I opted to write a poem related to a delegate, Cynthia McKinney, from my home state for the Personnages Obscurs site. They will post a poem a day that includes the name of a delegate – starting today. When the bill to bar women from serving in direct ground combat roles came up for vote…
Last night, listening to the “Women in the Avant Garde” cd that Justin Sirois of Narrow House Records so generously gave me two weeks ago. I decided on track three, since I briefly corresponded with Carol Mirakove awhile back, and I wanted to hear her work. Sleep I did not. Mirakove is an excellent reader…
After a lovely night at a local bar, I am convinced that people are drawn to but belittle poetry because, to put it simply, they fear their own potential. Poetry lets you say anything. A la Kenneth Koch, you aren’t bound to the logic of everyday language. If I give you a command or tell…
Kanye West’s songs generally explore the tension of wanting to acquire the American ideal via material signifiers and the price of that image (consider “Diamonds from Sierra Lyone”) to celebrating his ability to be successful. Even after he gets the goods required to “succeed,” he’s still at odds with a history that haunts “what’s inside.”…
A photo of James Baldwin graces the cover of Poets & Writers this month. Coincidentally enough, I was just revisiting his book of essays that I read as an undergrad, The Price of the Ticket. What an excellent book & man. Here’s an excerpt from an essay, “Here Be Dragons,” that seems fitting for today:…
This is the “Definition Essay” example I usually pass out to my ENG101 students. It’s from OWL, I believe, and is a fairly decent student sample. American Patriots: Soldiers, Citizens, Voters The United States is presently at war in Iraq and Afghanistan where American troops are fighting and dying. At home, cars and homes display…
hands half face. (king) a bodyfeel lexicon. (gordon/bozek) dimestore operetta say. (bowen) developing poetic ideas. (chirot) time space repetition. (armentrout) vie et pli. (giovenale) afar buzzing stars. (scappettone) props of henwifery. (sprague) digress into residency. (berridge) laced with forethought. (murphy) postcard of the. (tate) I posit no. (fieled) erratogenic paraparasitic postpoem. (goodland) erotic false consciousness.…
Well, Rob McLennan asked me some fun questions, so I had to think about me, me, me. I think I had fun with me. Visit me here. Or go to the complete archive and have fun with lots of other poets like Juliana Spahr, Adeena Karasick, William Allegrezza, Matthew Zapruder, Rosmarie Waldrop, Maxine Chernoff, Cole…
101 poets list books that have been especially important in their artistic development, and offer commentary. Sandra Alcosser * Jack Anderson * Philip Appleman * Ivan Argüelles * Mary Jo Bang * Luis Benítez * Robert Bly * Amy King * Daniel Bourne * Andrea Hollander Budy * Mairéad Byrne * Nick Carbó * Maxine…
Excerpts from “Pounding Fascism (Appropriating Ideologies — Mystification, Aestheticization, and Authority in Pound’s Poetic Practice)” as found in A POETICS by Charles Bernstein.“… For Pound’s fascism is all too easily censured, as by slap on hand, while the fascist ideas that infect his poetry and poetics seep unnamed into the orthodox cultural theory and criticism…
It’s a sad, sad state of affairs for the American people when we have to boil our presidential election down to questions of race and gender. And yet, we’ve arrived: Are Americans more racist or sexist? We have to wonder aloud, so that we send the most able opponent up against the Great White Hope,…
BEST SECOND BOOK (One time the singer Seal said something about how you have your whole life to write your first album, so people shouldn’t expect greatness out of a second attempt. These five say “go back in the water, Seal.”)Goat Funeral, Christopher Bakken Inflorescence, Sarah Hannah I’m the Man Who Loves You, Amy King…
The U.S. entered Iraq with bombs ablaze on March 18, 2003 — nearly five years ago. Many Iraqi citizens, living their lives much like we do, were killed in the middle of the night, and for months to come. Until that night, America was at peace with Iraq, and neither country had attacked the other.…
This blog has received regular hits for The Knife‘s “Pass This On” ever since I posted it at the end of May 2007. Since then, the video was removed by Youtube or the subscriber who posted it. Today, I found it elsewhere on the site (w/ an annoying “Z” in the upper corner) and posted…
Out of shape? Tennis shoes growing cobwebs? Mine too. So I went to Modell’s to buy a trampoline to do some indoor jogging and picked up an “Urban Rebounder” for what I thought was going to be about a hundred bucks. I walked out with the thing for fifty bucks total (the sale/markdown wasn’t even…
Ladies, there is no neutral position for us to assume. * Gertrude Stein, Libretto for the opera The Mother Of Us All by Virgil Thomson (1947), from Last Operas and Plays (1949) Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is.…
From the “INTRODUCTION” By Michael W. Jennings — THE WRITER OF MODERN LIFE: ESSAYS ON CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by Walter Benjamin: Yes the ragpicker is also a figure for Baudelaire, for the poet who draws on the detritus of the society through which he moves, seizing that which seems useful in part because society has found…
** “The tooth-in-eye technique, pioneered in Italy 40 years ago …” [Blind teen to have parts of tooth, jaw inserted in eye] ** “The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.” [Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son’s tooth in his…
The following excerpts are taken from “Dim Sum: Tonya Foster & Evie Shockley — Braiding: ConVERSations: To, Against, For” It would be one thing if poetry were made of words alone, but it is not–no more than words themselves are. –Paolo Friere via James Scully (Linebreak 133) …If essentialism means being able…
~~~ Tonight I’m thinking of Freddie. ~~~
Thanks to Jackie Clark for inviting me to participate in the ten part Poets Off Poetry series. My contribution, “Fed You From The Blood of My Nose: A Medley Melodic,” appears under the heading, “In Which Nearly Every Human Knows This Desire.” Lots of links to music you might enjoy, and I hope you do…
~~~ Speaking of heads and being right on, Katha Pollitt responds to the recent Washington Post article by Charlotte Allen in her own article, “Dumb and Dumber: An Essay and Its Editors — The question is not why Charlotte Allen wrote her silly piece–it’s why The Post published it.” Why do people still buy into…
From PEN American Center World-renowned writers from China and North America marked International Human Rights Day by launching We Are Ready for Freedom of Expression, a campaign that challenges the Chinese government to release all the writers and journalists it is holding in prisons before the August 8, 2008 opening of the Olympic Games. Noted…
Homework Questions 1. Please remind me — why are we in Iraq again? 2. The 9/11 terrorists came from what country? 3. Is the war in Iraq, and possibly Iran if McCain gets elected, related to the current crisis of the U.S. dollar? These are just a few questions I’ll ask my students today to…
Jay Silverheels, best known for his role as Tonto in “The Lone Ranger,” was also a boxer and lacrosse player and even held a position on Canada’s National Lacrosse Team. He also founded the Indian Actors Workshop in Echo Park, California, which no longer seems to exist. The number of Native American actors seems quite…
Is an Italian tiramisu finished with a not-too-nutty Frangelico. Bene appetite~
AMY KING 