can't kick the habit!

poetry workshop

Date: Fri, 6 May 2005 09:50:47 -0700
From: Jordan Stempleman
Subject: Kamau Brathwaite: CowPasture Update

from Kamau, in London
……. So far, after all our efforts, there has not been a single word/response
from Govt/Airport Authority, and the rumour grows louder that whats going on
at CP is not yet the ROAD but a ?new/old initiative of which the road is
PART - a golf course for the Airport’s tourists. To have created so much
havoc, thrown off so many people from the pasture, destroyed a rare
environment, thwarted my perhaps last opp to find a hoom in Barbados and set
up that Institute - all for a secret golf course! it makes you want to turn
to ’sterner’ other measures - at least you can see how these things come
about - not that we have that kind of psychology/raw material in ‘Paradise’

http://www.tomraworth.com/wordpress/

_________________________________________________________________

more chorus

poetry workshop

And a hearty thank you for today's class! The reading was terrific, even despite some friendly but authoritative heckling from yours truly. This is a class I'm really going to miss. Take care of yourselves and keep reading, writing, and yes, publishing. As for that last point, please come chat if you'd like to start up your own publishing concern. The fine tradition of mimeo and laser printed work continues, and isn't expensive. A wonderful way to create community and spread word(s).

You know where to find me. I'm the one who can't graduate!

aloha, Susan

professor spam mail

poetry workshop

I've been sending this around and around. Please forward it to friends.

TINFISH DOCKET


Tinfish Press has a number of fine volumes of poetry coming out this year and into the next. In order to defray the printing costs, which are considerable, we are asking that you purchase some existing books from us (see http://tinfishpress.com) or simply offer a modest donation to the press, which is now non-profit.

Here are the books that are coming:

Cribs, by Yunte Huang. Huang’s first book of poems, which moves vertiginously between baby cribs and word cribs, English and Chinese.

Surgical Bru ez, by Sherman Souther. Souther is a retired surgeon who earned his MFA at Naropa and lives on Kauai.

Composite Diplomacy, by Padcha Tuntha-obas. Tuntha-obas is a Thai writer in English whose book looks at the lyric through Thai and English lexicons.

Growing Still, by Deborah Meadows. Marvelous lyrical, philosophical meditations from Meadows, whose book Representing Absence came out recently from Green Integer.

Poeta en San Francisco, by Barbara Jane Reyes. Like many of our books, this one examines the bi-furcation of the diasporic experience, this time from the Philippines, through language and the poet’s wandering through San Francisco and its history.

When the Plug Gets Unplugged, by Kim Hye-sun, translated by Dee Mon Choi. A book of poems about rats by an important feminist South Korean poet.

Tinfish 15: more of Tinfish’s selection of experimental work from the Pacific region.

If you would like to give money toward one of these forthcoming publications, we will thank you on our website.

Donations of $50 or more come with a free Tinfish publication of your choice. Any help you can offer to publish work from the Pacific region is much appreciated.

aloha, Susan

Susan M. Schultz
Editor, Tinfish Press
Kane`ohe, HI 96744

timing

poetry workshop

I know it's getting down to crunch time; I'm feeling rather crunched myself.

I'll get to your poems on Wednesday and on Friday, my non-teaching days. In the meantime, please come see me on Wednesday to talk over chapbooks and particular poems and issues. I'll be in from 10 until near 3.

In the meantime, thanks for being so game this semester. It's gratifying to see you trying on new poetic gear, driving in new gears, gearing up in new ways. I fear I'm stripping mine!

aloha, Susan

o jah mon

Hi all—
Like most everyone else, this is my first x-posure to Brathwaite and I’m pretty much blown away by his poems. On a personal level, it’s strangely heartening to see a modern-day poet so successfully embracing techniques like alliteration, consonance, assonance and rhyme, since (in some of my drafts) I tend towards those repetitions of sounds, even though I’ve tried to tone it down and/or break myself of the habit occasionally over the years. With lines like “first there is the frost and it was light / blue almost white / like cloud. Icing of furushima / and then it was real cloud. / like the blue/ mountains” there’s obviously still hope for these techniques in the right hands (63).
Brathwaite is so strongly aware of the sound and rhythm (and silence) of language—down to the last syllable—that I hope we get to hear him read at some point. I tried to down load some stuff to bring too but couldn’t get it to work either. Reading his work also really made me aware of the percussive and rhythmic capabilities of one and two syllable words, as happens in “Words Need Love Too”: “bringing yr lips at last out/ not to resist/ not to resist but kiss/ kiss shapes back into their proper pout / & speech back into their proper sounds / & even beyond these proper sounds / soft song / soft songs / chant canticle poem & halleluja halleluja halleluja” (28). The kiss and pout are wonderfully alliterative, and they link to their meanings within the poem surrounding love/ communication / words / speech through it and through repetition; the three-syllable “halleluja”s seem even more expansive and dramatic when proceeded by all of the shorter, more percussive words about words. His use of nation language fits so strongly into his rhythms it makes me wish I had one, but, sadly the little test told me I speak 80% General American English and 20% Yankee, whatever those are. Valley Girl just really doesn’t seem like it would cut it (though you never know…)
Thanks,
Eve

what kind of english do you speak?

poetry workshop

a good way to prepare for today's class. Found it on ronsilliman.blogspot.com

http://www.blogthings.com/amenglishdialecttest/


Susan

back to the roots

Hi everyone. sing along with me now, bob marley stylee "it's been a long, long time, since i've got you on my mind" cuz honeys its been a long long time since I've been on dis here blog...as you can tell. anyways, getting back to what's at hand:

I am enjoying Kamau Brathwaite's _Words Need Love Too_. The introduction was invaluable and enjoyable to read. It laid out poetics, process..very helpful ideas to enrich our reading of Brathwaite. I even appreciated immensely the acknowledgement/thanks from the first page: it was like opening the book with a prayer..and being given understanding...something as old as our bones: like a spiritual poesis..if there is such a thing. What I'm trying to say is that even with that short snip of a page, it was like I was being prepared, cleansed, made ready for the rest of the book....like an initiation...at the very least, it allowed my mind to clear away from all the flarlingdom that's been expounded with Mohammad, from all the aesthetics(?) of the grotesque a la Dinh (even though i'm totally down wiht Dinh).....it's like after all this time, we're finally getting back to the roots. Anyways, I like how Bill summed up all the recognizable elements which are embodied or culminated in Brathwaite's poetry. But I especially appreciate it for its 'nation language' (which has been preambled in class last week) and that it is yet another representation of traditionally marginalized voices. I guess you could say that i'm a softy for marginalized artist/poets/writers. These poems definitly re minded me of McMullin, Rastafarian resistance, Cha, George Lamming (I was at that video-viewing too--that lecture series rocked some serious soul shakin' action), and Zombies...

i too am interested in hearing about Vodoun. isn't Agwe the god of rain/sea?

p.s. I'm bringing an orange shaker for tomorrow's musical/poetic performance. see you in class!

peace.

brathwaite interview

poetry workshop

give this a shot--same guy who interviewed Linh Dinh--

http://kaos.evergreen.edu/audio/cc_poetics_braithwaite.mp3

Susan

calling all you computer pros

poetry workshop

I'm not finding my Brathwaite cd, and Keith is having computer difficulties, so I'm wondering if one of you computer whizzes (Bill? Laura?) could do the class a huge favor and download some audio of Brathwaite reading a poem or two. Or answering a question (see the phillysound site for interview). There's lots out there.

Free Tinfish item for any who help out!

aloha, Susan

Flarf to workshop

Hi,
Here's my flarf meets list poem thang (vaguely related to that first Death Valley poem we did at the beginning of the semester) to workshop next time. Still working on the order of stanzas/ lines/ differing voices etc. so any suggestions welcome.Hope the formatting pastes right!
Thanks,
Eve

Consuming Reserve

…Death Valley may conjure up pretty scary thoughts, but some of the finest [1st lines should be italics]
…Death Valley National Park @ Deathvalley.com Copyright by Preferred Consumer. All
Rights Reserved
…Area includes a variety of industrial, agricultural, and consumer products
…Our business decisions balance economics
…20 mule teams carried 22 tons of Borax on each trip
…in Teel’s Marsh, birthplace of a legend
…Magic water softener and cleanser discovered in Death Valley, Calif.
…Extensive use of post-consumer recycled content paper products
…Dial Corporation
…All Rights Reserved

…Death Valley may conjure up pretty scary thoughts, but some of the finest
…Wildflower ALERT!!!
…Constant rain creates sea of rare blooms
…Desert Gold! Show starts from Furnace Creek to Badwater. Desert Gold! Pink Sand
Verbena, white Primrose roadsides! Desert Gold! Devils’s Golf Course to Jubilee
Pass!!!
…Tourists swarm to see blooms at Death…
…Beware deep washouts…Keane Wonder Mine Road open again
…In brain boiling summer heat
…we toured the arid 130-degree Death Valley dust bowl
…in the latest four-wheel-drive sport/utility vehicles
…Death Valley Days and Dark Nights Secure Reservation Form: VERY IMPORTANT
DISCLOSURE NOTICE: Please Read.
…It constitutes part of your contract for travel related services
…All Rights Reserved

…Death Valley may conjure up pretty scary thoughts, but some of the finest
…Epinions has the best comparison shopping information on Death Valley National Park
…Death Valley and Las Vegas are inseparable, you have to accept
…The mass-produced, mall-induced consumer society
…Boric Acid found in dried salt lake beds used in wide range of consumer products
…On Sunday we all drove to Death Valley
…That was my favorite trip
…We kept moving
…windows rolled up, on air-conditioned life support
…“Death Valley” is not a positive nickname
…Tourism up despite flooding
…Story of western expansion, wealth, greed, suffering, ultimate triumph
…hard won bounty
…All Rights Reserved

pro-Brathwaite website

poetry workshop

http://www.tomraworth.com/wordpress/

created by a wonderful English/Irish poet, Tom Raworth.

Susan