Literary Events at Washington and Lee Spring 2011

Hints:  Pick and Choose early.  Don’t wait until the only thing left is something you aren’t interested in.  Take advantage of the fact that W&L brings in more literary visitors than any other college our size: you are soooooo lucky to have this many choices!

March 4:  VMI Undergraduate Poetry Symposium

Friday, March 4

7:45 p.m. – Reading by Brian Turner

Gillis Theater, Center for Leadership & Ethics

Special guest speaker/poet Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet.

Brian Turner is a soldier-poet whose debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor's Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the US Army, to include one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. 

Turner's poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner was also featured in Operation Homecoming, a unique documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. He earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South Korea.

The conference focuses on student literary papers/analysis and student readings of poetry.

Saturday, March 5: Part II of the VMI Poetry Symposium

1 p.m. – Keynote by James A. Winn

Gillis Theater, Center for Leadership & Ethics

All-day presentations of original student papers on poetry, original student poems

and a panel on the Poetry of War.

March 10:  “Steven Ealy, speaking about Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. 

Hillel House, 7 p.m.

A senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc., Steven Ealy will speak about “Robert Penn Warren’s ‘All the Kings Men’ and the Political Leadership of Willie Stark.” Corruption, rhetoric and the limitations of political leadership are among the themes of Ealy’s talk. He will compare and contrast the three intertwining stories discussed in “All the King’s Men.”

Ealy, who received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Georgia, is the author of “Communications, Speech, and Politics: Habermas and Political Analysis” and a number of articles dealing with Robert Penn Warren. A senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc., Steven Ealy will speak about “Robert Penn Warren’s ‘All the Kings Men’ and the Political Leadership of Willie Stark.” Corruption, rhetoric and the limitations of political leadership are among the themes of Ealy’s talk. He will compare and contrast the three intertwining stories discussed in “All the King’s Men.”

March 11:  “BREATH OF FIRE” Latina Theater Company. 

Stackhouse Theater on Friday, 7pm-9:30pm. “Slip of the Tongue”
Contact:  Dominica Radulescu
From the BOFLTE writers’ collective who brought you The “Mexican” OC, comes a incredible collection of under told stories from hilarity to calamity of identity, sexuality, and culture all from 3 Latina/Chicana/Pocha/Chigonas/Mujeres, y mas?!   Pieces include: When Song Leaders Go Bad!* written and performed by Elizabeth Isela Szekeresh, Calzones Cagados* written and performed by Sara Guerrero, and  Rocks in My Salsa*, written and performed by Cristina Nava.  Their website is http://www.breathoffire.org/.

March 16:  Poet Jeanne Larsen, author of Why We Make Gardens.

Reading: 4:30, Northen Auditorium

Funded by The Glasgow Endowment

Contact:  Deborah Miranda

(Required for English 204 unless other arrangements have been made with Professor Miranda)

March 17:  "Desperate Times and Desperate Measures: Poetry Out of the Ivory Tower?"

Award Winning Poets Rod Smith and Sarah Kennedy Lead a Seminar Discussion & Reading Along with Commentary

Johnson Lecture Series #4

7:00 PM Hillel House

Contact: Prof. Eduardo Velasquez Poets Rod Smith of W&L and Sarah Kennedy of Mary Baldwin College lead a seminar discussion and reading along with a commentary that explore how literary genres that are generally meant to take readers to a private experience, yet during times of crisis -- especially wars and uprisings -- serve as a crucible meant to produce real heat and action.  The title is "Desperate Times and Desperate Measures: Poetry Out of the Ivory Tower?" It is open to the public.  Smith is also editor of Shenandoah.

March 21:  “What We Talk about When We Talk about Revision”

2nd Annual Writer-in-Residence Program

4:40 PM Hillel House Multipurpose Room

Contact: R.T. Smith

W&L Writer-in-Residence R.T. Smith will host Professors Jasmine Darznik and Deborah Miranda in a brief reading of poetry, non-fiction and poetry. It will be followed by an interactive discussion concerning specific tactics and practices writers employ to raise their writing from the level of raw rough draft to polished story, poem or essay.

The program is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

Darznik is assistant professor of English at W&L, a Steinbeck Fellow and author of The Good Daughter, to be released Jan. 27. Miranda is associate professor of English at W&L and author of The Zen of La Llarona, Indian Cartography: Poems. Her book Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, is forthcoming from HeyDay Press.  Smith edits Shenandoah and is the author of the short story collections The Calaboose Epistles and the forthcoming Sherburne.

The authors' books will be on sale. The program is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College.

March 23: Poet Kevin Hart

5 p.m., Hillel House

Kevin Hart is a poet, professor and chair of Christian studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.  Hart is the author of several collections of poetry, including “Free Tree: Selected Poems” and “Wicked Heat.” He has recently completed a new collection of poetry titled “Morning Knowledge.” Hart’s poetry has won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for poetry, Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, the John Shaw Neilson Award for Poetry and the Christopher Brennan Award by the Fellowship of Australian Writers. In addition to his poetry, Hart has taught philosophy, English and literature at the University of Melbourne, Deakin University and Monash University in Australia. In 2001, he accepted a position at the University of Notre Dame. He graduated from the Australian National University with an honors degree in philosophy. He also attended Stanford University on a writing scholarship and received a doctorate from the University of Melbourne.

March 31:  "At the Sign of the Whited Sepulcher: Notes Towards A History of Hypocrisy."

Shannon-Clark Lecture

March 31, 2011

8:00 PM

Northen Auditorium, Leyburn Library

Sponsored by the English Department and the Shannon-Clarke Lecture Series.

Lecturer will be Dr. Nicholas Watson, professor of English, Harvard University.  Free and open to the public.  Nicholas Watson is a Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, and the department’s director of graduate studies and the chair of the Medieval Studies Committee. He is an internationally known medievalist whose principal interest lies in Christian religious texts written in Middle English and Anglo-Norman French—the vernacular of the day. For Mr. Watson, these texts provide windows through which readers can catch a broader, if still fragmented, view of the culture of the time.

April 4: 

Alex Espinoza, Chicano novelist, author of Still Water Saints. 

6:30 p.m. Northen Auditorium

Contact: Deborah Miranda

Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico, the youngest of eleven children. At the age of two, he migrated to Southern California with his family and grew up in the city of La Puente, a suburb of Los Angeles. Earning a B.A. from the University of California at Riverside with high honors, Alex went on to receive his MFA from UC Irvine, where he was the editor of the university's literary magazine. Still Water Saints is his first novel.  When the people of Agua Mansa are hopeless, they turn to the healing power of Perla Portillo and the herbal remedies and religious items she carries in her shop, the Botánica Oshún. Weaving together the dramas of her customers -- from a young woman determined to lose weight, to a drag queen turned parent and an immigrant boy fearful for his life -- Still Water Saints chronicles an eventful year in Perla's life and how she not only changes her customers but how they change her.

Alex Espinoza reads the first chapter of his novel, Still Water Saints, describing a day in the life of the Botánica Oshún. (Running Time: 20:35)  http://www.kqed.org/arts/programs/writersblock/episode.jsp?essid=14552

An interview with Alex is located at: http://www.riversideca.gov/library/interview_aespinoza.asp   This program is sponsored by The Glasgow Literary Endowment Fund.

CREDO: What do you believe?

The word “credo” comes from the Latin, and literally means, “I believe.” You may be familiar with it as a religious term. Do you really know what you believe – in general, or about a specific issue? How does what you believe define who you are? A credo can also be written as an instructional piece of material, like the Desiderata: here’s what you should believe, here’s what you should strive for. What would you advise others about how to survive this world?

First: read the Credo poems in our class anthology, SM. Read them carefully, note what the poets are doing to create a definition of one's identity. Look at this Credo:

Credo

I believe in the testament of bones, their tensile strength.

Little girls jumping rope, boys with hockey sticks,

leap moons every day. They whirl like planets

and their bones turn the wheel of the universe.

I believe in the torso, ankles, spine, and those small

sticky ribs. I rejoice in my bones each morning,

rise from bed on legs that hold me straight,

walk me to the kitchen. I lift my coffee cup

with a slender filigree of fingers. My hat

fits my skull and I dare the world with my chin.

At night, my bones retract into a thin skin of dreams.

These, too, I believe. An undercut of sorrow

runs beneath. I accept the slow dissolve into mineral.

I touch my knees, my breastbone, feel the outward scars,

believe that mysteries are happening deeper than skin;

so soon bones diminish and fall away.

I believe nothing is wasted: calcium-crumble,

grate of shale, arrowheads once lost now found,

even shiny leaves, the pointed blades of grass.

Everything that has moved in the rain.

-- Jennifer McPherson

 

McPherson combines elements of praise, list, and ethics with her very close and appreciative musing on bones. Try to identify the abstract(s) McPherson believes in.  What are they?

 

If you can name the abstracts, but don't actually see those words in the poem, then she's done her job!  McPherson's amazement at the hard work of bones, the movements that specific bones let us make, and the mystery of how bones fade away with time, all come through with her concrete details, her carefully chosen images, and her concise use of the phrase "I believe."  Check out these Credos:

Credo

by Judith Roche

I believe in the cave paintings at Lascaux,
the beauty of the clavicle,
the journey of the salmon,
her leap up any barrier,
the scent of home waters
she finds through celestial navigation.
I believe in all the gods –
I just don’t like some of them.
I believe the war is always against the imagination,
is recurring, repetitive, and relentless.
I believe in fairies, elves, angels and bodisatvas,
Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
I have seen and heard ghosts.
I believe that Raven invented the Earth
And so did Coyote. In archeology
lie the clues. The threshold is numinous
and the way in is the way out.
I believe in the alphabets - all of them -
and the stories seeping from their letters.
I believe in dance as prayer, that the heart
beat invented rhythm and chant –.
or is it the other way around –
I believe in the wisdom of the body.
I believe that art saves lives
and love makes it worth living them.
And that could be the other way around, too.

-- Judith Roche

Roche's poem looks at the larger mysteries of the universe - Creation, Prayer, Wisdom, Art. But she still uses very particular images, unpredictable combinations, and specific details to create her sweeping statements. Hers is an inclusive belief system that, like McPherson's, accepts even the endings of mystery.

These pieces require their authors to be honest and unpredictable, mundane and risky, thorough and concise. A credo is your definition of self: it may be your self at any given moment, the self you aspire to become, the self you used to be, or the core self that never changes. It is both a concrete assertion, and an imaginary, abstract thing.
 
Two important hints:

1.  As tempting as it may be, avoid THE BIG ABSTRACTS IF YOU CANNOT SUPPORT THEM.  You may feel very strongly about yoga, Buddha, The Great Spirit, or Pepsi.  But if you can't give those abstracts a structure or skeleton to hold themselves up, your poem will be a blob of inarticulate dreck.

2.  Writing a Credo requires time, passion, and craft.  Give yourself TIME for freewrites, metaphor invention, exploration. 

Here are some exercises to get you started. Try at least two of them, even if you think you know what kind of credo you want to create - you want to make use of the unpredictability of language to help hit that magic combination of words.

Exercise A

Start each line below with “I believe.”
1. Write down five specific things you believe about one or all of these topics: religion, politics, nutrition, a particular sport, sex.
2. Write down five specific things you believe about one or all of these topics: asparagus, birds, sweatshirts, small appliances, personal hygiene.
3. Write down five things you do NOT believe in, from any of the above categories.
4. Write down three things you WISH you believed in (no limits).
5. Write down two things you USED TO believe in, but don’t any longer (no limits).
6. Write down what you believe is THE MOST AMAZING thing or event in the known or unknown universe, or simply in your own personal experience.
7. Use these lines to construct a poem that starts, “I believe…”
8. Revise: start adding in WHY you believe these things for all or every other line. See what happens to the poem. Remove some of the “I believe” statements to create a list-like tone. Check on your choice of verbs, words, clichés, unintentional repetitions, predictability. Strive for your own, unique voice in every possible way.

Exercise B
1. Do Exercise A, but start each line with “I don’t believe” instead of “I believe” (Sarah Lewis Holmes does this in her poem (above) with great effect, building a semi-absurd but also serious commentary on how to live one’s truest life). When you get to #6, tell us the most heretical, incredible, inhumane, unconscionable thing you don’t believe in: for example, “I don’t believe in flossing,” or “I don’t believe in an omniscient God,” or “I don’t believe in stretching before exercise.” This line is totally personal, and completely up to you, but remember: it still needs to make good poetry.

Exercise C
1. Write a credo from someone else’s perspective, Examples: Janitor’s Credo. Code-writer’s Credo. Fraternity/Sorority Credo. Designated Driver’s Credo. The Good Son’s (Daughter’s) Credo. The key here: GET INTO CHARACTER.

Exercise D
1. Write a credo that is about only one specific topic or event. Check out the infamous “Crash’s Credo” from the movie Bull Durham at watch the “Bull Durham” scene on you-tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBfdl6hNZ9k - this would be an example of a very specific life philosophy! Ex: Vacation Credo. Lawn-mowing Credo. Cheater’s Credo. Dog-owner’s Credo. Sex Credo. Sunday Credo. Exam Credo. Golf Credo. The key here: FOCUS.

Exercise E.1. Steal a great line from the credo poems in SM. Use it as your jumping off point for a topic-specific poem. For example, Jennifer McPherson’s line, “I believe in the testament of bones” would be a great start to a poem about the qualities, importance of, work of, dreams of, or memories of, bones.

Exercise F.Go to http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=4538138 and choose one of the “This I Believe” audio essays from NPR to listen to; freewrite on what the essay evokes in your mind about the topic (whether it be something about race, forgiveness, good neighbors, or ghosts); use some of the lines to write a “found” credo; write ABOUT the essay (“Amy Tan believes in ghosts; she believes in scary ghosts that lurk under chairs, she believes in baby ghosts that cry out for lost mothers…”).

I have tried my hand at writing a credo several times. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. This is an older effort, meant to focus on my move to Virginia from the west coast. Now that I’ve been here awhile, it might be time to try this exercise again.


Credo
-- Deborah Miranda

I believe that the scent of ions bristles on the edge

of a thunderstorm, chemically alters our brain cells

like the breath of a passing god.

I believe that round, sage green hills trigger

the heartsongs of ancestors still dwelling

in the ridges of blue mountains.

I believe the liquid jungle cries of robins overflow

from ancient fountains of praise. 

I don’t believe in promises pulled from weeping children,

or lovers.  I don’t believe in the noble poor,

the noble savage, or the born-again politician. 

I believe in a brilliant, distracted Creator

who’s forgotten to feed the kids but snags

a Nobel with that terra cotta sculpture.  I believe

in the languid lure of purple phlox on the road home,

forget-me-nots sprouting in abandoned yards,

the fervent green cries of a thousand acorns

all sprouting in love at once.

J. Ivy

After watching dozens of Youtube videos of Def Jam poets, I felt really prepared for what J. Ivy was going to do when he got on stage. I was wrong. From the second row, nothing could have prepared me for the passion, lyrics, and rhythm that J. Ivy manipulated and mastered on stage.

The craft was masterful. J. Ivy used words like “Him” and “Hymn” to not only sync a hefty, seemingly unconventional but nonetheless powerful rhyme while also delivering a powerful message about his dad. I’ve watched Eminem, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and others rap and J. Ivy uses similar methods they do to drop rhymes. These include a diversity of methods such as internal rhyme, ABAB, but the most powerful were slant rhymes. I’ve seen other Slam poets do this to perfection. The “Slam” slant rhyme allows a well-educated poet such as J. Ivy talk in street slang. This drives home the message of connecting with his home roots and humble beginnings.

The story made for the most powerful part of the whole routine. J. Ivy did not hesitate to jump right into rhyme by introducing himself as a kid from “ChiRAQ”, connecting his experience of war to the War on Terrorism in Iraq. Following this introduction which covered his broad array of sports and performance background, J. Ivy told us of the conditions of Chicago and the difficulty of young blacks escaping tough times. Luckily for him, he said, his voice gave him a chance to perform a poem on stage and one after another in college, he performed his heart out. Funny poems filtered his performance with an extremely comedic poem about a blind date that ended with J. Ivy being mugged in Jackson Park by his blind date and her boyfriend. A poem about “look up when you get down”, was his inspiration and big break onto records with names like Jay-Z and Kanye West. J. Ivy concluded his performance by performing “Dear Father”, which is my personal favorite. This praise poem praises the dirty, the ugly, the abandonment, the drugs, the family fights, the brutality, and the love of his father. J. Ivy closed his eyes and said, “Father, when I get to heaven, we going to kick back … and watch the Bear’s game.”

I wrote a poem about my brother yesterday about a terrible dream I had in which he killed himself because of depression. After watching J. Ivy, I have new inspiration and have been working on it all night. When I talked to him after the show and told him about my love of Def Poetry, he said to keep working and keep rhyming, cause a “big break is one lyric away.”

I have come away from this experience with a renewed respect for the work that Def Jam poets do. Race, poverty, depression, and floods of other issues inspire these artists, emotions that I may never truly understand due to my white, suburban background. Yet, I feel apart of them when J. Ivy drops his rhymes and delivers a powerful message of inspiration, “causing actions by [his] verbs.”

THE PRAISE POEM: CELEBRATION

Reading:  See the Praise Poem section in Sacrament of the Mundane, and chapter 8, "Odes and Praise Songs: When Poets Look Up," in 13 Ways.

 

Poems in praise of a particular person, object or ideal are poems that invite you to create lush, specific, fervent language, language that constructs a multi-dimensional image of that which the poet finds praiseworthy.  

The Western tradition is full of praise poems: Ode to an Athlete Dying Young, Ode on a Grecian Urn.  There is a well-known African tribal tradition of praise poems, with powerful animal and elemental imagery, which some prominent African American poets have adopted.  This beginning poetry workshop is actually named after a poem by contemporary poet Al Zolynas, because his line “ah, gray sacrament of the mundane!” gave me the perfect theme for young writers: learn to see the sacred in our everyday lives.  The moment Zolynas describes glancing down as he washes dishes has always illuminated for me a way of seeing, an attitude, a shift of perspective.  Here’s Al Zolynas’ poem:

          THE ZEN OF HOUSEWORK

        I look over my own shoulder

        down my arms

        to where they disappear under water

        into hands inside pink rubber gloves

        moiling among dinner dishes.

        My hands lift a wine glass,

        holding it by the stem and under the bowl.

        It breaks the surface

        like a chalice

        rising from a medieval lake.

        Full of the gray wine

        of domesticity, the glass floats

        to the level of my eyes.

        Behind it, through the window

        above the sink, the sun, among

        a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches,

        is setting in Western America.

        I can see thousands of droplets

        of steam --each a tiny spectrum --rising

        from my goblet of gray wine.

        They sway, changing directions

        constantly--like a school of playful fish,

        or like the sheer curtain

        on the window to another world.

        Ah, gray sacrament of the mundane!

Pablo Neruda has a long series of “Odes” in which he praises everyday objects such as a Tuna, an Artichoke, a Chestnut, Salt, a Lemon, and pair of Socks, a Fork and so on (see SM; also, Neruda's book, Elemental Odes, is published online )..  Edward Hirsch writes of Neruda’s praise poems,

The list of their subjects is dizzying. Nothing ordinary was alien to Neruda, or, for that matter, ordinary -- everything was magical. He wrote separate odes to tomatoes and wine, to an artichoke and a dead carob tree, to conger chowder, to a large tuna in the market, to his socks and his suit, to his native birds, to light on the sea, to the dictionary, to a village movie theater. He wrote an ode to time and another to the Earth, an [ode entitled] "Ode for Everything." . . . The first poem, "The Invisible Man," is explicit in its sense of the poet's urgency: "what can I do,/everything asks me/to speak,/everything asks me/to sing, sing forever." . . . The odes are funny, fiery and exultant, savagely new and profoundly ancient.

For this exercise, choose a common object from your current surroundings; empty out your pockets or backpack if you feel the need for more choices.  The more random, the better.  If you can, set the object in front of yourself on your desk, or go sit near it  Remember: Everything deserves praise.  In the style of Neruda, write an Ode to that object in a freewrite.  Do this several times, each time remembering to turn off your ‘inner editor’ and let the beauty of the object take over.  Title the poem simply “Plate” or “Scotch Tape” for now – it worked for Neruda.

Beauty in Small Things

Another kind of praise poem is a Beatitude (it is also frequently combined with a prayer poem).  “Blessed are the ______, for he/she/it/they ________________” is the basic form that has been used since Biblical times, and probably earlier. Choose a new object and write in  “Beatitude” style about it; after your freewrite time is up, choose a minimum of ten and a maximum of 14 lines to construct a Beatitude for the object.  Work for both utter seriousness, and a little light-heartedness.  See if your poem wants to go one way or another.  Be open to being funny; or to being deadly straight.  Strive for honest praise.  What does the object commonly do?  What work does it perform?  What miracles might it create?  How would the world be different without it?  How would YOUR world be changed without it?  What mundane but necessary act or work does your object perform that makes the world a better, easier, more convenient or beautiful place?

* Now try this exercise with a person as your focal point of praise.  This might be a family member, a celebrity whose impact you admire, an anonymous person whose path crossed yours recently.

* Now try this with a group of people as your focal point – a community of some sort:  blessed be the doctors … the actors … the dog-catchers … the janitors …. the stockbrokers … the kindergartners … the baristas …. the little brothers ….

As you write and revise, think about unsung heroes.  These can be people, objects, events, ideals, concepts, even a certain time of day or year.  It could be something we would normally never think of praising, or at least not praising lavishly; it could be something often praised, but for completely different reasons than those you are citing. 

 Watch and listen to Quincy Troupe's praise poem, "Poem for Magic."  Thinking about praising a celebrity whose art or work in the world deserves celebration - anything from social justice to pure entertainment.

PRAISE.  What does it mean to celebrate the existence of some one, or some thing?  Is it like falling in love?  Seeing it as if for the first time?  Listing what is beautiful, useful, surprising, ugly?  Noticing – really noticing?  Give us your take on praise.