My weekend:
Splendid Open House at the Writer's Center.
Monsoon.
Dinner party, complete with poodle.
Farmer's Market.
Duckpin Bowling.
Mad Men.
Scotch & gummi bears.
True Blood.
When Harry Met Sally.
Please note that I've filled in all kinds of logistical details for September and October readings, both here and on my website. I am particularly excited to be traveling to Atlanta, Greensboro, and New York City. For DC folks, please consider coming out to hear me read with Susan Settelmyre Williams this Monday (September 15) at the Cafe Muse Series. An emergency forced Susan to cancel her DC reading earlier this year, so I'm particularly thrilled to have a second chance. Her book, Ashes in Midair, won the 2007 Poetry Book Contest from Many Mountains Moving, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa.
My September 25 reading in Greensboro, North Carolina, is in celebration of the latest issue of Cave Wall, just out for Summer/Fall 2008. Cave Wall is a splendid little journal ably edited by the wonderful Rhett Iseman Tull; it could be the next generation of Poetry, in both physical format and aesthetic aspiration. I have three poems in the new issue, and you can read "Another Failed Poem about the Greeks" on the Cave Wall website.
September 08, 2008
September 02, 2008
Bookslut? Galley Cat? Anybody?
I enjoyed meeting author and feminist critic Susan Faludi at luncheon hosted by her publisher some months back. Later, I enjoyed reading her book The Terror Dream when it came to my office in hardback. When I spied the paperback edition at Kramerbooks today, I thought the redesigned cover was quite stunning.
I also thought--assumed, was dead sure--that the cover was using the art work of Kara Walker. Compare:
...to some work from Kara Walker's recent exhibition, My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love:
As readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of Walker's work. Because she is a political artist in her own right, I was surprised to see her willing to affiliate with Faludi, who has her own set of controversies. Well, it turns out this artwork is not credited to Kara Walker; it is apparently part of the "original" book design.
Which leaves me feeling a touch of discomfort. I recognize that whereas Southern iconography reigns in Walker's work, this cover substitutes Western images. Instead of dancing slaves, we have a dancing "injun." Maybe that's enough difference on a legal level. But I have the uncomfortable suspicion that Walker has exhibited an image very similar to that silhouette of the woman straddling the cowboy. Walker's version might be in a plantation skirt, and he might have a foreman's whip instead of a Stetson. Still, the spirit is the same: the oppressed loving her oppressor.
Does anyone else think this is an odd echo? Has Walker developed a "style" that, like Andy Warhol, can be imitated without consequence?
I also thought--assumed, was dead sure--that the cover was using the art work of Kara Walker. Compare:
...to some work from Kara Walker's recent exhibition, My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love:
As readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of Walker's work. Because she is a political artist in her own right, I was surprised to see her willing to affiliate with Faludi, who has her own set of controversies. Well, it turns out this artwork is not credited to Kara Walker; it is apparently part of the "original" book design.
Which leaves me feeling a touch of discomfort. I recognize that whereas Southern iconography reigns in Walker's work, this cover substitutes Western images. Instead of dancing slaves, we have a dancing "injun." Maybe that's enough difference on a legal level. But I have the uncomfortable suspicion that Walker has exhibited an image very similar to that silhouette of the woman straddling the cowboy. Walker's version might be in a plantation skirt, and he might have a foreman's whip instead of a Stetson. Still, the spirit is the same: the oppressed loving her oppressor.
Does anyone else think this is an odd echo? Has Walker developed a "style" that, like Andy Warhol, can be imitated without consequence?
Poetic Asides with Robert Lee Brewer
...Mining what's around you is practically inevitable, particularly for the first book. Young writers have been using the same bildungsroman arc since the days of the German enlightenment, and one of the things you hear over and over in MFA programs—"write what you know"—does nothing to challenge that. Which is just fine, as long as the craft is there and the writer has the discipline to then move on...
(Thanks for the great interview questions, Robert!)
(Thanks for the great interview questions, Robert!)
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