Check out these two TED clips to tour the amazing work of artist Tom Shannon:
I've been thinking a lot about the intersections between art and science ever since I attended the Phillips Collection's second annual Art & Innovation Design Gathering, which was cosponsored by the University of Virginia. We need more art that utilizes science. We need more science that engages art. I've never been able to attend a TED conference, but I think I got a tiny glimpse of the energy inherent to them from that day at the Phillips. The theme was "looking," i.e. using experiential learning and dynamic interactions with change agents to explore the power of perception and cognition; the art of looking slowly. We were given the opportunity to talk with artists Tobi Kahn and Sam Gilliam (the latter of whom has just installed a piece that hangs the entire height of the new wing's stairwell); learn from UVA professor and cognitive psychologist Denny Profitt how the human eye determines horizon line (in both daily life and on the canvas); and enjoy Ren Weschler's theory of convergences (both real and imagined).
It was an amazing session of revelatory, substantive conversation, and I felt so lucky to have been invited. In these days when the popular economy runs the danger of choking the creative economy, it's encouraging to think a curator would judge it worthwhile to add a poet to the mix. DC has all it needs to foster such collaborations. Let's get Tom Shannon to the National Science Foundation, STAT.
March 26, 2011
March 23, 2011
Dim-Lit Wednesday
Ach, ach. An in-between day: the cherry blossoms are out, but the skies are gray and the local sirens are wailing. Sadly, a lunch of frozen chicken vindaloo and wilted spinach will not turn the tide of my mood. Makes me think of an I Was the Jukebox poem--"Love Poem for Wednesday"--devoted to this strange time of each week.
I had a fun weekend, and not just in terms of Bishop-ing to a full house on Sunday. Saturday included a sojourn down to Charlottesville to 1) devour a cinnamon-raisin bagel with peanut butter at Bodo's, 2) interview with the editor of 3.7, the undergrad lit mag I edited in my own days at UVA, and 3) hear good friends Erika Meitner and Jehanne Dubrow read at the Festival of the Book. Those ladies make me proud to be a poet; I'd follow them anywhere. Here we are (Jehanne is on the left, Erika on the right):
...This was also my first chance to meet January Gill O'Neil, who took this photo, and who read great poems alongside Jehanne and Erika at the Downtown Mall's New Dominion Bookstore, which is one of my all-time favorite settings to hear poetry.
Afterwards I learned that since I'd read on Wednesday, I had an automatic invite to the "Writer's Reception" that closes the festival. That gave me a chance to catch up with some other writer-folks, including fellow SPIR Jake Adam York and BOA rockstar Dan Albergotti, and chat for a longer while with January, who is a fellow writer-not-teacher, which is not an easy path to take. I particularly admire January's latest project, organizing the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. I have a sneaking suspicion she is one of those women who can do anything, anything, she puts her mind to doing.
Kudos to the Festival of the Book for sponsoring the reception as a way of bringing writers together; we don't get a lot of perks on the road in our travels, and sometimes it is just nice to have someone pour you a glass of wine. One of the waiters was a familiar face--a UVA student whose undergraduate poetry class I visited this spring--and she made sure the bacon-wrapped dates passed my way each time a new tray came out from the kitchen. In my defense, it was the only part of the spread I wasn't allergic to (and she knew that). But, hot damn, VIP bacon access! That was awesome.
Since then, I've been staying in. My hermit-ing meant I missed hearing Mary Karr criticize Emily Dickinson and Rae Armantrout at the Folger on Monday. A friend who was said that the aesthetic takedown included other well-loved contemporary poets. I wanted to hear Karr in part because I love her essay "Against Decoration," which can be found appended onto the end of her poetry collection Viper Rum. The essay is an enduring, edgy, necessary critique of the tendency of poets to embroider their work with superfluous imagery. Knowing how unvarnished she can be in her opinions, I'm not shocked the Q&A became a spectacle. She's a bit of a giant-killer.
But gosh, thank god there are still a few of those around--especially ones who opt to expend that energy into articulating theories of poetry, rather than just penning harsh reviews. It is very hard to find compelling, detailed craft essays being published today. There are exceptions: a few academic journals, AWP's Writer's Chronicle, and sometimes American Poet. But I want more. Stephen Burt can't do it all by himself!
I bought both volumes of Janet Sternburg's The Writer on Her Work and was disappointed that the selection, while an inspiring look at how women come into their identities as writers, lacked close readings and scholarly rigor. Maybe that was never the intent of the project? I had a similar experience with Martin Espada's The Lover of a Subverssive is a Subversive: great energy, a good holistic approach to writing of place and from a dissident perspective, but not much on specific language strategies. Eavon Boland writes discerning essays, but they tend to be centered on a particular poet or form. In the entirety of Tin House's The Writer's Notebook, there are only two essays by poets, and the one by Matthea Harvey is really as much about prose. At least D. A. Powell hit a home run with his take on "(Mis)Adventures in Poetry," but still, I want more. I know I'm missing folks. Help me out. Who are they, and where?
This has been on my mind because I'm running a workshop on The Strategic Poet, and I've been searching hard for readings to kickstart discussion. Richard Wilbur and Theodore Roethke are masters, let's be clear. I've been happy to revisit their work. But when your new kid on the block is Gregory Orr...sigh.
For those interested, I have found a couple of contemporary texts that give me hope for the future of craft essays. One is Mark Doty's methodical, illuminating look at how he came to write "A Display of Mackerel." The other is a broad-reaching and fun (if slightly unpolished) lecture, "An Introduction to the Poetic Line" by Redactions editor Tom Holmes. My workshop loved the former; I'll find out what they think of the latter come Tuesday. At least it passes the "gratuitous Indian Jones reference" test.
(And yes, it's occurred to me that I'm part of the problem. I should write a craft essay!)
I had a fun weekend, and not just in terms of Bishop-ing to a full house on Sunday. Saturday included a sojourn down to Charlottesville to 1) devour a cinnamon-raisin bagel with peanut butter at Bodo's, 2) interview with the editor of 3.7, the undergrad lit mag I edited in my own days at UVA, and 3) hear good friends Erika Meitner and Jehanne Dubrow read at the Festival of the Book. Those ladies make me proud to be a poet; I'd follow them anywhere. Here we are (Jehanne is on the left, Erika on the right):
...This was also my first chance to meet January Gill O'Neil, who took this photo, and who read great poems alongside Jehanne and Erika at the Downtown Mall's New Dominion Bookstore, which is one of my all-time favorite settings to hear poetry.
Afterwards I learned that since I'd read on Wednesday, I had an automatic invite to the "Writer's Reception" that closes the festival. That gave me a chance to catch up with some other writer-folks, including fellow SPIR Jake Adam York and BOA rockstar Dan Albergotti, and chat for a longer while with January, who is a fellow writer-not-teacher, which is not an easy path to take. I particularly admire January's latest project, organizing the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. I have a sneaking suspicion she is one of those women who can do anything, anything, she puts her mind to doing.
Kudos to the Festival of the Book for sponsoring the reception as a way of bringing writers together; we don't get a lot of perks on the road in our travels, and sometimes it is just nice to have someone pour you a glass of wine. One of the waiters was a familiar face--a UVA student whose undergraduate poetry class I visited this spring--and she made sure the bacon-wrapped dates passed my way each time a new tray came out from the kitchen. In my defense, it was the only part of the spread I wasn't allergic to (and she knew that). But, hot damn, VIP bacon access! That was awesome.
Since then, I've been staying in. My hermit-ing meant I missed hearing Mary Karr criticize Emily Dickinson and Rae Armantrout at the Folger on Monday. A friend who was said that the aesthetic takedown included other well-loved contemporary poets. I wanted to hear Karr in part because I love her essay "Against Decoration," which can be found appended onto the end of her poetry collection Viper Rum. The essay is an enduring, edgy, necessary critique of the tendency of poets to embroider their work with superfluous imagery. Knowing how unvarnished she can be in her opinions, I'm not shocked the Q&A became a spectacle. She's a bit of a giant-killer.
But gosh, thank god there are still a few of those around--especially ones who opt to expend that energy into articulating theories of poetry, rather than just penning harsh reviews. It is very hard to find compelling, detailed craft essays being published today. There are exceptions: a few academic journals, AWP's Writer's Chronicle, and sometimes American Poet. But I want more. Stephen Burt can't do it all by himself!
I bought both volumes of Janet Sternburg's The Writer on Her Work and was disappointed that the selection, while an inspiring look at how women come into their identities as writers, lacked close readings and scholarly rigor. Maybe that was never the intent of the project? I had a similar experience with Martin Espada's The Lover of a Subverssive is a Subversive: great energy, a good holistic approach to writing of place and from a dissident perspective, but not much on specific language strategies. Eavon Boland writes discerning essays, but they tend to be centered on a particular poet or form. In the entirety of Tin House's The Writer's Notebook, there are only two essays by poets, and the one by Matthea Harvey is really as much about prose. At least D. A. Powell hit a home run with his take on "(Mis)Adventures in Poetry," but still, I want more. I know I'm missing folks. Help me out. Who are they, and where?
This has been on my mind because I'm running a workshop on The Strategic Poet, and I've been searching hard for readings to kickstart discussion. Richard Wilbur and Theodore Roethke are masters, let's be clear. I've been happy to revisit their work. But when your new kid on the block is Gregory Orr...sigh.
For those interested, I have found a couple of contemporary texts that give me hope for the future of craft essays. One is Mark Doty's methodical, illuminating look at how he came to write "A Display of Mackerel." The other is a broad-reaching and fun (if slightly unpolished) lecture, "An Introduction to the Poetic Line" by Redactions editor Tom Holmes. My workshop loved the former; I'll find out what they think of the latter come Tuesday. At least it passes the "gratuitous Indian Jones reference" test.
(And yes, it's occurred to me that I'm part of the problem. I should write a craft essay!)
March 18, 2011
Poetry Matters
Yes, this blog really is about poetry...sometimes. When not about wanderings & scotch.
A reminder that for those interested in Elizabeth Bishop, the Writer's Center is hosting a staged reading of her correspondence with The New Yorker on Sunday, March 20, at 2 PM. This is a free event featuring the fabulous poets David Gewanter, Rose Solari, and Dana Gioia; I'll be playing Miss Bishop.
Bryant Park has updated its "BryantParkNYC" playlist on the free media site Broadcastr, and part of their new programming includes recordings from last summer's Word for Word reading series. The three readers they feature are James Tate, Patricia Smith, and...me. Quick, hear it before they change their minds. Just go to Broadcastr and search for my name or, to enjoy the whole set, "BryantParkNYC." The latter will also pull up Matthew Broderick narrating the different parts of the park--the carousel, the chess tables, the grill. (The reason for the overlap becomes clear in the "Guard Kiosk" section, when Broderick talks poetry.) Sweet sweet Ferris Bueller, all grown up.
One of my weekend commitments is to do a little house cleaning, which means sifting through a huge back-catalogue of unread literary journals. I came across this poem in an old Gettysburg Review, and it blew me away. I love the pacing of it, the quiet revelations and detonations. I want to write poems like this.
BOUNDARIES
In Monet's Water Lilies,
willows dissolve into
flowers dissolve into water,
and form becomes a dream
in purples and blues
without scent or story.
Consider the death of boundaries,
the way sight dissolves
the moment just before sleep
overtakes us. The way
a man can disappear
inside a woman. I remember
a day of ruffling waters
when we sailed west
in your creaky boat.
We steered for the horizon--
the penciled-in line between
ocean and sky, then watched
as it receded ahead of us.
The night my mother died
there were cells in her body
that didn't notice. For a while
the moons of her nails kept rising,
the hair kept growing from the apex
of her widow's peak.
Now by a barbed-wire fence
that divides two countries,
the invisible roots of an old tree
spread their living network
underground, in all directions.
-LINDA PASTAN
A reminder that for those interested in Elizabeth Bishop, the Writer's Center is hosting a staged reading of her correspondence with The New Yorker on Sunday, March 20, at 2 PM. This is a free event featuring the fabulous poets David Gewanter, Rose Solari, and Dana Gioia; I'll be playing Miss Bishop.
Bryant Park has updated its "BryantParkNYC" playlist on the free media site Broadcastr, and part of their new programming includes recordings from last summer's Word for Word reading series. The three readers they feature are James Tate, Patricia Smith, and...me. Quick, hear it before they change their minds. Just go to Broadcastr and search for my name or, to enjoy the whole set, "BryantParkNYC." The latter will also pull up Matthew Broderick narrating the different parts of the park--the carousel, the chess tables, the grill. (The reason for the overlap becomes clear in the "Guard Kiosk" section, when Broderick talks poetry.) Sweet sweet Ferris Bueller, all grown up.
One of my weekend commitments is to do a little house cleaning, which means sifting through a huge back-catalogue of unread literary journals. I came across this poem in an old Gettysburg Review, and it blew me away. I love the pacing of it, the quiet revelations and detonations. I want to write poems like this.
BOUNDARIES
In Monet's Water Lilies,
willows dissolve into
flowers dissolve into water,
and form becomes a dream
in purples and blues
without scent or story.
Consider the death of boundaries,
the way sight dissolves
the moment just before sleep
overtakes us. The way
a man can disappear
inside a woman. I remember
a day of ruffling waters
when we sailed west
in your creaky boat.
We steered for the horizon--
the penciled-in line between
ocean and sky, then watched
as it receded ahead of us.
The night my mother died
there were cells in her body
that didn't notice. For a while
the moons of her nails kept rising,
the hair kept growing from the apex
of her widow's peak.
Now by a barbed-wire fence
that divides two countries,
the invisible roots of an old tree
spread their living network
underground, in all directions.
-LINDA PASTAN
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