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Literarily related articles. Book reviews. Poetry. Literary references

Jonesmania – poetry edition

Sometime today, I should be online as the NC Arts Council’s Poet of the Week. Poet Laureate Kay Byer selects a different poet to feature each week with introduction, brief bio and a couple of poems. I’m up for July 11 – 18. Betty Adcock read me her introduction over the phone, but I haven’t read it myself yet.
The page is up and the essay/intro from Betty is wonderfully flattering and in the parts about the techniques employed in the poems mostly accurate.

Orson Scott Card at Quail Ridge Books

Last night we drove over to Raleigh to hear Orson Scott Card at the Quail Ridge Bookstore. OSC is Tucker’s favorite author, of the moment anyway, and Quail Ridge is one of our favorite bookstores.
OSC is beginning a tour to promote his new book, Magic Street, which features a cast of entirely African-American characters as well as an homage to Midsummer Night’s Dream (he says).
First off, OSC announces that he will not read from the book because, in part, the audiobook version, which is not yet listed for sale, does a much better job than he could possibly do. Instead he will answer questions from the audience. He’s got several amusing answers in the can and as a guy who started as an actor and playwright in Utah, he can make the answers seem fresh and even improvised.
Several newsy items are announced. His extremely popular Ender’s Game is being made into a movie. The announcement that the guy writing the screenplay would be the same guy who wrote Troy was greeted by a level of disappointment that OSC obviously didn’t anticipate. [the Internet Movie Database lists Troy screenwright David Benioff not as the writer, but as the executive producer. Several others including OSC are listed as writers. The director of Troy, Wolfgang Petersen, is listed as the director for Ender’s]. OSC explained in various ways what Troy is a fine movie and how it shows how well Benioff and Petersen will understand and do a good job of Ender’s Game. At any rate, the movie isn’t due out til 2007.
In the meantime, OSC thinks that Magic Street might make it out as a movie first. According to him, Queen Latifah [warning Mama and Papas cover playing here] is looking at Magic Street. OSC even wrote one character with Latifah in mind after having had a conversation with her. He is very optimistic that Magic Street will be a movie and went on a bit about that.
He also had a lot to say about what a deal it was to write about/as black characters. Then true to OSC, and other writers, immediately said it wasn’t such a big deal. He did a lot of research, but then he really only talked intently to friends who are from the African-American culture.
OSC gives advice about writing that is teaching writing or not teaching writing. Mostly he rants about the Scarlet Letter for a while. His attitude toward the Scarlet Letter approaches that of a Scientologist’s toward psychiatry although it seems to be more for entertainment purposes. His approach to teaching writing too is highly varied and contradictory. First allow a lot of free writing. Don’t enforce rules. Then teach grammar and spelling. No Great Books. But he needed Great Books to be the writer he is. To be fair to OSC, he has age dependent contingencies for these suggestions. And he’s written a few books on how to write in his time.
Speaking of learning to write. About half the audience came over from the Duke Creative Writer’s Workshop in a big bus. The shoppers were given a choice of going to a Durham Bull’s baseball game or coming to a bookstore to hear OSC. Lots came. They were accompanied by their teachers, fellow WW grads Mimi Herman and Floyd Harris.
Much amusing OSC patter continued for about an hour then the signing began. Long lines with happy people.

Dr Fun Book and Middlesex

Dave Farley’s Dr Fun book is now on sale from Plan 9 Publishing in Greensboro. Dave has been doing Dr Fun, a single frame daily color comic (hosted at ibiblio), for over a decade now. Now you (and I) can own a whole big bound collection of Dr Fun.

Less than two chapters from finishing Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize winning Middlesex. This has to be one of the smartest and best written and most sweeping books that I’ve read in a long while.

Deja Review

On the phone to poet Betty Adcock tonight — since there is no way to do email with her. We ended up talking about the future of books which Betty will wax romantically about as if they were coalfired steam engine. That is extolling all their vices as if they were virtues. In the case of the stream locomotives — the clouds of coaldust smoke becomes something poetic instead of a stinky burning mess, the overloud engine becomes a lullaby, the earpiercing screams of the brakes becomes a kind of music. Basically the less you see of it, smell of it, the more valuable the experience becomes — like walking uphill to school in the snow and in the summer when the streets were melted tar (as I tell my son I experienced).
Books too have many not so great sides to them. The smell that Betty talks about of an old library is the smell of the books rotting. The heft of books often an artifact of marketing and of the limits of technology — what is needed to make a binding and what the bounds that binding will allow.
Betty says she stands by what she said in our discussion that Educom published in 1998. Now I have to go back and see what we both said.

The New Faces of Poetry

I have seen the mad new poets who are drunk on language, aware of critical approaches, ready for fun and sly about their gravitas. The Carrboro International Poetry Festival had a great helping of smart new edgy poetry. Poetry informed by performance, by l*a*n*g*u*a*g*e, poetry that rejects quietude, defies therapy, recognizes displacement, questions syntax, poetry that can be sarcastic and deep at the same time, poetry full of noise and full of fun.
The audio will be online at the Festival site soon.

Confessing poet; poetic wax

Carrboro Poetry Fest Logo
The Chapel Hill News finally put Carrboro Poet Laureate Patrick Herron’s “My View” piece that was published last Sunday online so I can refer to it here. Patrick confesses that he manufactured the poem that won him his Poet Laureateship by looking about some poetic tropes and cliches then incorporating them into his submission. But the joke was on him. He had wanted to use the office of Poet Laureate to create a community of poets and to put together a Festival of very diverse poets and poetics. Now he had to actually do it. No excuses.
And he did. Last year, 40+ poets read in the course of two days to good crowds and good responses. And we had a blast.
This weekend will be the Second Annual Carrboro International Poetry Festival. Many different poets. Some old favorites. And some surprises (I’ve been assured).
Here’s how the Chapel Hill News promotes it in today’s edition.

Carrboro Poetry: Schedule Released

Folks kept asking “When are you reading at the Carrboro Poetry Festival?” Now I know. Between noon and 1:30 on Sunday May 22. But there are many others reading at other times. Poet’s bios [here] are in alphabetical order by first name. Here’s what we have of the still unofficial schedule so far:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Saturday May 21 12 PM – 9 PM
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

11:00 SETUP/FOOD

Session A 12 PM – 1:30 PM
A 12:00 OPENING
12:15 Amy King
12:30 Julian Semilian
12:45 Sue Soltis
1:00 Todd Sandvik
1:15 Mel Nichols

1:30 15 MIN BREAK

Session B 1:45 PM – 3:05 PM
B 1:45 INTRO
1:50 Ken Rumble
2:05 Tanya Olson
2:20 Dale Smith
2:35 Mary Margaret Sloan
2:50 Joseph Donahue

3:05 30 MIN BREAK

Session C 3:35 PM – 4:40 PM
C 3:35 INTRO
3:40 Standard Schaefer
3:55 Rod Smith
4:10 Evie Shockley
4:25 Linh Dinh

4:40 15 MIN BREAK
Session D 4:55 PM – 6:00 PM
D 4:55 INTRO
5:00 Heriberto Yepez
5:15 Allyssa Alexandra Wolf
5:30 Gerald Barrax
5:45 Tony Tost

6:00 DINNER BREAK

Session E 7:30 – 9 PM
E 7:30 INTRO
7:45 Carl Martin
8:00 Lee Ann Brown
8:15 Philip Nikolayev
8:30 Harryette Mullen
8:45 Christian Bok

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sunday May 22 12 PM – 6 PM
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

11:00 SETUP/FOOD

Session F 12 PM – 1:30 PM
F 12:00 Introduction
12:15 Mack Ivey
12:30 Joanna Catherine Scott
12:45 Paul Jones
1:00 Chris Vitiello
1:15 TBD

1:30 15 MIN BREAK

Session G 1:45 PM – 2:50 PM
G 1:45 INTRO

1:50 Gabriel Gudding
2:05 Hoa Nguyen
2:20 Murat Nemet-Nejat
2:35 Patrick Herron

2:50 30 MIN BREAK

Session H 3:20 PM – 4:25 PM
H 3:20 INTRO
3:25 Reb Livingston
3:40 Hristo Ivanovski
3:55 Andrea Selch
4:10 Randall Williams

4:25 15 MIN BREAK

Session I 4:40 PM – 6 PM
4:45 Heidi Lynn Staples
5:00 Daniel J. Wideman
5:15 Marcus Slease
5:30 Tessa Joseph
5:45 CLOSING

Carrboro Poetry: One Week Warning!

Next weekend, Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22, is the Carrboro International Poetry Festival. Carrboro Poet Laureate and alterego to Lester, Patrick Herron sends this alert:

The second annual Carrboro International Poetry Festival, to be held at the Century Center in downtown Carrboro, NC, starts in exactly one week on Saturday May 21. Admission is free.

This year’s festival, like last year’s, will feature 40 poets from the US, Canada, and Mexico. The mix of poets includes renowned poets from outside of North Carolina along with some of North Carolina’s finest poets, including a large contingent from the Triangle. [including moi – pj]

In the coming days the schedule of readers will be posted to the website. (http://carrboropoetryfestival.org/) All of the poets’ biographies are up on the site already. The festival website also contains all the travel information you’ll need, from a comprehensive listing of local accomodations to directions and parking maps. We even have mp3s of readings from last year’s event. [already on the website – pj]

If you are in North Carolina, please keep an eye out for articles about the event in The Chapel Hill News (tomorrow), The Independent (Wednesday), and the Raleigh News & Observer (Friday).

Please come to the festival. The hundreds that turned out to last year’s free event displayed an enthusiasm about poetry in a way I’ve frankly never seen before. I’ve tried my best to make it entertaining, fresh, and surprising. I expect to see more of that same energy and excitement, as I have worked to make the festival better–not bigger–but better.

I hope to see you next Saturday.
Patrick Herron

What: Carrboro International Poetry Festival
Where: Carrboro Century Center, 100 N. Greensboro St, Carrboro, NC
When: Saturday May 21, 12 Noon – 9 PM and Sunday May 22, 12 Noon – 6 PM
URL: http://carrboropoetryfestival.org/

Did that happen in the Spirit World?

A while back I was standing geekily against the wall at a writers’ party listening. Two writers were talking. There was an intense discussion about the fate of a character who had had some fantastic experiences that made the Spiderman biography seem uncontrived. Then one asked the other, the other being mystery writer Michael Malone, “but did that happen in the Spirit World?”
Yes, these were/are writers of soap operas. And yes part of what they were discussing took place in the Spirit World. A place about which I am woefully uninformed.
Michael Malone has a rich Spirit World life as well as lives in other Worlds. One of his soap opera characters, Marcie Walsh of “One Life to Live,” has written a murder mystery (with Malone) called “The Killing Club.”
First, “One Life to Live” isn’t exactly true as the New York Times Magazine explains, “she had picked up a rare disease after being thrown into a Dumpster (long story) and given it to her boyfriend, who died.” But then we learn about “her new boyfriend (who is actually her old boyfriend’s soul in a different man — long story).”
No matter, her book has become a plot device as well as a product and I hope a book worthy of joining Michael Malone‘s other wonderful and fun work on my shelf.
Today’s NY Times Magazine, quoted in part above, has a good article on the artifice behind the creation of the book/event/plot device.
Bonus connection: Michael Malone’s home is on property ajoining Saint Matthews Church in Hillsborough.

Carrboro Poetry Fest: May 21 and 22

Last year’s Carrboro Poetry Festival was a real blast. Paris of the Piedmont Poet Laureate Patrick Herron lined up 40 very very different poets for two days of readings. He’s doing it again May 21 and 22 in Carrboro’s Century Center. I’m making a return appearance with a few new and different poems.

The low down:

American Life in Poetry

Andie Miller writes from South Africa to tell us about American Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry site.

The site is meant to be fodder for newspapers seeking free content and to thus get poetry out into the hands of more folks — more folks who read newspapers.

Locally, the News and Observer has been doing a good and fairly regular job — they sometimes print prose — in their Sunday Journal section, were my own poems have appeared over the past couple of years. I appreciate the readers and the publication and especially the copyediting there by Marcy Rice.

Bloggers as the Next Oprah?

From Dan Gillmor come these stories of bloggers promoting literary fiction from the Village Voice and the LA Times.

from the LA Times article:

Calling themselves the Litblog Co-Op, the effort includes the sites the Elegant Variation, Moorishgirl, Rake’s Progress and Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, all of which will continue to operate separately, the bloggers say.

Key to the effort is the Read This! campaign they’ve created, in which five of the bloggers will each nominate a title he or she thinks deserves readers’ attention, then the co-op will vote for one to promote jointly. The first title (four will be selected each year) will be announced May 15 on the group’s Web site, www.lbc.typepad.com.

Blogger Mark Sarvas, who drew the project together, described the effort as less an award program than a conversation starter.

Are we ready for poetry reviews and/or contributions to the News and Observer forums?

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