NORTH-AMERICAN AUTHORS
TRANSLATING HISPANIC POETS
AT The LIBRARY of CONGRESS
In celebration of 450 years of U.S. Hispanic poetry
Hosted by: Dr. GEORGETTE DORN
Chief of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress.
Moderator: Poet LUIS ALBERTO AMBROGGIO,
Member of the North-American Academy of the Spanish Language.
With the participation of the distinguished North American authors:LORI MARIE CARLSON: editor, translator, and novelist. Salient among her many publications is the landmark, award-winning collection, Cool Salsa. She is Lecturer in the Department of English at Duke University.
C.M. MAYO: novelist, fiction writer, poet. Founding editor of the bilingual publishing house Tameme. Editor (and translator in part) of the anthology Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion. Her translations of Mexican literary works appear in several anthologies, including Best of Mexican Fiction, New World / New Words, and Reversible Monuments (Copper Canyon), one of the most important anthologies of contemporary Mexican poetry.
YVETTE NEISSER MORENO: poet and translator whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Her translation of poet Luis Alberto Ambroggio's Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2009. The Palestine-Israel Journal has published her critical work on (and translations of) Palestinian and Israeli poetry. Moreno teaches poetry translation at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD., and has taught poetry in public schools and libraries in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
STEVEN F. WHITE's work as a translator appears in Rubén Darío: Selected Works, Poet in New York by Federico García Lorca, Seven Trees against the Dying Light by Pablo Antonio Cuadra, and The Angel of Rain by Gastón Baquero. He has edited and translated bilingual anthologies of poetry from Nicaragua, Chile and Brazil. His most recent book of poetry is Bajo la palabra de las plantas: poesía selecta, 1979-2009. He teaches at St. Lawrence University.
September 25, 2009 at 12:00 p.m.
The LIBRARY of CONGRESS
Pickford Theater. The James Madison Building, 3rd Floor
101 Independence Avenue, SE
Followed by a reception. R.S.V.P. Cynthia Acosta at (202)707-2013
Monday, September 21, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Jan Beatty at Reynolds Series today at UNK
The University of Nebraska Reynolds Series Presents the Fabulous Jan Beatty today, September 18th, at the Fine Arts Studio Theater University of Nebraska Kearney, hosted by Reynolds Chair, Allison Hedge Coke.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Review of Jan Beatty's latest book Red Sugar
"At the cafe I love Effie the waitress,
how she lets old Carl stay in the shack
behind the house in return for fixing
things that don’t need fixing, her still-
pumped sixty year old arms, she never
asks, just pours my coffee, says
How ya doin honey,
I found out she hates her gay son,
disowned him, should I hate her now?"
This question, asked in the poem “Cave Music – Comet Montana,” extends to all the characters in the poems in Jan Beatty’s latest book, Red Sugar, each one profoundly imperfect, some deeply evil: who should we hate? Who is human, or more so, or less so?
Once asked, it is a question that refuses to be answered. It pushes against the readers as we move through the book, resisting simplicity as the poems hurtle across the page, demanding to be read and reread, leaving the reader breathless. The poems strain against the limits of the page, and Beatty plays with the strain with her line breaks, her lack of pause, her spacing between lines, and the breaking of lines. While some poems look fairly conventional on the page, others use the visual element to help sustain their power. The poem “Flurry”, about a group of young children flocking around a priest who will later be charged with sexual abuse, pushes against the margins of the page; its lines stretch long and are double spaced. The white space creates deep pauses within the frenzied movement of the words of the poem, lending a sense of dread to what takes place.
…mornings, all of us laughing in bunches. & crowding around him each
day the same. flurry. young children. waiting to be scooped up.
(waiting to be thought of). held too tight. youngness. held too
long, kissed. the patting & hair stroking. I am his favorite…
“Flurry” is slow, deliberate, almost hesitant in what it needs to say. The poem that precedes it in the book, “Shooter,” is the opposite. A fantasy about who the speaker will shoot and why (a list that includes rapists, professors who looked down on women, and men who sexually harass employees), “Shooter” does not stop for line breaks; the lines are separated by slashes and keep flowing into each other, unpunctuated, until the end of the poem. The two could not be more visually different, yet they insist on the same sense of urgency. The characters they hold need to be heard, and we the readers need to hear them.
Red Sugar is about class, women, and blood. Beatty, in an 2008 interview with radio station Classical QED 89.3 Pittsburgh's series Around Town, says that “class runs all through [her] books, in terms of work, in terms of attitude towards work, in terms of survival,” and Beatty claims that this book, unlike Mad River or Boneshaker, her two previous books, tries to get inside the body, into the blood of people, into what drives them. We see these twin themes of class and heritage play out as Red Sugar marches into the center of the gritty side of life and stays, shining stage lights on the personas who exist there, drawing them into character with clear and hard language. Beatty’s profiles of fear, exploitation, sexuality, abuse, drugs, and death give voice to complex lives full of contradictions.
Beatty tells QED that her inspiration lies in blood, or red sugar, and the “stories… we carry within us that are never told and how…those drive us.” Life, for the speakers of the poems in Red Sugar, beats on regardless of hardship, taboo, or morality and doesn’t stop for evil, cruelty, or sadness. It presses on, dirty, sexy, brutal.
Buy this book at The University of Pittsburgh Press.
Katherine Howell is the Blog Goddess and Communications and Development Assistant for Split This Rock Poetry Festival; she lives and writes in Washington, D.C. Other reviews by Katherine can be found here.
how she lets old Carl stay in the shack
behind the house in return for fixing
things that don’t need fixing, her still-
pumped sixty year old arms, she never
asks, just pours my coffee, says
How ya doin honey,
I found out she hates her gay son,
disowned him, should I hate her now?"
This question, asked in the poem “Cave Music – Comet Montana,” extends to all the characters in the poems in Jan Beatty’s latest book, Red Sugar, each one profoundly imperfect, some deeply evil: who should we hate? Who is human, or more so, or less so?Once asked, it is a question that refuses to be answered. It pushes against the readers as we move through the book, resisting simplicity as the poems hurtle across the page, demanding to be read and reread, leaving the reader breathless. The poems strain against the limits of the page, and Beatty plays with the strain with her line breaks, her lack of pause, her spacing between lines, and the breaking of lines. While some poems look fairly conventional on the page, others use the visual element to help sustain their power. The poem “Flurry”, about a group of young children flocking around a priest who will later be charged with sexual abuse, pushes against the margins of the page; its lines stretch long and are double spaced. The white space creates deep pauses within the frenzied movement of the words of the poem, lending a sense of dread to what takes place.
…mornings, all of us laughing in bunches. & crowding around him each
day the same. flurry. young children. waiting to be scooped up.
(waiting to be thought of). held too tight. youngness. held too
long, kissed. the patting & hair stroking. I am his favorite…
“Flurry” is slow, deliberate, almost hesitant in what it needs to say. The poem that precedes it in the book, “Shooter,” is the opposite. A fantasy about who the speaker will shoot and why (a list that includes rapists, professors who looked down on women, and men who sexually harass employees), “Shooter” does not stop for line breaks; the lines are separated by slashes and keep flowing into each other, unpunctuated, until the end of the poem. The two could not be more visually different, yet they insist on the same sense of urgency. The characters they hold need to be heard, and we the readers need to hear them.
Red Sugar is about class, women, and blood. Beatty, in an 2008 interview with radio station Classical QED 89.3 Pittsburgh's series Around Town, says that “class runs all through [her] books, in terms of work, in terms of attitude towards work, in terms of survival,” and Beatty claims that this book, unlike Mad River or Boneshaker, her two previous books, tries to get inside the body, into the blood of people, into what drives them. We see these twin themes of class and heritage play out as Red Sugar marches into the center of the gritty side of life and stays, shining stage lights on the personas who exist there, drawing them into character with clear and hard language. Beatty’s profiles of fear, exploitation, sexuality, abuse, drugs, and death give voice to complex lives full of contradictions.
Beatty tells QED that her inspiration lies in blood, or red sugar, and the “stories… we carry within us that are never told and how…those drive us.” Life, for the speakers of the poems in Red Sugar, beats on regardless of hardship, taboo, or morality and doesn’t stop for evil, cruelty, or sadness. It presses on, dirty, sexy, brutal.
Buy this book at The University of Pittsburgh Press.
Katherine Howell is the Blog Goddess and Communications and Development Assistant for Split This Rock Poetry Festival; she lives and writes in Washington, D.C. Other reviews by Katherine can be found here.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Poems Against the Regime at Foreign Policy In Focus
Check out Poems Against the Regime at Foreign Policy In Focus.
Iranian American Poets Persis M. Karim, Sholeh Wolpe and Roger Sedarat have poems up at the Foreign Policy in Focus website, edited by Split This Rock co-director, Melissa Tuckey.
Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) is a "Think Tank Without Walls" connecting the research and action of more than 600 scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Call for Film and Video Submissions to Split This Rock
Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Call for film and video
Split This Rock invites poets, writers, artists, activists, dreamers, and all concerned world citizens to submit original films or videos for the 2nd Split This Rock Poetry Festival, to be held March 2010. We are looking for artistic, experimental, and challenging film/video interpretations of poetry that explore critical social issues. Selected work will be screened during the Split This Rock Poetry Festival film program. Entries can be up to 15 minutes long.
See the guidelines and entry form for full details and submission requirements.
Deadline: postmarked by January 15th, 2010
Entry fee: $20.00 (non-refundable)
Notification by February 15th, 2010
Festival dates: March 10th-13th, 2010
Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, artists, activists, dreamers, and all concerned world citizens to Washington, DC, for poetry, community building, and creative transformation as our country continues to grapple with two wars, a crippling economic crisis, and other social and environmental ills. The festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism –- opportunities to imagine a way forward, hone our activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change.
Film & Video Submissions:
We are looking for artistic, experimental, and challenging film/video interpretations of poetry that explore critical social issues. Selected work will be screened during the Split This Rock Poetry Festival film program.
Entries must be submitted on DVD (NTSC only) or CD (.mov format only), no HD formats. Please note: videos with h264, divx compression or any format not mentioned above will not be accepted.
Running time for entries should not exceed 15 minutes.
All entries must be in English.
All work submitted must be original. If portions of the submitted work contain material from third parties, author must have and be able to provide written permission to use such material.
All entries must include:
- Completed entry form
(download at: http://www.francescolevato.com/calls/Split_this_Rock-ENTRY.pdf)
- $20 entry fee (check made payable to: Levato Design, Inc.)
- A short synopsis, artist's bio, and artist's statement (on one page only)
Please label all DVDs and CDs with title, running time, director’s name and contact email.
Please mail entries to:
The Poetry Center of Chicago
37 S. Wabash, Suite 704
Chicago, IL 60603
Attn: Francesco Levato/Split This Rock submission
NO PHONE CALLS ACCEPTED
For more information:
www.SplitThisRock.org
info [at] splitthisrock [dot] org
www.francescolevato.com
Friday, September 4, 2009
Sunday Kind of Love: Mourning Katrina
Sunday Kind of Love Poetry Series
Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy
September 20, 4-6 pm
Langston Room, Busboys and Poets
14th & V Streets, NW,
On the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Sunday Kind of Love features Joanne Gabbin (pictured above), director of the Furious Flower Festival of African American Poetry, and contributors to Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy, edited by Joanne Gabbin. Mourning Katrina is about devastation and mourning, about the failure of humanity to act humanely, about the politics of poverty and race, but it is also about hope and healing. The poets give voice to the rainbow that comes after the storm and the revival of spirit that comes out of the depths of tested faith. All of them share a willingness to see beyond their sorrow to reinvent the spirit of "Laissez les bon temps rouler!" Though human suffering shaped the beginning of this project, the result of it is a morning of hope and inspiration. Co-hosted by Sarah Browning & Katy Richey. Co-sponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock. As always, with an open mic! For more information: browning [at] splitthisrock [dot] org or 202- 387-7638
A Poem for Senator Kennedy
The Man Who Should Be President
August 28, 2009
In memoriam: Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Feb. 22, 1932 – Aug. 25, 2009
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on,
the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."
--- speech conceding the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination.
Ted, headlines read of your passing,
Camelot Ends, Again;
Liberal Lion Dies;
A Torch Extinguished –
But we refuse to believe it.
You taught us better than that.
“I speak out of a deep sense of urgency
about the anguish and anxiety I have seen across America.”
The death of our Liberal Lion
Must not nullify his roar.
“The cause endures” in a jungle
Of disease, poverty, unemployment,
And every child left behind.
In a cacophony of conservative voices
You sang of Jefferson and Jackson,
Committed to jobs and health care
While opponents labeled you liberal,
Your laws and causes, Socialism.
But you knew better than that.
Which 300+ bills
You authored and enacted
Into law were written in the reddest ink?:
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965,
National Cancer Act of 1971,
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986,
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990,
Ryan White AIDS Care Act in 1990,
Civil Rights Act of 1991,
Mental Health Parity Act in 1996 and 2008,
State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997,
No Child Left Behind Act in 2002,
the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act in 2009,
Or was it several unsuccessful efforts at immigration reform?
Or Universal Health Care you championed since 1970?
In Camelot you would be King,
In America, the man who should be President.
Contemporary Ben Franklin,
Master Orator, Elder Statesman,
Super Diplomat, The Man
Who got the deed done,
White hopes shrouded
By the black cloak draping
Your desk, formerly your brother’s,
white roses in a black vase – a song of yourself,
The great “I” not individual
But communal, community, America.
Your 46 years in the chamber
Outlasted single- and two-term occupants
Of the Oval Office, 9 to be exact –
there would be no rest
For a Senator whose cigarette box
Engraving read, “The first shall be last.”
Good Catholic, Moses of the United States,
Your Old Testament values
Never shrugged due to New Testament politics,
And none of us have yet seen
The Liberal Land of milk and honey.
Though your body be dead
Your legacy is not.
Out of that deep sense of urgency
The cause must endure.
The sick must not get sicker,
The hungry not get hungrier
While the rich continue getting richer.
You vowed yourself to Whitman’s America,
Gave us a song and a dance and a dream.
Had you been President
America would be coughing less
And missing less time at work.
May every Patriotic American,
With Faith rooted in the Bill of Rights,
Get a tattoo of you on their Left arm,
The one they use in the voting booth,
Hoping to keep the American Dream alive
And showing that “the dream shall never die."
Joe Gouveia writes the monthly poetry column Meter Man for the Barnstable Patriot where this poem first appeared.
August 28, 2009
In memoriam: Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Feb. 22, 1932 – Aug. 25, 2009
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on,
the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."
--- speech conceding the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination.
Ted, headlines read of your passing,
Camelot Ends, Again;
Liberal Lion Dies;
A Torch Extinguished –
But we refuse to believe it.
You taught us better than that.
“I speak out of a deep sense of urgency
about the anguish and anxiety I have seen across America.”
The death of our Liberal Lion
Must not nullify his roar.
“The cause endures” in a jungle
Of disease, poverty, unemployment,
And every child left behind.
In a cacophony of conservative voices
You sang of Jefferson and Jackson,
Committed to jobs and health care
While opponents labeled you liberal,
Your laws and causes, Socialism.
But you knew better than that.
Which 300+ bills
You authored and enacted
Into law were written in the reddest ink?:
Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965,
National Cancer Act of 1971,
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986,
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990,
Ryan White AIDS Care Act in 1990,
Civil Rights Act of 1991,
Mental Health Parity Act in 1996 and 2008,
State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997,
No Child Left Behind Act in 2002,
the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act in 2009,
Or was it several unsuccessful efforts at immigration reform?
Or Universal Health Care you championed since 1970?
In Camelot you would be King,
In America, the man who should be President.
Contemporary Ben Franklin,
Master Orator, Elder Statesman,
Super Diplomat, The Man
Who got the deed done,
White hopes shrouded
By the black cloak draping
Your desk, formerly your brother’s,
white roses in a black vase – a song of yourself,
The great “I” not individual
But communal, community, America.
Your 46 years in the chamber
Outlasted single- and two-term occupants
Of the Oval Office, 9 to be exact –
there would be no rest
For a Senator whose cigarette box
Engraving read, “The first shall be last.”
Good Catholic, Moses of the United States,
Your Old Testament values
Never shrugged due to New Testament politics,
And none of us have yet seen
The Liberal Land of milk and honey.
Though your body be dead
Your legacy is not.
Out of that deep sense of urgency
The cause must endure.
The sick must not get sicker,
The hungry not get hungrier
While the rich continue getting richer.
You vowed yourself to Whitman’s America,
Gave us a song and a dance and a dream.
Had you been President
America would be coughing less
And missing less time at work.
May every Patriotic American,
With Faith rooted in the Bill of Rights,
Get a tattoo of you on their Left arm,
The one they use in the voting booth,
Hoping to keep the American Dream alive
And showing that “the dream shall never die."
Joe Gouveia writes the monthly poetry column Meter Man for the Barnstable Patriot where this poem first appeared.
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