-
A Poetry Anthology for Malala Yousafzai: submissions call
Poetry Anthology for Malala Yousafzai Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani girl was, on October 9, 2012, shot by a Taliban gunman as she was returning home from school. See article here. Malala is a blogger and education activist who has been speaking out against the unjust treatment of women in her own country.Diane Kistner, editor of FutureCycle Press, has invited Conrad DiDiodato and I to co-edit a poetry anthology honoring the life and values of Malala Yousafzai. All proceeds will go to a cause Malala would wish to support.Read More
-
Stillness
Irina Moga has a fine review of Conrad DiDiodato‘s Bridget bird and other poems here. I was struck especially by her observation that there is a “somewhat deceiving stillness in Mr.Read More
-
Malala
Malala Yousafzai Malala— the way forward’salways first into darkness,then through it— the light you carry,that old-soul courage— millions will follow ******** At the age of 11, Malala Yousafzai took on the Taliban by giving voice to her dreams. As turbaned fighters swept through her town in northwestern Pakistan in 2009, the tiny schoolgirl spoke out about her passion for education — she wanted to become a doctor, she said — and became a symbol of defiance against Taliban subjugation. On Tuesday, masked Taliban gunmen answered Ms.Read More
-
DiDiodato Unravels Main Threads in Thread of the Real
The first notice of Thread of the Real has appeared in the form of a thoughtful, in-depth reading by Conrad DiDiodato at Word-Dreamer: Poetics.Read More
-
DiDiodato in Mexico
Conrad and Friend (perhapsa member of the Redwood Nation) Mexico, where we go (on the Caribbean coast of Yucatán), inspires concentration. We’re usually there in April or early May, around my sweetie’s Yoga Fiesta—and where we stay (where we’ve stayed for 17 years now) is a quite, “boutique” hotel with a pool, a bar, a lending library, and hammocks scattered here and there in palapa shade and the shade of palm and almond trees.Read More
-
Avant-Chunks
“I like the idea of inspiration as regurgitated output. I’m stealing all these ideas from you, I hope you know, so don’t get mad when you see the regurgitated output … uh, I mean ‘inspiration’….” –“Poet” Sharon Mesmer in a Harriet interview with Edwin Torres. Torres prefaces his chat with Mesmer by claiming that her “poem” entitled “This Poem” “shows a fabulous breadth of poetics.” Since the “poem” is a flarf assemblage of stolen phrases, this is like praising a burglar’s storage unit for showing a fabulous breadth of commodities. The comparison of poetics and commodities is appropriate.Read More
-
Legitimization Factories
Lyle Daggett has a recent post at A Burning Patience with a tantalizing excerpt from an interview with Lorna Dee Cervantes. She discusses English departments, but what she says applies to cultural support institutions like the Pew Center or the Poetry Foundation as well. Of English departments, she says, “We are working in this legitimization factory.” Think about that…. And how does legitimization come about? What are the forces that create and distributes legitimization from the “factory”? Lorna Dee puts it this way: “I’m saying look at the conditions of power.Read More
-
An Addendum
L’autoritratto di Montale. 1952. My last Friday Notebook post should have included the following—a translation of Montale‘s famous sunflower poem, occasioned by a request from Conrad DiDiodato for versions of it to be published on his blog. Conrad himself and Annie Wyndham (see here and here) have weighed in as well. I highly recommend that you visit Conrad’s post and contribute your own version, just for fun.Read More
-
Friday Notebook 11.04.11
There is little in my notebook this week beyond a few stray quotes drawn from my reading and a raw reaction to one of Conrad DiDiodato’s most intriguing blog posts, which needs fleshing out. Let me post my notes on Conrad first: I reread Frank Samperi’s trilogy a few months ago, and it produced a kind of seething in my mind which I recognize in Conrad. His post suffers from a conflation of Language poetry (in the person of Silliman) and the Occupy Movement.Read More
-
Tibetan Poet Jailed
Thanks to Conrad DiDiodato for his heads-up on the case Tibetan poet Tashi Rabten, who has been sentenced to a 4-year jail term for publishing poems that displeased the Chinese government. I frankly don’t know what to do about this kind of thing. I stand in solidarity with Rabten, though I doubt the Chinese government follows this blog.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
