burning books May 29, 2007
| KANSAS CITY BOOKSELLER BURNS HIS BOOKS IN PROTEST |
| A used bookstore owner in Kansas City, Missouri, began burning his collection of books yesterday, the Associated Press reported. Tom Wayne, who has run Prospero’s Books for the last ten years, lit a match and declared, “This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” before setting fire to a pile of books outside his warehouse. The fire burned for less than an hour before the Kansas City Fire Department extinguished it.
Wayne had tried to thin out his collection of approximately twenty thousand books by giving some to libraries and other bookstores, all of which were too full to accept them. He started to burn his books in protest of “society’s diminishing support for the printed word.” A small crowd gathered in front of the fire; several people managed to salvage some titles, paying between ten and twenty dollars for an armload of books that were to be burned. Wayne says he plans to get a permit and burn books on a monthly basis. |
Memorial Day weekend reading May 29, 2007
Hey all – hope you enjoyed the long weekend! I was finally able to catch up on gardening, some cleaning – and of course reading & writing! (Although I’m still very behind in the blogging – stay tuned for more updates…)
Over the weekend, I read Native Guard by 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning Natasha Tretheway. I highly recommend this book for anyone raised in and/or enchanted by the South. The lyricism and form in this book is also jaw dropping. But who cares what I think?! Check out these interviews and reviews with the author:
- Philadelphia Inquirer Review
- Philadelphia Inquirer Interview
- Kwame Dawes’ personal thoughts on the book
- Pulitzer Prize notes (look up under Poetry for 2007)
More on the BofAP anthology May 11, 2007
Since I wrote about the Best of American Poetry 2006 a while back, I wanted to link to this review I came across in Pedestal Magazine. I think the author makes some good points about how to approach anthologies like this one, and what are the benefits of reading them (because you’ll probably hear more often why anthologies are bad for poetry, but whatever. I try to not buy into that negativity. And I can’t imagine a poet turning down an offer to have their work featured in an anthology, unless it was like Worst of American Poetry – but even then, I probably would still feel honored if they asked me.)
Queens MFA Faculty readings May 8, 2007
I used my journalistic and schmoozing skills last week to finagle an early copy of the press release for the spring MFA Creative Writing Faculty Reading Series at Queens. So here it is! (I highly recommend going if you are in the Charlotte area.)
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The low-residency M.F.A. program in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte is pleased to announce its next series of faculty readings. The readings are scheduled for Sunday, May 20; Tuesday, May 22; and Friday, May 25. The reading on Sunday evening will begin at 8:00. The readings on Tuesday and Friday evenings will begin at 8:15. All readings will be held in Accenture Auditorium in The John H. Sykes Learning Center on the Queens campus and are free and open to the public. This semester’s reading series will feature Rebecca McClanahan reading from her new book Deep Light: New and Selected Poems 1987-2007. McClanahan, a formerCharlotte native, served for 15 years as Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Poetry-in-the-Schools Program, for which she received a Governor’s Award of Excellence in Education. Listed below are more details about the participants in each reading.
Sunday, May 20:
Ann Cummins is the author of the story collection Red Ant House, and novel, Yellowcake. A 2002 recipient of a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Antioch Review, and elsewhere. Her fiction has been anthologized in a variety of series including The Best American Short Stories, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and The Prentice Hall Anthology of Women’s Literature. She divides her time between Oakland, California and Flagstaff, Arizona, where she teaches creative writing at Northern
Arizona University.
Bob Hicok is the author of five books of poetry, including his newest, This Clumsy Living, published in 2007. His other books are Insomnia Diary; Animal Soul, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Plus Shipping; and The Legend of Light, which won the 1995 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry and was named a 1997 ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year. A recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and an NEA Fellowship, his poetry has been published in The New Yorker, APR, Poetry, and The Paris Review, as well as three volumes of Best American Poetry. He recently received the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review and the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review. Hicok is an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech Tuesday, May 22:
Sebastian Matthews is the author of a collection of poems, We Generous (Red Hen Press), and a memoir, In My Father’s Footsteps(Norton). He co-edited, with Stanley Plumly, Search Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews, a recent finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Matthews teaches part-time atWarren Wilson College and edits Rivendell, a place-based literary journal. His poetry and prose has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Brilliant Corners, Georgia Review, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Poets & Writers, Seneca Review, Tin House and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. Matthews was recently a recipient of a 2006 North Carolina Artist Grant.
Jon Pineda is the author of Birthmark (Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), winner of the 2003 Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry, and the recent winner of the 2007 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Poetry & Prose (Western Michigan University) for his second manuscript The Translator’s Diary(due out in March 2008). The recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, he attended James Madison University and the MFA program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including the Crab Orchard Review, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, among others. He has been on faculty at the Kundiman Asian American Poets Retreat, held on campus at the University of Virginia. He currently teaches in the English Department at Old Dominion University inNorfolk, Virginia.
Friday, May 25:
Kym Ragusa is the author of The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and Belonging, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2006. Her essays have appeared in the anthologies Are Italians White: The Making of Race in America and The Milk of Almonds, and the journals Leggendaria and TutteStorie. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and an Ida and Daniel Lang Award for Excellence in the Humanities. She has taught Creative Writing at City College, Queens College, and Eugene Lang College in New York, and at the Josai
International University in Japan. Her films Passing and Fuori/Outside, have been shown on PBS and at festivals throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Her video, Demarcations, had its premiere at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Skin Between Us will be translated into Italian in 2007. She is currently at work on a new book of nonfiction.
Rebecca McClanahan is the author of five books of poetry, including her most recent collection Deep Light: New and Selected Poems 1987-200. Her other books include the collection of essays, The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings and three books about writing, including Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays and The Best American Poetry, and she has received a Pushcart Prize, the Wood prize from Poetry, and the Carter prize for an essay from Shenandoah. She lives with her husband in New York City.
reading materials May 2, 2007
Much of my reading list lately has been research-related material.
I just got this guy in the mail yesterday. I follow Kealey’s blog and I’ve read his bits in Poets & Writers, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to peruse through the book. So far, it’s doing well to answer my questions, although it does read a little like a kid’s educational film.
Also, this is the dreaded, although helpful, math study book I mentioned earlier. It’s split into 3 sections: arithmetic, algebra and geometry. And let me tell you, it’s a bitch. Although, math is easier to learn the second time around (sort of). I figure if I can make it through the arithmetic and algebra sections, that will be good enough. Geometry I usually don’t have a problem understanding since it relates so much to the visual world.
