Reading List 2008: Promoting Peace through Education

I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time (337 pgs) by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I was smart enough to read this book for double purposes: a book club at work and my March review for Uptown Neighborhood News. Which I have to write tomorrow. And will post a link to, once its available online.

Since I don't want to squander my enthusiasm for this book before the review, let me just give a brief recommendation. If you are interested in the humane solutions to the real roots of terrorism or if you care about human rights issues around the world or if you want to learn more about Pakistani and Afghani culture, read this book. Also, if you want to feel like a lazy slob who could do more good in the world, read this book.

Total For 2008: 1496 pages
Genres: Memoir (1), Essay (1), Graphic Novel (1), Non-Fiction (2), Poetry (1)

Reading List 2008: WWMcD?

My husband encouraged me to read the graphic novel Shooting War by Anthony Lappe & Dan Goldman (192 pages). So I read a little every night before going to bed. This was not a bright idea, because I got horribly vivid dreams about the Iraq War.

Let me back up -- Shooting War works on the premise that it is now 2011. The Iraq War hasn't stopped, John McCain is president, and one videoblogger is sent to cover the war for a CNN/Fox-News-type network, after a brief brush with a sort of morbid fame. Said videoblogger gets mired in the complexities and lies of the war, all while trying to rediscover his journalistic integrity.

What's scary about this is that it doesn't feel science-fiction-y in the least. The predictions are scarily authentic and the politics, while extremely left-leaning, show awareness of the multitudes of gray areas in this war.

I would highly recommend this book, if you like political writing or graphic novels.

Total For 2008: 823 pages
Genres: Memoir (1), Essay (1), Graphic Novel (1)

The Close Reading of Sadomasochistic Poets

I just started reading Break, Blow, Burn by Camille Paglia, and I am already in love with it. Paglia is just one of those personalities that you love and hate, like the smart and pretty best friend who gets all the attention, and you want to just despise her, but you can't. Because she's pretty and brilliant. Whenever I read Paglia's prose, I'm prone to fits of envy and laughing.

Here are two examples.

From the introduction: "During the past quarter century, humanistic principles and honest practical criticism could reliably more be found among low-paid adjuncts faithfully teaching service courses at community colleges than among the vain, showy professoriat of the elite schools."

As a former adjunct wage slave and someone who probably will never rise to the level of professoriat... Amen!

And from her explication of "Daddy," which I flipped to first, naturally: "If Plath has no literary successors, she certainly has her peers -- but they are in popular music. I nominate Sylvia Plath as the first female rocker. ... The nihilistic wipeout of the last line of "Daddy" is also in the fractious rock spirit: it parallels the smashing or burning of guitars by the Yardbirds, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the peak of expressiveness being a destruction of the instrument -- in the case of the poet herself."

I mean, can't you imagine it? Plath on a stage, burning her guitar? I'm sure I'll be quoting liberally from this book in the next few weeks. So, if I start mentioning Freudian phallic imagery and sadomasochism, you know now why.


Post Script: I typed in Google Images "Rockstar Poet" to find a picture to go along with this, and found this website. I also found this site, when typing in Camille Paglia.

I give up. No pictures for this post.

Thinking About New Hampshire in a Different Way

Why do I love the New York Times? Because, today, they published an excellent editorial from Donald Hall about voting. Sort of. It was really about the weather in New Hampshire and the snowfalls of his childhood. Sort of. It was really really about the noise that has been invading his state for a year and a half, the noise that is unnatural and will be leaving in 24 hours. It's about how he's craving the silence in his state. Sort of. It's about all of these things.

What I love most about this editorial is not the sentiment. It's kind of typical --a childhood recollection, a smattering of quiet political observations, a longing for the political process to be about community, and a communion with nature. Some of these are already Hall's tropes. But it's the fact that in 2008, we can be on the eve of an important primary, and the Times gives space to see what Donald Hall can say to us that makes us think about it in a different way. That's the power of poetry. So, go read him pontificate.

Do Politics and Poetry Mix?

Here are some pictures of a collage I made while listening to the Republican and Democratic presidential debates on Saturday night. (The bottom right picture is of my cat, Said, who is named after Edward Said, not the Lost character.) Yes, that's exactly what I did on Saturday night. I listened to 10 politicians discuss their policy differences and played with magazine cut-outs, paper and paints. I think that's why the paper is red and blue.

I'm torn (no pun intended) on what to do with all of the interesting things I'm learning about the presidential race. I've decided to volunteer more heavily with the Obama campaign, something that I started to do back in December. It's exciting and fun and interesting, and I'm really enjoying being involved in the political process, for once in my adult life. For instance, we went to an awesome campaign rally in Minneapolis on Saturday and got to meet some very nice fellow supporters.

However, the campaign is quickly taking over my brain and I'm wondering whether or not it belongs on this blog. I thought about starting a new blog just for this section of my life, because (if we're lucky and successful) I'll be volunteering on this campaign almost all year. I've always envisioned this blog to be about my poetry and personal life, not my political practices. But now, they're all coalescing together.

The larger question I'm asking myself is whether or not politics and poetry and real life mix. To be honest, I've always written political poetry. But it's political ideology, not political reality. There's something that seems sort of messy and mundane about who's running for president, as opposed to the systems of our culture. The blog issue is just representative of the larger question. I could segregate the political stuff to a separate blog, so that I could see the easy division of these spheres of my life. (And also not annoy readers with any political polemic. I certainly don't want to bore people with policy issues if they're expecting free verse.) But the spheres aren't that separate. It wouldn't be authentic to separate them, because the I live it all together, which is why I was collaging while listening to debates. This is the shape of my life right now: poetry, real life, and politics, all smooshed into one.

Don't worry, I won't be writing sonnets about presidential politics. (There aren't that many rhymes for mandates or ethics anyway.) I just want to be authentically representing what's going on in my life. What's going on in my life, right now, is that I'm participating in democracy. And it's really fun!

To Curse or Not To Curse

WBAI, a peace and justice radio station in New York City, self-censored earlier this year when they determined they could not risk airing Allen Ginsberg's landmark poem "Howl" on its 50th anniversary. They weren't worried about listener complaint or backlash from a conservative audience. They were concerned about the exorbitant FCC fines for swearing on the air.

The New York Times ran a very interesting editorial in today's paper about this radio station's act, and put it into the larger context of swearing in radio and television. Personally, I feel that the FCC should be putting swearing into a larger context -- if the swear is in an obviously literary work, like Ginsberg's amazing poem, then it should relax. If someone is swearing out of a desire to shock or offend, then fine the *^&%! out of them.

I think this is especially funny, since a few weeks ago I lectured on Howl's original censorship when it was published, 50 years earlier.

My Last Dance

Today, I gave my swan song presentation at work today. For banned books week, I gave a half-hour presentation on the power dynamics of book censorship. We discussed the cycle of banning ideas we are afraid of, in order to avoid discussing the issues. I also suggested the 5 books that "The Man" doesn't want you to read. They were:

1) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
2) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
3) Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
4) Howl by Allen Ginsberg
5) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

At the end of the presentation, I played this video, which is a collage of post-WWII images set to a portion of "Howl."

When the presentation was over, one of my students came to me and said that he felt bad that we were discriminating against the books. This made me miss teaching, just a little bit.

Read Books & Save Trees

I just learned of an interesting company called Eco-Libris. Eco-Libris works like a carbon offsetting company. But rather than neutralizing your carbon footprint through planting trees, Eco-Libris neutralizes your paper usage from your book buying habit. See, publishing companies often use virgin paper for books, which causes deforestation. (Also, paper production companies can be incredibly huge polluters, another environmental concern.) At Eco-Libris' site, you can pay $10 to plant ten trees, to offset the paper usage of 10 new books. The company works with a couple of non-profit planting partners to get the environmental action done. They are like middlemen in the process, connecting readers to eco-organizations.

When I look around my house, I see hundreds of books -- and therefore hundreds of trees that have been chopped down to print those books. Honestly, I've never thought of the environmental impact of my book buying addiction. I like books and I like the ideas that they transmit. This site opened my eyes to another aspect of my environmental imapct on the world, and it isn't pretty. Interestingly enough, even though they are a for-profit company, Eco-Libris' blog promotes other ways to limit your paper usage while still enjoying books.

An Exciting Day for Depressing Surrealists Everywhere...

Charles Simic has been named Poet Laureate of the U.S., according to this NY Times article. I love this choice because Simic is such a departure from the more recent group of Laureates, like Hall, Kooser, and Collins. These are all fine poets, but they don't scare me with their imagery, as Simic often does. It's nice to see the Librarian of Congress make a choice that represents the diversity in today's poetry.

Poems from Guantanamo, Part 2

The opinion editor over at the Iowa City Press-Citizen noticed that I posted last month about the Poems from Guantanamo anthology that the University of Iowa Press published. His paper devoted an opinion page to the anthology, since they are the newspaper that covers that University of Iowa area. He was kind enough to share the links with me, which I now share with you.

Start with the editor's preface, which is quite touching, and move onto the others that are linked on the page. It's amazing to see such an interesting literary conversation around this ongoing political event.

Post-Colonialism on Vacation

I've traveled relatively extensively, because my mother is in the travel business and travel is valued in our family. I've been to several countries around the world, but I have never been to a country quite like Jamaica. Jamaica's history is very interesting. They were colonized by both Spain and England and used as a significant port in the slave trade. In addition to the African, indigenous, and European people who have made homes in Jamaica, Chinese and Indian people have also immigrated there.

Jamaica has only recently emerged from colonial rule, having achieved their independence from England in the 1960s. Once independent, the country struggled with violence and poverty. Now, they have emerged as a developing nation, connected to their history and their many cultures.

When I arrived in Montego Bay, the resort arranged a transfer to the small village of Whitehouse, 90 minutes away. As we drove through Montego Bay, I was immediately struck by the level of poverty in the city. We drove by tin shanties and, to me the most heartbreaking, dilapidated schools. However, as we started driving through the mountains outside of Montego Bay, I noticed that there were more comfortable buildings and structures.

This drive reminded me of how fortunate I am. I realized, in a way that I had not before, what it means to be a colonized country. The more I learned about Jamaica and their culture, the more this realization hit home. This poverty and struggle is a direct result of their centuries-long colonization by England. Even their unofficial language, patois, is a direct result of colonization and slavery. Slaves created a language that is combination of Swahili, English, Spanish, and French as a way to communicate with each other in a way that the plantation owners could not understand. After this trip, I understood post-colonial theory in a new way, having seen the results of colonialism.

I would strongly recommend a trip to Jamaica. I think it is so important to support developing countries with tourism, which is often the main industry in countries like Jamaica. Also, the country is beautiful, verdant mountains and plains, surrounded by miles of coast line and the turquoise blue sea. Finally, the people are kind, friendly, and joyful in contrast to our harried American personality.

Poetry from Prison

I learned about an interesting new poetry anthology from Day to Day on NPR today, and I'm really intrigued by it.

Mark Falkoff, a law professor who also has a doctorate in literature, compiled poems from Guantanamo Bay detainees. His anthology, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, will be released by University of Iowa Press this August. During the Day to Day Program, one of the now-released poets read a couple of his poems and described a little of his experience as a detainee. His experience was harrowing, surely, but he described it in such a touching and accessible way. For instance, he developed a literary friendship with one of the guards and they traded poems back and forth about their experience as guard and inmate. I wonder what Foucault would think of that?

What amazed me most about this project is that these poems have an amazing opportunity to humanize these detainees and their experience. Here is their perspective, not only on their detention, but on their lives. However, the program described some of the legal difficulties that Falkoff had in trying to publish this anthology. Apparently, the current administration felt that the poetry might contain hidden messages that could endanger our national security. I cannot imagine that a respected press like the University of Iowa Press would publish poems that would promote terrorism. I think that the administration's concern is that the detainees' plight could become sympathetic, and that the poems might encourage further awareness of the Guantanamo debacle.

Poets & Cloggers Unite!

I hate being persnickety about details. I really do. But this article from Time Magazine has been sticking in my craw since I read it this weekend.

The stupid thing is that it is a good article. It's interesting and illuminates a big debate among poets and educators -- where does poetry belong, with the people or with the elite? See, it's about the Ruth Lily grant that the Poetry Foundation received. With this grant, the Poetry Foundation named John Barr, a poet and banker as the author painstakingly points out, as president. And now Barr is starting programs to help bring the poetry back to the people. All great news, in my book. As I often tell my students, if everyone read poetry, the world will be a better place.

So what's my problem? The author of the article, Lev Grossman, opens the article with several annoying and offensive stereotypes about poetry and poets. For instance...

1. "Money and poetry rarely have much to do with each other, especially in such a stunningly large quantity. Suddenly the small staff of Poetry was swimming in cash--it's the literary equivalent of the Beverly Hillbillies."

I can imagine the fish out of water TV sitcom now. The poet with flushing toilets and real writer neighbors.

2. "Poetry is the spinach in America's media diet: good for you, occasionally baked into other, tastier dishes (like the cameo that W.H. Auden's Funeral Blues made in Four Weddings and a Funeral) but rarely consumed on its own. In the hierarchy of cultural pursuits it sits somewhere just below classical music and just above clogging."

Seriously, clogging? In my informal and highly unscientific research, when you Google clogging, you get 4,890,000 hits. When you Google poetry, 145,000,000. And 108,000,000 for classical music, by the way.

3. "Poems became less like high-end pop songs and more like math problems to be solved. They turned into the property of snobs and professors."

I think we can aspire to being more than classy troubadours or bitter and troubled rock stars, while still retaining our level of intellectualism. In fact, I think it is more offensive to the public to say that because poetry became more intellectual, it became less popular. Surely, this is one of the reasons, but certainly not the only one.


So there's just a smattering of the things that bothered me. Taken out of context. I totally understood that this was exaggeration for emphasis because Mr. Grossman was making a point. I should take a breath and have a sense of humor. But, his language stings a bit, especially since he is contributing to the stereotypes that he is describing, by using this type of hyperbole.

Good News for the Little People

Publisher's Weekly reported earlier this week that a new form of philanthropy has hit the small press market. Literary Ventures Fund, a non-profit organization committed to spreading literature to new readers, proposes to help small presses promote single titles. While they will not publish titles per se, they will provide funding for the marketing of books and the promotion of books at the bookstore level.

According to the fund's mission statement, the organization was inspired to take on this task due to the pressures in large publishing houses to promote and sell books that appeal to a larger market. Currently, they do not help single authors promote their works to publication, but they have plans to do so in the future.

Hallelujah! This is fantastic news for all types of writers, from literary memoirists and novelists to poets, of course. Poets often are published exclusively through the small press, so any support for a small press is support for a small poet somewhere.

MySpace Saves Bookstores

According to this article from Publisher's Weekly, the social networking site MySpace has helped save a Chicago institution from closing.

Women & Children First Bookstore, a 28 year old feminist bookstore in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, used their MySpace page to discuss their financial difficulties with their patrons and friends. Even though W&CF is such a popular bookstore, their financial difficulties are a direct result of people buying books elsewhere. In fact many indie bookstores (and big box bookstores) are suffering, due to the widespread popularity of Amazon.com, among other things. The owners of W&CF posted this missive in their blog, to an overwhelmingly positive response. Their sales, both in store and online, improved considerably within a weekend.

Personally, I think it would be a shame if W&CF closed down. When I was in college, I drove down to Chicago to see Alice Walker read from her book on female genital mutilation in Africa. I was packed into this little tiny bookstore with over a hundred other people, and I got to meet Walker face to face. Without bookstores like Women & Children First to support them, independent and interesting writers may not have a chance to promote their work.

Dear TV Executives,

While getting ready for work this morning and trying to hear the headlines, my morning news program spent 10 minutes interviewing a radio personality about American Idol. I'm as into cheesy reality shows as the next American, but enough is enough. If you are going to spend valuable news time, forcing this show down our throats, can I make a programming suggestion?

I humbly suggest that you create Poetry Idol for your new fall lineup. It's true, reading poetry is in decline in some segments of our population, but it is no less intriguing than cooking or modeling or designing. While poets are not always photogenic, we are prone to depression, theatrics, and on occasion, embarrassingly bad poetry.

Please, at least consider my suggestion. And, if you use it, I will wait outside in the rain with all the other aspiring poets, waiting for a celebrity panel to thrash my sonnets.

Cases of Diminishing Readers, Large and Small

I woke up early this morning, after an inability to sleep. I knew I could read a book or magazine, but I chose to turn on my computer and see what's going on in the world. I subscribe,via email, to both the LA Times and the New York Times, because I value real newspapers. (Our StarTrib doesn't cut it at all.) I came across two articles, one in each paper, which made me feel both fortunate and afraid.

First, fortunate. In Iraq, infrastructure is a huge problem. When you have daily battles (or sectarian/civil violence, if you prefer), you have insurmountable difficulties getting the basic services to people. Libraries are included in daily services. While this might seem like a luxury to some, it is a necessary service to many. It helps build education and creates, rather than destroys, connections between people. It also preserves a culture that seems, at the moment, doomed.

Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraqi libraries and archives, has been having huge struggles keeping his country's library going. His computer system is spotty, due to bullet damage. He loses librarians to death threats and violence. After much debate, he has decided to publish a blog about his struggles. After reading a little of his blog, I feel fortunate to be able to take the bus down to the downtown library and simply borrow a book.

Now, onto afraid. In super-liberal, super-literate San Fransisco, independent bookstores are beginning to close down. This is a city that helped spark the Beat movement, through its bookstores. The article cites Amazon.com as the biggest detractor to sales, as well as the big box or mall bookstores. This has been happening for years in the Twin Cities most notably with the loss of Ruminator Books in St. Paul. We are slowly dwindling to a metro area that only uses big box bookstores to buy their books.

I am a little conflicted by this issue, due in part to the fact that my husband worked for an independently styled big box location for years. His store wasn't evil. There was no cafe, an awesome poetry collection, and staff members who were dedicated to reading. And his store was leaking money like sieve, which lead to its eventual closing. It was the last of its kind in our city. Now, every other big box bookstore is suburban and caters to the cafe/DVD/CD market. Ironically enough, the 3 independent bookstores in the same neighborhood outlasted my husband's corporate store.

Honestly, I do blame the indie bookstores, just a little. They do have supply chain issues (IE getting books on time or at all). They also have not adapted to the online marketplace, as well as they could. Besides, the big box stores are being spanked by Amazon as much as everyone else.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say, in this long-winded, somewhat connected post, is that we should protect the biodiversity of our reading options, here and abroad. My overall fear is that we only have one or two options to buy our books. These people get to decide what we read, by catering to sales or availability, which in turn, limits our reading. This limits our access to all knowledge, which is a terrifying thought.

Won't Somebody, Please, Think of the Books?

A couple of posts ago, I lamented library's use of technology to eradicate books. Luckily, the Library of Congress is trying to find ways to prevent the loss of knowledge through the deterioration of books and reading.

Starting in a few months, and with help from a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the LoC will begin digitizing books that are brittle and fragile, so that they will be available for future generations to read and enjoy.

I, for one, have never been a consumer of digital reading, preferring the sensory experience of curling up with a paper book. However, faced with the choice between losing precious memoirs and diaries from the Civil War or reading them on a screen, I'll choose blurry eyes and rescued narratives any day of the week.

By the way, I've spent a little time on the Library of Congress website and they are also doing some fascinating work on preserving digital content for the future. Along with this intriguing project, there is just a treasure trove of research content for those of us interested in obscure content.

Robert Frost Redux

I'm not obsessed with Robert Frost by any means, but this is 2 posts in a week. But, the New York Times had this great article about the battle between mainstream and avant-garde poets, which highlighted Frost's work.

It's very funny, because it balances between the seriousness of the debate (is language just meaning or a meaning unto itself) and the absurdity of the debate [it is described as, "a genuine aesthetic disagreement that is serious and important and (as one might say in Poetryland) worthy of a Panel Discussion, Followed by a Short Reception."]

According to the author, Robert Frost's work straddles the divide of using language in an everyday manner and using language to critique language. Of course, it's a precursor to advertise, er, review The Notebooks of Robert Frost, which have just come out. But the build-up to the review is priceless. It uses Frost's own quotes (without prior attribution) to make the argument for experimental poetry.

Can you tell the difference between the ideology behind...

“as soon as I start listening to the words they reveal their own vectors and affinities, pull the poem into their own field of force, often in unforeseen directions.” (avant-garde poet)

and

“the whole thing [poetry] is performance and prowess and feats of association.” (Frost)

I don't know if I can.

Goodbye Politics!

Today is a sad day for alternative newspaper journalism. Steve Perry, editor of the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages, is leaving his post after 13 years. He left this letter on the City Pages blog today.

In between the lines of this gracious exit letter lies a political struggle with the City Pages' parent company Village Voice Media. Steve Perry is cut from the old school journalistic cloth; he's a severe leftist political commentator who uses his paper as an outlet for his political slant. Meanwhile, the parent company is looking for a more apolitical tone for their papers. Steve Perry doesn't fit into the new vision of the company, a vision where diversity is squelched and homogeneity reigns supreme.

Over my coming of age in Minneapolis, after leaving L.A. as a teen, weaned on LA Weekly I have come to rely on City Pages for it's current, rousing, and yes, liberal, news journalism. I am hoping that another one of our weekly freebies takes the City Pages' place as a leader in lefty news reporting in this die-hard lefty town.