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Some indie books for your list
This week in the U.S. academic calendar involves a lot of reflection on and (less rewardingly) grading of student writing. I always sift and contemplate of my own year’s work, too, looking over what I’ve read and written, considering what I want to do next, or do better. I wasn’t surprised to see poet-blogger Ann…
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The view from lockdown
Around 3:45 pm on November 1st, a “shelter in place” instruction pinged in through our campus phone and email alert system. I was in my office about to head to class, but I checked with another colleague, also on the third floor of my old building and conferencing with a student. They had both received…
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Blockage, re-routing, clearance
Did I ever tell you about the time I was on an AWP shuttle bus and a publicist’s assistant told me that my sacral chakra was blocked? We were chatting about reiki, so I’m clearly receptive to that kind of random conversational offering, but it’s pretty bold to diagnose a stranger. I instantly knew that…
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STILL mythologizing solitary genius
I’m both proud of and embarrassed about where I went to grad school. I tend to avoid the name in conversations with new acquaintances because it triggers so much judgment: oh, you’re smarter than I thought, or richer and more privileged or snootier or whatever. I never felt as if I belonged at that elite…
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Writing about poetry with AI
Poetry’s Possible Worlds emerged from years of teaching undergraduates who don’t believe that learning how to write academic essays about literature has long-term relevance to their lives. Many of my students, though, enjoy–or can be surprised into enjoying–reading, thinking, and talking about books and poems, so the puzzle has been: how do I make writing…
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The magic of making things
I hereby direct you to the final project of my May term W&L class: a co-created website for a fictional liberal arts college, Bigglebottom Academy of Magic. The participants in English 239: Magical Education worked through four books in four weeks about schooling for sorcerous types: Le Guin’s novelette “Dragonfly”; Okorafor’s Akata Witch; Grossman’s The…
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Magical education
Monday I’ll teach Magic 101. At stake: what is magic–what are its sources, what can it do, and how is it supposed to differ from science or religion? Does it work mechanically, through wands and staffs and rings and words, or supernaturally, by more-than-human assistance, or in some other fashion? Can anyone be trained to…
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Occult AWP
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She carries me
In the Belly As a woman carries an insect, unconscious of the sign it shapes with diplomatic footfalls across her skin, she carries me. As a lake lifts the sky’s image, all burnished admiration, or proffers a crushed cup, a leaf, a rainbow slick of grease. As your network of neurochemicals and electricity carries, through…
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Easy poetry
“Excitement comes from being lazy and fun loving. O’Hara worked hard, but he also took it easy. His Collected Poems are a manifesto of the high aesthetic rewards that accrue from a life—albeit a tragically abbreviated life—of taking easiness as the gold standard. Like Warhol’s professed love of easy art (or art that was easy to make), O’Hara’s…