Photo of Bhanu Kapil by Kelly Writers House staff.
I’m very excited to be here with Andrea Quaid and everyone today for collective conversations on feminist poetics and pedagogy. Like to many people, the two may not seem like conjoined subjects. I also admit I don’t purport to know much about the intersections of the two. I’ve explored both separately — pedagogy in the classroom, the jail, the digital space; poetry on the page, the classroom, in jars … I’m excited either way for an exploration of both poetry and pedagogy, two passions that should intersect for me. Upon conversations with Andrea over the years, we’ve been keen to understand that as feminists engaged with poetics, our interests and work in pedagogy have often not had a space for the two to intersect. Yet, as the quote from feminist poet Adrienne Rich explains to graduating women, education is a privilege and must be claimed. Why should feminist poets reclaim pedagogy as our own? In the symposium we’re hoping for a space that can facilitate this conversation. What does poetics offer pedagogy, and how it can facilitate the difference between life and death and the promise of education?
The first thing I want to say to you who are students, is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one …
In 1995, Martin Spinelli and I did a series of thirty-minute radio conversations and readings with poets and writers. It was one of the first programs to be distributed nationally by satellite to public radio stations, so a precursor to podcasts. I went on to a make a related series of programs, Close Listening. All are available free to stream or download on PennSound. All in all, there have been conversations and readings by 133 poets, writers, and artists.
Editorial assistant Gabriela Portillo Alvarado makes her capsule reviews debut with writing on three poetry titles featuring love, resistance, and truth: Valuing by Christopher Kondrich, Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real by Moez Surani, and dayliGht by Roya Marsh. From the reviews: Valuing’s perhaps most prominent feature is romantic tenderness: “And though I have no holdings, / you may increase your stock in me; / you may reserve the right to vessel. To partition if you need to.” Through often-abstract wordplay, which rises to the surface of every page, Kondrich reveals his love of and mastery over language. Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real focuses on a variety of subjects from daily commute to relationships, from travels in India to New York Times references. Surani delves into his experiences with romantic love: “When we aren’t lured by mystery we’ll seek it in others. […] / Is love simply chasing after another’s full and elusive truth?”
[The basic book for Haroldo de Campos in English is still Novas: Selected Writings, edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa, Odile Cisneros, and Roland Greene, published by Northwestern University Press in 2007. De Campos and his brother Augusto remain two of the major American/Brazilian poets of the last hundred years, bringing poetry and poetics together.]
On July 2, 2015, Ted and I started on a collaboration, which we continued until June 11, 2016, just six days before Ted died. Ted and I exchanged lines back and forth over email, sometimes multiple times in a day and never less than every few days. After a while neither of us could fully separate what each had done, we were blowing together, back and forth, in a duet of, and as, time, bouncing off the moment as if it were a trampoline, tripping out into the eternity of the company, from dark to delight. There was no sense of unnecessary limit, no register we couldn’t play.
On feminist poetics and pedagogy
Meeting Bhanu Kapil
I’m very excited to be here with Andrea Quaid and everyone today for collective conversations on feminist poetics and pedagogy. Like to many people, the two may not seem like conjoined subjects. I also admit I don’t purport to know much about the intersections of the two. I’ve explored both separately — pedagogy in the classroom, the jail, the digital space; poetry on the page, the classroom, in jars … I’m excited either way for an exploration of both poetry and pedagogy, two passions that should intersect for me. Upon conversations with Andrea over the years, we’ve been keen to understand that as feminists engaged with poetics, our interests and work in pedagogy have often not had a space for the two to intersect. Yet, as the quote from feminist poet Adrienne Rich explains to graduating women, education is a privilege and must be claimed. Why should feminist poets reclaim pedagogy as our own? In the symposium we’re hoping for a space that can facilitate this conversation. What does poetics offer pedagogy, and how it can facilitate the difference between life and death and the promise of education?
The first thing I want to say to you who are students, is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one …Read more
LINEbreak is 25
In 1995, Martin Spinelli and I did a series of thirty-minute radio conversations and readings with poets and writers. It was one of the first programs to be distributed nationally by satellite to public radio stations, so a precursor to podcasts. I went on to a make a related series of programs, Close Listening. All are available free to stream or download on PennSound. All in all, there have been conversations and readings by 133 poets, writers, and artists.
Truth and revolution
Gabriela Portillo Alvarado
Editorial assistant Gabriela Portillo Alvarado makes her capsule reviews debut with writing on three poetry titles featuring love, resistance, and truth: Valuing by Christopher Kondrich, Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real by Moez Surani, and dayliGht by Roya Marsh. From the reviews: Valuing’s perhaps most prominent feature is romantic tenderness: “And though I have no holdings, / you may increase your stock in me; / you may reserve the right to vessel. To partition if you need to.” Through often-abstract wordplay, which rises to the surface of every page, Kondrich reveals his love of and mastery over language. Are the Rivers in Your Poems Real focuses on a variety of subjects from daily commute to relationships, from travels in India to New York Times references. Surani delves into his experiences with romantic love: “When we aren’t lured by mystery we’ll seek it in others. […] / Is love simply chasing after another’s full and elusive truth?”
Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (25)
Haroldo de Campos, 'Three poems & an essay toward a poetics'
[The basic book for Haroldo de Campos in English is still Novas: Selected Writings, edited by Antonio Sergio Bessa, Odile Cisneros, and Roland Greene, published by Northwestern University Press in 2007. De Campos and his brother Augusto remain two of the major American/Brazilian poets of the last hundred years, bringing poetry and poetics together.]
Translated by A. S. Bessa
'The Course' by Ted Greenwald and Charles Bernstein
On July 2, 2015, Ted and I started on a collaboration, which we continued until June 11, 2016, just six days before Ted died. Ted and I exchanged lines back and forth over email, sometimes multiple times in a day and never less than every few days. After a while neither of us could fully separate what each had done, we were blowing together, back and forth, in a duet of, and as, time, bouncing off the moment as if it were a trampoline, tripping out into the eternity of the company, from dark to delight. There was no sense of unnecessary limit, no register we couldn’t play.