Dr. Sward's Cure for Melancholia

2008 Santa Cruz Film Festival, Kerouac, Big Sur...

2008-05-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

Fri., May 9, World Premier of ONE FAST MOVE OR I'M GONE: KEROUAC'S BIG SUR, A DOCUMENTARY by Curt Worden, Del Mar Theater. Hundreds of people turn out, $20. a ticket, standing room only... our little town, pop. 56,000, with two, three film festivals a year.

Headline in Metro Santa Cruz: On the Rocks, The Santa Cruz Film Festival opens with Jack Kerouac's Big Sur breakdown.

Based on Kerouac's 1962 book, Big Sur, the film, with extraordinary footage of Big Sur, the scene around Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin near Bixby Canyon... Kerouac's agent, Sterling Lord; poet Michael McClure; Ferlinghetti; Carolyn Cassady; Patti Smith... all making an appearance. One of the finest documentaries I've seen... and Santa Cruz, situated half way between San Francisco and Big Sur, draws an enthusiastic audience, average age, I would guess, early 40s... scattering of younger people, scattering of folks in their 70s and older...

Metro SC says, "The Big Sur trip was a farewell to the three-cornered love [Kerouac] had for the Cassadys. Neither Jack nor Neal would make it out of the 1960s alive. Ultimately, poet Gregory Corso's judgment of Big Sur seems the sanest: 'He needs help.'"

--
Press Release:

Welcome to the 2008 Santa Cruz Film Festival

The Santa Cruz Film Festival is a growing international festival that fosters cross cultural exchange by screening independent films and producing multi-disciplined art events throughout the year.
Since the inaugural year (honored by The Downtown Business Assoc. as the Cultural Event of the Year) our programming has championed voices and stories that are often left out of mainstream cinema. We have presented films from 5 continents.

The Santa Cruz Film Festival presents nine days of non-stop, truly independent film screenings from May 9-17, 2008. Venues include: The Del Mar, The Rio Theatre, The Museum of Art and History, The Regal Riverfront Twin, Community TV, and the Cayuga Vault.

This year the Festival will present over 140 films from 26 countries, 17 World Premieres, and 4 US Premieres The fest will screen 41 Documentaries, 76 Narratives, 15 Animation, 21 Experimental, 43 Student 22 Local Grown, and 12 - 18 years of age films all of which will be in consideration for SCFF’s Audience Awards. The Jury winning documentary will receive a World Premier on Link TV.

Our community is reflected in our programming. 20% of our films are internationally produced, 10% are locally produced, and approximately 50% are produced or directed by women. 15%-20% are programmed for a GLBT audience. 10%-15% are by or about Latinos. 10% are youth-produced (under 18 years of age) including by students at high schools in Watsonville, Aptos, Scotts Valley, and Santa Cruz.

According to the Santa Cruz County Visitors and Convention Bureau, the SCFF has brought 1 million dollars to Santa Cruz County businesses since its inception in 2001. Over 23% of festival attendees come from outside of the county. The festival promotes Santa Cruz globally, while contributing to the economy and enhancing the collective cultural awareness locally.

The Santa Cruz Film Festival strives to engage in cultural and artistic diplomacy.

Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came To Canada in Vietnam War Era

2008-05-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

A Migration of Poets

Mail brings copy of new anthology Crossing Lines - Poets Who Came To Canada in the Vietnam Era, Seraphim Editions, Canada.

Edited by Massachusetts-born poet Allan Briesmaster and L.A. -born Steven Michael Berzensky (Mick Burrs), Crossing Lines includes the work of 76 men and women who grew up in the U.S. and then immigrated to Canada in the Vietnam War era (1965-75).

As noted in the Preface (A Migration of Poets), “…thousands of American women also emigrated during the historic period of upheaval and change in both countries… about a third of our Crossing Lines poets are women.”

And, as the editors point out, “Although the Vietnam war and the Draft and anti-war protests were prominent in the news of the time, individual circumstances differed greatly, even among those wishing to avoid ‘crossing the line’ into military service. These varied circumstances are in plain view in some of the poems here as well as in the contributors’ bios. At least two of the poets (Kolos, Sward) actually served in the U.S. armed forces” [I served in the combat zone in U.S. Navy during the Korean War and, exempt from the draft, came to serve as Poet in Residence at the University of Victoria (1969 - 1972) before moving to Toronto].

Apart from the draft, many came to Canada seeking opportunity or a fresh start; many were university students or, like myself, teachers…

Judging by their poetry, many contributors seem to have had little involvement with the politics of the day, or even with the counter-culture… they write instead of their feelings and experiences in making the transition—loneliness, a sense of separation, a lowering of expectations, the difficulty of finding work… and some write of going back as more difficult than leaving.

What did these people contribute to Canada? The editors observe, “One quality that characterizes this particular immigrant group is a dynamic individualism, a widely acknowledged American trait which they each brought undeclared across the border, prodding them to contribute something distinctive to Canada’s culture."

Press Release (see below)

THE BOOK BAND
Representing the Best of Small Press

P.O. Box 3471, Stn. C. Hamilton ON L8H 7M1
Voice: 905-545-5274 Fax: 905-545-5208 E-mail: info@thebookband.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 2008

Anthology Reflects America’s Loss, Canada’s Gain

Seraphim Editions (www.seraphimedtions.com) is proud to publish Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam War Era, an unprecedented 256-page, 76-poet anthology of poetry by men and women who grew up in the United States and emigrated to Canada during the years 1965-75.

Some of the poets came north to avoid crossing the line into military service; a few came after completing their stint; and still others, who were exempt from the Draft, chose Canada for a fresh start in life, many of them as students and teachers. Individual histories, literary careers, and writing styles differ widely, but all were fundamentally affected by their change of country.

Crossing Lines explores numerous themes related both to the turbulent decade 1965-75 and to our own time: including personal responses to the Vietnam War itself, reflections on war in general and war today, thoughts on leaving home and familiar places, memoirs of arrival and a new beginning, and, above all, a longing for peace. Many of these writers have achieved great literary distinction, and as a group they represent a cultural phenomenon which has been insufficiently recognized both in Canada and the U.S.

Publisher Maureen Whyte notes: “This book reveals some of the voices which helped to shape the styles and themes of Canadian poetry in the late 20th Century and beyond. I am very excited to contribute such an important addition to Canada’s literary legacy.” The moving and outspoken poems collected here will interest students and lovers of poetry on both sides of the border, and will be uniquely valuable to Canadian Studies programs, and to historians.

Founded in 1995, Seraphim Editions publishes the works of established and emerging writers from across Canada.

For more information about Crossing Lines and upcoming readings in Canada and the U.S., or to arrange an interview with editors Allan Briesmaster or Steven Michael Berzensky, please contact Trudi at The Book Band, info@thebookband.com

--

Maureen Whyte, Publisher
Seraphim Editions
238 Emerald Street North
Hamilton, Ontario
Canada L8L 5K8

Telephone: 905-525-5509
Facsimile: 905-525-0332
E-mail: info@seraphimeditions.com

Paul Blackburn, Re-visited

2008-05-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

Paul Blackburn about to lift rock... mid-1960s, probably in vicinity of Aspen, Colorado.

Link to Jerry Rothenberg and more on Paul Blackburn...

With thanks to University of Pennsylvania Professor Al Filreis...

---

Nearly half a century after Paul Blackburn read these lines [see below] aloud in one of our kitchen colloquies, the lines are fresh as ever. I can still hear his voice. And, certainly, Paul was an influence on the work I was doing then, Kissing the Dancer, Cornell Univ. Press, 1964, and now, God is in the Cracks, Black Moss Press, 2006.

As for generosity of spirit, Paul was the first poet I met who seemed to have that quality and, 50 years later, he’s still pretty much at the top of the list. Yeah, and to Paul’s name I’d add perhaps two or three others.

Paul Blackburn’s 1954 “statement” of poetics was published in The Parallel Voyages, Sun-Gemini Press, 1987.
Please see The Parallel Voyages for correct formatting.

“My poetry may not be typically American, or at least in matter, not
solely so: but I think it does make use of certain techniques which, even
when not invented by American poets, find their particular exponents
there in contemporary letters, from Pound & Doctor Williams, to younger
writers like Paul Carroll or Duncan or Creeley.

"Techniques of juxtaposition.
Techniques of speech rhythms,
sometimes very intense,
sometimes developed slowly, as
one would have
conversation with a friend.

"Personally, I affirm two things:
the possibility of warmth & contact
in the human relationship :
as juxtaposed against the materialistic pig of a technological world,
where relationships are only ‘useful’ i.e., exploited, either
psychologically or materially.

"...the possibility of s o n g
within that world: which is like saying ‘yes’ to sunlight.

"On the matter of song: I believe there must be a return toward the
musical structure of poetry, just as there must be, for certain people at
least, a return to warmth within a relationship.

"However impractical that may seem in a society controlled in some of its
most intimate aspects by monstrous, which are totally irresponsible,
corporations, organized for the greatest gain of the most profit: and whose
natural growth, like that of any organism, is toward monopoly,
self-support, self-completion, self-
perpetuation,
and eventually self-competition and self-destruction.

"In a world that is so quickly losing its individuals, it can only be the
individuals who persist, who can work any change of direction, i.e. control
the machines, or destroy them.

"Machines can be very beneficent as means

"to a better
(materially better)
life, as either
democratizing or socializing agents.
But as a means to control for the limited number of men who now own them,

"(but the president or general manager of the corporation
really owns nothing but his own salary (and his power) so that
even the controlling minds of these gigantic corporate machines
are irresponsible. That is, not subject to the effects
of their own decisions)

"(and
the personnel, the individuals
are replaceable, all the way to the top. The machine, the organisation, has
itself created the position and will function without the individual, has,
in that sense created the person to fill the ‘p o s i t i o n’
and its own needs) so that
when, in these upper reaches, the ‘organisation’ the machine itself
becomes master, it can only mean disaster, global and particular.

"I do not claim that a greater frequency of rhyme than is now made use of
in American poetry will, in time, set things right.

"Only that if a man could sing the poems his poets write

— and could understand them — and if

"the poets would sing something from their guts, rather than
the queasy contents of same,
then that man would stand a better
chance, of being a whole man, than
him who stands or sits and says but ‘Yes’ all day.

"Enough man to stand where it is necessary to take a stand.

"To give
and man enough to receive, LOVE,
when he finds it offered.

"To take the sun and the goods of the earth, while it lasts.
and to
fight in whatever way he can
the monstrous machines that try, and will try, to

"o b l i t e r a t e him, for

$1 more."

---

[See preceding April 28 post for more on Paul Blackburn].

Jerome Rothenberg webcast, Paul Blackburn...

2008-04-28T19:19:00.000-07:00

Poet / Translator Paul Blackburn

re: Jerry Rothenberg webcast - University of Pennsylvania - Writers House Fellows Program

Invited to email question(s) for Jerry Rothenberg April 29 webcast, I think of my old friend Paul Blackburn, poet and translator who died in 1971 at age 44. Given Rothenberg's work with Ethnopoetics, I recall Blackburn introducing, opening up a whole new world of poetry... reading aloud for me his translations from Spanish of the medieval epic Poema del Mio Cid, of the poetry of Frederico Garcia Lorca, Octavio Paz and the short stories of Julio Cortazar. Paul at the time (mid-1960s) was Cortazar's literary agent in the U.S.

Question: "Paul Blackburn was a dear and valued friend. I knew him in New York in the 1960s and it was Paul who introduced me and other writers to Julio Cortazar, Garcia Lorca, Octavio Paz... and Provençal poetry. To what extent did Paul Blackburn influence you and your work with Ethnopoetics?"

Rothenberg's moving response is now online--one can tap into the Writers House archives for his reply--but two points in particular stand out: 1) that Paul Blackburn, born the same year as Robert Creeley, "is the equal of Creeley as a poet," 2) and that Paul is something of a "lost poet," one who died young and did not put himself forward as Creeley had done, commenting and serving as spokesman for the Black Mountain School, for example. Paul chose not to align himself, or to allow others to align him with, the Black Mountain School or any other school.

Clayton Eshleman writes of Blackburn, "Many, not just a few, but many poets alive today are beholden to him for a basic artistic kindness, for readings, yes, and for advice, but more humanly for a kind of comradeship that very few poets are willing to give." The readings he organized were the direct progenitors to the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church on the Bowery.

As beneficiary of Paul's generosity, as someone who spent time with him and read (thanks to Paul) at St. Mark's Church on the Bowery, I feel this need to pay my respects... make some long overdue acknowledgment...

Wikipedia's entry on Paul Blackburn notes that he "played an important part in the poetry community, particularly in New York, where he helped fledgling poets develop and provided emotional support and opportunities to read for both unknown and established writers in the various reading series with which he was involved. He organized readings that offered work from the Beats, the New York School, the Deep Image Poets, and the Black Mountain Poets. But he was, let us say, an Independent. A non-aligned poet. Living in New York, organizing readings, etc., he was passionately involved and, like Creeley and others, at the center of the 1960s literary scene. But he was also his own man.

As poetry editor of The Nation he published a wide range of poets and, in the mid-60s, he directed workshops at the Aspen Writers' Conference.

Avatar

2008-04-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

In his book, AVATARS! my friend Bruce Damer defines the term, "Avatars are digital representations of yourself on the Internet that enable you to explore virtual worlds..." J.J. Webb created this particular avatar for use with the animated poetry presentations he's doing with some of my recent work for Blues Cruzio Cafe. "Beau Blue Presents - Contemporary Poetry - Animations"

Poetry Group / Workshop / "It's a Gun"

2008-04-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA - & vocalist Mariah Carey

M. arrives late to class. Keeps his gun out of sight... English 101. I'm trying to do what I can with Strunk & White's Elements of Style.

Later I write something that turns out to be, well, a not very good poem. Yet I can't throw it away. Something about the the personality of the kid, his one good essay, the gun, the incident... keeps me going back. I work and re-work the material. But some scribblings are just that, "scribblings," little more than anecdotes. Here's my little anecdote:

IT'S A GUN

Sara's got on earphones.
I make out Mariah Carey
singing, I want you,
I need you,
don't leave me.

Class begins.
"Okay, Sara," I say,
"tune her out."
Never be alone at night,
if you're lonely, love will be there, Carey sings.

Sara turns it up loud, then takes off the phones.

M n' M, New Yorker,
walks in late,
begins yelling from his seat
at some guy at the door
who's shaking his fists,

but M n' M isn't leaving,
he's staying put, and his friend,
clearly pissed, won't let up. "Mutha..."
waves and yells he's been robbed,
wants his money back,

"Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. Uh huh."
What are we on about today? I've got this
lesson plan. I mark the guy late.
"Cool it, cool it..."
I still don't know he's got a gun.

"Let's talk about this outside,"
and the other kid disappears
and M and I step outside
and I tell him to go home.
Actually, he's written this A+ essay

about "murder and bang bang,"
how home was a front stoop in Manhattan,
how he's here for his safety,
how he can't get used to "San-ty Cruz,"
he misses all that bad company.

"Teach," he says, "I'm not goin' home."

Now he's telling me to cool it.
"You don't know what I got," he saying.
He's right. I don't know. Then the police
are all around us; turns out
the room's barricaded. How did I know

Murder and bang bang. Mariah Carey singing
It's a gun, it's a gun.

"It's A Gun" reprinted from CALIFORNIA PART-TIMER, CCFT, AFL-CIO, Fall 1998, Vol. 10, No. 1.

CALIFORNIA PART-TIMER, CCFT, AFL-CIO, Fall 1998, Vol. 10, No. 1 "It's A Gun," poem.
Reprinted in CCFT (Santa Cruz/Monterey) Newsletter, Dec., 1998.

Friends make suggestions and I revise the thing and end up with something less, much less, than what I began with. In fact, I can't even remember what I began with. Only rage at the college for not leveling with me, how I had to learn about what really happened from a local newspaper.

So it's not the student or the gun I wanted to write about, but the way the incident was handled by the college. Murder and bang bang. Anyway, it's the student, it's the student who has the best lines.

* * *

• What does one get out of a poem? What do you take away?

Ezra Pound says, “Only emotion endures...”

and, long-term, what's it all about anyway?

• “God guard me from those thoughts •
men think in the mind alone. •
He that sings a lasting song •
thinks in a marrow bone.”

--W. B. Yeats

James D. Houston, A California Notebook

2008-04-18T17:11:00.000-07:00

The View from Santa Cruz

I've just begun reading Jim Houston's new book, Where Light Takes Its Colors - A California Notebook. Respond immediately to Jim's opening section, The View from Santa Cruz. No surprise. I've lived here since 1985 and have great admiration for Houston and know the locations he conjures up, like Buckhart's candy store, shaped like a Dutch windmill with a Dutch girl on its side...

"The store is called Buckhart's, which might be a Dutch name, except that the long sign over its door features not a girl but an enormous heart, and gazing from within the heart is a well-antlered buck who looks pirated from some Yorkshire hunting lodge. The heart was red once. After the vanes blew down they painted it white. The buck is white. The girl is white. The eight-sided dome is white. Where the morning sun catches it, the dome gleams and leaves an angular flash on my retina when I look away."

But what really gets my attention is Houston's ability to call up the quality of light... "A lot depends on the light here. It shapes the mountains and draws a mossy green from those high meadow patches that never turn brown. Down along the river that runs through town, the light swells up under a cloud of seagulls as they rise in a swirl, between the concrete bridges. They turn, soar, dive like a shower of white sparks and descend again to their marshy, low-tide, inland island. In later afternoon the light turns the bay white. It catches the eucalyptus leaves with their undersides up, like a thousand new moons."

There's more. Much more. I've tried for years to somehow catch the quality of light in (hometown!) Chicago, that bluish-silvery white snowy 4 or 5 o'clock February haze, that cast of light I recall walking home along icy Kimball Avenue from Von Steuben High School. No luck.

Living in Taos, New Mexico, I sought in my writing to catch the quality of light of that place, which I loved. No luck.

In the 1960s, a graduate student at University of Bristol, I studied with the English poet Charles Tomlinson who recommended Adrian Stokes book, The Quattro Cento and Stones of Rimini, which, like Jim Houston's "Where Light Takes Its Color," does the impossible: to bring alive the quality of light in a particular place and in so doing, to bring alive the place itself.

Stokes has been praised as a writer able “to invoke the material presence of works of art…” to realize that the materials of art “were the actual objects of inspiration… During the Renaissance, Stokes maintained, stone accordingly ‘blossomed’ into sculpture and buildings.”

In Where Light Takes its Color, Jim Houston, like Adrian Stokes, invokes the material presence of works of art and architecture, like the windmill and other Santa Cruz landmarks, to say nothing of the “The sea,” which, “as much as the light, gives this curve of coast its flavor. The light takes its color from the sea, sometimes seems to be emerging from it. And the sea here is ever-present. On clear days it coats the air with a transparent tinge of palest blue that salts and sharpens every detail.”

That’s it.

Rosanne Cash, Leonard Cohen, poetry & song

2008-04-13T17:41:00.000-07:00

1) What comes first, the music or the lyrics?
2) Are Song Lyrics Poetry?

All art aspires to the state of music. May be a cliché, but it’s the truth. And, in the 1940s, before I wrote or published anything, I’d make up songs, awful, by any standard, awful. But songs… and am fascinated by the connection between music, songwriting in particular, and poetry. I interviewed poet-singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen years ago for CBC Radio and was especially interested to hear what he had to say about his origins—as poet, songwriter… [Leonard Cohen interview on my website, www.robertsward.com]

My journals, my blogs, are scrapbooks—among other things—places to keep and, hopefully, organize so I can find what I’m looking for later. Blogs, I find, way better for finding things than paper notebooks. Hundreds and hundreds of paper notebooks. But now I have only to search “Rosanne Cash” or “Leonard Cohen” or (songwriter) “John Stewart”, and I have what I’m looking for.

So, Saturday, April 12, 2008, reading the NY Times… Rosanne Cash in feature titled “Well, Actually, It Is Brain Surgery,” I light on some of her remarks. She begins by saying, “I haven’t written a song in about a year.” And goes on to say of her songwriter mentor John Stewart (”Daydream Believer,” “Gold,” “California Bloodlines”), he used to say to me, upon hearing a new song of mine that he thought might be too perfect or careful or contrived, either lyrically or structurally, 'But where’s the madness, Rose?'

“His belief in songs, and his sense of liberation and expansion when he approached writing, was deeply inspiring. John showed me that songs were the expression of the essential language that all other languages hinged upon. When I first began to know him, I felt that I had been speaking with a vocabulary of 200 words, and in a few months he taught me 10,000 more…”

I like when she says next, “the level of my attention has increased, when I have broken free of chord-progression ruts, when a burst of inspiration propelled me an inch or two forward in my own evolution — but “Dance With the Tiger” was an important moment.

“People always ask me, “What comes first, the music or the lyrics?” I don’t know why people are so fascinated with the answer to that question, and the question always makes me slightly nervous, as if I should have an expert opinion or a backlog of statistics on my own songwriting to give a definitive answer. I can’t…

“Often, it’s true for me that the lyrics come first. I seldom find just melodies on the guitar that come out fully fleshed, and add the lyrics afterward. If I start on the piano, it often happens that the melody will come first, of a piece. The instrument has a lot to do with the order of inspiration. Sometimes. And sometimes the fragment of a conversation, the color of the sky, the image in a dream, has everything to do with where the song begins. My song “Seven Year Ache” began as a long poem, several pages of rambling, and I distilled it down into a lyric. The melody came last.

“On vacation recently, there were some Christian fundamentalists at lunch at the next table and I felt the tension and constriction of their religious beliefs wafting off them like a perfume. That is my own projection, I’m sure, but I thought of something a friend used to say about that particular brand of religion — that it was like “looking at the ground with a flashlight when the whole universe was around you waiting to be noticed.” Walking to the beach later, I was thinking about how my own idea of God was so mutable, and that even though I pray, most of the time I haven’t a clue to whom I’m praying.

“And I like it that way. Sometimes God is Art, Music and Children and that is more than good enough. Ruminating on these things, I thought of a phrase — “the pantheon of my religious desires” — and I wrote it in my notebook. That line is probably too sophomore-English-major precious, but this is how songs begin for me. Sometimes.”

Chico - dog with Mohawk & work in progress

2008-04-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

Chico the dog before Mohawk.

Blog not so much “blog” (on this occasion) as journal entry for handy reference. Exploring the uses of a multi-useful form, i.e., blog. Scarcely writing in my “journal” these days, more and more writing energy—and writing time—going into the blog.

Hence a little scribbling on plane returning from visit to K. (my daughter) in Austin, Texas. How “one woman to another,” how they see what is obvious, how they are tougher, franker, more fun than men, so it seems to me. How and what happens when I don’t need or don’t wish to speak as a father, simply don’t need to be “right,” whatever “right” is. How to listen to a daughter as another woman might listen. So I’ve written this poem, Woman to Woman.

How the woman K. is renting to has a little dog, Chico, who prefers K’s house to her own. Shaved and virtually hairless, little pooch has two-inch eyelashes, white or gray or blonde, and, dear God, I swear it’s true, a Mohawk. Almost hairless, but the dog has a Mohawk.

What crazy person did this to him? I think Chico’s a him. “He’s revolting,” says my daughter’s boyfriend. And the little dog goes into their bedroom at 2 am and knocks his head against the bed and rings its little collar bell to wake her up.

“I’m saying what I’m saying,” I say to my daughter, “and I don’t need to be right.” She’s obsessing about some dope (not the current) she’d be better off without. So I’m working on a poem and the poem has an agenda, but I’m writing what I’m writing, just as I say what I say to my daughter, without the need to be right, without any need at all—other than to convince her to drop the jerk. So the agenda’s up front. But poems or stories with agendas usually stink. The agenda gets in the way of the poem.

Am I, like Chico the dog, knocking my head against some solid object and doing so in vain? Still, the little bell is ringing, Wake Up Wake Up…

FAA let airline slide - Watch Dog Wanted!

2008-04-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

Southwest Airlines to AUSTIN, TEXAS - visiting family

DAY #1 - April 4 - Austin American Statesman, headline
"Staff: FAA let airline slide - Inspectors say supervisors ignored Southwest's problems. (this story first appeared in the NY Times)

"WASHINGTON--Veteran Federal Aviation Administrator inspectors told lawmakers on Thursday that their agency supervisors looked the other way while Southwest Airlines neglected to inspect planes as required and continued to fly them even after discovering cracks in some of them...

"The inspectors said that their FAA supervisors knew of the issues but had discouraged them from pursuing the safety problems or addressing problems within the agency, even threatening to relieve them of their duties...

[meanwhile] "...Southwest Chairman Herb Kelleher defended his airline's safety practices, noting Southwest has never killed any of its passengers." (Note: I am quoting the Austin American Statesman story word for word...)

Then, April 7, I board another Southwest Airlines flight and the plane is full, every seat occupied. How bad would the report have to be for us--myself included--to simply rent a car and take that chance and the additional chance that the bridges and highways, i.e., the fucking infra structure is still in order?

We do what we must... whatever works... for flying, I've taken to using Bach Rescue Remedy Spray, a "Natural Stress Relief, Discreet Mouth Spray..." which includes Rock Rose, said to "add courage and presence of mind in the face of terror or extreme fear." And here I am safely home working on my blog.

My Poet Father - by Hannah Sward

2008-03-29T16:52:00.000-07:00

Daughter Hannah with Anthony... Los Angeles...

Editing an ongoing series of essays on Literary Friendship, "Writers Friendship, Writers Enmity," for Web Del Sol / Perihelion (James Houston on Raymond Carver; Lola Haskins; Tony Barnstone...) thought, with some trepidation, I'd invite my daughter Hannah to contribute her thoughts on what it was like having as father... a writer... so, expanding the scope of "Writers Friendship" from what it's like for one writer to sustain a friendship with another, say, to sustaining a relationship with a family member, a daughter no less, who is herself a writer--and a good one!

Okay, here we go...

"My Poet Father," she writes (and I'm including Hannah's essay with her permission):

"The first sounds I remember are of an Olympia portable typewriter. My father clicking away. To this day, I find myself comforted by that sound.

Me, two years old, falling asleep to the rhythm, the vibrations of his voice as he recited his poems at poetry readings, half asleep in a papoose on my father’s back. I remember the vibration of my father’s voice as he recited …

I have many feelings about growing up the daughter of a poet. I cannot separate my father from the poet, the poet from my father. I envy his life. I want my life to be just as interesting. The stories my mother has shared with me of all the young women fawning over my father, coming over to our house, one by one going up to his study in our big old Victorian house in Oak Bay, Victoria, British Columbia. The stories my father himself has told me. Arriving late to a reading he was giving at The Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Only hours earlier having been hit by a car. Still bleeding from the head, bandaged, dizzy, (briefly) an amnesiac, he arrives to read, auditorium filled with starry eyed students –

My father the poet, his life rich with stories I have both lived and not lived, he is my hero. I romanticize his life and the life I have lived growing up with him. The frequent visits to Earle Birney’s home with his much younger, beautiful wife in Toronto. My first meeting with Margaret Atwood, she hovering over me like a medicine woman as I lay sick in my red, wrought iron bed on Algonquin Island (Toronto Island) in the cold of winter. Or, his CBC radio interview in Montreal with Leonard Cohen in the early eighties.

“Why can’t I go, dad?” I ask. “Why can’t I go with you to meet Leonard?”

Growing up there were many places I wanted to go with my father. There’s a line in one of his poems,

*NIGHTGOWN, WIFE'S GOWN

"Where do people go when they go to sleep? /

I envy them. I want to go there too. /

I am outside of them, married to them. /

Nightgown, wife's gown, women that you look at, /

Beside them--I knock on their shoulder blades, /

Ask to be let in. It is forbidden. /

But you’re my wife, I say. There is no reply. /

Arms around her, I caress her wings."

And I, as a child, and later as the adult, I knock on his shoulder blades, ask to be let in... "But you’re my father," I say. This is the life I wanted to avoid. Now I find myself living it. Even as a kid, the life of a writer is too painful, too lonely. But at the same time many lives in one. The life of a poet’s daughter is at once rich, but it is also lonely. The dreamer, the drifter, the life of a poet, the life of poet’s daughter . . .

___
*first published in The Paris Review... reprinted in dad's Collected Poems.

What is a blog? Ars Poetica and the art of the blog

2008-03-27T16:34:00.000-07:00

What is a blog?

Ars Poetica (also known as "The Art of Poetry," Epistula Ad Pisones...) was a treatise on poetics translated into English by Ben Jonson. How does Ars Poetica (aka Arse Poetica) apply to blog? There's an art to poetry. Is there an art to blogging? Just because you make it up as you go along doesn't mean there's not an art to it.

1. "In media res," or into the middle of things... a popular narrative technique that appears in ancient epics and remains popular to this day, says Wikipedia. Okay. And what is a blog if not an example of "in media res"? It's where you begin... is the beginning where you begin? or where you begin to begin? Blogging I'm thinking is beginning to begin... but of course in your mind you've already begun. Something's going on... even if not directly related to your "beginning to begin..."

2. "Make it new," the poet Ezra Pound said. Yeah, okay... not as easy as it sounds!

3. "bonus dormitat Homerus" or "even Homer nods." Homer the poet, not Homer Simpson. In truth, we're none of us awake. Poets fuck up. Bloggers fuck up. Have a little humility. Have a little compassion. Gimme a break. Give yourself a break.

4. And some continuity. Poems, if not blogs, gotta have some continuity. Yes? No?

5. Then there's "ut pictura poesis", or "As is painting so is poetry", by which Horace (so says Wikipedia) meant that poetry (in its widest sense, "imaginative texts") merited the same careful interpretation that was, in Horace's day, reserved for painting. So that's where I'm coming from, writing / blogging as if someone would not only read it, but read it with some care. This at a time when most of us are just "window-shopping," cruising from Ramayana and Blog Wild! to Raining Noodles or I Blame the Patriarchy or Smoking Gun or or... I think unless you have attention deficit disorder you're going to have trouble keeping up. Sorry. Am I allowed to say that?

6. Then, understand, the Art of Poetry involves "decorum," using appropriate vocabulary and diction in each style of writing.

So now I'm not sure this even works. For myself, I'm into the messiness and ephemerality, I can cruise, I can window-shop Web / blogs without holding my nose. I'm most inclined to wince when I read my own jottings, own tendency to nod, to be a senior dude older than John McCain.

And one day I'll actually check out the Internet Archive project, Way-back Machine (www.archive.org/web/web.php) that lets you travel back in Web time... I don't know enough. I'm just trying this thing out.

Ultimate Blogs, Masterworks From the Wild Web

2008-03-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading David Kamp's review of Ultimate Blogs, Masterworks From the Wild Web -- NY Times Book Review, 3/23/08. I'm more addicted than ever to blog blog blog. But I'll never have it down, never make it as an Ultimate Blogger. Too old, too unable to write "good bloggy prose," too unable to write without at least a _little_ editing. Though best poems, Uncle Dog and some others, were written in just this way, flash flash, bang bang... then fuss with the punctuation. Just did it. Did it and done. On to the next. Even as a journalist (Toronto Star, Globe & Mail), I wasn't really a reporter. I was a book reviewer, a feature writer, which suited me fine. I got to think, I got to have conversations with people, read books, do a little research... edit edit edit... A real reporter would just do it, fast fast fast... and on to the next... so blogging, I think is more like that, "reporting," though one is essentially reporting on oneself, using the Web to do the equivalent (ha!) of what diarist Samuel Pepys was doing in England a couple centuries ago. Writing about himself, what he observed, the good and the bad, the city (London), the times, the daily daily doings...

But I'm not "conversational and restless," well, maybe... yeah, but "reckless"? Reckless in what sense? He'll say anything. Someone who takes pleasure in surprising himself. Kamp the reviewer speaks of "chin-strokers," big time serious folks like Nobel economist Gary Becker and federal circuit judge Richard Posner, who share a blog "in which they bat serious issues back and forth..." others, I'm discovering, create alt-comix blogs whose work appears in panel form.

Now I've started this thing, something wells up, once, twice a week, and giving way to the urge, I scribble notes onto "Blogger.com/post-create". In truth, I'm writing more blog these days than poetry. Why and why not does something have to be a poem?

Poetry. "I too dislike it," says poet Marianne Moore in a poem titled Poetry. What she mainly dislikes is the phoniness, the not real, the bullshit... but still, she says, there's a place for it. So while I want an audience, I'm used to _not_ having readers for my poetry and these days am adapting to the idea of _not_ having readers for my blog. Spent half a century, I'm that fucking old! keeping up a journal that I never thought to inflict on anyone. What did I get out of it? I dunno. A poem or two. And I think of all those boxes, all those notebooks, scribble scribble scribble, at Washington University in St. Louis, my little archive. At least it's there and not under my desk or in a closet somewhere. Boxes and boxes and boxes. We're talking 50, 60, 70... lots and lots of boxes.

Must somehow enjoy it, blogging, because I'm using the time that might go into adding a counter to my blog, to blog... the blogging is taking priority... why put 20, 30 minutes into adding a counter when I can put 20, 30 minutes into writing the damn thing? And I don't even want to know if anyone is reading it. You're reading it. So add a comment, okay?

From what Sarah Boxer says in Ultimate Blog I guess what you want is people to comment. That's the sign of success, that's what counts for Big Time Bloggers... so far the only people who comment on my little strand of a strand of a strand are friends and family. Enough.

Woe Be Gone, Melancholics Against Happiness

2008-03-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of Garrison Keillor and, what's this? A New York Times (Sun., Mar. 16, 2008) book review of Against Happiness, In Praise of Melancholy, by Eric G. Wilson. The reviewer? Garrison Keillor. Given the subject of this blog, "Dr. Sward's Cure for Melancholia," I couldn't help but read what Keillor had to say.

"...Wilson clarifies his opposition to anti-depressants later. He is not opposed to them in the case of severe depression, only in the case of mild to moderate depression. All right. Thanks for that. The distinction between melancholia (good) and depression (bad), Wilson writes, is simple: depression is passive, melancholia is turbulent. Defending depression of any sort on the ground that Beethoven suffered from it is awfully close to defending tuberculosis on the grounds that it sharpened John Keats' vision or arguing that you shouldn't clean up violent, drug-ridden neighborhoods because so many brilliant jazzmen came from there. And look at the long list of gin-soaked writers--practically the whole pantheon of the 20th century...

"To argue for melancholia as a force for creativity prompts the question, Why isn't this a better book, since the author is so miserable. And a Minnesotan reading Wilson, a North Carolinan on the tonic effect of melancholy winter has to smile."

In short, Against Happiness is "a good old-fashioned broadside against American optimism--the mass of men lead lives of shallow happiness, the superior man exults in his gloom."

All I know, speaking personally, is that gloom begets gloom. And the title, "Woe Be Gone," is more than clever. Lake Wobegon. It's also a little prayer. This review reads like a charm, a charm against the gloom... O gloom, O melancholy, O Woe... Be Gone!

Ellen Bass, The Human Line

2008-03-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

Interviewing poet Ellen Bass for Bay Area publication, the wonderful and amazing Poetry Flash... coverage of the West Coast poetry scene, circulation 20,000. PF edited by Joyce Jenkins and Richard Silberg, both unusually generous poets, i.e., open to other peoples' work... generosity of spirit is a gift, a grace not always present in the people who make up "the little world of poetry." I'd include in that number, the "generous and gifted," our Santa Cruz neighbor, our friend Ellen Bass. She's listened to and critiqued my work, and I'd count her among my mentors. So it is I chose to interview her, so it is I hold in my hand The Human Line, her sixth collection of poetry, one praised by Billy Collins as "frighteningly personal poems about sex, love, birth, motherhood, and aging..."

As a writer, I sometimes ponder the workings of The Imagination, whatever that is. As more and more of what I see of the world strikes me as surreal, as the surreal, in a sense, has begun to seem so "ordinary..." I sometimes wish to employ my imagination as a way of calming down, of steadying the whirling of just about everything. I once took pleasure in the fever of imagining. Now I take pleasure in imagining the world (nature, politics, people...) as, well, a little more stable, and that's not the right word either. I sometimes think the only imagination you need is the ability to witness things "as they are," to record, honestly and accurately, that most run-of-the-mill, the most every day / mundane... just as it appears. That, at some level, that's all the imagination you need. In short, you don't need to smoke and drink and hallucinate... you only need to see and have achieved some mastery of your craft (as writer or painter...) to do justice to your calling.

There's nothing less believable than reality, but made up stories generally make sense.

That's what I think today.

Saying this badly, I suppose, but in reading Ellen Bass's "Sleeping in My Mother's Bed," the opening poem in The Human Line,

Those lines,

"...I lie in her bed
like a fork on a folded napkin,
perfectly still and alone..."

I'm moved by the poem, moved by those lines and, for myself, have no answer to the question: What is the line, if any, between such description and metaphor? And I think one reason I am moved by this poem, and those lines, is they're so utterly natural, utterly believable... I see what the poet is saying... there's an immediate impact certain lines have, certain poems... I sometimes call it "the ring of truth." Ellen's book, The Human Line, has about it... from beginning to end, "the ring of truth."

Another sample:

Sleeping With You

Is there anything more wonderful?
After we have floundered
through our separate pain

we come to this. I bind myself to you,
like otters wrapped in kelp, so the current
will not steal us as we sleep.

Through the night we turn together,
rocked in the shallow surf,
pebbles polished by the sea.

© BOA Editions, Ltd 2002

William Buckley, Sidelight--Liberal?

2008-03-03T19:42:00.000-08:00

William Buckley with Ronald Reagan.

Yeah, I’m older than John McCain. And some say he’s older than dirt. Doctor asked today if I felt a 72-year-old like John McCain would be up to handling the Presidency. Physically, mentally... I'm no Republican (our doctor is) but I said, "Sure, but our vote goes for Obama." Doctor said, "I'm a Republican, but I'm leaning toward Obama..."

Anyway, we're talking here about a man called Buckley. In fact, two men... two Buckley's.

In 1959 I was a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, walking distance from Robert Frost’s home. Frost was very much alive at the time and lectured and read from his poems at the Conference.

As a *waiter I was assigned a roommate, a non-waiter named Reid Buckley, younger brother of William Buckley. Chicago-born, fresh out of the Navy (Korean War vet on G.I. Bill), ill-educated, first trip to New England, raw, naïve, I had never heard of older brother William Buckley, author of God and Man at Yale (1951).

Still, I found Reid warm, friendly, a wonderful conversationalist and, well, educated...

Reid, I recall, was interested in what I had to say about my “studies” in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and we exchanged samples of one another’s work, his prose for my poetry. I had never met a self-declared “conservative.” Until I met Reid I had no idea what a conservative was. And the man, I learned later, was an aristocrat. Home-schooled with tutors. Independently wealthy. We could not have been more unalike.

As a conservative Reid argued that nothing genuinely new was likely to be produced in fiction or poetry. He himself was working on what he called a gothic novel. Because nothing new could be written, because it had all already been done, one might as well, Reid argued, write within a given tradition. If you wrote, or read, a gothic novel you knew where you were. Likely a castle, an old castle, maybe abandoned; the work would be pervaded by some mystery or fear; there might be women in distress, lonely women, pensive and oppressed... he seemed disappointed to see I wasn't following "the models," that I wasn't employing rhyme and meter.

For my part, inspired by Walt Whitman, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg and e.e. cummings, I was writing free verse. Good, bad or indifferent, I felt my work was, well, original... so, I recall, I was as much a puzzlement to Reid Buckley as he was to me. But I liked the guy and, as roommates go, I counted myself lucky.

In the fall of 1959 (I think I have the date right), I returned to Iowa City and the poetry workshop. And Reid and I corresponded. For a while. Then I made a fatal blunder. I mentioned my intention to vote for John F. Kennedy and made it clear I was a Democrat, a liberal.

That was it. Reid responded by saying he could no longer carry on a correspondence with me. A liberal? He had nothing further to say. So now, more than half a century later, the country more divided than ever, I think of that curiously innocent time. Though is any time ever innocent? And the oddness, so it seemed to me, that one’s political beliefs could so infect one’s aesthetic outlook... and one’s writing... That, in fact, if I believed as Reid believed that “nothing new could be written...” I’d have stopped right then and there. I was the first-generation American middle class graduate of a state University, one who, c. 1959, struck out for the New Territory (Iowa and points west). Reid, as I saw it, was the quintessential Easterner... tradition-bound, cautious, Establishment.

T.S. Eliot was the only model I had for a “conservative.” Eliot wasn't exactly born to it, but he took specific steps in his self-definition. He converted to Anglicanism, dropped his American citizenship and became a British subject. In the preface to his book, For Lancelot Andrewes, Eliot wrote "the general point of view [of the book's essays] may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and anglo-catholic in religion."

But Eliot, I argued, also wrote those extraordinarily original works, Prufrock, The Wasteland... he may have been a conservative, but he was also an innovator. Yes, I read and re-read Tradition and the Individual Talent.

And as for Liberal, I think of my aunt Leah who, in Poltava, Russia, endured successive pogroms. She used the term “liberal” to describe Czar’s who did not encourage or indulge in pogroms. There were czars, tolerant “liberals,” who did not go in for pogroms. A liberal, I came to understand from Aunt Leah, was someone who maintained a live and let live attitude.

That pretty much defined my understanding of what it meant to be liberal, people who thought for themselves.

And William Buckley, to his credit, was that kind of conservative, someone who argued for tolerance, who sought to restrain, for example, others all too willing to have given vent to their prejudices. So, in that sense, William Buckley--in Aunt Leah's eyes--would have qualified as a liberal. God bless William Buckley!

----
*Novelist and NPR reviewer Alan Cheuse was a fellow waiter that year at Bread Loaf. Alan has remained a friend.

Heart, Aphrodite, Valentine, Buttocks

2008-02-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

My friend, the Urban Dictionary

This post comes courtesy the Urban Dictionary. When I'm feelin' blue, as I am now following a three-day, time-wasting disaster with the NEA $25,000. Creative Writing Fellowship debacle--three days trying unsuccessfully to download the application form--I turn not to drink but to the (online) Urban Dictionary. Solace. The heart went out of me. I lost heart. I gave up. What did I lose actually? My heart. My fucking heart. So, Urban Dictionary to the rest-cue, sorry, rescue!

The weekend's coming up and I want my heart back.

Heart: "The familiar double-lobed heart symbol seen on Valentine's Day cards and candy was inspired by the shape of the human female buttocks as seen from the rear. The twin lobes of the stylized version correspond roughly to the paired auricles and ventricles (chambers) of the anatomical heart... The ancient Greeks and Romans originated the link between human female anatomy and the heart shape. The Greeks associated beauty with the curves of the human female behind. The Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, was beautiful all over, but was unique in that her buttocks were especially beautiful. Her shapely rounded hemispheres were so appreciated by the Greeks that they built a special temple Aphrodite Kallipygos, which literally meant, 'Goddess with the Beautiful Buttocks.' This was probably the only religious building in the world that was dedicated to buttock worship... Valentine's Day-type heart symbols first became popular in 15th Century Europe as a suit designation on playing cards. It is possible that the Renaissance fondness for classical literature and history brought forth the Greek interest in the female buttocks shape, which also mirrors the basic outline of female breasts."

And when I turned 60, I turned to Strunk & White's Elements of Style... see "Turning 60," p.213-214, The Collected Poems, Black Moss Press. I'm a fucking retired English teacher. What else would I do?

NEA $25,000. Creative Writing Fellowship

2008-02-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

Funding Opportunity Number, 2008NEA03LFCW

Funding Opportunity Number, 2008NEA03LFCW

"Before you apply through Grants.gov for the first time," says the NEA Application Calendar, "you must be registered. Register with Grants.gov:

* It is a multi-step process.
* Takes time; allow a few days.
* Must be completed before you can submit your application."

This year it wasn't simply a matter of not getting the grant (which is usually the case, though I've had some good luck in the past), but of trying and trying, and not even getting the application. Three days on the computer, locating the Funding Opportunity Number, 2008NEA03LFCW, downloading latest Adobe Reader and other software to "read" the application (pot of gold at end of rainbow), getting e-Authentication User ID, returning to the Grants.gov website, selecting "Home," going back to the ORC eAuthentication main page, selecting the blue "Credential Check" button, entering the User ID and password. Then my password gets rejected, then my User name gets rejected, then I start the process all over again... then my Safari browser crashes...

Back to the ORC e-authentication help desk... four hours, five hours... and I've written software user manuals for a living, I thought I knew how to do this stuff. Grow fascinated with the stupefying process, forget even why I'm doing it... more and more investment of time, figure "I can't quit now..."

I imagine Franz Kafka putting in for a writing fellowship... Kafka at Grants.gov... I call my friend David, more skillful and versatile with handling himself online... He too is stymied, but knows another person, a fellow poet, who has managed to download and complete the application.

"You're 74 years old," says my wife. "They're not going to give it to you anyway. They want younger people."

"But if it's this hard to get an application," I say, "the odds are fewer people will apply. Therefore, I'll have a better chance."

NEA Day 3 - she brews an espresso, suggests phoning for hard copy application, which I do. Get directed, then re-directed back to the very place on the website where I've spent all these hours... "Look, sir, they're no longer providing hard copy application forms," says a lady on the other end of the line.

Back to work. And I have just the poem, "Woof Fuckin' Woof," one of the new ones I've been seeking to set aside time to complete.

Poetry Workshop(s) #2, Professionalization

2008-02-24T00:17:00.000-08:00

With Roy Mash, Events Coordinator
for Marin Poetry Center.

The Professionalization of Poetry - Thurs., Feb. 21, 7:30 PM - Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael.
Panelists include Becky Foust (above), David Alpaugh (top right) and myself.

Given the topic, The Professionalization of Poetry, David Alpaugh begins by turning to Wikipedia for a definition of Professionalization:

"Professionalization is the social process by which any trade or occupation transforms itself into a true 'profession of the highest integrity and competence.' This process tends to involve establishing acceptable qualifications, a professional body or association to oversee the conduct of members of the profession and some degree of demarcation of the qualified from unqualified amateurs. This creates 'a hierarchical divide between the knowledge-authorities in the professions and a deferential citizenry.' This demarcation is often termed 'occupational closure', as it means that the profession then becomes closed to entry from outsiders, amateurs and the unqualified: a stratified occupation 'defined by professional demarcation and grade.' The origin of this process is said to have been with guilds during the Middle Ages, when they fought for exclusive rights to practice their trades as journeymen, and to engage unpaid apprentices.

"Professions also possess power, prestige, high income, high status and privileges; their members soon come to comprise an elite class of people, cut off to some extent from the common people, and occupying an elevated station in society: 'a narrow elite...a hierarchical social system: a system of ranked orders and classes.'
The professionalization process tends to establish the group norms of conduct and qualification of members of a profession and tends also to insist that members of the profession achieve 'conformity to the norm' and abide more or less strictly with the established procedures and any agreed code of conduct, which is policed by professional bodies, for 'accreditation assures conformity to general expectations of the profession.'

[from Wikipedia]

- Someone at the Poetry Center later commented on our panel, "Rebecca Foust was thorough in her objections and rebuttals (like the lawyer that she is); Robert Sward gave a sweet, scruffy flavor to the event as someone who's been around the poetry scene for 50 years..." okay, but still trying to figure out what "scruffy" means... physical appearance? Presentation?

- The crux of the matter is this, that writing workshops end up teaching poets to write poems that will pass muster in the workshop, the little "hot house..." writing poems to please the other students. More than anything else... it's insecurity, that's a constant in every workshop I've sat in on, taught, been a student in... too often that's the emotion than overrides all others... so, out of fear, so it seems to me, people too often are too willing to write to please. Love me, love my poem. Love me, love my poem.

- For me, the best thing about the three years I spent in Iowa City – I was later invited back to teach -
was the importance of poetry... that there wasn’t a day when I wasn’t writing or somehow interacting with others who were doing the same. And I had plenty of insecurity. I just didn't sign on to the prevailing aesthetic, Brooks & Warren, John Crowe Ransom, the New Criticism... this was half a century ago. Shit!

- I’m old enough (older than John McCain!) to have heard Robert Frost at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (c. 1960) say calling oneself a poet was a form of arrogance. Frost said a seat companion on a train once asked him what he did for a living. Frost answered saying he was a farmer.

- Never call yourself a poet, he said. That’s for other people to do. One has to earn the designation. You’re a poet for other reasons than the fact you've earned an MFA.

- But what do I know? I’ve been writing and publishing since 1957... I have doubts... I know at some level I haven't changed since I began scribbling aboard LST 914 during the Korean War. I'm a wannabe. Wannabe. Wannabe. Wannabe. Fine. I don't give a fuck. As long as I can go on writing.

[more to come...]

------

David Alpaugh’s essay “The Professionalization of Poetry” was serialized in the Jan/Feb and March/April 2003 issues of Poets & Writers Magazine and drew hundreds of emails and wide discussion on the Internet. Alpaugh's fiction, drama, and criticism have appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and anthologies. His first collection, Counterpoint, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press, and his chapbooks have been published by Coracle Books and Pudding House. One of the Bay Area's most popular featured readers, he has taught at the University of California Berkeley Extension and hosts a monthly reading series at Valona Delicatessen in Crockett. His second collection Heavy Lifting appeared earlier this year from Alehouse Press. "The Professionalization of Poetry" is available on-line at Huston Poetry Review.

Rebecca Foust, a former activist and grassroots political organizer for students with learning disorders, is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry in Warren Wilson’s low residency program. Her book about raising a son with Asperger’s Syndrome, Dark Card, won the 2007 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Award (Texas Review Press), and her full length manuscript was a finalist in three national book competitions, including Poetry’s 2007 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. Also in 2007, Foust’s poetry won two Pushcart nominations and several other awards and distinctions, appearing in Atlanta Review, JAMA, Margie, 2007 Marin Poetry Center Anthology, North American Review, Nimrod International Journal and many other reviews.
www.rebeccafoust.com

Robert Sward has taught at Cornell University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and UC Santa Cruz. A Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, he was chosen by Lucille Clifton to receive a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award. His many books include "Four Incarnations" (Coffee House Press); "Heavenly Sex," "The Collected Poems," and "God is in the Cracks" (Black Moss Press). "The Collected" and "God is in the Cracks" are now in their second printing.
www.robertsward.com