Further thoughts on the cultural labor of poetry and art. Not merely "is it good?," but "what has it accomplished?"...reviews of recent poetry collections; selected poems and art dealing with war/peace/social change; reviews of poetry readings; links to political commentary (particularly on conflicts in the Middle East); youtubed performances of music, demos, and other audio-video nuggets dealing with peaceful change, dissent and resistance.
JCU's MESA (Middle Eastern Students Association) Sponsors Movie Night: AMREEKA!
Friday, February 11 · 7:00pm - 11:00pm (movie start is 7:30pm)
John Carroll University Administration Building room 226
20700 N Park Blvd
University Heights, OH
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
FREE ADMISSION & POPCORN
Movie Discussion led by Dr. Philip Metres, Department of English
Help support MESA with its Middle Eastern Pastries Sale (Baklava, Nammoura, Sfouf, etc.)
**Attention nonJCU students: We checked with Campus Safety and PARKING is open & free anywhere on campus.
**ADMINISTRATION BUILDING is the large CLOCK TOWER building located in the middle of the campus. Take the stairs from either end to go to second level.
Does anyone get the feeling that you're watching Egypt through very cloudy, very weirdly framed lenses? I'm hungering to hear Egyptians talk about their own country's fate.
If you haven't been gripped with excitement, awe, and fear at the revolution in Egypt, then you're missing a nation waking up from history. In the meantime, the youth, as represented by the April 6 Youth, have spoken again, to say they will not negotiate with Mubarak, and they won't leave the streets until he leaves office. Funny thing, facebook and twitter for something other than self-promotion and acting like a 12 year old...
April 6 Youth's Statement for The Egyptian Uprising...
The Egyptian youth Stood & fought against the Tyrants, and we faced their bullets with bare Chests, with all bravery and patience, so hail for the great Egyptian people who made this revolution, and so we confirm that victory is in the fall of Mubarak and his Regime .
From the 25th of January "The Egyptian Uprising" we brought down the dictator's legitimacy...Who rule Egypt now is the Valiant Egyptian people... to maintain our peaceful uprising and to continue protecting ourselves and our country against the Sabotage of the terror regime's thugs.
We will continue what we started on the 25th of January, we the Egyptian youth of who were not deceived by Mubarak's speech which aimed to absurd the Egyptian people's feelings, and underestimated their mentality as it has been used for the past 30 years, with the same fake speeches and promises, and delusional election programs which none of it came to reality.
Mubarak came to this kind of false talk, as a thought from him that the Egyptian people still can be deceived and believe his false words as he just replaced some of his thugs by others and still killing and arresting people, Mubarak lost credibilty and will never gain it again from his the Egyptian people as they know now how to fight for their rights and ready to die for it.
We wil not accept any kind of negotiatons before Mubarak departs..
We will not give up until we achieve our demands..
April 6 Youth Movement
Egyptian Resistance Movement
In advance of the reading, exhibition, and panel on fracking, here's a video from Jacques del Conte about the effects of this extraction technology on regular citizens in Pennsylvania:
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 / 7-9pm
SEA Poetry Series No. 6 with Phil Metres and Michael Leong
and an artist response by Jacques del ConteThe SEA Poetry Series emphasizes diverse ways in which poets address social and environmental issues in their work. Presented in connection with specific SEA exhibitions, the series aims to investigate and expand the exhibition theme through the lens of contemporary poetry. After each reading, an artist from the exhibition or a community member working within the exhibition theme briefly responds to the poet. Past poets in the series have included Jonathan Skinner, Marcella Durand, Laura Elrick, The Canary Project, James Sherry and Julie Ezelle Patton.SEA Poetry Series conceived and organized by E.J. McAdams, poet and Associate Director of Philanthropy at The Nature Conservancy, New York City. $5. Cash bar. Q and A to follow.Michael Leong is the author of two books of poetry: e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009) and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions / The Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming). He's also written a translation of the Chilean poet Estela Lamat, I, the Worst of All (BlazeVOX [books], 2009), and several chapbooks and broadsides including The Great Archivist's / Cloudy Quotient (Beard of Bees Press, 2010), Midnight's Marsupium (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010), and The Lung of the Poet (Splitleaves Press, 2011). He lives in New York City and contributes to the literary blog Big Other.
Philip Metres is the author of To See the Earth (2008), Come Together: Imagine Peace (2008), Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941 (2007), Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein (translation, 2004), and A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (translation, 2003). He has also published two chapbooks, Instants (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006) and Primer for Non-Native Speakers (Wick Poetry Series, 2004), and has three forthcoming in 2011: abu ghraib arias, Ode to Oil, and Thirty-Five New Pages. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, and Inclined to Speak: Contemporary Arab American Poetry and has garnered an NEA, a Watson Fellowship, two Ohio Arts Council Grants, and the Cleveland Arts Prize in 2010. He teaches literature and creative writing at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. For more information on his poetry, click here. Jacques del Conte is a regular contributor of photography and video for Vanity Fair Magazine, VanityFair.com and Vogue.it. He has also been published in Nylon, Useless, Movies Rock, Giant, WhiteWall, V Man, Lucky, Vice, Out, and The Bardian as well as Tim Barber’s Tiny Vices and TV Books. In June 2010, he created a documentary video and contributed a series of photographs to a Vanity Fair article called "A Colossal Fracking Mess." For more information, click here.
ABOUT FRACKING
Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is a means of gas extraction that accesses gas trapped more than a mile below the earth’s surface. When a well is fracked, small earthquakes are produced by the pressurized injection of millions of gallons of fresh water combined with sand and chemicals, releasing the gas, as well as toxic chemicals, heavy metals and radioactive materials that contaminate air and water.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed under the guidance of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, exempts fracking from the Safe Drinking Water Act and major provisions of other protective laws, virtually eliminating the gas industry’s liability and E.P.A.’s regulatory oversight. Exemption from the Community Right to Know Law also absolves the gas industry from being required to report the actual chemicals used in the drilling processes—chemicals that can severely contaminate the water supply and cause serious illnesses. A drilling moratorium is in effect in New York State until the D.E.C. issues fracking regulation, potentially paving the way for drilling to commence in New York in 2011.http://www.DamascusCitizens.org
Educating about gas drilling issues and seeking solutions including legal, regulatory and government reforms
http://www.NYH2O.org
The NYC sister group to Damascus Citizens
http://www.riverkeeper.org/
Advocate of clean water in New York State and New York City
http://dontfrackwithny.com/
Affiliated with Riverkeeper
http://delawareriverkeeper.org
A 22-year-old environmental advocacy, stream restoration and education organization that operates throughout the Delaware River Watershed
http://www.un-naturalgas.org
Active in NY State; focused in Chenango, Delaware and Otsego counties
http://www.fractracker.org
Centralized source tracking and visualizing data related to gas extraction in the Marcellus Shale region
http://shaleshock.org/
Active in the Upstate NY and Finger Lakes region
http://www.earthworksaction.org
A national organization for the education, organization and protection of communities from the devastating impacts of oil and gas development
http://www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/
Active in the Catskills region
http://gaslandthemovie.com
About the movie and about getting involved in the issues
ABOUT SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics)SEA is a unique endeavor that presents a diverse multimedia exhibition program and permanent archive of artworks that address social and environmental concerns. SEA assembles artists, activists, scientists and scholars to address environmental issues through presentations of visual art, performances, panels and lecture series that will communicate international activities concerning environmental and social activism. Central to SEA’s mission is to provide a vehicle through which the public can be made aware of socially- and environmentally-engaged work, and to provide a forum for collaboration between artists, scientists, activists, scholars and the public. SEA functions as an initiative where individuals can join together in dialogue about issues that affect our daily lives. SEA was conceived by Exit Art Artistic Director Papo Colo.EXHIBITION SUPPORTGeneral exhibition support provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Bloomberg LP; Jerome Foundation; Lambent Foundation; Pollock-Krasner Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. We are grateful to Damascus Citizens for Sustainability and Delaware RiverKeeper for their help and expertise in the complex issues of fracking.
Israeli soldiers testify about their actions--and their sorrow--over Operation Cast Lead, the invasion of Gaza of 2008-2009. The question of whether they were asked to "cleanse" the neighborhood has become a recent translation furor, but the indignities go far beyond language...
John Carroll University Creative Writing Events Spring 2011 All events are free and open to the public!
Hayan Charara March 16th at 7:30 in Rodman A at John Carroll University.
Hayan Charara won the 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for poetry and is the author of *The Sadness of Others*, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and *The Alchemist’s Diary*. He also edited *Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry*.
Special Guest, Lee Smith April 6th at 7:30 in JCU’s Little Theater, located in the Student Center at John Carroll University
Lee Smith is the author of fifteen previous books of fiction— three collections of short stories and a dozen novels, including the bestsellers Fair and Tender Ladies and The Last Girls, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and “Good Morning America” Book Club Selection. Her latest collection is Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger. Among her many awards are the O’ Henry Prize, the North Carolina Award for Literature, the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, the 1999 Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2010 she was honored with a Lifetime Literary Achievement Award from the state of Virginia. For more information visit: www.leesmith.com
Mark Halliday and Jill Rosser April 13th at 7:30 in Rodman A at John Carroll University
Mark Halliday was a founding member of Rhode Island Feminist Theatre in 1973. He earned a Ph.D. in English at Brandeis University, and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Indiana University, Western Michigan University, and elsewhere; since 1996 he has taught at Ohio University. He has won the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Writer's Fellowship. His books of poems are: Little Star, Tasker Street, Selfwolf, Jab, and Keep This Forever as well as a critical book on Wallace Stevens, Stevens and the Interpersonal. This year he is Interim Editor of New Ohio Review.
Jill Allyn Rosser, says Billy Collins, is a poet on whom precious little is lost. She has published three books of poetry. Her first, Bright Moves, won the Morse Poetry Prize. Her second, Misery Prefigured, won the Crab Orchard Award. Her most recent book is Foiled Again, winner of the New Criterion Poetry Prize. She has received the Lavan Award for younger poets from the Academy of American Poets, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio State Arts Council, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Pennsylvania and now teaches at Ohio University, where she is the editor of the New Ohio Review.
Dave Lucas May 2nd at 7:30 p.m. in Dolan Auditorium at John Carroll University
Dave Lucas was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is an alumnus of John Carroll University. He is the recipient of a Henry Hoyns Fellowship from the University of Virginia and a “Discovery”/The Nation Prize, and his poems have appeared in many journals including Paris Review, Poetry, and Slate. His first book of poems is entitled Weather. He lives in Cleveland and Ann Arbor, where he is a PhD candidate in English language and literature at the University of Michigan.
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain,
it must eat and breathe air and sleep,
it has thin skin and blood right underneath,
an adequate stock of teeth and nails,
its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.
In tortures all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,
and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.
Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more people,
besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,
real, imaginary, temporary, and none,
but the howl with which the body responds to them,
was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence
according to the time-honored scale and tonality.
Nothing has changed. Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances.
Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.
The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,
its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,
it turns blue, swells, salivates and bleeds.
Nothing has changed. Except for the course of boundaries,
the line of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,
disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,
alien to itself, elusive, at times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has no place of its own.
Thanks to truthout for publishing this New Year's Meditation by Michael True, a former teacher and dear mentor who taught me "The Nonviolent Tradition and Literature" many years ago. His book, An Energy Field More Intense Than War, is an eye-opening exploration of how nonviolent principles and dynamics appear in American literature, from the beginnings to our present. In this piece, True casts his eye upon the last 60 years of ongoing imperial war, and some resolutions that we might make in the new year to end the budget deficit and our morality deficit all at once--halve the military budget.
"US at War Since 1950: A New Year's Meditation"
Saturday 01 January 2011
by: Michael True, t r u t h o u t
Op-Ed
"The same war continues," Denise Levertov wrote in her poem, "Life at War." Her lament is even more appropriate for 2011 than it was when she wrote the poem forty-five years ago.
Columnists and academics, including international relations professor Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, are finally acknowledging facts familiar to anyone "awake" regarding failed US policies, wasted lives and wasted resources during this period. Willfully ignoring such facts, as Bacevich wrote, "is to become complicit in the destruction of what most Americans profess to hold dear."
At the beginning of the new year, consequences of "life at war" stare us in the face: the victimization of military and civilian populations and a huge national debt, including an annual military budget that is larger than all military budgets in the world combined and includes $5 billion that remains unaccounted for in Iraq, as well as aid to Pakistan that has wound up in the hands of the Taliban.
These truths haunt any citizen who has lost loved ones in prolonged wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan since 1950, or in disastrous interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Granada, Panama, Honduras, and so on.
Any responsible citizen acknowledges this painful history in the hope of redirecting US foreign policy in the future. The purpose of reclaiming it is not to open old wounds, but to encourage legislative and direct action committed to peacemaking. It is a call to critique the policies and competence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security apparatus responsible for these disasters.
Ironically, the deficit-reduction commission appointed by President Obama intimates that social security, rather than a trillion-dollar war on Iraq and uncapped military spending in Afghanistan, is to blame for the deficit. And Congress has succeeded in extending Bush's tax cuts for the super-rich, which will increase the deficit.
Once the envy of the world community, the US now lags behind many nations in education and health care while it squanders its huge resources on military misadventures - including both overt and covert intervention - with some 1,000 military bases around the world.
Americans who voted for President Obama are justifiably disappointed that he has continued the worst practices of the Bush administration, particularly in foreign policy. In domestic policy, Obama's administration can point to some achievements, particularly in education and health care.
Tea Party advocates rightfully call attention to a faltering economy but offer no functional alternatives to present policy. Meanwhile, naysaying Republicans and cautious Democrats, as well as an irresponsible Supreme Court, enable rich corporations to dominate political debate. The Pentagon, including General Petraeus, lobbied for and initiated increased military action in Afghanistan. The result: more serious casualties among US and its European allies, not to mention embarrassment and confusion in efforts to end that war.
Is it any wonder that many people remain hopeless amid predictions that the country's 9.7 percent unemployment rate will continue through the new year?
So what must be done to alter this discouraging scenario and help the US regain the confidence of its own people and the world community?
1.Cut the US military budget in half for 2011.
2.Increase taxes on the filthy rich, the 1 percent of the population that owns at least 23 percent of America's wealth.
3.Rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure that remains in a state of disrepair.
4.Encourage policies that put people to work addressing the dangers of global warming.
5.Strengthen our education system at every level, providing skills for meaningful work for all citizens.
Some people may regard these remedies as utopian, though the consequences are, in essence, practical and essential.
Although many Americans continue to enjoy the benefit from this wealthy and beautiful country, the potentialities of democratic governance remain unfulfilled for many others.
In her poem, Levertov wrote that "we have breathed the grits of war in, all our lives. Our lungs are pocked with it," she continues, "the mucous membrane of our dreams/coated with it, the imagination/filmed over with the gray filth of it."
For decades, Americans have convinced ourselves - or have been convinced - that more or less continual war is the essential task of the US, and that that enterprise is justified by our knowing what is best for the world community. During the 1940s, we built military weapons to defeat Germany and Japan; now, we initiate wars in order to experiment with, and provide profit from, more sophisticated military weapons.
When will the American public, victimized by a war economy, come to the conclusion that a permanent war policy benefits only arms manufacturers, Pentagon contractors and their Congressional allies? Nor does it lessen our fear, increase our security or promote peace among nations.
There has to be a better way. My hope is that some of the remedies provided here offer a way out - and hope for a happier 2011.
Thanks to Poetry Daily (www.poems.com) for featuring today a poem by Robert Cording, whose mentoring gave me the courage to continue to write. He used to go into reverie about a year in graduate school when all he did was read John Ruskin (who appears in his recent book, Walking With Ruskin). Thirty-five years later, Cording is still walking with Ruskin. In some sense, twenty years after his tutelate, I'm still walking with Cording.
"On a Drop of Rain"
Late in the day, the rain abating,
I force myself outside for my daily walk.
I do not go far. Everything is doused
and diamonded with water. Even the stones
seem polished. At each bud of every scrub
roadside tree, and even on the thorns
of wild roses, hangs a drop of rain—
as if someone had hoisted chandeliers
to light the road from end to end.
I think of Marvell, how he found a story
one morning shining with meaning
in a drop of dew. A figure for the soul,
Marvell's dewdrop contained the whole
sky and, mindful of its native home,
came and went, scarcely touching
the earthly flower on which it floated,
its one aspiration the sunny exhalation
of water into air. It never seemed to feel
death's shiver. Here, it's nearly evening,
the air still rheumy enough to silver
the weedy edge of the road where beer cans
find their rest. My raindrops—tense, trembling—
really do seem to cling for dear life,
a story, I'm sad to say, of my all too earthly
wish to hang around forever in my body. No chance, the wind says, extinguishing
with every breeze, one drop after another.
