Poetry Beat

Susan Howe tribute

For the past three and half decades, Susan Howe has been a visionary nonconformist who has left her distinctive mark on American poetry.  More than any other figure associated with Language poetry and the critical writing it has generated, she has applied her innovative poetics to seemingly disparate historical narratives, divergent literary and philosophical traditions, and unchallenged cultural assumptions about gender and authority.

In her books My Emily Dickinson and The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History, Howe undertook a radical and passionate rereading of the foundational literary texts of her native New England--from Cotton Mather and Anne Hutchinson to Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, and Dickinson--that reclaimed those texts from the puritanical interests of patriarchy and social control.

In her own poetry, notably The Midnight (2003), Pierce-Arrow (1999), and The Europe of Trusts (2002), she takes up many of the same themes less methodically, using a hauntingly fragmentary and collage-like approach that acknowledges the text as visual space.   If one were to read her work entirely out of context, she might be mistaken for a literary anthropologist out to demystify the entire edifice of meaning.  "Where philosophy stops, poetry is impelled to begin," she writes in The Midnight.

Howe, who spent a portion of her childhood in Buffalo, returned here to teach in the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo from 1988 until her retirement this year.  In honor of her influence on an entire generation of students, poet Kyle Schlesinger's Cuneiform Press has just published I Have Imagined A Center//Wilder Than This Region: A Tribute to Susan Howe.

The 120-page volume is edited by Sarah Campbell, the young poet and essayist who made such a strong impression during her year-long stint as host of WBFO's Spoken Arts radio features last year.  It features an introduction by UB professor Neil Schmitz and contributions from 16 of Howe's more prominent students over the years. In addition to Campbell and Schlesinger, contributors include Barbara Cole, Benjamn Friedlander, Peter Gizzi, Jena Osman, Jonathan Skinner, Juliana Spahr and Elizabeth Willis.

For information on how to purchase the book, go to www.cuneiformpress.com

Natasha Trethewey

Monday night's edition of the National Public Radio program Fresh Air featured an 40-minute interview with Natasha Trethewey, the Gulfport, Mississippi, native whose collection Native Guard received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.   It's a terrific interview, even by the high standards set by UB graduate Terry Gross and her staff on that program.

Trethewey discusses growing up as a biracial child in the still segregated South of the late 1960s and reads from "Miscegenation" (one of her best-known poems).  She describes the pressures on her parents'  interracial marriage - still illegal in Mississippi in 1966 when she was born - and the unwelcome attention it drew from the local Klan, which burned a cross on their lawn. 

She also talks about her mother's murder by her second husband (Trethewey's stepfather) in 1985, and explains how she was able to write about it for the first time in Native Guard. Breaking her silence on this family tragedy inspired her to seek out other unwritten narratives of her region's African-American heritage.

Her "Elegy for the Native Guards" is dedicated to the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, a regiment of African-American and Creole soldiers (mostly escaped slaves and free men), who were formed under the Confederacy, but eventually fought on the side of the Union in the Gulf Coast states of Mississippi and Louisiana during the Civil War.  They were stationed on Ship Island, just outside Trethewey's native Gulfport, though she never learned of their existence until her years as a graduate fellow at Radcliffe.

I picked up a copy of Native Guard in April shortly after the Pulitzer announcement and was impressed by Trethewey's diction and command of formal verse forms.  They give her work the clarity and restraint necessary to handle difficult personal memories and sweeping historical narratives with equal mastery.   

You can listen to the interview and hear Trethewey reading several of her poems by clicking on the following link: NPR : Poet Natasha Trethewey, Hymning the Native Guard

Reed, Troupe at Book Fair

Two of the leading figures in the American Black Arts movement  will read and discuss their poetry at Saturday's Buffalo Book Fair. 

Both Buffalo native Ishmael Reed and former California poet laureate Quincy Troupe are prolific authors probably best known for their prose: Reed for his satirical novels (Mumbo Jumbo, Flight to Canada) and controversial essays and Troupe as a biographer (Miles Davis, James Baldwin), memoirist, and the co-author (with Chris Gardner) of the book version of last year's Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness.

Both began their careers as poets and have continued to write and publish poetry with such regularity that one could argue that it forms the baseline from which the rest of their work stems.  Reed, for instance, returns home to Buffalo as co-chairman of the book fair and in support of his recently released New and Collected Poems, 1996-2006, published in March by Carroll & Graf.

He will be interviewed and engage in an open discussion with Lorna C. Hill, founder and executive director of Ujima Theater Company, about the new book and his five-decade-long career as a writer.  "A Conversation with Ishmael Reed" will take place from 1:15 to 2:15 p.m. in the downtown library's "Ring of Knowledge" area.  This is a "can't miss" event for anyone interested in great literary talk between two strong personalities.

In that same area from noon to 1 p.m., Troupe will be interviewed by Les Trent, the former Channel 4 News reporter/anchor who is now a senior correspondent for television's Inside Edition. Troupe's most recent collection of poems, Architecture of Language, was published in October by Coffee House Press.

Troupe will read from his jazz-influenced performance poetry from 3 to 3:45 p.m. in the "Literary Cafe'" area.  Reed will read from his New and Collected Poems at 5:30 p.m. in the "Uncrowned Queens" pavilion.

Kazim Ali in APR

The July/August 2007 issue of American Poetry Review features a fine, essay length column called "Poetry and Space" by Kazim Ali.  It's an intuitive, beautifully-written meditation on how the spaces we inhabit (and leave behind) resonate through our spiritual and productive lives.  Pieces of such clarity, depth and emotional intelligence are rare, even in publications that bill themselves as showcases of fine contemporary writing like APR. 

It's good enough to make you want to scratch your head and ask "Who is this Kazim Ali?"

Many Buffalo area readers will remember Ali as the ambitious and engaging young poet of Indian Muslim heritage who spent part of his youth in the Buffalo suburbs.  He attended the University at Albany before returning here (where his parents still reside) to become an active participant in the local literary scene in the late 1990s. His work has been published on The News' Poetry Page and he did a stint as a Writer-in-Residence for Just Buffalo Literary Center.

Although his work back then was much more "performance-oriented" than what he is doing now, he always seemed to be absorbing new influences and refining his craft.  After leaving Buffalo for New York City and the MFA Writing Program at New York University in 1999, he began publishing his work in many leading literary magazines and journals.

Buffalo's own Geoffrey Gatza's BlazeVox Books published Ali's "lyric" novel Quinn's Passage in December of 2004.  The novel was named one of the Best Books of 2005 by Chronogram magazine.  His first book of poems, The Far Mosque, was published by Alice James Books in October of 2005 and selected for that publisher's New England/New York Award.   His new collection of poems The Fortieth Day will be published in 2008 by Rochester's BOA Editions. 

Ali teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine, and begining this fall, will join the faculty of Oberlin College in Ohio.  If readers have any additional observations on or insights into his work, I'd love to read your comments on it.