Marie Howe Transcript
April 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome to Sound Authors. Today is the 4th of April. On this day in 1968, 40 years ago, Martin Luther King was shot and killed. It’s a sad memory, but it’s been a long 40 years since then. Now we have a black candidate running for president and many things have happened since.Today on the show we’ve got four guests. At the end of the show, Jeff Beal, the famous composer of “Pollock” and “Rome” and some other wonderful music, and three authors, Susan Hetrick talking about families, Gary Freiman with some unique political opinions, and it’s my special honor to welcome Marie Howe. She’s a wonderful poet from New York. Welcome to the show.
Marie Howe: Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here.
Kent: You have quite a record. You’ve gotten a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Nation Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. Tell me a little about your background.
Marie: Oh, gosh. I grew up in Rochester, New York, as one of nine children and I didn’t start writing poetry in any serious way until I was about 29 years old. I was teaching high school before that.
Kent: What did you teach in high school?
Marie: I loved reading but I had no idea you could be a living person and write poetry.
Kent: What did you teach?
Marie: I taught English to the kids in high school who could hardly make it to school.
Kent: Your work is stunning. You have a new book that is just coming out.
Marie: Yeah.
Kent: What’s the release day?
Marie: Actually it just officially came out about two week ago. I never quite notice. It’s called “The Kingdom of Ordinary Time.”
Kent: There’s some really beautiful poetry, especially striking to me in looking through. The very first poem in the book confronts where we are right now after 9/11. Would you mind reading that?
Marie: I would love to read it. This is completely ridiculous, but I realize I’m standing here with my phone and my book is across the room. I’m on a phone that can’t reach, so I’m just going to reach over here.
Kent: I’ll do a little filler time here.
Marie: Do a little and I’ll be right there.
Kent: In 1987, she put out “The Good Thief.” In 1995, “In The Company of My Solitude: American Writings from the AIDS Pandemic.” In 1998, “What the Living Do.” Her new book is called “The Kingdom of Ordinary Time.”
Marie: And here I am.
Kent: OK.
Marie: Thank you so much.
Kent: Yeah.
Marie: I want to say something about Dr. King. I’m so moved to hear this information and to know this, and to be talking with you on the very day when he was killed, and to think of him as I’m about to read this. Would that he were here, and thank goodness Barack Obama is.It’s called “Prologue.” “Ordinary Time,” just for you listeners, I originally came to this term when I was growing up. The liturgical calendar, there was always this thing, we always stand there with the missals and there’s a period of time that’s called Ordinary Time, which is the period of time between the High Holy seasons. Not the Christmas season, not the Pentecost season, not Lenten season. It’s pretty much the rest of the year where nothing apparently miraculous happens.”Prologue.The rules, once again applied.One loaf equaled one loaf. One fish equaled one fish.The so-called kings were dead.And the woman who had been healed grew tired of telling her story,And sometimes asked her daughter to tell it.People generally worshiped where their parents had worshiped,And the men who’d hijacked the airplane prayed where the dead pilots had been sitting, and the passengers prayed from their seats–So many songs went up and out and into the thinning air.People, listening and watching, nodded and wept,And, leaving the theater, one turned to the other and said,What do you want to do now?And the other one said, I don’t know. What do you want to do?It was the Coming of Ordinary Time. First Sunday, second Sunday.And then (for who knows how long) it was here.”
Kent: What a stunning poem.
Marie: Thank you. That was so strange because the so-called kings were dead, right? I wasn’t even thinking of Martin Luther King, but of course he was one.
Kent: Of course it matches wonderfully. You talk so much about politics in your work. How does politics mix with this Ordinary Time and everyday life patterns?
Marie: It’s a time right now, as you know, as we all know, when holy wars are raging and there are people who, including our administration, are willing to kill for what they believe. There are people who are willing to die and blow themselves up for what they believe, and there are so many of use who don’t know what we believe.It’s such a strange time to be alive, especially given the last five years. I really hope that things will change with a new administration because of the way things have polarized so terribly. But also, there’s the sense of Ordinary Time where it seems as if the sacredness of any religion, as acted out in the war and the war zones, is being overshadowed by a kind of dogma, and the truly miraculous of course still keeps happening. [laughs] But I think in this country in particular it’s such an important and crucial moment in our history, given all the rights we’ve lost and the direction in which the empire is going to move next.
Kent: You’re a teacher. You teach in New York City. You said you taught English at a high school?
Marie: Yeah, that was a long time ago. That was almost 30 years ago now. I’ve been teaching in college and universities since then.
Kent: I’m curious about what the difference is from when you first began teaching to when you teach poetry now. What’s the difference for you?
Marie: Oh, gosh. There’s a lot to say. When I first started writing in 1980, people were just beginning to write from the margins, if you will. When I was in graduate school, we were taught maybe two or three women writers, and I don’t think any writers of color, and within the last 28 years.And really, it was beginning right then. Everybody has come into the writing world. Women, of course, people of color, people with different sexual identities, people from different countries, out loud, on the page, wrapped. Everything just poured into the world of what we used to call poetry. It’s really, really thrilling that so many people are writing now and many more people, I think, are reading poems that are written and spoken by lots of different kinds of voices.
Kent: I would love to listen to another poem. I’m going to put you on the spot here. Do you have another favorite in the book?
Marie: Sure, let me see. It’s funny, Jesus shows up in this book a lot. I’m not a practicing Christian but I grew up with those stories, and I just love the guy. There’s a little poem here called “The Star Market” that I’d love to read. A lot of what is throughout this book is that Jesus said “the kingdom of heaven is within you,” and I’ve been thinking about that for a long time.What does that mean, the kingdom of heaven is within each of us? So there’s a couple of questions in that case. I’ve been thinking about the problems in the world’s politics, and if the kingdom of heaven is within us, who governs there? Really? How do we govern ourselves? That’s another poem called “Government,” but maybe I’ll just read this little poem called “The Star Market.”"The people Jesus loved were shopping at The Star Market yesterday.An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout.Breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.Even after his bags were packed he still stood,Breathing hard and hawking into his hand.The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them,Shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay,As if The Star Market had declared a day off for the able-bodied,And I had wandered in with the rest of them, sour milk, bad meat, looking for cereal and spring water.Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself,Looking for my lost car in the parking lot later,Stumbling among the people.Who would have been lowered into rooms by ropes,Who would have crept out of caves,Or crawled from the corners of public baths.On their hands and knees begging for mercy.If I touch only the hem of his garment,One woman thought, could I bear the look on his face.When he wheels around?”
Kent: It’s fascinating how you can weave this biblical narrative into poetry. When did you start thinking about doing that?
Marie: I didn’t really think about. The stories are really real to me. I love how my daughter sits in the bathtub and says, “Tell me another story about Moses!” [laughs] It’s her fairy tale. I just love these stories, the Old Testament and the New Testament. So it’s not something I consciously do, it’s just something I do as I walk around.
Kent: Tell us about your daughter.
Marie: My daughter is adopted from China. To anybody who’s listening, I went to China, I began the adoption process when I was 50 years old. I had just gotten divorced. So if there’s any woman who’s thinking, “Oh, I’m just too old to go and adopt a kid, I say go do it.I went to China when I was 52, came home with a three-year-old who is just an extraordinary person. I can’t tell you. She’s amazing. She’s like a joyful Buddha. It just changed my life. Her name’s Anon. She’s a wonderful person. She just turned eight. So there’s that. I’m exhausted and happy.
Kent: And how does looking at her life, when she’s going to be a grown-up, how do you think this country and the world will change between now and then?
Marie: Oh, good lord, don’t we all wonder this? I don’t know if this is opinion radio, but I really do hope Obama becomes president. I feel like we have to realize that we’re a failing empire, and that China and these other countries are economically so much stronger. We have to put down our guns and begin to live as one world.It’s so strange, the Internet already lives like this. It’s almost like the world’s consciousness. The Internet already knows that we’re one world. We have to get politicians to understand that. We have to get them to begin to talk with each other and mediate our difference because this old “shoot ‘em up” thing is over.
Kent: [laughs] We’ll all work towards that. Can your read us one more poem from your book?
Marie: Sure. Another one of the major characters in this book is Mary, who is the Mother of Jesus. It’s not the Virgin Mary and not Mary as she’s been depicted, but Mary as the human being. I think I’ll just end with this little poem of Mary’s at the very end of the book. It partly comes from a sense of being exhausted as a new mother at my age with a little kid, not having any time to write.It’s also, of course, the illuminations that come with that presence in your life. It’s called “Mary, A Reprise” and it’s at the very end. It refers to all the paintings of Mary. She’s always sitting there in the Italian and Dutch paintings with a book in her hand and the book is half-closed. I’ve always been very interested in that.”What is that book, we always see, in the paintings? In her lap?Her finger keeping the place of who she was when she looked up.When I look up, my mother is dead,And my own daughter is calling from the bathtub.’Mom, come in and watch me. Come in here right now.’No Going Back might be the name of that angel.’No more reverie. Let this be done to me,’ Mary finally said.And that was the last time, for a long time,That she spoke about the past.”
Kent: What a wonderful poem. That’s from “The Kingdom of Ordinary Time,” just released by Norton, and Marie Howe’s been our guest. It’s been a real pleasure. You’re actually headlining the White Pine Festival in Stillwater, Minnesota, this summer.
Marie: Yeah, I am.
Kent: My mother’s going to be a solo poet with you, Cynthia Gustavson.
Marie: I am so delighted to hear this. And may I tell you, sir, it’s been a great joy talking with you today.
Kent: It has been a pleasure. Have a wonderful day. My next guest is going to be Gary Freiman. He certainly has a different opinion about politics, and we’ll chat with him. Thank you so much for being on the show, Marie Howe.
Marie Howe | Kingdom & Poetry
April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Today we spoke with poet Marie Howe. Marie Howe’s poems have appeared in the Atlantic, The NewYorker, Agni, Harvard Review, and New England Review, among others. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. More about Marie Howe and her new book from her publisher’s website:
Marie Howe is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Good Thief(1998), and What the Living Do (1997), and the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Her third volume of poetry, Kingdom Of Ordinary Time is forthcoming. Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. She has, in addition, been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughsahres, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. Currently, Howe teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, and New York University.
Marie Howe wowed readers and critics alike with her first book of poems, The Good Thief. Selected by Margaret Atwood as the 1989 winner of the National Poetry Series, the book explored the themes of relationship, attachment, and loss in a uniquely personal search for transcendence. Said Atwood, “Marie Howe’s poetry doesn’t fool around . . . these poems are intensely felt, sparely expressed, and difficult to forget; poems of obsession that transcend their own dark roots.” Howe sees her work as an act of confession, or of conversation. She says simply,” Poetry is telling something to someone.” The Boston Globe calls her work, “a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation.”
Howe’s equally acclaimed second book, What the Living Do, addressed the grief of losing a loved one. “The tentative transformation of agonizing, slow-motion loss into redemption is Howe’s signal achievement in this wrenching second collection,” said Publisher’s Weekly, in choosing it as one of the five best volumes of poetry published that year. Part of the urgency and importance of Howe’s poetry stems from its rootedness in real life—just ten minutes into her 1987 residence at the MacDowell Colony, Howe received a call from her brother John telling her that her mother had had a heart attack. Two years later, John died of AIDS, and her book What the Living Do is in large part an elegy to him. Howe’s poetry is intensely intimate, and her bravery in laying bare the music of her own pain- but never the pain alone—is part of its resonance. Inside each poem there is also a joy, a new breath of life, some kind of redemption. “Each of them seems a love poem to me,” says Howe.
ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIMEAn anticipated new volume from Marie Howe. Hurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven? And how does one live in Ordinary Time—during those periods that are not apparently miraculous? These are astonishing poems by a poet known as “a truth-teller of the first order.”
Jim Barnes Transcript
December 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment
[music]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to Sound Authors, where authors sound off. If you’d like more information about Sound Authors and Dr. Kent’s guests visit Soundauthors.com.Now, back to Dr. Kent and friends.[music]
Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors radio. Today is December 7th, and it’s the 40th anniversary of “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.”My next guest is Jim Barnes, a much-published poet. He’s from Oklahoma. He’s of Native American ancestry.Welcome to the show.
Jim Barnes: Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Kent: Where are you speaking to us from?
Jim: From Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Kent: How is the weather down there?
Jim: Well, it’s quite mild now, but it promises snow later on tonight.
Kent: Tell me a little bit about your newest book to start off. It’s called “Visiting Picasso.” Am I right?
Jim: ”Visiting Picasso,” yeah. Don’t ask me if I knew Picasso; I’d probably lie to you.[laughter]
Jim: It’s published by University of Illinois Press. It’s about 100 pages of some of the best poetry you’re ever going to read.
Kent: [laughs]
Jim: What else can I say?
Kent: Can you read us one?
Jim: Can I read you one? Yeah, yeah. Nothing to do with Picasso, but I think you’ll understand who it is to do with.Let me take about three minutes. Is that OK? You got time? You’re not going anywhere are you?
Kent: I’m not going anywhere.
Jim: All right. The title is from St. Louis Post Dispatch. It’s a headline that appeared on the 18th of July, 1998: “Deputy Finds Dean’s Tombstone on Highway.”"Over 40 years ago, I saw you in my mirror, mornings below the slow day’s dawn. Working the night shift miles above Bohemia and in love with smiles anyone gave.I was you to the core. Looked like you even then. Hung my hands in pockets lightly exactly the way you did, and wore the light-blue pants. Our names the same signaled something I tried my best to grasp. Maybe I have it now.But for you, Jimmy, I would have remained in the North Country, and never have known the freedom of road and will. I was a slow rebel.Double for you in the smoky taverns of Oregon where lost women in mournful bins spill their lives on Saturday nights.You taught me how to desire, and what the desiring is for: departure. The setting out must go on and on.So I think of this, these decades late, after reading the Reuters release. In July there are shivers in Fairmont. Someone’s life somewhere is about to change - The tailgate down and the bed empty and scarred.Your name, our name, Jimbo. Flat on the road; sliding west with traffic. ‘That’s the way it ought to be, always this far from Eden, ‘ I thought then.This, far from the lumbering towns are lots full of ‘oh I sees’, I see you still. The standing shadow in every ditch, or curve someone sometime did not make, and a momentary reach for misguided glory.The pickup reaches home toward midnight. The two men, in late middle-age, lean their arms on the rim of the empty bed and gaze into the nothing they have carried to the sanctuary of the deep Indiana fields.”OK, there you go.
Kent: Beautiful poem.
Jim: Thank you, thank you.
Kent: You have a great gift for story-telling. Can you tell us a little bit about your story; where you’re from?
Jim: My story? Well, it’s dull. I have to imagine; I have to pretend. I’m an Oklahoma farm boy, ranching still in Atoka part-time, living still part-time in Santa Fe. It’s an interesting life. Still, after having put in 39 years in academia, I’m thankful to be anywhere.Finished up my career at Brigham Young University just two years ago. Prior to that I taught at Truman State University in Missouri.
Kent: And how is retirement treating you?
Jim: Well, if it were truly retirement…I don’t know. I’m so busy that I’m busier now than I ever was teaching.
Kent: A long sabbatical.
Jim: [laughing] Yeah. Actually, I only had one sabbatical in my academic career. I chose not to go. I’d rather work than wolf.
Kent: So when did you become a poet? You have such a gift for words.
Jim: I’m still working on it, man! I’m still working on it. I’m afraid of each poem I write. I’m afraid of failing so I have to go on and do another one and another one and another one.I started writing perhaps when I was working in the North Woods in the Pacific Coast range trying to romanticize a very boring job where there was nothing to do except work, drink and stay out all night on the weekends. I thought there might be something else and sure enough there was; it was poetry, it was fiction, it was good writing. Something that I continued along for these days when there is so much bad writing.
Kent: Do you know Picasso? Your book is called, “Visiting Picasso.”
Jim: Well, not well. Well, actually not at all. But you know, one does pretend or what’s a life for?
Kent: You’re a Native American poet. My parents actually live in Oklahoma and they work a lot with the Native American community. I know from their work that some of the folks would like to be called Indians. I don’t know whether I should say Native American or Indian. You’ve been called a Native American poet but your poems aren’t limited to that. They are not held down by that. Can you talk about that for a second?
Jim: Yeah I’m part Indian. Native American, I don’t know any Indian who likes that term. That’s an academic term. It’s a safe term, you know? But Indian is the general term and Choctaw is the specific, as specific I have. I guess there is specific in the blood. I’m an eighth Choctaw but I’m a quarter immigrants Welch. God only knows what the rest is except Mongol American!I’m a poet. I don’t care what they call it. They can call me a Welch poet if they want to. They can call me an American poet if they want to.But I write. I’m a writer first of all. My blood doesn’t talk to me. My head talks to me. I am a child of my environment. Anyone who says he isn’t, these days, is a liar. I mean a downright liar, a no good liar. You’ve got to be aware of your environment. You are from who you are. Oklahoma is where I started. Oklahoma is where I’ll probably end. There are a lot of other things in the middle as there should be, I think.I’ve traveled about the world. I’ve seen some good things, seen some bad things. If I want to use these in poems, I will. I owe nobody anything except the truth as I see it. Lord help me to give it to them all.
Kent: Amen. How many poems have you written in your life?
Jim: I don’t count. [laughing] I don’t know, too many, probably. Those I don’t like I try to throw away though. I don’t know. I don’t write a lot anymore. There was a time I could do one a day at long stretches but now I don’t do that. I’d be kidding myself if I thought I could. I wouldn’t even want to, you know?I like to write and then enjoy having written. That is the best part, man–having written.
Kent: Do you, by chance, listen to any Otis Redding? [music]
Jim: I have heard Otis Redding in the past, yeah.
Kent: His last song was “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” 40 years ago. It was a gentle beautiful song. You have that same soul and the same heart–beautiful gentle stories. I appreciate you being on the show and we’ll look for your book, “Visiting Picasso” anywhere on the web or where can we find it?
Jim: You can find it at University of Illinois Press’ website or you can go to my website which is simplyjimbarnes.org. It will refer you to my work. I appreciate you having me on. It has been a pleasure.
Kent: Enjoy the snow this evening.
Jim: I will.
Kent: My next guest is Cy Tymony, a real-life MacGyver. [music to audio end]
Jim Barnes | Oklahoma Poet
December 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment
It was our pleasure this week to welcome soft-spoken Oklahoma poet Jim Barnes to the show. He is of Choctaw and Welsh descent, but says that his blood doesn’t write the poems — his head does that. His newest book of poetry is filled with haunts and stories, and is available from the University of Illinois Press. It’s called “Visiting Picasso.”
To find out more about Jim Barnes, visit his website at: www.jimbarnes.org
This is the complete biography from his website:
Jim Weaver McKown Barnes, of Choctaw and Welsh ancestry, was born and grew up in Summerfield, Oklahoma. He received his B.A. from Southeastern State College in Durant, OK (now Southeastern Oklahoma State University) in 1964 and his M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1972) from the University of Arkansas. He taught at Truman State University from 1970 to 2003, where he was Professor of Comparative Literature and Writer-in-Residence. After retiring from Truman State, he was Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at Brigham Young University. Jim married Cora Barnes McKown, artist and designer, in 2006. They now make their home a few miles east of Atoka, Oklahoma, on the McKown family ranch, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Jim is the founding editor of the Chariton Review Press and editor of The Chariton Review. He is also a contributing editor to the Pushcart Prize. He has published over 500 poems in more than 100 journals, including Poetry, Sewanee Review, Kenyon Review, The Nation, The Chicago Review, The American Scholar, Prairie Schooner and Georgia Review. His translations have also been published in journals, such as Translation, New Letters, Nimrod, Sycamore Review and Black Moon. His short stories have appeared in New Letters, Flyway, Connecticut Review, Texas Review, North American Review, South Dakota Review, Iowa Review, Descant, Sou’wester, Gargoyle, among others.
His community service involves membership in many organizations, including the Associated Writing Programs, the National Association for Ethnic Studies, PEN American Center, and PEN Center USA West. He has sat on several National Endowment for the Arts committees. He was Chair of the Camargo Foundation Creative Writing Selection Committee from 2001 through 2007. He is presently Poetry Editor for the Truman State University Press.
Jim Barnes has given readings of his work at many campuses, such as Texas A & M University, Baylor University, Austin College, Simon’s Rock College, San Jose State University, the University of South Carolina, Villa Serbelloni (Bellagio, Italy), Brigham Young University, University of Missouri at Columbia, Duke University, University of Arizona, Stephens College, Kansas State University, University of Nebraska - Lincoln and Omaha, Oklahoma State University, Brigham Young University, University of Oregon, Oregon State University, University of California - Berkeley, Riverside, and Santa Cruz, Cal Poly Tech - San Luis Obispo, Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France), University of Lausanne, University of Geneva, Villa Walberta (Munich, Germany), University of Stuttgart, Charles University (Prague), Ostrava University (Czech Republic), Olomouc University (Czech Republic), Viola Theatre (Prague), Pompidou Centre (Paris), and so on.
His new book of poetry is Visiting Picasso (University of Illinois Press, 2007).
Debra DiBlasi | Jiri & the Media
December 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This week, we spoke with fiction guru Debra DiBlasi. Her multi-media landscape is caustic, sardonic, cute, and intellectually satisfying, in a dirty little way. Her closing comments about Otis Redding (on the 40th anniversary of Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay) on behalf of her fictional character Jiri, said that he liked Otis because he liked water. Free association is a powerful tool, and DiBlasi uses it to illuminate race and gender issues for her audience, as well as fully confuse us from time to time.
Her projects are broad in scope, and can be accessed across the web. Her fictional character that plays in the real world much like Sasha Cohen’s Borat character, but with far more integrity and depth, and less slapstick humor, never fails to satisfy. Check out his band Umlaut with four dots not two.
The New York Times Book Review said of her writing:
“In clear, resonant prose, laced with bittersweet humor, Di Blasi imparts her understanding of love’s multiple ironies.” -The New York Times Book Review
Debra DiBlasi’s complete biography from her website at www.debradiblasi.com:
Debra Di Blasi is the recipient of many awards, including a James C. McCormick Fellowship in Fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Thorpe Menn Book Award, and Eyster Prize in Fiction. Her novel What the Body Requires was one of four finalists in the Heekin Foundation’s James Fellowship for the Novel-in-Progress and is being adapted to the screen for Indian director Biju Viswanath. Her story, “Sparrows,” was nominated for a 2005 Pushcart Prize, and a mixed media fiction, “Machine Ghosts,” was a finalist in the 2005 Panliterary Awards. In 2006, she received Pushcart nominations for “A Bird Does Not Understand the Concept of Glass” and “Personal Effects,” also selected by Web del Sol as “Best of Web Fiction.”
Books include the novellas Drought & Say What You Like (New Directions), and a short story collection Prayers of an Accidental Nature, (Coffee House Press), praised by The New York Times Book Review for its “clear, resonant prose, laced with bittersweet humor.” Regarding her newest fiction collection, The Jirí Chronicles & Other Fictions , (FC2 Books/
University of Alabama Press, Pleiades editor Kevin Prufer writes, “Di Blasi has a mind unlike anyone else writing fiction today, and this is her finest work yet.” And from David Hamilton, longtime editor of The Iowa Review: “Agitated, angry, inventive, iconoclastic, both literally and figuratively graphic… Beware, reader, you’re in for a sumptuous, hypertextual, hypercharged ride. Hyperion himself would smile.” Other writing includes short stories, poetry, essays, art reviews and articles published in a variety of national and regional publications, such as The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Midwest, First Intensity, Boulevard, New Art Examiner, New Letters, Chelsea, Sleepingfish and many others. Her fiction has been adapted to film, radio, theatre, and audio CD in the U.S. and abroad, and appears in the anthologies Wreckage of Reason: Xxperimental Women Writers in the 21st Century (Spuyten Duyvil), Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales (Wayne State University Press), and &Now /
And Then (Notre Dame Review), among others. Collaborations with visual and audio artists have been featured museum installations, and her drawings, paintings and art installations exhibited in prominent galleries. Screenwriting credits include Drought, for which she won the 1999 Cinovation Screenwriting Award, and The Walking Wounded, finalist in the 1996 Austin Screenwriters Competition. The short film, Drought, was directed by Lisa Moncure and went on to win a host of international and national awards including Best Drama and Best Director (Toronto, Canada), Best Medium Film (Lisbon, Portugal), Kodak Visions Award for Cinematography (Avignon, France), and Grand Prize and Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee. Drought was only one of six films selected for the Universe Elle section at the 2000 Cannes International Film Festival in France.
Debra is president of Jaded Ibis Productions, a transmedia corporation™ producing most notably, The Jirí Chronicles, a mélange of over 450 individual works of prose, poetry, fictive audio interviews and music, videos, print, web and visual art. She is a former arts writer at The Pitch, SOMA, and The New Art Examiner, and taught experimental writing forms at Kansas City Art Institute.
Joyce Carol Thomas | Story
November 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
We had the great pleasure this week to speak with author and poet Joyce Carol Thomas. She wove an elegant thread for the first half of the interview, telling about the rich, and free, history of Oklahoma, and her heritage there. She also spoke to us about her multiple award-winning book Marked by Fire, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and a re-released hardcover edition.
More information about Joyce below, from her website here:
Joyce’s book titles include bestseller Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone: Brown v. Board of Education, The Gospel Cinderella, Hush Songs: African-American Lullabies; Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea; I Have Heard of a Land, Crowning Glory; and National Book Award winner Marked by Fire.
Ms. Thomas’ more than 50 books have earned her more readers and more rewards: the National Book Award, the American Book Award, three Coretta Scott King Honors, two Governor’s Awards, three American Library Association Awards, the International Reading Association Award, an Oklahoma Lifetime Achievement Award, and many more.
Joyce Carol Thomas is a native of Ponca City, Oklahoma (the setting for some of her fictional works). When she was 10 years old, Thomas and her family moved to the rural area of Tracy, California.
A graduate of Stanford University, fluent in Spanish and French, Ms. Thomas has traveled to Australia, China, Ecuador, Guam, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, and Nigeria. She has taught from grade school to the university level, including the University of California at Santa Cruz and Purdue University. Her last teaching appointment was as Full Professor in the English Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she taught Creative Writing courses in poetry, drama, and fiction.
She now lives in Berkeley, California, near her family, where she continues to write and publish.
All of Joyce Carol Thomas’ books are available for sale in your local bookstore, online at her website at www.joycecarolthomas.com and at amazon.com
Francine Ringgold | Nimrod
November 16, 2007 | 1 Comment
Dr. Francine Ringgold, professor at the University of Tulsa, long-time editor in chief of international literary journal Nimrod, and former poet laureate of the state of Oklahoma, spoke with us this week about Oklahoma’s centennial. She read us two poems about her dog, one of which she composed just before our broadcast.
She also spoke to us about the rich history of her magazine Nimrod, its beginnings, its role as the spark at the beginning of countless authors’ careers, and its continued dedication to excellence.
Here is the mission of Nimrod Journal (taken from their website here):
Nimrod International Journal is published twice a year, spring and fall. Nimrod’s mission is discovery: the journal seeks new, unheralded writers; writers from other lands who become accessible to the English speaking world through translation; established authors who have vigorous new work to present that has not found a home within the establishment. Nimrod serves the national and international community of writers and readers by presenting the best writing, whether experimental or traditional:
- in print as Nimrod International Journal
- on the radio
- in live performances
- through creative writing workshops
- by sponsoring and administering its annual competition for poetry and fiction:
THE NIMROD/HARDMAN AWARDS:
- The Katherine Anne Porter Prize for fiction
- The Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry
You can subscribe to the Nimrod journal by contacting them through their website, at your local bookstore or library, or by purchasing it at amazon.com
Diane Glancy | The Land
November 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Our first guest on the special Oklahoma centennial show this week was author Diane Glancy. This part-Cherokee author talked with us about her new play, her upcoming film project, and her Oklahoma heritage.
Text below taken from Diance Glancy’s website:
“Writing is a conversation,” observes Diane Glancy, whose poetry, scripts, essays, and fiction have earned her numerous literary prize including an American Book Award, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Native American Prose Award and a Sundance Screenwriting Fellowship. “My students and I come together to take risks and reach new frontiers.” For Glancy, writing has also been a journey. As artist in residence for the State Arts Council of Oklahoma she traveled the state for a decade, teaching the skills of writing, oral communication and critical thinking. Her growing reputation as a writer opened the door to a fellowship at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers Workshop.
Glancy is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she taught Native American Literature and Creative Writing. She is now on a four-year sabbatical / early retirement program. Glancy also taught in the Bread Loaf School of English M.A. program on the campus of the Native American Preparatory School in Rowe, New Mexico, in 1999. She was the 1998 Edlestein-Keller Minnesota Writer of Distinction, University of Minnesota, where she taught Topics in Advanced Poetry. Glancy also was the Native American Inroads Mentor at The Loft in Minneapolis where she taught Creative Nonfiction in 1997.
Purchase all of Diane Glancy’s books from your local bookstore, or visit amazon.com
Diane Glancy Transcript
November 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome to Sound Authors radio. Today is the Centennial of Oklahoma state. Established as the 46th state in the union on November 16, 1907. Native Americans were already there long before 1541, when Vasquez de Coronado, Spanish Conquistador happened through.
Oklahoma was the dust bowl state of the 1930’s and the end of the tragic and deadly “Trail of Tears” in the 1830’s. The birthplace of Woody Guthrie and the birthplace of Mickey Mantle. Happy birthday Oklahoma.
On the show today, our writers Diane Glancy, Francine Ringold, and Joyce Carol Thomas and special guest musician Tom Paxton. We are celebrating some of Oklahoma’s rich heritage.
My first guest is Diane Glancy. Welcome Diane.
Diane Glancy: Thank you.
Dr. Kent: She was an artist in residence for the State Arts Council of Oklahoma for a decade. Her poetry, her scripts, essays, and fiction have gotten her many prizes including the Oklahoma Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry, the American Book Award, the Emily Dickinson Poetry Prize and the list goes on.
She’s a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, thought she’s on a sabbatical. Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself?
Diane: What would you like to know? I spent my adult years in Oklahoma and I started traveling the state for the state Arts Council and I’ve always found that the land has voices. The land has a voice. There are stories to be told.
One important thing I do as I write, is to travel to different places and there I get ideas for my stories. I have been a writer for many years. I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. My father went north to work during the depression. I was born in 1941. I spent my life teaching and writing.
Dr. Kent: You have quite a story attached to your Cherokee Great‑Grandfather.
Dr. Francine Ringgold Transcript
November 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent Gustavson: [music fades] Welcome back to Authors Sound Off Radio. Today is the Oklahoma Centennial Special, and my next guest has contributed immensely to the state’s cultural heritage. Welcome to Dr. Francine Ringgold.
Dr. Francine Ringgold: Hi!
Dr. Gustavson: She’s the former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma, and longtime editor‑in‑chief of “Nimrod, ” the international journal of prose and poetry. How’s the weather down in Oklahoma on this centennial‑‑
Dr. Ringgold: Actually it’s gorgeous today! It’s sunny, it’s very gusty and about 60 degrees.
Dr. Gustavson: It’s often gusty down there in Oklahoma.
Dr. Ringgold: [laughs] Right.
Dr. Gustavson: Can you tell me a little bit first off about your Poet Laureate position?
Dr. Ringgold: Well, I was appointed, I think it was 2003, and it’s usually a two‑year appointment and I was reappointed in 2005. And the task, really, of the Poet Laureate is what you make it, as long as you in some way promote poetry and the love of poetry and writing poetry. So that’s what I try to do.
Dr. Gustavson: Now are you first a poet, or are you first an editor?
Dr. Ringgold: [joking] Ah, what a nasty question! Well‑‑
Dr. Gustavson: [laughs]
Dr. Ringgold: I think probably I’m… first an editor, in the sense that I spend more time doing that. But in some ways it’s simultaneous ‑‑ not that I write at the same time as I edit ‑‑ but I keep being nurtured by what I read, and developing new ideas as to what I want to do, but it’s sort of submerged when I’m working with other people, because when I’m working with other people or other work, I’m really trying to help it emerge.
H.L. Hix | Bush & Bin Laden
November 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
This week we had the pleasure of speaking with poet, engineer, and prophetic wordsmith H.L Hix. He is an English professor at the University of Wyoming, and is the director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing there.
Hix’s new book, God Bless, isn’t a scathing diatribe, and it isn’t a complacent commentary; it isn’t quite prose, but it’s not common poetry. This is truly a book we haven’t yet read.
He places texts taken from the mouths and words of George W. Bush during his presidency, and Osama bin Laden during his similar reign within hiding. Hix doesn’t intend to make a statement that either man is ideologically correct or incorrect, but his careful placements and arrangements of their words are powerful, sometimes irreverent, and always fascinating.
H.L. Hix was able to join us for the first two segments of the show.
Text below taken from University of Wyoming Press Release found here:
Oct. 24, 2007 — President George W. Bush and al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden have never had a conversation.
Until now.
In his latest book, “God Bless,” released this month by Etruscan Press, University of Wyoming English Professor H.L. Hix pits excerpts from Bush speeches against arguments from bin Laden in a unique poetic dialogue that embraces politics, literature, language and culture.
“These are two people who ought to be talking but aren’t, so I’m going to make up a dialogue between them,” says Hix, who also serves as director of UW’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. “I think there’s important dialogue that hasn’t happened, and I’m trying to generate that dialogue.”
In his book, Hix creates poems using Bush’s own words from speeches, executive orders and other public statements. He also constructs poetry from the letters, speeches and other discourses of bin Laden.
“God Bless” also includes candid interviews with a diverse panel of experts, ranging from M. Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, to CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen.
“It’s a weird book. It was even a weird book for me,” says Hix, whose previous 10 books were poetry, philosophy or literary criticism. “I’ve never done anything like it before, and I don’t think I’ll ever do anything like it again.”
He laughs and adds, “I don’t know how it started happening, I just sort of found myself doing it.”
As part of his research for the book, Hix says he read more than 8,000 pages of speeches by the president, obtained from the official White House Web site, www.whitehouse.gov, and “pulled out language usage that I thought was interesting.”
He then studied bin Laden’s words and wrote what he called “interleaves” that use both direct quotations and reconstruction.
Unlike his previous books, Hix believes “God Bless” could receive mainstream media attention because of uniqueness and subject matter.
But, he says, “I have absolutely no idea what to expect because my previous books are philosophy, literary criticism and poetry and those types o