11/18/2016
Thinking on how it wasn’t all that long ago that it was my Irish ancestors that many people wanted out of the country, saw as less than human, thought they were taking their jobs, hated for their faith and their culture.
Make art about fear and exclusion.
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11/17/2016
I called my beloved brother, my late husband’s brother, for advice early yesterday, and in the way he has that I love and respect and admire and need so much, he started by saying, “You may not like the advice I have to give. You might get mad at me.”
I laughed, and said, “I’m not gonna get mad. That’s why I called you.”
Later last night I texted him Thank you. He called and asked, “So did my cantankerous advice work out?”
I laughed again, and said, “Sure did. Thank you so much.”
He said, “Don’t thank me. It’s you. All you. Just sometimes, even when we know what’s right, what we need to do, we just need someone else to say it, to say what’s hard to hear.”
Yep.
Make art about hearing hard truths.
11/16/2016
Make art about focus, about losing focus, about regaining focus, about staying focused.
11/14/2016
early 15c., from Latin dissentire “differ in sentiments, disagree, be at odds, contradict, quarrel,” from dis- “differently” (see dis-) + sentire “to feel, think” (see sense (n.)).
Related: Dissented; dissenting. The noun is 1580s, from the verb.
Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime. [Jacob Bronowski “Science and Human Values,” 1956]
Make art about dissent.
Something a little different this week: recommending a documentary, Poetry of Witness. Poetry of Witness is a 2015 documentary film directed by Billy Tooma and Anthony Cirilo about the lives of six contemporary poets who have lived through, and survived, extremities such as war, torture, exile, and repression, using poetry to preserve their memories.It debuted October 16, 2015 at the Buffalo International Film Festival.
The film documents the struggle of six contemporary poets who have faced the duress of war, exile, and human rights violations to give voice to their experiences while wrestling with the complex moral quandaries of artistic production, memory, and trauma. The poets: Carolyn Forché (Salvadoran Civil War), Saghi Ghahraman (Iranian Revolution), Fady Joudah (Doctors Without Borders), Claudia Serea (Socialist Republic of Romania), Mario Susko (Bosnian War), and Bruce Weigl (Vietnam War) offer first-person accounts of how their experiences as soldier, activist, doctor, and survivor imprint their poetry as evidence of those conflicts, rather than as representations of them.
Buy Poetry of Witness: The Documentary
A Couple of Suggested Anthologies (there are so many more…)
Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness
Award winning poet Carolyn Forché spent 13 years compiling Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness. It is an exhaustive and illuminating work of breadth, beauty, wisdom and tragedy.
More about the Poetry of Witness
Carolyn Forché talks about the poetry of witness
Poet Carolyn Forché gathers 500 years of suffering in new anthology
More About Against Forgetting at3Generations
Love y’all.
Mary
11/13/2016
Make art about our work, about what you think our work is, about what work means now.
The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished. -Ming-Dao Deng
11/7/2016
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”–Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4, 1861
Make art about the better angels of our nature (’cause we sure need ’em now).
This week meet one of my most beloved brother mans 🙂 Peter Grandbois, author of seven books, including: The Gravedigger, selected by Barnes and Noble for its “Discover Great New Writers” program, The Arsenic Lobster: A Hybrid Memoir, chosen as one of the top five memoirs of 2009 by the Sacramento News and Review, Nahoonkara, winner of the gold medal in literary fiction in Foreword magazine’s Book of the Year Awards for 2011, a collection of surreal flash fictions, Domestic Disturbances, a finalist for Book of the Year in Foreword magazine’s 2013 awards, and the novella collections or “monster double features,” Wait Your Turn, The Glob Who Girdled Granville (Honorable Mention, IndieFab award in the category of best fantasy of 2014), and The Girl on the Swing. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and been shortlisted for both the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is senior editor at Boulevard magazine and fiction co-editor at Phantom Drift.
Peter is a graduate of the University of Denver (Ph.D. 2006) and Bennington College (M.F.A. 2003). Previously, he taught at California State University in Sacramento and is currently an associate professor at Denison University.
Nahoonkara is my favorite 🙂
Praise for Nahoonkara
In the tradition of nature writers Rick Bass and Annie Dillard, award winning writer Peter Grandbois’ new novel Nahoonkara opens up an oneiric space of wonder, a place outside preconceived notions of reality and identity, a place where we are free to re-imagine ourselves.
“[Nahoonkara]…incorporates elements of historical fiction with experimental fiction, but nothing that pulls the reader out of the fictional dream.”
—Robin Martin,Gently Read Literature
“Departing from traditional narrative form, Grandbois moves masterfully between first, second, and third persons to invite readers into a textual visualization of how individual choices affect the well-being of the community.” —Review of Contemporary Fiction
“Peter Grandbois is a splendid writer I intend to follow very closely.”
—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize Winning author of A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain
“Vividly drawn, exquisitely crafted, Nahoonkara bespeaks not just the promise of its author, but also his undeniable power.”—Laird Hunt, author of Ray of the Star
Buy Peter’s beautiful books!
Nahoonkara
The Gravedigger
https://www.amazon.com/Gravedigger-Peter-Grandbois/dp/0811858189
The Girl on the Swing: Two Novellas
http://www.wordcraftoforegon.com/#wsfn3_girl
The Glob Who Girdled Granville & The Secret Lives of Actors: Two Novellas
http://www.wordcraftoforegon.com/#wsfn2_glob
Wait Your Turn & The Stability of Large Systems: Two Novellas
http://www.wordcraftoforegon.com/#grandbois1_waityourturn
The Arsenic Lobster: A Hybrid Memoir
http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/arsenic-lobster1.html
Domestic Disturbances
http://www.subitopress.org/catalog/2013-2/grandbois
More from Peter Online
http://www.wordriot.org/archives/2971
http://penmenreview.com/spotlight/penmen-profile-peter-grandbois/
http://midwestgothic.com/2015/07/interview-peter-grandbois/
http://thestoryprize.blogspot.com/2013/10/peter-grandbois-listens-to-images.html
http://www.smokelong.com/smoking-with-peter-grandbois/
And he fences too!!! 🙂
https://denisonmagazine.com/article/uncommon-ground-the-secret-lives-of-professors-peter-grandbois
Hear Peter Read 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awJ9W7SlQ6o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DHaPjIYTro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su84xHD7PXs
And there’s fencing video too! 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeJK5-q1WG0
Happy Reading!
xo
Mary
Mary Carroll-Hackett: Poetry and Prose 
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