long time passing

Okay, so it's been a long time since I've blogged but that doesn't mean that nothing is happening. In fact, the opposite of course. So much. Teaching: I really love the three classes I'm teaching this semester: Intermediate Poetry (new for me, and the students have done some wonderful writing, we've read Whitman, Pound, had student reports on Dickinson, Crane, Amy Lowell, tomorrow one on Eliot), Arts of Sport (again, a new one, which has allowed us to read some really good writing, Hunter Thompson, David Halberstam, Williams, Berrigan, Koch, Clampitt, Dean Young, William Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves, as well as watch the movie Glory Road; right now we're about to move from issues of race in sport to gender, which will culminate in seeing A League of Their Own, then on to case studies of various sports in the U.S.) and Spanish Surrealism (which it seems like I taught last semester but the number of students has gone from 27 to 38 and this changes how I have to think about it--tomorrow we look at the last of Poet in New York and then move on to Alberti's Sobre los Angeles).

And writing. Trying to get in four or five hours a week of poetry. Of translating. It's hard but worth the effort. The Hinojosa translations are out there (some). Go to tinhouse.com and the lost and found page and you'll see a little piece I did (which also appears in the magazine) but also has three translations. Waiting to hear back from a press on a proposal for the whole book. Cross your fingers.

Busy October:

Reading October 10 w/Pablo from Poet in New York at Teachers & Writers. Go to twc.org for more info.

Panel: October 16, ALTA convention (Minneapolis) on Poet in New York (chaired by Doug Unger)
Reading: October 17, ALTA Convention (Minneapolis) from Poet in New York 3-4.

Panel: October 29, UNLV on Poet in New York, 7:30 (check UNLV University Forum Series)
Reading: October 30, Las Vegas, from Poet in New York (will update).

November: Miami International Book Fair. Details forthcoming.

Okay, so that's the quick return to blog land. Jesse is cool, Katherine the greatest and Cannonball a woof.

Saludos y abrazos y l'shana tova.

Mark

First post 19 October 2007

So this is my entry into the world of having my own blog and I'm holping that after a while there are lots of responses and lots of comments on what I have to say, what other people have to say.

I admit to feeling a little out of my element, but having started this, it's something I'm going to try and make work.

So a couple of things to start:

I expect in the coming days I'll be writing about what it says on the top of the blog: poetry, teaching, New York, politics, and everything else that actually matters.

So start today by advising whoever reads this to see the new issue of Teachers & Writers magazine (twc.org) which includes a series of tributes to Grace Paley (okay, I wrote one). The one by Herb Kohl seems particularly moving because it gets at what Grace stood for, that sense not of what it means to be a writer in some isolated way but of what it means to be a writer in the world.