Remembering

Abbey Lincoln (1930-2010)


Fred Anderson (1929-2010)


Bill Dixon (1925-2010)


and

Frank Kermode (1919-2010)
From Shakespeare's Language, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
 

Tony Judt (1948-2010)
From "Meritocrats," New York Review of Books, August 19, 2010, Vol. 57, No. 13.

I came up to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1966. Ours was a—perhaps the—transitional generation. We were past the midpoint of the 1960s—the Mods had come and gone and the Beatles were about to record Sgt. Pepper—but the King’s into which I was matriculated was still strikingly traditional. Dinner in Hall was formal, begowned—and required. Undergraduates took their seats, awaited the arrival of the Fellows, then rose to watch a long line of elderly gentlemen shuffle past them on their way to High Table.

“Elderly” here is no relative term. Led by (former provost) Sir John Shepherd (born 1881), the Emeritus Fellows typically included Sir Frank Adcock (born 1886), E.M. Forster (born 1879), and others equally venerable. One was made immediately aware of the link between a generation of young men born into the postwar welfare state and the world of late-Victorian King’s: the age of Forster, Rupert Brooke, and John Maynard Keynes, exuding a cultural and social self-confidence to which we could never aspire. The old men seemed to blend seamlessly into the fading portraits on the walls above: without anyone making a point of it, continuity was all about us.

Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010)
Tuli Kupferberg, "A Short History of the Human Race"


Harvey Pekar (1939-2010)

Center: Evan Agostini/Getty Images Harvey Pekar surrounded by his portraits. The artists are, clockwise from top left, Sean Pryor, Dean Haspiel, Joseph Remnant and Josh Neufeld.

Basil Davidson (1914-2010)
From The Fortunate Isles: A Study in African Transformation, Trenton: Africa World Press, 1989.
 

Carlos Monsiváis (1938-2010)
From "No sin nosotros: los días del terremoto, 1985-2005, México DF: Ediciones ERA, 2005.

Peter Orlovsky (1933-2010)

Snail Poem

Make my grave shape of heart so like a flower be free aired
       & handsome felt,
Grave root pillow, tung up from grave & wigle at
       blown up clowd.
Ear turnes close to underlayer of green felt moss & sound
       of rain dribble thru this layer
       down to the roots that will tickle my ear.
Hay grave, my toes need cutting so file away
       in sound curve or
Garbage grave, way above my head, blood will soon
       trickle in my ear -
       no choise but the grave, so cat & sheep are daisey
       turned.
Train will tug my grave, my breath hueing gentil vapor
       between weel & track.
So kitten string & ball, jumpe over this mound so
       gently & cutely
So my toe can curl & become a snail & go curiousely
       on its way.
1958 NYC

From Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs, Pocket Poets Series #37, City Lights Books ©1978 by Peter Orlovsky.

Last (Really) Day of Classes + BP's Gulf Cataclysm + Griffey Jr. Retires + RIPs + UN: Eat Less Meat

Today, finally, was my last day of classes! It's hard to believe that my quarter is nearly over, but it is. We discussed the final two novellas, all of which will be due, in their revised forms, next week. All of my former fiction students know how enjoyable and difficult--grueling, at times--a process this is, but I must say that even with prior experience and deep enthusiasm, nothing quite prepares you for closely reading, marking up and writing a critical letter (of at least 1-page length) for over 1,590 (or 15students x (2+2+2+5+10+20+20+45 pages each)) pages of fiction* in about 14 weeks. (Just for comparison, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkonsky's 2007 translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, sitting beside me on my desk here in Chicago, is a slender 1264 pages.) And I'll still need to read the final versions of all 15 novellas, some of which are approaching 60-80 pages. It nevertheless was an exciting experience, and I can say now that as with my other writing classes, I witnessed ostensible progress and improvement, transformation even, not just aesthetically and technically, but personally, among many of the students. This is one of the things that as a teacher you hope for. Then too there's the reality of their having a portfolio of work they can call their own. By this time two weeks from now, they will have written as much as some writers accomplish in several years: 3-4 complete short stories (during the first half of the sequence), and a novella. Congratulations to all of them!

+++

I've been wanting to write about the horrific catastrophe BP, Transocean and Halliburton (of course their fingerprints all over this) have created in the Gulf of Mexico, but everytime I think about this cataclysm I start to feel such rage, at these environmental terrorists and criminals, who apparently and knowingly flouted all sorts of regulations to cut a few million dollars off their costs, with this inestimable disaster as the result, and such powerlessness at our impotent federal and state governments, who appear to be doing everything they can to coddle BP, to let them control the non-clean-up, set the agenda, and protect their multibillion-dollar Chernobylesque investment, which continues to spew massive quantities of oil and natural gas into the Gulf.

If we had anything but corporate lackeys running the country, we'd have seen BP's domestic operations nationalized, top scientists and engineers brought in immediately to neutralize the leak, and a strict clampdown on any current and future offshore drilling. Instead, we get a president talking out of both sides of his mouth, federal agencies operating like Keystone Cops to the benefit of the oil industry, and corporate liars, led by the Rowan Atkinsonian Tony Hawyward, so dense and incompetent that they actually believe anyone except the fools in the mainstream media Congress and their own lobbyists are gulled anything they're saying. It was clear when BP talked about putting that giant steel condom atop this gusher that they were on a steady track record of FAIL, and it's been nothing but that since. They are determined not to do anything that would radically block up that gusher, no matter how much damage it's causing, no matter how much dead flora, sea life, careers in the Gulf Region, other countries affected, it engenders. According to the administration, we're supposed to just sit by till August, September, who knows, while BP bumbles forward and drills relief wells (or someone does), whining and dissembling, and finagling Congress into limiting its liabilities.

Really it's as simple as this: US (BP) to Gulf Coast: Drop dead!

+++

Ken Griffey Jr., 40, one of the best baseball players of his generation, has announced his retirement after 22 seasons. Never carrying the taint of roids, playing full out year after year, even starring alongside his father for a short time, this former Rookie of the Year was one of the on-field leaders during the 1990s. Though he had many amazing years, especially during his initial 10-year stint in Seattle, perhaps the two most remarkable came in 1997, when he hit .304 with 56 home runs, 147 runs batted in, 125 runs scored, a .646 slugging percentage, a 1.028 OPS, and 393 total bases. He won the League MVP, and Seattle finished first in the AL West, though it lost to Baltimore in the League Division Series. The next year, in 1998, he again hit 56 home runs, drove in 146 runs, scored 120, had a .611 slugging percentage, stole 20 bases, and scored 387 total bases. Alongside these outsized years, Junior Griffey had many very good ones, hitting 40 or more homers 7 times and driving in 100 runs 8 times, and was a stellar fielder for nearly his entire career, winning 10 Golden Gloves. His playing time had dwindled this season to benchwarming, and with a .184 average, no home runs, and just 7 RBIs, he decided to bow out. Seattle and baseball fans in general are indebted to all he brought to the game. He'll be sailing into the Hall of Fame.



+++

Some real RIP goodbyes: Gary Coleman - Louise Bourgeois - Leslie Scalapino - Dennis Hopper - Peter Orlovsky - Ali Ollie Woodson - Tobias Wong - Andrei Voznesensky - Raymond Haysbert Sr. - Art Linkletter - Edoardo Sanguinetti

+++

Finally, the UN urges, "Eat less meat," save the globe. I didn't pay them, I swear.

Reg Gibbons Chicagoan of the Year for Literature + Some RIPs

Slowly I have been making my way through my university email account, and so it wasn't until just the other day that I learned that my esteemed colleague Reginald Gibbons, a writer of multifarious talents (a poet whose volume Creatures of a Day (LSU Press) was a 2008 National Book Award finalist, a fiction writer, an essayist, a translator, an editor, among so much else); scholar and teacher; mentor and friend to colleagues and students; administrator and program head; and literary and cultural activist, was named "Chicagoan of the Year" for Literature by the Chicago Tribune! The blurb about him reads:

Reginald Gibbons is a poet, essayist, translator and professor of English at Northwestern University. He edited TriQuarterly, one of the nation's premier literary magazines, for 16 years. This year, Gibbons added another line to his resume: muse. A woman whose work he long championed, Angela Jackson, saw the publication of her first novel, “Where I Must Go” (2009).

This of course only scratches the surface; check out Reg's website here, which includes his richly insightful blog and a listing of his many publications. Emerging poets might find his "A Few Cells from the Great Hive: a reading list for new poets" especially useful. He co-directs the university's graduate MA/MFA program, which he helped to create, while also serving as director of the Center for Writing Arts, and teaching in three different departments. I often speak of "greatness" and "amazing" people on this blog, and Reg is one of the people who fits both descriptions. Congratulations, Reg!

***

So as not to turn this blog into an obituaries column, I will only note in passing the recent deaths of such figures as Percy Sutton, the businessman, former Manhattan borough president and Malcolm X's lawyer; Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa's major poets and anti-apartheid activist, whom I witnessed announce live, at the Celebration of Black Writing in Philadelphia, that Nelson Mandela had been released from jail, causing the entire auditorium to cheer and weep for joy; Eunice Johnson, the longtime treasurer of the Johnson publishing business and the pioneering founder of the Ebony Fashion Fairs and cosmetics line; the feminist scholar theologian, philosopher and writer Mary Daly, many years resident as a professor at Boston College, whose works include the Wickedary; the great Color Field painter Kenneth Noland, one of the leading lights of American painting; and, perhaps least known among all of them but a figure whose name I heard all throughout my undergraduate years, because several good friends were studying the European classics, Ihor Sevcenko, whose field was Byzantine history and literatures. To all of them, resquiescant in pace.

RIP: John Hope Franklin

(Finally posted)
I was particularly saddened to learn yesterday of historian John Hope Franklin's death at 94. He was by every measure the most significant living African-American historian, and one of the most important historians of African America that we've ever had. His magnum opus, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, first published in 1947 and now in its 7th edition, still offers one of the richest and most complete overviews, in narrative form but buttressed by considerable research, of the history of black people in the north-American British colonies and the United States. (My battered, black and fox-eared copy saw considerable use when I was writing my first book, and I even cite it at the work's end.) It's a book I've recommended to many people alongside Lerone Bennett's more popular volume, Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (Penguin, 1994), and one that high school students across the US should have to delve into.

Franklin, who was born only 15 years after the end of slavery, also explored specific dimensions of American and African-American history, such as Emancipation and Reconstruction, the South before and during the Civil War, free blacks in the antebellum and post-bellum South, and, most recently, escaped slaves, with significant publications, ranging from papers to books, in each area. In 2005, he published his autobiography, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin, and his most recent book, written and edited with his son John Whittington White, was My Life and an Era: The Autobiography of Buck Colbert Franklin, which explored the life of his own father. During the late 1990s, he took an even more public role when he thanklessly led President Bill Clinton's "National Conversation On Race," drawing more criticism that honest dialogue on how race and racism had functioned and does function in this society.

After taking degrees at Fisk University and Harvard University, Oklahoma native Franklin taught at three historically black colleges and universities, St. Augustine's College (NC), North Carolina Central University, Howard University, and then Brooklyn College, the University of Chicago, and Duke University, where he was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and for seven years was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University. The historical profession, black academics, and Americans of all colors can mourn the passing of one of the leading intellectual beacons of the last half-century. His books, thankfully, are still with us.

Mr. Monceaux in NY Times + Gays In Jamaica + Obits (Richardson, Purdy, Updike)

A few brief thoughts in the midst of endless end-of-quarter reading:


Chris Hartlove for The New York Times

About two years ago around this time, as I was sunk deep into one of my usual brutal quarters, I posted a little squib on a friend, Morgan Monceaux/Sir Nagrom, a brilliant artist I first met in Providence back in 2001. That mini-piece discussed a show he was participating in at that time, and today's New York Times offers a fuller portrait of Nagrom, focusing on his many series, some of the many vicissitudes he's faced, and a little of the acclaim he's finally receiving, at age 62, for his art. (The "primitive" bit, along with the "living in a shack," miss the mark, but we are talking about the NY Times, which loves its romantic narratives.) If you happen to be anywhere near Baltimore, check out his "Divas" show at the New Door Creative gallery. It runs through May. (H/t to Geoffrey Jacques!)

***

Another squib from that same post focused on the anti-gay violence taking place in Jamaica. I noted that link, sent by Thomas Glave, as I thought about this recent post I came across on Michael Petrelis's blog, which links to the 2008 US State Department report on human rights in Jamaica. In its section on LGBTQs and people with HIV and AIDS, it notes that the anti-gay violence in Jamaica and the government's approach to it have not improved; the report points out that "target shootings" of gays and lesbians are occurring, attacks on Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), the primary gay rights group in Jamaica, continue, and that the situation is also grave for people with HIV and AIDS. To quote the report (as Petrelis does):

The Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG) continued to report human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, mob attacks, stabbings, harassment of homosexual patients by hospital and prison staff, and targeted shootings of homosexuals. Police often did not investigate such incidents.

J-FLAG members also suffered attacks on their property, home intrusions as people demanded to know the number of persons and beds in a home, and in one instance, a fire bombing at the home of two men that left one of them with burns on more than 60 percent of his body. In addition homosexuals faced death and arson threats, with some of these directed at the J-FLAG offices. J-FLAG did not publicize its location due to such threats, and its officials reported feeling unsafe having meetings with clients at the organization's office.

In February a mob broke into the home of four presumed homosexual men, killing three of them. The fourth was missing and presumed dead. The men had reported being harassed for their perceived sexual orientation prior to the fatal attack. Police made some inquiries in the case but did not conduct a full investigation or make any arrests by year's end.

The trial of six suspects arrested for the 2005 robbery and murder of Lenford "Steve" Harvey, initially begun and then postponed in 2007, was scheduled to recommence in January 2009.

And there's more. Petrelis argues for a boycott of Jamaican products, but I would urge that people contact the Jamaican Embassy in Washington, by letter and telephone, and urge them to become proactive in addressing this constellation of crises. Thinking about the situation in Jamaica also reminds me that many friends and correspondents have written me asking my thoughts about President Obama's decision to sign onto the United Nations gay rights decree, a decided shift from the prior administration. I do think it's a great move, but other issues, such as federal support for partner benefits, ending the failed Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and so on, still loom, and I am hoping that Obama doesn't try to slink away from his campaign promises when it comes to LGBTQ issues.

***

I was sorry to hear about the freak tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson at age 45. I never saw her act on stage, for which she received ample praise, but I thought she shone on screen in a number of roles, including in The Comfort of Strangers (1990) and the film adaptation of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale (1990). The circumstances surrounding her death are particular sad; a fall on a downhill baby slope at a Québec ski resort led to a subdural hematoma and swelling of the brain, yet she thought she was okay and refused more extensive treatment at first until she became severely ill 4 hours later. (I've tried nordic skiing, but alpine skiing, which I love watching, terrifies me to no end.) She leaves her husband, actor Liam Neeson, two sons, her mother, the extraordinary figure Vanessa Redgrave; a sister, actress Joely Richardson; and a half-sister, among other family members.

Also passing away recently was author James Purdy, at age 94. This is a slightly expanded version of what I wrote to Reggie H. about Purdy's passing:

Years ago I engaged in a little spat with him, in the then-titled Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, based on a racist (and anti-Semitic) comment he made after [Toni] Morrison won the Nobel Prize. [He something to the effect that now mainly Blacks and Jews were winning it.] I did like some of his books, though, particularly In a Shallow Grave [which was made into a 1988 film starring a very young Michael Beach and Patrick Dempsey], Malcolm, and Eustace Chisholm and the Works. Garments The Living Wear, the AIDS novel, was a disaster, I thought, rambling, failing in its ironies, verging on incoherent. He, like Coleman Dowell and a few others, was ahead of his time, at least in aesthetic terms.

I do give Purdy--a native West Virginia and longtime Chicago and New York resident who drew upon both cities in his work, and whose combination of raw sexuality and violence always struck me as fitting for our society--credit for having stuck to his vision, even when it meant obscurity; his four novels of the 1970s and 1980s perhaps sank his reputation with the New York publishing industry at a time when that really was the kiss of death.

Some time back, during one of my periods deep in the paper pit, reader Kai had written to ask my thoughts about the passing at age 76 of John Updike, one of the most prodigious and acclaimed writers in contemporary American literature. Reggie H. and I naturally exchanged emails about Updike's death, and I wrote to him:

Wow! He was one of the writers (authors, poets, nontheoretical critics, etc.) who towered over the last 50 years, pretty much from the time he graduated from college. It's strange to think that he's not with us. I had many quarrels with him, his work, his racism or racial [and gender] limitations [and in particular, his sorry excuse for a novel titled Brazil, which led me to write a letter to the newspaper in protest], and so on, but at the same, he was a remarkable figure and often superb writer with greater syntactic and figurative facility than nearly all his peers. His stories again and again show an innate and assured grasp of structure that would take a lifetime to learn. Rabbit At Rest is one of my favorite books, and the first of that tetralogy, Rabbit, Run, is a landmark work of 20th century American literature. [Like perhaps many students over the past four decades, I had to read the book in high school, and found it intermittently enthralling and so tedious I had to force myself to finish it so that I could write a paper on it.] I almost can't believe he's dead, even though I'm typing this.

I used to find it almost unbearable to read his work, since it was so highly extolled during my high school and colleague years (his fiction, that is; I don't think I ever heard much praise for his poetry, and a colleague, one of the major poets out there, recently assessed it as "awful"); its fluency and capacity for almost the most infinitesimal shadings of description and detail were so daunting; and its focus, after the earliest works, on such a narrow stratum of American life, middle-and-upper-middle-class suburban white Northeasterners, was so relentless, but I have cut him some slack over the years, and though I haven't taught an Updike story or novel ever, I do find the novel Memories of the Ford Years, and many of the short stories, such as "A&P" (one of his most famous), "Snowing in Greenwich Village," "The Hermit," "The Killing," and "Playing With Dynamite," among many others, to be exceptional. And they remain, though he's gone.

Signal On + Memorials + Debate #1 + Brazilian Poets in Chicago

I'm back in the Chi, classes are underway. This fall's load looks to be a little lighter than the past few years, since I'm teaching only a graduate workshop and an undergraduate honors seminar, and I'm supervising just a few undergraduates and graduates, all of whom are sharp and talented as they come, so it should be an enjoyable quarter.

***

In the time since I last posted, nearly a month ago, so much has happened on many fronts out there in the wide world, but I do want to note a few things, starting with the passing of a few important people: the first is Reginald Shepherd, a poet I knew, though not well, but whose poetry and criticism I grew to appreciate a great deal. His early and untimely death still shocks me. On the CC list I wrote the following:

I remember his essay, "On Not Being White," in Joseph Beam's anthology In the Life, which annoyed me for a good while until I reread it and made an effort to understand where he was coming from.* I also remember when Reginald's first book came out and all the buzz around it, and how I excited I was to meet him for the first time back at one of the old OutWrite conferences in Boston, in the late 1990s.

He could be, to use Shakespeare's and everybody else's phrase, a piece of work, but he was certainly a brilliant poet and a lively critic. His passing is a real loss for Black, Black LGBTQ, and American poetry, but I hope he finds real peace.

His lyrical facility, the deep and relentless exploration of desire and yearning for love and acceptance that surged through his stanzas, his skill with metaphor and a particularly deft gift for the music of rhyme are all hallmarks I register when I think of his work. Without hesitation I can say that Reginald was easily one of the most important Black/gay poets to emerge over the last 25 years, and I'm very sorry that we have lost his voice. He was only 45, and leaves his partner, Robert Philen, and many family members.

Also, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, the Puerto Rican/Nuyorican author, also passed away earlier this month. I met him once, at a reading featuring some of New York's important Latino writers that I helped coordinate at one of my former jobs. I wasn't at all familiar with his work, but hearing Vega Yunqué read and talk about his life and work, he struck me as a real treasure. Original, funny, feisty, cantankerous, and like so many, deserving of greater honors and attention than he ever received. After the reading I went and found some of his work, which reminded me in many ways of Ishmael Reed, not least in its caustic humor and social criticism. Like Ishmael, Vega Yunqué was a social activist, and played a key role in building and nurturing Puerto Rican/Nuyorican/Latino letters and arts in New York; he was one of the founders of the vital arts center Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center on the Lower East Side. He was 72.

Then there was the news of the tragic death of one of the most celebrated writers of the contemporary era, David Foster Wallace. I've taught his work a few times over the years, and consider his story "The Girl With Curious Hair" to be a comic masterpiece. I'm less a fan of his novel, Infinite Jest, which I admit I advanced only about 300 pages into, but whatever my thoughts about that work, I must say that Wallace was blindingly talented and offered one of the most influential, ironic takes on our society to be found in recent literature. A huge loss.

And then yesterday I read about the passing of one of the consistently superb actors--and activists--of the last half of the 20th century, Paul Newman, at 83. Very sad.

***

I watched the debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain last night. My own thoughts about the contest aren't important, because it appears that Obama achieved what was most necessary: positive reviews by many in the influential establishment media, and very positive reviews by independent voters and in quick post-debate polls. While I will definitely be watching the Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and the walking disaster known as Sarah Palin, I'm not sure if I can bear another Obama-McCain talkfest, especially if Obama, however successful his tactics, refuses to challenge McCain more and if McCain's rage and contempt have him seething like an old and overheating radiator.

***

One highlight of this week was the series of readings in Chicago by four noteworthy contemporary Brazilian poets, Maria Esther Maciel, Virna Teixeira, Paulo Henriques Britto, and Sérgio Medeiros. The poets, from Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza by way of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Matto Grosso do Sul via Florianópolis respectively, all appeared in the Brooklyn-based literary journal Aufgabe's issue no. 7 (2007), which featured a special section on Brazilian writing, edited by poet and translator Ray Bianchi. Ray also organized the readings, with Aufgabe editor E. Tracy Grinnell, and they took place at three different venues across Chicagoland: the university, the University of Chicago, and at Chicago's main branch Harold Washington Library in the Loop. Colleagues at the university, along with Litmus Press, the Chicago Poetry Project, and the Consulate General of Brazil in Chicago, all sponsored the events.

I attended the first reading, at the university, which my colleague, prodigious author and translator Reg Gibbons, had helped to coordinate and which he introduced. All four of the poets read either excerpts from longer work or a few short poems in Portuguese, and either they or Ray followed with English translations. One of the things that intrigued me was that two of the poets, Henriques Britto and Teixeira, both wrote in English as well as Portuguese; for Henriques Britto it resulted from his having spent part of his youth in Washington, DC, and he later told me that his first poetic language was English. Teixeira told me that she wrote in English when she was living for several years in Scotland, though now she wrote almost always in Portuguese. In the case of both poets, the English was idiomatic and lyrical, with Henriques Britto's more discursive and assured in its handling of rhyme, and Teixeira's grounded in concise and evocative imagery.

With regard to their Portuguese texts, I noted and asked about the differences during the question and answer session. Medeiros, who told me about a new language melding Portuguese, Spanish and Guaraní that was developing in southern Brazil (where he lives), read from a long poem that was both fragmentary and composed along the lines of what I would identify as the Language poetry movement's "new sentence." Maciel's briefer poems drew upon the rich homophonic, rhyming polysemous possibilities of Portuguese, which she contrasted with a few visually grounded prose poems. Teixeira's short poems moved from image to image, and, as became clear soon enough, were often inspired by works of art. The fourth poet, Henriques Britto, read poems in fixed forms: sonnets, a half-sestina, and a full villanelle. They sounded as adroit and nimble in Portuguese as in English.

When the writers spoke about influences, they listed many of the best known names in 20th century Brazilian poetry: Carlos Drummond de Andrade, João Cabral de Melo Neto, the two de Campos brothers, Augusto and Haroldo, and Cecília Meireles. They also mentioned English-language authors such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and the great modernists Wallace Stevens and, from a later generation, Elizabeth Bishop. In reading the poetry in the special section, I wondered about more recent national and international trends and influences, because a number of the writers are in conversation with them. Other questions during the Q&A touched upon the contemporary literary landscape in Brazil, national vs. regional trends there today, the presence and influence of literary journals (which Ray does touch upon in his introduction to the special section), and the problem of a readership for poetry. Three of the writers, I believe, are also university professors, though I didn't gather that any of them taught creative writing per se; that is, it seems, a peculiarity thus far of the English-speaking world (mainly the US, Britain, Canada, and Australia). Teixeira mentioned that she was a medical doctor, and the precision of her work, in retrospect, bore this out.

I attended a second round today at the Harold Washington Library, and got to hear all the writers read more of their work. Maciel read one of my favorite poems from the special section, a poem consisting only of a litany of single words separated by commas, which ends with "palavra" (word). It was titled "Palavras preferidas" in Portuguese, and "Favorite Words" in English. The translator managed to capture some of the richness of the original's sonorities and playfulness, but there is nothing like hearing "ferrugem" (iron) or "ruido" (noise) or "arara" (arara!) pronounced by a native Portuguese speaker, Brazilian or from Europe or Africa. It's almost as if paper's crinkling in the mouth as a song emerges. Lovely: amável!

The event was heartening on many levels, but I also hope it's a signal that more such events will be possible in the future.