The Case of the Purloined Langston of DC

A poet (I have known for half my adult life, and not least for his prestidigitory skills) decided to engage in his own form of protest during the Associated Writing Programs conference.

At Busboys and Poets, a popular DC-area bookstore, there once stood a cardboard cutout of Langston Hughes as a busboy, his occupation when he was a young poet and working at the Wardman Park Hotel, the main venue of the AWP conference.

And then, one night, while the conference was underway, the cardboard cutout disappeared in the company of a certain poet, a native of DC, a former resident of Boston, Providence and Cleveland, and now a denizen of New York City and its environs (cf. below right, photo: Graywolf Press): Thomas Sayers Ellis.

(I was in Busboys and Poets on Thursday evening, after the Encyclopedia reading, and must confess that I neither noticed the cardboard Langston nor his absence this time. I should add that when in DC I have seldom spent time at the store, which has a great selection of work and delicious, affordable food, and have never read or been invited to read there. I was there during the last Split This Rock conference, in 2010.)

Another poet, of considerable note, noted to the bookstore and performance space's owner that he had seen said Hughes, at the Wardman Park Hotel no less, arm in arm with the purloiner-protester. Neither, it's fair to say, was bussing.

The poet says he transported the cardboard Hughes because the spot, which does sponsor poets in residence and pays readers a $50 fee could and should pay these artists better. "You would think that an establishment that makes as much money as Busboys would have set in place a reading series with a respectful pay scale for writers."

A cellphone photo of stand-in Hughes has reached Busboys and Poets owner Andy Shallal (below left), but his whereabouts remain known only to the poet, and stand-in Hughes.

According to the Washington Post, Shallal says he is going to get another Hughes to stand in his window. Perhaps the purloiner-protester will host or at least participate in a reading at Busboys and Poets in the future at which the original cardboard Hughes also makes a reappearance. And will, like any poets or writers reading at the spot, get a bit more cash for his efforts. I think the real Hughes would strongly approve.

Walking Poem: A March Against Censorship

On Friday afternoon, after spending a little time at the university's info table, talking up the MA/MFA program and Triquarterly Online, I headed to the corner of Connecticut Ave. and Woodley Road, just up the block from the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and a stone's throw from the National Zoo to join the participants in SAYING IT: A Walking Poem Against Censorship. Co-organized by Cara Benson, Caroline Crumpacker, Tina Darragh, Jennifer Karmin, and Dana Teen Lomax as part of the Belladonna* Collaborative, and reprising Jennifer Karmin's 2006 Walking Poem Project in Chicago, nearly a dozen people, joined at various points by DC residents themselves, walked through the chilly but picturesque Washington streets to the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Monument at M St. NW, just a few blocks down from Dupont Circle (a place where I spent many a day and night in my youth), for a moment of silence, a reading of the US Bill of Rights and the UN Charter on Human Rights, and some of the impromptu poems that passersby and participants along the way (including at the conference) had drafted.  We also answered inquiries from people we encountered about what "censorship" meant (letting them know that all of the marchers were not in agreement about either the meaning of the term), received a good deal of affirmation from younger people, and talked among ourselves about the importance of political action of this sort at an increasingly institutionalized even like AWP, in which networking and politicking assume increasing importance. Many thanks to the organizers, fellow participants, and everyone who joined us, even temporarily, honked, smiled, or even registered what this little intervention was trying to get across.

Caroline Crumpacker, Dana Teen Lomax, Jennifer Karmin & David Emanuel
 
DC poets Phyllis Rosenzweig & Tina Darragh, collecting impromptu poems

Rosenzweig and Darragh talking and walking with a DC resident
 
Cara Benson, pink poster in hands, at the crosswalk
 
What the doorman wrote (for Rosenzweig and Darragh)
 
With Longfellow (me, Cara Benson, Jennifer Karmin, Dana Teen Lomax, Caroline Crumpacker, Phyllis Rosenzweig & Emily Skillings (standing above)
 
Reading, declaiming, listening
 
Dear America: a sandwichboard poem (Dana Teen Lomax & Jennifer Karmin)

Encyclopedia 2/War Diaries Reading @ AWP

It's February, it's winter quarter, it's the time of the year when I don't have time to breathe. But I did manage to get to the Associated Writing Programs annual conference in Washington, DC, this past week, for two days, in part to participate in Encyclopedia's Vol. 2 F-K Launch Party, with War Diaries, the last in a series of arts-collaborative publications from AIDS Project Los Angeles.

The reading, organized by the remarkable Tisa Bryant, co-editor both of Encyclopedia (with Kate Schatz and Miranda Mellis) and of War Diaries (with Ernest Hardy) took place on Thursday night at the DC Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Communities, and the lineup included Samiya Bashir (Encyclo & War Diaries), A. Naomi Jackson, Jen Hofer, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Reggie Harris (Reggie H.!), Robin Coste Lewis, Vanessa Place, Terese Swoboda, Bronwen Tate, Kevin Simmons, Sarah Fran Wisby, and Matias Viegener.  It was an honor to read with this crew, and I was also very happy to present a little sunburst of Jean Wyllys's work in English. (Perhaps that was the first time anyone had done so?)

A few writers, including Duriel Harris and Bhanu Kapil, unfortunately weren't able to make to town in time to participate. (My own trip was happened truly on a few wings, a prayer, and one bad knee: I had to teach Thursday morning, so I raced to O'Hare on the post-Snowpocalyptic roads, which were still paved with snow atop a bed of ice, which meant an even longer trip than usual, only to be told that I had arrived too late to make my flight, but the American Airlines check-in agent suggested that I nevertheless go to the gate, and so after I made it through security I ran, luggage in tow, to the gate, was able to board my flight to Philadelphia, and then was able to make an even earlier connecting flight to DC, which brought me to DC National Airport with an hour to spare before the reading.  Even after gym workouts I haven't gotten as soaked with sweat as I did sprinting to my gate.) The reading packed the room, and it was especially wonderful to see writers I haven't seen in a few years or many.

Below are a few photos from the event (including one of me that Reggie took). Some of the readings are obvious, but see if you can guess what each writer actually read. If you want to know, I highly recommend the new volume, whose index alone will give you a productive brain workout, and I also recommend War Diaries, which you can order directly from AIDS Project Los Angeles.

Organizer Tisa Bryant

Tisa

A. Naomi Jackson
 
Sueyuen Juliette Lee

Vanessa Place

 
Terese Swoboda
 
Robin Coste Lewis
 
Jen Hofer
 
Matias Viegener
 
Yours truly (photo by Reggie Harris)

Lisa Moore

Trasi Johnson

Erica Doyle, Kate Rushen, Holly Bass

End of Quarter + DC Marriage Equality a Reality

Is it true that 9 weeks have passed since January 4, 2010? They must have, because the undergraduate quarter is over on Friday; next week is Reading Week, and exams and final papers and projects follow one week later.  Today was the final meeting of the "Situation of Writing" class, and I must say that I'll really miss the students in that class. Today we concluded our discussion by discussing articles on MFA programs by Menand, Delaney, and Greif; on Rick Moody's Twitter short story, the e-book truce between Amazon and the publishers, and on the old vision of hypertexts vs. new(er) ones; and on Rebecca Mead's New Yorker article on the twin Dickman poets (yes, that's their last name). We also momentarily touched upon graphomania and Alice Flaherty's The Midnight Disease, which I'll have to give more time next time, just as I think I ought to return to Pascale Casanova's The World Republic of Letters (other than Moretti's book on global literature, is there anything out there that's comparable and not weighted down by leaden theory?). There were a good many other things to discuss that we didn't have an opportunity to (though we ran the table on the syllabus!), but as I told them today, I felt like I learned a great deal from them, as I always do. We also had the final quarter meeting of the novella class, and they turn in the opening 10 pages tomorrow, but I'll be seeing them in all the old familiar places next quarter (the semester continues), so this isn't an ending, but a brief hiatus. My final class meeting is next Wednesday; I really enjoy these graduate writers, so it'll be hard to say goodbye to them as well.  After 7 years, I'm still not used to the speed with which a quarter zooms by; on the one hand, we always get a lot done in a short period of time, but on the other, I always feel like it's just too short.

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If you'd told me 10 or 5 or even 2 years ago that Washington, DC would allow same-sex marriage before New York City or State, New Jersey, or even states like Illinois and Washington State, I'd have said you need a wakeup call. But, the unbelievable is now, wonderfully, reality: in the nation's capital, marriage equality is a reality!  At DC's Superior Court, 151 couples lined up for marriage licences today. It's taken many years of struggle but this dream is now a reality, and, as I've said, it--legal equality--will eventually be the law of the land. But for today, let's celebrate this good news from DC!

Rocky Galloway and Reggie Stanley (from Rod 2.0 [http://bit.ly/cQNvY4])