Thinking Its Presence: The Racial Imaginary Conference, UMT, Missoula

Last April, the inaugural version of a conference that was a long time in coming, Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing (TIP14), took place in Missoula, Montana. The brainchild of poet and  professor Prageeta Sharma, in conversation with scholar Dorothy Wang, and poet Joanna Klink, among others, TIP14 brought together writers, scholars, critics, and readers across racial, ethnic, religious, and genre boundaries towards dynamic conversations--as opposed to a single one--about how race, racism and white supremacy function in relation to creative writing, as pedagogy and practice, in the US and elsewhere. This is not to say that such cross-cultural conversations don't happen at other literary conferences--they do, and I am thinking in particular of activist gatherings such as Split This Rock, which I have attended and written about on this blog.

At TIP, however, which draws its title from Dorothy Wang's superb study, Thinking Its Presence: Form Race and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry (Stanford University Press, 2013, 2015), which adopted it from a poem by the poet Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, what was clear last year, and even more so this year, especially as outrageous yet unsurprising racist events in the wider literary world were occurring simultaneously, was the conference's practice of active decentering whiteness as norm (and lack), and of its social, political and cultural interrogation of and pressure upon white normativities and the values and power attendant in them.

This year's iteration, Thinking Its Presence: The Racial Imaginary (TIP2015), which ran from from March 12-14, 2015, and directly grappled, in discussions that took place both inside and outside the various classrooms and auditoriums, with the discourses and ideology of whiteness as normativity, and the systems and structures that have made it so, institutionalized racism, and, in particular, the unnameable thing in our society, the ideology of white supremacy. (In concert with though not in coördination with the conference, the Boston Review published a critical forum, "Race and the Poetic Avant-Garde," curated by Dorothy and Stefania Heim and featuring eight pieces, by Dorothy, David Marriott, Lyn Hejinian, Prageeta, David Lloyd, Mónica de la Torre, Stefania, and Erica Hunt; and the Mongrel Coalition, an incisive, fearless group of poets, issued a public manifesto, "Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo," which includes a critique of Kenneth Goldsmith's and others' shenanigans, as well as of the larger, still whitewashed avant-po-crit-world.)

Kristin Languell & Tonya Foster,
my walking companions

Ed Pavlic, reading from
Let's Let Not Yet   Inferno

Dorothy Wang

One of the books that was central to this year focus was the amazing Claudia Rankine's superlative, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning collection Citizen (Graywolf Press, 2014). Citizen is one fruit of Claudia's prior, 2011 online "Open Letter" project, which provided a space for writers and readers to recount and explore, as TIP2015's abstract points out, "art’s failure, thus far, to adequately imagine race and culture." In response to Rankine’s project, "writers [have] question[ed] the effects and affects of racial difference and explore what it means for art to fail and to adequately imagine." Many of the participants in Rankine's project, which is now a Fence Books anthology, published this January and entitled The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race In the Life of the Mind, edited by Claudia, Beth Loffreda and Max King, participated in TIP2015, as did a number of other writers who were not present last year. Among the featured writers new to the conference were Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Marilyn Chin, Thomas Sayers Ellis, William S. YellowRobe, and Ofelia Zepeda, and figures honored and invoked through panels and discussion during the conference included Wanda Coleman, Amiri Baraka, Stuart Hall, and Fred Ho.

Will Alexander and Charles Alexander

Will Alexander, reading from
his new quartet

One of the bridges, with
lovers' locks

Clark Fork River

I should note that although I ended up participating in four different events, I was not sure, as late as the beginning of March, that I would be able to attend, based on the state of my knees. I received medical clearance to fly and to participate but had to take it much easier than I would have, so though I ended up walking some days as much as 4 miles (!), there were no traipses, like last year's, along the Clark Fork River's trails or jaunts back and forth between Montana's beautiful mountain-trimmed campus and the easily walkable downtown area. On the other hand, I was very happy to be on my feet and healing in real time, and not to have to resort to being ferried about constantly. I felt considerably more scattered than I usually do at such gatherings, though, and was still in significant pain throughout, so my apologies to anyone to whom I seemed air-headed, short or impolite.

Bill YellowRobe, Jr.

Jess Row & Aja Mujinga Sherrard

I was able to walk from the hotel to my first event, a Fence-sponsored reading with Ed Pavlic, whose next collection of poems, Let's Let No Yet   Inferno, to be published in Fall 2015 by Fence and which I selected for the 2014 National Poetry Series, at Missoula's Shakespeare and Company bookstore, and to remain vertical at each of my other events, including a Founders Reading with Tisa Bryant and Sherwin Bitsui, which included a Q&A afterwards led by Dorothy; a panel on race and translation organized by Jen Hofer, with James Thomas Stevens; and a response to a brilliant paper by race, racism and comic cynicism by Jess Row. I cannot praise enough the contributions all of them made. I also was very glad to be able to attend a number of the events I was not participating in, and as was the case last year, came away intellectually provoked, enriched and inspired. I did not, however, make the dance this year; I did not want to push my luck.

Karen An-hwei Lee & Luisa Igloria

Luisa Igloria, Ruthie Kocher & Bhanu Kapil

Bhanu showing Ruthie &
everyone a technique to
address & relieve stress

One of the most telling moments at the conference occurred when a white poet with whom I was chatting said that she perceived visible and palpable "fear" among the white people present. I thought about what she had described, and I read this apparent "fear" in a different way; what I saw was some emotional discomfort, sometimes expressed in body language, as caution, or hesitation, or carefulness, in speaking and acting. And I read these responses as attempts at engage with a deeper, non-normative awareness, to more carefully and critically think about their words, works and ways of being and creating in the--which is to say, our--world. This is not to say that I witnessed every white person present had an epiphany, as polite but contentious exchanges I had with members of the audience at my conversation with Jess Row made clear--one audience member suggested that all racial problems would disappear in several decades as we all became "brown," while another claimed that the problems in Brazil hinged not on race but class, as if the two were somehow inextricable. But for those few days in Missoula, I could begin to see and hear people actively working through different ways of thinking and being.

Several white (or white-racially marked) poets spoke about actively rejecting or resisting white skin privilege, though they also made quite clear that it was not merely a personal choice, but part of a larger, social and societal process and practice (or praxis) that was neither simple nor permanent, because the power inherent in white skin privilege and entitlement is vast, and the systems that endow them with such power are extremely difficult to dismantle. Alongside this, I saw levels of ease and camaraderie among many the writers of color, and intraracial-ethnic and interracial-ethnic expressions of joy at being able to share, listen, teach, learn, commiserate, interact, bond, and no longer have to explain or defend, though there was some of this too. These circuits of connection animated every space the conference occupied.

Ronaldo V. Wilson, perforeading

Ronald, en masque

There were so many highlights I cannot catalogue them all, but you can check out the conference schedule here. A glittering array of established and emerging writers and scholars were present, and for the first time got to hear Marilyn Chin and Ofelia Zepeda read their work and to meet both writers. Marilyn's performance of "How I Got That Name" brought the house down. Another delight was catching William YellowRobe Jr.'s often hilarious play, "Native American Paranormal Society (NAPS)," and then having an opportunity to speak with the playwright and actor afterwards. The culminating event, Claudia's reading from Citizen and from The Racial Imaginary, packed the auditorium, and sparked a number of conversations afterwards. For those who could not attend, many of the panels were videotaped and will be available once the videos are archived.

Among the many people I had an opportunity to listen to and talk with, including those named above and below, were: Vidhu Aggarwal, Charles Alexander and Will Alexander (with whom I had a great lunch and chat), Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Teresa Carmody, Mike Emmons, Tonya Foster, Todd Fredson, David Micah Greenberg, Anna Maria Hong, Luisa A. Igloria, Lisa Jarrett (thank you for the ride and great conversation!), Bhanu Kapil, Joy Katz, Ruthie Kocher, Kristin Languell, Sandra Lim, Farid Matuk, Tracie Morris (cousin!), Gar Patterson, Vanessa Place, Amanda Ngoho Reavey, Paisley Rekdal, Metta Sama, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Elissa Washuta (with whom I had a great trip to Seattle), Ronaldo Wilson (love set and match!), David Witzling, and Maggie Zurawski. This is only a small portion of the wonderful gathering of minds there, and I offer fond thoughts to and for anyone I had an opportunity to chat with and accidentally did not name! (Let me know if we chatted and I left your name out!)

Joanna Klink, introducing Claudia Rankine

Claudia, reading & speaking

One of my favorite event occurred on Friday night, at the Missoula Art Museum, when poet Thomas Sayers Ellis, my fellow Dark Room Collective member, who is a visiting professor this semester at Montana, led an ensemble, entitled Heroes Are Gang Leaders, in tribute to the late Amiri Baraka (1932-2014) and Amina Baraka, artist, dance, activist, and Amiri's widow, who is thankfully still with us. Band members included fellow Dark Roomer and poet Janice Lowe (Piano/Voice), James Brandon Lewis (Saxophone), Luke Stewart (Bass), poet Ailish Hopper, (Poet), poet Randall Horton (Poet), Margaret Morris (Voice), and Ryan Frazier (Trumpet), many of whom also participated in recording an album of Baraka tribute pieces this past year. Thomas was the impresario, conductor and, as he described himself, Head Hegro-in-Charge. The group's unique combination of blues, funk, hip hop, gogo, r&b, soul, and even classical music, with a riff on Samuel Barber's famous "Adagio"--as well as the rich trove of Baraka's poetry, dramaturgy and prose, and that of the participating poets, was extraordinary, with the second set even better than the first.

Ailish Hopper (in foreground),
Thomas Sayers Ellis in back, James
Brandon Lewis at center

Margaret Morris, Ari Laurel (on guitar),
and local Montanan on the sound board

Randall Horton launching a paper
airplane, Thomas, Ryan Frazier (back
turned), Luke Stewart (on bass)

James speaking, Thomas at right

I want to end by thanking everyone--students, staff, faculty, and administrators, and the local sponsors--who made TIP2015 possible. Thank you Dorothy and Joanna, thank you to all the other board members and participants I have not mentioned by name, and an especial thanks to Aja Mujinga Sherrard, and to Prageeta Sharma, who lost their beloved father and husband, Dale Sherrard,  respectively, and who despite their tremendous grief still made this conference happen, and as smoothly as possible. Thank you many times over, and Prageeta, I and many others are eager to continue working with you to ensure that the Thinking Its Presence conference, and your vision for it, go forward.

A view from a dinner venue

One of Bhanu's anti-racist eye masks,
which she gave to everyone present

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, reading

Ofelia Zepeda

Marilyn Chin

Luke Stewart, and Janice
Lowe (in front, at piano)

Thomas, peforming

Tonya Foster, Tracie Morris, Ronaldo

One of the decorated doors
at the Holiday Inn

Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing

Sometimes conversations about changing the world, or at least about interventions that might spark real change, can lead to tangible outcomes with potential powerful, long-range effects. One example of this occurred this past weekend, at the University of Montana, in Missoula, at the inaugural Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing Conference. Organized by acclaimed poets and critics Prageeta Sharma and Joanna Klink, the conference arose out of conversations about institutional racism, aesthetic and critical blind spots, and the necessity for writers and scholars teaching creative writing to convene to hash things out. It also served as a public launch for scholar Dorothy Wang's superb new monograph, Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race and Subjectivity in Asian American Poetry (Stanford University Press, 2013), which explores these and other crucial issues specifically in relation to 20th and 21st century Asian American poetics and poets, but also within the larger American literary, aesthetic and cultural fields.

The opening panel

The conference, which ran for three days, comprised panel discussions, readings, talks, pedagogical presentations and papers, and a keynote address by Dorothy. Scholars, writers, students, alumni, and staff from the University of Montana, among Montana's president, Royce Engstrom, and from points all over the US and overseas attended, as did people from throughout the local Missoula creative community. A number of nearby businesses, including Submittable, the online submission software company that is based in Missoula, served as sponsors, and one restaurant, Plonk, provided a special discounted menu for the duration of the gathering.

There were many highlights, beginning with the opening panel, which featured University of Montana scholars, among them David Moore, George Price, Quan-Manh Ha, Benedicte Boisseron, and Dylan Suagee, each of whom not only gave provocative papers that provided conceptual and thematic frames for the rest of the event. Price, a local historian and lecturer at Montana of Wampanoag, African-American and Euro-American ancestry, opened his talk with a Wampanoag greeting, before posing the question at the center of his paper: "Equally What?" He suggested that historically oppressed people's quest for equality had often been presented and resulted in a push for material, and more specifically, consumerist equality, but pressing questions of social, political and economic equity, as well as attentiveness to the landscapes around us, still awaited a response from the larger society.

The Naropa-based writers Sarah Richards Graba,
Ellie Swensson, and Amanda Ngoho Reavey

Equity vs. equality proved a recurrent theme throughout, as did Suagee's point about writing by people of color being a political act always, and his emphasis on the necessity of crossing boundaries to gain knowledge, power and capital to take it back to share with our home communities. This flowed into his discussion of mobile identities and identifications--intersectionalities--and of "communitism," or the merger of community and activism, which he saw his and others' work striving to achieve. One final point that Suagee also broached was that we recognize that "assimilation" was not the goal; as he noted, for many Indians who had gained resources through oil revenues, they were becoming more Indian, not less. That idea of not sacrificing difference in the face of liberal--and now neoliberal--assimiliationist discourse and policies also reappeared throughout the conference.

Monica Mody's Skyped participation

Another key moment was Dorothy's talk, which reprised part of her study's chapter on poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, while ranging more broadly to encompass contemporary criticism about poetries by poets of color. A thread throughout her talk was to disarticulate the concepts of the autobiographical, the universal, the abstract, and the experimental. The questions she fielded were sometimes pointed. One questioner, in an effort to bash "identity politics," a misreading of Dorothy's point about how minority poets, especially ones working in a formally experimental vein and producing work that is not racially marked, wielded what I call the "Hegel" card, which is to say, using European philosophy and critical theory as a trump to make his point, but she was as sharp and spirited in her response, and basically put him and Hegel in their place(s).

Don Mee Choi

After Dorothy finished the Q&A, we took a short break, and Sherwin, an acclaimed Diné poet from the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, and I read in succession. He presented both new work and poems from his most recent collection, Flood Song (2009), the former performed almost as though being projected onto an imaginary screen in front of the audience. For my part, I read a new story inspired by a link to minstrelsy sheet music Dorothy had discovered and sent last fall, which led me to look into the life of Bob Cole (1886-1911), who, I learned, was a major figure in the development of African American vaudeville cultural production. Cole committed suicide while on summer vacation, and my story explored his final hours, weaving in not only snippets of his songs--among which number the still well known "Under the Bamboo Tree," performed by Judy Garland in her 1949 film Meet Me In St. Louis, a personal favorite--but also a structural chiasmus in which one song he wrote based on a famous Negro spiritual cross, with a reprise of yet another series of lyrics unfolding in rapid fashion at the end of the story. At any rate, I think it went over very well, and it will be part of a collection, Counternarratives, which is on its way next year.

Elizabeth Eslami, Michelle Naka Pierce,
Tisa Bryant, Heather Cahoon

There were so many excellent panels and readings I'll just mention a few. One was by young writers studying at Naropa University (Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics). Chaired by Naropa professor Michelle Naka Pierce, a superb poet in her own right, the panel featured Ellie Swensson, Sarah Richards Graba, and Ngoho Reavey, each of whom explored distinctive aspects of the panel's theme, "Engaging Urgency: Articulation of the Polysemous Self." I have to mention Ellie's neologism "omniantichronology," which she articulated, if I recall correctly, as a way of showing the plasticity of temporality. Themes and practices involving the body, language and multiplicity in terms of form, genre and platform ran through all three of their presentations, with Sarah noting that "to return to the place [where violence occurs] even in your mind creates violence," but she, like Ellie and Ngoho, was interested in the "wound of the return." As Ngoho pointed out, which underlined a number of presentations all weekend long, "English is always a site of translation," and she mentioned the untranslatability of a Tagalog term which a body in relation to all other bodies, which she was looking at in some of her recent work. During this panel, an exchange involving one of the white audience members and Ellie unfolded around white privilege, in which the panel mistook Ellie's mention of privilege as saying that she'd "overcome" it (which the audience member also linked to her own "pain" and burden as a result of that privilege), leading Tisa and I to offer our thoughts, and while the issue was not fully resolved, I felt like there was an open exchange.

Lillian Yvonne Bertram reading

Another memorable event was Jess Row's talk, "White Flights," a version of an essay he'd previous published, in which he spoke about the quest among many white American writers of the last 30 or so years for "deracination," which is to say, both "derace" themselves, submerging their racial identity into a normativized universal American (middle-class) subjectivity, but also uprooting themselves from the increasingly racially, ethnically, religiously, and class-diverse urban and suburban spaces of late 20th and early 21st century America. This "white flight" thus has involved not only a flight from racialized others, but from racial identification itself. Among the writers and works he cited as part of his nuanced, enlightening critique were Marilynne Robinson in her famous novel Housekeeping, Anne Beattie's stories, and Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford and his Frank Bascombe trilogy. Jess noted that since the 1960s, a "decoupling" now linked to an absorption with the landscape depopulated of its original and current peoples, with this liberal abstraction turning into a generalized feeling sublimating racial and social guilt.

Jess Row

Among the many ironies Jess pointed out, this sublimation, abstraction and submerging has been frequently--regularly--characterized as "realism," though it is evidently quite different and distinct from the realism of 19th century European and American literature. In reading Ford and others, he also spoke about the "invisible capital," especially in terms of real estate, to use George Lipsitz's terms, that gets passed on generation after generation by white people, citing the massive loss, in the double digits billions of dollars African Americans have faced by being cut of out the Homestead Act and subsequent legislation, and noted that in over the last four decades we have witnessed a massive "reinvestment in whiteness" in our literature, either by a literary focus on suburbia or exurbia, or on rural settings. There has been an impulse, he stated, "towards erasure and avoidance," with the controversial HBO show Girls representing a metastatization of this spatial deracination. I.e., Brooklyn with the black and brown people!

Tisa presenting at one of the
pedagogy panels

Throughout a host of readers presented their work, including featured authors Kimiko Hahn, Mena Alexander, and Kathryn Shanley, as well as Lillian Yvonne Bertram, Tisa, Heather Cahoon, Teresa Carmody, Don Mee Choi, Biswamit Dwibedy (in electronic form), David Micah Greenberg, Farid Matuk, Monica Mody (by Skype), Tracie Morris, Michelle Naka Pierce, Metta Sama, Aja Sherrard (who was also taking photos throughout), Leihua Taitano, David Witzling, and many more, and the conference concluded with a stellar reading by Montana's very talented and poised MFA students. 1913 Press and Les Figues were especially visible presences throughout.

One bizarre moment occurred when someone attending a Montana state Republican gathering--was it a state party convention? a caucus?--at the Holiday Inn where the conference was occurring decided to act out, in response to the slogan "Minorities with Grievances" (from Dorothy's book) that graced the conference's beautifully designed (by Lisa Jarrett) book bags, towards the people at the Thinking Its Presence table. They received a(n unexpected?) firm and polite response and left, though it was clear that the conference participants present were a bit startled by the unprovoked attack. I heard later that officials from the state party convention did apologize for the imbroglio, and as far as I know for the rest of the conference, attendees to both events came and went without incident.

Montana GOP posters all
over the Holiday Inn atrium

The manageable size of this conference compared to the usual literary ones I attend (like the Associated Writing Programs Conference, for example, which by its very nature has to keep expanding) and the racial, ethnic, gender, class, and sexual diversity were refreshing, as was another key difference from nearly every literary conference: the vibrant participation of Native American writers, artists and scholars. Both led to broader and richer conversations, especially ones going beyond the black-white dynamic and involving a broader spectrum of issues (often similar, but distinct given the US's history) that people of color face, than I usually hear. In general, too, the openness of participants to dialoguing across differences and disagreements was invigorating, and should happen far more than it does. (I do hope there are more participants working in playwrighting/drama and performance next year.) Prageeta and Joanna achieved something quite significant with this conference, and I am eagerly looking forward to next year's event, again at Montana, which will no doubt build upon this year's excellent pilot gathering.

Farid Matuk

Meena Alexander and one of the Montana students

David Micah Greenberg

Anna Maria Hong

Julie Rouse, one of the talented
Montana MFA students reading

Rutgers-Newark Student Readings @ KGB Bar

KGB Bar, one of the East Village staples, where many a young writer, including yours truly, has read work in progress. In the 1990s the creative writing programs--or perhaps it was just students organizing them--at NYU and Columbia used to host a joint reading fiction series that brought together what always felt like somewhat contrasting styles: technical proficiency in the case of the Columbia writers, and wilder subject matter from the NYU wordsmiths. Very likely this was just my impression and others went away with different insights, but the gatherings were always a lot of fun, and somewhat bridged the divide between the two behemoth institutions. At other KGB readings I can recall faculty members from both schools also reading, one that I particularly recall involving Randall Kenan, then at Sarah Lawrence, though he has long since departed for more southern climes. 

But it had been a while since I hit KGB, so it was a pleasure to head there last night to catch three Rutgers-Newark affiliated student writers, nonfiction writer Iris Ortiz, poet Adam Bowser, and fiction writer Serena Lin, reading their work live, as part of a series Rutgers-Newark students have been running for the last few years. The bar was still so small as to make a tiny crowd feel like a packed stadium, but I found a spot, sipped a Guiness, and listened to all three writers. I should note that I currently am advising Adam and Serena, so I am quite familiar with their work, and I'd even seen Serena read during last year's student series in Newark, but it was a pleasure to hear all three of them, Iris reading from a personal memoir, Adam performing poems with a bit of local flavor and language, and Serena reading from a moving story about a character's struggles with and loss of her mother.

The warmth of the bar and the liveliness of the introductions (by a few more Rutgers-Newark students I've been lucky to work with) and readings made venturing out in the bitter New York cold a worthwhile proposition. It also made me think that I should check the bar's schedule to once again start catching more readings there if possible.

Iris Ortiz

Iris Ortiz 

Adam Bowser 

Serena Lin 

Serena Lin

National Book Awards & Poem: Mary Szybist

I watch too much TV, still. I say every single day that I am going to cut back, and I have had periods (like winters in Chicago) when I could go for long stretches watching almost nothing except a show or two (The Wire, Sleeper Cell, Project Runway, etc.), but now that I'm back in New Jersey full-time, part of the rhythm of home involves that infernal digital box (I was going to write cathode ray contraption, but those days are now mostly gone). My TV watching--which does not preclude reading, for classes, for pleasure, etc.--even extended recently to a program I never thought I would sit through, the 2013 National Book Awards ceremony. It ran on CSPAN-2, I believe, and I know that I wasn't the only one watching, because as is now the case with many TV programs, it included a vibrant social media component, which meant that my Twitter feed lit up with comments from Twitterati I follow (or who were retweeting other wits and observers) who were watching the program too.

The fiction finalists

One part of me did think that it was perhaps ridiculous to be tweeting about an awards ceremony focused on book awards, but another part of me said, how wonderful that literary arts, though framed by a strong commercial push from the National Book Foundation and major global and domestic publishers, are not only being celebrated, but televised, and not just televised, but watched and reviewed in real time. Most of the people in my Twitter feed, as did I, tended to celebrate the authors, make positive comments about the winners' work and self-presentation, and cheer about specific books that were nominated and those that won. I thankfully did not see many--any?--negative comments about the authors or their book nor did I see arguments break out about the selections. In truth it is so rare to see living poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, and authors of young adult literature individually or together, and their work, their art, our arts, being celebrated no less, on our dominant cultural mass medium that I think this may have held a lot of negativity in check.

The nonfiction finalists

One person who provoked a smidgen of negative commentary was one of the two co-hosts, Mika Brzezinski. She struck me as somewhat incongruous amidst the proceedings, though it turns out that the National Book Awards finalists were revealed on Morning Joe, the program she co-hosts with former GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough. I am not being snide or snarky when I say that while I think she may be a savvy person--and she has gotten quite far in the world, admittedly with the boost of a famous parent--she does not give the impression of being a regular reader or literary enthusiast. But I have not studied her life exhaustively and could be quite wrong; she did study English at Williams College and very well may consume books the way many around us devour reality TV shows and TV melodramas, and perhaps her performance on Morning Joe is more performance than anything else. She unfortunately did make a major flub when, after having announced the order the prizes would be handed out--there were only four, so it should have been fairly easy to remember them and figure out something was amiss, especially for an on-camera professional--she announced the nonfiction presenter instead of the person presenting the award for fiction. Allegedly she also left before the awards ceremony was over. I guess too much of the book business can get to some.

The poetry finalists

The winners included author and musician James McBride for his Civil War-era novel about a young man who accompanies abolitionist John Brown, The Good Lord Bird (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group USA); nonfiction writer George Packer, for his meditations on the contemporary state of American society, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux); Cynthia Kadohata's young adult book The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster); and poet Mary Szybist, who gave the most affecting speech this year, for her collection Incarnadine (Graywolf Press). A few years ago a furor arose because the five fiction finalists were not well known, and most were with smaller presses, but as this year's winners make clear, the big houses mostly cleaned house. There also was for the first time a Man Booker Prize-like longlist, which I think aimed to generate a bit more "buzz" and was a good idea in terms of honoring more writers than fewer, though in a sense it also seems a bit cruel to those who did not advance to the finalist stage. But what are you going to do? In any case there are several more big American/global literary prizes to go (the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prizes, and the various PEN awards, etc.), so perhaps some of the nominees who did not win this time will merit consideration for some of the ones for later this award season cycle, and other authors, like the great Jay Wright, and my brilliant and prolific Rutgers colleagues Rigoberto González, Jim Goodman, Rachel Hadas, Jayne Anne Phillips, Brenda Shaughnessy, all of whom I believe published new books (several in the case of Rigoberto!), will also receive some of these honors. Congratulations to all this year's winners--and to all 2013 authors too!

The young people's literature finalists

I thought I would post two of the most formally daring poems from Mary Szybist's Incarnadine. Their content and rhetoric give a good sense of the book and its concerns, though these two poems go much further, in terms of their formal daring and visuality, than the rest of the book, thus making them almost unrepresentative. I have to say that I like them and like looking at them and like trying to read them, and like that an author is both tackling the subject of God and the numinous, and yet also doing so in ways that are unexpected. And I like that some other poets and critics, serving as judges, saw fit to honor such daring. Several of my undergraduate students have been particularly interested in poetry's non-verbal qualities and abilities, its multiple capacities for signification, and these poems, hearkening in some ways back to George Herbert in the case of the "How (Not) to Speak to God" and to May Swenson or the Concrete poets, just to offer a few examples, in the case of "It is Pretty to Think," exemplify what my students and I have been talking about.



Enjoy:

Copyright © "How (Not) to Talk to God" and "It Is Pretty to Think," by Mary Szybist, from Incarnadine, Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2013. All rights reserved.