42opus!

Between now and July 8th, I'll have some poems up at the delicious 42opus. Today, it's The next time you survey your land, your land will accommodate your skull. Happy Independence Day.

If you're in Chicago, or you miss it...

You'll find the poetry haps here at Chicago Poetry Calendar. Thank you Kristy Bowen!

Delirious Hem: Deviant Beach Reads Forum

Visit Delirious Hem for June's poetics forum Deviant Beach Reads


Monday June 1:
Michele Battiste on Emma Donoghue
Cara Benson on Marianne Apostolides
Mary Biddinger on Banana Yoshimoto

Tuesday June 2:
Michelle Detorie on Carol Emshwiller
Kate Durbin on Angela Carter & Joan Didion
Elisa Gabbert on Joy Williams

Wednesday June 3:
Brandi Homan on Selah Saterstrom
Becca Klaver on Miranda July
Kathleen Ossip on Jennifer Moxley

Thursday June 4:
Evie Shockley on Renee Gladman & Selah Saterstrom
Elizabeth Treadwell on Janet Frame

Friday June 5:
Erika Meitner on Marjane Satrapi
Sarah Murphy on Margo Lanagan & Maggie Stiefvater

This forum includes a DIY option. If you'd like to suggest a Deviant Beach Read, fill out the following form (take your liberties!), and post it in the comments field at Delirious Hem.

Title and author of your pick for Deviant Beach Reads:
Six words that describe this book:
When I first read this book, I...
When I finished this book, I...
This book will...
This book [verb]
This book is a [adjective noun].
A favorite quote from book:

Please write a blurb, endorsement, homage, imitation, or the like re: the experimental/innovative/feminist/deviant woman fiction writer of your choice. You may choose one of her works, or many. You may write about yourself if you write fiction. Has this work been important to you as a poet? As a feminist? Mother? Daughter? Partner? Human? Is this work right for the beach? Is it edifying? Should it be? Is it a destroyer of worlds? When did you first encounter the work? To whom would you give this work? What kind of noise in your head does this work produce? Etc.!

Curated by Danielle Pafunda


Past Forums & Features:
May 2009: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like curated by Danielle Pafunda

December 2008: Advent Kalendar! curated by Susana Gardner

May 2008: Disarming, Destabilizing, & Creeping Out the Patriarchy a Conversation on the Gurlesque with Arielle Greenberg and Danielle Pafunda

February 2008: Dim Sum Being several & a few responses to the trio of "Numbers Trouble" articles in last fall's Chicago Review curated by Elizabeth Treadwell


Future Forums (subject to change and mutation):
July 2009: Summer break, no forum planned, read something deviant.

August 2009: TBA curated by K. Lorraine Graham & Becca Klaver

Fall 2009: Non-normative bodies,(pro)feminist men poets, and This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Part 2!

Thunk: Me v Ryan Manning

what do you aspire to?

Foresight. Patience. Unimpeachability. Lust.

Talk: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like

Catherine Daly here.

Feministing's Community page here.

Jeannine Hall Gailley here.

Becca Klaver here.

Mark Wallace here.



And don't forget:

Reb Livingston here and here

Adam Robinson at HTMLGIANT

Stan Apps here

You! At Delirious Hem; c'mon over.

Gurlesque is for XX II

To be clear, this is my thinking about gender & the Gurlesque. Lara says she'd consider Johannes Goransson & Mayakovsky (to name just two men) Gurlesque. I wouldn't--I'd consider their work of an affinity-aesthetic yet unnamed. Perhaps I'm over-specializing, but I suspect there are a number of highly specific categories with gender-bender affinity, and each of them would be important not only for the bending, but for the mode of bending. A Written on the Body category, for instance, shouldn't be lumped in with the kitschy performance of the feminine, or the hypermasculine, or etc. And I should clarify that I don't believe in an essentially feminine or masculine experience, but I do believe that girls/women and boys/men experience significantly different culturing in the US and abroad, and while we question, challenge, and subvert the binary, we also remain to some degree subject to it.

Questions I'll advance answer to:

1. Could a man/male/masculine manifestation write a Gurlesque poem? Sure, but the speaker to my thinking, would still have to reside in some manifestation of feminine. Or the poem would have to mess with femininity a la the grotesque/burlesque/girly kitsch/etc. that Lara & Arielle describe. I don't think Lara (or Arielle?) agrees with me on this point, and you may find me changing my tune if I see poems + persuasions.

2. Does a human need female biology to perform feminine? No, of course not. But the way girls/women/feminine manifestations are cultured cannot be divorced from our notions about the female body. Consider: testosterone, from testicle, from the Latin root meaning to testify. Estrogen? From oestrus, Latin for gadfly or frenzy. Culture informs biology informs culture...and this to me seems quite central to the poets in whom Gurlesque has been identified. It's vital to examine how these poets confront the powers that police and define female bodies. Further, the female body has long been a site on which aesthetic camps planted flag in a way the male body has not, so there is some very different, necessary work to be done on that stomping ground.

Other questions that seem to be nagging at the borders of discussion:

3. Does the Gurlesque envision gender as a spectrum? Or some other non-binary model? (Answer probably = yes.) And, if so, would that be more significant than, or overwrite the work it does to interrogate explicitly feminine gender roles and the cultural responses to the female form?

4. Do the Gurlesque poets go drag? Do they mess with masculinity? Do they create types neither masculine nor feminine?

5. If so, #4, are those Gurlesque things they do, or are those things they do in addition to the Gurlesque?

There's also discussion afoot over at Johannes Goransson's.

Gurlesque is for XX

Dudes,

I like to think there's a large umbrella of non-normative body/gender work under which Gurlesque and related aesthetics would fall. Mantasia! Dogirlelle! TransManlantic!

Chelsey Minnis & Joe Wenderoth & David Trinidad & kari edwards & so on might all end up in a wonking-huge Gender Trouble Poetry Trouble anthology.

But Gurlesque is descriptive of girls/women/females/feminine manifestations camping up, kitsching up, f-ing up, xing out, troubling femininity--girl type, woman type, mother type, daughter type, hey-lady baby bitch...type, gorgon siren pillar of salt type, wife/girlfriend type, or vagina as social agent type gender. It is not the only mode of interrogating (feminine) gender norms, and all modes are not interchangeable. In my opinion.

Other opinions of late?

Lara Glenum's Gurlesque guest post on Johannes's blog.

Good Things(on the Internet)

The state I most like to see another human in is “nervous but brave,” says Anne Boyer to Ryan Manning at Thunk.

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like

Who's talking:

Reb Livingston here and here

Adam Robinson at HTMLGIANT

Stan Apps here

You! At Delirious Hem; c'mon over.

Featuring:
Monday May 4:
Mary Biddinger, Anne Boyer, & Brandi Homan
Tuesday May 5:
Megan Kaminski, Becca Klaver, & Majena Mafe
Wednesday May 6:
Gina Myers, Martha Silano, & Leah Souffrant
Thursday May 7:
K. Lorraine Graham, Elizabeth Treadwell, & Sarah Vap
Friday May 8:
Teresa Carmody, Kim Rosenfield, Vanessa Place, & Christine Wertheim

There are likely as many strains and modes of feminist poetics as there are of feminism, but in reviews, discussions, and even our own manifestos, we often fall into shorthand that fails to explore this valuable friction, our own variations. I've lately longed for unpacking, and so issued this open-ended call:

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like: what branch of feminism, model of feminist poetics, feminist icon, or etc. informs your poetry? Or, from which of these does your poetry diverge? Are there particular feminist tactics you employ? Do you consider yourself a feminist in many ways, but don't particularly involve it in the poetry? Feel free to take liberties with the questions! Short, long, essay, manifesto, whatever appeals to you!

Delirious Hem's monthly poetics forums are designed to give women poets a platform from which to address topics we all grapple with, obsess over, cram down the craws of our cohabitant lovelies. DH's poetics forums invite creato-critico-bio-cultural-multi-dimensional responses. Political personal public private. Theory-rich, yammer-strung, high-octane, molecular-fringe. DH's poetics forums invite contributors to drop in briefly or never shut up. We hope you'll do the same (see fig. 1, the comments box).

Poetics Forum #1 at Delirious Hem

Over at Delirious Hem, you'll find the first installment in the new poetics forums I'm curating. I hope you'll visit, comment, thrill.



Featuring:
Monday May 4:
Mary Biddinger, Anne Boyer, & Brandi Homan
Tuesday May 5:
Megan Kaminski, Becca Klaver, & Majena Mafe
Wednesday May 6:
Gina Myers, Martha Silano, & Leah Souffrant
Thursday May 7:
K. Lorraine Graham, Mytili Jagannathan, Elizabeth Treadwell, & Sarah Vap
Friday May 8:
Teresa Carmody & co.

There are likely as many strains and modes of feminist poetics as there are of feminism, but in reviews, discussions, and even our own manifestos, we often fall into shorthand that fails to explore this valuable friction, our own variations. I've lately longed for unpacking, and so issued this open-ended call:

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like: what branch of feminism, model of feminist poetics, feminist icon, or etc. informs your poetry? Or, from which of these does your poetry diverge? Are there particular feminist tactics you employ? Do you consider yourself a feminist in many ways, but don't particularly involve it in the poetry? Feel free to take liberties with the questions! Short, long, essay, manifesto, whatever appeals to you!

Delirious Hem's monthly poetics forums are designed to give women poets a platform from which to address topics we all grapple with, obsess over, cram down the craws of our cohabitant lovelies. DH's poetics forums invite creato-critico-bio-cultural-multi-dimensional responses. Political personal public private. Theory-rich, yammer-strung, high-octane, molecular-fringe. DH's poetics forums invite contributors to drop in briefly or never shut up. We hope you'll do the same (see fig. 1, the comments box).

Poet Craig Arnold has Gone Missing

Many of you have been following this story. You can get regular updates at Find Craig Arnold. Craig is a professor here at the University of Wyoming, and the university is also taking an active interest in finding him.

The search has been extended a few days, but help, support, and spreading the word are all still very appreciated.