And Now, A Word from Our Poet Laureate

In case you missed the gemlike flame of current U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan's wry modesty, try this on for size.  When asked by Dwight Garner, "Whose books are generally shelved next to yours in bookstores?  How does it feel to be sitting between them?" she replied:

I like the assumption of this question, that I am sitting between other poets on a shelf. That I am my book – or if it’s a really good bookstore – books. Because this is pitifully true. Sometimes I go to look for myself in inferior bookstores – at airports, say – and I find I don’t exist. Sometimes my entire people does not exist. From the condition of not existing, I have no way of mustering the self importance necessary to bring myself into some future being by asking to speak with the book buyer. I am unpersoned. I can barely buy gum.

For more, see the original mini-interview on Paper Cuts.

And in latest wondrous news, I am very proud to say that one of our star graduate students here at UNL has just won big.  The talented young poet John Chávez has snagged the Letras Latinas Residency Fellowship, which includes one large (I can't help saying one large--I've been watching The Wire on DVD) and a one-month stay at the Anderson Center in Minnesota.   Check out John's chapbook, Heterotopia, at Noemi Press (where you can read an excerpt).  I got to work with John a little last fall in ENGL 852A:  Writing Literary Nonfiction, and it was always a pleasure to read and think about his complex and ambitious work.  I wish him well in Red Wing!

As for me, I'm working on two things simultaneously right now, my keynote lecture for the Conference on the Americas next month and a personal essay for a collection on Latina mothering forthcoming from Demeter Press and edited by Dorsía Smith Silva and Janine Santiago, who both teach at the University of Puerto Rico.  The keynote's a lock, but Silva and Santiago, though they liked the proposal, could decline the essay if it's not a good fit (i.e., if it sucks).

I started writing yesterday morning at 8:00 a.m. and now have rough drafts of both pieces--about 50 pages longhand.  The rumors are true:  I am a machine.  (Well, I + vast vats of caffeine = a machine.  Of sorts.) 

So I've made the marble.  Now comes the lovely, complicated process of chipping away until some sort of coherent form emerges cleanly from what is currently a big, shapeless block.  For the sake of Silva and Santiago, and for the sake of the conference attendees in Grand Rapids next month, here's hoping I can wield the chisel.

Okay, that's just about enough of that metaphor.  Forgive the grandiosity.  Most days, I can barely buy gum.
 
Last but not least, I forgot to mention one of the unexpected highlights of the AWP conference for me:  running into the very charming Naca, whose poetry manuscript Bird Eating Bird won the National Poetry Series mtvU Prize and will be out from Harper Perennial this year. 

If you go here, you can click to a clip of Naca interviewing the judge who selected her manuscript, Yusef Komunyaaka (whose very slick autobiographical poetry collection Magic City we just finished reading in ENGL 258B, by the way, and which sports on its cover one of the wonderful Harlem Renaissance murals of Aaron Douglas, who turns out to have been--who knew?--a UNL alumnus). 

Anyway, check out the video:  it's a weird mix of The Literary with the conventions of reality-TV.  Naca's as giddy as I would be. 

While I am proud to say that she's slept in my living room, Naca has gone onto significantly finer things and is now teaching at Macalester.  It was great to relax and catch up with her in the snazzy Normandie Lounge in Chicago.  Respect.