Opon (prep): [variant spelling of "upon" used by Dickinson], also, a new web pub edited by Brad Vogler

I’ve long felt the need for a publication to appreciate the poem in context (isn’t it about time we admit poems are not worlds unto themselves and need not, or should not, “stand alone?”), so I was thrilled when Brad Vogler of Delete Press asked me to submit to his new publication Opon. Vogler is looking for “something more involved than just a poem or two” (as he sold it to me in our email correspondence), and encourages submitting process statements, revisions, video, sound, image… and I have to say the results in this first issue are truly exceptional.

Here is a space to tell the stories of process and product; Vogler presents the work as living things. The other poets/artists included in the issue are Jill Magi (with images and process notes from a new bookish project of procedural notes that will be kept in clay boxes), Kate Eichhorn (with poems documenting the process of cataloguing videos from the Feminist Video Vault) Eric Goddard-Scovel (whose process is computerized though exposes reading intimacy with Gertrude Stein), Tirzah Goldenberg (whose poems are “gathered and gleaned” from Dead Sea Scrolls), and Nico Vassilakis (whose visual poems nod to composer Conlon Nancarrow). I’m so grateful for my work to appear with such incredible company. I feel as though I’ve intruded upon these works in the most delightful way. Please do, also, intrude.

Recommendations (n): The action of consigning, entrusting, or commending

There is much more to say about these works, but for now I will announce and recommend them and suggest that you immediately go purchase and/or pick these up while you’re at AWP (if you will be at AWP, you lucky dog, you).

Sally Keith’s new collection from Milkweed Editions

The Devotional Poems, Joe Hall’s latest, once again from Black Ocean

Canticle of the Night Path, Jennifer Atkinson’s latest, from Free Verse Editions, Winner of the New Measure Poetry Prize

Hermit (n): A person living in solitude

I go through periods of time where I live like a hermit. While I do go to work, I generally wake up, go to work, go home, I work/write/sleep, and get up and do it all over again. On the weekends I might venture out to get coffee or stop by the farmer’s market, but otherwise I return to my home office and sit in front of the glare of my computer screen for hours on end taking breaks only to stir whatever big pot of soup or chili or stew I have cooking on the stove or to eat from said pot of food. I do see friends on occasion, but more often than not the friends have initiated the hang time request, and I often also neglect personal email and gchat (things that when I am not being a recluse I do frequently and with great attention).

It’s no surprise that as a writer/scholar/thinker I often become more reclusive when I’m working toward a goal or deadline; as of December 1st I finalized a draft of the article derived from the ideas about nonce genres articulated earlier on this blog. Dec. 1st was the goal and I met it. There’s something about needing to get work done that inspires this kind of bunker down, dig in, work-hard-but-forget-to-play-hard mentality for me. My periods of solitude, I’m sure, would seem to be exactly like that seductive life-of-the-writer ideal people expect (and I perpetuate it through my Facebook and Twitter statuses, for sure). I do, after all, work on my computer in a small warm room surrounded by books on shelves and on the hardwood floor underneath my feet. There is always a warm steaming mug café au lait or loose leaf black currant tea or snow monkey tea—or else there is always a mug of coffee or tea half-finished, ignored and cooling during particularly productive periods where my fingers do not leave the keyboard keys.

But I don’t actually buy into that romantic image of the writer/scholar/artist alone in his or her office, deep in the throngs of creative action or else taking long walks or staring out the window waiting for lightning to strike. Continue reading »

Politics (n): The theory or practice of government or administration & Poetry (n): Composition in verse or some comparable patterned arrangement of language

I am pleased to share that “Cinncinatus of the West,” “Luxury and Lack,” and “To Entertain,” three poems and their corresponding ceramic pieces by my friend and collaborator Stephanie Rozene, are up at The Offending Adam’s special issue on Politics and Poetry. These poems are excerpted from the larger 24-piece collaborative project, Simultaneous Contrast, which we initially shown as a part of the “DIS-arming Domesticity,” gallery exhibit in Wallingford, PA in 2010. We’re so pleased to have a “printed” home for these works and offer many thanks to Andrew Wessels at The Offending Adam for his support and giving this project such a wonderful home in this special feature. Along with our project, the issue also features Craig Santos Perez and Kristin Sanders. [Read an excerpt from Wessel's introduction to the issue and praise for TOA after the jump]  Continue reading »

Conference (n): The action of conferring or taking counsel, now always on an important or serious subject or affair

I apologize for neglecting to blog in September and this isn’t much for October… needless to say it’s been a very busy semester. I’ve been writing up a revised and researched version of the “nonce genre” idea, and my colleague, John Boyd, and I have been busy writing up our talk/workshop for this week’s IWCA (not to mention the daily work of running our Writing Center).

If you are a writing center person and are attending IWCA this week, we encourage you to attend our workshop. We’ll be offering a rationale for our revised seminar and asking for participants to consider how we should, or might, shift the focus of our tutor training to accommodate recent longitudinal studies in writing studies scholarship. We believe that writing centers must take their place as active participants in learning instruction, and see this as a way to do so. Here is our abstract and presentation details. We hope to see you there!

Shifting Focus: Addressing the Knowledge Domains of Writing Expertise in a
Peer Tutoring Seminar

John Boyd (Washington College), Moriah Purdy (Washington College)
Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:30-2:45
Session: 4C Room: 1360A
Recent longitudinal studies of undergraduate development offer a challenging and, in some ways, unsettling perspective for writing centers and writing programs. Investigations like those conducted at Harvard and the University of Washington suggest that the gains students make in writing during the college years are inseparably tied to disciplinary practice and rarely, if ever, depend on generalized strategies and transparent “skills.”

If this is true, then writing centers will need to rethink some of their assumptions about how peer tutoring contributes to student writing development and what kind of preparation will help tutors function successfully in a variety of contexts. In this interactive workshop, we report on how we restructured our peer tutoring seminar based on the five knowledge domains of writing expertise outlined in Anne Beaufort’s study, College Writing and Beyond. By rooting our seminar in both theoretical and practical knowledge related to process, subject matter, rhetorical context, genres, and discourse communities, we aimed to shift our tutors’ focus away from the problematic binaries often emphasized in writing center literature (such as directive/non-directive strategies and higher/lower-order concerns) and toward a framework for interacting with other writers that accounts for differing contexts and disciplinary practices.

In our workshop, we present what we found to be the benefits and challenges of our revised focus, and we ask participants to consider how they might account for Beaufort’s knowledge domains in their own tutor preparation efforts. Together, we will draw some conclusions about the value of knowledge about writing development and explore strategies for incorporating that knowledge into tutor instruction. Ultimately, we pose the following questions: What kind of course is a peer tutoring seminar? What kind of course should it be?

Peacock (adj): Designating a person or thing like, associated with, or suggestive of a peacock, esp. in being ostentatious, proud

Two poems from the thesis/Olmsted manuscript are up at the Peacock Online Review, a lovely little poem webspace for innovative poets. Although relatively new on the circuit, editor Sophie Sills has brought in some wonderful poets, including Anselm Berrigan, Noah Eli Gordon, and Phoebe contributor Emily Carr, among others. This new issue, which I am proud to be a part of, includes fantastic collaborative poem-ing between Travis Macdonald, Michelle Taransky, Joseph Cooper, and j/j hastain, among other great new works. Take a look at the issue, for sure, and then look around some more.

Many thanks to Sophie Sills for giving these poems a home!