<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Dear
Contemporary Poeticians,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">As tends to be
our practice, I am sending a series of questions that were drawn from our
discussion of C. D. Wright’s Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon
2008).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These questions are being
sent to Wright as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These will
help shape the conversation we will have when the poet joins us this Friday
from 3-5 in room 116 of the Whitney Humanities Center.</span></p>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">As the
questions will testify, the tensions between the personal and the political are
at the center of this particular book. In light of that I thought I would
include a passage from the essay “Wages of Poetry” :<o:p></o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Poetry for me is
compatibly tendentious and personal. It is both reproachful and irresistible.
It thrives on errancy (as well as an excess of pride and piety). Writing is a
discretionary activity; it follows that reading is too. Controversies between
strains of poetry are useful tools of refinement, perhaps especially to those
of us who see ourselves on the sidelines but affected by similar concerns. But
literary hegemony, the drive to prevail, seems insupportable, and poisonously
reflective of class allegiances. Both the vanguard and the rearguard simulate
the dominant hierarchies. Of the vanguard I can say, I admire their procedures,
but I think their attitude stinks. Of the rearguard I admit I think their
procedures and their attitudes stink. When this discord erupts into an
all-or-none competition, the last reader can exit in a body bag.
"Writing," as Colette wrote, "leads only to writing." I do
not see any end to it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p>++++ </o:p></span></p>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">And also I
recommend her piece entitled” Concerning Why Poetry Offers A Better Deal Than
The World’s Biggest Retailer.” <a href="http://lanaturnerjournal.com/article.php?article=wright">http://lanaturnerjournal.com/article.php?article=wright</a><o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">Here are
the questions—the “you” refers to Wright, of course:<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">1) In
reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Rising, Falling, Hovering</i>, we
discussed at great length the ways that political and the subjective intersect
another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What are the ways that
you see that these two modes can come together.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>The dangers have been well-discussed by both sides of the
equation: a poem that brings in politics can become political, rhetorical; a
poem that is subjective or personal doesn’t have the efficacy or singleness of
purpose to motivate people to direct action. Is this a false schism between the
two modes?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How do you negotiate
these questions in that your work so often walks this space. Do you see the
work as intergrating the two modes or does it instead not keeping them to
segregated<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">2) In what
ways do you see the relationship of your work and its concerns (thematic as
well as formal) to your contemporaries?<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">3) Auden
famously—or infamously—wrote, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Do you think that
the poet can serve a function as a public intellectual?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What is that function?<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">4) Given
the intensity of the political climate in the U. S. around the publication of
Rising, Falling, Hovering, did you have a different sense of audience for this
book—did you imagine it changing votes?<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica;
font-weight:normal">5) The speaker of the book is addressed as "C"
thus declaring this book to be a portrait or self-portrait.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What is the representation of the self
that appears in this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is it a
form of you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is it a persona? And
what is the sense of responsibility you feel towards representing others in
terms of fashioning a kind of portrait?<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica;
font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica;
font-weight:normal">6) In the book, the form flows between prose, long lines,
short lines—even within the same poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>What is your thinking about form as it relates to speech or to
conventions of genre?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How does
motherhood—in that this is a factor that seems to recur throughout the book--
shape your sense of poetry and of form?</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:normal"><o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal">++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman"">Also, the
night before C.D. joins us there is a reading by </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:
16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Timothy
Donnelly happening:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h4 style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:
0in"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";font-weight:normal"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> November 4 @ 7pm<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Grad Poets Reading Series: Timothy
Donnelly<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">63 High Street, Linsly-Chittenden Hall,
Room 317<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Timothy Donnelly is the author of <i>The
Cloud Corporation</i> (Wave Books,
2010) and <i>Twenty</i>-<i>seven Props for a
Production of Eine Lebenszeit</i>
(Grove Press, 2003). His work has been
translated into German and
Italian and has also appeared in numerous
anthologies, including
<i>Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century</i>,
<i>Isn’t It
Romantic: 100 Love Poems</i>, <i>Joyful Noise: An Anthology of
American
Spiritual Poetry</i>, and <i>Poet, Poems, Poetry</i> edited by Helen
Vendler. A
graduate of Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Princeton Universities, he
is
a poetry editor for <i>Boston Review</i> and teaches in the Writing
Program
at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn
with
his wife and two daughters.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> “When they approach you with
plates of soft fruit<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">and erotic objects, they have already
singled you out”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">—from “Advice to Baboons of the New
Kingdom”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Graduate student poets, you are warmly
invited to read briefly from your work at this or future events. Please contact
Sarah Stone, <a href="mailto:sarah.stone@yale.edu"><span style="color:#0017F7">sarah.stone@yale.edu</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The Grad Poets Reading Series is
supported by the Dean’s Fund, the <i>Yale Review</i>, and GPSS.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">+++++<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"">see everyone this Friday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And remember: </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt">The Working Group in Contemporary Poetry and
Poetics meets every other Friday at 3.00 PM in room 116 at the Whitney
Humanities Center at Yale University to discuss problems and issues of
contemporary poetry within international alternative and /or avant-garde
traditions of lyric poetry. All are welcome to attend.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt">Onward,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:13.0pt">Richard Deming</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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