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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal">Dear Friends,</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">On Oct. 21, the WGCP met for the first of two sessions
devoted to the work of Claudia Rankine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Our conversation focused on her most recnt collection, Don’t Let Me Be
Lonely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The conversation was
wide-ranging and provocative. Instead of minutes, below I will paste a series
of questions drawn from the session.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>These should give people a sense of the warp and woof of what was talked
about that day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These questions
will be sent to Rankine, who will be joining us on Friday, Nov. 11 from 3-5 PM
in room 116 of the Whitney Humanities Center.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>The questions will serve as series of prompts to give some
shape and structure to our discussion that day.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Rankine will also be reading the night before, but more on
that later.</p><p class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, I will post below an announcement from Josh
Stanley about an upcoming reading that should be of particular interest to
members of this list.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">I also wanted to let people know, that the last two sessions
of the semester will be on Dec 2<sup>nd</sup> and Dec. 9<sup>th</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These will be devoted to the work of
poet and translator Andrew Zawacki.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>I will send more information about these dates, but I wanted to make
sure that people put them on their calendar.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">From amidst the snow,</p><p class="MsoNormal">Richard Deming, Co-coordinator</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><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-family:Helvetica">From Josh
Stanley: <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-family:Helvetica">Simon Jarvis
will be reading his poetry on Wednesday November 2nd in LC 317 at 7pm.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">Simon
Jarvis has published three works of verse in the past 6 years: The
Unconditional (Barque Press, 2005); F [subscript] 0 (Equipage, 2007); and
Dionysus Crucified: Choral Lyric for Two Soloists and Messenger (Grasp Press,
2011). Recent poems can be read and heard here: <a href="http://theclaudiusapp.com/1-jarvis.html"><span style="color:#1B419A">http://theclaudiusapp.com/1-jarvis.html</span></a>
. Jarvis has also published two major critical works: his Adorno: A Critical
Introduction, published by Polity in 1998; and Wordsworth’s Philosophic Song,
published by CUP in 2007. Jarvis' work in gutty verse and prose is concerned
with the thinking that verse in fact is: a thinking which is capable both of
unedited-for-consumption gulps and body rhythms and of distinctive
speculation. <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-family:Helvetica"> <span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>
Briefly, I want to insist on the difference between “reading his poetry” and
“giving a poetry reading”. Jarvis reads in a way that is unlike anything I have
ever heard from an American poet because embedded in his practice (and recent
criticism) is a belief that poetry is alive in the moment of performance – what
is on the page without even a silent reading is a graveyard of cutup language.
What I mean is that this is not a chance to hear Simon Jarvis give us an
interpretation of his poems in the act of reading or supply a fresh or first
encounter with his work. Instead, I think this is a rare opportunity to hear a
master verse-performer reading prosodically intense work.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">
<span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Furthermore,
as a reminder: Jarvis will be giving a lecture in the English Dept on Tuesday
November 1st in LC 317 at 4pm on *rhyme*.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">+++++<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p>Questions for Claudia Rankine </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">In the brief
interview with you that is available at the Academy of American Poets website,
<a href="http://poets.org">poets.org</a>, you indicate that you primarily think of yourself as a poet and yet less
and less you think of writing in terms of genre.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>What does it mean, then, to call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:
normal">Don’t Let Me Be Lonely</i> an “American lyric”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In other words, how would you define
lyric, especially since in many ways <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Don’t
Let Me Be Lonely</i> challenges some of more traditional expectations brought
forward when “lyric” is invoked. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">As you move
from a traditional genre (or perhaps better described as “genre more traditionally
determined?), are there forms of writing or writers from whom you are
drawing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Were there models that
you were able to pull from in writing that book or the writing that you are
doing now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This attached to the
fact that the back of the book we see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Don’t
Let Me Be Lonely</i> is to be described as “Lyric Essay.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What does that entail?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">Since your
writing and what we might see as its poetics have changed over the years, could
you describe your own evolving sense of poetry, of what it can and can’t do, of
what its value and the limitations it wrestle with and against?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">Given that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Don’t Let Me Be Lonely</i> pulls into its
movements historical events, cultural critique, media studies, and so forth,
what is the role or responsibility within American culture as you see it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These seems like a grand question, but
the specifics of witnessing and acknowledging both broad world events as well
as personal crisis are present among the book’s concerns.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">One very
spirited exchange in our discussion of the book deals with the political
content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Clearly the events of 9/11
inform the book, yet how do you conceive of the relationship of the political
claims present in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Don’t Let Me Be Lonely</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is it meant to be explicitly
political?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Or is the political the
condition and context for the general and pervasive sense of (and focus upon)
depression that pervades the book?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">Can you
describe the process of writing the book?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>When did you begin it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This
question ties into the relationship that the work has to 9/11.</span></p>
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