The Vacation by Wendell Berry

American Life in Poetry: Column 425
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

If we haven’t done it ourselves, we’ve known people who have, it seems: taken a vacation mostly to photograph a vacation, not really looking at what’s there, but seeing everything through the viewfinder with the idea of looking at it when they get home. Wendell Berry of Kentucky, one of our most distinguished poets, captures this perfectly.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Wendell Berry, whose most recent book of poems is New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012. Poem reprinted from New Collected Poems, Counterpoint, 2012, and used with permission of Wendell Berry and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2013 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Interview: Dr. Vosk, Asylum Seekers Medical Examiner

From the Sampsonia Way online:

A volunteer for the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network, Dr. Vosk assists asylum seekers through medical evaluation. He remembers first getting involved with the program in 2009 when he saw a notice for an asylum examiners’ training course in Washington D.C. and decided to attend. Since then, he has been a volunteer for Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). Before seeing the notice, however, Dr. Vosk had been involved with political causes since the 1950s and practiced medicine since the 1970s—Physicians for Human Rights seemed like a great way to combine both of his passions. 

In this interview Dr. Vosk discusses the role coincidence plays in keeping asylum seekers alive, his method of assessing trauma via an individual’s scars, and the difficulties people face when seeking refuge in the United States, where “fearfulness and rejection of immigrants have become an accepted part of national policy.”

Read the full interview here.

Jamaica Kincaid Interview

From Alyssa Loh's interview on Salon.com:

People only say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman. But all sorts of people write with strong feeling, the way I do. But if they’re white, they won’t say it. I used to just pretend I didn’t notice it, and now I just think I don’t care. 

There are all sorts of reasons not to like my writing. But that’s not one of them. Saying something is angry is not a criticism. It’s not valid. It’s not a valid observation in terms of criticism. You can list it as something that’s true. But it’s not critical. 

You may not like it because it makes you uneasy—and you can say that. But to damn it because it’s angry…. They always say that about black people: “those angry black people.” 

And why? You’re afraid that there might be some truth to their anger. It might be justified. 

I promise you, if I had blonde hair and blue eyes this wouldn’t be an issue. No one ever says, “That angry Judith Krantz…” or whatever.

CFP: Basic Writing and Community Engagement

For the Fall 2014 issue of Basic Writing, Community Engagement, and Interdisciplinarity (BWe), the editors seek articles that investigate the uses and effects of community engagement in basic writing coursework. Their concept of “community engagement” is conceived very broadly, and includes concepts covered by umbrella terms such as service-learning, community based learning, and community literacy. In addition, BWe is interested in interdisciplinary collaborations from any perspective. How has your basic writing course worked with the library, the writing center, or other disciplines? BWe welcomes submissions not only from basic writing faculty, but also faculty from other disciplines or from community partners who have collaborated with basic writing classes.

Article submissions will be accepted through December 28, 2013. BWe submissions will be responded to by March 1, 2014. If revision is requested, a final revision from a BWe author must be submitted by May 31, 2014.

BWe is a peer-reviewed online journal that welcomes both traditional and multi-modal texts. Submission guidelines for formatting print essays and webtexts appear on the BWe Web site.

CFP: Postgraduate Ecology Articles

Dandelion editors seek submissions on the theme of ecology for their next issue. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Ecocriticism
• Political ecology
• Eco-poetics and nature writing
• The pastoral
• Urban/rural space and/or wildness and civilization
• Ecology and interdisciplinarity
• Romantic ecology and its legacy
• Biotechnologies
• Cybernetics and ecology
• Art and eco-activism
• Ecology and the military-industrial complex
• Nuclear criticism
• Ecofeminism
• Ecology and modernity/postmodernity

This issue is inspired by Silent Spring: Chemical, Biological and Technological Visions of the Post-1945 Environment, a collaborative workshop series taking place at Birkbeck School of Arts and the Centre for Modern Studies at York University.* Rachel Carson’s classic polemic Silent Spring celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2012: it still stands as one of the most influential texts on the damage caused to the natural environment by chemicals and nuclear fallout in the twentieth century. In line with the workshop series, this issue takes the anniversary of Carson’s text as a starting point for exploring how biological, chemical and technological changes to the environment have shaped cultural explorations of nature and landscape across the humanities.

Dandelion welcomes both long (5000-8000 words) and short (under 5000 words) articles. The editors also encourage conference and event reports, blog posts, book, film and exhibition reviews, podcasts and artwork. They welcome submissions from doctoral students, early career researchers, established academics and independent practioners, working in all disciplines.

Deadline: 31 July 2013.

Dandelion is an online postgraduate journal and research network, supported by Roberts Funding and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It aims to bring together a diversity of works from researchers in the arts, to offer collaborative research and training possibilities, and to promote an independent, cross-institutional space for professional development.

Publication Identity Theft

Aurora Antonovic, Editor-in-Chief of Magnapoets was surprised to come back from a year-long hiatus to find that Magnapoets had been running in her absence by someone she had once trusted who had stolen her identity. Antonovic wants to set the record right in her May 7 post about the incident, assuring writers and readers that she maintains claim to Magnapoets, past and future. NewPages has updated all of our links and contacts to this publication and urge our readers who may have had prior contact to do the same.

Coleman Barks Interview

Assistant to The Georgia Review editors C. J. Bartunek had the opportunity to talk with Coleman Barks in his home in Athens in January 2013. The Georgia Review offers Bartunek's comments on the experience as well as two audio recordings - one of the interview and one of Barks reading from his own  work as well as Christopher Smart's Jubilate Agno, lines from which Barks included in his long poem "The VOICE inside WATER." Bartunek notes that this reading is a rare opportunity for listeners "because in one of the poem's copious footnotes [Barks] writes that 'Most likely. . . I will never bring this poem and its notes to a reading. Too long, too willful in its wandering.'"

The interview begins with Barks: "I've never tried to think systematically about these long poems that I write or to justify them with any kind of poetic or rationale. Steve keeps trying to make me think more consciously about what I’m doing, but I don’t like that. I resist that. I just finished this poem and felt that it was a whole thing, somehow, and I felt good about it. But now I've been rereading it and justify it, and see what questions you might ask, and I wrote down nine purposes that I have in this poem, if I were going to teach it, I guess.”

Writers on Writing

The Glimmer Train Bulletin (available free) features craft and commentary essays by writers whose works have recently been published in Glimmer Train Stories. The most recent monthly issue (#76) includes Ella Mei Yon [pictured], Finding a Way In; Benjamin Percy, Method Writing; Michelle Richmond, On the Joys of Not Finishing What You Started; Daniel Wallace, Notes Toward Future Works; and Lance Weller, Gut. Or, Never Knowing the Next Word.

Feminist Bookstores in America

Los Angeles Review of Books writer Lisa L. Moore examines the rise and influence of feminist bookstores in her column The Dream of a Common Bookstore:

In my last column, I made the case that writing by poets formed a foundation of feminist theory and the academic discipline of women’s studies, partly because of the special status of poets in the women’s movement. As Zee put it, “the poets who would come from out of town [to do readings at Smedley’s] were like rock stars. It wasn’t a poetry-being-shunted-off kind of thing. And especially Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde. The poetry was very elevated.” In today’s column, I want to explore the idea that feminist bookstores have made a distinctive contribution to American poetry because of this elevation. Feminist bookstores created an audience and market for poetry, a meeting place for poets and readers, and a public sphere in which poetry had an important bardic function. Feminist bookstores brought a new public to poetry both as readers and writers, a life-giving function that, little-understood and therefore little-noticed, continues to shape both mainstream and feminist poetry worlds today.

Virtual Author Event: Shirley Reva Vernick & J.L. Powers

Monday May 13 at 6:00 pm EDT, Cinco Puntos Press presents two virtual discussions via Shindig: Remember Dippy: Middle Grade Fiction, Representing Autism with Shirley Reva Vernick and That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone, Talking Children and War with J.L. Powers.

Remember Dippy: Middle Grade Fiction, Representing Autism by Shirley Reva Vernick

Johnny’s summer plans fly out the window when he learns he has to help out with his autistic older cousin, Remember. His premonitions of disaster appear at first to come to cringeworthy fruition, but when the two boys save a bully from drowning, salvage the pizzeria guy’s romance and share girl troubles, Johnny ends up having the summer of his life.

Come join us for Cinco Puntos' debut Author Talk series with award-winning author Shirley Reva Vernick, who will talk about her second novel for young people where laughter and serious issues mix in a lightly humorous novel.

That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone, Talking Children and War by J.L. Powers

In this 2013 Notable Book for a Global Society, seventeen writers from around the world contribute essays about coming of age during a time of war: fighting, dying, surviving. Powers will talk about war, violence, and childhood, and what these writers taught her about exile and belonging after their worlds were destroyed.

Gender Redesigned Book Covers

In the DailyMail (UK) article Female Novelist Sick of Patronising Covers on Women's Books, Sam Webb explains how author Maureen Johnson claimed publishers pigeonhole books by women. She asked fans to 'coverflip' books and was inundated with classics with new 'girly' covers as well as a few made more 'manly.'

Poetry Gender Count UK

In response to the number of reviews of poetry books by women, poet Fiona Moore's blog post Big Five Poetry Publishers in the UK: A Gender Audit examines the data of women poets published by top publishers.

Job :: Processing Archivist

The University at Buffalo seeks a full-time Processing Archivist - Poetry, University Libraries - Music and Special Collections. Application deadline: May 31, 2013.

Happy Mother's Day!

To My Mother
by Christina Rossetti

To-day's your natal day;
Sweet flowers I bring:
Mother, accept, I pray
My offering.

And may you happy live,
And long us bless;
Receiving as you give
Great happiness.

Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize Winners

Winners of the 78th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards are:

• Laird Hunt, Kind One, Fiction
• Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds, Fiction
• Eugene Gloria, My Favorite Warlord, Poetry
• Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree, Nonfiction
• Wole Soyinka, Lifetime Achievement

Past winners include five writers who went on to win Nobel prizes – Nadine Gordimer, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, and Derek Walcott.

The Anisfield-Wolf winners will be honored in Cleveland Sept. 12 at a ceremony at the Ohio Theatre hosted by the Cleveland Foundation and emceed by Jury Chair Henry Louis Gates Jr. Poet Rita Dove, novelist Joyce Carol Oates, psychologist Steven Pinker, and historian Simon Schama also deliberate on the jury. The Cleveland Foundation has administered the book awards since 1963. They remain the only juried American literary competition devoted to recognizing books that have made an important contribution to society’s understanding of racism and the diversity of cultures. For additional information, including a complete list of winners, visit www.Anisfield-Wolf.org.