New England College MFA Program in Poetry
MFA IN POETRY EVENTS & OPEN HOUSES
Saturday, June 27, 2009
OPEN HOUSENew England College Campus8:30 AM-9:00 PMFree Open House for prospective students interested in an MFA. A day of writing workshops, lectures and a performance with Regie O'Hare Gibson. Pre-registration required. July 6-11, 2009
Download application and full schedule here:Post MFA Symposium with Peter Campion, Rachel Hadas, Ilya Kaminsky, Major Jackson and Ed Ochester.
July 8, 2009 (free and open to the public)
PANEL WITH DONALD HALL and Post-MFA faculty
on Donald Hall's historic essay "Poetry and Ambition"
2:00 PM in the Great Room,
Simon Center,
98 Bridge Street
Henniker, NH
ReadingsAll readings held in the Simon Center, 98 Bridge Street at 7:30 PMFree and open to the publicCall 603-219-9172 to confirm readingWednesday, June 24Ilya Kaminsky and Carol FrostThursday, June 25Featuring NH Poets Pat Fargnoli and Maura MacNeilFriday, June 26Kazim AliSaturday, June 27Performance with Regie O'Hare GibsonSunday, June 28NEC alumnus Chris Goodrich and Paula McLainTuesday, June 30NEC student readingWednesday, July 1,Brian Henry and Eleni SikelianosPost MFA Symposium ReadingsMonday, July 6Major JacksonTuesday, July 7Rachel HadasWednesday, July 8Peter CampionThursday, July 9Chard deNiord & Peter EverwineFriday, July 10Ed Ochester and Ilya Kaminsky
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Poets Follies Reading Series Presents Ralph Freedman and Mariela Griffor
March 19, 2009 at 7pm.
Ewald Branch Library in Grosse Pointe Park
15175 East Jefferson
Open to the general public.
Ralph Freedman, who grew up in Germany, emigrated at nineteen to England and ultimately the United States. He served in the US Army during World War II, in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy, afterwards graduating from the University of Washington and earning a doctorate at Yale. He taught 12 years at the University of Iowa, 22 at Princeton and for two post-retirement years at Emory University. He wrote and published a novel (Divided, 1948), criticism (The Lyrical Novel, 1953), biographies of Hermann Hesse (1978), Rainer Maria Rilke (1996), and many essays. His works have been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. A Chinese version is in press. He loves hiking, travel and good talk. He is reading from his novel Rue the Day.
Rue the Day: Jacob Becher, a young American intelligence officer, meets Francesca Mancini, a member of the Italian Resistance on a battlefield in Italy where they are nearly killed by enemy artillery fire. The exploding shell spares them but creates a bond that leads to marriage after the war. During an investigation by a "McCarthyism" committee at the University of Washington where they both teach, he betrays his wife. Francesca flees; their marriage ends, but Jacob spends the next 50 years tormented by guilt and his unabated love for her. Terri, his daughter by a second marriage, is determined to uncover the secret of her father's unacknowledged anguish, and embarks on a prolonged search that takes her back in time.
Mariela Griffor was born in the city of Concepcion in southern Chile. She attended the University of Santiago and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She left Chile for an involuntary exile in Sweden in 1985. She and her American husband returned to the United States in 1998 with their two daughters. They live in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. She is co-founder of The Institute for Creative Writers at Wayne State University and Publisher of Marick Press. Mariela is the author of Exiliana (Luna Publications) and House (Mayapple Press). She will be reading from her newest work of translations, an anthology on contemporary Latin-American writers which is compiled by Poetry International and will be published by San Diego State University Press in 2009.
The Poets Follies Reading series is a free admission event.
Ewald Branch Library in Grosse Pointe Park
15175 East Jefferson
Open to the general public.
Ralph Freedman, who grew up in Germany, emigrated at nineteen to England and ultimately the United States. He served in the US Army during World War II, in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy, afterwards graduating from the University of Washington and earning a doctorate at Yale. He taught 12 years at the University of Iowa, 22 at Princeton and for two post-retirement years at Emory University. He wrote and published a novel (Divided, 1948), criticism (The Lyrical Novel, 1953), biographies of Hermann Hesse (1978), Rainer Maria Rilke (1996), and many essays. His works have been translated into German, French, Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. A Chinese version is in press. He loves hiking, travel and good talk. He is reading from his novel Rue the Day.
Rue the Day: Jacob Becher, a young American intelligence officer, meets Francesca Mancini, a member of the Italian Resistance on a battlefield in Italy where they are nearly killed by enemy artillery fire. The exploding shell spares them but creates a bond that leads to marriage after the war. During an investigation by a "McCarthyism" committee at the University of Washington where they both teach, he betrays his wife. Francesca flees; their marriage ends, but Jacob spends the next 50 years tormented by guilt and his unabated love for her. Terri, his daughter by a second marriage, is determined to uncover the secret of her father's unacknowledged anguish, and embarks on a prolonged search that takes her back in time.
Mariela Griffor was born in the city of Concepcion in southern Chile. She attended the University of Santiago and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. She left Chile for an involuntary exile in Sweden in 1985. She and her American husband returned to the United States in 1998 with their two daughters. They live in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. She is co-founder of The Institute for Creative Writers at Wayne State University and Publisher of Marick Press. Mariela is the author of Exiliana (Luna Publications) and House (Mayapple Press). She will be reading from her newest work of translations, an anthology on contemporary Latin-American writers which is compiled by Poetry International and will be published by San Diego State University Press in 2009.
The Poets Follies Reading series is a free admission event.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Gear Up for National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month is only a few weeks away and Poets.org is offering this poster, with a quote from T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, free to teachers, librarians and booksellers.
Order one here.
Order one here.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Marick Press Introduces New Authors April 11, 2009
MARICK PRESS INTRODUCES NEW AUTHORS APRIL 11
‘ INRI’, ‘Been and Gone’, ‘American Prophet’, ‘It May Do Well With Strawberries’ and ‘At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems’ are publisher’s new books for 2009
GROSSE POINTE PARK, Mich. – Marick Press, a literary publisher dedicated to poetry and fiction, will release its new titles: Poetry translations of ‘ INRI’ by William Rowe, and ‘Been and Gone’ by Piotr Florczyk, the non-fiction ‘It May Do Well With Strawberries’ by David Matlin, and poetry collections ‘American Prophet’ by Robert Fanning and ‘At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems’ by Alicia Ostriker for Spring 2009 at the Stata Center at the MIT.
Raul Zurita, winner of the Chilean National Poetry Prize, is one of the best known poets of Latin America. His work is part of a revolution in poetic language that began in the 1970s and sought to find new forms of expression, radically different from those of Pablo Neruda. The challenge was to confront the contemporary epoch, with its particular forms of violence, including violence done to language. In 2005, Raul Zurita, wrote INRI a book about the Pinochet regime victim’s. Zurita bulldozed a poem into the sand of the Atacama Desert. It read ni pena ni miedo: neither pain nor fear. Long ago, it would have been obliterated by rains and wind, but the people in the nearest village still carry shovels into the desert on Sundays and they turn over the sand of the letters to keep it fresh. Zurita is considered one of the most important Chilean poets of his generation. Translated into English by William Rowe. INRI will be published by Marick Press and distributed by Wayne State University Press and SPDbooks in spring 2009. William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics in the Department of Spanish and the School of English and Humanities. He has published six books and over eighty articles on Latin American literature and culture. He has also published translations of a wide range of Latin American poetry and his research interests include the theory and practice of literary translation.
Born in Gliwice in 1946, Julian Kornhauser, the author of “Been and Gone,” is one of the most acclaimed figures of Polish poetry writing today, while also being an uncompromising critic, translator and professor of South-Slavic literatures at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. This debut collection of his work in English, which draws exclusively on his three most recent volumes and presents the poems in a new arrangement together with their Polish originals, should not be viewed as an attempt by the translator to recap the poet’s voluminous and diverse body of work, even though it does in fact touch upon most, if not all, of Kornhauser’s formal strategies and thematic concerns, thus giving American readers the opportunity to discover one of Poland’s most important contemporary writers in Piotr Florczyk’s splendid translations.
David Matlin is that dangerous thing, a writer’s writer. (William O’Rourke). ‘It Might Do Well With Strawberries’ is an important book. Writing a book of days for his time and country, David Matlin provides us with a glimpse of how one might witness and record the life of the nation in a new way. Combining lyrical verse, prose, responses to daily events, joys of friendship, gardening and literary meditations, Matlin gives us an astounding mosaic of our time. David Matlin is a novelist and poet who lives in San Diego, California and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at San Diego State University.
At once lyrical, humorous, heartbreaking, bitter, and wry — American Prophet, by Robert Fanning, introduces a character like none other seen in the history of poetry. This engaging collection of poems details the sojourns of a so-called Prophet across the American landscape, from coastal beaches to strip malls to cities to heartland farms. As the Prophet tries continually but fails to reach “his people,” his urgent messages go unnoticed or get swallowed by the machines and cacophony of contemporary America. Robert Fanning (The Seed Thieves, Marick Press 2006) is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University.
At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems’ bring us the best of Alicia Ostriker. Ostriker is a major American poet and critic. Twice nominated for a National Book Award, she is author of eleven volumes of poetry, most recently No Heaven (2005). As a critic Ostriker is the author of two path breaking volumes on women’s poetry, Writing Like a Woman and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Her most recent critical book is Dancing at the Devil’s Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics and the Erotic. She has also published three books on the Bible, Feminist Revision and the Bible, the controversial The Nakedness of the Fathers; Biblical Visions and Revisions, a combination of prose and poetry that re-imagines the Bible from the perspective of a contemporary Jewish woman, and most recently, For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book.
# # #
Titles scheduled for publication in the Fall 2009 included books By Gerry LaFemina and The Country of Loneliness by Dawn Paul and a book by poet Jerome Rothenberg (Gematrias Selected).
Galley proofs are available upon request
Marick Press Events
All events are open to the public
Launch celebration
Join Marick Press and the Latin-American Alumni of MIT for the spring 2009 launch of new books by Marick Press. An introduction by editors at Marick Press will be followed by poetry readings Raul Zurita, William Rowe, David Matlin and Robert Fanning. The readings will be followed by cocktail party.
Date: Saturday, April 11, 2009 at the Stata House at the MIT
Time: 2-5pm
Location: ROOM TO BE ANNOUNCED
Admission: Free admission
Information: (313) 407-9236 or visit our website: www.marickpress.com
‘ INRI’, ‘Been and Gone’, ‘American Prophet’, ‘It May Do Well With Strawberries’ and ‘At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems’ are publisher’s new books for 2009
GROSSE POINTE PARK, Mich. – Marick Press, a literary publisher dedicated to poetry and fiction, will release its new titles: Poetry translations of ‘ INRI’ by William Rowe, and ‘Been and Gone’ by Piotr Florczyk, the non-fiction ‘It May Do Well With Strawberries’ by David Matlin, and poetry collections ‘American Prophet’ by Robert Fanning and ‘At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems’ by Alicia Ostriker for Spring 2009 at the Stata Center at the MIT.
Raul Zurita, winner of the Chilean National Poetry Prize, is one of the best known poets of Latin America. His work is part of a revolution in poetic language that began in the 1970s and sought to find new forms of expression, radically different from those of Pablo Neruda. The challenge was to confront the contemporary epoch, with its particular forms of violence, including violence done to language. In 2005, Raul Zurita, wrote INRI a book about the Pinochet regime victim’s. Zurita bulldozed a poem into the sand of the Atacama Desert. It read ni pena ni miedo: neither pain nor fear. Long ago, it would have been obliterated by rains and wind, but the people in the nearest village still carry shovels into the desert on Sundays and they turn over the sand of the letters to keep it fresh. Zurita is considered one of the most important Chilean poets of his generation. Translated into English by William Rowe. INRI will be published by Marick Press and distributed by Wayne State University Press and SPDbooks in spring 2009. William Rowe is Anniversary Professor of Poetics in the Department of Spanish and the School of English and Humanities. He has published six books and over eighty articles on Latin American literature and culture. He has also published translations of a wide range of Latin American poetry and his research interests include the theory and practice of literary translation.
Born in Gliwice in 1946, Julian Kornhauser, the author of “Been and Gone,” is one of the most acclaimed figures of Polish poetry writing today, while also being an uncompromising critic, translator and professor of South-Slavic literatures at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. This debut collection of his work in English, which draws exclusively on his three most recent volumes and presents the poems in a new arrangement together with their Polish originals, should not be viewed as an attempt by the translator to recap the poet’s voluminous and diverse body of work, even though it does in fact touch upon most, if not all, of Kornhauser’s formal strategies and thematic concerns, thus giving American readers the opportunity to discover one of Poland’s most important contemporary writers in Piotr Florczyk’s splendid translations.
David Matlin is that dangerous thing, a writer’s writer. (William O’Rourke). ‘It Might Do Well With Strawberries’ is an important book. Writing a book of days for his time and country, David Matlin provides us with a glimpse of how one might witness and record the life of the nation in a new way. Combining lyrical verse, prose, responses to daily events, joys of friendship, gardening and literary meditations, Matlin gives us an astounding mosaic of our time. David Matlin is a novelist and poet who lives in San Diego, California and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at San Diego State University.
At once lyrical, humorous, heartbreaking, bitter, and wry — American Prophet, by Robert Fanning, introduces a character like none other seen in the history of poetry. This engaging collection of poems details the sojourns of a so-called Prophet across the American landscape, from coastal beaches to strip malls to cities to heartland farms. As the Prophet tries continually but fails to reach “his people,” his urgent messages go unnoticed or get swallowed by the machines and cacophony of contemporary America. Robert Fanning (The Seed Thieves, Marick Press 2006) is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University.
At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems’ bring us the best of Alicia Ostriker. Ostriker is a major American poet and critic. Twice nominated for a National Book Award, she is author of eleven volumes of poetry, most recently No Heaven (2005). As a critic Ostriker is the author of two path breaking volumes on women’s poetry, Writing Like a Woman and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America. Her most recent critical book is Dancing at the Devil’s Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics and the Erotic. She has also published three books on the Bible, Feminist Revision and the Bible, the controversial The Nakedness of the Fathers; Biblical Visions and Revisions, a combination of prose and poetry that re-imagines the Bible from the perspective of a contemporary Jewish woman, and most recently, For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book.
# # #
Titles scheduled for publication in the Fall 2009 included books By Gerry LaFemina and The Country of Loneliness by Dawn Paul and a book by poet Jerome Rothenberg (Gematrias Selected).
Galley proofs are available upon request
Marick Press Events
All events are open to the public
Launch celebration
Join Marick Press and the Latin-American Alumni of MIT for the spring 2009 launch of new books by Marick Press. An introduction by editors at Marick Press will be followed by poetry readings Raul Zurita, William Rowe, David Matlin and Robert Fanning. The readings will be followed by cocktail party.
Date: Saturday, April 11, 2009 at the Stata House at the MIT
Time: 2-5pm
Location: ROOM TO BE ANNOUNCED
Admission: Free admission
Information: (313) 407-9236 or visit our website: www.marickpress.com
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Poets Follies Reading Series 2009
Marick Press and its reading series Poets Follies is looking for writers who are promoting their works and would like to read at the Ewald Library in Grosse Pointe in 2009. The dates for the reading are below. Contact Carrie Cunningham (ccunningham@marickpress.com) if you are interested in reading from your newest or forthcoming work. We would be happy to have you!
POETS FOLLIES READINGS SERIES
Poets Follies Reading Series 2009 will be held at the Ewald Branch Library in Grosse Pointe Park, 15175 East Jefferson
Grosse Pointe Park, MI 48230, 313-343-2071, the fourth Thursday of each month. Poets' Follies 2009 schedule: January 22; February 26; March 26; April 23; May 21; June 25; July 23; August 27; September 24; October 22; November 19; December 17
POETS FOLLIES READINGS SERIES
Poets Follies Reading Series 2009 will be held at the Ewald Branch Library in Grosse Pointe Park, 15175 East Jefferson
Grosse Pointe Park, MI 48230, 313-343-2071, the fourth Thursday of each month. Poets' Follies 2009 schedule: January 22; February 26; March 26; April 23; May 21; June 25; July 23; August 27; September 24; October 22; November 19; December 17
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Absinthe #10
Our friends at Absinthe have released issue #10. It includes poetry, fiction, essays, photographs, and reviews by E.C. Belli, Andrzej Bursa, Djura, Tsvetanka Elenkova, Jörg Fauser, Almudena Grandes, Orhan Kemal, Thomas E. Kennedy, Birhan Keskin, Vyacheslav Kupriyanov, Krystyna Lenkowska, Murathan Mungan, Billy O’Callaghan, Daniele Pantano, Jacek Podsiadło, Daniel Tobin, and John Taylor and Anne Magnan-Park. They plan to have some excerpts up on the web site very soon. www.absinthenew.com
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Review of Sean Thomas Dougherty’s The Blue City
Review of Sean Thomas Dougherty’s The Blue City
By Susannah Nichols
The Blue City, Sean Thomas Dougherty’s experimental novella, opens with an urban man at work: “In the blue city, in the dawn-scraped awakening, Tomas the fish-monger is already stacking the day’s catch in the fish stalls of the great Cathedral-skyed market. Tomas wears the shawl of the blue city.”
The Blue City sounds like a euphemism—a tour of various locales that blend the old and the new, the fantastic and the actual, the good and the evil. A reader might sense that she could parallel the Blue City to Istanbul or Prague or Budapest, or apply those cities to the realms of other chapters, with titles like “The Red City,” “In the City of the Bare Bulb,” “The City of a Hundred Angers,” “The Black City.”
But Tomas is no ordinary protagonist, and the walk we take with enigmatic narrator Josef is no ordinary journey. The Blue City isn’t a travelogue but rather a thoughtful meander through the geography of self. Josef forces us to confront innocence, freedom, opportunity, fear, and honesty within these locales. “This is where childhood stutters and sings,” he tells us of the Black City.
Josef’s mission throughout the book is to face what he has done, but Dougherty’s language compels the reader to consider that concept on a much larger scale—my journey, Josef seems to be telling us, is secondary to yours. This message hits hardest in “The City of Broken Noses,” when Josef urges us to be careful in our assumptions of other people. “It is the home for the imperfect,” he tells us, “for the gesture that seems to spell out what is failed. But does it? What can one perform if perfect?” Josef gives the description of the residents of this city, but it’s up to us to decide whether to be intuitive observers or ogling tourists.
A practical reason the reader stays with himself rather than with the characters of this story is that the characters are distant, often downright cryptic, and the actual plot of the story is rather disorienting. Tomas, Josef, and the heartfelt Marta are involved in a complicated triangle of friendship, exploitation, lust, secrets, redemption, and growth. The particulars of both character and action are alluded to rather than specified, and the perspective jarringly shifts, giving us an unstable sense of time and place within the story. But this instability isn’t necessarily problematic. This is, after all, an experimental novella.
What Dougherty omits in linear plot structure and conventional character development is more than made up for in the overall mood he creates. His philosophical truisms and physical descriptions have a lyrical loveliness that makes you want to swim in his language for as long as possible. His sentences have been meticulously crafted and culled to their most powerful elements, but he doesn’t draw attention to his craft. He writes like the seasoned athlete who makes even the most arduous maneuvers look effortless.
The Blue City won’t provide its readers with an easy-to-use map or accessible tourist attractions. But travelers who are willing to look in a stranger’s eyes, willing to wander down a seedy street, and willing to feel before analyzing may find something deeply satisfying in Dougherty’s landscape.
Susannah Nichols teaches English at Roeper School in Birmingham, MI
and is currently working on her first novel.
By Susannah Nichols
The Blue City, Sean Thomas Dougherty’s experimental novella, opens with an urban man at work: “In the blue city, in the dawn-scraped awakening, Tomas the fish-monger is already stacking the day’s catch in the fish stalls of the great Cathedral-skyed market. Tomas wears the shawl of the blue city.”
The Blue City sounds like a euphemism—a tour of various locales that blend the old and the new, the fantastic and the actual, the good and the evil. A reader might sense that she could parallel the Blue City to Istanbul or Prague or Budapest, or apply those cities to the realms of other chapters, with titles like “The Red City,” “In the City of the Bare Bulb,” “The City of a Hundred Angers,” “The Black City.”
But Tomas is no ordinary protagonist, and the walk we take with enigmatic narrator Josef is no ordinary journey. The Blue City isn’t a travelogue but rather a thoughtful meander through the geography of self. Josef forces us to confront innocence, freedom, opportunity, fear, and honesty within these locales. “This is where childhood stutters and sings,” he tells us of the Black City.
Josef’s mission throughout the book is to face what he has done, but Dougherty’s language compels the reader to consider that concept on a much larger scale—my journey, Josef seems to be telling us, is secondary to yours. This message hits hardest in “The City of Broken Noses,” when Josef urges us to be careful in our assumptions of other people. “It is the home for the imperfect,” he tells us, “for the gesture that seems to spell out what is failed. But does it? What can one perform if perfect?” Josef gives the description of the residents of this city, but it’s up to us to decide whether to be intuitive observers or ogling tourists.
A practical reason the reader stays with himself rather than with the characters of this story is that the characters are distant, often downright cryptic, and the actual plot of the story is rather disorienting. Tomas, Josef, and the heartfelt Marta are involved in a complicated triangle of friendship, exploitation, lust, secrets, redemption, and growth. The particulars of both character and action are alluded to rather than specified, and the perspective jarringly shifts, giving us an unstable sense of time and place within the story. But this instability isn’t necessarily problematic. This is, after all, an experimental novella.
What Dougherty omits in linear plot structure and conventional character development is more than made up for in the overall mood he creates. His philosophical truisms and physical descriptions have a lyrical loveliness that makes you want to swim in his language for as long as possible. His sentences have been meticulously crafted and culled to their most powerful elements, but he doesn’t draw attention to his craft. He writes like the seasoned athlete who makes even the most arduous maneuvers look effortless.
The Blue City won’t provide its readers with an easy-to-use map or accessible tourist attractions. But travelers who are willing to look in a stranger’s eyes, willing to wander down a seedy street, and willing to feel before analyzing may find something deeply satisfying in Dougherty’s landscape.
Susannah Nichols teaches English at Roeper School in Birmingham, MI
and is currently working on her first novel.
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