Barack Obama Teenage pictures

Video: Michigan Avenue/Grant Park Election Celebration

Way too much work today, so here's one of the videos from last Tuesday's celebration. It's taking place on Michigan Avenue. Enjoy!

Monday Notes

Many thanks to Joshua Marie Wilkinson and his colleagues at Loyola University of Chicago who hosted the talks + reading that I was fortunate to participate in last Friday. Joshua, who opened the event by reading one of Barack Obama's poems, invited six of us to speak about poetry and something else we were doing that inflected our work, and my co-speakers offered great remarks. Jennifer Karmin spoke about poetry and activism; Robyn Schiff (I miss her!) spoke about poetry and publishing; Abraham Smith spoke about poetry and performance; Quraysh Ali Lansana (Q!) spoke about poetry and history; and Lisa Fishman spoke about poetry and farming. I read some remarks on collaboration in relation to my work, extending it to my translation projects (another form of collaboration, and one in which this blog has played a great part), and some art stuff. (Dear collaborators...hint, hint....)

After a delicious lunch, we all read briefly, and then I had to go catch a plane, missing what was billed as a "snow storm." I was very glad to see so many local poets and students there (a group from the university came down), and to see them really getting into the poetry as well.

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Rapturous reviews of Roberto Bolaño's final, unfinished magnum opus 2666 (FSG, 2008) have been appearing over the past week. The persnickety Adam Kirsch says that it has the "confident strangeness of a masterpiece." (Francisco Goldman's summer 2007 review of a portion of Bolaño's collective oeuvre, including the Spanish version of 2666, can be found here.) The Spanish version graced my carrel at the library this summer, though I wasn't able to get far in it. Would that there were a parallel vein of time.... But the English translation, by Natasha Wimmer, who deserves an award, is out, and although I have only grazed a few pages, I can say, as I did in an email to Reggie H., that it confirms for me that Bolaño will join that cadre of exception writers since 1900--Rilke, Proust, Tolstoy, Hughes, etc.--who are among the finest in the literary tradition but never received the Nobel Prize. You can get the book in one hardcover volume or a boxed three-volume set; I bought the box. Bolaño originally suggested five volumes, but his heirs and executors wisely, it seems, kept the entire work (mostly) together.

Also receiving rhapsodic treatment is Toni Morrison's new novella, A Mercy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). Reviewer after reviewer discusses its exploration of slavery's early form and praises its poetic language, tautness, haunting qualities, and links it to Morrison's masterwork, Beloved (1987). Even the nation's toughest critic, who hasn't spared Morrison harsh criticism in the past, is jumping on the bandwagon. If you missed her reading selections from it on NPR, you can hear it here. It's on my list, for the winter break...

One of the books that recently crossed my desk is Asher Ghaffar's Wasps in a Golden Hum Dream a Strange Music (ECW Press, 2008). It looks gorgeous, from cover to cover, and I've also added it to my list!

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One of the most dismaying bits of recent news was the horrific school collapse in Pétionville, Haiti, just outside the capital, Port-au-Prince. More than 94 children and adults have died, and the international search and rescue effort, which did pull 4 surviving children from the rubble on Saturday, will now likely turn to a recovery of bodies. Up to 250-300 people were thought to be in the building at the time of its collapse. (Above left, a woman in anguish for her missing child is assisted by relatives at the site of the collapsed the church-run school, La Promesse, in Petion-ville, Haiti on November 10, 2008, AFP/Getty Images.)

It now appears that the school's owner, Pastor Fortune (Fortin?) Augustin, who had voluntarily turned himself in, is being charged with involuntary manslaughter; when the building collapsed, workers were adding an additional floor, and the pastor is alleged to have constructed the building without engineering help. Haiti is still trying to recover from the quartet of devastating storms which have battered the Caribbean islands since the late summer. Haiti lost 2/3rds of its crops and entire neighborhoods still remain under water.

If you are able to, you can contribute relief funds here or here.

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I'm not going to speculate on President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team or his putative cabinet picks, though I found this short New York Times piece on Valerie Jarrett quite illuminating. Really, I think we should just wait and watch. Despite the right's claims that he was the second coming of V. I. Lenin (yeah, right!), and the desire among some in Washington for the second coming of Dwight Eisenhower (whom the contemporary Republicans have banished from their roster, along with other decent Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, who was Ronald Reagan's favorite), he has mostly been a center-left legislator, both in the Illinois State Senate and the US Senate. This maps closely onto what I read as his ideological orientation, which is center-left, with the emphasis on the center. Obama isn't and hasn't ever been a left radical, though he often announces leftist intentions and demonstrates progressive tendencies. But he will likely govern from the center-left, perhaps further to the left, because he received a greater popular vote mandate, than any of his previous three predecessors. He is, nevertheless, going to appoint DLC-prototype folks like Rahm Emanuel and his ilk to high posts, bring in a host of Clintonistas, and draw upon the University of Chicago braintrust he hung with for quite some time, and not just the progressive ones.

Some of the early news we're getting, such as his team's careful review of Bush's executive orders and his plan to reverse many of them and his intention to close the abomination at Guantánamo Bay, more than balance out his accommodating stance towards someone like Connecticut's independent senator, Joe Lieberman. Uggh!

Now, can anyone scare up some inauguration tickets for C, me, and family members? (Former classmates...help!)

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Speaking of Obama, poet John Murillo sent along a link to an article noting the President-Elect was recently spotted carrying a copy of Derek Walcott's Selected Poems (Edward Baugh, ed., FSG, 2007) as he was dropping his daughters off at school. I noted to the CC folks that "So much marvelous work in this collection that I'm sure hits Obama at a very deep level," and posted the poem I'd posted on here a month ago, "As John to Patmos." Given that he's already alluded to Langston, Alice Walker (tell me you knew that!), and others, I thought that we might hear snippets of Walcott and many others from our literature in his speeches, including his inaugural. Get your ears and eyes ready!

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One of the greats to remember and honor: Miriam Makeba. Singer, actress, activist-fighter, visionary, "Mama Africa": beautiful. She was 76.

The Day After

"I'm rocking with Obama but I'm not a politician...."
--Jay-Z, "Jockin Jay-Z"

I was so elated and disoriented this morning (I went to bed at about 3 am, after relaying between the TV post-election chatfests on CNN and MSNBC and all of my favorite political websites) that I wasn't sure I would be able to get through the day, but I couldn't cancel student meetings or my class and didn't want to miss my colleagues Eula Biss's and John Bresland's reading/screening or a program event, so I headed up to the university determined to make it through until 5 pm. I must say that I wasn't fully there, and as I type this entry, I still am not. Obama's election still doesn't fully feel real, but I know that last night's results are not a mirage, and that the country--63 million Americans and counting--decisively rejected George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's continuous disaster of an administration that has dominated the last 8 years, and took a huge leap into the future by electing Obama and Biden. Further proof of this were the vote tallies that increased the Democrats' margin in the Senate and in the House.

About five years ago, at the Evanston home of two very distinguished university colleagues, I met Barack Obama in person. He was running for the US Senate seat that he will now forgo to assume the presidency. I remember telling C after I left the event how struck I was by Obama's charm, brilliance, poise, political acumen, and vision. He spoke without notes about his aims for the position, and while he was articulating mostly standard liberal positions, he did so in a way that felt fresh and persuasive. I realized that night that Obama was going to win the Senate seat, even though he faced a field of around 6 or 7 other Democrats in the primary, and then 1 of 5 or so Republicans. He saw that he had and has that elusive it that cannot be acquired or taught. I also felt that his sense of timing was uncanny; Peter Fitzgerald's open seat was a likely Democratic pickup at the very moment when the state was turning against Bush and the war, and Illinois had already shown the nation that it was willing to make history by electing a Black candidate doing so in exemplary fashion when Carol Moseley-Braun was elected in 1992. Obama demonstrated these gifts at the Democratic convention, before a national audience, and after he won his Senate seat in a landslide, I figured he'd eventually run for the presidency, but not for a decade or more. But he realized that the clock was ticking, and launched his campaign in 2007, and the rest, as we can now say, is history.

I've met and known a few politicians and political figures in my time (one of our most recent Republican Undersecretaries of Indian Affairs is my high school classmate), but few have impressed me immediately in the way that Obama did several years ago. All of those struggles, those battles, for centuries, from the 17th century through the Abolition movement through the Civil Rights struggle and Black Power movements, the words and deeds of history's well-known and unknown fighters, were going to take symbolic and material form in someone, and yesterday, they did so in him. Certainly I've had my moments of disenchantment with his politics and fence-straddling, as I made clear when he capitulated on the FISA bill, but I remain convinced that he is an extraordinary figure. What the next four years and after will spell I cannot say, but I do know that he has the skills and talents to match the very best presidents we've had, and it'll be up to all of us, those who supported him and those who didn't, to ensure that he achieves all that he's--and we're--capable of.

I was at Grant Park (though not in the ticketed section) and was able to participate in the mass celebration, which I described to colleagues today as something akin to all of Chicago's sports teams winning at the same time, though everyone was on her or his best behavior, polite, brimming with smiles and teary eyes, laughing, saying hello and apologizing for accidental bumps, breaking into spontaneous songs and dances and cheers, almost a kind of Kantian ethical dreamworld filled not with Prussian burghers but Midwesterners of every age, color, race and ethnicity, physical status, and so on.

The official tallies claim that only 200,000 people were there, but I think far more were on the streets (Michigan Avenue, the various side streets all the way down to Congress Parkway, and west well to State) surrounding the park. Out of the thousands who went to the park, I missed some colleagues who were there, but ran into a handful of students, all as excited as I was, on the El, on the street, and at the park's edges. I'm going to post a few pictures below, and will post a video from my other camera, from which I haven't yet downloaded lots of pictures, but it was as festive an experience as I've ever had.

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One thing that has tempered my ongoing elation is the news that all of the major state-based anti-gay ballot measures passed last night. In Florida (same-sex marriage ban), in Arizona (same-sex marriage ban), in Arkansas (gay adoption), and most notoriously in California, voters approved measures that would restrict or remove rights and equality for LGBTQ people. California's Proposition 8, the anti-same sex marriage amendment, did pass by a vote of 52.5% vs. 47.5%, and as CNN's exit polling suggests which should be taken with qualifications, black voters overwhelming claimed to have supported it:

This was very disappointing news, though not exactly surprising. Although some of the most pro-LGBTQ figures in our society are Black leaders (public intellectuals, politicians, business people, etc.), and many Black people are very accepting of LGBTQ friends and family members, an issue like this California same-sex marriage ban, presented in the abstract, especially without a sustained chorus of prominent Black and other POC gay and non-gay people advocating against it, was likely to receive a homophobic backlash, and the Obama turnout had a converse effect, it appears. My first question was, what effect will this have on same-sex couples who have already married? Do those marriages stand or once this new amendment takes effect will they invalidated, even though they would be recognized in two other states (Massachusetts and Connecticut)? Can another Supreme Court ruling or a legislative act trump this referendum amendment to California's constitution?

One thing I told C is that from this day forward, one thing that all Black LGBTQ people, our Black non-LGBTQ and non-Black queer and non-queer allies must do is make a much greater effort to educate those segments of our fellow folks who still hold fast to heterosexism and homophobia. I have said and will say again that Black people are no more homophobic than any other group. At the same time, we as Black communities do have pockets of homophobia that we must address. However you feel about marriage or same-sex marriage, it is inconceivable that we should be taking away rights and legalizing civil discrimination against any of us. Black people over these hundreds of years in America have fought too hard, sweat and bled and died to secure equality, and we should absolutely not be helping in any way to further discrimination, which affects all of us, including those of us who are Black and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, who want to and demand to be treated equally and fairly, by other Black people and by everyone else. So as I said, we need to redouble our efforts from today forward, however we can, to address this issue in our community, even as we strive to address homophobia in the broader American society.

Please do read blogger Pam Spaulding's great take on things here at Pam's House Blend.

I am also glad that civil rights groups are immediately challenging the Proposition 8 results in the courts. As I told colleagues today, I take consolation in the fact that yesterday's vote, particularly among the young, points to a better future in so many ways. We will have a female president sooner rather than later, as well as political and social leaders from all backgrounds, and the politics of demonization and discrimination, which the vile right wing and cowards on the left have utilized as a mechanism of power and dominance, are losing their salience. So while yesterday brought a very saddening note, I have tremendous hope for the future, our American future.

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Those photos:



A band on Michigan Avenue

T-shirt vendors

Artist and instantaneous art

On Michigan Avenue, from the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago

The crowd proceeding up Michigan towards Grant Park

From the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago, looking south down Michigan

Obama-Biden Win Presidency!

BARACK OBAMA IS THE 44th PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

BARACK OBAMA IS THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

BARACK OBAMA AND JOSEPH BIDEN HAVE WON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!

CONGRATULATIONS, SENATORS OBAMA AND BIDEN!!!!

GOD BLESS YOU, PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA AND VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN, AND THANK YOU, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE!
YES WE CAN, YES WE DID!

Congrats to Kearnizzle + Intl Writers + 1968+40 + Condolences

Congratulickations to Cave Caneiste Doug Kearney (photo, The Other Project Blogspot), who received a Whiting Foundation Award for his sustained, exemplary and ongoing poetic magification. Doug is a poet, performer, librettist, educator, professor, a high performance lyric man-machine, with one of the hairiest chests of any wordsmith I've ever known (one notices these things). If he comes to your corner of the great American literary showgrounds, catch him because he and his work are definitely worth seeing. He levitates and makes words do so too. Really, he does.

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This weekend four writers came to town for two events through the good graces of the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa, my colleagues Reg Gibbons and Stacy Oliver, the university's Center for the Writing Arts, and the Guild Complex in Chicago. They were Leila Al-Tarash (novelist and media producer, Jordan); Tarek El-Tayeb (poet, playwright, fiction writer, essayist Austria and Egypt); Yael Globerman (poet and fiction writer, Israel); and Gutierrez "Teng" Mangansakan II (poet, fiction writer, film producer and director, Phillippines). The first was a classroom conversation at the university. As they did last year, the writers spoke on Friday to an audience of our students and faculty members, talking about their lives and work in the context of their societies. A few highlights include El Tayeb's discussion of his start as a storyteller when very small as a means of self-protection and enchantment of a wilder, older schoolmate, and his belief that his work was an attempt to write about something he'd lost; Laila al-Atrash's exploration of the censorship of her work regarding its religious content, though once sexually taboo material is permitted, and of the necessity of having had to balance a full-time career in the media with her writing, which she's been able to devote much more time to; Yael Globerman's commentary on the waves of immigration that have marked Israel and Israeli literature, and her sense that the silence about what had happened in Europe--the Holocaust--had been broken by David Grossman first and then increasingly addressed by subsequent generations of writers, as was the case with the silence about Arabs in Israel, which was also now part of Israeli literature; and Tang Mangansakan's disquisition on moving from the geographical periphery (Mindanao, in the south) to the cultural center, in Manila, and writing in English, one of the colonial and now predominant languages in the Phillipines.

One moment that particularly interested me was the somewhat contentious but good-spirited back-and-forth between al-Atrash and Globerman over the issue of immigration, home and the Other in Israel; al-Atrash was a native of Palestine, and her perspective differed from Globerman's, though they came to agreement with al-Atrash's comments about the great fear of the Other, the sense that the person whose life was in so many ways similar and geographically close but fundamentally unknown was monstrous, terrifying, a grave threat, and yet, over the years, that sense of Otherness had broken down, though not without a great toll levied through the years. Their dialogue was, if I may sound somewhat trite, symbolic of the dialogue that is ongoing. Another moment that particularly caught my ear was when Teng Mangansakan talked about his own blogging (his site is Funktional Schizophrenic), which he saw as a means and form of writing, and of building audience. Through review of his site counter, he learned that about 60% of his readership was in the US, and he not only was making money as a blogger, but also selling books through the medium. He also mentioned his video essay Jihad, about his own personal jihad as a queer Muslim Filipino, and I do hope to see it and more of his work if and when they appear at one of the local film festivals or on DVD.


Reg, Tarek, Yael and Laila at the Friday morning event

On Saturday, along with Chicago-area writers Tony Trigilio and Paul Martínez Pompa, I joined them on a panel discussion, entitled "Migrating People, Migrating Literature," that was part of the Chicago/International Writers Exchange. It was hosted by the Guild Complex at the Chopin Theater on the edge of Wicker Park (Real World Chicago!) and Humboldt Park (you've got it, Saul Bellow's old stomping grounds). Many thanks to Reg Gibbons, Michael Puican, Ellen Placey Wadey, and everyone affiliated with the Guild Complex who staged this event. I believe it was taped and will be available soon via audio, so I'll post the link when I have it. We had to write short pieces about migration before the event, but we mostly discussed other things, ranging from translation to politics and writing and the politics of writing to the various ways you might study literature to various kinds of authenticities. It was a joy to meet Tony and Paul, and converse publicly with the visiting writers, and I only wish they didn't have to head back to Iowa so soon. Below are a few photos from both the second event.


Tony, Teng and Yael before the conversation

Laila and Paul after the conversation

Paul, Tarek and Yael

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Also this weekend, the university held a conference commemorating the courageous protests, led by Black students enrolled 40 years ago, which led to the establishment of the now renowned African American Studies department, increased admissions of Black and especially poor and working-class Black students, more Black faculty (because of them I have my job!), and number of other changes that have made the campus more hospitable to Black students and other students and faculty of color.

One of the highlights was hearing poet and fiction writer Angela Jackson, whom I'd previously written about when my colleague Ed Roberson held a mini-conference last year on the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, read from her forthcoming novel, Where I Must Go, about that episode and related events. It will be published by Northwestern University Press next July, and if the excerpt I heard, which involves a number of the university's Black students visiting a revolutionary on the South Side of Chicago and having their eyes opened, figuratively and literally, by his critique of them, their education, and their belief systems, is a harbinger, this will be a remarkable work. Angela is a poet of true grace and wit, and the selection she read showed she had recaptured that era vividly and distilled it, deploying her abundant lyric and dramatic talents in the process. It will be interesting to read this novel's likely critique of the Black bourgeoisie's and the revolutionaries' sometimes intersecting, sometimes conflicting aims, especially in light of our current era, when their convergence has taken the symbolic and material form of a nationalist and post-nationalist dream likely to come true in the form of Barack Obama. What I was so aware of, as I listened to the notes of recognition among the audience members, so many of them alumni or the heirs of that era, was that this current would not have been possible without them, and it was part of their vision, even if different what they envisioned.

They are all my heroes.


Angela Jackson reading from her forthcoming novel Where I Must Go


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Earlier today I saw the very sad news that Madelyn Dunham, Senator Barack Obama's grandmother, passed away today. She was 86 and lived in Hawaii. He had lived with her during his high school years, and had just gone to visit her a few weeks ago when she became gravely ill. My offer my sincerest condolences to Senator Obama and his family, and I wish she could have lived to see the outcome on Wednesday, because I strongly believe he will that he'll be victorious tomorrow.



Here's a link to Ta-Nehisi Coates's thoughtful and moving Atlantic Monthly commentary on and tribute to Obama's grandparents.

Senator Obama's comments on his grandmother are here (in text and video form).



My condolences also to the family of Illinois's senior Senator, Dick Durbin, whose 40-year-old daughter, Christine passed away after a lifetime struggle with heart disease. My thoughts go out to him and his entire family. I should also note that Senator Durbin is running for reelection, and has been one of the few consistently outspoken liberals in the Senate. He is on track to return to the Senate with a very large margin of support.

Phoning for Senator O

Earlier today I decided to take a step I hadn't in many years, and contribute more than money and unwanted thoughts to a political campaign, so I volunteered to go to a MoveOn-sponsored phone party for Barack Obama. Here's an excerpt of my prosaic email to two friends in New England about the experience:

Today I went to a MoveOn.org phone banking party for Obama. It was at the home of a middle-aged couple living in West Rogers Park, perhaps 15 blocks from my spot in Chicago. The middle-aged couple who hosted the event were quite friendly, and the wife is a lawyer who is planning to monitor a polling place in Indianopolis on Tuesday. When I got there at 4 pm, only a few people were present, but slowly others started showing, and by the time I left, several waves of people had shown up. We were tasked with calling people in Virginia who'd somehow turned up on MoveOn.org's lists. My pages of lists were all to voters in Newport News, Virginia, which as you both know is a predominantly African-American city. I was really nervous at first--I'm not a phone person, and am pretty shy--but once I got going it was a lot of fun. Many of the people I called were not home, and we weren't supposed to leave messages, but I hate calling people and hanging up, so I did give them the Obama campaign's info, address and number in Newport News, and soon learned that others were doing so as well.

What really heartened me was the number of people I spoke to who had already voted, were already working for Obama or on voting issues generally, were urging family and friends to vote, or were eager to go knock on doors tomorrow and on Sunday. Some of these people were elderly, I could tell, but they were so excited. I spoke to one woman who sounded like she was probably in her 40s or 50s. She said she had only just got back from burying her father in Florida, had returned to school and had Saturday classes, but really wanted to help out and said that she would take time out at 5 pm tomorrow to go get material and do what she could.

Also, the phone bankers came from all different backgrounds. One woman brought her daughter. There were two older South Asian women who arrived when I was nearly finished. It was really cool to see the diversity and enthusiasm of people there, and I may make calls this weekend if I can fit it into my schedule.

Now, 4 more days to go, and let's send positive thoughts towards Pennsylvania!

The scene at the event

Signing up

The phone banking form

Show Me Rally + Powell's Words + Congrats!

I was incredibly proud of my hometown, and my native state, when I learned that Barack Obama drew an estimated 100,000+ spectators to his speech beneath the Gateway Arch at the St. Louis riverfront (at left, Jae C. Hong/Associated Press) and an estimated additional 75,000 people at his public rally later that day in Kansas City. For Obama to draw so many people (his largest rally to date, I think) in a traditionally conservative, bellwether state so close to the election augured well for his changes in Missouri. Even still, I think the election there will be very close. Curiously, I haven't seen many photos of the Kansas City rally, as if the images from the St. Louis gathering are supposed to serve, by the media's lights, as a metonym not only for both events, but for his current appeal, statistical lead, and likelihood of victory.

After belittling and spinning away the huge May rally in Portland, the immense crowd in Philadelphia, the 200,000 people who stood to hear Obama in Berlin, and Obama's stadium-filling Democratic National Convention acceptance speech in Denver, how will Republicans and their media lapdogs dismiss this unambiguous affirmation in their proverbial, beloved HEARTLAND? Everything I've seen shows that they've decided under the circumstances to pass over the rallies, if not the fundraising, with minimal comment. You can't wish that many people away no matter how hard you try.

One point that I may have missed others noting is a visual and historical one. In the photo below, the cupolaed building in the background is St. Louis's Old Courthouse (c. 1826-1862) The significance of this building in relation to Obama political run, his presence in Missouri and his potential victory can't be understated. As I like other St. Louis schoolchildren learned from my parents, enslaved people were sold on the courthouse's steps. In 1847 and 1850, two of the first trials in the Dred Scott case were held in its courtrooms, and Scott successfully sued for and temporarily gained his and his family's freedom, in 1850, within its walls. And in 1870, suffragette Virginia Minor's case for a woman's right to vote came to trial at the Old Courthouse as well. When I saw the Courthouse's dome rising above the vast see of people, I wondered if somewhere amidst those faces, descendants of Scott (some of whom still live in St. Louis) and Minor, along with their ghosts, weren't also cheering Obama on.

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Alongside the news of Obama's $150 million September fundraising haul, the other big announcement for today is former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State General Colin Powell's hearty endorsement of Barack Obama. It is huge news, and although I cannot ever forget his crucial roles in creating political difficulties for helping to sell the illegal and unwarranted Iraq War, I believe that he still has enough political capital that his critiques of the slanderous direction of John McCain's campaign, the McCarthyite ranting by Representative Michelle Bachmann, and the unanswered racist slurs against Arabs and Muslims will, along with his support of Obama, prove noteworthy. I still don't trust Powell, and am dismayed to learn that Obama is planning to offer him some sort of position--will he replace the now-invisible War Czar, or head the Department of Veteran Affairs?--but I get the politics of the return gesture. Now, when is the incompetent and totally disgraced Dr. Condoleezza Rice going to offer her endorsement of Obama? How many effigies must be hung, canvassers attacked, death threats be lodged vocally, reporters kicked to the ground, and so on before she finds herself so disgusted she has to take a public stand against McCain, Palin, and the politics so eagerly fostered by the man she once labeled her "husband"?

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Among the many moving and heartening get-well notes, cards and encouraging gifts I received, for which I'm forever grateful, I want to show the following, but for reasons other than to do with my own health.

My former student Tai Little, one of the smartest and most talented and inventive writers I've worked with (her graduating class is still one I remember vividly and fondly), sent this CD of Chihei Hatakeyama's music. I wasn't familiar with Hatakeyama or this CD at all, but I've been playing it frequently on my drives around Chicago. I particularly appreciated the title (Tai flourished in the drudgery of my aesthetics theory class years ago), which playfully invokes a certain philosopher I greatly admire, but spares the listener of struggle through his prose. Not only did it help my convalescence, but it has a definitive calming and yet invigorating effect when I encounter Lake Shore Drive's sclerotic traffic on my drives south to my graduate class in Chicago.

This letter is from other than Ronaldo Wilson, of whom I've written on here before. I initially skimmed the letter with gratitude, which as you can see includes an artful insert, drawings, and RW's distinctive calligraphy. Then something told me to reread it, because I've come to realize that careful rereading always pays. And it did, because it was then that I learned that Mr. Wilson is now officially Dr. Wilson--so congratulations, Ronaldo Wilson, Ph.D.! Though as anyone who knows him will attest, he already possessed mastery of areas the rest of us have hardly envisioned.

Signal On + Memorials + Debate #1 + Brazilian Poets in Chicago

I'm back in the Chi, classes are underway. This fall's load looks to be a little lighter than the past few years, since I'm teaching only a graduate workshop and an undergraduate honors seminar, and I'm supervising just a few undergraduates and graduates, all of whom are sharp and talented as they come, so it should be an enjoyable quarter.

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In the time since I last posted, nearly a month ago, so much has happened on many fronts out there in the wide world, but I do want to note a few things, starting with the passing of a few important people: the first is Reginald Shepherd, a poet I knew, though not well, but whose poetry and criticism I grew to appreciate a great deal. His early and untimely death still shocks me. On the CC list I wrote the following:

I remember his essay, "On Not Being White," in Joseph Beam's anthology In the Life, which annoyed me for a good while until I reread it and made an effort to understand where he was coming from.* I also remember when Reginald's first book came out and all the buzz around it, and how I excited I was to meet him for the first time back at one of the old OutWrite conferences in Boston, in the late 1990s.

He could be, to use Shakespeare's and everybody else's phrase, a piece of work, but he was certainly a brilliant poet and a lively critic. His passing is a real loss for Black, Black LGBTQ, and American poetry, but I hope he finds real peace.

His lyrical facility, the deep and relentless exploration of desire and yearning for love and acceptance that surged through his stanzas, his skill with metaphor and a particularly deft gift for the music of rhyme are all hallmarks I register when I think of his work. Without hesitation I can say that Reginald was easily one of the most important Black/gay poets to emerge over the last 25 years, and I'm very sorry that we have lost his voice. He was only 45, and leaves his partner, Robert Philen, and many family members.

Also, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, the Puerto Rican/Nuyorican author, also passed away earlier this month. I met him once, at a reading featuring some of New York's important Latino writers that I helped coordinate at one of my former jobs. I wasn't at all familiar with his work, but hearing Vega Yunqué read and talk about his life and work, he struck me as a real treasure. Original, funny, feisty, cantankerous, and like so many, deserving of greater honors and attention than he ever received. After the reading I went and found some of his work, which reminded me in many ways of Ishmael Reed, not least in its caustic humor and social criticism. Like Ishmael, Vega Yunqué was a social activist, and played a key role in building and nurturing Puerto Rican/Nuyorican/Latino letters and arts in New York; he was one of the founders of the vital arts center Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center on the Lower East Side. He was 72.

Then there was the news of the tragic death of one of the most celebrated writers of the contemporary era, David Foster Wallace. I've taught his work a few times over the years, and consider his story "The Girl With Curious Hair" to be a comic masterpiece. I'm less a fan of his novel, Infinite Jest, which I admit I advanced only about 300 pages into, but whatever my thoughts about that work, I must say that Wallace was blindingly talented and offered one of the most influential, ironic takes on our society to be found in recent literature. A huge loss.

And then yesterday I read about the passing of one of the consistently superb actors--and activists--of the last half of the 20th century, Paul Newman, at 83. Very sad.

***

I watched the debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain last night. My own thoughts about the contest aren't important, because it appears that Obama achieved what was most necessary: positive reviews by many in the influential establishment media, and very positive reviews by independent voters and in quick post-debate polls. While I will definitely be watching the Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and the walking disaster known as Sarah Palin, I'm not sure if I can bear another Obama-McCain talkfest, especially if Obama, however successful his tactics, refuses to challenge McCain more and if McCain's rage and contempt have him seething like an old and overheating radiator.

***

One highlight of this week was the series of readings in Chicago by four noteworthy contemporary Brazilian poets, Maria Esther Maciel, Virna Teixeira, Paulo Henriques Britto, and Sérgio Medeiros. The poets, from Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza by way of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Matto Grosso do Sul via Florianópolis respectively, all appeared in the Brooklyn-based literary journal Aufgabe's issue no. 7 (2007), which featured a special section on Brazilian writing, edited by poet and translator Ray Bianchi. Ray also organized the readings, with Aufgabe editor E. Tracy Grinnell, and they took place at three different venues across Chicagoland: the university, the University of Chicago, and at Chicago's main branch Harold Washington Library in the Loop. Colleagues at the university, along with Litmus Press, the Chicago Poetry Project, and the Consulate General of Brazil in Chicago, all sponsored the events.

I attended the first reading, at the university, which my colleague, prodigious author and translator Reg Gibbons, had helped to coordinate and which he introduced. All four of the poets read either excerpts from longer work or a few short poems in Portuguese, and either they or Ray followed with English translations. One of the things that intrigued me was that two of the poets, Henriques Britto and Teixeira, both wrote in English as well as Portuguese; for Henriques Britto it resulted from his having spent part of his youth in Washington, DC, and he later told me that his first poetic language was English. Teixeira told me that she wrote in English when she was living for several years in Scotland, though now she wrote almost always in Portuguese. In the case of both poets, the English was idiomatic and lyrical, with Henriques Britto's more discursive and assured in its handling of rhyme, and Teixeira's grounded in concise and evocative imagery.

With regard to their Portuguese texts, I noted and asked about the differences during the question and answer session. Medeiros, who told me about a new language melding Portuguese, Spanish and Guaraní that was developing in southern Brazil (where he lives), read from a long poem that was both fragmentary and composed along the lines of what I would identify as the Language poetry movement's "new sentence." Maciel's briefer poems drew upon the rich homophonic, rhyming polysemous possibilities of Portuguese, which she contrasted with a few visually grounded prose poems. Teixeira's short poems moved from image to image, and, as became clear soon enough, were often inspired by works of art. The fourth poet, Henriques Britto, read poems in fixed forms: sonnets, a half-sestina, and a full villanelle. They sounded as adroit and nimble in Portuguese as in English.

When the writers spoke about influences, they listed many of the best known names in 20th century Brazilian poetry: Carlos Drummond de Andrade, João Cabral de Melo Neto, the two de Campos brothers, Augusto and Haroldo, and Cecília Meireles. They also mentioned English-language authors such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and the great modernists Wallace Stevens and, from a later generation, Elizabeth Bishop. In reading the poetry in the special section, I wondered about more recent national and international trends and influences, because a number of the writers are in conversation with them. Other questions during the Q&A touched upon the contemporary literary landscape in Brazil, national vs. regional trends there today, the presence and influence of literary journals (which Ray does touch upon in his introduction to the special section), and the problem of a readership for poetry. Three of the writers, I believe, are also university professors, though I didn't gather that any of them taught creative writing per se; that is, it seems, a peculiarity thus far of the English-speaking world (mainly the US, Britain, Canada, and Australia). Teixeira mentioned that she was a medical doctor, and the precision of her work, in retrospect, bore this out.

I attended a second round today at the Harold Washington Library, and got to hear all the writers read more of their work. Maciel read one of my favorite poems from the special section, a poem consisting only of a litany of single words separated by commas, which ends with "palavra" (word). It was titled "Palavras preferidas" in Portuguese, and "Favorite Words" in English. The translator managed to capture some of the richness of the original's sonorities and playfulness, but there is nothing like hearing "ferrugem" (iron) or "ruido" (noise) or "arara" (arara!) pronounced by a native Portuguese speaker, Brazilian or from Europe or Africa. It's almost as if paper's crinkling in the mouth as a song emerges. Lovely: amável!

The event was heartening on many levels, but I also hope it's a signal that more such events will be possible in the future.

Back Up & Running

And now, finally, I'm back to my previously scheduled program, many stones, three surgeries, two stents, and a month and a half later, just as the summer, unfortunately, is winding down and the academic year is about to barrel in. Neither C nor I thought in July that things would turn out to be so complicated, but such are the body's vagaries. If I say that neither of us would like to see the inside of a hospital anytime soon, or spot evidently crazed people who later turn out to be one's nurses, or overhear hospital staff regaling each other about homeless people's chicaneries to get food, or juggle any of the countless forms required every time you set foot near the patient intake center, or I don't think I'd be stretching. But throughout the medical professionals, like C, have been exemplary, so let me say thank you. The experience yet again highlighted for me the necessity of comprehensive, truly universal health insurance, and the urgency, for all of us, not only to elect people at every level of government who will support it, and then to hold them fast to its implementation as soon as possible.

As I posted before, I greatly appreciate all the get-well wishes, posted here or sent via email. They've truly been a balm.

***

Many J's Theater readers know that had I been feeling better, I was likely to post shots from a major athletic extravaganza like the Beijing Olympics. But I had vowed to myself before the events took place not to promote them in any fashion on this site, mainly because of host nation China's horrendous record, past and recent, in so many areas of human and political rights, and because of the ongoing bloody repression of the Tibetans and other social, political and religious dissidents and minorites there. (Let me be clear that in calling out China I am not absolving the United States or any other country). It just so worked out that I was in constant enough pain during the period of the Olympics that I was unable to post anything (I could barely type at certain points), but I was captive and lucid enough that I watched most of the televised events, especially towards the end. The Chinese really know how to stage mass events and win gold medals, no? Does anyone think they won't be atop the gold and total medal counts by the next summer Olympics in 2012, in London? And will the corporate press ever live down the shame of covering for the Chinese authorities and, as they've done during both major US party conventions last week and this week, failing to do their jobs by reporting on the serious issues in China and the attempted protests, the imprisonment and the suppression of dissent?

As I said, I was couchbound for weeks, and watched a slew of events, including ones I little enjoy like beach volleyball, team handball, and shooting (which turned out to be pretty interesting). My favorite athletic moments beyond the more obvious ones, such as the swimming races, which, despite the Michael Phelps hype (though he admittedly was unbelievable), or the US men's team's (the "Redeem" team) basketball games, provided great drama, or the gymnastic competitions, which naturally received a lot of press, not least because some of the Chinese female gymnasts were visibly underage, were numerous. They included the individual and team victories by various US fencing squads (women's foil, women's and men's sabre); the gold victory by the all-black French epee fencing team (above left), and the bronze by French baby giant judoka Teddy Riner (at right); the triumph by the lone out gay male athlete in Beijing, Australian Matthew Mitcham, in the mens' 20 m platform diving (though NBC saw fit to suppress his victory celebration with his partner); the medal victories by athletes from tiny countries, like the Dominican Republic's boxers or Togo's kayaker or Panama's long jumper; and the gold, replete with a compelling background story, won by men's under 55 kg freestyle by Henry Cejudo.

One of my favorite sports, track and field, did not disappoint. I believe I watched nearly all the running events that wer televised, including the marathons. Most exciting I thought were Usain Bolt's spectacular victories in the men's 100 and 200 m, the Jamaican women team's 100 m sweep, the American men's 4x400 race, and the last minute victory by American Sanya Richards (below, with her fellow relay team members) of the women's 4x400 race, which almost felt like it had been scripted in a Hollywood; Romanian Constantina Tomescu's breakaway victory in the women's marathon, which required a gutsy decision by the winner to push herself as much as possible and then not let up; the 1-2-3 victory by the Americans in the men's 400 m and 400 m hurdles; and the blazing triumph that bespectacled 110 m Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles turned in.

On a sports listserve I belong to, I commiserated with other fans about NBC's coverage, but I have to say in retrospect that things weren't so bad overall in part because some of the less popular sports (equestrian; weightlifting, etc.) were broadcast, just not on NBC. Between MSNBC, USA Networks, Oxygen, and Telemundo, and NBC's online site, it was possible to see a great deal of what was taking place in Beijing, often live. Thus I got to see the rowing events, wrestling, soccer, baseball, and quite a bit of other stuff that wasn't featured on the main channel. (I suspect, however, that some sports, like modern pentathlon, were just not broadcast at all. Oh well.) I hope this becomes standard policy for the future.

***

I have been following the political races too, and watched most of the Democratic convention and about as much of the Republican one as I could stomach, which is not much. Whatever my quarrels with Senator Barack Obama's positions, detailed on this very site over the last year or so, I was utterly moved and impressed by his acceptance speech last Thursday. The speech itself was prehaps less soaring that some of his other ones, but the performance overall, which includes the setting, the history-making quality of the event, its significance for our political culture, nearly brought me to tears. It has been interesting to note the contrast between the tones of the two conventions, the quality of speechmaking and political rhetoric at the one last week, a great deal of it inspiring, visionary and hopeful, and this week (so much of it acid, detached from the problems we face as a society and as a world, and in complete flight from the debacle of the last eight years. The political commentary by the punditocracy I've found almost uniformly abysmal, with the sole exception of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. (Who thankfully will be getting her own show next week!)


(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Most of the people on air appear less informed about basic aspects of the party's and candidates' platforms, their histories, their ideologies, and what they're saying and how they're saying, than my two cats. They are very good at regurgitating talking points issued by the McCain campaign and RNC, or reciting whatever they've read on Drudge Report. I expect Fox always to be at the bottom, and they do not disappoint ever, but the major broadcast channels, as well as CNN and even PBS, have proved to be quite bad. Watching Charlie Rose the other night, with "liberal" Al Hunt (Mr. Judy Woodruff?) downplaying or simply not broaching every valid criticism of the unqualified and constantly lying, self-described "barracuda" that John McCain has chosen as his Vice Presidential pick made me want to puke.

And can I just say this: it really says everything about John McCain that he picked someone who has lied, blatantly, in each of her first three public appearances since being named to his ticket. Think about that: on each of the first three times Sarah Palin spoke as the Republican VP pick to the American people, she blatantly lied, not just about one issue, but about multiple ones. Most obviously, she lied about that "Bridge to Nowhere" in Ketchikan. Congress canceled the earmark in 2005, taking the issue off the table. Let's state this again. Congress canceled the earmark IN 2005, TAKING THE ISSUE OFF THE TABLE. She was not elected UNTIL 2006. Yet she still advocated for the earmark in 2006 while running for office, and when Congress sent the money, without specific requirements for the bridge, she used it, in part to build a "Road to Nowhere"! Last Friday, she said before the paltry crowd in Dayton and the world that she had "told Congress" no thanks—I know her boss is clueless about Google, but is she? How dumb does this woman think we all are?

In addition to the cynicism it displays about the political stakes we face, the sexist assumptions that women would vote for any woman, and in particular this social and religious extremist, and sheer contempt for politics in general, McCain's selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin undergirds one of Obama's fundamental critiques of McCain last Thursday: the Arizona senator, in addition to being out of touch, too far to the right, and lacking in any principles, has terrible judgement and a reckless temperament, both of which this choice embodies.

As people close to me will testify, I was very disappointed with Obama's selection of Senator Joe Biden, whom I think of as a Washington insider whose foreign policy instincts and pronouncements I've tended to find pretty suspect. He essentially agreed with Hillary Clinton and John McCain on invading Iraq, with poor excuses as to why, and on the Georgian crisis, he's been pushing almost the same line as the Bush administration. (Why on earth have none of the Democrats called more forcefully for bringing Russia to the table to discuss the situation? It's clear that McCain's campaign is hitched financially, via advisor-lobbyist Randy Scheunemann, to Georgia's leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, but the Democrats aren't also on Georgia's payroll, are they?) I was much more in favor of Obama picking someone like Montana's governor Brian Schweitzer, for example, who really brought a lot to the ticket, including ideological and geographical diversity. Schweitzer would have been a fresh face with substance behind it, unlike Palin, and as he showed at the convention last week, he possesses that coin that the establishment media seek like a jones: the man's a geiser of authenticity, real, unvarnished folksiness. From the perspective of several weeks, however, I'll give Obama the benefit of doubt. I think he and his team were right, and Biden looks like a very good choice as running mate, especially compared to Palin.

As of today Obama retains his national lead as well as leads in many states. But I was born and grew up in a state, Missouri, in which there are many people—perhaps not a majority, but close to it—who will find this woman's personality and the establishment media's bowdlerized version of her personal history, scrubbed almost completely of the pertinent and highly disturbing facts, quite appealing. There are more than a few places across the country, in Missouri and elsewhere, in which the politics of resentment and ressentiment, as well as cynicism, subterfuge, sub rosa racism, and host of other dangerous crap, which the GOP is playing to the hilt, very well may prove effective. So I worry. I really do.

But then I also keep in mind that the basic facts of today, the rising unemployment rate, the dodgy financial system and the collapsing real estate market, the rising costs of living, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady tide of news about un-Constitutional activity that emanates from the White House—all of it may trump the exhausted and yet still caustic ploys the Republicans and their allies are turning to, it may trump the relentlessly flogged narrative of the POW-hero-"maverick" the press repeats like a mantra, and it may trump the presence of this dangerous, horribly unqualified woman whom the McCain campaign is itself so unsure of they will not let her near their very "base," the establishment media, they have quickly turned against like rattlesnakes in order to cow.

But as I've said it will not be easy—and not one of us who wants someone other than John McCain and Sarah Palin in the White House (and yes, there are options such as Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, Ralph Nader's traveling roadshow, and various folks on the right, like Bob Barr, who'd be worse than McCain-Palin) should assume it will be.

***

On a completely different note, the one and only Jennifer Saunders (French and Saunders, Absolutely Fabulous) will have a new show on US TV, a sendup of daytime talk shows entitled The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle. It headlines Sunday's upcoming Sunday Comedy Block, starting at 9 pm EST. I can't wait!

***

In a few days I'll try to post some reviews and other things. I haven't gotten half as much reading as I'd hoped to, certainly far, far less than last summer, but I haven't been totally idle, or addled.

I did get out to the opening of CONTRANYM, a show curators Kelly Kivland, Alisoun Meehan and Chris Stackhouse mounted in the New Voices, New York series at chashama ABC gallery, in the East Village. The gallery itself was a toaster, but the art, by Robert Delford Brown, John Cage, Victoria Fu, Stephanie Loveless, and Brian Kim Stefans, was cooking in the best way.

In addition to chatting with the curators and Brian, I had the opportunity to meet fellow Cave Canem poet Myronn Hardy, whose book of poems The Headless Saints appeared earlier this summer. Here are some photos from that event. Enjoy!


The crowd at Contranym

Brian Kim Stefan's digital film, "Scriptors"

Part of the collaborative Robert Delford Brown "Fluxus"-style piece, "Explosion of a Tile Factory"

Inside and outside