wishful thinking.

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Julianna Baggott was quoted in this article on the Poetry Foundation web page. The article discusses the effect that the VT shooting last Spring has had on how creative writing professors handle violence in their students’ writing. Baggott is named as the voice of one extreme – that teachers have only literary, not moral, responsibilities to their students – while the other extreme argues for a absolute merging of those duties.

From the article:

“Most of the poets who responded to my interview first defined their own notion of “evil,” and, like Levertov and Duncan, they differed on the question of their moral and literary responsibilities. On one end of the spectrum is Bucknell University professor G.C. Waldrep, whose theological beliefs inform his work and life.

“Evil is a given. It is part of our human condition, whether one perceives its origin in the putative ‘Fall’ or not,” he says. “The most we can do, perhaps, is recognize it for what it is, in ourselves and in others. And behave accordingly: which includes writing about it with honesty and passion.”

On the opposite end is Florida State University professor Julianna Baggott. “I don’t think in these terms and I don’t think I ever will,” she says. “Are you asking if it’s my role to teach the difference between good and evil, or the evils of evil? No, that’s not my job. I teach people how to write—I believe my duties are more of an artful mechanic than a preacher. . . . I’m not a psychologist and have no understanding of psychosis, but I see Seung-Hui Cho’s actions as those that stem from a deep mental illness.”"

Also, here is a link to the PDF file of Virginia Tech’s plan for responding to disturbing writing.

Here is a recording of Charles Bernstein reading “The Kiwi Bird in the Kiwi Tree” at the Kootenay School of Writing in 1989. This is a long mp3 – about 20 minutes – since it includes almost half of poems from this particular reading. If you’re feeling ambitious and want to listen to the whole thing, the link to all the different recordings is here.

Download link

Julianna Baggott’s reading on October 30^th was an interesting look at the place of poetry in today’s world. I confess to being a little disappointed that she chose to read more of her fiction than her poetry. Even though I did not love Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees, I was still looking forward to hearing an accomplished poet read and talk about her work. When Baggott laughingly said that she was not going to recite any poems from Silkworms during the actual reading but that maybe she would have an opportunity to read one during the q&a, I felt vaguely insulted. I tried so hard to find more in those poems than flippancy and here was the poet herself treating the book as a punch line. Read the rest of this entry »

The Poetry Foundation has a neat feature where a graphic novelist makes a comic strip out of a poem. One I particularly like is Paul Hornschemeier’s take on Ted Kooser’s The Giant Slide.

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