Search results for ""wesleyan university press""

Joy Harjo is a powerful voice for her Creek (Muscogee) tribe ("a stolen people in a stolen land"), for other oppressed people, and for herself. Her poems, both sacred ad secular, are written with the passions of anger, grief, and love, at once tender and furious. They are rooted in the land; they are one with the deer and the fox, the hawk and the eagle, the sun, moon, and wind, and the seasons - "spring/ was lean and hungry with he hope of children and corn." There are enemies here, also lovers; there are ghost dancers, ancestors old and new, who rise again "to walk in shoes of fire." Indeed, fire and its aftermath is a constant image in the burning book. Skies are"incendiary"; the "smoke of dawn" turns enemies into ashes: "I am fire eaten by wind." "Your fire scorched/ my lips." "I am lighting the fire that crawls from my spine/ to the gods with a coal from my sister's flame." But the spirit of this book is not consumed. It is not limited by mad love or war, and"there is something larger than the memory/ of a dispossessed people." That something larger is, for example, revolution, freedom, birth.

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A Black poet performs a shamanic soul retrieval of the seven-hundred-year-old diasporic Black arts traditionContinuing her search for a neotropical mythos in this brilliant second collection, poet fahima ife articulates various scenes of subduction. Spoken in quiet recognition and grounded in desire, Septet for the Luminous Ones imagines a lush soundscape textured in oblique spiritual fusion of the Taíno and Yoruba. Or, what it sounded like coming together for the first time, and what it sounds like ever after, breathless, diaspora calling. Similar to the incidents in Maroon Choreography, what resounds in these poems is an ecstatic love song of the Caribbean Americas, of the main lands and islands, shaped and reshaped as breathwork, ritual, communion, and fantasy. In essence, the collection speaks to raise the vibrational frequencies of all beings on Earth through a pulse of Black English.[sample poem]preface to a twenty-volume spiritual ascentneoromanticismthe seven players, and our c

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Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us/>/>The poems in Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout's new book are concerned with this ongoing attempt/ to catalog the world in a time of escalating disasters. From the bird who check-marks morning/once more//like someone who gets up/to make sure// the door is locked to bat-faced orchids, raising petals like light sails as if about to take flight, these poems make keen visual and psychological observations. The title Go Figure speaks to the book's focus on the unexpected, the strange, and the seemingly incredible so that: We name things/ to know where we are. Moving with the deliberate precision that is a hallmark of Armantrout's work, they limn and refract, questioning how we make sense of the world, and ultimately showing how our experience of reality is exquisitely enfolded in words. It's true things fall apart. Armantrout writes. 'Still, by thinking/we heat ourselves up./>/>Sample Text/>/>HYPER-VIGILANCE/>/>Hilarious

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Ethnography on the politics of land and belonging in post apartheid Zulu performancesWhat does it mean to belong? In The Land is Sung, musicologist Thomas Pooley shows how performances of song, dance, and praise poetry connect Zulu communities to their ancestral homes and genealogies. For those without land tenure in the province of KwaZulu-Nata, performances articulate a sense of place. Migrants express their allegiances through performance and spiritual relationships to land are embodied in rituals that invoke ancestral connection while advancing well-being through intergenerational communication. Engaging with justice and environmental ethics, education and indigenous knowledge systems, musical and linguistic analysis, and the ethics of recording practice, Pooley's analysis draws on genres of music and dance recorded in the midlands and borderlands of South Africa, and in Johannesburg's inner city. His detailed sound writing captures the visceral experiences of performances in everyday life. The book is richly illustrated and there is a companion website featuring both video and audio examples.

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James Dickey: The Selected Poems is the first book to collect James Dickey's very best poems. Like many visionary poets of the ecstatic imagination, Dickey experimented in a wide variety of literary styles. This volume brings together the finest work from each of the periods in Dickey's extremely controversial career. For over three decades, until his death in 1997, Dickey was one of the nation's most important poets; these are the poems that brought him a popular readership and critical acclaim.

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The role of performing art in one of the world''s most diverse and complex societies/>/>This book is the first comprehensive overview of Javanese performing arts from their origins to their dynamic present. Renowned scholar and musician Sumarsam draws from a lifetime of immersion in both wayang and gamelan to guide readers through the concept of the in-between, revealing how the interplay of dualismsmyth and history, sacred and secular, personal and culturalforms the bedrock of Javanese performance. Rigorously researched historical case studies reveal the intricate relationship between histories and mythologies in Java. Wayang, accompanied by gamelan, is a multimedia performance imbued with rich historical, aesthetic, religious, and emotional associations. Sumarsam delves into this intricate, profound, and ever-evolving art form, exploring its diverse manifestations and venues, from courtly village entertainment-cum-ritual to palace-based aesthetic expressions of cultural proficiency;

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CAMINO IMAGINADO Blue leaves, hojas rotas in the shape of stars. Ni un "no" en tu vocabulario but for others; blue in place of green in the shape of Spain. Ojos the color of dirt, chocolate, coffee, time, azules las horas, hojas de horas van y se van, ni una palabra, ni una queja, nor broken bit a tu lado beside me andamos walking, sí walking caminamos caminos like these, such streets, what city. 7/15/95 Paris Xicancuicatl collects the poetry of leading avant-garde Chicanx poet Alfred Arteaga (1950–2008), whom French philosopher Gilles Deleuze regarded as "among those rare poets who are able to raise or shape a new language within their language." In his five published collections, Arteaga made crucial breakthroughs in the language of poetry, basing his linguistic experiments on the multilingual Xicanx culture of the US Southwest. His formal resources and finely tuned ear for sound patterns and language play remain astonishing. His poetical work, presented as a whole here for the first time, speaks more than ever to a moment in which border-crossing, cultural diversity, language-mixing and a multi-cultural vision of America are critical issues.

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mahogany is about the passing of time and unimaginable loss, strength, humor, and love/>/>mahogany takes its name from the dark wood prized for its durability, workability, and elegant look, and from the Diana Ross movie, whose theme song asks if what lies ahead is what you really want. This book is the third in a trilogy, and like the first two books it is steeped in pop music. Each poem here takes its title from a line of a Diana Ross and The Supremes song, as well as songs from Diana Ross' solo career. Short lines flow down the page like postmodern psalms, connecting dailyness to timelessness, merging the historical and the beloved through reverence for family, music, and the life we actually live. mahogany is a lament for the passing of time and unimaginable loss, and at the same time it models the daily search for joy, and the deep shine that can arise from the darkest times./>/>[sample poem]/>/>i'm like a woman who once knew splendor*/>/>/>sometimes i feel like the pink panther/>all naked and pink/>lost in the morass of/>do the best you can today/>and nigga heal thy self/>our end of winter/>spirits break/>like old tibetan snow/>i remember/>you was conflicted/>and i found myself alone/>here on my ancient hurt/>the disquieting hum/>of living history/>dear god, please/>put my head above my heart/>we can only be together/>if the stories are told/>plain face/>same instrument/>just a couple of coke bottles/>full of gasoline/>like god and rain/>is a waste of time/>my mother used to clean houses/>as a child/>some days i can barely/>get out of bed/>in my mind/>she's like diana ross/>scrubbing the white lady's stairs/>in lady sings the blues/>except prettier/>and with green eyes/>i've just been living/>off of cough drops/>and water and anger/>just sitting in the whole foods/>parking lot eating pineapple/>i am literally/>the definition of "hot mess"/>pain changes everything/>somebody come/>and pick up/>my limp body/>off the ground/>i am dying/>a slow ohio death/>we miss you starman/>it's our first sunrise of the burn

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Documentary filmmakers have been making films about music for a half-century. American Music Documentary looks at five key films to begin to imagine how we might produce, edit, and watch films from an ethnomusicological point of view. Reconsidering Albert and David Maysles’s Gimme Shelter, Jill Godmilow’s Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in America, D.A. Pennebaker’s and Chris Hegedus’s Depeche Mode: 101, and Jem Cohen’s and Fugazi’s Instrument, Harbert lays the foundations for the study and practice of “ciné-ethnomusicology.” Interviews with directors and rich analysis from the disciplinary perspectives of film studies and ethnomusicology make this book a critical companion to some of the most celebrated music documentaries of the twentieth century.

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The definitive guide to a major African American poet/>/>This volume promises to be the definitive guide to Calvin C. Hernton's unparalleled poetic career, re-introducing readers to a major voice in American poetry. Hernton was a cofounder of the Umbra Poets Workshop; a participant in the Black Arts Movement, R. D. Laing's Kingsley Hall, and the Antiuniversity of London; and a teacher at Oberlin College who counted amongst his friends bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Odetta. As a pioneer in the field of Black Studies, Hernton developed a theoretical and practical pedagogy with lasting impact on generations of students. He may be best known as an anti-sexist sociologist, following in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois, but Hernton viewed himself, above all, as a poet. This volume includes a generous selection of Hernton's previously published poems, from classics like the often anthologized "The Distant Drum" to the visionary epic The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong, reprinted in full for the first time since 1964, alongside uncollected and unpublished material from the Calvin C. Hernton papers at Ohio University, a new critical introduction, and detailed notes, chronology, and bibliography./>/>[sample poem]/>/>The Distant Drum/>/>I am not a metaphor or symbol./>This you hear is not the wind in the trees./>Nor a cat being maimed in the street./>I am being maimed in the street/>It is I who weep, laugh, feel pain or joy./>Speak this because I exist./>This is my voice/>These words are my words, my mouth/>Speaks them, my hand writes./>I am a poet./>It is my fist you hear beating/>Against your ear.

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The first comprehensive biography of the director behind Godzilla and other Japanese sci-fi classics.Ishiro Honda was arguably the most internationally successful Japanese director of his generation, with an unmatched succession of science fiction films that were commercial hits worldwide. From the atomic allegory of Godzilla and the beguiling charms of Mothra to the tragic mystery of Matango and the disaster and spectacle of Rodan, The Mysterians, King Kong vs. Godzilla, and many others, Honda's films reflected postwar Japan's real-life anxieties and incorporated fantastical special effects, a formula that appealed to audiences around the globe and created a popular culture phenomenon that spans generations. Now, in the first full account of this long overlooked director's life and career, authors Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski shed new light on Honda's work and the experiences that shaped it—including his days as a reluctant Japanese soldier, witnessing the aftermath of Hiroshima, and his lifelong friendship with Akira Kurosawa. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa features close analysis of Honda's films (including, for the first time, his rarely seen dramas, comedies, and war films) and draws on previously untapped documents and interviews to explore how creative, economic, and industrial factors impacted his career. Fans of Honda, Godzilla, and tokusatsu (special effects) film, and of Japanese film in general, will welcome this in-depth study of a highly influential director who occupies a uniquely important position in science fiction and fantasy cinema, as well as in world cinema.Together, the authors have provided audio commentary tracks and produced supplemental material for numerous home video releases, including Ishiro Honda's Godzilla for the British Film Institute. They co-produced the documentary feature Bringing Godzilla Down to Size (2008).

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Poetry that precisely conjures images of the war in Vietnam by an award-winning author.

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Kay Dickinson is Associate Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University, Canada. She is the author of Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together (Oxford University Press, 2008); the editor of Movie Music (Routledge, 2002), Teen TV (British Film Institute Publishing, 2003), and The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics and Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). In addition, she has worked as an education officer on the Ramallah International Film Festival and as an advisor on the Shashat Women's Film Festival (Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah). In the academic year of 2010-11, she was awarded a Fellowship in Global Aesthetics at Cornell University.

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Gathered here are versions of Hinge Picture (1974), Chanting at the Crystal Sea (1975), Cabbage Gardens (1979), and Secret History of the Dividing Line (1978) that differ in some respects from their original small-press editions. In a long preface, "Frame Structures," written especially for this volume, Howe suggests the autobiographical, familial, literary, and historical motifs that suffuse these early works. Taken together, the preface and poems reflect her rediscovered sense of her own beginnings as a poet, her movement from the visual arts into the iconography of the written word. Susan Howe is a professor of English at the State University of New York—Buffalo. Most of her later poetry has been collected in The Nonconformist's Memorial (New Directions, 1993), The Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (Sun & Moon Press, 1990), and Singularities (Wesleyan University Press, 1990). She is also the author of two landmark books of postmodernist criticism, The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history (Wesleyan University Press, 1993) and My Emily Dickinson (North Atlantic Books, 1985).

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Osman's writing reinvents poetry as an instrument for dissecting vision, language and power This extensive collection of poet Jena Osman’s acclaimed work spans more than 30 years, gathering poems from journals and books long out of print. Her poetry traces overlooked visual and linguistic incidents across centuries of American history, transforming "official" language—from Supreme Court opinions to the chatter of Predator drone pilots—into writing that is comic, chilling and relentlessly inventive. Jena Osman’s (born 1963) books include Motion Studies (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019), Public Figures (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), The Network (Fence Books, 2010, selected for the National Poetry Series in 2009), An Essay in Asterisks (Roof Books, 2004) and The Character (Beacon Press, winner of the 1998 Barnard New Women Poets Prize). She lives in Philadelphia.

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"Best-known for his gritty and uproarious prose poetry collection Letters to Wendy's, Wenderoth began his career with two books of gimlet-eyed, world-weary, hard-hitting poetry. Now he returns to verse, favoring (as before) relatively short poems, often twelve lines or fewer, most of which crackle with a bleakness that's part gallows humor, part outrage, and part despair."--Publishers Weekly, starred review of No Real Light "A perverse, sometimes pretty, obscene, and confounding collection of one page meditative missives ...trimmed with lunatic fringe."--Rolling Stone review of Letters to Wendy's Whether it's addressing the grotesque in daily scenes or upsetting the norms of professional culture, Joe Wenderoth's fifth collection resonates with his signature intellect and disturbing humor. He is at once an aesthete and an iconoclast who brings inventive force to American poetry. Early Capitalism they are perfecting the pillow with which you are being suffocated now it sings to you and shows you pictures Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of No Real Light, The Holy Spirit of Life: Essays Written for John Ashcroft's Secret Self, and Letters to Wendy's. Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune and It Is If I Speak. He is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis.

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"Sharon Bryan's third collection reveals a clever, ironically detached curiosity about how human beings mediate experience through language. Whatever personal emotions underlie these witty, deftly-crafted poems are transcended by Byran's rationalism and her focus on how we have 'invented words to keep the world / just out of reach.'--Poetry "Reading [the poems of Flying Blind] is like watching a trapeze artist suspended between one flying bar and another, framed by the essential element of air. I found myself laughing, delighting in Sharon Bryan's original turn of mind, spinning on her surface wit. And I found myself saddened by a generalized sense of loss that incorporates my own. At the deepest level, Sharon Bryan's terrain resides in each of us."-The Georgia Review "The finely crafted, intelligent poems in Bryan's third collection concern the relationships or perceived relationships between life and death, the living and the dead, and, more urgently, our struggles to communicate on the subject. . . . These poems require bravery, compassion, and patience, for they are difficult, painful, and not always self-disclosing. Their deeply personal literary and spiritual drama is at times prayerful, at times macabre, and at times almost celebratory."-poetry calendar Flying Blind is Sharon Bryan's third collection of poems. The first two, Salt Air and Objects of Affection, were published by Wesleyan University Press. She is also the editor of Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition (Norton, 1993). Her awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Discovery Award from The Nation, and two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Prisons constitute one of the most controversial and contested sites in a democratic society. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the industrialized world, with over 2 million people in jails, prisons, and detention centers; with over three thousand on death row, it is also one of the few developed countries that continues to deploy the death penalty. International Human Rights Organizations such as Amnesty International have also noted the scores of political prisoners in U.S. detention. This anthology examines a class of intellectuals whose analyses of U.S. society, politics, culture, and social justice are rarely referenced in conventional political speech or academic discourse. Yet this body of outlawed "public intellectuals" offers some of the most incisive analyses of our society and shared humanity. Here former and current U.S. political prisoners and activists-writers from the civil rights/black power, women's, gay/lesbian, American Indian, Puerto Rican Independence and anti-war movements share varying progressive critiques and theories on radical democracy and revolutionary struggle. This rarely-referenced "resistance literature" reflects the growing public interest in incarceration sites, intellectual and political dissent for social justice, and the possibilities of democratic transformations. Such anthologies also spark new discussions and debates about "reading"; for as Barbara Harlow notes: "Reading prison writing must. . . demand a correspondingly activist counterapproach to that of passivity, aesthetic gratification, and the pleasures of consumption that are traditionally sanctioned by the academic disciplining of literature."—Barbara Harlow [1] 1. Barbara Harlow, Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention (New England: Wesleyan University Press, 1992). Royalties are reserved for educational initiatives on human rights and U.S. incarceration.

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"Discipline, humility, kindness. These qualities cohere in the best mentors, bundled into an overarching approach to the art of writing. It is not, I think, coincidence that the writers in this collection remember these qualities best when speaking of their mentors as people, as fellow pilgrims who helped them on the way. In some sense, whether consciously or not, we seek out mentors who learn how to live—as an artist, and as a human being."—from the Introduction by Jeffrey Skinner Lee Martin is the author of a collection of stories, The Least You Need to Know (Sarabande, 1996), a memoir From Our House (Dutton 2000), and a novel Just Enough Haughty, also forthcoming from Dutton. He teaches in the creative writing program at the University of North Texas where he also edits the American Literary Review. Jeffrey Skinner is currently Director of Creative Writing at the University of Louisville. His published collections of poetry include The Company of Heaven (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992), Late Stars (Wesleyan University Press, 1985), and A Guide to Forgetting (Graywolf Press, 1988), which was a National Poetry Series selection. Contributors include: Michael Collier on William Meredith Jay McInerney on Raymond Carver Tess Gallagher on Theodore Roethke and Stanley Kunitz Reginald Shepherd on Alvin Feinman Dana Gioia on Elizabeth Bishop Maura Stanton on Vert Rutsala and John Berryman Elizabeth Graver on Annie Dillard, Angela Carter, Stanley Elkin, and others Sylvia Watanabe on Dorothy Vella David Huddle on Peter Taylor David Wojahn on James L. White Erin McGraw on John L’Heureux CONTENTS PREFACE by Lee Martin, vii INTRODUCTION: The Scrupulous Philanthropy of Expertise by Jeffrey Skinner, xi MICHAEL COLLIER An Exact Ratio, 3 The Farrier, 12 JAY MCINERNEY Raymond Carver: A Still, Small Voice, 15 Getting in Touch with Your Child, 24 TESS GALLAGHER Two Mentors: From Orphanhood to Spirit-Companion, 39 Behave, 45 DAVID HUDDLE What about Those Good People?, 51 Backstory, 57 REGINALD SHEPHERD T

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