Author: rhoff1949

Posted by rhoff1949 on August 11, 2007 in Featured

A while back I bookmarked this essay by Kathy Lou Schultz, but when I returned to it the URL had expired. I have found it elsehwere, however, and feature it here. It seems to me to be an authentic and honest grappling with the intractable issue of class as it pertains to writing, writers, MFA […]

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES BALDWIN

Posted by rhoff1949 on August 2, 2007 in Featured

“Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on July 23, 2007 in Featured

Sometimes, as a teacher, I feel like one of those honeybees who come back to the hive and do a little funky dance that tells the rest of the clan where the nectar is. Lately, I have been browsing the Michigan Quarterly Review’s site where every issue since their first in 1962 has been archived. […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on July 22, 2007 in Featured

All depends on the skin. All depends on the skin you’re living in. All depends on the skin. Sekou Sundiata: 1948 — 2007 July 21, 2007 — NEW YORK Sekou Sundiata, a poet and performance artist whose work explored slavery, subjugation, and the tension between personal and national identity, especially as they inform the black […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on July 11, 2007 in Featured

Philip Booth, a Shy Poet Rooted in New England Life, Dead at 81 by Roja Heydarpour Philip Booth, a poet known for his explorations of existence and New England in an intense, sparse style, died on July 2 in Hanover, N.H. He was 81 and had split his time between Hanover and Castine, Me., for […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on July 4, 2007 in Featured

For a couple of years during my twenties I carried a certain book with me nearly everywhere I went: The Orphic Voice by Elizabeth Sewell. I have no idea how I came to have it (I am an inveterate browser and believer in the serendipity of bookstores, especially sprawling used bookstores, and even then I […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on June 16, 2007 in Featured

This poem, along with visual art by Lisa Sette, is the latest offering from Broadsided Press. (See links.) The Car Covenant O give us individual mobility and daily we will embrace death.Give us miles to the gallon and things made small by moving swiftly away.We will sacrifice certain teenagers to the oak tree. Make the […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on June 11, 2007 in Featured

My friend the poet Mario Noel Rodriguez of El Salvador sent me the following statement, signed by many of Colombia’s writers, artists, and intellectuals, addressing the intractable bloody civil war there. I have brought it over into English as best I could, but I include the original also for those who can read Spanish. For […]

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Posted by rhoff1949 on June 1, 2007 in Featured

Eduardo Galeano Uruguayan essayist, journalist and historian. Galeano’s best-known works include the trilogy Memoria del fuego (1982-1986, Memory of Fire) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (1971, The Open Veins of Latin America), which have been translated into some 20 languages. Galeano’s work transcends orthodox genres, and combines documentary, fiction, journalism, political analysis, and […]

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More Herbert

Posted by rhoff1949 on May 22, 2007 in Featured

Among the poems of Herbert I want to include here is this one, “Elegy for the Departure of Pen Ink and Lamp” which has at least the minor virtue of irony, given the fact that I am “blogging” it; on the other hand, maybe that fact belies the “dark” of Herbert’s ending. Here’s the poem: […]

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