Location:
New Jersey
What are you working on right now?
A memoir
Did you publish a book this year?
A new edition, with a forward by Vincent Katz and drawings by Alex Katz, of a poem written for a reading on the eve of our invasion of Iraq, called "March 18, 2003"
What's the best book you read this year?
Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, edited by Caroline Moorehead
Who was the best new writer you read this year?
Jose Funes
What was the best work in translation you read this year?
Human Landscapes From My Country by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
What is your favorite literary web site?
Tom Raworth's
What is your favorite literary blog?
Ron Silliman's, though as wide ranging as his knowledge and interest in poetry is, it still misses a lot of work outside the more or less "language-centered" poetry scene. He's more inclusive than others who prefer that approach, but even when he includes references to poetry other than "language-centered" his take usually presumes that approach is the most valid.
What was the best literary event you attended this year? And why?
A book party/reading for Simon Pettet's Nore Winnowed Fragments, because Simon is one of the most interesting poets and readers of his own poetry around, for my money.
What was the most important literary news this year?
The whole James Frey fiasco. What was the real news, for me, was that anyone could have ever fallen for all his obvious lies. I read it when it first came out and immediately started sending letters to The New York Times Book Review and Poets & Writers and anyone else who treated his book like it was based on fact. Anyone who had spent any time on "the streets" or in jail or had had anything like the experiences Frey pretended to have had could see through his ridiculous attempts to sound tough and experienced. Right at the beginning of his story he describes getting on an airplane with a hole in his cheek you can see through and he's covered in blood and vomit and no one even questions him let alone tries to keep him from flying. It just gets sillier after that. The other important news to me, and probably more significant, was the closing of even more independent bookstores.
What do you value most about your Membership to PEN?
Supporting and being a part of an organization that works for writers around the world, for freedom of speech, and for recognition for literature from outside the English speaking world. The magazine's pretty interesting too.
For how long have you been a Member of PEN?
Since the 1970s.
What literary topics would you would like to see discussed by PEN Members in an online forum?
Overlooked books and authors
Any other news?
My poem, "March 18, 2003," created for a reading on that date, had references to things, like our troops using humiliation and torture on yet to be convicted prisoners in Afghanistan, that turned out to be realities in Iraq as well, and yet seemed to shock some people. Everywhere I read it, audiences responded with cheers and tears, of both sadness over the turn of events and relief that someone was expressing their feelings. I know others have written as well about the war and in protest of it, but at the time, my book length poem was the only literary work I knew of that specifically addressed the invasion and predicted much of what was to unfold. Despite the audience reactions, and the poem being posted on my web site and on the web sites of others, and being shared around the web, and the many many responses I received through e mail or letters or in encountering people when they discovered I was the author of it, no one reviewed it, or seemed to even taken note of it, in t!
he literary world, as far as I know. I am long past expecting or caring about attention for its own sake, or for mine for that matter, but how work that can have an impact, not just mine but of so many others, can continue to be overlooked or ignored while the same handful of books and authors are covered over and over again from the main stream media, as they say, to the supposed alternative outlets like literary magazines and Poets & Writers etc. continues to mystify and dismay me. Like I said, not for my sake, I'm happy to just be alive and still able to write and reach even one reader or listener who responds, but for the sake of so many writers who haven't even had the modicum of recognition for their work that I have, let alone the kind of attention paid to the handful with the right connections or agents or publishers. Was it always this way? Maybe, but I think there was a moment in the late 1960s and early 1970s when little magazines, and even more established literary journals, were more open to a wider range of approaches to!
writing
a poem or piece of prose than the present. Maybe I'm wrong. let me know if I am, and if I'm not, what suggestions anyone might have to rectify that. Yes, I know the web, and blogs, which I have only recently begun to participate in, have a wide range of voices, but from what I can tell so far, there's still a limited few that get most of the attention and what they focus on seems as narrow as the offline publications.
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