Ok, so this “ain’t” no sonnet

But, I’ve been thinking about poems, and about the 4C’s, and about posting more sonnets, but it is not happening yet.

Poet, prose writer, fiction writer, and all around genius, Eileen Myles, has been up to some of her usual radness:

May 1–Poet’s Strike!

“Why don’t we all refuse to write or read poetry on May 1st and turn our energies towards political acts all over the country and you know why not the world. This idea was floated in the 60s maybe as a joke but today I’m thinking that rather than it being about who cares if we write or not we can use our resistance as an organizing tool.

Everyone can do it locally – I’m thinking we should NOT do things in poetry spaces (except maybe to plan and organize.) Though certainly art world spaces could be used, or any other space inside or out. I’m not thinking top down organizing at all. Pick your issue, your group of poets and we don’t have to limit our groups to poets only, but poet organized.

The point is to get attention to your issue whether its about women’s rights, tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts, environmental disasters and defunding, whatever you want to devote your energies to publicly or privately that day. Any takers?”

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I LOVE the idea of “using our resistance as an organizing tool.” Count me in on May 1.

It makes me think about the “Serious Play” Conference I worked on last week up at Bard’s Institute for Writing & Thinking. I asked my teacher/students to write about the following prompt–What is the use of poetry? What is poetry’s job? Why do we teach it? What can it do?

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And, here’s Eileen over at the Harriet Blog

She writes about the Rainbow Book Festival at the gay community center a few weeks (or months?) back–

“…they can’t always ‘get’ gay. I can’t always either. Nobody feels it’s a trusty category finally so we have to use it I think carefully, but once inside be wild. So I just want to say in light of all that I was frankly comfortable to be spending my afternoon with LGBT poets reading and there were a multitude of approaches that everyone in the group used to denote being queer or gay. Like gay was a bump in the road and every driver took note. Cause today there was a sign. Most of us when we go to an event like this deliberately choose our most gay work but that still is not a uniform perspective – what makes my work gay in the context of other gay writers. Is it content, is it feeling, is it lineage – i.e. which well-known gay poet am I most clearly influenced by. And I suppose there was also such a thing as reception going on as well. Meaning that we had been invited that way and had accepted the invitation among a group of others who did also meant by their presence they agreed to be frankly homosexual as poets so that it was a very comfortable event.”

I love how she describes this particular event (which I also read at, but had to leave early). I felt a real level of simpatico that day–in a small sunny room with a lot of people I didn’t know, vaguely know, etc. It was strange and it was great.

The rest of the post deals with issues of the body and poetics–“female embodiment” and “what does this have to do with the craft of poetry”? I’m always thinking about the body, but usually a cyborg one. I can’t wait to see where this goes…Myles writes, “it won’t happen, my answer, till after the poetry month is over. So we’ll just have to see. I’ll see. And I’ll try and make it that you’ll see too.”

About The Author

Erica Kaufman

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Author his web sitehttp://commons.gc.cuny.edu/members/ericakaufman/

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04 2011

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