So, as is the case when I blog, this space has lapsed significantly.

But, this morning, 8:27AM in Boulder, CO, I feel compelled to report–mostly because I am here teaching at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, in a week devoted to different manifestations and forms of technology and hybridity.

The week’s description is:

Gender & Hybridity, and Should We Consider the Cyborg?

“We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs” – Donna Haraway

How is our writing mediated and motivated by considerations of gender and hybridity? We’ll look at some of the movements in recent decades across less represented writing communities: gay, trans, war vets. We’ll take inspiration from Homi K. Bhabha’s diasporas and Cole Swensen and David St. John’s American Hybrid anthology. How has the “democracy” of the Internet opened up floodgates of “untested” material? What of the cult of blogs, everyone’s story, confession, the manufactured memoir? What is interesting? Do our bodies become speedier and more mechanized as we plug in? What capabilities are gained in the age of the ebook and text message novels?

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On Monday, there was an amazing panel about the “hybrid.” On Tuesday, there was a panel (which I was on) about “Writing Diaspora: Live & Virtual.” And, my class this week is titled “Prosthesis and Procedure.” So, my mind is on many things related to the kind of things that happen when one blogs, when one brings technology into the classroom, etc…The implications of the posthuman–and why is it that I truly believe that I am a “cyborg,” particularly when the term is actually quite problematic.

I ended my panel statement with the following:

“When N. Katherine Hayles refers to Alan Turing’s “imitation game” in her “Introduction” to How We Became Posthuman, what she really seems to be pushing us towards is a question of embodiment. If a computer can fulfill the same activities that a human can, what’s left to differentiate? Hayles also states that the idea of the posthuman both “evokes terror and excites pleasure.” But, what do we really make of any of this as writers? Particularly in the context of the vocabulary chosen for the title of this panel. Live and virtual are easy enough to handle. But, diaspora. Is the posthuman a way to finally locate a home? Is the virtual the way to house that which has no home?”

But, even now, I am not so sure I agree with that…

**

Another highlight for me was Samuel R. Delany’s talk on writing–refreshingly not connected to hybrid or diaspora–but more an excavation/explanation of the cliche–a history of sorts, framed by a student conference.

**

And, so, some questions:

• Why does this conversation on technology–particularly with regards to pedagogy–always produce some kind of binary? For example, either technology is good or it is bad. Either we use technology in a class or we don’t.
• What is a hybrid? There were some really interesting definitions offered on the panel on Monday, but I am curious about how one might define “hybrid” under the auspices of the classroom?

this seems to have become the way I now listen. the notetaking. then the sonnet. and so they continue. although it is may.

“Let me recite what history teaches” (Stein)

i’ve never done this before, come up

with a job description like a good

stubborn plagiarist, approachable

depleted but it’s only spring

so break the mattress the waitress

at last be generous with your form

arms extended always giving

like the rendering of Jesus on the walk

to center city just one experience

of tempo of self-proclaimed pastoral

but i do not hear a language

need all those signs to need me

first turn paragraph to portraiture

embrace the nod & greet basis

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?”

**

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?

**

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.”