I read your article in the Sunday Chicago Tribune every week and often pursue your recommendations. Two of my kids graduated from Miami of Ohio, so I waxed very nostalgic reading your post this morning.
1)Too many lists have too many white American writers. Longstanding problem Yes,some mention of Hernan Diaz' brilliant Trust BUT..there are more scintillating novels I I am not seeing.
2) There is amost NO poetry at a time when a revolution in poetry on an international scare is occuring led by a wave of South Korean writers headed by the current leading surrealist,Hyesoon Kim reknowned everywhere except iin the American poetry hierarchy although the long standing Poetry Magaziine has finally understood the lines from one of Bob Dylan's slysest satires, "The Ballad Of A Thin Man" the starts:" You walk into a room/wiith a pencil in yo Your hand/ You see someone naked and you say "Who's that man??/You try so hard but you dont understand/ just what you will say when you get home/ but something is happening, and you dont what it is, do you, Mr. Jones/. I am wondering, John Warner, and others, if you know of the two organizations, CAVE CANEM, and KUNADAMIN, respectively supporting African American and Asian American poets in MFprograms since for decades most poetry organizations like so many American instututions rremained calcified in their racism.But in 1996, two establishd African American poets, Toi Derricote an Cornelius Eady decided enough was enough and organized Cave Canem. They also enlisted other poets willing to participate in mentoring, leading workshops, and retreat, and networking for scholarships and fellowships. These poets included Rita Dove, Michael Harper, Lucille Clifton,Yusef Koumyaaka, Marilyn Nelson, Elizabeth Alexander and other. Twenty years later, there are over 400 members , many of whom are mentors and winner of maor literary honors, including National Book Awards and Pulitzeer Prizes and other. Content-wise, and technically, many of these poets are exceptiional. covering many aspects of American history,(Marilyn Nelson's brilliant poetry historiies of the abolitionist school teacher Prudence Crandall, her outstanding book of George Washington Carver, and her elegiac sonnet crown A Wreath For Emmet Till (All of these books are acessible for middle school and high school teachers) past and present,, the changes in attention to LBQT lives as powerfully described by Danez Smith, Francie Harris, John Keene, and others, the daring of Patricia Smith in Bloood Dazzlle writing about New Orleans partially from Huuricane Katrina's point of view,and the sheer exuberation off such. experimentation as weaving all kinds of history. (sometimes with erasures to represent what's been lost or deliberately omitte, family history(Nikkey Finney, typography experiments.(thank you for Buck Studies, Douglas Kearney)
This plethora of gifted poets is also true of Kundiman, an Asian American organization started by Joseph Legaspi and Sarah Gambito. Their magazine KAYA publishes outstanding work inccluding last year powerhouse The Book of The Other by the Bay Area poet Truong Tran, author of several other books incudiing Placing the Accentl. There are also Latino/Latinx writing groups and Arab American poets.George Abraham, a Palestinian American poet has written a highly original work BIRTHRIGHT, that helps to give a deeper understanding of the current and ongoing disastrous situation in Palestine. Anyone interested in the writing of this part of the world which has one of the longestlasting literary traditions inclcuding Tales of the Arabian Nights,the poetry of Rumi, and Hafiz can contact me at erbrill69@gmail.com I have been avidly reading internatiional literature for over fifty years (Asturias fom Guatamala, Victor Serge from Russia, Ousmane Sembene from Sengegal and the reknowned Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, our own amazing poets such as Muriel Rukeyser,Gwendolyn Brooks, Naomi Replansky, Sterling A. Brown, Alicia Ostriker, Janice Mirikitani, Pedro Pietri, Frances Chung, John Beecher, B.H. Fairchild - to name a few of our finest omitted from most anthologies. Why is that? Take a guess. And it's the same with international writers although its changing somewhat. But from I've seen and heard the ignorance of Americans in terms of the great writers of the world is nothing more than appalling, especially with, again, poets. Here are some of the finest international poests, and some Cave Canem and Kundimanpoes.s
1. Pablo Neruda (Chile) One of the greates t social justice AND love poets of 20th century
2. Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine) Same as Neruda. When he read anywhere in the Middle East, hundreds came. People made songs from the poems of both Darwish and Neruda
3.Tadeusz Rozewicz- (Poland) one of the sharpest short poems writers
4.Vasko Popa- same as Rozewicz
5.Paul Celan- arguably the finest poet regarding thee Holocaust
6. Rabinthe Tagore (India) - one of the greateest Peace Poetss.
7. Rumi (Afghanistan) same as Tagore.
8,Aimee Cesaire- one of the great anticolonial poet, founder of the Negritude movement
9. Frederico Garcia Lorca (Sspain) one of the finest lyrical poets. Murdered by Spain's fascists.
10. Nazim Hikmeet (Turkey) One of the finest freedom poets who outlasted the Turkishgovernment that jailed him for over ten years.
11 Okot p Bitek )Uganada) wrote the great epic poem Song of Lawino presenting a hsband and wife with two diffeent views of progress for Africa
12. Alan Ginsberg (US) Broke open the calcified American poetry scene in the mid fifties, a total original with such epic poems as HOWL and KADDIS.
13. nn Sexton- one of the finest image filled poets with a wicked sense of humor
14. Gwendolyn Brooks -one of the finest urban poets of any century. No one could write about the big city as Brooks can,,immortalizing Chicago in such works as In the Mecca and A Street In Bronze
to be continued. Stay tune for the International Fiction Classicss' F tragedy how about some laughs, and There IIS a WORKING CLASS in Literature, so why do critics ignore it and so many teacher stay afraid to teach it?
Here is a list of wonderful deep novels that dont gets enough cred and promotion.
1) Waiting For Nothing- Tom Kromer. Powerhouse novel of the1930s homeless workes. First person present tense, very short Tsentences. E est Hemmingway and Raymond Carver,eat your heart oot.
2( Tent of Miracles- Jorge Amado. Underground rambunctious education. There is more joy on one page of Amado than all the catatonic existential works of Samuel Beckett and all the overrated emo. writers
3) My Name Is Red- Oran Pamuk. A panoramic daring love story/mystery among Turkish minaturist painters. One of a kind, totally orginal.
4. The Brothers Askenazi. Two Jewish brothers in nineteenthcentury antisemitic Poland . by IIJ Singer the more talented brother of the Nobel Prize winner IIB Singer.
5. Indian Killer- Sherman Alexie. Alexie is a total original who opened hugeroads for Native American novelists
6. The Case of Comrade Tulayev- Victor Serge' A thriller om one of the finest communist writers of the twentieth century. When a n idealistic young communist impulsively kills a hated rotten bureacrat, it sets off a horrid chain of events by the paranoid maniac Joseph Stalin.
7.The Darby series - Ernest Hebert -Dogs of March, A Little More Than Kin, Whisper My Name, The Passion of Estelle Jordan, Spoonwood, Farewell Howard Ellman- A rambunctious rural New Hampshre town led by a poignant illiterate resists enroaching rural gentrication by arrogant city greedies.
8. Time Past- Le Lu- An indepth exploration of a Vietnamese war vet returning home after the war.
9.The People Who Knock On The Door- Patricia Highsmith. A scalpel-like exposure of quietly crazed right wing forces in America.
10. The Dreamer- Charles Johnson. A novel of Dr.King in Chicago in the sixties.
11. Yokahama California- Toshio Mori. A warm and ti wonderful collectionof stories about Japanese American families and neighbors ath the outbreak of World WarI.
12. The Stories of Damon Runyon. One of the funniest writers of all time. Wait to you meet Lilly of the Valley, The Brain, Harry the Horse, Dave The Dude, and The Lemon Drop Kid.
13. Palestine's Children- Ghassan Kanafani. If only for the novella "Return to Haifa", and one of the most profound and charming stories about education ever- "The Slope", get this gem.
1) It is too bad that within the teaching professon in high school and colleges, there are so few teachers who have the courage to teach literature by African Amercans, Latino/Latino x, Native Americans, and Asian Americans or works by international writers other than writers from England. I taught high school for twentyyears, and adjunct college for a decade, and so many teachers were either timid, calcified (teaching the sameolld sameolld year after year. They have not a clue what they were/are missing.. I love teachers on the whole, many Do wantt to teach such writers as I offer,but often our principals resemble not educators but lifers in the army.Same with superintendents. THEIR MAIN JOB IS TO MAKE THE ASSEMBY LINE RUN WELL. MOST OF THEM CCOULD CARE LESS ABOUT THE CURRICULUM. JUST DONT GET THEM INTO TROUBLE. APEME PARENTS? THEY LOVE TH
I submitted a request on September 11 and have not heard back. Joe F
I hope your talk went well! Would be curious to hear what feedback you heard from the folks there. Anything surprising?
I read your article in the Sunday Chicago Tribune every week and often pursue your recommendations. Two of my kids graduated from Miami of Ohio, so I waxed very nostalgic reading your post this morning.
Thank you so much for taking the time to put these suggestions out here for all of us to read. Greatly appreciated.
I have several comments.
1)Too many lists have too many white American writers. Longstanding problem Yes,some mention of Hernan Diaz' brilliant Trust BUT..there are more scintillating novels I I am not seeing.
2) There is amost NO poetry at a time when a revolution in poetry on an international scare is occuring led by a wave of South Korean writers headed by the current leading surrealist,Hyesoon Kim reknowned everywhere except iin the American poetry hierarchy although the long standing Poetry Magaziine has finally understood the lines from one of Bob Dylan's slysest satires, "The Ballad Of A Thin Man" the starts:" You walk into a room/wiith a pencil in yo Your hand/ You see someone naked and you say "Who's that man??/You try so hard but you dont understand/ just what you will say when you get home/ but something is happening, and you dont what it is, do you, Mr. Jones/. I am wondering, John Warner, and others, if you know of the two organizations, CAVE CANEM, and KUNADAMIN, respectively supporting African American and Asian American poets in MFprograms since for decades most poetry organizations like so many American instututions rremained calcified in their racism.But in 1996, two establishd African American poets, Toi Derricote an Cornelius Eady decided enough was enough and organized Cave Canem. They also enlisted other poets willing to participate in mentoring, leading workshops, and retreat, and networking for scholarships and fellowships. These poets included Rita Dove, Michael Harper, Lucille Clifton,Yusef Koumyaaka, Marilyn Nelson, Elizabeth Alexander and other. Twenty years later, there are over 400 members , many of whom are mentors and winner of maor literary honors, including National Book Awards and Pulitzeer Prizes and other. Content-wise, and technically, many of these poets are exceptiional. covering many aspects of American history,(Marilyn Nelson's brilliant poetry historiies of the abolitionist school teacher Prudence Crandall, her outstanding book of George Washington Carver, and her elegiac sonnet crown A Wreath For Emmet Till (All of these books are acessible for middle school and high school teachers) past and present,, the changes in attention to LBQT lives as powerfully described by Danez Smith, Francie Harris, John Keene, and others, the daring of Patricia Smith in Bloood Dazzlle writing about New Orleans partially from Huuricane Katrina's point of view,and the sheer exuberation off such. experimentation as weaving all kinds of history. (sometimes with erasures to represent what's been lost or deliberately omitte, family history(Nikkey Finney, typography experiments.(thank you for Buck Studies, Douglas Kearney)
This plethora of gifted poets is also true of Kundiman, an Asian American organization started by Joseph Legaspi and Sarah Gambito. Their magazine KAYA publishes outstanding work inccluding last year powerhouse The Book of The Other by the Bay Area poet Truong Tran, author of several other books incudiing Placing the Accentl. There are also Latino/Latinx writing groups and Arab American poets.George Abraham, a Palestinian American poet has written a highly original work BIRTHRIGHT, that helps to give a deeper understanding of the current and ongoing disastrous situation in Palestine. Anyone interested in the writing of this part of the world which has one of the longestlasting literary traditions inclcuding Tales of the Arabian Nights,the poetry of Rumi, and Hafiz can contact me at erbrill69@gmail.com I have been avidly reading internatiional literature for over fifty years (Asturias fom Guatamala, Victor Serge from Russia, Ousmane Sembene from Sengegal and the reknowned Chinua Achebe of Nigeria, our own amazing poets such as Muriel Rukeyser,Gwendolyn Brooks, Naomi Replansky, Sterling A. Brown, Alicia Ostriker, Janice Mirikitani, Pedro Pietri, Frances Chung, John Beecher, B.H. Fairchild - to name a few of our finest omitted from most anthologies. Why is that? Take a guess. And it's the same with international writers although its changing somewhat. But from I've seen and heard the ignorance of Americans in terms of the great writers of the world is nothing more than appalling, especially with, again, poets. Here are some of the finest international poests, and some Cave Canem and Kundimanpoes.s
1. Pablo Neruda (Chile) One of the greates t social justice AND love poets of 20th century
2. Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine) Same as Neruda. When he read anywhere in the Middle East, hundreds came. People made songs from the poems of both Darwish and Neruda
3.Tadeusz Rozewicz- (Poland) one of the sharpest short poems writers
4.Vasko Popa- same as Rozewicz
5.Paul Celan- arguably the finest poet regarding thee Holocaust
6. Rabinthe Tagore (India) - one of the greateest Peace Poetss.
7. Rumi (Afghanistan) same as Tagore.
8,Aimee Cesaire- one of the great anticolonial poet, founder of the Negritude movement
9. Frederico Garcia Lorca (Sspain) one of the finest lyrical poets. Murdered by Spain's fascists.
10. Nazim Hikmeet (Turkey) One of the finest freedom poets who outlasted the Turkishgovernment that jailed him for over ten years.
11 Okot p Bitek )Uganada) wrote the great epic poem Song of Lawino presenting a hsband and wife with two diffeent views of progress for Africa
12. Alan Ginsberg (US) Broke open the calcified American poetry scene in the mid fifties, a total original with such epic poems as HOWL and KADDIS.
13. nn Sexton- one of the finest image filled poets with a wicked sense of humor
14. Gwendolyn Brooks -one of the finest urban poets of any century. No one could write about the big city as Brooks can,,immortalizing Chicago in such works as In the Mecca and A Street In Bronze
to be continued. Stay tune for the International Fiction Classicss' F tragedy how about some laughs, and There IIS a WORKING CLASS in Literature, so why do critics ignore it and so many teacher stay afraid to teach it?
The same is true
Here is a list of wonderful deep novels that dont gets enough cred and promotion.
1) Waiting For Nothing- Tom Kromer. Powerhouse novel of the1930s homeless workes. First person present tense, very short Tsentences. E est Hemmingway and Raymond Carver,eat your heart oot.
2( Tent of Miracles- Jorge Amado. Underground rambunctious education. There is more joy on one page of Amado than all the catatonic existential works of Samuel Beckett and all the overrated emo. writers
3) My Name Is Red- Oran Pamuk. A panoramic daring love story/mystery among Turkish minaturist painters. One of a kind, totally orginal.
4. The Brothers Askenazi. Two Jewish brothers in nineteenthcentury antisemitic Poland . by IIJ Singer the more talented brother of the Nobel Prize winner IIB Singer.
5. Indian Killer- Sherman Alexie. Alexie is a total original who opened hugeroads for Native American novelists
6. The Case of Comrade Tulayev- Victor Serge' A thriller om one of the finest communist writers of the twentieth century. When a n idealistic young communist impulsively kills a hated rotten bureacrat, it sets off a horrid chain of events by the paranoid maniac Joseph Stalin.
7.The Darby series - Ernest Hebert -Dogs of March, A Little More Than Kin, Whisper My Name, The Passion of Estelle Jordan, Spoonwood, Farewell Howard Ellman- A rambunctious rural New Hampshre town led by a poignant illiterate resists enroaching rural gentrication by arrogant city greedies.
8. Time Past- Le Lu- An indepth exploration of a Vietnamese war vet returning home after the war.
9.The People Who Knock On The Door- Patricia Highsmith. A scalpel-like exposure of quietly crazed right wing forces in America.
10. The Dreamer- Charles Johnson. A novel of Dr.King in Chicago in the sixties.
11. Yokahama California- Toshio Mori. A warm and ti wonderful collectionof stories about Japanese American families and neighbors ath the outbreak of World WarI.
12. The Stories of Damon Runyon. One of the funniest writers of all time. Wait to you meet Lilly of the Valley, The Brain, Harry the Horse, Dave The Dude, and The Lemon Drop Kid.
13. Palestine's Children- Ghassan Kanafani. If only for the novella "Return to Haifa", and one of the most profound and charming stories about education ever- "The Slope", get this gem.
1) It is too bad that within the teaching professon in high school and colleges, there are so few teachers who have the courage to teach literature by African Amercans, Latino/Latino x, Native Americans, and Asian Americans or works by international writers other than writers from England. I taught high school for twentyyears, and adjunct college for a decade, and so many teachers were either timid, calcified (teaching the sameolld sameolld year after year. They have not a clue what they were/are missing.. I love teachers on the whole, many Do wantt to teach such writers as I offer,but often our principals resemble not educators but lifers in the army.Same with superintendents. THEIR MAIN JOB IS TO MAKE THE ASSEMBY LINE RUN WELL. MOST OF THEM CCOULD CARE LESS ABOUT THE CURRICULUM. JUST DONT GET THEM INTO TROUBLE. APEME PARENTS? THEY LOVE TH