This unconventional fall, I’m revisiting two creative writing courses I’ve frequently taught at Hartwick College, though in a hybrid face to face/online mode. The syllabi:
Author: Bradley J. Fest
Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 5: July 16–August 15, 2020
Black Lives Matter
Ishmael Reed, “America’s Criminal Justice System and Me.”
Anthony Bogues, “Black Lives Matter and the Moment of the Now.”
Colin Dayan, “Police Power and Can’t Breathe.”
Dwight Garner, “Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste Is an ‘Instant American Classic’ about Our Abiding Sin.”
Jane Hu, “The Second Act of Social-Media Activism.”
Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson, “Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters off Portland Streets.”
Shane Harris, “DHS Compiled ‘Intelligence Reports’ on Journalists Who Published Leaked Documents.”
Ken Klippenstein, “The Border Patrol Was Responsible for an Arrest in Portland.”
Katie Shepherd and Mark Berman, “‘It Was Like Being Preyed upon’: Portland Protesters Say Federal Officers in Unmarked Vans Are Detaining Them.”
Charlie Warzel, “50 Nights of Unrest in Portland.”
Conrad Wilson, Dirk Vanderhart, and Suzanne Nuyen, “Oregon Sues Federal Agencies for Grabbing up Protesters off the Streets.”
Gillian Flaccus, “Judge Blocks US Agents from Arresting Observers in Portland.”
Richard Read, “Out of Portland Tear Gas, an Apparition Emerges, Capturing the Imagination of Protesters.”
“2015.11” and “2015.12” in Adjacent Pineapple
“2015.11” and “2015.12,” two sonnets from my ongoing sequence, are in the sixth issue of Adjacent Pineapple. Thanks to Colin Herd for his patience with these.
Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 4: June 16–July 15, 2020
Black Lives Matter
Gina Cherelus, “How We Juneteenth.”
Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.”
R. H. Lossin, “In Defense of Destroying Property.”
Coronavirus
b2o Review, “COVID-19 Dossier.”
Hortense J. Spillers, “Apocalypse Now and Then.”
Charles Bernstein, “Herd Immunity.”
Nathan L. Grant, “Horseman No. 5.”
The A-Line Editorial Staff, “Convergence 5: Apocalypse Now and Then.”
Adrian Parr, “Pandemic Urbanism.”
Neil Vallelly, “The Coronavirus Decade: Post-capitalist Nightmare or Socialist Awakening?”
Umair Haque, “If Life Feels Bleak, It’s Because Our Civilization Is Beginning to Collapse.”
Hamilton Nolan, “There Is No Plan (For You).”
Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 3: May 16–June 15, 2020
Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks . . . .
Ibram X. Kendi, “Who Gets to Be Afraid in America?” and “American Nightmare.”
Cornel West, “A Boot Is Crushing American Democracy.”
Democracy Now, “Uprising and Abolition: Angela Davis on Movement Building, ‘Defund the Police,’ and Where We Go from Here.”
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “Of Course There Are Protests. The State Is Failing Black People.”
Roxane Gay, “Remember, No One Is Coming to Save Us.”
Jeet Heer, “The Fire This Time.”
Melvin Rogers, “We Should Be Afraid, But Not of Protesters.”
Matthew Dessem, “Police Erupt in Violence Nationwide.”
Jamelle Bouie, “The Police Are Rioting. We Need to Talk About It.”
Adam Gabbatt, “Protests about Police Brutality Are Met with Wave of Police Brutality across US.”
Joshua Clover, “66 Days.”
Barbara Ehrenreich, “A Journalist Marked by Police Violence.”
Greg Afinogenov, “Everything Could Be Free.”
Jamilah King, “The Summer of 2020 Is Going to Be Long, Violent, and Necessary.”
Mara Gay, photographs by Jordan Gale, “The Nation’s Largest Police Force Is Treating Us as an Enemy.”
Reading of “Dead Horse Bay” and “Blason III” for the Ecopoetics Reading, July 16, 2020
On July 16, 2020, I took part in the fourth of ten readings around the release of the Poetics for the More-than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary (Spuyten Duyvil, forthcoming 2020), originally published as a special issue of Dispatches from the Poetry Wars edited by Mary Newell, Bernard Quetchenbach, and Sarah Nolan. Other readers are: Cara Chamberlain, Petra Kuppers, Andrew Melrose, Eléna Rivera, Arthur Sze, and Jen Web. My reading of “Dead Horse Bay” and “Blason III” starts around 29:30 in the July 16 reading .
To find more about the series, visit the Ecopoetics Anthology Facebook page.
“Blason I,” “Blason II,” and “Blason III” in The Second Chance Anthology
“Blason I,” “Blason II,” and “Blason III,” poems from my current ongoing project, Postrock, have been republished in The Second Chance Anthology, which will appear from Variant Literature on August 1, 2020. (Order it here; read it here.) The anthology features “work that has been pulled, withdrawn, [or] removed without notice from” a number of different publications. I’m especially thankful to Tyler Pufpaff and the editors of Variant Literature for finding a new home for the orphaned writing of so many great writers.
“2019.03” in Pine Hills Review

Untitled, by Courtney Bernardo
Another sonnet from my ongoing sequence, “2019.03,” is in the Pine Hills Review.
Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 2: April 15–May 15, 2020
Coronavirus Think Pieces
Kim Stanley Robinson, “The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations.”
Jodi Dean, “Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?”
Ibram X. Kendi, “We’re Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic.”
David Harvey, “We Need a Collective Response to the Collective Dilemma of Coronavirus.”
Richard Grusin, “Radical Mediation, COVID Masks, Revolutionary Collectivity.”
Charles Stross, “It’ll All Be Over by Christmas.”
Laurie Penny, “Productivity Is Not Working.”
Corey Robin, “Comrades.”
Masha Gessen on the present.
“Paraclausithyron” in Flatbush Review
Another poem from my new project, “Paraclausithyron,” is in the fifth issue of the Flatbush Review.