Literature

Reading at Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series on June 13, 2017

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I recently read  at the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series, and you can listen to (and download) it here. I read “We’re Just Like Yesterday’s Headlines,” “Throw Out Your Life,” and “The Shape of Things I,” all from my forthcoming collection, The Shape of Things, due out soon from Salò Press.

You can also hear the other poets here: Nikki Allen, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Jason Irwin, Sharon Fagan McDermott, Kayla Sargeson. It was a really nice evening filled with wonderful verse. Thanks all.

Poets who read at Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series, June 13, 2017. Back row, left-to-right: Jimmy Cvetic, Bradley J. Fest, Sharon Fagan McDermott, and Joan Bauer; front row, left-to-right: Nikki Allen, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Kayla Sargeson, and Jason Irwin.

End of the Semester Links, Spring 2017

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It’s been a long year, long for many reasons, but here’s a backlog of some links. (Some very good news is imminent. . . .)

 

Nuclear and Environmental

New York Times Editorial Board, “The Finger on the Nuclear Button.”

Rebecca Savranksy, “US May Launch Strike if North Korea Moves to Test Nuclear Weapon.”

Kaveh Waddell, “What Happens if a Nuclear Bomb Goes Off in Manhattan.”

Radiolab, “Nukes.”

Laurel Wamsley, “Digitization Unearths New Data From Cold War-Era Nuclear Test Films.”

Michael Biesecker and John Flesher, “President Trump Institutes Media Blackout at EPA.”

Brian Kahn, “The EPA Has Started to Remove Obama-Era Information.”

Zoë Schlanger, “Hackers Downloaded US Government Climate Data and Stored It on European Servers as Trump Was Being Inaugurated.”

Cass R. Sunstein, “Making Sense of Trump’s Order on Climate Change.”

Laurie Penny, “The Slow Confiscation of Everything.”

Continue reading →

Upcoming Readings on May 18 and June 13

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I will be giving two poetry readings in Pittsburgh over the next couple months.

On May 18, 2017 I will be reading at Piccolo Forno at 7:00 pm to accompany the release of issue 7 of the After Happy Hour Review. Also reading will be Bob Hartley, Daniel Parme, Celine Roberts, and Daniel M. Shapiro.

On June 13, 2017 I will be reading at the Hemingway’s Summer Poetry Series. Also reading will be Nikki Allen, Jennifer Jackson Berry, Jason Irwin, Sharon Fagan McDermott, and Kayla Sargeson.

“Toward a Theory of the Megatext” Forthcoming in Scale in Literature and Culture

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“Toward a Theory of the Megatext: Speculative Criticism and Richard Grossman’s ‘Breeze Avenue Working Paper,'” the first essay from a new project on what I have been calling megatexts, will appear in Scale in Literature and Culture, edited by Michael Tavel Clarke and David Wittenberg. The collection of essays will be published by Palgrave Macmillan and will hopefully come out later this year. More information to come.

Beginning of the Semester Links, Spring 2017

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Nuclear and Environment

Stephen Hawking, “This Is the Most Dangerous Time for Our Planet.”

Andrew Bast, “Unpredictable,” review of Nuclear Politics: The Strategic Causes of Nuclear Proliferation, by By Nuno P. Monteiro and Alexandre Debs.

Joe Romm, “Priebus Confirms That Climate Denial Will Be the Official Policy of Trump’s Administration.”

Natasha Geiling, “Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Deletes Accurate Climate Science from Agency Webpage.”

Madeline Conway, “Trump Threatens to Upend US Nuclear Weapons Policy.”

Sam Stein, “Trump Releases Letter From Putin Amid Talk Of Nuclear Arms Race.”

Robinson Meyer, “Human Extinction Isn’t That Unlikely.”

Continue reading →

“The Shape of Things II” and Other Poems in Verse

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verse-33

A portfolio of my poems was chosen as a finalist for the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize and was just published in Verse. Included in the portfolio are “The Shape of Things I,” “Architects and Their Books,” “What We Are Looking At,” “Tristeza,” “An Ode to 2013: We Are the National Security Agency’s Children,” “Throw Out Your Life,” and an eighteen-page long poem, “The Shape of Things II,” of which I am particularly proud.

The poems appear in volume 33 of Verse, along with poems by Felicia Zamora, the winner of the 2015 Tomaž Šalamun Prize, E. C. Belli, Alex Stolis, Beth Marzoni, Michelle Murphy, Dan Ivec, Gabrielle Hovendon, Todd Melicker, Keith Jones, Catherine Taylor, Lynn Melnick, and the late James Tate. I will post a link to where one can order the issue as soon as it becomes available, but in the meantime, individual subscriptions can be ordered from Verse‘s editorial office for $18/year (check payable to Verse):

Brian Henry and Andrew Zawacki, Editors
Department of English
University of Richmond
Richmond, VA 23173