All Announcements

The Strand to celebrate the last poems of Harvey Shapiro

We are pleased to announce a new book by Harvey Shapiro, A Momentary Glory: Last Poems. A celebration of Shapiro’s work will occur on Tuesday, September 30, at 7:30 PM, in the Rare Book Room of The Strand Book Store (828 Broadway at 12th Street, NYC). Read more here.

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The distinguished poet Harvey Shapiro passed away on January 7, 2013. The poems in this book, many of them previously unpublished and discovered only after his death, are a great gift, and the final confirmation of his extraordinary talent. Edited by Shapiro’s literary executor, the poet and critic Norman Finkelstein, these last poems bear an unprecedented gravitas, and yet they are as supple, jazzy, and edgy as Shapiro’s earlier work. All the themes for which he is known are beautifully represented here. There are poems of his experiences in World War II, the erotic life, and of daily moments in Brooklyn and Manhattan, all in search of a worldly wisdom and grace that the poet calls “a momentary glory.” As Shapiro tells us, the poem “Is an Egyptian / ship of the dead, / everything required / for life stored / in its hold.” The book includes a introduction by the editor. An online reader’s companion is available at http://harveyshapiro.site.wesleyan.edu/.

For more details, click here.

Also available as an ebook—check with your favorite ebook retailer.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

Psalm

I am still on a rooftop in Brooklyn
on your holy day. The harbor is before me,
Governor’s Island, the Verrazano Bridge
and the Narrows. I keep in my head
what Rabbi Nachman said about the world
being a narrow bridge and that the important thing
is not to be afraid. So on this day
I bless my mother and father, that they be
not fearful where they wander. And I
ask you to bless them and before you
close your Book of Life, your Sefer Hachayim,
remember that I always praised your world
and your splendor and that my tongue
tried to say your name on Court Street in Brooklyn.
Take me safely through the Narrows to the sea.

SUBMIT NOW for Best American Experimental Writing

bax-cover

Now is the time to submit your work for the 2015 edition of
Best American Experimental Writing!

THE DEADLINE IS DECEMBER 1ST 2014

BAX compiles the best North American writing inspired by an experimental ethos. The inaugural edition, published in July 2014 by Omnidawn, features 75 works by a diverse range of emerging and established writers. The anthology is a vital teaching tool and a must-read for anyone interested in innovative concepts. Contributors include Rae Armantrout, Charles Bernstein, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Ken Chen, Monica de la Torre, Forrest Gander, Kate Greenstreet, Brenda Hillman, Farid Matuk, Jena Osman, Ron Padgett, M. NourbeSe Philip, Vanessa Place, Ed Roberson, Danniel Schoonebeek, Anne Waldmen, and many more poets. 

The next edition of BAX will be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2015.
You may submit your work via Wesleyan UP’s Submittable Page.

 

#tbt Rae Armantrout, & Paul Muldoon, for the New Yorker

Join us on The New Yorker‘s Sound Cloud to enjoy a reading and interview with Rae Armantrout, conducted by Paul Muldoon. Armantrout recalls and reads a Susan Wheeler poem, from the The New Yorker archives. Then she reads a poem of her own, before discussing her work with Muldoon.

Covers

Wesleyan University Press will publish Armantrout’s next book, Itself, in February 2015. Today’s poem is from Armantrout’s 2004 collection, Up to Speed.

“Fieldwork”

One’s a connoisseur of vacancies,

Loud silences
surrounding human artifacts:

Stucco hulls
of forgotten origin

that squat
over the sleepers

in rows
on raised platforms.

She calls her finds
“encapsulations.”

*

One is ebullient,

shaving seconds,
navigating among refills.

She’s concerned with the rhythm
of her own sequence of events,

if such they can be called,

though these may be indistinguishable
from those in the lives of other people,

though the continuity which interests her
breaks up
the middle distance.

*

She finds the fly-leaves of her new notebook
have been pre-printed
in old-fashioned script–

phrases broken to suggest
mid-race

as a site of faux urgency:

“this work since it’s commenced”

“cannot nor willnot stay”

 

———-
Rae Armantrout is a professor of writing in the Literature Department at the University of California at San Diego, and the author of many books of poetry, including Money ShotVersedNext Life, and Veil: New and Selected Poems. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and many other awards. 

 

Susan Campbell’s “Tempest-Tossed” reviewed in TLS

 

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We’re pleased to announce that Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker, by Susan Campbell, was recently reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement (September 5, 2014)

About the book: Tempest-Tossed is the first full biography of the passionate, fascinating youngest daughter of the “Fabulous Beecher” family—one of America’s most high-powered families of the nineteenth century. Older sister Harriet Beecher Stowe was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Brother Henry Ward Beecher was one of America’s most influential ministers, and sister Catherine Beecher wrote pivotal works on women’s rights and educational reform. And then there was Isabella Beecher Hooker—“a curiously modern nineteenth-century figure.” She was a leader in the suffrage movement, and a mover and shaker in Hartford’s storied Nook Farm neighborhood and salon. But there is more to the story—to Isabella’s character—than that.

 

Read the review here, courtesy of The Times Literary Supplement:

In 1903, a young female suffragist wrote to Isabella Beecher Hooker, lamenting the effacement of Hooker’s contributions to the women’s suffrage movement. “I am not forgotten”, Hooker defensively responds. Susan Campbell’s new biography, like the remainder of Hooker’s letter, records even as it seeks to rectify the ironies of this statement. “To this day it has never been suggested that my name should appear with Mrs. Stanton’s [Elizabeth Cady Stanton] and Miss Anthony’s [Susan B. Anthony]”, Hooker writes, naming those who remain inseparable from the struggle for women’s rights. While Campbell’s biography may not rewrite history in the manner that her subject would have wanted, it captures the personal and public tensions that kept Hooker in the shadows.

Even now, Campbell notes, it is easiest to introduce Hooker in terms of her relatives and associations: the younger half-sister of the author Harriet Beecher Stowe and minister Henry Ward Beecher, and the close friend and confidant of Anthony and Stanton. Compared to these more recognizable public figures, Hooker was a late bloomer. She married the lawyer John Hooker in 1841 and spent the next two decades focused on domestic concerns. This time, however, would set the foundation for her future politics. Unlike radical suffragists such as Victoria Woodhull, who espoused free love and divorce reform, Hooker took a moderate stance: a woman’s place was in the home, but that “trained her for the bigger world” and encouraged in her an “ability to lead”. Hooker thus became a go-between for moderates and radicals.

Not only do Hooker’s individual desires mirror the larger goals of female suffragists – the craving for a public voice; the desire to be a mother, wife and respected intellectual and politician – but her peripheral status gets at what likely hindered the movement itself. “It is funny, how, everywhere I go – I have to run on the credit of my relations”, Hooker once complained. In its early days, women’s suffrage, too, was subordinated to other causes: abolition, most significantly, but controversial religious movements such as Spiritualism as well. Such associations were not always beneficial. The pathos recorded in Susan Campbell’s work isn’t just Hooker’s effacement, but the fact that in spite of their years of struggle, Hooker, Stanton and Anthony all died well before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment – the very law that would have granted Hooker that “particle of individuality” she craved.

Emily Hodgson Anderson

* * * * *

This review was first published in The Times Literary Supplement on September 5, 2014. It is reprinted with the permission of The Times Literary Supplement and the author of the review, Emily Hodgson Anderson. Emily Hodgson Anderson is associate professor at the University of Southern California, and author of  Eighteenth-Century Authorship and the Play of Fiction: Novels and the Theater, Haywood to Austen.

Autumn fun in Connecticut–agricultural fairs and more!

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With Fall quickly approaching, we look forward to the many agricultural fairs happening across Connecticut. Attending a fair is the perfect way to enjoy Connecticut’s beautiful Fall weather, and colors, with your family, friends, or that special someone!

Wesleyan University Press is dedicated to publishing books to support Connecticut history and culture. Our Connecticut-related titles include some great Autumn reads: Becoming Tom Thumb by Eric D. Lehman, Connecticut’s Fife and Drum Tradition by James Clark, The Old Leather Man by Dan W. DeLuca, Hidden in Plain Sight by David K. Leff, African American Connecticut Explored edited by Elizabeth J. Normen, and Barns of Connecticut by Markham Starr, among other books.

Here is a schedule of Fall 2014 agricultural fairs and festivals in Connecticut:

Hebron Harvest Fair 2014 
347 Gilead Street
Hebron, CT
September 4-7, 2014
Hours: Thursday, 4-10pm; Friday, noon-11pm.; Saturday, 9am-11pm; Sunday, 9am-8pm. Admission: $12-13; parking, $5.

North Haven Fair 2014
Washington Avenue (Route 5)
North Haven, CT
September 4-7, 2014
Hours: Thursday, 5-10pm; Friday, 3-11pm; Saturday, 10am-11pm; Sunday, 10am-7pm Admission: $10; senior on Sunday only, $5; children under age 12 admitted free when accompanied by an adult.

Wapping Fair 2014
Evergreen Walk, 100 Cedar Avenue
South Windsor, CT
September 4-7, 2014
Admission: Adults, $6; seniors over age 64, $3; children 57 inches tall and taller, $6. Hours: Thursday 6-10; Friday 6-11pm; Saturday 10am-11pm; Sunday 10am-6pm. Parking is free.

Bethlehem Fair 2014 
284 Main Street
North Bethlehem, CT
Phone: 203-266-5350
September 5-7, 2014
Admission: General, $9; seniors, $7, Saturday and Sunday only; children under age 12, free with an adult. Hours: Friday, 5-10pm; Saturday, 8am-9:30pm; Sunday, 8am-5:30pm

East Haven Fall Festival on the Green 2014 
Town Green, Main and River streets
East Haven , CT
September 5-7, 2014
Hours: Friday, 6-11 pm; Saturday, noon to 11 pm; Sunday, noon-6 pm with a car show at 9am.

Ledyard Fair 2014 
Route 117
Ledyard, CT
Phone: 860-464-912
September 5-7 2014
Hours: Friday, 6-11pm; Saturday, 9am-11pm; Sunday, 11am-6pm. Admission: Adults, $8; seniors and youth age 13-18, $5; 3-day pass, $13; children under age 11, free. Parking: Free at junior and senior high school with shuttle bus to fair. Pets: Service animals only.

Norwalk Oyster Festival 2014 
Veteran’s Memorial Park, 42 Seaview Avenue
Norwalk, CT
Phone: 203-838-9444
September 5-7, 2014
Hours: Friday, 6-11pm; Saturday, 11am-11pm; Sunday, 11am-8pm. Admission: Friday $10, Saturday/Sunday $12. Seniors $10, Children ages 5-12 $5, US Military Personnel on Active Duty: Free with ID.

Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival 2014
Fort Trumbull and other parts of the New London waterfront
New London, CT
September 11-13, 2014

Four Town Fair 2014 
Egypt Road and Billings Road
Tolland, CT
Phone: 860-749-6527
September 11-14, 2014
Hours: Thursday/Friday 4-11pm, Saturday 8am-11pm, Sunday 8am-7:30pm. Admission: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, $10; Thursday, $6; children age 12 years and younger, free; seniors all day Thursday and Friday, $5.

Newtown Arts Festival 2014 
Fairfield Hills, Trades Lane
Newtown, CT
Phone: 203-417-0862
September 13-14, 2014
Hours: 10am-6pm. Admission: $5. Children 12 & under FREE.

Guilford Agricultural Fair 2014
Guilford Fairgrounds, Lovers Lane
Guilford, CT
September 19-21, 2014
Hours: Friday, 1-11pm; Saturday, 9am-11pm; Sunday 9am-7pm. Admission: Adults, $10; seniors, $8; children age 6-11, $5; 3-day pass, $25.

Milford Irish Festival 2014
Fowler Field Rotary Pavilion behind the Milford Public Library, 57 New Haven Avenue
Milford, CT
Phone: 203-874-7275
September 19-20, 2014
Hours: Friday 6-11pm, Saturday 11am-11pm. Admission: Friday $5, Saturday $12.

Harvest Festival at Haight-Brown Vineyard 2014 
Haight-Brown Vineyard, 29 Chestnut Hill Road
Litchfield, CT
Phone: 860-307-5426
September 20-21, 2014
Hours: 11am – 6pm, both days. Admission: $25; kids under age 21, $10.

Harvest Festival at Stonington Vineyards 2014 
Stonington Vineyards, 523 Taugwonk Road
Stonington, CT
Phone: 860-535-1222
September 20-21, 2014
Hours: 12-6pm. Admission: Advance tickets $20, Day-of tickets $25.

Orange Country Fair 2014
525 Orange Center Road
Orange, CT
September 20 & 21, 2014
Hours: Saturday, 8am-7pm; Sunday: 8am-6pm. Admission: Adults, $7; seniors, $5; free parking and shuttle.

Durham Fair 2014 
Main Street and Fowler Avenue
Durham, CT
September 25 – 28, 2014
Hours: Thursday, 4-10 pm; Friday and Saturday, 9am-10pm; Sunday, 9am-7pm. Admission: Adults, $10-$15, depending on the day; children age 11 and younger admitted for free.

16th Annual Connecticut Renaissance Faire 
Dodd Stadium – 14 Stott Avenue
Norwich, CT 06360
Phone: 860-478-5954
Saturdays, Sundays and Columbus Day, Sept. 27 to Oct. 26, 2014
Hours: 10:30am-6pm. Parking: Free of charge. Admission: General (Ages 16+) $17, Youth (7-15) $10, Children 6 & under FREE.

New England Acoustic Music Festival 2014 
Main Street between Front (Route 44) and Lee streets
Putnam, CT
September 27, 2014
Hours: Gates open at 11:30 a.m. and music starts at noon. Festival ends at 9 p.m. Admission: $15 in advance and $20 at the door (includes one serving of beer, soda or water).

Oktoberfest at Quassy 2014 
Fieldside Pavilion, Quassy Amusement Park, Route 64
Middlebury, CT
Phone: 203-758-2913
September 27-28, 2014
Hours: 12-6pm. Admission: Free! Parking $6 per vehicle.

Berlin Fair 2014
Berlin Fairgrounds, 430 Beckley Road
East Berlin, CT
Phone: 860-828-0063
October 3-4, 2014
Hours: Friday, 11am – 10pm.; Saturday, 9am-10pm; Sunday, 9am-7pm. Admission: Adults, $12; seniors, $8; children under age 11, free.

Southington Apple Harvest Festival 2014 
On and around Town Green
Southington, CT 06489
October 3-5 and 10-12, 2014
Hours: Fridays, 5-9pm; Saturdays, 9am – 9pm; Sunday, October 5, noon – 7pm; Sunday, October 11, noon – 5pm. Admission: Free admission and parking.

Old Wethersfield Fall Craft Fair 2014 
Cove Park
Old Wethersfield, CT
October 4, 2014
Hours: 10am-4pm. Admission: $6, Children 12 and under FREE. Ample free parking!

Blue Slope Country Museum Fall Tyme Fest 2014 
Blue Slope Country Museum, 138 Blue Hill Road
Franklin, CT
October 4-5, 2014
Hours: Saturday, 10am-4pm; Sunday, 10am-3pm. Admission: Adults, $7; children age 4-14, $4.

Fall Festival & Swap Meet 2014 at Zagray Farm Museum
Zagray Farm Museum, 544 Amston Road (Route 85)
Colchester, CT
October 4-5, 2014
Hours: 8am-3pm. $5 per car.

Harwinton Fair 2014 
Locust Road
Harwinton, CT
Phone: 860-485-0464
October 4-5, 2014
Hours: Saturday, 8am-6pm; Sunday, 8am-5pm. Admission: Adults, $7; children age 12 and younger, free.

Portland Fair 2014 
Exchange Club Fairgrounds, Route 17A
Portland, CT
Phone: 860-342-0188
October 10-12, 2014
Hours: Friday, 5pm-11pm; Saturday, 10am-11pm; Sunday, 10am-5:30pm. Free off-site parking. Admission: Adults, $10; seniors, $6; children (under age 10), free.

Riverton Fair 2014 
Route 20
Riverton, CT
Phone: 860-738-4227
October 10-12, 2014
Hours: Friday, 5-10pm; Saturday and Sunday, 8am-6pm. Admission: Adults, $5; children under age 12, free. Free parking. Pets: Service animals only.

Garlic and Harvest Festival 2014 
Bethlehem Fairgrounds, 384 Main Street North (Route 61)
Bethlehem, CT
Phone: 203-266-7810
October 11-12, 2014
Hours: 10am to 5pm. Admission: Adults, $7; seniors, $6; children under age 12, $1.

Scotland Highland Festival at Waldo Homestead 2014 
Edward Waldo Homestead, 96 Waldo Road
Scotland, CT
October 12, 2014
Hours: 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Admission: Adults, $15; seniors and students, $10; kids age 6-12, $5. Parking location address: 130 Devotion Road, Scotland

Roseland Cottage Fine Arts & Crafts Festival 2014 
Roseland Cottage, 556 Route 169
Woodstock, CT
October 18-19, 2014
Hours: 10am-4:30pm. Admission: Free for Historic New England members and children under 12; $5 for nonmembers.

 

We wish you all the best for this lovely season!

#tbt: Kenneth Goldsmith’s “Page One” from DAY

This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is Kenneth Goldsmith’s “’Page One’ from The Day,” published in Wesleyan’s anthology, American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics. The poem is from Goldsmiths book Day. Listen to Goldsmith read his poem here, at the book’s companion website.

 

goldsmithrankine

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“Page One” from Day

“All the News

That’s Fit to Print”

The New York Times

Late Edition

New York: Today, mainly sunny and noticeably less humid, high 79. Tonight, clear, low 62. Tomorrow, sunny and cool, high 76. Yesterday, high 86, low 73. Weather map is on Page D8.

VOL. CL. . . No. 51,873

Copyright © 2001 The New York Times

NEW YORK, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

$1 beyond the greater New York metropolitan area.

75 CENTS

Photographs, clockwise from top left, by Librado Romero, Ruby Washington, Ruth Fremson and James Estrin / The New York Times

THE HOME STRETCH On the last day of campaigning, the mayoral candidates scoured the city for votes. Clockwise from top Peter F. Vallone, Alan G. Hevesi and Mark Green talked with voters in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Page B1

Nuclear Booty:

More Smugglers

Use Asia Route

By DOUGLAS FRANTZ

ISTANBUL, Sept. 10 – The police in Batumi, a Black Sea port in Georgia, heard a rumor in July that someone wanted to sell several pounds of high-grade uranium for $100,000. The most tantalizing aspect of the tip was that one of the sellers was reportedly a Georgia Army officer.

All sorts of scoundrels have tried nuclear smuggling in recent years. Many are amateurs; most of what they try to peddle proves useless for making bombs.

But the possible involvement of an army officer gave the Batumi case a measure of deadly seriousness, beyond its status as another example of how the smuggling of nuclear material has shifted to Central Asia.

On the morning of July 20, the local antiterrorist squad burst into a small hotel room near the port, just outside the Turkish border. They arrested four men, including an army captain named Shota Geladze.

On the floor of the room, in a glass jar wrapped in plastic, sat nearly four pounds of enriched uranium 235, according to Revaz Chantladze, one of the police officers. The quantity was less than is usually required for a small atomic bomb.

Subsequent analysis yielded differing opinions. A Western diplomat

Continued on Page A10

City Voters Have Heard It All

As Campaign Din Nears End

By JIM DWYER

The first time the phone rang, Victoria Ehigiator was elbow deep in a sink of soapy dishes. She dried her hands and picked up the phone. It was Al Sharpton on the line, calling about the primary election. He said his piece, and she went back to the dishes. A few minutes later, the phone rang again, and she lifted herself from the bubbles once more.

That time it was Fernando Ferrer. And then it was Gloria Davis. Followed by Adolfo Carrión.

As one digitized caller after another dropped into her home, thanks to new technology that can swamp the telephones in a ZIP code or an entire city with the actual voice of, say, Ed Koch, urging a vote for Peter Vallone, Ms. Ehigiator started to suspect that very few people in New York were not running for something – whether it was mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president or City Council.

And as for those few who weren’t candidates, they all seemed to be calling her about those who were.

Had Bill Bradley actually phoned her about Herb Berman? And who was Herb Berman, anyway? (Psst: he’s a council member running for comptroller.)

“There was another guy – his name starts with S,” said Ms. Ehiglator, of Morrisania in the Bronx, offering no other clues. “I’m trying to do the Sunday dishes but I never got off the phone with all these animated

voice messages. It was a real fiesta of phone calls.”

Today is the end of the busiest primary campaign around here that anyone can remember, and the candidates are ganging up on the small fraction of the electorate that customarily decides such races. From the high cliffs of northern Manhattan to the ocean foam at Rockaway Beach, New Yorkers report they are coping by slamming down the phone faster, throwing out the mail sooner,

Continued on Page B5

a Nation of Early Risers,

Morning TV Is a Hot Market

By BILL CARTER

How much morning television can one nation watch?

Ever since the owlish Dave Garroway ambled through the “Today” program on NBC starting in 1952, sometimes accompanied by a chimpanzee, television screens have greeted awakening Americans with the combination of hard news, feature reports and soft celebrity interviews that has come to be known as the morning news program.

But the competition for bleary eyes has grown more intense as media conglomerates have awakened to

the idea that changing lives, heightened interest from advertisers and other factors have made the morning one of the few areas of growth in the television business.

That trend was underscored last week when CNN raided its rival all-news cable network, Fox News, and took the anchor Paula Zahn for a new morning program it will begin next spring from inside the Time & Life Building at 50th Street on the Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan.

According to Fox executives, reading from the offer sheet they said CNN gave to Ms. Zahn, CNN agreed to triple her salary, bringing it over the $2 million mark.

The figure would be by far the most money CNN has ever paid for an anchor, far more than double what CNN agreed to pay to Aaron Brown, the anchor it has brought in from ABC to lead a prime-time newscast.

The raid and Fox’s response — a lawsuit — represent the latest nasty interchange between Fox News and CNN, and serve as a proxy for a larger corporate battle between

Continued on Page C16

NEWS SUMMARY A2

Arts E1-10

Business Day  C1-16

Editorial, Op-Ed A22-23

International A3-15

Metro  B17

National  A16-21

Science Times F1-12

Sports Tuesday D1-8

World Business  W1-8

Fashion  B7-8

Fashion B7-8

Health/Fitness F5-12

Obituaries C17

Weather D8

Classified Ads F9-11

Auto Exchange D4

Updated news: www.nytlmes.com

School Dress Codes vs. a Sea of Bare Flesh

By KATE ZERNIKE

MILLBIJRN, N.J., Sept. 7 — In the tumult of bare skin that is the hallway of Millburn High School, Michele Pitts is the Enforcer.

“Hon, put the sweater on,” she barks at a pair of bare shoulders.

“Lose those flip-flops,” to a pair of bare legs.

One student waves her off as Mrs. Pitts crosses her arms in a “Cover that cleavage” sign. “You talked to me already,” the girl insists, then promises, “Tomorrow!” as she disappears around a corner.

Baseball caps, a taboo of yesteryear, pass by unchallenged, having slipped in severity on a list of offenses that now include exposed bellies, backs and thighs. For Mrs. Pitts, the assistant principal, there is simply too much skin to cover.

With Britney Spears and CosmoGirl setting the fashion trends, shirts and skirts are inching up, pants are slipping down, and schools across the country are finding themselves forced to tighten their dress codes and police their hallways.

This fall, New York State is requiring all public school districts to adopt dress codes as part of a larger code of conduct. In North Carolina, the bill that allowed schools to post the Ten Commandments also required them to institute dress codes.

The days when torn jeans tested the limits are now a fond memory. Today, schools feel the need to remind students that see-through clothing is not appropriate. (The Liverpool Central School District, near Syracuse, learned this when two high school girls showed up on Halloween dressed in Saran Wrap. Only one appeared to be wearing underwear.)

In the new dress codes, spaghetti straps are forbidden (straps must be no less than an inch and a half

Don Standing

for The Now York Times

The dress code

at Millburn High

School aims to

raise standards and self-respect.

It frowns on low

necklines, bared

shoulders, flip-

flops and spa-

ghetti straps.

wide), as is clothing that “bares the private parts”; fishnet stockings and shirts; T-shirts with lewd messages; flip-flops or other clothing more suited to the beach; and skirts or shorts above mid-thigh. Boys cannot wear tank tops or

Continued on Page B7

INSIDE

Mrs. Dole to Run for Senate

Elizabeth Dole plans to announce that she will run in 2002 for the Senate seat being vacated by Jesse Helms of North Carolina. PAGE A16

Afghan Rebel’s Fate Unclear

A day after a bombing aimed at the leader of the opposition to the Taliban, there were conflicting reports as to whether he survived. PAGE A15

Morgan Stanley Bias Suit

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a sex-discrimination suit against Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. BUSINESS DAY, PAGE C1

FOR HOME DELIVERY CALL 1-800-NYTIMES

0 354613937201

Giants Fail in Opener

The Giants allowed touchdowns in every quarter as the host Denver Broncos rolled to a 31-20 victory.

SPORTSTUESDAY, PAGE D1

Debate Over Shark Attacks

Commercial fishermen are at odds with scientists over the reason for a spate of highly publicized shark attacks. SCIENCE TIMES, PAGE F1

Scientists Urge

Bigger Supply

Of Stem Cells

Report Backs Cloning

to Create New Lines

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 – A panel of scientific experts has concluded that new colonies, or lines, of human embryonic stem cells will be necessary if the science is to fulfill its potential, a finding that is likely to inflame the political debate over President Bush’s decision to restrict federally financed research to the 64 stem cell lines that are already known to exist.

In a 59-page report that examines the state of human stem cell science, the panel also endorsed cloning technology to create new stem cells that could be used to treat patients. Mr. Bush strongly opposes human cloning for any reason, and the House of Representatives voted in July to outlaw any type of cloning, whether for reproduction or research.

The report by the National Academy of Sciences, perhaps the nation’s most eminent organization of scientists, is scheduled to be made public on Tuesday morning at a news conference in Washington. It does not address Mr. Bush’s policy directly, though it strongly supports federal financing for stem cell research.

“High quality, publicly funded research is the wellspring of medical breakthroughs,” said the report, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times by Congressional supporters of stem cell research. It added that federal financing, and the government oversight that comes with it, “offers the most efficient and responsible means of fulfilling the promise of stem cells to meet the need for regenerative medical therapies.”

Though the academy often issues its reports in response to requests from the government, it embarked on this study on its own earlier this year. The study was not an exhaustive review of the scientific literature in stem cells, but was rather intended to examine the prospects for the on this study on its own earlier this year. The study was not an exhaustive review of the scientific literature in stem cells, but was rather intended to examine the prospects for the research and to make policy recommendations. The report was written

Continued on Page A18

Strict Arsenic Limit Sought

Strict standards for arsenic in drinking water, suspended by the Bush administration, were justified, experts have concluded. Page A20.

KEY LEADERS TALK

OF POSSIBLE DEALS

TO REVIVE ECONOMY

BUSH IS UNDER PRESSURE

Lott Open to More Tax Cuts –

Democrat Sees Temporary

Dip Into Social Security

By ALISON MITCHELL

and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 – Key figures in both parties responded to the darkening economic outlook today by exploring possible compromises on additional tax cuts, and the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee suggested that such a deal could involve the politically perilous step of tapping temporarily into the Social Security surplus.

Pressure mounted on President Bush to drop his cautious approach to dealing with the weakening economy, much of it from within his own party. Republicans are voicing growing concern that the White House has underestimated public unease about the economy and the threat it poses to members of Congress up for re-election next year.

Confronted with polls showing that support for Republicans was eroding even before the government reported on Friday that the unemployment rate had surged, nervous Republicans moved on a variety of fronts.

In the House, Republican leaders agreed tonight to take up legislation in committee on Tuesday that would require automatic spending cuts if any Social Security money was spent on other government programs in the current fiscal year.

After accounting for the slowing economy and the tax cut signed into law by Mr. Bush in June, the Congressional Budget Office projected last month that the government would spend $9 billion of Social Security receipts in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. Both parties now expect that figure to be higher.

The White House sent a memorandum to all cabinet agencies today asking them to look for possible budget cuts as the administration develops tax and spending proposals for its next budget.

In the Senate, Trent Lott of Mississippi, the minority leader, said he was open to an idea floated by Democrats for a tax cut for workers who had not qualified for the current rebate. Workers who do not make enough money to pay federal income taxes but who still pay the payroll taxes that finance Social Security and Medicare will not receive rebate checks this year.

Mr. Lott said he would like to see

Continued on Page A20

Traced on Internet,

Teacher Is Charged

In ’71 Jet Hijacking

By C.J. CHIVERS

Thirty years after a black-power revolutionary hijacked a jetliner from Ontario to Cuba and disappeared, Canadian and federal authorities matched the fingerprints he left on a can of ginger ale in the airplane with those of a teacher in Westchester County and charged the teacher with the crime yesterday.

The teacher, Patrick Dolan Critton, 54, of Mount Vernon, N.Y., was charged with kidnapping, armed robbery and extortion in United States District Court in Manhattan. He is facing extradition to Canada, where a detective had tracked him down through a simple Internet search.

The authorities said that Mr. Critton, a fugitive for 30 years, had been hiding in plain sight for the last seven years, working as a schoolteacher, using his real name, raising two sons and mentoring other children. Even one of the police officers who arrested him said he had the appearance and demeanor of a gentleman.

But as a young man, the authorities said, Patrick Dolan Critton was a revolutionary with a taste for the most daring of crimes.

By 1971, when he was 24, he was wanted by the New York City police on charges that he participated in a bank robbery that led to a frantic gun battle with the police, and that he had worked in a covert explosives factory on the Lower East Side, where the police said he made pipe bombs with other members of a black liberation group, the Republic

Continued on Page B6

SPEND “AN EVENING WITH JOHN WATERS” this Saturday and see the director’s cut of “Female Trouble.” For tickets to this TimesTalks event at the Gay Life Expo, call (212) 352-3535 – ADVT

From the Author:
"I am spending my 39th year practicing uncreativity. On Friday, September 1, 2000, I began retyping the day's NEW YORK TIMES word for word, letter for letter, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, page by page." With these words, Kenneth Goldsmith embarked upon a project which he termed "uncreative writing", that is: uncreativity as a constraint-based process; uncreativity as a creative practice. By typing page upon page, making no distinction between article, editorial and advertisement, disregarding all typographic and graphical treatments, Goldsmith levels the daily newspaper. DAY is a monument to the ephemeral, comprised of yesterday's news, a fleeting moment concretized, captured, then reframed into the discourse of literature. "When I reach 40, I hope to have cleansed myself of all creativity."

#tbt: Frances Chung, “For Li Po”

This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is Frances Chung’s “For Li Po” from Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple: The Poems of Francis Chung (2000).

 

chung blog

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For Li Po

they read your poem still
at the New School
in Pound’s translation

at West Lake your spirit
mingles with Su Tung Po’s
a willow path is named for you

in Shanghai we found you
reclining in a Friendship store
carved out of an olive pit

in Chinatown a waiter tells of
the time you visited Hangchow
was it there you took your life

you will be pleased to know
your legend lives on
we remember your middle name

 

FRANCES CHUNG (1950 – 1990) published her poetry in several anthologies and journals, including The Portable Lower East Side and IKON, and posthumously in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry and Chain. A teacher of mathematics in Lower East Side public schools who often taught in Spanish, she was awarded several poetry fellowships by the New York Times Co. Foundation and New York State Council on the Arts. Find a heart-felt piece about Chung, who we lost too soon, here.

WALTER K. LEW, editor of Crazy Melon and Chinese Appleis the author of Excerpts from: DIKTE for DICTEE (1982), editor of the poetry anthology Premonitions, and co-editor of Kŏri: the Beacon Anthology of Korean American Fiction.

 

#tbt: Peter Gizzi, “Still Life with Automobile”

This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is Peter Gizzi’s “Still Life with Automobile,” originally published in Periplum, and Other Poems. The poem is also found in Gizzi’s newest book In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems 1987-2011.

 

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Still Life with Automobile

He was going to take it to the next town.

Though the park was empty

the pond bristled with life. He had

not an answer within 100 sq. acres

or it was only answers that tweeted about.

Who was this lonely figure in a landscape

and once he is made known

would the narrative slack and come

to a warm bed and slippers?

It was no no and yes yes all afternoon

on the thruway. It was a big state said the signs

and so did the sky say big state.

 

Praise for In Defense of Nothing

In Defense of Nothing neither apologizes nor explains, but in its circumnavigation the reader will be moved to find experiences of suffering, surprise, joy, and gratitude, experiences that define life itself.”
-Ange Mlinko, Boston Review

“A deep lacuna has opened in the work, which makes the title In Defense of Nothing as much literal as rhetorical, opening a space for the next step in Gizzi’s trajectory.”
-Alan Gilbert, Hyperallergic

“These selected poems from five books are helpful in understanding the architectural gifts of Peter Gizzi—studying his extended productivity show us the overall force of his work.”
-Grace Cavalieri, The Washington Independent Review of Books

“As a whole, Gizzi’s In Defense of Nothing affirms the notion that poetry is a form of salvation for those who are willing to do the hard work of turning perceptions into the ‘second tongue we call grammar.’ It is a book worthy of all who love art and all who love to express themselves through poetry.”
-Sonja James, The Journal, Martinsburg, WV

“Gizzi’s poetry is ‘silly with clarity,’ infused with a restless vernacular that can elevate the mundane while making the impossible tangible.”
Publisher’s Weekly

In Defense of Nothing Selected Poems 1987-2011 splendidly champions Gizzi as a major force in the ever-expanding vastness of the poetry world. His well-earned spot as an integral influential force of our time is thus firmly staked out.”
-Patrick James Dunagan , Bookslut

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PETER GIZZI is the author of Threshold Songs, The Outernationale, Some Values of Landscape and Weather, Artificial Heart, Periplumand In Defense of Nothing. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“Still Life with Automobile”  © 1992 Peter Gizzi, from In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987 – 2011

#tbt: John Ashbery, “White Roses”

This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is John Ashbery’s “White Roses” from The Tennis Court Oath (1977).

 

ashbery TBT

 

WHITE ROSES

The worst side of it all—
The white sunlight on the polished floor—
Pressed into service,
And then the window closed
And the night ends and begins again.
Her face goes green, her eyes are green;
In the dark corner playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”  I try
to describe for you,
But you will not listen, you are like the swan.

No stars are there,
No stripes,
But a blind man’s cane poking, however clumsily, into the inmost
corners of the house.
Nothing can be harmed !  Night and day are beginning again !
So put away the book,
The flowers you were keeping to give someone:
Only the white, tremendous foam of the street has any importance,
The new white flowers that are beginning to shoot up about now.

 

 

JOHN ASHBERY was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. He is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, and has won nearly every major American award for poetry. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ashbery is currently the Charles P. Stevenson, Jr., Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College. He divides his time between New York City and Hudson, New York.

“The Fiddlehead’s” retrospective on Rae Armantrout

Fiddlehead Summer 2014The Fiddlehead recognized Wesleyan author Rae Armantrout in a retrospective found in their Summer 2014 issue (No. 260). You will find some new poems in the issue. Below is the introduction, by Ross Leckie. Wesleyan will release a new volume by Armantrout, Itself, in Spring 2015. 

From The Fiddlehead:

The Poetry of Rae Armantrout

What is the poetry of everyday life?  What does it look like?  Well, we might say, it looks like the work of a number of very fine poets written in prosaic free verse, using the language of the average person, and telling stories of the quotidian experience of family, relationships, illness, alcoholism, work, and so on.  The poetry of everyday life might look like all of these things, or it might look like the poetry of Rae Armantrout.

 Armantrout certainly gestures to daily life, and we could imagine a conventional free verse lyric ending with “Is it the beginning or end / of real love / when we pity a person // because, in him, / we see ourselves?”  You could open a collection of fiction with the quirky humour of Lorrie Moore and not be surprised to find a story opening with this sentence: “When she hugged him I wanted her to hug me too because, if she didn’t, I would have to wonder about that, whereas, before, I would have been happy with a friendly word and, after a slight hesitation, she did wrap her arms around me.”

The “Lorrie Moore” sentence is the first of three sections of Armantrout’s new poem “Membrane,” printed here, and it displays her sly wit and her ability to expose a moment of pathos. The first and third sections of the poem open themselves to the possibilities of narrative interpretation.  The second section, however, highlights the textuality of language and resists interpretation in the ways that identify Armantrout as a language poet.

Armantrout articulates across her career all of the concerns of language poetry: postmodern culture, self-reflexivity, the materiality of language, semiotics and deconstruction, disruption of the symbolic order, and an oppositional politics inherent in the interruption of the language of seamless ideological discourse.

The second section of “Membrane” is comprised of four indented words, each on a line of its own: “ion / selection / channel / membrane.”  Ion.  An electrically charged particle.  The emotionally “charged” situation that attempts to resolve in a hug?  Membrane.  A separating layer.  But also a pliable material that is selectively permeable, filtering wanted from unwanted particles.  Is the membrane the skin of the body that, in a hug, both separates and filters emotional ions?

The concluding section begins “Put simply,” as if promising an explication of the second section.  We learn that Eve’s “fall” from paradise is in her snake-bitten recognition that people have intentions they don’t explain, the meaning of which you must intuit.  This leads her to compare herself to others, and there is no end to comparison, fraught with insecurities, anxieties, and fears.

The second section of this poem, an irritant to any reader looking for a narrative of meaning in this poem, is crucial.  It resists any simplistic “lesson” on the perils of comparison.  A world without comparison would exist only in paradise, and it would be without language, as language is a function of relation and comparison.  Language is a membrane that disguises its intentions and is a site of endless anxiety.

Another new poem, “Our World,” announces a dilemma in the poetics of everyday life.  Conventional lyric seems worn out, merely an endless worrying of the stories of our lives.  The poem asks, “We’d been tweaking / the poignancy // of small plots / for how long?”  Small plots are little narratives or individual graves, which are one and the same.

And so we moved on.  “We needed space, // perceived distance / between thing and statement, // as if irony, / inflated, / might be a whole new globe.”  Implied here is that irony upon irony upon irony is also a dead end.  Our world, though, has galloped on ahead of us.  The “transport of poetry” is a unique yellow sedan or a minivan with the decals of two skulls.  Family van as hearse.  “In our world” Cinderella’s gown is made by animated flying scissors in a fantasy of romance.  It is “class-system kitsch,” as she calls it in the poem “Nothing.”  And all these things are the self-assembling virions freshly released.  Inflated irony has gone viral!

I love both the wry and the outrageous humour of Rae Armantrout.  “Instruction” begins “I’m holding a baby / who was born yesterday” (everyone else wasn’t born yesterday).  Later she says of the baby: “I point to her mouth / and say, ‘Mouth, mouth.’ // She mouths it back; she’s so precocious!”  The poem concludes in London with “two tour bus routes // marked out: / one red, one blue.”  For some reason it seems fitting to me to interpolate this with Robert Frost: two tour bus routes diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one most traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

RAE ARMANTROUT is a professor of writing at the Literature Department at the University of California at San Diego, and the author of ten books of poetry, including Money Shot, Versed, Next Lifeand Veil: New and Selected Poems. Her forthcoming collection, Itself, will be released from Wesleyan University Press in spring 2015. She is the winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award.