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#tbt: from Gerald Vizenor’s “Hotline Healers”

by selliott • October 23, 2014

Today’s Throwback Thursday post features Gerald Vizenor’s Hotline Healers (1997).

At left: Gerald Vizenor reading from Blue Ravens at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, October 18, 2014

Vizenor’s work, drawing upon the trickster tradition in Native American culture, is among the most radical in Native American writing today. Academics of all stripes (but particularly anthropologists), the champions of victimry, Richard Nixon, and many others come under the lash of Vizenor’s satiric tongue in this hilarious, often surreal work: Hotline Healers.

In this collection of eleven linked stories, Vizenor brings back one of his most popular characters, Almost Browne, in full trickster force. Born in the back of a hatchback, almost on the White Earth Reservation, this crossblood storyteller sells blank books–some autographed (by him) with such names as Isaac Singer, Geoffrey Chaucer, N. Scott Momaday, and Jesus Christ; projects laser demons over the reservation; lectures in the Transethnic Situations Department at the University of California; is crowned Indian Princess of the University of Oklahoma by posing as the “mature” senior Penny Birdwind (who majors in native animations and simulations) and delivering a heartstopping, lip-synched rendition of Peggy Lee’s “Fever”; and much more. The stories feature many members of the Browne family, including Grandmother Wink, who can drop an insect in flight with a single puff of her poison breath, and great-uncle Gesture, the acudenturist who creates false teeth with tricky smiles from the Naanabozho Express, the free railroad train he runs on the reservation.

From Chapter 1: Teaser of Chance

Almost Gegaa Browne is rather ordinary, as you know, and a homely person in many ways. Ordinary in the sense of natural reason and native sovereignty. His tricky stories, even as a child, were heard as dares, the trusty tease of chance, the ruse of extremes, and the constant motion of creation, but you might think otherwise in his actual presence.

Almost teases everyone, a natural sense of mercy that others sometimes misconstrue as censure outside of the barony. He wears four ordinary wrist watches, and the hands are set at arcane hours. His clothes are borrowed, bright, loose, and wrinkled from neck to ankle. He never wears hats, socks, or undershorts, and his outsized shoes are nicely tied with copper wire.

“We live forever in stories, not manners,” he teased a writer for the New York Times. “So, tease the chance of conception, tease your mother, tease the privy councils of the great spirit, be a natural pirate, and always tease your own history.” Yes, my cousin is outrageous, notorious, wanton, a natural bother, as you know, and he is a mighty hotline healer in his stories.

Almost creates his intimate celebrations of contradictions, the traces of natural chance, the turn of seasons, a thunderstorm, and yet he amounts to much more than humor, a tease, and a generous memory at the end of his own stories. He is a hotline healer with a sure hand, heart, and eye of survivance. Almost has never been a separatist or a treasonous coach of victimry.

Read the rest of Hotline Healers, Chapter 1.

Vizenor’s newest books are Blue Ravens, a historical novel based on his great uncles’ journeys before, during, and after WWI, and Favor of Crows: New and Collected Haiku.

Holiday Gift Ideas from Wesleyan UP

by selliott • October 22, 2014

Something for everyone on your list!!! Order from UPNE.com using discount code W301 to receive a 30% discount. For History Readers
	Blue Ravens by Gerald Vizenor $27.95 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7416-9 From one of today’s most important Native American writers, this “emotionally wrought and finely crafted” (ForeWord) novel follows two Anishinaabe brothers from the battlefields of World War I, to their home on the White Earth Reservation, to the streets of post-war Paris. The book is based on his great uncle’s stories, as well as extensive research.
	Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker by Susan Campbell $28.95 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7340-7 The youngest child of one of America’s most famous families, a mover and shaker with a wild streak, Isabella Beecher Hooker is remembered in this engaging, breezy biography. Pulitzer-winning author Susan Campbell combines the research skills of a “born historian” (Connecticut Explored) with a breezy, accessible style.
	Prudence Crandall’s Legacy: The Fight for Equality in the 1830s, Dred Scott, and Brown v. Board of Education by Donald E. Williams, Jr. $35.00 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7470-1 In 1833, despite public backlash, Prudence Crandall admitted a black girl to her private school, resulting in the first integrated classroom in the country. Former CT state senator Donald E. Williams Jr. details Crandall’s life and work, and her unique role in the fight for civil rights, including her battles in the court system and the legacy of these battles, which include Brown v. Board of Education, the civil rights movement, and the problems and progress we see today.
	The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory by Anne Farrow $27.95 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7305-6 Anne Farrow, co-author of the bestselling Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery, takes readers on a harrowing journey onto the slave ship of a Connecticut merchant via the journal of that merchant’s son, bearing witness to our most shameful forgotten history.
For Film & Theater Buffs
	*The Director Within:* *Storytellers of Stage and Screen* by Rose Eichenbaum $30.00 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7289-9 Thirty-five masterminds of film, television, and theater—the directors of such productions as The Lion King, Chicago, and Rain Man–open up to Rose Eichenbaum about the entertainment industry, the role of the director, and how their work impacts our culture and lives.
For Poetry Readers
	A Momentary Glory: Last Poems by Harvey Shapiro $24.95 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7489-3 Acclaimed poet Harvey Shapiro “plays for keeps” (Hugh Seidman) in this posthumous collection. With his signature brilliance he reflects on war and eroticism, illness and aging, love and death, all in search of a worldly wisdom and grace that the poet calls “a momentary glory.”
	The Tatters by Brenda Coultas $22.95 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7419-0 Brenda Coultas turns her keen eye to everyday objects—a pigeon feather, a discarded piece of jewelry—to make sense of the landfill we humans have made of our world. “These poems,” wrote The Kenyon Review, “cataloguing and owning and turning from and grappling with our vast trash, are trouble in the most useful sense of the word.”
	In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987-2011 by Peter Gizzi $26.95 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7430-5 Bookslut calls Peter Gizzi “a major force in the ever-expanding vastness of the poetry world.” In this landmark collection, representing over twenty years of work, Gizzi cements that reputation, enlisting the very American vernacular in a magical and complex music all his own.
	Favor of Crows: New and Collected Haiku by Gerald Vizenor $24.95 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7432-9 Gerald Vizenor unites the imagistic poise of haiku with the early dream songs of the Anishinaabe people in this stunning new collection, in which ordinary moments “come to shimmering life on the page” (David G. Lanoue, president of the Haiku Society of America).
For Music Lovers
	John Cage Was by James Klosty $55.00 Hardcover 978-0-8195-7504-3 A lavish 12 x11″ art book with a textured hardcover, velum wrap, and over 170 stunning duotone photographs of the great composer at work and at play, combined with eclectic remembrances of Cage from figures like John Ashbery, Yoko Ono, and Stephen Sondheim. This book a memorial to treasure.
	Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music by Alvin Lucier $19.95 Paperback 978-0-8195-7492-3 Composer and performer Alvin Lucier brings clarity to the world of experimental music as he takes the reader through more than a hundred groundbreaking musical works, including those of Robert Ashley, John Cage, Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young. No previous musical knowledge is required, only a love of music.
	Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings by Michael Jarrett $27.95 Paperback 978-0-8195-7464-0 In what Music Tomes calls “one of the best oral histories of country music to come around for quite some time,” Michael Jarrett interviews the producers behind the most iconic country recordings of Elvis, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and more—revealing how producers have shaped our music and our tastes over the decades.
	Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop by Joseph G. Schloss $24.95 Paperback 978-0-8195-7481-7 Schloss examines the way hip-hop artists have managed to create a form of expression that reflects their creative aspirations, moral beliefs, political values, and cultural realities. This second edition of the book includes a new foreword by Jeff Chang and a new afterword by the author.
	Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal by Robert Walser $22.95 Paperback 978-0-8195-7514-2 Dismissed by critics and academics, condemned by parents and politicians, and fervently embraced by legions of fans, heavy metal music continues to attract and embody cultural and societal conflicts. Walser explores how and why heavy metal works, both musically and socially, and investigates the genre’s formations of identity, community, gender, and power. This edition includes a new foreword by Harris M. Berger and a new afterword by the author.

#tbt: Ed Roberson, “All At Once” and Black Nature Poetry

by ojonathan • October 16, 2014

This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is Ed Roberson’s “All at Once,” from his 2010 collection To See the Earth Before the End of the World. Enjoy the poem, and a discussion of Roberson as a writer of “nature poetry”.

All At Once

Trees have whole streets
of when they were planted
plaqued with when the city is
to inherit them dead
of age almost all at once as if
a natural bombing.

People see a bill not figured in,
a blood red
collection come
like fall’s leaf due without fail
an unseen cost of the design:
pale bud and yellow blossom—

though seeming little to do this time
with tense spring
in the window
of dead and dying trees’ terms up,
with expecting a life by life replacement—
not this plague of life’s time

as seasons across the city.
By trial we do, but don’t
know how death counts the rings
from trees to clocks,
species to singled soul
at its hour. or on history’s days we all die at once.

* * * * *

In the essay “The Earth Before the End of the World: Ed Roberson’s Radical Departure from Romantic Tradition,” John Yau explains that Roberson self identifies as “a Black poet who writes nature poems.” Yau continues, “Roberson didn’t say, though he certainly could have, that his view of nature breaks as well as critiques the historical conventions of nature poetry, which is the picturesque view that enables the poet to believe there is sanctuary outside of human reality. In contrast to much nature poetry written in this vein, particularly as the subject was initially formulated in English Romantic poetry, Roberson’s work does not view landscapes as sublime or transcendent, or as embodying proof of God’s existence. He has consciously broken with a radical literary and artistic tradition that includes William Wordsworth,William Blake, and Vincent van Gogh, but that is now both dated and diluted.” Read John Yau’s complete essay here.

If you are interested in reading more nature poetry from black authors, check out this book, from our friends at University of Georgia Press: Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry.

Ed Roberson is the author of numerous books of poetry. He is the recipient of the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Awards and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award. Having retired from Rutgers University, Roberson currently lives in Chicago where he has taught at Columbia College Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago.

Gerald Vizenor at Radcliffe Institute

by ojonathan • October 13, 2014

Gerard Vizenor is on the move again! Next week Vizenor will be at Harvard University for a reading and discussion on his recent book, Favor of Crows: New and Collected Haiku. The reading and moderated discussion will be a part of the Roosevelt Poetry Readings at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and is co-sponsored by the Harvard University Native American Program.

Favor of Crows is a collection of new and previously published original haiku poems written over the past forty years. Vizenor has earned a wide and devoted audience for his poetry and in the introductory essay he compares the imagistic poise of haiku with the early dream songs of Anishinaabe, or Chippewa. Vizenor concentrates on these two artistic traditions, and by intuition he creates a union of vision, perception, and natural motion in concise poems—he creates a sense of presence and at the same time a naturalistic trace of impermanence.

“Through the vehicle of these wondrous and succinct poems, Vizenor reinforces the reality of our human dependency upon the natural world as the source that sustains us within the circle of life. He reminds us that we are born to perceive the beauty of our surroundings and, by doing so, celebrate life in all its majesty.”- Sonja James, The Journal

The reading place will take place at the Radcliffe, Sheerr Room, Fay House, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA. For more information please visit the event online. Vizenor will sign copies of his book at The Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, in Cambridge.

The reading is free and open to public.

#tbt: John Luther Adams and Experimental Music at Wesleyan

by agansley • October 9, 2014

This week’s Throw-Back-Thursday post is dedicated to composer John Luther Adams. Below you’ll find a passage from his 2004 book, Winter Music: Composing the North.

John Luther Adams, who received the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his symphony Become Ocean, is a widely praised composer, and author of two books published by Wesleyan: Winter Music and The Place Where You Go to Listen: In Search of an Ecology of Music. Adams is the subject of a recent Radiolab podcast, which aired earlier this month on WNYC . Give it a listen if you are interested in “all the forces at play in Adams’ work,” or in “the dark majesty of Adams’ take on the apocalypse.”

From Winter Music. “Love the Questions”

John Cage said that in the course of his life and work he gradually came to understand composition ‘‘not as the making of choices, but as the asking of questions.’’

Morton Feldman put it even more succinctly, when he advised simply: ‘‘Love the questions.’’

The most important questions in music and in life may turn out to have many answers, or no answers at all. In any case, the questions may well be more important than the answers.

Varèse had a maxim for composing: ‘‘Keep it level, especially in times of invention.’’

Lou Harrison has written: ‘‘When I find myself inspired I enjoy it—but, I try to lay the pencil down, for, if I continue, I know that I shall have to use the eraser in the morning.’’

Although the music of Cage, Feldman, Varèse, and Harrison sounds nothing alike, all four composers speak of a healthy mistrust of ‘‘inspiration,’’ ‘‘self-expression,’’ and the artist’s ego. In very different ways each of them placed his faith in something larger than his own will and intentions: a deep belief in the power of the music and the sounds themselves.

In my own work I try to follow a similar path. I try to ask as clearly and directly as possible a few essential questions about the music at hand. Once I articulate these questions, my discipline is simply to keep faith with the musical materials, to listen carefully to the sounds and follow wherever they might lead me.

# # #

Wesleyan University Press and Wesleyan University’s music department are well known for their commitment to experimental music. Our press has published a number of John Cage titles. John Cage Was, by James Klosty, is newly available. Cage was an assistant professor in Wesleyan’s music department, collaborating with members of our community from the 1950s until his death in 1993. Our press also published Alvin Lucier’s Music 109 (now available in paperback), aptly named after his Wesleyan course “MUSIC 109: Introduction to Experimental Music.” Lucier is the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Emeritus, at Wesleyan. Another recent retiree from Wesleyan, Anthony Braxton (Emeritus, Faculty of Music), continues his musical life with the Tri-Centric Foundation. You can read more about Wesleyan University’s music department here.

This weekend (October 11), Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts will host a performance by the Vijay Iyer Trio. Vijay Iyer was described by Pitchfork as “one of the most interesting and vital young pianists in jazz today.” The trio also includes bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Tyshawn Sorey (Wesleyan, MA ’11).

In the brief piece above, “Love the Questions,” Adams considers the virtues of letting music itself take the lead while composing. Experimental music allows listeners to consider sound and art in ways they might never have imagined. Wesleyan remains committed to facilitating such artistic innovation. Experimental music has certainly enriched the cultural life at Wesleyan University. We hope our readers will enrich their own lives through experimental music.

An inside view of experimental music, with Alvin Lucier

by sgerton • October 8, 2014

Alvin Lucier’s Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music. is now available in paperback!

Lucier’s new CD was recently reviewed by Robert Carl for Fanfare Magazine. Carl wrote: “Lucier has fruitfully pursued his passion for a uniquely personal form of research and experiment over the decades. He could have been a ‘one-hit wonder,’ but definitely was (and is) not. This is another I’d love for the Want List, though by now the waiting room is getting crowded. Highly recommended, and even those who think they won’t like it should confront this. It’s bracing, and one hears everything differently, and fresher, afterwards.”

Composer and performer Alvin Lucier brings clarity to the world of experimental music as he takes the reader through more than a hundred groundbreaking musical works, including those of Robert Ashley, John Cage, Charles Ives, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young. Lucier explains in detail how each piece is made, unlocking secrets of the composers’ style and technique. The book as a whole charts the progress of American experimental music from the 1950s to the present, covering such topics as indeterminacy, electronics, and minimalism, as well as radical innovations in music for the piano, string quartet, and opera. Clear, approachable and lively, Music 109 is Lucier’s indispensable guide to late 20th-century composition. No previous musical knowledge is required, and all readers are welcome.

For more details, click here.

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

This project is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Celebrating “John Cage Was”

by agansley • October 7, 2014

We are pleased to announce an important new book of photographs by James Klosty — John Cage Was, a collection of intimate portraits and remembrances of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Books will be available at the October 18th release party, and on October 31st in all other locations.

John Cage at a piano

Wesleyan is honored to continue our close relationship with the memory of Cage and his works. In his recent review of John Cage Was (Paste magazine) Bill Taft notes:

“John Cage Was adds an important work to the Cage canon published by Wesleyan University Press. The small press published Cage’s first book, Silence, in 1961. The success of that book enabled Cage to author five more tomes (all published by WUP) filled with lectures, essays and scores. Thanks to WUP’s fine stewardship of the Cage archive, today’s readers have easy access to a wealth of his written work. Klosty gives us a pictorial representation of a man whose life became as significant as his art.”

Wesleyan’s collection of Cage’s books include Musicage, Anarchy, Year from Monday, Empty Words, Cage:M, and Cage:X. Our recent 50th Anniversary Edition of Silence exposed a new generation of readers to his genius. In his foreword to the 50th Anniversary Edition, Kyle Gann explains why Silence was not only groundbreaking for its time, but also how it remains an innovative text in the 21st century.

“Personally, I have tried, at Cage’s urging, to enjoy a baby crying at a concert, not letting it ruin a piece of modern music; so far I’ve failed. But that’s why I keep coming back to Cage, because I keep thinking that if I could evolve or relax a little more, I could enjoy babies crying and fire alarms ringing, and feel as comfortable with the universe as he always seemed to be. He thought his way out of the twentieth century’s artistic neuroses and discovered a more vibrant, less uptight world that we didn’t realize was there. Silence is the traveler’s guide to that world. Every visit it to it lifts the feet a little more off the ground.”

We are overjoyed to add John Cage Was to our collection of John Cage titles. This volume is a true celebration of a remarkable figure who redefined music forever.

For more information on John Cage Was by James Klosty, click here.

Gerald Vizenor’s New England Tour, October 7-23

by selliott • October 3, 2014

Gerald Vizenor is Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a citizen of the White Earth Nation, and has published more than thirty books, including Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance, Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence, Native Storiers, Father Meme, Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence, Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57, Shrouds of White Earth, and The White Earth Nation: Ratification of a Native Democratic Constitution. His most recent publications are Blue Ravens, a historical novel about Native American Indians who served in the First World War in France, and Favor of Crows: New and Collected Haiku. Vizenor received an American Book Award for Griever: An American Monkey King in China, and for Chair of Tears, the Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award, and the Lifetime Literary Achievement Award from the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas. Vizenor is a veteran of the United States Army. He served in Japan during the era of reconstruction, following WWII.

October 7, Tuesday, 4:30 PM—Wesleyan University
Center for East Asian Studies, Mary Houghton Freeman Room
343 Washington Terrace, Middletown, CT
EXPEDITIONS IN FRANCE: Native American Indians in the First World War

October 10, Friday, 12 Noon—Yale University
Native American Cultural Center
26 High St., New Haven, CT
Reading, and discussion of Blue Ravens

October 14 , Tuesday, 12 Noon—Bridgewater State University
Heritage Room in the Maxwell Library
131 Summer St., Bridgewater, MA
EXPEDITIONS IN FRANCE: Native American Indians in the First World War

October 15, Wednesday, 6:30 PM—Brown University
Metcalf Auditorium
190-194 Thayer St., Providence, RI
EMPIRE TREASONS: Native American Indians in the First World War

October 16, Thursday, 4:15PM—Harvard University
Radcliffe, Sheerr Room, Fay House
10 Garden St., Cambridge, MA
Reading, and discussion of Favor of Crows: New and Collected Haiku

October 18, Saturday, 1:30-3PM—Mashantucket Pequot Museum
110 Pequot Trail, Mashantucket, CT
Reading, and discussion of Blue Ravens and Favor of Crows.

October 21, Tuesday, 4:30PM—Dartmouth College
Rockefeller Center 1
2 Webster Ave., Hanover, NH
White Earth to Picardy: Native Americans & the First World War in France

October 23, Thursday, 4:30PM—Amherst College
Paino Lecture Hall, Beneski Earth Sciences & Natural History Building
81 Dickinson St., Amherst, MA
EXPEDITIONS IN FRANCE: Native American Indians in the First World War

#tbt: Harvey Shapiro, “Monday”

by sgerton • October 2, 2014

This week’s Throwback Thursday selection is Harvey Shapiro’s “Monday,” from his 1988 collection National Cold Storage Company: New and Selected Poems. On September 30th, Wesleyan released Shapiro’s posthumous collection, A Momentary Glory: Last Poems, edited by Norman Finkelstein. Shapiro wrote honestly about life, love, sexuality, aging, and death.

Monday

Everybody thinks the past is real.
The window and the skull
Admit light. The past comes through
Like that—undifferentiated,
Hallucinatory, of no weight.
Sleepless that night, he saw the
Room close-woven, a nest
Of chairs, tables, rug
The past was filtering through.
It had no odor, no
Emotion. You could not
Say that in the silences
The past came in
Like water over sand.
There was no movement.
You could not draw the blind.

HARVEY SHAPIRO published his first book of poetry in 1953. He taught at Cornell University and Bard College before joining the staffs of Commentary and The New Yorker. In 1957 he became an editor of The New York Times Magazine and was editor of The New York Times Book Review from 1975 until 1983. He lived in Brooklyn, New York.

Rhythms of South India, in Persian!

by ojonathan • September 24, 2014

Wesleyan University Press is pleased to announce the release of a Persian language edition (Aref Music, Iran) of Solkattu Manual: An Introduction to the Rhythmic Language of South Indian Music, by David P. Nelson.

The book, a first of its kind, is a step-by-step introduction to South Indian spoken rhythm. It includes instructions for designing performable pieces, accompanied by graphic notations as well as video demonstrations on two DVDs (Persian language edition), and online (English language edition). The Persian edition sports beautiful new artwork that is reminiscent of our English language edition.

Solkattu Manual is designed for use in a variety of settings. Beyond courses in Indian music, it can be used for beginning music courses or for courses in percussion studies. It does not assume any prior experience with Indian music.

More information about our English language edition is available online.