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Kazim Ali wins Ohioana Book Award

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We are pleased to announce that Kazim Ali’s Sky Ward is the 2014 Ohioana Book Award winner in Poetry!

 

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The Ohioana awards have been presented annually since 1942 to talented Ohioans in recognition of their contributions to the literary and cultural life of the state. The awards are among the oldest and most prestigious awards in the country; past winners in Poetry include Mary Oliver, David Young, Rita Dove, and Dave Lucas, among others. The 73rd annual Ohioana Awards ceremony will take place at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus on Friday, October 10th.

“From the nearly 400 books that were eligible for this year’s awards, our judges selected twenty-nine finalists,” said David Weaver, executive director of the Ohioana Library. “To make this short list is recognition of excellence. Choosing a winner in each category from such outstanding books was a challenge for the final selection committee.”

Kazim Ali is the author of three books of poetry, including the cross-genre Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities. He is also the author of two novels and two essay collections— Fasting for Ramadan and Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art, and the Architecture of Silence. Ali is a frequent contributor, of essays and poetry, to magazines including American Poetry Review, jubilat, and Boston Review. He is an associate professor of creative writing and comparative literature at Oberlin College and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. His diverse professional experiences include four years on the liberal arts faculty of The Culinary Institute of America and several years dancing with the Cocoon Theatre Modern Dance Company. Read more about Ali’s work here, or visit his website.

#tbt: James Dickey, “Fox Blood”

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This week’s TBT selection is “Fox Blood,” from James Dickey’s 1965 collection Buckdancer’s Choice (1965), winner of the 1966 National Book Award.

 

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Fox Blood

Blood blister over my thumb-moon
Rising, under clear still plastic
Still rising strongly, on the rise
Of unleashed dog-sounds: sound broke,
Log opened. Moon rose

Clear bright. Dark homeland
Peeled backward, scrambling its vines.
Stream showed, scent paled
In the spray of mountain-cold water.
The smell dogs followed

In the bush-thorns hung like a scarf,
The silver sharp creek
Cut; off yonder, fox feet
Went printing into the dark: there,
In the other wood,

The uncornered animal’s running
Is half floating off
Upon instinct. Sails spread, fox wings
Lift him alive over gullies,
Hair tips all over him lightly

Touched with the moon’s red silver,
Back-hearing around
The stream of his body the tongue of hounds,
Feather him. In his own animal sun
Made of human moonlight,

He flies like a bolt running home,
Whose passage kills the current in the river,
Whose track through the cornfield shakes
The symmetry from the rows.
Once shot, he dives through a bush

And disappears into air.
That is the bush in my hand
Went deeply through as I followed.
Like a wild hammer blazed my right thumb
On the flashlight and moonlight

And dried to one drop
Of fox blood I nail-polished in,
That lopsided animal sun
Over the nearly buried
Or rising human half-moon,

My glassed skin half mooning wrongly.
Between them, the logging road, the stopped
Stream, the disappearance into
The one bush’s common, foreseen
Superhuman door:

All this where I nailed it,
With my wife’s nailbrush, on my finger,
To keep, not under, but over
My thumb, a hammering day-and-night sign
Of that country.

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JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997), best known for his novel Deliverance, was a prolific poet and novelist as well as a critic and teacher. He served as the eighteenth U.S. Poet Laureate, and was awarded the National Book Award and the Order of the South Award.

A vivid ethnography and in-depth history of musical performance in North Sumatra

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We are pleased to announce a new book by Julia Byl, Antiphonal Histories: Resonant Pasts in the Toba Batak Musical Present.

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“Well-written, smart, and honest, Antiphonal Histories is an innovative juxtaposition of historiography, ethnography, musical analysis, and reflexive autobiography. There are also moments of poignant insight, brilliant induction, and hilarity.” —Jeremy Wallach, author of Modern Noise, Fluid Genres: Popular Music in Indonesia, 1997–2001

Positioned on a major trade route, the Toba Batak people of Sumatra have long witnessed the ebb and flow of cultural influence from India, the Middle East, and the West. Living as ethnic and religious minorities within modern Indonesia, Tobas have recast this history of difference through interpretations meant to strengthen or efface the identities it has shaped. Antiphonal Histories examines Toba musical performance as a legacy of global history, and a vital expression of local experience. This intriguingly constructed ethnography searches the palm liquor stand and the sanctuary to show how Toba performance manifests its many histories through its “local music”—Lutheran brass band hymns, gong-chime music sacred to Shiva, and Jimmie Rodgers yodeling. Combining vivid narrative, wide-ranging historical research, and personal reflections, Antiphonal Histories traces the musical trajectories of the past to show us how the global is manifest in the performative moment.

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Clockwise from top left: a group of men playing at the lapo tuak; ceremonial dancing at a Toba adat ceremony; Martahan Sitohang playing the Toba suling during a performance residency in the Netherlands (photo: Hardoni Sitohang); and a gondang group.

For more details, click here.

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

Samuel R. Delany’s “American Shore”

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We are pleased to announce the release of a brand-new edition of The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch —- “Angouleme,” with an introduction by Matthew Cheney.

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A keystone text in literary theory and science fiction The American Shore: Meditations on a Tale of Science Fiction by Thomas M. Disch—“Angouleme” was first published in 1978 to the intense interest of science fiction readers and the growing community of SF scholars. Recalling Nabokov’s commentary on Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Roland Barthes’ commentary on Balzac’s Sarazine, and Grabinier’s reading of The Heart of Hamlet, this book-length essay helped prove the genre worthy of serious investigation. The American Shore is the third in a series of influential critical works by Samuel Delany, beginning with The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine, first published in the late seventies and reissued over the last five years by Wesleyan University Press. Delany was honored with a Pilgrim Award for Science Fiction Scholarship from the Science Fiction Research Association of America. He has also received the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, and the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime’s contribution to gay and lesbian literature. In 2013, he was named the 31st Damon Knight Memorial Foundation Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. This edition of The American Shore includes the author’s corrected text as well as a new introduction by Delany scholar Matthew Cheney. For more details, click here. Also available as an ebook—check with your favorite ebook retailer.

Conversations with country music’s legendary producers

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We are pleased to announce a new book by Michael Jarrett, Producing Country: The Inside Story of the Great Recordings.

 

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“…you would look long and hard to find a more readable contribution to the cultural studies, or country music, canon.” Tim Holmes, Record Collector magazine

Musicians make music. Producers make records. In the early days of recorded music, the producer was the “artists-and-repertoire man,” or A&R man, for short. A powerful figure, the A&R man chose both who would record and what they would record. His decisions profoundly shaped our musical tastes. Don Law found country bluesman Robert Johnson and honky-tonk crooner Lefty Frizzell. Cowboy Jack Clement took the initiative to record Jerry Lee Lewis (while his boss, Sam Phillips, was away on business). When Ray Charles said he wanted to record a country-and-western album, Sid Feller gathered songs for his consideration. The author’s extensive interviews with music makers offer the fullest account ever of the producer’s role in creating country music. In its focus on recordings and record production, Producing Country tells the story of country music from its early years to the present day through hit records by Hank Williams, George Jones, Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, and more.

 

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Chet Atkins and engineer Bill Porter in RCA Studio B, Nashville. Courtesy of Merle Atkins Russell, the Chet Atkins Estate

Producing Country includes original interviews with producers Chet Atkins, Pete Anderson, Jimmy Bowen, Bobby Braddock, Harold Bradley, Tony Brown, Blake Chancey, Jack Clement, Scott Hendricks, Bob Johnston, Jerry Kennedy, Blake Mevis, Ken Nelson, Jim Ed Norman, Allen Reynolds, Jim Rooney, James Stroud, Paul Worley, and Reggie Young, among others.

For more details, click here.

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

Telling Janet Collins’ story

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Janet Collins, renowned dancer, painter, and the first African-American soloist ballerina to appear at the Metropolitan Opera, remains largely under-recognized. Actress and mother Karyn Parsons, who played Hilary Banks in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, hopes to remedy this by sharing Collins’ story with those to whom it might be most important—children.

 

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Karyn created a Kickstarter campaign, which closes on July 18th, to fund the project. Donors will receive all manner of exciting prizes. There are signed posters, photographs, and books; chances to have a voicemail message recorded by Chris Rock or Jada Pinkett Smith; even opportunities to meet Rock or members of the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

You can also select Welseyan’s book on Janet Collins, Night’s Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins by Yaël Tamar Lewin. As Collins wrote in her unfinished memoir, included in Night’s Dancer, her life was full of  “great thrills—and great chills.” Janet was born in 1917 to a poor but educated family in New Orleans. The family moved to Los Angeles soon after her birth, as her mother wanted to live in a place where her children “could go anywhere they wanted to, particularly the library.”

Janet’s talents became apparent at a young age, but as a black woman in the entirely white world of dance, she faced prejudice. At age fifteen she was offered a spot in the prestigious company Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but only if she agreed to perform in whiteface. She refused. Later, she was unable to tour in the Jim Crow South.

Collins went on to star in Aida and Carmen, and eventually graced the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, its first black prima ballerina. Since then, she has been widely recognized as one of the finest dancers in America. Her artistic and personal influences continue to shape the dance world today.

It’s an important story, one that is sure to inspire todays young people. Visit the Kickstarter page to contribute. The campaign has garnered attention from BET, The Guardian, and NPR.

Photo credits, all found in Night’s Dancer: 1 & 2: Collins in Spirituals. Photo @ Dennis Stock/Magnum Photos. Courtesy of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 3: Painting of a young girl by Collins. Courtesy of the estate of Janet Collins. 4: Painting of a woman with magnolias by Collins. Courtesy of the estate of Janet Collins. 5: Collins with Hanya Holm, Don Redlick, and Elizabeth Harris, 1961. Photo by Bob McIntyre. Courtesy of Don Redlich. 6: Collins surrounded by her art. Betty Udesen/The Seattle Times.

#tbt: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, “Worn Blues Refrain”

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This week’s TBT selection is “Worn Blues Refrain,” from Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ 2003 collection Outlandish Blues. Wesleyan is publishing her book, The Glory Gets, in Spring 2015.

 

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Worn Blues Refrain

My father danced on Saturday mornings,
turned his fat professor’s legs the wrong way.
No rhythm self, tripping over Mama’s corns,
his jitterbug like a worn blues refrain.
Then the afternoons, he sat himself down
to the piano, knee pants memories
of Louis and his trumpet come to town.
Louis didn’t crack a smile. Don’t believe?
Want to dispute it? Dad didn’t think so
and commenced with Jelly Roll religion.
Those porcelain hours, demons stopped poking
my father. From someplace close he found love.
He got some rhythm when he played the blues,
hollered and touched us all without bruising.

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HONOREÉ FANONNE JEFFERS  is the author of three books of poems, including Red Clay Suite (2007), Outlandish Blues (2003) and The Gospel of Barbecue (2000). Her next book, The Glory Gets, will be published by Wesleyan in Spring 2015. Her other honors include the 1999 Stan and Tom Wick Prize for Poetry for her first book and the 2002 Julia Peterkin Award for Poetry, as well as awards from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Rona Jaffe Foundation and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Antiquarian Society, the MacDowell Colony and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. A founding member of Cave Canem, the writer’s colony for African-American poets, Jeffers teaches at the University of Oklahoma, where she is Associate Professor of English.

#tbt: Peter Gizzi, “The ethics of dust”

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This week’s TBT selection is Peter Gizzi’s “The Ethics of Dust” from Some Values of Landscape and Weather (2003). You can find a review of Peter’s latest book, In Defense of Nothing, in the July/August issue of Boston Review.

 

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The ethics of dust

to think I have written this poem before
to think to say the reason I came here
sound of yard bird, clinking lightbulb

to think the world has lasted this long

what were we hoping to say:
ailanthus, rosebud, gable
saturnalia, moonglow, remember

I am on the other side now
have crossed the river, have
through much difficulty
come to you from a dormer closet
head full of dark
my voice in what you say

at this moment you say
wind through stone, through teeth
through falling sheets, flapping geese

 every thing is poetry here

a vast blank fronting the eyes
more sparkling than sun on brick
October’s crossing-guard orange

 

 

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

#TBT: “Delta Traveller” by our new Poet Laureate, Charles Wright

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It’s Throwback Thursday, and also a day to celebrate the United States’ new Poet Laureate: Charles Wright.

This week’s selection is “Delta Traveler,” from Charles Wright’s Country Music, Selected Early Poems. 

 

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Delta Traveller
—MWW, 1910–1964

Born in   the quarter-night, brash
Tongue on the tongueless ward, the moon down,
The lake rising on schedule and Dr Hurt
Already across the water, and headed home—
And so I came sailing out, first child,
A stream with no bed to lie in,
A root with no branch to leaf,
The black balloon of promise tied to your wrist,
One inch of pain and an inch of light.

*

No wonder the children stand by those moist graves.
And produce is spread on the cobbled streets,
And portraits are carried out, and horns play.
And women, in single file, untangle
Corn from the storage bins, and soft cheese.
I shield my eyes against the sunlight,
Holding, in one hand, a death’s-head,
Spun sugar and marzipan. I call it Love,
And shield my eyes against the sunlight.

*

I lie down with you, I rise up with you.
If a grain turns in my eye,
I know it is you, entering, leaving,
You drift through the antilife,
Scrim and snow-scud, fluff stem, hair
And tendril. You bloom in your own throat,
Frost flame in the frost dust,
One scratch on the slipstream, a closed mouth.

*

High-necked and high-collared, slumped and creased,
A dress sits in a chair. Your dress,
Or your mother’s dress, a dress
On a wooden chair, in a cold room, a room
With no windows and no doors, full of the east wind.
The dress gets up, windbone and windskin,
To open the window. It is not there.
It goes to the door. It is not there.
The dress goes back and sits down. The dress gets up.

*

Three teeth and a thumbnail, white, white; four
Fingers that cradle a black chin;
Outline of eye-hole and nose-hole. This skull
And its one hand float up from the tar
And lime pit of dreams, night after slick night,
To lodge in the fork of the gum tree,
Its three teeth in the leaflight,
Its thumbnail in flash and foil,
Its mouth-hole a nothing I need to know.

*

Cat’s-eye and cloud, you survive.
The porcelain corridors
That glide forever beneath your feet,
The armed lawn chair you sit in,
Your bones like paint, your skin the wrong color—
All this you survive, and hold on,
A way of remembering, a pulse
That comes and goes in the night,
Match flare and wink, that comes and goes in the night.

*

If the wafer of light offends me,
If the split tongue in the snake’s mouth offends me,
I am not listening. They make the sound,
Which is the same sound, of the ant hill,
The hollow trunk, the fruit of the tree.
It is the Echo, the one transmitter of things:
Transcendent and inescapable,
It is the cloud, the mosquito’s buzz,
The trickle of water across the leaf’s vein.

*

And so with the dead, the rock dead and the dust:
Worm and worm-fill, pearl, milk-eye
And light in the earth, the dead arc brought
Back to us, piece by piece—
Under the sponged log, inside the stump,
They shine with their secret lives, and grow
Big with their messages, wings
Beginning to stir, paths fixed and hearts clocked,
Rising and falling back and rising.

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Wesleyan University Press also published these books by Charles Wright: The Grave of the Right Hand (1963), Hard Freight (1970), Blood Lines (1973), and China Trace (1975).

Wesleyan Welcomes Books by J. A. Rogers

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“Perhaps his most unique achievement [was] the fact that with little more than a high school education, [Rogers] was able to perfect an orthodox history methodology.”
                                                 –Bilalian News, August 1976

The Wesleyan University Press is pleased to announce that we are now distributing a collection of books by J.A. Rogers, originally published by Helga M. Rogers. Joel Augustus Rogers (1880–1966) was a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and a self-taught historian who made great contributions to the history of Africa and the African diaspora, with a focus on the history of African Americans in the United States. His research spanned the fields of history, sociology, and anthropology–challenging prevailing ideas about race and demonstrating a connection between civilizations. Rogers was instrumental in popularizing African history and tracing African achievements. He revolutionized the telling of African history by addressing the lack of science behind many assumptions about “race,” as well as the dearth of black historians researching and telling their own histories.

Wesleyan University Press  is now distributing eight of his titles: 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, Nature Knows No Color Line, Africa’s Gift to America, Sex and Race Volume 1, Sex and Race Volume 2, and Sex and Race Volume 3, The Five Negro Presidents, and From “Superman” to Man.