Lesley Jenike's Blog, page 24

I will shortly post my thankful/unthankful list per Gretc...

I will shortly post my thankful/unthankful list per Gretch here in a min. but a word about teaching at an art school that's really getting my panties in a wad these days: 
Why oh why are my poetry workshops the worst? And by worst I mean not really bad but just challenging. I consistently have very talented, very intelligent students who already know how to think visually--so what's the problem? Sass. Cockiness. And seniors. Lots of senior fine arts majors take the class--and I love them but b...

This humble and typo-riddled blog been honored by a visit...

This humble and typo-riddled blog been honored by a visit from David Lehman! And I've been anticipating his book of essays on the Great American Songbook with so much excitement, in fact, I missed the release date. Christmas gift, anyone? PLEASE?? Anyway, besides loving the man's poems, his wonderful book on the New York School, and his general poetic magnanimity, I so love his undying love for those songs and that great American tradition of tunesmithery I grew up listening to and adoring. H...

Lately I've had fun trying to take traditional poetic str...

Lately I've had fun trying to take traditional poetic structures apart and/or manipulate them so the poem becomes a bit like a house I've built just to burn down. I don't know why, exactly, except I want the fire-licked outline of the house to stay standing, I guess, and it's a way to push the language to reach its full potential (before it completely collapses? Which it usually does?). I've got a lot of half-assed, lazy-girl sonnets laying around that I'm trying to think of more as grown up,...

I swiped this from Best American's blog (by David Lehman)...

I swiped this from Best American's blog (by David Lehman):
It's Johnny Mercer's birthday
from Natchez to Mobile
in the cool cool cool of the evening
very cool with Barbara Lea
singing Marian McPartland playing
the greatest revenge songs of all time
hooray and hallelujah
you had it comin' to ya
and a bottle of Rodenbach
Alexander red ale from Belgium
with cherries and "Tangerine" in
the background in Double Indemnity
he had a feel for the lingo, "Jeepers Creepers"
as Bing Crosby sang it on my birthday
in...

Two poems from my chatty little South Carolina/Georgia Lo...

Two poems from my chatty little South Carolina/Georgia Low Country series up on Ink Node (Thanks, Gretch).

I just received this email in my CCAD inbox and I had to ...

I just received this email in my CCAD inbox and I had to share. I'm intrigued for sure, but maybe a little creeped out. Thoughts?
Hello CCAD community,

As you read this, one of the most profound movements the world may ever witness is exponentially building momentum. It's a vision of what the future can be if we utilize the full potential of science and technology. It's a project that has the ability transform our scarcity driven, corruption generating world into something far more humane and...

Right back atcha, Gretchen:Top Ten Things to learn more a...

Right back atcha, Gretchen:





Top Ten Things to learn more about in the relatively near future

1. jazz
2. jazz
3. jazz
4. eighteenth century horticulture
5. Dante
6. Tennessee Williams (what did he like to eat for breakfast, for example?)
7. Rousseau
8. Tristram Shandy
9. miniatures
10. Johnny Mercer (sort-of see #s 1-3)

Whoever made this video shares my brain, I think:In other...

Whoever made this video shares my brain, I think:



In other fantabulousness: the Blake scholar/printmaker who visited CCAD and with whom (along with the beauteous Intagliod and others) I was able to have dinner, has just sent me an email telling me he's friends with THE preeminent Cosway scholar (as in Richard and Maria) and has given me his email address. In Edinburgh. Where he's curator of the National Portrait Gallery. Where he was consulted for that terrible film Jefferson in Paris. Where h...

Whoever made this video shares my brain, I think:

Whoever made this video shares my brain, I think:

"Great" minds think alike? Just yesterday I finished up a...

"Great" minds think alike?
Just yesterday I finished up a quick little blog entry for 32Poems on the ways some young(er) poets employ traditional form--not to underpin hierarchical narrative structures--but to give sculptural shape and forward propulsion to poems that allow for shifts and rifts in speaker, and tone---hell, even space and time, man! They are an odd bunch, these "avant-formalists." In fact, I'd never really heard of them before, but over in The Writer's Chronicle...