Why This Wife is Staying Around

Contributed by Michele Randall '12

Paula McLain’s novel The Paris Wife climbed The New York Times’ Best Sellers list shortly after its release in February of 2011. Well over two years later, The Paris Wife stands strong: number five in trade paperback and number ten in combined fiction, running head to head with the beloved work The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Through word of mouth and the avid response of its readers, The Paris Wife can count on a very long and stable life on the Best Sellers list. McLain offers an intriguing theory as to why reader response has been so fervent—chewiness. 

The Paris Wife centers on Hadley Hemingway and her four-year marriage to novelist Ernest Hemingway. Their relationship and marriage take us to the 1920’s, from Chicago to Paris, and McLain recreates the pulsing literary scene of the time. Literature fans get reintroduced to characters such as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. We get to watch Hadley and Ernest’s marriage spark, combust, and flame out. Ultimately, The Paris Wife moves beyond our voyeuristic tendencies of he slept with whom? or she lost what? and delivers a world so vibrant that readers feel compelled to create their own response to the story—and have done so in many different ways.

Without much time sleuthing the Internet, you can find more book clubs, discussion groups, and reading guides than you have time to read. Certain well-known book clubs and a celebrity recommendation have also helped readers find McLain’s novel. Beyond the expected reader reaction, though, shines the evidence that readers formed their own relationships with The Paris Wife—foodie blogs supply recipes to recreate meals mentioned in the book, photo blogs offer a virtual tour of the places mentioned in the book, and if in Paris, you can even find a The Paris Wife walking tour. Yes, The Paris Wife is that kind of novel—the kind that evokes a response instead of a reaction.

TB—What has surprised you the most about the reader response to The Paris Wife?

PM—How passionate it is! I never do an event where readers don’t feel very free to tell me just how they feel about Hadley and Ernest. For some readers (and women in particular), Hadley is too passive. She puts up with a lot and doesn't simply take what she wants. Frankly, I found Hadley maddeningly passive at times, too, but made a decision early on in my research to take her as I found her and not judge her. I wanted to be curious, not critical, and to not limit or shape her based on my own comfort level. As for Ernest, that rule of thumb helped me have more compassion for him than I might have otherwise. A lot of readers don't have that empathy or a lot of patience for his complexity as a character—but in truth, I think the fact that Ernest and Hadley both stir up readers and make them a little crazy is part of the reason the book has done so well. We like to have something to chew on, don't we?

TB—Will you tell us anything about your much-anticipated next novel about Marie Curie?

PM—Yes! I'm focusing on her life, from her point of view, and primarily her early research and marriage: 1894-1906. She is so fascinating—fierce and determined, passionate to the point of obsession. I like that I get to go back to Paris, and in another time period. I also like the huge challenge of learning about physics—in 1894 no less!

So far, the life of The Paris Wife is impressive and looks to last much, much longer than Hadley’s marriage.  And, with hints of obsessions, physics, and another trip to Paris, McLain’s enthusiasm and ability to give her readers something to chew on will undoubtedly earn her another entry on the Best Sellers list in the near future. 

The MFA program at New England College welcomes Paula McLain as a guest during the summer 2013 residency.

NEC Graduate Irina Mashinski Awarded the Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize

Irina Mashinshi '08

Congratulations Irina Mashinski (‘08) and Boris Dralyuk whose translation of Russian poet Arseny Tarkovsky won first place in competition for the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize. 

Mashinski’s original poem in Russian “All that Happened to Me” translated into English by Boris Dralyuk was also recognized as a commended work.

Interview with Anne Waldman

By Patrick Meighan

LOWELL, Mass. – Anne Waldman acknowledges feeling a spiritual kinship with Jack Kerouac through their mutual friend, Allen Ginsberg. “Allen’s connection to him was so profound. I got a lot of that (same sense of connection to Kerouac) through Allen,” Waldman said after performing her poetry at the annual Jack Kerouac Literary Festival. “Kerouac was conservative and grumpy and politically incorrect, and all those things. But the word itself can transcend. There’s a spiritual architecture to his work,” Waldman said.

Waldman, who is most closely associated with the New York School of poetry, isn’t considered a Beat poet per se. But as a poet close to the heart of the Beat movement, Waldman was a key presence when Lowell, Massachusetts in October honored its connection to native son Jack Kerouac with a world premiere production of his “lost” play “Beat Generation.” Accompanied by musician son Ambrose Bye, Waldman gave a two hour performance of her poetry at the University of Massachusetts Lowell on Oct. 11 during the annual Kerouac festival. Later that evening, Waldman led a discussion with the audience at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell following the second-ever staging of Kerouac’s three-act play.

Waldman and friend Ginsberg, who had called her his “spiritual wife,” helped found the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute, now Naropa University, in Boulder, Colo. Waldman also has ties to the MFA program at New England College. She and Bye have appeared during residencies in Henniker to perform her poetry and conduct workshops on the art of performance poetry.

Sitting on the Merrimack Repertory Theatre stage following the performance of “Beat Generation,” which Kerouac wrote in 1957, Waldman addressed the importance of bringing Kerouac’s words to life through the production at MRT, a nonprofit professional theater. “I’m very, very impressed, the whole gestalt of putting this together,” she said. “I think the cast really captured something authentic.”

Waldman’s familiarity with the script before this production was through parts excerpted in “Pull My Daisy,” a short 1959 film adapted from the third act of his play, which was discovered in its entirety after Kerouac’s death. “Beat Generation” is set five years after the last road trip that ended the novel On the Road. The play follows a group of friends based on Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and others over the course of one day in 1955 as they visit various locations around New York City and converse on philosophy, spirituality and horse racing, among other topics. This production of “Beat Generation” was performed as a staged reading having been in rehearsal only four days before the eight-performance run. Actors carried scripts, and a sparse set represented three locations — a New York apartment, the racetrack and Cassady’s ranch house. Each scene began and closed with live riffs of a saxophone.

“The attention to the language, the rhythm, the phrasing was amazing,” Waldman said, adding, “This is a real find, being the only extant play of Kerouac.” The play also captured some extreme sexist views prevalent in the 1950s, views Kerouac also shared, Waldman said. Modern audiences can only view the interaction of the male characters on one level as sophomoric, she said. “This is basically a play of guys, and you’re in the clubhouse,” Waldman said.

But “Beat Generation” also gives breath to Kerouac’s remarkable voice and insights into Ginsberg, Cassady and other real-life figures who made up a remarkable era in the nation’s literary history, Waldman said. “The language is really the star.”

After her reading earlier in the day, Waldman reflected on the connection between Ginsberg and Kerouac, and on the music in Kerouac’s voice. Kerouac broke down language into phonemes, words, even abstract sounds, like the sound of the ocean in “Big Sur,” Waldman said. “It’s that consciousness to the minutest particulars of increments of language that actually has power to awaken you and awaken things in you. Then you take that to the images and the voices and the conversations and the combinations of images, the montage that goes into that, and the hybridity of his work. It’s never just, this is Neal Cassady, this is so-and-so, it’s through (Kerouac’s) ear that these characters, these presences let’s say, evolve. So that’s very important,” Waldman said.

Through the character named Buck he modeled after himself, Kerouac was candid about his insecurities and alcohol abuse in “Beat Generation.” “I like to think of him not as this isolated, damaged figure — he’s also a cultural hero for some of those reasons because there is a sort of … in our culture, there’s an attraction and romanticism to the dark side, which is always there. That’s our job as artists and thinkers and scholars and everything you all are, is to look into the darkness of our time,” Waldman said.

Partly because of that appeal, there seems to be a Kerouac renaissance in every generation, Waldman said. “He was constantly generative. So he’s in the same world as Jackson Pollock, and John Cage. He was aware of things going on. He was part of a movement that’s way beyond the literary and Tibetan consciousness,” Waldman said. “Younger people feel that consciousness. And also that camaraderie and collaboration. That’s why there’s always a Kerouac renaissance,” Waldman said.

As with Naropa, the low-residency MFA program at NEC was established upon the principle of building and fostering a community of poets. NEC, like Naropa, also has an intrinsic tie to the Beat movement. A co-founder of the NEC program, Jacqueline Gens, worked as Ginsberg's personal assistant. It was Waldman's friendship with Gens that brought her to Henniker periodically as guest faculty.

Mark Your Calendar

New England College MFA Winter 2013 Residency Dates

Dates for the NEC Winter 2013 Residency have been posted: January 3–8. 

A distinct component of the NEC MFA experience is the generative workshop series held during the January residency. These workshops allow students to learn new ways to engage in the creative process as well as fuel their work for the semester.

Other events during this residency will include our Open House on Saturday, January 5th and the graduation ceremony on Sunday, January 6th.

Fond Reflections: An Interview with Former MFA Co-Directors

By Patrick Meighan  

This June, Jacqueline Gens, a founder of NEC's MFA program, retired from her decade-long tenure as co-director. The summer also marked the last residency for Jim Harms, co-director with Jacqueline since 2009. Jim was recently awarded the position of West Virginia University’s English Department chairman, preventing him from continuing in his position at New England College. The influence Jim and Jacqueline have had on the program will continue to be felt. Students and faculty alike hope both remain part of the NEC family and visit future residencies—perhaps to rekindle past workshops—"Kaddish," Jacqueline? The Sublime Lie, Jim?

Carol Frost

Faculty member and distinguished poet Carol Frost has stepped up to serve as interim director. Author of eleven books of poems, Carol also holds the Theodore Bruce and Barbara Lawrence Alfond Chair of English and directs Winter With the Writers, A Festival of the Literary Arts at Rollins College in Orlando, Fla. Her 2010 collection of poems, Honeycomb, was the recipient of the Gold Medal in Poetry from the Florida Book Awards. Her poems have appeared in four Pushcart Prize anthologies, and she has been a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. The Poets’ Prize and Elliston Award committees have also honored her work. Carol Frost founded and for fifteen years directed the Catskill Poetry Workshop, and she served as poetry editor for Pushcart Prize XXIII in 2003 and as a poetry judge for the 2005 National Book Award.

Tygerburning caught up the program's other co-founder, Chard deNiord, when he read from his latest book, Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs:  Interviews and Reflections on Contemporary American Poets, at Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Mass.

Chard founded the program with Jacqueline in 2002. A Vermont resident most of the year, he teaches at Providence College. He reflected on founding the MFA program with Jacqueline. "It was both of our ideas to work as equals, as opposed to a director and an assistant," Chard said. Jacqueline brought her administrative talents to the program, but she also is a poet—and became one of the MFA program's earliest students as well. A couple of years after the program's birth, she went through as a student while serving as co-director, "which was a little tough," Chard said.

One of Jacqueline's most impressive qualifications was serving as a personal assistant to Allen Ginsberg. "He would never have called her an assistant," Chard said of Ginsberg. "They were friends and on the same wavelength as Buddhists. She did everything for him he couldn't do for himself."

Chard deNiord and Jim Harms

Jacqueline and Chard came to the program from different traditions in poetry, "two different 'transmissions,' she would have said," according to Chard. 

Jacqueline's contribution was profound. She founded "Tygerburning," and brought to the program such faculty as Eleni Sikelianos and Anne Waldman.

Chard left NEC in 2007, before Jim began. He didn't want to be the type of ex director who meddled. "I really wanted to give him the freedom and time to create his own vision there, while preserving the legacy," Chard said.

"I was so heartened by his presence there, his kindness, his humor, his attention to detail," Chard said.

Here now are Jacqueline's and Jim's reflections on their experience at New England College:

Tygerburning to Jacqueline Gens: What is your fondest memory of your time at NEC?

Jacqueline: "It must have been our second graduation ceremony when one of our graduates Melissa Severin 'channeled' a Sylvia Plath 'Bee' poem that just had us all collectively sobbing. Or more recently when Ilya Kaminsky recited Mandelstam's famous poem 'The Age' in Russian. Anne Waldman's performance workshop—a sense of historic lineage; deep strains of poesia flowing through our blood thus a kind of transcendent community. There are many such magic moments I cherish."

Tygerburning: What are working on now?

Jacqueline:  "Making handmade paper from recycled sacred texts with a group of friends who have founded the Khandroling Paper Cooperative."

Tygerburning: What are you reading?

Jacqueline:  "Books like Helen Heibert's "Papermaking with Plants."

Tygerburning: How are you planning to stay involved in the poetry community?

Jacqueline:  "Teach workshops online and live in Contemplative Poetics; develop homegrown books (literally) for me and some friends to publish our work through the Khandroling Paper Cooperative studio I am part of. Finish a couple of manuscripts -- 'Dragons' Crease' and 'The Mansion of Elements.'

Tygerburning to Jim Harms: What is your fondest memory of your time at NEC?

Jim:  "There really are too many to list.  I think just sitting around before and after events (at the residencies) talking to students and fellow faculty about poetry was pure pleasure.  I also loved being a part of the final semester thesis projects, watching all those wonderful manuscripts come together so beautifully."

Tygerburning: What are working on now?

Jim:  "Just writing poems. My next book will be a 'New & Selected,' so I'm not thinking too much about how the various poems fit together just yet."

Tygerburning: What are you reading?

Jim:  "Adam Zagajewski's new book, as many translations of Transtromer as I can find (I'm teaching him in the fall), the uncollected Schuyler (at last!), Alan Furst's new novel, Anne Tyler's new novel (just finished that one), Ann Beattie's 'The New Yorker Stories' (slowly), other I'm forgetting.

Tygerburning: Tell us a little about your new position.

Jim:  "I'm chairing the Department of English at West Virginia University, where I've been teaching for nearly twenty years.  It's a big department (the biggest in the college), more than 60 faculty and instructors plus more than that many graduate student instructors. So it's a huge job, all day every day, but I have a big investment in this department so I'm enjoying it."

NEC MFA Summer Residency 2012

Summer Residency Events

A Pilgrimage to Dunbarton
Students with New England College's MFA program packed bag lunches and piled into cars to visit the grave of poet Robert Lowell in Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Homage was paid to the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet when each student read his favorite Lowell poem.

Photos courtesy of Annelies Hyatt Zijderveld and Michele Parker Randall

Patrick Meighan is shown here reading from Lowell's "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket." Read an excerpt from the poem here: 

A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket,-
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our north Atlantic Fleet,
when the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light
Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,
He grappled at the net
With the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs; (1-7)

Click here to read the entire poem.

Rachel Fogarty reading Donne's "The Apparition"

Poetry at the Covered Bridge - A Tradition
The Contoocook River, which runs alongside the New England College campus, offers students many opportunities for fun. During the day, students can be seen sitting by the side of the river or jumping in on a rope swing. Students from the MFA program have made it an annual tradition to read poetry at the covered bridge. One night this June, students read their favorite spooky and not-so-spooky poems. Activities concluded after with each student read a stanza from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."


Congratulations Class of 2012
New England College MFA Class of 2012: Susan Williamson, Laura Stillson, Michele Randall, Daniel Padilla, Michael Odom, Dawn Coutu, Shoshanna Cote, Katie Cloutte, and Sherry Horowitz (not shown in the photo below).

Class of 2012

News from Barbara Benoit (09)

Photo compliments of Louis Seigal

Barbara Benoit, 2009 graduate of NEC, has a book review on Henri Cole's Touch in Shenandoah this month. Barbara's chapbook Waiting for the Thoroughness of Winter is forthcoming from Pudding House Press and she has poems in several journals including Cimarron Review, 5 AM, and Slipstream.

Bhisham Bherwani's (06) Second Night of the Spirit makes Poetry Foundation Bestseller List & to Teach Workshop at the Saltonstall Arts Foundation

Bhisham Bherwani’s Second Night of the Spirit (CavanKerry Press, 2009) was on the Poetry Foundation’s bestseller last fall.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/books/contemporary/2011-10-30

Bhisham, who graduated from the MFA Program in Poetry in 2006, is the editor of an anthology of modern and contemporary poetry in English (including translations) from India (Atlanta Review, April 2012). He has received fellowships from The Frost Place, the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ucross Foundation, and the Jentel Artist Residency Program. He lives in New York City, where he teaches literature.


Bhisham Bherwani to Conduct a Workshop at the Saltonstall Arts Foundation

Bhisham Bherwani will be conducting a two-day weekend workshop on nature in poetry on April 7–8, 2012 at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, NY.

From Virgil to Li Po to Basho to Seamus Heaney, poets have been writing about nature and through nature for centuries and across cultures. The experience of nature can lead to work that is informative (Virgil's instructions on beekeeping), political (Robert Frost's prescient environmentalism), or meditative (William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey").

In the workshop, participants will compose original poems informed by nature. They will also read and discuss poems by W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, W. S. Merwin, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams, among others.

More information, including a registration form and a reading list, can be found at http://www.saltonstall.org/workshops.html.

Kathleen Fagley & Paul Fisher(05), M. Ayodele Heath (07), Erika Lutzner ('10) and Marilyn McCabe (10) New Publications

Paul Fisher (05) reads with fellow Geospatial poets on March 25, 4:00 pm, at the 2012 Cascadia Poetry Festival. His poem, “North of the Crater,” set at post-eruption Mount St. Helens, has been selected for inclusion in A Sense of Place: the Washington State Anthology of Geospatial Poetry, which can be read from space, figuratively speaking, by all who have Google Earth installed on their computers. Simply click the cyber pushpins to read the poems and to view photos of their locations. Details can be found in the links below.

www.katharinewhitcomb.com/geospatial/p_anth.kmz

http://splab.org/2011/12/cascadia-schedule/

www.paulfisherpoet.com

Order Otherness by M. Ayodele Heath (07)  from  Brick Road Poetry Press

Erika Lutzner's ('10) book, Invisible Girls is now available from Dancing Girl Press

This flyer is to announce to friends and acquaintances that Katheen Fagley's (05) poetry collection from Finishing Line Press, How You Came to Me, is coming out June 1, 2012.

To pre-order visit www.finishinglinepress.com and click on forthcoming titles

How You Came to Me, the title of Kathleen Fagley's new volume, aptly conveys the multi-layered theme of these splendid poems. Through them we experience all the complex emotions of bearing a child whose birth brings in a “Wedge of specialists/with shiny stethoscopes”. The language of diagnosis floats in the mother’s mind as a linguistic puzzle, and though used to describe Evan, is somehow disconnected from him.  Evan’s birth is one way he came to his mother, and it is rendered in spare, precise, and evocative images:  the onset of labor; the cut of the caesarean delivery.  Then the poems observe, probe, question, and explore poignant moments, moments either painful or transcendent or both.  All are rendered with an exquisite attention to nuances of time, place, other people, and the world.  Reading these poems, I found my breath slow and deepen. Margaret Rozga, author of Two Hundred Nights and One Day and Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad

Fox tracks in snow, preserved peaches like “squishy vulvae pressed against glass--”, baby bats killed by fondue forks, and a child no more defined by his damaged chromosome than by his name “Evan—-Welsh for John,/Hebrew for ‘God is good’”: By living fully within one life’s palpable complex of grief and beauty, Kathleen Fagley's  poems take us straight into a timeless and universal predicament: the costs and joys of living in that gray area in which we find our humanity.  The unassuming strength of character apparent in these powerful poems is a reminder of the vigilance and, yes, continuous courage required to live and love honestly in this world of wonder and tragedy.   --Jane Mead

In spare, crafted, muscular language and stunning metaphors, Kathleen Fagley relates the anguish of having a child, a boy, Evan, born with the fragile x that leaves him severely developmentally disabled. As she struggles to come to terms with the child's effect on herself and her family and with their decision to place him, it's as if she, her marriage, the whole family is torn apart and put together again.  These are important poems, shattering but life-affirming, full of insight, compassion and emotional power.  --Patricia Fargnoli 

It’s in print! Marilyn McCabe's ('10) new book, Perpetual Motion, has hit the bookshelves, at least cyber-ly. You can order it at:
WORDWORKS BOOKS
And available from Small Press Distribution Books

http://www.brickroadpoetrypress.com/order-books/130-order-otherness.html

AWP CONFERENCE

Photo Credit: Jacqueline Gens of Jim Harms and Ilya Kaminsky 2010 Conference

VISIT THE NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE MFA PROGRAM BOOTH AT THE CHICAGO AWP  CONFERENCE

BOOTH A18

Best American Poetry Blog Interviews Chard deNIord on "Sad Friends, Drowned poets, and Stapled Songs".

Best American Poetry Blog interviewed Chard deNiord on his new book of interviews, "Sad Friends,  Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs" (Marick Press, 2011)

Chard deNiord is the former program director and co-founder of the MFA program at New England College. The book is published by Marick Press.

This book of interviews with seven senior American poets-Jack Gilbert, Donald Hall, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Lucille Clifton, Ruth Stone, and Robert Bly- and essays on Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell’s correspondence, specifically her delicate outrage over his use of his wife’s and daughter’s letters in his 1974 book, The Dolphin, James Wright’s poem To the Muse, and Philip Levine’s poems The Simple Truth and Call it Music, presents a broad view of the bold and original epoch in contemporary American poetry following World War II. In their wise and always engaging responses and commentaries, deNiord's subjects reflect candidly on their careers and the unprecedented big tent of American poetry today.

Datum Earth Reading

 

 

 

 

 

POETRY BY 

VERMONT POET LAUREATE SYDNEY LEA

& BECKY D. SAKELLARIOU

SATURDAY NIGHT

DECEMBER 10, 8PM

@THE STARVING ARTIST, KEENE, NH

 

http://datumearth.blogspot.com/

Winter 2012 Afternoon Electives

The following six hour electives will be available during the Winter 2012 MFA Residency. These electives allow students to concentrate on areas of interest which result in work they can continue working on into their mentor semester or deliver during the residency.  To review the different concentrations available, visit our pages on the right margin. The following workshops are currently offered for the 2012 winter residency:

RETURN GUEST FACULTY/WORKSHOP in

The Poem-in-Performance: 

Working with our melopoeia, -- the innate music of our writing -- we will let our poetry guide us into various performance strategies and modes of composition. We will be working with our voice, our timing, possible instrumentation, collaboration and the like. We will consider methods of sprechstimme (speak-singing), monologue, vocal duets, curses, spels, lullabies, blues, poem-as-libretto, and also consider how to shape the work on the page with its orality in mind. We will begin with some “experiments of attention” and work toward individual pieces we will then record on a CD. Participants may also bring a piece of their choice to class to work on, as well as instruments they can play. Musicianship is welcome! Discussion will include some performance theory.  Last winter this same workshop generated at least two individual performance pieces per student in addition to a group ensemble piece recorded professionally. Anne is phenomenal; Ambrose a musical genius when working with poets!  --Anne Waldman & Ambrose Bye

One Foot in the Fire: the History and Practice of Prose Poetry

In this class we’ll discuss prose poetry from Baudelaire to Ben Marcus, look at some of the ‘forms’and conventions of the prose poem, and work on writing our own. Much of the focus here will be on the discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of prose vs. lineated verse. Hybridity will be encouraged, so even students with a strong preference for the line could consider coming, just to shake things up a bit. This will be primarily a generative workshop, though if you have prose poems or poems you think might work better as prose poems, feel free to bring in 20 copies on the first day of class
-- Katie Farris

New Media Poetics: Time: Motion and Typography Using Flash

In this workshop we will investigate the concept of time and typography in poetics (both on and off the page) and explore the possibilities of Flash animation software in the creation of new media poetry. Students will be guided in the process of translating/animating one of their own poems, using formal and conceptual elements and conventions common to both poetry and Flash animation, with particular emphasis on typography, elements of design, time concepts, and the relationship between form and content. Students will be given a foundation-level introduction to the Adobe Flash Professional software, which they will use in the production of an original, Flash (animated) poem. Please note, however, that this is not a software training class; rather, it is intended to introduce the fundamentals of new media poetry and its production to expand students’ understanding and appreciation of poetries both on and off the page, give students a hands-on experience in the creation of an original new media poem, and serve as a foundation for further exploration and learning.

*No prior experience with time-based media/software is necessary, but students should be comfortable with general computer use. Students who have questions or concerns about the workshop or its technical/skill requirements may contact Tara Rebele by email (tara@tararebele.com) or see her in person at the residency.--Tara Rebele

Poet As Translator                                                                      

Octavio Paz said: “Translation is an art of analogy, the art of finding correspondences. An art of shadows and echoes…” Charles Baudelaire said that poetry is essentially analogy. The idea of universal correspondence comes from the idea that language is a micro cosmos, a double of the universe. Between the language of the universe and the universe of language, there is a bridge, a link: poetry. The poet, says Baudelaire, is the translator.”

In this workshop we will read and compare multiple translations of  single poems and examine the choices and strategies of translation. In addition, each student will also provide contributions of his or her own translation of given poems. These translations will serve as focal points for the larger subject of translation, that of the poet as translator. Knowledge of a second language is welcome but not necessary.

--Malena Morling

2012 Winter MFA Open House

WINTER MFA OPEN HOUSE

Friday, JANUARY 6, 2012

SIMON CENTER at New England College | 98 Bridge Street | Henniker, NH

For individuals interested in finding out more about New England College’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing: Poetry program, please join us for a day of events at our MFA Winter Residency. Come and meet faculty and students to explore and see what a perfect fit our program is for your journey.

Spend the day on-campus attending a writing workshop and a choice of electives in New Media or Prose culminating in an evening filled with student readings. Co-directors Jim Harms and Jacqueline Gens will also be on hand to discuss the admissions process and financial aid options.

Friday, Jan. 6, 2012 Open House for prospective MFA Students, Teachers and Poets

9:15 AM Continental Breakfast and registration

9:30-10:00 AM       

Welcome and Program Overview with 

Co-Directors, James Harms and Jacqueline Gens

10:00 AM-Noon                        

Choice of  New Writing Workshop with Carol Frost, Brian Henry, 

Ilya Kaminsky or James Harms in the Center for Educational Innovation (CEI Building)

Noon-1:00 PM                  

Lunch in Gilmore Dining Hall

1:15 PM   

Question and Answer Session

* Optional-- Participants who are interested may join one of the afternoon electives in either New Media or Prose

Please R.S.V.P. with Cristy McGuinness, Graduate Admission Counselor at:

 cmcguinness@nec.edu or 603.428.2906. We look forward to seeing you.

For further information about New England College’s MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry program and faculty bios visit: www.nec.edu/sgps/mfa-in-poetry/ 

News from Barbara Benoit ('09)

Pudding House is publishing Barbara Benoit's ('09)  chapbook Waiting for the Thoroughness of Winter, and her poem "And If Not Good" is forthcoming in 5 AM.