I just want to make a quick plug that I am taking part in “Local Author Night” this Wednesday from 5-7 pm at the Valley Community Library, located at 739 River Street in Peckville. The event is free and open to the public. I’m not sure who else will be reading, but I do know my friend and fellow poet Dawn Leas will also be there.
Obama’s Long Game
Newsweek has drawn the ire of conservatives yet again for a headline on its cover that reads, “Why Are Obama’s Critics So Dumb?” Inside of the current issue is an article by Andrew Sullivan that looks at Obama’s first term in office and pushes back against his critics on the left and right. Sullivan makes Obama out to be a rather centrist president with legislative victories that should please both the left and right. You can check out the article here.
Regarding critics of the right, who Sullivan says have sometimes made Obama out to be some left-wing, radical socialist, Sullivan points out that Obama has not yet ended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and he has cut taxes several times, including the payroll tax. Furthermore, Sullivan points out that the stimulus package passed during Obama’s first few months in office included tax breaks for 95 percent of taxpayers.
Sullivan also addresses the claim by Mitt Romney and others that Obama’s policies have deepened the recession. According to the article, when Obama took office, the U.S. was losing 750,000 jobs a month, and since 2010, the U.S. has added about 2.4 million jobs, and unemployment has dropped about 2 percent.
Regarding the critics on the left, Sullivan says Obama did have legislative victories they should be happy about, including healthcare legislation that, when it fully takes effect, will require everyone to have healthcare coverage, and those that can’t afford it will be given government subsidies. Sullivan does point out, though, that the healthcare bill did not include a public option, which many progressives wanted, but he said in an era where anything in the Senate needs 60 votes to pass, this may be the closest to universal healthcare we get. Obama’s other main accomplishment Sullivan addresses is a full withdrawal from Iraq, which was one of Obama’s key campaign promises when he announced he was running for president in early 2007.
Sullivan does admit that he is an Obama supporter, but I think the article does give a fair assessment of the president’s first term and addresses criticism of the president from the left and the right. The piece concludes with the idea that Obama thinks in the long term, that he runs a long game, and that he envisions himself accomplishing more if re-elected. But what Sullivan doesn’t point out is that Obama is going to have a harder re-election in 2012 than he did in 2008. His base is starting to wake up and get fired up, but the economy is still in a slump, and that will mar him heading into re-election. Anyways, the piece is a good read that cuts through the stereotypes and criticism that surround the president and presents him not as a left-wing radical or a leader too timid and weak to stand up to opposition, but rather as a centrist and pragmatist.
Some Updates
I want to thank everyone who came out to the New Visions Writers Showcase this past Saturday. The turnout was simply incredible. Big thanks to Dawn Leas, Frank Sabina, Rich Howells, Tricia Kinney, Lisbeth Herr-Gelatt, Jen Bokal, and Bridget McIntyre for strong readings. The next Writers Showcase will be in March, one of the last two weekends. We’re trying to nail down the date this week. We have the readers booked, and I promise they won’t disappoint.
If you can’t get enough of the poetry scene around NEPA, you should come out to the Third Friday reading at Art Seen Gallery this Friday in Wilkes-Barre. It is located at 21 Public Square. The reading starts at 8 p.m., and this month’s featured reader is my friend and fellow poet, Reena Ranells, who will have her new book available for sale. An open mic will follow her reading.
Finally, I want to mention that my chapbook, Front Man, is now available to purchase for Kindle. If you’re an Amazon prime member, you can also borrow the book for free. Click here to check that out. Also, if you’ve read the book, feel free to review it on Amazon. I would greatly appreciate that.
That’s all for now. Happy writing!
More Proposed Budget Cuts to Education
Last year, Pennsylvania’s Republican Governor, Tom Corbett, drew ire and protest when he proposed and succeeded in passing deep cuts to education, especially to the state university system. Now, Gov. Corbett is proposing more cuts to education, this time about $20 million to the State System of Higher Education. A history professor at East Stroudsburg University had an editorial published yesterday in the The Morning Call newspaper, which covers the Lehigh Valley, about what impact these budget cuts have at state universities. Read it here.
The writer and professor, Shannon Frystack, points out that cuts to education lead to higher class sizes, cuts to courses that are planned to run, and dissatisfaction among students. She writes, “The most recent cuts have forced my university, as well as others in the state system, to increase class sizes and cut courses that did not meet, what I believe to be, unreasonable minimum numbers of students.” She goes on to say, “Many students have expressed to me that they are feeling ‘lost in the shuffle’ and that they were told that if they came to ESU, they would have smaller classes and more interaction with their professors. I’m doing the best that I can, but there is only so much I can do when I am forced to work with 150-200 students per semester.”
She also points out that the budget cuts have forced ESU and other universities to leave vacant open faculty positions.
Maybe Corbett, like a lot of other Republicans, wants to fully privatize education, doing away with the state system that makes higher education obtainable for a lot more students. I myself am a product of the state university system because I went to West Chester University for my undergrad education and had a wonderful experience and great professors. If you are concerned with this issue, let the governor know how you feel. You can contact him online by clicking here.
New Visions Writers Showcase
As promised, here is some more info about the New Visions Writers Showcase. It will take place this Saturday at 7 pm at New Visions Studio and Gallery, located at 201 Vine Street in Scranton. Jason Lucarelli and I will host it, and we have a wonderful line-up of readers this month. You can read an article about the event here.
Here is some info about the readers.
Lisbeth Herr Gelatt is an undergraduate student at Keystone College who has taken community poetry workshops in Scranton and creative writing classes at Keystone. I’ve had her in class a few times, and she’s a great reader.
Rich Howells is an award-winning journalist, longtime blogger, and short fiction writer. In addition to his daily work for Scranton newspaper Go Lackawanna, his articles are also regularly published in The Times Leader, The Abington Journal, and The Weekender. Online, he maintains two main blogs and several smaller websites, and he is currently working on expanding into comic book writing. A good sampling of his portfolio can be found at www.RichHowells.net.
Trica Kinney is a senior at Keystone College. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Word Fountain, WritingRaw.com, and Indigo Rising Magazine.
Dawn Leas is the author of the chapbook I Know When to Keep Quiet, published by Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared online, in print and in buses including goldwakepress.org, Willows Wept Review, Literary Mama, Interstice, and Poetry in Transit. Currently, Dawn Leas teaches middle-school English at Wyoming Seminary. Visit her at www.dawnleas.com.
Frank Sabina has taught English at Keystone College. (We are actually still waiting for his full blurb to come in!)
Jennifer Bokal lives in Upstate New York with her husband, John, and their three daughters. Originally, a romance writer, Jennifer switched her focus to young adult novels while pursuing a degree in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. When not writing, Jennifer can be found practicing yoga, having lunch with friends or shopping for shoes. King’s Crossing is her first novel for young adults.
Bridget McIntyre is a GLBT writer who holds her MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University. Currently, she teaches in the English department at Marywood University and is working on her first novel, Stonewall Girl.
We also have one other writer on the list, Beth Burke. Jason has the blurb for her. This Writers Showcase is unique in the sense we have a broader range of genres compared to the last showcase, which was poetry heavy. I’m confident all of the writers will do a wonderful job, so come on out and enjoy the work of local and regional writers! The event is free, though donations to the gallery are encouraged.
Writings about the Boss
A few posts ago, I mentioned that one of my resolutions for 2012 is to share more on here about books I’m reading. So, to adhere to my resolution, I want to mention a book that I got for Christmas from my girlfriend– Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader. Lately, I’ve been reading more non-fiction than usual. I just finished a long bio on Hemingway called Hemingway’s Boat. I recommend it. Now I’m reading this collection of essays, interviews, and articles on Springsteen. It begins with his career in the early 1970s, shortly before Born to Run was released, and it concludes with his post-9/11 album The Rising.
What impresses me most about this book is how it details the evolution of Springsteen from a New Jersey rocker who played the clubs of Asbury Park and struggled early on to a rock star with an evolving political/social conscious and a willingness to speak out for the working-class, especially on the albums Darkness on the Edge of Town, Born in the U.S.A., and The Ghost of Tom Joad.
The book contains the first major article about Springsteen, published in 1973 in the magazine Crawdaddy!, a little after Springsteen released his first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, and had yet to hit the mainstream. What surprises me about the Crawdaddy! article and some of the early articles about Springsteen from the New York Times is how much he was compared to Bob Dylan. I’m a big fan of Dylan and Springsteen, and I don’t like one more than the other, but I don’t see a lot of similarities. Springsteen’s early albums were not folk albums, and they weren’t at all political or social, like Dylan’s first albums. That would come later for Springsteen. Furthermore, Dylan always worked in the abstract, with wild characters, word play, and layers of metaphors. Springsteen’s songs are more concrete, often centered around character-driven narratives.
I especially like the section on Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. album and how Ronald Reagan tried to co-opt the title song for political purposes, despite the fact the title song and a lot of other tracks on the album are about people struggling for jobs in Reagan’s trickle-down America. But my favorite section includes the essays on The Ghost of Tom Joad album, which may be Springsteen’s most political/social album to date. Released in the mid-1990s, the album is a barebones folk album, filled with stories of immigrants struggling to survive and references to Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.
One of my favorite essays is entitled “The Ghost of History: Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie, and the Hurt Song.” Here, the writer, Bryan K. Garman, compares Springsteen’s Joad album to the work of folk pioneer Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan’s earliest albums that focused on the Civil Rights Movement and racial injustice. Here a distinction is made between Springsteen’s songs and Dylan’s early work that I think is poignant. Garman writes, “While Dylan constructs his working-class characters as passive ‘pawns’ who are wholly manipulated by historical and social forces beyond their control, Springsteen’s characters make their own history, but they do so under very difficult circumstances. Springsteen’s working-class narrators proudly and faithfully proclaim, ‘Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man/And I believe in a Promised Land!”
I like that quote because I think it sums up Springsteen’s work rather well. Over the years, he’s always written about the working-class, and even on some of his darkest albums lyrically, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, which includes the track “Promised Land” referenced above, there are rays of hope. In an interview with Springsteen published in 1985 by the Los Angeles Times, when he was really at the height of his success, Springsteen says, “I’m a romantic. To me, the idea of a romantic is someone who sees the reality, lives in the reality every day, but knows about the possiblities too.” That quote also sums up his work and characters well.
If you’re a fan of Springsteen, rock ‘n roll history, or politics, check out The Springsteen Reader. You won’t be disappointed. Springsteen and the E Street Band are also set to have a busy 2012, including a tour and a new album promised to be one of their best yet. I’m excited to hear where Springsteen goes lyrically for the new album, considering he is still mourning the loss of his childhood friend and long-time sax player in the band Clarence Clemons. The country is also so fractured politically, and the promised land Springsteen sang about for so many years seems unobtainable for a lot of Americans now. His songs are more relevant now than ever.
As far as poetry goes, I’m currently reading Elizabeth Alexander’s collection Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010. Alexander teaches at Yale and gained more notoriety when she delivered a poem, “Praise Song for the Day,” during Obama’s inauguration three years ago. I like Alexander’s work. Her poems draw on everything from first kisses to race in America. Check her out.
That’s all for now. Happy writing folks!
Some Updates
I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years and developed some solid resolutions for 2012. I wanted to share some updates. The next Writers Showcase at New Visions Studio and Gallery will be held on Saturday, Jan. 14 at 7 pm. The venue is located at 201 Vine Street, and there is free parking in front of the gallery. We had a wonderful turnout during the first event back in November, and I’m hoping for the same or even better this time. Next week, I’ll post a description of all of the readers involved. It will be a solid mix of poetry, non-fiction, and fiction.
I also want to mention that I have a poem, “How I Remember Her,” published in the new issue of Evening Street Review. This is a wonderful print journal published out of Ohio. Check it out here.
Finally, I want to share an update about ZineFest 2012. Last year, the organizers received a county grant that basically paid for the event. This year, the county received even more applications, and unfortunately, ZineFest did not secure any grant money. The organizers are trying to raise enough funds to secure the venue for a soon-to-be scheduled June date. They are seeking donations, and if you can help out, that would be much appreciated. Feel free to email them at scrantonzinefestival@gmail.com. Any support would be much appreciated. Last year’s event was a huge success and brought in writers, artists, and zinesters from across the East Coast, and I hope the event keeps going.
That’s all for now. Happy Writing, Happy New Year!
Book List Update
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is looking forward to an exciting New Year. When thinking about this blog and what I want to do in 2012, I realized that I very rarely share books I’m reading. In fact, I wish that other blogs did this more too because I love to know what people are reading and what I should check out. So, in the new year, I plan to post a little more about what I’m reading and what is informing and influencing my own writing.
So, here it goes. I currently have a few different books cracked, and I’ll share those with you.
I just ripped through Compendium 1 of the hit graphic novel/comic series The Walking Dead, which most people now know as a hit TV show on AMC. Compendium 1 features the first 48 issues of The Walking Dead. I’ll admit that I’m not a big comic guy or a huge fan of graphic novels, but I do love The Walking Dead, and not just because it features zombies and gore. I like the fact that no one is safe in the comics and several of the key characters die. It makes it a constant page-turner. In fact, by the end of Compendium 1, only one main character is left that was present in issue 1. I also like how the main characters, especially the protagonist, Rick Grimes, a cop, are often faced with tough moral choices that question just how much humanity remains in a postapocalyptic world. These characters unravel more and more as they lose friends and loved ones, and you’re not quite sure if there’s any hope at all left for them. If you like the TV show, you should check out the graphic novels. Though the show is good, the graphic novels offer more character depth, conflict, and plenty of zombie action!
Regarding poetry, I’m currently reading two different collections right now- What Work Is by Philip Levine and Selected Poems 1966-1987 by Seamus Heaney. I often return to Levine’s work because I find his working-class portraits utterly beautiful and much needed in a time of global austerity and assaults on the middle and lower classes by the top 1 percent. Very few poets have influenced me more than Levine. I like to study how he depicts and humanizes his characters, how he makes the reader care about empy warehouses in Detroit and aging factory workers. His poems push beyond mere description into statements about humanity or meditative reflections.
Heaney reminds me a little of Levine in the sense that he too sometimes writes about the working- class, including field hands and drunken boatmen, among others. However, Levine is known for his longer, descriptive, narrative poems, and Heaney often employs tight, restrictive forms. If you’re a poet or like poetry and haven’t checked out Levine or Heaney, you should. The local library or bookstore should have plenty of their collections.
Finally, I just started Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson, a bio on Hem that focuses on the years 1934, when Hemingway first achieved major fame, to 1961, when he committed suicide. I’m only about 50 pages in, but I like it thus far. The book uses various images and the history of Hemingway’s boat, Pilar, to address the twists and turns of his life and his struggle to be a good man in the midst of so much fame. What impresses me about the book so far is the personal side of Hemingway it shows. Included are various letters to his sons and friends that show a far less macho side of the writer that we aren’t used to seeing.
Feel free to tell me what you’re reading or what’s on your book list for 2012.
You’re still very much missed, Joe.
Today marks the 9-year anniversary of Joe Strummer’s death. I was a freshman in college, home from Christmas break, and punk rock was still very much the only music I listened to. When I heard the news, I spent the evening spinning Clash albums over and over again, especially the self-titled album and London Calling. The Clash is one of the few punk bands I still listen to quite often, and in a world where the gap between the rich in the poor is so huge and widening even more, I wish we had Strummer around, or at least someone like him, someone able to give an overview of social and political ills in a three-minute song.
Weeks before Strummer passed, Clash co-front man Mick Jones appeared on stage with him several times to rip through various Clash songs. Maybe it could have led to a full Clash reunion, or at least a chance for them to play together in early 2003 when the Clash were inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. Sadly, we’ll never know.
RIP, Joe! You’re missed!
Scranton ZineFest 2012
In 2011, one of my favorite readings I took part in and hosted was part of Scranton’s first ever ZineFest. The event brought together zinesters, craft makers, and booksellers from Scranton, Philly and other pockets of the East Coast. The day featured an exchange of zines and crafts, and the reading was held in the evening at Anthology New and Used Books (this was actually the last ever reading held there, sadly).
I’m pleased to announce there will be a second ZineFest, to be held in June of 2012, at the Keyser Valley Community Center. This year, we won’t have to worry about any rain clouds lingering over the participants and tables because the venue will allow us to be indoors all day. The new venue also has a kitchen, so it will make it easier for us to cook and store food.
I met the other day with Jessica Meoni and Dana Marie Bloom, the two key organizers of the festival. I left the meeting feeling eager to be part of this event again. Soon, Jessica and Dana are going to send out letters inviting last year’s participants to partake in this year’s festival, and I am going to finish sending out invitations to writers we hope will participate in the evening reading. This year the reading will be different in the sense that we want the writers to share works that are music-themed, or have some type of socio/political undertone, to reflect zine culture. The reading should stand to be a good mix of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, and we’ll have some of the readers back from last year, but also some new faces.
Once we finalize a date and line-up some of the zinesters and readers that will be attending, I’ll post more details here.
Brian Fanelli 