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Memory: The ‘Spiral’ in the Poetry of Joy Harjo

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Susmita Paul, Independent Scholar

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Abstract

Memory as a narrative is a vindicated thesis in academia. In the article, the author focuses on the nature and the function of ‘memory’ in the poetry of Joy Harjo, an indigenous American poet with tribal affiliations. Instead of using only Eurocentric discourses of performance studies and theoretical studies on memory, the author attempts to assess the distillation of Harjo’s independent ideas on memory in her creative oeuvre – written and performed poetry. Further, the author probes how Harjo’s ‘theory’ of memory connects the past, the present and the future. Keep Reading

Towards a Postmodern Poetics: Reading Elizabeth Bishop’s Reccy of Realities

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Amit Bhattacharya, University of Gour Banga

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Abstract

In this paper, I have tried to analyze a few poems by Elizabeth Bishop to show how she takes up or takes in shifting identities and subject-positions in a clear dialogue with cultural norms and expectations. I have also sought to chart her poetic trajectory from alienation to alterity to show how she started by refusing to accept the ‘otherness’ about her and her various poetic personae based on such determinants as gender, sexuality, class or age, and ultimately accepted those self-same counts of ‘otherness’ in a never-ending melee with the ‘so-called’ metareality of conundrum and contingency that is provisionally called ‘life’. Keep Reading

Paintings of Murali Sivaramakrishnan

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Murali Sivaramakrishnan is a poet, painter and critic. He is Professor and Head Department of English at Pondicherry Central University.

Artworks Keep Reading

Poems and Paintings by Rob Harle

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POTENTIAL

the potential,
for creating digital autonomy;
an insistence,
directed by a Gabriel clone
about the inequity of reality;
and then sadly,
transmitted orally to one person (a life);
this dying is about a postmodern body
a lonely body, alone;
the situation becomes more impersonal
and still yet?
Transhuman potential, Keep Reading

Five Poems of Peter Nicholson

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                               A Life

No intermediary in the passing night

Brought better news than what the heart revealed,

Sending from its furthest reaches news

Of bitter blood, infatuated calm

Or a tempest of delighted skin.

Thus at midnight, with the world beyond

Your fragmentary reach at goodnesses,

Silence then was best—you were just a guest

Of something larger than this sorrowing.

No use to reason why the crest of time

Has danced on you, then left a trampled rind.

You lived and knew the best, then left your life behind. Keep Reading

Selected Poems of Partha Mukhopadhyay

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Three Verses on Our History

Verse 1 – Early Hominids

The third ape-shadow emerged, baby-curious,

From the primitive Mormon-mist.

A lucent moon watched

As ape-gene glowed, mutating with every touch.

Left alone at daybreak

Soul-light dazzled the primate mind

And the first divine thought of the universe

Contaminated all pure beasts

In one massive cloudburst

Saying

“I love”. Keep Reading

Book Review: Poor-Mouth Jubilee by Michael Chitwood

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Publisher: Tupelo Press (October 15, 2010)

Paperback: 72 pages

Price: $16.95

ISBN-10: 1932195890

ISBN-13: 978-1932195897

Review by

Paula Hayes

Strayer University, USA

“True revelation occurs amid distortion”—The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture:  Volume 1:  Religion

Southern poetry occupies an inimitable place in contemporary literature. Michael Chitwood, whose work has gained significant recognition and a wide readership over the last two decades or so, represents a current trend of an increased interest in Southern poetry. His latest collection, Poor-Mouth Jubilee, reaches back to the heart of what can bind a Southern town together—religion—in an effort to explore the meaningfulness and fruitfulness of human relationships.  Chitwood’s usual positions of irony, skepticism, and cynicism toward Christianity are softened, considerably, in Poor-Mouth Jubilee.  Still, the unrelenting quality of obstinacy that characterizes a particular sect of Southern literature from William Faulkner to Flannery O’Connor is ever-present in Poor-Mouth Jubilee. The concept of obstinacy in Southern literature translates into the idea that while it is impossible to overcome suffering through a transcendence of it, nonetheless there can be a repudiation of the belief that suffering is meaningless. Poor-Mouth Jubilee reminds us that meaning can be found in the smallest of appreciations. In the poem, “Now And In Our Time of Need,” Chitwood describes how a flock of crows can remind us of the need for prayerful meditation. Keep Reading

Book Review: In the Heart of the Beat the Poetry of Rap by Alexs Pate

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The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Pub Date: Jan 2010

Hardcover, 176 pages

Price: $24.95

ISBN: 0-8108-6008-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6008-7

Series:  African American Cultural Theory and Heritage

Review by

Pragna Paramita Mondal, Victoria College, Kolkata

Alexs Pate’s In the Heart of the Beat begins with an anecdote from his childhood days in North Philadelphia. Johnny, a boy in the neighborhood who survived a car accident, was subsequently involved in a conscious process of reorientation of speech as a means to counter his disability. What the ‘Professor’ (Johnny) and rappers share in common, however, is their sense of exigency in speech and their need to articulate and prioritize their distinct worldviews from a position of marginality and oppression. In fact, orality has been one of the defining features in Black cultural history, one that has sustained African American sanity and self-expression. In this book Pate, therefore, makes an attempt at disengaging the poetry of rap from the claims of music and hip hop beats and validates the ‘speech’ of rap by subverting the conventional notions that determine its popular consumption. Keep Reading

Editorial, Volume 3, Number 1, 2011

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This issue is dedicated once again to a more definitive exploration of the interdisciplinary question in humanities, in the inquest which characterizes modern science and a corresponding investigation of the nature of artistic and imaginative pursuits. The essays in this collection bear evidence of the scientific temperament, to say the least, but more importantly an attempt to explain certain creative tendencies on the basis of findings in evolutionary studies and psychology. The concern in academy for a mechanics of perception has taken a turn. This is a very “philosophical” question. We cannot circumscribe its importance.  Keep Reading

Art/Science: Problem-Solving Model as a Unifying Principle of Creativity in Art and Science

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Slobodan Dan Paich, Artship Foundation, San Francisco, USA

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 Abstract

Possible procedural similarities between abstract problems mathematically expressed, engineering problems mechanically resolved, collective tensions and yearning expressed as significant poetic, acoustic or visual manifestations in art will be explored through a series of open questions and reflections. We begin with a short analysis and comparison of the methodologies of Nicola Tesla and Leonardo da Vinci, and explore issues raised by examples of imagination in scientific discovery, such as the German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé resolving the riddle of the benzene ring in 1865. The exploration will include reflection on issues of:

   1. Mastery and skill sets

   2. Preparing the field and gathering elements for research

   3. Cognitive modeling in Art and Science

   4. Unexpected connections/discovery

   5. Motivation to complete

Before ending with an open-ended summary, we will include the segment of questions and answers from an ongoing dialogue between the author of this paper and Dr. Paul Pangaro, Board Member of Artship Foundation, Cybernetics practitioner, theorist and the proponent of Conversation Theory. Keep Reading

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