Maurice Manning in NY Times

Faculty member Maurice Manning’s Op-Ed piece “My Old Kentucky Conservatism” appears in the Nov. 5th issue of the New York Times.

CUTTING firewood on a recent afternoon in the woods at the back of our farm, it occurred to me that the term conservative has lost all connection to its original meaning.

The root of the word comes from the Latin verb “conservare,” which means “to keep and preserve.” It’s interesting that the origin is a verb and not a noun, a term that implies action and duty, rather than merely a stance. Other meanings suggested by conservative have to do with frugality, modesty and the preservation of tradition.

By these lights, I would qualify as a conservative. My goal in tending our 20 acres is to preserve the character and health of this land. I don’t pile chemicals on our soil; I plant our gardens on our few patches of level ground, and every fall I am careful to rebuild the soil with leaves and compost...[Keep Reading]…

Maurice is the author of The Common Man (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

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Faculty Poetry in CURA

Faculty members Gabrielle Calvocoressi and C. Dale Young have new poems appearing in CURA Magazine.

 

from Rocket Fantastic

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Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Self-Portrait as Cylon

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C. Dale Young

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Anthony Doerr on Hawaii

Faculty member Anthony Doerr‘s essay “Discovering Hawaii’s Big Island” appears online at Conde Nast Traveler.

The Valley of the Kings, or Waipi‘o (think Y-P-O) Valley, is twenty miles shy of the northern tip of the island. Here, says my guidebook, you’ll find the only place in Hawaii that isn’t friendly. Here, you stay on trail, respect private property. Here, you obey kapu (the ancient Hawaiian system of religious taboos) or else. Here, when drivers wave hello—if they wave at all—they raise only one finger off the steering wheel, as if to say, “Yes, I see you and your big backpack, haole, but let’s not pretend I want you here.”

A sign at the overlook reads, “If not invited, please respect this sacred valley by enjoying its beauty from this lookout here.” Behind it three other signs say, “Falling Rocks!” “Hazardous Cliff!” and “Flash Flood!”—each featuring a cartoon man suffering spine-shattering mishaps.

Mark says, “Were we invited?”

I say, “Depends what you mean by invited. . . …[Keep Reading]…

Anthony is the author of The Shell Collector: Stories (Scribner, 2011).

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Megan Staffel in NER

Faculty member Megan Staffel’s story “There is no Ordinary” appears online at the New England Review:

Once, on a cold and snowy morning, there was a sharp, aggressive knocking on the glass door in our kitchen. It was a chicken.

“What’s that chicken doing?” Graham asked. The chickens lived in the shed behind our house and when the snow was deep, they rarely went outside of the small shoveled area in front of their door.

“That’s just a crazy one. She always wants something. Ignore her.” That is, more or less, what I said. It was a slow, relaxed Sunday, the animals were fed, and I had a cup of hot tea in my hand. So I turned around and went back upstairs where I was reading. In our family, I was the authority on chickens because I was the one who fed and watered them, and collected their eggs. And it was true, there was one hen who was far more talkative than the others. Every time I went outside she ran up to me, complaining...[Keep Reading]…

Megan is the author of Lessons in Another Language: A Novella and Stories (Four Way Books, 2010).

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Robert Cohen in Five Chapters

Faculty member Robert Cohen’s story “Renaissance Man” appears online at Five Chapters.

No sooner does he put on the uniform than the banal truth announces itself: he feels like a new person. It’s a loss and a gain. Gidi stands before the mirror in the employee bathroom, adjusting the fit of his flaming red work shirt, his pointy paper hat with the garish font. At seventeen, it’s his first job, and not a particularly good one either. Still, he has his reasons for being there, a few of which he even understands. Now he pats the new person’s face with cold water, wipes it on a towel, and begins to fiddle with the drawstrings of his apron, tying and untying and then retying them for the rest of the afternoon, while Kevin, the day manager, puts him through the paces of his training, shuffling him along from station to station — grill, prep, fries, drinks – like an aspirant touring some provincial third-tier college.

“Let’s figure out what you’re good at,” Kevin says. “Then we’ll decide where to put you.”  …[Keep Reading]…

Robert is the author of Amateur Barbarians (Scibner, 2009) and The Varieties of Romantic Experience (Vintage, 2003).

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Reading Announcement

Faculty member Martha Rhodes will read from her latest collection, The Beds (Autumn House Press, 2012) November 1st at the NYU Creative Writing Program Reading Series.  Poets Cathy Park Hong and Kathleen Ossip will also read.

Time: 7pm

Location: Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues

For more information, visit the program website.

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Laura Kasischke in Poetry Magazine

Faculty member Laura Kasischke‘s poem “Game” appears in the current issue of Poetry.
Game
I thought we were playing a game
in a forest that day.
I ran as my mother chased me.
But she’d been stung by a bee.
Or bitten by a snake.
She shouted my name, which
even as a child I knew was not
“Stop. Please. I’m dying.”   …[Keep Reading]…
Laura is the author of the poetry collection Space, In Chains (2011, Copper Canyon Press) and The Raising: A Novel (2011, Harper Perennial).
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Alan Shapiro Nominated for National Book Award

Faculty member Alan Shapiro has been named a finalist for the National Book Award for his poetry collection Night of the Republic (2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).  Winners will be announced November 14th in New York City.

Gas Station Restroom
from Night of the Republic
The present tense
is the body’s past tense
here; hence
the ghost sludge of hands
on the now gray strip
of towel hanging limp
from the jammed dispenser;
hence the mirror
squinting through grime
at grime, and the worn-
to-a-sliver of soiled soap
on the soiled sink...[Keep Reading]…
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Daniel Tobin in berfrois

Faculty member Daniel Tobin’s essay “A Traveling Tradition,” and his poem “The Creature Has a Purpose” both appear online at berfrois.

A Traveling Tradition

The apartment building where I grew up in Brooklyn during the Sixties and Seventies had strangely much in common with the kind of close-knit Irish townland from which my grandmother emigrated in 1913. Tucked just beyond the entry on the first floor landing, her small one bedroom flat was the first stop for virtually everyone coming home from work, as well as family and friends from nearby neighborhoods—many of them also immigrants from townlands outside Balinrobe or Claremorris. Over the years, her kitchen had become a New World hearth, and my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, my brother and I, and the crowd of neighbors, gathered there daily for talk and tea or a quiet drink. Sometimes a man named John Gibbons, an accordion propped on his wooden leg, would play and sing. Little wonder I identified as Irish, though born in the United States, the same way my friends in the schoolyard also born in America identified as Syrian or Lebanese or Italian, our nationalities bandied like favorite sports teams in the school yard...[Keep Reading]…

Daniel is the author of Awake in America: On Irish American Poetry (2011, Notre Dame Press) and Belated Heavens (2010, Four Way).

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Robert Boswell Featured in Houston Press’ “100 Creatives” Series

The Houston Press Blog recently featured faculty member Robert Boswell as part of its “100 Creatives” series:

University of Houston professor Robert Boswell always wanted to write, but took some sideways paths along the way to his present acclaim as author of 11 books and the writer of the cyber-punk novel, Virtual Death.

He graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in both psychology and creative writing. But he went on to earn his graduate degree in rehabilitation counseling. He practiced counseling in both Tucson and later in San Diego for two years.

As time went on, he only became more convinced that he wanted to pursue his writing career. So returning to the University Arizona, he earned his MFA in Creative Writing. He accepted a teaching position at Northwestern University just north of Chicago and then another at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, where he worked for 20 years...[Keep Reading]…

Robert is the author of The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards (2010, Graywolf).

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