Robert Day Publishes Story in NUMERO CINQ MAGAZINE

http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2012/08/29/sometimes-it-is-sometimes-it-isnt-fiction-robert-day-2/

Robert Day has been my mentor and friend many decades. He is a terrific guide to the joys of living a literate life. This story shows his accessible narrator--I always enter his stories effortlessly, and then don't want them to end. Ed Ruhe used to compare reading his stories to eating candy. Pure pleasure.

I'm pleased to see my photo of Bob Day hunting in the layout here. It was late fall just outside of Bly, Kansas, pleasant weather but snow still on the ground, the dog kept chasing birds and leaves, and we went home empty handed but happy. Along the way, we met Mr. Bison, part of a local herd. We had bison meatloaf for dinner with the rancher who raised it. Memorable.
Even better news is New Letters of the University of Missour-Kansas City is publishing his new book of short stories in September! They have published a number of short stories in their journal in recent years.

Association of Writers & Writing Programs has writers' directory on its new website.

Association of Writers & Writing Programs

USA Artists LENAPE CODE Project Ends Today! Please Donate!

Please consider donations! for this project, which ends at midnight today. Only a few hours remain. This is an all-or-nothing fundraising model, so we need one last push to keep all funds raised to date.

The project, about Lenape (Delaware) heritage, is a collaboration of artists, musician, and my text. I found that my family tombstones in the Flint Hills are engraved with Algonquin beadwork designs! Since then I have found specifically the medicine wheel, or "Ojibwa Rose" design, has a history that extends back to 17th century treaty signatures and petroglyphs in Central Park, NYC. All these are part of the multi-layered project.

This visual and creative text will include my text, artists’ prints by Paul Hotvedt and Clare Doveton, music by Stephen Howard (he does the video soundtrack), an electronic version, and further expressions. Perks include print and electronic access to these creations.

Roger Shimomura nominated me for USA Artists, the fundraising organization that backsprojects across the country, and I appreciate his faith in me. Thanks to more than 50 people who have donated.

With much appreciation,

Denise

http://www.usaprojects.org/project/lenape_codes_explorations_in_delaware_arts

PAUL HOTVEDT & CLARE DOVETON are artists for Lenape Code Project. 2 Days Left!

Paul Hotvedt 2006

Good news--Paul Hotvedt and Clare Doveton have agreed to be artists working with the Lenape Code project. See Paul's work at http://paulhotvedt.com/. He and I have collaborated on the From the Ground Up project, http://www.groundsite.org/home.shtml , and he has work in collections from Baltimore to Santa Fe. He has degrees from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and the Maryland Institute. Clare Doveton received her BFA in Fine Arts Painting at Parsons School of Art and Design. Over the last 18 years, she has shown in galleries throughout New York City, San Francisco, and the Midwest. In 2004 she moved her studio to Kansas. She has a site on FaceBook and also http://www.claredoveton.com/  Perks for this project will include signed work by the artists as well as text and sound by Stephen Howard. Time is short. Please help the Lenape Code collaborative project become a reality. 100% of the funding must be achieved by Aug. 20, midnight. A donor’s button is on the site: ttp://www.usaprojects.org/project/lenape_codes_explorations_in_delaware_arts

Clare Doveton "While You Were Sleeping" 2012

Lenape Codes: Explorations in Delaware Arts

Lenape Codes: Explorations in Delaware Arts: <p>This project evolved through a memoir I began writing on my grandfather, a Lenape(Delaware) American Indian, in an attempt to explore my personal heritage andthe facets of his American indigenous identity. These were suppressed by thesocio-political pressures of his lifetime. My research uncovered an unknownglyphic language that expanded the scope of my memoir into a multi-media piecethat explores graveyard symbolism. Algonquian people like the Lenape usedimages that preserved clues to their tribal identities and historical eventsnot otherwise documented.&nbsp;</p><p>I isolated the marble tombstones, ornamented with woodland motifs and specifically the &ldquo;Ojibway Rose&rdquo; as the primary source to explore the imagery and significance of this glyphic language.&nbsp; The tombstones also mark the path of the Algonquian Indians from Great Plains back to the place of contact betweenEuropeans and Algonquian bands on the East Coast. The connotative symbolism of the Rose represents everything from the spiritual and ceremonial tradition to prayer, healing, Earth, and plant life. I refer to the format of this piece as a &ldquo;creative text&rdquo; because it is composed of assembled photographs, maps, documents, and my own response in the

AWP 2013 Conference Features Nobelists Walcott and Heaney

Seamus Heaney

The 2013 AWP Annual Conference and Bookfair will be in Boston March 6-9, 2013, at the Sheraton Boston Hotel & Hynes Convention Center. Keynote speakers will be Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney, both of whom have won Nobel Prizes in poetry. For more information, see the AWP link:
http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2013headlinersbios.php

I have followed both of their works since the 1980s. Both are incredible, but I had the pleasure of spending time with Heaney years ago.

Derek Walcott

 In 1985, I had the pleasure to be at a very small conference that featured Seamus Heaney as keynote. I took a van full of Haskell Indian Nations University, then Haskell Indian Junior College, students to Pittsburg State in southeast Kansas to be part of the Kansas Writers Association, a state group of college creative writing departments and independent writers. Most of us were AWP members also. Michael Heffernan was one of the organizers, as well as Stephen Meats, poetry editor of Midwest Quarterly, and the special collections librarian, Gene DeGruson. Altogether maybe there were 75 attendees. This background helps to explain the intimacy of the event.

Heaney did his keynote, and I remember his chattiness and charm. His poems had sounds I had not heard arranged so densely in a poem. His poems taught me about country life in Ireland and those politics as well. He was companionable, comfortable, and engaging as a reader. But also, despite his reputation, even then, he participated and seemed to enjoy all the events. He did not present his talk, collect a check, and speed away to the airport.

For me the greatest moment came during the open mic. All the visiting program directors read, and he paid rapt attention. Although I was dry-mouthed, I stood up at my turn, read a few poems, and got caught up in the words; I hammed it up a bit. I had the sense he was encouraging some of the local texture I was adding to the poems. Heaney applauded and congratulated me afterwards. Perhaps he was just being polite, but I was thrilled. It buoyed me through the next years of learning the craft. I will never forget his kindness at that time, when he was prominent but not yet a superstar. His hair was coal black, his words apt, his heart kind.

Early Review of CONJURO by Xanath Caraza Posted on Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/Conjuro-Xanath-Caraza/dp/0983799563/ref=cm_cr-mr-img See Xanath Caraza's new book of poetry Conjuro reviewed early on Amazon--first review! The book is also available through www.mammothpublications.com (just email mammothpubs@hotmail.com ). Congratutlations to her for this excellent book of poetry. Here's a comment from the introduction by Fred Arroyo:

Is there a way to be gone and still 

belong? Travel that takes you home?

Is that life?—to stand by a river and go?[i]

—William Stafford, “Quo Vadis”

In these lines I read filaments Xánath Caraza weaves into her vivid, incantatory, and enchanting Conjuro. Caraza is a poet who travels across languages and geographies, histories and identities, in conjuring a new language that helps her to travel home. Through this poetic journey—part American Indian (Nahuatl), part African, part Midwestern American, and part European—she calls on her readers to experience within poetry’s music the feeling of being gone yet still needing to belong. I evoke Stafford simply because he’s often remembered for growing up in Kansas, where his imagination became rooted and restless, and although he lived a majority of his poetic life outside Kansas, Stafford became the great American poet from the Middle West—and I make this connection in order to read and place Xánath Caraza’s poetic achievement within this heartland, while also considering how Caraza poetically dwells within and travels from the Middle West; navigates rich and strong linguistic currents; and creates a terrestrial tapestry that shares the magical enchantment of her poetry. Xánath Caraza is a scholar, teacher, and activist—a poeta deeply residing in the earth. The speaker of “Of Synonyms, Euphemisms, and Other Figures of Speech” sings:

Freedom and education are synonyms for me.

Professor, teacher, and social activist, are likewise.

Pronouncing ancestral languages of my heritage is resistance.

The voice of the Sun is a euphemism.

The SB 1070 Arizona law is as a shame. A simile.

Wind brings the time of freedom to the silence of the desert. An alliteration. (47)

(Prose from Fred Arroyo's introduction to Conjuro)

---

[i] The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 1998, p. 38. 

Langston Hughes D.C. Residence (1924-26) Is on S St. NW

1749 S.St. NW c. Denise Low

Langston Hughes residence 1924-6

Langston Hughes lived in Washington, D.C. 1924-26. He lived briefly at the YMCA on 12^th St., but mostly he was at 1749 S. St. NW. He came to D.C. to live with his mother and brother Kit, but he also aspired to attend Howard University. On S. St., the small family lived in two unheated, rented rooms (DC Writers). Across the street lived the parents of Charles Hamilton Houston, who would be a 1950s law professor at Howard. Hughes also visited Saturday night salons of neighbor Georgia Douglas Johnson, who lived at 1641 S. St. NW. Here Hughes was able to “discuss literature, eat cake, and drink wine” (Mills).  This building has been torn down—1631 remains (see photo). These would have been luxuries to Hughes, who was desperately poor at the time. To raise money, he held a series of odd jobs, including proof reading for the Washington Sentinel and busing tables at the Wardman Park hotel. At the segregated hotel, poet Vachel Lindsay read Hughes’s poetry and gave him his break (Cultural Tourism). Hughes began his career: “While living in DC, he published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), and wrote most of the poems that would become his second book, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)” (DC Writers). In his memoir The Big Sea and in the article “Our Wonderful Society, Washington (Opportunity, Aug. 1927), he describes his struggles during these years with class issues. In Lawrence and Kansas City he had a background in popular cultures of the time—blues, early jazz, oral literatures, dance. He continued to seek out arts of the common African American people while he was in Washington D.C. (Mills).

A personal note: in Lawrence, my hometown, many buildings where Hughes attended school, plays, church services, and worked are still standing. A grocery store his grandfather owned in the 1880s is still standing on the main street. See more photos in Langston Hughes in Lawrence, by Denise Low and Thomas Weso, http://www.mammothpublications.com/catalog1.0.html It is a total coincidence that son Daniel Low, from Lawrence, has a house within a block of Langston’s residence, or is it?

Photos all © by Denise Low, 2012.
“Langston Hughes Residence: African American Heritage Trail.” Cultural Tourism  D.C. 1999-2012. Web.
“Langston Hughes.” DC Writers’ Homes. 2012. Web.
Fitzpatrick, Sandra and Maria R. Goodwin, The Guide to Black Washington, rev. ed. (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1999).
Freund, David M.P.  and Marya Annette McQuirter, Biographical Supplement and Index, Young Oxford History of African Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Mills, Paul T. “Langston Hughes.” The Black Renaissance in Washington. June 20, 2003. Web.
Gatewood, Willard B. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 338.
Rampersad, Arnold. Life of Langston Hughes (2 volumes from Oxford University, 1988, 1986)

Update for "Lenape Code" project: Walking Purchase Treaty turtle signature fits into the puzzle

Here is an update for the “Lenape Code: Explorations in Delaware Arts” project I’ve been working on through USA Artists, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting artist projects http://www.usaprojects.org/project/lenape_codes_explorations_in_delaware_arts

So far I have about 25% of the funds raised through generous, tax-deductible contributions. Individuals may donate, and I also encourage groups and organizations to consider donations. At higher levels ($250-$1000), you can receive individualized lectures and gallery talks. Funds will support travel and research to complete illustrated creative texts, both print and electronic. The print products will include an illustrated, signed poster (broadside) on fine paper. The electronic presentation will includes audio, image, and text. I will post this on a website and approach Plains Indian Ledger Art about hosting this webpage, as well as other organizations. The project will explore the continuity of Algonquian glyphs—Turtle, Spiral, Medicine Wheel, and others. Please see below for more information. Deadline is August 20, 2012.Here is one of the sources I’m working with: a Turtle signature glyph from 1737 Walking Purchase treaty. This is one of the images connected to both the "Ojibwa Rose" motif of beadwork as well as the Medicine Wheel. It appears here in a written document, as a leader's signature glyph. I have also seen stylized turtles in Cheyenne ledger art as well.

Publishers Weekly likes Julianne Buchsbaum's new poetry collection

The Apothecary's Heir is Julianne Buchsbaum's third collection of poetry and winner of a National Poetry Series award. New from Penguin, and definitely one of the best new books out.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-14-312141-1

My online review of the book is at this link--another lense for viewing this dense, fine collection. But get the book itself--you can see for yourself.
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/29/3681297/on-poetry-new-collections-reflect.html