No, I’m afraid that in my department (Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies) the people who keep up with contemporary lit are fiction people. Personally, I know no one who reads contemporary poetry very much, or at least who writes much about it. In fall, in my Introduction to Asian Pacific American lit class, I will assign the new book of…[Read more]

Oh no. I have been, and continue to be, extremely busy with several ongoing projects, including the writing of a book proposal. I would have no time or opportunity for a collaboration for quite some time. Moreover, I sense that your knowledge of contemporary poetry greatly exceeds mine. I know several writers’ work fairly well, but don’t keep up…[Read more]

I think the proposal is impressive, though I am concerned about the scale of the period covered. Is it possible to speak of “early” and “late” reactions to an event that happened less than sixteen years ago? I see that the anthology was published in 2002, the year following 9/11. I had a poem in the Poets Against War website in 2003, and looking…[Read more]

I would love to see your proposal. My email address is <streamas@wsu.edu>, and you may just send it that way if you’d prefer. We’ve avoided the word “confessional,” and I think that’s wise. I don’t think Gluck is a conventionally confessional poet, yet she’s less “historical” and public than, say, the Lowell of the 1960s. Because several new books…[Read more]

I haven’t read everything in the anthology yet, but am curious about October. Gluck seems to be one of those “nature” poets who really isn’t writing about flora and fauna but about the self, but that makes political comment feel distant, uncommitted. She’s saying, not “I am deeply wounded by the deaths of those refugees” but “I am deeply wounded…[Read more]

I’ve just requested from our library the anthology and the Gluck book, and look forward to reading them. Do you know Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being? A small section of it is devoted to a Japanese father’s fixation on images of the Falling Man, and then his daughter, one of the book’s two protagonists, registers his fixation and feels…[Read more]

Sorry I’m so late to reply. I  am unfamiliar with the first item above, and am surprising myself not to be familiar with the Gluck book, since I keep up with most of her work. I very much like the rest of the list. At risk of getting slightly off-topic, would you agree that fiction writers have written about 9/11 and its aftermaths more and…[Read more]

I’m very interested, especially as US poetry in the second half of the past century seemed concerned with the private and now, with the provocations of 9/11 and Claudia Rankine, poets are being urged to become more public.

John Streamas