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Poetry at Amherst (A New Crop)

May 17, 2014 News and Events

Event Date:

Saturday, May 31, 2014 – 4:30pm – 6:30pm

Location:

Amherst College, Merrill Science Center, Lecture Hall 1

Perhaps it’s the close attention to reading, the classic New England landscape or reverberations in the air left by Dickinson and Frost. Whatever the reason, Amherst has long been a wellspring for poetry, and generations of Amherst alums have achieved remarkable success in the literary world. In this reading and discussion, moderated by Jennifer Acker ’00, founder and editor-in-chief of The Common, six emerging and established poets, critics, and essayists read from their work and talk about the ways their literary lives thread through Johnson Chapel and beyond. Featuring Rafael Campo ’87, Rachel Nelson ’99, Brian Simoneau ’99, and Tess Taylor ’99. A book signing will follow. Presented by the Class of 1999.

Nella Citta Nuda: Two Subway Stories

May 14, 2014 Fiction

By ANTONIO MONDA

Today, The Common is featuring two translated short stories from the book Nella Citta Nuda by Antonio Monda. The Common in the (Eternal) City on May 21 features Monda in conversation with Larissa MacFarquhar.

Touring History

May 13, 2014 Essays

By MARIAN CROTTY

lights and palm trees

Disposable ponchos and white tennis shoes, cotton beach dresses worn without bras, sunglasses dangling from nylon cords, and a way of walking that is, in spite of the gray sky and the drizzling rain, ponderous. On a whole, they are younger than I expected, larger, and much more interested in cover bands. Almost all of them are couples.

Why I Love the MFA

May 12, 2014 Essays

BY JAMES FRANCO

I love MFA programs, because they are a purified space where the love of art is nourished.

This is an essayistic love poem written to MFA programs. It is a form that I learned from my mentor, Frank Bidart. Frank is a poet, but he is also a lover of film, acting, theater, music, pop-culture, Hollywood history, food, and sex.

Frank is old and doesn’t have sex anymore. At least I don’t think he does. But his poems are full of deep life, and sexual connotations.

A Textile Guide to the Highlands of the Chiapas

May 7, 2014 Dispatches

By ROLF YNGVE

All around the Parque Central of San Cristóbal de Las Casas there were women in traditional dress. Sometimes they were standing in line. Sometimes they clustered together looking inward at each other. One of them standing in a long line of similarly dressed women told me, “We are here for the government.” There was a uniformed guard who seemed to be looking after them. He told me they had been bused to the city for the government.

On the Emergence of Native American Literature: An Interview with Ron Welburn

May 6, 2014 Interviews

S. TREMAINE NELSON interviews RON WELBURN

Ron Welburn

Ron Welburn is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches American Literature, Native American Literature, and American Studies. His ancestors include Gingaskin and Assateague from the Delmarva Peninsula, Cherokee, Lenape, and African American. Professor Welburn received a B.A. in both Psychology and English from Lincoln University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University.His research and teaching interests include ethnohistory of eastern Native America, cultural studies, and jazz studies. S. Tremaine Nelson spoke with Ron over the phone about poetry, New York City, and two authors whom they both very much admire, Ralph Ellison and Leslie Marmon Silko. Ron’s poems “Seeing in the Dark” and “When You Know a Hard Sky” appear in Issue 06 of The Common.

Review: In the Low Houses

May 5, 2014 Reviews

Book by HEATHER DOBBINS
Reviewed by SARAH WETZEL

In the Low Houses

Most of us have been damaged or done damage to someone we love. Perhaps we fell into an affair, abused alcohol or drugs, or turned our backs on commitment. Who has not awakened at three a.m. to find the grinning demon of shame at the foot of the bed? If we are honest, we acknowledge our fears and dependencies, discern our selfishness and jealousies.If we are lucky, we forgive and find some sort of redemption, hopefully without spending too many nights with our mouths to a half-empty bottle of bourbon. In Memphis poet Heather Dobbins’ first full-length collection of poetry, In the Low Houses, published this year by Aldrich Press, there is a bottle of bourbon. Also marriage, infidelity, and death. There are graves, literal and metaphorical, and if, as T.S. Eliot suggested, our only superiority to the past is that we can contain it and be enlarged by it, there is something good growing in Tennessee.

April 2014 Poetry Feature

April 23, 2014 Poetry

For this month’s poetry feature, we’re publishing five new poems from The Common print contributors.

On the Subway: the Comfort of Fingers Entwined

April 23, 2014 Dispatches

By MASHA HAMILTON

My mother’s last remaining sibling is dying, and quickly, it now seems. I received the call last night from my mom and exchanged emails this morning with my cousin but didn’t really have time to think about it until the subway ride in from Brooklyn to Grand Central this morning.She is walking, still, and planning a trip to the San Diego beach in June (it keeps Eros alive, my uncle once told me with a wink, and in a case of too-much-information to share with a niece) but one eye won’t quite open and her speech isn’t coming out correctly and the body of my aunt Stana seems to be collapsing, her skin folding over itself, in response to the cancer.

Searching the In-Between: Flight MH370 and the Emotional Landscape of the Missing

April 21, 2014 Essays, In House

By MELODY NIXON

clouds

Charlie Kaufman imagines a plane crash at the beginning of his semi-autobiographical film Adaptation; he envisions himself nonplussed while the passengers around him scream and fight each other for oxygen masks. I always imagine frantically writing an invariably optimistic goodbye note to my family as my plane descends – reassuring them, falsely or not, depending on the day, that I enjoyed what life I had. Almost anyone who’s flown in an aircraft has played a similar “What if we all die?” scenario in their minds, even if just half-consciously while watching the safety demonstration.