| |
POG presents
February
19
Jena Osman:
a talk and roundtable discussion with poet Jena Osman
Saturday, February 19, 3pm,
Dinnerware Contemporary Art Gallery,
210 N. Fourth Ave., Tucson
Admission: $5; Students $3
Jena Osman, Tiffany MacFerrin,
Dawn Pendergast
Saturday, February 19, 7pm,
ORTSPACE,
121 E. 7th Street, Tucson (entry on east side of building, at alley door)
Admission: $5; Students $3
Jena Osman teaches in the graduate writing program at
Temple University. She has published six books of poetry: Jury (Meow
Press, 1996), Amblyopia (Avenue B, 1993), The Lab-Book (Poetics
Program at SUNY Buffalo, 1992), Balance (Leave Books, 1992),
Underwater Dive: Version One (Paradigm Press, 1990) and Twelve Parts of
Her (Burning Deck Press, 1989). Her poetry has also been anthologized in
The Art of Practice: Forty-Five Contemporary Poets, as well as
Subliminal Time and Writing From the New Coast: Presentation. She
is the co-editor (with Juliana
Spahr) of
Chain, a journal that investigates language in its various presentational
frames. Also see her online works:
Tiffany MacFerrin is an original Tucson specimen, guilty of subjecting
cohorts to spontaneous singing on the streets after a few beats of the wind in
her hair. She is too often having work to fun hard on her poetry, but come
hear, if you dare, what stars might explode in midair!
Dawn Pendergast is a second-year MFA student at
University of Arizona. She received her MA in Performance Studies at NYU and a
BS in Science, Technology, and Culture at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Recent collaborative projects include
She currently
teaches creative writing and works for the
University of Arizona Poetry
Center.
Abstract for the Roundtable Discussion
with Jena Osman:
Poet-critic Joan Retallack has described the poethical art form as "a form
of life in which we would, in our most enlightened moments, want to live —
[that] which makes the intricate complexity of the intersecting intentional
and accidental that is our world known to us through the sensory and
imaginative enactment of complex forms" ("Accident ...Aeroplane
...Artichoke"). I've been thinking about this concept in relation to a comment
Anne Waldman made a year or so ago at the Kelley Writers House in Philadelphia
about how now is a time of "outrageous metaphor and terrible misnomers," what
she called a kind of "interior terrorism." She said that the best thing we can
do right now as writers is study euphemism. Poet-critic Barrett Watten said in
a talk called "War=Language" that "We need to take the mechanized hardware of
the language of war apart — by locating alternate evidence in multiple media,
by questioning the pseudo-objectivity of its delusional conclusions, by
unpacking its embedded metaphors and narrative frames, by thinking otherwise."
There seemed to be a necessary hope that as writers, pointing to language
itself is a first step toward action. But in what ways is that pointing
poethical? Are there ways to critique the topical world, the world of events,
while at the same time providing alternative "poethical" forms? In other
words, in what ways can words in poems make war, and in what ways can they
make peace?
POG events are sponsored in part by grants from the
Tucson/Pima Arts Council,
the Arizona Commission on the Arts,
and the National Endowment for the Arts.
POG also benefits from the continuing support of
The University of Arizona Poetry
Center, the Arizona
Quarterly, Chax Press,
and The University of Arizona
Department of English.
thanks to our growing list
of 2004-2005 Patrons and Sponsors:
|
Corporate Patrons
Buffalo Exchange and
GlobalEye Systems
|
|
Individual Patrons Millie Chapin, Elizabeth Landry,
Allison Moore, Liisa Phillips, Jessica Thompson, , and Rachel Traywick
|
|
Corporate Sponsors
Antennae
a Journal of Experimental Poetry and
Music/Performance,
Bookman’s,
Chax Press, Jamba Juice,
Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions,
Kore Press,
Macy’s,
Reader’s Oasis, and
Zia Records
|
|
Individual Sponsors Suzanne Clores, Sheila Murphy,
and Desiree Rios
|
We're also grateful to hosts and programming partners
for further information
contact
POG: 615-7803,
pog@gopog.org
|