] Outside The Lines [

“this threadbare beauty / the ribs of the disaster / curving their assertion / among the tentative haunters.”

chrismhennessy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:41:30 +0000

Is there much better than this? Adrienne Rich, you do it so powerful, and make it look so easy. I want to memorize this.

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

Harold Norse’s “To the Hustler”

chrismhennessy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:02:53 +0000

A blogger posts a Harold Norse poem! Not many folks know about Norse, but he’s likely going to be one of the poets I study for my diss. The blogger writes, “’To the Hustler,’” [Norse's poem] always keeps me on my toes because the poem is not strong enough to hold a powerful message, or hold onto emotion. The poem searches for it — desperately searches — the search is heartbreaking.” I’m not sure if the blogger thinks the poem is purposefully failing in its search, or not but in any case click on over to read the poem and judge for yourself.

“One element that has remained consistent is my identity as a politicized person.” — Rigoberto Gonzalez

chrismhennessy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:57:09 +0000

If we identify as a person is important, is how we identify as a writer important? Less so? More so? Here’s an interview with essayist, memoirist, poet, and editor Rigoberto Gonzalez, who describes his background this way: ” I was born in California, raised in Michoacán, educated in Spanish, and then English when my family returned to the U.S. when I was ten. I come from three generations of migrant farm workers, grape pickers mostly, and until I left for college I spent summers working alongside my family harvesting grape, onion, and green beans. As you can appreciate, our working class perception of the arts was enriched with folk music, Catholicism, and storytelling. I grew up with a strong sense of myself as a Mexican, and later, in college, as a Chicano and a gay man. One element that has remained consistent is my identity as a politicized person. My family was always willing to participate in boycotts and labor strikes. The good fight is the single sensibility I have kept sacred all these years. There was also familial conflict, of course, and not much freedom in a crowded household that resorted to physical and verbal abuse as a way of channeling the frustrations that came with poverty and exhaustion.”

Check out this particular moment and then dive in to the rest:

Interviewer: Taking into account the current renascent politics of American nativism and the general anti-Latino atmosphere most exemplified by Arizona’s and Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant-laws and the intentional or unintentional exclusion of Latino/as from all other aspects of the broader culture, literature included (take for example the long overdue recognition of Latino/a poets in Eduardo C. Corral’s recent winning of the YaleSeries of Younger Poets Award and a Whiting Writers’ Award) what is the role of a Latino/a writer in our times?

RG: I prefer to identify as a gay Chicano. I also embrace other terms, like queer and Latino. I think it’s important to celebrate all of this language as an antidote to the hostility, derision and fear that others are attaching to them. A writer is an activist and a citizen, and has a responsibility beyond the poem, story or novel to participate in the political arena. For some of us that means picketing and organizing protests, others take to the pen or the computer and articulate positions through essays and editorials, and some perform that activism through the classroom as teachers. Activism is defined by the individual. I understand not everyone is willing to accept the challenge, but I sure as hell know that everyone can. In any case, this is an old argument and usually the only ones who speak up are the ones who want to negate that premise for selfish reasons. At the very least, people who do not want to participate in these conversations should please cease from making such comments as “I don’t want to be known as a Chicano writer” or “I don’t want to be known as a gay writer.” We need role models, not cowards.

A conversation between snow men and women at www.poetryfoundation.org

chrismhennessy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:27:25 +0000

I’m so excited to be teaching a 10-week master’s poetry at Grub Street that starts today! Before we workshop, we will be talking about this poem and this more recent poem, both of which deal in some way with winter. Check ‘em out. You may have read one of them before! I think you’ll find there’s an amazing conversation going on between them. And for a prompt, if time, I’m asking students to write a poem that begins or ends in “winter” but begins or ends in someplace else entirely.

Franco’s Broken Tower trailer (Hart Crane)

chrismhennessy — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:21:36 +0000

Reading announcement: BLACKSMITH!

chrismhennessy — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:51:55 +0000

I’ve been holding on to this information for a while now, but no longer. I’m bursting! I am privileged to be reading at historic Blacksmith House Poetry Series this spring! MARCH 19! I’ll be reading with the wonderful Rebecca Morgan Frank. If you’re local, or even if you’re not ( ;-0) I hope you can make it! I’ve been dreaming of this for a long time! Of course, I’ll be reading work from…

Love-In-Idleness, by Christopher Hennessy

“Christopher Hennessy gets the rhythm right, the timbre right, and the heart-sense right. Every detail is in place, and the whole ensemble sings. There’s hard labor behind these poems—in Oscar Wilde’s sense, and in Emily Dickinson’s. (Did Emily talk about hard labor? Indirectly, yes.) Wise about words and about the world, Hennessy’s poems cut no corners, though they are full of the melancholy wisdom that hides in coverts, closets, hope-chests, crevices, and other concealed places. I praise Hennessy’s talent, his ardor-packed process, and the shapeliness of the results.”

—WAYNE KOESTENBAUM

Recovering

chrismhennessy — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:44:14 +0000

I’m finally in a place to start recovering and thinking through my qualifying exams (orals) that took place in Dec. (I passed!) I wrote my ‘exams’ and then talked to my committee about the gay historical imagination and identity formation, the role of the public/private space in the process, and the nature of gay historicizing as a backwards glance. The original readings I did were on O’Hara, James Schuyler and Harold Norse.

So I’ve been looking at some of the quotes/info. I ended up NOT using. Here’s a nice nugget.

“The homosexual had to discover that one’s native language was not one’s own. It could not be trusted as an instrument of desire or assertion or self-definition. What an interesting discovery. What terror and what richness. One had to understand instinctively the often treacherous meaning behind the culture’s simplest norms and pervasive rituals. One had to rely on interpretation and tone; for gay people, inflection was required. The translation of the felt language of love and custom was something homosexuals understood by doing without. The possibility that it was all lies, as it felt to him, enters early into the gay soul.”

Robert Dawidoff, “In My Father’s House there Are Man Closets,” Making History Matter (86)

Poetry on the Kindle

chrismhennessy — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:33:44 +0000

Did you know Love-In-Idleness is available on the Kindle? I got a Kindle for Christmas and am loving it, surprisingly so. (Of course you can always get buy a copy here too.) Am I being too subtle?

What do you think about poetry on the Kindle/ebooks? Here’s what Billy Collins had to say a year ago. I think it’s changed for the better! I’ve had a few folks tell me they’ve bought the book as a Kindle version and have enjoyed it!

Assaracus

chrismhennessy — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:12:18 +0000

I’m a proud subscriber of Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry. Got my issue 5 yesterday. Can’t wait to dig in. You should subscribe! I opened up at random to find Erik Schuckers sumptuous “Aubade for a Closet Case” and the really beautiful and accomplished “Requiem for a Jock.” So happy Bryan Borland has created this space for us! Cheers!

Some Love-In-Idleness Love

chrismhennessy — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:06:31 +0000

It’s been a little more than three months since the publication of my debut book, Love-In-Idleness. It’s been a truly wonderful three months, with many friends and family and strangers reaching out to me. I feel incredibly lucky. So to all of you who I’m talking to, THANK YOU. (And special thanks to Wayne Koestenbaum, D.A. Powell, Martha Rhodes, and David Trinidad for their blurbs and to all the folks at Brooklyn Arts Press.)

But I also know this space might be new to some folks who are finding their way here. So, I want to say welcome to you, and to let you know more about my book, in the hopes that it interests you:

“Shifting intuitively between youthful belligerence, the individualization of collective myths, and portraits of erotic maturity and angst, Christopher Hennessy’s debut collection of poetry, Love-In-Idleness, commits itself to lyrical explorations underpinned by a sharp and honest introspection. These poems forget themselves, undulate, embrace the actual, dissolve and regroup in their efforts to detail moments of sustained interruption and desire. Here you will find a study of the vivisection of a Midwestern family, a soliloquy from the lover of a Han Dynasty emperor, the re-imagined death of Saint Sebastian, a steamy appropriation of Satie’s humorous score notes, an admirer’s courting of Carl Linnaeus, and the impending finality of a deathbed vigil. Together they announce the arrival of a gifted new voice in American poetry. “

Please visit BAP’s website to learn more—and to see videos of me reading some poems close to my heart!