Jerry Ward's Blogspot

 v TO HELL WITH THE CORRECTNESS OF BEING DEFENSIVE   Within the past 30 years, sundry writers slide openly or secretively into the posture of begging. It is a good signal that some younger writers ( those under 60) are again having fearless conversations about the sorrows and joys of writing and publishing in the United States of America.   Writing has seldom been easy.   And in 2021, the difficulty of putting the Self on the page has intensified.   It is a good signal that some younger writers differentiate defending the Self against attacks from the Self's being defensive for the sake of fitting in, of being acceptable.   The signal harkens back to essays in The Black Seventies (Boston: Porter Sargent Publisher, 1970), edited by Floyd B. Barbour.   Of special interest is "The Death of the Defensive Posture: Towards Grandeur in Afro-American Letters" by Lance Jeffers.   The "relentless kind of honesty" Jeffers championed is becoming more visible.   We

  The 48th Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, July 18-21, 2021   Unless they are planned with exceptional care, traditional ZOOM conferences often assault participants with tanks, dogs, and fire-hoses of   "political correctness."   This year's virtual Faulkner conference was planned   and executed with exceptional care.   The reason is not far to seek.   The theme ---"Faulkner, Welty, Wright: A Mississippi Confluence"---provided an opportunity to examine the spectrum of race in Mississippi   literary productions (including the conference itself as production and performance) without uttering the N-word that provokes fear, trembling, and linguistic/ psychological   guilt.   It is ironic, of course, that avoiding use of the N-word can magnify awareness that the word has been operative and continues to function in many sectors of American life.   One doesn't have to utter the word to know its location in America's powerful racial contract, to a

  On Stephen E. Henderson   "We as Black people don't have the luxury of abandoning interpretive criticism for the criticism of form."   From "Saturated Situations:   An Interview with Stephen Henderson. Obsidian 6.3 (Winter 1980: 82-92.     I interviewed Henderson on March 20, 1980 at Tougaloo College.   His comment about interpretive criticism is an integral part of my terms of engagement.   Henderson was speaking about practices in the academic world.   He knew, as he demonstrated in Understanding the   New Black Poetry, the importance of not slavishly following so-called mainstream   habits of analysis, especially dominated by varieties of Continental literary and cultural criticisms.   The interview revealed much about his scholarship, the remarkable power of his mind, and his commitment to making   criticism equipment for living.   It was crucial then that Black people should exercise independence in dealing with critical difference.   It is

  TODAY   It was a day that ought to be remembered, though you will not remember much about it come July 18, 2022.   You will recall delivering a keynote address "Faulkner, Welty and Wright" The Tragicomic Histories of Mississippi" for the 47th Annual Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference and a few of the questions from the ZOOM audience about Faulkner's 1945 letter to Wright, the meaning of "authority" when one talks about writers, and how to identify the tragic and the comic in the State of Mississippi in 2021.   You will recall some points in the keynote that preceded yours, Susan V. Donaldson's "Witnessing Jim Crow; The Mississippi Writers and the Politics of Invisibility."   You believe politics is ever a matter of visibility. You will recall Jay Watson's eloquent words as he introduced you. You will recall Natasha Trethewey's giving The Inaugural Ann J. Abadie Lecture in Southern Studies.   You will not reme

    THE STATE OF RAINBOW ABSURDITY   The just released National Urban League 2021 report on the "State of Black America" suggests we ought to make strong investments in seeking to understand the simultaneity of history as process and as multiple recordings (often contradictory) of the process.   We ought to focus on the sleight-of-hand involved in speaking of any group of American citizens as a collective.   Community and collectivity are not identical. We can have little certitude about anything other than uncertainty.   The NUL's current report addresses "The New Normal," which in my not-modest opinion is "The New Absurdity."   The minor flaw in the report is an absence of comments on Native Americas.   American citizens who profit most from manufacturing misery and suffering for large numbers of Black American citizens should at least have the decency to publish annual reports on the State of White America.   In a democracy,   it might be

  DICTATORS & SUB-ATOMIC PARTICULATE MATTERS   In a magic of film-- always never will be--- 1804 vanishes ---just another tragedy of the nun-black   symphony. Music /noise in sudden summer, a ballet of bullets in global bodies politic. Aesthesis of sound and nonsense and incense. Mercy abandons a night. Breath-destroying deeds publish themselves in the best papers to hold minds hostage, to make the making of coffee, cotton, tea and cane-crust runes   Kaufman sang in the ancient rain. Drum the ineffable of always never was. Dictators grow fatter and fatter to image what ears refuse to hear. In the underworld of things, billionaire skeletons pray salvation can be found in space. They are wrong of course. Poets faithfully dislocate that place. Sell them-- the dictators --   no dreams of ghost Diaspora, of gothic sublime, of pandemic traps. Permit them to swan-song demise--- sub-atomic particulate matters, signs of your cross--

  ON CONTEMPORARY POETRY   American society is so caught up in its obsession with poetry (poetries) that explanations of poetry are frequently hyper-subjective and a bit obtuse. Consider this case.   A writer claims that poetry is stylized language.   That   claim is   legitimate.   On the other hand, the writer's claim that poetry has four distinguishing elements----- 1) line length 2) sound 3) meter and/or rhythm 4) metaphor and simile ------ provokes skepticism.   Is not prose also an instance of stylized language when it exceeds the limits of "The lion roars" or "People make love"?   Should not images, which may combine three of the four elements ,   be considered a fifth element that bridges poetry and prose?   And is sound not a powerful link between poetry and music?   A limited description of what poetry is at any moment in human histories is counter-productive. In a democratic society,   just anyone can create poetry.   Democratic poet

  WHY DO I WRITE?   "Children stand under and understand the lemons of citrus   fears"     The question has upset my thinking for the last three days, so it might have some psychological gravity.   I am not anxious to address the gravity.   For thousands of years people first spoke and then wrote about the multiple environments (states of being-in-the-world they guess they inhabit.   In cultures where literacy dominate and deny validity to the oral, asking why do I write is trite.   People write.   Period. What is the profit of beating a dead mule?   In the age of the digital ( plus pandemic), the question assumes the guise of "the universal."    It matches the universality of the pandemic.   Why do you, I, and we write?   Select the pronouns with care.   The question "Why do I write circulates in the arena   of dialectics , in the territory of zero consensus, in traps that reject   justification .   I am a part of all that.   I writ