New poems published from forthcoming ms.

Thanks to New Bedford Poet Laureate and good friend, John Landry, for choosing two of my new poems from "If the radiance of a thousand suns": Songs of the American Hiroshima to appear in Billy Finnegan's forthcoming . . . Like This journal. Contributors include Jack Hirschman, Sharon Doubiago, and Sarah Menefee, among others.

Hope to have more publication information in the coming weeks. First section of the galleys are currently being typeset.

Ed

Heading to VA Beach to record a poetry audiobook

All of a sudden, things have started to really cook. Not only have I just sent the first portion of the American Hiroshima ms. to the editors, but a friend of mine from Goddard has arranged for me to record a poetry audiobook at a VA Beach studio the end of July. We plan to lay down around 10-15 tracks with selections from solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short and American Hiroshima (more details on specific track selections to follow).

I have to work up a title and cover art before then (or shortly thereafter) and will post more information (including price and availability) as the project takes shape.

In the next few months, Mitch James is interviewing me on American Hiroshima, which will run in a forthcoming edition of Quay. (see quayjournal.org in the coming weeks for more information).

_American Hiroshima_ publication news

It's hard to believe, but the first part of my forthcoming poetry ms. "If the radiance of a thousand suns": Songs of the American Hiroshima goes to the publisher tomorrow. The publisher and I decided to stagger the workload and typeset in installments. This helps me out actually (and moves up the release date targets by about six months, from Q1 2009 to sometime in the fall of this year) and allows me to keep ahead on the edits for sections II and III.

Needless to say, I'm very excited about this project. A few close friends who have seen the preliminary galleys have expressed equal amounts of enthusiasm and anticipation. Once I have more information in terms of cost, release date, and release part(ies), I'll be sure to post here.

Also, news on Germany will be forthcoming this week (once I've had a chance to breathe!)

First leg of trip to Germany

I've arrived and checked in at Pittsburgh International. The first part of the itinerary involves a connecting flight from here to Newark, where I layover for about four hours. At 7:25 p.m., I depart for Frankfurt with a scheduled arrival of 9:25 a.m. Sunday. It wouldn't be so bad if the trip came to a conclusion there, but unfortunately I have to layover once more and then catch a train from Frankfurt to Dortmund. This will place me in Dortmund somewhere around 3 p.m., Frankfurt time (6 hours ahead of the States).

I brought my new digital camera with me and plan to document the trip as it unfolds. Check out this list of activities for the week:


Monday, 16 June 2008
Whitman Seminar

9:00 am-Noon
Welcome & Introduction

Course Session 1:
Watching and Discussing the new PBS Film, Walt Whitman

Room 0.406, Emil-Figge 50
12:30-1:30 pm
Lunch Mensa

2:00-3:30 pm
Campus Tour

Meet in front of Emil-Figge 50
4:30-5:30 pm
Reception
Eberhard Becker, Rektor
Hans Peters, Associate Dean

Erich -Brost-Haus, Atrium, Campus Nord

The wine served at the reception are from Weingut Wittmann,
an organic vintner to the south of Mainz
www.wittmannweingut.com

6:00-9:00 pm
Course Session II:
The First Edition of Leaves of Grass: Beginning the Book, Singing the Self

Plenary Rm. 0.406, Emil-Figge 50
Group Sessions Rms. 0.406, 2.512, 3.406, 3.312

Tuesday, 17 June 2008
Whitman Seminar

Exploring Dortmund

Starting at the U-Bahn stop Stadthaus at 10 a.m. (upstairs), this tour will take you through the Stade­wäldchen, a park established by one of Dortmund’s former beer-brewers in the 1920s, into the Westfalenpark, one of the largest inner-city parks in Europe. From on-top of Dortmund’s television tower “Florian” you will have a great view not only across Dortmund but also beyond the city limits into the Ruhr Valley. Afterwards we will take the subway to Dortmund harbor in the the colorful multicultural North of Dortmund. On the way to the city center, we’ll encounter many interesting sights and peculiarities of Dortmund. The tour will end with a lunch at Café Max.

4:30-5:30 pm
Whitman Resource Session: Maria Clara Paro-Bonetti (São Paulo), Whitman in Brasil

Rm. 3.311, Emil-Figge 50
6:00-9:00 pm
Course Session III: The 1856 Edition of Leaves: Expanding the Book, Composing Songs

Plenary Rm. 0.406
Group Rms. 0.406, 2.512, 0.512, 3.406

9:30 pm Poetry Reading by Edward Carvalho (PA)
Sissikingkong, Nordstadt

Wednesday, 18 June 2008
Whitman Seminar

Tour de Ruhr

The Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex is a large former industrial site in the city of Essen. It is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The parts built in Bauhaus style are considered architectural and technical masterpieces and earned the site a reputation as the “most beautiful coal mine in the world.” The visit will take the format of a photo safari under the Motto “Transition.” Participants will investigate the changes on this former industrial site as an example of the post-industrial transformation of the Ruhr region.
We will take the 9:45 am train to Essen (from the main station) and return around 2:30 pm.
4:30-5:30 pm

Whitman Resource Session:
Walter Grünzweig (Dortmund),
Whitman in German

Rm. 3.311, Emil-Figge 50
6:00-9:00 pm
Course Session IV:
The 1860 Edition of Leaves: Embodying Sex, Saving the Union

Plenary Rm. 0.406, Emil-Figge 50
Group Sessions Rms. 0.406, 2.512, 0.512, 3.406

Thursday, 19 June 2008
Whitman Seminar

Roman City or Green Hills – Cologne or Sauerland

Sea of Rocks – Felsenmeer in Hemer
The Sea of Rocks in Hemer in the Sauerland region is literally a land-mark. Riven by the tidal forces of prehistoric time and by ore mining industry since the Middle Ages, the area is now a nature reserve: the boulders have been reclaimed by a beech forest and a lively fauna, lending the name paradise to a part of it. With this, the Sea of Rock is a monumental natural and cultural landscape, about which local myths abound.

Visit to Cologne
For those interested in an historical urban space, a visit to Köln/Cologne will be offered.
5:00-5:45 pm
Whitman Resource Session:
Christine Gerhardt (Freiburg)
Whitman and Environmental
History

Rm. 3.311, Emil-Figge 50

6:00-9:00 pm
Course Session V:
The Civil War: Abandoning Leaves, Re-Centering Leaves

Plenary Rm. 0.406, Emil-Figge 50
Group Sessions Rms. 0.406, 2.512, 0.512, 3.406


Friday, 20 June 2008
Whitman Seminar
Whitman Symposium

9:00 am-Noon
Course Session VI: Reconstruction and Beyond: Defining the Democratic Future, Answering Whitman

Rm. 0.406, Emil-Figge 50
12:00 -2:00 pm
Lunch at Mensa
3:00 pm Symposium Opening
Senatssitzungssaal South Campus

3:30-4:45 pm
Melissa L. Olson (Dortmund): “Apocalyptic Anxiety and the Neue Mensch: German Expressionists ‘Paint back’ to Whitman”

Dara Barnat (Tel Aviv): “Whitman and Holocaust Poetry: The Case of Irving Feldman’s ‘The Pripet Marshes’”

Asya Altuğ (Izmir): “Fragmented Personas: Walt Whitman and Can Yucel”

4:45-5:00 pm Break

5:00-5:45 pm Discussion

7:30 pm
Whitman Week Party for
Seminar & Symposium
Participants

Walter Grünzweig’s home
Gustavstraße 8

Saturday, 21 June 2008
Whitman Symposium

9:00-10:10 am
Jeanne Cortiel (Bochum): “Devising Public Selves: Frederick Douglass Meets Walt Whitman"
Rachel Blumenthal (Chicago), “Capt­ive Representations: Figuring Native American Identi­ties in Whitman’s ‘The Sleepers’ & Sherman Alexie’s ‘Captivity’”
10:10-10:40 am Break
10:40-11:50 am
Delphine Rumeau (Paris), “A duet « al alimón »: from Whit­man’s Songs to Garcia Lorca and Neruda’s Odas”
Ed Carvalho (Indiana, PA): “’I contain multitudes’: Deconstruct­ing Whitmanian Inheritance in the Poetics of Martín Espada”
12:00-2:00 pm
Lunch at student bistro Sonnendeck or flea market

2:00-2:40 pm
Jacob Nelson Wilkenfeld (Chapel Hill): “‘The Pains of Hell Are With Me’: T. R. Hummer’s Walt Whitman in Hell”

2:45-3:45 pm
Ed Folsom (Iowa City) and Kenneth Price (Lincoln) on the Whitman Archive Translation Project

3:45-4:15 pm Break
4:15-6:30 pm Business Meeting TWWA

Suggested evening activity:
Midsummer Night of Industrial Culture
This Ruhr-wide all-night open-air event features extraordinary cultural performances and multi-media installations in more than 40 mines, industrial production sites and museums, and highlights the uniqueness of the region's historical heritage. For more information: www.extraschicht.de

Sunday, 22 June 2008

9:00-10:10 am
Vanessa Steinrötter (Lincoln): “Walt Whitman, the ‘Soul of America’?: Seeing the American Bard through the Eyes of His German Translators”

Marta Skwara (Szczecin): “Whitman’s ‘Miracles’ as Read, Translated, and Performed by Polish Poets”

10:10-10:30 am Break

10:30-12 pm Final Discussion & Conclusion of Conference.

12 pm Lunch and Departure

The Walt Whitman Week
International Walt Whitman Seminar & Symposium, 16 -22 June 2008, Dortmund
Sponsored by the Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association (TWWA) and TU Dortmund University

Off to Germany!

I fly to Germany on Saturday for the first International Whitman Week Seminar and Symposium! A copy of the itinerary arrived in my Inbox the other day, and I must say that the week is filled with a wide variety of activities that include not only Whitman-specific events, but also tours of Dortmund and the surrounding areas. Provided I can recover from the jet lag, I expect to take full advantage of all this trip has to offer.

I'll try to remember to post pics here when possible.

Look for me in another time zone.

Mentioned on the Dortmund University page

Gearing up for Germany, and in the process of doing so, found the following on the University of Dortmund page.

"Edward Carvalho, for example, currently completing a doctoral thesis on Whitman in Pennsylvania, will read from his own poetry in the Dortmund’s funky Nordstadt."

Click here for more information.

Truly an honor to be named among such scholars as Ed Folsom and Betsy Erkkila.

On another note, I must again apologize for the long silence (already violating my New Year's resolution to blog more). I am currently wrapping up work on the forthcoming Society for Critical Exchange issue of Works and Days, and simultaneously working on the first third of my guest-edited volume on Academic Freedom and Intellectual Activism in the Post-9/11 University. My interviews with Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, and Martin Espada have all been transcribed and are in the proofing stages. By next week, we should be moving these and other pieces from Henry Giroux, Eric Cheyfitz, Sophia McClennen, Michael Bérubé, and David Beard to galleys.

Before heading to Germany (June 14-June 23), I have to get a leg-up on the Whitman reading for the seminar and prep my College Writing syllabus for the fall semester at the same time. It seems like this year is already flying by at a ridiculous pace and there's just no shortage of things I have to address. All rewarding work, but exhausting, nonetheless! At least with Germany I'll have the opportunity to see some new terrian and, more than likely, gain some new perspectives. I've been trying to think of it as a "working vacation," with heavy emphasis on the latter portion of that phrase.

_Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull_ review

Under no circumstances should you pay full price to see this movie--matinee it or wait for video. I went to see _Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull_ with some friends last night and left feeling as though I just watched a spoof of the three prior _Raiders_ films on record. I don't know that I can muster anything positive to say about this incarnation (other than the great ILM effect work on the nuclear blast scene [yes, there was even a nuclear moment in this film] and culminating scene of the Mayan ruins' ruination), so consider yourself, dear reader, forewarned.

Frankly, the only thing the film didn’t have was a Satanic cult, and/or cameos from O.J. Simpson, Pee-Wee Herman, or Jerry Springer. The unbelievably ludicrous segues of swashbuckling astride jeeps, Tarzan-vine swinging (not kidding here), gone-once-to-the-well-and-can’t-go-back-again scene recreations from previous Indy films (not entertaining to see Harrison Ford invoke the fight with the German air mechanic from the first film. It was like watching my Grandfather tussle with the corpse of George Burns), and atrocious dialog, places this at the Mayan summit of the worst of the Jones’ films in the series. My friends and I _Mystery Science Theatered_ the film nearly the entire way through, laughing when inappropriate to do so and making snarky remarks in between candy-mouth snorts. It was that bad. Someone actually booed at the end, which I haven’t heard in some time. In short, this film made _Temple of Doom_ seem like _Gone With the Wind_.

I wish I could say to you that this was a “5-star 2.5 star film,” (much how the recent _Doomsday_ was described) but it would be mendacious to do so. Harrison Ford was a joke, and Shia LaBeouf? That kid trying to reenact Brando’s charisma from _ The Wild One_ is like trying to paint a garbage can and then rename it “recycle bin.” Appropriate that he quaffed his hair into a DA (that’s “Duck’s Ass” for the unhip), because that’s just about the extent of his swagger—yeah, I said it: LaBeouf came off a duck’s ass. To quote the former Governor of Texas, Anne Richards, who brings to mind another timely metaphor rooted in animalia—“You can put lipstick on a sow, but it’s still a pig.” After feeling like I had gone through a 2.5+ hour street-mugging (or perhaps feed from a trough) for my eight dollars, don’t I know it.

Just goes to prove my theories about the relationship between art and fat: the more money, the more success, the more laurels, the worse the aesthetic. It’s either that or something is in the water at the Presidio. Lucas, Spielberg, Ford, and others should be utterly embarrassed for the production of this film. I feel like sending them a longer version of this screed accompanied by the request for a refund.

Don’t cry to me after you pay hard-earned cash to see this one. Sit through this film and you get what you get.