for writers at Boston University and beyond
May 11, 2009 at 1:50 PM
Now that the blog is up and running, we would like to encourage commenting, especially on other people’s work, and especially if you have something useful to say. We think it’s important that the atmosphere of useful criticism continue on into your after-program lives.
Apparently commenters need to be approved prior to submitting comments. I’m going to remove that feature, as long as everyone promises to play nicely. Remember, it’s only fun until someone loses an eye.
May 7, 2009 at 2:26 PM
The Ponds of Boston
Some pitted by rain like spotted mirrors, others
green and smoky as Venetian glass,
choked with weeds and hidden
in the woods; some shallow as the palm
of a hand, and clear to the bottom, bright
with koi; still others dark and turbid, stirred
from underneath; some salty to the taste
like tears, brittle surfaces on which the water lily
and the hyacinth unfold, proliferate-
(and if a church bell were to strike, they would
shatter like a pane of glass-)
Across Chandler's Pond, the medieval
stone towers of Boston College. In a darkened
room, a student reads about the future
from the past, his life shining quietly within him
like a lamp turned low-the brief
gleam of a flashlight, the cottages
reflected in the water, afraid almost
of themselves.
Taylor Altman was born and raised on Long Island. A graduate of Stanford University and the Creative Writing Program at Boston University, she currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she works for QuestBridge, a non-profit program that connects low-income students with scholarship opportunities. Her first book, Swimming Back, was recently published by Sunnyoutside Press, and her poems are forthcoming in Salamander and Silk Road.
May 6, 2009 at 4:57 PM
Lapeyrouse
From my grandfather on,
my family was supposed to be
buried in Lapeyrouse Cemetery
across from Queen Victoria Square
in Trinidad. Back there,
there's no family mausoleum.
I remember his grave,
shoots of grass from between stones,
the corners of the cross blunted,
and the too narrow street
wide enough only for a brougham
passing at his feet,
at sunset, the chipped curb
paled to a dull tropical concrete grey.
After only ten years, the sea-salted air
was already eroding his name's inscription
and birth date, so illegible
light flattened the stone's face.
Only ten years!
No one has died since he died
in nineteen seventy-four,
except his mother.
Half of his children are here in America,
my father among them.
My father hasn't discussed where
his and my mother's burial should be,
or his brothers',
or any new family plot,
or whether they'd be flown back
to be buried in Trinidad.
Cost will make that decision.
My father hasn't even made his will yet!
Doubtless, his two sisters
and their families, and his two brothers
and their families, and his mother, who all stayed
back, will be buried
back there in Lapeyrouse
alongside my grandfather.
For his children, it's different:
our lives were lived more here
in America and less there.
My sister has her own family
and certainly will be buried
beside her husband
in Florida, where his father died;
he's already purchased plots
and even hopes to move to Florida,
soon! I have neither wife nor child.
I've played with the idea
of cremation and having my ashes
thrown into the Atlantic that beaches
both countries.
My grandfather's grave, I recall,
looked too small.
It lies in a rehabbed cemetery,
a block up from which still is
the Electric Ice Factory
and, next to that, Trinidad & Tobago Electricity
Commission, with its black-rimmed
steel towers that had in bold
black letters T&TEC;
they've been repainted POWERGEN.
Nigel Assam received his M.A. from Boston University's Creative Writing Program and has been working in publishing ever since. He is currently studying for an M.S. in Marketing. Having spent his childhood in Trinidad, he is not as widely published as he'd like to be.
May 5, 2009 at 4:25 PM
Two new editions of The Wind in the Willows appeared this week, one of them a scholarly, annotated edition by Creative Writing alumna Annie Gauger, who earned her MA here in 1999, and went on to the Editorial Institute to complete her PhD in the early 2000s. Both new editions of the classic childrens' story were reviewed in the Boston Globe yesterday, and Gauger's seems to have come out on top.
Writes Katherine Powers for the Globe, "Gauger more than Lerer investigates the possible origins of the novel's characters and settings. She provides illustrations of a number of grand piles upon which Toad Hall might have been modeled. She describes the Fifth Duke of Portland's weird underground establishment, which could, in part, have inspired Badger's ancient dwelling - though both she and Lerer acknowledge the importance of Grahame's fascination with buried ruins. And both editors note that Grahame himself has been fingered for Badger, but Gauger goes on to quote C.S. Lewis's encomium: 'Consider Mr. Badger - that extraordinary amalgam of high rank, coarse manners, gruffness, shyness, and goodness. The child who has once met Mr. Badger has ever afterwards in its bones a knowledge of humanity and of English social history which it could not get in any other way.'"
Congratulations to Annie. This new edition has been many years in the making. To read the full text of the article, click here.
May 4, 2009 at 3:24 PM
Alessandra Gelmi's (GRS 1999) new book, Ring of Fire: Collected Poems 1972-2008 is now out from Publish America.
May 4, 2009 at 2:12 PM
Hello, Creative Writing community. Welcome to our first entry on the crwr blog. This page is here to serve you in whatever way it/I/we can. At the moment, we're preparing to slowly say goodbye to the outgoing class, that is the class of 2009. A few of these have already handed in their theses and are on track to walk at commencement in another two weeks, if they choose to do so. (If you do, don't forget the cap and gown.)
A few others, it should be noted, have been named our first Robert Pinsky Global Fellows, and will be leaving Boston for Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Patagonia, and Greenland. Good luck to all of you, congratulations, and bon voyage!
