By Sybrina

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Rodriguez who is an amazing, humble person. He spoke of how he came to America to pursue his dreams and attended college. He spoke of the racial tensions he felt and still feels today in the way Americans view Latin American people. He felt embarrassed of his skin color and his ethnic background in his earlier years. In his book, Brown, he likens the Rio Grande to a stool sample stain on the American border. This profound metaphor speaks loudly of his experiences as a Latino in America. He made me squirm in my seat and humbled me. He spoke of how we are all the color brown and that America is not made up of Black and White people. There are brown people that have contributed to building this country, farming this country, and made it what it is today, yet they are exploited and treated as if they are stains upon our society. You could hear a pin drop when he spoke from his heart. He believes that modern technology is ruining our ability to communicate in language and how a letter, written by the hand, is so much more personal than a letter sent through cyberspace. We are all in a hurry and we don't take time to embrace what we have. He used Facebook as an example. If you are constantly updating your status on a social network, what else is there to talk about when you see your family and friends. It has all been said to the world. Writing properly, such as using correct grammar and punctuation is fading because of informal text messaging and words are now shortened to LOL or IDK. Our future rests on the generation we are raising now and it is scary. People don't even capitalize their names on forms anymore. Everything is informal. What will happen in the future if our language is lost? Are we so busy that we must lose that as well?

by Sybrina

by Sybrina

By: Scott

Naomi Shihab Nye once said, “A person does not become a poet. We are all born poets. A person will either remain a poet, or forget that they used to be one.” This was a connection to innocence. As a child, it is certain we all had our favorite poems. (likely Seuss, but that is a-okay in my book) A child has a connection to the wonder of the world that we should all be so jealous of.


As this pertains to Terrance Hayes, our audience was treated to his metamorphosis from a painter to a poet. He said he always though himself a better painter than poet, but I contend that even as a painter Mr. Hayes had always been a poet. He was a poet of the eyes and not of the ears, and in this way had always been a poet even from inception, or as the saying goes: (I’m a poet and didn’t know it.) Now that we get to hear what Terrance Hayes has to tell us as opposed to seeing what he wanted to show us, he has opened us up to what could be called a weeping art form. Hayes let us know a very delicate piece of self today. He had never seen a painting that made him weep. Poetry however, has got the better of him. So he decided to quit painting and go back to his first love, his childhood love, as Naomi Shihab Nye would tell us:


…poetry…


I for one, am grateful.

By: Scott

By: Scott

A little lead into this scenario before I begin this post.

If you've never been to the Athens campus, go. Go now. Now I may just be a small town guy but I'm well traveled, or, that is to say I'm not completely green. However, this campus is impressive. As a whole it is as large as the town in Oregon I grew up in; population 850. Knowing this you may wonder what possible claim I could lay to not being "green." Some other time for that.

The buildings are fanciful. I had never seen four escalators in a row to go up floors. We were on the third floor of Baker Center and the building was certainly impressive. I have photos but I don't have the ability to post them from my nook.

The architecture of the campus as well as the buildings themselves affected me, and last night as I slept in what was most assuredly the most comfortable hotel bed I have ever been on, (thank you, Ohio University Inn) I drempt. It went a little like this:

Last Night

Last night I met a new author
One of beauty
One of strength
One of youth
She shaved half her hair
And laid the other half
Back across the bristles
Of her artistic side
She roamed the halls
Of the conference
Hoping that someone would buy her books
One happened to be
Childrens' literature
As much as picture pages
Can be literature
She was counter-culture
She was hippie
She was sapphic
We stumbled into the same elevator
Of that spire of steel and stone
The cable snapped
And our box tumbled
Our bodies drifted weightless
Like a flight crew
Cresting a parabola
The containment shifted as if
There was no shaft
Just a free-falling elevator car
Floating
Like an icecube
Bouying in a glass.
Vodka?
Vermouth?
V-8?
We smashed on the sidewalk
I was strangely unharmed
Yet the girl was not
Her neck had snapped
The buildings were impressive
But a true architect
One of words, of ideas, of humanity
Was lost Last Night.

by Hayley

By: Scott

Oh,Terrance Hayes you sly dog. How dare you make me enjoy contemporary poetry! I grew up falling in love with the simple lines and delicate rythyms of Shel Silverstein. How dare you bring me into your world by pulling your world out of your pocket? Mr. Hayes presented himself behind the lectern garbed in a t-shirt emblazoned with the wonders of Orange Crush soda and invited me in to a hotel room occupied by himself, his father and his son. I am not ashamed to admit that I had to wipe clean a small patch of damp skin just above my cheekbone. Only just slightly damp.

I suspect it had never been published before. I can't go back and re-read it. I can't study it. He pulled it out from a little hidey-hole, this crumpled sheet of paper, unfolded it and then made me all soft. I've never wanted to rent a hotel room and spend the evening with my own father and son more so than I do just now. And if my own experience doesn't rhyme I might not even bitch about it.

Hello,


From Wednesday, May 9th to Friday, May 12th, six OU Southern students and alumni will be attending the Athens Spring Literary Festival. Check out their pictures and blog responses here during the event!


-- Hayley