August 30, 2015 -- My article on poetry and neuroscience, from the John Clare Society Journal 33 (2014), Ed. Simon Kovesi:
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July 24, 2015 -- Check for events and readings at the Ron Paul Salutsky Amazon Author Page.
February 5, 2013 -- Check out Don Bogen's reading at The Warehouse. To read my introduction for this excellent poet, critic, and translator, see below.
January 29, 2013 -- If you missed my Warehouse reading with Kerry James Evans, or if you'd like a replay, click HERE.
December 5, 2012 -- Today my upper-division Article & Essay Technique students give a final reading of the essays they've been working on throughout the semester. This is always one of my favorite classes, so we've arranged to video the event. Check back soon for the link.
December 4, 2012 -- I'll be at The Warehouse at 8:00 to welcome Samuel Ligon, who'll read from his collection of short stories, Drift and Swerve.
November 27, 2012 -- With Charlie Beckerman I co-host a reading featuring C. Dale Young, MD. Dr. Young's reading is part of the Warehouse Reading Series, this time in cooperation with The Medical School at FSU, so we'll meet in the Thrasher College of Medicine Auditorium, 1115 West Call Street, from 8-9:00. If you accidentally end up at the Warehouse, be sure and check back here to remind yourself that you're in the wrong place.
Don Bogen Introduction -- 2/5/13:
Don Bogen is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati, and editor of the Cincinnati Review. A two-time Fulbright Senior Lecturer and Distinguished Scholar, first in Spain and then in Ireland, Don has published criticism, translations, and well over 100 poems, including a body of translations by the Spanish poet Julio Martinez Mesanza. He has four books of poems, the first from Wesleyan University Press in 1986, After the Splendid Display, and his most recent, titled An Algebra, with the University of Chicago Press, in 2009.
In his first book, After the Splendid Display, Bogen’s efficient syntax moves us swiftly across the globe, from “the raja’s parade grounds” in India to a narrow ledge in the 15th Century Szechuan Province, from the “sun / squinting through a drift of frangipani” in Bob Marley’s Jamaica, through a German market where “Johannes Brahms brought Schubert’s calf” to a balcony in Pasadena, California, where “Her man-sized pet / gorilla got loose and romped among the bungalows / a scandalous week."
In his first book, the speaker’s identity inhabits different moments in time, whereas in his most recent book, An Algebra, different moments in time seem to inhabit a speaker’s identity, where “the green blue of ocean, the white blue of sky” fixes itself as memory’s backdrop then dissipates as quickly into broken images of Midwestern industrial decay, as in his poem “Edge.” Bogen writes,
The edge is something you can’t see across
Burnt-out refineries on the rim of a winter city
Trainyards, coal piles, empty pre-fab warehouses
No people but a clutter of abandonment
Against a straight blank sky
I mention these then-and-now distinctions because it’s not often you’ll find a poet willing to bridge the ideological divide in American poetry, call it difficult versus accessible, elliptical versus narrative, or whatever you like. What Don Bogen shows us is that the best poems of either school have more in common than not, that is, that language and image trump form and politics, that as in the field of algebra, division is simply a vehicle for balance, that as 21st century poets and readers, in terms of ideology, in terms of identity, in terms of culture, our responsibility may well be defined as the bringing together of broken parts. Ladies and gentlemen, Don Bogen.
February 5, 2013 -- Check out Don Bogen's reading at The Warehouse. To read my introduction for this excellent poet, critic, and translator, see below.
January 29, 2013 -- If you missed my Warehouse reading with Kerry James Evans, or if you'd like a replay, click HERE.
December 5, 2012 -- Today my upper-division Article & Essay Technique students give a final reading of the essays they've been working on throughout the semester. This is always one of my favorite classes, so we've arranged to video the event. Check back soon for the link.
December 4, 2012 -- I'll be at The Warehouse at 8:00 to welcome Samuel Ligon, who'll read from his collection of short stories, Drift and Swerve.
November 27, 2012 -- With Charlie Beckerman I co-host a reading featuring C. Dale Young, MD. Dr. Young's reading is part of the Warehouse Reading Series, this time in cooperation with The Medical School at FSU, so we'll meet in the Thrasher College of Medicine Auditorium, 1115 West Call Street, from 8-9:00. If you accidentally end up at the Warehouse, be sure and check back here to remind yourself that you're in the wrong place.
Don Bogen Introduction -- 2/5/13:
Don Bogen is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati, and editor of the Cincinnati Review. A two-time Fulbright Senior Lecturer and Distinguished Scholar, first in Spain and then in Ireland, Don has published criticism, translations, and well over 100 poems, including a body of translations by the Spanish poet Julio Martinez Mesanza. He has four books of poems, the first from Wesleyan University Press in 1986, After the Splendid Display, and his most recent, titled An Algebra, with the University of Chicago Press, in 2009.
In his first book, After the Splendid Display, Bogen’s efficient syntax moves us swiftly across the globe, from “the raja’s parade grounds” in India to a narrow ledge in the 15th Century Szechuan Province, from the “sun / squinting through a drift of frangipani” in Bob Marley’s Jamaica, through a German market where “Johannes Brahms brought Schubert’s calf” to a balcony in Pasadena, California, where “Her man-sized pet / gorilla got loose and romped among the bungalows / a scandalous week."
In his first book, the speaker’s identity inhabits different moments in time, whereas in his most recent book, An Algebra, different moments in time seem to inhabit a speaker’s identity, where “the green blue of ocean, the white blue of sky” fixes itself as memory’s backdrop then dissipates as quickly into broken images of Midwestern industrial decay, as in his poem “Edge.” Bogen writes,
The edge is something you can’t see across
Burnt-out refineries on the rim of a winter city
Trainyards, coal piles, empty pre-fab warehouses
No people but a clutter of abandonment
Against a straight blank sky
I mention these then-and-now distinctions because it’s not often you’ll find a poet willing to bridge the ideological divide in American poetry, call it difficult versus accessible, elliptical versus narrative, or whatever you like. What Don Bogen shows us is that the best poems of either school have more in common than not, that is, that language and image trump form and politics, that as in the field of algebra, division is simply a vehicle for balance, that as 21st century poets and readers, in terms of ideology, in terms of identity, in terms of culture, our responsibility may well be defined as the bringing together of broken parts. Ladies and gentlemen, Don Bogen.
