In Print

The Fall 2007 issue of Tar River Poetry was published on December 5th.  The journal features reviews of books by Rebecca McClanahan and Gregory Djanikian; poems by award-winning poets William Trowbridge and Susan Meyers, among others; and a cover photo taken by Leanne E. Smith. Tar River Poetry is edited by Luke Whisnant; Assistant Editors are graduate students Arrie Brown and Dean Tuck.  For more information, see:  http://core.ecu.edu/engl/trp/

Resa Crane Bizzaro's review of American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic edited by Ernest Stromberg and published by U of Pittsburgh P (2006) appeared in the most recent issue of the Journal of Advanced Composition.  According to the publisher: "The book examines the complex and sophisticated efforts of American Indian writers and orators to constructively engage an often hostile and resistant white audience through language and other symbol systems."

Ellen Arnold's review of  James H. Cox's Muting White Noise: Native American and European American Novel Traditions published by U of Oklahoma P (2006) appears on H-Net online.  Arnold writes: "James Cox takes the title of his book from Sherman Alexie, for whom 'white noise,' the static that remains on a television after broadcasting ends, represents 'the oppressive noise of white mass-produced cultures, the loud demand to conform to the invader's cultural belief system or be destroyed.'  Cox takes 'white noise' to signify a broad history of colonial domination and erasure, which Alexie and the other novelists he considers write to resist."  For a full-text, please see: H-Net  H-Net, Humanities and Social Sciences Online, is "[a]n international consortium of scholars and teachers, H-Net creates and coordinates Internet networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. H-Net is committed to pioneering the use of new communication technology to facilitate the free exchange of academic ideas and scholarly resources."  Also, Arnold's review of two books by Allison Adele Hedge Coke -- Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival published by U of Nebraska P (2004) and Off-Season City Pipe published by Coffee House P (2005) -- appears in American Indian Quarterly 31.2 (2007).  Allison Adele Hedge Coke is a Native American poet, writer, storyteller, mentor and educator.

Pat Bizzaro's review article, "Poetry and Intelligence: A Reading of Chitwood, Franklin, and Root" was published in Asheville Poetry Review 14.1 (2007) and discusses the work of Michael Chitwood of UNC-Chapel Hill, Jeffrey Franklin of the University of Colorado, Denver, and William Pitt Root of the University of Northern Colorado.  William Pitt Root's latest White Boots: New and Selected Poems of the West (2006) is available from Carolina Wren Press.  Root's poetry has been translated into 20 languages, and his poems have been broadcast over the Voice of America and Liberation Radio.  Franklin's latest book of poetry For the Lost Boys (2006) is available from Ghost Road Press, and Michael Chitwood's latest book From Whence: Poems (2007) is available from Louisiana State U P.

Leanne E. Smith's article "North Carolina Wine: A Growing Business" appeared in the Fall 2007 "Wineries and Vineyards of The Inner Banks" theme issue of The IBX Newsletter: Your Inner Banks News Source. Smith writes: "The wine potential of North Carolina's abundant native grapes impressed the area's early European explorers.  Giovanni de Verrazano, who traveled the Cape Fear region in 1524, and Sir Walter Raleigh's captains, Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, who explored the outer and inner banks areas from their Roanoke Island base in 1584, all reported masses of vines laden with wild grapes that would likely make good wine. Their prediction was correct."  Also, two articles by Smith appeared as the "From the Classroom" feature in East, ECU's alumni magazine --  "Teaching Students to Serve," an interview with English professor Reginald Watson, was published in the Fall 2007 issue, and "The Doctor of Dogfish," an interview with biology professor Roger Rulifson, is in the Winter 2008 issue.

James Matthew Wilson's "Poetic Jansenism: Religious and Political Representation in Denis Devlin's Poetry" appears in Eire-Ireland 42: 3-4 (Fall/Winter 2007).  According to the Irish-American Cultural Institute: "... Eire Ireland is the leading forum in the flourishing field of Irish Studies.  Since 1966, Eire-Ireland has published a wide range of imaginative work and scholarly articles from all areas of the arts, humanities, and social sciences relating to Ireland and Irish America."  Also, Wilson's "Traces of the Fugitive Gods," a review of Bill Coyle's The God of This World to His Prophet published by Ivan R. Dee (2006) and Joshua Mehigan's The Optimist published by Ohio U P (2004) appears in The Dark Horse 21 (Winter 2007/2008).  According to the publisher: "The sixth winner of the annual New Criterion Poetry Prize is Bill Coyle's The God of This World to His Prophet.  Mr. Coyle's first collection of poems spans the divide between the minutely considered trappings of an often hard-bitten and desolate world and the larger, more elusive questions of belief.  Shifting easily through registers of sober reflection, gentle satire, and even outright humor, his poems encompass landscape and dramatic situation with equal skill.  Also included are a number of poems translated from the Swedish that dovetail seamlessly with the author's own sensibility and concerns." Also, from the publisher: "Nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The Optimist stares at contemporary darkness visible, a darkly lit tableau that erases the boundary between the world and the perceiving self. Whether narrative or lyric, dramatic or satirical, Mehigan's poems explore death, desire, and change with a mixture of reason and compassion. There are echoes in The Optimist of Frost, Robinson, Kees, and Justice; and more in terms of point of view, Bishop and Jarrell. In Joshua Mehigan's award-winning poetry, one encounters a lucid, resolute vision driven by an amazing facility with the metrical line. Most of the poems in The Optimist unapologetically employ traditional poetic technique, and, in each of these, Mehigan stretches the fabric of living language over a framework of regular meter to produce a compelling sonic counterpoint."

Also, Wilson's "Explaining the Modernist Joke: W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, and Letters from Iceland," appears in Contemporary Poetry Review (October 2007), and his essay "Our Steps amid a Ruined Colonnade: Chapters on Contemporary Poetry and the Academy, Part II: Expansive Poetry and Its Discontents," appears in Contemporary Poetry Review (September 2007). Wilson's poems "The Vineyard Dinner: A Retrospect" and "Alone, Far from the New Yorker" were published in the online journal Lucid Rhythms (December 2007).