SewaneeLetters.com

photo by Stephen Alvarez

Congratulations to Mary Priestley, who has an essay about Lost Cove (the new, 3,000 acre addition to the Sewanee domain) in the current issue of The Tennessee Conservationist magazine.

We’ve lined up a lecture by Philip Weinstein from Swarthmore, a brilliant critic of modern fiction, for a talk about Faulkner. Weinstein is the author of two books on Faulkner, most recently Becoming Faulkner.

Later we’ll be hearing from David Hudgins, the screenwriter behind the (very well-written) television show Friday Night Lights, among others. David will be offering what he characterizes as a craft lecture.

On February 17 and 18 are the festivities surrounding the appearance of Donald Hall, 2009 recipient of the Sewanee Review’s Aiken-Taylor award for poetry. Hall, as you may know, is a major and senior figure in American poetry; now in his 80s, he published his first poems at 16, when he was Robert Frost’s student at Bread Loaf.  He’s won most of the major prizes for a poet (and a few unusual ones, like a Caldecott medal for Children’s literature) and was the Poet Laureate of the United States.

At 3:00 p.m. on the 17th, in the Alumni House, Poet Peter Makuck will lecture on the importance and meaning of Hall’s work. The next day, Feb 18 at 4:30 in Convocation Hall, Donald Hall will receive his award and read from his poetry.

Then on March 1, at 4:40, in Gailor Auditorium, Playwright David Roby, next year’s Tennessee Williams Fellow and Writer in Residence at Sewanee, will read from his works. Roby is a very promising younger playwright and an excellent reader of his own works; should be a good show.

Megan Roberts emailed me with some inspiration for our summer session:

Is anyone familiar with The Moth? All stories are TRUE and are told before a live audience using NO NOTES.  You can listen to many of the recorded stories on the website or through the weekly podcast.  Don’t know if we could convince people to participate (writers don’t always make the best performers), but I would love to attempt our own mini-Moth night on the Mountain this summer.  We might find there’s less pressure without paper - no option to have done better editing, and listeners don’t get red pens.

Sounds like a great way to organize our late-night sessions at Shenanigan’s. What do you think?

Good news from Donna Brewer. Though she won’t be joining us in Sewanee this summer, she’ll be busy in London, brushing up her Shakespeare…

Thanks to a grant from the Nashville branch of the English-Speaking Union of the United States, Donna Brewer will participate in Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance, an intensive program for teachers that provides instructors with practical and play-filled approaches to teaching Shakespeare in the classroom. Presented by Globe Education in association with The English-Speaking Union of the United States, participants spend three weeks at The Globe Theatre in London and attend Globe productions while working with theatre artists and Globe Education Practitioners who offer participants insights into the relationship between play and stage. Participants will have their own opportunity to explore that relationship at first hand when they present scenes on the Globe stage at midnight in July, 2010.

Great news: Don Parker’s poem, “Blood Chit,” was accepted by the California Quarterly (CQ) for publication in their current issue. Congratulations Don! I couldn’t find it online, so here’s the entire poem:

BLOOD CHIT*

A young marine, his weapon left behind
walks quietly into the night alone . . .
away from comrades, all fatigued, supine.
He’s done. Bonds severed, he feels he can’t atone

for all his killing and the cries of grief:
the sight of body parts— a baby’s arm,
a mother’s breast among the kumquat leaves:
the guilt a sore, a mine he can’t disarm.

More guilt: code requires his unit search for him
and give their lives and limbs because they share
what it is to be Marines in battle trim.
Checks his pocket, feels no blood chit there . . .

The Taliban won’t welcome him as friend;
Afghanistan, no Arkansas, will be his end.

*A patch given to the military when in hostile territory. On one side there’s an American flag and on the other, in several local languages: “Anyone helping this person to safety will receive a reward.”

April Alvarez forwarded this fantastic meditation on fiction writing by Robert Jackson Bennett. I particularly liked this confession:

I can say that the more I learn about stories, the less I know what they are. The narrative construct is one of our greatest and most mysterious tools, and I often doubt if we wield it as much as it wields us.

April has also promised to send in photos of John Grammer sledding. Stay tuned.

Attention curious students: All courses and faculty for summer 2010 are now listed online. Time to start daydreaming about next summer on the Mountain.

And now back to your hectic holiday schedule…

Congratulations to Cheryl Whitehead! She was a finalist for the New Letters Literary Award and received Honorable Mentions for two of her poems– Requiem for A Trumpet and Distant Relations. Cheryl is writing and submitting while the rest of us sleep…

Check out this from the Chicago Tribune, whose reviewers were invited to recommend only two “favorite books of 2009.”  Critic Julia Keller picks  “Girl Trouble” by our new faculty member Holly Goddard Jones. It’s just the most recent endorsement of a book that has gotten a lot of attention since appearing at the end of the summer.