The first image we encounter in America, We Call Your Name: Poetry of Resistance and Resilience (203 pages; Sixteen Rivers Press) is that of Lady Liberty in the midst of a grey fog; it’s unclear as to whether she is receding or emerging. The editors have stated that the impetus for this anthology was a desire to help unify the country after the 2016 Presidential Election. The Trump Administration symbolizes the oppression that these poets are resisting; the collection acknowledges that the election woke up many people who had grown politically complacent. For this anthology, Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared […]
Tag: Dean Rader
Merging into a Singular Voice: ‘They Said,’ edited by Simone Muench and Dean Rader
by Caleigh Stephens, Claire Ogilvie
They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (535 pages; Black Lawrence Press), edited by Simone Muench and Dean Rader, is an ambitious, immersive collection that challenges readers and writers alike. Breaking out of traditional ideas of authorship, the book gathers hundreds of pieces of multi-author writing that span multiple genres and formats. At the end of each work is a blurb written by the authors that describes their unique writing process. In the spirit of the collection, we decided to collaboratively read and review the work in the form of a conversation. Claire Ogilvie: What stood out most […]
Craft Talk: Dean Rader on Poetry Workshops, Writing Hurdles, & Looking Outward
by Ingrid Vega
Diligent readers of ZYZZYVA will have noticed Dean Rader’s dazzling poems in numerous issues of the journal, most recently in our Art & Resistance-themed Issue 111. We’re pleased to announce that Rader will also be leading a ZYZZYVA Writer’s Workshop in Poetry on August 18th, which is currently accepting submissions. The deadline to enter is June 18th –– so do not delay! The poet recently took time out of his busy schedule, which includes teaching writing at the University of San Francisco, to discuss the merits of the Workshop format, writing hurdles he’s overcome, recent poetry collections he’s read, and much […]
When Art Must Step In: Q&A with ‘Bullets into Bells’ Editor Dean Rader
by Isabel Erickson White
The poetry collection Bullets into Bells (Beacon Press) stands as an innovative response to American gun violence. The work is a collection of poetry, each poem paired with a prose response written by an “activist, political figure, survivor, or concerned individual.” Many of the poems are in response to widely reported shootings, such as Sandy Hook or the murder of Tamir Rice, but there are also several accounts of less publicized shootings. Despite the high coverage of gun violence in the media, reading this book gives the sense that this type of violence is even more pervasive than it seems, and that nearly […]
‘Still Life with Cacography’ by Dean Rader: ZYZZYVA No. 111, Winter Issue
by editor
Dean Rader is a professor of English at the University of San Francisco. His most recent poetry collections are “Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry” (Copper Canyon Press) and “Suture” (Black Lawrence), written with Simone Muench. You can see him in conversation with other ZYZZYVA contributors tomorrow at East Bay Booksellers. Two of Rader’s poems are featured in ZYZZYVA No. 111. Presented here in its entirety is the poem “Still Life with Cacography”: “If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here— right to their waist or right to their ankle—and one of the people in that room happened to have […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: Dean Rader
by editor
Dean Rader (whose poetry has been published in ZYZZYVA Issues No. 93 , 98 & 101) is the author of several books, including the poetry collections Works & Days (winner of the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize), Landscape Portrait Figure Form, which was named by the Barnes & Noble Review as one of the Best Poetry Books of 2013, and the forthcoming Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, to be published in 2016 by Copper Canyon Press. ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon talked to Rader about what makes for a “successful” poem, how his work has come to be shaped, the attraction […]
We Want What Language Won’t Do: Dean Rader’s ‘Landscape Portrait Figure Form’
by Maggie Millner
There’s a little room adjacent to the Djerassi Gallery of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in which, during the Paul Klee at SFMOMA exhibit in 2011, several of Klee’s small drawings and sketches hung. While the main gallery—spread with bright, prismatic paintings on large canvases—was overwhelming, the little annex was quieter and still, its pictures more thoughtful and muted. It was a place to ponder and absorb the dazzling content and heady theory of Klee’s works, a place for the emergent patterns of thought and art to coalesce and make themselves known. Dean Rader’s new chapbook, Landscape Portrait […]
Self Portrait as Wikipedia Entry
by Dean Rader
Dean Rader is a professor in the English department at the University of San Francisco and author of Works & Days (Truman State University Press), which won the 2010 T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize. His forthcoming book is Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film from Alcatraz to NMAI (University of Texas Press).
“Self Portrait as Wikipedia Entry” is one of his two poems in ZYZZYVA‘s Winter issue. The piece, in print, appears with sections of underlined words, denoting what would be a hyperlink if read on a screen. We reproduce the poem here with the actual links.
Rader will be reading tomorrow night at 7 p.m. with Herbert Gold, another Winter issue contributor, at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, as part of a ZYZZYVA/Granta event.
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