The editors at Smile Politely have come out with a list of the top ten CU-connected books of the decade, a mighty list to be sure. And a mighty task.

I respect this list for the most part, and it should come as no surprise that notable appearances are made by nationally prominent residents, former community members and University of Illinois faculty members such as Richard Powers, Roger Ebert, David Foster Wallace, Janice Harrington and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. This really is a superb roster that makes you feel proud of the concentration of intellectual and literary ability in these cities, but there just seemed to be a glaring omission in the exclusion of one now-prominent literary rock star/icon–Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Illinois student Dave Eggers.

Perhaps known best for his 2000 memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Eggers is a stylistic innovator frequently ranked, for his contributions to indie publishing and community/social involvement, in lists like Time Magazine’s Hundred Most Influential People or Rolling Stone’s 100 Agents of Change.

Is this exclusion purely one of literary taste or a failure to own the student population as part of the Champaign-Urbana community? Does is rest on the assumption that Eggers only saw himself as a transient denizen? I’m almost inclined toward believing, mind you on no empirical grounds, that this list is a combination of all of those things with a wee bit of refusal to bolster the status of an icon with a probably already bloated ego.

As an Illinois student with limited mobility and excessive time commitments, it’s sometimes hard to believe that there is a life outside of Campustown though my bed is, I’m told, in downtown Urbana. The student population is predominantly busy, motionless, transplanted, and engrossed in a campus culture alien to the community at large. The only strange thing with this list is that it does not reflect that in its selection criteria–David Foster Wallace grew up here as the son of a professor and took off. Roger Ebert grew up, went to school, and then hit the bricks. Other writers on the list are faculty at the University who moved here later in life. It seems that the community-at-large has every respect for the people who go forth from here as well as the people who wind up here at 45, but not as much for those whose stated purpose is to come as adults with the widely received expectation that they will go away again in four years.

CU is dependent on this University, and the University would not be the place that it is without the beautiful community here, but somehow, we, as a student population, continue in a pervasive apathy for the local businesses, people, and scenes which surround us, and we’re all worse off for that lack of exchange. But, say you don’t want the Big Ten student culture to infiltrate the downtown city bars, theatres and music venues due to fear of some sort of vague notion like gentrifcation. Then is Campustown not its own urban neighborhood, as much a part of CU as the strip malls and subdivisions on the outskirts or the downtown main streets and commercial buildings?

Still, is it cool with you if I start to ditch Murphy’s for the Iron Post? I mean, I do like live music more than juke boxes. Since I’ve spent some of the most formative years of my life on the U of I campus and, to a lesser extent at Merry-Anne’s, the Boardman Art Theatre and the Rose Bowl, can I tell the rest of the world that I came from Chicago by way of Urbana?

Matt

PS–For shits and giggles, I came across this interesting 2003 interview of David Foster Wallace by Dave Eggers in The Believer while I was pretending to do some research for this post. This is all the sexy, digressive, cutting-edge, post-modern Urbana-related thought that one web page can handle. Enjoy.

It’s December. Rabbit-rabbit day, as some say. Hopefully we all had a delicious respite filled with turkey, that is, if you’re into that sort of thing. If not, a wonderful day filled with friends, stuffing, and family, including that crazy racist uncle whom you avoid talking politics with at all points. Yeah, hope everyone’s holidays were filled with that. Hope those of you in the literary community avoided that question about what you’re going to do with some creative writing degree after you graduate. Yeah. It’s really hard to explain that you’re going to use your degree to change the world, maybe, someday.

And now it’s time to start putting that to work. Tomorrow evening at 6:00 in the P of M, CU’s premier literary open mic, Writ N’ Rhymed, will co-sponsor what looks like an exciting event with the good folks at the African Cultural Association over at the Women’s Resource Center right above the Freestar Bank on the southwest corner of Green and Wright. “From Steppin’ to Spoken Word” will feature live step-dancing paired with the recitation of spoken word poetry aimed at raising awareness for HIV/AIDS. Seems like a noble idea, and it seems free. An open mic will follow the performance until 8:00(-ish).

In another vein, I’d like to pose a question that I’m struggling to find some answers to, so if anybody is out there reading this, I’d like to hear your opinion. This is the question of identity and cultural appropriation. Last week at Writ N’ Rhymed, MC Jeremiah Childers delivered a chilling reading of Patricia Smith’s “Skinhead.”

This is how Patricia Smith delivers it:

She is a black woman assuming the identity of a white racist skinhead. Jeremiah Childers, and I swear I can say this since I’m one as well, is a ginger kid. My question begins with this; who is it easier to see perform this poem? There’s no video of Jeremiah’s rendition, I know, but imagine, as best you can, a compelling, immersed reading of the poem. Jeremiah phenotypically fits the bill for this piece. Smith, convincing and involved as she is, does not. One can assume some distance when she reads the poem; one can assume she is channeling. When a white man delivers the poem, the character that is realized is no less pathetic but is somewhat more convincing, less distanced and more intimate. We’re forced to confront what is being said more as a plausible speech and less as a fiction–which, I think, is all the more chilling and disturbing.

I would never begrudge an author or poet to assume other identities in the course of their work. In fact, that’s one element that has made fiction and poetry since the start of the twentieth century so interesting and compelling. God knows I do it. But there are some boundaries that are clearly not to be crossed, and I’m not so sure what they are. In a class of mine, I saw students react with near outrage when we read pieces where a white gay man claimed the identity of a black lesbian and a black gay man that of a “negress.” Are these impermeable barriers? Even in naming and describing the phenomenon that was being discussed in my class I, just now, had to impose identities upon these men that they do not themselves own. Is this not just as stifling?

Along the same lines, however, I believe in a diversity of opinions, ideas and perspectives. So how can a “diverse” group come together if its participants are not classified? And how can this classification come about, then, without some policing of the boundaries that exist among races, genders, etc.? And how can you police these boundaries while allowing for the inclusion of the disenfranchised groups and stifled voices who most need to be elevated in a commitment to diversity?

I swear, the more education I get, the less I know about anything.

Help me out, y’all,
Matt

Recently, I stumbled across a truly free press. Well, I suppose there are a few caveats that need to be explored to understand what I mean by “free.”

Broadsidedpress.org publishes broadsides, an all but forgotten literary outlet, by accepting poetry text submissions and pairing a selected poem with an image crafted by their team of visual artists. Then, each month, they produce one of these as a PDF file in standard 8.5”/11” format so anyone with a printer, ink and some paper to spare can print out copies with the intent to post them in public space around their community.

Imagine running into this stuff at Schnucks, Espresso, Paradiso, your apartment stairwell, your dorm bulletin board, ramshackle walls and street light posts.

This is guerilla art. This is graffiti of the written word and the power is in your hands. That is, if you’re not one of the chumps shelling out a nickel (or dime!) per page in one of the University computer labs…like yours truly.

Get the word out,
Matthew.

It seems impossible to ignore the potential of this place. The past couple years, I’ve attempted to immerse myself in the creative writing community at U of I only to discover that what exists of the community is incredibly limited in capacity. In one way I mean Champaign-Urbana has limited venues for literary expression, in another I mean the poetic output here is limited in range and form.

Let’s rattle off what we’ve got, as per the best of my knowledge—U of I’s student literary journal Montage, which hosts open mics at the Red Herring occasionally, the SPEAK Café, the administration’s more nationally-oriented lit. journal Ninth Letter, respectable in the community-at-large, the publisher Dalkey Archive, and the Carr Reading Series. I’m aware of no other independently published ‘zines, chapbooks, or popular, continual reading series.

The problem is that this climate feeds into the literary world’s incestuous inbreeding. The pop lit term these days is hybrid, and I have my own problems with whatever it’s supposed to represent, but if you only read and write for writers, particularly those tied to academies, then you’re an illegitimate governing body just begging for a revolution.

I spent two weeks studying, reading and learning at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program in Boulder, CO and what I saw in Colorado was a bit inspiring. There was a weekly reading series at the downtown Laughing Goat Café which featured prominent local and visiting national poets, as well as a well-received open mic portion where it seemed everybody tried to push their lit. journal or chapbook on you. Naropa faculty mingled and drank with representatives and audience members associated with the larger University of Colorado community and Boulder townsfolk. There was a sense that somebody was listening and something that was said mattered. It was almost impossible to keep in my head all the names and faces and books and words and recitations and assaulting performances.

Something has begun, Wednesday nights, at the Women’s Resource Center on Green and Wright. Just take the elevator to the second floor. There are open mics, coffee, sometimes Illinois faculty member Janice Harrington, original work and shocking recitations of standard and contemporary published poets from a host of regulars and passers-by from 8:00 to 11:00. Something’s building up.

What I am proposing, through this blog, is a venue to knit together the insular poetic and literary hubs of this University and this wider community so that those producing written creative work know one another, and so that this community knows an audience. If you have an event you’re putting on, let me know, I’ll plug it and do my damndest to attend and profile it. If you want to organize an event, let me know and I’ll help any way I can. I helped organize and ran this past spring’s Poetry Palooza at Caffé Paradiso which roped in about 100 people. I might ask for your help, reader, in putting something together. If you want your work published, send it here and once in a while I’ll put something up. I can move a little more quickly than Montage with an editorial staff of one and no printing costs or design issues. However, community-building is the aim of this blog, so events and movements will garner far more attention here than individual work.

While this all may seem a little vain and masturbatory, please, bare in mind, all I want to do is unite a community. In CU, there are vibrant music (classical, pop, indie, jazz, world), theatre, fine art scenes. Well, why not something that everybody has the tools for? Pen, paper, heart. Voice and body.

And most importantly, if I’m unaware of some groovy thing that you’ve got going on, let me know and I’ll rectify the situation. I’m a blogger, not a reporter, and this is a participatory art form, so I’ll need your help.

Oh, and so you know, here’s some of what we got: clips from Poetry Palooza compiled by student “BK” Keller.

And U of I faculty member Mike Madonick reading a poem about bestiality and its progeny as it pertains to a serial killer convict, video by Illinois alum Sarah Gorr.

Check out Sarah’s other videos–Youtube channel JoesBoilingRage–for more U of I students and faculty (including yours truly) pontificating on poetical matters.

Build a scene,
Matthew.