THE RED WHEELBARROW REVIEWWHERE WORD MEETS SPIRIT

BREAKING NEWS/UPDATESOn Rich Murphy’s Practitioner JoyAUGUST 1, 2020That we are at a crossroads in human history is plain to see. It is up to each one of us, I would contend, to choose which path he or she will go down. What we have been taught in school, by our parents, and by tradition is important when we it comes to making this choice. But it is not enough. We must investigate our hearts to intuit the correct path. However, we do not have to turn inward alone, for we are not the isolated individual of Hobbes, Nietzsche, and the likes. We are humans and, as such, possess the ability to be in communio with others by the use of language.

Each of us, then, can employ language, whether it be visual art, music, mathematics, science, philosophy, or literature, as a guide in the search for meaning. For we now stand at a crossroads where we must answer the question: What is it to be human? In giving an answer, no matter what it is, each will contribute to the truth that is to be found in human nature.

If we lose the grip on the question at hand, we are in danger of forfeiting our humanity. We must keep the grip, but we must hold-on loosely. When the grip becomes too tight, as it has through the idioms of scientific reductionism as it has been employed in social and psychological sciences, we allow ourselves to be defined by our creations; in the mirror we see the reflection of human technology and the economic systems that drive it, staring back at us as our reflection. Is this what it is to be human?

Rich Murphy understands what is at stake. Heidegger wrote, “To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world’s night utters the holy.” There can be little doubt that we are in a destitute time.  And we are at a crossroads. Rich Murphy’s book of poems, Practitioner Joy, may serve as a candle in a moonless night, for the poet speaks best of the ineffable aspects of our humanity. Let us listen to the poet’s song.

Over the next weeks and months (a new post every week or two), I will be sharing my thoughts on the poems in Practitioner Joy. I urge you to purchase a copy and ruminate along with me. Maybe together we can help one another answer the question “What is it to be human?” In doing so, we can then each make a choice, alone but not, on which road to take. Please join me on this journey.
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Stay tuned… https://theredwheelbarrowreview.com/on-rich-murphys-practicioner-joy/

CROSSROADSHUMAN NATUREPOETRY

NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES BOOK IMPRINT
Prophetic Voice Now: Crafting Space for Visionary Thinking and Practice
ISBN: 978-1-86335-193-5 (hbk)
121 pagesRichard MurphyIn Prophetic Voice Now: Crafting Space for Visionary Thinking and Practice, Rich Murphy dives deeply into a robust analysis of the state of poetry, the arts by implication, and culture in the United States. Written over the course of twenty years, Rich Murphy explores and interrogates prevailing understandings of poetics, culture, and prophetic voice in poetry. Moreover, he calls for prophetic voices to propose a new narrative for stabilizing global culture and explores how poetry, as well as the arts and humanities generally, might craft a narrative that will lead us from the current brink and navigate the interrelated transitions of the Anthropocene, post-industrial Capitalism, and post-humanism. Through a careful and inventive analysis of current norms and assumptions about education, the individual, creativity, voice, and space, Murphy develops a compelling prescription for the vital and necessary expression of visionary thinking and practice.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES BOOK IMPRINT
Prophetic Voice Now: Crafting Space for Visionary Thinking and Practice
ISBN: 978-1-86335-193-5 (hbk)
121 pagesRichard MurphyIn Prophetic Voice Now: Crafting Space for Visionary Thinking and Practice, Rich Murphy dives deeply into a robust analysis of the state of poetry, the arts by implication, and culture in the United States. Written over the course of twenty years, Rich Murphy explores and interrogates prevailing understandings of poetics, culture, and prophetic voice in poetry. Moreover, he calls for prophetic voices to propose a new narrative for stabilizing global culture and explores how poetry, as well as the arts and humanities generally, might craft a narrative that will lead us from the current brink and navigate the interrelated transitions of the Anthropocene, post-industrial Capitalism, and post-humanism. Through a careful and inventive analysis of current norms and assumptions about education, the individual, creativity, voice, and space, Murphy develops a compelling prescription for the vital and necessary expression of visionary thinking and practice.

Rich Murphy has taught writing and literature in colleges and universities for 34 years. He is visiting lecturer at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Two of his five book-length poetry collections have won national book awards. He has also published five chapbooks and essays on poetry and poetics in a number of journals. 
25% Off THIS or ANY BOOK with Code: CGBOOK2020With a purchase of $15USD or more
Order Your Copy Today
NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HUMANITIES BOOK IMPRINT
Prophetic Voice Now: Crafting Space for Visionary Thinking and Practice
ISBN: 978-1-86335-193-5 (hbk)
121 pagesRichard MurphyIn Prophetic Voice Now: Crafting Space for Visionary Thinking and Practice, Rich Murphy dives deeply into a robust analysis of the state of poetry, the arts by implication, and culture in the United States. Written over the course of twenty years, Rich Murphy explores and interrogates prevailing understandings of poetics, culture, and prophetic voice in poetry. Moreover, he calls for prophetic voices to propose a new narrative for stabilizing global culture and explores how poetry, as well as the arts and humanities generally, might craft a narrative that will lead us from the current brink and navigate the interrelated transitions of the Anthropocene, post-industrial Capitalism, and post-humanism. Through a careful and inventive analysis of current norms and assumptions about education, the individual, creativity, voice, and space, Murphy develops a compelling prescription for the vital and necessary expression of visionary thinking and practice.

Rich Murphy has taught writing and literature in colleges and universities for 34 years. He is visiting lecturer at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Two of his five book-length poetry collections have won national book awards. He has also published five chapbooks and essays on poetry and poetics in a number of journals. 
25% Off THIS or ANY BOOK with Code: CGBOOK2020With a purchase of $15USD or more
Order Your Copy Today

Birthplace Accidents
 
 
Born with a sash weighted by merit badges,
Fauntleroy tips over in playgrounds
and nods off in front rows during class times
after pulling blue ribbons to the chin.
 
Schooled in place-holding from birth,
the extra-curricular bellies roar with hunger
when cramming in an education for the last resort:
Each proof an equation “losers grow into losers.”
 
The good scout cliché looks out for number one
and the bottom line for the trophies to win,
while the poor lout uses night vision goggles
in a foreign land that harbors natural resources.
 
The American knows from the start that the drill
divides into two: One plus none on flash cards.
Justice rationalizes so that resentment dies early
in bodies, voice, or energy = a bowled over score.
 
An immigrant with a spangled attention span
pledges to act out scapegoat along with neighbors.

FRACTURED ECOLOGIES

FRACTURED ECOLOGIES
Edited by Chad Weidner

EYECORNER PRESS
CRITICISM SERIES
ISBN: 978-87-92633-52-1
9×6 in; 424 pages
FORTHCOMING: JUNE, 2020
http://www.eyecornerpress.com/fractured-ecologies/

Fractured Ecologies participates in environmental praxis through literary practice. How does experimental writing contribute to the ways we think about ecology? This collection of papers, bent essays, and playful poetic impressions positions marginal aesthetic forms front and center. The idea of Fractured Ecologies is that rigorous and irreverent papers addressing experimental writing and other borderline manifestations in an environmental context are infinitely interesting and always fresh.
“somewhere located below the Sol – way cold solar plexus” —Frances Presley
“Who tethered the earth to someone else’s sun?” —Joshua Schuster

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Chad Weidner: Introduction: Deliberate Poetry as Ecological Survival Technique
Harriet Tarlo: ‘GOLD/ Is Recovered’: Maggie O’Sullivan and Environment
Sarah Nolan: Fractured Environments in Susan Howe’s That This
Margaret Anne Clarke: Biopoetics: The Interfaces between Language, Form and Life
Richard Murphy: Hybrid submissions
Matthew Shenoda: Wild
Margaret Ronda: Green Road
Vickie Vértiz: Cyanotype in a New York Public Library
Maurice Kilwein Guevara: The Results Are Spreading
Wang Ping: Peace Over Everest
Aki Gibbons: Fireblossoms
Orchid Tierney: ode to surfaces, air
Camilla Nelson: RUN
Evelyn Reilly: Grosse Fatigue: Eco-Weariness and the Feminine Hand
Dana Zoutman: (that reflect heat back into space)
Katrin Benzler: “What in the Name of Arse” “Cries out for Universal Brotherhood” “?”
Sophie Bergmeijer: Tipped the Scale, Made a List, Then and Now
Arthur Sze: Lichen Song and Salt Song
Shelia Karpesky: Man to Machine
Chad Weidner: Mourning May
Kenji C. Liu: A Frankenpo: Report to Exxon Shareholders
Andrew Shaw: Pests
Edwin Torres: FRAMING DEVICE: The Animal’s Perception of Earth
Angela Peñaredondo: Hybrid Submissions
Jess Allen and Bronwyn Preece: full:new
Robyn Maree Pickens: Tender
a rawlings: WHOSE WHO
Mari-Lou Rowley: Feral Poetics for a (Re)Programmed TechnéPolis
Arpine Konyalian-Grenier: Fasciae, Fauna, Faux Pas: Capital Beyond the Noise
Peter Jaeger: Walter Benjamin, John Cage, and Kenneth Goldsmith: A Weather Report
Matthew Cooperman: Process, Person Erasure: Recovering the There There in Dorn, Orange, Long Soldier & Cooperman
hiromi suzuki: Virtual Water Alarms
Maja Jantar: Some
Alison Hawthorne Deming: THE DIORAMAS
Joshua Schuster: Notes on Heliopoetics
Adam Dickinson: “THERMOGRAPHIA: Labwork”
H. L. Hix: Copia
Frances Presley: Channels: on boulder beach, Pink Bay, passerine, Needle’s Eye
Brenda Hillman: S KIN OF OLDER WOMAN WALKING FROM