Tu Fu Talks with Barack Obama

Here's a little link to a poem in which ancient poet Tu Fu Talks with Barack Obama...

Update

Well, it's been a while, and I've been up to many things...teaching, editing others' works, publishing a few, and seeing my own novel The Long River Home reach publication through our Working Lives Series. That has taken me on the road for some readings around the state...even back home to Mingo Junction, Ohio...that one was great. What I have learned is the old "persistence as a way of life" for writers. Don't let the ego get in the way or cause you pain. But do what you must, by all means, do what you must.

New book of translations from Taigu Ryokan

New book from Taigu Ryokan...The Kanshi Poems of Taigu Ryokan...his journal poems from his years as a mountain monk, translated by Larry Smith and Mei Hui Liu Huang.
Check it out. http://smithdocs.net/laughing_buddha_series_of_books

Working-Class Writing

General Characteristics of Working-Class Writing and Art:
1) The writing is based on lived experience and shows characters as human persons
in a lived space, depicting their daily life including their actual physical work.
2) The writing creates space for people to speak and represent themselves, includes speech idioms and dialects, curses and blessings.
3) The writing is communal in nature. The individual "I" is speaking for the collective "We."
4) Readers can recognize themselves in the writing; it gives validation to their own stories and culture.
5) The writing gives language to human suffering and grief. Economics forces are recognized thus giving validation to deep feelings often ignore by mainstream art.
6) The writing (art) has agency in the world, is useful.
7) The writing includes forces of history and their impact on human relationship.
8) The writing challenges dominant assumptions about aesthetics... It breaks rules or conventions of form in favor of verity of experience.
9) The writing builds consciousness of class oppression....denial of rights, exploitative marketplace, etc. and may lead to rebellion.
10) The writing takes sides..."Whose Side Are You On?" it asks and then declares.
[Source: Developed in collaboration with Janet Zandy and her Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work (Rutgers University Press)]

Photo Gallery of Cleveland Poetry Scene and Bottom Dog Press

Here are some images from the last couple years of our activitites in the Cleveland Poetry Scene.

New Addresses...

AOL went out of the business of hosting web pages this November, and so this has necessitated creating new pages on yahoo.com's small business web hosting. Please check the pages below for our newest address both for Bottom Dog Press and Larry Smith. Let us hear from you.
We have some big new books out. COME TOGETHER: IMAGINE PEACE is a big great anthology of peace poetry. Best, Larry See it at

http://smithdocs.net/foodpoems.htm

Cleveland Poetry Scenes Chronology

Please check my web page for the Cleveland Poetry Scenes chronology dated from 1945 to the present. It is extensive and open to suggestions for editing and adding to it. d.a.levy, Daniel Thompson, CSU Poetry Center, etc. http://smithdocs.net/Clevelandpoetrychron.html

Our homepage is now http://smithdocs.net