Kane, Daniel. All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. I am a major fan of the New York School of Poets (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, James Schuyler, et al.) and its descendants. Kane’s book covers both groups, so I bought it to readContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently”
Author Archives: danielshankcruz
Writing About Black Sexuality
A friend passed along this article by Stacey Patton from The Chronicle on Higher Education. It provides a helpful summary of the ever-growing history of the intersection between Black Studies and queer theory. This dialogue is a crucial one for my work on Samuel R. Delany, thus it is pleasing that others outside of theContinue reading “Writing About Black Sexuality”
Reality Imitating Art
I went to the dentist this morning. As I was lying prone in the chair in pain, I thought of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague, in which the title character is a dentist whose grip is so strong that he is able to extract teeth with his bare hands. Later in the visit, I received aContinue reading “Reality Imitating Art”
Harvard Kink
An article on CNN.com reports that Harvard has just approved a student club for students who are interested in “kinky sex.” Kudos to both the students behind the club for organizing publicly and to the school for recognizing that non-vanilla sex (which does not just encompass BDSM, but also includes various fetishes such as watersports,Continue reading “Harvard Kink”
Visiting Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty
Today with three friends I visited Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, a piece of land art near Corinne, Utah, that was built on the shore of the Great Salt Lake in 1970. It was an amazing experience! I had seen numerous pictures of the Jetty in art history textbooks, but it was wonderful to get to experience itContinue reading “Visiting Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty”
Books Acquired Recently
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1984. This is a classic in the field of African American literary studies which keeps popping up in my reading, so I figured it was time to finally break down and read it. Bought from Better World BooksContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently”
The New Site Photograph
I just updated the main photograph for the site (what Facebook would call the “cover photo”). It is a picture of one of my favorite shelves in the poetry section of my library. The photograph includes some of my favorite poets and one of my favorite books of poetry, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence andContinue reading “The New Site Photograph”
Brief Thoughts on Fiction in America
I mentioned in a post on 15 November that I’m currently serving on the search committee for a job opening in my department. The position is for a fiction writer, so I’ve been reading lots of short stories which serve as the candidates’ writing samples. Much of the fiction is quite good, which is comforting because it shows thatContinue reading “Brief Thoughts on Fiction in America”
Books Acquired Recently
Kroll, Eric, ed. The Art of Eric Stanton: For the Man Who Knows His Place. Cologne: Taschen, 2012. This book collects many of Stanton’s erotic drawings from the 1950s and 1960s, many of which appeared in Irving Klaw’s publications (Klaw is the man who made Bettie Page famous). It fits perfectly with my scholarly interests inContinue reading “Books Acquired Recently”
Ervin Beck on David Foster Wallace
There is a fascinating, impressively-researched article about David Foster Wallace’s relationship to religious faith by Ervin Beck in the latest issue of the Journal of the Center for Mennonite Writing. Wallace is one of my favorite writers, and Beck is a former professor of mine and one of the most important mentors that I’ve had,Continue reading “Ervin Beck on David Foster Wallace”
Daniel Shank Cruz 