Newly Available Audio: Claudia Rankine on Race

	March 16, 2011 Share Facebook StumbleUpon E-mail to Friend Twitter New Audio • Tony Hoagland's "The Change" as read by Nick Flynn • Open Letter: A Dialogue on Race by Claudia Rankine • "Dear Claudia": A Response by Tony Hoagland • "We Heard Health Care" a Poem in Response by Claudia Rankine		Dear Friend, Despite all our differences — in race, region, gender, creed, and aesthetic — most American poets share a faith in the capacity of language to bridge these divisions. I said as much in my introduction to a reading at the 2011 AWP Conference last month, and I would like to reiterate this point — even though we all know that words can also trigger powerful emotional reactions. The goal of the Academy of American Poets is to represent, as much as possible, a wide range of contemporary poetry exploring the whole of human experience. At AWP we hosted Claudia Rankine's reading of a dialogue about Tony Hoagland's poem "The Change," and what Hoagland refers to as its racial complexity. If you are unfamiliar with this recent event, which has sparked many conversations, please take some time and listen to the newly available audio recording of the entire presentation, which included Hoagland's "The Change," read by poet Nick Flynn; Rankine's essay written about the poem; the response Tony sent by email to Claudia; and a closing poem by Rankine. Art is about our lives, and poetic language can lead to confusion and misunderstanding as well as illumination. Literature has the power to alarm, to console, to provoke, to heal, and — we hope — to lead individuals on the path of discovery and engagement. In her report, Rankine quoted Judith Butler saying, "Our very being exposes us to the address of another.... We suffer from the condition of being addressable." Poetry, which is one powerful way we address one another, can help us understand who we are. We welcome discussion about the role of poetry in our lives — how tone, voice, persona, and charged language resonate in our imaginations. Any change we make in the world must begin there — in the imagination. Yours truly, Tree Swenson Executive Director Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901 New York, NY 10038 212-274-0343 academy@poets.org Thanks for being a part of the Poets.org community. Please sign in to subscribe to other Poets.org newsletters, change your email address or unsubscribe from this list at any time.