History Is What the GOP Doesn’t Want You to Teach

(As Fred Jameson once said.)

So I’ve been teaching it and talking about teaching it. Gave a long talk at The Story Center of Kansas City’s Mid-Continent Public Library Tuesday night (on Facebook Live, recorded here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=461105401624401&ref=watch_permalink) on Missouri writers, which is hard to do without talking about the state’s special history of race, capitalism, and empire.

If a funny bit sticks out of the side of your state, might be a story

I also wrote a short thing for Modernism/modernity‘s blog In These Times (https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/cohen-2016-project) in which I use Walter Johnson, Walter Williams, and no other Walters to talk about why it’s important to be able to teach these kinds of things, especially in These Times.

Always quote your colleagues, even if they’re just quoting someone else

You don’t have to watch the long talk or read the short thing, of course, but if you want to pick one, pick the short thing, and share it with people if you think it’s worth the clicking. I think it’s an important subject and hope you do too. Use hashtags. Like #CriticalRaceTheory, #1619Project, my newly invented and surely not catching on #2016Project. If there’s anything we can do to keep these bills legislative stunts only rather than watching them become laws, we should do it.

It’s #SidelinePoetry All the Way Down

And we haven’t hit bottom yet. (But there’s still time! One more weekend left in the season.) These new poems are from league play two Sundays ago (the first) and from a tournament this past weekend (the rest), all in the glorious, glorious state of Kansas. *

One critic to whom I am related noted a certain pessimism creeping into the poems a few weeks ago, to which I can only reply with this from late Saturday:

not bottom yet

… so there’s that. It’s not you, world, it’s me, or the length of the season, of the semester, and/or of the legislative session. And I don’t edit these things, they just pop out on Twitter, so the mood they got written in is the mood that shows up in them. I will also note a personal tendency in these most recent poems, which I think is more pronounced than in past ones, or maybe I’m just hiding it less, and certainly no one cares either way. I’ve got grading to do and something to write for someone about the aforementioned shit show in Jeff City, so here are the poems, which are supposed to be just for fun anyway, yes?

It’s just another story.**


*https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/feb/02/trump-kansas-city-missouri-super-bowl-tweet

**that was for the Clash fans. For all of you, a video: