Larissa Shmailo

The Humanities in Opposition World League (HOWL) is an international collective of practitioners in the humanities: artists, poets, historians, social scientists, psychologists, actors, scholars of all disciplines, linguists, critics, journalists, and others. We believe in vibrant truth-telling, inclusiveness, racial and gender equality, right to love, environmental healing, economic justice, and freedom of the press for all writers and readers. We believe that we can improve political conditions and individual lives by sharing the information and art we have culled and created. The nations of the world experienced a change of life in November 2016, but not a natural development, part of maturation as an international community. Rather, we experienced the very unnatural transition in the United States from a democracy to a country led by an unstable alt-right-wing president, threatening a path of isolationism, racism, environmental destruction, censorship, and oligarchic rule. This affects the entire globe. What role do the humanities and its practitioners play in this? A major one. How we share information now can affect global politics, and the lives of individuals in a profound way. In the humanities and the arts, we are always cool. Decorative, interesting, informative, entertaining, moving. But as Toni Morrison says, these are the times we really earn our keep. That said, we must go to work. We seek to work now in the spirit of Frankl, Scalapino and thousands of others in the humanities, our many role models and heroes. We signatories to this manifesto vow to fight fascism at every turn, with ideas, analysis, images. And we promise not to tell one another how that must be done. We agree to share information that is inspiring, entertaining, and/or educational. We will contribute to political freedom, whether we discuss politics directly or " tell it slant. " We vow to reach across the aisle; that said, we will have no tolerance for views predicated upon the diminution of other people. And we will bring the breath of democracy, inclusion, freedom, and human decency to our discourse. We promise to use our brains, talents, and humor to subvert Trumpism and promote the human, and we so here sign.

Metrical patterns and metrical narrativities are analyzed in the free verse of oral poet, language conservator, and slam guru Bob Holman using Annie Finch’s theory of the metrical code. The concept of metrical action, or the ways in which meter connotes, builds suspense, creates a narrative, and renders a poem dialogic with other poems, is introduced. Scansions of Holman’s poetry in griot, postmodernist, avant, and performative free verse styles are deconstructed, decoded, and celebrated. Meter, as studied by Finch, and oral poetry, as Holman performs it, is discussed. The metrical mythology of an oral poet in the Twenty-first century is explored.

Key Words: Bob Holman, metrical action, metrical code, iconic theory, proprietary theory, frame theory, Annie Finch, Roland Barthes’s narrative codes, Roland Barthes’s mythologies.

Metrical patterns and metrical narrativities are analyzed in the free verse of oral poet, language conservator, and slam guru Bob Holman using Annie Finch’s theory of the metrical code. The term metrical code denotes the way a free verse poem’s partial, irregular, and/or conflicting usages of meter encode the poet’s relationship to the poem’s content, other meters, and literature. The concept of metrical action, or the ways in which meter connotes, builds suspense, creates a narrative, and renders a poem dialogic with other poems, is introduced.  Scansions of Holman’s poetry in griot, postmodernist, avant, and performative free verse styles are deconstructed and metrically decoded. The meaning of meter in Holman’s work is discussed along with the connection between meter and the immediate, “one-time” nature of oral poetry. The metrical mythology of an oral poet in the 21st century is explored.

Metric patterns and metric narrativities are analyzed in the experimental verse of poet and essayist Alexander Skidan using Annie Finch’s theory of the metric code. The concept of metric action, or the ways in which meter connotes, builds suspense, creates a narrative, and renders a poem globally intertexual, or dialogic, with world literature is introduced and applied to Skidan’s poetry. Space and the caesura as fundamental to experimental poetry is discussed; the rhythms of Skidan’s Western-literature appropriation and heteroglossia are examined as a function of the poet’s global poetics.. The mythology of the poet as boiler room stoker and leftist critic is realized as revolutionary and necessary for the global reach of Skidan’s poetry.
Key Words: Alexander Skidan, metric action, metric code, caesura, dialogic intertextuality, Roland Barthes’s narrative codes, Roland Barthes’s mythologies

A brief overview of the status of formal poetry in the twenty-first century. This talk introduced the panel, Endangered Music: Formal Poetry in the Twenty-first Century, at the Association of Writer and Writing Programs' 2016 conference in Los Angeles.

AWP18 panel presentation: "The Semi-Formal: Hybrid Free and Formal Verse." An analysis of how meter, metric codes, and hybrid forms inform pluralism, multiculturalism, and subversive political vectors in selected poems by Claudia Rankine and Patricia Smith.

An examination of hybridism in the portrayal of male sexual sadism and the polyvalent female "no" in David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" - AWP Portland panel presentation for "Hybrid Sex  Writing: What's Your Position?" -  March 28, 2019

VIDEO OF ALL-STAR WOMEN POETS READ TO BENEFIT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY with Larissa Shmailo, Elaine Equi, Rachel Hadas, Patricia Spears Jones, Trace Peterson and emcee Maggie Balistreri
http://www.100tpcmedia.org/100TPC2012/2018/08/larissa-shmailo-all-star-women-poets-read-to-benefit-the-democratic-party-2018/