A fellow professor of English at Nassau
Community College where PA facilitator Ralph Nazareth teaches, Richard Jeffrey Newman,
poet/translator, will share his writing and thoughts on feminist meaning and progressive
masculinity, childhood sexual and global violence and, ultimately, the greater reward
found in pursuit of right questions over pat answers when he visits Curley's this Tuesday.
Richard’s books
include The Silence of Men (Cavankerry, 2006), his first collection of poetry, admired online by a three-time reader and fellow
English teacher for its readiness to let memory and the past function not just as some determinist trap of “obsession or grudge to be
chipped away, but (as) a source of richer voice…. actively riding and owning
the waves of circumstance”. Below in a 2012 interview with readings, Richard
elaborates on this and related liberating perceptions and how poetry proved an
effective channel for their expression:
Moved by strife in the world and motivated by the impact of
feminism on his own life, Richard bypasses predictable male metaphors of intimacy
to recast sex as a reflective, inclusive dialogue that promises an amplified
sense of humanity (see at the end of this entry the hauntingly choreographed “Running Up
That Hill” performed by UK rocker Kate Bush, covering similar relational territory).
Considering how Iran’s historic role as a major cultural seedbed
is all but forgotten against the peril of East/West tensions, a greater
consciousness of the species-wide import of this theme is especially vital today. As
such, Richard
means his translation of a portion of the Islamic Republic’s national epic in The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi's Shahameh (Junction Press, 2011) to demonstrate the relevance of Persian poetry to our lives in such chaotic times.
Kazim Ali lauds Richard’s lyric yet accessible accomplishment of bringing to life a classic tale of politics, devotion
and peace-making filled with “corrupt kings,
rebel princes, dragon-sorcerers, and resourceful cooks (travelling) through (a)
poetic history of an ancient and storied civilization.”
Words for What
Those Men Have Done, his second volume-in-progress, is being penned through a grant
awarded by the Queens Council on
the Arts. Richard also curates the First Tuesdays neighborhood
reading series at Terraza Cafe in Jackson Heights, NY, serves on the Board of
Directors of Queens-based Newtown Literary Alliance (publisher of the Newtown Literary Journal) and has participated earlier this month in ManQuestion.org’s
2015 New Masculinities Festival in Manhattan (check out The Good Men Project for a comparable forum on issues of masculinity in society, male identity and its
formation). Richard’s website is www.richardjnewman.com.
Thank you so much for this lovely write up!
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