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Thursday, October 06, 2005

In honor of this year’s…

…fiftieth anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, UD offers



Howl for Papers

A poem inspired by this recent Call for Papers from English Professor Don Hedrick, Kansas State University:


Papers can be on a wide variety of topics related to the conference theme of privacy and secrecy and the public sphere.

Papers on specific instances are welcomed, and papers considering a variety of issues and concerns: tabloidization and the neutralization of the political; the personal as political; hypocritical Puritanism; the defense by offense; vast right wing conspiracies; "outing" as a political tactic; scandal amnesia; "spin" and tactical framing; true evil beneath the compassionate, Christian front; why nothing makes a difference; left tactics and despair; the politics of denial and shame; business secrecy vs. personal secrecy; liberal vs. conservative secret lives; sexual dysfunction in conservatives; Laura Bush's private life; scholarly muckraking and shockjocking.


Send brief, 200 word abstracts by email, not attachment, to Don Hedrick, along with a very brief bio, to Don Hedrick, Department of English, Kansas State University, at [email protected], by October 24. Inquiries welcome.






I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
Hypocritical Puritanism, evil dysfunctional shameful,
dragging themselves through Christian streets at dawn
looking for Laura Bush‘s private life,
Left tacticians of despair burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the personal as the political,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating vast rightwing conspiracies,
organizing panels on tabloidization and the neutralization of the political,
passing through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating outings and spinnings and Blake-light tragedies
among the scholars of war,
minds tenured in the academies for probing sexual dysfunction in conservatives,
and for testifying that nothing makes a difference,
ashcan rantings, battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox…
Posted at: 10/06/2005 04:25:00 PM