Kids with special educational needs: in Texas, the numbers are far below the national average. But a new report suggests its a numbers game, we’ll explore. Also in 2016 there have been as many stays of execution in Texas as there have been actual executions, and some experts think we may be looking at a sea change in attitudes over the death penalty, we’ll explain. Plus vive la frack: the French discover deals in the almost abandoned Barnett Shale. Do they know something us companies don’t? And it’s one of the fastest growing careers in Texas. The challenge? Training workers quickly. We’ll hear about what’s behind the rise of the Promotoras. Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:
poetry
Texas Standard: July 29, 2016
A front row seat to history? We can do better than that. Dallas sheriff Lupe Valdez on the view from the podium. Plus disorder in the court? A federal challenge to the way Texas picks its top judges. And the aging population of the lone star state are Texas towns and cities ready? Plus, in some state facilities, levels of lead as bad at Flint Michigan: what’s being done and what isn’t. Also 50 years after the Texas tower shooting, what’s changed when it comes to guns? Plus the week in Texas politics and much more, today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: July 15, 2016
Another attack. Again in France. At least two Americans killed, reports they were Texans. We’re following that. Also in this country… ongoing tensions in police-community relations. A Texas leader calling out the President for his reactions to recent events. And funding for fighting Zika… what Texas can expect from Washington. Plus a Texas Youth Orchestra takes its talent overseas… performing classical pieces in the cities where they were written. And a new study may have you questioning everything you thought you knew about dinosaurs. Also why we may soon be seeing more of those loud law office commercials. Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: April 28, 2016
Educators do the perp walk in El Paso. 5 indicted on federal charges, some wonder what took em so long. The back story today on the Texas Standard. Also if you’re in Texas illegally, your legal options are limited…one thing that is possible however: adoption. A state policy raising eyebrows and interest. And amid a growing bipartisan pushback over the rising cost of college, some unconventional wisdom as Texas gets in front of competency based education. Also- virtual reality or virtually useless? Some say the new gadgets could boost job safety, we’ll try it out. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: April 26, 2016
Some people don’t pick up on social cues, which can lead to tragedy. We’ll meet a mother who’s changing how Texas police interact with kids like her own. Plus In south Texas, there’s a huge fishing spot for many who have difficulty putting food on the table, but the fish are toxic. What’s being done to protect the locals and what isn’t. Also a 10 thousand dollar prize for the best idea to improve Texas schools, The Rather prize, we have the name of the winner and one of the prize cofounders –a certain Dan Rather. Those stories and much more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: April 25, 2016
A Texas Senator and an Ohio Governor join forces to stop a new York Billionaire. An act of desperation? A solid strategy? Perhaps Both? We’ll explore. Also- Bernie’s going back to jail. and we’re not talking about the Presidential candidate either. A Hollywood story meets Texas justice. Texas medical researchers pose a question: is there a connection between profits and patient health in the state’s hospitals? And with more severe thunderstorms on the radar for Texas, what are doing doing to prepare in the long run? All that and much more today on the Texas Standard:
Think There’s No Poetry In Texas? Think Again
A New Yorker told me that he never uses the words Texas and poetry in the same sentence.
He thinks Texas poetry is an oxymoron because he doesn’t see how such a refined art form could be produced in a macho culture. But he is wrong. Cowboys and vaqueros were reciting poetry in the warm glow of firelight on the Texas plains hundreds of years ago.
A modern inheritor of this tradition is Walt McDonald. He gives us this poem that celebrates country music in Texas. It’s called “The Waltz We Were Born For.”
“I never knew them all, just hummed
and thrummed my fingers with the radio,
driving five hundred miles to Austin.
Her arms held all the songs I needed.
Our boots kept time with fiddles
and the charming sobs of blondes,
the whine of steel guitars
sliding us down in deer-hide chairs
when jukebox music was over.
Sad music’s on my mind tonight
in a jet high over Dallas, earphones
on channel five. A lonely singer,
dead, comes back to beg me,
swearing in my ears she’s mine,
rhymes set to music that make
her lies seem true. She’s gone
and others like her, leaving their songs
to haunt us. Letting down through clouds
I know who I’ll find waiting at the gate,
the same woman faithful to my arms
as she was those nights in Austin
when the world seemed like a jukebox,
our boots able to dance forever,
our pockets full of coins.”
Here is another one I enjoy from well-known Texas poet, Chip Dameron. It is printed in the shape of Texas. You begin in the Panhandle and work your way down to the Rio Grande. The words celebrate the part of Texas in which they reside. It is called “A State of Mind.”
Last, here is Violette Newton, Poet Laureate of Texas in 1973. She wrote this humorous poem which speaks directly to the problem of getting respect for Texas poetry:
Up East, they do not think much
of Texas poetry. They think Texans
have no soul for aesthetics, that all
they do is pound their own chests,
talk loud and make money.
But every time I’m nearing Austin,
I look up at a painted sign
high on the side of the highway
that says, “Bert’s Dirts”
and to pyramids of many-colored soils
sold by Bert, and I swell with pride
at that rhyming sign, I puff up
and point to that terse little title
and wish we could stop
so I could go in
and purchase
a spondee of sand
to make a gesture of my support
for poetry in Texas.
Take that, New York.
W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.
Texas Standard: January 29, 2016
Equal Rights. Equal Obligations? A rite of passage for men may become a legal requirement for young women, too. Details today on the Texas Standard. Efforts are underway to remove a last vestige of sexism in the military. Not all women are thrilled about it, however. We’ll explore. Also Is growth is Texas making economic segregation worse…how one texas community may have found a solution. Plus lariats and laureates: lassoing the allure of cowboy poetry. Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:
Oliver Lake (9.13.15)
Oliver Lake is an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and poet who co-founded The World Saxophone Quartet in 1977. In this edition of Liner Notes, Rabbi and jazz historian Neil Blumofe talks about the way in which Lake’s music offered a portal for us to understand the civil rights movement and social justice through art. When listening to Oliver Lake and The World Saxophone Quartet we’re are able to understand how to create profound statements without words.
Kari Anne Roy
K.A. Holt loves middle grade novels and poetry and has a gift for both.
Her novel Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel won praise from middle grade readers all over the nation. Her poetry shines in her collection Haiku Mama: Because 17 Syllables is All You Have Time to Read, written under the name Kari Anne Roy, is a collection of haikus hilariously bemoaning the struggles and joys of parenting.
In 2010 Holt combined the two genres and started writing middle grade novels in verse. Her first, Brains for Lunch (A Zombie Novel in Haiku?!), followed the misadventures of a preteen zombie dealing with all the romantic challenges of middle school while also being one of the living dead.
Rhyme Schemer follows a middle school bully with a secret passion for poetry. In her forth coming novel in verse, House Arrest, a young boy journals about his struggles through a year of probation and his younger brother’s health crisis.
Holt’s anti-heroes pop with life (even the undead ones). She depicts the emotional and social pre-teen challenges of her young characters with pitch perfect humor and riveting authenticity. She manages to avoid ever condescending to her readers or artificially endowing her middle grade characters with adult takes on the world. She nails the wildly turbulent thoughts and feelings of a 7th grader – and does it in verse.
Holt has a knack for bringing poetry to surprising places. In 2013 Holt and fellow Austinites Jodi Egerton, Sean Petrie and David Fruchter took a love of vintage typewrites and public poetry and formed Typewriter Rodeo. The group can be found at music concerts, museum openings, and SXSW parties banging out spontaneous poems on old school typewriters.
Holt, again writing as Kari Anne Roy, is also a celebrated blogger known for fearlessly diving into difficult issues ranging from abortion legislation to CPS investigations. Her insights are supported by relentless honesty and a wry wit. More than one entry on her blog www.haikuoftheday.com has gone viral and emerged on the national scene.
It’s a true pleasure to get to sit down with Holt on The Write Up and discuss her craft and career and how she balances daily life, deadlines, and being a mother of three. Join us as we chat about the attraction of writing for a younger audience, her love for underdogs and preteen ne’er-do-wells, and the allure of poetry.
Carrie Fountain
Always Remain a Beginner
Interviews on the Write Up come out more as conversations than a scripted line of questioning. The authors who are featured bring their own spirit and personality into the discussion and the conversation spins to wonderfully surprising places. Our episode with award-winning poet Carrie Fountain is a perfect example. Talking with Fountain is like grabbing a coffee with a dear friend you who leaves you feeling thrilled and more awake to the world about you.
During our talk, Fountain and I explore parenting, mysticism, craft, and her extraordinary new poetry collection Instant Winner. Whether it’s writing her next poem or facing a new parenting challenge, Fountain strives to “always remain a beginner.”
Carrie Fountain’s poems are prayers. Like prayers they carry the earthbound to heaven. Her poems are born from daily life — experiences of motherhood, marriage, traffic and trash trucks – but quickly rise up to questions of spirit and desires for divine connection.
Fountain earned her MFA at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin where she began work on what would become her debut collection Burn Lake. That book received the 2009 National Poetry Series winner and was published in 2010 by Penguin.
Her latest collection, Instant Winner, is a sly prayer book of winking meditations and wry observations. Fountain has a gift for finding the miraculous in the mundane, the tremendous in the ordinary. Capturing a fragment of life, a passing moment, Fountain highlights the endless magic moments that fill an average day. Like the best of poetry, her pieces inspire new views on a world we believe we know.
Balancing a family and a writing career can be an incredible trial. Fountain and I chat about becoming a mother and how that has impacted her life and poetry. Fountain is married to acclaimed playwright Kirk Lynn. We chat about how a household of two creatives works and how the two have inspired, supported, and challenged each other.
Fountain has taught at the university level for several years and is now the writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University. We chat about mentoring younger poets and her love for poets who have inspired her.
Much of poetry in Instant Winner describes encounters with the spiritual. Fountain shares some her own experiences with organized religion and where she stands now on questions of faith, God, and religion. She also discusses the role writing poetry plays in her spiritual life.
We touch upon Fountain’s own process in approaching writing: When she writes, how she seeks inspiration, and the discipline needed to sculpt a career in the arts. She also gives us a peek at how she approaches a blank page. Fountain hopes her style never outshines her poem, instead she aims for what she calls an “invisible craft.”
So brew a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and join us for a conversation on this edition of The Write Up.
V&B: Cowboy Poetry Set to Music
Graphic designer DJ Stout and Austin-based composer and pianist Graham Reynolds talk about their collaboration that illustrates the power of regionalism and the beauty of home on a global stage. Stout of Pentagram, the world’s largest independent design consultancy, will discuss his latest publication featuring cowboy poets from West Texas, as Reynolds performs a live score along with the presentation. This will be a version of the performance they gave at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town in February 2014.
Along with their presentation they’ll talk about what it means to bring your home and your place into your work, however international it may be. Why is it important to “go back to your roots”? What is the role of home and history is 21st Century graphic design? What was the reception in Cape Town to this Texas project?