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Memory
and Influence: A History of DC Poets
Presented
by
Beltway:
An On-Line Poetry Quarterly
Edited by Kim Roberts
Beltway is an on-line quarterly
journal of poetry by authors who live or work inside the beltway
in the greater DC metro region. That's a narrow geographic
range--but a wide range of voices. The editor, Kim Roberts, consciously try to include
poets from different traditions (academic, spoken word,
experimental, etc.) and with different levels of experience
(from internationally recognized folks such as
Pulitzer-Prize-winner Henry Taylor to authors who have not yet
published books). This range provides a dynamic mix that
showcases the best poetry from the Beltway area and encourages a
sense of community.
Issues run for three months, after which time
web pages go into the site Archives. (The Archives serves as a
growing anthology.) Five poets are typically featured in each
issue.
African-American poets (and poets of color
generally) are well represented, though that is not Beltway's
exclusive focus. (Nonetheless, approximately 64% of
contributors to date are people of color.) Some of the
most interesting younger African-American poets right now are
associated with Cave Canem, the summer writing institute,
and a very large percentage of those writers seem to live in the
greater DC area, so one sub-group of Beltway writers are Cave
Canem alums.
This special issue of Beltway examines
the lives and legacies of DC poets who have passed away, but
whose influence and importance to the DC literary community and
to American letters remains strong. Contributors from whom
essays were commissioned include some of the area's best loved
writers:
Features include biographical information, reprints of poems,
photos, and suggestions for further reading.
This issue was made possible by the generous support of the
DC Humanities Council, The Word Works, Inc., and several
individual donors. Contact:
Kim Roberts, the editor, at
beltway.poetry@juno.com
or see
http://washingtonart.com/beltway.html.
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Debt: The First 5,000 Years
By David Graeber
Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy. Economist Glenn Loury /Criminalizing a Race
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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update 24 November 2011
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