gay-lesbian-queer department in the muse apprentice guild

[August Highland]

dear writers,

there is a new gay-lesbian-queer department in the muse apprentice guild
edited by amy king whose advisor at buffalo was charles bernstein

please share a good thing and notify your colleagues about this new
department

here is amy's excellent introductory statement entitled "After the sum
of scars ..."


_____________________________________________

After the sum of scars .



Trying to articulate our individual realities, we often fall prey to
traditional discourses that speak in umbrella-like terms meant to
clarify what is "gay", "Buddhist", "female", "elderly", etc.  However,
the very plurality of everyone's experiences fails these pigeonholes;
the complexities of personhood spill from, stutter in, evade, fracture,
blur and erode tidy definitions-and so, daily life inherently resists
the narratives that group together, normalize and homogenize our lives,
that attempt fairytale-transparent access to our lives.



Lesbians, gays, transgendered and queers have historically pursued
common civil rights causes and have been rendered one of society's
primary sexual deviant groups, and so consequentially, each participant
is read accordingly.  The stranger on the street "knows" me because
within my hand is another woman's.   But how do I know myself?  The
story I have inherited of two women holding hands does not encompass or
explain my experiences nor does it provide tools to examine them with.
A poetics that resists the pressures of assimilation and works against
the bindings of certain knowledge, a poetics that plunges into,
multiplies and celebrates! our "deviant" label is in order.



The m.a.g. offers a place to recognize, note and use the scars identity
marks us with while locating new methods to expose those limitations,
examine the mechanisms of identification, and moreover, provides the
exploratory space in which we can create and share new identifying
gestures.



"And if, on laying Stein's book aside, we feel that it is still
impossible to accomplish the impossible, we are also left with the
conviction that it is the only thing worth trying."

                                                                  -John
Ashbery







sincerely,
august highland

muse apprentice guild
--"expanding the canon into the 21st century"
www.muse-apprentice-guild.com

culture animal
--"following in the footsteps of tradition"
www.cultureanimal.com





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