National Poetry Month: Create Book Spine Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and this April, particularly, is a perfect time to discover poetry. One way to enjoy poetry is to read it; the other way is to write it.

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” — Leonard Cohen

I’ve found one of the most enjoyable ways to write poetry is to create book spine poetry. Book spine poetry is considered “found” poetry; that is, a poem made up of words from other sources. You, the poet, aren’t writing the words, trying to fit a form, or looking for words that rhyme. Instead, with book spine poetry, you simply arrange books so their titles to create a poem.

books on a bookshelf
Phil Shaw’s book spine poetry.

A timely book spine poem by Phil Shaw made its way around Twitter recently, though author Stephen King was “unconvinced . . . these are real covers.” (Why? The fourth book from the left on the top shelf is supposed to be King’s bestseller It. King points out that the artwork seems wrong and his name is misspelled.)

Still, Shaw’s quarantine project got me working on my own book spine poems. While I have a pretty full bookshelf at work, I have even more books at home. And more variety. I’ve had fun throwing together some poems. It’s easier than trying to find a word that rhymes with “quarantine.”

a stack of books
One of Professor Mazzie’s book spine poems.

What can you create? Send pics of your book spine poetry to me and we’ll create another post with all the submissions.

UPDATE (4/17/2020): Student Affairs Specialist Sarah DiStefano and I both had cats on the brain when we created these poems.

books on a table
Professor Mazzie’s poem on “What Cats Think.”

Thanks for sharing, Sarah!

books on a shelf
Poem by Sarah DiStefano, Student Affairs Specialist

 

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Real-time Control of Stormwater Management Systems

Real-time Control of Stormwater Management Systems

Earlier this week the Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies published Overcoming Legal and Institutional Barriers to the Implementation of Innovative Environmental Technologies, a paper I co-authored with Dr. Walter McDonald of the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering (CCEE) in Marquette’s College of Engineering; Stormwater flowing into a grateJoe Naughton, a 2020 Sea Grant Knauss Fellow at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and Hannah Hathaway, a member of the Law School’s Class of 2020. Another faculty colleague, Dr. Tony Parolari of the CCEE department, participated in the underlying research grant that resulted in the paper. This kind of work is part of our core mission: the Marquette University Water Law and Policy Initiative seeks, among other things, to employ an interdisciplinary approach, and to pursue opportunities for information exchange and collaboration within and outside Marquette University.

The following excerpt describes the work. The full article is freely available at the above link.

Communities in the United States face growing challenges to effective stormwater management as a result of aging infrastructure, increasing urbanization, changing climate, and shrinking budgets, among other factors.  These changes have increasingly stressed existing “static” stormwater management systems such as pipe networks, retention ponds, and detention ponds, that are intended simply to convey storm flows to nearby receiving waters without regard to overall system conditions.

Dealing with these stressors may require innovative solutions such as real time control (RTC) or “dynamic” stormwater management systems. 

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When Must a Catholic Judge Recuse from Cases Involving His Diocese?

[The following is a guest post from Daniel Suhr ’08, a prior guest alumni contributor to the Blog.]

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Archdiocese of Washington v. Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority.  According to the order in the case, Justice Kavanaugh took no part.  In his statement respecting the denial of certiorari, Justice Gorsuch wrote, “Because the full Court is unable to hear this case, it makes a poor candidate for our review. But for that complication, however, our intervention and a reversal would be warranted….”  Justice Kavanaugh was a member of the D.C. Circuit panel that first heard oral argument in the case when he was Judge Kavanaugh, and thus could not hear the case again on appeal. See 28 U.S. Code § 47 (he subsequently withdrew from the panel).

Some have suggested that Kavanaugh was recused (either at the DC Circuit or SCOTUS) because he was an active member of a parish in the Archdiocese of Washington. This is not the standard for recusal for any judge on cases involving institutions of his or her faith.

Courts consistently hold that judges do not have to recuse when their denomination has taken a public stand on an issue before the judge.

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