November 21, 2005

New Yipes! at 21 Grand (11/21)

Again with the good curating. Movies to start, movies in the middle, and movies to end and all somehow very very with the poetry angle. SF video artist Cathy Begien's short "Favorite Things" was comic, nauseating and very much about consuming (literally and figuratively). Darin Klein's reading (yes, the Yipes! thankfully still has straight up readers) began a little slow but worked up momentum to a finale of short prose pieces that had the kick of a mule. Norma Cole's intro was great for many reasons and her CDR Scout (Krupskaya 2005) should be on everyone's I-want-it list. The night was rounded out with another tremedous Begien offering, "Blackout." Any one of these elements would have been enough for a successful evening in and of itself; certainly Cole's screening would have been enough to get the bodies into the chairs. The fact that curators Cynthia Sailers and David Larsen continue to indulge us in such programmatic excesses really does make each installment an amazement.

November 13, 2005

Recent negative reviews in Poetry

As much as I hate how mainstream the mainstream is betwixt the pages of Poetry, I do in fact read Poetry month after month, mainly for the reviews. So when Judith Kitchen (among many others expressing similar thoughts) writes, "I've noticed a tendency toward (no, a fad for) negative reviews;" I agree with Mark Steudel and say the dialogue between critic and reader, critic and writer is not only welcomed but necessary (Poetry Sept. 2005, 462; Poetry November 2005, 162). Poetry is one of the few institutions that can pull a bad review off without threatening its subscription base. To say that a bad review hurts poetry in any fashion, is to somehow not recognize the value of criticism or the skepticism that many readers of poetry have towards reviews because most are (by necessity?) written by friends or extended acquaintances. In fact, I think that the dearth of bad -- or even mediocre -- reviews hurts poetry. The non-scene-initiated reader, armed with only the blurbs on the back of dust jackets and covers is at a loss; if he doesn't already know, he doesn't know. If you doubt the veracity of this statement just reread Richard Kostelanetz' piece "Poetry Blurbs" in Central Park #24 (1995), a testament to how empty another poet's accolades can be. Is there any wonder that the mainstream would-like-to-learn-about-poetry reader is buying Garrison Keilor's, Good Poems (Viking, 2002) or its franchise?

November 9, 2005

Dirt #2 (November 2005). 53 pages. Free.

A great zine devoted to minimalist approaches to writing. Geof Huth's two page essay "The Art of Pwoermds" is an excellent introduction to (and implicit challenge for readers to create their own) one word poems: "Because of the huge limitations on the creators of pwoermds, these poems are one of the most challenging forms to create successfully" (11). The visual poems add fun and depth to the reading experience. The interview with Andrew "endwar" Russ has an interesting discussion on his practices as well as a brief history of his press IZEN. And there's a John M. Bennet poem to solidify Dirt's indie cred. Edited by PR Primeau.

November 7, 2005

Dislocate #1 (2005). 117 pages. $7.

A lit annual out of the University of Minnesota. The first issue starts off strong with two poems by Elizabeth Willis: short, sharp, dead-on prose. The last piece from a section entitled "Writing Notes" (which I hope is a permanent feature) offers glimpses into Anna Cypra Oliver's attempts to promote her first book, Assembling My Father. Allison Reed Miller and N. Katherine Hayles' essay on Complexity Theory seems geared more towards an undergraduate survey audience, but offering space to lit crit in a relatively slim volume shows that Dislocate is trying to offer more than the usual CW program annual. The interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Edward P. Jones asks a few off-kilter questions ("Can you tell me about your stamp collection?") that prove to be fodder for an entertaining read.

November 6, 2005

John Kerrigan, "Notes from the Homefront: Contemporary British Poetry," Essays in Criticism 54.2 (April 2004): 103-27.

For a lecture focusing on the domestic in British poetry, it seems a bit strange that the Martian poets, Craig Raine especially, get most of the ink. British Feminist writers occupy three paragraphs. The Martian movement more or less died a quiet death in the 1980s: Is 20 to 30 year old work really still contemporary? With a subject as vast as the shift in domestic paradigms and poets' reactions to it, it's a shame that Kerrigan brought only two approaches into discussion.