February 28, 2006

Rosalie Moore, The Grasshopper's Man (Yale UP, 1949). 66 pages.

I came across this via the Neglectorino Project. Moore's The Grasshopper's Man was first on CA Conrad's list of neglected poets, so I reckon she factored a bit into the impetus of the project overall. As luck would have it, she donated a signed copy of the book to the library I work for. Substantiating the neglected claim is the fact that this book hasn't been checked out since November 28, 1955. The only other Moore book in the collection, Of Singles and Doubles (Woolmer/Brotherson, 1979), has only been checked out once, and then by a faculty member.

How is this the first time I'm hearing of the Activist School and Lawrence Hart? I've ordered Hart's Idea of Order in Experimental Poetry through Interlibrary Loan to check this whole thing out.

But to return to our sheep, most of these poems read fresh.

The drops starting like tacks.
Bull-snorting umbrellas
Refuse rain. Hair
Breaks at the roots to lightning --
"I can see
How hard it is, how very hard it is
To live in this climate" (Parade with Piccolos, p. 53, ll.1-7).

Throughout the poems, there is a sense of the motion of augmentation, everything within the poem seems to be building upon itself; take for example the repetition of "more" and the repetition of structure in "Timepiece" (49).

The fact that this is neglected, and seemingly so soon (the Beat explosion in the Bay Area didn't help), is unfortunate, as the work still stands after so many years. The fact that Auden chose it for the Yale Series of Younger Poets is strangely making me rethink Auden.

____

Imagine the "I can see" line being at least two tabs in. I need to bone up on my html skills.

February 26, 2006

Ryan Murphy, Down with the Ship (Seismicity, 2006). 66 pages. $11.95.

Down with the Ship is a solid first book. Murphy's lines continually reinterpret themselves, change gears, and take the poems out for walks, the trajectory usually plotted non-linearly and far from their point of origin:

You're darking and coffee
the bedpost my pinion,
my stevedore. Allay always.
Offer up everything: truth

be told I'd rather
be fishing,
and so on (Stalwart and Floodtime Time, ll. 1-7).

The section "Poems for Pitchers" (25-33) is so good with it's reuse and recontextualization of phrases and lines: Compare the opening two lines of "Dear Roger Celemens"

New York is eternity,
it is a monument (25).

to the opening of "Dear Sandy Koufax"

We threaten eternity with our monuments (27).

to line 6 of "Dear Fidel Castro"

History is a poor eternity (31).

Such play/structure runs successfully throughout this section.

Available through SPD.

February 23, 2006

Korean intermedia text-based artist Young-Hae Chang.

February 21, 2006

Kim Bartley & Donnacha O Briain, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2003). 74 minutes.

What happens when a popular anti-free-market leader takes power in the fourth largest oil producing nation? The powers that be, from the media to the US State Department, set in motion concerted plans for his overthrow. This award winning documentary pieces together at the scene footage of the ousting and return to power of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April, 2002. A fine case study in the uses of media manipulation among other things.

February 21, 2006

The Oakland Tribune is reporting the US Army Corps of Engineers plans to tear down the remaining three structures that once were the Arks community in Fruitvale. According to the article, "During the 1930s,'40s and'50s, the arks were populated by a colony of artists, writers, laborers, eccentrics and families who thrived in an unconventional lifestyle. Painter Otto Riehl lived in one ark, as did vaudeville actor Bill Hill. Jack London is said to have visited the colony to harvest oysters. " Because the Arks are located on federal property, it seems that local officials and the historical society will be powerless to stop the razing of these structures.

February 20, 2006

William Burrough's "A Thanksgiving Prayer"

February 18, 2006

James Thomas Stevens and Caroline Sinavaiana, Mohawk/Samoa Transmigrations (Subpress 2006). 67 pages. $16.

Subpress is such a brilliant idea. Collective members put in 1% of their income towards the press and then each member edits a book every three years or so. This particular tome was edited by Juliana Spahr.

Working with material from their native traditions, the poets reinterpret (reprocess) core material from the other's culture. Stevens, a Mohawk, translates a Mohawk song, then Sinavaiana (a Samoan) writes a poem in response. Then vice versa. So the Mohawk "Mosquito Song"

The mosquito is bringing a message.
He comes to tell us how poor he is.
In truth, he is repetitive
and brings the same old message (25)

generates lines like these:

Sleeping through the din
of solitude's stinging messenger (27).

On the path around
temple gates
you stumble into
free fall, then lift

into arms of
echo and refrain (29).

This collaboration highlights the many places where traditions can intersect and revitalize each other.

February 16, 2006

Reading notes from Stephanie Young's Telling the Future Off (Tougher Disguises, 2005): The rhetoricals.

does this sound like waves crashing on the Berkeley shore? Was that my fantasy? Doesn't a poem in which the majority of lines begin with prepositions, not this poem, constitute a theory? is it right to be "in the world but not of it"? and you had the nerve to mis-heard me, "Is love bald"? Was the music coming from a piano? It is not easy, if not, I let go? Is this really so different from my behavior in the sleeping room? if he's here with us in Oakland tonight, what would he say? Is that wind? Are you raining in the trees? Will I find a good job? Should I say yes? Wil I marry a blonde? Is my love true? And the sun, golden, or what? Would you rather A: grow grain and corn and fruit or B: edit the diaries and notebooks of a famous person? Work the dock primarily and pursue the independence of shipping? At which part of the Canadian border shall I evade you? If I am only so tall as all that, can you cover me? Where's the little girl who becomes you? Dear north, are you there? Am I a liar? it hovers there, a kind of spare tequilla, and who could blame me? Am I tough enough? Now that we've united it what am I saying? Do you think I will be able to know your name when it changes? Would you like some sweet and sour chicken? But not having practiced enough, how should I set about to practice? so who's the pervert now? For what man even catching my gaze before he exits at the Powell Street station can save me for longer than the three minutes it took to write this down? Is there anything here that's NOT a robot? Was it only last Saturday that you procured me? Bird dog with a bird dog in her mouth? Two Innocent Pigeons? I know a mind that's been sitting in one place too long especially the wrist, do you? Did I think I was too busy for the war? Did I think I was too busy for the war not to be over? This much and no more? What am I supposed to do with this fine sense of the horrific? Do babies go to heaven when they die? Did the stars call out faintly, "Fuck you?" Were their pants so tight they found it difficult to move? What, in short, caused them to explode ... was that your face raining or your face in the rain? And may I have this opportunity? why should your hair not be very long and disingenuous? now to play detective to? If I am another thing what will not be surveyed how will it not be worked into a lather of originality, another thing above things happening? I didn't go shopping? What happens to the photo of a sponge in the afternoon of a viewing mystery? I mean later? Will I be forced to dribble always? where's waldo? Where are you star eight six? who is the misanthrope in the following sentence?

February 15, 2006

Kerouac neo-benshi here.

February 13, 2006

Tom Beckett, Little Book of Zombie Poems (2005). 24 pages. Free.

An e-chap available for the asking here.

The opening poem sets the parameters:

Structure=zombie.
Zombie=incident.

...Anything that occurs
in a structure

is a feeling
that's part zombie (p.1; ll. 3-4, 9-12).

So as with all things zombie, they have the potential to show up anywhere, right when you least/most expect it. Beckett gives us all the warning signs: they are constantly horny, they smell sweet, they eat cold pizza and drink warm beer, they clone themselves, they don't read poetry... It seems that full-on eros and passion may be the only things to save us from becoming zombified (ie. lifelessly structured) ourselves.

Fun and smart.

February 11, 2006

Artur Zmilewski, Repetition (2005). 39 Minutes. At CCA Wattis Institute (Nov 30, 2005-February 21, 2006).

The premise is simple enough. Back in the 70s, Stanford performed a prison experiment in which the volunteers were put in prisoner/guard positions in a simulated prison. The results soon turned so violent that it had to be shut down after just six days. Conclusion: human nature is sadistic. The problem with this experiment is that with all experiments, they need to replicated to be validated. Unfortunately, the dicey ethical nature of the experiment has prevented researchers from doing so, leaving this one experiment the last word and unquestioned authority on the subject. Step in Zmilewski and several down and out Poles who really need the $40 a day the experiment pays. They recreate the experiment (although with a new opt-out option not overtly given to the Stanford subjects). Results: half the prisoners opt-out, then things come to a head, and every one involved opts-out in unison at the warden's suggestion, because human dignity is worth more than $40 a day. Repetition? Not really. Knowing you can leave changes everything (hardly the replication of true prison conditions). But still, the results reaffirm a lot of what's good in humans put in authoritarian social structures. Check this out before it ends.

February 11, 2006

Gloria Frym & Bernadette Mayer at Small Press Traffic, February 10.

Bernadette Mayer read first. Engaging, funny, seemingly light-hearted even while reading more serious (ie. not funny) poems. I had never seen her read before, and I realized immediately that I have been reading her much differently than she reads herself. It now gives me fodder to go back and reread her in a different light. Poetry readings seldom do that to/for me. It was great that she read a few of the mis-translation pieces, French text included (with the help of an audience member).

Gloria Frym read several war related poems and used a lot of the tools utilized succesfully by slam poets (rhyme, catalogue verse) but without the cadence that makes spoken word actually flow. Also unlike slam poets, she'd let the rhyme drop, making it seem that she wasn't committed to or sure of the device.

February 8, 2006

I like a happy dance.

February 7, 2006

Dunja Popovic, "Pravo na TRUP: Power, Discourse, and the Body in the Poetry of Nina Iskrenko," The Russian Review 64.4 (2005): 628-41.

I only know Nina Iskrenko's work that was in the anthology In the Grip of Strange Thoughts (Zephyr, 1999). The rape sequence poem "Sex -- a Five Minute Briefing" is especially powerful:

And having hunched over her out of vileness out of tenderness
& abuse
He pulled out her soul having taken her the best he
could
Across the Urals Then closed the gate (ll.38-42)

Popovic argues that Iskrenko's poetry is subversive on several levels: anti-Soviet, feminist, and anti-traditionalist. Popovic notes three uses of the body in Iskrenko's work that corresponds to each of these catagories. First, Iskrenko juxtaposes the realness of the body ("the touchstone of the real" 632) to demonstrate the emptiness of the collectivity promised by Soviet political rheotoric. Second, Popovic examines the poem "Dear Undress to the Waist" in which the female body is manipulated by men (by a doctor, an artist, and by Tolstoy) giving rise to the Russian cliche turned pun "We are waiting/ for the tram" (which apparently means we are not whores who hang around trainstations looking to pick up men) "to suggest the possibility of female agency in the face of repressive misogynist ideology" (637) . Lastly, during Iskrenko's last phase before succombing to cancer, the body is used subversively to elevate personal experience as a "rejection of grand narratives in favor of 'little ones'" (638).

This article makes me want to pick up her selected translation The Right to Err: Selected Works (Three Continents, 1995).

February 6, 2006

Parachute 120 (2005). 150 pages.

Stefano Boeri, "Border Devices" (28-39): "From a study of the infinite restrictions that space places on an uncontrolled flow of population into a particular territory and the social relations that follow it, a kaliedoscope of boundary devices can be called up that has nothing to do with the traditional mirroring of geographical fluctuations in population, or even with the traditional subdividing of the modern map in large political, social, and cultural areas" (28). The article ends with an eight page visual poem/essay engaging the idea of borders.

Michelle Debat, "Gilbert Boyer: The Language of Art: For a Language in Migration" (72-91). A good discussion of Boyer's text images and sculptures.

February 5, 2006

Poems about Detroit, a brief list

Philip Levine, "Detroit Grease Shop Poem," "An Abandonned Factory, Detroit," "Belle Isle 1949," and "M. Degas Teaches Art and Science ar Durfee Intermediate School --Detroit, 1942" (and a lot more)
Carolyn Forche, "The Morning Baking"
Douglas Tanoury, "East Grande Boulevard"
Lawrence Joseph, "Sand Nigger"
Matthew Lee, Detroit Poetry
Jim Gustafson, "Detroit"

Shout outs:
Ethridge Knight, "A Poem for Myself"
Carl Sandburg, "Work Gangs"
Joseph May Wristen, "Books Written on the Road"
Jose Luis Peixoto, "A Joke"

See also: Stephen Dobyns (he was a reporter in Detroit for a while); Catherine Anderson (born in); Marge Piercy (born in); Reynaldo Ruiz's article on Chicano and Puerto Rican poets from Detroit in the 1980s; Detroit Slam Team 2002 National Slam Champs; Robert Hayden, Poems (born in); Dudley Randall (grew up in); Mick Vranich (lives in); John Sinclair (lived in); Donna Brooks (grew up in); Faye Kicknosway (born in); Chris Tysh (works in); George Tysh (works in); Melba Joyce Boyd and M.L. Liebler eds., Abandon Automobile: Detroit City Poetry 2001.

Far from complete or representative. More later.

February 3, 2006

Crying Sky: Poetry & Conversation vol. 1 no. 1 (Spring 2005). 78 pages. $9.

I really didn't like the David Wojahn poems, visually and linewise: "The Language of the old belief, has it perished?" ("Web Prayer for Milosz," 58).

I really did like the William Kemmett poems. "Hedge" reminds me a little of Richard Brautigan in a good way(41).

Unlike many small press journals, the interview with David Wojahn covers 16 pages. Some of the questions are a little softball ["Would you talk a bit about your development as a poet, in terms of your approach to language?"(62)], but at least they didn't edit it down to two or three pages of soundbites.

Poems by David Allen Evans, Alice Fogel, Glenn Freeman, James Haug, Cynthia Huntington, Wm. Kemmett, Leatha Kendrick, Rustin Larson, Cleopatra Mathis, Jack Myers, James Rioux, Betsy Sholl, and David Wojahn.

Crying Sky
W.E Butts and S. Stephanie, eds
164-1 Maple Street
Manchester, NH 03103

February 3, 2006

Red Hills Review vol. 1 no. 1 (2004). 48 pages.

The print zine is moving online to here apparently in the very near future.

In her intro, editor Julia Park tells us that RHR grew out of an online writer's group. The social aspect of this issue plays out with a large proportion of the poets and writers hailing from Park's stomping ground of Alameda, a stone's throw from Oakland, California. The social and the local, both good things, right?

As you might expect given the editorial model of focusing on such an insular community (literally, Alameda is an island), the level of the writing ranges from awful:

She had hair like wild fire running down her back,
cascading over her creamy skin (Liriel, "Untitled,"7)

to better:

Walking home,
I saw a glorious sunset
in a puddle
and trekked it
all over
the kitchen floor (Karen Braun Malpas, "Untitled," 21).

This miscellany collects poems, short fiction, and memoir.

I question Park's editorial/design decision to begin each poem with a drop cap, thus inserting a visual element into poems that are clearly not considering such vispo elements.

February 1, 2006

Key Satch(el) (1997-1999).

I miss Key Satch(el). Back when I was first seriously playing around with the prose poem as a form, four times a year in 24 saddle-stapled pages, I could get a run-down of where everyone else was at with their own experiments. From Gary Duehr's brief briefs like "Song:"

Someone may have sorrow, and sing it, yet no one able to tell with whom it belongs [2.2 (1998) :11].

to embarrasingly my first exposure to Maxine Chernoff in 2.3(1998) and Cid Corman in 2.4 (1998), Key Stach(el) was a crutch in my learning curve to the genre.

The last page of the last issue is a lament that everyone considering running a journal (print or otherwise) should ponder before the leap of faith and no-more-free-time and anemic bank accounts.

In fact, pairing this with T.S. Eliot's "The Idea of a Literary Review" [The Criterion 4.1 (1926)] might be a good jumping off point for editors in general.