THE VOLTA NEWS

In anticipation of Anne Carson’s forthcoming Sophokles translation, Antigonick, Tom Roberge looks back at Nox and the publishing establishment’s many responses to the work. Read the full scoop at New Directions. 

[got readings? contact thevoltanews]

New York

Susan Howe & Roberto Tejada
St. Mark’s Poetry Project
February 8
8pm 

San Francisco

Lyn Hejinian
City Lights Bookstore
February 9
7pm 

Tucson

Release of  I’ll Drown My Book (Les Figues Press), the women’s conceptual writing anthology. Hosted by Laynie Brown.

Renee Angle
Judith Goldman

Bhanu Kapil

Laura Mullen

University of Arizona Poetry Center

February 10 

7:00pm

Denver

The Bad Shadow Affair

Emily Petit

Rachel Glaser

Derrick Mund

Jesse Morse

Lost Lake Lounge

February 11
7:30p 

“It’s easy to be silent; it’s hard to be quiet. If you want the former, just don’t say anything. But if you want the latter, you will have to figure out how to control for how we register sound. It isn’t simply a matter of volume. A whisper, for instance, can prove even more distracting than speech pitched at a normal register, just as the whine of a single mosquito or the buzzing of a lone fly can provoke attention where we might successfully drown out a louder but less differentiated racket.”

- from Ray McDaniel’s review of Rae Gouirand’s Open Winter, over at The Constant Critic

Lucy Ives interviews Renee Gladman at Triple Canopy. 

Due to flight cancelations and inclement weather, tonight’s event at Counterpath has been postponed. We’ll keep you in the loop!

New issue of Typo is up and ready for viewing, including a couple local poets (well, local for me in Denver) Julia Cohen and Thibault Raoul. Check out their poems below and the whole mag here 

AMERICAN CALENDAR

Above the table
tempered with envy & a shotgun agreement, we
eliminate the modern forecast. A tree crouching near a 
moldy pool dissolves blue exam books.
Provoke me. Evoke my supply of
origami levers, a tablecloth feeding crumbs to the guilt-
ridden river. Like your hair is down
& swims beside me.
Remember dinner? Remember the levee tripping with twigs?
Your outdoor body is water, the refigured
lamp floating like a night-bug. Our similes bring us closer to
an anatomy against envy. Against the swilled sink.
No longer the modern mossed with
glinting legs. Our levers
urgently pull to hide the program. The nuance-insects, mild in climate,
agents of a klutzy pattern. We iron leaves to cover the table.
Go salt the stain or
examine the cloud that keeps us.

                  - Julia Cohen

TREENAGE HYMNS

He knew she lived somewhere near river since he lived on river. Mornings, her hair passed by him on the water and, come evening, returned to her. He waited until he knew each strand. Then, having cleaned himself with flour and dressed in red, he walked until he found a brick hut. No entry.

That night he felt the roughest parts with his fingers and, though he did not find her exit, the sounds he made pleased him. Second night—by now his reds were fading—he thought as he touched the other parts: My hunger is cilice, dead heat dead shot dead time. By fifth night he was doing with his throat what he imagined river would do if it had throat.

Ø Ø Ø

By noon next day, he had taken her strands and hung them in the trees. BOIS would have it. Each time she called 4Winds, world was instrumental. (In six months, they had three children, whom they named Fanny, Fanny, and Osprey.) So: world was stochastic hijiki.

Ø Ø Ø

He lifted her onto shale near river to show bird-eating birds what he and she were made of—names. Birds did not need shale-lovers to function; they did not want shale-lovers to function. As she brought him to her lips she made him see through jade brouillard that had settled in their valley and ruined all trees not marked with fern-ash—CRISP SHOUTOUT TO MORBIER. It was natural what they did. Even the words. Even dancing—drenched—away from light.

Ø Ø Ø

She tugged on his sleeves of clay. He looked past her, saw two herons colliding, leaving dust on a frog’s lower lip. Fusain dropped from pines and said, «If either desires to move armoire riverside and see what happens, now’s the time». So she forgot what she had wanted to say, he skirted the duties herons had given him, and they went to her Aunt’s place to fetch beige armoire, whose name was Fossa. In her Aunt’s yard they picked up three cherry-colored feathers near Pierre De Ronsards. Within a quarterhour they’d glued feathers around Fossa’s keyhole, and had left her by river that moved slow—heard slow.

River did not mind cherries. River loved armoires, but river could not stand the color beige. River dived to bottom and found mud that could pass for lips and river coated armoire with lips. Fossa, after the thirty minutes she had paid for were up, said—«What is it you think you are doing?» River said, «You were an orphan. Now your home is my reach. You were not that attached to your color, were you?»

«Nope», said Fossa, «Colors are for hills. People like us should be more into frames and clear lavender coast».

                                     - Thibault Raoult

FRIDAY FEATURE: Tyrone Williams reviews Kazim Ali’s Bright Felon. 

MEDIUM: New video from Pierre Joris.

Joshua Beckman Reading / Robert Smithson Screening

Friday February 3rd, 8pm

222 Roebling St.

This Friday Joshua Beckman will be reading poems from his recent book “Poems”,

along with some new work. His book “Poems” was hand set and printed letterpress 

in an edition of 125 copies this past November at 222 Roebling St. by Joshua and Jon Beacham.

Copies of the book will be available for sale for $25.

After the reading we will be screening Robert Smithson’s film “Spiral Jetty”.

1970  16mm  color  34.5 min

We will have a 16mm print from the New York Film-Makers’ Coop.

Please join us at 8pm for these events.

Publications from The Brother In Elysium will also be available for sale.

There will be a brief intermission between the reading and the film.

Please come on time as to not interrupt either event. Seating is limited.

222 Roebling St. Brooklyn NY 11211

Located between S2nd & S3rd St. - Ground Level

Listen to her read HERE. 

Timothy Donnelly wins the Kingsley Tufts Award. Katherine Larson wins the Kate Tufts Award. Full press release.

The End And The Beginning 

Someone has to get mired

in scum and ashes,

sofa springs,

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder

to prop up a wall.

Someone has to glaze a window,

rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,

and takes years.

All the cameras have left

for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,

and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged

from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,

still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens

and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby

starting to mill about

who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes

sometimes someone still unearths

rusted-out arguments

and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew

what was going on here

must make way for

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown

causes and effects,

someone must be stretched out

blade of grass in his mouth

gazing at the clouds.

(via The Poetry Foundation)

Waiting in line for the bus that never comes 

In winter rain. A long line waits at the bank
For money. A line inches up to the post office
Stamp window (fresh out of new stamps).

At last at the supermarket, I wait like the others
In several lines; and I ask myself: how many
Of the people in them are as patient as they look.
I for one am not in any hurry. I feel righteous

And kindly, almost levitating as I move among
All that bounty. You wouldn’t believe my sweet
Self-control as I reach for that last box of straw-
Berries and someone grabs it from behind.

I just smile to myself and push on to my next
Indifference, my next invincibility, my ever calm
But scratchy shift away from things quotidian,
Sidestepping on the fresh-produce aisle floor

A little pile of spilled strawberries being angrily
Trampled by a shopper. He stamps and pivots
In the wet mess with hostile attention, staring
At the berries as if they were bugs or slugs.

Standing in line at checkout I watch the checker
Slip a strawberry from the cash drawer and pop
It in her mouth while making change. Red juice
Is running down her chin and onto her shirt.

The wonder is, no one but me appears to notice
The stains—city people are so inured to anything
And everything but at least they ought to show
Some surprise if not the dizziness that’s drawing

This reddish film over my sorely tried indifference
As all these people begin throwing strawberries
At each other or just into the air like children with
Snowballs in a frenzy of foolishness, the disgraceful

Bloodstains all over them certain to be noticed
Once they’re out in the street, my steady unconcern
Shattering as I emerge and a woman points in horror
At me dripping in a red puddle of  equanimity.

(via The Poetry Society)

Look at this thing. Don’t you want one?

January 2012

1. Sancta by Andrew Grace (Ahsahta Press)
2. Conflict by Norman Fischer (Chax Press)
3. Journey to the Sun by Brent Cunningham (Atelos)
4. Goat in the Snow by Emily Pettit (Birds, LLC)
5. This Can’t Be Life by Dana Ward (Edge Books)
6. Ventrakl by Christian Hawkey (Ugly Duckling Presse)
7. selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee by Megan Boyle (Muumuu House)
8. Howell by Tyrone Williams (Atelos)
9. The Hole by Thom Donovan (Displaced Press)
10. Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me by Mark Leidner(Factory Hollow Press)
11. SABORAMI by Cecilia Vicuña (ChainLinks)
12. Burning City: Poems of Metropolitan Modernity by Jed Rasulaand Tim Conley, Editors (Action Books)
13. The Weary World Rejoices by Steve Fellner (Marsh Hawk Press)
14. Crystal Flowers: Poems and a Libretto by Florine Stettheimer(BookThug)
15. The Source by Noah Eli Gordon (Futurepoem Books)
16. Dissolves (Terra Lucida IV-VIII) by Joseph Donahue (Talisman House, Publishers)
17. Ascension by giovanni singleton (Counterpath Press)
18. The Bled by Frances McCue (Factory Hollow Press)
19. 40 Watts by C. D. Wright (Octopus Books)
20. The Trees The Trees by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)

Lisa Levy covers the new volume of Eliot’s letters over at The Rumpus:

“Bel Esprit was a scheme hatched by Ezra Pound and others to enable Eliot to leave the bank in 1922. The plan was to find thirty guarantors of £10 per year, giving Eliot a “salary” of £300. A circular Pound wrote in March 1922 stated: “[TSE] certainly is not asking favours, our plan was concocted without his knowledge. The facts are that his bank work has diminished his output of poetry, and that his prose has grown tired”

EVENING WILL COME: Rachel Gontijo Araujo, Brenda Hillman, Andrew Joron

TREMOLO: Brian Teare interviews Andrew Zawacki

THEY WILL SEW THE BLUE SAIL: Chris Martin, Dawn Lundy Martin, Mathias Svalina

THE PLEISTOCENE: A new audio interview with Brandon Shimoda

If you haven’t already, take a look at Tsering Wangmo Dhompa reading from her work My Rice Tastes Like the Lake on MEDIUM and Daniel Moysaenko’s review of Ariana Reines’s Mercury on FRIDAY FEATURE!