March 2012
54 posts
Boston Review Poet Sampler: David J. Daniels
POST-BARIUM
Last week they lit your insides up
by sci-fi periscope, and your insides up
on the doctor’s screen blazed like a colonist’s map
of the Congo: wherever the empire had set up shop
all down the rich green river-stink
were now fully functioning trading posts of pink
or outposts of rot inverted pink
that couldn’t be got at
easily by knife nor chemo shrink.
Tonight you’re passed out cold
on the couch—valerian cut into dope. We’re old
acquaintances; I’m keeping watch. I take my occasional leave
for a smoke on your iced-over balcony. We’ve
been through this before: first Curtis one blasted
summer going fast; then Farmer who lasted
longer. I’ve somehow managed to wind up clean—breathed
dead hippo meat so to speak and not be contaminated—
that last bit lifted straight from Joseph Conrad.
Andrew Joron on Barbara Guest the Surrealist
The whole piece can be found on the City Lights Blog
“However, the complexity of Barbara’s character and creative process ensured that her composition of “surrealist poems” never followed Breton’s (early) formula of “pure psychic automatism.” I was witness to the often agonizing, spiritually perilous process of revision, self-doubt, and self-rescue that the making of each new poem (even, and especially, a “surrealist” poem) entailed for Barbara. The terror of the blank page combined with an imperative to make of each move an unexpected swerve meant that Barbara often needed to trick herself into writing (something, anything). The notion that she was writing surrealist poems was perhaps the last trick that Barbara played on herself.”
Chapbooks Chapbooks
Colorado College’s Coburn Gallery is having a chapbook exhibit called “The Chapbook in the 21st Century: Efficiency/ Excess/Ephemerality” in connection with a course Ugly Duckling’s Matvei Yankelevich is teaching on letterpress printing. If you happen by Colorado Springs between March 27th and April 17th, happen by the exhibit.
Meanwhile, between March 28th and March 30th the CUNY 2012 Chapbook Festival will be happening at various locations in NYC. Chapbook fair, folks!
New York Tribute to Morgan Lucas Schuldt
New Yorkers,
Consider attending this celebration of the life and work of poet Morgan Lucas Schuldt on Tuesday, March 27th. Flying Guillotine Press, who put out Morgan’s recent chapbook, organized the lovely event. See the Facebook event for more information.
New Colorado Review
Eileen Myles, David Buuck, CA Conrad
Small Press traffic has video recordings of Myles, Buuck, and Conrad reading together and answering questions.
Steve Evans on the Phonotextual Braid
Over at Jacket2, poetics scholar Steve Evans tackles the “Penelope-like task of weaving and unweaving what I call the ‘phonotextual braid,’ that intertwining of timbre, text, and technology that presents itself to us when we attend to recorded poetry.” His first article defines the terms.
Bad Shadow Archives
Poets Sommer Browning and Julia Cohen curate The Bad Shadow Affair, a reading series at Denver’s Lost Lake Lounge. This series has brought a rich variety of readers to the Denver community, and for your enjoyment, they’ve filmed along the way. Check out the Bad Shadow Archives online.
Do You Value The Examination of the Political in Poetry?
The Poetry Society of America, as part of their Red, White, & Blue campaign has a bunch of poets answering that question and more at their website. Who you ask?
Charles Bernstein
Rose Alcalá
Joshua Clover & Juliana Spahr
Ron Silliman
Fady Joudah
Prageeta Sharma
Matthew Zapruder
Rae Armantrout
Douglas Kearney
Deformation Zone
Johannes Göransson and Joyelle McSweeney have a double-chapbook out from Ugly Duckling Presse:
UDP says:
Theoretically minded and practice oriented, McSweeney and Göransson’s interests range outside the literary mainstream and even the “experimental” literary mainstream, incorporating cutting-edge media theory, the aesthetics of abjection, and theories of disability as they apply to translation. Deformation Zone: On Translation comprises two essays, one by each author, exploring their ideas.
McSweeney says:
If you’re curious about a theory of translation which takes this poem as its zeropoint and cascades out into two inverted mirror twinning metastases/theories of translation, then please scoot over to Ugly Duckling Presse and buy a copy.
Two Poems by Natalie Lyalin
Lyalin’s “Drank a Pine Tree” and “You Should See My White Vest” are up at Two Serious Ladies. Here’s the beginning of the first, and the page where you can find the rest.
“Drank A Pine Tree”
In a week you can so love someone
Take them to the woods
Wrap them in a fur cloak
Point out tremendous lichen
Singe a steak bone
Then move into the woods
This is an experiment
Like a sugared nut that settles the stomach
Like how the planets are confused
