THE VOLTA NEWS

Little Lady of My Heart

Shoe polish before
News from home
Up to the drawn-
In knee where your
Eye socket trusts
Off-shade
On purpose, don’t
They read…it concerns
People who are close,
I enjoy myself a
Bit with a twig be-
Guiled by your
Curls noncompetitive
With hides in quo-
Tation and bla, further
A 17th-cen. tureen
Emptied of am ex-
Pands there, remorse
But not so much
Remorse that you
Should polish intro-
Spection it could
Mean so much
To her and her
Followers if
Counters gleam
Time of relationship

full poem 

It’s funny that this should arrive the very week we’ve had the pleasure of hosting Lisa Robertson in Denver. Many satellite members of The Volta and our Denver community have had the great honor of listening and learning from Lisa by way of workshops, exercises, films, lectures, and conversations. Last night she enlightened us on reclamation of the etymology of “ruthmos,” paired with fresh takes on natality and the polis, layered with thinking from Arendt, Beneviste, and others. It was transformative and invigorating. I’m only 15 pages into Nilling (from BookThug), and I wish I could stop everything to sit with it. It seems urgent somehow.

“And so I turn to the poetry of Lisa Robertson as a space of contemplation. It is an exterior space. It represents a possible future. It offers a deep respect for the present. It honours me with doubt. As a reader I am included. I am shuffled off to my own thoughts. And that gives me all of the above, and a way of moving forward in my own creation.”

Read the rest at HARRIET.

“14 Fragments/10 Muses [Re:Sonnet #38]

We’re with James Baldwin in a lofty basement room, with a narrow strip of windows close to the ceiling revealing a moving stream of star-sky. There’s a loud high-pitched sound in the room. “Oh that?” James says. “That’s just the stars howling.”

Me and Sampson Starkweather are making a poem. It goes:

“Beauty is just a series of essays
proving that beauty doesn’t exist.”

I’m staying in the same B&B as Matvei Yankelevich did some ten years ago with a young, moon-faced woman, who is referred to as his “bride.” On the washroom mirror, I find pinned a poem, titled “The Stag and Doe,” that begins:”

more at the site

featuring work by Paige Taggart, Jess Rowan, kathryn l. pringle, Curtis Perdue, Jesse Morse, Rob MacDonald, Valerie Loveland, Mike Gross, Kit Frick, Megan Burns, Maurice Burford, Ark Codex, Stephanie Anderson, Kimberly Alidio, and Kristin Abraham. Cover art by Dagan McClure-Sikkema.

over at Harriet:

“when I think about crafting or making, I want to know why I’m doing it. I want to have some sense of charge behind the desire to make something in a particular way, since in my view, anything at all is possible. There are no rules in art, no rules in poetry—there is no reason you should write in any particular way—no reason to justify left, no reason to write a book, no reason to break a line after four beats, five, seven, or twenty. No reason to mess up your syntax, no reason not to. Unless you HAVE a reason—and though that reason might seem incredibly grand, or even far too demanding, that reason – internally motivated, and for some of us absolutely forceful—will drive “craft.”

If you’re in SF you can get a free book of poetry and listen to these poets read silently to themselves in the SPD Reading Room:

    Reading Room Schedule

11:00 Michael Cross
11:30 Hugo García Manríquez
12:00 Andrew Kenower
12:30 Michael Nicoloff
1:00 giovanni singleton
1:30 Norma Cole
2:00 Charles Legere
2:30 Chris Chen
3:00 Brian Ang
3:30 Christian Nagler
4:00 Samantha Giles
4:30 Taylor Brady
5:00 David Brazil
5:30 Linda Norton
6:00 Suzanne Stein
6:30 Ben Mirov
7:00 Amanda Nadelberg
7:30 Melissa Benham     

Get your schedule here

Caroline Bergvall
Monica de la Torre
Craig Dworkin
Farrah Field
Nikky Finney
Vievee Francis
Suzanne Gardinier
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Ben Lerner
Bernadette Mayer
Rachel McKibbens
Kevin Pilkington
Mathias Svalina
John Whitworth
Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Li Young Lee

Read a really stunning poem from Reviews Editor, Noah Eli Gordon, and watch the video response from Marcus DeMaio at ON AND ON SCREEN.

Author of As We Are Sung, Christina Mengert, reads from her work at MEDIUM.

“That Meyer is not more widely or enthusiastically read is one of the repeated petty crimes that make up life in the poetry world of contemporary America.”

Read O’Leary’s review at FRIDAY FEATURE to understand why not reading Thomas Meyer is a crime.

She might not remember which Weiners poem inspired it, but it’s extraordinary nonetheless. Watch it HERE.

If you’re nearby, perhaps you’re already there? See the lineup HERE.