tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65247765235897905542024-03-08T03:34:05.544-08:00Galatea Resurrects #24 (A Poetry Engagement)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-8632528915202056582015-05-12T07:42:00.001-07:002015-05-13T09:34:27.313-07:00Issue No. 24 TABLE OF CONTENTS<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">[N.B. You
can scroll down on blog or click on highlighted titles or names to go
directly to the referenced article.]</span></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">By <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/editors-introduction.html">Eileen Tabios</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">NEW REVIEWS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Cat Tyc reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-tatters-by-brenda-coultas-1.html">THE TATTERS</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Brenda Coultas</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Deborah Poe and John
Bloomberg-Rissman engage <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/to-look-at-sea-is-to-become-what-one-is.html">To look at the sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">(2 vol. set), Eds. Thom Donovan and Brandon
Shimoda</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Richard Lopez reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/two-books-by-michael-dennis.html">missing the kisses of eloquence </a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/two-books-by-michael-dennis.html">and Coming Ashore on Fire</a></b>, both by Michael Dennis</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Laura Carter reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/called-by-kate-greenstreet.html">Called</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Kate Greenstreet</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The Rev. Dr. Thomas C.
Marshall reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/pregrets-by-anselm-berrigan.html">Pregrets</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Anselm Berrigan</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/books-by-antoon-postma-stephanie.html">Mangyan Treasures on The Ambahan: A poetic expression of the Mangyan of Southern Mindoro, Philippines by Antoon Postma; DRAGON LOGIC by Stephanie Strickland; and ACTION SCORE GENERATOR by Nathan Walker</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Sarah
Sarai reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/woodnote-by-christine-deavel.html"><span id="goog_859919944"></span>Woodnote<span id="goog_859919945"></span></a></b> </span></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Christine Deavel</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">April Joseph reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/not-so-sea-by-mg-roberts.html">not so, sea</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Mg Roberts</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Joel Chace reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/justified-sonnets-by-james-mclaughlin.html">Justified Sonnets</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by James McLaughlin</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/as-they-fall-by-ivy-johnson.html">As They Fall</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Ivy Johnson</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Sheila
Bare reviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/what-ive-stolen-what-ive-earned-by.html"><i>What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned</i> </a></b>by Sherman Alexie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Laura Carter reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/hello-my-meat-by-daniel-beauregard.html"><span id="goog_859919940"></span>Hello, My Meat<span id="goog_859919941"></span></a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Daniel Beauregard</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/port-light-haynaku-collection-by.html">Port Light: A Hay(na)ku Collection</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by William Allegrezza</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Patrick James Dunagan engages
<b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/dear-alain-by-katy-bohinc-and-i-no.html">Dear Alain by Katy Bohinc and I No Longer Believe in the Sun: Love Letters to Katie Couric by Derek Fenner</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Sally Heggeman reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/organic-furniture-cellar-by-jessica.html">Organic Furniture Cellar</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Jessica Smith</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/two-books-by-raymond-mcdaniel.html"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Saltwater Empire </span></i>and <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Special Powers and Abilities, </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">both by Raymond McDaniel</span></a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/dont-let-me-be-lonely-american-lyric-by.html">DON’T LET ME BE LONELY: AN AMERICAN LYRIC</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Claudia Rankine<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Michael S. Judge reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/schedule-of-unrest-selected-poems-by.html">Schedule of Unrest: Selected Poems </a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by John Wilkinson</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Min Gu Kim and Jongyoon
Choi review <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-coal-life-by-adam-vines.html">The Coal Life</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Adam Vines</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Veronica Montes reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-descartes-highlands-by-eric.html">The Descartes Highlands</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Eric Gamalinda</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/selected-amazon-reviews-by-kevin-killian.html">Selected Amazon Reviews</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Kevin Killian, Edited by Brent Cunningham</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/vuelo-subterraneo-subterranean-flight.html">Vuelo Subterráneo / Subterranean Flight</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Mario<i> </i></span><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Melendéz</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Sheila Bare reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/salu-salo-in-conversation-with.html">Salu-Salo: In Conversation with Filipinos: An Anthology of Philippine-Australian Writings</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, Edited by Jose Wendell P. Capili and John Cheeseman</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Tom
Beckett r</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">eviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/sixty-morning-talks-by-andy-fitch.html">Sixty Morning Talks</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Andy Fitch</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/state-of-union-by-susan-lewis.html">STATE OF THE UNION</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Susan Lewis</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/two-books-by-patricia-jabbeh-wesley.html"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The River Is Rising </span></i>and </a></b><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/two-books-by-patricia-jabbeh-wesley.html">Where The Road Turns</a></b>, </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">both by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/trembling-hand-equilibrium-by-barry.html">TREMBLING HAND EQUILIBRIUM</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Barry Schwabsky</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Jim McCrary reviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/books-by-e-tracy-grinnell-and-jamie.html"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">portrait of a lesser subject</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by e. tracy grinnell </span>and <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Shade</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Jamie Townsend</span></a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Amanda [Ngoho] Reavey reviews
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/as-we-know-by-amaranth-borsuk-and-andy.html">As We Know</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Amaranth Borsuk and Andy Fitch</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/brash-ice-by-djelloul-marbrook.html">BRASH ICE: NEW POEMS</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Djelloul Marbrook</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Zaki Refai reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/eunoia-by-christian-bok-1.html">Eunoia</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Christian B<span style="color: #1c1c1c;">ö</span>k</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Ole Kauert reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/eunoia-by-christian-bok-2.html">Eunoia</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Christian B<span style="color: #151515;">ö</span>k</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/home-and-away-old-town-poems-by-kevin.html">Home and Away: The Old Town Poems</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Kevin Miller</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Jonas Schallenberg reviews
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/persepolis-by-marjane-satrapi.html">PERSEPOLIS: The Story of a Childhood</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b> </b>by Marjane Satrapi</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Parker Bryant reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/tapeworm-foundry-by-darren-wershler.html">The Tapeworm Foundry</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Darren Wershler</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/driving-to-bees-by-maggie-schwed.html">Driving to the Bees</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Maggie Schwed</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">John Bloomberg-Rissman engages
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/homage-to-etel-adnan-edited-by-lindsey.html">Homage to Etel Adnan</a></b>, </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Edited by Lindsey Boldt, Steve Dickison &
SamanthA Giles</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Parker Bryant reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-arrival-by-shaun-tan-1.html">The Arrival</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-arrival-by-shaun-tan-1.html"> </a></b>by Shaun Tan</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Jonas
Schallenberg reviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-arrival-by-shaun-tan-2.html"><i>The Arrival</i> </a></b>by Shaun Tan</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-loveliest-vein-of-our-lives-by-neil.html">The Loveliest Vein of our Lives</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b> </b>by Neil Leadbeater</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Jonas Schallenberg reviews
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/meanwhile-by-jason-shiga-1.html">Meanwhile</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Jason Shiga</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Zaki Refai reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/meanwhile-by-jason-shiga-2.html">Meanwhile</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Jason Shiga</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Peg Duthie engages <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/she-blueprint-by-michelle-naka-pierce.html">She, A Blueprint by Michelle Naka Pierce (text) and Sue Hammond West (image)</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">jim mccrary engages <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/books-by-jennifer-l-knox-and-meg-johnson.html">The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway by Jennifer L. Knox and Inappropriate Sleepover by Meg Johnson</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Billie Chernicoff reviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-tatters-by-brenda-coultas-2.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A Poetry Reading by</span> </a></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-tatters-by-brenda-coultas-2.html">Brenda Coultas</a></b> Reading <i>The Tatters</i> on
Heart’s Content Road</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">POET INTERVIEWS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Tom
Beckett interviews </span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/interview-with-marton-koppany.html">Márton Koppány</a></b></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Richard
Lopez interviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/interview-with-stefan-hyner.html">Stefan Hyner</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">FEATURED ESSAY<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/essay-by-tom-hibbard.html">“Quantum Difference: Barthes, Deleuze, John Bennett and the Topographies of Meaning” </a></b>by
Tom Hibbard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">THE CRITIC WRITES POEMS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-critic-writes-poems-sarah-sarai.html"><b>Sarah Sarai</b></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">FEATURED POETS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/featured-poet-sun-yung-shin.html">Sun Yung Shin</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/05/featured-poet-alfred-yuson.html">Alfred A. Yuson</a></b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">FROM OFFLINE TO ONLINE<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Gerald Maa reviews <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/04/uncontainable-noise-by-steve-davenport.html">“Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackman” </a></b></span><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/04/uncontainable-noise-by-steve-davenport.html">from
</a></b><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/04/uncontainable-noise-by-steve-davenport.html">Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackman and Other Poems</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Garin Cycholl reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/04/uncontainable-noise-by-steve-davenport.html">Uncontainable Noise</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Steve Davenport</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Meriwether Clarke reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection24.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-tribute-horse-by-brandon-som.html">The Tribute Horse</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Brandon Som</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-24679513419905005302015-05-12T07:41:00.000-07:002015-05-12T07:41:58.546-07:00EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thanks as ever to <i>Galatea
Resurrects</i>' generous volunteer staff of reviewers. In addition to presenting wonderful feature articles, we feature <b>53 NEW POETRY REVIEWS </b>in this
issue. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With Issue No. 24, <i>GR</i>
has provided 1,499 new reviews and 125 reprinted reviews (the latter brings
online reviews previously available only viz print or first published in
now-defunct online sites). With this issue, we also increased our coverage of
poetry publishers by 24 to <b>544 publishers in 17 countries.</b> This
is important as much of the ground-breaking poetry work is published by
independent and/or relatively small presses who (by the nature of their work)
are not always as well-known as they deserve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">We’re also delighted to
encourage young critics!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Included in
this issue are several reviews by high school students from <b><a href="http://www.indiansprings.org/podium/default.aspx?t=108790">Indian Springs School in Alabama,</a></b> a private school that includes grades 8-12. Along with a review published in
the last issue (by Zach Choi, Andrzej Richardson & Jeffrey Simonetti), the
reviews in this issue (by Sally Heggeman, Min Gu Kim, Jongyoon Choi, Ole
Kauert, Jonas Schallenberg, Parker Bryant and Zaki Refai) were written for
Douglas Ray’s “The Writers Workshop” or Jessica Smith’s “Experimental
Literature Class.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Great job, teachers!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Poetry has enhanced my
love of lists so here are <i>GR</i>'s latest poetry-lovin' stats!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 1: 27 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 2: 39 new reviews
(one project was reviewed twice by different reviewers)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 3: 49 new reviews
(two projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 4: 61 new reviews (one
project was reviewed thrice, and three projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 5: 56 new reviews
(four projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 6: 56 new reviews
(one project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 7: 51 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 8: 64 new reviews (3
projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 9: 65 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 10: 68 new reviews
(1 project was reviewed thrice and 1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 11: 72 new reviews
(1 project was reviewed thrice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 12: 87 new reviews
(1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 13: 55 new reviews
(1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 14: 64 new reviews
(3 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 15: 72 new reviews
(1 project was reviewed thrice and 4 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 16: 73 new reviews
(2 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 17: 108 new reviews
(3 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 18: 104 new reviews
(3 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 19: 68 new reviews
(1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 20: 64 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 21: 78 new reviews<b> </b>(2
projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 22: 40 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 23: 69 new reviews<b> </b>(3
books were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 24: 53 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I continue to encourage
authors/publishers to send in your projects for potential review—note that
because we believe in Poetry's immortality, <i>GR</i> does not limit
reviews to just "recent" poetry publications. And, obviously, people
are following up with your review copies (see below)! Information for
submissions and available review copies <a href="http://grarchives.blogspot.com/"><b><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">HERE</span></b></a>. Future reviewers
also should note that the next review submission deadline is Nov 15, 2015.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Of reviewed publications,
the following were generated from review copies sent to <i>GR</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 1: 9 out of 27 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 2: 25 out of 39 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 3: 27 out of 49 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 4: 41 out of 61 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 5: 34 out of 56 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 6: 35 out of 56 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 7: 41 out of 51 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 8: 35 out of 64 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 9: 42 out of 65 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 10: 46 out of 68 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 11: 46 out of 72 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 12: 35 out of 87 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 13: 38 out of 55 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 14: 40 out of 64 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 15: 43 out of 72 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 16: 49 out of 73 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 17: 73 out of 108
new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 18: 84 out of
104 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 19: 41 out of
68 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 20: 50 out
of 64 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 21: 46 out of 78 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 22: 30 out of 40 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 23: 49 out of 69 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Issue 24: 28 out of 53 new
reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The beauty of Blogger is
how typos can be corrected at any point in time. If you see any typos,
feel free to let me know as I can still correct them even after the
issue's release.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I hope you enjoy this
issue of <i>Galatea Resurrects</i>! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Editor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">May 12, 2015<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-71176043785812961782015-05-02T23:50:00.000-07:002015-05-12T07:38:34.358-07:00THE TATTERS by BRENDA COULTAS (1)<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">CAT TYC Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">THE TATTERS</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Brenda
Coultas <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Wesleyan University Press, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The Tatters </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">is
Brenda Coultas’ homage to “poet’s hero” & friend Brad Will, who she
describes as an anarchist, activist, Indymedia reporter, freight train hopper,
squatter, fire-eater and poet who was murdered while filming political events
in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006. While reading this, it felt impossible to not think
about what it means to be an activist. I found myself metaphorically passing
the word ‘activist’ back and forth in my hands. Any time I felt I was certain
of what I thought it meant, I would find that meaning almost instantly
dissolved like handfuls of sand escaping from my fingers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">These filaments of escape
are the ‘tatters’ in which Coultas explores, “I, ephemera, carrying my chemical
burden/ I, ephemera, once paper becoming plastic becoming digital or /I,
ephemera holding the space/ I, ephemera, hold the space.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">This section represents Coultas’
particular style of documentary poetics, more interested in the first person
perspective of being on political ground and using language of inclusiveness –
‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hold the space’</i>- to give the reader
access to her view on the ground and in conversation with her friend. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Another example of Coultas’
view is when she speaks to the specificity of Will which is harkened in the
piece “A Mass For Brad Will”, where she writes, “If I were a handsome feather,
I’d walk to City Hall/ In full plumage & release all of Manhattan’s
political prisoners/ If I were a quill, I’d give you life / On this quiet
page.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">This phrase speaks to a
certain parallel that runs through out the entire piece. It speaks to the generous
spirit of this man that Brenda bears the responsibility of carrying, not only
in memory of him, but also as an attempt to follow through on that generosity
by humanizing the emotional struggles of political commitment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">With recent events
sparked after the Eric Garner verdict, the activist identity has been on my
mind a lot. I knew action was happening based on what I saw on social media
& in the news after the fact but anyone I talked to in person said they
weren’t actively participating in the actions because ‘they just didn’t have it
in them anymore.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The first time I heard
this it struck me (I was having my own conflicts with school & work
obligations so it made me a feel a little less guilty) but when it became a
constant, I really started to wonder. These people weren’t saying they didn’t
care or that they weren’t outraged. Many were trained professional union
activist non profit go getters but there was a certain level of exhaustion,
both emotional and physical, that they pointed to that made me think. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A couple friends
transplanted<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from Philly told me they
felt they were reliving the time of Mumia protests again. How they phrased it
pointed to a hint of trauma that I had never seen a light on in regards to
political action. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Then, upon further
explanation, the other constant was acknowledgement of other responsibilities
competing with politics. Children, non profit jobs and art projects centered
around other injustices and physical disability. All issues framing a milieu of
their own politics which acknowledges the ying yang nature of a lifetime in
activism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A balance of light and
dark that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tatters </i>toes the line
from start to finish. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Coultas’ personalization
of Will acknowledges all things hopeful & utopic from the activist lens
happens when she says, “When the bicyclists take over the streets / and bring
the city / to a standstill, Brad said that / is critical mass<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I asked, “ What happens
when the city is shut down ?” / He said, “ Then we’ll dance.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Being introduced to Brad
Will in this way makes the End Notes more relevant and special where focus
turns towards his journalism and why he did it, his connection to the poetry
community and the poem he read at St. Marks Poetry Project on the last New
Year’s before his murder. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">This accessibility to the
activist makes one think of the individuals in our own lives who take politics
one step further. The ones who are always on their way to a meeting, an action
& asking you to sign a petition in transit. The ones whose name impart a
tiny inflection of faith that someone is doing something for this horribly
unjust world despite the fact that you just can’t for x, y, z reasons. The ones
who introduced us to Marx and took us to that place that introduced you to the
revolution that lives within us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Coultas’ individual
political awareness gets equal measure & also points to the darker
landscape of invested political activism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It surrounds her while in the middle of an action against fracking, “The
last glass of water sits before you, how fast or slow will you drink it ?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘tatters’ </i>she speaks of evoke a study of what is happening on the
periphery. Of a movement, and of an action. What we want to change and what we
have lost. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The unspoken stakes in
committing to change this world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">“The water is an hourglass,
and I write fast as I can before it runs dry.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">This kind of
precariousness that Coultas is describing parallels what Judith Butler wrote
about after the birth of Occupy, where she described the specifics of being
precarious in a political nature as being “ not simply an existential truth –
each of us could be subject to deprivation, injury, debilitation, or death by
virtue of events or processes outside of our control. It is, also importantly,
a feature of what we might call the social bond, the various relations that
establish our interdependency.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">An analysis of connection
is what transcends this to not being just one elegy but really more elegy of a
constant multiple, friends and water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This text is a narrative of that particular ‘social bond’, speaking to
the friendship between she and Brad Will but also to the relationship that she
has, as an activist & human, to the planet and its limited resources. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">Cat Tyc is a poet/new media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Currently she is a MFA Candidate for Writing/Activism at Pratt Institute. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><br /></span>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-40003857310849042232015-05-02T23:45:00.000-07:002015-05-11T22:20:16.257-07:00TO LOOK AT THE SEA IS TO BECOME WHAT ONE IS: AN ETEL ADNAN READER by ETEL ADNAN<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">DEBORAH
POE and JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN Engage</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><i>To look at the sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader </i>(2 vol. set), Eds. Thom Donovan and Brandon Shimoda</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>(Nightboat Books, Callicoon, New York, 2014)</i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(DP =
Deborah Poe; JBR = John Bloomberg-Rissman)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">DP: My
father was a pilot. I dream of flying. One of my close friends in Seattle is
passionate about amateur astronomy and space exploration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In February 2013, I went on a trip to the </span><a href="mailto:http://www.mjt.org/"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Museum of Jurassic Technology</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> in Los Angeles. One exhibit showcased bizarre and
enormous portrait paintings of Russian dogs that went to space. A favorite read
of mine during the last five or so years was Brandon Shimoda’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">O Bon</i> in which Shimoda nods to Adnan’s
work (such resonances there). One of my handmade books was in the New York City
exhibit of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts
Here</i> in 2013 at the Center for Book Arts. All of these things undoubtedly
were with me as I approached Etel Adnan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral
March for the First Cosmonaut </i>at the Whitney Biennial in the spring of
2014. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Susan
Howe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tom Tit Tat</i> was actually the
first project in the realm of book arts that caught my eye on the floor devoted
mostly, it seemed, to mixed media experiments. But it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral March for the First Cosmonaut</i> that blew me away. Adnan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral </i>was the most interesting work
there in my view, and I spent most of my time with this piece. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Adnan
created the accordion-fold book, or </span></span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">leporello, handwritten in ink. Space ship, eye, planets,
rocket trails, and evocative spherical shapes in watercolor launch forward from
behind the text.</span><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI40r8bSLNZYom0qT_4maCnFPq7klVp-wGTNydxCD9X3SWST4T7MyKlBNy6iipHkFEXhjPDGBEeLZ6iWXfOlsox7J1NUYC7o7thGdEQHlN5NCXWA5Z4JdnOQv92ntfJ0AT137kRONNWMk/s1600/AA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI40r8bSLNZYom0qT_4maCnFPq7klVp-wGTNydxCD9X3SWST4T7MyKlBNy6iipHkFEXhjPDGBEeLZ6iWXfOlsox7J1NUYC7o7thGdEQHlN5NCXWA5Z4JdnOQv92ntfJ0AT137kRONNWMk/s1600/AA.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>(Click to enlarge)</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When John Bloomberg-Rissman asked if I would
like to collaboratively write this piece on Adnan’s landmark two-volume edition,
I was energized by the idea. My own experiences in moving every few years,
while growing up in a military family, have made me sensitive to questions
around cultural identity, home and belonging. I felt like the show at the
Whitney was my first real introduction to Adnan’s work, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral March for the First Cosmonaut</i> struck
me as thoroughly invested in those questions: cultural identity and hybridity, the
politics of geography, and the relationship of colonization and imperialism to “home.”
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I do not think it an accident that Adnan
includes California to place the piece and to remind us of our country’s bloody
inheritance by way of colonialism and imperialism—an ugly contradiction
presented as a supposed multicultural melting pot replete with possibility in
achieving the American Dream, and the racism and ethnocentricism that goes
hand-in-hand with American exceptionalism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But I get ahead of myself. One of the things that
interests me most about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i> is how
Adnan traverses the literal and figurative on the page, which for me parallels
the conceptual drives of the piece. Inventively she weaves the concrete with
the metaphorical. Adnan acknowledges the material conditions of cultural
identity, the cultural politics of difference relative to place, and the
relationship of colonization to home. She simultaneously questions how those material
conditions can be negotiated through art, science, and the imagination. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Adnan situates us in the concrete: San Quentin,
Frank Lloyd Write, the inmates, the paper. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
the beginning was San Quentin<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
saw it at twilight<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a gigantic casino<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>a
Frank Lloyd Wright building<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>floating
dream but<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>it
was rejecting light<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>like
a mirror<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>its
sadness all written in that refusal <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">light was not going through<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">it was being arrested in all
its glory<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">the prison transfigured, only
for<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">those outside<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">the inmates remaining in the
dark<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and these images are imprisoned
on<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">paper<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I see them struggle toward
freedom,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">toward meaning<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and they fall like Gagarin
today<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">fell: (15)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The evocation of Genesis “in the beginning”—is
inextricably linked to prison. Thus the subjugation of people of color, part
and parcel of the prison industrial complex, is systemic, perhaps dogmatic. The
casino arises not without its colonial context in a structure designed by a
white architect . Adnan’s work is “like a mirror” but not a mirror. This work
is not about narcissistic reflection or blind idealism. And though the images
and language are “imprisoned on paper,” those images and words allow us to
attempt refusal of arrested glory. They allow us to “struggle toward freedom,
toward meaning,” even as we repeatedly fall.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">JBR: I think that mixed in with the biblical
imagery is also a gesture towards the Platonic myth of the cave, which is
almost as culturally determinative as Genesis. But since (within <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i>, at least) that really only
applies to the situation of the inmates, I won’t push it, except as a way to
situate my response to what you have written as well as to the poem. And yes, I
use the word “situate” twice, intentionally, because it was the word cosmonaut
in Adnan’s title that revealed to me my own “situation”, a kind of “cultural inmate”
status, imprisoned or at least deformed by the very forces of US American exceptionalism
to which you so rightly refer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Speaking of inmates, I want to comment on a
line you quote, the one that associates Frank Lloyd Wright with San Quentin. I
am not at all claiming that what I am about to say is what was in Adnan’s mind,
in fact it couldn’t have been, given that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i>
was written in 1968, but I have plenty of associations that connect Wright,
Gagarin, and San Quentin that affect the way I read this line. Wright did build
the Marin Civic Center, not far away. Which has been described, not as a
rocket, but as a sci-fi building (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gattaca</i>
was filmed there). So that’s one association we can make between Wright and
Gagarin. But there are others, even stronger ones, ones that directly associate
the Civic Center with San Quentin. The furniture for the courtrooms there was
built at San Quentin, which has a century-long history as a place that makes
furniture. But, most interestingly, I think, is this: On August 7, 1970,
Jonathan P Jackson, “initiated an attempt to negotiate the freedom of the
Soledad Brothers (including his older brother George) through the kidnapping of
Superior Court judge Harold Hale from the Marin County Civic Center in San
Rafael, California an incident in which he was one of four people killed.”
(Wikipedia). Which just goes to show how little an author can remain in control
of the impact of her own writing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Back to my own “cultural inmate” status. Now I
don’t want to be all melodramatic about this, I mean, there’s no way I think my
situation is the same as someone locked down 23 hrs/day in a Supermax. But. Why
was I shocked–not too strong a word, tho it was low-voltage–by the focus on a
cosmonaut rather than one of “our own” astronauts? Why is my personal library
so Anglo-European? Why does it in NO WAY representative of the totality of all
wonderful written things. (You don’t need a VIDA count to see which way the
wind blows …) And which therefore in no way acts as a conduit, so to speak, to
the reality of the lived experience of most humans on the planet. (Yes, I still
think texts have something to do with lived experience …)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So my very first debt of gratitude to Adnan is
the title of this poem, which showed me just how very provincial I am. Am
hopefully slowly ceasing to be (better late than never). In honor of which
hoped-for transformation I would like to make mention of Laika (real name
Kudryavka), the first world hero (species be damned) to leave the biosphere
behind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Oh, and I should note, before plunging into the
poem, that while reading about Adnan’s leporellos, I discovered that one from
the same year as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i> (1968) is
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Late Afternoon Poem</i>, in which
one can find a line that will turn out to be prophetic: “Why is a solar ray
burning my eye when the sky still lies in ice?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So. For our readers who may not know. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i> is the second poem in the first
volume of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To look at the sea is to become
what one is</i>. It was written only about three years after Adnan began
writing poetry in English. The cosmonaut for whom / because of whom <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i> was written is Yuri Gagarin. He
was the first human in space. The occasion of the poem is his death, in a plane
crash, 7 years later. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As hinted at above (my reaction to the title), one
of the features of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i> that most
strikes me is global orientation, which is so appropriate for a poem
memorializing someone who experienced (in reality or in the poet’s imagination)
“seventeen sunrises in one day.” No borders. Or, rather, no borders that aren’t
ultimately porous. Which means that Adnan is able to apply an incredible range
of poetic affects and allusions:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You were searching through the
hands of the monkey tree<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">that pipeline to the sky<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">an incoherent light-wave was
moving<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">behind the clouds<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and you went swimming into that
distant <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">pool you went to be suspended
there<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">cool as the western side of
palm leaves<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">under the break of noon (9)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This is how the poem opens, and somehow I am in
the territory carved out by Aimé Césaire and/or Léopold Senghor, et al., a
francophone surrealism. Which is surprising, given that Adnan is Lebanese, tho
it shouldn’t be, given that French was her first language, or at least her
first literary language (she was educated in French schools). Perhaps
surprising is the wrong word, and I should refer back to the mild electric
shock the title gave me. The main thing I am instantly aware of is that this,
might have been written in California, but it is not US American poetry of the
late 60s. This sense is reinforced later on the same page when she lists the
names of US American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts side by side, “the new
hierarchy of archangels”, as if they were all on the same team. In the midst,
at the height, of the Cold War? Amazing. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">By the next page she is dialoging with the
North African (“Carthaginian”) Augustine. On the page after that we find the
first lines of a new Genesis:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">in the beginning was the sufi
in orbit<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">in the beginning was the white
page<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">in the beginning was the sword<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">in the beginning was the rocket<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">in the beginning was the dancer<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">in the beginning was color<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">in the beginning was music (11)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A new Genesis means a new mythology, which is
appropriate given that we are now in a new age (“seventeen sunrises in one
day”), but the old mythologies are never left behind, because suddenly we are
in the midst of “Icarus remember Dedalus remember Gagarin remember the
archangel remember the / white rose Roses blanches tombez! remember Icarus
remember Icarus remember / Dedalus remember Gagarin /<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/ …” (11) and around it goes for the rest of
the page because why? because we are orbiting … <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But one thing Adnan never is, is naïve. We turn
over the leaf and are in post-Hiroshima Japan, no, not only post-Hiroshima
Japan, but post-Kamakura earthquake Japan. The earthquake took place in 1293. The
sun on the flag of Japan is a black halo here. I think of the astronauts and
cosmonauts, who have already been identified with archangels, as Benjaminian
angels of history, especially as depicted in his Ninth Thesis on History:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A Klee painting named Angelus
Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something
he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings
are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned
toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single
catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of
his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what
has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in
his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm
irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the
pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Later we encounter Omaha Indians, Batman,
Martin Luther King, Jr., a camel, San Quentin (etc; what we find in the lines
you quote above), Leonardo’s bats, the sun god Ra, Elijah, Jesus, Mohammad
(these last other, earlier, cosmo/astronauts–we know the stories of all their
flights). Gagarin’s ascent into space might have marked the beginning of a new
hope in some sense, but his death returns us to the earth, the only one we
have, and from our human history, from which nothing, despite the way some of
those ancient cosmo / astro nauts are still worshipped, offers an escape. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This makes the poem a rather harrowing
experience, for me at least. As Andrew Durbin notes in his encounter in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Inquiry</i> with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To look at the sea is to become what one is</i>:
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1966, the American writer
Stewart Brand petitioned NASA to release a then-rumored image it had
photographed of the whole earth. He printed the question “Why haven’t we seen a
picture of the whole earth yet?” on a series of buttons and pamphlets and
distributed them around the country with the help of Buckminster Fuller. The
campaign took off—and, in 1968, it led Stewart to start the Whole Earth
Catalog, a countercultural journal that focused on space, ecology, and art and
writing related to the environmental movement. NASA released the image and, for
the first time, humanity had a full portrait of Spaceship Earth. Brand believed
that the photograph would provide a universal image that might unify the world in
efforts toward peace and environmental consciousness. (It is often remarked
that Earth Day began only a few years after the release of the image.) The
image of the whole earth provided a counterpoint to the mushroom cloud, which
had become “a symbol for the collapse of Western civilization,” as Anselm
Franke points out in his essay for The Whole Earth, a recent exhibition
inspired by Brand. Franke writes,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The blue planet, on the other
hand, exhibits a completely different tendency for bringing about the end of
history. It appears to transcend all frames, borders, and preconfigured notions
of order, dissolving them into oceanic vertigo: the astronaut Russell
Schweickart gave the title “No Frames, No Boundaries” to his memories of seeing
the earth from space. Here, all antagonisms, borders, and conflicts “down
below” fade into the background, and with them history with its contradictions
and struggles. Of course, the image’s appearance failed to bring about the end
of history—or an end to conflicts “down below.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Rather, it presaged the
globalist movement, which saw, in the smallness of the whole earth, a whole
market, interconnected and easily reached. While the photo of the earth
energized the nascent green movement, the blue planet—later downsized by Carl Sagan
to a “pale blue dot”—remained mired in its countless contradictions and
struggles.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Etel Adnan knew all that in 1968. What makes
the poem harrowing, tho, isn’t just her foresight. I said above that she never
seems naïve. Well, she never seems defeatist or cynical either. It’s her
ability to spin round and round the globe at space-orbital speed without ever
once losing her balance that really gets to me. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">DP: John, there are so many points
of departure from which to respond, but I want to pick up on the following. You
write:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #111111;">Gagarin’s
ascent into space might have marked the beginning of a new hope in some sense,
but his death returns us to the earth, the only one we have, and from our human
history, from which </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">nothing, despite the way some of those ancient
cosmo / astro nauts are still worshipped, offers an escape.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Adnan brings back Gagarin in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i> (1989) “the sun
waits for SOYOUZ the sun waits for APOLLO the sun is GARGARIN” (183). I bring
this up here because I appreciate the cohesion between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse </i>and Adnan’s earlier work in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Funeral</i>. But your thinking also strikes
me as relevant to this sense of multiplicity across her work and which
undermines binary ways of thinking. I keep coming back to this; it seems such a
vital aspect of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Margaret Simonton makes so many
wonderful points about Adnan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apocalypse</i>
in her essay “The Sun is a Deaf Star; the Sun Eats Its Children: Etel Adnan’s ‘The
Arab Apocalypse.” But at this point in our discussion, I want to focus on one
aspect, the sun. Simonton writes:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The poem‘s ba<span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">sic building block, the word</span>, “sun,” is repeatedly paired with other adjectives,
nouns, and proper nouns—as if tossing words into a hopper of chance and
calculation—to produce images, words, lines as above. The sun
pulls in other bodies (moon, stars, planets, galaxies) in primary
colors, accompanied by objects (boats, flowers, body parts, esp. teeth, eyes,
and belly), set in a landscape (sea, Beirut), engaged in acts of creation/destruction, movement. (3)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There are so many
binaries which Adnan turns on their head, upside down, and inside out by using
that basic building block in the way that Simonton describes: death and life,
the hegemony and the disempowered, the mythological and the real, and (in)visibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">From the beginning,
Adnan’s project is chromatically driven, beginning in “A yellow sun<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A green sun<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a yellow sun<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A red sun<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a blue sun.” I won’t talk right now about
the glyphs marked throughout their text but agree with Simonton who writes that
they “reify and equate the historical and mythic dimensions of the text” (2). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I finished Sebastian
Barry’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Long Long Way</i> (Penguin
Books 2005) last week (the night in fact before I was supposed to meet the
deadline for this correspondence). It haunted me for days. The novel is about
an Irish young man fighting in World War I. He’s often marginalized by the
English he’s fighting alongside. Even some of his fellow citizens persecute him
due to nationalist issues at the time. It is a heartbreaking book, bleak and
beautiful both.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So why do I bring it up
here? Because both Barry and Adnan write the unequivocal waste of war, the
futility of violence, and of art as a means to negotiate said violence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Long Way</i> uses traditionally lineated prose of course. As such,
it is a wildly different project from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Arab Apocalypse</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to contrast
what Barry and Adnan are doing has been productive for me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is Adnan’s
repetition—“that hopper of chance and calculation” in Simonto</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">n’s terms—as well
as the contacts with colors and “other bodies” that makes Adnan’s rendering of
war and violence unique and compelling. To spin with her on these axes makes us
invested, provides us opportunity to think in a more nuanced fashion, perhaps
even makes us look at ways in how we are complicit in such violence. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I do not wish to reduce
the chromatic aspect to race because that would grossly oversimplify what I
think Adnan is doing. But in the beginning of the book, the chromatic aspect
does seem to at least provoke thoughts of race or ethnicity, especially because
Adnan does so much work at the beginning and throughout putting the indigenous
American experience on the same page as the Arab one: “A Hopi a Red Indian sun
an Arab Black Sun a sun yellow and blue / a solar Hopi a solar Indian reddening
a solar Arab darkening” (164).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As we proceed through at
least the first third of the book, there are other distinct parallels with
America’s colonial, imperialist, and exceptionalist history and the yellow sun:
“a yellow sun over Mexico trembles” (169). In the first third of the book, I
get the idea of yellow sun as some symbol of this dominant paradigm of light,
idealism, and white power. That said the yellow sun as a symbol of Western
power is consistently undermined: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">a
yellow sun over Mexico trembles. sleeps the sun<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">a
green sun and a solar green the slowness of the solar boats along your arm<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">a
world. I rolled as grass at the slug my flowers are cut<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">a
Nubian nubile spring rape of almond trees in no-flowers. Diaphanous flowers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">an
Arab tortured mutilated vomits the sun hangs from his feet. Meticulously. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A
privileged yellow sun trembles over Mexico, changes to a green sun creeping
like boats along the arm. Another world is acknowledged with a different color
sun where the earth is raped and the Arab is tortured and mutilated. (169; vol.
1)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This is not a simple
equating of yellow sun to hegemony. It is one of many pivot points around which
the dominant paradigm is at once manifested and turned on its head:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">. .
. There is a rallye in yellow chaos<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">a
sun lying on the highway a sheriff checking its heart. Have a good laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">???
when the bordello opened its door they found the sun fucking<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">a
yellow sun yawns over Beirut and Paris dying and New York is fainting. O unsewn
Time! (170; vol. 1) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">All the films with
problematic representation of Arab and Arab-American peoples (we could just say
people of color) came to mind at this point. There’s a spectacle going on here,
and what it represents is surficial and painful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Violence of and to the “sun” produces a good
laugh—a thoughtless moment of levity where violence is furthermore sexualized.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; letter-spacing: -0.75pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You write aptly that Adnan never seems
defeatist or cynical. It is that she spins around the globe without ever losing
her balance that gets to you. I hear you. I think it’s the repetition and ever-changing
contacts. The sun in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i>
is not the violence or the peace, the rape or the tenderness, the visibility or
the invisibility, the perpetrator or the victim, life or death. In this way,
she levels the field of violence. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I have a phrase in my poem “Magnesium (Mg), or
Basalt” that comes from Hannah Arendt: “evil reveals itself as
thoughtlessness.” For some reason I think of that here. One constant in Adnan’s
Apocalypse seems to be thought-fullness. She puts everything in play: <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">the sun unites the Arabs
against the Arabs<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">the sun married its mother to
better crucify its son. (196). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">She puts everything in play so that we can find
our way among the complexity. The field rises above us, interstellar. Even the
mythological mirrors our violent ways. Our stories reflect what we are. As
Simonton puts it: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The
horror of human war, modeled from time immemorial by the gods of myth, will be
put to rest only by the first and greatest god, the Sun. Adnan maintains that
true apocalypse, with omens of ecological disaster, waits entirely on the
astronomical clock. (7). <span style="color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">JBR: OK. I understand why you (hesitantly and
assuredly at the same time) read race into the chromaticism, and, as I have
come to learn via Alexander Wehilye’s discussion of the thought of Hortense
Spillers and Sylvia Wynter in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Habeas
Viscus</i> (Duke University Press 2014) racializing assemblage are implicitly
invoked and put into motion every time we talk about peoples as peoples (we, or
rather the assemblages of which we are a part as well as a function,
“racialize” them). But I’m not absolutely sure how much of that comes into play
here (I could say “I’m not absolutely sure how much of that does not etc” just
as easily), but I find myself wanting to note that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i> is (for me at least) a companion-piece to one
of the pieces in the reader not on our mutually agreed upon reading list, but
which I read anyway: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sitt Marie Rose.</i>
Just as the Apocalypse is a visionary, cosmological, universal and “surreal”
take on the pivot point of the civil war in Lebanon, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sitt Marie Rose</i> is a straightforward narrative novel describing a
particular incident during the war, the murder of a teacher who is considered a
traitor to the Christian Falange because she insisted on teaching Palestinian
children, the blatantly racialized “enemy”. What I’m trying to say is that I
think that at least one reason that this civil war hits Adnan as such an
apocalypse is because there really is no chromaticism that can come into play
here: tho the Christian Falange has racialized itself, so to speak, as well as
racializing the Palestinians, they are (in chromatic terms at least – at least)
the same people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This is not to suggest that Adnan would have
been happier had racialized chromaticism actually come into play. She makes
that extremely clear, as you note above with her examples of “chromatic
others”, who are also caught in the tentacles of the world holocaust. I’m just
trying to suggest that the real subject of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Arab Apocalypse</i> is a true civil war, and not much is more horrifying to Adnan
(and countless others) than that. At least at the time of the writing of the poem.
All of which perhaps underscores how central racializing assemblages are to our
whole notion of who we are and what makes others others (why should a civil war
be more horrifying than any other kind of war?. I don’t want to go down that
road here, as that would turn this into a very different discussion.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You also, rightly, emphasize the importance of
the sun as a sign and a trope and a unifying device in this poem (other
devices, which I would like to discuss later, are the use of the word “STOP”,
and the centrality of the glyphs will are found throughout the poem, I haven’t
counted them, but there are hundreds …). But what is the sun, here? I will
quote you quoting Simonton:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The poem‘s ba<span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">sic building block, the word</span> “sun,” is repeatedly paired with other adjectives,
nouns, and proper nouns—as if tossing words into a hopper of chance and
calculation—to produce images, words …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">However true that might
be, and to a great degree it is, it must be made clear–I want to assert – that
there is nothing arbitrary or chancelike about the sun itself here. Resuming
writing this morning, I find this note to myself: “[Go into a discussion here of
Reza Negarestani’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cyclonpedia</i>
“thesis” that the sun is in some sense at war with the warm core of the earth;
tie the sun to the psychoanalytic Oedipus; tie that to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-Oedipus</i>]”. And I wonder why I was feeling the need to so over determine
and at the same time limit what Adnan might be doing with her “basic building
block”. Today that seems more destructive than helpful. Especially because I
have to say that I can’t help but read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apocalypse</i>
fast, and as a piece of music, in which we can pass thru a million rhythms and
melodies without getting to stop on any of them. I think that’s an intentional
feature of the poem. The glyphs which intersperse it serve, for me at least, as
notice that there is something here “beyond interpretation.” Something that
can’t be reduced to language, or at least to any known language. Which is,
perhaps, why the glyphs were redrawn for this edition. Which is why I have both
this and the Post-Apollo editions: to indicate that meaning is not intended to
be fixed. This is a sample page from the Post-Apollo edition, as found on
Adnan’s web page:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxmRpnWk8xwWP4qw33gxAympKBm3tXO2yH4GOp-f_JjhBv_hABL1IvJi0Hp-sb9CTO2B28RuzG-uVpzVxRqx6yZYF3a5sfWgiJN92JKe3uu1F2T-CR5BapEWnmbUN-mBleh93oR2TZbgY/s1600/BB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxmRpnWk8xwWP4qw33gxAympKBm3tXO2yH4GOp-f_JjhBv_hABL1IvJi0Hp-sb9CTO2B28RuzG-uVpzVxRqx6yZYF3a5sfWgiJN92JKe3uu1F2T-CR5BapEWnmbUN-mBleh93oR2TZbgY/s1600/BB.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(Click to enlarge)</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I can’t find an image from the Nightboat
edition, but it is indeed full of different glyphs. As is the German edition …<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I want to follow this with a bit from an
interview between Adnan and Lisa Robertson because it gives a bit of
“authority” or “resonance” to why I think it would be a mistake to follow my
original impulse to try to tie down in any way what is meant by the sun:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LR The last sentence I
read before I got off the metro on my way here was, “Behind an image there’s
the image.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA There are layers of
images—that’s what I meant, very simply. There is thickness. Vision is
multidimensional and simultaneous. You can think, see, see beyond: you can do
all these things at the same time. Your psyche, your brain catches up. Some
people today say that an image is not necessarily a clear figuration of
something; it could be like a blurred abstract drawing, like a sliding door.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LR An event in perceiving.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA Yes, an event. It is a
speed that you catch. Images are not still. They are moving things. They come,
they go, they disappear, they approach, they recede, and they are not even
visual—ultimately they are pure feeling. They’re like something that calls you
through a fog or a cloud.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LR So they are immaterial,
in a way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA That’s it! They are
immaterial in essence. But they could be strongly defined, or they could be
fleeting, almost like a ghost of things or of feelings going by. So the
word image is very elastic. It’s a very rich concept. Although we are
bombarded with images, our culture is anti-image. We think we don’t like it;
it’s not fashionable. That is why Surrealism exists: it intends to amplify the
image, to force us to see it. Andy Warhol understood that we are surrounded by
so many things, and people, that we do not see them. We are rather blinded by
them. So he forced our attention on soup cans and Marilyn Monroe.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On an other level, there are
also different clarities. Some things are not meant to be clear; obscurity is
their clarity. We should not underestimate obscurity. Obscurity is as rich as
luminosity. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LR I was thinking about
the way that light moves through your work. There is, for me, a very strong
sense of light as being human light, spirit. Also, the light of a
single day is a human unit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA The environment was my
life, maybe because I was an only child. I didn’t have brothers and sisters to
play with, so the light coming in through the window was a great event for me.
I played with that instead of playing with other children. It was my companion.
Beirut is a very sunny city and there were very few cars when I grew up. That
was a blessing, because there were people in the street. I remember trying to
walk on my shadow. Shadows and light were two strong entities. In Spain or
southern France or Italy shadows are very strong and beautiful—the patterns are
very clear. Light is an extraordinary element. It’s a being on its own, it’s
something you look at, and that also you inhabit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LR I wrote down the
phrase: “The situation of consciousness in the daylight.” The idea of the
French Enlightenment and the meaning of enlightenment in the sense of
18th-century rationalism is also in your work—<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA I went to Catholic
schools all my life. There were no other schools in Lebanon. We had religion
around all the time. I’m lucky—I never believed in catechism or any of that. I
was always a dissident without effort, at a distance from all the things the
nuns were saying. I never liked saints. What touched me was their speaking of
revelation, even the word itself. That always made sense to me. We owe life to
the existence of the sun; therefore light is a very profound part of our
makeup. It’s spiritual, in the way that even DNA is spiritual. What we call
“spirit” is energy. It’s the definition of life, in one sense. Light, as an
object, as a phenomenon, is magnificent. I am talking to you and the light
coming in through the window has already changed. You go on the street and you
look at the sky and it tells you what time it is. We are dealing with it
constantly, and obscurity is also maybe its own light, because it shows you
things. Obscurity is not lack of light. It is a different manifestation of
light. It has its own illumination.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LR You call it the “Palace
of Night.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA That comes from Joanne
Kyger. She wrote, on what I call a little floating paper, a folded page, a
piece titled “Night Palace.” …<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the things that’s really interesting
about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apocalypse</i> is it’s – in my
opinion – the most surreal and least linear of all the writings in the
Nightboat reader. So let the sun just be the sun, and whatever the sun suggests
to the reader in the context of this particular <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apocalypse</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">One of the things that blows my mind about Adnan’s
writing is her ability to find a form that fits the circumstance, so to speak.
Most of us writers have much less range. A good example of a completely
“different clarity” is the next piece we read together, “To Write in a Foreign
Language”. This is a truly straightforward (in comparison to the two poems we
have discussed so far) autobiographical account as focused thru the lens of the
languages she learns, and how they both close and open doors for her. As I read
this piece, whatever language she is writing in, it is a foreign language, so
that she is in some sense a perpetual exile everywhere. And, as you not above,
all her work plays forward and backward in a kind of lifetime intertextuality,
tho inter*text*uality isn’t exactly the word I’m looking for. She writes, after
describing how her father, “no pedagogue”, gives up teaching his francophone
daughter Arabic by handing her an Arabic-Turkish grammar and saying “copy these
lessons … and you will learn Arabic”:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So I remember that once in a
while (did it last one year, two years, a single season? I can’t tell) I used
to sit and copy – which means reproduce faithfully – words after words whose
alphabet I understood, but seldom their meaning –<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">never trying to understand what
I was writing: I think I loved the act of writing things I did not understand …
There must have been something hypnotizing about these exercises because much
later, and for different reasons, I ended up doing practically the same thing …<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Since I had so much fun writing the words
“truly straightforward” above (as if there were such a writing anywhere), it
seems almost unfair to focus on her phrase “and for different reasons”, and to
say hmmm, I wonder. In any case, I think that it’s easy to see the glyphs of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i> in utero, as well as
some of the poem’s textual/procedural strategies, as well as her career as a
visual artist, which we really can’t talk all that much about here, which I
regret, because it is obvious to me that any attempt to draw a line between her
work as a writer and her more strictly visual work leads to false impressions
and conclusions, as the illustrations above already evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">DP: I want to return for a bit to the question
of chromaticism relative to race. I think it would perhaps have been more apt to
question chromaticism as an evocation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">difference</i>.
The civil war—and you’re right, horrifying in and of itself—involves as you say
“the same people.” I am not an expert on Lebanese history by any means. But the
historical context of this civil war was undoubtedly precipitated by the creation
of the Israeli state (and the associated changes in populations) and French colonial
rule, which in my mind intensified us-and-them lines or divisiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You write: “All of which perhaps underscores
how central racializing assemblages are to our whole notion of who we are and
what makes others others.” Yes, agreed, a very different discussion. Which is
why I think the idea of difference would be more useful here. The cultural
politics of difference (whether in Lebanon or the US, whether in civil war or
“peacetime”) that incites so many to violence against another human beings. Adnan
writes in “To Write in a Foreign Language” of Lebanon’s “opening onto the
world, a thrilling diversity.” But she qualifies this: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But it also created, in a
country too small to easily absorb such a strong wind of change and cultural
pulling apart, undercurrents of tensions that were to explode a generation
later and practically destroy it. (251; vol. 1)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I know. What really incites violence against
another human being? It is much more complicated than difference. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">I want to turn now and say how much I love—“love
in all its forms is the most important matter that we will ever face” (375;
vol. 2)—when you write of the glyphs that they are “</span>[s]omething that can’t be reduced to language, or at least
to any known language.” That is beautifully stated. Even the sun of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i> operates like this,
I think: irreducible, an image not still but moving (to return to Adnan’s
interview above), light producing but also obscure where obscurity is “a
different manifestation of light.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In “To Write Another
Language,” Adnan writes that “[p]oets are deeply rooted in language and they
transcend language” (257; vol. 1). I think about the glyphs again, which not
only are irreducible but also reach beyond language. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We did not select Cole
Swensen’s essay, “Etel Adnan: The Word in and by Exile,” for your and my
readings. But the subject matter is just too related, it seems, to the
direction we are taking here. In the essay, as the title indicates, Swensen unpacks
not just exile but an internal exile, an “inile” if you will. In the essay she
speaks of Adnan as a “poet of place” (379; vol. 2). I don’t think any reader
would disagree with that label. But Swensen complicates that name or label.
Swensen writes: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In a
sense, it’s an exile from exile itself, and thus a way of making a permanent
home there, which is the beginning of inile<span style="letter-spacing: -.75pt;">.
(380; vol. 2) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I appreciate thinking about this relative to
the statement Adnan made in the Lisa Robertson interview you shared: “We should
not underestimate obscurity. Obscurity is as rich as luminosity.” Is it just
me? Or do you too see exile and inile pivoting on the same axis as obscurity
and luminosity? Herein those images that are “pure feeling” reside. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And I agree with you, intertextuality doesn’t
seem right. There does seem to be a symbology. Yet it’s not a set of archetypes
or symbols, is it? Still, there are undoubtedly these resonances that Adnan
seems to carry with the pure feelings of elements like sea and sun and fog. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But I want to get back to this notion of exiled
language relative to being “a poet of place.” There are so many examples in “To
Write in a Foreign Language.” There are the letters her father wrote to her
mother “in the tone of the German, Austrian, or Russian novels of the time,”
from the Dardanelles front (247; vol. 1), which heartbreakingly were lost to
Adnan over time. When Adnan was a child in school “Arab was equated with backwardness
and shame” (248; vol. 1). Frustrated with Adnan’s lack of proper education in
anything but French, her father classified “everything” as “propaganda in this
country” (249; vol. 1). Adnan too pretended “to learn a language . . . just by
writing it down” (250; vol. 1). And Adnan explains a translation problem with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Book of the Sea</i>, which I thought so
profound: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">. . . the sea, as a noun, in
French, is feminine, and the sun is a masculine word. In Arabic it is the
contrary; the whole<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>poem is developed
along the metaphor of the sea being a women [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i>] and the sun a warrior, or a masculine principle. So the poem
is not only not translatable, it is, in a genuine sense, unthinkable in Arabic.
(251; vol. 1) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">All of these things I think present a literal
exile from language—a perpetual exile everywhere. As we have begun to elucidate,
this manifests itself in her work in a myriad of ways. Swensen writes: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">“[The]
irony and paradox of being a poet of place who is endlessly displaced is one of
the driving forces of her art, and is echoed in its medium, for at an elemental
level, language too is always in exile, can operate only by exiling itself,
always forcing itself outward from what it has already said. (379; vol. 2)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I do not
want to dive too much into the theoretical aspect of language nor do I wish to
take us in a Marxist direction. But I love this bit by Raymond Williams on
language, where “language has…to be seen as a persistent kind of creation and
re-creation: a dynamic presence and a constant regenerative process” (31).
Poetry, as art and through language, is a social presence, a material process,
and a productive activity. It is the language of poetry that can offer
alternative ways of thinking. It is through art as poet that the exilic
consciousness attempts to cross borders, break barriers of thought and
experience, and encounter limits of ideological paradigms. Poets like Adnan
make something new in terms of language and experimentation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Glyphs exile themselves and find their place.
Language reaches beyond language. Adnan pushes and pulls language into an anti-stasis,
an anti-permanent permanence. Even with a word as basic as the sun, in
repetitions, usage, context, contacts, stability is destabilized. Presence is
absence. Language is exiled from itself yet finds a (temporarily) permanent
home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">JBR: It feels to me that we are at a possible
crossroads in this conversation, Deborah. We can either to continue to work our
way thru the two volumes, discussing “representative” texts, or we can have
that discussion we keep saying is a discussion for another time, the one we
keep teetering on the cliffedge of, the one about what we have been calling
“racializing assemblages”, or “difference”, and now “exile / inile”, “poetry of
place”, etc etc. I think we should have that discussion. In other words, as I
see it, we can begin to talk about why Adnan’s work is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">important</i> (I have no doubt that it’s important, very important) in
a broader sense than hey, she’s a good writer, eh? I would like to have that
discussion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I think I will segue into that broader
conversation via a response to one of the questions you ask above. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You write: “What really incites violence
against another human being? It is much more complicated than difference.” Yes,
indeed. For thousands of years people have asked that question. I do not
propose to answer it here, because how would I know. But I do want to say, and
this I think is a central feature of the phase of modernity in which we live,
that just because “what really incites violence” is indeed “more complicated
than difference” (I won’t quibble here over the difference between racializing
the other and rendering them different), it would be a terrible mistake to
allow that “more complicated than” to minimize the importance of “othering” (to
introduce a third term) as an enabling factor. I’m going to quote, at some
length, from Karen M Gagne’s “On the Obsolescence of the Disciplines: Frantz
Fanon and Sylvia Wynter Propose a New Mode of Being Human:” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This article discusses the
difficult but necessary task of dismantling our disciplinary<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">boundaries in order to even
begin to understand the who, what, why, when and how of human beings. Sylvia
Wynter argues that when Frantz Fanon made the statement “beside phylogeny and
ontogeny stands sociogeny” in Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon 1967) he
effectively ruptured the present knowledge system that our academic disciplines
serve to maintain, by calling into question “our present culture’s purely
biological definition of what it is to be, and therefore of what it is like to
be, human”. This rupture that Fanon caused remains the space, Wynter argues,
that will necessarily move us out of our present Western/European/bio-economic
conception of being human whereby the Self requires an Other for its
definition, toward a hybrid nature-culture conception that needs no Other in
order to understand Self.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If we do not move beyond, as we
have already moved through, our present disciplines, the maintenance of which
functions to insure our present world order, then we will never be able to
properly deal with all the local and global crises that we confront and the
study of which sociologists make our life’s work until we first see these
struggles as different facets of the “central ethnoclass Man vs. Human”
struggle. These crises, Wynter notes, not the least of which includes the
possibility of our species extinction, the sharply unequal distribution of the
earth’s resources, poverty […] [it’s an endless list – JBR].<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">That we have been unable to
reach “another landscape”—as proposed by Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) in the
1960s—in order to “exoticize” Western thought to make visible its laws whereby
we would be able to unfix the sign of blackness from the sign of evil,
ugliness, and the negation of whiteness, has been for two reasons. These are,
according to Wlad Godzich as quoted by Wynter, first, “the imperviousness of
our present disciplines to phenomena that fall outside their pre-defined scope”
and, second, “our reluctance to see a relationship so global in reach—between
the epistemology of knowledge and the liberation of the people—a relationship
that we are not properly able to theorize.” The shift out of our present
conception of Man, out of our present “World System”—the one that places people
of African descent and the ever-expanding global, transracial category of the
homeless, jobless, and criminalized damned as the zero-most factor of Other to
Western Man’s Self—has to be first and foremost a cultural shift, not an
economic one. Until such a rupture in our conception of being human is brought
forth, such “sociological” concerns as that of the vast global and local
economic inequalities, immigration, labor policies, struggles about race,
gender, class, and ethnicity, and struggles over the environment, global
warming, and distribution of world resources, will remain status quo.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Two thoughts. First, while there are good
reasons for Gagne’s focus on “peoples of African descent,” that is narrower
than my focus here, and narrower than the theses she discusses provide for.
There is no reason that this can’t be extended to all who fall outside Wynter’s
definition of Man. Man is not coterminous with human. Man is coterminous with
male white Christian Europeans. We can see that definition enshrined in the US
Constitution, in which the only citizens with voting rights were rich white men.
We can see that in present-day France, in which Marine Le Pen’s fascist
National Front is increasingly popular, because millions of formerly colonized
people who are not white now live in France, and in the insanity that ensued
after the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Charlie Hebdo</i> journalists
were murdered, an insanity that went so far as to racialize even whites who
refused to say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Je suis Charlie</i>,
noting that “Charlie” was, among other things, racist, Islamophobic, etc. We
can see it in the popularity of a movie like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Sniper</i>, which makes a hero out of a racist psychopath,
because he killed dark people. So: we don’t want to ever underrate:
racializing/differencing/othering, even if it’s not the whole answer to
anything.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Just to
note, anyone who reads Adnan carefully and ever tries to “other” people again
will have to feel at least a bit hollow. To reiterate a passage you quote
above, which shows how her work does not allow for an othering: “A Hopi a Red
Indian sun an Arab Black Sun a sun yellow and blue / a solar Hopi a solar Indian
reddening a solar Arab darkening” … I will add that, since poor whites,
especially those who have been imprisoned don’t count as Man, either, that
racializing has more to do with a “racial” imaginary than anything else, so we
can incorporate your notion of chromaticism, as long as we accept that we are
talking about a chromaticism with consequences make it hard to distinguish
between racializing and chromaticizing and … they become more or less synonyms
in practice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">OK, to
my second point. Why did I quote the bit that goes: “<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">These are,
according to Wlad Godzich as quoted by Wynter, first, “the imperviousness of
our present disciplines to phenomena that fall outside their pre-defined
scope””? Because, and this applies to you and me at least, if not to all the
potential readers of this peace, we are on the wrong side of the line, as
Boaventura de Sousa Santos has it, to be the actual “ralliers” (Santos again)
for the new world proposed above, the one in which Man is no longer defined
against the Other, the one in which becomes possible what is called in certain
parts of Latin America sumak kawsay / buen vivir / good living. This of course
is not true for all poets all the time, etc.; I really hope no one reading this
thinks that’s what is being said here. It is really only those on the front
lines, say, those indigenes in Brazil fighting to save the rainforest with
their very bodies on a daily basis, or #IdleNoMore, and I could of course name
others, who can fight that fight. And there are poets among them. And there are
activists on “this side of the line”. But that doesn’t mean those of us not
positioned so close to the front as, say, the Brazilian indigenes, need be
nothing. We can be a certain kind of ally. In fact, after much work with the
World Social Forum and other such gatherings, Santos claims that that’s what
the ralliers want us to be. Now I will quote from the “manifesto” that opens
his most recent book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against
Epistemicide</span></i><b> </b>to explain what I mean (and this, I think, has a
lot to do with poetry):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The second reason why I consider that writing from the
perspective of the impossibility of radicalism is promising has to do with the
mission ascribed to intellectual-activists by ralliers for good living/buen vivir:
to contribute to the elaboration of theories of the rearguard (more on this
throughout the book). This mission is almost impossible, but to the extent that
it can be accomplished, it constitutes the greatest novelty at the beginning of
the millennium and is the best piece of news for those who genuinely believe
that capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and all other satellite-oppressions
can be overcome. These political experiences witnessed by ralliers for good
living/buen vivir cause surprise because they were not conceived of, let alone
foreseen, by the political theories of Western modernity, including Marxism and
liberalism. Particularly significant, among many other examples, is the case of
the indigenous peoples’ movements in Latin America and their contribution to
recent political changes in some countries. The surprise is due to the fact
that both Marxism and liberalism have ignored the indigenous peoples, both as
social and political actors. The great Peruvian Marxist José Mariátegui was
stigmatized as “romantic” and “populist” by the Communist International for
having ascribed a role to the Indians in the construction of Latin American
societies. Such a surprise poses a new question to theoreticians and
intellectuals in general—namely, whether they are prepared to experience
surprise and wonder. This question has no easy answer. Critical theoreticians
are particularly trapped in this difficulty since they have been trained in
vanguard theorizing. Vanguard theory, by its nature, does not let itself be
taken by surprise or feel wonderment. Whatever does not fit the vanguardists’
previsions or propositions either does not exist or is not relevant. To answer
positively to the challenge of allowing oneself to be surprised presupposes
that the process of untraining and reinvention is in progress and proceeds
successfully. Intellectuals willing to let themselves be taken by surprise are
those who are no longer surprised by the imagined novelties, however
extravagant and seductive, of vanguard theories, having reached the conclusion
that the time of vanguard theories (the time of linearity, simplicity, unity,
totality, and determination) is over. Once intellectuals enter the untraining
process, the academicist, overintellectualized, and stagnated character of
vanguard theories becomes gradually more obvious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I don’t
know what you hear here, but I hear a description of poets, and one possible
(and very attractive) path forward for my poetry. [Other poets have other
paths, I know, and I honor them. This isn’t meant to be prescriptive …] I hear
Keats’s negative capability. And, probably more important here: I ask myself,
isn’t this what Adnan has been doing? Yes, it is, and given the above, it’s
important. <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">And: if Adnan is important, that presupposes
that poetry is, or at least can be important. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">DP: Why is Adnan’s work so important? To use
some of the phrases you include above, John, I think it is important for its
forged “ruptures,” a “hybrid nature-culture conception,” a writing that seems
to resist definition of “other” in order to understand the “self,” the
seemingly tireless reaching towards/creation of “another landscape.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A different infrastructure is what Adnan
attempts to build. She gets inside of binaries and explodes them. I just
thought of my December Christmas-tree-hunting adventure in rural Oregon with my
friend Clay, along with some of his friends and family. I won’t relay the tale
of how we went to buy a $5 tree from an old geezer whose field was utterly
empty upon arrival. Clay and company found their trees anyway at a nearby tree
farm. To prep the trees before loading, the workers used this gripping machine,
which shook the tree of all its dried leaves. This image just came back to me
relative to Adnan’s vibration against and within this system of binaries, whereby
the us-and-them mentality—by contrast to something like the abhorrent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Sniper</i>—is challenged rather
than reinforced. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">(A resistance to binary ways of thinking is one
of thinking is one of the reasons eastern philosophy attracted me as early as
nineteen-years-old and why, to date, a more and more regular contemplative
practice brings me some peace. In that practice, I find that I can be the best
“kind of ally.”)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">The Santos passage that you share resonates
with me—for two reasons especially. First, I appreciate thinking about the
phrase “writing the perspective of the impossibility of radicalism.” The
connection for me here is that there is a </span>difference between saying “Using language to attempt to
drive change won’t help” and “Using language to revolutionize won’t happen, so
I’ll do nothing.” By using language <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to
attempt </i>to drive change and/or to revolutionize, we shake the latent
politics of language up, regardless of medium, perhaps inspiring change, even
if it’s not change in our lifetime. Poets do something. They innovate, provoke,
incite with language. Even though I don’t believe language is itself
revolutionary, I do believe writers like Adnan can shake the foundations,
driving long-term change.<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">My notion
of language has broadened. And that notion of language comes into play here
with Adnan’s work, for example her glyphs in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse </i>and drawings of Mount Tamalpais in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey to Mount Tamalpais</i> about which
we have talked a little. She uses all these different kinds of text, playing
too with the relationships between those texts, to construct new spaces on and
off the page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But I
want to talk about the second reason I am keen on the Santos passage. Santos writes
that “the time of vanguard theories (the time of linearity, simplicity, unity,
totality, and determination) is over.” What this points out to me, at least in
part, is that poetry allows us to seek alternative realities—beyond totalities.
Poetry is a medium through which we can push, prod, challenge, and undermine
the status quo. Marjorie Perloff writes: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: black;">Language theory reminded us that poetry is a <i>making</i> [<i>poien</i>],
a construction using language, rhythm, sound, and visual image, that the
subject, far from being simply the poet speaking in his or her natural "voice,"
was itself a complex construction, and that--most important--there was actually
something at stake in producing a body of poems, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that poetic discourse belonged to the same universe as philosophical
and political discourse</i> (emphasis added).</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To consider Santo’s and Perloff’s passages
together nods to the importance of Adnan’s work. The dehumanization that occurs
within mainstream media and relative to the dominant paradigm (male, white,
European, Christian) is acknowledged and defied in Adnan’s work. Adnan’s work
swims along a current of the mythological, the philosophical, the political.
She imagines better worlds, but in ways I talked about earlier she also “keeps
it real.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I am thinking again of Swensen’s
beautiful idea of Adnan making a “permanent home” in exile (inile I suppose). In
his essay “Reflections on Exile,” Edward Said writes: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We take home and language for granted; they become
nature, and their underlying assumptions recede into dogma and orthodoxy…The
exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are always
provisional. Borders and barriers, which enclose us within the safety of
familiar territory, can also become prisons, and are often defended beyond
reason or necessity. Exiles cross borders, break barriers of thought and
experience. (185)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Adnan’s
work is innovative as it reflects on the detemporalized modern age and embraces
spatial considerations with an exilic consciousness. Her work is vitally
important in terms of border and boundary crossings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I do not
believe in an essentialist notion of home, which is still another reason I
think Adnan’s work resonates so deeply. She does not seem to believe in such a
notion of home either. Mount Tamalpais is “her” mountain, as it is not. My
heart’s home, the northwest, is my home, but it is not. “I’m from Seattle” always
seems a truth but not; I lived there longest. Hudson Valley is home but not
home. My beau is my RV, a mobile home. Visual artist Kazumi Tanaka recently
said at Lee Gough’s and Olana’s Deep Air Art Series in Hudson that home is the
body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In any
case, I view Adnan as a thinker and artist in the spatial camp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An exilic consciousness and the importance of
place are inextricably linked with her oeuvre. There is this sense of
displacement (and replacement) around which she orients herself. For example,
in “Journey to Mount Tamalpais,” she writes: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In front of the Buena Vista Café, in San Francisco, Jack
Burlybum was selling jewelry <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">made of Indian bones unearthed in a Northern California
burial ground. The Indian sitting next to me by the sidewalk said: “They took
our land and now they are selling my bones!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I told him how the Bay was blue, and that Angel Island
was dark brown, the color of live deer skin, and Tamalpais was as green as a
crushed bottle of beer. . . .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he
smiled. America, I told him, was torn between paradise and hell, and it was not
suffering, it was numb. (295; vol. 1)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As in
this example, Adnan connects with another human being (not withstanding the
readers), reaching beyond binaries through the mutuality of place. You
mentioned in [a separate conversation] what you get<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> from Santos’s
writing and relative to this Adnan excerpt from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey</i>. I want to recite that here, in case you do not think to
include in your response:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">[S]ince I am on the privilege
side of the line, it is not the job of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my
</i>language to determine vanguard positions; it is the job of my language to
surrender its privilege and to attempt to forge alliances. Adnan does just
this, I think, in front of the Buena Vista Café. She renounces any and all
privilege and becomes “one with the other” to use a Levinas phrase. We with
privilege can no longer sell indigenous bones as if they are ours to sell with
our words. But that doesn’t mean we can do nothing. Her forging an alliance with
the Indian is doing something. I may or may not be misreading Santos here (is
there any kind of reading that is not a misreading?). But what I want to do is
to walk a line with my writing that rejects privilege and still forges
alliances. I want my words to be included in the human megaphone, even if that
means they cease to be mine. Or, better, if they are both mine and not-mine at
the same time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Adnan walks
this line. She resists the divisiveness of identity politics and concerns
herself with the rise of an imperialist and globalized world that produces
greater and greater subjugation. She is not creating art pieces in a vacuum, or
dehistoricized work, or work stripped of sociopolitical contexts. Adnan is not
creating an essentialist or exceptionalist object that’s logical conclusion is
idolatry or ideology by way of binary thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I think all of these things distinguish Adnan’s thinking as particularly
spatial. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And it
is that spatial consideration that allows Adnan to present exilic consciousness
as an alternative to discursive practices that extol the value of History with
a capital H. Truth with a capital T—dominating ideologies that (re)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">produce</i> exile in the wake of all its –<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">isms</i> (imperialism, colonialism, racism,
homophobia). Adnan writes in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journey to
Mount Tamalpais </i>“to each place, there is a counter-place, like the second
plate of scales” (325; vol. 1). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Place, landscape,
mountain, sun. These, in Adnan’s work, are loved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">More and more people behave as if they ignore Nature,
dislike it, or even despise it. We wouldn’t have the ecological catastrophe in
which we live it were otherwise. They absolutely cannot understand Native
American Chief Joseph’s response to American settlers when they tried to use
Indians to plow the land: “How can I split my mother’s belly with a
plough?”—and he meant it not metaphorically, but literally. After all, Earth is
mother. It sustains life. We come from it: religions say it their way; science
says it too, as well as common sense. So we do not love our first, our
original, mother. We quit her. We left her behind. We went to the moon. (“The
Cost for Love We are Not Willing to Pay,” 371; vol. 2)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">By the
end of this essay (I should add also the last piece in the two-volume
collection of Adnan’s work), Adnan writes: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">. . . . Love in all its forms is the most important
matter that we will ever face, but also the most dangerous, the most
unpredictable, the most maddening. But it is also the only salvation I know of.
(“The Cost for Love We are Not Willing to Pay,” 375; vol. 2).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I am
troubled with the messianic evocation of the word salvation, but as I read<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"> Hilton
Als’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Women</i> last week I thought
of this particular passage of Adnan’s again. Als writes: </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">Time has not changed my point
of view, nor has the knowledge that what divide people are not the dreary
marginal issues of race, or class, or gender, but this: those who believe
friendship and love dispel our basic aloneness, and those who do not. (19)</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As with
much of Als’s book, and like you, I am in agreement and disagreement with this
quote. (I find Als’s book at once illuminating, disagreeable, and wise). But I
welcome what both Als and Adnan present. Love means a kind of openness that
moves beyond divisive marginal issues. I try always to remain aware of my privilege
as I move through the world. On the train when the conductor doesn’t check my
ticket and checks the two Hispanic passengers next to me. On the street. Posting
on social media. In discussion with a Saudi student that is upset (and
rightfully so) with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Sniper</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Friendship
and love (undoubtedly the same thing) provide a space that we can aim for something
else—poeti-politically and otherwise, to build bridges between our differences
and to make something(s) new. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Still, I
can’t help but go back to Wynter’s argument that you presented earlier about “<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">our
present Western/European/bio-economic conception of being human.” A lack of willingness
to step fully into the space of love very well may be the key element that
divides us. Love might be what is missing from our present conception of being
wholly human. Love might not be our salvation, but it might bring us closer to
some semblance of equality and liberation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">JBR: First, I want to note (temporarily fixate
on?) a metaphor of yours. Which has to do with shaking. I know this is not at
all what you said, but I pictured the dead leaves being shaken <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i> of the tree, and, suddenly it
occurred to me that, vis-à-vis poetry’s “mission” (to get all hyperbolic), as
we’ve discussed it here with Adnan as an exemplar, I want to distinguish
between shaking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i> and shaking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">up</i> (I take your “shaking the
foundations” as a form of shaking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">up</i>).
Shaking out makes me uncomfortable, since it’s what the Lebanese Christian Phalange
wanted to do to the Palestinians in Lebanon (we see the result of that not only
in the civil war, of which Adnan writes, but also in the slightly later
massacres of Sabra and Shatila; it is still ongoing). It’s what the worst of
humans wants to do to the rest of us (cf. the recent revelations that have come
out of the publication of Heidegger’s “black notebooks,” which leave us in no
doubt of his Nazism, and of the centrality of the Shoah to it and to his entire
philosophy. I will stop myself before I begin ranting). Let me quote a bit on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shaking out</i> from an interview of Adnan
by Lynne Tillman:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA: I wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i> [sic] when Tel
al-Zaatar was under siege. Tel al-Zaatar is a neighborhood in Beirut, where
20,000 people, not all Palestinian but mostly Palestinian, lived basically
underground. The Phalangists and their allies attacked in ’76, [the men had
some advance notice?]; the women, children, old people who remained were
slaughtered. It was worse than Sabra and Shatila.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LT: Worse than Sabra and
Shatila?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA: It was as bad and worse. There
was only one well, so women would go there for water. Maybe 20, to make sure
one got back; they were surrounded by snipers. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Arab Apocalypse</i> is about Tel al-Zaatar – the hill of thyme –
but its subject is beyond this siege, which was the beginning of the undoing of
the Arabs. This war was the sign of disaster coming, that by mismanagement and
mistakes, the Arabs would undo themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LT: The form and content of The
Arab Apocalypse are imaginatively fused.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">“A sun and a belly full of
vegetables, a system of fat, tuberoses. A sun which is SOFT.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The eucalyptus. The Arabs are
under the ground. The Americans are on the moon. The sun has eaten its
children. I myself was a morning blessed with bliss.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What’s produced is a sense of
survival, even in the midst of atrocious conditions and<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA: I started this book when I
lived in Beirut. It’s 59 poems, the same number as the days of the siege. I
could hear the bombs from my balcony. For 59 days they didn’t let any food in,
water, nothing. I saw a manifestation of pure evil. In metaphysics there is no
word for that. I saw evil.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So I want to distinguish between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shaking out</i> (which can be evil) from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shaking up</i>. Which is an utterly
different thing. You write:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">… there is a </span>difference between saying “Using
language to attempt to drive change won’t help” and “Using language to
revolutionize won’t happen, so I’ll do nothing.” By using language <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to attempt </i>to drive change and/or to
revolutionize, we shake the latent politics of language up, regardless of medium,
perhaps inspiring change, even if it’s not change in our lifetime. Poets do
something. They innovate, provoke, incite with language. Even though I don’t
believe language is itself revolutionary, I do believe writers like Adnan can
shake the foundations, driving long-term change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I really
like that notion of shaking the foundations, which I call here “shaking up” (I
do live in earthquake country, after all, so what may be a metaphor to you is
literal to me) That’s something poets can do, and something Adnan does. From
the interview with Tillman:<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">LT: The Arab Apocalypse takes a
unique approach to writing on the page, you use signs, lines, curves, symbols.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">EA: The signs are there as an
excess of emotion. The signs are the unsaid. More can be said, but you are
stopped by your emotion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As Adnan notes in the interview, one way of
shaking up language is by pushing it beyond its boundaries, e.g. via the glyphs
she mentions. Via what you call “forged ruptures.” It is in the space created
by these ruptures that new possibilities come in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But I think that the really important way of
shaking up language is what you come to in the end: love. Talk about a rupture.
Talk about new possibilities. You mention your attraction to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and practice of eastern religion. Adnan is a
bodhisattva. Of that I have no doubt. While I have no desire to prescribe to
any poet what they should and shouldn’t do, or how they should do it, I am
drawn to the notion of love as the basis of poesis, as the reason for it. Love
need not take the form that it takes in Adnan’s work. As a relatively extreme
counterexample, Joyelle McSweeney’s necropastoral, strikes me as a deep form of
love as well. So does (or did) flarf, which seems, at least originally, as a
way of being discontent with the status quo. So does conceptualism, in spite of
itself (I’m thinking of Claire Bishop here, of her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Artificial Hells</i>, in which she discusses the whole notion of
contemporary “creativity” as essentially an acceptance of neoliberal precarity,
and of at least some forms of conceptualism as a rejection of that). Which is
not to say that the high romanticism, which values creativity and inspiration,
of a Dorothea Lasky is not also a way of loving. Just as Spinoza said, no one
knows what a body can do, no one knows how to love correctly, or even if there
is such a thing, which I doubt. But, to quote something from my youth, “without
love in the dream it’ll never come true.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Let’s talk a little about home in this context.
It seems to me that you, and she, make an almost explicit connection between
home/inile/exile and the ecopoetics of the anthropocene. This too is
bodhisattva work, and there is perhaps none more crucial. I will speak
indirectly about this below in a minute, when I quote Santos again. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #111111;">You write: “</span>Friendship and love (undoubtedly the same thing) provide
a space that we can aim for something else—poeti-politically and otherwise, to
build bridges between our differences and to make something(s) new.” I want to
tie that to another metaphor of Santos’s: baroque subjectivity. He writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Baroque subjectivity lives comfortably with the temporary
suspension of order and canons. As a subjectivity of transition, it depends
both on the exhaustion and the aspiration of canons; its privileged temporality
is perennial transitoriness. It lacks the obvious certainties of universal
laws–in the same way that baroque style lacked the classical universalism of
the Renaissance. Because it is unable to plan its own repetition ad infinitum,
baroque subjectivity invests in the local, the particular, the momentary, the
ephemeral and the transitory. But the local is not lived in a localist fashion,
that is, it is not experienced as an orthotopia; the local aspires, rather, to
invent another place, a heterotopia, or even a utopia. Since it derives from a
deep feeling of emptiness and disorientation caused by the exhaustion of the
dominant canons, the comfort provided by the local is not the comfort of rest,
but a sense of direction. […] <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We get
that from Adnan. From all the work we’ve mentioned and from all the work we
haven’t. To the degree that this is still a review, I want to say that if what
we are talking about here is as necessary in reality as it seems to us, this
Nightboat reader is crucial. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">___________</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><b>Works Cited</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Adnan, Etel. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To look at the
sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader (2 Vol. Set)</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. Ed, Thom Donovan and Brandon Shimoda. Callicoon, New York: Nightboat Books, 2014. Print.</span></span></h1>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Benjamin, Walter. "On the Concept of History / Theses on the Philosophy of History." Andrew Feenberg, Simon Fraser University. Web. 15 February 2015. </span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html>.</span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Durbin, Andrew. “Lessons of Engagement.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Inquiry</i>. 12 Aug. 2014. Web. 15
January 2015. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><</span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/lessons-of-engagement/>.</span><span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gagne, Karen M. “On the Obsolescence of the
Disciplines: Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Propose a New Mode of Being
Human”. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Human Architecture: Journal of
the Sociology of Self-Knowledge</i> Volume 5 Issue 3 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reflections on Fanon</i>. 2007</span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">. Web. 15 February 2015. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;"><http://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1196&context=humanarchitecture</span><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">>.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Gulim;">Said, Edward.
</span><i><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">Reflections
on Exile and Other Essays</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">University Press,
2000. Print. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">Perloff, Marjorie. “After Language Poetry:
Innovation and its Theoretical Discontents.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">University at
Buffalo State University of New York. Web. 1 March 2015. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;"><http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/after_langpo.html>.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Robertson, Lisa. “Etel Adnan.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bomb Magazine</i> 127. Spring 2014. Web. 30 January
2015. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><http://bombmagazine.org/article/10024/etel-adnan>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">Simonton, Margaret. “<span style="color: #111111;">The Sun is a Deaf Star; the Sun Eats Its Children: Etel
Adnan’s ‘The Arab <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">Apocalypse.”
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Academia.edu</i>. 6 July 2012. Web. 15
January 2015. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;"><https://www.academia.edu/1859976/The_Sun_Is_a_Deaf_Star_the_Sun_Eats_Its_Children_Etel_Adnans_The_Arab_Apocalypse_
Academia.edu>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">Tillman, Lynn. “Etel Adnan interviewed by
Lynne Tillman.” Etel Adnan web site (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bidoun
<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">Magazine</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">). Web. 1 March 2015. <http://www.eteladnan.com/reviews/interview_tillman.pdf>.<span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Santos, Boaventura de
Sousa. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Epistemologies of the South:
Justice Against Epistemicide</i>. Boulder, Colorado: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Paradigm
Publishers, 2014. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Print. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 200%;">Williams, Raymond. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marxism and Literature. </i>Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Deborah Poe is the author of the poetry collections <i>the last will be stone, too</i><i> </i>(Stockport Flats), <i>Elements</i> (Stockport Flats), and <i>Our Parenthetical Ontology</i> (CustomWords), as well as a novella in verse, <i><span style="color: windowtext;">Hélène</span></i><span style="color: windowtext;"> </span>(Furniture Press). Her writing regularly appears in journals and is forthcoming or has recently been published in <i>Touch the Donkey</i>, <i>Posit</i>, <i>Loose Change</i>, <i>Jacket 2</i>, the Dusie<i>ECOPOETHOS Issue</i>, and <i>Court Green</i>. Handmade book objects have recently appeared in Casper College Handmade/ Homemade Exhibit in Wyoming (2014) and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Exhibit at Center for Book Arts in New York City (2013). Deborah Poe is associate professor of English at Pace University, Pleasantville, where she directs the creative writing program and founded and curates the annual <span style="color: windowtext;">Handmade/Homemade Exhibit</span>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">John Bloomberg-Rissman has just finished a 5-year textual project/poem, <i>In the House of the Hangman</i>, the third section of his maybe life mashup called <i>Zeitgeist Spam</i>. Want to publish it? It’s only 1.5 million words, not counting the notes. The first two volumes <i>have</i> been published: <i>No Sounds of My Own Making</i> (Leafe Press, 2007), and <i>Flux, Clot & Froth</i> (Meritage Press 2010). His working title(s) for the fourth section are <i>In the House of the Hangman</i><i>: The Baroque Feast </i>and<i> Adouéke</i>, an untranslated plant name in a Kanaka war chant which <i>was</i> translated by Louise Michel while she was exiled on New Caledonia in the 1870s, after the Commune (adouéke makes warriors “fierce, and charms their wounds.”) In addition to his Zeitgeist Spam project, Black Widow Press has just published an anthology which he co-edited with Jerome Rothenberg, titled <i>Barbaric Vast & Wild: An Anthology of Outside & Subterranean Poetry</i>, and he’s just embarked on another anthology project, called <i>Nuestra America</i>, about which he’ll be more than happy to wear out your ear. He’s also learning to play the viola and he blogs at <a href="http://www.johnbr.com/">www.johnbr.com</a> (Zeitgeist Spam). </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-69210830451411733582015-05-02T23:41:00.000-07:002015-05-11T22:19:53.883-07:00TWO BOOKS by MICHAEL DENNIS<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">RICHARD LOPEZ Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">missing the kisses of
eloquence </span></i></b><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">by Michael Dennis<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">(<i>GSPH, Ontario, Canada,
1994)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Coming Ashore on Fire </span></i></b><b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">by Michael Dennis<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">(Burnt Wine Press, Ottawa,
Canada, 2009)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Some poets you admire for
their talent and technique. Other poets you respect for their humanity. Michael
Dennis is a poet who is the whole large thing, head, heart, talent and
goodness. I admire and love his work, and I love him as a person. For Dennis is
that rare bird in poetry world: a good, kind person. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t take my word for it.
Read his poems. Read his poetry review blog, michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com,
where Dennis publishes reviews of poetry books with such great art, I mean
heart, I mean both art and heart. Dennis’ work should be taken wholly and
completely. Whether in prose or verse Michael Dennis’ goodness shines forth. The
two books under review are published 15 years apart. No matter. They are
written by the same large spirit with a style that is ageless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">For Michael Dennis is a
domestic bohemian. The subjects of his poems are often about travel, quotidian
experiences, work that we do for money, his long and happy marriage, and the
ordinary fumbles of living in this world as a thinking human being. I will
treat these books under review as a single work. If that may not be fair to the
individual books I make up for treating Dennis’ poetry as a totality. As the
Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva said, some poets have history and some poets do
not. Michael Dennis, as far as I have read his work, does not have history. He
began writing with full force and great maturity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only change I can tell is that his
earlier work was often printed lower-case and unpunctuated. Later poems stay
unpunctuated but have standard capitalization. But all of his poetry have the
same warmth, humor and humility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Take this poem for example<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>the smartest person on the street<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">walking my short legged walk down main street<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and thinking about nothing but the
weather<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it is fall, my favorite season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>except when it is winter, spring or
summer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i enjoy the edge in the air<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the hot sun in the cool sky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the streets are busy with no end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to the nickle and dimers standing on
corners<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>making their sad faces and small
change transactions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i cross from one corner to another<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and a woman almost my age<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>turns to ask for what i can spare<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the words barely out of her mouth
when she smiles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and without a trace of malice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“hell, you’re not rich, are you”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in a rhetorical way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and she is right<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i am wearing old boots that are
cracked<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but still warm and comfortable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they are sixteen years old<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and have done me well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i’m hoping for at least one more
season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my pants are clean but have some
paint stains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i live with a painter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and sometimes help him in his studio<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my jacket is out of fashion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but it fits me fine with good big
pockets<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because they are the best<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i am wearing a beret<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>even though some don’t like it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i started wearing it years ago<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and my poor fat head feels naked
without it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i am not insulted and she knows that
too<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if i had money i’d pass some on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and she seems to understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>instead we share a smile and the
weather<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>she turns to more important business<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i keep walking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Here is the delight of the
poet who loves fall, but winter, summer and spring too. He shares poverty with
the subject of the poem but I would call it a cosmic poverty like the poverty
of a saint. For both the speaker and the subject knows what it takes to survive
in this world but they also know it does not take money to be rich in health
and experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To exist is more than
enough of such riches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Michael Dennis’ poetry is
mostly narrative. He is a wonderful storyteller. If you look for it on youtube
you can find the poet reading ‘The Hockey Poem” that is a masterpiece of
performance. You will also crack a rib from laughing hard for the poem is that
funny.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">As I age I value generosity
and kindness as the greatest values. One does not need to be nice to be a good
writer but for me practicing goodness and good writing are inseparable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Michael Dennis gives advice to younger
poets he says, “I tell them that writing isn’t as important/as being a good
person.” Which shocks in its declarative simplicity. It shouldn’t. Poetic myth
of the last two hundred years or so elevates the selfish and the greedy. Dennis
is destroying that myth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Another great theme of Dennis’
poetry is the happy marriage. Why should that be so strange? For health and
happiness are standard bearers for civilization and are not incompatible with
poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>summer windows<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>putting up plastic over summer
windows<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i sentence our chimes to a winter’s
silence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in an attempt to reduce the onslaught<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of what snow, wind and rain can do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it is an act of maturity unimagined<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the dreams i dreamt in my youth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>i notice dust under furniture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and remember to take meat out of the
fridge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we are attempting to have a child<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>like everyone else we imagine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we can undo our childish pain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the perfection of a new born<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>unclear, unfocussed, untainted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a life to mold with our perfect
kindness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and our un-realized dreams<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we monitor the geography of my wife’s
body<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>marking each month a season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>framed by the blood of a promise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we think in the future tense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>during the moments we consider
children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the rest of the time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my wife does her work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and i do mine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some nights we dine with friends<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we watch movies, dance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the housework gets done<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>along with the waiting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>responsibility closes in like the
weather<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>irrevocable, irresistible, undeniable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>feared and cherished<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>welcomed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The stress of domestic life
is welcomed along with its pleasures. These are quiet triumphs of spirit. A
domestic bohemia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Here is another poem of love
in a long marriage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>this simple life<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">it is ten forty P.M. on a Sunday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my wife is snoring <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in our marriage bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>earlier tonight, while playing
Scrabble<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>she made me laugh out loud<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>she was in denial<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>farting loudly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>denying louder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we had our first BBQ<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the season tonight<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nothing fancy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as there is still snow on the ground<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>steak with an Argentinean red<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>earlier today she went to yoga<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on her way home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bought our groceries for the week<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we have been married a long time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but not long enough for me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll be able to say it properly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>precisely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>how I find her finer than air<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>more necessary <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to my breathing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“[W]e have been married a
long time/but not long enough for me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>beautiful!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Finally, Michael Dennis is a
poet of the elements. His metaphysics are grounded in the things he can touch,
taste, see and feel. Love for him is a physical law. Goodness is a fundamental
human right. For these qualities, and so much more, I deeply love and admire
this poet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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*****<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>richard lopez</b> was born in the summer of love in a hospital where the late poet/short story writer raymond carver worked as a janitor. current projects include a collaboration with the poet lars palm and co-editing an anthology of demotic haiku with this partner in rhyme jonathan hayes. he published poems, essays, interviews and reviews in, among others, <i>cordite</i>, <i>jacket</i> and <i>dwang</i>. </span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-88268500377294940312015-05-02T23:40:00.000-07:002015-05-11T22:19:34.585-07:00CALLED by KATE GREENSTREET<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">LAURA CARTER Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><i>Called</i> by Kate Greenstreet</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>(Delete Press, 2011)</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Called </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">is
a journey of sorts, and it seems to me that it’s about becoming a poet, or
being called to something. Greenstreet writes often in the book about soldiers,
and one gets the sense that this call might be something to doubt, in the sense
that there are very rarely (at least for me) thoughts of entering an army
without fear. She weaves her story beautifully, using voices that are part of a
larger landscape, though it’s also an interior landscape. Having been a fan of
Kate’s work for a long time, I’m pleased to read this chapbook and to find some
of the same themes in this book that appear in her other work: questioning,
characters, colors, etc. It is a true pleasure to write about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Called </i>here!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The book starts out with a
simple question: “But what about fog?” It’s as if, in this book, we’re moving
through a series of fog-like questions that might guide us to an answer to the
question of what it means to be called to anything. Her second question is:
“What about / anonymity?” and with this we begin the process of asking about
what it means to be on a stage, presenting as a called one, at least to me. She
writes about colors, too, the various shades of a family house that has burned
or else been left behind, and there are intimations of a call that makes one human
as opposed to animal. Greenstreet writes: “Animal to person, person to plant.
Who’s not going to accept a call?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">We move from landscape to
building, and Greenstreet writes that “suddenly we saw a church.” It’s as if
there’s a religious tone to this work, and if you’ve read Greenstreet’s
fabulous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young Tambling</i>, you know
that she has a religious background. Her ethos is perhaps best summarized in
the following lines:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We shouldn’t tell ourselves stories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>about a better world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s just a life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What you find around you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So many fish these days<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here’s my explanation of death: There is no water.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">These poems probe what it
means to be called to something, to have desire for something, and also what it
means in light of a bigger picture. Greenstreet uses images that are familiar
but also uses them in new and vivifying ways, so that we get to see what a call
would really look like. She writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“A lamp in my work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>might make you think of a police interrogation, but it’s
also<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>religious, like a candle.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">We get the sense that she is
always leading us across a field of sounds and voicings that point the way
home. She introduces us to real characters, and she describes them in a way
that lets us in our their thoughts, which provides the main crux of the book. We
learn from her wry wisdom, too, that “Not much has changed in the future” and
that “ ‘The experience depends on the way in which a memory is retrieved.’ ”
The book ends with a correct assessment of the voicings that have carried us
all this way, meandering through accounts of soldiers and men and women and
such: “I could never get too close to him physically. / We hadn’t taken any
main roads.” This seems to be the perfect ending for a journey that meanders
along minor paths to finding what is ultimately the secret of an ending, that
there are humans in our world who need us. Greenstreet’s use of the soldier
analogy to get to this is quite pertinent and leaves us, at the end, finally
getting on a main road, maybe one we hadn’t known existed before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Laura Carter lives in Atlanta. Other reviews have appeared in <i>The
Fanzine </i>and <i>Atticus Review</i>.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-88683087234260010482015-05-02T23:30:00.000-07:002015-05-12T07:37:55.846-07:00PREGRETS by ANSELM BERRIGAN<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">THE REV. DR. THOMAS C. MARSHALL Reviews</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pregrets</i> by Anselm Berrigan <o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<i>(Vagabond Press, Sydney, 2014)</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Out where yr going”:
a review of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pregrets<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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This book begins with three emphatic repetitions of its
title: this unusual word is boldly presented on the simple tasteful cover, and
then whisper-small on the first leaf, and then bold again on the title page.
But it is also there as the title of the first poem, and it appears again as
the title of ten more poems in the book. A neologism that off-handedly
encapsulates a whole history of poetics and aesthetics, the word “pregrets” is
the first surprise of this fine handful of poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perfectly designed to fit the hand and the
mind of any reader engaged with poetry’s current dilemmas over such elements as
imagery and personal psychology or even just having fun, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pregrets</i><u> </u>is a fitting book for our times.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Its poems are thoughtful, even in their tone, as they
suggest the hesitations and shifts in voice that thought hazards all the time.
Person and personality are not chased out of the poems by any simple objectivity;
they are, instead, invited to expose themselves as everyday engines of language
making. The words and phrases come in everywhichway, from the kids or the TV,
from inside and out, from a feeling of loss always already there in putting
things into language, from our habitual forms of addressing things, and from
our common concerns. There’s a strategy of fresh composition behind each line
that reminds me of what Anselm’s dad used to teach: each line, a new mind. That
mind is not our own. The act of “putting it into words” is usually half-begun
before you know it; it’s not a matter of expressing feelings but of catching
what they say or what they have you say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The poems use only a few different titles, repeating
“Pregrets” and “Regrets” several times each. The first “Regrets” poem reflects
on the idea of “pregrets” by saying, “all pres are / broken frames humanly
stuck behind / some claims to know time by marks” (11). This poem pushes past
pre-formed feelings and perception by using images that seem ostensibly to come
from bird-watching, a pastime that operates on the basis of matching what’s
seen to forms pre-known. The poem asserts that “that pelican’s an old form
flying / by this fish house any pre might be a / plunge breaking down” (11). We
are given an image we know (pelican plunge) and asked to read it in terms of
its form and what we think we already know about it. It is moves like this that
puts these poems right at the crumbling edge of our present aesthetic world,
where poetry is trying hard not to reify bourgeois individualism but can hardly
escape its engineering. That “Regrets” poem ends with another image:
“interrupted by a cormorant head / popping up all my alls are 2D pres / pitched
at arcs to undo as if free” (12). The totalizing image repertoire is put in
question right in the imagery there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The next poem, also “Regrets,” offers a mock-nostalgic image
that may call to mind the plastic bag on the whirlwind in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Beauty</i>: “flat blue bag of floating / snacks just walks
itself away” (13). And the one following that, also “Regrets,” reflects on this
process of knowing the world by what we see and how we feel about it. It asks
“why we default / to re-entry that often” and asserts that “your experience
pictures / you from time to time” (15-16). This challenge to reverse the usual
perspective, from imaging your experience to it picturing you, is carried out
throughout the book in a variety of moves that test the ways pictures come to
mind out of what’s already in it A “pregrets” poem in the middle of the book
starts with the almost random phrase “dowery volt cabinet” followed by
“untilled / trop” as if<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in comment,
which moves toward the relatively clear “little pile of bones on shelf in
curator’s house” (21). The opening trope is almost naturalized by those
objectively visualizable bones, though we aren’t told if they are bird or
lizard or dinosaur bones because the poem again shifts perspective. It goes
into another reflection on what the mind does as it works: “but maybe it’s the
gravity we don’t understand / quite happily devoid of any supporting medium /
and other stuff inextricably conjoined to the baggage / of your brain” (21).
The next two words shift things slightly again but also comment on that
question of the weight of what’s only ever in the mind, all this poetic
imagery, by saying: “launch fantasycast” (21). <o:p></o:p></div>
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That poem ends with the name “John,” a one-word homage to
Robert Creeley that acknowledges his similar investigation of how words posit
things. It appeared back in the Fifties, in his poem “I Know a Man” when the
poet wrote:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>As
I sd to my<o:p></o:p></div>
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friend, because I
am<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>always
talking,--John, I<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>sd,
which was not his<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>name,
…<o:p></o:p></div>
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There a car and a need to watch out where we’re going that
are also posited in Creeley’s short poem, all from a voice rambling on in talk.
We see these “things” because we hear that voice and want to “get the picture.”
Their existence there in the poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ex
nihilo</i> is an everyday miracle that is bound to “pres” and to a space that
has nothing in it but capacity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anselm Berrigan’s most delightful book so far ends on this
note:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span>someone<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>just
walked in & took their time’s photograph<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>I
don’t wonder about the miniature objects lining<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>up
in me not so secretly, all illusions currently<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>in
the shop, which is all air, for instance we’re<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>writing
in sentences, nothing has to be having<o:p></o:p></div>
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matter, want to
say a few words about lino<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>engraving
refuse to insure the back-up drive<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>the
stand-ins a gang of vicious holograms<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>in
defiance of their own needs and so forth<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Matisse
was ambivalent about words they said<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span>(41-42)<o:p></o:p></div>
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But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pregrets</i> is
not just about any old philosophical subject like the weaknesses of language;
it is more about marvellingly demonstrating words’ little miracles. It works to
remember that “you may or may not build your images / into a likeness of my picture,”
but you do build (25). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pregrets</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i>insists by demonstration that “someone’s / gotta come
construct a construct in the this / for me, gotta cuff the image plane, one
only / controls the scarring & scaffolds so much” (36).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Or, as Mr. Creeley said in the rest of that poem of his:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>…,
the darkness sur-<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>rounds
us, what<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>can
we do against<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>it,
or else, shall we &<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>why
not, buy a goddamn big car,<o:p></o:p></div>
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drive, he sd, for<o:p></o:p></div>
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christ’s sake,
look<o:p></o:p></div>
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out where yr
going.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Out where poetry’s going, the words do the driving, and the
voice that comes before the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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*****<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The Rev. Dr. Thomas C. Marshall used to be an alien, but then he was arrested and kicked out of Canada. His poetry-and-slide-shows began at D.G. Wills Books decades ago, and they continue to turn the tension between verbals and visuals toward the "post-aesthetic" today. He will present a new composition this year at Felix Kulpa Gallery, with an homage to The Sun Ra Arkestra at its heart, and he hopes to head up a panel at next year's AWP on post-aesthetic poetry. Here, he dances "Ring Around the Rosie" with his grandchildren</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-82980313197053468122015-05-02T23:21:00.000-07:002015-05-16T20:02:54.498-07:00BOOKS by ANTOON POSTMA, STEPHANIE STRICKLAND and NATHAN WALKER<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">EILEEN TABIOS
Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mangyan
Treasures on The Ambahan: A poetic expression of the Mangyan of Southern
Mindoro, Philippines </i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">by Antoon
Postma<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Mangyan
Heritage Center, Mindoro, Philippines, 2005)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DRAGON
LOGIC </i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">by Stephanie
Strickland<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Ahsahta
Press, Boise, ID, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ACTION
SCORE GENERATOR </i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">by Nathan
Walker<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(if p then q,
Manchester, U.K., 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Antoon Postma
is a Dutch anthropologist, linguist and former missionary priest who was
assigned (by the Society of the Divine Word) to the island of Mindoro, Philippines,
in 1958. A year later he met the Mangyans, fell in love with their culture, and
began researching and writing about them. He would come to leave the priesthood
to marry Yam-ay, a Hanunuo Mangyan. In his 80s now, he still lives in Mindoro.
It’s no surprise then that the love for his adopted culture shines through in
his wonderful book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mangyan Treasures on
The Ambahan: A poetic expression of the Mangyan of Southern Mindoro,
Philippines</i>. It is clearly a labor of love as Postma “compiled, translated
and explained” the poetic form of “ambahan.” Postma defined the ambahan as: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<ol start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a set of poetic expressions <o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with a measured rhyme of
seven-syllable lines <o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">having rhyming end syllables
<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">vocalized as a chant without
a determined melody or too much melodic variation <o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">without the accompaniment of
musical instruments <o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">recited for the purpose of
verbalizing in a metaphorical way certain human situations or
characteristics <o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with the possible challenge
of matching answer in dialogue fashion, and <o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the presence of an interested
audience of various size. <o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ol>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In
his lifetime, Postma collected over 20,000 ambahan which are now digitized,
transcribed and stored at the Mangyan Heritage Center’s Library. The book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mangyan Treasures</i> presents 261 ambahan
divided thematically among 13 chapters with themes spanning a life’s
categories, from “Birth and Infancy” to “Marriage” to “Death.” Here below is an example with its English translation. I note that the Mangyan poem can be read phonetically, thus enjoyed, by readers not fluent in its language. And do imagine for what it may be a metaphor!<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Kang ka-ubi guhayan</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Dag paribo yahudan</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Kawo may
hulong divan</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">You, a yam, called
Guhayan,</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">climbing many is
not fun! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">You should only climb on one!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">(43)</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Postma
has provided an invaluable service to not just the Mangyan culture he adopted but
also to poetry. Through his studies, he is able to present a useful presentation
of a poetic form that is charismatic enough to attract a global and not just
Filipino audience. Some of the most compelling aspects of the ambahan are its
history and philosophy as regards authorship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As
regards history, the ambahan poetry of the past was scratched into the surface
of a piece of bamboo with a sharp pointed, home-made knife, creating a memory
aid for remembering the poetry. The bamboo pieces were used as containers, and
the text relied on an old writing system that originated in India about 2,500
years ago. As Postma explains, “Once written down, it would be of help to many
others, because another Mangyan, when in need of lime and tobacco, would use
this bamboo container covered with writing, and might notice the ambahan engraved
in lines on the outer surface, and eventually copy it on another piece of
bamboo for his own repertoire, to be used at the proper occasion.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As
regards authorship, Postma observes that “new ambahans are still being composed
today by Mangyan poets, although no one would ever take credit for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the most important thing is the
poem itself, and not the one who created and/or presented it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Through the ways the Mangyan perceive authorship and the role of reading, I would remember this book when I read two other books that, on the surface, would seem very different: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stephanie Strickland’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DRAGON
LOGIC</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and Nathan Walker’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ACTION
SCORE GENERATOR.</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Both books are among poetry collections released in recent years to (partially)
manifest the “poems” made possible with the use of computer code. That is, the
poets input various data and modes into a program that then, without additional
authorial intervention, create or generate poems.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DRAGON LOGIC</i> includes a
six-page list of Strickland’s data and conceptual sources and inspiration—or, to
use her term, “codemakers”—which show an impressive diversity. The list begins
with Al Farabi, “10<sup>th</sup> c. mathematician, musician, philosopher;
studied in Baghdad” and ends with “Z” and that “the z-axis represents getting
up off a 2-dimensional plane or down onto a complex one; a z-plane is a
conventional representation of complex numbers established by one real axis and
an imaginary ( z ) axis perpendicular to it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In between are references to Celan, Darwin, Hendrix, Lucretius… and so
on. Strickland’s generator is brilliantly effective in creating a wide variety
of poems. It’s a challenging result as one’s way of reading a poem also shifts
from one poem to another (this is a compliment, btw). The results are
wide-ranging but, intriguingly, the rub of words against each other make more
often than not for a poetry in which it’s easy enough for a reader to invest
meaning or significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example,
these evocative excerpts:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">after Yang<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">asymmetry
rules<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">unruly
interactions between forming fields<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">unique<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">—from “NEWFANGLENESS”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it goes off-patent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">factoid<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>leeches make shocking comeback<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">—from “Hunger Dragon of Unstable Ruin”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In
terms of explanatory information, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ACTION
SCORE GENERATOR</i> doesn’t (like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DRAGON
LOGIC</i>) present a list of data sources so much as an explanatory—and
usefully explanatory—essay by Mark Leahy on how Walker was interested in creating a generator
that explored the poet’s philosophies regarding reading and other elements
related to reading (e.g. action and time). Before the essay which held the
place of an afterword, numerous poems were presented; most are short, which fit
the project’s intent to only reveal the poems for a short period of time before
going on to the next generated poem. That is, when the generator was running
short poems appeared on screen at a relatively fast pace. The pace of
appearance and disappearance has to do with several concepts including
challenging the “reviewable aspect of print” (since the texts appear so briefly
and rapidly), as well as, intriguingly, facilitating “reading [as] action”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An action (as a functional term) can be
extrapolated across digital, linguistic and performative modes. It has both
continuous and discrete qualities, each banner is ‘an action’ and ‘action’ is
generated by the passing text(s). The title ‘action score generator’ names the
engine, the machine that is at work; what are evident on the screen are the
action scores, scores that are being or have just been generated. The machinery
is the code processing the verbal material, which is hidden, held in waiting
until selected, until called forth for output. This action, acting, removes the
pressure to act on the scores, to carry out the instructions. The pressure to
perform an imagined future or possible, external other act, is suspended; focus
is brought to the action occurring on the screen. Reading is an action.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here
are a couple of examples (chosen by opening the book at random) that are
presented as they are on the book page: all capitalized, large font and
centered:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ROCKS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">WITHIN PARTS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SHOUT WITH<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AUDIENCE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">DRAWING<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BELOW<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SHOES DRAW<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BEHIND<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BARRIERS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
text are the type that ordinarily would make a reader pause to consider what
they mean (so to speak). But that consideration is dropped as there’s no time
for it—via the generator, the texts are appearing too fast and the generator
facilitates a “forward expectation” by the reader as, along with reading what’s
on screen, the focus is on what’s next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hence, by Walker’s standard, “just the reading is an action.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Leahy's essay was a highlight for me. It presented intelligent philosophical
ideas, and was written in a lucid style. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The all of it allows the reader to see clearly a proposition of the poet’s intent. Thus, one can judge the poems by also determining whether the poems effectively manifest these intentions for the project. By such a standard, yes, the poems are effective. For example, the claim in the essay that the effect is like “silent cinema” is believable—it’s quite eerie as, as one keeps turning the pages onto these short texts in a very long book (the book is unpaginated but about 1.5 inches thick), a sense of soundlessness surfaces. It’s like being presented with a face moving its lips but not hearing anything because the focus is so brief and is in an anticipatory mode</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
wonder, of course, if reading is really reading (versus, say, scanning) if
there’s no time to consider what is being read. I’d like to offer an example of
a normative reading of one of the texts (normative in the sense that I can
pause to think about what I’m reading instead of being pushed onto the space of
another text). Opening the book at random, I see <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NAILS BESIDE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">EYE SPEAK<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AGAINST ROOM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For
me, “nails beside eye” bespeaks danger (a nail can easily scratch the
eye).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this situation, focus is on the
nail and everything else falls away. Thus, there would be the effect of a situation
that “speak(s) against room” in the sense that the focus has narrowed because danger
often narrows focus to the threat (nails). Yet there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> a “room” that exists. So the danger is dual: there also is
danger in, to lapse to another metaphor, ignoring the forest for the tree(s). What’s
interesting to consider is whether I would have thought all this in the seconds
of the words’ appearance before the screen presents another poem. It would take
a highly-focused reader, I think, to be able to do so … and do so for the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>next poem … and the next. And perhaps such
magnified lucidity is another goal of this project; if so, it’s an admirable
goal befitting the experience of poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enhanced
lucidity is an apt goal because my reading of the sample tercet above could
imply that perhaps the project is suggesting the need to slow down and focus on
what the words are saying. But poetry is an imaginative act and such a didactic
conclusion is not so stable when one reads the text visually, as can occur in
poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DRAGON LOGIC</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ACTION SCORE GENERATOR</i> reveal through numerous, unexpectedly
pleasing poem-results are the huge possibilities within the code approach. To me,
the underlying philosophies to code creation are as important as the generated
results. I’ve discussed above Walker’s thoughts about his project. Strickland’s
conceptual underpinnings relate, to quote blurber Joanna Klink, to how “our
material face-to-face world threatened from so many directions, slips into
potentially infinite virtual spaces,” thus raising the question, “where have we
gone?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Klink continues about the
pervasiveness of the virtual world, “We do not know whether <span style="color: #262626;">it renders humankind irrelevant, serves as an escape from
apocalyptic problems, or is to be welcomed as a new direction for human life.”
Such is the “increasingly invisible dragon-in-the-room stalking our time.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2k3N1HeLS9qyjJrCuI-sWL3ZKT-pf3VHdC5yXhc4iYGksksOv5Sxxwz-awIrNRBw0Z4ZDdvcKCNb9alYv30ptpekHtLPcelSPzaa-pbZKUGP1Uk01ui2wz1niivmcudHtwIaXI19xslY/s1600/DragonCover-333x500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2k3N1HeLS9qyjJrCuI-sWL3ZKT-pf3VHdC5yXhc4iYGksksOv5Sxxwz-awIrNRBw0Z4ZDdvcKCNb9alYv30ptpekHtLPcelSPzaa-pbZKUGP1Uk01ui2wz1niivmcudHtwIaXI19xslY/s1600/DragonCover-333x500.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Speaking of
dragon in the room, it’s worth noting here the effectiveness of Quemadura’s
cover design: the front cover bespeaks dragon scales but modernized to give a
sense of it being (whether or not it is) a computer-generated image.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #262626;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #262626;">But the circle
turns and it’s the reader of the poems—the humans looking at the computer
screens—who will determine the effect: “the new direction for human life.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or as the other </span>blurber Amaranth Borsuk says of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DRAGON LOGIC</i>, “…these are poems of emergent meaning: our fingers on
the knots bring them into being.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Klink
notes in her blurb that humankind’s slippage into “potentially infinite virtual
spaces” can be an “escape” or a “new direction.” Notwithstanding the cautionary
notes inseparable from the book’s content, I find it somehow heartening to
glimpse optimism in the book’s last poem. Technology, after all, is not
necessarily the problem; it’s, as ever, what humans choose to do with
technology. Thus, the book can end with these last lines from the last poem
“Unsolved Problems”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">duration distance solitude<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">life-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">obedience</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not ten-hut<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">military<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">rather <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ob-au-di-re</i> (hear . . . thoroughly)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">then too<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>endurance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Endurance:
the engagement continues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because, to
paraphrase from an emphasized (viz epigraph) source, The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cyberiad</i> by Stanislaw Lem, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everyone knows that dragons don’t
exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the laymen, it does
not suffice for the scientific mind …. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cerebron, attacking the problem
analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon : the mythical, the
chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say,
nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To
return to what I perceived to be the links between these computer-generated
poems and ambahan poetry, the approaches accept the instability of authorship
as well as persona. The ambahan authors don’t see their individual authorial
by-lines as particularly important; they are focused on the message and what
benefits (e.g. lessons and advice) their poems impart. The code-programming
poets also relinquish their subjective stances to the code; they don’t, I
believe, erase the author since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a someone</i>
still has to write the code (including conceptualizing the code) as well as
determine the inputted data. But they’ve relaxed authorial control on the
output; in turn, this facilitates focus on the readings (with its subsequent
engagements, if any and additional) that occur beyond the “writing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While
the benefits of ambahan poetry is narratively discernible, the
computer-generated poems rely much more on reader-participation for the
investment of significance or meaning. This difference, though, only emphasizes
the unexpected linkage between this indigenous and radical poetries—how the
experience of poetry is not individual but communal (the forest in addition to
the tree?), and how open-ended poems facilitate such engagement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eileen Tabios </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">recently released an experimental auto-biography, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/prose-collections/against-misanthropy-a-life-in-poetry-2015-1998/">AGAINST MISANTHROPY: A LIFE IN POETRY</a></b></i>, as well as her first poetry collection published in 2015, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/i-forgot-light-burns/">I FORGOT LIGHT BURNS</a></b></i>. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Forthcoming later this year is <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/inventstory-selected-catalogue-poems-new/">INVENT(ST)ORY </a></b></i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">which is her second </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">“Selected Poems" project; while her first Selected <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm">THE THORN ROSARY</a></b></i> was focused on the prose poem form, <i>INVEN(ST)ORY</i> will focus on the list or catalog poem form. She </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">does not let her books be reviewed by <i>Galatea Resurrects</i> because she's its editor (the exception would be books that focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work. Her poetry collection, <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios6.html">SUN STIGMATA (Sculpture Poems)</a></b></i>, received a review by Joey Madia in <i><b><a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2015/01/sumptuous-sculpture-review-of-eileen.html">New Mystics Review</a></b></i> and Zvi Sesling in <i><b><a href="http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2015/01/sun-stigmata-sculpture-poems-by-eileen.html">Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene</a></b></i>.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> More information at <b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/">http://eileenrtabios.com</a></b> </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-39068634237314526442015-05-02T23:20:00.000-07:002015-05-11T22:12:05.324-07:00WOODNOTE by CHRISTINE DEAVEL<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">SARAH SARAI Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Woodnote </b></span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>by Christine Deavel</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>(<a href="http://www.bearstarpress.com/books/woodnote.htm">Bear Star Press</a>, 2012)</i></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Bird-be-here!<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“How big was the town?” asks
Christine Deavel in her debut collection, <i>Woodnote </i>(Bear Star Press). No
miles, blocks, lots. It is “One crockery bowl filled with red leaves” [“Home
Town (Over and Over)”]. We can lift, fill, create, and know it. One bowl + red
leaves = an assay, a familiar weight and measure, an image. A fey specificity.
The leafy town in Indiana, a repository of family, is one the poet has returned
to year after year, proving that in going home again she can illuminate life's
macrocosm which hovers, as if to please a neo-Platonist cosmic vision, in the
microcosm where there is rootedness and wisdom—“Knowledge not as comfort but as
shelter” [“Drawn”]. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Christine Deavel is co-owner of a
poetry-only bookstore in Seattle. I should disclose: the bookstore was a few
blocks from my apartment when I lived the great Pacific Northwest (I left in
'95) and that some jolly conversations were had by Deavel & co. &
myself, but I review <i>Woodnote</i> because its voice is distinct, its
inventive delicacy deliberate and determined. The poems' quiet precision
disarms yet delivers a cosmic vision (not Sagan- but Whitman-cosmic). <i>Woodnote</i>
won Bear Star Press' Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize and the 2012 Washington
State Book Award for Poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Some poems replicate the question
and answer of old American song (and the countries from which they migrated).
The style offers an anticipatory sway and tease between an asking and answering
which feels right in a collection artfully documenting origin, a genealogy more
telling than a chart. While reading “Home Town (Over and Over),” for instance,
I found myself mind-humming “Billy Boy” (“Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy,
Billy Boy. . .?” And <i>he</i> says, “I have been to seek my wife, she's the
joy of my life...”). In Deavel's poem, some of which I quote below, the “What,”
the “Why,” each create a demanding vortex between a reader's lips sucking her
into the question's implicit demand, whereas the answers require a canny dance,
a sort of two-step enjambment of explanation, an equation (“time the sag”) or
direction (“through the chute”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What
was its density? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Th<b>e
</b>weight of a bee on a bridal-wreath branch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">times
the sag of a clothesline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What
were your increments?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
beats of the luna-moth's wings and the pieces of coal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">through
the chute to the basement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Who
charted these things?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's
not too late to have noticed, it's not to late<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">to
see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">More
of the measure, the weight, the equation of the daily to its thrumming, moving,
changing environment. I'm reminded of Emily Dickinson and not just because of
the bee, though Emily's claim on bees and prairies defies metaphysical
copyright law. It's simplicity as a choice which serves as echo of America's
Belle. Both Dickinson and Deavel have their respective worlds of literature to
draw on, which they do, but also the everyday and at-hand, the clothesline, the
coal chute, pebbles, a cloud, a small town. A post-industrial fear that the
ordinary is disappearing does not seem to leave us, and a poet's fear that the
poet herself will disappear from the planet (she will) equally informs. But
Deavel suggests, “It's not too late...” Her invention and the poems' look—some
gambol over ten or more pages and are variously stanzed—suggest that changing
perspectives can save us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For all Deavel's creation of form,
I'm reminded of the directness of Richard Wright's brilliant and unexpected
haiku, most written in France. “#<span style="color: black;">11 You moths must
leave now; / I am turning out the light / And going to sleep. #191 Little boys
tossing / Stones at a guilty scarecrow / In a snowy field.” [<i>This</i> <i>Other
World</i>, Richard Wright, Arcade Publishing, 1998]. Simplicity under the
microscope, a skilled directness of purpose, an investigation into life by
framing its details—all also are hallmarks of <i>Woodnote </i>which contains
nary a haiku but maintains the form's confluence of precision, the visual, the
palpable: “Pop the stone out of its setting / and suck on it, suck on it / Now
you are the sea” [“Button Box”].<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And now for chrysanthemums, the
Russian dolls of flowers, thick with petals, petals hugging petals, each and
all a bit stout and self-proclaiming, and at the golden flower's head and
anthers, a petal emptiness that forces the beholder to turn inward with a
frisson of bitterness, a focus of contemplation not sinister but rife with too
many possibilities for blind surety. Chrysanthemums, first nurtured in China,
neither toil nor spin but I bet they preen, awaiting yet another painter or
poet to exploit their explosive being. Deavel's exploitation of the
chrysanthemum comes “In Piece by Piece,” in which she asserts we can “believe
in the chrysanthemum.” And why not! She speaks of more than one thing, or
speaks out of both sides of her lines or stanzas. For instance: “In a
thunderstorm / do not talk on the telephone. // The lightning will find you /
talking // to someone not here. // Listen / you better listen // to what's
happening // over at your house.” I've heard, more than once, that a person
should keep her own house in order and life will then fall into place. True but
not false, and more to the point, a directive. Deavel's statement telegraphs a
voice-over in a creepy teen horror movie, the mood ominous—but without tricks,
and as a consolation of understanding, and perhaps of a philosophy. “It is
possible to / believe in the chrysanthemum . . .” It's not a scripture or
Messiah, that flower, but a presence. We can't “...follow its will // for it
has none...” So why bother with a flower that lives at the whim of the Fates
and watering cans (as we do with hurricanes convivially named “Katrina” and
“Sandy”)? Because, like Hillary's Everest, it's there? I think so. For the very
reason that it knows nothing of us, cares not for us, but “glows under the
window / sips the dark / not for you / but catches you all the same.” For the
possibility of joining with the natural world. ”Come unhumbly / and lower
yourself / to be drawn into the straw of its fragrance / peeled by a button of
yellow / out of your days.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Like Russian dolls or
chrysanthemums, poetry delivers on its evocations simply because it is so
enjoyable. Not that it could all be a lie and we wouldn't care. We do care. We
all long for wisdom and that longing keeps us reading Borges, <em><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: normal;">Szymborska, Brooks.</span></em> We
long for spirit, divinity, meaning—or revel in an anti-meaning which must live
up to its opposite. Deavel blends spirits and spirit. One spirit that was
searching the shrubs “...sat up and swatted // the lilac.” Reading that I saw a
sleepy monster, like the amphibian (and the woman who him) in Rachel Ingall's <i>Mrs.
Caliban</i> (a novel that charmed an audience diverse as David Lynch, John
Updike, Sarah Sarai). Obviously Updike is in no position to chime in, and I
have no access to Lynch, but the third leg of this triumvirate, me, loves
Deavel's spirit's “humming in an exasperated way, / a growling, puffy hum
before a sentence,” like Larry, the aforementioned amphibian runaway from a
scientific experiment with his nature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Further sections of the poem find a
young girl, her mother, a doctor, “He in the dark / I in the dark / Mother in
the dark /. . .” Deavel successfully marries the everyday tragic (“I a person
of interest in her terror”) with a girl's sense of whimsy when writing of a
walnut tree in the family's yard and the mother's diminishment. “The walnut is
a dangerous beauty” with its inevitable, cyclically relinquishing nuts falling
to ground. The girl's mother defended the tree's messiness and held out against
eager buyers of walnut bark. “Straight as light, unmarred, // rivulet-perfect
brown bark...”. The description and brief episode is lovely in itself but more
so when the poem takes another hop, as these poems do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In a leafy fury<br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>spin the takings of you up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into a tree<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So, be a bird<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Quillous, beak-sure,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">hooked feathers in a color<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">the color of a color <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Tell! “Bird-be-here!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-line-height-alt: 10.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bird-be-here!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like
the chrysanthemum, the bird is all about being itself. For the joy of it and to
keep us leafy, rooted and yet aerial. Not losing sight of the winged, Deavel
does a neat turn by sonically translating Theodore Roetke's “The Bird.” It's a
charming exercise, and an object lesson in translation. Ten sonic translators
would produce ten versions. When Roetke writes, “But in this forest of the
dead” Deavel gives a diaphanous probe, translating-to-reinterpreting with,
“What listens for us, us of thread?” For easy consultation I copied out both:
Roetke's “No Bird,” followed by Deavel's “Median Coverts.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6524776523589790554" name="80"></a><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">No Bird<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">by
Theodore Roetke<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Now
here is peace for one who knew<br />
The secret heart of sound.<br />
The ear so delicate and true<br />
Is pressed to noiseless ground. <br />
<br />
Slow swings the breeze above her head,<br />
The grasses whitely stir;<br />
But in this forest of the dead<br />
No bird awakens her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial;">Median
Coverts<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">by
Christine Deavel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">How
clear this space. Sore want to do,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">a
seed left dark or drowned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Leafed
fear, sewn pelt, a cut that flew.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Risk
rest—whose voice is bound?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Low
wings from trees, a love pure red.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Redness
is nightly turned.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What
listens for us, us of thread?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Snow
word, a gate in earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Deavel
sometimes references others' poets, playfully, with great reverence, to good effect.
Though I mentioned Dickinson, previously, I caution you that Deavel doesn't
have a gossamer twin with whom she's invented an eerie language none of us can
hope to emulate or grasp. Words are words, poems are poems, there is nothing
new—though—we have been told to make it new. We do our best when we make it and
make it ours. Poets who offer a collection that is theirs, who hone an original
voice—it takes work and lots of making—are poets worth reading. And thus I
recommend Christine Deavel's <i>Woodnote</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: 0pt;">Sarah Sarai’s poems have been published in <i>Ascent, Yew, Thrush,
The Wallace Stevens Journal, Boston Review, Fifth Wednesday</i>, and other
journals. Her collection, <i>The Future Is Happy</i>, was published by
BlazeVOX; her chapbooks include <i>I Feel Good, Emily Dickinson’s Coconut
Face, O You of the Cotton Pajamas, </i>and<i> The Risen Barbie</i>. She also
writes fiction. Long ago she was a freelance book reviewer for <i>The
Seattle Times</i>. She has taught high school English; also its older offspring
(composition and lit) at CUNY, Fordham, Pace, among other colleges. A native of
New York State, she lives in New York City, but grew up in Los Angeles. She
always longs for California and the Southwest. Please visit her at <i><a href="http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/">My 3,000Loving Arms</a></i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-43095845663812946292015-05-02T23:15:00.000-07:002015-05-16T20:00:01.667-07:00NOT SO, SEA by MG ROBERTS<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">APRIL
JOSEPH Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">not so, sea by Mg Roberts<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>(Durga
Press, 2014)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am
reminded of color as I surround myself, my listening, my reading with writers
of color. Then to undertake the generous preview of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not so, sea </i>is indicative of how the universe reveals my sisters
and brothers. Thank you universe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I consider
some writers of color: Cisneros, Neruda, Dr. King, Junot Diaz, Mg Roberts. They
speak our language. A language of survival: an outcast cry, a language of
arrival, of departing. To arrive is to depart. To depart, you must arrive. Even
if you’ve landed in an in-between space. You’ve landed. Mg Roberts’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not so, sea </i>begins:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is how I arrived, cut. (9)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">not so, sea </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is memory echoed from the belly of a whale. From
the moment we step into the cavernous mouth of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not so, sea</i> we are “unearth”ed. Roberts reminds us that arrival and
departure requires surrender in order to examine the debris or “cuts” of the
storm—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This place holds
distinctions etched onto flexible strips of plastic. Do you hear its mutability
of letters, the knock of consonants?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Discomfort remains
separate against the back of mouth where hosannas name the naming. (12)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Roberts’
ears are fine tuned to the sound bites of words. Her language emits a
sword—mimicking the point of arrival, the point of departure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">After
reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not so sea, </i>I came across a
throat chakra stone—I am working with this stone to remember the lives of those
passed on—gone gone gone beyond. I am working with the throat chakra to consider
and write the voices of humans who will not or cannot write or speak for
themselves. Their silence is unjust and violent. Roberts reminds us of the
importance of the voice. The voice must sing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I must untie the
knot in my throat, puncture air, shift to bone. Search for boundary. Locate
name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How to build horizon from what was?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Shall I learn to
cleave? Hold prayer salt into knees, carry edges of psalm in lung across ocean?
Make animal gestures: bleat. (15)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I begin
to understand why the universe places us in strange desert(ed) landscapes
filled with those “left behind.” Humanity’s wasteland. I consider “at risk
youth” who do not realize their plight from or endurance of “ghetto.” These
dangerous streets are filled with families of color who cross borders with
undocumented stories, pushing against heavy hands to survive. How many stories
are forgotten? I realize the urgent need for this literature: the various
voices found inside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not so, sea</i> trace
ancestral lines. Roberts’ inquiry into the practice of self-canceling and what
it means to be self-reflexive illustrates the rediscovery of
memory—contradicting memory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pages turn creating distance. I must
retell myself, until I can see us in color. (20)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Roberts
entices us with a foreign soundscape and shares Filipino superstitions—allowing
the reader to be the fly on the witch doctor’s wall—listening as the “sky
breaks”—envisioning the fractures, calling us to relocate (27). The text opens
with the sky as Roberts’ use of space and negation demonstrate the breaks in
language and memory. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A shape I am
bringing to life: an earlobe scratches into and out of seeing; a fist is
everything and nothing; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">beetles fill the
sky; thru shadow—the sky is mating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A2.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Recalls details
though what’s broken: mother and auntie’s English.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 7;"> </span>Watch //fs disappear (23, 25)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In
“Something from Nothing: The Disontological Poetics of Leslie Scalapino,” Jason
Lagapa writes, “According to the precepts of Christian negative theology,
indirect speech is necessary to describe the sacred. One ought to speak of the
ultimate nature of the divine only through negative utterances…This double
negative is useful, for it formulates a conception or approximation of the
divine even as it implies the faultiness of language itself” (34). Roberts’
work describes the sacred act of relocating a sacrificed language and culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
dreams the women occur as sound.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span>//wak-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span>wak-wak.
(22)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Silence. Sometimes is all we have. (37)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These
utterances indicate the legacy of women and the immigrant experience. As we
enter “Here,” the voices of ancestors are heard: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">…a beat heard as tears. Look at me I’m stained throughout </i>(43). Roberts
writes the voiceless whispers of ghosts—reaching towards the disappearing roots
of language. Roberts’ enquiry into the groundedness and groundlessness of
language reveals sites of trauma and spirit/spirituality. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not so, sea </i>is an island surrounded by sound beads that ask “…where
to dissolve” (66). Roberts’ words dissolve at the point of origin to indicate the
collapse of memory—forgetting, failing—reminding the reader of the flux of
memory—how a heartbreaking touch can wave memories and like the tide pull us
under “as in the state of gasping, sound too can hold the intention to ghost”
(68).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I read
Mg Roberts and consider the necessity to read writers of color who write from
the space that documents the breaking-boiling point of roots—that create or
transform humanity. This writing connects to the mother tongue—the matrilineal
blood line that screams pain or is so far away you can barely see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Across ocean or
back, before prayers and breath, before salt of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>ocean, of before was
lungs. (79)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">not so, sea</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> revisions the past
to make way for new birth, to create new channels of living.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">April
Joseph</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span class="" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429975439863_31264" style="color: #333333; font-family: Lato, 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 28.7999992370605px;"> is a poet from East L.A., California, who is currently exploring the Pacific Northwest. After studying The Beat Generation and Buddhism in American Popular Culture at the University of California, San Diego, s)he received a MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, Boulder, CO. April has taught writing at Naropa and Las Vegas, NV, and performs paths to heal ancestral trauma</span><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1429975439863_32440" style="color: #333333; font-family: Lato, 'Helvetica Neue', 'Lucida Grande', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 28.7999992370605px;">, most recently at the Literary Death Match in San Francisco.</span></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-72537920310442222472015-05-02T23:10:00.000-07:002015-05-11T22:09:24.878-07:00JUSTIFIED SONNETS by JAMES MCLAUGHLIN<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">JOEL CHACE
Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Justified Sonnets</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> by James McLaughlin<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="normal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">(The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, Newton-Le-Willows,
United Kingdom, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Here is “Sonnet
Seventeen,” from James McLaughlin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Justified
Sonnets</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sonnet Seventeen</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">tower<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">did<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tiny<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">petals<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>turning<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">lemon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>blue<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>begin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>form<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">\<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">an<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>instant<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>did<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">all<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>look<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">up<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">gaze<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>\<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">salvation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This poem is a
striking example of McLaughlin’s radical structural methods in this collection.
On the literal page, in two dimensions, each of the seventy two poems is 14
lines, precisely the same overall size as its seventy one companions, and
perfectly proportioned or balanced<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>justified not only left and
right but also top and bottom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, a
set of seventy two identical rectangles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>However, McLaughlin’s most remarkable formal accomplishment<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>thanks to his use of vertical lines and forward and backward slashes
(his “punctuation”), as well as spaces, gaps, whitenesses within the text<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is
transforming each two dimensional rectangle into a three dimensional entity, a
cabinet of thought and emotion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each
sonnet expands outward, toward the reader, or<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>perhaps more accurately<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>pulls the reader into its surprising depths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Especially in the first half of the sequence,
this effect is profound, indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And one
can find no clearer illustration than “Sonnet Seventeen”:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>26 words scattered into the frame; spare and
gorgeous, a poem that draws the reader into its bare, ruined, but possibly
redemptive landscape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yet, among the
ruins, where is redemption, consolation, and how to reach them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For that matter, how to justify the creation
of sonnets or any poems?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What good
reasons exist for such an endeavor?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
an absolute sense, there are none, especially if a writer’s intent is to convey
the rightness, the good sense of the world around us.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>...I frame knowledge to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>point of ignorance \<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Three</b>,
7-8)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>...let me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">have<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>little<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>knowledge<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">particular
subject<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>let me make<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">many<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>basic<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>errors<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>use<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">language<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>goad<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>prose|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Three</b>, 10-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>...intellect
worms<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">–<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>almost<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>grasps for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>life|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Seven,
</b>13-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">deliberation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fails the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">ability<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to attain…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ten</b>, 11-12)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>...more than<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">ever<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>sun<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>fades<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>too<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>fast<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">memory<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from nowhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">comes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>illusion<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">justification<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wide ranging in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">its
landscape<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is it always so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">important to be
right…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nineteen</b>, 2-8)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">can<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>ever<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reshape<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>design<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">model<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pieces<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>air<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>boxes |<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nineteen</b>, 13-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Since these
poems so explicitly acknowledge the limits of language, McLaughlin (especially,
again, in the collection’s first half) more than earns the right to argue that,
in an absolute sense, there is every good reason for launching sincere,
courageous poetic explorations out into the mess and glittering swirl of the
world.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">studious<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>observation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">compelled to
form<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>images<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">\ and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ideas<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mind<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">wonderful<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>things…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Twenty Five</b>, 8-11) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>we try to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">grasp<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>daggers<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>before<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>us<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>|<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">tiny<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>dots of light dart as<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">images<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>forming a circle<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">close<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>many things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">remain
incompletely<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>present<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thirty
One, </b>9-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>desire<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>seems<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">hold<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the eye<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>much is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">much<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of so much<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">extraordinary<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>listen can I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thirty Three</b>, 11-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Given the
inevitable inadequacies of any medium, including language, any artist may feel
tempted not even to make an attempt, at all.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">...resurrected<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>under leaves and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">branches<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>\<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>or rejoice<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">broken
lime<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ray and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>font<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>|<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">luxuriating<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on dust<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">wondering<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>nothing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>at<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eleven</b>, 10-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>corpse like I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">slide<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>estuary<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">become part
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nothing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Twenty Three</b>, 9-11) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>withdraw<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>reason
and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">make<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>notice<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nothing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">nothing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>particular<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>along<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">river<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bank<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nothing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>note<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>forest floor…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Twenty Five</b>, 1-5)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But this poet
resists such temptations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For he
understands that artistic failure never results from not solving the world, but
that such failure comes from not confronting the mysteries around and within
us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Needless to
say, such great mysteries include memory and loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In McLaughlin’s sequence, along with the
particularities of the surrounding natural world<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>flowers, birds, streams, sky<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- a
“lost one,” a particular person, now gone, haunts the speaker.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>...you gave<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">me<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a frigid look…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Four</b>, 5-6)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>love is such a
gambler<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>saw<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in your eyes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Four</b>, 13-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>was I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>broken<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>crow<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>you<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>took<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">home<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and cried<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>over<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Twenty</b>, 12-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>perhaps
one of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">several<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>actions<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>courses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">/<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a toss coin<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Twenty Six</b>, 12-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">we were <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>too irregular,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>too<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">slippery<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>over<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>used<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thirty</b>, 8-10)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>once more<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">take<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>my<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>arm<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>die<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thirty Six</b>, 13-14)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Time and its
assassins stun us with losses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for
remedy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>time, of course, and ever unreliable memory.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>when<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>look<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">there<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are uncertain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">lines<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ten</b>, 6-9)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>a thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">signifies<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>memory<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>again<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">again<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>|<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all seems at variance \<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">knowledge<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ceases<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">understand<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thirteen</b>, 2-6)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from
nowhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">comes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>illusion<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">justification<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nineteen</b>, 4-6)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Time, memory,
and words can console, but not enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal">
<br /></div>
<div class="normal">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12.0pt;">Joel
Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as<i> </i></span><i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Tip of the Knife, Counterexample Poetics, OR, Country Music,</span></i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12.0pt;">Infinity's
Kitchen, </span></i><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt;">and <i>Jacket</i>.
Most recent collections include <i>Sharpsburg</i>, from Cy Gist Press, <i>Blake's
Tree</i>, from Blue & Yellow Dog Press, <i>Whole Cloth, </i>from
Avantacular Press, <i>Red Power, </i>from Quarter After Press, <i>Kansoz</i>,
from Knives, Forks, and Spoons Press, and <i>Web Too</i>, from Tonerworks.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-88126898338412178622015-05-02T23:05:00.000-07:002015-05-11T22:09:06.249-07:00AS THEY FALL by IVY JOHNSON<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">EILEEN
TABIOS Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b><i>As
They Fall </i>by Ivy Johnson</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>(Timeless,
Infinite Light, Oakland, CA, 2015)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLHjqRNhz2vxh3vQO2ozNxihcWhD77Zn0l57FWB1o9QPxBmcltsqt17QnZVQFGR4RXyULkVegvyJfbUE0opY1cvZwMJ4q_4B1M3ozpWw3SgWfaahv4yMS9jao4cNKmQCEKQM5M81fOjk/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLHjqRNhz2vxh3vQO2ozNxihcWhD77Zn0l57FWB1o9QPxBmcltsqt17QnZVQFGR4RXyULkVegvyJfbUE0opY1cvZwMJ4q_4B1M3ozpWw3SgWfaahv4yMS9jao4cNKmQCEKQM5M81fOjk/s1600/1.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s
fitting that Ivy Johnson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As They Fall</i>
arrived “damaged” in the sense that the grey paper wrap around a set of cards
was torn: it arrived <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fallen</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, to take the project out of its mailing
envelope was to take an unbound set of cards already falling from each other to
reveal what some of the cards say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus,
I as recipient was facilitated to engage with the cards, flip through them,
check them out … rather than set them aside in their neat boundness to explore
at some other time when I had more free time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But you know what, I never have free time so what the hey: I engaged!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
it turned out, I was empathetic right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Each card presents text and a poem (created from words on all of the
cards) or shorter poems (from some of the cards) that can be created from
random orderings of the card.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s an
example from five cards I chose at random from the pile:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">something escapes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">i can feel the light of the universe
upon me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the echoes rearranged<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It was true.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the word planted seeds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nifty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love the result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a legit poem, or I recognize it as such
in the same way the author presents the project as a poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The grammatical formality of the fourth line
even works to dramatize the last line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anyway,
I was saying I’m empathetic right away because of my own
poem-written-from-random-orders of a database of lines (see <a href="http://eileenverbsbooks.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-mdr-poetry-generator.html">“Murder, Death andResurrection” or “MDR”</a>). I am moved by an author’s letting go of total control to have the universe (if
you will) collaborate in the writing of a poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It reflects my own ars poetica as I captured it in an old couplet: “To
bring the poem into the world / is to bring the world into the poem.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Three
factors elevate Johnson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As They Fall</i>
into a highly effective poem. First and most important, the resulting poem(s)
can only be as good as the inventory of lines. Johnson’s words are highly
resonant and well-crafted in that the lines don’t carry unnecessary words;
these words are not notes or jottings—they are lines in a poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are three examples again chosen at
random:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">AS IN A MIRROR<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">free love<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I had a dream that I walked crude
architecture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
sure: I consider the above tercet effective as a poem, too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What <i>As They Fall</i> illustrates, as the best of
this type of poem-making does, is what Gertrude Stein et al understood: meaning
can arise from random combinations of words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
second factor that makes this project effective is that the words on each card
are handwritten. That’s better by being more personal and drawing you (the
reader/viewer) into a more intimate space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, the all-capitalized line (in above excerpt), “AS IN A MIRROR,”
loses its loudness or becomes softer because it’s handwritten. Here's one view:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAbF0npVTTWR7cHV1hzKQDEBJkvFiJxjAPcYg5Cg_WMeY_x0Ypixj2ls23Q_r-XfViuT4Mp0AVUf5BD2yDNMnBsKjK6HjNQ7aq61thrPdV3NvL3WGdBwCtBLqDtd4OxtyDGFxTnj_c-J4/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAbF0npVTTWR7cHV1hzKQDEBJkvFiJxjAPcYg5Cg_WMeY_x0Ypixj2ls23Q_r-XfViuT4Mp0AVUf5BD2yDNMnBsKjK6HjNQ7aq61thrPdV3NvL3WGdBwCtBLqDtd4OxtyDGFxTnj_c-J4/s1600/2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Speaking
of intimacy, the third factor is the project’s structure of cards (not, say,
lines on a page as is the case in my MDR project or lines onscreen manipulated
by a computer program, which is another way poems-writ-at-random are created by
others).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The use of cards means the
reader/viewer is forced not just to engage visually with the poem but engage <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">physically</i> with the poem. One must touch
and manipulate the poem. That’s all good and apt for a highly personal
project—“personal” as affirmed by the project’s description by the author
and/or publisher:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“As They Fall</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is a vivid,
sensual journey through the haunted landscape of the self [of Ivy Johnson].”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Form,
here, mirrors content and it’s lovely to see, touch and feel this poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s a couplet randomly created … for
another instance of radiance:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">drawing is silent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">our voices sound the cry of the earth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thank
you, Ivy Johnson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the photographers
Emji Spero, Otis Pig, Justin Carder and Caitlin Enwright whose photos used on
the cards depict light in many splendiferous permutations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eileen Tabios </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">recently released an experimental auto-biography, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/prose-collections/against-misanthropy-a-life-in-poetry-2015-1998/">AGAINST MISANTHROPY: A LIFE IN POETRY</a></b></i>, as well as her first poetry collection published in 2015, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/i-forgot-light-burns/">I FORGOT LIGHT BURNS</a></b></i>. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Forthcoming later this year is <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/inventstory-selected-catalogue-poems-new/">INVENT(ST)ORY </a></b></i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">which is her second </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">“Selected Poems" project; while her first Selected <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm">THE THORN ROSARY</a></b></i> was focused on the prose poem form, <i>INVEN(ST)ORY</i> will focus on the list or catalog poem form. She </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">does not let her books be reviewed by <i>Galatea Resurrects</i> because she's its editor (the exception would be books that focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work. Her poetry collection, <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios6.html">SUN STIGMATA (Sculpture Poems)</a></b></i>, received a review by Joey Madia in <i><b><a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2015/01/sumptuous-sculpture-review-of-eileen.html">New Mystics Review</a></b></i> and Zvi Sesling in <i><b><a href="http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2015/01/sun-stigmata-sculpture-poems-by-eileen.html">Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene</a></b></i>.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> More information at <b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/">http://eileenrtabios.com</a></b> </span> </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-67850565978869915842015-05-02T23:00:00.000-07:002015-05-13T17:47:44.155-07:00WHAT I'VE STOLEN, WHAT I'VE EARNED by SHERMAN ALEXIE<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">SHEILA
BARE Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> by Sherman Alexie<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Ludic and the Lamentable: “Equal
parts joy and hurt” in </span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sherman Alexie’s </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned</span></i></b></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">If, like
me, you have grown to expect and enjoy Sherman Alexie’s wit and dark humor in
his many works, then his new collection of poetry, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned</i> will not disappoint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if I can summarize Alexie in one word,
that word would have to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">irreverent</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We see this throughout his new collection by his
use of juxtaposing the sacred with the profane and crafts it into “equal parts
joy and hurt” (23).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mash-up of
words, images, and forms in Alexie’s hand result in poetry that is at once
ludicrous and mournful, something perhaps, the coyote trickster himself might
have invented.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">A good
example of this juxtapositioning is the way in which Alexie plays with
form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The high form <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sonnet</i>, for instance, in Alexie’s creation often does not look and
sound like a typical sonnet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, fourteen
lines and iambic pentameter have gone the way of the dodo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hints at the form through the title, as in
“Sonnet with Slot Machines”; or he otherwise numbers each stanza, fourteen of
them containing differing number of lines and are often in free form, which can
be seen in “Hell.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a number of
“sonnets,” Alexie does not bother to delineate the stanzas but rather writes in
free form altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A whole section of
the book is dedicated to “sonnets” alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Content
follows form in the way in which Alexie juxtaposes images and ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Returning to “Sonnet with Slot Machines,”
Alexie fuses gambling as tradition, with the slaughter or “murder of mammals”
and the “economic sovereignty for indigenous peoples!” with the “slot machine
ritually murder[ing] the gambler’s soul” (32).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After noting what the average patron gambles per night, and then
calculating that to a monthly and then a yearly equivalent, the speaker tells
us, in the Alexie form of the sonnet, “12.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>O trust me, I’m trying to find the poetry in these numbers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>13.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wait, here it is, make the ‘b’ silent, and pronounce it ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nummer,</i>’ as in ‘remove sensation,
especially as a result of cold or anesthesia, as in ‘remove emotion.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>14.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
you punch a kid once, then he’ll cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you punch a kid once an hour for a year, then he’ll learn how to make
the fists feel like flowers” (32).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
casinos and slot machines provide for native sovereignty and allay the poverty
of some natives in their reservations, then it is also equally true that
gambling as an addiction anesthetizes and therefore prevents the addict from
any feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the well-rehearsed
history of the U.S. nation-state’s genocide of Natives (“murder of mammals”)
and of stealing (as in “slot machines”) their land, it isn’t a reach for the
reader’s imagination to apprehend that what is being anesthetized here is the
pain of history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To “find the poetry in
these numbers,” then is to remember this painful past.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps
an Alexie invention, the “monosonnet interrupted” is also a mash-up of the
fourteen- line sonnet interrupted between the octave of the first stanza and
the sestet of the last stanza by free form verse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alexie’s “sonnet” is a “monosonnet” because
the lines in the octave and sestet contain only one word per line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In “Monosonnet for the Martriarchy,
Interrupted,” rhythm can best be found in the free verse than within the
stanzas:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“When / A / Woman /Asks / You /
To / Owl / Dance /,” the first stanza tells us, “(O, O, O, O, the owl dance,
two steps forward, one step back, O, O, O, O listen to the drummers attack that
drum, O, O, O, O [. . .]),” (30).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here,
the reader can almost hear or at least imagine the “O”s in the poem
representing a beat of the drum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Linguistic choice and content echo and mirror one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
“Monosonnet for Colonialism, Interrupted,” this auditory playfulness is
replaced with a playful image within the free form stanza and a reference to
music in the sestet: “Yes / Colonialism / Created / George / Custer / And /Andrew
/ Jackson // [. . .] // But / Colonialism / Also /Created / Miles / Davis,”
reminding us that history is “equal parts joy and hurt” (42; “Powwow Ghazal,”
23).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The free form verse that
interrupts, marries the “genocidal maniacs,” of the first stanza—without which
there “would not have [been] action-adventure movies like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Die Hard</i>”—with an “improvisational and highly American olio of
poetry, film, and comedy” through the figure of Emily Dickinson (42).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I am a man who loves cinematic gunfire and
American poetry, if not equally, then with parallel passion,” the speaker tells
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He then continues to note that he
has “considered writing an action-adventure movie about Emily Dickinson” and
that he has designed a poster and a tagline: “The poster features an actress
[think of the latest and greatest young and muscular American actress] dressed
in a tattered white gown while holding a large automatic pistol at an acute
angle to the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The movie is called
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emily</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the tagline, the little phrase that will
sell the movie to millions, is ‘Her Life Stood a Loaded Gun’” (42).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, the first line/title of one of
Dickinson’s best-known poems is then used to redefine the introverted and
reclusive poet into someone bold and brash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Poetry and high culture is also juxtaposed with popular culture (also
read as low culture) through cinema, and anyone even vaguely acquainted with
the American poet, Dickinson, cannot help but snicker at the juxtaposition of
images.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Introverted recluse turns badass
in Alexie’s hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Alexie’s
ludic play of words continue in the juxtaposition of words in “Powwow Ghazal”
(23).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Students of poetry will probably
recognize the poetic form “ghazal,” a song/poem from South Asia that invokes
the panegyric and celebratory and/or the elegiac and mournful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Alexie’s hand, the play of words cannot be
missed in the poem’s title, invoking both the Native American “Indian” and the
Indian from South Asia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both the powwow
and the ghazal are, of course, forms of performance or repertoire; as songs and
dances, they are embodied performances and part of the repertoire of
culture/cultural memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the act of
writing and/or recording, however, brings in the notion of archiving and an
invocation of Western epistemologies and the Western anthropologic and colonial
project.<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, this “production” of culture
in the colonial project, becomes a product to be consumed for Western audiences
to ascertain the “knowability” of the “other” and perpetuates the exoticization
of the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other thus becomes an
object of analysis, stripped of subjecthood/personhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The archive privileges western thought by
privileging writing over embodied performances of the putatively “uncivilized”
others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as ghazals are traditionally
self-referential as they include in the final couplet the poet’s name,
signature, or any reference to the poet, then rather than an outside observer
looking down into his/her/hir object of analysis, what we have, instead, is the
voice of a tribal member recording and describing a ritualistic, ceremonial
performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of an “object of
analysis,” what we have is the rendering of the speaker’s subject, a rendering
of subjecthood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Alexie’s ghazal, his
subjects come to life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The performers in
this powwow perform in the present tense: they “spin,” “talk,” “sing,” and
“dance” (23-24).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is also the use
of gerunds: the fancydancer is “weeping!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The girl is going insane with drums;” “That nostalgic Indian is wearing
blue suede shoes” (23).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is clear,
these “Indians” are not from a distant past; they have not disappeared as the
myth of the “disappearing Indians” would have us believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are alive and they are performing their
culture and they enact their history through this powwow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If assimilation is the name of the game in
the colonial realm, there is also reciprocity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If the non-native has appropriated the natives’ culture, then we have in
the “nostalgic Indian” appropriating white culture through his performance of
Elvis (who, as it turns out, was appropriating black culture in his
dances).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note that the only “nostalgic
Indian” is the one who is yearning for a product of “white American
culture.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If nostalgia is a wistfulness
for a static past, then the only static past in this powwow is Elvis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though the colonial project is a tragic tale
to tell, there is also “equal parts joy and hurt” as we see in this depiction
cultural survivance (23).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The drummers
are both “kids” and “elders” so that culture and tradition are handed down
through the generations (23).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
way the production of knowledge, culture, and tradition are circulated
throughout the tribe by the tribe’s elders and bearers of culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, if the performance is a re-membering
of the past, a suturing of history into the present, then we have history
coming alive with every performance, a reiterative act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In every powwow, in every recitation of the
ghazal, history is not relegated to the past, but rather comes to life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Equally important, the intellectual and
artistic property of cultural performance belong to this native poet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Equal
parts joy and hurt,” to use Alexie’s own words, best describes this
collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the juxtapositioning of
the sacred and profane, Alexie has brought together a painful national and personal
history—there is also the pain and suffering from the loss of his father and
his sister juxtaposed with anger from an inability to reconcile these
relationships—with his signature dark humor and irony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though he has “stolen” forms from the high
culture of poetry, wherein Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas to name
just a few, make a cameo appearance, he has also skillfully “earned” his craft
as writer and poet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
See Taylor, Diana.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the
Americas</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Durham and London: Duke UP.
2003.</div>
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*****<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Sheila Bare is an independent scholar and a life-long student. Lately, she has been studying Buddhism. When her nose is not in a book or in a cooking pan, you may find her on a yoga mat or out for a run. And there are those days when she tries to write. Best to stay away from her during those times. Unless, of, course you bring with you a good bottle of wine and talk about books. She was raised by two parents and now lives somewhere on planet earth.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-50830514297642402512015-05-02T22:55:00.000-07:002015-05-11T22:06:43.000-07:00HELLO, MY MEAT by DANIEL BEAUREGARD<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">LAURA CARTER Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Hello, My Meat </b></span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>by Daniel Beauregard</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>(Lame House Press, 2015)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">What, exactly, is the
spectacle? Illustrated beautifully by Guy Benjamin Brookshire, and written in
lovely, meandering lines by Daniel Beauregard, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hello, My Meat </i>tells us exactly what we might find there. We might
find a “butterfly world air permeated” or “Mr. Milktoast,” and Beauregard lets
us know that Mr. Milktoast watches out for us as we seek to take on America and
to celebrate the American dream in so many ways that are so fulfilling, no? We
learn about pageantry, Victorians, and the Queen who is deficient in
conversation. We learn about the beauty of the naked body, buffed and prime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Beauregard gives us a
perspective that we may not have heard of before, with questions like, “How far
will the salt penetrate?” and “extra gasoline edible viscera.” That’s what it’s
all about, and a picture of Sigmund Freud lets us in on the truth of the
cigar-smoking, analytical man behind the whole thing. Beauregard tells us that
“we mounted the shaggy ponies” and that there is “the latest American hairdo
from New York.” We also learn about “Pagan sloop Roman-nosed goats” who
populate the winds of the spectacle, blowing as American pageants do. This
brilliance doesn’t seem to end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The book is relatively
brief, as chapbooks often are. We have many enjambed lines and many lines that
lack punctuation in this homage to the beautiful. We learn about how “springs
stick out in great humps,” about how the spring that never runs out of water is
the great American epic poem. I am surprised by the ending, though, which is
“the vintage of a century.” Are we Victorians? Are we moderns? Maybe we need a
critic to come in and write about this book from the perspective of some –ism,
but maybe not. I don’t think a critic could do this book justice. Only a
cannibal could.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Laura Carter lives in
Atlanta. Other reviews have appeared in <i>The Fanzine </i>and <i>Atticus
Review</i>.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-70526508012725191642015-05-02T22:45:00.000-07:002015-05-11T13:07:11.634-07:00PORT LIGHT: A HAY(NA)KU COLLECTION by WILLIAM ALLEGREZZA<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -19.3pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">NEIL LEADBEATER Reviews</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial;">Port Light: A
Hay(na)ku Collection </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial;">by
William Allegrezza<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Meritage Press, San
Francisco & St. Helena, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">William Allegrezza edits Moria Books and teaches at
Indiana University Northwest. He has previously published several volumes of
poetry including <i>In The Weaver’s Valley,</i> <i>Collective Instant </i>and
(with Garin Cycholl) <i>Aquinas and the Mississippi. </i>He is also the author
of a number of anthologies and seven chapbooks. Among other things, he founded
and created Series A: a reading series in Chicago from 2006-2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Port Light</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"> is more fully titled “A Hay(na)ku Collection” For
readers who may be unfamiliar with this 21<sup>st</sup> century diasporic term,
a <a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/haynaku/"><b>hay(na)ku</b></a> is a tercet-based stanza in which
the first line consists of one word, the second line two words and the third
line three words. The form can be reversed (where the longest line is placed
first and the shortest line is placed last) but this is the exception rather
than the rule. <a href="http://haynakupoetry.blogspot.com/2005/07/hay-naku-history.html">The form was invented </a>by Eileen Tabios. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Most of the poems in this collection are single
entities in their own right which cover a range of subject matter. Others may
be said to form some kind of grouping, whether it be the series of nine
sequences that deal imaginatively with the earthquake disaster in Haiti or the
linked poems relating to cartography. There is also a prose poetry section
headed <i>Response Poems </i>in which the poet responds to hay(na)kus provided
by Eileen Tabios. This combination of hay(na)ku and prose is known as “haybun.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The sequence relating to Haiti is for me the most
significant poem in the book. Allegrezza is not generally regarded as a poet of
place. Indeed, he often thinks of place as being more important for fiction
than for poetry, but the Haiti earthquake made him intentionally focus on the
island for this sequence. It is in this poem that we discover the book’s title,
<i>Port Light.</i> Moments of harsh realism, such as the opening hay(na)ku:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">1.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">land<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">of cracked<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">earth spreading
time<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">like<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">history over<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">our open eyes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">are matched with the stark abruptness of accumulated,
random objects which convey the sense of disjuncture felt by the survivors:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">shattered<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">sign. hotel<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">wall. car turned.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Here, music can suddenly sound in the strangest of
places. In an interview with Dupur Mitra, Allegrezza admits that music plays a
large part in his writing so that he sometimes focusses more on the sound than
the meaning:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">a rock has<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">landed in<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">my<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">hand. a rock<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">has landed<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">in<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">my hand. a <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">rock, my<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">hand.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Because the sentence overrides the 3-2-1 tercet by
one word, Allegrezza is able to offer up a soundscape that is not far off from
a lullaby with its infectious sing-song repetition while at the same time
ensuring that the nouns end cleanly in the final 3-2-1 tercet. The last tercet
leaves the reader with the brute force of nature weighed in equal syllables
against the fragility of human life. The drama lies in the description which
is, of course, in stark contrast to any words that might resemble a lullaby.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Several shorter poems in this volume are clearly born
of observation and human understanding. The first poem in the book, <i>lessons,</i>
drew my attention. Even though it is a theme that has been approached in the
same vein many times before, it still seemed fresh to me. Here it is in full:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">my <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">daughter comes <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">to me with<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">a <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">broken plastic <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">toy. “glue it,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">tape<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">it,” she <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">says, but i <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">know<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -19.45pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">that some <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">things once
ruptured<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">are <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">broken beyond <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">repair.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In an interview with Tom Beckett, Allegrezza
expressed the hope that poetry could help us ultimately to be individuals in
our own right and to be accepting of each other. He hoped that it would foster
a respect for, and a way to, the person within. This awakening is expressed
with precision in the poem entitled <i>politics:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">poetry<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">can change<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">the world but<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">just <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">slightly the<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">way a flower<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">shifts<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">your gaze<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">in a barren<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">or a<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">thud wakes you.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Later in the book, Allegrezza imagines that he was
once a cartographer and makes the connection between the craft of drawing maps
and writing poetry – the shaping of continents and the shaping of words. He
then explores this single idea through a series of successive poems in which he
concerns himself with the landscape of the heart, the creative instinct, the
artist’s ability to listen to the music within, the artist setting himself free
from the restraint of literary devices and the scribe striving to be true to
all that he has seen but finding it impossible to hold a mirror up to nature.
If there is any conclusion here it is that the poet must map out his or her own
journey in what can only be his or her own way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The final sequence of poems in the book reveal a
preoccupation with the written and spoken word – its diminishing effectiveness,
its reduction at one point to mere mathematical symbols, its fragility and
vulnerability over time, the moment when no-one wants to listen anymore.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Returning to that interview with Dupur Mitra,
Allegrezza was once asked the question “What is poetry?” He didn’t have a set
definition but there were several that were close to his heart. One of these
was that “poetry is language condensed.” The hay(na)ku is a useful means to
adopt for this purpose and Allegrezza chooses his words carefully so that his
poems and their subject matter fit well into this mould.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater is an editor, author, essayist and
critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems
have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad.
His most recent books are <i>Librettos for the Black Madonna</i> (White Adder
Press, Scotland, 2011); <i>The Worcester Fragments </i>(Original Plus Press,
England, 2013) and <i>The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives </i>(Poetry Space,
England, 2014).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-54160999751282971562015-05-02T22:34:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:47:37.840-07:00DEAR ALAIN by KATY BOHINC and I NO LONGER BELIEVE IN THE SUN: LOVE LETTERS TO KATIE COURIC by DEREK FENNER<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">PATRICK JAMES DUNAGAN
Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>Dear Alain</b></span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b> by Katy Bohinc</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Tender Buttons Press,
New York, NY, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b>I No Longer Believe in
the Sun: Love Letters to Katie Couric</b></span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b> by Derek Fenner</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Bootstrap, Lowell, MA and Oakland, CA, 2009)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">DUNAGAN WRITES BOHINC AND FENNER: AN
EPISTOLARY REVIEW<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dear K.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Read your
epistolary <i>Dear Alain</i> with interest. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I thought what's this
young poet up to? She's sure got a lot of flirting sexy page turning of words
all round and then numbers! too, coming into the mix. Along with mathematics...
philosophy... poetry... there's terrific gall and great feminine wile, as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But, like these
letters grip (and gripe) so openly with a guy so old!
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then I thought: well,
it's all about the mind really the body is isn't it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Next I thought about
my friend Derek's book<i> I No Longer Believe in the Sun: Love Letters to
Katie Couric</i>. The writing adopts this persona, a real at times quite creepy
one, of a guy who is obsessively and rather occultly stalking Couric. It's
totally fucked up. Astrology, Native American mounds, family history,
television weirdness, it's all here, including photos and drawings. Derek
documented everything. I mean you know here he is this young guy writing in the
voice of a bit of derangement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">…is it love?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pj<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">__________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Heyas man,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bouhin wrote to
Badiou: An entire book of letters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sorta fucking him in
not so graphic terms but sexualized nonetheless. Endearing in a way. Quite
charming even.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I thought of yr <i>Love
Letters to Katie</i>. Almost perversely I suppose. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">~ Patrick<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">____________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dear K,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Online there's video
and photos of you reading, seems like from <i>Dear Alain</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Do you think Alain
watched? …Ever? I'm sure Slavoj has, huh?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Does reading the
letters aloud in front of others contribute to or take away from "the
real" within them?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like when you
write: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> "Everyone
likes to think they aren't a crazy lover but the truth is I'm fragile and
broken and crying too." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How's that feel? Read
aloud? I don't think you're pushing any kind of confessional gig, so like how's
this work for you? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There doesn't seem to
be much distance for your person from the writing at all. You fuck with that,
eh?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I've seen Derek read
with a red thong in hand, twisting it in his grip, his voice rising in Katie
angst.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I've heard of one
drunken performance when things got even more out of hand. There was a stage,
dark lighting...or maybe not so dark. Boston poets never saw Derek the same
again!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Do you think of <i>Dear
Alain</i> as sexual harassment? Are you playing with "the
real" or are you playing with playing with "the real." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That's what I think it
comes down to with both these projects.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Apprehensively, but
ever,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pj<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">___________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Heya,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So Bohinc's book is
serious but allusive a bit in specifics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The hard math is there
though, seemingly, even though what do I know about it? Other than if somebody
says it is, then I think: Great!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But what works for me
best about her book is I believe she means it... like she's not just being coy
(tho she's definitely coy at times …it’s also wickedly smart and she doesn’t
seem a bit bothered by being labeled a show-off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I think she's living
the writing out and that's always what matters most. No bullshit: Just a giving
over to The Real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There may be dead ends
here and there but she's always in the midst of them as they enter in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Letters, after all,
involve gaps between writing. Feelings shift, change of scenarios abound.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Just like how you pick
up one book and go to another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The fingers ever as
fickle as the heart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">~ piddles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">______________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">K ~<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is there a line you'd
draw between art and life? What if Alain was terrified that you were really
like after him for not just a night of romance but a lifetime (for the years he
has left) of conjugal bliss?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Is there "a
joke" to be "in" on? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In his <i>Love
Letters</i>, Derek's errant doppelgänger slides from one page to the next
between addressing Couric, "Katie," with aggressive, if honest,
desire: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"I don't know where to begin if not with
the truth---I'm a little drunk tonight and I'm having nasty thoughts of you. It
is getting tougher to be away from you, and by "nasty" I mean dirty.
God I want to fuck you so bad. It hurts my head, Katie---it hurts my head---it
hurts!---I haven't been sleeping" <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To then pleading for/to
her as savior, along with a nod to possibly some larger form of spiritual
transformation:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Just pray that God takes care of me and
does His will. Outside of you, I've got nothing to live for. I'd love to come
and get you so we could run away and raise kittens in Maine or Mexico and be
carefree and drink gin on Sundays and sleep whenever we want and read and write
each other letters in the same room, but we know my destiny lies on the Great
Hopewell Road at the Great Serpent Mound."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In <i>Dear Alain</i>,
you write out the personal enmeshed within mathematical/philosophical tones:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"[...] you see the way I conceive of the
world is at once traditional and modern. I am creating something new but it
builds on the past to embrace the future and the traditional. I like Gauss'
projective plane. There infinity is the just horizon but it is also right now.
Which is to say that thought and being are not just points on a directional
linear trajectory, but that they are sort of a collection of moments which
circle back into a complete thing, like a mobius strip no one point being
predominant over the other. You might say birth or death begins or ends, but a
beginning or an ending do not presuppose directionality in a circle. There are
many forms of thought which support the circle view, Hinduism, Eastern concepts
of reincarnation, Alzheimer's disease. And to circle back, saying philosophy is
the set of all thoughts ever and everywhere, expands on your multiplicity of
possible events to go even further to discuss the multiplicity of all possible
thoughts and thought systems." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To then break out at
later points in near argumentative rage:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"FUCK YOU AND YOUR BREAKING BONDS ALL WE
HAVE IS BONDS THAT'S ALL WE FUCKING HAVE AND IF THAT MEANS I CANT HAVE TRUTH
THEN I DON'T. FUCKING. WANT. IT.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Look I went for the Joycean fucking departure
and there's a reason why <i>Ulysses</i> is all about Dublin. I went
to the revolution numbed my bonds to kelvin left them with language at the door
of progress and I am fucking militant too. I fucking am. But it's not what you
say. It's that we can do better than what you say. We can do it with love too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now stop, my fucking heart is breaking."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Readers witness you
plead:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"What are you doing to me, Alain? What
are you doing, what are we doing? Why can't I stop loving you, why? But we're
here and I stand and I call it love. We can have it too. We already do. In this
moment we make love and it is real and tomorrow it will break you too much
logic and infinite and I will stand to say it's true and isn't that all you
ever asked? So isn't this all it is? Am i the woman? Am I the man? You need to
shove your fixed positions down your thick throat with your tall man hands but
right now it doesn'ty matter we agree on this, we are alive at dawn on the
horizon and the future will bring us back to reality only if we let it. I need
your heart with me this time. I need it back together. Tell me. Tell me. Tell
me. I love you."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What drives this
writing? I don't mean in terms of "the device" at work in it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The public domain of the
personal exposure: text as skin?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Concerned. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">...but interested,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pj<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">___________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">D!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bouhinc's letters
share with yours that sorta merriment twinkle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like you
say, "Who owns the sun, Katie Couric?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She says, "Oh
Monsieur Badiou! How lovely to argue with you!"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You're both sincerely
pulling the leg of the reader who is at once caught off balance held up in the
flourish of intimacy yet ever skeptical of being "let in" on the
inner psychosis of a rather unbalanced correspondent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It's a fun, disturbing
at times ride.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I dig it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">big LOVE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">~ paj<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">___________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Dear K, Dear D,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yo,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I'm left not sure
whether to fully believe either of yous is truly sincere (tho I do remind
myself: But these are characters, Dunagan! Personas yo) in either of your
"letters" but also am convinced that taken together there's some near
balance struck.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like an approach to
beginning a line of poetry that merges the page as a tangent from the world in
which we live. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For instance, D’s
truly blue-blooded American protagonist ranting against his own unavoidably
waning mental state under da unbearable light of his Goddess Couric represents
a die-hard rant against the abysmal nature of our media culture soaked to the
bone in misdirected spotlight blitz, that is, American A grade, good old
fashioned Capitali$m wor$hip. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That's a good
thing... <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One question:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Why didn't either of
you date any of your letters?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It's a very pragmatic
sort of thing to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hmmmm . . .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We should all have a
drink some time, the three of us, and write anonymous letters back-n-forth
across the table, trading lines round-robin style.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘til then. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">~ PJD</span><span style="background: white; color: #888888; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p>*****</o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Patrick James Dunagan books include <i>GUSTONBOOK</i> and <i>Das Gedichtete</i>. Bird and Beckett Books in San Francisco will publish from <i>Book of Kings</i> in 2015. He edited and wrote the introduction for poet Owen Hill's <i>A Walk Among the Bogus</i> (Lavender Ink, 2014). Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library for the University of San Francisco.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-39589321110537070872015-05-02T22:25:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:47:15.462-07:00ORGANIC FURNITURE CELLAR by JESSICA SMITH<div class="MsoNormal">
SALLY HEGGEMAN Reviews<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Organic Furniture Cellar</i> by Jessica Smith<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(McNaughton & Gunn
Inc., Charlottesville, VA, 2004)<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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In Jessica Smith’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Organic
Furniture Cellar</i>, Smith bravely goes where most poets don’t. In this
thought-provoking, mind-bending collection, the words used in the poems occupy
the space of the page in a much way different from what one is accustomed to.
At first glance, the pages may not make sense but as one engages with the text,
it becomes clear that what appears to be disorder is actually the natural
order—hence the word ‘organic’ in the title—that is exactly how this writing is
crafted.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The words are arranged on the paper in the same manner that
they are arranged in our minds. As humans, when we hear words, we make associations.
Most natural thought is not straightforward and linear. Smith takes us into her
own inner landscape and reveals her thought processes. In these writings, Smith
is recounting memories, so the scattered layout of wording is effective and
engages both the eye and the mind of the reader. Through a series of words,
numbers, and many different “furniture” arrangements, the reader is given the
opportunity to engage, decode, and rearrange the given words.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because the writing in this book is not linear, each word
chosen by Smith carries a heavier weight than one from a traditional novel. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Organic Furniture Cellar</i> also draws the
reader’s attention to the space on the page and how the arrangement of words
may change the message the reader gets (from a certain page) altogether.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> a<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> d s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> red<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> w c i<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> fire explosion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> k<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> tt l<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> d<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> yellow burnt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> e bursts of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> ***<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> orange<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> little specks of brown<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> a<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> smell of wet leaves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> like bananas ll<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> trees like fireworks brown<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> eaves some trees turn utterly yellow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Trebuchet MS";"> more quickly than others<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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The text above is a passage (though the layout is not
identical to the published one) of one of Smith’s passages in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Organic Furniture Cellar</i> titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">first leaves.</i> I find this passage to be
my favorite. This passage embodies the experience of time passing in the fall.
The individual, lower-case letters that stand by themselves are arranged in
such a way that they mimic the same, free falling motion of leaves. One can
sense the passing of time as Smith takes us from the initial burst of colors in
the beginning, to the slow falling of the leaves in the middle, and finally to
the end when the leaves turn brown. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the opening of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Organic
Furniture Cellar,</i> Smith introduces the reader to the concept of “plastic
poetics”. Plastic poetry melds together word and image, while also dealing with
the spatial components of the characters, yet poetry can only be considered
legitimately “plastic” if it disturbs the reader’s mental path. A good example
of this would be the way architecture disrupts and controls our paths in
physical space. We must yield to objects that are in our way; we must move
around them. This same sort of movement is required in order to read plastic
poetry; the reader’s space must be disrupted. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Smith introduces us to the metaphor of the “house” in the
opening, and illustrates the role the reader will play in creating his or her
own “space”. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Entering the house,
the visitors find that in order to do anything—move, sit on furniture,
cook—they must constantly lift the fabric “roof” of the house high enough over
their heads to slither through the space. One of them observes, “Rooms form
depending on how we move. If I bend down, I nearly lose the room.” This
interdependency of agent and architecture is characteristic of Arakawa’s work,
which consistently explores the theoretical problems of being a body in space.
Questions of how one occupies space, how one affects and is affected by
architecture, move to the fore. A building is no longer a dwelling-space, but a
site of reciprocal becoming.</span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Smith’s
approach to plastic poetry challenges and invites the reader to travel with her
through the depths of her mind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial; line-height: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sally Heggeman is a student at Indian Springs School where she studies writing and experimental literature. She plans on pursuing visual arts in college. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Her poetry is forthcoming in </span><i style="font-family: Helvetica;">Delirious Hem.</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-26848869928705082562015-05-02T22:20:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:46:52.593-07:00TWO BOOKS by RAYMOND MCDANIEL<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -19.3pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">NEIL LEADBEATER Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Saltwater
Empire </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">by Raymond McDaniel<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Coffee House Press, Minneapolis,
2008)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Special Powers
and Abilities </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">by Raymond McDaniel<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%; margin-right: -19.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Coffee House Press, Minneapolis,
2013)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%; margin-right: -19.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In <i>Galatea Resurrects </i>#21, <a href="http://galatearesurrection21.blogspot.com/2014/01/jealous-witness-by-andrei-codrescu.html">I reviewed JealousWitness by Andrei Codrescu</a>.<b> </b>Part of that book concerned
itself with the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. One of
the reasons why I expressed an interest in reviewing Raymond McDaniel’s
collection, <i>Saltwater Empire</i> was because it covered the same subject and
I was interested to see if there were any points of similarity in the way that
these two writers approached their subject. In the end, rather than trying to
establish some sort of common ground, I was more interested in the differences
that lay between them. Both accounts are startlingly original and graphic in
their description.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%; margin-right: -19.3pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Born in Florida, Raymond McDaniel now lives in Ann Arbor
where he teaches at the University of Michigan and writes for the <i>Constant
Critic. </i>He is the author of three books of poetry. His first collection, <i>Murder
(a violet)</i> was a National Poetry Series selection. His other two books are
reviewed here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Saltwater Empire</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is a tour de force of poetic metaphor
that is as powerful as the waters that break through the levees and the
hurricane that wreaks such cataclysmic devastation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reading it, our senses are assaulted and at
the same time captivated by its sheer energy and magnetism. The poems go beyond
New Orleans, rippling out into wider issues that are ecological, political and
religious and speak of cruelty, resilience and, ultimately, survival. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is a book full of <i>unruly rain </i>and the <i>unreeling
weight of the sea –</i>of water in all its destructive fury – <i>waves of pure
bass…fossils in flood…the wreck of rain…the circumstance of rain…</i>a rain
that wrings clothes to a rope on a line…<i>weave water…well water…white waves
that adorn and destroy the shore…sea that has sluiced its way through
fortification gates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>These are just
some of the phrases that grace these poems like jewels. The book starts at sea
level – an appropriate place to begin – and rarely leaves the shoreline. Some
poems seem to take place in a kind of underwater terrain, others are never far
from the river or the sea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Moments of magic are conjured up in the opening poem, <i>Sea
Level:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -19.45pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">what witchery remains in a standing piano<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 107%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -19.45pt; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">what room for choruses before they become other people’s
music<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">what innocence perseveres in boxcars buried beneath sea
level<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">what accelerates a train so that it skips like a stone<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">from St. George’s to Port au
Prince<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">what then-excellence is the experience of sleep<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">on a bed of old guitar strings…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The same spell-binding musicality
reappears in the poem <i>Driftglass:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Vessels, missiles, her
glass-cracking love letters.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That shade-hole up in the sky
suggests the fate<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of all the stones she’s thrown,
stuck in circles,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consigned to lesser lights,
showboat satellite.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In <i>Assault to Abjury </i>the effect is that of opening up
a treasure trove of flotsam and jetsam, pebbles, beads, glass shards, <i>the
threads of jellyfish, castaway trash</i>…these are the magical elements in the
book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The book is structured to reflect the many voices whose
lives it reflects. Six texts are spaced throughout the book with the title
“Convention Centres of the New World” – these are poems that are drawn from
interviews conducted by volunteers for “Alive in Truth: the New Orleans
Disaster Oral History and Memory Project, which records life histories of
people from New Orleans, Louisiana, and nearby areas who were affected by Hurricane
Katrina.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poems were assembled by
recombining several of these histories. They are plain-spoken texts offered up
as reportage and provide a strong contrast to the other styles of writing in
the book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thirteen poems consisting of eleven lines each, which are
all written in italics, form another feature of the book. Ten poems with titles
in italics are also placed throughout the volume at strategic intervals. For
the most part the titles of these poems refer to deities from Greek, Roman and
Egyptian mythology. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
collection is peopled with characters who are variously described as <i>radio
souls, sea-breathers, weredogs, fishermen, sorcerers, straightrazors,
first-person shooters, strippers, psychomagicians, army men, sailormen, marines
and legionnaires. </i>William Tell is here, as is Robin Hood and Bushido. There
are also the recorded voices of the survivors many of whom bring out the
political and religious argument:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
just feel like, the government has really, really failed us.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s
just unreal.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
think the government failed us. I think the mayor failed us,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
think the government failed us. I think our president failed us.</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
could pray but whatever God want to hand me,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He
gonna want to hand me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
poems are often fragmentary which is entirely in keeping with their subject.
The full impact is felt when they are read as part of a sequence rather than as
single entities. The book is a fitting testament to the resilience of a people
who have seemingly lost everything yet continue to survive. Highly recommended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Raymond
McDaniel’s third collection, <i>Special Powers and Abilities,</i> is a very
different offering altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Highly
original, often accessible and certainly amusing, it is a brilliant poetic
gloss on the world of the adventure comic. These poems draw upon characters and
plots associated with comics such as Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes
published by DC Comics, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
book is arranged into three sections headed Gold, Silver and Bronze which I
take to be some kind of Olympic ranking for the heroes. The text is
interspersed with brief biographies of the <i>dramatis personae </i>pitched in
poetic terms and neatly packaged in boxes, three boxes to a page. Plots are
retold or imagined from the actual pages of the comics and, when these are not
being told, a series of poems starting with the generic title “What to Expect”
introduce the reader to life in the 30<sup>th</sup> century where<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sibling
rivalry persists<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Girls
have come to trust girls but boys will be boys, dumb, stupidly sentimental.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
are told that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
will be hair pulling but as a rule we will stand on ceremony<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">and
that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
will grow up. But we will never grow old.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
passing, we are informed that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">World War VI was fought in 2783 with superweapons wielded by<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">computer minds but all that is so, so long ago…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the book proceeds, we are told what to expect in terms of
future ecology, gadgets, the world of fashion, crime and punishment. These
texts afford the author with an opportunity to philosophize on specific
subjects that are very much bound up with the present let alone the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The characters of the plots are skilfully drawn. They have
names like Supergirl, Dreamgirl, Sunboy, Chameleon Boy and Shrinking Violet.
They are teenagers with superpowers who display the most basic of emotions
without actually coming alive as real beings. This is as it should be for they
belong very much in the realms of the adventure comic. McDaniel finds just the
right level at which to pitch these characters – they are too otherworldly, too
fantastic to be believed. Their speech is the poetic equivalent of
Lichtenstein’s WHAM!! and ZAP!! – they find a voice on the printed page which
is more often ecapsulated in a speech bubble – and it is all done with
incredible finesse. Having said that, McDaniel’s characters are not exactly
cardboard cut-outs – they have more than one string to their bow but operate
within defined limits. Like marionettes, McDaniel pulls the strings. They are
all <i>in the spring of blooming youth</i> and <i>with the gift of magical
fabrics</i> look <i>good enough to eat.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Throughout the book we are dazzled with the gadgetry, the
technical detail:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After the cashiering of amalgonite refineries, comfort is
secured by fusion<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">powerspheres, for which there is no black market.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Joneses keep up with Worldwide 3-D News, sponsored by
the ultimate<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">road vehicle: the Astrovette 8000!<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are linked via visiphone; we adduce the aberrant via
crime computer;<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">we keep track of our cohort with the Monitor Board…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are in a world full of telepathic plugs, transsuits,
molecular glue guns, anti-telepathy, helmets and battery beds. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Technical wizardry aside, basic impulses are still very much
to the fore. In <i>Colossal Boy Loves Shrinking Violet <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thom can induce<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">gravity’s pull and increase the mass of objects and Gim<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">can get real real big.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He’s always loved her but even more since she changed<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">to the new costume<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">with the black leather thigh-high fold-over boots…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Throughout the volume, a super-intelligence, <i>Brainiac 5</i>,
masterminds the scenes but even he is not infallible. No sooner has he solved
one problem than another one follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">…The stress is immense. Sometimes the torsion coils
superhelical. And sometimes what I superintend I instead superordinate; what I
wish to supervise I supervene. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The real mastermind is McDaniel himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Neil
Leadbeater is an editor, author, essayist and critic living in Edinburgh,
Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in
anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His most recent books are <i>Librettos
for the Black Madonna</i> (White Adder Press, Scotland, 2011); <i>The Worcester
Fragments </i>(Original Plus Press, England, 2013) and <i>The Loveliest Vein of
Our Lives </i>(Poetry Space, England, 2014).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-10376603122943233452015-05-02T22:15:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:46:24.751-07:00DON'T LET ME BE LONELY: AN AMERICAN LYRIC by CLAUDIA RANKINE<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">EILEEN TABIOS Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">DON’T LET ME BE LONELY: AN AMERICAN LYRIC</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Claudia
Rankine<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Graywolf
Press, Minneapolis, Minn., 2004)<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">DON’T LET ME BE LONELY</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> is a post-911 poetry collection but it’s larger than
even that very large event which presents its cloud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book very much reflects the zeitgeist
that is, sure, U.S.-American but also larger than American due to the media’s and internet’s
lack of national borders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Rankine
(for example, too, with her latest, much-lauded book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CITIZEN</i>) is known for reflecting / refracting the times or her
times.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet I accessed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DON’T LET ME BE LONELY</i> for this review
specifically after reading her words on forgiveness as raised by the death of
Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. After quoting from Derrida, Ranking notes
that McVeigh apparently considered both condemnation and forgiveness irrelevant
by quoting from </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">William Earnest Henley’s
poem “Invictus”—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“It matters not how
strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my
fate: I am the captain of my soul.”</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Upon reading Henley’s words, I immediately
recalled how Mom and I had seen <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invictus</i> together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To quote from this zeitgeist’s oracle,
<b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invictus_(film)">Wikipedia</a></b>, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invictus</i>… is based on the
John Carlin book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Playing the Enemy:
Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made A Nation</i> about the events in South
Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup, which was hosted in that
country following the dismantling of apartheid."</span></div>
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Rankin’s poem made me remember how, during the movie, Morgan Freeman who played
Nelson Mandela started reciting Henley’s poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And I’ll never forget how Mom astonished and quieted down the movie
audience into listening to her as she recited the words along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also was astonished—I didn’t even know Mom
had memorized that poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom's really was a
different generation reflecting how poetry memorization was a normal part of
education—how much poetry was part of the mundanity of living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sense some in the audience recalling that
time even as younger attendees were simply surprised. And then, of course, in
remembering Mom and how special she was, I had to put down Rankine’s book to
wipe away my tears.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now, is my particular response relevant as
criticism?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does it indicate something
about literary merit?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, in Rankine’s
case—certainly for this book—I believe it is relevant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For one of the strengths of the book—and the
strength I most admire—is the expanse of Rankine’s knowledge and (then) the
distillation that occurred to alchemize said knowledge to fit within poetry’s
inherently minimalistic borders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
stellar example would be the prose poem that begins with a reference to two
women chatting about “Rudy Giuliani” receiving a knighthood from the British
Queen and whether he would kneel as he was knighted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The overheard conversation compels Rankine in
the poem to recall and mull over “Giuliani as nobility. It is difficult to
separate him out from the extremes connected to the city over the years of his
mayorship.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then, Rankine remembers:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“… a day after the attack on the World Trade Center a reporter
asked him to estimate the number of the dead. His reply—More than we can
bear—caused me to turn and look at him as if for the first time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From there, Rankine moves on to quote Wallace
Stevens on nobility (and Stevens is powerful on nobility), describes her walk through the downtown debris of the
World Trade Center attack three days later including her observation about the
stance of the police as they watch traffic, offers a discourse on the name
“Osama Bin Laden” (the last name “rhymes with sadden, not lawless”), recalls
college studies on Hegel, an observation on Antigone, singing to the tune of
“Day-O” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Come Mr. Taliban, give us Bin
Laden</i>, and finally an overheard conversation about death and how the
conversant felt he’s led a good (I first typed “god”) life such that he would
be able to “live” with a life suddently cut short.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amidst the above descriptive paragraph is this
wonderful connection of two dots, this relationship Rankine draws from Hegel’s
positing death as a threat to keep citizens in line such that someone who
doesn’t fear death is no longer controlled by governments or councils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That relationship drawn by Rankine is that
the terrorist, by not fearing death, is the embodiment of freedom and that they
manifest such freedom by already being dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Like Antigone, Rankine notes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Antigone, the character not the play, by Theban definition was a
domestic terrorist. Hegel uses her as an example. She identified with the dead,
was willing to walk among them. In the course of the drama, even though she has
many lines left to speak in the play, Creon eloquently describes her to her
sister as already dead. So it is, was, already, with Osama.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Consider the breadth of just this one work that
began with Rudy’s knighthood coronation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so, yes, I consider my personal reaction involving my mother and our
movie viewing of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invictus</i> to be
relevant because Rankine’s work—with its huge scope—seems to me to be why it
would be wise to allow a poem to have the fluctuating expanse that would
generate individualized and varied responses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I am remembering something that Meena Alexander once told me about
poetry during an interview (cited in my first book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b><a href="http://www.bookrenter.com/black-lightning-asian-american-writers-worksh-tabios-1889876038-9781889876030">BLACK LIGHTNING</a></b></i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alexander said that a poem can have different
entry points for different readers—it could be even just one stanza out of a
long poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such would be okay: in
the example prose poem I describe above, it would be asking a lot (though
that’s okay, too) for all readers to make similar journeys as Rankine did in
connecting the specified dots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my
case, for example, her referenced singing to “Day-O” left me unmoved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is still much in the poem to
resonate with me—from Stevens from whom I’ve also quoted as regards nobility to
the notion of Antigone as a “Theban … domestic terrorist.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The word “parataxis” is somewhere in the
book—what is marvelous about Rankine’s writing is how her placement of matters
and events next to each other reveal an unanticipated logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At their best, the combinations also reveal
wisdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Read these two examples below
and marvel as I did:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Or, well, I tried to fit language into the shape of usefulness.
The world moves through words as if the bodies the words reflect do not
exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world, like a giant liver,
receives everyone and everything including these words: Is he dead? Is she
dead? The words remain an inscription on the surface of my loneliness. This
loneliness stems from a feeling of uselessness. Then Coetzee’s Costello says in
her fictional lecture, “for instants at a time I know what it is like to be a
corpse.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Or Paul Celan said that the poem was no different from a
handshake. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake
and a poem</i>—is how Rosmarie Waldrop translated his German. The handshake is
our decided ritual of both asserting (I am here) and handing over (here) a self
to another. Hence the poem is that—Here. I am here. This conflation of the
solidity of presence with the offering<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>of this same presence perhaps has everything to do with being alive.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eileen Tabios </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">recently released an experimental auto-biography, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/prose-collections/against-misanthropy-a-life-in-poetry-2015-1998/">AGAINST MISANTHROPY: A LIFE IN POETRY</a></b></i>, as well as her first poetry collection published in 2015, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/i-forgot-light-burns/">I FORGOT LIGHT BURNS</a></b></i>. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Forthcoming later this year is <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/inventstory-selected-catalogue-poems-new/">INVENT(ST)ORY </a></b></i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">which is her second </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">“Selected Poems" project; while her first Selected <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm">THE THORN ROSARY</a></b></i> was focused on the prose poem form, <i>INVEN(ST)ORY</i> will focus on the list or catalog poem form. She </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">does not let her books be reviewed by <i>Galatea Resurrects</i> because she's its editor (the exception would be books that focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work. Her poetry collection, <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios6.html">SUN STIGMATA (Sculpture Poems)</a></b></i>, received a review by Joey Madia in <i><b><a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2015/01/sumptuous-sculpture-review-of-eileen.html">New Mystics Review</a></b></i> and Zvi Sesling in <i><b><a href="http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2015/01/sun-stigmata-sculpture-poems-by-eileen.html">Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene</a></b></i>.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> More information at <b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/">http://eileenrtabios.com</a></b> </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-63923467228702208172015-05-02T22:10:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:43:50.188-07:00SCHEDULE OF UNREST: SELECTED POEMS by JOHN WILKINSON<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MICHAEL S.
JUDGE Reviews</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b>Schedule of Unrest: Selected Poems </b></span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b>by John Wilkinson</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><i>(Salt, 2014)</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">If wholes were only
catalogues of shards, John Wilkinson would be a 'difficult' poet. His
diction borrows and recodes the terms of half a hundred disciplines. His
rhythms tend toward the shifty and elliptical: splintered monologue and programmed
imperatives irrupt through a kind of fragmentary agility, a linguistic
transcription of REM sleep. He touches, often and with great unease, upon
the monstrous collusions that life in the West entails, and diagrams the
gangrenous way that political power infects even our least guarded acts of love
and need. (See 1986's <i>Proud Flesh</i> for an unsparing and
brilliant index to the latter.) But if I'm pressed to name the salient
characteristic of his new selected-poems volume <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schedule of Unrest</i>, I come to something much rarer than mere
complexity or erudition: that strange sensory halo called grace.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> It's
not a word that we're disposed to take seriously. "Grace" has
been roped in by both religious fundamentalists and the effete nicety of
artists who aspire to interior decoration. I use the word in an older and
more carnal sense: the grace of his work is an internal logic, a structural
rhythm that articulates the whole of a book or poem in ways difficult to explain
in abstract terms.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">As Wilkinson writes
in his brief introduction,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The poems are the reverse of
‘intellectual.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A cry emerges into song,
the song into language, language is weighed and attributed in its relations to
the world as language must be, such being the ‘intellectual’ moment of a poem’s
emergence, and lastly, through the attentive impregnation of turned-over words,
poems thicken into somatic entities of some sort, whatever sort satisfies for
the time being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are not primarily
poems of ideas but […] poems of embodied thinking and feeling in progress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The poem, then, is a map of itself and
articulates a territory inextricable from the language that composes it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neurology is not sensation, but each is a
decoding of the other, a manifold congruence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's not something
easily grasped in quotation, nor can it be attained by craft alone. It
requires the deftness of a properly alchemical synthesis to animate a poem with
nothing more than sheer linguistic voltage, a current running word to word to
word.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The allegedly ‘experimental’ poets
who have received the bulk of critical attention during Wilkinson’s career
(e.g. John Ashbery and Charles Bernstein) have resorted to precious humor,
garish pseudo-invention, and self-congratulatory cleverness. Wilkinson hasn’t,
doesn’t, and presumably won’t. His writing is meticulous as only natural growth
can be, organized less like a drama or a list than like a protein sequence, and
any given poem makes perfect sense in ways that paraphrase can’t capture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here,
for example, are the first 16 lines of Wilkinson’s long poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sarn Helen</i>, previously collected in
2001’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Effigies Against the Light</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">bayoneted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If any will hear the truth must cling best<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">avoid blow dragonflies, clung on by
nail-feasance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">over a cataract which scours a giant
curtain wall,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">or was it short-of-time shrunk the
unseeming aimless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">river to a bank’s sediment?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Common seals luxuriate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">transmitters pinned behind their
perked-up ears,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">breezes buffet from all directions
Body-build them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">into a race of top achievers, filing
across hillsides<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">mewl within their gathering blades, a
scopophilia<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">shrink-wraps the forest in its retailer’s
proud image<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Preserving it while it speeds,
dragnetting seagulls,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">seagulls, choughs, a tinkers’ brood they
desolate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">with far cries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"> And that “/” should properly be
considered a line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The intimation of
fracture and of depersonalized language, as in computer programming where a
word is an arbitrary placeholder for a set of electrical signals, is important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wilkinson has almost no interest in the
first-person singular, at least as constituted in the confessionalist swamp,
and the romantic-oracular prologue “if any will hear the truth” is gashed on
both sides: to the right, insects swarm Ezekiel, and to the left, a scrap of
factual violence supersedes the heroic injunction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We arrive bayoneted and are cause of, and
prey to, the endemic slippage of nature into measurement, calculable value,
quantity enough to trade with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The seals
have been tagged for further study; the forest asphyxiates at the end of a
telephoto lens; the ex-river is punished for its apparent aimlessness, and mineral
surveyors swarm its corpse.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> Theme,
in the standard sense, is an irrelevant concern, but the poems in </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schedule of Unrest</i><span style="font-family: Arial;"> brush consistently
against a few complexes of concern, cultural biopsies: the mass manifestation
of desire, the pathways by which energy becomes first routine and then control,
language’s potential to disassemble and rebuild pervasive schematics of power. If
that reminds you of Deleuze and Guattari, J.H. Prynne, or Joseph Beuys, you’re
on the right track.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">Wilkinson isn’t much
given to explicit allusions within his poetry, but he studied with Prynne, the
polymath doyen of English poetics, at Cambridge.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">He also, however,
spent decades working in the mental health wing of the National Health Service
and, as he writes in the introduction, he “felt closely the engineered
corruption of the most admired and trusted institution in British life.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These were the Thatcher/Reagan years, when a
Prime Minister could declare that “there is no such thing as society” and sell
her nation for scrap – which is to say, they were today and will be tomorrow. The
tension between a program of cultural resurrection, like the one Prynne
inherited from Ezra Pound and Charles Olson, and the mean sclerosis of
Thatcherite desertion, civic decay, and profitable squalor is all over his
language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every word can be turned,
broken, plugged into a strange and unstable constellation, but every word is also
marred with barcode, price tag, and a whiff of North Sea oil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Consider a poem,
given here in full, from the sequence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Case
in Point</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A DJ puts the groove down in a private
club.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A scratch held a part so as to incubate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A vigilante takes his heat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hotshot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Feet compress the forest trail, its
underthatch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>/horsehair
sags aloof desirable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Where’s the pocket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ripped out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">That’s to provoke not some resigned
attitude<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">uniformly strikes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">lash for eyelash, feedback in the cubicle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">detects its always front makeready thin
stock,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">soaks in saliva,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">soaks in acid, in urea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Soft-shoe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>plantation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">rowan splash, photoperiod burst,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>fingering
a blunder mass installed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">base in that booth sucks the silt back
& forth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>mending & re-mending what<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">lemon spare part So let flatten<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>So
a regular pulse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">locks & re-dilates,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">sweeps the sand now marked out for
runway.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"> On first reading, several months ago, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Case in Point</i> struck me as one of the
most opaque pieces of language I’d ever encountered. There are several dozen
poems in the sequence, and most are of roughly this length and density.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got through about ten of them, sure that
I’d find something but without much idea what, when their structural principle
suddenly deciphered itself, and every word began to rattle and buzz.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> What
happened?</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">I heard this poem scratching
at the cognitive divide between energy and structure, flow and form, what
Heidegger would call the Earth (what </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i><span style="font-family: Arial;">)
and the World (what we </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">make</i><span style="font-family: Arial;"> from
it).</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">We’re soaked in an overgrowth of
embodied stimuli; we group those phenomena into patterns, pulses, shapes; and
if we’re not careful, we come to occupy a necropolis of dead rites, trying to
bargain with carcasses.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">James Joyce savaged,
mourned, and dreaded that morbidity on every page he wrote.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">And every poem in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Case in Point</i> focuses on a recognizable
cluster: try rereading the above with the set [track/groove/pathway/route] in
mind, and see what strange conjunctions appear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Eyelashes fret the cubicle as cartridge does a record’s grooves, and
biometric scanners lay the tarmac for the Gaza City Airport.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(There are likewise poems for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">box</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bag</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">membrane</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">limit</i>.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">All of which is much
more legible in sequence – and that may be the only major problem with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schedule of Unrest</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wilkinson is a serial poet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even his page-long poems are best read
together, fairly quickly, moving at the rhythm of their own disclosure, not
pored over or dissected until you’ve gotten through them in real time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taken out of context, the longer work can’t
quite create the same marvelous continuum of altered, local sense, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Proud Flesh</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Nile</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sarn Helen</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saccades</i>, and others need to be read in
their entirety, all at once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Several
complete sequences are, fortunately, included.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But if this volume leads to those poems, and to the more discrete work
in between them, it will have accomplished something crucial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s right here, living and working at the
peak of his powers; read him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Michael S. Judge is an American
writer. He has worked in poetry, philosophy, aesthetics, and criticism of
music, film, and literature, but he's primarily a novelist. His recent
work includes the novels <i>... And Egypt Is the River</i> (Skylight,
2013) and <i>Lyrics of the Crossing</i> (Fugue State, 2015). A third
novel, <i>The Scenarists of Europe</i>, is forthcoming from Dalkey Archive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-79512765108807046412015-05-02T22:05:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:43:27.762-07:00THE COAL LIFE by ADAM VINES<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
MIN GU KIM and JONGYOON CHOI
review</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><b><i> The Coal Life</i> by Adam Vines</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><i>(The University of
Arkansas Press, 2012)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Adam Vines’s prominent style of
‘show, don’t tell’ draws readers into his world of poems without much
difficulty. He rarely speaks in abstractions and instead usually begins with a
scene that has mostly to do with fishing, mining, raising kids, being a son,
and observing nature; all experiences somehow related to masculinity. His clear
and concise expression in the poems addresses a lot about normal and peculiar
life without sugar coating much of it. Considering that Professor Vines, a
professor of English Honors Program at University of Alabama, is an avid fan of
nature and in contrast has experienced rapid technological development since he
was young, this collection of poems best represents what he feels and has
experienced in this world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Professor Vines does not stick
with one specific style of poem but instead wanders around many to fit his
themes best. Not only does he use many stanzas to emphasize silence and
graveness in some of his poem, but also writes in one single stanza to
highlight flow and connectedness in others. There are also a lot of other
styles that have their own themes. Look at the poem ‘Toilet Flowers’, for
example.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">They sat in an open box next to the
toilet <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">I shared with my three brothers, father,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">and mother. They didn’t come with
Mother’s warnings <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">or reprimands like “Don’t swordfight with
the plunger; <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">______ will kill you; _____ will make you
go blind.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">I knew they were for her, all else was a
mystery.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">In this poem, the boy slowly
discovers the truth of his mother and her use of tampon. He slowly realizes
that these mysterious objects are for her, but has no idea of their function.
The speaker compares the objects to other objects found in the bathroom that
have come with warnings. In a house full of three boys, it is easy to imagine
them swordfighting with the plunger and other miscellaneous items that may be
dangerous. However, the tampons come with none. They are simply there to be a
mystery. Another poem ‘Burying the Dead’ deals with remembering his father
because his dad has passed away when he was eighteen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">I tell myself this time I’ll dig deeper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">I wave Mom off like Dad would, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">tell her I’m too busy for lunch—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">the dead must be buried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">because the rain will come again <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">It is about “if one ever can
really move beyond the sorrow,” and is “ based on a recurring dream I [he] had
for years” (eunoiasolstice.com: interview with Adam Vines). In this particular
part, he is planning to bury his “army men and cowboys” deeper into the ground
because the rains have brought them closer to the surface. These objects are
the “dead,” but he does this as a ceremony to bring back memories of his
father. The poems ‘Path’ as well as ‘Almost Clean’ also deal with the speaker’s
father.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Besides his transitioning theme
and style of his writing, his language seems to be consistently using
colloquial language, such as barge and slough. It turns out he is in love with
”language/jargon from industry and disciplines outside of what we commonly
associate with the arts” (eunoiasolstice.com: interview with Adam Vines)
because it brings to the readers a sense of the rhetorical as well as sensory
richness. It gives him a sense of mastery of what is he narrating about. The
jargon also coherently demonstrates his use of “show, don’t tell” through
specific details and language.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The speaker poses many questions
on church and religion in his book. In “The Baptist Steeple,” the speaker says
that “The steeple never rose above the spoils,” indicating the holy aspirations
of the church never rise above the works of the common man that the church
hopes to serve. He uses working men’s language to show the gritty life and
experiences of the subjects he chooses. There are other poems in which
immaterial things become more substantial than actual things. In his poem “Overburden,”
shadows are a dominant motif that motivates more action than other physical
objects in the poem. In these poems, Vines’ sense of language brings weight to
physically immaterial things, bringing gravity and substance to things that
would otherwise be inconsequential.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Vines also seems sanctify the
works of laymen. In his poem “Path,” the speaker says that “At shift change,
children who can’t sleep / forget the sky and look to the path for stars.” The
stars are actually the lanterns that the children’s fathers are carrying out of
the mines. Through such imagery, it is clear that Vines has a tremendous
appreciation for working class life. The language he uses to describe such
gritty work is more appropriate for religious and academic contexts. However,
Vines makes it work to his favor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Vine shows how the everyday
experience has been and continues to be a huge influence on his work. He paints
and sketches with language instead of paint and graphite. <i>The Coal Life </i>contains
a few ekphrastic poems. Quite a few poems mention visual artists or paintings.
The visual rhetoric is what he is interested in most: anxieties between
objects, people, and the natural world. The painting may have a narrative
embedded in it or fruitfully ambiguous tension or idea. His poems are
essentially responses to the rhetoric.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p>*****</o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Min Gu Kim Bio: I am a senior at Indian Springs School, originally from Seoul, South Korea. I’ve been to Canada (Toronto) for several years to learn English. This year, Amnesty International appointed me as a Student Activist Coordinator for the state of Alabama. In this role, I will serve as the student contact for all student groups in the state and help other high schools form Amnesty International Chapters, according to a press release from the school. I am also the <span class="">Founder and President of Amnesty International on campus. I am currently planning to go to college in the U.S. </span>When I am not writing or leading the club, I enjoy planning soccer and making sculptures.<br /><br />Jongyoon Choi: I am a senior at Indian Springs School, originally from Seoul, South Korea. My family moved to the U.S. for several years when I was in the middle school because of my father's job. I enjoy watching movies and reading books. I am currently planning to go to college in the U.S.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-35058369814302228952015-05-02T22:00:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:42:41.453-07:00THE DESCARTES HIGHLANDS by ERIC GAMALINDA<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">VERONICA MONTES Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The
Descartes Highlands</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Eric Gamalinda<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Akashic Books, Brooklyn, 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The Lost
Boys<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I
was sitting in a burger joint when I first cracked the spine of Eric
Gamalinda’s novel, <i>The Descartes Highlands</i>. Inexplicably, restaurant
management had decided that vertigo-inducing zydeco music was the perfect
accompaniment to the high calorie fare. I happened to disagree, but I have to
admit zydeco music <i>was</i> the perfect accompaniment to the first seven
pages of <i>The Descartes Highlands</i>, where in short order we discover that
a child has been sold to a stranger for thirty thousand dollars; a woman learns
she is infertile and is then abandoned by her lover; a young girl suffers fits
of hysteria and must be sedated to receive an abortion; and Manila, “a city
used to constant erasure,” is bludgeoned by a tropical storm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Take
a deep breath; I did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">An
armature of three voices provides the framework for <i>The Descartes Highlands</i>:
that of two brothers (unknown to each other for the first half of the novel)
born on the same day to different Filipina mothers, and their reckless,
disillusioned father. The brothers are, in fact, human trafficking victims
disguised as international adoptees, and their adoptive parents are fully complicit
in the crime. None of this bodes well for Jordan and Mathieu, whose harrowing
origins are reflected in the course of their lives. Like their biological
father, the brothers are freefalling through an existence marked by absence,
unstable relationships, ugliness, half-truths. Are they better off in their
adoptive countries of the US and France than they would have been in the
Philippines? Have they been “saved” by their parents? Both seem to think so. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Gamalinda
dedicates his novel to his family. “Especially to my mother,” the inscription
reads, “who taught me to write fearlessly.” He does indeed write fearlessly in <i>The
Descartes Highlands</i>, where he stares down startling, discomfiting images
and renders them in rich, unflinching prose. This storytelling stayed with me,
even when I would have preferred that it leave me alone for a bit. I can’t
forget the dog who is castrated in flagrante delicto, then left howling in pain
and running in circles while his amused assailant looks on. Or the tender,
deeply sad glimpses we’re given of co-dependent Jordan as he tends to his
injured mother, a victim of the right-wing lunatics who firebombed her abortion
clinic. It took many attempts for me to make it through a scene in which a
prisoner, himself a rapist, experiences unspeakable sexual abuse at the hands
of his captors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There
were moments I felt claustrophobic while reading this novel—as if I were
trapped in an echo chamber of misery. But as challenging as I found the darker
aspects, I was compelled to keep reading by the strength of the writing (it’s
not for nothing that Gamalinda is the recipient of the Philippine National Book
Award, a Palanca Memorial Award, and a Philippine Centennial Prize), and a
palpable need to learn what becomes of Jordan and Mathieu. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">At
the end of it all, I kept returning to Jordan, whose collection of coping
mechanisms includes stepping outside of himself and existing in the third
person. “‘Then I can think of myself as maybe a character in a film,’” he explains
to his lover, “‘in a story that maybe I can create myself.’” Is this, then, how
we pull ourselves out of our sinkholes? Jordan and his father cite the
Descartes Highlands, where the Apollo 16 moon rover left behind tracks that
will remain for a million years. By telling our stories—the most difficult
ones, the painful, ugly ones—we leave our own tracks behind: proof that we were
once here, that we once mattered. It’s not quite hope, but I’ll take it.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Veronica Montes is a fiction writer. Her works include the collaborative novel <i>ANGELICA'S DAUGHTERS</i> written with Nadine Sarreal, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Erma Cuizon and Susan Evangelista.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-13382403981281372302015-05-02T21:55:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:41:29.039-07:00SELECTED AMAZON REVIEWS by KEVIN KILLIAN<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">EILEEN
TABIOS Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Selected
Amazon Reviews</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Kevin
Killian, Edited by Brent Cunningham<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>(Hooke Press,
Oakland, 2006. Offered as <a href="http://hookepress.com/Kevin%20Killian%20-%20Selected%20Amazon%20Reviews.pdf">free .pdf</a> as
of December 2014)</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’d
heard of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected Amazon Review</i>s by
Kevin Killian when it was first released in 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was Hooke Press’ as well as the
author’s willingness in 2014 to release it as a <a href="http://hookepress.com/Kevin%20Killian%20-%20Selected%20Amazon%20Reviews.pdf">free .pdf </a>that
reminded/encouraged me to write this review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The book is now not just free but a true gift—it’s witty, hilarious,
subversive and moving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hadn’t read the
whole collection until I learned of its pdf release and the all of it affirms
why I long had intended to check it out, though never got to it until
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I had wanted for years to read
the whole thing because of the one review by Killian that I did see prior to the book—something
that deserves to become a classic:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gerber
Tender Harvest 1st Foods Sweet Potatoes, Baby Food, 2.5 oz <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Offered by Gristedes Supermarkets of
New York Price: $0.79<br />
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days<br />
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mmm-mmm
good, March 19, 2006 <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Tender Harvest” is one of Gerber’s
best-selling lines, and I believe the sweet potatoes form their all-time
best-selling specialty item. Why? Because of its tantalizing blend of organic
goodness and a soft, piquant flavor to the root vegetables pureed within that
makes you think of a big sweet-potato pie with all the fixings. You’ll be
asking yourself, is there sugar in this? It’s as resolutely sweet as a twenties
Irving Berlin standard, but if you search the ingredients on the label you’ll
find zero added sugar, it’s all in the starch; and the starch itself has this
robust bite, as though if you dipped your collar into the open jar, it would
emerge forever crisp and dapper, suitable for office wear. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I first was introduced to Gerber as a
wee laddie, when Mom never dreamed I’d ever graduate to anything but baby food,
for I would sit in my high chair and refuse to eat anything but mashed-up
Gerber’s vegetables. If Mom, Dad, or our extended family attempted to sneak
something else onto my tray, wham! It would hit the opposite kitchen wall. Back
then, sweet potatoes were not on every baby’s bill of fare, they were thought
to be too tough for baby’s delicate stomach, but since then stronger minds have
prevailed. Let’s face it, a baby will eat a license plate if it wants to, and
many in our native populations believe in feeding an infant a tiny amount of
dirt every day, believing in the old saw that we all have to eat a peck of dirt
before we die. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Disappointingly, gift wrapping is not
available with this item, so if you order it, be prepared for just getting the
plain jar with no fancy party flavor to it. However, the label is attractive,
as the inner baby inside of you will, no doubt, be letting you know as your
tongue and front teeth attempt to gnaw it off the jar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That
is just stellar writing!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its merits
showcase themselves—I don’t need to blather on and on about it though I could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I will cite the delicate balance such
writing achieves as it willingly abides by its context: an Amazon review
(indeed, several of the reviews include notes on how many readers found said
review “useful”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is tempted with
this—and other reviews—to think the author is pulling the reader’s leg but (and
as confirmed by Brent Cunningham in his Editor’s Introduction), Killian is
sincere: if he says he likes something, he really genuinely does.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the time of the book, there were 1,241 reviews by Kevin Killian on Amazon.com
ranging over movies, books, CDs and various objects. Cunningham provides an
interesting introduction by contextualizing the project partly in the high vs.
low cultural debate—one of those debates that, to me, threatens to become old-fashioned
given the speed with which the internet, social media, et al makes everything
almost equally valid as a topic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say
“threatens to become” yet such reductiveness may not yet become a total reality
as long as intellectualism retains its merit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
was more surprising was learning how Killian began writing these Amazon
reviews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a mark of our times that,
upon learning of these writings, I had assumed he intentionally created it as a
project … and I actually had given Killian props for thinking to use Amazon’s
comments sections as a publishing framework—I thought that brilliant!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’s not how it unfolded—here’s an
excerpt from the Authors Introduction:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And then, in November 2003, a heart
attack weakened my defenses and forced me onto a regime of very few fun things
except for the prescription drugs they gave me to stop this or that. I lost the
need to write. And I was fine with that. The Wellbutrin made me permanently
happy; I could carry very little, not even a grudge. Dodie did my writing for
me. I figured that, hey, I had written a whole shelf full of books, did the
world need to hear more from me? If they wanted to read something by me, they
could just pluck a volume off the shelf. In the hospital, a friend, the poet
Rodney Koeneke, bought me the new novel by a detective writer we both enjoy.
And somehow I managed to write down what I felt and put it up on Amazon:
December 28, 2001. However, I couldn’t do much more than that; I was feeling
too giddy. Criticism seemed stupid, beneath me. Is this how people felt in the
1960s? I went back to work, spooking everyone around me with my insensate grin
and reduced frame. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But little by little I started to fret.
What I was feeling, I think, was the desire to write, snatched from under the
coverlet of feel-good-drug happiness. Or was it the desire to criticize, as I
sometimes suspect? Whichever, writing for Amazon was the key (for me). By April
2004 I was writing away, often twice a day, commenting on this, that, or the
other, whatever book I was reading, whatever DVD was in the machine. It’s
surprising how many texts you can actually experience in a lifetime, or, say,
in the span of a year. This was my regimen, my therapy, if you will, and I kept
it pretty quiet, not telling anyone what I was doing, though I wasn’t exactly
hiding under a cloak of anonymity. I was signing my own name—which isn’t always
the smartest thing to do, I guess. And after awhile, I built up the strength in
my writing muscles and continued to work in other areas (completing a novel,
writing plays, poetry, different sorts of critical work, etc.). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kudos to Hooke Press for recognizing that a selection from
Killian’s writings deserved to be published in book form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The all of it is worth reading but here are
excerpts from three of my favorites (the ending sentence of the first review is
arguably my favorite line in the book):<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Street of Clocks: Poems</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Thomas Lux<span style="color: #6b6d6d;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This volume took six years to write,
and it shows in the repeated thrusts and mechanical coughs of the verse style.
Contrary to previous reviewers, I did not find Lux’s language to be always
specific. Sometimes it seemed vague, as though he were trying to describe
dreamlike experiences or states of feeling for which language does not suffice.
Have you ever read the German poet Stefan George? Sometimes, or so it seems to
this reviewer, George was born again as Thomas Lux in upstate New York or
wherever it was and suffered through the typical milkman’s son’s life until he
found Sarah Lawrence the way George found his Maximin. His writing is filled
with violence, like “Rommel’s Asparagus,” the punji-like sticks which ripped
the underbellies out of enemy pilots. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">All in all, he should stop it with the
long hair; it makes him look like he was part of ABBA. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">John Gardner: Literary Outlaw</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Barry Silesky<span style="color: #6b6d6d;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Charles Johnson uses the word
“legend” to describe his late friend, he’s being loyal, but it’s a terrible
debasement of the word “legend.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then there's this third example:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Black
& Decker BDL310S Projected Crossfire Auto Level Laser <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Price: $99.00<br />
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours<br />
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Answer to a Nightmare, March 28, 2005 <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Did you ever get yourself in a jam when
hanging a picture, and no matter where you put up the nail in the wall, the
picture still wound up looking crooked, even from far across the room? We had
this nightmare happen to us on Wednesday, and after a few temper tantrums I
remembered that we had the Crossfire Laser still sitting in its box from
Christmas under the stairs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It didn’t take a minute to figure out
how to use the thing, and as you are aware, twin lasers appear and trace any 90
degree angle you like. You’ll be surprised that you won’t need any chalk (or
ballpoint pen) to put the mark on the wall, and it measures perfectly the
distance between the floor and ceiling with ease, without having to squint to
see the bubble line in the tube as we used to do for a level—in that tube that
always looked like an oral thermometer. This one is far less messy. (As a
sidelight, we found indeed that the reason the picture always hung crooked is
because the frame itself wasn’t perfectly rectangular but instead was made in a
slightly rhomboid shape! Who would have guessed it, and without the Black &
Decker Crossfire we still would have been kicking ourselves.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I can see using this for so many things
that needed doing around the house, inside and out. It’s easy to understand,
it’s lightweight, and it’s accurate, almost scarily so. It’s the answer to a
common household nightmare. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Out
of (Amazon) context, this review’d be admirable deadpan flash fiction!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stay
healthy, Kevin Killian!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We want more
books from you!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eileen Tabios </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">recently released an experimental auto-biography, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/prose-collections/against-misanthropy-a-life-in-poetry-2015-1998/">AGAINST MISANTHROPY: A LIFE IN POETRY</a></b></i>, as well as her first poetry collection published in 2015, <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/i-forgot-light-burns/">I FORGOT LIGHT BURNS</a></b></i>. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Forthcoming later this year is <i><b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/poetry/inventstory-selected-catalogue-poems-new/">INVENT(ST)ORY </a></b></i></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">which is her second </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">“Selected Poems" project; while her first Selected <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm">THE THORN ROSARY</a></b></i> was focused on the prose poem form, <i>INVEN(ST)ORY</i> will focus on the list or catalog poem form. She </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">does not let her books be reviewed by <i>Galatea Resurrects</i> because she's its editor (the exception would be books that focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work. Her poetry collection, <i><b><a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios6.html">SUN STIGMATA (Sculpture Poems)</a></b></i>, received a review by Joey Madia in <i><b><a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2015/01/sumptuous-sculpture-review-of-eileen.html">New Mystics Review</a></b></i> and Zvi Sesling in <i><b><a href="http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2015/01/sun-stigmata-sculpture-poems-by-eileen.html">Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene</a></b></i>.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> More information at <b><a href="http://eileenrtabios.com/">http://eileenrtabios.com</a></b> </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-42867424086048341902015-05-02T21:50:00.000-07:002015-05-13T07:06:32.298-07:00VUELO SUBTERRANEO / SUBTERRANEAN FLIGHT by MARIO MELENDEZ<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">NEIL LEADBEATER Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial;">Vuelo Subterráneo / Subterranean Flight </span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">by Mario<i> </i><o:p></o:p></span></b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Melendéz</b></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Rafaelli Editore, Rimini, Italy, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt;">This bilingual (Spanish /English)
edition with a translation by Ron Hudson is available as a PDF from <a href="http://www.rafaellieditore.com/"><span style="color: #0563c1;">www.rafaellieditore.com</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Melendéz</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> is considered one
of the most important new voices in Latin-American poetry. Originally from
Linares in Chile, he now resides in Italy where he lectures on Latin-American
poetry at the University of Urbino. He is the author of several volumes of
poetry and his work has been translated into many languages including Italian,
French, Portuguese, German, Romanian, Bulgarian and Catalan. At the beginning
of 2013, he received the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic,
awarded by the International Foundation Don Luigi di Liegro. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Before coming to Rome, he
lived for a while in Mexico City where he conducted literary workshops and
headed up various cultural projects. While he was in Mexico he edited a
collection of Latin-American poetry for Laberinto Editions and he also edited
various anthologies of Chilean and Latin-American poetry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The present volume gives
readers in the English-speaking world an opportunity to sample at first hand
the distinctive work of this poet. It is the first time that any of his work
has been available in English. The translation by Ron Hudson is excellent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The poems in <i>Subterranean
Flight</i>, often slightly surreal, are spiced with a wry sense of humour. In
several of his poems, for example, he chooses to turn his words into characters
that quickly assume a life of their own. In <i>The Messenger</i> they are
individuals who are taken out for a walk and who speak their own mind. There is
something edgy here, though. This is not just a casual afternoon ramble. Their
impact has a lasting consequence to the extent that they have to be suppressed
to the point of being killed-off. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">She took the words out for a walk <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">and the words bit the children<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">and the children told their parents<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">and the parents loaded their guns <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">and opened fire upon the words…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">What at first appears to
be a light-hearted piece may also be interpreted on a deeper level.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Words represented as
characters make their reappearance in <i>Scars of War.</i> This time they take
the poet home when he is drunk, but is he drunk on beer or words? There is a
gentle irony at work here. Instead of taking care of him and putting him to
bed, the words lambast him for writing bad poems. It is the words themselves
that have the last laugh. The title of the poem raises the stakes to that of a
battleground…a war of words, perhaps.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Words are once again
viewed as characters in <i>The Daughter of Rimbaud </i>whose beguiling beauty
is celebrated through the lines of the poem. Everything in nature is seen as
her lover and the repetition of the “open dress” is an invitation to carnal
lust.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">When she opens her dress…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">the sparrows flock<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">crazy with love <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">above her paper breasts.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The magic that is
inherent in this poem is also to be found in <i>One Day I Will Return to Your
Eyes</i> where<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a spirit is about to
return to a loved one. After an absence, we are told, the spirit will return in
the image of a bird <i>more alive, more pure, more hungry</i> than ever before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">Take Me With You </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">is another love poem in which the lover compares the
loved one to his homeland where he is the only inhabitant. In the poem, which
is very much aligned to the metaphysical, the body of the loved one is
described in terms of geography and landscape and conjures up a nostalgic
yearning for a return to one’s roots.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In <i>For Greater
Security</i> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Melendéz's</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> poetry is viewed as something which is at once concrete
and tangible. Here, it appears in the guise of a physical building. Words are
the building blocks of this habitation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">Come to see my poetry<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">it is not made of lightweight material <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">it will perfectly withstand the winter<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">and in summer it will refresh <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">minds and bodies.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The idea behind <i>The
Recipe</i> <i>or The Beginning of Poetry </i>has been tried and tested many
times and is by no means original but this is one of the best examples of its
kind that I have come across so far. It is essentially a poem about the
creative process in which the ingredients are carefully listed—inspiration and
madness being proffered in equal measure. Reality and fantasy, laughter and
tears all go into the mix. Careful attention is paid to aesthetic appeal—the
look of the poem, the thoughts that flow from the pen and the way in which the
poem is voiced so that not a word sounds out of place. Art in any form cannot
be rushed. It will evolve in its own time and not before. It will often be the
subject of much revision. That which appears effortless on the printed page is
often the product of a lifetime’s work. And this, says Melendz, is just the
beginning of poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Beyond the humour of <i>The
Sinatra Clan</i> lies the wider issue of audience response, of today’s reception
towards modern poetry—a reception that in this case is based on ignorance,
prejudice and misunderstanding. Sinatra does it “My Way”, the poet does it his
way. Each is equally valid at the end of the day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Jealous rivalry is
light-heartedly portrayed in the poem <i>My Cat Wants To Be A Poet. </i>In this
poem, the tables are turned and the poet, enraged that his cat can write better
poetry than he can, exclaims <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">May God forgive me for this <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">but I see no other way out<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">tomorrow I will throw my cat out into the street<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">and I will publish the poem under my name.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In <i>The Other Woman</i> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Melendéz</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> offers us a quirky variation on the Little Red Riding Hood story and,
in so doing, offers us another take on his irrepressible humour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In <i>Unfinished Pedagogy</i>
words are characters again. They are living entities in their own right. Words,
we are told, do not grow old. They are as young as the day that they were born.
They hold some secret elixir of eternal youth. After a poet dies, the words
remain. This is the hope of every poet who seeks some form of immortality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Melendéz's</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> work is both
accessible and appealing and we owe a debt of gratitude to Ron Hudson for
bringing the work of this poet to our attention. His work is deserving of a
wider audience and this is a welcome translation. Recommended.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I am grateful for
permission from the translator to reproduce these extracts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater is an
author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short
stories, essays, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies
and journals both at home and abroad. His most recent books are <i>Librettos
for the Black Madonna </i>(White Adder Press, Scotland, 2011) <i>The Worcester
Fragments</i> (Original Plus Press, England, 2013) and <i>The Loveliest Vein of
Our Lives </i>(Poetry Space, Bristol, England, 2014). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6524776523589790554.post-23161783857050108032015-05-02T21:45:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:34:09.264-07:00SALU-SALO: IN CONVERSATION WITH FILIPINOS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PHILIPPINE-AUSTRALIAN WRITINGS edited by JOSE WENDELL P. CAPILI & JOHN CHEESEMAN<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">SHEILA
BARE Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Salu-Salo: In Conversation with Filipinos: An Anthology of
Philippine-Australian Writings</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">, Edited by Jose
Wendell P. Capili and John Cheeseman<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Casula Powerhouse & Blacktown
Arts Centre, Australia, 2008)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Salu-Salo is a celebration of writing that provides food
for thought for anyone interested in the Filipino-Australian community—[. . .]
welcome [. . .] to the feast.” John Cheeseman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Published
in 2008, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salu-Salo: In Conversation with
Filipinos: An Anthology of Philippine-Australian Writings</i> edited by Jose
Wendell P. Capili and John Cheeseman “is the first anthology of
Filipino-Australian writing revealing the positive contributions of Philippine
communities in Australia.”<span style="line-height: 17.1200008392334px;">(1)</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Tagalog word, “salu-salo” is a get-together
and a feasting, a party, and, as is often the case with Filipino parties, food
is always abundant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The anthology thus
invites readers to feast on these offerings by the diasporic Filipino community
in Australia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
short anthology, a collection of creative works in prose and poetry, all
written in English, by Filipinos in Australia, contributes to the study of
Filipino writings in the diaspora.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Capili’s
introduction provide historical context of the socio-politico experience of Filipinos
in Australia, and the creative works are themselves a reflection of the
writers’ navigation of the social and political landscapes of Australia even as
they reflect upon the homeland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
the geographic and historical space of Australia vis-à-vis the Philippines and
Filipinos are contextualized, equally important is the way in which Capili
situates these writers’ experience and their works vis-à-vis the West and the
Cold War global restructuring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
writers’ transnational sensibilities, in other words, are informed by events in
the Philippines from as far back as the country’s colonial, postcolonial, and
neocolonial histories, World War II and the Japanese occupation, to the more
contemporary history of the Marcos dictatorship, the enforcement of Martial
Law, and the homeland’s overall political and economic instability; policies
and events in their adoptive homeland, such as John Howard’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“One Australia” policy, Pauline Hanson’s “One
Nation” party, and the “White Australia Policy,” none of which included native
Aborigines or other peoples of color, immigration and exclusion policies, antimiscegenation
laws, the child removal policy (a phenomenon known as the “Stolen Generation”
or the “Stolen Children”), race riots, and so forth; and the Vietnam War that
further destabilized the region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">It isn’t
any wonder, then, that home—whether it be the Philippines or Australia—and
notions of identity, for these writers, are always already vexed and
fraught.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their writings reflect the ways
in which they navigate and mediate the definitions, borders, liminality, and
fluidity of home and identity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Cesar Leyco Aguila’s historical novel, <i>Between Two Worlds</i>, for instance, tells
of a home cleaved by guerilla warfare.
The excerpted chapter only gives us hints of this </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">homeland:
the word “rebel” is used once or twice; there is a terse description of the
death of “Commandante Che” that vaguely alludes to communism; but most telling
is the writer’s depiction of setting, “the army and the government-controlled
media for once get their stories right when they use the words ‘impenetrable
jungle’” (47).</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">It is clear, the
“impenetrable jungle” is in the Philippines, and the “army and the government-controlled
media” alludes to the Marcos regime.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">If
that does not convince the reader, then surely the three references to
“butterflies,” in the beginning, middle, and at the end of the chapter is most
compelling.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">An omniscient narrator tells
us, “Before him, he watched a pair of deep and red butterflies weaving
invisible curlicues as they chased one another in the quiet countryside, their
purpose unknown and unknowable, hidden as all such purposes are of butterflies”
(41); and “As they begin their getaway, Cristina sees two windblown butterflies
in jagged flight.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">They are so like the
deep purple and red she had seen cavorting earlier, just as Roberto did” (45);
and finally, “It is later, at another time and place, when she is stunned by a
flock of butterflies bursting like flowers from a clump of bushes she has
disturbed” (47).</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">The first time the
reader is acquainted with these butterflies, the description is a bit ominous,
their “purpose “unknown and unknowable, hidden.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">More importantly, every scene in which the
butterflies appear is flanked by the death of one or a few of the rebels.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">These butterflies connect us specifically to
Imelda Marcos, who is also known by her nickname “Iron Butterfly” or “Steel
Butterfly” purportedly because she had survived life challenges, but I suggest
here that the connection has more to do with Imelda as a social butterfly.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">She sings to the nation, her putative beauty
and elegance distract the masses from the hunger they are experiencing and from
the knowledge that the government is stealing from them.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">And while in Tagalog, the term “alibangbang”
means butterfly, its root word, “libang” means to distract, entertain, or
amuse.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Finally, as is her habit, Imelda
usually appears in public in formal attire, a terno, the formal and traditional
Philippine national dress since the Spanish colonial period, has stiff sleeves
called “butterfly sleeves.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><br />
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paschal
Berry’s “The Folding Wife,” a “text for performance,” written from the
perspective of one woman who, through anecdotes, reveals what the two
generations of women before her experience.
Berry’s chapters are not laid out in linear fashion, signaling the
fragmented subject position of the speaker, Grace. This fragmentation is due in part to the
history of unrest in the homeland coupled with the alienation and experience of
otherness in her adoptive home. Through
his enthralling language, Berry depicts a home that is gendered in the extreme. It is a home where the women “sit and wait”
for “wars to finish,” for “men to come home” (60). Lola Clara, tells us through Grace that she
has “sat here through decades and felt this unrest [. . .]. Our women must go through this. Every decade or so reveals discontent. You either get up or you stay seated. If you have the will. . . . if . . . but will
is also about staying. Is it not?” (60
ellipses in original). Not only does
Lola Clara invoke home’s history of unrest, but the question of leaving or staying
also brings up notions of diaspora, overseas workers, and mail-order brides. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lola
Clara and Dolores, Grace’s mother, also teach her that it is by “bending and
folding into recognisable shapes” that one “become[s] resilient” (69). In this home, women are practiced
shape-shifters to weather the storms of multiple colonizations and a
patriarchal, masculinist, even misogynistic nationalism. If there is subversion or resistance, it is
through subterfuge. Grace, for instance,
tells us that “Lola was held together by lace.
Neatly pinned and tucked by a brooch.
In her diary my mother Dolores described her as unfaltering. But I remember her as fluttering—the quick
opening and closing of a fan” (61). Lace,
of course, denotes daintiness. But while
unfaltering equates to strength and resilience, fluttering equates to agency in
making the body a bit more comfortable from the tropical heat. The adjectives also invoke the butterfly,
which leads us back to Imelda Marcos as noted earlier. Later in the play, Grace will remember a time
when as a schoolgirl, she, like many other school children, waited for Imelda
Marcos to come, “Waiting for our alibangbang—butterfly” (65). Performance is thus a form of
subterfuge. Lola Clara, Grace tells us,
“loved to tell stories and hold court” (61), she will teach Grace to keep her “eyes
to the ground but always seeing the entirety of a room” (62). When the Australian, Arthur, comes to take
Dolores and Grace away, Dolores “links her arms around his and lays her head on
his shoulder. The smile is not for me,”
Grace tells us, “but for a bittersweet artifice” (69). As a young girl, Grace is also practiced in
this “artifice”: “Isn’t my mother beautiful?
She laughs. He laughs. They all laugh. We are at play. The script is going well” (69). The young Grace learns that women put on a
performance to attract the Western, or rather, white, male saviors.(2) This white male savior will then take them
away to a distant land. With her
admonishment to “Marry a foreigner. With
any luck an American and get out of this country and take me with you,” Lola
Clara voices the profound implications of the American neo/colonial empire in
the Philippines. Imelda Marcos herself
had been known to have “met with Marlon Brando,” “the Pope,” “the Reagans,”
“danced with Martin Sheen,” and “partied with the Nixons” while “we [the
masses] wait,” a nation waits for its salvation in the hands of men from the
West. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">As a
schoolgirl, Grace, too, remembers having to wait for hours in the noon-day sun
for Imelda to arrive. “We are panting,”
she tells us, “little hearts are small drums,” fluttering, perhaps, “voices of
angels singing well rehearsed songs” (65):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> I will give you these hands to build
our country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Imelda is coming!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> I will give you my legs to support
your ambitions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> She hardly comes to Cebu!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> I will give you my eyes so you can
see your future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> She has come to grace us with her
beauty!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> I will fight for you! I will die for you!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> We wait. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(65, emphasis in
original)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">It isn’t any wonder the speaker feels
fragmented. The song is a litany in
praise of Imelda and an offering of parts of their bodies to her desire, not
the nation’s. It is a song </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">the
schoolchildren sing, taught by the school, an agent of the dictatorial
nation-state.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Children are languishing
in the sun, waiting, biding, and abiding.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">To wait is also to serve, to watch in expectation.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">And while Imelda herself never shows, her
beauty is extolled, and she becomes a distraction to the flagging masses.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Addressing the audience, Grace tells us, “You
want me to say that we hid in the mountains and took up arms.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">But no my friends . . . we waved flags and
wore Imelda’s favourite perfume, Chanel No. 5” (66, ellipses in original).</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Instead of taking up arms and fighting
against the dictatorial regime, the masses are taken in by their
“alibangbang.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">That they wore her
favorite perfume hints at a consumerist culture and neocolonialism.</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the
midst of the massacres, bombings, and civil wars, Grace recounts, “We still
have fiestas. We still have
siestas. We still have kite flying. We still have universities. We still have rumba, the cha cha and the
kuratsa. We still have powdered milk and
corned beef in cans. We still have ice
cream. We still have concerts in Fuente
Osmena” (64). That life goes on despite
civil unrest shows the resilience of the people; organized concerts in a park
named after a former Philippine President hints at statecraft in distracting
the masses to keep from seditious acts and to keep them blinded by a government
riddled by graft and corruption; and while the “fiestas,” “siestas,” and the
dances keep them rooted in colonial Spain, “powdered milk and corned beef in
cans” invoke U.S. presence in the islands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">But it
is perhaps Berry’s use of the trope of blood and bleeding, as in the bleeding
from the wounds of war, bleeding from menses, and/or bleeding from parturition,
that wars and civil unrest in the homeland become a gendered affair. Grace was born the year Martial Law was
declared, 1972. Of her birth, she tells
us, “They split her stomach open [. . .].
She is hacked open while the streets are vibrating from religious
devotion. Her world is on
fire—massacres, bombings and civil wars are hot under her feet. And I grow inside her” (64). Learning her own history from Lola Clara and
her mother, the prepubescent Grace discovers, too, that parturient and
menstrual bleeding may have a connection to the phenomena of the querida, a
Spanish word for “mistress,” and is a practice common among rich Filipino men
in a country where divorce is not recognized.
Grace herself is a result of Dolores’ dalliance with a married Filipino
man. Lola Clara disparages Dolores,
saying, “Why would you pressure a man with so much responsibility? A very dashing and promising politico who
would have taken care of her?” (63).
Lola Clara here demonstrates the complexity of the querida question: If
she isn’t being abused, she is showered with material wealth, a golden
handcuff. In a way, having a child
ensures the man that the querida will stay.
Grace, of course, sees through Lola Clara’s opacity: “’Hello? With a
wife and five children!!!” (63). It is
no wonder, then, that Grace refuses to bleed: “I will not bleed, I will not
bleed, I will not bleed” is what she thinks when her mother tells her she is
“no longer a child” and that she will “bleed soon” (67, 66, original emphasis).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">If her
homeland is riven by civil unrest, then her adoptive home is alienating and
uncanny. It is in Australia that Grace
learns about racism and an insidious “multiculturalism.” Arriving there, she sees that the “median
strip is lined with black people in rags.
A language I do not understand is shot like gunfire” (72). Perhaps sensing her apprehension, Arthur
tells her, “Cop an eyeful of our natives darlin’. Lazy stinkin’ bastards, stay clear out of
their way and you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble. There’s no helpin’ this lot” (72). On “Australia Day,” Grace tells us, “We are
gathered in the name of Multiple Cultures.
We are our parent’s hopes for assimilation. We are lined up as the United Nations. All made up to highlight ethnicity”
(73). She blushes at her mother’s
“appropriation” as Dolores “waltz[es] with a Pavlova cake” (73). They laughed that someone brought noodles,
“Noodles Grace, just in case we were homesick!
Have you ever tasted such tasteless garbage!” (73). Guests at their home check for dust and tell
Dolores, “Oh you’re such a good cleaner, you run a tidy ship” (74). They insult Dolores by asking whether she
went to school, and they ask whether the Philippines is in Asia. “If anyone ever insults you,” Dolores
instructs Grace, “tell them you can trace your family as far back as the
1600’s—to great men of Spain. That should shut those convicts up” (74). Dolores’ rejoinder comes out of frustration
and is made only to her daughter; it is in response to her feeling of otherness
and inferiority. Grace, though, can
apprehend their condition far more than Dolores can. “Great men of Spain,” Grace tells the
audience. “Wow Dolores. Our great men. Our men are present only in anecdotes unable
to defend themselves. Always absent”
(74). It isn’t any wonder, then, that
when Grace does meet a boy, a boy whose “face [is] haloed by a golden crown,”
she tells us, “In the shadows I feast on him.
[. . .] His eyes search for me,
but I am opaque. Unbending, unfolding,
unwilling. He cries when we finish. Love is his fragile cargo. How delightful that he is so careless. His heart beating in my hands. And I finally understand. I will never fold. I will never fold, I will never fold, I will
never fold into myself” (75). Grace has
learned that the women in her family wait all of their lives for a white male
savior only to take them away from a home torn by civil unrest to a home where
state policies foster a culture of inferiority and alienation among their
non-white denizens. Grace will wait for
no white male saviors; she will be her own saving grace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Following
Berry’s drama is Merlinda Bobis, short story, “The Making-Better Herb.” This time, the Australian is not the “savior”
but rather a journalist who falls in love with a rebel “Kumander.” The journalist sends his reports to his
writing patron, who, unbeknownst to the journalist, is an informant for the
military. Both the journalist and the
Kumander “disappear,” a term used by the rebels and their allies to suggest
that the military had executed them covertly.
The herb, in Bobis’ story, is lemongrass, an herb that is difficult to
differentiate from kogon grass. But
though the latter is a common weed that overruns the landscape, the former
“aspires to flavor the earth,” does alchemic wonders to dishes from the lowly
soup of chicken feet and papayas to the fatty aftertaste of pork. The story suggests that the herb would
“sweeten [the] graves, or the mouth [of those who have “disappeared”]. To rid it of grief, like that pernicious coat
of fat, so we can make better the truth that we speak” (83).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Erwin
Cabucos’ short story, “The Bleached Hills of Cotabato,” like Berry’s drama,
deals with the mail-order bride and is a commentary on Filipinos’ attitude of
exalting western standards of “whiteness” and beauty while denigrating their
own, darker, skin tones. Cabucos’ turns
to religious iconography to demonstrate how the masses, in their adoration and
religious fervor, were gripped to worship the white-skinned Jesus and Mary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Manila
Bay,” and “Taft Avenue,” Noonee Doronila’s poetry offerings, deal with the
literal landscapes of Manila. “Manila
Bay” begins aesthetically enough, we see people strolling along the bay, some
are rowing in the water, fishing, lovers “gazing at each others [sic] eyes”
(101). It is a place where people
congregate to enjoy the sights and breezes, to fall in love. But the bay’s “Gentle waves nearly still /
With seaweed, paper, plastic, tin / floating so closely, so still / waiting”
paints a different picture (102). The speaker tells us that people are “Staying
for dusk’s delight / For the quiet / Before the evening’s night life / The
lights that line / This bay of delight………” (102, ellipses in original). The ellipses here tell of delights to come,
delights that perhaps prudence prevents the speaker from naming. The jetsam and flotsam that litter the bay,
like the people who loiter at the bay, speak of more unsavory goings on that
the darkness conceals. That the “coast
guard [is] waiting for the inevitable incident” hints at something more
insidious that the nation-state promotes.
Though we may be looking at something pleasing in the beginning,
innocence is lost in the end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">In “Taft
Avenue,” the speaker depicts the hustle and bustle of a crowded street where
vehicles and vendors litter the street.
“Chowking, MacDo, Tapa King, KFC [. . .] You name it, the gastronomic
delights of western society / Splashed at the eskinita” (103). The speaker “splashes” the poem with Tagalog
words, “Bilisan mo / Baka ka masagasaan,” (hurry up / you might get run over)
fusing West with East, because, though we are “In a globalized world,” the
speaker confesses, “But oops we still like our rice” (103). Though western capitalism is firmly
entrenched, the “MacDos” and the KFCs still have to cater to the desires of the
local consumers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Doronila’s
final poem, “The Calm,” much like “Manila Bay,” lures the reader with a
pleasing beginning, “The storm calms / Amidst the silence / That lingers” with
a wind that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> slightly blows<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Through the windows<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Gently<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Raising the curtains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Lacy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> White<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Pure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> So pretty and so feminine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <i>(104)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
poem’s rhythm can not only be sensed in an oral and auditory way, but also
through the visual. There is a
copiousness of space that seem to relay a slowness and gentleness, much like
wind blowing through the lacy, white curtains.
“Lacy,” while denoting fragility and therefore must be treated gently—it
is “so pretty and so feminine”—is a homonym of lazy, a slothfulness and
lethargy that affects the body. But this
slowness of rhythm belies a raging storm, a typhoon perhaps, as<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> A lash of wind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> The curtains fly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Like Kites<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Away from their poles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Struggling to hang on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And away it goes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <i>(104)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
“lacy”/lazy curtains are now “struggling to hang on,” the wind that blows
“gently” is now a “lash of wind.”
Perhaps this is a phenomena everyone who has been through one of the
typhoons in the Philippines experience.
Nevertheless, be warned. Don’t
let the calm fool you, as if the speaker is saying, for the typhoon may blow
you away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Crystal
Gail Shankgkuan Koo’s short story, “Benito Salazar’s Last Creation,” tells of a
futuristic Manila where novels are not only written and read but are
technologically crafted and seen through a holograph. The story treats narrative fragmentation not
as a writerly skill but as a “glitch” in technology, and where a younger,
“wunderkind” has put the Philippines in the literary map because of his
putative “invention,” though it is more like an “accident” he stumbled upon
(110). Salazar’s writer’s block, a
result of his feeling of insecurity and inadequacy in the face of a looming
deadline and in light of the “wunderkind”—who is praised by critics and even
has a theory named after him—will likely ring familiar to many writers, yours
truly included. The story pits a
carefully crafted and honed skill of the past, to the mass produced,
technological advancement of modernity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">For
writer Xerxes Matza, the dynamics of being a Filipino raised in Australia comes
to a collision during family get-togethers in his short story, “Kick Some
Butt.” Here, the family is troubled by
their aging mother—grandmother to our narrator—and who is suffering from the
advanced stages of dementia. When he
suggests a nursing home, his aunt complains that he doesn’t “understand
Filipino culture anymore. What would you
know? You’re an Australian, she said
pointedly. No love for the elderly”
(127). While for his family, the speaker
is “not Filipino enough” as he was raised in Australia and therefore has
acquired Australian values and culture, he nevertheless is subject to derogatory,
racist remarks: “Council should get these Asians out of my street; they dump
rubbish everywhere” (128). And living in
“John Howard’s Australia,” where his policies of “One Australia” do not include
people of color, the speaker “can’t help wondering whether will [sic] there be
polices in place to safeguard [his] interests when [he] grow[s] old?” (129). His choices are either returning to
the Philippines, a land he no longer knows, or euthanasia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Monsoons
Volcanoes The Interisland Ship,” a poem by Robert Nery, is irreverent in its
word-play, interspersing untranslated Tagalog into a fragmented prose
narrative. “Black Nazarene,” a
ninety-minute video essay written, shot, and edited by Nery himself, focuses on
Holy Week crucifixions in Manila, and is reminiscent of Eliot’s “The Waste
Land,” and Yeats’ “The Second Coming.”
Finally, in “The Servant,” the speaker is a “balikbayan,” or one who
returns to the homeland to visit, and is shocked at the changes that has
transpired. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">In “Becoming
Australian: A Filipino Woman’s Journey,” Deborah Ruiz Wall reflects on her work
as a proponent of Aboriginal issues by interweaving personal narrative with
poetry. In doing so, she provides
historical information on the plight of the Aborigines and contextualizes the
dynamics of peoples of color in Australia in relation to settlers of European
origin and the policies and practices that come out of over eleven years of John
Howard’s government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
finally, the poems of Noel Giuvani Ramiscal, “If You Read This,” “Nanda Devi,”
and “The Kiss,” all aesthetically sketched, provide refuge from the identity
politics and whisk us away into a global and timeless milieu. “If you Read This,” the speaker tells us, you
may be in the “Eupalinion tunnel” built in Greece; or a dentist’s office in
Marikina, Philippines; an attic in Wollongong, Australia; star-struck in
“Hollywood Vine”; trysting with a stranger in Efes, a Turkish name for the
ancient Greek city of Ephesus; or perhaps in a hotel in Frankfurt listening to
a the “radio / tuned into some Dresden murder” (163-4). But then again you may be summoned by the
mountain itself, “Nanda Devi”; or you anticipate that long-awaited kiss in the
final poem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">A good read all-in-all, and one in which
students of Filipino writing in the diaspora cannot miss.</span><!--EndFragment--><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 107%;">(1) <a href="http://todaimitaka.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html">http://todaimitaka.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html</a>. April 19, 2015. 3:46 pm.</span><!--EndFragment-->
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="line-height: 14.266666412353516px;">(2)</span></span> Here,
I use the term “Western” to designate not just Europe and the United States but
also Australia, areas of the globe where the hegemony is designated as “White.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Sheila Bare is an independent scholar and a life-long student. Lately, she has been studying Buddhism. When her nose is not in a book or in a cooking pan, you may find her on a yoga mat or out for a run. And there are those days when she tries to write. Best to stay away from her during those times. Unless, of, course you bring with you a good bottle of wine and talk about books. She was raised by two parents and now lives somewhere on planet earth. </span><br />
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