Attention Span
2004
Introductory
Note
In
July of 2004, I invited readers of Third Factory
/ Notes to Poetry to submit constellations of up to eleven titles
that spoke to their present interests. While an emphasis on poetry titles
published after 2001 was encouraged, other items of literary, cultural,
and political interest were also welcomed. I am grateful to everyone
who made time to participate in this ongoing attempt to map the shifting
field of our singular and collective attentions. —Steve Evans
Directory
of Individual Participants
Ammiel
Alcalay • Rae Armantrout • Bill
Berkson • Anselm Berrigan • Jules
Boykoff • Pam Brown • Franklin
Bruno • Joshua Clover • Chris
Daniels • Jordan Davis • Marcella
Durand • kari edwards • Larry
Fagin • Steve Farmer • Graham
W. Foust • Benjamin Friedlander
• Heather Fuller • Alan
Gilbert • Noah Eli Gordon • Kevin
Killian • Aaron Kunin • John
Latta • Peter Middleton • Chris
Murray • John Palattella • Marjorie
Perloff • David Perry • Meredith
Quartermain • Lisa Robertson •
Kaia Sand • Jennifer
Scappettone • Michael Scharf • Jerrold
Shiroma • Rick Snyder • Eileen
Tabios • Tony Tost • Karen
Volkman • James Wagner • G.C.
Waldrep • Dana Ward • John
Wilkinson • Stephanie Young
Combined
list by title and frequency
Ammiel
Alcalay
Faraj
Bayrakdar | Dove In Free Flight | Published
in Beirut, no date/Arabic
A remarkable
book by a former political prisoner that I have spent a lot of time
with over the past several years, working on a translation with a group
of people (we call ourselves the New York Translation Collective, even
though members are in New York, New Hamphsire, Damascus, Cairo and Beirut!).
Individual poems have come out in Beyond Baroque (revived mag
from Los Angeles), and Bomb, with some more expected and a book
to come sometime this year).
Alan
George | Syria: Neither Bread Nor Freedom
| Zed, 2003 | 206pp
I was reading
this to understand a little more about the context of Bayrakdar's imprisonment
and subsequent release; one of the only books in English that covers
this period.
David
Meltzer | Beat Thing | La Alameda Press,
2004 | 160pp | $18.00
History
as bop, verse as life. The inimitable encyclopedic David Meltzer, a
must-read.
Herman
Melville | Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War:
Civil War Poems |
DaCapo Press, 1995 | 272pp | $13.95
Particularly
apt in these times, with a superb introduction by Lee Rust Brown; here
is Melville, in 1865, in a poem called "America": "Law
on her brow and empire in her eyes."
Anne
Waldman and Lisa Birman, eds. | Civil Disobediences:
Poetics and
Politics in Action | Coffee House Press, 2004 | 470pp | $18.00
Just in
over the transom—I'm a contributor but, despite that, looks like
there is a lot here to digest and explore.
Maggie
Dubris | Skels | Soft Skull, 2004 | 240pp
| $14.95
I've read
an earlier version in manuscript and have been eagerly awaiting the
publication of this. Maggie Dubris is unique, read her.
Douglas
Valentine | The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret
History of America's War on Drugs | Verso, 2004 | 554pp | $29.00
Masterful
alternative history that can restructure the way you think about politics,
economics, government, and all kinds of other things. The real deal,
by the man who brought us the indespensable Phoenix Program, perhaps
the only book to detail the operations against civilians during the
latter days of the American war in Indochina.
Steve
Hodel | Black Dahlia Avenger: The True Story
| Harper-Collins, 2004 | 560pp | $14.95
An absolute
knock-out. Hodel is a former LAPD detective who actually fingers his
own father, Dr. George Hodel, as the Black Dahlia killer and the killer
of other women. Most interesting are Dr. George Hodel's connections
to people like Man Ray and John Huston.
Maureen
Konkle | Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals
and the Politics of Historiography, 1827-1863 | University of
North Carolina Press, 2004 | 368pp
An important
view into native discourse prior to the civil war and "removal."
Very useful in reconsidering some popular but too loosely used categories
like "post-colonialism."
Dorothy
B. Hughes | In A Lonely Place | The Feminist
Press, 2003 | 250pp | $14.95
Yale Younger
Poet turned pulp and noir writer Dorothy Hughes, finally re-issued.
Magic!
Cornell
Woolrich | Rendezvous in Black | Modern
Library, 2004 | 212pp | $12.95
The inimitable
Woolrich is slowly coming back into print; check this one out, along
with a collection of stories recently out and edited by Francis Nevins,
his biographer.
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to the directory
Rae
Armantrout
Since I also
responded to the last survey on this site, I’ve chosen only recent
books this time to avoid duplication.
Bob
Perelman and Francie Shaw | Playing Bodies
| Granary Books, 2004
The book
presents 52 paintings by Shaw, each of which shows a toy dinosaur and
a doll involved in an ambiguous tussle. Perelman has written a poem
in response to each painting. The poems are terse, urgent, colloquial.
They deal with big subjects in a completely unpretentious way.
Lyn
Hejinian | The Fatalist | Omnidawn
This work
opens wide to admit anything imaginable. That makes for a wild ride.
I love all of Lyn’s books and this is among my favorites.
Graham
Foust | As in Every Deafness | Flood Editions
Foust seems
to have come out of the blue as a completely accomplished poet. His
work is extremely compressed, even miniature, yet each poem makes wrenching
twists and leaves you somewhere unexpected.
Graham
Foust | Leave the Room to Itself | ahsahta
press
I’m
just a G.F. fan.
Lisa
Robertson | Occasional Work and Seven Walks from
the Office of Soft Architecture |Clear Cut Press
Lisa Robertson
may be the opposite of Graham Foust, but I love her work too. This book
deals with (Vancouver) space in terms of texture. Its baroque style
seems to suggest we’ll never get to the bottom of "things."
Kit
Robinson | The Crave | Atelos
This book
is also about space — the alienated space of the business traveler.
It isn’t depressing though. It’s more like cool jazz.
Catherine
Wagner | Macular Hole | Fence Books
Wagner
is sort of like a post-feminist Sylvia Plath on acid. Check it out.
It’s intense.
Peter
Gizzi | Some Values of Landscape and Weather
| Wesleyan
This book
is elegant. The poems invite you in and then threaten to dissolve. It’s
a bit like Ashbery but with no hint of camp.
Elizabeth
Willis |Turneresque | Burning Deck
Willis
makes a kind of grim comedy out of our fantasies and representations.
"inventing a bobby / fischer to live through it."
Elizabeth
Robinson | Apprehend | Fence
I love
fairy tales and this book finds a way to rewrite fairy tales, opening
them up to contemporary experience.
Ron
Silliman | Woundwood |Cuneiform
This is
a good example of what I like in Ron’s writing: the quality of
his observation. And behind or between the observations, increasingly
lately, there is a subtle emotional resonance.
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Bill
Berkson
Take one
Kenward
Elmslie | Agenda Melt
Charles
Reznikoff | Testimony
Kenneth
Koch | A Possible World
Nathaniel
Dorsky | Devotional Cinema
Ron
Padgett, ed. | Painter Among Poets: George Schneeman
John
Thorpe | Five Aces and Independence
Adam
Phillips | Darwin's Worms
Kit
Robinson | The Crave
Rudy Burckhardt | Abrams monograph
W.H.
Auden | Lectures on Shakespeare
Frank
Kermode | Shakespeare's Language
Take two
John
Godfrey | Private Lemonade
Charles
Rosen | The Classical Style
Frank
O'Hara | The Houses at Falling Hanging |
in Yale Review with intro by Olivier Brossard
Paul
Valery | Selected Writings
Silver
Poets of the Sixteenth Century
Whitman
| Selected by Robert Creeley
Ovid
| The Metamorphosis | Trans. John Golding
David
Rattray | How I Became One of the Invisible
Richard
Holmes | Sidetracks
Alexander
Nehamas | The Art of Living
Plato
| The Symposium | Trans. Alexander Nehamas
& Paul Woodruff
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Anselm
Berrigan
Eric
Baus | The To Sound | Verse | 2003
Samuel
R. Delaney | Times Square Red Times Square Blue
| NYU, 1999 | 203pp | $18.00
Hafiz
of Shiraz | Thirty Poems: An Introduction to the
Sufi Master | Trans. by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs | Handsel,
2003 | 81 pp | $14.00
Karen
Weiser | Placefullness | Ugly Duckling,
2004
Douglas
Oliver | Arrondissements | Salt, 2003 |
172pp | $16.95
Anne
Waldman and Lisa Berman, eds. | Civil Disobediences:
Poetics and Politics in Action | Coffee House, 2004 | 425pp |
$18.00
Michael
Lewis | Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair
Game | Norton, 2002 320 pp | $13.95
Samantha
Powers | "A Problem from Hell": America
and the age of Genocide | Perennial, 2003 | 656 pp | $17.95
Lorenzo
Thomas | Dancing On Main Street | Coffee
House, 2004 | 110 pp | $15.00
Linh
Dinh | All Around What Empties Out | Subpress/Tinfish,
2003 | 96 pp | $12.00
Unpublished
manuscripts by Alice Notley, Dana Ward, Marcella Durand, Karen Weiser
and Edmund Berrigan, plus the Collected Poems
of Ted Berrigan, nearly 900 pages, and due to be published by UC Press
in late 2005.
•
• •
Notes: I
am choosing not to choose books by anyone I introduced at the Poetry Project
in the past year, which cuts out about fifty books. At the same time I
am choosing to list family and the person I live with, as I probably spend
the most time with that work (and it is also among the best, he says without
a care towards the lack of impartiality, whatever the fuck that's supposed
to be in this day and age). Noah Eli Gordon's Frequencies,
from Tougher Disguises should be in there too. I have also been obsessively
reading all of J.R.R. Tolkien's works for the past three years
(having never read them before), and any of David Halberstam's
sports books (The Breaks of the Game,
on Basketball, and 1964, on Baseball,
in particular). And lots of political essays, which I think constitute
some kind of new genre of trash reading (left and right). Otherwise, I
can't think of anything to say about the books I am listing beyond the
fact that they work.
Recent poems
by Anselm Berrigan can be found on-line at GutCult.com and 2ndAvenue.com.
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Jules Boykoff
Alex
Callinicos | The New Mandarins of American Power
| Polity, 2003
A smart,
concise, measured, critical look at the ‘War on Terrorism.’
A good Marxist for the good Marxist in all of us.
Renee
Gladman | The Activist | Krupskaya, 2003
This is
a fractured planning session, a psychological excavation, & mass
media critique all rolled up into a gripping book. "I swear on
my heart that Americans will not be rabble-roused," said the President.
Carol
Mirakove | Occupied | Kelsey St. Press,
2004
Speaking
of rabble-rousing, Carol Mirakove brings us Occupied, a crucial book
for this historical moment. Mirakove kindly reminds us that "democracy
is a contact sport." This work is more direct than her previous
stuff, as she seems to be overtly reading the vertiginous swirl-a-girl
called Our Present Moment. The book even comes with handy-dandy glossary-like
reference section.
Critical
Art Ensemble | Flesh Machine | Autonomedia,
1998
Steve Kurtz’s
recent suppression (via the USA PATRIOT Act etc.) inspired my return
to the Critical Art Ensemble’s engaging discussion of new-wave
eugenic based technological advance masquerading as social progress.
Lisa
Robertson | Occasional Work and Seven Walks from
the Office of Soft Architecture | Clear Cut Press, 2003
I love
the precision of language, the perambulation of thought, the thoroughgoing
ranginess of this book. Fun to read out loud with a friend. Fun to look
at the [color!] pictures, too.
Robert
Pollin | Contours of Descent: U.S. Economic Fractures
and the Landscape of Global Austerity | Verso Press, 2003
Lucid
demystification of the so-called economic boom in the 1990s under Clinton.
Pollin is radical economist who is also a sonuva NBA owner (Abe Pollin
of the Washington Wizards).
Devendra
Banhart | Oh Me Oh My…The Way the Day Goes
by the Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs of the Christmas Spirit
| Young God Records, 2002
This CD
has been spinning wildly in our stereo since the day we got it. "You
certainly are nice people, in your white-ass suit and lion tattoos.
You’ve seen it all. Pale horse licks your skin, begin."
Michael
Smith | It A Come | City Lights, 1986
A collection
worth returning to. Michael Smith, a Jamaican poet, was the victim of
political murder in 1983. His poem "Sunday" is one of my all-time
favorites.
Aishah
Rahman and Kamili Feelings, eds. | NuMuse: An Anthology
of Plays from Brown University | Seventh Issue | Providence,
2001
Contains
an interview with playwright Adrienne Kennedy. Kennedy’s "Sleep
Deprivation Chamber" is also included.
Chalmers
Johnson | Blowback: The Costs and Consequences
of American Empire | New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000
Direct,
compelling analysis replete with numerous specific examples of U.S.
foreign policies in East Asia. This was written before 11 Sept. 2001.
Read chapters 1, 2 & 10, if nothing else.
Leslie
Scalapino, ed. | War and Peace | O Books,
2004
Includes,
among other things, a fantastic long piece from Judith Goldman &
one of my all-time favorite Rodrigo Toscano poems—one that reminds
me of the enormous gaps in my education.
Women
in the Avant Garde | cd | Narrow House Recordings, 2004
This CD
is a recording of a slam-bang poetry reading given by Laura Elrick,
Heather Fuller, Carol Mirakove, Kristin Prevallet, and Deborah Richards
that Kaia Sand organized in St. Mary’s County, Maryland in Nov.
2003. The recording is so crisp that at times you can hear Sophie Prevallet
squealing with glee in the background. Can’t blame her—this
is a fantastic, & variegated, reading.
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Pam
Brown
Laurie
Duggan | Mangroves | University of Queensland
Press, 2003 | 186pp
During
a long bout of poetry-writing block, Laurie Duggan wrote a doctoral
thesis on early Twentieth Century modernism in Australian visual culture.
It was published as a book called ‘Ghost Nation’ in 2001.
Then, starting from where he left off from poetry , or from where poetry
left him a few years earlier, he wrote his eleventh book of poems, ‘Mangroves’.
Softly critical, mildly scholarly, always wry , often funny – ‘If
the futurists were reborn would they choose to live under the flightpath
?’ Ten of the best poems here are written ‘after Ardengo Soffici’.
Michael
Brennan | The Imageless World | Salt Publishing,
2004 | 93pp
These poems
are excised from the work of mourning. Endearing, ‘emotional’,
also tinged with an eastern european tone (eastern europe before the
1980s fall). Axiomatic fragments sensitize a reader’s consciousness
with feeling. ‘Freedom might be the week love begins or love ends.
Well fed words might keep it from us.’ The wanderer’s already-nostalgic
letters and postcards home are also occasionally tragicomic – a
lover’s departure – ‘She left a sliver of green soap/Which
I started to use/The day after the day she left./I tried to mail the
postcard but/Without a forwarding address/Only the soap that was almost
gone was left.’ Michael Brennan is the Australian founder of the
vibrant independent chapbook imprint Vagabond Press.
John
Tranter | Studio Moon | Salt Publishing,
2003 | 114pp
A selection
of poems from the last fifteen years from this prolific Australian poet
and editor of the widely-read internet magazine, ‘Jacket’.
Tranter displays his formal skills – elegies, odes, haibun, sestinas
, pantoums and so on. Desperation and the darker side of disappointment
in poems like ‘Decalcomania’ and a kind of ordinary or domestic
ennui in others, temper any excess of imaginative revelation. A wide
range of narrative unravelments that come close to seeming classical.
Plus daring feats of twentieth century fin-de siècle stream-of-consciousness.
Lisa
Robertson | Occasional Work and Seven Walks from
the Office for Soft Architecture| clear cut press, 2003 | 274pp
Little
essays that might have been dreamed, or received, rather than thought.
Conceptual beauties. ‘My guide raised the styrofoam coffee cup
as if it were the most translucent of foliate porcelains. During the
instant of that gesture morning was all recollection…’ In
Vancouver.
Donna
Haraway | The Companion Species Manifesto
| Prickly Paradigm Press 2003 100pp
Dog writing
is a branch of feminist lit theory . So Australian novelist Amanda Lohrey
includes a talking, thinking mutt in her latest novel ‘The Philosopher’s
Doll’. The well-known male writers John Berger in ‘King -
A Street Story ‘ and Paul Auster in ‘Timbuktu’ use dogs
as their first-canine-pronoun leading characters, partially pre-empting
this treatise. Now that cyborgs have completed their absorption into
an imaginary feminist-run world, Haraway exhorts us to continue the
struggle and to ‘Run fast; bite hard !’
Susan
M. Schultz | And Then Something Happened
| Salt Publishing, 2004 | 132pp
Dense,
intense, engaged, darkly witty, observant, worldly, brainy, this book
is a necessary antidote for the jaded. The reader can follow thinking’s
action in these socially (or societally) grounded poems and prose poems.
Covering a mix of topics from writing theory to adoptive motherhood
to corporate crime to political, philosophical & military power,
Susan Schultz critiques the western English speaking world with extraordinary
acuity and poetic brilliance.
Eileen
Myles | The Inferno (Chapter 1) | Angry
Dog Midget Editions, 2003 | 32pp
Pacy autobiographical
prose - distracted, dishevelled, glamorous, frank and funny, the teenage
poet falls for the world literature teacher who understands existentialism
– thereby reclaiming (or is it ‘inventing’ ?) a lesbian
trope.
Gerry
Dukes | Samuel Beckett | Penguin Books,
2001 | 161pp
A photographic
biography. Beckett was shy of publicity, wary of speaking in public
yet not, as is evidenced here, camera-shy. Over a hundred photos of
Samuel Beckett and his friends and family , his stage and film work
in progress or production, plus ephemera (book jackets etc) and an inventive
text as a condensed biography by Dublin-based academic, Gerry Dukes.
•
• •
Regular reading
News &
current affairs:The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Newspaper,
Green Left Weekly, The Guardian Weekly, The Nation - online, The Onion
- online
Journals:
Art Monthly Australia, Art & Australia, Modernism/Modernity, Jacket,
Tinfish, Meanjin, Southerly, Cordite, HOW2
Newsletters:
Five Bells (NSW Poets Union), The Gleaner (Gleebooks bookshop), Red
Tape (CPSU - my union), AFI (Australian Film Institute), Friends of
the National Film & Sound Archive, Sydney Alliance Francaise
Blogs:
Ron Silliman, Steve Evans' Third Factory, Cassie Lewis' The Jetty
Current
manuals: Roxio Toast 6 Titanium - Getting Started Guide, Pentax Optio
S40 digital camera Operating Manua
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Franklin
Bruno
Rae
Armantrout | Up To Speed | Wesleyan University
Press, 2003
Observation,
comprehension, doubt; the experience of time as a condition of consciousness
and intentionality. "Does a road/run its whole length/at once?"
Also Veil (Wesleyan, 2001); The Pretext (Green Integer,
2001), and two new poems in The Canary 3.
Christian
Bök | Eunoia | Coach House Books, 2001
If a thing’s
done perfectly, does that demonstrate it was worth doing? Also the Coach
House CD of the author reading his work; MacGregor Card’s two palindromic
poems in The Hat 5; Guy Bennett & Ron Griffin, Drive to
Cluster (ML & NLF, 2003).
Fanny
Howe | Economics | Flood Editions, 2002
The argument
that transparency is by nature illusory is much more convincing when
made implicitly, by writing that nearly achieves it. "Lotto"
devastates me with its ‘surprise ending,’ all the more so
in that I usually find Howe’s prose heavy going (Indivisible,
The Wedding Dress).
Manny
Farber | About Face | 2003 | Museum of Contemporary
Art, San Diego
I’m
cheating; the catalog essays are excellent, but I really mean the show
of seventy-odd paintings itself, and the three out of four related screenings
I managed to attend. (Musketeers of Pig Alley!) I’ve been
struggling to get an essay on Farber down to 6,000 words, so 50-or-less
is out of the question.
Wayne Koestenbaum | Cleavage | Ballantine
Books, 2000
Like Robertson
and Stark below, a collection of magazine writing – in this case,
elliptical, deceptively light, and technically enviable. Manages to
make something of the least promising assignments: Interview Alec Baldwin
for Vogue, write Monica’s Clinton diary. Also, Andy Warhol
(Penguin Lives/Viking, 2001)
Peter
Richards | The Nude Siren | Verse, 2003
Productively
indeterminate between an imagistic poetics (or maybe a Kayak-y
soft Surrealism) and a materialist one. I’m told but haven’t
confirmed that this is entirely different from his earlier Oubliette.
Lisa
Robertson | Occassional Work and Seven Walks from
the Office for Soft Architecture | Clear Cut Press, 2003
"I
watched the city of Vancouver dissolve in the fluid called money….I
began to research the history of surfaces. I included my own desires
in the research." Cold comfort: I had thought it was just L.A.
(Not incidentally, this is a gorgeous book-object.)
Frances
Stark | Collected Writings 1993-2003 | Book
Works, 2003
I’m
not drawn to the work of the fellow L.A. visual artists Stark discusses,
but I respond to her sense of the practical payoffs of theoretical engagement,
and to "The Housewife and The Architect," an earlier pamphlet
on Modernism and domesticity reprinted here.
Caetano
Veloso | Tropical Truth | Knopf, 2002
Essentially
an intellectual autobiography, barely disguised as an insightful, not
unromantic account of Veloso’s (ongoing) cultural moment. Makes
you wish Bob Dylan were the discursive type. Also A Foreign Sound
(Nonesuch, 2004); Ruy Castro, Bossa Nova (A Cappella Books, 2000);
Arto Linsday, Salt (Righteous Babe, 2004); Luciano Perrone, Batacuda
Fantàstica Vol. 3 (1972, CD reissue Whatmusic 2004); Xeroxes
of sheet music for several Veloso songs, courtesy Scott Saul.
Kevin
Young | To Repel Ghosts | Zoland, 2001
Narrow-lined,
broadly polysemous stalk-poems sprouted from the seed-language in Jean-Michael
Basquiat’s paintings. See/hear also: Basquiat (dir. Julien
Schnabel, 1996), Downtown 81 (dir. Edo Bertoglio, DVD released
2000), "Beat Bop," Ramelzee Vs. K.Rob (12" single prod.
Basquiat, 1981, available on New York Noise, Soul Jazz, 2003).
Tyrone
Williams | c.c. | Krupskaya, 2002
‘Fierce
erudition’ is a cliché, but it fits. Ending a collection
with fifteen identically-titled haiku ("Tag") takes some nerve,
I’d say: "Silver chains of com-/mand identify remains/of etcetera."
A difficult book in more than one respect, but one I’m glad not
to be done with.
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Joshua
Clover
Pierre
Alferi | La voie des airs | P.O.L., 2004
"Ne
pas écouter l'intérieur
— enregistrer, enregistrer"
Barbara Cole | Situation Comedies | /ubu
editions, 1998-2004
There's
a time and a place for everything. An MLA reading with 27 participants
is the time and place to stand up and say "This is called... 'Foxy
Moron.'" Onward to Philadelphia, and "Foxycontin."
Jay-Z | "99 Problems" | Roc-A-Fella
Records, 2003
Specifically
the second verse, where he walks his core audience through their 4th
Amendment rights armed only with savoir-faire and Rick Rubin. Brechtian.
Many Artists/Many Songs/No Albums At All | Acquisition 110.3 | 2004
Wasn't
the fax machine just so weird? Such a brief but intense period in the
history of technology, such a big and clunky thing? And then one day
you realize you'll probably never use one again.
Chris Nealon | The Joyous Age | Black
Square, 2004
"We
should totally be sister cities."
RETORT | "Afflicted Powers: The State,
the Spectacle and September 11" | New Left Review
27 | May/June 2004
The only
analysis of recent political developments to make good use of both Milton
and Lowell
Lisa Robertson | Occasional Work and Seven Walks
from the Office for Soft Architecture | Clear Cut, 2004
The only
way I could like this book more is if it actually had a puffy cover,
like Chairman Mao's Little Pink Book of Derives. Hello Kitty Situationist.
Kristin Ross | May '68 and Its Afterlives
| University of Chicago, 2002
Acidic
disdain for the New Philosophers of the late Seventies, and for their
equation between "totality" and "totalitarian,"
viz contemporary poetics: helpful.
Michael Scharf | "I Love Systems"
| /ubu editions, 2004
A coffee
table book for a better world. I know because I had it on my coffee
table for almost a year. It's fun to watch guests pick it up idly like
it's a magazine -- their faces.
Xi Chuan | Trans. Maghiel van Crevel | "Salute"
and "What The Eagle Says"
"I
chose this record player from the warehouse, to play you a song, to
cure you of your old disease." These are both quite long prose
poems, started around 1997 and translated recently. Trying to imagine
what "warehouse" feels like in the China of spastic murderous
entrepreneurial Communism: difficult.
Yang Xiaobin | Trans. author | "Final Excursion:
Twelve Tercets"
"He
sang with a variety of mouths and marched off in all directions at once."
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Chris
Daniels
I have adored
poetry since my father, in the bathtub with me, recited "The Owl
and the Pussycat" and Hafiz’s great poem about the rose and
the nightingale. This is one of my earliest memories. Over the past forty
years, I’ve slowly but inexorably turned away from Poetry USA and
its various cliques, claques and apparatchiki. Nearly everything "creative"
I’ve read in the past few years has been in Portuguese, Spanish or
in translation (in that order). The Eurocentric, Clinton-Liberal, emotionally
touristic, all-too-public cluelessness of the vast majority of US poets
and the academic and corporate parasites who make their living and/or
gain prestige by feeding off of them and controlling exposure and interpretation,
have all become unendurable.
1. Current
translation projects (whoever said that translation is the deepest form
of reading was absolutely right):
Clarice
Lispector | Um Sopro da Vida (pulsações)
| Livraria Francisco Alves Editora, 10th edition, 1994
Her last
"novel." No publisher as yet.
Murilo
Mendes | Chaos’s Window | Listening
Chamber, forthcoming
I read
and re-read:
Murilo
Mendes | Poesia Completa e Prosa | Nova
Aguilar, 1994
Murilo
Mendes | Recordações de Ismael Nery
| EDUSP, 1996
Murilo
Mendes | Laís Corréa de Araújo
| Perspetiva, 2000 (1st ed., 1972)
Júlio
Castañon Guimarães | Territórios/Conjunções,
poesia e prosa crítica de Murilo Mendes | Imago, 1993
Murilo
Marcondes de Moura | Murilo Mendes: a poesia como
totalidade | EDUSP, 1995
Leila
Barbosa and Marisa Rodrigues | A Trama Poética
de Murilo Mendes | Lacerda Editores, 2000
Francisco
Faria | The Meaning of American Landscape
| Edições Mirabilia | bilingual edition | forthcoming
in 2004
Art criticism
by one of Brasil’s best artists.
Raul
Bopp | Cobra Norato | multiple publishers
Long poem
based on BR folklore. Modernist classic, now in it’s 19th edition.
Also reading various crit. works. No publisher as yet.
Josely
Vianna Baptista | Os poros flóridos
| unpublished in BR | bilingual Mexican edition, Aldus, 2003
A modern
Soledades in six cantos. A palimpsest of thresholds. No publisher as
yet.
José Lezama Lima, Néstor Perlongher, Severo Sarduy
| various poems
Carlos
Drummond de Andrade | Various texts,
including "Prideful heart, you rush to confess your downfall /
and put off for another century our collective happiness. / You accept
rain, war, unemployment and unjust distribution / because all alone
you could never dynamite Manhattan." And a great many others. I’m
working on an anthology of BR poetry. Might be a publisher.
Fernando
Pessoa | Fictions of the Interlude |
massive selection of Pessoa’s heteronymic poetry | Grand
Quiskadee, Berkeley, 2006 |at least two volumes, print-on-demand,
coming your way after January 1, 2006, when the work falls back into
P.D.
The
Fourth World War | documentary film
Into Portuguese,
for release in BR this winter or early in 2005. I’m organizing
the work. Everybody should see this powerful film.
Various
journalism and dispatches for MST | Ongoing
2. The following
have helped/are helping to remind me of what it means to be a citizen.
Michael
Barratt Brown | The Economics of Imperialism
| Penguin, 1974
Michael
Hudson| Super Imperialism | Pluto Press,
2003
Immanuel
Wallerstein | After Liberalism | The New
Press, 2000
Immanuel
Wallerstein | The Essential Wallerstein
| The New Press, 2000
Robin
Hahnel | Panic Rules! Everything You Need to Know
About the Global Economy | West End Press, 1999
Bertell
Ollman | Alienation | Cambridge UP, 1971
The
Code of Federal Regulations | online here
Title 31—MONEY
AND FINANCE: TREASURY, Chapter V, Part 515—Cuban Assets Control
Regulations, contains the language that got Ry Cooder in trouble with
the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Start with Subpart B—Prohibitions,
§ 515.206 Exempt transactions, and follow the cross-referencing.
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to directory
Jordan
Davis
Ben
Friedlander | Simulcast | Alabama
Jenny
Browne | At Once | Tampa
Kasey
Mohammad | Deer Head Nation | Tougher Disguises
Chris
Edgar | At Port Royal | Adventures in Poetry
K.L.
Evans | Whale! | Minnesota
Joanna
Fuhrman | Ugh Ugh Ocean | Hanging Loose
Rod
Smith | Music or Honesty | Roof
Catherine
Wagner | Macular Hole | Fence
Matthea
Harvey | Sad Little Breathing Machine |
Graywolf
Joseph
Donahue | Incidental Eclipse | Talisman
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to the directory
Marcella
Durand
Lisa
Robertson | Occasional Work and Seven Walks from
the Office of Soft Architecture | Clear Cut, 2003
This eminently
portable book is part of a subscription series from Clear Cut Press,
based in Oregon and edited by Matthew Stadler of Nest magazine.
Brenda
Coultas | A Handmade Museum | Coffee House
Press, 2003
A permanent
sensitizer of consciousness/conscientiousness about one's environs.
Karen
Weiser | Placefullness | Ugly Duckling Presse,
2004 | Edition of 300
Poems written
in "conversation" with Etel Adnan's There, In the Light
and the Darkness of the Self and of the Other.
Bird
walk with Jack Collom and Cecilia Vicuna | July 19, 2004 | Jamaica Bay
Wildlife Refuge | Queens, NY
Some species
seen: Black crowned night heron, tundra swan, laughing gull, cedar waxwing,
yellow warbler.
Michele
Metail | Les Horizons du Sol | CIPM, 1999
Geological
poem of the deep origins of Marseille.
Joan
Murray | Poems by Joan Murray 1917-1942
| Yale Series of Younger Poets, 1947
After publishing
essay by John Ashbery on Murray in first issue of Newsletter,
perfect copy miraculously found at some bookstore before bridge to Deer
Island, Maine.
Exhibition
and catalogue | Ocean Flowers: Impressions from
Nature | at the Drawing Center, NYC, 2004
Early Victorian
drawings, impressions ("embedded specimens"), botanographs,
photograms, and durandotypes (sic) of various seaplants, including limboo
mal. lycopodium and laminaria fascia, "drawn by the plant itself."
Harry
Mathews | Tlooth
So much
depends on one enamelled word.
Jean-Michel
Espitallier | Le Theoreme d'Espitallier
| Flammarion, 2003
"There
are the victims, there are the events. And now, a small relaxation session."
Kevin
Davies | Lateral Argument | 2003
A signal
work
by a signal poet, beautifully printed by Baretta Books.
Andrew
Joron | Fathom | Black Square Editions,
2003
Like reading
philosophy in poetic form, or poetry in philosophical form.
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to the directory
Yedda
Morrison | Crop | Kelsey St. Press, 2003
a must
have book...a truly gifted writer
Daphne
Gottleib | Final Girl | Softskull, 2003
punky,
queer, here and a must read
Brenda
Iijima | Around sea | O books, 2004
this is
a beautufl book
Deborah
Richards | Last One Out | Subpress, 2003
Michelle
Naka Pierce & Veronica Corpuz | Tri/Via
| Erudite Fangs, 2003
wonderful...do
not miss this on going collaboration
Allison
Cobb | Born2 | Chax Press, 2004
fun and
multi-layered
Peter
Gizzi | Some Values of Landscape and Weather |
Wesleyan
University Press, 2003
this is
lovely and delightful read
Terrence
Chiusano | On generation and corruption
| Handwritten Press, 2004
and object
hand printed book, deep in language
Hung
Q. Tu | Structures of feeling | Krupskaya,
2003
Jill
Hartman | A painted ELFphant | Coach House
Books, 2003
a great
read. this is how to use language.
kari edwards
is the author of iduna (O Books, 2003)
and a day in the life of p. (subpress
collective, 2002). Work can also be found in Scribner's The
Best American Poetry 2004. There's a review
here; and the blog is here.
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to the directory
Larry
Fagin
Richard
Roundy | The Other Kind of Vertigo | Barretta
Books, 2003
Kostas
Anagnopoulos | Daydream | Insurance Editions,
2004
Carol
Szamatowicz | Reticular Pop-ups | Insurance
Editions, 2004
David
Perry | Knowledge Follows | Insurance Editions,
2004
David
Perry | New Years | Braincase Press, 2004
Clark
Coolidge | Mine: The One That Enters the Stories
| new edition | The Figures, 2004
Philip
Whalen | Prose [Out] Takes | Poltroon Press,
2002
Duncan
McNaughton | Counting Toes | 2004
Duncan
McNaughton | Capricci | Blue Millennium,
2001
David
Meltzer | Beat Thing | La Alameda Press,
2004
Jo Ann
Wasserman | The Escape | Futurepoem, 2003
James
Schuyler | Alfred & Guinevere | NYRB,
2001
Bill
Berkson | Sweet Singer of Modernism | Qua
Books, 2003
Merrill
Gilfillan | Rivers & Birds | Johnson
Books, 2003
Frank
O'Hara | The Houses at Falling Hanging |
Play | In most recent Yale Review
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Steve
Farmer
Tim
Davis | Dailies | The Figures, 2000 | $12.50
| 111pp
Have not
put this book down for almost 4 years.
Laura
Elrick | Skincerity | Krupskaya, 2003 |
$11 | 82pp
Great great
debut. Tough, toned, great sense of structure, and whip-smart. Looking
forward to tons more from this talented writer.
Robert
Fitterman | Metropolis 16-29 | Coach House
Press, 2003 | $14.95 | 124pp
Never a
dull moment as this uber urban long poem continues, starting fresh and
varied with each new installment. The best "berries" in the
land.
Heather
Fuller | Dovecote | Edge Books, 2002 | $10
| 90pp
Truly strange
and original writing that pushes the envelope. Intriguing push-off points
like Hopper (the painter and/or the actor), beggars, and the Civil War
coalesce and spin out.
Yedda
Morrison | Crop | Kelsey St Press, 2003
| $11 | 79pp
Brilliant
and focused writing of a major order. Lends itself to many re-readings,
each one revealing new layers of the machine.
Kim
Rosenfield | Good Morning-- Midnight-- |
Roof Books, 2001 | $10.95 | 106pp
Displays
not only her deft, subtle wit, but her power (see "Excelsior Reflector").
"A Self-guided Walk" one of the all-time greats.
Deanne
Stillman | Twentynine Palms | Perennial/HarperCollins,
2001 | $12.95 | 79pp
Couldn't
put this one down. "A true story of murder, Marines, and the Mojave."
Timely and local hello America.
Rodrigo
Toscano | Platform | Atelos Press, 2003
| $12.95 | 231pp
A massive
sounding wall of the highest magnitude. Complexity of thought &
wordplay should be basic text for all students of things poetique.
Hung
Q. Tu | Structures of Feeling | Krupskaya,
2003 | $11 | 107pp
Great minimalist
pieces singed with wit, music, and disdain. Brilliant.
Diane
Ward | Portraits & Maps | NLF Editions,
2000 | 74pp
The latest
from one of my favorites, a collaboration bouncing off the work of artist
Michael C. McMillen, published in Italy with Italian translations.
Elizabeth
Willis | Turneresque | Burning Deck, 2003
| $10 | 95pp
Her best
book yet, which is saying a ton. 'Nuff said.
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Graham
W. Foust
Rae
Armantrout | Up to Speed
DJ Rae
gettin’ busy as a midget mountain climber. Tick, tick, vroom.
The
National | Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers |
Brassland Records, 2003
The second
album by the best band in the world. Don’t like The National? You’re
wrong.
Frederick
Seidel | The Cosmos Poems | FSG, 2003
I can’t
decide whether I want to spank or be spanked by the speaker of Fred
Seidel’s poems, but if he lived in the penthouse across the hall
from mine, boy oh boy would I want there to be some spanking.
Peter
Doig | "Metropolitan" | Pinakothek
der Moderne, Münich
People
often talk about bursting into tears before certain paintings. All well
and good, I suppose, but in front of Doig’s paintings, I burst
into color, planet, thought. And then I asked the grouchy motherfuckers
at the info desk if they had that dogs playin’ poker picture.
Rod
Smith | The Good House | Spectacular Books,
2001
Okay, I
burst into tears when I finished this. More than once. My most re-read
poem of this millennium.
Peter
Ramos | Watching Late-Night Hitchcock and Other
Poems | Handwritten Press, 2004
Berryman
said his Dream Songs were meant to comfort and terrify. If this
chapbook contained an author photo, Peter Ramos would be carrying a
hot water bottle in one hand and an incredibly venomous spider in the
other. As it stands, the book’s cover photograph is by Lara Odell,
which makes the poems all the more beautifully bleak.
Monica
Youn | Barter | Graywolf, 2003
See Ben
Friedlander’s review of Elaine Equi’s book from 2003’s
Attention Span; substitute "Monica" for "Elaine."
My favorite full-length of 2003.
Stacy
Szymaszek | Emptied of All Ships | Bronze
Skull Press, 2003
Sometimes
I wish this chapbook were a 12" single, ‘cause I’d spin
it all day long and sing along. I almost always wish more poets sounded
this good...
Die
Kreuzen | Self-titled LP | Touch and Go
Records, 1984
During
a year in which I made many pleasurable pilgrimages back to old favorite
bands (The Smiths, Television, The Go-Go’s, Van Halen), this return
was perhaps the most rewarding. Even—nay, especially—après
grunge, Milwaukee’s finest are still way scary, still absolutely
vital. Steve Albini said it best, way back when: "This is so fucking
great . . . that all that horseshit that passes for punk nowadays doesn't
even upset me anymore. This exists too, and that's enough."
Joyelle
McSweeney | Reading "The Commandrine"
and other poems | Drake University, Fall 2003
Should
you decide to put forth the effort required to maintain a regular series
of "cultural events" at an academic institution, two things
might happen almost simultaneously. One: People whom you once assumed
were "on your side" might say snide things to you about the
relevance and sincerity of your efforts and intentions. Two: Someone
whom you’ve known for only twelve hours might do something so thrilling
and hilarious that the aforementioned people will—for at least
forty minutes or so—cease to matter.
Listening
to Life without Buildings’ "The Leanover" while driving
past the Williamsburg, Iowa outlet mall and its gi-normous American
flag on September 11, 2003
I guess
you had to be there. I didn’t, but I was.
•
• •
I also
have to mention Xiu Xiu’s "Fabulous Muscles" from the
Fabulous Muscles LP (5RC, 2004), simply
because any song that contains the lyrics "Cremate me / After you
come on my lips / Honey boy / Place my ashes in a vase / Beneath your
workout bench" needs to be on a list, and because I haven’t
been as obsessive about continuously replaying a song since I discovered
Jim Croce’s "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" in the first grade.
Graham
Foust has a heart murmur, grinds his teeth, and divides his time between
central Des Moines and the north end of Iowa City.
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Benjamin
Friedlander
Gwendolyn
Brooks | In Montgomery and Other Poems |
Third World Press, 2003
The title
poem—first published in Ebony with photographs sadly absent
here—is investigative poetry, and forms the moral ground for this,
Brooks's last book, which also includes a sequence of lyric diffractions
spoken by children and her devastating long poem from 1968, "In
the Mecca."
Frances
Chung | Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple |
ed. Walter Lew | Wesleyan UP, 2000
I love
this book because it documents the New York I lived in but never really
knew* and also because its poetic idiom is so wily: layers of simple
statement that initiate the reader into a structure far richer and more
complex than any individual poem could reveal.
*Two other
books I enjoy for the same reason: James McCourt, Queer Street (cited
below), and Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day: A History of American
Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979 (Duke UP, 2003).
Barbara
Cole | Situation Comedies: Foxy Moron |
Ubu Editions, 2004
By turns
gleeful and inane—but glee is so rare a thing, I'll take it in
any form I can get.
Robert
Creeley | I Know a Man, Poems 1945-1975
& Just in Time, Poems 1976-1998 | CDs
| Optic Nerve, 2004
Creeley's
poetry is molecular: a series of irreducible, endlessly recombinant
blocks. Its virtues are clarity, definition, adaptability, surprise...qualities
that his reading style also embodies, while highlighting in addition
the subjective basis (experienced, organic, fallible, contingent) of
what otherwise might come across as objective (observed, logical, precise,
necessary). It's trippy too, for reasons I can't easily explain.
Jordan
Davis and Sarah Manguso, eds. | Free Radicals:
American Poets before Their First Books | Subpress Collective,
2004
The poets
here believe in high concept and the power of naming, a welcome relief
from the poetry of honed technique and abstraction that held sway in
the '90s. The premise is dubious, that booklessness is freedom, but
the book that results (a contradiction?) is persistently readable, so
who cares.
Susannah
Young-ah Gottlieb | Regions of Sorrow: Anxiety
and Messianism in Hannah Arendt and W. H. Auden | Stanford UP,
2003
I've admired
Auden but never read him for pleasure, so I turned to this for what
it might tell me about poetry and philosophy, and out of affection for
Arendt. I only wish the critics who did take up the poets I love were
as careful and original as Gottlieb.
James
McCourt | Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an
American Culture, 1947-1985 | Norton, 2003
Walter
Benjamin's historical imagination is so idiosyncratic, I didn't think
it could serve as a model for anyone else. McCourt proves me wrong.
It helps, of course, that he writes so well (in "bejewelled barbed
wire"—Wayne Koestenbaum), and that his history is, like Benjamin's,
a magnificent dream assembled from lovingly collected bits of material
culture.
Adah
Isaacs Menken | Infelicia and Other Writings
| Ed. Gregory Eiselein | Broadview Press, 2002
The strangest
story in the history of identity politics.
K. Silem
Mohammad | Hanging Out with Pablo and Jennifer
| Duration E-Book 15, n.d.
If I have
to choose, I'll be a Philistine: I want my reading to be intellectually
daring, but I also want to be entertained...or at least kept awake.
The Cap'n understands that.
Murat
Nemet-Nejat, ed. and trans. | Eda: An Anthology
of Contemporary Turkish Poetry | Talisman House, 2004
This book
has a wonderful coherence—I've wondered in passing if Murat didn't
make it all up himself—yet resists assimilation in its range of
delirious possibility. I imbibe bits whenever I can, but it will be
a while before I can offer a serious opinion.
Philip
Pullman | His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass,
The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass | Knopf, 1995-2000
By happy
accident I read this just after my first serious encounter with Blake,
the principal inspiration—along with Milton—for what is, in
essence, a theological argument in fantasy form, aimed at teens. Beautifully
imagined, magnificently realized, unconvincing.
Quid
nos. 1-12 | online .pdf archive | link
Nate Dorward
has fed me photocopies from this journal, but until the .pdf became
available this year, QUID was more a rumor than reality to me. The most
engaging poetry magazine of the last decade?
Rod
Smith | Music or Honesty | Roof Books, 2003
If a choreographer
transcribed a tantrum and then performed it as a dance, without anger,
the result would be something like these poems, which trace out patterns
of behavior in language ordinarily overwhelmed by meaning.
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to the directory
Heather Fuller
Noam
Chomsky | Hegemony or Survival | An Audio
Renaissance Audio Book, 2003 | 6 CDs, 7 hrs | $34.95 | ISBN 1-55927-941-9
Chomsky
is all over the place but that's one reason we love him. I found the
parts on the U.S.'s terrorism in Central American countries most compelling,
but you really have to listen to all of the CDs to feel the cumulative
effect of this thread.
K. Silem
Mohammad | Deer Head Nation | Tougher Disguises
Press, 2003 | 113 pp. | $12 | ISBN 0-9740167-0-5
Pure euphoria
is the effect of much of this book, in which each deer is a recognition
scene transcribed by an intelligent awe of where we find ourselves,
pinned to history, culture, each other.
Lisa
Robertson | Occasional Work and Seven Walks from
the Office for Soft Architecture | Clear Cut Press, 2003 | 274
pp. | $12.95 | ISBN 0-9723234-3-0
Desperately
gorgeous documentation of the trace of capital disparity and exploitation
on Vancouver and consciousness in general.
Oz:
Seasons 1-3 | HBO series on DVD, 1997-1999 | 9 discs
I am intrigued
by the slashing and burning of metaphors throughout each episode, some
of this process stunning and some of it disarming. Apart from the obvious
Wizard of Oz allegory butting up against Em City in Oswald Prison,
there is this fascinating employment of a narrator, part spoken-word
poet, part griot, part seer. His poetry ain't outstanding, but his job
of linking Oswald Prison to the epic and tragicomic traditions is well-done
indeed.
Jules
Boykoff, Max Boykoff, Kaia Sand, Neal Sand, editorial collective | The
Tangent #14 | February 2004, special insert to Boog City
Another
fine issue of Tangent magazine.
Debbie
Stoller | Stitch 'n Bitch | Workman, 2003
| 248 pp. | $23.95 HC | ISBN 0-7611-3258-9
Every girl
needs to get her knit on, subversively. I am working on the sweater
with the big skull on it and the devil hat.
Miles
Champion, poem; Trevor Winkfield, drawings | "Air
Ball" | Tolling Elves
#15 | February 2004
Two pieces
of 8.5 X 11 paper folded into a lovely surprise of language and imagery.
Brenda
Coultas | A Handmade Museum | Coffee House
Press, 2003 | 125 pp. | $15 | ISBN | 1-566-89-143-4
Heartbreaking
homage to decay, transition, recovery.
Carol
Mirakove | Occupied | Kelsey St. Press,
2004 | 48 pp. | $10 | ISBN 0-932716-66-0
How to
present intelligence, when our government does not.
Buck
Downs | Golden Taters | Buck Downs ephemera,
chapbook, 2004
Nuggets
excised from speech and the writing on the wall, circumscribed by the
inimitable Buck Downs alchemy.
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to the directory
Alan Gilbert
Currently
Provisional Top Ten List (Poetry & Otherwise)
Michael
Moore | Fahrenheit 9/11 | Lions Gate Films,
2004
What does
it say about current conditions in the US that the veracity of Moore’s
film is debated far more extensively and vigorously than the evidence
the Bush administration presented for the invasion of Iraq? This is
not a rhetorical question.
cLOUDDEAD
| Ten | Mush, 2004
Maybe my
favorite "hip hop" album since Cannibal Ox’s 2001 release
The Cold Vein. If the stoned-sounding lyrics and production of
Ten weren’t so brilliantly
boundary pushing, they would just be stoned-sounding lyrics and production.
Alex
Bag | The Coven Services for Consumer Mesmerism,
Product Sorcery, and the Necromantic Reimagination of Consumption
| Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 2004
"Hi,
I’m Private Jessica Lynch!" Actually, it’s Alex Bag dressed
up as Jessica Lynch while pretending to star in a very amateurish commercial
for Halliburton, mixed with footage of metrosexual ennui, and snippets
from Paris Hilton’s homemade sex tape. Utilizing video, collage,
and handwritten spells, Bag’s solo show at Elizabeth Dee did everything
in its power to make the military-industrial-Michael Jackson complex
shake in its (moon)boots.
Lorenzo
Thomas | Dancing on Main Street | Coffee
House Press, 2004
Thomas
has had a total of three original book-length manuscripts of poems published
in the US during his forty years of serious commitment to the writing
and teaching of poetry. Recent paint-by-the-numbers poetry MFA program
(or equivalent) graduates [insert relevant names here] have already
had a couple books published by [insert relevant presses here]. What’s
wrong with this picture? This is not a rhetorical question, either.
Animal
Sounds | Illustrated by Aurelius Battaglia | Western Publishing
Company, 1981
If it’s
my 14-month-old daughter’s favorite book, it means I’ve been
spending a lot of time with it also. "Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!"
Dinh
Q. Lê | From Vietnam to Hollywood
| PPOW, 2004
Lê’s
literal weavings of personal, social, historical, and cultural imagery,
his sophisticated use of foreground and background, and his rhythmic
splatters of visual static seem just as applicable an approach to poetry.
Anti-colonial
resistance | cf., Frantz Fanon | Iraq, Afghanistan, Occupied Territories,
elsewhere | ongoing
If US government
officials really want deeper insight into the anti-colonial disposition,
they shouldn’t be congratulating themselves for belatedly discovering
Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, they should be
reading Fanon.
Benjamin
Friedlander | Adult Contemporary | Subpoetics
self-publish or perish, 2004
Friedlander
continues to mine the vernacular of popular culture in a way that’s
never meant to impress you with the size of his CD collection or his
knowledge of, say, obscure film noir. Rather, plumbing the fathomless
emotional depths of if-the-shoe-fits-wear-it FM radio love songs, Adult
Contemporary feels as if it’s written by a Kantian Glen
Campbell, with the result that you don’t know if it’s just
an idea or entirely real.
Marvin
Gaye | What’s Going On | Motown, 1971
| remastered version, 2002
A couple
months ago, this CD earned the distinction in my household of being
the only one my partner has ever told me that I play too much.
The
Detroit Pistons | NBA Champion, 2004
If they
can do it, surely Kerry can beat Bush.
Alan Gilbert’s
writings on poetry, art, culture, and politics have appeared in a variety
of publications, as have his poems. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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to the directory
Noah Eli Gordon
George
Albon | Brief Capital of Disturbances |
Omnidawn, 2003 | $12.95 | 94pp
Beth
Anderson | Overboard | Burning Deck, 2004
| $10 | 78pp
Eric
Baus | The To Sound | Verse Press, 2004
| $12 | 80pp
Fran
Carlen | I Know Where I’m Going | Adventures
in Poetry, 2003 | $12.59 | 117pp
Kevin
Davies | Lateral Argument | Barretta Books,
2003 | unpaginated
John
Godfrey | Private Lemonade | Adventures
in Poetry, 2003 | $12.50 | 100pp
Tan
Lin | BlipSoak01 | Atelos, 2003 | $12.95
| 327pp
Christopher
Nealon | The Joyous Age | Black Square Editions,
2004 | $13 | 69pp
Hoa
Nguyen | Your Ancient See Through | Subpress,
2002 | $12 | 111 pp | illustrations by Philip Trussell
Catherine
Wagner | Macular Hole | Fence Books, 2004
| $12 | 64pp
Elizabeth
Willis | Turneresque | Burning Deck, 2003
| $10 | 95pp
•
• •
I decided
it’d be interesting to construct an Attention Span pseudo-cento in
place of any brief commentary. The following sentences, taken verbatim
(although many were written in verse & didn’t originally have
periods marking the sentence’s end) from the 11 books on my list—two
sentences from each, are deployed alphabetically, according to the last
name of the author, mirroring the progression of the list itself; however,
each author is given one sentence until the list repeats its cycle.
A strange,
small bird-sound from outside: a clucking rasp, only sounded when your
attention has returned to where it was before. Obsession with the recovery
of what has been taken from you manifests itself as an excess of sleep.
I’m afraid you’ll have to build another machine to explain
yourself. The delicate link to silence, luminous redemption, adieu then,
curtain slit, kimono sleeve. You might be familiar with the old atlas
I’m shaking in your face to keep both of us cool. It goes in one
ear and stays put. This aspect and its watercolor. These are qualities
of mind we like to call emotion. My Luden’s cough drop sunrise.
The reward for buying is the bought thing. Who would not leave the mess
for the illumination, the culture for the poem? Labor replaced by simple
days, simple days by labor. I am not a hero, and I expect the assassin
this evening. I am writing to you from the most public library in the
world. It is raining and one part of the population tries to annihilate
another. The weather is something you notice. It should be one of us.
Needles of pink smoke jet from a vent high in the wall. Am I the sexiest
person in the building? We wisely keep these thoughts to ourselves.
Trying to walk out of there. Why risk warmth?
Noah Eli
Gordon is the author of the book-length poem The
Frequencies (Tougher
Disguises, 2003) and a collection of three long poems The
Area of Sound Called the Subtone (Ahsahta,
forthcoming). He lives in Northampton, MA, where he publishes the Braincase
chapbooks series.
back
to the directory
Kevin
Killian
Terrence
Chiusano | On generation and corruption
| Buffalo: handwritten Press, 2004
Unbound,
the pages of Chiusano’s first significant publication take a stand
and argue for systems of increasing lexical and syntactical complexity,
while retaining the down-home flavor of good old Long Island tack. He
is almost frighteningly good, but if you stand too close you get sucked
in like those glass houses filled with Venus flytraps.
Garin
Cycholl | Blue Mound to 161 | Pavement Saw
Press | PO Box 6291, Columbis, OH 43206
I don’t
usually care for this kind of poetry, but the exception proves the rule.
Cycholl takes a few square miles of territory (in Illinois) and watches
it up and down the 20th Century as it mutates on some kind of Wisconsin
death trip. The dark and bloody crossroads where US writing and politics
are often said to meet has a new signpost that says, "This stretch
of highway adopted by Garin Cycholl." If there are any questions
about this national nightmare, feel free to call him at any time.
Buck
Downs | Golden Taters | Box 53318, WDC 20009
As a tribute
to Jonathan Williams’ poetics, it’s an unusual tribute from
one generation to an older, on a regional basis, in multiple fonts and
multiple eras of US Southern history. "Throw the first fish back
/ hold me that hash bucket / I can still smell your ass in my hair."
It’s raunchy as all get out.
K. Lorraine
Graham | Terminal Humming | Slack Buddha
Press | 50 Garrison Avenue | Somerville, MA 02144
I have
seen Graham’s work compared to that of the late Kathy Acker, she’s
got something of Acker’s sexual frankness, voracious intake, the
sense that anything can come into the writing, but even if she isn’t,
you know, Kathy Acker she’s got something that Acker never had.
I can’t really characterize it right now, but I’m a sucker
for Graham’s writing and this is the best example of it I can name.
Paolo
Javier | The Time at the End of this Writing
| Tokyo/Toronto: Ahadada Books, 2004
Though
he aposteothizes himself as a kind of freee zone of writing between
the large islands of Jose Garcia Villa and Ted Berrigan, Javier’s
best poetry is all about youth and its relentless extremism. Thus there’s
a poem which takes off from the different names by which he is known
to many people--the mirror effect of Lacan writ large. I could read
this forever and hope someday to meet the lad.
Murat
Nemet-Nejat | EDA: An Anthology of Contemporary
Turkish Poetry | Jersey City: Talisman House, 2004
This is
a big book I’ll be poring through for ages, because it brings to
me a number of areas I know nothing of, via the generosity of editor
Murat and publisher Ed Foster. I riffle the pages of this big book and
the air of the Sufi blows back at me. There’s a feeling of utter
strangeness not being familiar with any of the names. Murat’s introductory
matter proposes a mystical reading of poetry, a gathering of a band
of readers that itself flirts with the mystic. I’m all ears.
Barry
Schwabsky and Hong Seung-Hye | Ways | Meritage
Press | $12 | ISBN 89-950473-2-1 03650
If possible,
WAYS looks even more elegant than when Dodie and I published its text
in our zine, "Mirage #4/Period[ical.]" The combination of
Schwabsky’s sparkle and shine with Hong Seung-Hye’s jokey,
Lego-block drawings is a potent one.
•
• •
And then
there are our four new Krupskaya books which appear almost any minute
now. One is by Rob Halpern, called "Rumored
Place," the first book of a young poet and student in
the "HIS-CON" program at UC Santa Cruz. For a long time I’ve
been wanting to see a whole book by Halpern, and it’s great to
actually be part of the publishing collective that’s doing one.
He is one of the bright lights who has been brokering the marriage of
high theory, New Narrative, and Genet-like French symbolism. And everything
is about situationalism to the extent that the term includes the site.
Or mattress in Rob’s case.
Another
book we are doing is called TRAMA
by Kim Rosenfield. Rosenfield has a whole battery of different
styles that she wields effortlessly, like Willlow Rosenberg her spells
and charms, and she can interweave them within a singlle paragraph.
TRAMA to me is a brief, poetic, even picaresque novel about a young
child and also an epic history of a world shimmering under blue smoke
of crisis. Rosenfield’s writing is hypnotic, puts you under.soul.
Deborah
Meadows’ book is called ITINERANT MEN.
Meadows, who lives in the Southland, has been turning various chapters
of Moby Dick into the purest kind of Pan-American verse, and
this book contains the largest selection of them yet. I saw her read
at a reading at Antioch in Marina del Ray and haven’t gotten it
out of my head still, this voyage between the oceans.
We fantasize
that in decades to come, poetic historians will look back at this time
and dub it the Age of Rodrigo Toscano, and they will be reading
TO LEVELING SWERVE as one of the
signal texts of this era. And then and only then will our poetic prognostications
be fully justified, but in the meantime we feel sure that Toscano’s
great gifts have never been more beautifully brought to fruit, and we
have the book that we call, in the loving shorthand of fans, "TLS."
back
to the directory
Aaron
Kunin
Beth
Anderson | Overboard | Burning Deck, 2004
Brian
Blanchfield | Not Even Then | California,
2004
Kevin
Davies | Lateral Argument | Barretta, 2003
Frances
Ferguson | Pornography, The Theory | Chicago,
2004
Graham
Foust | As In Every Deafness | Flood, 2003
Lisa
Jarnot | Ring of Fire | Second edition |
Salt, 2003
Madeleine
de Scudery | Trans. Karen Newman | The Story of
Sapho | Chicago, 2003
Marjorie
Welish | Word Group | Coffee House, 2004
•
• •
Also,
some older books: W.S. Gilbert, The Bab Ballads;
Henry James, The Wings of the Dove; T.S.
Eliot, Four Quartets; and a lot of Jack
Spicer.
back
to the directory
John
Latta
A contribution
arrived at (with the imposed limit of eleven) with some difficulty—after
weighing several strategies of "balance" (wild churning considerations
of gender, generation, trade versus small press, praises unsung versus
lauds oversung, jeez Louise . . .). I pretty much quit the gob-smackin’
and look’d around the room: what (for the most part) seem’d
the flotsam bobbing to surface in the sea of books got the nod. One I
was unhappy to leave out: Jordan Davis’s Million
Poems Journal (really, the whole project—I’m not
entirely convinced that the best Davis poems here end’d up under
the Faux Press imprint). Another nod should go to Dale Smith’s
tremendous | 