tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57574102131828116522024-03-14T00:08:52.241-05:00Read This Awesome BookWendy Xuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10898345191841113438noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-66600817541176605812012-07-12T23:06:00.000-05:002012-07-15T11:13:01.909-05:00A Real Time of It by Sally Delehant<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLo4tp4ZSc28chhOcEKUq0dSWLb4COcxPGRLd3L7Gsb-hc9H0KFkDk9HiFFZlfjzyqfDISoRI1leCcdXNiqQJb07oeq_EoKVjzkLgoCL4Y5Y43BIpy3GMuGHS0QfOP17l6scGfjDmW4Sw/s1600/photo-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLo4tp4ZSc28chhOcEKUq0dSWLb4COcxPGRLd3L7Gsb-hc9H0KFkDk9HiFFZlfjzyqfDISoRI1leCcdXNiqQJb07oeq_EoKVjzkLgoCL4Y5Y43BIpy3GMuGHS0QfOP17l6scGfjDmW4Sw/s320/photo-1.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Feeling nothing<o:p></o:p></div>
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is the opposite of love.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Cultural Society, 2012. This book. Oh, this book. It is
a sunburn in the shape of a fingerprint.
An owl pellet filled with candy hearts and rabbit bones. It is a box of
petit fours left over from a birthday party where somebody has died. <o:p></o:p></div>
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To say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Real Time of
It</i> is a treat is to be horribly cliché. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Ms. Delehant has a pitch-perfect ear for rhythm and sound.
Combined with an eye that scans the fields, seashore, city, and home for only the details that delight and surprise, her lines such as: “hearts/
adorned with habit’s form,” “snow geese scramble tic-tock,” “eggs/ coddled and
under chandelier light,” and “fortune cookies tah-dah a hated taste” read like grown-up
nursery rhymes. Just like in those childhood stories, there is something
inherently charming about “a puddle of pantyhose,” “lamps warm piglets” and “Love the sea’s small
papers/ we crumple and throw.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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But don’t you dare read these poems in a baby voice, though.
Despite its consistent beauty of image and sound, this book snuggles up with sadness. It
is a meditation on deep, human grief: the anguish of losing a parent, the
heartache of a failed relationship. Here, Ms. Delehant performs the very brave
work of expressing real sentimentality in a world that Ping-Pongs between
Hallmark cards and post-modern cynicism. She does that nowhere better than in
her prose poem, “Easter Sunday”:<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the first anniversary of my mother’s death, I bake a
birthday <o:p></o:p></div>
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cake for an attorney I work for. It’s good for me. It
reminds me<o:p></o:p></div>
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that every day is someone’s birthday, until I fuck up the
cake. I<o:p></o:p></div>
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don’t wait long enough for it to cool, the top layer peels
off into<o:p></o:p></div>
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the frosting, and it looks like shit. I drive to the store
to buy a re-<o:p></o:p></div>
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placement cake. I think about how my mom lived—smiled, said<o:p></o:p></div>
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“no problem,” bought cakes, took shit from attorneys. I
don’t <o:p></o:p></div>
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know what the end of post-modernism means or what a poem<o:p></o:p></div>
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should do. I only know to sit outside my apartment in my
dark<o:p></o:p></div>
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car and hold the new cake, with its crown of cookies propped
on<o:p></o:p></div>
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whipped cream, and weep.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The voice in “Easter Sunday” is uncharacteristically blunt
compared to the rest of her poems, but, perhaps because of that—that break and
that surrender—it is this poem that strikes me the hardest.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Real Time of It</i>
is Ms. Delehant’s first book and a resplendent promise for more to come from
this remarkably talented young writer. You can find the book here: <a href="http://www.culturalsociety.org/publications/a-real-time-of-it-poems-by-sally-delehant/">http://www.culturalsociety.org/publications/a-real-time-of-it-poems-by-sally-delehant/</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Buy it. Read it. Love it, I promise you.<o:p></o:p></div>Anne Barngroverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05938008285182183514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-30725238537267431662012-05-22T12:46:00.001-05:002012-05-22T12:46:18.911-05:00Between the Crackups by Rebecca Lehmann<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Salt Publishing, 2011. Winner of the Crashaw Prize. Snaggle-toothed, impish, and daring, Rebecca Lehmann’s debut collection <i>Between the Crackups</i> reads like the love child of Robert Frost with an attitude and Pop Culture with an ear to the ground. Bristling with re-imagined elegies, sonnets, “Letters to a Shithead Friend,” and “A Hundred Words for Loser,” this book completely took me under. At times it was the school bully, passing mean notes in class, spreading vicious rumors. “Bucolic Calling” ends with this unrepentant image: “Mom was in the gravel road crying and we/ laughed at her. We laughed and we laughed at her silly poor-person/ jacket and we laughed at her face, and at her silly tears.” Just as brutal, “For Posterity” snarls the line: “Go publish a bird’s nest.” At other times, though, this book is the victim, exposed, tender and afraid. To contrast, “The Devil is in Detroit” ends with “I never told anyone about the bruise you made,/ but wished I had a bone to break against the world.” In “Particulate Matter,” this stanza nearly broke me:<br />
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To the right of the man,<br />
a mother holds a fistful of gnats,<br />
tells me she is saving them for me.<br />
Each gnat is a heartache I<br />
can’t remember.<br />
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The glow worm energy and dark beauty of this book lie in this double-play of aggression and vulnerability. Lehmann shows us an America we all know but don’t want to see: “A kid sells cotton candy in bags at a busy stoplight in summer”; “In the back alley: half/ a bologna sandwich, a flattened refrigerator box”; “The sky like a bathtub/ emptying, the sun a glob/ of blond hair clogging its drain.” In dreams, too, we are not safe from “a snarling monster/ nesting in my oven, its matted fur/ spotted with light and ice, its snaggle-/ tooth a mess of old skulls, forced together.” My favorite poem in the collection, “My Father’s Fourth Tooth,” paints this unforgettable picture of bully and victim and love:<br />
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A fox hunches<br />
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on a bridge, cracking open a clam.<br />
How pink its shell’s ridges; how mealy<br />
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its muscle, its one lonesome tongue.<br />
And the fox—his teeth gleaming,<br />
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his fur soaked with brackish water,<br />
gray as my father’s hair. <br />
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Part pastoral elegy, part working-man’s ode, and part old-fashioned coming-of-age storytelling, <i>Between the Crackups</i> is an impressive first collection from a bold new poetic voice. Check it out here: http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/9781844718580.htm and Read this Awesome Book!Anne Barngroverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05938008285182183514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-89482514838288394102012-05-11T13:27:00.000-05:002012-05-11T13:27:02.456-05:00SCARED TEXT by Eric Baus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</style><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Center for Literary Publishing, 2011. Central
question: Is the dictionary a bible that is an animal or a story that is a
name? This is the question, or a variant of, that Eric Baus’ <i>Scared Text</i> poses, or disposes of, calling upon language as a semantic menagerie
in which meaning and sound, mythology and etymology, definition and
transformation swarm, dissolve, and amalgamate, revealing the ontological
tension within the acts of speaking and writing. The poem “A Delphi” introduces
Minus and Iris, figures/apparitions/word-animals who are as much their own
definitions as ghosts of Baus’ pluralized “I,” and the characters from which
these poems hang their dream-like narrative, literalizing the poet’s interest
in absence as presence and the fallibility of our primary sense. </span>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Minus tried to write his own bible. It began,
<i>So what, saliva. So what, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i> milk.</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Iris told us her dad died in space. The
whited-out vowels rang in my </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> ears.<i></i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><i> Stupid moon. Stupid burned-up blind spot.</i></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The doctors said his name had burned up. We
never knew how it </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> sounded.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">Baus’ direct statements hypnotize without
confounding, building a world of spiritual breakage in which “Minus’s bible was
reading itself,” and “I woke up behind the sky.” Governed by paradox and
repetitions that accumulate but don’t cohere, “A Delphi” does best what all of
these poems do by walking the line between narrative and non sequitur, quelling
the difference by making it extraordinary, a bit blooming, a bit explosion, the
same. Injecting each syntactically simple phrase with its own lyric dissidence,
Baus allows each (prose) ((yes and no)) poem to move both inward to the music
of each sentence and outward to the illusory movements of the whole collection.
Indeed, the book's obsession with the distinction, or lack of distinction,
between name and namelessness, animate and inanimate, turns every word into an
amplification of its own semantic struggle between meaning and noise.
“Inscribed, blighted, tongue filled with snow. A throat so other I entered my
name,” Baus writes, paralleling language and the act of speaking with the need
for identity and articulation that is so often stunted or stunned by the
inability of language to let us out of its own Bosch-like incongruity. And like
taking in a Bosch painting, reading Baus can leave you a little scared, or
sacred, depending on how your eyes feel it.</span></div>
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</span></div>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-88589779910989801222012-04-15T15:34:00.006-05:002012-04-15T17:29:19.825-05:00The Cost of Walking by Shannon Tharp<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0XKXBXKpKeZFP1r4wSHsvzZR3zWhBAm2cVqPRY3giey4bUbWEjPf449PtQc3-_mb7auziXVVwKr440t3yLhjQszeOWI6u-S7J_7ZpqZkZQIIqaW0iyYClVvykH41bocCGt-qBaE2uCQKY/s1600/photo+%25283%2529.jpg"><span><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0XKXBXKpKeZFP1r4wSHsvzZR3zWhBAm2cVqPRY3giey4bUbWEjPf449PtQc3-_mb7auziXVVwKr440t3yLhjQszeOWI6u-S7J_7ZpqZkZQIIqaW0iyYClVvykH41bocCGt-qBaE2uCQKY/s320/photo+%25283%2529.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5731733097675891586" /></span></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span>Skyskill Press, 2011. I had the pleasure of hearing Shannon Tharp read poems from <i>The Cost of Walking</i> in New York in October. The room fell completely silent as she read. A sudden attentiveness was palpable as the audience awakened to the gravity of her words and to the voice of these poems— one that is careful but insistent and vital. It’s clear that Tharp listens to the sounds of the world, the sounds of her words, and to “the weather within,” as John Taggart writes.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span>The poems in Tharp’s first full-length collection confront various physical landscapes and climates. The images are often Midwestern— fields, stretches of highway, vacant barns, or they are Pacific Northwestern— rain, fog, harbors, the sea. The poems’ speaker pulls at these environments and turns them inward. Of course this comes at a cost— the longing that is established in thinking through the particulars of existence, an awareness that we walk through the world alone, and what we do have is received in moments and pieces. This is what poetry gives us. This is what it can do: “What of birds and the peculiarity of / flight— a pattern by which to scratch // existence. What of me and the inexpense of / sitting in a field with your face / to any nameable thing.” (“Steady, Less and Less”)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span>The poems are often short and sometimes written in one and two word lines. This form gives each word weight and value. It’s as if a wind has blown through the poem leaving just its spine or perhaps the edge of a wound: “The / ocean // reasserts / itself. // Each / wave // makes / a crater.” (“Travelogue”) These poems are real and truly beautiful. We get to dwell solely in the sublime, and that’s refreshing. From “<a href="http://www.culturalsociety.org/texts/poems/after-astronomy/">After Astronomy</a>”:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>“Books, porcelain, windows are open, </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>and heaven could be said </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>to be a wreck.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span><br /></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span>The clouds are here, </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span><i><span>they aren’t up in the sky</span></i><span>— that’s </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>your handwriting, that’s the way you write. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>I told you I need something </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>to hold— here I am cold </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span>with you, without.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span>I could not give a book a higher recommendation. This one’s important. Read it. Get it right here:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-style: normal; "><span><a href="http://skysillpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/cost-of-walking.html"><span>http://skysillpress.blogspot.com/2012/01/cost-of-walking.html</span></a> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 100%; "><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Sally Delehanthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04544751138860749526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-71360989185497190972012-04-11T07:46:00.005-05:002012-04-11T10:04:39.667-05:00OF LAMB by Matthea Harvey & Amy Jean Porter<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-huErLC-SCf8/T4WcAZgS4nI/AAAAAAAAAC8/JOs6traTr_4/s1600/oflambRTAB.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-huErLC-SCf8/T4WcAZgS4nI/AAAAAAAAAC8/JOs6traTr_4/s400/oflambRTAB.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730157631559098994" border="0" /></a>McSweeney's Books, 2011. Packed with wit, dark humor, and twisted pathos, <span style="font-style: italic;">Of Lamb</span> is a collaboration between Matthea Harvey and Amy Jean Porter combining Harvey's erasure of <span style="font-style: italic;">A Portrait of Charles Lamb </span>by David Cecil with Porter's stunning, often slightly disturbing illustrations that creates a contemporary re-telling of the relationship between Mary and her Lamb. With the outward appearance of a children's book and a story within that follows Mary and Lamb's relationship from naive sexual encounter to Lamb's uncomfortable realization of self to the emotional and psychological disintegration of both lovers, <span style="font-style: italic;">Of Lamb</span> beautifully juxtaposes Porter's bright, inviting, thoroughly weird illustrations (like, are those Lamb's genitals?) with Harvey's lines, a mixture of child-like declarative sentences ("Lamb lived in the background") and the slightly antiquated diction of Cecil's original text ("He moved among the rouged illusions of dawn"). As the story progresses and Harvey's lines lead Lamb and Mary together and apart and together again with Porter's illustrations continually complicating and exacerbating the emotional and psychological drama of Mary and Lamb's taboo relationship, <span style="font-style: italic;">Of Lamb</span> develops both a growing magic and a sense of ontological frustration: how, really, can the girl and the animal love one another? However, <span style="font-style: italic;">Of Lamb</span>'s success and delight lies in the fact that it never poses such questions directly but lets the narrative built of Harvey's careful word choices interact with and rattle off and oddly illuminate Porter's illustrations, creating a seamless dialogue between the two artists that endlessly charms, humors, and, thankfully, weirds-out.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P93V3EY3OmM/T4Wc62paGhI/AAAAAAAAADI/qZYBpT7H_mU/s1600/oflamb.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P93V3EY3OmM/T4Wc62paGhI/AAAAAAAAADI/qZYBpT7H_mU/s400/oflamb.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730158635814361618" border="0" /></a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-12051809821534107712012-04-10T13:29:00.000-05:002012-04-10T13:29:32.347-05:00Not Merely Because of the Unknown That was Stalking Toward Them by Jenny Boully<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwW96sPXbP5KB6AALYjzrUC124EXfeFHjl6C1MwAgWCzv2zE4Q8AHIqxiZN1Ez4rvfCMB633YgTkNtsFCJyWoz8foAmHk-7gMGKizH-4ZBkOeTeExMaUuvBaRM-Fne2Dqan679py-HWaP/s1600/Screen+shot+2012-01-31+at+11.09.02+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxwW96sPXbP5KB6AALYjzrUC124EXfeFHjl6C1MwAgWCzv2zE4Q8AHIqxiZN1Ez4rvfCMB633YgTkNtsFCJyWoz8foAmHk-7gMGKizH-4ZBkOeTeExMaUuvBaRM-Fne2Dqan679py-HWaP/s320/Screen+shot+2012-01-31+at+11.09.02+AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I have a big crush on Jenny Boully. This is very awkward for everyone involved. But I can't help it. Her first book, <i>The Body</i>, made me go "Whoah" in a Keanu Reeves manner when I was in graduate school, and her next book<i> [one love affair] </i>prompted an "Oh my God, this is so <i>true</i>" reaction that had me pushing the book onto any person who would listen. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This latest book uses J.M. Barrie's <i>Peter and Wendy</i> (think Peter Pan) as a jumping off point for Boully's intriguing mix of poetry/prose. The darker adult themes that always existed in Barrie's work are pulled forth, and the anxieties and pressures of reaching or avoiding physical and emotional maturity are highlighted. That sounds serious, and it is, but this book is also <i>fun</i> -- from Neverland logistics (does Tinkerbell need tiny tampons?) to Neverland pinups (Tiger Lily in a seashell bikini, the seductive stylings of Hook). Boully's latest will keep you turning the page to see what familiar scene or character she'll reinvent next -- though I confess that as I neared the end I turned the pages more and more slowly, hoping to make it last. </div>Rebecca Hazeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13523408865020263931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-52770149226550297012012-04-06T11:18:00.015-05:002012-04-07T08:48:03.149-05:00I WANT TO OPEN THE MOUTH GOD GAVE YOU BEAUTIFUL MUTANT by Bianca Stone<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-omOKE8l_opU/T39fyRBGkiI/AAAAAAAAACY/RXnp_8eaXy0/s1600/biancastoneRTAB.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-omOKE8l_opU/T39fyRBGkiI/AAAAAAAAACY/RXnp_8eaXy0/s320/biancastoneRTAB.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728402568204685858" border="0" /></a>Factory Hollow Press, 2012. <span style="font-style: italic;">I Want to Open the Mouth God Gave You Beautiful Mutant </span>is a poetry comic written and drawn by Bianca Stone. Imagine if Edward Gorey and Frank O'Hara had the complete DVD set of Star Trek: Voyager when they were roommates at Harvard and the haunting, delightful, generously weird tone of this book, moving line by line, frame by frame, and page by page towards inexplicable wonder, will be immediately clear. In the two pieces in the book, "Waltzing With You" and "Les Miserables," the poetry and the images are so seamlessly combined that it never feels as if one came before the other, as if they were somehow created simultaneously. Blurring distinctions between human and nonhuman, conscious and unconscious, the images have a fragile, hopeful sorrow to them, reminding you that these poetry comics are hand-drawn and that they are human-drawn, in the sense that they are emotionally and imaginatively active, never simply illustrations. That there is never a truly straight line, that nearly every figure and scene is distorted and darkly singular, that lines like "Can you see me in the dusk, asking nothing of it?" are tethered to these figures and scenes in a way that works on a reader's intuition like the waking aftermath of a dream, that as I write this I am realizing that a line is something you both draw and write and how odd it is to have never stumbled on that thought before but how obvious it is that the aesthetic of a drawn line that is never straight would perfectly translate into a written line whose logic, images, or associations are not straight or straight-forward makes so much sense: all of these things contribute to make this book, like any exciting piece of art, an experience that asks to be returned to over and over, never feeling completely tied up. It's as if every time I close and open the book the drawings have slightly shifted or a new line has been added. Did that typewriter say "Enigma Machine" last time I saw it? If only these were the questions we were always asking ourselves.<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1zO4xYiO_Cg/T39zhK9yfHI/AAAAAAAAACw/eYTNIzw1jIY/s1600/Photo%2B15.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1zO4xYiO_Cg/T39zhK9yfHI/AAAAAAAAACw/eYTNIzw1jIY/s400/Photo%2B15.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728424264754953330" border="0" /></a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-42385179700211234702012-04-04T07:27:00.003-05:002012-04-04T07:33:01.603-05:00About the Dead by Travis Mossotti<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTkQj8pAlh_sqcQB4sZ-m8XLEbEkOGnK3KfXSkNpZa7uQbjuhUh5x8dYt8JVclJqklmH_q-2z6dNu-cGMg5BWVnX9Js68Q9ustGM4xEqTa10thWLH_Jybj6lhG0fgoswE0KxE2VLc49a0/s1600/About+the+dead.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTkQj8pAlh_sqcQB4sZ-m8XLEbEkOGnK3KfXSkNpZa7uQbjuhUh5x8dYt8JVclJqklmH_q-2z6dNu-cGMg5BWVnX9Js68Q9ustGM4xEqTa10thWLH_Jybj6lhG0fgoswE0KxE2VLc49a0/s200/About+the+dead.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5727521657020900738" /></a><br />Utah State University Press, 2011. If you’re looking for poetry of brawn and muscle and girth and vertebrae, look no further than Travis Mossotti. Last week I had the pleasure of meeting him over beers and oysters and hearing him read in Tallahassee at FSU’s visiting writer series. Let’s just say those undergrads there for extra credit had no idea what was coming.<br /><br />This book is awesome because it is written by a real person—not some phantom or peacock feathers—about other real people. <span style="font-style:italic;">About the Dead</span> might as well be called <span style="font-style:italic;">About What They Leave Behind</span>, but don’t expect a lot of sitting around and wailing. People do shit in this book. They go tubing (“One generation has tended to this river the same/ as the last and we’ve come here to mock that”), get arrested, go to church, play the blues, and hoe weeds in the same way they might bury their dead. They live in real places that have gas stations and fried chicken meals and hillsides where the dead “…lean against the wood frames/ like turnips wondering why nobody/ ever comes to visit.” In “Alice,” a poem that gives me goose bumps, the speaker follows the memory of a lost love in such tender and unapologetic language: <br /><br />Maybe it was the seam of your black stocking <br />I trailed through Appalachia, chicken dinner<br />cooling on a billboard, the sky opening up<br />its empty skull, gravel dust powdering<br />my unkempt hair with the same dull ivory<br />of the letter you sent me telling me not to come<br /><br />And—thank God—the speaker of these poems feels real people feelings. Nothing is more irritating than a voice that pretends not to hold grudges, wallow in self-pity, get horny (“She walked like most people wish they could fuck.”), get pissed off, get even or at least try our hardest to like the rest of us. When the poem “Apology” ends with this stanza:<br /><br />Maybe your time down here might’ve been better spent<br />learning to fire an M-16 instead of patchworking daisies<br />into your coffin lining. I apologize, that last one was out of line.<br /><br />we know the speaker doesn’t really apologize, and that makes me cackle.Anne Barngroverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05938008285182183514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-2783295122037885752012-03-13T13:57:00.000-05:002012-03-13T13:57:37.174-05:00POST NATIVITY by Joe Hall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6fDQZPEGmaM/T1-YOpN1HII/AAAAAAAAANw/Hu077T_iUy4/s1600/143421.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6fDQZPEGmaM/T1-YOpN1HII/AAAAAAAAANw/Hu077T_iUy4/s400/143421.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<a href="http://publishinggenius.com/?p=588" target="_blank">Publishing Genius 2012</a>.<br />
<br />
Here is a book of poems! It is a very very small book of poems, by Joe Hall, excerpted from his forthcoming full-length <i>The Devotional Poems </i>from Black Ocean. This little book came home with me from AWP, and it was very small and patient with me (some other books I brought home were loud! in a good way! but different!) but today I read it on my porch, and if I was already too excited for The Devotional Poems, then now my excitement is definitely unmanageable.<br />
<br />
POST NATIVITY is a long poem in 3 parts--at moments it prays, other moments it's drunk and falling over, other moments it's being degraded, other moments it's looking around at the terrifying landscape of our inhabitable (UN-inhabitable?) spaces:<br />
<br />
"On a plain of upset bricks, static television screen, a flat emergency<br />
Tone, then the warnings of an angular language ..."<br />
<br />
and later:<br />
<br />
"The night sky gone berserk with light--O Beast, O Christ"<br />
<br />
This little book takes advantage of its small spaces--long lines rollick from darkness into light and back again, into the language of ritual and passage, back down into "LOLOMG, Dear Dave, it's been a hard / couple weeks." And all the way throughout, the eerie shadow of modern global conflict. Our stupid wars. The evening news. The things we can't un-see.<br />
<br />
"Pulled by gangs of men in orange jumpsuits<br />
Bags tied over their heads, keeping pace with a falcon turning regular circles<br />
Around an evil sun -- I watched the flame clothe a tree"<br />
<br />
Read this stunning, powerful little book & then come over to my apartment and we'll plan activities to pass the time until it's 2013 and we're reading The Devotional Poems. I'll make snacks.Wendy Xuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10898345191841113438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-53419715036242377012012-01-19T13:39:00.004-06:002012-01-19T14:14:00.105-06:00Fort Gorgeous by Angela Vogel<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzeVeHWvfFKaIHOO8Fs1cWdmHaztS_cPUmdX4UOrdWgOsANPM4xSe5E4A7AnfsHZvYSmdtN8LQfyhqKNbuandxV_oVM3tnjjSk7FawHG4B0Q2wMeuq1qaKGH6JZ-aHr9iNgToAR_ZihC-D/s1600/IMG-20120117-00813.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 317px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzeVeHWvfFKaIHOO8Fs1cWdmHaztS_cPUmdX4UOrdWgOsANPM4xSe5E4A7AnfsHZvYSmdtN8LQfyhqKNbuandxV_oVM3tnjjSk7FawHG4B0Q2wMeuq1qaKGH6JZ-aHr9iNgToAR_ZihC-D/s400/IMG-20120117-00813.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5699430741502669394" /></a>The National Poetry Review Press, 2011. You'll find my favorite poetry books anywhere but in my hand. Why, you ask? Because my favorite poetry books make me want to write a poem, and when that desire strikes, darn it, you have no choice but to act. Every time I've picked up <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fort-Gorgeous-Angela-Vogel/dp/1935716107">Fort Gorgeous</a></i> by <a href="http://angelavogelpoetry.com/">Angela Vogel</a>--whether settling in to read it cover to cover, or taking a quick peek at a random poem when I'm supposed to be cutting cauliflower--I have been sent to that place. Yes, <i>that place</i>. The one where poems come from, the elusive state we try to evoke at 10:00 pm when the house is finally silent. Thank you, <i>Fort Gorgeous</i>, for putting a spell on me.<div><br /></div><div>What I admire about Angela Vogel's poems is the way that they welcome me as a reader, with a refreshingly frank diction, and images that make me remember why I love images so much. The poems of <i>Fort Gorgeous</i> are replete with flora and fauna, but not in a decorative sense. Instead, the gardens and forests of this book are active champions of their own destinies, perhaps even a bit predatory. Vogel's sense of humor emboldens these poems (I mean, look at the titles! "We'll Go for the Juggler," or "GPS: A Fairytale"), but it's not a slackerish or empty kind of humor. These poems deploy the most subtle and compelling social critiques, poking fun in the process.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Fort Gorgeous</i> should be required reading for anyone grappling with lineation, as Vogel's work exhibits such mastery of the break and turn. "Jubilee Year" begins, "The only thing left is to hang / our hat on regret's haberdasherie," but as readers we want to keep our hats on, not hang them up. This book doesn't belong on a shelf. It belongs in your hand, and then wherever you set it down when it works its bright magic on you. </div>marybidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14100986477346925113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-30407784067188310942012-01-12T08:21:00.003-06:002012-01-12T08:49:15.602-06:00Call the Catastrophists by Krystal Languell<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbga-O6rTGc7npmxRmBQZS0JoOwAzRtBbN3DDBq7E25aJWGmPKpxTq1e77_AQjHHn54mbu7A0dqph7IezetSsZL3aA-7-abZjlfKg51th9cUgRj9DcmXH1agE8HVycViV6xTTZa5zon_4/s1600/IMG-20120106-00778.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 364px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbga-O6rTGc7npmxRmBQZS0JoOwAzRtBbN3DDBq7E25aJWGmPKpxTq1e77_AQjHHn54mbu7A0dqph7IezetSsZL3aA-7-abZjlfKg51th9cUgRj9DcmXH1agE8HVycViV6xTTZa5zon_4/s400/IMG-20120106-00778.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5696750760032383826" /></a><br />BlazeVOX [books], 2011. Sure, we've all heard the ponderous question, "If you were stranded on an island with only five small press poetry books, which would they be, and why?" I would like to propose that you immediately strike #1 on your list, and replace it with <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Call-Catastrophists-Krystal-Languell/dp/160964090X">Call the Catastrophists</a></i> by Krystal Languell. <div><br /></div><div>Simply put, this book is a new book every time you read it. Its three carefully rendered sections--titled CATASTROPHES, SALVAGE, and CONTINUUM--are deceptive in their uniformity, because these sections don't so much contain the poems within, but give them walls to tap upon, ledges to peer over. Languell's lineated poems whistle at their prose poem neighbors, and she seems equally adept with either form, as well as in poems where she makes use of the field, such as "Flesh: A Clarification." <div><br /></div><div>What is remarkable about this book is how Languell is able to take everyday occurrences and objects and make them both frightful and enlightening, from a fortuitously aligned sunset to a bundle of twigs wrapped in a red bow. These are contemplative poems that manage to never get lost in their own thoughts, though we may find ourselves returning to them while gazing at a streetscape or washing dishes. The final poem in the book, "Suggestions for Longevity," tells us, "You'll want to think the end isn't your fault. Get organized. Go for a hike. Start a non-profit. // I don't do that kind of thing, but I'm not the one who wants to live forever."</div></div><div><br /></div><div>This book might just make you want to live forever, or at least to savor its pages on a deserted island, not bothering to scan the horizon for any signs of rescue. </div>marybidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14100986477346925113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-6256927706250611322012-01-09T14:46:00.006-06:002012-01-09T15:23:17.886-06:00The Last Decent Jukebox in America by Doug Cox<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimmnwPhafeLiX6LpvMBo10AvJdiuwKIH5qegzkoL41LTBR1DhSZb8rlNZuPTyHDiyz7vYiLmQBNc_vEVDlzx0XWGTJ5-RMzU558iykGlVLJXNnyOa3Z8AIUtQmZesEEeV5ZQX2xrS6WH4/s1600/Photo+on+2012-01-09+at+15.18.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimmnwPhafeLiX6LpvMBo10AvJdiuwKIH5qegzkoL41LTBR1DhSZb8rlNZuPTyHDiyz7vYiLmQBNc_vEVDlzx0XWGTJ5-RMzU558iykGlVLJXNnyOa3Z8AIUtQmZesEEeV5ZQX2xrS6WH4/s320/Photo+on+2012-01-09+at+15.18.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695744878506801458" /></a><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><div><div><span >LS&S Press, 2011. Sometimes poems call on their ancestors, sometimes they call them out. Doug Cox's poems do both, singing the praises of muses--family, musicians, other poets--while refraining from being too starry-eyed. Those muses, after all, are human, too, with flaws and failings that Cox's poems refuse to overlook; the narrators in these poems are like the friend you can trust to tell you (kindly) when you're being a jerk. </span></div><div><span ><br /></span></div><div><span >But the reason you should read it? Because these poems will become muses, too. Cox's poems dive into raucous punk rock benders, the unwieldy weight of loss, and insufferable injustices, wrapping them in received forms (ghazals, sonnets, villanelles) that try to give shape to, make manageable life's enormities. Still, sound escapes. When read aloud, the poems hum low, almost inaudible notes. They emit the hard crack of static. They howl with feedback. They fill you with song until you've got no choice but to bust out a poem of your own. </span></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-27352406175698113642012-01-08T17:07:00.004-06:002012-01-08T19:43:17.752-06:00I AIN'T ASKED ANY PARDON FOR ANYTHING I DONE by Sasha Fletcher<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-49_StkbimCo/Two32tmkl6I/AAAAAAAAAB0/wF60pCx1QJM/s1600/fletchercover.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-49_StkbimCo/Two32tmkl6I/AAAAAAAAAB0/wF60pCx1QJM/s320/fletchercover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695426091857254306" border="0" /></a><br />Greying Ghost, 2011. Sasha Fletcher's poems give us a world where everything is persistently consuming and being consumed by an extreme code of ethics, or lack thereof, defined by a brutal bandit-and-bible landscape. In other words, everyone and everything is either leaving, dying, crying, killing, or on fire. A cinematic Western-meets-Salamun-like logic puts us in deserts that eat tears, with coyotes who cut open other coyotes to hide inside them, and in trains that spontaneously burst into flames, all driven by an ontological hunger for survival that, as the title suggests, shuns forgiveness. Through it all, Fletcher transforms these formulaic characters and settings into darkly strange lyrics that meld human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, in bizarre situations that reveal the binary of malice and hope that governs our desires. Written in long lines that waver between violent directness and biblical intensity, these poems want to break out of themselves. In it's entirety, <span style="font-style: italic;">I am Feeling Good</span>:<br /><br /><br />There are eggs from buzzards that I caught falling from the sky.<br /><br />I opened my eyes until the sun burned them out and I grew new ones.<br /><br />I bent my arm in the middle of all the bones. I heard them crack. The crack<br />I heard was the splitting of an old dead tree set on fire and left to burn.<br /><br />I let the dust wash my tongue I let the bandits wash over me and swallow me<br />and pass around me and I saw it all and it was good and I pronounced it.<br /><br />I howl but no sound comes out.<br /><br />I will try harder next time to think more softly.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I Ain't Asked Any Pardon For Anything I Done</span> is already sold out from Greying Ghost - even more evidence that this is an awesome book. If you don't know anyone who already owns a copy of this chapbook you need to need to get to know them. And as always, the elegant presentation from GG, with vintage battle maps in the interior, makes the experience that much better.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><br /></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-58965690514844321812012-01-03T16:52:00.004-06:002012-01-05T10:18:29.201-06:00The Naming of Strays by Erin Elizabeth Smith<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJLzIgo2NwG8W6350gfQID5vBwhy5B_clrz482wEExUEFAhB0xGTbRtdZIQ2HjRAZDuXgX41fyq9HUUjhCmMsaFn8elzK82t1clIoaebi2aBNk534mcbUU7vPsTbMeQ_zr8i9dDreceGs/s1600/143013.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJLzIgo2NwG8W6350gfQID5vBwhy5B_clrz482wEExUEFAhB0xGTbRtdZIQ2HjRAZDuXgX41fyq9HUUjhCmMsaFn8elzK82t1clIoaebi2aBNk534mcbUU7vPsTbMeQ_zr8i9dDreceGs/s200/143013.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693543007602946050" /></a><br />There’s no forgiveness<br />in empty bottles, the silent<br />teeth of blackouts on bourbon<br />and cheap shiraz…<br /><br />Gold Wake Press, 2011. Sound like your New Year’s Eve? 2012 has started off on a sassy note with Erin Elizabeth Smith’s <span style="font-style:italic;">The Naming of Strays</span>—a collection that drawls and howls in a voice that’s unapologetic yet unmistakably real.<br /> <br />The texture of this book is cool in two ways. One, the front cover literally has kind of a velvety feel, which is always a plus. Two, throughout the four sections, which are divided into the Oxford definitions of the noun and verb “stray,” we are forced to see and feel and taste the worlds of the wanderer, deviator, roamer, animal.<br /> <br />To put it bluntly, these poems aren’t afraid to “go there.” Whereas another poet may bask in the cheery refuge of a home-cooked meal, Smith describes a “Still Life with Cook after One-Night Stand” as: “An uncooked bird needs/ brining, its pale rubber body/ sink-warm. There are cranberries/ to bleed. Lettuce to crack and clean.” The very next poem is titled “Driving Next to Two Men I’ve Slept With.” Yeah, we cringe, it’s awkward, we want to look away, but she refuses to with lines like: “In the bayou, the trees/ don’t speak, but deal in secrets/ and human combustion” and “We are three in this car but were once two-/ and two again. We try to believe nothing/ before this highway existed, these bodies that sheen/ like blades.” And again, the next poem, “Lovebugs” (for anyone who’s lived south of I-10, you know what these are), Smith exposes the creepiness and uncertainty of instinctual lust with: “They bang/ into banisters”… “love turned/ beast and blood in the streets.”<br /><br />Building in verve and momentum, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Naming of Strays</span> demands to be heard and remembered. You won’t regret taking it in. Happy 2012 y’all, and Read this Awesome Book!Anne Barngroverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05938008285182183514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-22340511627099189962011-12-19T15:49:00.008-06:002011-12-19T17:13:12.229-06:00CALIFORNIA by Jennifer Denrow<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jtZKpO5d9cQ/Tu_CIvO4ezI/AAAAAAAAABo/eba8nTut_o4/s1600/CALIFORNIA.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jtZKpO5d9cQ/Tu_CIvO4ezI/AAAAAAAAABo/eba8nTut_o4/s320/CALIFORNIA.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687978309765856050" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z5AbmH-tlU4/Tu-yupbet7I/AAAAAAAAABQ/jwjmV0mC3eI/s1600/CALIFORNIA.jpg"><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-alt:Cambria; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -</style></a><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-alt:Cambria; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --></style>Preface: Jennifer Denrow’s <i>California</i><span style="font-style: normal"> is one of the most underrated books of 2011.<br /><br />These poems are an ethereal mapping of how our selves, our voices, our thoughts, and our desires are embodied, or, as it is, disembodied in the act of being. To exist is both a sorrow and joy, but what do we mean when we say something exists? How does place exist? How, through the act of thinking and speaking, do we transform ourselves, our own being? What does it mean to have a mouth? What does it mean to use it? And what does it mean to use someone else’s mouth? Denrow reaches inside and manipulates these questions into poems that are mirrors as much as they are their own breathing bodies, challenging the boundaries between the real, the artificial, and the imagined, and pointing to the place, the California, where they meet.</span><br /><br /><br />When I’m in California I’ll go to the beach<br />and cry. All of the seagulls will crowd<br /><br />around me and force my mouth open<br />with their wings.<br /><br /><br />The book is appropriately ordered into three acts which, rather than sections, speak to Denrow's interest in the theatricality of being; how we act and are acted upon, how our selves become other. The first act, the long poem “California,” follows a speaker through her yearning to leave her life for a California that is more fiction than reality. “I should drive away from my life,” she states, and that is only the beginning. California becomes myth, utopia, and salvation until, ultimately, the rest of the world becomes an imitation of California.<br /><br /><br />I buy California style pizza and beer. I drop my ID when the woman<br />asks to see it.<br /><br />No one in the store looks like they could be from California.<br /><br />A baby eats some keys.<br /><br /><br />But what’s frightening here is that the speaker’s California is imagined, an end of America that is a means to forgetting her own inability to be other than herself. “If California didn’t exist, I’d still want to go there,” and that’s the terror of a heaven, that it could also be a hell, that it could be right now, that it could be nothing.<br /><br />The third act, “A Knee for a Life,” is an ingenious series of epistolary poems between ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, which is as sorrowful and funny as it is disturbing and tender. Again, these poems raise issues of agency, theatrics, and the continual cross-pollination of the real and imagined. <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Dear Edgar,<br /><br />Even in the stage light<br />your birds are not quiet.<br /><br />Your hand is a little colder today. Are you feeling well?<br /><br />Has anyone ever told you your hands are like soft, skyless<br />animals?<br /><br /><br />The question here, what or who animates us and what does it mean to feel or sense that animation, is at the root of what it means to speak, think, and create in this world. The answer is a dive into the spiritual grace and frenzied mystery that compels us to imagine beyond ourselves, and that Denrow is such a master of. From “California”:<br /><br /><br /><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>…He said, <i>Why do you want to go there?</i><i><br /><br />Because I have to.</i><i><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span><br /></i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-58961843797862202782011-11-28T10:43:00.000-06:002011-11-28T10:43:59.596-06:00PANIC ATTACK, USA by Nate Slawson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uNuMiIFtMgE/TtO51FsvbDI/AAAAAAAAALI/XG8Yvg1IvyY/s1600/114000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uNuMiIFtMgE/TtO51FsvbDI/AAAAAAAAALI/XG8Yvg1IvyY/s400/114000.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">YesYes Books, 2011. To say too much about Nate Slawson’s PANIC ATTACK, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> is to fail at matching its beauty and energy. I will be brief and trust you, to read this awesome book.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This book punched me in my face-heart (you have one too) and I liked it. In love indiscriminately with joy and hurt, these poems <i>feel</i> deeply—Slawson’s speaker (Slawson himself, or otherwise) knows that sometimes beauty is a sledgehammer to the knees, but still can’t seem to look away:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“call me Ponyboy and I’ll bleed all my blood for you</div><div class="MsoNormal">I am committed to that & fucking amen.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And from one of my favorites, O SHOTGUN:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“In my chest are coalveins.</div><div class="MsoNormal">You have the blackest eyes</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have ever seen & your flowers</div><div class="MsoNormal">smell devastating. Like one</div><div class="MsoNormal">hundred rabbits in love</div><div class="MsoNormal">with magnolia blossoms.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Just when it begins to feel like love isn’t enough, this book keeps believing in “all the ways a slow song / could undress you,” no matter the terror that nakedness and solitude brings. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">PANIC ATTACK, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">USA</st1:place></st1:country-region> makes me believe in believing. Being alive is important, and these poems chronicle a very amazing part of how it is equal parts pain, and sheer ecstasy. I am trying to be as emphatic as possible here on the internet in text. You'll love this book!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Wendy Xuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10898345191841113438noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-1448552948259379162011-11-09T19:35:00.004-06:002011-11-09T19:49:27.914-06:00The Disinformation Phase by Chris Toll<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oul34Ib6MFg/Trsrlo-ZH8I/AAAAAAAAABE/0R1kCf7NrXs/s1600/disinformationphase.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oul34Ib6MFg/Trsrlo-ZH8I/AAAAAAAAABE/0R1kCf7NrXs/s320/disinformationphase.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673176081257537474" border="0" /></a><br /><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-alt:"Trebuchet MS Bold Italic"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --></style>Publishing Genius, 2011. Chris Toll has built a book of machines called <i>The Disinformation Phase</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. By Chris Toll I mean an alien who filters his dreams through vampire movies and writes encrypted letters about his own past and future hearts. By machines I mean that these poems are always eating their own parts, reinventing their own uses. This is because Toll uses words like they’re little piñatas, beating them with a metaphysical wiffle bat until praying mantises and algebra fall out. “I made my head and now I’ll weep into it,” Toll writes in “The Third Station of the Double-Crossed,” foregrounding emotional confetti over the dull armchair of coherence, putting semantics in the cathedral and letting it light the fuse. “Why is dent in resplendent?” he asks, and “Who pays the rent / in incoherent?” and it is good that Chris Toll is asking these questions because words are keeping all kinds of secrets. Like, when “a cheetah sleeps on an adverb,” (from “I Can’t Stand Along the Watchtower”) I totally understand because there is a modification taking place, which is part of the rule (an adverb is a word that modifies a verb), and I am also feeling partially rewired, epistemologically thawed, because few poems are willing to dive off their own cliffs into the accumulative, spaceship-colored, mysterious soup that builds our souls, or what’s left of them.</span> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br />One of the most electric things about <i>The Disinformation Phase</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> are the “translations” of canonical poets spread throughout the collection. Each translation is paired with a short paragraph explaining the imagined discovery and history of the particular poem. Trying to summarize these narratives doesn’t do them justice: just know that Edgar Allen Poe’s step-mother goes skiing in Colorado and that John Keats believes in the force, like The Force. Here’s a stanza from one of Toll’s translations of an Emily Dickinson poem, “My Ruby Hat,” written in French and then hidden in a cupboard:</span> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br />"I have the Gift of Second Sight –<br />Despair guzzles Gin’s Alphabet.<br />A Spider kneads a throne on the Moon.<br />The snoozing Singer writhes." <p class="MsoNormal"> </p><br />Indeed, Chris Toll’s irreverent imagination is a weird holy light in these poems. This is one of those books that you leave out on your desk, a thing you keep in reach, not only because its incredible cover (one of Toll’s own collages) refuses to be hidden on a bookshelf, but because these poems are irreducible, subversive fun. “You can see / as well with the heart / as with the eyes,” he writes in “Why Is Try in Poetry?” and that’s what’s at the riotous heart of this book, a rare, illimitable faith in internal wonder.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-82813211971386821752011-10-16T17:48:00.000-05:002011-10-16T17:48:21.636-05:00I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur by Mathias Svalina<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BMZJv9co2WE/Tpte89kslRI/AAAAAAAAAKM/QnuQJNTtf28/s1600/184640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BMZJv9co2WE/Tpte89kslRI/AAAAAAAAAKM/QnuQJNTtf28/s400/184640.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Mudluscious Press, 2011. This book is at once hilarious, heartbreaking, and decidedly important in our very real, very odd (sometimes terrible) world of consumer madness. It is according to my definition, very amazing. I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPENEUR contains short chapters / poems (however you like best, to think of them) each detailing a different business started by the speaker. But nobody here is selling t-shirts or coffee. These businesses sell the fantastic, the almost-unimaginable, and the before now un-commoditized things to a hungry capitalist world:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I started this one business that </div><div class="MsoNormal">employed generous looking, kind-hearted looking</div><div class="MsoNormal">people to walk by you & smile warmly at the exact</div><div class="MsoNormal">moment when all you can think about when you see a</div><div class="MsoNormal">building is how tall it would have to be to ensure that</div><div class="MsoNormal">the fall would kill you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The products in this book are the things we want but can’t have—the “solutions” to our very human problems and feelings that an exploded entrepreneurial culture has tricked us into believing we need, and can buy:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I started this one business that gave</div><div class="MsoNormal">the parents of deceased children a glassful of sugar-</div><div class="MsoNormal">water each morning as they left their houses.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We could never make the sugar-water sweet enough.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As a means of commenting on it, this book uses a razor-sharp and beautiful imagination to participate in our problematic capitalist detachedness. It will make you think about things you know, in a way you didn’t know to think about them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span> </span>READ THIS AWESOME BOOK! </div>Wendy Xuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10898345191841113438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-23448700744481424992011-09-23T14:43:00.001-05:002011-09-23T14:44:17.992-05:00Speak Low by Carl Phillips<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj46mjeO0bSbbaPVq9hR61N5daHTvM_4gV9v18qWaHJ52Rs3Dn6qWVCbp065rBUyH2fZWzKtJ-ykTbpUfOw8PMTvwrSYpF-rmewn0nBJMD-mUw9yz1Aja2tMlneEJq5_BKVdAE8rKZmp9WL/s1600/Photo+on+2011-09-21+at+13.26.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj46mjeO0bSbbaPVq9hR61N5daHTvM_4gV9v18qWaHJ52Rs3Dn6qWVCbp065rBUyH2fZWzKtJ-ykTbpUfOw8PMTvwrSYpF-rmewn0nBJMD-mUw9yz1Aja2tMlneEJq5_BKVdAE8rKZmp9WL/s320/Photo+on+2011-09-21+at+13.26.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. The highest compliment to a book you love might be not being able to articulate why you love it. I can tell you that I love Phillips' use of recursive as he tries again and again to pin down <i>how</i> to say what he's saying, as well as whether or not what he says is valid. I can tell you that I love how Philips uses sex, and particularly the dynamics of power within rough sex, to ground these cerebral and philosophical poems. I can tell you these poems are hot. I can tell you they are intellectually demanding. None of this really gets to the heart of why I like this book, why I keep picking it up and reading poems at random, reading them out loud to anyone who will listen, holding up the book and saying, "You must read this." You're one of those people now.Rebecca Hazeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13523408865020263931noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-69096651008249893252011-09-17T12:41:00.008-05:002011-09-17T13:02:25.035-05:00Heavy Petting by Gregory Sherl<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkfO6Xxxd7T5SBE5B5J0qluPWGOyuvZCgTvb99G7oMaDP49nwXU7vvdIrSGPXCGljkFPPg0Zo2sI1oVj2-8CcRG9d6ighPqJ3i4pYAas637HJqxtzA1yLGipi35kd8EzQOlNIg2MMRxJE/s1600/172053.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkfO6Xxxd7T5SBE5B5J0qluPWGOyuvZCgTvb99G7oMaDP49nwXU7vvdIrSGPXCGljkFPPg0Zo2sI1oVj2-8CcRG9d6ighPqJ3i4pYAas637HJqxtzA1yLGipi35kd8EzQOlNIg2MMRxJE/s200/172053.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5653385738400698866" /></a><br />YesYes Books, 2011. Let’s just put this out there: while reading this book, you will want to put it down and go nuzzle something that can nuzzle back. You will probably get a little hot and bothered. You’ll want to brush your teeth and then dip a finger in frosting. You will most certainly want to be kind.<br /><br />Our generation is often called “The Selfish Generation” by older people who believe they are less selfish than we are. In a lot of ways, I agree that a fair few of us might as well bop around singing “Here I am, me me me me me!” while simultaneously updating our iPhones, iPads and personal Facebook profiles. And yet, while the speaker of <span style="font-style:italic;">Heavy Petting</span> may be self-loving at times, this is only because he doesn’t have any other choice. Because when we turn ourselves inside-out from selfish to selfless for another selfish person, what happens? We’ve all gone from “<span style="font-style:italic;">I love you like waterfalls love shampoo commercials</span>,” “touch you like a showerhead,” “fuck like a clothesline on a Saturday afternoon” to feeling like “every rejected Snapple fact,” “stuck inside your Easy Bake Oven” and “so/ far apart from each other it’s like we’re not even connected by stars. The stars said/ fuck it and gave up.” At some point we’ve all said: “Like: even when I love you I get lonely.” Maybe the older generation has it all wrong about us.<br /><br />This past week I attended a reading by a writer who’d published a memoir about growing up in South Africa. During the Q&A, a snarky undergrad from the back asked, “Does it ever bother you that it’s self-indulgent to write a memoir?” The writer chuckled and responded brilliantly, “Do I ever feel it’s self-indulgent? Yes. Does it bother me? No.” Everyone laughed, but then he turned back to the undergrad and said, “You know, I think that what’s most important to avoid being self-indulgent in our writing [because, I mean, seriously, how can you <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> write about yourself in some way?] is to always be curious about yourself.” That answer really stuck with me. After all, isn’t being curious about yourself being curious about humanity in general?<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Heavy Petting</span> is a collection that is at once luxurious and exuberant in its voice and wholly generous and empathetic in its heart. We can sling-shot from the aching image: “I have cried so many days there is a river under my bed. The monster has grown/ gills, webs between its toes,” to: “When we kiss, the audience sighs. Some asshole coughs” as well as literal drawings of “a firefly eating a bear” and “An anorexic banana.” It’s like we have been vaulted into a world that is both alien and yet unmistakingly familiar. I promise you: you won’t want to leave. And, you’ll most likely want to bring somebody along with you.<br /><br />You have been warned.Anne Barngroverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05938008285182183514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-88705496976918158712011-08-29T12:06:00.004-05:002011-08-29T12:37:04.667-05:00The Trees The Trees by Heather Christle<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkVHzbg6ENvQ4PsNj0RrDQCvh60gilhWfhaJtQyHt0znsigazH6n9T2PbziP08LZ4ZvbqwBkghfoOIxWZAmK2kJNYzQRftScLiVUZrR4d12LluSk-jB51Hg1Y1iplSJ4xH4B0UEMxgSCGN/s1600/IMG-20110826-315.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 362px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkVHzbg6ENvQ4PsNj0RrDQCvh60gilhWfhaJtQyHt0znsigazH6n9T2PbziP08LZ4ZvbqwBkghfoOIxWZAmK2kJNYzQRftScLiVUZrR4d12LluSk-jB51Hg1Y1iplSJ4xH4B0UEMxgSCGN/s400/IMG-20110826-315.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5646327204581913890" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">Octopus Books, 2011. A rivet is a mechanical fastener, and it is permanent, so when I tell you that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Trees The Trees</i> by Heather Christle will rivet you, I mean forever, and even more so, I mean it will connect things that never expected to be connected, and it will connect them for good. What better way to unite A with B than in prose poems that have a cellular structure all their own? If not a cross-section of xylem, then a bright repurposing of the caesura, a series of hidden rooms, a brief pulsation of non-text. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">This is a book of reversals and variations. Think back to when your mother told you not to get on that pirate ship ride at the carnival, the one where a metal bar was all that kept you from being flung onto the horizon, and no matter how cool you were, you just had to scream a little as the giant boat made its swing. It was natural. And that’s the swing Christle recreates again and again in these poems.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m not talking about paddle boating along a traditional narrative arc or lunge, but something so new that we feel immediately at home in it. Each of the poems in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Trees The Trees</i> is a thriller. 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unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">Everyday objects inhabit Christle’s poems with such urgency that we may become more suspicious of our surroundings, or perhaps even enchanted by them. In “The Actual Future,” “I am a handbag ____I am the kind of handbag nobody weeps into____except for when I went to the ten-year reunion____then everyone wanted to weep into me.” (Dear reader, please note that the lines in these quotes are meant to be spaces, not lines). Or in “Condo,” “microwave doubles as a nightlight____this is that other song____the one that likes to sing itself.”
<br />
<br />In a collection that marries death with rebirth, while maintaining simultaneous and separate preoccupations with both, it’s the helmets and scissors and owls and cats that remain steadfast. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Trees The Trees</i> is a haunting, rapturous tribute to both the known and unknown, and what happens when the two collide.
<br /></p> marybidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14100986477346925113noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-89786938372190455682011-08-25T18:07:00.000-05:002011-08-25T18:07:53.768-05:00Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me by Mark Leidner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vTZ9DQq_1sA/TlbVkhA_pLI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/rHh2LILhD8c/s1600/180829.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vTZ9DQq_1sA/TlbVkhA_pLI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/rHh2LILhD8c/s400/180829.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Factory Hollow Press, 2011. Mark Leidner's BEAUTY WAS THE CASE THAT THEY GAVE ME has one of the sweetest cover designs I have ever seen, but that is not the point. The point is that the name of this blog and this book might as well be the same thing. I am going to skip over the part where I tell you Yes it's funny, Yes the language is fresh, Yes Mark Leidner is a very good poet etc etc, so I can get to the part where I tell you that this book will say "Hey I Love You" in ways sometimes unusual, sometimes "unpoetic," and sometimes bordering on totally indecent and uncomfortable. From "Mutually Assured Childhood Molestation" (what did I JUST say?):<br />
<br />
"In which case, and my point is<br />
I must have been molested by someone beautiful<br />
because I'm attracted to you<br />
and you are beautiful<br />
and my attraction is strong<br />
and of the beyond-my-control variety<br />
precisely the kind of attraction brought on<br />
by supersecret prepubescent abuse."<br />
<br />
These poems propose over and over that there is no better or worse way to be delivered into the arms of other people--they build into themselves a ridiculous, laughable conceit, but it's the poems' die-hard commitment to these absurdities that ultimately illuminates the ephemeral nature of love and language. Everything is interchangeable, as perhaps best seen in the poem "What's Cool Changes," which so ridiculously discusses the slippery nature of "cool" for close to a page, but ends with "Now, those and only those who ... are willing to alter their entire / belief structures to keep pace with what's cool as it changes, are, in the end, and / all alone, completely cool." Leidner praises adaptability, fluidity, and knowing that sometimes the best way to pin-down "the point," is not to try at all. Humor and a gracious love of playfulness are abundant in this book. When the poems do touch upon the decidedly UN-hilarious (and they do, upon war, upon death) there is a feeling of organic, genuine awakening to their consciousness:<br />
<br />
"And at what age<br />
do normal men mature?<br />
I wonder this and get a boner...<br />
and yet there are some things<br />
that do not give me a boner:<br />
the level of tranquility<br />
a Jeep of body bags achieves<br />
jostling off along a twisting gravel<br />
path, bound for home;<br />
the bracing red and white of flags<br />
crisply creased,<br />
handed over."<br />
<br />
The precision with which Leidner's poems turn from the ordinary to face the underlying horror of American living is tremendous. It will make your head spin in a way that you want. Read this awesome book and then sue me if it doesn't become your new favorite thing ever. I'm not worried.Wendy Xuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10898345191841113438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-75199465255144434392011-08-16T21:39:00.009-05:002011-08-17T00:06:56.790-05:00Beautiful in the Mouth by Keetje Kuipers<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQx9QJUq9CuzUJ5mwwNbah7RXGJlNH17xz2rxTbx91dSbhdU1bTbQFl_6ok-AMgU7JA1khuDpRderLVn9L3IObXAdA4wT3Pe5sBDmr7WBu1GJjTmX8vCBxrHTxQN2wSFBIWeE80pmkEPA/s1600/142953.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 160px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQx9QJUq9CuzUJ5mwwNbah7RXGJlNH17xz2rxTbx91dSbhdU1bTbQFl_6ok-AMgU7JA1khuDpRderLVn9L3IObXAdA4wT3Pe5sBDmr7WBu1GJjTmX8vCBxrHTxQN2wSFBIWeE80pmkEPA/s200/142953.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641649695737916498" /></a>
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<br />BOA, 2010. Winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Whooo, I’m on a plane! (This explains why the book in the photo is upside down—I had a very limited time to take this picture before being labeled as a freak.) Ok first off, I was sort of conflicted about reviewing <span style="font-style:italic;">Beautiful in the Mouth</span> for the very selfish reason that I love this book so much I kind of just wanted to keep it all to myself. It’s like when I was a kid and made my sister check out <span style="font-style:italic;">Betsy-Tacy</span> from the library because I refused to share my own copy, despite how my mom always said “she’s not gonna read the words off the page!”
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<br />False. If you are a human being—if you have maybe loved someone or lost someone or perhaps moved somewhere at some point in your life—the poetry of Keetje Kuipers is going to lodge itself inside of you and <span style="font-style:italic;">cling on</span>. This book Sumo-wrestles with that whole mythical Julia Roberts-esque notion that if you up and run off somewhere new it will become a fresh start and you’ll leave all that aching and thoroughly un-sexy crap behind.
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<br />Here, Keetje (I feel like this chick and I are on that kind of first-name basis) explores how the raw presence of loss can morph, echo and take shape in very different landscapes. She treks us somewhere west of the Rockies (“The salt shaker heart wants to make all the lies come true, wants to make/ the horses throwing sparks with their shoes on the scree slope/ into deer, wants to make the deer into wolves”) and through the cosmopolitan loneliness of New York City (“I have tried to forget your light, the way it breaks/ me open, even now, and makes me speak,/ how it glitters up and down Eighth Avenue,/ swirling in pools of snowmelt”). And, in perhaps one of her most powerful poems, “Across a Great Wilderness Without You,” she confesses:
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<br /> But I carry a gun now. I’ve cut down
<br /> a tree. You wouldn’t recognize me in town—
<br /> my hands in my pockets, two disabused tools
<br /> I’ve retired from my life of touching you.
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<br />Throughout her wandering she speaks this very human truth: there are the ways we change, and then, there are the ways—no matter how much it breaks us—we stay the same. Keetje’s next book, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Keys to the Jail</span>, is forthcoming also from BOA in Spring 2012, and I for one can't wait to hear from her again soon.
<br />Anne Barngroverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05938008285182183514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-27306986037178785092011-08-14T16:52:00.002-05:002011-08-14T17:00:27.525-05:00Fables by Sarah Goldstein<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVbUODpbsRvLgFUrVFZSKE44DcXYRDbXGQ0Hn-XvmU1kMZFOUU1VTwZSute80NaV3U6gR8a13iHiwNK0arvO8CBP2IPL003c4CyvEF-tJTXO5WAFPo6u8QZjG_ZRb4twDPkQRMjjU-LI/s1600/Picture0057.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqVbUODpbsRvLgFUrVFZSKE44DcXYRDbXGQ0Hn-XvmU1kMZFOUU1VTwZSute80NaV3U6gR8a13iHiwNK0arvO8CBP2IPL003c4CyvEF-tJTXO5WAFPo6u8QZjG_ZRb4twDPkQRMjjU-LI/s320/Picture0057.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;">Tarpaulin Sky 2011</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
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My friend Zachary and I were talking about monsters a few months ago in relation to a research project I'm putting together and he said, "A day doesn't go by when people don't think of monsters. The threat is always present." In particular, the threat of harm is always lingering in edges of what we can't know. The ambiguity lacquered into shadows, the dripping voices around the corner; at the very least we must be weary of the unknown.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sarah Goldstein's collection <i>Fables</i>, completes the aforementioned criteria, and then becomes <i>fucking </i>menacing. As with an fable or fairy tale, we choose to believe in the niceties of what Disney has provided us with; however, almost all of these stories were horrifically grim (or Grimm). Goldstein does not allow us to afford any hope that we will not be harmed. For instance, the second poem from her Fables section creeps into our viscera and won't let us breathe:</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The girl comes clambering up the hill from the meadow to the house, whispering the message into her hands. <i>Now the sheep in the field, the holes in the ground; </i>and she stops, having entered the kitchen. Her mother is on the floor in the corner, curled with her fingers in her mouth. The rabbit her father tossed on the counter for stew has awakened, and they watch as it lurches towards the window. Outside, the dogs begin to howl and their father comes into the kitchen. He holds his shovel like a sword, breathing heavily. In the barn, the cats are stalking the mice they killed that morning, mice that now stagger across the rough-hewn floors. (8)</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Something in these poems is twisting necks of chickens behind you. Something in these poems has a frightening smile. Then, you enter the poems and see what is menacing behind you.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">The book is split up into 3 parts, and a prelude and epilogue (or at least I'd like to think it is that way). And all the while, the you and I slowly creep from the sweating pours of these poems and as a reader they become too close for comfort. The best comparison to this book, for me, is the German film <i>White Ribbon.</i> Suffice to say, this is a horrific and threatening film that never relents in its promise of violence:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj142/dotiara/600full-the-white-ribbon-screenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj142/dotiara/600full-the-white-ribbon-screenshot.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Through the filter of this film, these poems have an all too real probability of menacing from under your tongue. There is an unsettling viscera being manipulated and probed; Goldstein's ambiguity does not judge what has or is about to happen: "If the ghost of your true love appears at your window, cover your eyes with cotton and stay still until dawn. But if the ghost comes again the next night, you must lead her back to her jagged body in the cellar where she lies." (48)</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">These poems beg the read to consider possibility, which is the most frightening after-gloaming our imaginations are able to task. This book is monstrous.</span></div>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06825745902299410514noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5757410213182811652.post-57838944697199268602011-08-10T10:23:00.000-05:002011-08-10T10:23:30.298-05:00American Busboy by Matthew Guenette<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK6SiUrp7WXw2wpdrlBvUbwDGeG8ISnKFGU0eQWwN5h0nwXci09JEi_s3ww2CuxtaJjBaDuCMOeKDVXs_aa95YjRdlQstcUb5DuofZ7orgIT6BkBTI2LP5D5NFGWo4ZkcqSHAXGNdbdqdk/s1600/Photo+on+2011-08-10+at+10.03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK6SiUrp7WXw2wpdrlBvUbwDGeG8ISnKFGU0eQWwN5h0nwXci09JEi_s3ww2CuxtaJjBaDuCMOeKDVXs_aa95YjRdlQstcUb5DuofZ7orgIT6BkBTI2LP5D5NFGWo4ZkcqSHAXGNdbdqdk/s320/Photo+on+2011-08-10+at+10.03.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The University of Akron Press, 2011. So, to begin this review, I must first disclaim. I know Matt Guenette. I heard him do a reading and was knocked out by his delivery and bravado, and, in a rare act of bravery, approached him at the after-party, and we've been friends ever since. But. But, I say. I still want you to read these poems. Here's my case.<br />
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1) I liked the poems before I met the man.<br />
2) These poems are funny, sad, and angry. There aren't enough angry poems.<br />
3) There aren't enough poems concerned with class in America, which these are, or enough poems concerned with <i>work</i>. These poems force the reader to acknowledge the people who are regularly ignored every day. Part of the experience of restaurant dining is contracting out the nitty gritty labor , and this book brings busboys, dishwashers, and fry cooks to the fore. <br />
5) Look at that cover. When's the last time a book of poetry made you want to wipe your hands? (If you have an answer to that question, I don't want to know.)<br />
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There. My totally biased and yet 100% true review.<br />
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Rebecca Hazeltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13523408865020263931noreply@blogger.com0