Levi Rubeck

BEND TO IT BY KEVIN SIMMONDS SALMON POETRY 2014 ISBN 978-1908836793 When the young Miyamoto Usagi (from the pages of the Stan Sakai comic Usagi Yojimbo) won his first tournament, his reward was a pair of swords. The katana was named “Yagi no Eda” (or ‘Willow Branch’); and the short sword was name Aoyagi, or Young Willow. His future lord and master Mifune explained that the willow bends so as not to break, and that strength isn’t just power but, perhaps more importantly, adaptation. This comic book was essentially my main role, from days at Alta Vista elementary to my present as a semi-professional thirty-something. Pliability over strength and sacrifice are things I learned from Usagi, and thought about way too much as a teenager. I still ponder them almost daily, and clearly so does Kevin Simmonds, as evidenced by his new book Bend to It. The cover depicts a [...]

THE BROTHERS PERDENDO AND PERDENDOSI BY BRIAN TRIMBOLI RELEASED BY NO, DEAR MAGAZINE AND SMALL ANCHOR PRESS This is how terrible of a reader I can be: didn’t even think to look up “perdendo” or “perdendosi” until after I’d read this chapbook at least four times, the first two in quick succession immediately after it arrived. Not that it’s necessary to define every little thing in a book or poem, or so I feel; but the title is that much more fitting knowing that these brothers are named after, if not actually, a manifestation of loss, or at least the musical term for a fade out. The Brothers of Loss, things fading away. This might have been more accurately titled The Brothers Perdendo and Perdendosi and their Father, as far as the literal ongoings within as the dichotomous distinction between the two halves set them up next to the father [...]

When reading poetry I often have difficulty distinguishing signal from noise. Much of what’s going around now is different variations on this confrontation. There are golden proportions, where poetic signal is accentuated by the noise, shaped by it in ways that clear reception cannot anticipate. Unlike with cooking, these ratios are individual rather than universal. One poet may thrive with higher signal, while another may better divine meaning from the noise they mine. This is hardly a newsflash: Poets have differing styles, film at eleven. Some poets work the chaos down to the letter, the phoneme and allophone even. Others do better to keep court with general syntax, but break down associations between sentences, lines, stanzas, so on and so forth. Writers flourish under various circumstances, and that’s only half of the equation. There is no accounting for what the reader may glean, to a point. The poet can only [...]

“Dear Mark” by Martin Rock Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013 ISBN 978-1936767199 When teaching poetry to middle school students, “ekphrasis” was often our go-to source of instant inspiration. Many kids freeze at open writing, and actively rebel against instructions (rightfully so), but when presented with an image, film, song, or other piece of art to write against, opinions would fly and reflect around the room. Which isn’t to say that ekphrastic writing is easy. As something to dig from, great lines can be mined, but there’s no guarantee. To really connect with a work, to entwine your contribution as inseparably as possible, is a next-level challenge for the ekphrastic writer. With Dear Mark, a chapbook recently published by the Brooklyn Arts Press, poet Martin Rock opens a dialogue with the work of visual artist Mark Rothko, with engaging results. One of the barriers of ekphrastic writing can be the need for [...]

ISBN978-0520259263 It’s hard to justify a $50 book nowadays. Unless you’re a scholar looking to pore over every character in an author’s archive, a volume of collected work can easily overwhelm. Is there a non-academic audience for a tome like The Collected Early Poems and Plays by Robert Duncan (University of California Press)? I can’t speak for the market, but as a young poet scrambling through the poems of the past, as well as the growing morass of contemporary offerings, I finished this beast of a volume feeling refreshed. It’s clear that UC Press has a plan for Duncan’s collected works, which are stylistically in tune with The H.D. Book. While poems often share pages, pages rarely feel overwhelmed. Economy of space is understood. This book feels like a chronological collection of published and uncollected works, so we are given a particularly instructive timeline of Duncan’s growth as a poet. [...]

Contrapuntal By Christopher Kondrich Parlor Press, 2012 ISBN 978-1602353671 Music, for being such a well-diffused cultural product, can be challenging to adequately write about. Like many creative disciplines, it commands its own lexicon and sits atop a tall barrier of entry. But this shouldn’t preclude anyone who wants to get hip-deep; we’ve all experienced music to some degree and should attempt to verbalize our reactions to its influence. Then you have folks like Christopher Kondrich, a poet who is clearly comfortable writing through the influence of music in his latest collection, Contrapuntal. The first instinct one might have with a book titled after the musical theoretical concept of counterpoint (two or more melodies moving with respect to each other), is to look for counterpoint’s influence on the book’s metrical and sonic aspects. Such an approach would not be a mistake, but Contrapuntal is more than a book of poems informed [...]

Doc, there was a hand Doc, there was a hand, my bed was pushed across the room, the wallpaper looked, I drew faces on the flowers, this one with closed eyes, and when I woke they suddenly opened. I watched my father wash his hands with gasoline, he always smelled of something burning. He held out his hands, twin flames, volcanic rock. In the room, I mapped out an archipelago of needs— mine, then his, then my father’s. Stray rocks, a map. Doc, you call it schema, me shut-eyed, my cousin’s hostile need. I dreamt my arms were raised. I think in surrender. I’ve been studying Freud’s On Dreams, wish fulfillment, my cousin’s hostile need. He returns like a wild obsession. (There, like a skein in my dreams.) Archipelago of desire. I skip stones, one to another. My mother’s shame, father’s cold and brutal shielding. There was more tenderness in [...]

Author’s statement: In the summer of 2012, M.A, Vizsolyi visited Ronnie Yates in Houston, Texas, where it was hot as a mofo. They took walks beneath the live oaks, sweated their asses off, and at night, on the roof of Nick Flynn’s apartment (Nick was away in Paris), they began a collaboration tentatively titled, “It’d be a little cooler not to Rock This,” from which this poem is taken. Houston Poem 26 this moment she’s flowering there were boys around her that does suck i agree with that talk about that grief i would have been like ‘whoa’ morality is a bitch but dude morality will grind your ass it will fucking stripe your ass it’s a cat of nine tails rightous indignation that’s a legion of decency oh my shit that’s like scarlet letter styles that’s like dragging that girl by the hair terrible humiliation nah! i don’t think [...]

When you fell asleep with your fingerprint on the sensor I kept your hand warm. I kept my hand above the hand on your controller, and we scrolled through the menus together, punched your dream onto the screen. It was a first person shooter. You navigated through levels reserved for early adopters. Every portal glowing in the dark. Of course I’d never dream you’d cruise through rooms of memory. How you used to sleeptalk about the startup, in the morning beg me tell exactly what you’d said. A room filled with diamonds and enemies, the exit a sewer stacked with rubies and man-size rats. Aboveground, the circuits of the sky surge on. A figure on a bridge rimmed with gold coins, no railing, goes down. You muscle your way into a villa stocked with backstabbers and portraits of riches. I never recognize myself in any of the victims. __________________________________________________________ Elsbeth [...]

FOR IBRAHIM QASHOUSH They found you like a river stone in the Orontes where the people fished you out. And like oil on water you take the tint of all colors. Now a streetwise nation wakes, thousands on the Brooklyn Bridge, down Broadway, Cleveland, L.A., on the lawn of the Capitol jailbreaking our jobs and mountains, our houses foreclosing or falling down. There’s no due process to undo a quarter-century of bankers clapping the beat of a pop tune, people lost to a blindfold of interest. Listen. They’re singing your song in the square, old and young, a voice wading out where the cameras can see. ____________________________________________ Laren McClung is the author of Between Here and Monkey Mountain (Sheep Meadow 2012). She lives between two cities. Related Posts Poem of the Week: Walter Stone Poem of the Week: Geoffrey G. O’Brien Poem of the Week: Luke Johnson Poem of the [...]

from (Opera) Asylum 1. ______Here is the proof, ____________everything about me. I couldn’t stop thinking ___________about myself as him, so the revelatory parts of me _____like confetti undropped grew dusty and apologetic. “It isn’t enough _____to tell you any more.” ____________* _____“I’d like to think myself _____a generation who stayed married.” Back here, while walking past the foreign languages, my daily discussion with the parrot behind me, _____above all I am unaware who is trying to help. ____________* _____Given an infinity to write this, ___________you might. On courage: so much is trial and error. _____To adapt though, to take the raw materials _____of predestination and refine to a convenient last name. _____Once, my father _____said something accidentally better than any he ever thought. ____________* _____The closest I get to being alone an unanswered phone, _____the showers even crowded. _____Nancy the butcherbird changes _____the sheets and rallies discrete with nicknames and [...]

More capable writers have written about Robert Duncan and the circumstances surrounding The H.D. Book, notably whose review I highly recommend. It’s impossible not to concur with her on every point with regard to this, but I can’t speak to such a deep relationship with Duncan. As such, The H.D. Book, for me, was more a lesson on how to read poetry, perhaps at the most extreme. Divided into three books, the short history of The H.D. Book is a somewhat common tale. One of those pieces that a writer is constantly writing, editing, tinkering, refining, adding to, etc., thus never really receiving a “finished” stamp of approval. Which is the exact way for a book like this to evolve, as it is essentially a record of Duncan’s two-step with poetry. This dance began with H.D. early in his life, and as such, she is present through all his thoughts [...]

When charm works, the connection established between individuals is palpable. Flow becomes effortless and meaning is instantaneous. Hearing LaGrone read his poems out loud can deliver this, in a way. Such fluid links are also temporary, made all the more constrained by the instant in which they exist. Having this chance to really interact with Oyster Perpetual as a whole rather than through workshops with LaGrone extends the charming band-leader qualities of his poetry, but also elucidates the temporal nature of these poems. He leads his parade of broken but non-pitiable scoundrels around urban, natural, and temporal topographies, usually branching off between lines. He has no qualms about naming the people, bars, drinks, smokables, poets, car parts, and more that populate his worlds. Charisma can be a liability, though. LaGrone is aware of this. Throughout the book he casts wide for characters of all permutations but uses them as a [...]

By this point in his career Kevin Young is an old hand at the psychic restoration of outside source material. His books, including Jelly Roll, To Repel Ghosts, and Black Maria, have each found something lyrical in the dry air of various historical and cultural archives while maintaining a crucial link to his own personal experience and sense of family. This is key to the work in Ardency because it’s his least personal book so far, but in many ways that allows him to approach those same emotions within the book’s historical characters from a more objective stance. Kevin Young rehydrates history with the often impenetrable abstract motivations of humanity, those emotions both feral and civil that run through us all. Those human characters, and their voices, are the cornerstone of Ardency. This epic embodies in verse their experience as men, boys, and girls kidnapped from the paths winding through [...]

James Copeland is a tall man, who rides a tall bike, drinks tall drinks, and writes tall poetry. To My Plants is a tallish, stiff chapbook of words arranged by James, printed on cellulose by James, and containing a DVD of a short film shot by a friend of James, from which the still photographs interspersed throughout the chapbook originate. The cover is two-sided, both unassuming, without any words to indicate title or author. You get clouds and mountainous valleys at first glance, but the sleuthy reader will check under the flap and be delighted, or maybe teased, with a string of automobiles as silent as any natural wonder. You’re right, I’m stalling, but only because To My Plants already says everything that needs to be said about itself. It’s a book that delights in a cat-like batting about of your preconceptions: Plants, oh, James is a hippie, or: “Science [...]