Category: Poetry

Seen above, for the first time, is a newly-discovered photograph of Arthur Rimbaud from the 1880s. I quote from the Associated Foreign Press: Unseen photo of French poet Rimbaud unveiled PARIS — A previously unseen photo of French poet Arthur Rimbaud was unveiled in Paris on Thursday, bringing the total number of known images of the writer to eight. The photograph, which shows Rimbaud on the porch of a hotel in Yemen around 1880, was showcased at the International Antiquarian Book Fair at Paris’s Grand Palais exhibition venue. The black and white image is only the fourth to portray the poet as an adult and is “the only one in which Rimbaud’s adult facial characterisics are distinguishable”, according to the poet’s biographer, Jean-Jacques Lefrere. Rimbaud, who was once described by Victor Hugo as “an infant Shakespeare”, produced his best-known works in his late teens. At 20 he gave up poetry [...]

(To sum up our tryptych of posts for Dorothea Lasky, I present a brief and delicious interview) It seems like some of the best writing that’s happening right now is coming out of the Amherst/ Northampton area. I’m thinking of Natalie Lyalin, Heather Christle, Emily Pettit. Matthew Zapruder went to school there. So did you. What’s the secret? My instinct is to add to that list with the large number of great poets, writers, musicians, and artists who have come out of there also. But I am not sure where I would stop with this list. So, I will just shake my head and say yes, I agree. That area is a generative space. Of course, I think so because I went to MFA school at UMass-Amherst (all of these people went to UMass, if not for MFA, then for undergrad.) The MFA program there is wonderful, it just generates. [...]

Dorothea Lasky is a poet of petulant grace. The particular way she does is she carves into the alphabet for poetry’s hurtfully buried, metastasized epiphanies of black life. Thence comes the fragments of jagged wonder she strings together to decorate her verse with pretty conflict. Her wonder (love and awe) is heavy and plain, stilted like she’s writing after a concussion, but the generalness of language (many fundamental ideas repeating, put forth directly) is thick—it spills over the edges of its meaning into the scary beyond. She meets herself in conversation with the space outside experience’s edges. That is the damaged holiness brought out: a haze of dirty purity like a cough toward an inaccessible God. It hurts like joy. I remembered, reading her previous collection Awe, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America—an answer in there re how people change: “Well it has something to do with God so it’s not [...]

Dorothea Lasky’s made huge waves when debuted at this years AWP. The newest book on ‘s Dossier imprint, Lasky lays out, in 19 quick pages, a theory of poetry that reaches back through High Romanticism into a more hermetic time. Illustrated beautiful throughout by , Lasky’s theory pushes against the limits set out by conceptual writing, striding toward a more cosmic and otherwordly approach to artistic creation. There’s a lineage of deep thought coming from poets back from Blake to Spicer’s ideas of poetic dictaction and Barbara Guest’s short collection of writing on art, Forces of Imagination. I was graced with the wondrous task of editing this book, and I present to you a soundbytey narrated version of the greater text, so you can get a flavor of what’s happening here. <> “I once heard a scholar use the term “project” as he introduced another poet at a reading. He [...]

See more about Dottie Lasky’s POETRY IS NOT A PROJECT Get it at while the ink is still wet. Available at the UDP portion of the “table X publishing commune.” Related Posts Book Review: Map of the Folded World (John Gallaher)

<> Concerning all the recent discussions about memory, recitation, etc, I thought I would try it in my own way. I should disclose that I never recite my own poems from memory at readings. I think it is corny, weird, it makes me uncomfortable, and frankly, to spend that much time memorizing your own work is kind of sick. <> I want to rebel against my own ideas. <> I tried to write a poem entirely in my head and memorize it. I would never write it down. All editing would take place in my head. Line for line. The entire building and reconstruction could only exist abstractly. No writing as an aid. I would memorize the final poem. I would recite the poem and that is how it could live. <> This is how it went: First I had a few lines, but I could only get at it [...]

Ben Luzzatto’s THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, ABRIDGED (UDP, 2010) is one of those rare artifacts that transfers its own actual magic—and it is real magic—until the possessed begins to lift a bit toward the sky. Ugly Duckling Presse has been summed up quite well as “a publishing collective specializing in experimental poetry and new editions of forgotten textual artist, producing lovely, cheeky books by authors you’ve probably never heard of but your grandchildren will likely read in college…a nesting ground for swans of the avant-garde poetry scene.” It’s true that I do feel personally attached to many titles UDP has produced (such as or ). THEORY is the most recent in its Dossier Series, which produced the wonderfully heady though deadly pretentious , and soon will bring out Dottie Lasky’s . When I first held this particular book though, I do what I do with most books, hold it open [...]



I recommend playing all the videos at the same time. Some enchanted evening You may see a stranger, you may see a stranger Across a crowded room And somehow you know, You know even then That somewhere you’ll see her Again and again. Some enchanted evening Someone may be laughin’, You may hear her laughin’ Across a crowded room And night after night, As strange as it seems The sound of her laughter Will sing in your dreams. Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons, Wise men never try. Some enchanted evening When you find your true love, When you feel her call you Across a crowded room, Then fly to her side, And make her your own Or all through your life you May dream all alone. Once you have found her, Never let her go. Once you have found her, Never let [...]

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Sometimes when I happy get I turn on my television set and disappear into its glow like a pixelated crow I flap my wings so pure and black and feel like there’s no going back inside the tube I’ll stay forever consider thrown the simulacrum lever if my mother comes home and turns it off at her love I’ll scoff happy on my own terms you see like a Titleist balanced on a tee waiting for the coming thwack to send me into orbit’s knack for spinning guests in skyward order free I am a floating boarder everywhere I go I smile I see my reflection in bathroom tile my grin it gleams with the purity of creams freshly descended from the cow of bacon from the virgin sow who snorts and oinks as I come close we are friends the farmer knows and so he waves as I walk [...]

Sunday evening I encountered this artifact created out of the weekend’s leftovers. I had been showing family around who had never been nyc before. That meant three miserable days of walking in the rain while forcing myself to be cheerful. This stream or river or rainbow or spittle-barf of umbrellas was an affirmation to me of whats most at stake in being conscious, (which could be described very quickly, I guess, as a reaction). Whoever made this left no trace of themselves nor stuck around to explain. Less is almost always more. I love you, whoever made this, for that. Related posts: better late SONNETS by Bernadette Mayer A Preface to a Blog: Auguries of Experience Accident and Inspiration: Waking up from a Comma

Poetry Blog is looking for experienced book reviewers to blog about new contemporary poetry titles. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be updating our review copies list from national poetry presses. If you’re interested in writing a review, write us an email and let us know. [email protected] Currently, up for grabs: CHRISTOPHER SUNSET, Geoffrey Nutter, 2010 SELECTED POEMS, Dara Wier, 2009 SUNNY WEDNESDAY, Noelle Kocot, 2009 Related posts: “The Sweetness of Herbert” by Stuart Krimko Three Poems and an Interview with Ben Mirov better late Some Books on My Mind, or {Potential} Purchases of Imperishables Golden Splinter

How does one choose which poem should be first in a manuscript? Ben Lerner’s new book, , begins with something resembling a love poem. Joshua Beckman’s latest book, , which I’ve been enjoying lately , uses a kind of apostrophe: Dear Angry Mob, Oak Wood Trail is closed to you. We feel it unnecessary to defend our position, for we have always thought of ourselves (and rightly, I venture) as a haven for those seeking a quiet and solitary contemplation. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience…. This is fairly witty–simply to put a short little charmer of a poem out front to ease the reader in–but it also overdetermines my reading of the first few pieces that follow. Then again, where else could such a poem go but at the beginning? I’m at a loss. Today’s question: How should books begin? A Study in Fixation All the People of [...]