The Other

This entry is part of a series, Ashbery and Pragmatist Poetics» Introduction: Why the Lyric Essay? 1. I want to start with a problem: an overwhelming, close to paralyzing sense that an essay about John Ashbery’s poetry is like a representational critique of a cubist painting. The two (essay and poetry) just feel ill-fitting, strange [...]

Whether as a gadfly to the bigger kids in communist Romania or as a teenager in Chicago, part of me always wanted to be hip, but another part always knew that it was too much work. What does it mean to be hip? It means to be urban, wired, social, to occupy the latest spaces, [...]

LOST COLONY Laconic (but not lazy), this time the lights stay on. __The formal fields have their wanton way; cherubs ____go drooling in posterior exterior, dimpled afresh. ____Generously, music unzips, points square to path __token by no occasion; in need of jetties and sweeties on some barren arm, a strap for each remembrance. Gradually recipes [...]

LUPE’S DIAMONDS She had other nieces at least eight but mine was an expensive gift to never lose They were jagged freckles of light My aunts said let her wear her hair down no importa burnt red lipstick and diamond specks How I suffered from feeling blanched in a world inhabited by amber women who [...]

, 2011. ISBN: 978-1934200490. 80 p. Today I write; I wait for the form around which I was formed. Laura Wetherington, “My poitrine made of clouds” Is order inherent or created? Does form come first or does the form-giver? Laura Wetherington explores structure – the visual, the functional, and the physical – in A Map [...]

The Hills A wolf whistle sounds. Street level shot of an apartment complex at night, windows lit. “Heidi and Spencer’s Apartment, Hollywood, CA” say white letters at the bottom of the screen. Shot of Heidi’s torso in a room with white walls. She has on a black, low-cut halter dress with russet trim. As she [...]

Mayakovsky’s Revolver By Matthew Dickman WW Norton Forthcoming October 2012 ISBN 978-0-393-08119-0 112 pages Matthew Dickman received the second fan letter I’ve ever written. The first was written in 1989, when I was ten years old, and it was addressed to Howard Johnson, an infielder for the New York Mets. Johnson—or “HoJo,” to baseball cognoscenti—wore [...]