I have often been called a loose cannon: disorganized, lacking structure, etc. I don’t think this is true. I think I disrespect power–my own or anyone else’s, and like to circumvent the maze in which they would have me find the cheese, and if that’s a loose cannon, so be it. I always think: trust [...]
A Note from Jorge: I did not want to make any personal assessments regarding these poets, their poetry or why they were chosen by me. But if you need me to, I will keep it extremely simple. These are four American poets of various ages and backgrounds who published a volume of poems in 2013 [...]
OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS, ECHOIC BY CHRIS TYSH LES FIGUES PRESS, 2013 CUNT NORTON BY DODIE BELLAMY LES FIGUES PRESS, 2013 1. Pins Ups: Covering the Classics “I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike — and I don’t think there really is a distinction between the two — are [...]
The radical poetry of 100 years ago was not radical in terms of style. It was conventional in terms of style and this doomed much of it (though not all of it) to being forgotten and rightfully so, but note that the folk songs and protest songs and blues songs of that period were not [...]
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. [...]
True standards are physical measurements. All other standards are evil metaphors of measurement created by systems of power to maintain control and to replace thinking. All standards are a form of virtual thinking–the law put in place to preclude any daily or ongoing assessment of values–to avoid all questioning. This is why I hate grants [...]
L’Olive: sonnet 28 My tongue cannot resist disclosing all I feel for you, when from you I’m away, but suddenly, feeling you nearby, it says nothing—-left dumbstruck and deaf, words stall. Thus hope makes guarantees while duping me: I am less there, the more I’m in your presence. What eludes me pleases me immensely: I [...]
Last year, CAConrad’s A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon—a book that encompassed a perfect blend of street insolence and elegiac tribute—was published. Raunchy and tantrumy, insightful and spiritually reverent, Rumpelstilskin-stampingly angry, and uproariously hilarious, it was a kind of hash oil distilled from its author’s originality and strangeness, and an unforgettable hymn of praise to the work [...]
I admit I didn’t like Denise Levertov’s work when I was a kid. I preferred the hilarity of Ted Berrigan, the obvious authority and beauty of Stevens, the light but dazzling cool of Frank O’Hara, and Ginsberg’s Kaddish as well as Reality Sandwiches. I was even more a fan of Spanish and Latin American poets–Hernandez [...]
End of Lifed The angels, those constant followers, stay dumb to metaphors, deafer to jokes. Outside firm circles, however, the idea of decay as a transitional state meets with uncommon success. Props and shout-outs to the flesh, the flesh, and the flesh for keeping caps on myth-proliferation, though experts trouble to isolate origins, what wags [...]
Christopher Phelps said something interesting about Buber and the cult of personality. He tied it into the poetry scene, which makes it especially interesting to me (You could also tie it into a certain extent with why indie bands muted the role of the singer in the grunge era, still do to a certain extent [...]
. Late in the forest I did Cupid see _____Cold, wet, and crying, he had lost his way, _____And being blind was farther like to stray: _____Which sight a kind compassion bred in me, I kindly took and dried him, while that he, _____Poor child, complained he starved was with stay, _____And pined for want [...]
Not too long ago, blessed with my usual late summer/fall insomnia, I woke up at 2 in the morning and knew I would not be going to bed again anytime soon. I’d fallen asleep at 11, and so I’d had the 3 hours most insomniacs know, are just enough to preclude any further hours of [...]
on falling in love I love how you burst through the door and look around. I love how bad you are at hiding the fact that you’re trying to find me— and how trapped I feel when you’re nearby. I love how when you see me your mouth falls open, how another mouth extends from [...]
“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 [...]
“Gene Tanta comes from a land where the place of words and even of letters was challenged one hundred years ago. Tristan Tzara, born and educated in a very small town of Eastern Romania, Moineşti, as Samuel Rosenstock, and Isidore Isou, pen name of Ioan-Isidor Goldstein, broke the new wood between mimetic language and language [...]
