Seattle likes to pride itself on being one of America’s Most Literate Cities. I pay attention to these annual pronouncements for about 2 minutes when they inevitably make the news, or are posted on Facebook, and Seattle’s usually up there with Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. The thinking is that, what else are you going to do when it’s cloudy for the 99th day in a row? That’s also the excuse for the coffee consumption and suicide rate in Seattle, so locals can have their evening planned right off. What interests me, however, is despite how literate it’s supposed to be here, Seattle got stuck in Modernism. Oh, we’re already way past the postmodern era in some ways, like when NPR interviewers with straight faces talk about how we’ll have a better quality of life in the future when we alter our genetics through some kind of bio-technology expertise. (Though I [...]

A Review of The Pistol Tree Poems by Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. – Karl Marx You must be the change you want to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. – Percy Bysshe Shelley Experimental writers can perform no more politically effective feat toward that noble Marxian goal of changing the world than imaginative collaboration. To the central tenet of the old Left that one must change the world, Gandhi adds that one must be the change one wants to see in the world. By collaborating to create The Pistol Tree Poems (Shearsman, 2011), Peter Hughes and Simon Marsh have intervened in the lyric poetry tradition to our benefit. Whether or not Marx, Gandhi, and Shelley’s wisdom resonates with us, today’s philosophers (read readers) [...]

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 [...]

It is not language that is arbitrary, but power itself that is arbitrary and this is perhaps the reason post-modernist latched onto the arbitrary sign. Power, in order to remain power, must be arbitrary–and this includes slavishly following rules at times in order not to be a slave to whim. The authority of the whimsical is total and can only be overthrown by an act of violence so great that it exposes itself as too earnest to be truly power. Power is the because I, we, or it said so, the “just because.” It is not only vapid; it is vapidity itself. At the most elemental level it is hidden behind many veils of order–which I call terministic screens. The three great veils are I, we, it, and of these three, the “it” is the most recalcitrant and dangerous in that, being without human accountability, it may be purely evil. [...]

Here’s a question: What to do with (how to view) a poem you can’t help but think of as perfect? Here’s one that falls in that category for me, “The Doe” by C. K. Williams, a latter-day sonnet: Near dusk, near a path, near a brook, we stopped, I in disquiet and dismay for the suffering of someone I loved, the doe in her always incipient alarm. All that moved was her pivoting ear the reddening sun shining through transformed to a color I’d only seen in a photo of a child in a womb. Nothing else stirred, not a leaf, not the air, but she startled and bolted away from me into the crackling brush. The part of my pain which sometimes releases me from it fled with her, the rest, in the rake of the late light, stayed. Now let me qualify “perfect.” I don’t ask perfection to [...]

Terracotta Lawyers Insofar as the apple never flees the shadow of its tree, I need a new image to sanctify multiplicity. To make a start, not of particulars but rather, the incidentals— outlining the propriety of uncertainty in syllogistic scree. I like counting dust bunnies while still keening from a dream, reflecting when suggestion barely holds a charge; or, embracing the holding patterns high over American cities— to not accept but love one’s fate, that is the genius of the Greek. We know this from our teacher, the Pisan from Green Lawn, who was fond of the Yiddish adage: in some way we’re all fucked. Know it now as the imagination, what separates my house from highway debris— a flash of incongruity that laminates evening. But tonight the sky is low not limitless, projecting a simple myth, like the show on obedient cats emanating from the other room. _______________________________________________________________ Aaron [...]

As Far as Height’s Concerned There really should be more sugar maples in the valley below. I don’t know how we know, but we know they’d be perfect as far as height’s concerned. Show me more photographs of eccentric strangers on your camera phone—more earrings, more baggage, more footwear, more than I can carry with these arms too short to be viewed from the street’s perspective. In the gaudiest museum stairwell, each plate of glass reveals a doorway to a unit of music & diction—a personal funhouse. Patrons snap shots of Manets to capture the shades, from brown syrup to white ash. _______________________________________________________________ Kevin Shea is originally from Quincy, MA. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY and currently works at The New School for Social Research. He is also a recent graduate of the MFA program at The New School. His writing has previously appeared in The Alembic, Asinine Poetry, [...]

The visual has always been an important means of communication, from caveman paintings, to graphic novels, to IKEA instruction manuals. We know it fits in somewhere with poetry, beginning with how poets and artists have always looked lovingly upon one another, and ending somewhere more uncharted. It’s been proposed that the use of illustration with poetry is redundant, but what this forum is interested in is not translating the words, but a much wider vision: illustration as a kind of poetic form. Poetry and poets who interact with the visual has limitless implications, from traditional use of the comic-strip and comic book, to a much more experimental use of text and image. I wish to go boldly, willingly, into Poetry Comics, and see what people are doing out there. I’m not entirely concerned with defining what I mean by Poetry Comics, but rather seeing how many tiny silver arrows we [...]

A work of art is a problem It’s easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer: the one who will come without appointment remembering circles and maps of temperance. Down the avenue of swift and invisible nudes a thin, brittle demon the shade of an autumn leaf is seeking imperfections. Our prophets always speak too soon– you know you want to own a picture of a man carrying a drum made of human scalps. Give me a little more time here– A democracy of strangeness is a reminder that the work of art presents not an expression of identity but a problem ‘I prefer the films that put their audience to sleep in the theatre.’ Now– I’d like a word or two from you. _________________________________________________ Sridala Swami writes poetry, short fiction. Her first collection of poems, A Reluctant Survivor,was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award in 2008. [...]

Warning: mUutations are a project from my other site, . They are arbitrary interpretive readings that change the poems into something they’re not. Proceed at your own risk. Pete Winslow is a very minor Beat surrealist poet who died young and only published a few books, including Monster Cookie, which contains this short poem, “The Dada Scarecrow”: Two crossed sticks in a field This is the dada scarecrow The crows gather around to wonder at it No straw no old clothes No floppy hat like scarecrows wear Just two crossed sticks in a field And a real man suspended naked From its arms. When reading poems, it’s always good to ask yourself how your expectations and assumptions about the poem changed throughout. This is essential with a poem that has a “shocker” ending like this one. Once the sticks become a Roman cross, it’s impossible to see the first six [...]

Lessons in Solitude from Men 1. To be okay alone is to treasure time like a lode in the stone day, but I can’t figure out how the strong do it, fuse skin to ore against loss that rains like rusted bearings, like the recluse Geryon, the suit he poured his frame into each day, the sheets of impracticable iron he wore to make rounds among sheep, a warrior’s carapace that could not have been his nor do I think the loot of some conquest, but, I suspect, a shepherd’s grief, the weight to him of a lover’s solid clasp, the weight to him of loss. 2. I learned about solitude from men like Aaron in Parry Sound, rasping at canoes with his heart in his heels, from Oliver after Saugatuck stunned hard and heart sick, the timing for us ill, from Matthew the summer I left Harlem naked and [...]

1. The traditional book was based on a form that needed capital, influence, etc. This meant that gatekeepers were required. Getting through the gates endowed an author with certain benefits: editing, layout, publicity, and—perhaps most important—legitimacy. a. The system inevitably mistakes its own guardians of capital for guardians of true literary value. Certainly these interests aligned sometimes (for better or for worse, depending on your views about the idea of “canon”—to many, the values of capital and canon are one and the same). b. Some publishers were started with the expressed purpose of aligning these values, with varying levels of success based upon their capitalization. I think, perhaps New Directions if the best example of this. James Laughlin was a poet who couldn’t hack it according to Ezra Pound. Pound suggested he use his sizable independent wealth to subsidize a publishing house. Other reputable, non-commercial presses (Graywolf, etc.) have other [...]

The Blue Dress in Mother’s Closet Her blue dress is a silk train is a river, is water seeps into the cobblestone streets of my sleep, is still raining, is monsoon brocade, is winter stars stitched into puddles, is goodbye in a flooded antique room, is goodbye in a room of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the ring-ting-ring of water dripping from the mouths of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the Mississippi River is a hallway, is leaks like tears from window sills of a drowned house, is windows open to waterfalls, is a bed is a small boat is a ship, is a current come to carry me in its arms through the streets, is me floating in her dress through the streets, is only the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a blue dress out to sea, is my mother is a [...]

Warning: mUutations are a project from my other site, . They are arbitrary interpretive readings that change the poems into something they’re not. Proceed at your own risk. Here’s a poem by Bob Kaufman. It’s what happened to many of the Beats: Cincophrenicpoet A cincoprhenic poet called a meeting of all five of him at which four of the most powerful of him voted to expel the weakest of him who didn’t dig it, coughing poetry or revenge, beseech- ing all horizontal reserves to cross, spiral and whirl. Rejection of social norms and ideologies is pervasive throughout Bob Kaufman’s work and is represented in the anti-conformity and “rejectionary philosophy” of Abomunism, a thinly veiled term for the beatnik culture of which Kaufman was a part. This process of differentiation comes at a cost, however, alienating the rebel from his cultural and ideological context. This necessitates a search for alternative contexts [...]

To Women Waiting at the Gynecologist -Anarcha’s Ballad Deep inside this cabin, deeper still into the darkness arising like fumes, like odor of woman, broke, harnessed in a body, by the bodies of men who believe me animal, wild, and numb because my body be black, be able, be stank after childbirth, ruined, cast out into the woods to spoil alone. My savior wears white coats bends spoons, bends me, bends spoon into my crouched hound of body. White women rest easy in clean sheets, while spoons scrape through me, give me new hollows. He will one day find, in me, how to mold the tool, the pressure, his, to relieve those precious as dew drops settled on dove’s wings will be gone. And you, innocent you, lying on cool white slabs, free legs ready, no remnants of me in you until you are pressed wide open, coffee brewing in [...]