tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91417163767428908202024-03-12T18:57:47.364-07:00Galatea Resurrects #22 (A Poetry Engagement)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-74777980922870813852014-06-03T07:57:00.000-07:002014-06-03T08:19:01.700-07:00Issue No. 22 TABLE OF CONTENTS <div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="color: #2a2c2e; font-family: Arial;">[N.B. You
can scroll down on blog or click on highlighted titles or names to go
directly to the referenced article.]</span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial;">EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0c0d00; font-family: Arial;">By</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span style="color: #0000e9;"> </span><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/editors-introduction.html">Eileen Tabios</a></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial;">NEW REVIEWS</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Nicholas James Whittington
reviews <i><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/joie-de-vivre-selected-poems-1992-2012.html">JOIE DE VIVRE: SELECTED POEMS 1<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">992-2012</span></a></b></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Lisa Jarnot</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Genevieve Kaplan reviews <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">five chapbooks: <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/chapbooks-by-michelle-detorie-cj-martin.html">FUR BIRDS by Michelle Detorie, LO, BITTERN by C.J. Martin, ONE PETAL ROW by Jaimie Gusman, TINDER / HEART by Lisa M. Cole and FASCICLE 30 by Brad Vogler</a></b></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Arial;">Patrick
James Dunagan reviews</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/books-by-daniel-robinson-and-joe-safdie.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MYSELF AND SOME OTHER BEING: WORDSWORTH AND THE LIFE WRITING by Daniel Robinson and SCHOLARSHIP by Joe Safdie</span></a></b><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Aileen Ibardaloza engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/verses-typhoon-yolanda-edited-by-eileen.html">VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA: A STORM OF FILIPINO POETS</a></b>, </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Edited by Eileen R.
Tabios</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">T.C. Marshall reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/reading-unseen-offstage-hamlet-by.html">READING THE UNSEEN (OFFSTAGE) HAMLET</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Stephen Ratcliffe</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thomas Fink reviews <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b>“<a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/it-is-well-known-by-harriet-zinnes.html">It is Well Known,” a poem from </a></b><i><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/it-is-well-known-by-harriet-zinnes.html">NEW AND SELECTED POEMS</a><span id="goog_501970568"></span></b> </i>by Harriet Zinnes</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/zen-by-jessica-smith.html">ZEN</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Jessica Smith</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez reviews
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/companionable-voices-five-filipino-poets.html">COMPANIONABLE VOICES: FIVE FILIPINO POETS </a></b></span></i></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">T.C. Marshall reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/stele-by-cole-swensen.html">STELE</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Cole Swensen</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Richard Lopez reviews
<i><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/american-haiku-by-jonathan-hayes.html">AMERICAN HAIKU</a></b></i> by Jonathan Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Aileen Ibardaloza engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-acharnians-by-aristophanes.html">THE ACHARNIANS</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Aristophanes. Translation by Douglass
Parker</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thomas Fink reviews <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/overpainted-thresholds-by-tom-beckett.html">“Overpainted Thresholds,” a poem from <i><s>DIPSTICK</s>(DIPTYCH)</i></a></b></span>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Tom Beckett</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/imagined-sons-by-carrie-etter.html">IMAGINED SONS</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Carrie Etter</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Greta Aart reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/micrograms-by-jorge-carrera-andrade.html">MICROGRAMS</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by<i> </i>Jorge Carrera Andrade, Translated by Alejandro de Acosta and
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-heart-can-bear-by-robert-gibb.html">WHAT THE HEART CAN BEAR: SELECTED AND UNCOLLECTED POEMS, 1979-1993 </a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Robert Gibb</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/fate-lines-desire-lines-by-caleb-puckett.html">FATE LINES / DESIRE LINES</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Caleb Puckett</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/disturbance-by-ivy-alvarez.html">DISTURBANCE</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Ivy Alvarez </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Marton Koppany engages the
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/fourth-international-text-festival.html">FOURTH INTERNATIONAL TEXT FESTIVAL</a></b>,
Curated by Tony Trehy, Philip Davenport, Susan Lord, Diana Hamilton and KFS
Press</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/collected-poems-by-patricia-dobler.html">COLLECTED POEMS</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by
Patricia Dobler</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Hibbard reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/apollo-ballet-by-igor-stravinsky-by.html">APOLLO: A BALLET BY IGOR STRAVINSKY</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by<i> </i>Geoffrey Gatza</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-ants-and-insect-country-b-by-sawako.html"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">THE ANTS</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span>and <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">INSECT COUNTRY (B)</span></i></a></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, both by Sawako Nakayasu</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/in-house-un-american-by-benjamin.html">IN THE HOUSE UN-AMERICAN</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Benjamin Hollander</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/memory-holes-by-erin-virgil.html">MEMORY HOLES</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Erin Virgil</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Beckett reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-tv-sutras-by-dodie-bellamy.html">THE TV SUTRAS</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Dodie Bellamy</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/hoard-by-jaime-robles.html">HOARD</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Jaime Robles</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">David Rudolph reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/souvenir-by-aimee-suzara.html">SOUVENIR</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Aimee Suzara</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/complete-minimal-poems-by-aram-saroyan.html">COMPLETE MINIMAL POEMS</a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> by Aram Saroyan (2nd Edition), Edited by
Aram Saroyan and James Hoff</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/two-books-by-lightsey-darst.html">FIND THE GIRL </a></b></span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/two-books-by-lightsey-darst.html">and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DANCE</i></a></b>, both by Lightsey Darst</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios engages</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span><i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/six-portraits-by-julie-danho.html">SIX PORTRAITS</a></b> </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Julie Danho</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Tom Beckett engages <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/no-wait-yep-definitely-still-hate.html">NO, WAIT. YEP. DEFINITELY STILL HATE MYSELF</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Robert Fitterman</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Neil Leadbeater reviews <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/dear-good-naked-morning-by-ruth-l.html">DEAR GOOD NAKED MORNING</a></b> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Ruth L Schwartz</span></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Marton Koppany reviews <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-used-to-by-sarah-sanders.html"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I USED TO (2012) </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">by Sarah Sanders</span></a></b></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-used-to-by-sarah-sanders.html"><o:p></o:p></a></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-used-to-by-sarah-sanders.html">in THE DARK WOULD ANTHOLOGY OF LANGUAGE ART</a></b>, edited by Philip Davenport</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/">VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA</a></b></i> – a
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-6802583594504027882014-06-03T07:56:00.000-07:002014-06-03T07:57:20.547-07:00EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Thanks as ever to <i>Galatea Resurrects</i>' generous volunteer staff of reviewers. In addition to some wonderful feature articles, we have <b>40 NEW POETRY REVIEWS </b>this issue, encompassing 39 publications and a coverage of the Fourth International Text Festival that took place in Bury, U.K.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">With Issue No. 22, <i>GR</i> has provided 1,383 new reviews and 116 reprinted reviews (the latter brings online reviews previously available only viz print or first published in now-defunct online sites). With this issue, we also increased our coverage of poetry publishers by eight to <b>506 publishers in 17 countries.</b> This is important as much of the ground-breaking poetry work is published by independent and/or relatively small presses who (by the nature of their work) are not always as well-known as they deserve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Poetry has enhanced my love of lists so here are <i>GR</i>'s latest poetry-lovin' stats!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 1: 27 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 2: 39 new reviews (one project was reviewed twice by different reviewers)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 3: 49 new reviews (two projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 4: 61 new reviews (one project was reviewed thrice, and three projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 5: 56 new reviews (four projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 6: 56 new reviews (one project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 7: 51 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 8: 64 new reviews (3 projects were each reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 9: 65 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 10: 68 new reviews (1 project was reviewed thrice and 1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 11: 72 new reviews (1 project was reviewed thrice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 12: 87 new reviews (1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 13: 55 new reviews (1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 14: 64 new reviews (3 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 15: 72 new reviews (1 project was reviewed thrice and 4 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 16: 73 new reviews (2 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 17: 108 new reviews (3 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 18: 104 new reviews (3 projects were reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 19: 68 new reviews (1 project was reviewed twice)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 20: 64 new reviews</span><span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 21: 78 new reviews<b> </b>(2 projects were reviewed twice)</span><span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 22: 40 new reviews</span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">*****</span><br />
<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">I continue to encourage authors/publishers to send in your projects for potential review—note that because we believe in Poetry's immortality, </span><i style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">GR</i><span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;"> does not limit reviews to just "recent" poetry publications. And, obviously, people are following up with your review copies (see below)! Information for submissions and available review copies </span><a href="http://grarchives.blogspot.com/" style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none;">HERE</span></b></a><span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">. Future reviewers also should note that the next review submission deadline is NOVEMBER 1, 2014.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Of reviewed publications, the following were generated from review copies sent to <i>GR</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 1: 9 out of 27 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 2: 25 out of 39 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 3: 27 out of 49 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 4: 41 out of 61 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 5: 34 out of 56 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 6: 35 out of 56 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 7: 41 out of 51 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 8: 35 out of 64 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 9: 42 out of 65 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 10: 46 out of 68 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 11: 46 out of 72 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 12: 35 out of 87 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 13: 38 out of 55 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 14: 40 out of 64 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 15: 43 out of 72 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 16: 49 out of 73 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 17: 73 out of 108 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 18: 84 out of 104 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 19: 41 out of 68 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 20: 50 out of 64 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 21: 46 out of 78 new reviews<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">Issue 22: 30 out of 40 new reviews</span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial;">The beauty of Blogger is how typos can be corrected at any point in time. If you see any typos, feel free to let me know as I can still correct them even after the issue's release.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">*****</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I am now blogging more bibliophiletically at <b><a href="http://eileenverbsbooks.blogspot.com/">EILEEN VERBS BOOKS</a></b>. You are invited to visit and stay to peruse. Poets are invited to participate in four of the blog's ongoing features: "<b><a href="http://eileenverbsbooks.blogspot.com/2013/12/money-and-poetry.html">Poetry and Money</a></b>," "<b><a href="http://eileenverbsbooks.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-are-you-reading-what-are-you.html">What Are You Reading?</a></b>", "<b><a href="http://eileenverbsbooks.blogspot.com/2014/01/what-do-you-re-read.html">What do you Re-Read?</a></b>" and "<b><a href="http://eileenverbsbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-writers-selfie-writers-desk.html">Writer's Selfie: The Writer's Desk</a></b>."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I hope you enjoy this issue of <i>Galatea Resurrects</i>!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Eileen Tabios</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Editor</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">June 3, 2014</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-70404139950704917232014-06-01T23:59:00.000-07:002014-06-03T10:40:33.814-07:00JOIE DE VIVRE: SELECTED POEMS 1992-2012 by LISA JARNOT<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">NICHOLAS
JAMES WHITTINGTON Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Joie de Vivre: Selected Poems 1992-2012</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> by Lisa Jarnot<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(City Lights, San Francisco, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">DAILY VIVISECTION: On Lisa Jarnot’s <i>Joie de Vivre<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> “All this had to be said in words…”<br />
—Ogotemmeli
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
latest, ninth volume in the City Lights Spotlight Series, <i>Joie de Vivre</i>: <i>Selected
Poems, 1992-2012</i>, by Lisa Jarnot, does what a “selected” should; it drives
the reader out to seek those books from which the selection was made. And this,
in part, is the expressed intent of the series, as attested in the back of each
volume: “to draw attention to those small presses publishing…the wealth of innovative
[US]American poetry being written today.” Truly the best, i.e. most interesting
and most engaging, contemporary poetry is published, with but few notable
exceptions, by small and even smaller, “micro” presses, not large houses or
universities. And this generally has been the case for a hundred years, at
least, and probably much longer than that, but if it be not news, it still is
true and ought not be forgotten. What also oughtn’t be forgot is that the
pronounced contest-ification of the small press publication process, while a
sound and proven business model resulting in a glut of books not seen since the
NEA stopped throwing money at poet/publishers in the 1980s, is no great boon to
Poetry, writ large. The collection of $20 and higher entrance fees, followed by
a screening process of interns, grad students, etc., followed by another
screening by an “editorial board” and, ultimately, a selection – being required
to be made – by some more-or-less established and hence “qualified” Judge, who
is pointedly not the publisher, hardly instill much faith in this writer that
Great Work is like to come to the fore, unless by sheer accident. (Though, I
suppose, accidents do often enough occur.) Call me old fashioned, but I think
publishers ought to make their own decisions about what to publish. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">A book’s
provenance matters, and this is why I’m writing all this: not because I mean to
bash any other house in particular, but because I’d like to laud the publisher
of this book, <i>Joie de Vivre</i>, and the
editor of the series within which it’s set; because this is meant to be a <i>book</i> review, not a consideration of some
poems as poems, <i>per se</i>, or “pure” and
“simple,” but as poems selected from books, collected into a book, which exists
and can be held and beheld, as, again, the books from which they were selected
can be, too. I make this point in part because the selection is necessarily small,
scarcely more than 100 pages culled from perhaps six times that many of
previously published poems – to say nothing of the version of the <i>Iliad, XXII</i> or the meticulous biography
of Robert Duncan, just recently out from UC Press – and the workings of much of
it extend beyond the bounds of the selection, begging to be found out in their
native setting. Certainly, it is to the credit of the editor that one does feel
compelled to find them there, as also to his credit is the near seamlessness of
the transitions from one prior book’s segment to the next, despite the
distinctness of each book as published previously. Well represented here are Jarnot’s
four major collections: <i>Some Other Kind
of Mission </i>(1996); <i>Ring of Fire </i>(2001,
rev. 2003); <i>Black Dog Songs</i> (2003); and
<i>Night Scenes</i> (2008); along with a
quartet of poems from a recent chapbook, also titled <i>Joie de Vivre</i>, all capped by a long poem, “Amedellin Cooperative Nosegay,”
which is, to this reader, perhaps the star of the selection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Her
first book, <i>Some Other Kind of Mission</i>,
selections from which comprise the first twenty or so pages of <i>Joie de Vivre</i>, is a Language-impacted, neo-Steinien
sequence of (mainly) prose poems and visually complex but text-heavy
cut-up/blacked-out/over-written collage works, which together form a sort of
self-referential and repetitive feedback system, an echoing edifice whose
architectural logic has naught to do with the physical, narrative, or
metaphysical contemplation, but nonetheless does evince a powerful logic, or
logics, peculiar to poetry, and to dream. Indeed, “dream” and “nightmare” are
everywhere present in the atmosphere, as well as by actual naming in these
poems, but they are by no means illogical, the poems, nor immaterial, nor
invisible, but, as Jarnot writes, “extracted from the visible,” extrapolated
from the available language and its logic by an insistent exploitation of
syntactical trapdoors, shifting clausal reiterations, and other structural in(ter)ventions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hit the pitch
coordinate throwing junk. in the back of a tree. we built backwards in the
living room or cell. in the pitch of what i dreamt of. in the firs and terns
and coming back in morning. hit the pitch coordinate of did the bird or not
explode. watching all the field soil in extraction. did or not explode the bird
in in the field soil. first it was the motorcade the house of prayer. having
gone to. mediocrity. … in chaos, still retracted, at the plan of having dreamt.
all around in having dreamt in series differentiate retraction only polar.
having giving. to the bus. fir and clover beach tern in retracted. first it was
the motorcade, the bird terned in retraction of the tide and having clover. did
or not the bird. in meticules in dreamt of field soil at the tern.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">It seems
the seam where dream- and language-logic might meet, and so be sewn together,
is the poem – that is, if we take dream to be some extension of the subconscious
and language to be simultaneously an axe of the conscious and an expression of
the collective un-conscious. This juncture sets Jarnot’s work early in some
trajectory of the Surreal, alongside several other Spotlight authors. Will
Alexander, Andrew Joron, and series editor Garrett Caples, himself, are the
most avowedly Surrealist, but Cedar Sigo and Micah Ballard – and arguably
others, too – while perhaps less expressly Surrealist, do share an expressive
character which is redolent of the original Frenchmen who constituted that
movement, and of their progenitors, too.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Joron’s <i>Neo-Surrealism or the Sun at Night:
Transformations of Surrealism in American Poetry, 1966-1999</i>, originally
published in 2000, expanded in 2004, then published again in 2010 with a
substantial afterward (dated January of that year) in which the author
assembles a good sized supplementary “roster” of arguably neo-surrealist
writers, makes no mention of Jarnot, but much of what is written in this
invaluable “résumé” of USAmerican neo-surrealism could well be applied to
Jarnot’s work. Joron highlights, in specific regard to the work of Alexander, a
certain “prioritization of the ‘word’ rather than the ‘image’…, a linguistic
turn within neo-surrealist practice…convergent with the emergence…of the
Language school[, which] regarded the sixties’ poetics of expressive
imagination as a failed utopia. Rather than a poetics of enthusiasm, a poetics
of skepticism was advocated: the Romanticism of the metaphoric image was
rejected in favor of the ‘realism’ of the metonymic cut-up.” But Joron goes on
to cite Charles Brokhuis, who argues that “’both Surrealism and ‘Language’ poetry
are attempts to decenter the idea of the self-as-creator’; in both forms, ‘the
text is read as an accumulation of poetic evidence’ rather than as the
testament of ‘a particular ego.’…Borkuis envisioned a form of
‘Parasurrealist/Textual’ practice, where ‘thought is not outside, observing
this process [of writing], but part of it; it finds itself in-situation.’” This
is clearly the ground in which Jarnot’s first book is seeded and from which her
oeuvre grows. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">From the
more ambivalent, yet still Whitmanic (and Will Alexanderine, for that matter)
songs of the self and not-self which comprise much of <i>Ring of Fire</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">I am a partially submerged
boat on the waterfront of<br />
Jack London Square on a Sunday morning
buying jam.<br />
I am flesh-colored and pale, in an
indian head dress <br />
cracking chestnuts and eating roots, in the fissure <br />
between the bus lines, … <br />
… I am krill and various large birds, the color <br />
grey of the sidewalk, a small opossum, in the breaking <br />
glass in isolation in the sun, I am waiting for the <br />
swamps and smoke of eucalyptus in the breeze, I am <br />
stuck in traffic near the mudflats on the bay, I am <br />
aimless and have several new tattoos.</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(from <i>Sea Lyrics</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the
singly Lear-ic (and, yes, Blakean) character of many of the poems in <i>Black Dog Songs</i>, and <i>Night Scenes</i>, too, with their blatant,
tone-lead whimsy tempered with a subtle, subcutaneous melancholy: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">To the sparrows high
on tree tops<br />
fly on sparrows through the hedge stops<br />
bristle up and fly away<br />
black crest heads point this way gay<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">What to do for you is
write you<br />
into this a word for word zoo<br />
I and you inside the thread<br />
of the vowels sad and red.</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(“Harpersfield Song”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Jarnot’s
cheeky mock archaisms, poetic inversions and employ of pseudo-traditional forms
and rhythms belie a tense and cutting contemporary ennui, a quagmire of
presumptively, and perhaps preemptively, failed attempts at self-definition via
identification with place – both geographical and temporal, or in other words,
historical – and with the accoutrements of daily living. Now, these <i>accoutrement</i> include the objects of
domestic (“the dark metallic stapler”) and public (“the L train”) use (and
uselessness) which the Surrealists made such revolutionary use of, in their
ready-mades, for instance, highlighting our own estrangement from the very
things we use most often and hold most dear, as well as the objects of the
natural world, the flora and fauna with which we are most familiar – and these
poems are rife with all manner of creatures. But, as Jarnot writes, “the tree
and the root and the worm and the corn are all words.” Asked to attend to them
as such, do they become more familiar to us? Do we have greater claim to them,
as part of the human world, having assigned human sounds to them? (“Because the
words are all friends with the worm and the friend of the tree.”) Or is it
rather the opposite? (“Because some words they grew up. Because some words they
grew up smarter. Because some words they grew up smarter and smarter.”) Do the
words outgrow us, overreach the lattice-work of our language, as consciously
constructed and used, and turn feral? Jarnot’s work is indeed a “word zoo”
replete not only with lemurs, opossums, pigeons and yaks, but also the “concept
of the tapir” and the “trajectory of the armadillo.” There are the words, and
there are the progeny of the words; and at the risk now of overextending the
trope, it might be said that, more than zoos, some of these poems are open-doored
menageries on some isle of Dr. Moreau, their vivisected beasts, split-tongued, set
free. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">As Aaron
Shurin’s blurb on the back cover says, “Lisa Jarnot’s book of joy raises joy in
return.” This joy, however, is not come to lightly and is no lightheaded euphoria.
Jarnot’s poetry works itself out from some early intellectual-linguistic morass
(albeit one of a particularly uncanny beauty) through to a mature progressive
domesticity, in which the very house of language is accepted as the living
thing it is, not “the fantasy of renovated words,” as Jarnot puts it in the
title poem of this selection, but an actual multiphastic possibility, as Duncan
would say. Duncan’s words are offered as epigraph to <i>Night Scenes</i>, too: “to release the first music somewhere again, for
a moment / to touch the design of the first melody,” unabashedly foregrounding
the song which is at root of all poetry, all language, “The Song Between,” as a
poem from <i>Ring of Fire</i> dedicated to
the great Philip Lamantia (whose own collected poems came out from UC Press last fall) is titled:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Break your bird on
your beak, bird, with a title known as bird,<br />
with a bird sound called a bird, with a bird, being birdlike, <br />
being all bird, in the shallow water, being all water, in the<br />
shallow bird, being the shallow sound of the bird spray in the<br />
wing, being wing of sound, bird, being where you are,<br />
being all, and the water is the shallow of the sound inside<br />
the bird, a shadow in the window of the man,</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">the
human, who is only human, most human, in response, in call, welcoming the chaos
of intercourse, embracing the negative capability inherent in language itself,
sounding itself out in echoes, in quotes, both straight and slant, repetitions,
second takes, revisions, like a jazz musician hammering at a phrase until it
glints just right and shows a way forward, often only later to recur. When one
listens to the likes of an Eric Dolphy solo, so called, one hears no solo, but rather
a conversation, which is not to say argument or compromise, as some have, with
his horn. One hears an actual coming to terms, musically, mutually engendered but
belonging neither to Dolphy nor to his horn, belonging only to the air. And, as
Dolphy has most famously said, “When you hear music, after it’s over, it’s
gone, in the air. You can never capture it again.” You can only make more, move
on, sing again, anew, even if the same song. It will always be. See that
somehow holy Irish wake of a poem “Amedellin Cooperative Nosegay” at the end, remembering
in lament and celebration, singing from, and of, and for the common, the
cooperative. The community matters:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">and where is he? and where is she?<br />
<br />
<i>Michael
, Rynn, kari,<br />
Akilah, Brad, and someday Harry.<br />
<br />
hydrangeas and helicopters<br />
</i>grief its proper mode<br />
<br />
<i>“D”
in “Death”<br />
</i> <i>under
the space between<br />
“will” and “remember”<br />
<br />
that it smells like the
painting of a flower<br />
<br />
a red
flower<br />
a pink
kid<br />
a blue
dude<br />
and
pythons<br />
eating
strawberries.</i><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Nicholas
James Whittington was born and raised in the City of San Francisco and
currently resides in Oakland. He has also lived for significant stretches in
Santa Cruz, San Diego and Siena, Italy. Recent poems have appeared in <i>Big
Bell</i>, <i>Dusie</i>, <i>The Emerald Tablet</i>, <i>Greetings</i>, <i>Ping
Pong</i>, and also <i>AMERARCANA: A Bird & Beckett Review</i>, of which he
is the editor. The author of the chapbooks <i>Slough</i> (2010) and <i>Scoria
</i>(2012), he works with his
father and brother at the family store, Bird & Beckett Books and Records,
in San Francisco.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-63414715784800454112014-06-01T23:55:00.000-07:002014-06-02T11:42:23.805-07:00CHAPBOOKS by MICHELLE DETORIE, C.J. MARTIN, JAIMIE GUSMAN, LISA M. COLE and BRAD VOGLER<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">GENEVIEVE KAPLAN Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b>Five chapbooks by Michelle
Detorie, C.J. Martin, Jaimie Gusman, Lisa M. Cole and Brad Vogler</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial;">Fur Birds / Parrot 14</span></u></i><u><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Michelle Detorie (Insert Press, Los Angeles, 2012)<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">There
is no table of contents, no front matter in this slim packet. Instead, the
chapbook-length poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fur Birds</i>
immediately begins: “I am 15. Female. Human (I think),” suggesting readers must
question the narrator of the poem. As we continue to read, we find more clues to
tell us who—or what—is speaking through these poems: “We lived in a burrow….I
licked my paw” (4), sister has a “tail” (4). The poem ends, “Tongue to paw. Paw
/ to ground. Pause. / Pause. Repeat.” (16). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
characters in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fur Birds</i> include “I”
(having “For hands, fur birds” (16)), “we” (I and “sister”), “you” (“you turn
your eye,” “you pull wire from your ribs,” “you’ve been so complicit, so cruel”
(5)), and “she” (perhaps the narrator addressing herself: “she thought this to
herself before / bed every night for a week” (10). On the other hand, “she is
my twin scissor” (13)). The surreal qualities of the world inhabited by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fur Birds</i> are foregrounded. Objects are
always important; the book is full of “old bones” (4), “sour birds” (5), a
“dead seal” (7), many branches and sticks (9, 14, 15), “metal / chains
a-linking” (16). The characters are equally animal as they are human, the
setting both wild and tame: “everything seemed fine until / we rolled [the
seal] over and saw / the blood” (7) and “each of us was asked to speak” (9).
The speaker wears “clothes” (15) but “ate grass” (4). The journey the book
takes readers on is a strange one, for sure, but it’s definitely one worth
joining in on. Ultimately, Detorie reminds us, “No matter how we look at it –
we are either all together or else we are all alone” (13).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial;">Lo, Bittern</span></u></i><u><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by C.J. Martin (Atticus/Finch, 2008)<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Lo, Bittern</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">
immediately demands a reader’s attention. First, the book itself is beautiful,
careful. Handsewn, with heavy paper French fold covers, it arrives in a
protective plastic sleeve. The physical unwrapping that must occur prefigures
the kind of work readers will need to be ready to do, content-wise, once they
begin reading the poems inside. The book has two parts; the first, “Lo, Bittern,”
consists of 24 pages, and the second, “The Islands 1979,” is four pages long.
Is each section a single poem? I can’t be sure. The first line on each page is
frequently in all-caps: “--HARDEST WAS LIMIT IS LEFT, UNTOLD” or “ADS ELISSIVE,
1979.” Some pages begin with an even larger and more separate line—“PARTITION”
and “PARTITION RUIN.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But these titles
and first lines are inconsistent, and there is no table of contents to guide
me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Since
I’m a little unsure how to proceed, I let myself read the poems as driven by
sound: “None lo, so founder-pt. (Nor beltus be, / though nothing could: hills,
hills, down, / root, left, roots, the, het” I read. I find pleasure in noting,
“Of passage as of pasturage,” which I hope is what is expected. The language
itself is an object in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lo, Bittern</i>,
it’s clear. Martin frequently abbreviates words down to their smallest forms (“pt.,”
“w/,” “yr,” “wch.’s,” “tho,” “nt.”) or combines smaller into larger ones (“admixture,”
“midmost,” “unnumb,” “be-loved,” “parcelside,” “memory-me”). Or, words are broken:
“eas / ily,” “dis / posal,” “adde / d,” “me- / chanic,” “ac / cord.” While I
may not readily comprehend the content of the poems here, I always understand
and respond to their sound and speed: I read quickly or slowly, according to
Martin’s conducting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Lo, Bittern</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">’s
poems are alternately troubling and exciting, and the chapbook is certainly an
object worth holding, exploring, and listening to: “Old forms remain what are /
day labor and / alter, bitter, memory-me.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial;">One Petal Row:</span></u></i><u><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Jaimie Gusman (Tinfish, Hawai'i, 2011)<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Gusman’s
seven-poem chapbook is most obviously tied together by the peculiar figure of
“Anyjar”—simultaneously a god, a vessel, a father, a lover, an object, a
metaphor, a vision, and even the self. In various poems throughout <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One Petal Row:</i>, Anyjar speaks
(“Anyjar…lectured us on the art of collecting”), Anyjar emotes (“Anyjar gets
mad”), and Anyjar is spoken to (“Anyjar, have you lost interest in our home? we
ask”). Sometimes Anyjar is totally mundane:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“filled with change,” “cradle[d]…under your arm,” and “left…/in the
snow, on a doorstop, / or wrapped in newspaper.” But Anyjar is also larger than
life. In the poem “On repetition,” Gusman writes, “our house is roof-deep in
water…the jar cannot contain it.” The poem continues, “the Anyjar / is not only
a decorative or an alembic / but a systematic approach to the epistemological
discovery of collective remembrance.” However, such a system is always
undercut; in the previous poem, readers learned that “The Anyjar is not
anything not all at all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">There
are other themes in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One Petal Row:</i> as
well: home, the ocean, love, family, gardens…. The poems reference pudding
pops, “a pewter fork,” “delicious flowers,” “a two-seater / and a cup holder,”
television sets, couches, ships, sand, backpacks, dinners, and coral reefs. The
Anyjar’s peculiarity is particularly powerful because of the way Guzman
juxtaposes it with ordinary daily experiences: we “discussed musical
instruments as we chewed pen caps,” we have “nicknames,” and “We fog the glass,
write.” These engagingly narrative poems resonate strange and dreamlike: “We
decided to take a nap” and “We playback our reactions in the bedroom,” all the
while both troubled and comforted by the looming figure of the Anyjar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial;">tinder // heart</span></u></i><u><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Lisa M. Cole (Dancing Girl Press, 2012)<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">tinder // heart</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;"> is a book of thirty prose poems, each numbered rather than titled.
While the poems are in prose, Cole often uses a double-slash to create tension
in the lines, and to act as quasi-line-breaks. This slash also reinforces <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tinder // heart</i>’s recurring theme of how
language and objects are seen, re-seen, and always inconstant. Readers
encounter words that are repeated but broken: “darling” becomes “darl-ling”
(5), the “leaflets on a terrace” turn into “leaf-lets” (5). Objects, too, morph
easily from one thing to the next: “brain as body” is immediately followed by
“brain as bullet // brain as lamppost” (8) and “body as map” becomes “body as
road // body as landscape” (15). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Death,
violence, and the afterlife haunt <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tinder
// heart</i>’s narrator. “Bullet” (8, 17) she echoes, “a bomb going off” (9),
“blood” (6), a “razorblade” (19). There are ghosts (23, 5) and graves (27), “corsets
& handcuffs” (13), “tarot cards” (7) and a “Ouija board” (23). But even as
we “harvest the blood // sterilize the blade” (20) our expectations are
shifted. It turns out “death is not a death—is not a death” (3). We must not
“be frightened by doors, by gates // by things that creak open” (29) because “to
un-bloom is not to wither” (24).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Cole’s
book occasionally relies on tired tropes like “zombie eyes” (2) and “the animal
in me” (21), but it continually—and importantly—also confronts more existential
problems of the human experience. “I see all of these things // I see none of
these things” (10) assures Cole’s narrator; “I veer sideways // I veer
never-ways (always)” (19). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: Arial;">Fascicle 30</span></u></i><u><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Brad Vogler (Little Red Leaves Textile Series, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fascicle 30</i> Brad Vogler draws from poems
by Emily Dickinson, cutting, modifying, and re-assembling to create his nine-page
chapbook. While it can be tricky at times to precisely locate Dickinson—as
Vogler writes, we “lose her / obtain her / lose her / yet obtain her” (3)—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fascicle 30</i> consistently projects an
overall sensibility of the19th century poet. Lines like “you – He is ˟, and
brave – I” or “My heart / The liberty to say –” evoke Dickinson’s stutter and
pause, and her use of punctuation—dashes, capitalizations—in a sort of echo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Not
everything in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fascicle 30</i> is clearly
sourced, however. Vogler writes, “I often wish myself- / a’bloom – No Bird //
Dear, // If God is-,” and readers know that his poem 660 was elsewhere
initiated by Dickinson. But if we look up Dickinson’s poem 660 (“’Tis good –
the looking back on Grief – ”), we don’t find the expected similarities; Vogler
is working from Dickinson’s manuscripts, and we must turn to this more obscure source
material instead. Once we examine Dickinson’s original Fascicle 30—a group of
twenty-one poems, handwritten on scraps of paper and hand bound—we begin to
better realize how these two disparate little volumes might resonate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It can
be wonderfully satisfying to find the word “opon” in Vogler’s poem 657 and Dickinson’s
521, “bosom” in both 656 and 520, “˟ Exclusively – to save” in Vogler’s “659
(variant 2)” as well as Dickinson’s 539. Dickinson’s line “We love the Wound”
in her poem 379 becomes Vogler’s “Balmless Wound” in 660. Vogler’s new Fascicle
includes crossouts and typeovers and slashes, a sort of revision-on-the-page
technique reminiscent of Dickinson’s drafting process. Vogler’s use of numbers
recalls Dickinson’s title-free work; too, his poems 658 and 659 are noted as
“variants,” reminding readers of the instability of source material while
highlighting his compositional process. The Little Red Leaves Textile Series books
are always beautiful, tactile products, and the format seems especially apt for
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fascicle 30</i>; holding the
cloth-covered “lovingly sewn” object activates one more Dickinsonian echo to
enhance our reading experience. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Genevieve
Kaplan is the author of <i>settings for these scenes</i> (Convulsive
Editions, 2013) and <i>In the ice house</i> (Red Hen, 2011). She
lives and works in southern California, but you can find her online at The
Forest and the Trees (<a href="http://genevievekaplan.blogspot.com/"><span style="color: #386eff;">http://genevievekaplan.blogspot.com/</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-35613355218312972012014-06-01T23:50:00.000-07:002014-06-02T20:43:22.409-07:00BOOKS by DANIEL ROBINSON and JOE SAFDIE<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">PATRICK JAMES DUNAGAN Reviews</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>Myself and Some Other Being: Wordsworth and
the Life Writing</i> b</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">y Daniel Robinson</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>(University of Iowa press, Iowa City, 2014)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>Scholarship</i> b</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">y Joe Safdie</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Blazevox, Buffalo, 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">William Wordsworth ranks in the upper echelon
upon the slopes of Parnassus. He’s generally considered to have written, along
with his pal Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the foundational texts of English
Romanticism marking the shift towards Modernism, <i>The</i> <i>Lyrical
Ballads</i>. The Preface for which, recognized to be primarily the work
of Wordsworth, calls for a poetry written in the language of the working class
(Wordsworth referred to the working <i>man</i>) and concerning matters
with which everyday regular individual readers would be able to identify. It
often sounds as if Walt Whitman stepped directly out from its pages as a poet
fit-to-order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Joe Safdie teaches English at a small
community college down around San Diego. A former student of poet Ed Dorn, he’s
steeped in the lineage of American poetry that runs directly from English
Romanticism to Whitman and Dickinson on up through the Modernism of Pound, W.C.
Williams, and H.D. continued by Black Mountain College figures such as Olson,
Creeley, and Duncan onwards to its various manifestations in locales such as
Buffalo (Blakean Jack Clarke) and Bolinas (the ever present Joanne Kyger and
likewise mainstay Duncan McNaughton). Over the last forty years his poems
have appeared in numerous small press publications, including several
chapbooks, yet <i>Scholarship</i> is the first full collection of his
work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Daniel Robinson’s <i>Myself and Some
Other Being: Wordsworth and the Life Writing</i> looks at the composition
of Wordsworth’s autobiographical epic poem <i>The Prelude</i> which
spanned his entire writing life, undergoing three significant manuscript stages
and was only published after his death. Wordsworth completed the first, much shorter
two part version of the work now known as <i>The Prelude</i> in
1798-99 beginning his initial work on it nearly immediately after Coleridge’s
prompting, who urged in 1796 that, despite any substantial work as yet to
demonstrate it, Wordsworth see himself as “the best poet of the age.” In 1805
he finished a much expanded thirteen book version of the previously abandoned
work. Wordsworth’s <i>The Excursion</i> published in 1814 serves as a
kind of alter after-the-fact reverse-ur-text accompanying the ongoing
composition of the other poem. <i>The Prelude</i> conceivably
introduces the early life experience of the hermit-poet presented in <i>The
Excursion</i>. Throughout his later years Wordsworth repeatedly came back again
and again to <i>The Prelude</i> and composed a final fourteen book
version published in 1850. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Robinson, a former student of poet James
Dickey, utilizes his study of <i>The Prelude</i> to offer a supple
biographical sketch diving into Wordsworth’s ambitions as a poet and his
troubled relationship with Coleridge. He also takes the opportunity to discuss
broader ramifications for the role of the poet as maker of the work of art, the
interrelations between the poet’s life, his work, and his audience:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What the maker seeks to do is to find figures from his life that
will correspond with similarly peculiar ones from his readers’ lives and then
model for his readers what they can do with those figures, to produce creative
fruits of their own and to repair imaginations that become impaired during the
intercourse of everyday life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Safdie is a poet straddling the hump between
the 20<sup>th</sup> and the 21<sup>st</sup> century confronting the
same desire, and accompanying problems, as faced Wordsworth two hundred years
before. Safdie’s “Watching Sports on TV” describes his struggle with writing
the poem at hand, “trying to make autobiography / into epic, like Wordsworth”
while simultaneously following a basketball game on television. Humor is
rampant in Safdie’s often lengthy digressively discursive poems wherein he
bandies about the weighty inheritance of poetic practice to which he’s albeit
an unacknowledged heir. He’s commonly found to be running through comparisons
between himself and poets of old, reconciling (or not) likes and dislikes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> my first insight – I hate Virgil <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> because I’m too much like him,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">channeling the
heavens, surfing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the divine waves,
seduced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">by the Father God into
thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">there’s a plan instead
of just<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">letting things flow,
as Ovid did<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
(“Summer Reading (2011)”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Safdie drafts his poems in clear dialogue not
only with past poets, but also with readers he’s well aware do not as yet exist
in any great number. Iowa is not knocking on his door offering him the next
visiting poet slot. Not that he doesn't recognize his own lack of interest in
attempting attain academic posts: “There was a job in Oregon I thought / I
could get, but I forgot to apply / by the due date” (“Saturn Return (The
Sequel)”) Yet similar to the Wordsworth who Robinson focuses upon—that is, the
young, unproven Wordsworth who only has his own inhibited ambition and the
backing of Coleridge to launch his grand poem <i>The Prelude</i>—Safdie
embraces the larger questions of the act of writing itself in his work.
Safdie proves himself the same sort of metaphysical
thinking-through-the-writing poet Robinson describes Wordsworth of being.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Although he never became the philosophical poet that Coleridge
wanted him to be, Wordsworth was interested in metaphysics. His thinking about
such matters tends to focus on how they relate to identity and self. He comes
up with a subjective metaphysics associated with poetics, with making, with
creating – both poetry and identity. Wordsworth’s chief subject – even before
Wordsworth himself – is the poem itself as a poem about the development of the
writerly self.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Safdie is interested in this same exploration,
pushing himself via his work to ask larger questions even as he understands
that ultimately he’ll likely have to settle for accepting much less than the rewards
of any sort of final summative answer: “What is poetry? I’ve been writing it
for a long time and I have no idea.” (“Afterword: on <i>Scholarship</i>”)
Despite the challenges not only of life but also the lackadaisical nature of
the inspiration offered at times from the work itself, ways of courting poetry
must be found.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">later the Muse came
less often<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">no longer hiding in
the everyday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">needing to be summoned
by odd rituals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">marijuana
jazz the World Cup<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
(“Tribute to
Jack Clarke”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Safdie demonstrates the same stamina Robinson
allocates Wordsworth to the dedication of a life practice in poetry: “If
there’s one thing that Wordsworth’s poetry shows, it’s that the writing of
one’s <i>life </i>may sustain the life writing it by giving a sense
of purpose, of being, of belonging – and of becoming.” It is the spirited zeal
to reach beyond one’s own self, to be guided by the Outside in practices which
develop the inside life. A set of principles Safdie discovers his own examples
of as every poet must.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">…poetry
which has to come from sources<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">outside the
self as Spicer also said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">still, it makes sense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">to think of Jack as
Romantic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">counseling concrete life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
(“Tribute to Jack Clarke”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As much as Robinson’s book is an introduction
to Wordsworth’s work, life, and poetics it is also a meditation upon the
working life of any poet practicing today. We’re all still Romantics, after
all, even those who would deny the Muse in their work. (Safdie: “We’re all
romantic / and all equally screwed.” (“Against Romanticism”)) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When working through drafts of poems, even
those destined for recognition and study, there’s no fame that accompanies being
a poet. Wordsworth’s <i>Prelude </i>went overlooked his entire life
for lack of readers due to his own inert impulse to publish it. Robinson
remarks, “William Blake should have read <i>The Prelude</i> instead
of <i>The Excursion</i>, which gave him a bowel complaint.” Of course,
“like everybody else, he didn’t know it existed.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Robinson’s book relates an image of Wordsworth
as the very practical-minded poet he no doubt brought himself into being as
opposed to the rather socially lopsided, opium-addicted Coleridge. Safdie is
somewhere between the two. While he maintains a steady source of income from
teaching he’s no academic and not at all averse to recognizing the hazardous
futility of the calling he’s willingly chosen. In the Poet Game, Safdie’s a
lifer: Whatever the consequences he’s all in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I want to meet William
Blake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Why not? When I was 21
I took acid<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">for the first time and
he addressed me –<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Now that you’re
here,” he said,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“what are you going to
do about it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I didn’t know what to
say,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">much less what to do…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">it’ll come to me or
not,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">before that chain
rusts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(I’ve thrown away the
key)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>
(“What I want”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That a poet such as Safdie goes
overlooked in our day and age doesn't bode well for him or anybody
else interested in poetry. I don't know whether Safdie has his own <i>Prelude</i> lurking
in a drawer or with suspended status of "in contemplation" somewhere
between his imagination and the page but given the range and depth found
in <i>Scholarship</i> I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover he
did. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Patrick James Dunagan
lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson library for the University of San
Francisco. Many book reviews appear here and there. His most recent books
are <i>A GUSTONBOOK </i>(Post Apollo 2011) and <i>Das Gedichtete</i> (Ugly
Duckling 2013).</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-75426037495310984112014-06-01T23:45:00.000-07:002014-06-02T10:51:19.369-07:00VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA Edited by EILEEN R. TABIOS<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">AILEEN IBARDALOZA
Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">VERSES TYPHOON
YOLANDA: A STORM OF FILIPINO POETS, </span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Edited by Eileen R.
Tabios<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Meritage Press, St. Helena & San Francisco, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">NOTES ON <i>VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">A requisite of the art
and practice of poetry is the art and practice of being relevant. “If you would
be a poet,” challenges </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Lawrence Ferlinghetti</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">, “write living newspapers.” Such as Allen Ginsberg who “howled”
against conformity and intolerance, thus breaking a barrier, and changing his
generation with a poem. Or Jose Rizal who, on the eve of his execution, wrote verses
that would be instrumental in giving Filipinos a Bill of Rights and the <a href="http://nhcp.gov.ph/the-philippine-bill-of-1902-turning-point-in-philippine-legislation/">privilege
of legislation</a>; the same poem would be translated into more than 70
languages, and would serve as a <a href="http://www.palhbooks.com/rizal.htm">battle
hymn of Indonesian soldiers</a> in their national struggle for independence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Poets are inherent
game-changers, the “unacknowledged legislators of the world,” according to </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Percy</span><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> Bysshe
</span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Shelley<i>. </i>To
practice poetry is to be freely, fiercely radical – form a community, inspire
change, show compassion wherever and whenever it is needed.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/">Verses Typhoon Yolanda is a call to action, where 133 Filipino poets came together to create a fundraising anthology</a></b><span lang="EN" style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> To emphasize the extent of Yolanda’s devastation, the </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43309.pdf">Federation
of American Scientists</a>, in a report prepared for Congress, writes, “Super
Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda)… directly swept through six provinces in the Central
Philippines… with a force equivalent to a category 5 hurricane and sustained
winds of up to 195 mph… [As of January 2014,] UN agencies reported that 14.1
million people had been affected… with more than 4.1 million displaced… an
estimated 6,201 had been killed and 1,785 [are still] missing… an estimated 1.1
million houses [had been] damaged or destroyed… and nearly 5.6 million [people]
required food assistance… International donors contributed a total of $662.9
million to the relief efforts…”<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<em><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Verses Typhoon Yolanda</span></i></em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"> is a reportage invoking the language of the poets. It begins with a “Lament,”
a prelude to profoundly moving instances of loss and the persistence of love:<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></em><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></em></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">You have become driftwood. / Only the sea
knows the full story / of how you were battered and / shaped into death, limbs
twisted… // I love you and the Universe / you once contained, which include /
memories of the sea and its splendor… <i>(Madriaga, 21)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The book flashes back
to “The Night Before the Storm” with images and muted tones of foreboding:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">They huddled inside their living
room / And watched the news. They wondered / What signal number 4 will feel
like… // And what is a “storm surge”? They / Heard that the sea will rise from
the / Shore and extend its reach inland. <i>(Cuales, 23)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">And then follows a post-landfall
narrative with unbroken verse lines so powerful and immediate they necessitate
anger or action, or both:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">We crowded the basement. There were
bodies spilling out, we couldn’t all fit, and some took refuge in the scattered
Jeepneys along the road, and when the trees and metal gates bent, so did they.
// We walked ten miles to the airport after the winds fell and the storms bent
metal gates and 10,000 went missing… We hear the military planes roaring above,
bringing us more things to eat: we eat our hope… We walk, one leg lifting, one
arm swaying, we walk, one breath inhaling, we walk. We walk with 10,000 bodies.
We walk more than ten miles. We walk longer than eight hours. We walk till the
metal gates unbend. Till the trees re-root. Till the coffins are filled. Till
the houses are rebuilt. Till the roads are paved with our sweat. <i>(Sipin, 26-28)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The world is warming.
And like <a href="http://asiancorrespondent.com/121237/climate-change-yeb-sano-puts-philippines-in-focus/">Yeb
Sano</a>, we are outraged by delaying climate action. “It is the fight of our
lives – yet we can hardly bear to look at it,” <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/23/climate-change-fight-of-our-lives-naomi-klein">Naomi
Klein</a> points out. In more solemn and mournful tones, the following
quatrains express both umbrage and remorse:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Men endure the world both tropical
and bipolar. / Water, true ruler of our lives, / awaits coronation by the
public / that still sings paeans to oil. // The wind stabs through the cracks,
/ the smell always smoky, a charnel / house of the dead and the hungry. / The
soil bone dry, the cities // And their sirens remind us / of the appointments
we set, / and the graves we dug for ourselves / a long time ago. <i>(Francia, 54)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The indignation
spreads across boundaries and generations, demanding both perception and
action: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">because music more than my english
words can cross borders / and move a giving nation, because my words ironize
sympathy, / solidarity, because, my poems are infected with corruption, / about
deforestation… / The danger is, words can romance what I have never seen–only
in postcards and travel catalogs, but my family calls the archipelago home.
<i>(Manzano, 75)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Poetry [is] a way to
survive,” says Meena Alexander, “In a time of [tragedy], the task of poetry is in
some way to reconcile us to our world and allow us a measure of tenderness and
grace.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Verses Typhoon Yolanda</i>, even
as it recounts, sifts, and thunders (at) the larger issues, offers vignettes of
life that restore, gently hopeful and forgiving:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">raise the line high, to catch the
wind, sun, sky, our clothes / bellied out, bleached white, drops darkening the
sand, / vanishing into air, turning into clouds, falling as the rain / that
lashed my grandmother’s house one night as a typhoon / blew through. Downstairs
filled with neighbours, / sleeping on the concrete floor. Outside, the rain
became needles, / pinning the night through and through. When we woke, / the
sun was out, the water dried up. I wound my watch, / brought it up to my ear to
hear it tick. <i>(Alvarez, 126)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mostly in monsoon weather / There is
that rush for umbrellas, / Colored dots seen from the sky / As the scurrying of
shiny ants. / From the slick wet streets / The doorways glimmer with light /
Veiled by haze of downpour, / Welcoming, beckoning, opening up / For those who
would come home. <i>(Anonas-Carpio, 160)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">i wanna write a song for my people /
a love song / soothing / blunt edge / and / sorrow / on / lonely nights / home
from factories / song / stitched / mountain to field / all us folk / chanting /
this song / psalm / a poem of love / united / this moment / breath / rhythm
solid / breath / once again / unity / in poem / a song of love / for my people
<i>(Sevilla, 185)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ultimately, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Verses Typhoon Yolanda</i> is about
community – building one in order to rebuild another. It is this, our sense of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kapwa</i>, that moves us to <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">look out<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for each other <i>(Skyline College’s Fall 2013
PCN Class, 205)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Help to change the world, and make
it blossom. <i>(Fernandez, 202)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">most of all make the story heard.
<i>(Caranto, 199)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i>VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA</i> can be ordered <b><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/eileen-tabios/verses-typhoon-yolanda-a-storm-of-filipino-poets/paperback/product-21515174.html">HERE</a></b>; all profits will be donated to relief organizations helping survivors of Typhoon Haiyan.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Aileen Ibardaloza is
the author of <i><b><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/aileen-ibardaloza/traje-de-boda/paperback/product-6359820.html;jsessionid=A76B088FE74F48295ED6805DE39FDA4E">Tr</a></b></i></span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px;"><b><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/aileen-ibardaloza/traje-de-boda/paperback/product-6359820.html;jsessionid=A76B088FE74F48295ED6805DE39FDA4E">aje de Boda</a></b> </i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">(Meritage
Press, 2010) and the Associate Editor of </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://www.oovrag.com/">Our Own Voice Literary Ezine</a></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-3073451527280521772014-06-01T23:40:00.000-07:002014-06-02T20:41:47.611-07:00READING THE UNSEEN (OFFSTAGE) HAMLET by STEPHEN RATCLIFFE<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">T.C.
MARSHALL Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Reading the Unseen (Offstage) <u>Hamlet</u></span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> by Stephen Ratcliffe<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Counterpath Press, Denver, CO,
2010)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hearsay or See: Ratcliffe’s
Questioning Shakespeare<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">On page
3 of this book, we get to wrestle with Gertrude Stein’s minimized punctuation
to get an important idea: “does as the scene in the theater proceeds does the
hearing take the place of seeing as perhaps it does when something real is
being most exciting, or does seeing take the place of hearing as perhaps it
does when anything real is happening or does the mixture get to be more mixed
seeing and hearing as perhaps it does when anything really exciting is really
happening.” Though he makes copious use in his notes of great literary scholars
like Harry Berger or Stephen Greenblatt, Stephen Ratcliffe briefly and
effectively uses Stein’s lecture on “Plays” to focus on his point in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reading the Unseen</i>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>This book is a close reading, a very close reading, of several key
speeches in Shakespeare’s <u>Hamlet</u>. It focuses on words and the work they
do to show actions and images that are not seen on stage but are important to
the play and its story. Ratcliffe’s repeated contention is that these are not
just ways of forwarding the plot or giving depth to characters but “in effect
Shakespeare’s way in <u>Hamlet</u> of calling into question how it is that we
know what we know” (62).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
looking at what we hear in Queen Gertrude’s speech about Ophelia’s drowning,
for instance, Ratcliffe raises the question of how the Queen knows the things
she says. This echoes and accentuates our own dilemma in the audience as we
take the Queen’s word for what happened, and may hear in it many things that
might either accuse or excuse Ophelia. Her accident or suicide is perhaps
undecidably both and all we know about it for sure is that we heard about it in
Queen Gertrude’s words. The way we picture it to ourselves from those words is
part of Ratcliffe’s focus. He reminds us to look again at how we almost tend to
think we have seen it because we can picture it. As his preface puts it, “those
scenes work to make physically absent things imaginatively ‘present’” (xi).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ratcliffe’s
thinking in this book works with “the materialities both of language and of
physical action performed on a stage” in the “seamlessness” of the play, and
with how the meanings of either may be “multiple or unclear” (xii). This is
poets’ stuff. Ratcliffe permits himself the readerly focus that he says
Shakespeare’s writing usually does not get from us in the quick pace of a stage
performance, but he is also implying that even then we are affected by what the
words themselves perform (xiii). He slows down this effect and works to help us
see more of what the words perform and how they do it, sound by sound and
meaning by meaning or nuance by nuance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Those of
us who practice poetry as writers or readers or both will benefit from
Ratcliffe’s approach. His approach to his own poetry these days seems very much
caught up in related questions. Counterpath has also published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected Days</i> (2012). Recalling
Whitman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Specimen Days</i> of Civil War
times in its title and presentations of observed images, that book collects
selections from six day-book works Ratcliffe has written in recent years. At
the heart of each of them is the faith that the reader can and will build
images from the words and take them as specimens of what the writer has
observed. Specimen, evidence, testimony, observation, all are in play here. In
the play <u>Hamlet</u>, Ratcliffe shows us, Shakespeare worked to use this
sensibility by going inside it. He went even further than Ratcliffe’s own poems
do by using the device of plot to frame the undecidable nature of testimony.
This nature is located in us, in our hearing, in the “ear” and the “mind’s
eye.” “Hear-say” is used both to help the audience to get all the pieces of a
story too difficult to stage in all its parts, and to help the audience to
question the nature of knowing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">What’s
interesting about following Ratcliffe into this split is that it reveals the
nature of theater as poetry. The old narrative bardic function of poetry is
probably the root of theater after all, along with the ritual re-enactment of
the hunt and other stories. These depend on a story that is already somewhat
known by the audience being re-created by narrators who tell what we trust them
to know. As Robin Blaser used to say narr = gna = know, and his etymologies
were usually trustworthy. What Ratcliffe wants us to notice and focus upon in
his close reading is how we picture to ourselves what we hear, and then we tend
to believe it. He even goes to the level of sound play, where the “sound
effects” of speeches like Queen Gertrude’s “simply happen too quickly and too
constantly for us to notice that they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i>
happening.” His reading links those effects to the way we “see” what we are
told but not shown, and he says that “:is why they are so aesthetically
effective” (66). He works toward the point that what happens in words has its
own location apart from “the world” (68).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ratcliffe’s
suggestion that the playwright “could have chosen to show that scene” in the
world onstage seems to bring in a modern sensibility from film or video (76).
This weakens the point even as it helps to make it; such an enactment is not a
likely subject for the stage of Shakespeare’s day and would deny the history of
the audience’s imaginative place in theater and poetry. We enter the play’s
themes of “uncertainty, ambiguity, and the unknowableness of death” through our
part in their indirect representation by words (76), just as we have done
through the millennia of poetry’s presentations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ratcliffe’s
book investigates several other speeches from <u>Hamlet</u> along with
Gertrude’s. He does this job very ably through looking closely at “the verbal
action <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the speech” and “the physical action
described <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">by</i> it” (77). The scenes
presented all are ones unlikely for representation on the boards at the Globe
(though Tom Stoppard took a crack at Hamlet’s voyage in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rosencrantz and Guildenstern</i><u>)</u>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reading the Unseen</i>’s poetic emphasis on “how words work to enact a
world whose meaning cannot be seen or heard” in any direct simple way brings
its well-wrought weight to bear on “a world whose performance in theater
becomes” (in Hamlet’s own words) “what thinking makes … so” (2.2.250).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">It is
our thinking that is emphasized here; in modern terms, <u>Hamlet</u> is
“interactive.” In age-old terms, it operates by audience participation in
everything from sexual innuendo to intrigue and on to imaginatively supplying
scenes that are not likely for staging. Ratcliffe’s point that “we are never
going to know for sure what exactly ‘happened’” in these scenes is well argued
and should be well taken. Still, it seems to discount our part and our tendency
to play it. We do imagine and thereby know; we are never entirely “left in the
dark” We who do enjoy plays like this do “keep coming back to it, wanting more”
(103), but what we want is more opportunity to play our part and have our hours
upon the stage of our own engaged minds in more than the strutting and fretting
of “a poor player” (<u>MacBeth</u> 5.5.24-25). This focus seems to be missed by
Ratcliffe’s closing “Afterword.” There he focuses on Shakespeare and all the
mystery about who he was and what he meant. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
sharper contribution of this book is in a sentence halfway through: “What is
not shown physically cannot ever be known, yet (mysteriously) is wholly
imaginable once it enters opur ears” (55). That is the great mystery, and
Stephen Ratcliffe has done a great job of showing us the minute ins and outs of
it in <u>Hamlet</u> as a play for audiences and readers. The play, and
Ratcliffe’s very engaging recent poetry,“ invite us to ‘see’ things with our
ears because we cannot see them with our eyes.” These are<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the substance of our root role as audience
because they are “things we can therefore only speculate about from the words
used to ‘perform’ them—words that are in interaction with one another
themselves like actors in a text (<u>Hamlet</u>) that itself is to the theater
as theater is to that text” (51). To focus on the many things that do not
“happen except in words” (43) is to return the theater to its poetry. Ratcliffe
returns us to that in this brief and lively book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">T.C. Marshall has been publishing poems, critical work, and literary theory ever since his “Skyscraper” was selected for a mimeographed poetry anthology when he was in first grade. Recently, he has gone beyond paper into publishing blogbooks. One is called "Post Language" becuase it is composed of poems that incorporate picture that were all posted first on FaceBook as interventions in the photo-sharing expectations there. Tom has also begun Maize Poem, a blogged composition in progress that displays the evolution of his self-education about corn. Another focuses on education and is called "Mister Ed." They all can be found on blogspot along with other thoughts of his and ones he has borrowed from his teachers. He himself has enjoyed teaching for over twenty years in the community and at Cabrillo Community College in Santa Cruz County, California.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-23480060763065805642014-06-01T23:35:00.000-07:002014-06-02T20:40:50.039-07:00"IT IS WELL KNOWN" by HARRIET ZINNES<span style="font-family: Arial;">THOMAS FINK Reviews<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">“It
is Well Known,” a poem from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New and
Selected Poems</i> by Harriet Zinnes<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Marsh
Hawk Press, New York, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></b>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">LINEAR AND RETROSPECTIVE READING: </span></b></div>
<div align="center" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">HARRIET ZINNES’
“’IT IS WELL KNOWN’”<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Harriet
Zinnes’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New and Selected Poems</i>, (East
Rockaway, NY: Marsh Hawk Press, 2014) collects the work of roughly half a
century. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1966, when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An Eye for an I</i> was published, the poet
was already an accomplished Comparative Literature professor and translator. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New and Selected Poems</i>, includes work
from eight previous books of verse, the most recent being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weather Is Whether </i>(2012), as well as seven new pieces. Zinnes’ work
happily blends the influence of French Symbolism, French surrealism, Steinian
reiterations, stately cadences and heightened speech of high modernists like
Eliot, Yeats, and Stevens, and a dash of Ashbery’s disjunctive cliché-tweaking.
The great old themes of love, mutability, war, and communion/alienation, and
the attempt at oneness with nature (especially birds) appear, but minus old
platitudes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
1966 poem “’It is Well Known’” is especially remarkable for the ways in which
the poet orchestrates an unsettling encounter between linear and retrospective
reading. The opening tercet consists of a tantalizingly decontextualized string
of quoted clichés:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">“It is well known.” <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">“It is dangerous.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">“Temptation is irresistible.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">(15)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Perhaps
the relation between “temptation” and danger is “well known,” but the pronoun
“it” lacks a referent. And isn’t it also well known that some temptations can
be resisted?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Next,
in a single-lined strophe, an image conveys a trope of positioning: “The center
holds the black round eye.” The orientation of a “center” that is also an “eye”
in tacit relation to a periphery suggests the organization and representation
of perception. This is followed by two more aphorisms in a couplet that
articulate further general admonitions about danger: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The path is hard./ Error is everywhere</i>.” “Hard” can be read as a
pun that links psychological and physical difficulty, while “error” includes
the connotation of wandering (i.e. from the path), as well as mistake. Thus,
the concept of centering and stability (“holds”) in the prior strophe is
disrupted by an aura of deviation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">All
of a sudden, the concluding strophes (a tercet and a couplet) provide somewhat
firmer contexts:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The canvas is light
blue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Who torments the child
with the McGuffey Reader<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">and tears the canvas at
its black throbbing center?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The page is white<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">and the President is
dead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The
repeated word “canvas” places a “frame” around the earlier “center” and “eye.”
Is Zinnes describing a minimalist painting with a single “bullseye” at the
center. As an art critic, she would have been acutely aware that minimalism
stood at the center of the New York art scene at the time she wrote the poem.
There are several reasons to suggest that “the black… center” is “throbbing.”
For one thing, in a composition with so few elements, the viewer, staring hard
at the canvas, may experience the illusion of central movement despite the
work’s actual stasis. Also, like the nineteenth century American pedagogical
tool, “the McGuffey Reader,” which Henry Ford helped endure in the early
twentieth century, the center as a trope for stability—perhaps ahistorical
“truth”—is subject to history’s volatility. Zinnes’ preposition “with” performs
its own “violence” against the reader: is someone tormenting the young student
by imposing the McGuffey reader on her/him, or is the child tormented by
someone while s/he is trying to enjoy reading this text? As for the painting,
the speaker may wonder who does violence to the painting—if not literally
“tearing” it, then dismissing the value of the work, denying its aesthetic
centrality even in a momentary act of looking. Of course, Zinnes is also
spotlighting how bids for centrality in art seem to depend on the negative
critique of other movements: Minimalism in visual art, soon to be challenged by
Pop Art’s drive to refiguration, and a more severe conceptualism, can itself be
read as an attack on fifties’ Abstract Expressionism’s emphasis on emotion,
personality, and even Existential action, as well as an attempt to prove itself
superiority to prior twentieth-century movements championing abstraction, such
as that of Mondrian and his followers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It
is obvious that intimations of desecration and destruction are registered on
the poem’s “white” “page,” but the text’s final allusive assertion is its most
ominous. If Zinnes wrote the poem as late as the early months of 1966, prior to
her first book’s publication, it was merely a little over two years after John
F. Kennedy’s assassination. Varied associations then (and for those of us old
enough to remember, now) attached to this tragic event, especially the
obliteration of Kennedy’s youthful promise and hope invested in his “New
Frontier,” and the glaring vulnerability of the President as putatively
stabilizing signifier for national identity, “throb” so insistently that the
concluding line urges a reconsideration of what precedes it. Thus, the
adjective “dangerous” can be tied to historical rupture. And there may be
“irresistible” “temptation” to read this particular rupture, even if smoothed
over by Lyndon B. Johnson’s speedy assumption of the Presidency, in ways that
tenuously re-establish a conceptual “center” in order to banish anxiety and
insecurity. Johnson’s own “error”-prone “path” involving escalation of U.S.
involvement in Vietnam—evident to many who were left of center as early as 1965
or 1966—might be seen in this light, as would the perceived need to grapple
with conspiracy theories and the notion of Oswald as an individual acting alone
that resulted in the Warren Commission’s research. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Although
the art world is a tame arena compared to the tumult of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">realpolitik </i>involving war and assassination, a retrospective
reading of Zinnes’ poem establishes a salient parallel between the two.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>We can identify the “temptation” to
mastery, to insist (“dangerously”) on maintaining that some “truth” “is well
known” and to deny the relevance of other formulations, as well as the actual
“errancy” of the “hard path” where “centers” do not “hold,” as serious problems
in both spheres. So it turns out that, for Zinnes, “it is well known” that one
can suppose many assertions of what “is well known” to be dangerous concealments
of what is either unknown or unknowable or known only so long as some random
disruption has not yet rendered it illusory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thomas Fink is the author of 8 books of poetry, including <i>Joyride </i>(Marsh Hawk Press, 2013) and a book of collaborative poetry with Maya Diablo Mason, <i>Autopsy Turvy</i> (Meritage Press, 2010). A chapbook, <i>Former Sestinas,</i> Fink and Tom Beckett’s collaboration, appeared in late 2013 (Beard of Bees). Fink’s work appears in <i>The Best American Poetry 2007 </i>(Scribner’s). He is the author of <i>A Different Sense of Power</i>: <i>Problems of Community in Late-Twentieth Century Poetry</i> (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2001) and co-editor of<i>Reading the Difficulties: Dialogues with Contemporary Innovative American Poetry</i> (U of Alabama P<i>, 2014)</i><i> </i>. His paintings hang in various collections.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-15187110352313896782014-06-01T23:30:00.000-07:002014-06-03T10:44:02.853-07:00ZEN by JESSICA SMITH <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN
Reviews</span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial;">Zen</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Jessica Smith <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">(Lulu eBook (PDF), 2011)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The cover of <i>Zen</i> is important, so I reproduce it
here:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If
the cover can be trusted, it is some sort of rewrite of Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra; what kind, we don’t know yet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Opening
the volume, we find: 238 apparently blank pages. Or we would, if we printed out
the PDF. I think immediately of other works of erasure, such as Ronald
Johnson’s <i>Radi os</i>, Jen Bervin’s <i>Nets</i>, Rauschenberg’s <i>Erased De Kooning</i>, etc. And ask, is
blankness the same as “erasedness”? Are erased pages blank?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
before I think too hard about the tradition of such work, I flash: blank/erased
pages, a title that can resolve to … zen … clever total rewrite / reworking /
negating of the concept of the <i>übermensch</i>
… aha. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
is that it? Somehow I’m not comfortable leaving it at that. Then I realize why.
Besides the fact that it feels too simple, the cover image: Is that Nietzsche
sitting on what appears to be the corpse of a horse? How odd. As Béla Tarr
tells the most famous story from Nietzsche’s biography at the beginning of his film
<i>The Turin Horse</i>, “In Turin on 3rd
January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via
Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble
with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move,
whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche
comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms
around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies
motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory
last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by
his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
we can be pretty sure Nietzsche never sat on it …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
some ways the picture performs the function of a koan. But, in spite of the way
Smith’s book is commonly called <i>Zen</i>,
it appears from a continued careful perusal of the cover, that the real title
is <i>Z:En.</i> Zen and not zen. A koan and
not a koan … <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of
course, once we pass beyond the cover, and into the text, I can’t help but
think of Craig Dworkin’s <i>No Medium</i>, which
is a study of “works that are blank, erased, clear, or silent”. It turns out
that Dworkin has a long footnote that in part discusses Smith’s book. After
discussing Marcel Broodthaers’ edition of Baudelaire’s <i>Pauvre Belgique!</i>, in which Broodthaers blanks out Baudelaire’s
dissing of Belgium, he assimilates <i>Zen/Z:En</i>
to Broodthaers' tradition of rebuke, in this case of the genre of erasure (as a <i>reductio ad absurdam</i>), and, surprisingly,
finds her choice of title arbitrary (“Why the distributed ‘zen’, rather than
‘rat’, say?”). This last is not a rhetorical device, because he never does go
on to figure out why this book is not called <i>Rat</i> (I don’t claim that Smith couldn’t have called the book <i>Rat</i>, I just claim that it would have
been a very different book, and not the one in question). He concludes his
discussion of <i>Zen/Z:En</i> by remarking
on the “bite” of her “cynicism”, and “the possibility of a more sincere reading
of the blank pages in relation to the title”; I am not very interested here
(frankly, I am not very interested at all) in the cynicism, which relates to
erasure as a genre (because I am not very interested in genre, really), tho I
will enthusiastically endorse the possibility of the latter. And hope to, at
least in part, provide a sincere reading here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
if we assume for a moment that Smith means / intends, every aspect of her text?
What if we assume that we must read this translation of Zarasthustra with as
much sincerity” as we must read any other translation, not to mention the German
text?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(More
questions: did she erase the German? The cover is German, but how much does
that signify? Did she erase a translation? Is this a translation of a
translation?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
am not asserting here that I have mastered the nuances of erasedness, or even
of this particular collection of erasednesses. Quite the opposite. You will
find more questions than answers here. But I am asserting that these erasednesses
seme: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Asking whether
signs involve sound images like <i>tsupu,</i> or whether they come to
mean through events like a palm crashing down, or whether their sense emerges
in some more systemic and distributed manner, like the interrelated network of
words printed on the pages that make up this book, might encourage us to think
about signs in terms of the differences in their tangible qualities. But signs
are more than things. They don't squarely reside in sounds, events, or words.
Nor are they exactly in bodies or even minds. They can't be precisely located
in this way because they are ongoing relational processes. Their sensuous
qualities are only one part of the dynamic through which they come to be, to
grow, and to have effects in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In other words
signs are alive. A crashing palm tree-taken as sign-is alive insofar as it can
grow. It is alive insofar as it will come to be interpreted by a subsequent
sign in a semiotic chain that extends into the possible future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The startled monkey's jump to a higher
perch is a part of this living semiotic chain. It is what Peirce called an
"interpretant," a new sign that interprets the way in which a prior
sign relates to its object. Interpretants can be further specified through an
ongoing process of sign production and interpretation that increasingly
captures something about the world and increasingly orients an interpreting
self toward this aboutness. Semiosis is the name for this living sign process
through which one thought gives rise to another, which in turn gives rise to
another, and so on, into the potential future. It captures the way in which
living signs are not just in the here and now but also in the realm of the
possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Although
semiosis is something more than mechanical efficiency, thinking is not just
confined to some separate realm of ideas. A sign has an effect, and this,
precisely, is what an interpretant is. It is the "proper significate
effect that the sign produces" (CP 5.475). The monkey's jump, sparked by
her reaction to a crashing palm, amounts to an interpretant of a prior sign of
danger. It makes visible an energetic component that is characteristic of all
sign processes, even those that might seem purely "mental." Although
semiosis is something more than energetics and materiality, all sign processes
eventually "do things" in the world, and this is an important part of
what makes them alive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Signs don't
come from the mind. Rather, it is the other way around. What we call mind, or
self, is a product of semiosis. That "somebody," human or nonhuman,
who takes the crashing palm to be significant is a "self that is just
coming into life in the flow of time" (CP 5.421) by virtue of the ways in
which she comes to be a locus-however ephemeral-for the
"interpretance" of this sign and many others like it. In fact, Peirce
coined the cumbersome term <i>interpretant</i> to avoid the
"homunculus fallacy" (see Deacon 2012: 48) of seeing a self as a sort
of black box (a little person inside us, a homunculus) who would be the
interpreter of those signs but not herself the product of those signs. Selves,
human or nonhuman, simple or complex, are outcomes of semiosis as well as the
starting points for new sign interpretation whose outcome will be a future
self. They are waypoints in a semiotic process.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Eduardo Kohn,
<i>How Forests Think</i>) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
with that, I am going to pause a moment and ask the author some questions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1)
Is the name of this book <i>Zen</i> or <i>Z:En</i> or both or neither? And how did you
come to choose that title?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Jessica
Smith: “<i>Zen</i> (which is how I think of it, although it is also at the
same time certainly not simply <i>Zen</i>, but <i>Z:En, </i>an
already hinged text) stemmed from a discussion with my former partner, Martin Hägglund,
who is a Derrida scholar. I remember discussing Nietzsche’s yes and Derrida's
“opening” and their desire for the future, which seems opposed to (what I know
of) the Buddhist concept of nirvana, which seems nihilistic. That is the
opposite of Nietzsche, who far from wanting everything to be erased, wants to
make love to that night demon who offers him eternal return.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2)
Can you tell us something about the cover image? (Provenance, etc. Anything you
want)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS:
The cover image-- I don’t remember how I found it-- is not of Nietzsche, though
it is intended to represent the scene you describe, where he ostensibly breaks
down over the beating of a work horse. As I told Dworkin, at the time
there were a lot of erasure poems in the literary scene so this is a reference
to “beating a dead horse,” and the internal completely erased pages were
intended to be the last stop of erasure (a form which I now embrace, but at the
time I felt like Dworkin recently at AWP, “I hope I never see another
erasure poem again”). At the same time, there’s some deep pathos in that image,
and its use is not accidental. Nietzsche—“Why I am so clever” Nietzsche--
breaks, forever, while witnessing violence against an animal. And then
everything happens to Nietzsche in those “blank” ten years: in the blank space
of his silence, his sister determines his image for the next fifty years. With
these tools, the context of the cover, how does one read those 238 pages?
Blankness certainly isn’t meaningless-- the blank space of the page is never
weightless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3)
Is there anything above you disagree with? Anything you’d like to comment on /
argue with / correct? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">JS:
I love that you call <i>Zen</i> a koan and perhaps this is both its
irony and its potential power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">OK.
There are a few points or comments or whatever that Smith makes to which I want
to respond, because they relate to how I read this book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First:
“I remember discussing Nietzsche’s yes and Derrida's “opening” and their desire
for the future, which seems opposed to (what I know of) the Buddhist concept of
nirvana, which seems nihilistic. That is the opposite of Nietzsche, who far
from wanting everything to be erased, wants to make love to that night demon
who offers him eternal return.” Smith and I have very different concepts of
“nirvana”. As best I understand it, an enlightened person “carries water, chops
wood.” There seems nothing nihilistic about this. Therefore I don’t read <i>Zen/Z:En</i> as contradiction of <i>Zarathustra</i>, so much as of a sublation
of it. Erasure is not annihilation. Especially when a trace (the cover) (the
enlightened person??) is left. Is this book what happens when the eternal
return meets non-returning? When a dream of the future meets the is? I’ll come
back to this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Second:
“As I told Dworkin, at the time there were a lot of erasure poems in the
literary scene so this is a reference to “beating a dead horse,” and the
internal completely erased pages were intended to be the last stop of erasure
(a form which I now embrace, but at the time I felt like Dworkin recently at AWP, “I
hope I never see another erasure poem again”).” I should again make it explicit
that the erasure of a genre (by completing it, perhaps) is of no interest to me
here. That’s a whole other conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Third:
“And then everything happens to Nietzsche in those “blank” ten years: in the
blank space of his silence, his sister determines his image for the next fifty
years. With these tools, the context of the cover, how does one read those 238
pages?” With this comment, Smith appears to relate her blanking of <i>Zarathustra</i> to Nietzsche’s biographical
erasure/blankness/(mis)interpretation. Thus (authorial-intention-wise), it
would seem that at least in part the blank pages that make up <i>Zen/Z:En</i> are pretty purely
representational. Which, besides indicating that, for Smith, blankness can
perform a number of functions simultaneously, leads me to ask: Is one of the
functions that she wishes to perform akin to that performed by Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s? I would answer: in part, at
least, very possibly yes. Among the other things that erasure does, these
blanked/erased pages can be seen to interpret Nietzsche’s text. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fourth:
“Blankness certainly isn’t meaningless-- the blank space of the page is never
weightless.” This is certainly my contention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fifth:
“I love that you call <i>Zen</i> a koan and perhaps this is both its
irony and its potential power.” Given that, perhaps I should to leave the
relationship between the Nietzsche’s title and text and Smith’s title and text
as just that, a koan. But I’m not. I’m going to interpret it. No. I’m going to
offer one possible interpretation. Not because I believe that it is <i>the</i> interpretation, <i>the</i> key to what is going on here, but as an example rather, of how
erasure is never complete, and how even apparent blankness can seme.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Verso Books blurb for Malcolm Bull’s <i>Anti-Nietzsche</i>
(2011) reads:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nietzsche, the philosopher seemingly
opposed to everyone, has met with remarkably little opposition himself. He
remains what he wanted to be— the limit-philosopher of a modernity that never
ends. In this provocative, sometimes disturbing book, Bull argues that merely
to reject Nietzsche is not to escape his lure. He seduces by appealing to our
desire for victory, our creativity, our humanity. Only by ‘reading like a
loser’ and failing to live up to his ideals can we move beyond Nietzsche to a
still more radical revaluation of all values—a subhumanism that expands the
boundaries of society until we are left with less than nothing in common.<br />
<br />
<i>Anti-Nietzsche</i> is a subtle and subversive engagement with Nietzsche
and his twentieth-century interpreters—Heidegger, Vattimo, Nancy, and Agamben.
Written with economy and clarity, it shows how a politics of failure might
change what it means to be human.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First,
note the dates of these books. Smith’s was published two years before Bull’s.
Therefore one can be pretty sure that <i>Zen/Z:En</i>
is not in the Bull “tradition”. Yet I propose that the latter can be fruitfully
read thru Bull’s notion of reading like a “loser”. And then some. I mean, let’s
start with Bull. And then. Bull:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nietzsche repeatedly refers to Supermen
as being a different species: ‘I write for a species of man that does not yet
exist: for “the masters of the earth.” He was not speaking metaphorically,
either. He hoped that the new species might be created through selective
breeding, and noted the practical possibility of ‘international racial unions
whose task will be to rear the master race, the “future masters of the earth.”’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">According to Nietzsche, it follows from
this that, relative to the Supermen, ordinary mortals will have no rights
whatsoever. …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Simply
put, I am arguing that it is possible to say that if one were to erase
everything in Zarathustra NOT aimed at “losers”, there just might not be much
left. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now,
I <i>know</i> that Bull’s reading is
controversial, and my point here is not to insist on it. I am not arguing that
he has got Nietzsche absolutely right. I am arguing, rather, that his reading
has at least some validity, and that it is possible to read Smith thru this
lens. As Keith Ansell-Pearson writes in a review of <i>Anti-Nietzsche</i> at <a href="http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/web/the-future-is-subhuman">http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/web/the-future-is-subhuman</a>
<i>Radical Philosophy</i>, “For Bull
although there have been an abundance of post-Nietzscheans keen to appropriate
Nietzsche for their own agendas, there have been few post- Nietzschean
anti-Nietzscheans – ‘critics whose response is designed not to prevent us from
getting to Nietzsche, but to enable us to get over him’.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let
us assume for a moment that there is value in getting over Nietzsche, or at
least certain aspects of him, aspects perhaps best exemplified by Zarathustra
and the whole Superman/masters of the earth/no rights for the rest of us thing.
What are our options? We can read like a loser. OK. But that’s not getting over
Nietzsche, that’s getting caught in a dialectical relationship with him. The
very opposite of getting over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How
to sublate this dialectic? (I said I would return to this). Well, one way is thru
the meditative techniques associated with zen (which, as I have indicated
above, is in no way nihilism or passive or …). Or should I say <i>Zen/Z:En</i>? Note that this goes further
than Bull does, at least according to the Verso blurb, which indicates that in
his reading we would be left with “a subhumanism that expands the boundaries of
society until we are left with less than nothing in common.” In my opinion, it
is good to go further than that. who wants a world in which “we are left with
less than nothing in common”? That is not the world of zen practice, which, at
least in its monastic form, is utterly communal as well as individual, tho, as
enlightenment approaches, the borders between communal and individual can be
said to flicker and go out, at least in a practical sense. Or what else might
it mean to be a bodhisattva? These are Dōgen’s Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts
(John Daido Loori translation). They applied to lay practitioners as well as to
monks:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Three Treasures<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Taking
refuge in the Buddha<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Taking
refuge in the Dharma<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Taking
refuge in the Sangha<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Three Pure Precepts<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Do not
create Evil<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Practice
Good<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Actualize
Good For Others<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
Ten Grave Precepts<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Affirm
life – Do not kill<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Be giving
– Do not steal<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Honor the
body – Do not misuse sexuality<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Manifest
truth – Do not lie<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Proceed
clearly – Do not cloud the mind<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">See the
perfection – Do not speak of others errors and faults<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Realize
self and other as one – Do not elevate the self and blame others<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Give
generously – Do not be withholding<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Actualize
harmony – Do not be angry<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Experience
the intimacy of things – Do not defile the Three Treasures<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You
will recall Smith saying, “I remember discussing Nietzsche’s yes and Derrida's
“opening” and their desire for the future …” Well, we have now sublated Nietzsche’s
yes (which, as we have seen, may not be a yes for you, or a yes for me …) and
arrived at a larger yes, and we have walked thru Derrida’s opening, into a
possible future of bodhisattvas. Who neither win nor lose. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
I want to return once more to the picture on the cover. Let’s think for a
minute about that cover image. It’s still just a puzzling. I am choosing here
to read it as Nietzsche-Boddhisattva. Or not. This is a koan to gnaw on. But
humor me. What does it say about the future? Perhaps that it will mean
beginning again and again and again, failing again and again and again, beginning
again and again and again … “Experience the intimacy of things – Do not defile
the Three Treasures” … face not an
eternal return but an exquisitely engaging undetermined … <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Which
is not bad, given that we started with a cover and half a ream of erased pages
… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
wait! The name of Smith’s book may not be <i>Zen</i>,
but rather <i>Z:En</i>. What does that do to
this reading? How does it change it? Aha! The reading(s) of this erasure, just
like the future, may never end …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John Bloomberg-Rissman has about a year and a half to go on <i>In the House of the Hangman</i>, the third section of his maybe life project called<i> Zeitgeist Spam</i>. The first two volumes have been published: <i>No Sounds of My Own Making</i> (Leafe Press, 2007), and <i>Flux, Clot & Froth</i> (Meritage Press 2010). In addition to his <i>Zeitgeist Spam</i> project, the main other thing on his plate right now is an anthology which he is editing with Jerome Rothenberg, titled <i>Barbaric Vast & Wild: An Anthology of Outside & Subterranean Poetry</i>, due out from Black Widow Press, Autumn 014. He's also learning to play the viola and he blogs at <a href="http://www.johnbr.com/">www.johnbr.com</a><span style="font-size: small;"> (Zeitgeist Spam).</span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">WILFREDO PASCUA SANCHEZ Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">COMPANIONABLE VOICES: Five
Filipino Poets<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Quincunx
Publishing, Manila, 2013)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">TRUANTS
OF THE WORD: FROM DOVEGLION TO QUIJANO TO QUINCUNX<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond;">All to each said Good-bye as we dispersed,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond;">Bursts of flowers of prairie grass:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond;">May God by signal-fire, by symbol, art<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond;">Or artifact help us find each<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond;">Other soon again in time<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond;">--Erwin E. Castillo, p. 117<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Exeunt Doveglion and Quijano de Manila.
Enter the Quincunx generation of poets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here’s a 148-pg limited edition of
poems & photos just released by Quincunx Publishing which is living up to
its initial billing, featuring five largely unread Filipino poets some of whom,
just as their literary extinction seemed assured, have sprung back with a
vengeance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The five poets, sometime
partners-in-crime and the oldest of friends, include: Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Recah
A. Trinidad, Erwin E. Castillo, Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez and the late Juan Jose
Jolico Cuadra. Sometime in their youth in the sixties they lived, schooled and got
drunk in Manila, then a rank and burgeoning city where all their paths crossed
and where they intermittently ‘locked horns.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If a sixth man could be said to hover
over the book, it would be Manila’s de facto laureate Nick Joaquin aka Quijano
de Manila who among other companionable ghosts (as would seem to scowl through
the cover image painted by Sonny Yniquez way before the book’s conception)
would have guffawed, not in the pejorative, to see his savage chickens coming
home to roost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Joaquin strongly promoted their works
in the early ’60s only to see them, with the exception of Aquino, dropping out
of the literary scene. At the time they were beginning to hold their own while
seeming to always fall short, with no resources to finish. Then, in a word, they
went missing. Decades later they each came out with individual books, Castillo
with <i>Firewalkers</i> in 1992, Sanchez with <i>New and Later Poems</i> in 2003, and just this
year <i>Recah with Tales from My Lost River</i>. While Aquino continued publishing,
the increasingly reclusive Cuadra, who died at age 74, has yet to have a book
published in his name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This impoverishment of output is
dismaying but not entirely to be blamed on the martial law years, a period when
even Joaquin himself—whose influence on the five poets seemed even more firmly
entrenched than [Jose Garcia] Villa’s—returned to reportage instead of literature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Castillo put a finger on it when he
said: “Now, with the happy exception of Cesar Ruiz Aquino, the poets gathered
in this volume come from a line of poets who have not, who could not, will not
accommodate themselves to the new, harsh realities. They continue to hold out,
out-of-touch, estranged, grumpy, scandalous and every single one unique,
singular, alone.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Agreed, this small book is inadequate
in itself to account for the hiatuses in the missing poets’ careers. Still
there is enough interest in it to invite us to take a backward look into how
our poetry in English, in its 100+ year-history, was developed and where
ultimately it is heading. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So let’s look at the timeline
particularly leading to the Quincunx generation, from the 1940s to the present,
with special emphasis on Villa and Joaquin. Bringing a welcome focus on their not
antithetical but contrasting influences might help to clarify where the
Quincunx poets are coming from (and, to be fair, there may be six to seven
other poets that could be grouped under the Quincunx label, though some of them
have passed on or ‘stopped poetrying’—to use Castillo’s words).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Before Quijano de Manila, there was of
course Doveglion. Pause to consider where our poetry was before Villa <i>arrived</i>. Well, when exactly did he
arrive? Who remembers Cornelio Faigao, Manuel Viray, C.V. Pedroche, Toribia Mano, Angela Manalang Gloria?
(These names are plucked not just for euphonious reasons, but these are poets
that Villa thrashed early on in his career.) It would take more than a stick of
dynamite to reignite their reputations; which is not to stigmatize their
poetry, of which we know little, but to make clear by comparison that the <i>something</i> that makes Villa valuable is
his aura of complete competence though the unarticulated rap against him,
perhaps unfair, is that he somehow left his hubris at the door in dealing with
foreign critics and was quick to suck up to them when they favored his work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To quote an original cliché: “It must
be very clear/That arrival is non-arrival.” Definitely not vintage Villa, but
it will do to remind us that poetry is always on the make, the possibilities
are exhausting and endless, but how difficult it is alas for this ‘sullen art’
to take hold. Judging by the shrinking number of quality poets on the local
scene, it’s very much a disappearing art for and by the disappearing few. We
are coping but appear in reality to be two steps behind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Prior to the 1940s, we can cite a number
of poets, among them Luis Dato and Virgilio Floresca, who were writing poems equal
or superior to Villa’s. Already, there was Nick Joaquin (b. 1917) who didn’t
just sneak up on Villa, on the contrary he was a more promising poet than the
Villa of the late thirties, having written his celebrated Sheba poem “The
Innocence of Solomon” in 1937. Villa
then has yet to write anything remotely comparable, of the same Yeatsian depth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The years 1940 to 1953 saw Villa’s
meteoric rise as a poet; after abandoning story writing he seriously hunkered down
and became a technician of the word, exploring experimentations with prosody
and verbal techniques along modernist
lines. One remarkable aphorism of Villa (Aphorism 69) goes this way:
“Not,all,birthdays,/Are, Inhabited.” We believe he is talking here about the
creative act as either stillborn and therefore unlived-in, or via “parthenogenesis
of genius” (169), self-engendered yet taking a supreme life of its own, isolate
and de-linked from its temporal surroundings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After writing “The Anchored Angel” in
1953, which was also the year of Dylan Thomas’s death, Villa’s serious poetic
output declined. Admittedly he stopped writing for fear of repeating himself
but more likely he concluded that the experimental verseform for which he had
become famous, the comma poem, had reached an unproductive dead end. While he
did not altogether quit writing what he produced thereafter was largely
negligible, confined to adaptations, poeticisms as opposed to aphorisms, and
spurious light verse. His announced
critical opus, from what we can gather, is not likely to enlarge our current
assessment of his achievement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Villa (b. 1908) and Bulosan (b. 1911), often
considered polar opposites, experienced America and for all the differences in
their upbringing were bruised by the experience in comparable ways,
particularly during the depression years followed by the war years. They wielded no influence on each other or if
they did only minimally. But it is no stretch to assume that both of them, in
differing degrees, felt their migrant status to be a millstone around their
neck during these 10-odd years when many writers were sweating the offices of
WPA and were drastically searching for work. Around this time, too, Quezon was
meeting with H.L. Mencken of Baltimore, who in his diary patronizingly remarked
of the president that he spoke English “with a curious accent, but uses words
correctly and even idiomatically.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Villa chose not to explore class
conflicts in his poetry, describing himself simply as a humanist, while Bulosan
was openly embracing of American democratic ideas, taking his cue from a narrow
left-leaning circle of writer friends such as Fante, Saroyan, Carey McWilliams,
et al. He also befriended a few American women who faithfully doted on him
through his years as a TB patient, until his death in 1956. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Though not blind to its frailties,
Bulosan romanticized America, and staunchly supported its egalitarian ideals
for the working class, which by the same token made his work more commercially
viable especially in the U.S. in a heightened wartime atmosphere. Diaspora-conscious
he was not, in the sense that he didn’t agonize over his foreignness and instead
craved assimilation socially and artistically. Villa, on the other hand, had no
such direct aspirational ambitions. Incidentally, his vaunted internationalism
has now become anathema to the multiculturally-inclined. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Villa took the route of exile, deliberately
attempting to extirpate his nationality from his poetry and with <i>Have Come, Am Here</i> (1942) became the
only Philippine poet of his time to have wowed the Anglosphere. At the time he was
increasingly receiving accolades from
the likes of Marianne Moore, Mark Van Doren, Richard Eberhart, Babette Deutsch
and others, he was in his early thirties, doing poetry tutorials at Columbia
University and clerking full-time at the university bookstore. There and
subsequently around Greenwich Village most of his American poetry contacts were
originated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The point is, in 1958, Dame Edith
Sitwell, by extravagantly praising his <i>Selected
Poems & New</i>, seems officially to have coronated Villa’s arrival as a
poet. Here, at last, was somebody from a backwoods somewhere endowed with a
divine gift. Never mind that she, as many Villa-bashers have since pointed out,
condescendingly referred to him (once, as a “dark green creature”-- aboriginal,
ecological green mind you!) in private correspondence with her friends. More in
the nature of fond mockery, we take it, and should in any case not diminish the
fact that he was honestly esteemed by Sitwell whose <i>Collected Poems</i> contained a poem dedicated to him. Note that Cummings
too, paid him for his devotion with a similar compliment in <i>Adventures
in Value</i> (1962).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is unfortunate that Villa’s
influence sparsely impacted younger American or British poets, at least the
ones that mattered. Ginsberg, Creeley,
Lowell, Larkin, Merrill, Ashbery, just to name a few, must have had a nodding
acquaintance with his work but seemed not to have benefited from his example.
He got scathing reviews from Jarrell, a certified Germanophile, and Thom Gunn, a
sometime disciple of Yvor Winters, and was generally overlooked by proponents
of new transcontinental poetics. There
is a fine irony in the fact that the last memorable allusion to "The Anchored
Angel" comes in the form of an orgasmic remembrance from the narrator of William
Gass’ novel <i>The Tunnel</i>, a Professor
Kohler embarked on an aborted study of Nazism in Germany. As we know, unknown to either Kohler or maybe even
Professor Gass, one of Villa’s central themes is the ousting of the generic fuehrer
god. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The waning of Villa’s reputation happened
not so expectedly in his own country where too many poets have jumped on his
bandwagon, and his colorful persona seemed to fit the public stereotype of an
artist, even to the extent that his flippant witticisms became fodder for the
local press. However, his approach to poetry involving melding literary odds
& ends into a harmonious mould, remained 80% paramount and was mimicked by a
younger generation of Philippine poets who preferred him over his American
counterparts because of his origin, just as they preferred him over his local
rivals because of his ‘name recognition’ abroad. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Putting that aside, and besides the
fact that his status was briefly mainstreamed by his foreign peers, what it was
they really found so attractive was Villa’s high seriousness and uncompromised
commitment to the poetic craft. There is no question that intrinsic weaknesses
in his approach prefigured his decline, but his achievement, as embodied in a
handful of poems (SPN 75, 102, 115, 117, 130, 159, 162), stands. Remove the
‘ice-cream chrysantheme’ factor, and
we’re left with a very vital poetry, as resonant as the poetry of Dylan Thomas
and as rigorously adhesive as Laura Riding’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One thing is certain. Some and some of
the same poets who followed Villa gradually shied away from his poetic and were
propelled in different directions. At least three identifiable reactions took
shape, as follows: 1) a movement from rhymed rhetoric to raw objective imagery, 2) a shift from
lyric to more ethnocentric genres, including satire and prophetic verse, and 3)
a return to the long poem and the narrative vogue. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In truth, all these elements latent in
poetry throughout the ages are brought to a boil not deliberately in reaction
to one person or two, but under pressure of locally grown events and
circumstances, as for example, in the years subsequent to Tydings-McDuffie,
when nationhood jitters were most acute or in the ‘70s when the nexus of
politics and poetry was elevated. We see these tendencies overlap in as many
ways as we have poets, and as variously as our poetry has gone through
transformative waves of brilliant creativity, from Villa to Lansang, from
Joaquin to Bautista, from Moreno to the Quincunx generation of poets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As early as the Commonwealth era, the
long poem gained popularity through works like <i>Sohrab and Rustum, Leaves of Grass</i>, and <i>The Song of Hiawatha</i>. Now the vogue seems to be regaining some
esteem. Not too long ago, the poet
Alfred A. Yuson essayed a kaleidoscopic poem of 252 lines, “SUITE AS CYCLE:
Captives of the City,” based on a semi-fictional event. Many others have tried,
in English (and here a helpful guide would be Abad’s--the first part coedited
with Edna Manlapaz--three-volume anthology, whose capsule bios of the poets are
probably its most illuminating feature) notably Virgilio Floresca, Ricaredo
Demetillo, Cirilo F. Bautista and Ricardo M. de Ungria. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now, Zulueta y da Costa’s <i>Like the Molave</i> (1940) was a dismal
failure, and so was Demetillo’s <i>Barter in
Panay</i> (1961). Bautista succeeded partially, magnificently in the third book of <i>The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus</i> (1999), and de Ungria totally in <i>Waking Ice</i>. Bautista’s first book, <i>The Archipelago</i>, appears to have been cobbled before his ‘grand’
design was internalized. Despite occasional poignancies it strikes the reader
as a lazy mosaic, perfunctory at best. The second book is similarly loosely unified,
and like the first it is padded up with unrelated verses which are better left
to stand on their own, as independent poems. In all, <i>Telex
Moon</i> reimagines Rizal’s persona on an astral plane, which might have
inspired a gnostic parallel in Cuadra or not, depending on your poetic bias. On
the other hand, de Ungria’s brilliant sequence of poems hews to a personal
storyline and succeeds in a way that say, Ted Hughes does in his <i>Birthday Letters</i>, or Alfred Corn in his
long poem “1992.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Incidentally, Hufana’s <i>Poro Point</i> (1961) cannot be considered a
long poem, but rather a series of related poems, much like Edgar Lee Master’s <i>Spoon River Anthology</i> from which it
derives its overarching conception and scope. Masters makes his characters
directly interact in a way that Hufana does not. <i>Poro Point</i> is no less dramatic in content, with its rich anecdotal
grasp and vigorous syntax. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hufana, party allegiances
notwithstanding, exemplifies the
movement toward satire and political invective alongside the poetry of
Bulosan, Tinio, San Juan, Maranan, Aguilar, Dauz down to the Lacaba brothers,
Eman and Pete. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From the mid-fifties through the
sixties, a number of remarkable poets
joined ranks with Villa and Joaquin, among them EdithTiempo, Ilio, Daguio, Angeles,
Moreno, Veloso, Hufana, Dimalanta, Ayala, Larry Francia, Tinio, Nolledo (<i>sic</i>), San Juan, Lansang, Manalo, Guillermo,
Tadena, Espino, Casuga, Dumdum, Yuson and Marra Lanot. Each modernized their
poetry in their own way, veering away from mere verbal artifice, reliant on
universal symbolism, to objective clarity, grounded in critical formulae and formalist
tradition. Two outstanding examples would be <i>Poems 55</i> (1961) by Jose Lansang, and <i>Batik-Maker and Other Poems</i> (1972), by Virginia Moreno, which not
surprisingly for a poet of great delicacy and finesse, took a full 20 years to
collect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It can be said that from a strictly
literary perspective there isn’t much to the ongoing faux Villa/Bulosan divide.
Bulosan is a fine poet, with a sociological edge, but put simply, Villa is the
better poet. Bulosan remains, to his credit, excruciatingly relevant to swelling
hordes of Pinoy eco-refugees in the U.S. Nor would it be correct to conclude
that Bulosan, for all his justifiable acclaim as a proletarian writer, is more
relevant to our national literature than Villa (as his more ardent explicators
would lead us to believe). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Literature is far more complicated than
that. Villa, by reason of his name alone, could not have eluded if he tried to
the radical implications of his birth no more than Bulosan could. Make of it
what you will, but Villa blurbing himself “the son of a physician who was the
chief of staff for General Aguinaldo in the Philippine revolution against
Spain” sounds hardly like someone anywhere close to antagonistic to his paternal
roots. We must grant that Villa knew what he was doing when he quit writing
about coconuts, Mirinisa, and “The Man Who Looked Like Rizal.” It was so much
an affectation, a burlesquing of his talents to have continued on in that vein.
It just wasn’t his cup of salabat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Immediately this leads us to Nick Joaquin,
who one can say embodies the flipside, the soixante to Villa’s neuf (excuse the
joke!), and who has admirably filled the vacuum that Villa left. Without losing sight of their limitations
Villa and Joaquin, offsprings of revolutionaries both, are the only writers that
could be said to have achieved culture-hero status in our time, and in my
opinion they’ve triggered a dynamic dyad of forces which has convincingly shaped
the progression of our literature in English, particularly its poetry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the context of competing strategies
in poetry they are precursors and antipodes both, representing on the one hand
a nonobjective poetry drawn to archetypal symbols and on the other, a poetry of
objective content, encompassing historical and contemporaneous events. As Villa
had to grow out of his Doveglion phase in order to produce a purist poetry, emptied
of any local associations, so Joaquin contrastingly had to implant native roots
into his poetry in order to invigorate it. Here there is not a false dichotomy,
as the approaches may be incompatible but the same aesthetic objective (which
is good poetry as opposed to bad) is attained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When Joaquin wrote “Stubbs Road Cantos”
in 1949, he was already moving in the opposite direction to Villa, introducing
a manner of poetry as perfectly expressive of personal feelings as old-world delicadeza
would allow, a mode he later amplified in
poems such as “Bye Bye Jazzbird” and “Come My Coach.” No one can read
“Come My Coach,” without being moved by his portrayal of three ladies, not
uppity ladies in ironic shades of Eliot and Pound, but true believers in the delicate
“art of patronage.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Indeed Joaquin engaged history in a
much deeper way in his historical cycle of poems, for instance in “El Camino
Real” and others published under the heading Five Foreign Chronicles in his
Collected Verse (1987) than he did in his earlier works, where we might detect
a latent trace of bourgeoism and religious zealotry that present-day proponents
of social literature have found slightly off-putting if not outright
wrongheaded. It must be noted that his poem “Coming in From the Cold” antedates “The Cardinal Detoxes,” a verse play
written by Thomas M. Disch in 1994, which is somewhat more straightforwardly
critical of the Church.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Post-Villa, and following the death of
Nick Joaquin in 2004 the unsettling and then nine years on the gradual demoralization
of our literature began to rear in, despite good efforts from the radical left
and from the soigné poets of the PLAC troop, Bautista, Yuson, Abad and de
Ungria leading. One cannot exclude expat poets such as Eric Gamalinda, Bataan
Faigao, Bino Realuyo, Luis Francia, Felix Fojas, Fidelito Cortes, Luisa Igloria,
and Eileen Tabios, who like it or not have gotten themselves categorized in the
interim as American poets of Asian descent. (As have we, though we are
practicing poets only in our homeland, not away from it.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Clearly, a peculiar mindset fueled by
internet had set in, and what is now in the ascendant is generalized academic
verse, imported from overseas and compliant with American standards. Diaspora,
anyone? Shifting to Tagalog or the
vernacular may seem the obvious and inevitable alternative, but that doesn’t
necessarily solve the problem. (Could one ignore the fact that our best-loved poem
ever is “Florante at Laura,” a flabby moralizing tale set in Albania with
nothing to commend it except its enduring musicality and commanding language.
And even more confounding, what is now regarded ‘cool’ is that we have a
president who unapologetically talks to the local media in Taglish!) Villa’s
poetry should be appreciated for what it is, on a practical level, as a darn radical
solution to the lack of language. Paradoxically he was trying to escape a
tradition of which he became a vital part. For Villa, language has become an
ideology, not a denial of lineage—which is impossible—but a reaching for language
whatever the language that is conversant in poetry alone. His corresponding
rejection of local-colorism that the fledgling market was encouraging at the
time also goaded others of his contemporaries with opposing views to burrow
deeper into their own milieu instead of kowtowing to undifferentiated global
demands. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Comparing himself in 1997 to NVM
Gonzalez who was then named National Artist, Joaquin had said: “I pretended
that reportage expressed me better than literature. I realized my subterfuge in
the light of <i>The Bamboo Dancers</i>,
which is literature reporting on the times--and far more acutely than the
efforts of us truants of the word.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Did he really believe that, Yes or No?
Obviously he did, for he ended his career with a production of freshly relevant
plays and a late flowering of master opuses, set in contemporary times, to
match his phenomenal early work in <i>Prose
and Poems</i> published in 1952. But
it’s a qualified Yes, in the sense that his early work, though mostly set in
Spanish times, already answered the same perennial issues of gender politics
and dichotomies of culture more compellingly if in less than explicit fashion
than in his latter works, where the pull of current events is put on overdrive.
Martial law altered his method, but not in a significant way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What then were he alive today would
Nick Joaquin have thought of <i>Companionable
Voices</i>, a curious production of his self-appointed heirs in their own late
years? If there’s no denying the quality of their literary engagement, albeit
in this book there is an almost palpable sense of windows closing, there would
be no need for him to trumpet their achievements, but he would chastise them
certainly for not doing enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is a souvenir book, in every sense
of the word. It contains 76 poems, for the most part selected and arranged by
the authors themselves. A few are a reworking of old poems. These tribal artifacts,
for that is what the majority of the poems are, transitioning easily from light
to somber to elegiac instill the same sense of gamesmanship and nostalgic ardor
as mirrored in the hunters’ bacchanal on the book’s cover, with its idyllic amalgam
of fruit, game, fish, ginebra, canned goods and white rice. There are 29
photos, including montages showing the young bards grinning with expectations,
and now--still grinning--rumpled with age. And this begs the usual questions. In
what ways have their poetry changed from where they picked off in the sixties?
How have they changed, and have their attitudes towards poetry changed? Long-term
slump on the poets’ part can take a weightier toll on affections rather than on
vulnerabilities. Poetry comes from an innate need and, if lucky, can even
improve with age. (Or can it, really.)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Every one of our five poets who began
writing as they did in the ‘60s, grew up reading Villa and wouldn’t be
embarrassed to own to imitating him in their early poems, compounding words,
turning nouns into verbs, etc., and developing short lyrics with zero regard to
other than their linguistic value. For
him, as for them, poetry became the distillation of an elixir constituted by
language and founded subordinately in universalized myth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lines like “Sir, there’s a tower of
fire in me” and “Proceed to dazzlement, Augustine” struck us novitiates of the
word as poetry of the first rank, that sure enough didn’t spring coincidentally
and full-strength out of the Philippine soil, but was evolved (and we bring this up to emphasize his value
as a poet ) out of progressive confrontation with language. What was wrong with
our poetry before Villa was language,
not the absence of ethnicity, and he understood that well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then, of course as our five poets went
along they too eventually soured of Villa’s poetic self-posturing and his self-created
‘theology,/Of, rose,and,/Tiger.’ More
importantly they were learning from poets other than Villa. They were reading Lorca,
Valery, St. John Perse. They were ingesting Russian poets, German poets, Nordic
poets, and other European poets known to them mainly in translation. They were
reading “The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock” alongside Mayakovsky’s “Cloud in
Trousers,” and “Dark Night of the Soul” alongside “The Drunken Boat.” They were
discovering drama, local color and meaningful narrative and were starting to
write poetry as different from Villa’s as their earlier ones were similar to
his, and as a result their total verbal zeitgeist was revitalized. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nowadays, when ironically we have many
more assiduous poets practicing than before, we tend to overlook the fact that both
Villa, not so dominant now, and Joaquin are still very much looming if no
longer preponderant influences in our poetry.
Indeed they set the bar high and, for
reasons we have indicated, their dual legacy changed the course of our
literature and must be considered as still providing the strongest challenge to
our emergent poets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In summary, let’s point out the reverential
and not-so-reverential ways in which Villa and Joaquin are treated in the works
of our five poets. Cuadra’s untitled poem, to start with an obvious example, ends
with the word ‘comma’ followed by a comma. It is a quasi-paean to Villa the
quintessential comma poet who left most of his poems untitled. There are other Villa references in his long poem, as in the mock epigraph and
in line 295, quoted from Villa’s own
paean to Lucifer, poem 45, “this First, pioneering Genius.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In one poem Cesar Ruiz Aquino gives in
to a surreal fantasy about Villa commenting on one of his poems, Aquino’s that
is. There are references to both Villa and Joaquin in Sanchez’s long satirical
poem, “Eman Spelled Backwards.” Joaquin
is made to hook up with Gertrude Stein in another poem and is invoked,
mock-solemnly, as Nicodemus in “Homage to Geron Munar” and as St. Melkizedek in
“Freundes.” Both Villa and Joaquin get a nod as well as in Erwin E. Castillo’s
“Poetic License.” And what about Recah Trinidad’s laconic “A Tree Song”? It’s Villaesque,
to say the least.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some might shrug all this off as
clinging to the outdated notion of luminosity as the end-all of poetic art, as
Villa preached, though that is only half of the equation. Even recognizing that
his work lends itself to parody and is prone to quasi-metaphysical rhetoric, to simply dismiss Villa’s poetic as out-of-date
would be irresponsible. (His idea of god as an adversarial devil on equal
footing with the poet is something he <i>profoundly</i>
believed in, though we suspect he is like Cummings totally irreligious at the
core.) <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cuadra’s new vehemence of style is
something outside the scope of his previous poetry, and his immersion in
current events is a shrewd re-tweaking of Villa’s neutralizing stance. In contrast
to its formulaic opening, “No, no: no tale sad or gay” Cuadra floats two remarkable
lines “imponderable/comma,” at the very end, putting his entire diatribe in
messianic suspension. Thus the poet becomes JR’s strident mouthpiece, assuaging
his ‘Musa perfidia’ by annexing the hero’s fate to his own feckless personality.
Cuadra’s gambit, along with his adroit handling of peripeteia, is impressively
superior to anything he has attempted before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Besides his allusions to classical figures
and to modern poets, Graves and Dylan Thomas among others, he uses biblical
references interlarded with gallicisms and hispanisms, reflective of his
iconoclastic upbringing, his activist romps in Paris, along with his
late-developing interest in the cult of Rizal – all comprising a veritable rant
that Villa himself might have disavowed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So, with the same quotient of subjectivity
do the narrative poems of the other poets, Trinidad, Aquino, Castillo and
Sanchez depart from the Villa tradition while adhering to poetry’s synoptic power
as an ideological vehicle of language. In a haiku-epigram not included here,
Aquino commented on this wittily, thus: “After long time no/ see, Villa said to
Daguio/ ‘Why do you insist?’ ” Not only is it not enough to master the
language, or the art remains narrowly a part of a borrowed literature, with all
the provincialism that that implies, but to language must be added Fact and
Content, knowing that intelligent content is ultimately an integral part of the
whole equation. That is the crucial value of Joaquin’s position.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With reference to clashing cultures, with
which thematically so much of our literature is enmeshed, Castillo goes one
better than Joaquin or Bautista in his forage for native materials, exhuming
them as it were from history’s corners, reconstructing them in depth through a
series of brilliantly sketched characters,
such as in “Bajai-Manuc,” “The Saber of Leonard Wood,” “Inang Miyang,” and “The
Dead Walk North” where the implications of our colonized history are worked out
to the full.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In every respect, one cannot
underestimate the influence of Joaquin on all of our five poets. Pro or con
doesn’t matter, only the insights gained from close knowledge of his work and
methods. In taunting reversal of Joaquin, Cuadra rails against a populace colonialized
by imperialist greed. And Joaquin’s patronesses, in spite of their middle-class
backgrounds, share a noble kinship with Castillo’s warrior prototypes. Aquino’s
verbal mutations hint at supernatural activities, reopening gothic avenues paved
by Joaquin. Trinidad’s poems derive from religious currents in Joaquin. Also,
in terms of historic narration, Sanchez’s meanderings into myth, including his later
tinkerings with the narrative genre, are a throwback to Joaquin’s feudal world.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally the one great lesson learned,
that the lot of our poetry is interconnected with nationhood, is a truth of
style enunciated by Joaquin, and tied up to that is the awareness that to forge
new models, as our poets here are continually endeavoring for, they must learn
to tap into deeper roots. Unchurch unwanted idols if you will, and look past revered
funereal icons and the big clichés of history. Even today, as this book shows,
there is no absence of ethnicity but a surfeit of it, the difference being
there are no unsanctioned frontiers anymore, with language no longer the
hobbling issue that it was when we apprenticed ourselves knowingly to Western
models. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some of the poems, 31 total by our
count, mostly short poems (the count here, just like the matter of scansion or
rhyme, is minorly relevant in the long run) persist in a pure lyric impulse, denuded
of realistic or topical content. And that’s all right, too. Take “Adarna” or
“When Last We Said Goodbye” for example. If they’re combed with honey and hived
with bees these poems are a far cry from the verbal mélange erupted by our
refined coterie of syllabus poets, from Lumbera to Abad. On a poetic level
neither Villa’s nor Joaquin’s more versatile and wide-ranging formulation in
itself gives comfort or clout to the unwary. Each poem must be hammered afresh,
as the slogan goes, one poem at a time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Looked at from Joaquin’s standpoint, it
would be gratifying to note that the bulk of the poems, 45 out of 76, and
none of the five sections (each assigned to one poet) are devoid of
indigenous content. They revel in history and speak to a broad concern with
contemporary issues. They also reference actual happenings, chronicling people and
events with arcane precision as well as journalistic gusto. In fact what the
poets belatedly have tried to achieve in
this book is in masterful extension of Joaquin’s template, of literature as a
mirroring of the times with commensurate fealty to the written word. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">With Villa, they’re saying again “Have
come, we’re here” and with Joaquin, conscious for the most part that they’ve long
severed themselves from the poetic scene and now have shepherded themselves
back, exhilaratingly, into the fold, that was all for a reason, no slackers’
alibi, for here we are left with clear and dissonant voices, picking on the
dead horse of language, language, language—with a motley of native flummeries
to boot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">## <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><u>Unincorporated Notes:</u> p. 97, H. L. Mencken,
<i>The Diary of H.L. Mencken</i>; p. 161, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, <i>National Artists</i>;
p. 246, Victoria Glendinning, <i>Edith Sitwell A Unicorn Among Lions</i>; p. 294,
Jonathan Chua, <i>The Critical Villa</i> (see also pp. 307-309, appendix D, which—kidding
aside--provides an amphisbaenic slant to my ‘69’ joke)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Copyright 2013 @ Wilfredo Pascua
Sanchez</span></i><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> grew up in Manila, Philippines and was educated at UP Diliman. He is author of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>New and Later Poems</i></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">, published by The University of the Philippines Press in 2003. He lives with his wife, Maria Teresa Quijano, in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-83158835068825009352014-06-01T23:20:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:44:19.934-07:00STELE by COLE SWENSEN<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">T.C. MARSHALL Reviews</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Stele</span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"> by Cole Swensen</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Post-Apollo Press, Sausalito, CA.,
2012)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Aesthetic Exercise: Swensen’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stele</i> Reading<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stele</i>
fits in one hand, in Post-Apollo’s style, with an abstract cover of simple
orange stripes on off-white framed in army-blanket green designed by publisher
Simone Fattal. The poem sequence inside seems, too, to be simple and lightly
abstract. It uses a few very simple devices to proceed almost narratively while
at the same time offering a mood of philosophical reflection kind of in the old
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nouveau roman</i> style. Image,
reflection, and voice make this a poetic book. The devices make it a poetry
that could be called language-centered, but that’s redundant. The devices are a
self-interrupting syntax, like thought in action often will have; the narrative
use of a figure and little actions “he” takes; and a line that is broken in two
by space in the middle. There is a ekphrastic sense here of reading some stele,
too, that combines those three devices into one possible parsimonious whole
reading of the poem’s multiplicities. Something calm and quiet happens here as
we read, but it reverberates beyond any one framing thought. In fact, we are
drawn in a couple of directions at once: into the (ostensible) pictures and the
story they call forth in us, and into the act of voicing what may be creating
the pictures in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The devices create a narrative of
thinking and reading that may be the origin of the images or may have an origin
in responding to something perceived and read. The chiasmus in the lines helps
this chiasmic effect; the first poem shows it well:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>from a distance<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>seems
to be walking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>and so becomes a man<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and so the man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">in his silence<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>therefore these hills and hills<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">in their ceaseless every surface<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of
the eye in its folding<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">and disappears an evening<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of folded hands<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">as if the folded hands<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the statue had<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">too many fingers<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>making them look oddly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">feathered and thus<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>so much less<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">contained or able<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span>to
be contained<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 9;"> </span>(3)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
eventually get the sense that these images are somehow objective, that they
come from some thing--like a real stele or photograph or painting or maybe even
a movie. The images above are continued on page 7 in lines like “walking is the
other / and slips we think … we think all motion / cedes warmth, a blood of
forth or // cede the long fall / back to mere name again”; we want to think
there’s some thing there, but the writing also keeps alive the possibility that
it is creating objects for reading that are only there in the writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That effect joins another to make
this little book especially interesting for poet-readers. Norma Cole’s
cover-blurb suggests that we can and do read the pages both in the normal
“horizontal” way that would see tow-part lines and in a “vertical” way that
sees two poems per page perhaps. Page 19 shows pretty well how this would work,
and not. It is good evidence for this as an intended effect because it shows
that the elements, the half-lines, can add up just as well vertically as
horizontally. There is an elegance and an awkwardness to this. We see in these
lines how this tempting approach works, and doesn’t:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">paint the field<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span>field the never<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">ends in a gradual slope<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that opens the sky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">as an excess<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span>where the walking starts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">also to have an openness<span style="mso-tab-count: 4;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wishing on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">in its paintedness<span style="mso-tab-count: 5;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is the calm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">that always issues from<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>repetitive action<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">slowed down<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by the onslaught of perception<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">displacing time<span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>which
is the essential motion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">of a painting breaking open<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the wall behind it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">We can read
“paint the field / the field never // ends …” smoothly enough, but we can read
just as normally getting “paint the field / ends in a gradual slope …” and
“field the never /that opens the sky … .” Both approaches are engaging and
sometimes off-putting because of loose abstractions. They ask for leaps that
are rewarded mostly by ideas about perception.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Were the book more highly engaged
with a politic as well as an aesthetic, and if it could make both of those
perspectives sharper with its multiple “readabilities,” then we might have a
stunning poem. The museum-visit feel of it does not seem to include
consideration of the museum itself and its social history. As it is, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stele</i> is enjoyable and illuminating, but
mostly only in aesthetic ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">T.C. Marshall has been publishing poems, critical work, and literary theory ever since his “Skyscraper” was selected for a mimeographed poetry anthology when he was in first grade. Recently, he has gone beyond paper into publishing blogbooks. One is called "Post Language" becuase it is composed of poems that incorporate picture that were all posted first on FaceBook as interventions in the photo-sharing expectations there. Tom has also begun Maize Poem, a blogged composition in progress that displays the evolution of his self-education about corn. Another focuses on education and is called "Mister Ed." They all can be found on blogspot along with other thoughts of his and ones he has borrowed from his teachers. He himself has enjoyed teaching for over twenty years in the community and at Cabrillo Community College in Santa Cruz County, California.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-65794996167430288652014-06-01T23:19:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:43:25.357-07:00AMERICAN HAIKU by JONATHAN HAYES<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">RICHARD LOPEZ Reviews</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>American Haiku</i> by Jonathan Hayes<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(<i>Mel C. Thompson Publishing; San Francisco, 2013)<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Poets seem to be in a dither about the question of what kind
of jobs poets need for a living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a
good question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the question
dovetails into an examination of poetic self-worth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If our society does not value poetry then it
follows our society does not value its poets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If that is the case should poets even worry about what one does for a
living?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We, as poets, do worry about the efficacies of labor upon
our writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Recently I was reading a
blog of mostly Bay Area poets answering a series of questions about being in
the workforce and being a poet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was
fascinating reading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some poets teach;
some poets work in IT; some poets serve customers in supermarkets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The myriad answers by varied poets of the
cost and value of their labor in the workforce in relation to their value in
society, and its effects on their writings, underscores the dynamism of poetry
as a value in itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poetry, and poets,
is various and is without simple, easy answers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Look into the mirror, thy poet, and find your own answers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then there are poets who simply get to work on time, both as
laborers and as writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jonathan Hayes
is such a poet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inspired by Jack
Kerouac’s <i>Book of Haikus </i>Hayes’ crafted a diary of sorts in free verse
haiku.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The haiku is usually in three
lines, a couplet and a concluding single line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In these verses Hayes makes, and writes about, a living as a deckhand at
the supermarket Trader Joe’s located in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San
Francisco.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A small disclaimer here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jonathan Hayes is a friend and I am named in one of these verses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not the only poet to be called out in
friendship but if you, dear reader, think me not unbiased about the poetry of
Jonathan Hayes you are half-right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
poet deserves a wide audience because his work is, I think, that good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Take for example this haiku about a photograph in a show at
the SFMOMA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>b/w
photograph<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>=<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“now’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>-- garry
winogrand at sfmoma<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The precision of these three lines, with an equal sign,
quotation marks that surround the word, now, and a small dash as minimal
punctuation, provides a still life of a sort that lets the reader to
simultaneously see and know the work of the artist as if the reader was
standing before the piece in the museum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I said that Hayes has written a book about being a
laboring poet in a supermarket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has
indeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, we’ve all, in our
personal and professional lives, made mistakes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Do we admit to these mistakes?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ringing up
a customer, almost finishing the sale,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>we chat and
she walks out w/out paying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--”i fucked
up” i tell the manager<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The clarity and
honesty of the writing illustrates a brutal truth, we are human, we sometimes
fuck up on the job and off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Still, Hayes is not a sentimental writer but he is a man of
deep feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When a neighbor’s husband
passes away during Christmas time the poet delivers a wreath in love and
consolation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>brought
christmas wreath to neighbor,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>condolences
on her husband’s passing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--half
naked in doorway she hugs me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The hug in the jam of a doorway illustrates the grief of the
woman and the beautiful awkwardness of felt connection between the consoler and
the aggrieved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The poet is also happily married and his wife makes frequent
appearances in these poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes
she yells at the poet to get up or he’ll be late for work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other times the couple find time for play.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>in bed w/
the wife,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>farting and
laughing together<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>--the alarm
clock goes off!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The poet does not ask himself why he must work for a
living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather the poet practices a kind
of California Taoism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hayes simply makes
the way in his own fashion and performs his own brand of “wu-wei’ or
non-action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The act is worthy on its own
of its performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For book of haiku,
American or otherwise, is a cause of readerly celebration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am grateful for the poet Jonathan Hayes and
his book of free verse haiku because I, and other readers, am invited to
participate in sharing and making the well-lived life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">richard lopez lives, loves and writes in northern california. he is engaged in two collobaration projects with the poets john bloomberg-rissman, and lars palm. lopez has published three chapbooks and one split-chap with his brother-in-rhyme, jonathan hayes. he loves good writing and good friends. lopez also loves to correspond with fellow brothers and sisters in the arts. drop him a line, if you like, at rlope67atgmaildotcom. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-15374179598808322172014-06-01T23:15:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:42:20.503-07:00THE ACHARNIANS by ARISTOPHANES<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">AILEEN IBARDALOZA Engages</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Acharnians </i>by Aristophanes<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> Translation by <span class="additionalfields2"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Douglass
Parker</span></span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span class="additionalfields2"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><i>(University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1961)</i></span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">A Comic Poet’s Symbols of War and
Peace<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Aristophanes’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acharnians</i> is a
quest for peace in poetic meters. It begins with an Athenian farmer, speaking
in the voice of the comic poet, desiring peace to restore an old way of life
that has been disrupted by war:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">…O my
city, my city! For myself, I always come to the Assembly before anyone else and
sit here; then, when I’m alone, I sigh and yawn, stretch and fart, don’t know
what to do, draw on the ground, pluck myself, count to myself, gazing at the
countryside and yearning for peace, loathing the town and longing for my
village – my village, which never cried “buy charcoal” or “buy vinegar” or “buy
oil”; it knew not “buy”, it produced everything itself, and Mr. Buysome was not
to be found there. So now I’ve come absolutely prepared to shout, interrupt,
abuse the speakers, if anyone speaks about anything but peace. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acharnians</i> 27-39)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Middle-aged, poor, and initially marginalized, Dicaeopolis is the ideal
Aristophanic comic hero who overcomes all obstacles (Kotini 2010). He is the
narrator who unifies the play’s dramatic structure (MacDowell 1995), as well as
the collective voice of the poor and powerless. Presented at the Lenaea during
the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acharnians</i>
is a political comedy tackling the life of the polis, in particular, the
significance of war and Athenian politics in relation to ordinary Attic farmers.
Athens being a naval power, at the time, naturally did not want to engage Sparta
and its allies on land. As a consequence, the countryside was abandoned to the
enemy, and countryfolk, like the farmer Dicaeopolis, were forced to retreat
within the city walls, essentially becoming refugees in their own country
(Spatz 1978). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In the prologue, the comic hero appears as a sympathetic character who
longs for peace and his own deme (see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acharnians</i>
32-6) where, as MacDowell points out, he can gather or produce various items
which he otherwise would have to pay for in the city. Dicaeopolis attempts to
secure a hearing in the Assembly in order to open negotiations for peace with
Sparta. When this fails, he sends Amphitheus to conclude a separate peace for
himself and his family. Amphitheus returns with three kinds of peace treaty in
the form of three wine vintages. Dicaeopolis tastes each and chooses the third:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">AMPHITHEUS:
I have indeed, these three samples here [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">showing
three wine skins</i>]. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a
five-year one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Take it and taste it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">DICAEOPOLIS:
Ugh!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A: What’s
the matter?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">D: I
don’t like it; it smells of pitch and naval preparations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A: Well
then, you take this ten-year one and taste it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">D: This
one smells too – of embassies to the states of the alliance – a very acid
smell, as if the allies were being ground down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A: Well, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> is a thirty-year treaty by land and
sea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">D [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tasting it</i>]: Holy Dionysia! This smells
of ambrosia and nectar, and of not being on the alert for the words “three
days’ rations”, and it says on my palate “Go where you please”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I accept this, I make the libation of peace,
and I’ll drink it dry; and a hearty goodbye to the Acharnians!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Myself, released from war and misery, I’ll go
inside and celebrate the Country Dionysia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ach.</i> 187-202)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Spondai/truce (and by association, peace) here relates to sponde/wine in
that in Ancient Greece, libations were poured when concluding a treaty (Kotini).
For Dicaeopolis, the wine is the first sign of the delights of peace and its
attendant pleasures: that is, peace is giving him the chance to celebrate the
festival in his own home. The thirty-year vintage symbolizes the thirty-year
treaty, as it had existed before the outbreak of the war; it also represents
the countryside where “the fantasy space finally breaks free and becomes
self-sufficient” (Slater 2002). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Wine, however,
being an article of sacrifice, presupposes violence: i.e., the pouring of
libations before going to battle, as was the case before the Athenian fleet set
sail for Corcyra where it was to join its allies in the summer of 415 B.C. (Hammond
2009)].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In the scenes following the prologue, Dicaeopolis is being pursued by a
chorus of Acharnian men for traitorously negotiating peace with Sparta.
Acharnae, a charcoal-producing town outside of Athens, was the first to be ravaged
by the enemy in 431 B.C. The Peloponnesian army had sought to provoke the
Athenians, particularly the Acharnians with three thousand men serving in the
Athenian infantry, into engaging in a land battle (Strassler 2008). It follows
that, in the play, the Acharnians, whose lives and livelihoods had been
devastated by the war, are naturally opposed to making peace with the Spartans
and their allies. They throw stones at Dicaeopolis and yield only when he holds
hostage a basket of coals. The coals, a parodic reference to the baby Orestes
in Euripides’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Telephus</i>, effectively
function as a comic metaphor for Acharnian countrymen or children:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">DICAEOPOLIS:
…I’ll kill in return the dearest of your loved ones; for I’m holding some of
your people as hostages, and I’ll take them and cut their throats.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">CHORUS-LEADER:
Tell me, fellow-demesmen, what is the meaning of this threat against us
Acharnians?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hasn’t got a child of one
of us here, has he, shut up inside?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or
if not, what’s making him so confident?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ach.</i> 326-330)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Like coals, the Acharnians are “fierce, sputtering, and always
threatening violence… [but can also be] peaceful [and] life-sustaining”
(Spatz). In the agon, Dicaeopolis delivers his speech of self-defense, dressed in
Telephean rags first to arouse pity, then to obtain recognition as a citizen
and patriot:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Now I
hate the Spartans intensely, and I hope the god of Taenarum sends them another
earthquake and brings all their houses down on them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I too have had vines cut down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But look – for there are only friends here
listening – who do we blame it all on the Laconians?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For it was men of ours – I do not say the
city; remember that, I do not say the city – but some bent, ill-struck pieces
of humanity, worthless counterfeit foreign stuff, who began denouncing the
Megarians’ little woolen cloaks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if
they saw anywhere a cucumber or a young hare, or a piglet, or some garlic or
lump-salt, it was declared Megarian and sold up the same day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that, to be sure, was trivial and purely
local; but then some cottabus-playing young rakes went to Megara and stole a
whore called Simaetha.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After that the
Megarians, garlic-stung by the smart, stole two whores of Aspasia’s in
retaliation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And from that broke forth
the origin of the war upon all the Greeks: from three prostitutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then in his wrath Olympian Pericles lightened
and thundered and threw Greece into turmoil, making laws worded like drinking
songs, “that no Megarian should remain on land or in Agora, on sea or on shore”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After that, when they were starving by
inches, the Megarians asked the Spartans to procure a reversal of the decree
caused by the prostitute affair; but we refused, though they asked repeatedly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And after that it was clashing of shields.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ach.</i> 510-540)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Dicaeopolis’ argument for peace traces the (probable) roots of war: that
is, an ill-judged policy on the part of the Athenians which quelled Megara’s
economy (and subsequently caused its citizens to starve (Pelling 1997), and
which the Athenians would not revoke, leaving the Megarians and their Spartan
allies no other option but to go to war (Hammond).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The chorus unites and identifies with Dicaeopolis in the parabasis: “The
man has triumphed in his argument, and convinced the people on the subject of the
treaty” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ach.</i> 626-627). In managing
conflicts in the ancient world, the communicator (in this case, the chorus),
relied on logic and character to persuade his audience. Elderly and
marginalized like Dicaeopolis in the prologue, the twenty four men of Acharnae
who make up the chorus are simultaneously speaking for and drawing the
audience, representatives of the Athenian citizenry, to empathize with their
cause.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In the following comic episodes, Dicaeopolis opens his market and revels
in the pleasures of peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Boeotian trader
from Thebes arrives laden with goods, including the famed eel from Lake Copais:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">O dearest
one, long yearned for, thou hast come – the heart’s desire of comic choruses,
and dear to Morychus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Servants, bring me
the brazier out here and its fan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look,
children, on this best of eels, for whom we have longed, just barely come after
six years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Greet her, little ones;
because of this newcomer I’ll provide you with coals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 1.0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Go, take
her in; for even when I die ne’er may I part from thee…served wrapped in beet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ach.</i> 885-894)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Transported a short distance from the lake to Athens, Copaic eels were
Boeotia’s most sought after produce. In Greek antiquity, they were articles of
sacrifice as well as the centerpiece of many Athenian dinners. Reckford (1987) posits
that the scene of the Copaic Eel is one of recognition where the eel is
metaphorically transformed into a beautiful lady. It is the very human trait of
pothos (yearning) which allows the remembrance or recognition of peace (in this
case, a beautiful lady in the image of an eel) in times of war. The Copaic eel,
however, while a symbol of peace to the Athenian, represented Boeotia’s
economic dependence on Athens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The agora is symbolic of the ebb and flow of life in ancient Greece –
bustling and vibrant on the one hand, ruthless and crude, on the other. Dicaeopolis
profits from a starving Megarian who sold his daughters disguised as pigs; the
bargaining is full of crass humor as the men inspect the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">choiros</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ach.</i> 729-815),
taken to mean as pig or vagina, and by association, good food and sex. The
Megarian being paid in garlic and salt, two of Megara’s most profitable
products before the war, implies war’s privations (MacDowell) by illustrating
how far a starving man will go (Spatz). As was the case with the marketplace, Athenian
life was also centered around wine drinking festivals, such as the Dionysia and
the Anthesteria. Dicaeopolis’ celebration of the Country Dionysia and his
invocation of the spirit of the phallus are indicative of a “deeply felt local
community religion” associated with “peace, freedom, fertility, power, and
pleasure” (Spatz). The final setting of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acharnians</i>
takes place on Choes day, the second of the Anthesteria. A strange mixture of
gaiety and gloom, the festival celebrates new wine and death; those engaged in
the Choes drinking parties did so in total silence and isolation:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The main
aetiological story explaining this curious rite involved Orestes: when he was
entertained in Athens before his trial on the Areopagos, the Athenians, wishing
to offer him proper hospitality, but yet to avoid contact with his polluted
hands and mouth, instituted this special custom of eating and drinking at
separate tables… the ambiguity of the drinking-arrangements at the Choes
reflects and continues the ambiguity of Dicaeopolis’ relations with the
Athenians…(Fisher 1993)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Dicaeopolis, whose name stands for ‘Just City,’ is an Aristophanic
sketch of an ordinary Athenian citizen who intended to save his city (Fisher)
by pushing for peace with Sparta, and “when no one will listen to him, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does what the City ought to have done</i>”
(Croix 1996).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Foley (1996), however,
does not consider this just behavior as “urging the city to make peace and
making a separate peace are not the same thing.” This moral ambiguity has been
a constant source of tension for critics. Fisher calls out his selfishness in
refusing to share his peace except with a bride because she is “a woman and
[therefore] not responsible for the war” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ach.</i>
1062); MacDowell, on the other hand, stresses that “peace leads to pleasures of
every kind – but only for the man who has made the effort to obtain it.” But at
the end of the day, Dicaeopolis is simply the poor farmer and the flawed market
owner whose yearnings are as ambiguous as they are real. He is also the
ordinary man weary of war, and the comic poet yearning for peace. It is,
however, Reckford’s view that is most appealing: that while the “hero is a paradoxical
and parodic figure, he is also that shared human nature writ large.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">_______________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">De Ste. Croix, G.E.M. “The Political
Outlook of Aristophanes.” In <i>Oxford
Readings in Aristophanes</i>, ed. Erich Segal. UK: Oxford University Press,
1996.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Fisher, N.R.E. <span class="grame">"Multiple
Personalities and Dionysiac Festivals: Dicaeopolis in Aristophanes'
Acharnians." </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Greece & Rome</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> 40 (</span>1993).</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal;">Foley</span></em><span class="st1"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial;">,</span></b></span><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial;"> Helene P. "The 'Female Intruder' Reconsidered:
Women in </span></span><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal;">Aristophanes</span></em><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial;">' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae.” </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oxford Readings in Aristophanes</i>, ed. Erich Segal. UK: Oxford
University Press, 1996.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hammond,
Martin. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Peloponnesian War</i>. UK:
Oxford University Press, 2009.<b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Kotini,
Vassiliki. “Aristophanes's Response to the Peloponnesian War and the Defeat of
the Comic Hero.” Accessed April 25, 2014, <a href="http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Aristophanes's+response+to+the+Peloponnesian+war+and+the+defeat+of...-a0229226867">http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Aristophanes's+response+to+the+Peloponnesian+war+and+the+defeat+of...-a0229226867</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">MacDowell,
Douglas Maurice. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aristophanes and Athens:
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">An Introduction to the Plays</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">. UK: Oxford University Press, 1995.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Pelling, Christopher. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Greek Tragedy and the Historian</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial;">. UK: Clarendon Press, 1997.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Reckford, Kenneth J. 1987. <span class="grame"><i>Aristophanes' Old-and-New Comedy</i>.</span> Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1987.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Slater,
Niall W. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spectator Politics: <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2002.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Spatz,
Lois. </span><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial;">"War and Peace: </span></span><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal;">Acharnians</span></em><span class="st1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial;"> (Akharnes) and Peace (Eirene)." In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twayne's World Authors Series 482</i>.
Boston: Twayne Publishers, </span></span><em><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal;">1978</span></em><span style="font-family: Arial;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Strassler,
Robert. <i>The Landmark Thucydides. </i>New
York: Simon and Schuster, 2008.</span><span style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Aileen Ibardaloza is
the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1234814343"></span>Traje de Boda<span id="goog_1234814344"></span></a></b></i> (Meritage
Press, 2010) and the Associate Editor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.oovrag.com/">Our Own Voice Literary Ezine</a></i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-9980481512687039672014-06-01T23:10:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:41:21.319-07:00"OVERPAINTED THRESHOLDS" by TOM BECKETT<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: .5in; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">THOMAS FINK Reviews</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial;">“Overpainted
Thresholds,” a poem from </span></b><strong><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><s><span style="font-family: Arial;">DIPSTICK</span></s></i></strong><strong><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">(DIPTYCH)</span></i></strong><span style="font-family: Arial;"> <b>by Tom Beckett</b></span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Marsh Hawk Press, New
York, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">TOM BECKETT’S “OVERPAINTED THRESHOLDS”<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The exploration of poetics
in “Overpainted Thresholds,” the first of two poems in Tom Beckett’s
doubly-titled book <strong><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><s><span style="font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">DIPSTICK</span></s></i></strong><strong><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">(DIPTYCH)</span></i></strong> (Marsh Hawk P,
2014), is intimately connected with the poems’ and the volume’s
self-questioning titles. (One might argue that there is a two-page poem, “My
Robot,” folded within “Overpainted Thresholds,” thus making the book consist of
three poems.) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DIPSTICK</i> is crossed
out; is the poet therefore bracketing or suspending possibilities of
measurement? Does the wet line where the oil stops constitute only a shadowy
trace of presence? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(DIPTYCH)</i>, is put
in parentheses: does this make it a parergon, an insignificant aside, or do the
parentheses call all the more attention to it?. “Overpainted Thresholds”
suggests the placing of a boundary under erasure, not through an eraser’s
dematerializing action that nevertheless leaves a residue, but through material
(paint) that obscures the physical marker beneath it. Oil on a dipstick
signifies an “overpainting” and a “threshold,” too. And the poem-title, “I
forgot,” which turns out to be the first two words of most sentences in this
catalogue-poem modeled on Joe Brainard’s “I Remember,” bespeaks the tracing of
a gap, a rupture in memory with consequences for narrative and for human
action. Both sides of this poetic diptych speak to one another as measurement
of displacement and displacement of measurement. As for the troubling third
term, the title “My Robot” refers both to a steely measurement of human
attributes and the question of whether technology really possesses “memory” or
an ability to “forget.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Asterisks separate
“Overpainted Thresholds’” irregularly sized sections, each of which has a
varying stanza pattern featuring short-lined free-verse whose visual
arrangement is center-justified. These stylistic features tend to promote both
leaps from one set of tropes, images, and concepts to another and inevitable
return to prior concerns. The “borders” between sections—or<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“thresholds” from one to the next—are neither
arbitrary nor thematically self-evident. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Like Derrida, Beckett in this
poem is obsessed with charting reversals and displacements of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the binary opposition of inside/outside, which
informs the notion of “borders” or “thresholds”: “Inside and/ Outside all/ The
time” (20). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a “threshold” is
“overpainted, stained/ Smudged, smeared,/ Scratched” and even “half-erased [as
or by] pentimenti” (4), then <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Borders aren’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Always apparent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Buffering…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Borders aren’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Always available<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Or mappable, documentable.
(4-5)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Beckett is extremely
interested in investigating the border(s) or lack of them between the speaking
subject and others: “Your voices/ Shadow mine” (4). To “shadow” is to practice
surveillance, crossing borders. But the “you” does not merely do this to an
“I”; as other sentences in the poem suggest, it is understood to be reciprocal.
As in Bakhtin’s Dialogism, each member of the dialogue both respond to prior
utterances and anticipates latter utterances of the other. And in keeping with
Bakhtin’s notion of “double-voiced discourse,” as well as Lacan’s concept of
how the speaking subject constitutes him/herself through access to pre-existent
signifiers in the Symbolic Order, Beckett meaningfully pluralizes “voice” to
indicate that each individual as communicator can be represented as the locus
of prior and ongoing utterances from other sources. In this sense: “The noise
in me/ Is undimmed” (6) and “I am/ A series/ Of interruptions” (20). While
“interruptions” surely include events like “a seizure” (11) that can “tear” one
“apart” and “rearrange” him differently (12), the interruptions of one voice by
another are a two-way crossing of borders. The “threshold” from one “self” to
another is continually “overpainted,” and it is not always clear whether early
“layers” are visible through the top coat. “Voice-overs” (6), then, are not merely
a recording technique designed to create a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unified</i>
polyphony; they may be a competition for vocal space.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">At certain points, Beckett
goes as far as to question the I/you split and boundaries altogether: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No thing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn’t connected <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To some <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To some <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Unexpected thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Separations are <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Social constructs. (18)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The repetition of “thing”
paradoxically makes the discourse more abstract and less indicative of the
materiality of objects. Beckett’s poetry in general cultivates the “unexpected”
as a welcome, if sometimes anxiety-producing disruption of a complacent
ensemble of demarcations. Language’s separations such as “This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i>,/ This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i>” can be recognized as “most/ Peculiar constructions” (6) only
when one follows the poet in subjecting what is most familiar to
defamiliarization. One of Beckett’s “voices” knows that definitions, founded on
distinctions, are ever dangerous: “I’m not/ Protected against/ 500,000
definitions” (19). Yet he also recognizes that even the continual crossing of
borders and overpainting of thresholds, the conversion of an outside to an
inside, does not override long internalized perceptions of constructed
boundaries as truth. Such perceptions mark the psychodynamics of human
interaction: “Wherever I/ Am you’re/ Someplace else” (12). This is especially
true, of course, when what appears to be communication with another really
functions as one part of the socially constituted split self trying to use
language to cross the border line to the other: “Talking to/ Oneself in/
Speaking to another// Is a kind/ Of reverse ventriloquism” (6-7). But which of
the self’s “voices” is addressing which interior “ear”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">“My Robot,” the possible
poem within the poem, precisely allegorizes the self’s attempted conversation
with itself. After the robot that has “just arrived/ In the mail” (16) “emerges
grinning” from a “package” that “opens from within” (17). The “owner” crosses
the threshold to confinement: “I take/ Its place/ In the box.” Then, the newly
boxed subject confers quasi-human identity on the newly mobilized robot:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My robot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Opens the box<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our eyes lock.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">“Happy Birthday,”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say. (17)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The social contract may say
that the personality-enhanced (?) simulacrum of the human being is the servant
of the “real” being. However, when the “I” recognizes this “thing” as a mirror
image, he seems “locked” into suffering something like the mythological fate of
Narcissus. The speaking subject has engineered his own reification, though a
few pages later, we encounter a linguistifying sentence that makes this reading
seem reductive, “My Robot/ Is one hard/ To parse sentence,” and then a
challenge for us to “try…/ to diagram/ [Their] relationship” (20). In fact,
whereas Narcissus drowned and was “reified” into a flower, contemporary
consciousness of self-reification can lead to a breaking of the spell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The ever-questing,
ever-questioning philosopher-trickster-tropester Beckett ends “Overpainted
Thresholds” with a wry allusion to Lacan’s assertion in his “Seminar on ‘The
Purloined Letter’” that every letter arrives “at its destination”: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Messages are <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being sent <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But are <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Rarely received. (24) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">The poem’s final word is
ambiguous. Is “to receive” equal to “to understand”? Yes and no: the reader
does not fully grasp the meaning of this last “message.” For Lacan, the arrival
of a letter at its “proper” “destination” does not mean that the addressee
knows how to read it—that is, understand how to follow the itinerary of the
signifier, the stages in a metonymic chain that ends only by arbitrary fiat. He
does not necessarily grant that any character in Poe’s tale, even the private
detective Dupin, can fully trace this itinerary, though Dupin comes closest by
far. In fact, the discontinuous but thematically recursive form of Beckett’s
poem resembles a metonymic chain, and his probing of thresholds, boundaries,
interiors/exteriors keeps exposing the difficulties of trying to justify one’s
action of drawing or erasing lines. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Thomas Fink is the author of
8 books of poetry, including <i>Joyride </i>(Marsh Hawk Press, 2013)
and a book of collaborative poetry with Maya Diablo Mason, <i>Autopsy
Turvy</i> (Meritage Press, 2010). A chapbook, <i>Former Sestinas,</i> Fink
and Tom Beckett’s collaboration, appeared in late 2013 (Beard of
Bees). Fink’s work appears in <i>The Best American Poetry
2007 </i>(Scribner’s). He is the author of <i>A Different Sense of
Power</i>: <i>Problems of Community in Late-Twentieth Century Poetry</i> (Fairleigh
Dickinson UP, 2001) and co-editor of<i>Reading the Difficulties: Dialogues with
Contemporary Innovative American Poetry</i> (U of Alabama P<i>,
2014) </i>. His paintings hang in various collections.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-11731343019850413372014-06-01T22:30:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:40:18.700-07:00IMAGINED SONS by CARRIE ETTER<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">EILEEN
TABIOS Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagined
Sons</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Carrie
Etter<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Seren, Wales,
2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It’s
been over two years since my mother died of cancer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> I haven’t yet experienced an ebbing in the sorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sometimes, I think of Mom and … it feels just like yesterday that we
were …<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when I talk to others whose
parents have died, many say that, Yes, the feeling of loss does not go away,
even decades later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Different people
cope differently, of course, but that feeling of loss remains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So,
I extrapolate and conclude (perhaps wrongly but I conclude): if it’s so
difficult to grapple with the loss of one’s parent who was there for most of
one’s life, how much more difficult it must <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>be for a parent to lose a young child, a baby, before memories of living together can be created.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagined Sons</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Carrie
Etter offers the experience of a birthmother who, at age 17, gave up her son for
adoption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing the impact of my
mother’s death, I was not surprised that the birthmother would feel her loss so
<i>deeply</i> even years after separating from her baby.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagined
Sons 15: The Second Supermarket Dream<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When I reach the cashier, I’m already
five minutes late for my appointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
rummage through the bottom of my purse for more change. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Just
give me a minute.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Take all the time you want. You’re my
last customer.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Coins collected, I meet his gaze and
shudder. He’s reasonably handsome, with his father’s reddish hair and light
eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Mango and okra—what are you making?’
he says, bemused, holding out his hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The silver splatters back into my
purse. I extend my fingers and feel the warmth of his own before the face
pales, the eyes darken, and I see a stranger, pimpled and cringing, ‘Lady?’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagined Sons</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> presents
prose poems haunted by the birth mother’s imagination of her son: her son as a
baker, as a woodcutter, a nurse, as used car salesman, and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are all as heart-wrenching as the above
sample poem above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon, perhaps
initially as a coping mechanism but now only a new source of impossibility as
regards knowing her son, the birth mother imagines a son’s friend and poems
related to “The Friend” are interspersed throughout her imagination of her son:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagined
Sons 21: The Friend (Part 3)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His friend brings me a shoelace, twelve
photos, two unposted letters, a worry stone, a restaurant receipt and a brown
leather bomber jacket. At night I alternate between using the jacket as a
pillow and as a blanket. Either way I wake to a span of years carved into grey
stone—thousands, thousands of irreclaimable days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Also
interspersed throughout the “imagined sons” poems are poems developing “A
BirthMother’s Catechism” where several answers are presented to the same
question:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">“How did you let him go?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With
black ink and legalese<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">How did you let him go?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It’d
be another year before I could vote<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">How did you let him go?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With
altruism, tears and self-loathing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">How did you let him go?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">A
nurse brought pills for drying up breast milk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">How did you let him go?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Who
hangs a birdhouse from a sapling?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Are
these poems of pure imagination?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a
mere reader rather than close personal friend of the poet, I don’t know, of
course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I also discerned an
authenticity from the process in that it wouldn’t surprise me if the poet
incorporated real life references into her imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is, when I read a poem based in Lisbon
where she experienced another imagined encounter with her son, I felt as if the
poet did travel there, to Lisbon (a testament to Etter’s craft).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I wondered then if all (or many) of the
scenes come directly from the poet’s personal life—her supermarket, her trips
to Venice Beach and Alaska, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
this achieves is the incorporation of time’s passage, a life unfolding—which
deepens the ache of longing, and the sorrow that a life unfolds without the
presence of one’s son.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m
a Mom because I adopted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no matter
how many “success” stories exist in adoption, I feel it is simply unnatural for
a child to be separated from the birthparents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The loss has been described as nothing less than a “primal wound.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I love my son, I would prefer to
remain childless if it meant he never had to experience the sundering from his
birthmother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it’s easier if separation
occurs through the parent’s death, whether from an accident, an illness or
otherwise in that at least there is a known quantity to the death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if I—and others—still feel so deeply the
loss of a parent, even from natural circumstances like "old age" (while my mother had cancer, she also was nearly 80 when
she died), how much more difficult for the adopted child who may or may not
have closure in knowing what happened to the birth parent?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And,
as this book reveals, the position of the birthmother is similarly
stained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Imagined Sons</i> is important for the birth parent’s position has not
been as widely presented or discussed as the position of the adoptee or the
birth parent (though this, fortunately, is changing).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Imagined Sons</i> is also important for
showing how craft allows for the effective portrayal of a loss so expansive it
could easily wriggle out of control into poetic “laxness” (for lack of a better
word; I have read a lot of poems by those touched by orphanhood and/or adoption
and many simply sag under the weight of the topic).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this sense, too, Etter was wise in
choosing the prose poem whose form allows the suppleness required for such a
fraught topic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Here’s
another example from a book that deserves to be read in its entirety—this
example reveals the utter fearlessness of Carrie Etter (whose lack of timidity
here honors Poetry), and how, sadly, the downside of not knowing is that one
can imagine anything:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Imagined
Sons 37: Night Patrols<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After three rapes in four weeks, the
night patrols reach an all-time high, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Bath Chronicle </i>reports each infinitesimal development in all caps. I begin
avoiding the narrow passageways I normally prefer, but one night, after drinks,
I forget, instinctively following an old route, until a hand grabs my shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I pull away with a jerk, but he’s got
my elbow; now my upper arm, and when we face, we halt in mutual recognition.
His jaw drops, but he does not or cannot let go, so I draw back my free arm and
strike – I hit him as hard as I can.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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*****<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eileen Tabios does not let her books be reviewed by Galatea Resurrects because she's its editor (the exception would be anthologies she edits because they focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work. <b><a href="http://mhpress.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_archive.html#5246974897213050913">Soffwana Yasmnin engages her poem "Jade"</a></b> from her <a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">THE THORN ROSARY: SELECTED PROSE POEMS AND NEW (19980-2010) </a><i style="font-weight: bold;">. </i> Her latest book, <i><b><a href="http://gradientbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/eileen-r-tabios-147-million-orphans.html">147 MILLION ORPHANS (MMXI-MML)</a></b></i>, is also reviewed by Joey Madia at <i><b><a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html">New Mystics Reviews</a></b></i> as well as at <i>Book Masons Cafe Press Website</i> and <i><b><a href="http://www.literaryaficionado.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html">Literary Aficionado</a></b></i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And her latest anthology as editor, <i><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/">VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA</a></b></i>, receives an engagement in <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/verses-typhoon-yolanda-edited-by-eileen.html">this issue of GR</a></b> by Aileen Ibardaloza; at <i><b><a href="http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/05/22/verses-typhoon-yolanda/">Manila Standard Today</a></b></i> by Jenny Ortuoste; at <i><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/2014/04/north-american-review-to-sing-of-beauty.html">North American Review</a></b></i> by Vince Gotera; and at <i><b><a href="http://globalnation.inquirer.net/104693/all-hail-to-those-who-hold-up-half-of-heaven">Philippine Inquirer</a></b></i> by Luis H. Francia.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-42961039507310401662014-06-01T22:00:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:22:43.022-07:00MICROGRAMS by JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">GRETA AART Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;"><b>Micrograms
</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;"><b>by<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Jorge Carrera Andrade, Translated
by Alejandro de Acosta and Joshua Beckman</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;"><i>(Wave Books, Seattle and New York, 2011)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">What is a microgram? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">In these translations — and re-translations — of Jorge
Carrera Andrade’s haiku-like verses and his renderings of Japanese haikus, I was
thankful for the chance to renew my limited understanding of an ancient poetic
form, invented through Carrera Andrade’s poetic imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nourished and inspired by the natural world,
the Ecuadorian poet develops a distilled voice based on the purity of sounds: a
music grounded in immediacy, undecorated but timeless. The translators
inform us, “The microgram is a poem usually between three to six lines long and
about little natural creatures (both flora and fauna) and their existence in
the universe.” Part-essay, part-collection of Carrera Andrade’s short
poems (which also contain his Japanese translations of haikus), this handsome
little book is very much in itself a microgram.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The poet’s introduction of nineteen pages, “Origin and Future of the
Microgram” is, in particular, an interesting read: while Carrera Andrade
himself specified from the outset that he did not “pretend to have invented the
Microgram,” he was clearly motivated to reinvigorate the form via characteristics
of the new Latin American poetry that he knew well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this and other reasons, one should not be
surprised by the contemporary feel and modern appeal in each of these
micrograms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">This volume contains thirty original “micrograms” that
Andrade wrote when completing his stint as an ambassador in Japan, and twenty of
his translations of haikus by Japanese masters Yaha, Chigetsu-ni, Basho, Sora,
Ransetsu, Hokushi, Joso, Inembo, Otsuyu, Issa, and Kikaku.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The compilation was first published in Tokyo
in 1940.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reading translations of
translations is fun, and of course, a challenge: how much of each text is being
“lost” a second time, or “gained” better in a different register?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On this, the translators offer us their
direct experience: “We chose to translate these poems directly from the Spanish
without referring to any of the numerous translations into English (or to the
Japanese, which we do not know).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
seemed that doing this would help us create a more unified tone, consistent
with the tone of Carrera Andrade’s book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We also thought we would enjoy the experience.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">I, for one, very much enjoy the experience of these intelligent
micrograms, and take the opportunity to quote some of my favorites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember them for their stark imagery,
quick humor, and the signature (though deceptive) economy of words:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">Nut:
wisdom compressed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">little
vegetal turtle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">magic
brain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">paralyzed
for all eternity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.95in; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">— “Nut,”
p. 36<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">Late
Night Toad: your little<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">typings
strike<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">the
moon’s blank page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 265.8pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">—<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">“Typewriting,”
p. 37<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">The air
string cannot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.4pt; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">spin its
green top.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 265.8pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">—<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: FR;">“The
Pear,” p. 45<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Imprisoned beneath the leaf<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">an anemone watches<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">the world’s sadness pass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Yaha)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.95in; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">— p. 65<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Closed house:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Around the paper lantern<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 70.8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The bats dance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Ransetsu) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 265.8pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">—<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">p. 70<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 247.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Greta Aart lives in France.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">NEIL
LEADBEATER Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>What The Heart
Can Bear: </i></span></b><em style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b>Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1979-1993</b></em><b><span style="font-family: Arial;"><i> </i>by Robert Gibb</span></b></div>
</div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Autumn House
Press, Pittsburgh, 2009)<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Robert Gibb was
born into a family of steelworkers in Homestead, a mill town six miles south of
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Kutztown
University in 1971, a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Massachussetts
Amherst in 1974, and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. at Lehigh Universirty in 1976
and 1986 respectively. In many ways, Homestead is central to his work as an
American poet. Three of his books, which comprise what he refers to as <i>The
Homestead Trilogy</i> reflect in what amounts to nearly 100 poems, the
vanishing industrial history and culture of America’s <i>Steel City.</i> The
first book in the trilogy, <i>The Origins of Evening </i>won the 1997 National
Poetry Series Open Competition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The poems in <i>What
The Heart Can Bear </i>have been selected from four previous volumes: <i>The
Names of The Earth in Summer </i>(1983); <i>The Winter House </i>(1984); <i>Momentary
Days </i>(1989) and <i>Fugue for a Late Snow </i>(1993). Interestingly, they
are presented in reverse order which means that we travel back in time from
1993 to (according to the book cover) 1979. A series of poems written between
1980 and 1990, which were previously uncollected, round off this substantial
offering of his work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The cover art,
<i>Snow Fence, Shosanbetsu, Hokkaido, Japan © </i>2004<i> </i>Michael Kenna, is
a good indicator of what is to come for Gibb maps the weather with precision
and there is a lot of snow in this book. In the poem <i>Snow Fences</i> Gibb
observes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Unlike
us, they are reeds. They are weirs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Straining
drifts from the snow.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
are huge gates missing between them<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Watching
the world go blank,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m
not sure what I like most about them -<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Their
gleaming ease, or the way clarity’s<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Part
of the emptiness in which they occur.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What strikes
me the most about Gibb’s work is that it is totally unpretentious. He does not
try to be clever or even original. He does not have to be because his command
of language in expressing his subject matter is so complete that it needs no
other elaboration to claim our attention. Gibb tells it as it is but the
description is powerful because the scene has been well-observed and keenly
felt and the language is finely honed. In <i>Blues for December 21<sup>st</sup></i>
he can even make a frozen pipe sound like music to the ear:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Shortest
day of the year<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
cold too,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> water<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Marled
thick as quartz<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the collar<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> of the pipe.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Winter
dominates these poems. It is the season in which he has invested his poetic
gift and the vocabulary is used to good effect. He is acutely aware of the
landscape surrounding his homestead and of the animals and birds that populate
it. His descriptions of nature are never sentimental or maudlin. The violence
of nature as well as the beauty, like the weather, is conveyed to us in a
dispassionate way. Several poems on the subject of road kills, for example, are
written with the precision of a pathologist’s report. In <i>Road Kills, </i>the
animals he discovers <i>Halfway to heaven on the roads, </i>he sees how<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">….the
bowels turn black<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
fallen apples, their pelts break<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Down
into the hard nap of asphalt…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
so often happens in the middle of his poems, a second, more personalised,
thought takes over from mere observation, creating a bigger emotional impact:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
think of that two hour life<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
matter your baby sank through,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lungs
like small wet leaves,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And
the world flooding his eyes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like
headlights. If I were to tell you<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That
death begins in such sweetness<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As
any of us would drown in,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Would
it help? <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Several poems
in this volume work along these lines. In <i>Buying Raw Milk, </i>his thoughts
turn to Wang Wei; and in <i>Dusting The Garden, </i>it is Mendel who suddenly
claims his attention when he remarks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
seven characters Mendel discovered<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the monastery at Brno are nodding<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Inside
my peas.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In the poem
that follows, the thought process is neatly encapsulated in the title: <i>Working
In The Garden I Think Of Thoreau Who Opposed The Mexican War </i>and then
elaborated in the text. This movement from one thought to another is subtly
conveyed through imagery drawn from the natural world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Gibb’s
capacity to draw the reader into his landscape is, at times, hypnotic. It is as
if we are invited to look through a zoom lens at a detail we have not seen
before. In <i>Autumns</i> (section three headed <i>Wild Turkeys</i>) he says:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
looked through my field glasses<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Straight
into the thermals of the turkey’s heat:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
whole of him headdress and ruffled,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
great tail fanning warily where he oversaw<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His
women, of which there were four.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Reading his
work I am, at times, reminded of Frost. <i>Two Walks in the Winter Woods</i>
and these lines from <i>Leaving the Valley </i>remind me of Frost’s iconic poem
<i>Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening: <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To
have stood in November<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At
the edge of a wood and seen<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the blade of winter twilight,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Its
cold pewter and waning grays,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Something
of that long affair<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Burning
itself to ash…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is not so
much because the month happens to be November but because of the way Gibb makes
us, like Frost, look deeply into the wood while, at the same time, keeping hold
of some sort of detachment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Not all the
poems in this selection are about landscape. The landscape is often used as a
metaphor for something else. <i>The Surface Hunter</i> is a good example of the
way in which the poet makes use of his material to delve beneath the surface to
reach out some deeper significance. As soon as he found <i>a small stone adze</i>,
he says:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> …I knew I was onto
something<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> In which the years leaped back<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To
mussel shells and campfires<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> And shelters carved into the rocks.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The thrill of
this journey of discovery, of past memories through the medium of association,
is beautifully conveyed at the close:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <i>The scent of crushed
sassafras lay<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> All around me. I could smell it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
the fields at evening as I walked<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Back home, in my clothes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> As I sat at the kitchen
table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> With the new world I had found,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
it up to the elbows.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Two poems <i>Williams
in Autumn</i> and <i>Listening To The Ball Game</i>, are worth reading side by
side even though they are separated by over forty pages in the book. In the
first poem, Gibb writes of William Carlos Williams who<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">is
tired of being a house<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Whose rooms are closing,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Stroke by stroke,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> And wants now simply to sit<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Bathing in the light<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> he thinks is falling for
him<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For
the last time on Yankee Stadium,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Flooding the shapes of the players<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> And spilling into his
room…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The poem is
full of autumn, of the great sense of time passing and time already passed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second
poem, in which Gibb himself, listening
to another ballgame. reflects on the passage of time and contemplates on his
own mortality:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I
don’t know….how long<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My
momentary days will continue<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To
fill with such splendid ease…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">but
what he does know is that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So
much of what we love takes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">place
beyond us…<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Both poems
have a remarkable aura of serenity about them; an acceptance of things to come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In closing, we
catch a hint of what the writing of poetry means to this poet in his poem <i>The
Dance</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe
then, I kept thinking, the last poem<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Won’t
mean the end of touching the world.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">These are
indeed poems that touch the world and also the heart. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Neil
Leadbeater is an editor, author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh,
Scotland. His short stories, essays, articles and poems have been published
widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His most recent
books are <i>Librettos for the Black Madonna </i>published by White Adder
Press, Scotland (2011) and <i>The Worcester Fragments</i> published by Original
Plus, England (2013). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-74142447823833155572014-06-01T21:00:00.000-07:002014-06-02T13:52:27.579-07:00FATE LINES / DESIRE LINES by CALEB PUCKETT<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">EILEEN TABIOS Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">FATE LINES /
DESIRE LINES</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"> by Caleb Puckett<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Mammoth Publications, Lawrence, KS, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Swerve!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cheerful swerve!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wow: I was not expecting so much pleasure in
Caleb Puckett’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FATE LINES / DESIRE LINES</i>
which I picked up desultorily one afternoon (I’d already pushed away another
award-winning poetry book for trying to force me into a premature siesta).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, Puckett’s poems blew away the lethargy
from the house and woke me up!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And the poems did so with
much fresh lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The innovative diction
makes it difficult for the eye to pass by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead, the reading <i>slows</i> so that one can savor the fabulous language
in these poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance—and here I
open the book at random—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Words
flare and disappear,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">obscured
by the weather<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">settling
like soot behind bay windows<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">where
coffee pots clatter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">and
the smell of oil<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">lulls
each interlocutor into dreams of outriggers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I’m glad the book fell
open to the poem “Runoff” which I excerpt above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this sample also shows one of the
collection’s strengths: imagery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
combined with a philosophical stance that I sense lurking throughout, the
result can be quite effective, as in the poem “Blind Spot”—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Blind Spot<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There’s
a blind spot between the cataract in the basin and the blade slipping across
your chin: a glossy photo of your father floats in that space, white with
lather, black with stubble. Shorn and washed away with a disinterested flick,
it’s a matter of unfinished business best left inside a leather bound album
shelved away. It’s a matter, immemorial and static, detached from the nick that
you must nurse at work and work forever to command—the grooming of smooth
patience, of a self-made man who keeps life in the present perfect. Perfect is
a tap that never stops dripping.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Interestingly, the
strength of Puckett’s diction becomes most evident to me in the poems written through
some formal structure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His hay(na)ku is
strong, as in Scarborough Bound”—for instance, the excerpt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Know
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">the
wormhole<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>opening into those<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">City
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">limit
signs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">with
population statistics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But Puckett’s sonnets are
simply wondrous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Read—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feel!—</i>his Sonnet 29 and sense the
tradition it both confirms and upends!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">When In Distaste With Tributes of Human
Design<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">(Sonnet 29)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">When
in distaste with tributes of human design,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I all alone celebrate my singular state,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And
find strength no other can assign,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Look upon myself, and determine my fate,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Acquiring
resolve through self-directed hope,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Featur’d like a calling, like a charge to be
posses’d,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Desiring
my inborn art to find a larger scope,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With what I most enjoy, leaving the least:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Yet
in these thoughts all men despising,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sadly I think on me,—and then their state<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">(Like
to the drunkard at break of day arising<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With a clear mind) mocks me at glory’s gate;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">For
pride only comes from the accolades they bring,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Causing me to scorn this slight song of self
I sing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Puckett’s poems are no
“slight song[s] of self.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seek them out
and marvel at language made fresh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eileen Tabios does not let her books be reviewed by Galatea Resurrects because she's its editor (the exception would be anthologies she edits because they focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work. <b><a href="http://mhpress.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_archive.html#5246974897213050913">Soffwana Yasmnin engages her poem "Jade"</a></b> from her <a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">THE THORN ROSARY: SELECTED PROSE POEMS AND NEW (19980-2010) </a><i style="font-weight: bold;">. </i> Her latest book, <i><b><a href="http://gradientbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/eileen-r-tabios-147-million-orphans.html">147 MILLION ORPHANS (MMXI-MML)</a></b></i>, is also reviewed by Joey Madia at <i><b><a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html">New Mystics Reviews</a></b></i> as well as at <i>Book Masons Cafe Press Website</i> and <i><b><a href="http://www.literaryaficionado.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html">Literary Aficionado</a></b></i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And her latest anthology as editor, <i><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/">VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA</a></b></i>, receives an engagement </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/verses-typhoon-yolanda-edited-by-eileen.html">this issue of GR</a></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> by Aileen Ibardaloza; at <i><b><a href="http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/05/22/verses-typhoon-yolanda/">Manila Standard Today</a></b></i> by Jenny Ortuoste; at <i><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/2014/04/north-american-review-to-sing-of-beauty.html">North American Review</a></b></i> by Vince Gotera; and at <i><b><a href="http://globalnation.inquirer.net/104693/all-hail-to-those-who-hold-up-half-of-heaven">Philippine Inquirer</a></b></i> by Luis H. Francia.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-88897755321441300542014-06-01T20:00:00.000-07:002014-06-02T10:40:40.877-07:00DISTURBANCE by IVY ALVAREZ<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN Reviews</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><b><i>Disturbance</i> by Ivy Alvarez </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><i>(Seren
Books, Bridgend, 2013)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">“Death is not an event in life: … What we
cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> -</span>Ludwig
Wittgenstein, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Disturbance</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> is an almost novel-like
book. Rashomon-like, it tells the story of what has become known as a “domestic
tragedy”: a man kills most of his family then turns the gun on himself. My “It
tells the story” is actually a misleading locution. Because that is exactly
what Disturbance doesn’t do. Because it can’t be done. All that can be done is
to talk <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">around it</i>. So, it tells a
story. About the attempt to speak what cannot be spoken. It tells all that can
be known, which in the end is nothing. See Wittgenstein, above. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">2.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">That doesn’t mean we don’t learn a lot about
the surrounding circumstances. We have statements from many people, which range
from witness accounts to the thoughts of the surviving daughter to shopping
lists to the (imagined?) thoughts of the husband. We learn that the husband
murderer gave his mother the creeps (his unending neediness), abused his wife
(abused? What a euphemism, he beat the shit out of her), we learn that the wife
had her own set of problems, we learn many things. But what we mainly learn,
what I mainly learned, that in the end this event (which is itself, as well as
a stand-in for so many others) contains a core of incomprehensibility, and that
tho we can’t stop talking about it, we can’t get near that core.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">3. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">One of the signs that we can’t get near the
core is how cliché-ridden the various speakers are. In “A Neighbouring Farmer”:
“I don’t know what could have set him off.” This is the farmer, clearly, and
not Alvarez; her deployment of cliché is evidence of her art (proved, perhaps
by the fact that this line is followed by “then again / I cannon understand /
how cows know / to chew in unison”). I don’t blame any of the speakers for
resorting to cliché; who hasn’t been there, who hasn’t said to some bereaved or
other, “I don’t know what to say … but …”?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">4.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">One speaker strikes me as slightly different
from the others: the journalist. For a reason I can’t put my finger on, I am
convinced that (in some respects, at least) the journalist stands in for
Alvarez herself, and that she knows that whatever she provides her readers, it
will only be to “mar the glass / jar the faces”, to tell a tale (“a fictitious
or true narrative or story, especially one that is imaginatively recounted”).
It is no coincidence, I think, that when the journalist comes to tell the
story, it is titled “The Journalist’s tale” (nor do I think it is coincidence
that this is the only poem in the book set in two columns, the way that certain
editions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Canterbury Tales</i> are
set …)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">5.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">None of these considerations, that add up to
what “really” happened can’t be spoken, in any way lessen the horror. The book
is suffused with pathos and horror. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">6.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">I am reminded of two other books here, Edgar
Lee Masters’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spoon River Anthology</i>,
but that’s more a formal matter than a significant one, and, more importantly,
Vanessa Place’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tragoedia</i>. I like the
way the Place and the Alvarez work together, and tell things about each other. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tragoedia</i> is made up of legal documents,
which allow us the fiction of believing that what can’t be spoken, can. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Disturbance</i> reveals that fiction, that
the legal form is really make-believe. Contrarily, Tragoedia shows how, without
that formal make-believe, all we are left to fall back<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are who-knows-how-relevant details, e.g. the
wife Jane’s “re-stock fridge”. Who know’s how relevant is not meant to say
irrelevant, it’s meant to say we don’t know what we need to know when an event
such as that recounted here occurs, so all we can do is fall back on what comes
to hand. It is possible that all these who-knows are the only life-raft we
have, outside the fiction of forms such as the justice system and the documents
it produces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">7. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">Leaving all the above aside, for a moment, I do
want to add that these Alvarez’s considerable skills are on display here, so
that there is some pleasure amid the, well, the everything else. I mentioned
“re-stock fridge”, above. That reads in whole:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">raspberry
ripple ice-cream<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">blood on
skin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">dried
grape juice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">an older
bruise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">blueberry
stain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">shoulder
sprain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">the
door’s sharp edge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">fed to
my face<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">you
deserve it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">It strikes me as remarkable that such ugliness
can co-exist with “the dance of the syllables.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">John Bloomberg-Rissman has
about a year and a half to go on <i>In the House of the Hangman</i>, the
third section of his maybe life project called<i> Zeitgeist Spam</i>. The
first two volumes have been published: <i>No Sounds of My Own Making</i> (Leafe
Press, 2007), and <i>Flux, Clot & Froth</i> (Meritage Press
2010). In addition to his <i>Zeitgeist Spam</i> project, the main
other thing on his plate right now is an anthology which he is editing
with Jerome Rothenberg, titled <i>Barbaric Vast & Wild: An Anthology
of Outside & Subterranean Poetry</i>, due out from Black Widow Press,
Autumn 014. He's also learning to play the viola and he blogs at <a href="http://www.johnbr.com/"><span style="color: #0000e9;">www.johnbr.com</span></a> (Zeitgeist
Spam). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-3013408699739532102014-06-01T19:30:00.000-07:002014-06-02T21:51:21.777-07:00FOURTH INTERNATIONAL TEXT FESTIVAL<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">MARTON
KOPPANY Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Fourth International Text Festival,
Curated by Tony Trehy, Philip Davenport, Susan Lord, Diana Hamilton and KFS
Press<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Bury, U.K., 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><b><a href="http://www.textfestival.com/">Fourth International Text Festival</a></b>, Bury, UK, 2014. Curated by Tony Trehy (also founder
of the Festival, director of the Bury Art Museum), Philip Davenport (also
editor of The Dark Would anthology), Susan Lord, Diana Hamilton and the KFS
Press.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
fourth incarnation of the Text Festival, which I was lucky to attend, is an
exciting constellation of exhibits and performances commenting on each other. These
are just brief footnotes to a few miraculous things I saw less than
a week ago. (But see also my other review in this issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Galatea Resurrects</i> about<b><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-used-to-by-sarah-sanders.html"> the photo-documentation of an earlierperformance which was repeated at the Festival</a></b>.) Deeper analyses will need more
time and a better chronicler. Some of the events I’ll mention concentrated on
the first three days, but the exhibitions will be open through early July, and
new events are in the making, so it is well worth a visit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Some examples:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
enter the beautiful building of neo-classical reminescences. (They will continue
in the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sculptures and paintings of the
permanent collection.) Ian Hamilton Finlay would probably be pleased to be
exhibited here. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And indeed, on the second level, behind the columns of
the circular gallery (and behind Barney’s), there’s an I.A. Finlay on the wall,
part of a small exhibit of “political texts”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I enter the main room of the permanent exhibition (or
something that looks like that) and run into Steve Giasson’s titles of artwork,
which look like ordinary titles, and are fastened on the wall or the pedestals exactly like
those. They are written in Latin (and perhaps translated from ancient Greek). If
we need the English versions, we can pick up their printed lists in the middle
of the room. Thanks to Latin, we read the twofold (or threefold) punned titles
with a delay in the English translation, which makes a difference. Generally
speaking: this clown won’t give the first laugh, we’ll have to figure out for
ourselves when to laugh and when to cry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">DESISTE TE
LUDERE TANTUM DE DELICIIS ET MORTE COGITAS (Stop Kidding Yourself, You Only
Think About Sex and Death) – photo by Philip Davenport<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F9pSZW-E-Kw/U3BPBlYcnBI/AAAAAAAAI1A/8NRbBgGuNzc/s1600/Steve+Giasson+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F9pSZW-E-Kw/U3BPBlYcnBI/AAAAAAAAI1A/8NRbBgGuNzc/s1600/Steve+Giasson+1.jpg" height="320" width="179" /></a></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">CREDEBAM
LEONARDUM DICAPRIO FUISSE HOMINEM QUI MONAM LISAM PINXIT (I Used To Think That
Leonardo Dicaprio Was The Guy Who Painted The Mona Lisa) – photo by MK<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LJQALm3_co8/U3BPInyJAyI/AAAAAAAAI1I/k9ft-FAWuYc/s1600/Steve+Giasson+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LJQALm3_co8/U3BPInyJAyI/AAAAAAAAI1I/k9ft-FAWuYc/s1600/Steve+Giasson+2.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">“Please do not touch.” The warnings on the wall look
like Steve’s titles, which look like ordinary titles. They are now part of the
installation. It is sad that we are not allowed to touch the artworks. And the
sculptures are sad, too, no doubt. They don’t like to be alone. They don’t like
to be copies of another “–ism”, called classicism. Deep inside they are
original. That is their secret. “But how could we touch anything which is
‘just’ an idea,” the installation asks. On the other hand, good ideas are touching,
and the sculptures are saved for the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 16.799999237060547px;">(And there are points of time in vynil on the floor saying how far I am from a Victorian painting of Orpheus, taming the animals… And the huge painting, one of the many in the room, spoke to me through its title: MIHI NON AMICIS OPUS EST SED SECTATORIBUS. /I Don’t Need Friends, I Need Followers/. “</span><span style="line-height: 16.799999237060547px;">As everything could now be done openly he ran because of curiosity and the wish to get it over with long flying leaps towards the pulpit.”, I thought.)</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mtS611PgKM8/U3BPTMLH7-I/AAAAAAAAI1Q/Mh9E92NzOvs/s1600/singer+from+Juxtavoices+anti-choir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mtS611PgKM8/U3BPTMLH7-I/AAAAAAAAI1Q/Mh9E92NzOvs/s1600/singer+from+Juxtavoices+anti-choir.jpg" height="239" width="320" /></a></div>
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Paolo Malatesta by Sir Joseph Noel Paton, in a corridor hosting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Would</i> exhibition. (It is the
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<span class="MsoHyperlink"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Long Lankin”
is based on a British folk ballad about a motiveless murder; more closely on a song,
especially as it was performed by a singer in the sixties; and on Matt’s
previous short videos. </span></span><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Matt recites the song (in several voices), and the monotonous
rhythm of the simple song gives threathening coherence to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">“</span><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">story”, which otherwise
consists of flashing images of streets, cars, a blooming tree, and beyond them </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">fallen
leaves, discarded toys, dying fish, fences, a microwave, a feather, twigs in
the water, segments of the of sky, unpaired shoes, petals. </span><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Each image is a different
goodbye. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">Matt keeps moving (we don’t see him, only what his
camera sees), and at the end of the video when he fights his way through the
bushes, we don’t know: is he escaping an unnamable danger or is he the danger
himself? In this state of hypnotized concentration everything has a dream-like
logic, but nothing can be predicted, judged or even named. Only the permanence
of the danger is real </span><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">– </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;">although not more real at all than the image of a feather
caught on a branch.</span><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><b style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;">Liz Collini – photo by MK</span></b></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><b style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></b></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vhj3qWxr_j8/U3BPoDUscJI/AAAAAAAAI1Y/swDgtM3729Y/s1600/Liz+Collini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vhj3qWxr_j8/U3BPoDUscJI/AAAAAAAAI1Y/swDgtM3729Y/s1600/Liz+Collini.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><b style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></b></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The Text Festival is about different kinds of writing and
our ability to read. In the Lawrence Weiner show we experience how objects
become words and words become objects. Poems can be based on the simple gesture
of moving from one page to the next, and they can be found, like in the case of
several pieces in the rich and diverse Language of Lists group exhibition. They
can absorb time and radiate it like in Liz Collini’s beautiful, memorable work
made on the spot during the three opening days of the festival. They can be
inclined toward minimalism – or be as comprehensive as Caroline Bergvall’s
breathtaking multimedia performance, one of the most outstanding events of the
Festival, where </span><span lang="HU" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Gesamtkunstwerk</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> was perfectly functional, and
typography served the highest purposes of a myth without intervening gods. It
is a song on isolation and compassion, ending in between, but leading to catharsis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Caroline
Bergvall – photo by Philip Davenport</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xkbGwNbhJyQ/U3BPur_YgyI/AAAAAAAAI1g/qHe0IBDE0YQ/s1600/Caroline+Bergvall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xkbGwNbhJyQ/U3BPur_YgyI/AAAAAAAAI1g/qHe0IBDE0YQ/s1600/Caroline+Bergvall.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Visual poetry per se (for me simply one of the names
for the “same” open field, but a name I know more closely), was represented,
too, although to a lesser extent than in 2011. I met a lot of wonderful artists
this year as well – and I missed a lot some of my visual poet friends who I’d
met the previous time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Tony Trehy and Philip Davenport put together valuable works
and events belonging to very different genres and coming from very different
traditions (also from “outsiders”). They looked behind labels and saw them as simply
constructions. As we walk around the exhibitions and move from one event to the
next one, we must learn to read again and again – and that’s a great pleasure.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rachel Defay-Liautard - photo by MK</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k-Boaclphts/U4jKjgsUdvI/AAAAAAAAI6Y/Aj-S9P0NLT8/s1600/Rachel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k-Boaclphts/U4jKjgsUdvI/AAAAAAAAI6Y/Aj-S9P0NLT8/s1600/Rachel.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">…Finally I arrive at Rachel Defay-Liautard’s performance (it actually happened one day before the Juxtavoices), held with good reason in one of the rooms for The Language of Lists. During the whole time of the performance Rachel (blindfolded with a black cloth covering her eyes, leashed on the cord of the microphone she held in her hand and followed by her shadow on the screen), repeated the same formula, the title of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay: </span><i>The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility</i>. She kept moving, but her motion was clumsy because she entangled again and again in the cord. She felt her way reaching the microphone toward us as if searching for contact. And indeed, she came closer to us, repeating the formula in different languages, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and apparently waiting for a response, for some kind of participation. And it is not by chance that I use the word <span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: small;">“formula”, because step by step, the text lost its meaning and became almost a chant. Before the performance Rachel had asked me to intervene in case the spectators were too polite to eliminate the distance. At a certain point I went to the microphone and repeated the title in Hungarian. Then others joined me, and the participation became almost continuous and multilingual. It wasn’t until the performance ended and I came out of the room that I realized (and I might have been wrong), that Rachel might have wanted us to say something </span><i>else<b>.</b></i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><o:p><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">-May 11, 2014</span></i></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 20.80000114440918px;">Marton Koppany</span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 20.80000114440918px;"> lives in Budapest, Hungary. He has been dealing with visual poetry, language art, intermedia etc. since the beginning of the 80's. His latest book in print is </span><i style="color: #333333; line-height: 20.80000114440918px;">Addenda</i><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 20.80000114440918px;"> (Otoliths, 2012). </span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 20.80000114440918px;">His new ebook, </span><i style="color: #333333; line-height: 20.80000114440918px;">Hungarian LangArt</i><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 20.80000114440918px;">, can be downloaded here: </span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 20.80000114440918px;"><a href="http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/pdfs/HungarianLangArt.pdf">http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/pdfs/HungarianLangArt.pdf</a></span></span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-68730353852493361792014-05-31T23:30:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:17:19.785-07:00COLLECTED POEMS by PATRICIA DOBLER<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">NEIL LEADBEATER Reviews</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Collected Poems </i>by Patricia Dobler</span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Autumn House Press, Pittsburgh, 2005)</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Patricia Dobler was very much an American poet. As Patricia Averdick, she was born in Middletown, Ohio, in 1939. After completing a BA in Political Science at St. Xavier College, Chicago, she married Bruce Dobler. As the wife of a writer and professor, she moved house many times: all the way from Iowa City to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with many stops in-between. It was in Pittsburgh, after raising two daughters, that she began writing after completing her MFA at the University of Pittsburgh where she studied poetry with Ed Ochester, Lynn Emanuel and Louis Simpson. She came to writing late in her life and only produced two volumes of poetry during her lifetime, <i>Talking With Strangers </i>(1986) and <i>UXB </i>(1991). Her final book, <i>Collected Poems</i> was published posthumously in 2005. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The<i> Collected Poems</i> contains all of the poems that she wished to see in print.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In her professional life, she taught at Carlow College in Pittsburgh and she also directed the Women’s Creative Writing Centre. Friends who knew her say that she had an enormous hunger for life and for art. Her first volume of poems displayed a maturity that went way beyond what one would normally expect from a first collection and it won her the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. She was also a translator and a few of her translations are included in the volume under review. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On first impression, the Second World War is never far from her work. This is hardly surprising given the fact that she was born in 1939. In <i>En Route</i> it manifests itself in </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The railroad guards who rifled my bags, looking for bombs</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and it is prominent in several other poems such as <i>Train Platform: Munich to Dachau; Soldier Stories </i>and in <i>The Driven Out: May, 1945.</i> </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a poem about an unexploded bomb found on an old Messerschmitt field in Augsburg, West Germany, Dobler puts aside her translation work, in which she ingenuously likens the process of extracting and unravelling the meaning of the poem to that of defusing an unexploded bomb, in order to focus attention on the action in the field below. The way she uses a line break and a section break to hold the tension for one more unforgettable moment is impeccable:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I left you alone for a time,</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">stopped teasing you out like a fuse</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from a ticking clock. On the other side</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the window, I waited</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for the bomb’s wump.</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3.</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which did not come. The UXB</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">got safely herded back to scrap.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In <i>Truth </i>her origins are captured in an uneasy tension that acts as a stimulus to many of the family portraits contained within the book:</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Germans only tell the lies that they believe,</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and I believed it when I said</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’m mostly Hungarian,” or “American</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">mostly,” if anyone asked. Really, I’m half</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">German, father’s side. My mother’s mother’s</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">maiden name was Singhoffer, but she was born</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in Hungary, you understand. I was born in 1939</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(that is the truth) the beginning of good years</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to be anything but German. And the family felt</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hungarian…</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Family poems sometimes take the form of group or individual portraits vividly drawn from the past. In <i>Your Language Is Lost At Sea, </i>she writes, for example, of her grandmother as if she is speaking directly to her:</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">…you buried the Hunkie gutturals and sibilants </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">keeping back only the few consonants and vowels </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you thought your children would need in Ohio…</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and describes her in a later poem, <i>Grandma Remembered,</i> <i> </i>as a woman who </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">swallowed her pride to say yes </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to compassion</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">…and never forgot it.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In <i>Uncles’ Advice</i> we read about the uncles who <i>like dark birds / flew away to war; </i>and there are many fine poems about her father which are drawn with candour and a mastery of restraint. There is nothing sentimental here, just honest truth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many of Dobler’s poems inhabit an industrial landscape. There are frequent references to steel mills where the blast furnaces are described like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. To Sister Monica, who takes the fourth-graders on a field trip to the mill</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the blazing orange heat pouring out</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">liquid fire like Devil’s soup</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">doesn’t surprise her. She understands</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Industry and Capital and Labor,</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the Protestant trinity.</span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The Joke </i>(the title becomes clear on reading the poem) is a fine piece of writing set in a paper mill. The language is taut and descriptive so that we have no doubt that we are in the poem seeing and hearing everything that she writes about as if we are experiencing it firsthand. The Great Miami River which flows beside the mill is described as</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hardly a river more a slow-moving mass of pea-colored sludge</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That no one remarked on including her because even she knew</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you wanted a paper mill and its jobs you had to take green</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> muck</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For a river…</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inside the mill, she writes about </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the wet smell of gluey cardboard coming apart</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the rolls of waste paper taller than the marble columns of</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Cincinnati’s</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Railroad station…</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pitched against the hard lines of industrial America are some joyous moments of spontaneity and release. In <i>Jazz</i> she writes:</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chicago how I loved you</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">my release, my out of jail my joy</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the sweet heat of the drinks in those clubs</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">under the city…</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">…even I could hear the intricate unwinding</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of the riffs careening from the alto sax.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and, years later, in what I call its companion piece, <i>Rock and Roll</i> she writes</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">my husband and I are up</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and dancing, not, for the moment</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">thinking it strange to rock and roll in</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the only Serbian restaurant in Hildesheim, West Germany, </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">maybe the first Chicago dirty boogie since circa 1957</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ever danced there…</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">…together in that moment, we are the world’s oldest teenagers,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and rock and roll will never die.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Poems about the natural world are few and far between but <i>Tarantuala </i>deserves a special mention because it is a beautiful piece of writing which shows what Dobler was more than capable of achieving in drawing on a scene from nature: </span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nothing to see here but scrub, just a dirt road like a hot held breath</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">between El Paso and Chandelar, then in front of us,</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a tarantuala shedding his skin. In the grip of the one beautiful thing</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he knows how to do.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">She muses on what it must be like</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To slip out of your body, to drop it like an old shirt.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Her compassion for all living things is brought out in her poems which are addressed not only to friends and family but also dwell on incidents concerning total strangers. The following poem, the last in the book, seems like a fitting place to end because it expresses so clearly what it means to be truly human, courageous and vulnerable, and above all, honest to the last:</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whenever Someone I Love Gets Sick I Get Angry</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">which is my way of being afraid. I take </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">their illnesses to heart, that is, to my unnamed </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">heart…</span></i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">…So when I am angry with your fevers,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when I say “don’t die” so fiercely, I want you to hear</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I love you” the full weight of those words.</span></i></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i></span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is not enough space to do full justice to this collection. Autumn House Press are to be congratulated on having the foresight to bring together and publish this definitive edition which is a fitting tribute to a poet who died too young. It is highly recommended.</span></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i></i><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*****</span></b></div>
<div style="min-height: 14px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b></b><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Neil Leadbeater is an editor, author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, essays, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His most recent books are <i>Librettos for the Black Madonna </i>published by White Adder Press, Scotland (2011) and <i>The Worcester Fragments</i> published by Original Plus, England (2013). </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-58046633468461597912014-05-31T23:00:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:14:04.156-07:00APOLLO: A BALLET BY IGOR STRAVINSKY by GEOFFREY GATZA<!--[if !mso]>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">TOM
HIBBARD Reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Apollo: A Ballet By Igor
Stravinsky </span></i></b><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">by<i> </i>Geoffrey Gatza<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">(BlazeVOX [Books], Kenmore, N.Y., 20140<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">GEOFFREY GATZA’S <i>APOLLO</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">NIETZSCHE, ROSE SELAVY AND THE FORGOTTEN<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">UMBRELLAS OF ELMWOOD AVENUE<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">“…this [artwork]
itself is our catastrophe…it says that
the catastrophe…has already occurred </span></i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">because the very idea of the catastrophe is impossible.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">
-Jean Baudrillard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</w:wrap></v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Did
the universe begin as a mistake, a crime?
As some horrendous mishap?
According to Christian mythology, in its beginning, Creation was a smooth-running
paradisical garden inhabited by only a solitary couple, Adam and Eve, along
with all the natural creatures and God.
God told Adam and Eve they could do anything (eat anything) in paradise, except they could not eat the fruit
of two trees at its center—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the
tree of life—perhaps more potent or toxic fruits whose taste would catastrophically
cause them to become self-aware and dissatisfied. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, Adam
and Eve listened to the snake, “the serpent” and ate the fruit of those trees. God cast them out of “paradise”—and thus
began the bumpy history of civilization.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e_4wqj2aivY/UzC3gEs9ytI/AAAAAAAAITc/O9N249ae-dk/s1600/Apollo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-e_4wqj2aivY/UzC3gEs9ytI/AAAAAAAAITc/O9N249ae-dk/s1600/Apollo.jpg" height="195" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In the same way, at an unsuspecting lulling blissful moment in oblivion of
spring 2011 (“April is the cruelest month”), poet and publisher Geoffrey Gatza
decided to visit an exhibit at the local art gallery, the Albright-Knox art
gallery on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, New York.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The day was rainy, and Gatza took with him an umbrella.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Art galleries are similar to paradise.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The walls and floors are spotless; the
lighting is precisely beneficially measured; the abundant spacing of </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">the artworks is idyllic.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As Gatza absorbed and enjoyed discussing one
of the works at the Albright-Knox gallery with friends (noting that white is an
“ambiguous” color), he was asked to leave by a security guard because he was
carrying an umbrella.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In this way, Gatza was also cast out of paradise. In my opinion, both the fates of Adam and Eve
and Gatza are similarly somewhat arbitrary and predictable. Though God expressly gave them this one restriction,
as God of all Creation, he must have known that Adam and Eve would succumb to doing
what they were told not to do. The mysterious prohibition itself tasted of forbidden
fruit. This Adam-and-Eve tale could only
be some sort of preface to the unfolding of human development, with the so-called
“Fall” in the Garden as the revelatory opening of the discourse of humanity becoming
responsible for its actions. Had everything
gone as outlined and continued in endless bliss, many essential events
and ideas that in Christianity’s own doctrine lay ahead could not have taken
place, including the giving of the Law, the ideas of grace and ascension, the
Apocalypse, the appearance of Elija and of God’s son—Jesus, who, in his lifetime, compared himself to that self-same
serpent in the wilderness being “lifted up,” that is, articulated and embraced
for what it really meant and was (is).
(Ferlinghetti once said about Kerouac that he liked his writing once he
understood what Kerouac was doing.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Especially considering it occurred in an environment of artists,
artworks and art curators, Gatza’s being asked to leave the gallery is a
serious matter. As presented, this
shocking incident has many implications that concern art, literature and humanity. Because of its apparent capriciousness and callousness,
it constitues something similar to an atrocity—a subject very relevant to 20<sup>th</sup>
and 21<sup>st</sup> century Art (and religion).
As Gatza says, he attended the art gallery “all my life”; as he
purchased his ticket no one mentioned the umbrella; no signs were posted about
umbrellas, and the gallery could have simply taken the umbrella to a place
where Gatza could have picked it up as he exited. As with the cautionary tale of Adam-and-Eve,
the “crime” of Gatza, the crime against Gatza reflects on humanity as a
whole. In both the instance of Gatza and
Adam and Eve, peaceful assurance turns into alienation. Paradise turns into hell. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">With “hurt feelings” and “wounded,”
Gatza is forced into unexplored darkness.
He is required to explain and articulate on his own the significance of
what has taken place. As Sartrean
“humanism” rises beyond the limits of what is forbidden, placing “the writer” at
a level equal with the creator, Gatza must “invent himself” from accursedness
and negation. As a literary or artistic
movement is christened in its very condemnation, as speech is the unaccountable
child of silence, Gatza must recover “totality of being” with his own myth of identity
and homeland, his own dialetical badge of history and historicity. He must populate it with real people and a
new style of perception. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">* *<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now I am ready to tell you of the birth of
Apollo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">How he fell in love with the charming
dryad,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Caissa and how the game of chess was
invented for her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In dying to the art of the Albright-Knox gallery, Gatza lives to the art
of a new world. Jacques Derrida
describes the encounter with “<i>differance</i>”
as an “adventure.” <i>“Tout dans le trace de la differance est strategique et adventureux.”</i> (“Everything about the trace of <i>differance</i> is tactical and
adventurous.”) From the cavernous,
generous vantage of possibility issues
the discovery of nothingness. For Gatza,
the Albright-Knox gallery, a life-long fixture, has become a thorn-filled emptiness
and desert that he must now contemplate in a quantum, a pluralistic manner. On a new stage and with a new cast of
characters, Gatza must transform his world into a new pattern, a new
arrangement of meanings. He must be
prepared (in venturing forth) to say as Marcel Duchamp said to Brancusi at a
Paris air show in 1912, “It is all over for painting. What could be better than that
propeller? Tell me, can you do that?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From the fragments of his shattered world, from the simulacra of
fragmentation, Gatza must alter his vision, must escape the art gallery of his lifetime. Rather than a question of defending himself
or “righting the ship,” it is a question of opening up “a space of alternate
theoretical possibilities” unrelated to but prompted by what has gone before,
of chance, of improbability, exploration, free-association. As his main focal point, Gatza lights on a
lesser-known ballet by Igor Stravinsky titled <i>Apollo</i>, intertwined with purported complexity and luster associated
with the game of chess. Calling his
multi-media book or collection—which includes many photographs—a “one-night only” production, Gatza speedily brings
together a global tornadic storm of Greek gods, dryads, “jealous Hera,” the
sun-god Apollo and his sister Artemis, the seer/wise man Tiresias (whose habit
of being in the wrong place at the wrong
time causes him not only to become blind but also changed into a woman) together
with a cast of unlikely artistic luminaries—Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Dizzy
Gillespie, Gertrude Abercrombie, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Donna di
Scalotta and Duchamp’s famous “female alter-ego” Rrose Selavy. The invention of the game of chess by Euphron
the god of sport (in fact chess was invented in India) in order to seduce the
nymph Caissa is introduced as an enticing symbol of multiplicity and discovery. This rousing creative super-nova of
space-time is enhanced by an array of formal devices—tableaux, variations, <i>pas-de-deux</i>, <i>pas d’action</i>, codas, endgames, recipes, poems, dramatizations,
letters-to-the-editor, collages, artworks, pantheons, diagrams of famous chess
games, photos, bio blurbs. In this wildly
fantastical literary dance of the extremes of emotion and benignity, mortals interact
with gods and many new things are born into existence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Despite its reference to the term “post-avant” (after-before), Gatza’s <i>Apollo</i> is a return to the avant-garde. This is underscored in the appearance of Duchamp
and Stravinsky and “the Duchamp heritage” as a main source of imagery. Duchamp, famous for his ground-breaking
abstract Armory painting <i>Nude Descending
A Staircase</i> and his “readymades” (found art objects) is one of the most
respected and idiosyncratic, innovative artists of the 20<sup>th</sup>
Century. Rather than confirming a
pragmatic unchanging metaphysics, Gatza’s <i>Apollo</i>
is a work intended in Derrida’s words “to transform concepts, to displace them
to turn them against their presuppositions…and to thereby produce new
configurations.” Yet this is obviously
more than wantonness and destruction.
“Artists like Rainer, Reich, Gaburo, Chopin and Ashley command
considerable respect,” writes Nicholas Zurbrugg in his book on Postmodernism,
“for continuing the positive avant-garde tradition of working outside and
against the financial barrier, the aesthetic barrier, and the barrier of the
imagination that condition prevailing cultural and critical expectations.” In calling literature “an exigence and a
gift,” Sartre himself concedes that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Whether he wants to or not, and even if he has his eye on eternal
laurels, the writer is speaking to his contemporaries and brothers of his class
and race. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The avant-garde is an attempt to perform the same function vis-à-vis
“change” and social transformation as a cataclysm or tragedy but without the
cost in human life or widespread destruction.
All of this supports the criticism that non-objective artworks that are
too refined and formulated are in danger of abetting the very problem they intend to solve—namely the
removal of the meaningless iconic arbitrary absolute. The color white may be “ambiguous,” just as a
law may be a good law, but, without a greater substantiveness infused into the
universe surrounding these artworks and laws, there is an ominousness and
menace that emanates from their justification and ideology. An artwork such as Gatza’s <i>Apollo</i> (which, though concurrent with
it, should not be confused with Stravinsky’s actual ballet <i>Apollo</i>) must take place entirely in fragments and “posthumously” in
the space between other artworks. The
end result should contain none of the volatility of the notions of inclusion
and exclusion, of “elsewhere” or “outside.”
Perhaps it should even supply a measure of what Derrida describes as
“pedagogic ballast” providing inertness and stability. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">* *<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The voluminous poetry in Gatza’s <i>Apollo</i>
reinforces the Dadaistic enhancement of disintegration and reconfiguration. Every line seeks to burst into undiscovered regions
of compassion, more basic and interesting particles of Being. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In Scalotta’s silvery mirror<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Striving upwards, climbing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To meet the lordly gray sky,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The ivory towers reflect life;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In reverse she sees Camelot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The castle projected in silver.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Up the road and down the river she watched;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Weaving her songs into blossoms and roses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To her all things are possible, for
everything is impossible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She is free to be playful in her
paradoxical island of Shallot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The curse has come<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Cried Donna di Scalotta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">RE: Why didn’t I say, why didn’t I say, no,
no, no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
Part two – oh god, I could do better than that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">She forgoes literature discovering other
forms of writing, law, philosophy, physics and so on. Finding no solace, she transforms further
into logical statements and equations.
These expressions divide their forms, converting into sets that can be
in the universe and sets that do not need a universe to formulate their
function.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dark rills begin, the words of every
generation of humankind appear,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Pour forth from her eyes and nose in
analogous driblets of India ink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Her dark hair is a tangled thicket of
possibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A madwoman of the woods, a queen of trees,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A murmuration of starlings lost to the
exaltation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">of the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yesterday<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To exist is the
continuing act of becoming. In the cold
winds, recollect; you will never be yourself.
A full being, never. Death brings
finality and vultures, a virtue portrait that looks backwards in regret at the sparrows that could have been saved
from afternoon rooks. Paint dries ever
so slowly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">51 Years Ago<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was by accident
that he was driven from home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A soldier and a
boy, cold and shivering, he survived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He would lock
himself in the bathroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On the jealous
toilet he read comic books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Yellow flowers
erode, orange shells explode.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> SELAVY<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> White Knight
to d4<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In festive rituals
and Carnivalesque reversals, servants would dress up as their masters, men
would go out in drag, dogs would dress as cats, and mice would dress as
cheese. The leader of these events was
entitled the Lord of Misrule. He was an
officer appointed by lot at Christmas to preside over the Feast of Fools and
other revelries for the ritual of Saturnalia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
DUCHAMP<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Black Knight to e8<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I didn’t know, I
would have worn a fancy dress. Who shall
I be, if you are the Lord of Misrule?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
SELAVY<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> White Pawn
to f4<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You shall be the
salt seller. As the spoonerism of your
name, Marcel Duchamp, le marchand du sel, a merchant of salt. Ha!
Done! <i>With a wave of her arm.</i> You
are thus reborn!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">* *<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Do we need to consider the possibility that there might be some justification
in the action of the security guard at the Albright-Knox art gallery? In his response, which could and should be
considered a self-examination and healing <i>apologia</i>,
Gatza seems to feel that in some way he is responsible for what took place. At any rate, he feels a responsibility for
explaining it and dispersing the pain of it.
I remember my dad, a lawyer, once telling me that in a car accident
there is never one-hundred-percent liability on one side or the other. If artworks are “over our heads,” in the
sense that cold rainy days bring regeneration and bright blossoming, it is also
true that umbrellas are over our heads and may be an unwelcomed defense
mechanism in art galleries. Perhaps
Gatza’s umbrella was perceived as a threat to Art. In his study of Nietzsche, <i>Spurs</i>, Derrida ends by discussing a
separate fragment found among Nietzsche’s papers with the words “I have
forgotten my umbrella.” Derrida discusses
this fragment at some length and concludes that “[Forgetting] belongs to the
nature of Being and reigns as the Destiny of its essence.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thus, in a thousand ways, has the
“forgetting of Being” been represented as if Being (figuratively speaking) were
the umbrella that some philosophy professor, in his distraction, left
somewhere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Would it then be culpable
or complicit for a “philosophy professor” to <i>remember</i> his umbrella? Could
Gatza’s umbrella have had some significance or volatility of which he was
unaware? Undoubtedly so, but, in my
opinion, by the same reasoning, the bizarre actions of the security guard could
never be and should never be construed as a form of virtue. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nietzsche famously
discusses the sun-god Apollo in <i>The Birth
of Tragedy</i> as a symbol of negation, which he contrasts with the god of wine,
Dionysus, associated with impulsiveness and emotion. In Christianity, except for a new Testament
apostle, “Apollo” is treated as a dark figure, in Hebrew “Abaddon,” in Greek
Apollyon—“the destroyer”—due to his invulnerable preeminence. As a symbol of renewing complexity, of reconfiguration
and reconciliation, both the figure of Apollo and the game of chess seem to
have some inappropriateness. The game of chess, which has a military ancestry,
is really a symbol of limitation not of liberating multiplicity and possibility. The imaginativeness suggested by its decorative
and colorful pieces is a superficial
complexity, more an “impressive” technical difficulty than complexity. Despite the many photos Gatza supplies of
various views of chess boards and different arrangements of the pieces (in
panels grouped in varying sets of numbers), the “game of Kings” has a sense of emnity
and stagnancy. It is “tactical” yes, but
what are its tactics? Its aim is superficial
rather than liberating and profound. Apollo
and chess could be seen as being in the camp of the Albright-Knox security department,
with its tyranical authority. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As images of
discovery and diversity, the sun-god Apollo and the game of chess might not reflect
the dark rejection that invariably occurs
in the struggle of life. However it
would be unfair to say that the formal carnival variety of Gatza’s work doesn’t
distance itself from the repression and despotism of artistic or any other sort
of effeteness. Happily and admirably,
Gatza’s work has overcome the characteristic human fear of Creation
itself. It is an <i>“invitation au voyage,”</i> with its content flowing from hurt and honest
inquiry, the lengthy straightforward substantiveness contained in line after
line, strophe upon strophe of Gatza’s beautiful poetry and writing, searching
for the multiple and the non-manipulative.
In the end it sheds a true light on what took place in Albright-Knox
gallery and the problems that are posed by these sorts of occurrences. It is the Being that humbly rises above
negation—even from the gods—that remains heroic. There is no intent to deny laws, the Law or
lawfulness in the archetypal artistic response, in the scientific, reasoned,
philosophical striving for imaginativeness and reconciliation. There is only the wish to place authority
with humanity, with contemplation and suffering, with intent, with parody, with
the empirical fullness of competent knowledge—the law tempered in mercy,
justice, the experience of life. What
does artificiality (artifice) and loneliness have to say? This is the paradise at the <i>end</i> of the journey whose peace resides in
the forbidden fruit of self-awareness and understanding—the ability to perceive
joy not in sameness but <i>differance</i>. <i> </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">*****</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt;">Recently
Tom Hibbard has had several articles published on visual writing, one <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in Big Bridge</i>, issue 17 and also in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Galatea Resurrects</i>, issue 19.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hibbard has also had an article on the work
of Belgian artist Luc Fierens in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Word/
For Word</i>, issue 22 and an article on Jack Kerouac’s poetry also in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Big Bridge</i>, issue 17.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several poems following Kerouac’s style and
visual writing were recently published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cricket
Online Review</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His book of poetry <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sacred River of Consciousness</i> is
available online at Moon Willow Press and Amazon.com.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Place of Uncertainty</i> is available online at Otoliths Storefront
from Lulu.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hibbard is working on a new
collection of poetry and further articles on visual writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-79386974025244031142014-05-31T22:30:00.000-07:002014-06-02T14:13:44.410-07:00THE ANTS and INSECT COUNTRY (B) by SAWAKO NAKAYASU<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">EILEEN
TABIOS Engages</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">THE
ANTS</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Sawako
Nakayasu<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Les Figues
Press, Los Angeles, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Insect
Country (B)</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> by Sawako
Nakayasu<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Dusie,
Switzerland, 2007)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To
know of Sawako Nakayasu is to know that she’s got this committed relationship
to/with ants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s been writing about
or through them, as well as conducting related performances, for many
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I think of Sawako Nakayasu,
I remember her lovely smile, her intelligence … but also, always, ants.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thus,
I was not surprised when she came out with a new book entitled (wait for it) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">THE ANTS</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eagerly, I delved into it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, I could have opened the book with
no particular enthusiasm to my curiosity and still would have been snagged
immediately into the book—there is a propulsion to Nakayasu’s writing styles
and engagements with ants that make the book a page-turner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That
propulsion may be attributed to the enchantingly weird turns the poems make, their
wit, their humor, their insight, even its version of algebra (“Apple Speed”), their
deft deadpanness (“The Cannibal”), the writing’s punchiness (“Art Project”) and
always her unique discernments. Here is a sample—and for this example, I opened the book at
random to show how many of the poems benefit from Nakayasu’s poetic strengths
as I identified them:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Girl
Talk<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We are sitting around the table eating
and drinking and exchanging stories about flashers, gropers, underwear thieves,
your general assortment of urban perverts. When I tell the story about the man
who came up to me and opened up his bag and offered me one of a teeming million
wiggling ants in his bag, the whole table goes silent and I am reminded all
over again how hard it is to get along with the women in this country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One
of the book’s strongest poems is actually the opening one, “We the
Heathens.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After reading the first poem
and before the rest of the book, I wondered whether this poem would overshadow
the rest as I found it so effective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately,
all of the poems were strong in different ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
writing contains much forward-pushing momentum, of which “Battery” is an
exemplary example owing to its use of repetition, (lack of) punctuations, and masterful
use of the word “very”—here’s the poem’s beginning:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We get lost in the desert, lost very
lost, and although we aren’t going to tell anyone that we can’t possibly be any
more than two miles from civilization, the fact remains that we are lost very
lost in the desert very desert, and the car very car is having a hard very hard
very hard time getting started up again, and so we very kick it in its ass very
ass and the car is still having a hard very hard time …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now,
I did pause in my readings over the poem “Decay,” specifically wondering
whether it was aptly titled. For, isn’t the matter of decay a <i>process</i> of time versus the quick crack of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pop</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here’s the poem below and you decide (at one point in my considerations,
I thought the poem should be retitled something like “Bliss”—as in the
paradoxical bliss one sees in a hungry ascetic’s eyes):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Decay<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The great desire is to get inside of
it—the poem, the painting, the movie, the music.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">An ant, perceiving itself to have
failed to get in anywhere, takes one brave leap off a cliff, thereby making its
last and final attempt to get into something, anything, anyhow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On its way down, or perhaps at the
moment it lands (neither of us are quite sure which), it makes an undeniable
percussive sound as its body breaks, pops, and for the duration of the decay of
this sound, it is as inside as it can get, there, inside that sound, however
short-lived, who cares if it is witnessed or not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nakayasu
does note “however short-lived” for the sound of “pops”; I wonder if it’s an
improvement if the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pops</i>” was just
eliminated so that the “sound” referred to then would be the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">breaking</i>, which is more of a process of
time as is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">decay</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, a minor point….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nakayasu’s
ants were previously featured in chapbooks; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Galatea
Resurrects</i> reviewed the Dusie chap <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">INSECT
COUNTRY (B) </i>twice – <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection10.blogspot.com/2008/07/chaps-by-raymond-farr-paul-klinger-jill.html">HERE</a></b> by Bob Marcacci and <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection7.blogspot.com/2007/08/poetry-blog-and-two-chaps-by-sawako.html">HERE</a></b> by Nicholas Grider.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I also previously reviewed the first chap, <i>INSECT COUNTRY (A)</i> over <b><a href="http://galatearesurrection3.blogspot.com/2006/08/insect-country-by-sawako-nakayasu.html">HERE</a></b>. </span>Reviewing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">THE
ANTS</i> made me look up the B chap version again and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I can see
how for some readers or depending on the reader’s mood at the time of reading, the
chapbook presentation may be more effective because of its ant-like scale: the
smaller size of the chap, the more emphasized drawings of the ants, and the
fewer number of poems present the project more intimately than does this “trade
book.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Interestingly,
I didn’t have the same doubt in reading the poem “DECAY” – the duration implied
in “decay” not fitting the brief time aspect of a “pop” sound -- when seeing it
in the chapbook version.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not sure
why; perhaps the chapbook’s enchanting presentation just doesn’t lend itself to
analysis so much as just experiencing joy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yet
of course the book is necessary as it’s also worthwhile reading to see all of
the ant poems in the same space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
book’s advantage is how its scale, unlike with the chapbooks, allows for
references to other poems in the series (e.g., "Ant Heart") as well as to evoke a more present
sense of the poet’s autobiography or series persona (I can’t tell, not that
it’s necessary to know for purpose of enjoying the poems, whether some of the
Japanese references are true to life or fiction).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The overall result is a deeper, more
multi-layered project that will linger in memory longer than the chaps’ charm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nakayasu has spent years with ants, and this
book makes her endeavor worthwhile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’ll
end with one of my favorites—it made me laugh out loud, startling the cat and
making her jump from the windowsill:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Art
Project<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am observing an ant trail from the
tenth floor of a building, and photograph the exact same frame, once per
second, sixty times, in order to have an accumulated minute of ants. Later, much
later, I go back to the same exact spot where the ants once were, and place a
grain of rice in the exact location of each ant in each frame. I am growing
satisfied with the precision of my accumulation of ants and time as represented
by grains of rice, until my postwar Japanese mother finds me and slaps me
upside the head for wasting all that rice and tells me to get back inside and
do my homework.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Eileen Tabios does not let
her books be reviewed by Galatea Resurrects because she's its editor (the
exception would be anthologies she edits because they focus on other poets as
well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews
of her work. <a href="http://mhpress.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_archive.html#5246974897213050913"><b><span style="color: #0000e9;">Soffwana Yasmnin engages her poem "Jade"</span></b></a> from
her <a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">THE THORN ROSARY: SELECTED PROSE POEMS AND NEW (19980-2010) </span></i></b></a><b><i>. </i></b> Her
latest book, <a href="http://gradientbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/eileen-r-tabios-147-million-orphans.html"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">147 MILLION ORPHANS (MMXI-MML)</span></i></b></a>, is
also reviewed by Joey Madia at <a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">New Mystics Reviews</span></i></b></a> as well as
at <i>Book Masons Cafe Press Website</i> and <a href="http://www.literaryaficionado.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">Literary Aficionado</span></i></b></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">
And her latest anthology
as editor, <a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA</span></i></b></a>, receives an
engagement </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/verses-typhoon-yolanda-edited-by-eileen.html">this issue of GR</a></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> by</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"> Aileen Ibardaloza; at <a href="http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/05/22/verses-typhoon-yolanda/"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">Manila Standard Today</span></i></b></a> by Jenny
Ortuoste; at <a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/2014/04/north-american-review-to-sing-of-beauty.html"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">North American Review</span></i></b></a> by Vince
Gotera; and at <a href="http://globalnation.inquirer.net/104693/all-hail-to-those-who-hold-up-half-of-heaven"><b><i><span style="color: #0000e9;">Philippine Inquirer</span></i></b></a> by Luis H.
Francia.</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-2564058679526025872014-05-31T22:00:00.000-07:002014-06-02T13:58:33.536-07:00IN THE HOUSE UN-AMERICAN by BENJAMIN HOLLANDER<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN
Reviews</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><i>In the House Un-American</i> by Benjamin
Hollander</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i>(Clockroot Books, Northhampton, MA, 2013)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">THIS
IS AN ACUPUNCTURE BOOK. Like any great medical text, it contains a selected
"case” where someone presents to a great doctor a discomfort, a situation
of malaise. The exact contours of the discomfort may or not be exactly clear to
the sufferer, their family or friends, but they feel hindered, confined, a
little choked. … And so naturally they explain. … The great doctor merely takes
it all in — listen, senses, watches, waits, perceives — bringing no previous
judgment of the situation to the situation. The words are, to him, only
partially instructive. Rather he sits there in the flow of explanation. — blank-faced,
unmoving, empty as an old black stone — <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>Seung Sahn, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Only Don’t Know</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Unfortunately,
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> world, Carlos ben Carlos
Rossman’s world, my world, your world, our world, there is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no such thing as an acupuncture</i> for our malaise. And, as for a doctor,
are you kidding? There is no doctor. There has never been a doctor. Tho,
somewhere, on some beach or other, there may be an old black stone …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>JBR<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">… so the furthest I’ve ever
been able to get in Kafka’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amerika</i>
is the scene where Karl Rossman leaves his luggage in the care of a total
stranger and plunges back below deck because it’s just too painfully obvious
what’s going to happen next even if it doesn’t, but I know from Benjamin
Hollander’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the House Un-American</i>
that Karl does indeed manage to leave the ship more or less, less probably,
un-intact because on the first page I am introduced to the offspring of the
mystic marriage between Karl and William Carlos Williams, Carlos ben Carlos Rossman,
who grows up in Queens, eventually moves to San Francisco (neither of which
seem anywhere near The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma), and mind instantly brings
to itself two poems, Jerome Rothenberg’s “Cokboy”, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">saddlesore
I came<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">a
jew among<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">the
indians<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">vot
em I doink in dis strange place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">mit
deez pipple mit strange eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">could
be it’s trouble<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">could
be<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>could be<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">etc, tho here it is not “the
indians” who could be trouble, and Kenneth Koch’s “This is Just to Say”,
especially part 2, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">We
laughed at the hollyhocks together<br />
and then I sprayed them with lye.<br />
Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">who does?, but I don’t think
it’s that version mind is really trying to think, it’s one in which the plums
are injected with strychnine, or cyanide, or Round-Up, which I may or may not have
dreamt (or maybe it is this one, because it has lye in it), but in any case,
and in a manner of speaking, and we can’t make too little about a manner of
speaking, because a manner of speaking is what there is, because what is not a
(sometimes spoken) text (which I first typed as test)? the real concern here is:
can one actually enter into “America’s pastime” with a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">green </i>baseball bat? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">2.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">America, Amerika, the great
melting pot, in which all differences are melted away, so goeth the myth, which
is useful to the ruling class but is only painful for everyone who actually has
or is a difference, because this is an unforgiving and unaccepting place,
really, if the difference is perceived to make a difference, because then it is
information in the Gregory Bateson sense, and we all loves us our information,
because that tells us how to respond to others, and we all loves us our stand
your ground laws, which allows us to kill that difference, and yes of course
this is hyperbole, but maybe not to an immigrant, which means every one of us
besides the indigenes who is not amnesiac. And I wonder: difference, “could be
it’s trouble / could be<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>could be” …
identity, “could be it’s trouble / could be<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>could be”, coincidence when you’re a
stranger in a strange land, “could be it’s trouble / could be<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>could be” …, what does it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mean</i> that Bateson shares a first name
with Samsa? (“could be it’s trouble / could be<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>could be”) In any case, if the ground
melts away, it melts into what, exactly? into an American. But what the hell is
that? NB, this is a timely book, because, as the ubiquitous news tells us, in
early May 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Alabama’s
chief justice offered an unusual interpretation of the U.S. Constitution in a
newly-released video, telling a religious organization that the First Amendment
only protects Christianity. “They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim
ship” Chief Justice Roy Moore announced at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, an
event hosted in January by Pro-Life Mississippi. … Moore told his
audience that religion in the First Amendment only applied to the God in
the Bible. “Let’s get real. Let’s learn our history. Let’s stop playing games. Everybody,
to include the U.S. Supreme Court, has been deceived as to one little word in
the First Amendment called ‘religion.’ They can’t define it,” the state’s
chief justice said. “They can’t define it the way Mason, Madison and even the
United State Supreme Court defined it, ‘the duties we owe to the creator and
the manner of discharging it.’ They don’t want to do that, because that
acknowledges a creator god.” “Buddha didn’t create us. Mohammed didn’t create
us. It’s the god of the Holy Scriptures,” said Moore. (MSNBC, http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/judge-first-amendment-only-christians)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">but since millions of other
“Americans” instantly cried bullshit, it doesn’t tell us what an American is,
only that no one knows, not even “the pure products of America” (about whose
craziness more in a minute). But one thing we do discover in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the House Un-American</i>: real Americans
do <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> come to the park with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">green baseball bats</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">3.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">What we have is a
genre-bending series of meditations by Carlos ben Carlos Rossman on what his (trans)migration
might signify, and by the end we are no nearer understanding – or are we? –
than Karl Rossman was, when he saw the Statue of Liberty looming and either
confusedly or correctly or … saw its torch as a sword … this is not a book for
those looking for answers, I don’t think, it’s a book for those in search of
uncertainties. Among the uncertainties are linguistic ones, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the House</i> is written in such a way as
to foreground them, to hint that language just might be the key to the mystery,
not that there really is a key, because there might not really be a mystery,
tho on the other hand …. and pace all you theorists and philosophers and poets
and leftists and … who bemoan the “linguistic turn”, by the end of this book I
am pretty well convinced that, to quote Pound, “you who think you will / get
through <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">hell in a hurry”, are shit
out of luck, as my mom liked to say, and language (which of course doesn’t
stand alone, which of course makes and is made of history) will remain the
ground of all thinking. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Here’s
a beautiful (necessarily a bit lengthy) example of what I’m mumbling about:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Anyone
in America could be Ron Paul. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">So
when his teachers claimed Berri was just right in English, and thus in his head
from the moment he said “yes” in it at the age of six after arriving at the
Harbor of the New York of the New Land, he seized a particular kind of invisible
ownership of the language – somewhat like Xerox did with the copy, advertising
itself out behind the scenes in the land of plenty – an ironic kind of
Americanness he never felt but projected, without anyone noticing what of this
language belonged to who of his person, as silent and screened, at the time, as
the name “Carlos” in the iconic three-folded name of the American poet William
Carlos Williams – who today would be framed as the white American male poet
William Carlos Williams.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Strange.
At the time, no one knew or even asked about this Carlos, who or why his middle
name was Carlos, his name later discovered to have come into being after
brother of his Puerto Rican mother, yet who knew, at this time, of a Puerto
Rican mother, at the heart of this white American poet’s calling, certainly not
Carlos ben Carlos Rossman or his friend Berri, for example, naturalized
Americans in Queens, both of whose mothers were born in the city of Leipzig,
Germany, at the turn of the last century, although their families went deeper
in time into the Eastern past, into what was then called Posen, the future
Poland, which they had left Leipzig for just before the war to escape the Nazis
– <i>you know who they are</i>, the mothers used to whisper to their children
in America about anyone they either thought was following them or going the
other way, it didn’t matter, if they thought they looked like Nazis, <i>you
know who they are</i>, they whispered to their children, who were born after
the war and never knew any Nazis. A mistake, in hindsight, more menacing, to be
sure, to be invisible, a rumor, for the children to have never known Nazis yet
live with them as if their names and faces were just coming into being in their
bedroom closets, to be sure, the family could escape, quietly to Warsaw because
they thought it was safer than Leipzig, so that they went there not to be shot
in the ghetto but the Nazis followed them into the future, at least this is
what was rumored, what they told their children, but Carlos and Berri,
naturalized Americans in Queens, got to wondering why an American poet would
say he wanted his poems to sound an authentic American speech, the same as that
which could, he emphasized, <i>come out of the mouths of Polish mothers</i>,
which would have been fine with Carlos and Berri, though a bit curious, to be
sure, since they wondered, looking back, why could he not have made the speech
coming out of these mothers’ mouths his own, Puerto Rican. The fact that he
didn’t, threw them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">OK.
The ground keeps shifting, the old world ground, the new world ground, nothing
retains its name or identity, for reasons that can only remain mysterious, even
if we can explain them. Even if they can be explained, they still remain
mysterious. And, to my ear, the language in this passage is masterfully
controlled, and at the same time a little bit … off … and by off I mean <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not quite American</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">4.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">And
yet. And yet. Aren’t these boys pure products of America? I mean, not only can
anyone in America be Ron Paul, that’s been proven, unfortunately, a<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">nyone in America could have a Puerto Rican
mother AND assume that the authentic American speech must flow from another
mother, maybe a Polish one. And anyone in America can have a mother from Leipzig
who lived briefly in Poland. Who then lived in Queens. Etc. And make the same
speech assumptions. That wherever the language is, that wherever Americanness
is, it’s not quite <i>here</i>. So we are all left looking for something that
supposedly exists, that indubitably exists, but which can never be quite found.
Who could be crazier than Ron Paul? Even if he doesn’t know it? Just listen to
him. Who could be crazier than a <i>real American</i>? Who <i>isn’t</i> a
stranger in America [ which I could be spelling Amerika, as Kafka and sometimes
Hollander does]? The indigenes of course are not from America / Amerika. They
are from a place with other names, a much older land. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">*****<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">John Bloomberg-Rissman has
about a year and a half to go on <i>In the House of the Hangman</i>, the
third section of his maybe life project called<i> Zeitgeist Spam</i>. The first
two volumes have been published: <i>No Sounds of My Own Making</i> (Leafe
Press, 2007), and <i>Flux, Clot & Froth</i> (Meritage Press
2010). In addition to his <i>Zeitgeist Spam</i> project, the main other thing
on his plate right now is an anthology which he is editing with Jerome
Rothenberg, titled <i>Barbaric Vast & Wild: An Anthology of Outside
& Subterranean Poetry</i>, due out from Black Widow Press, Autumn 014. He's
also learning to play the viola and he blogs at <a href="http://www.johnbr.com/"><span style="color: #0000e9;">www.johnbr.com</span></a> (Zeitgeist
Spam). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9141716376742890820.post-91107199957518075692014-05-31T21:30:00.000-07:002014-06-02T13:57:29.518-07:00MEMORY HOLES by ERIN VIRGIL<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">EILEEN
TABIOS Engages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">memory holes</span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> by Erin Virgil<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">(Monkey Puzzle Press,
Harrison, Arkansas, 2014)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><i>memory
holes</i> is well-crafted work, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i>
deceptively so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Deceptively” because
this memoir is rooted in darkness: the first section “withdrawal” handbook* is about withdrawing from Selective Serotonin Reuptake
Inhibitors (SSRIs), the second section “offers other people’s memoirs” which
are replete with loss and desire as they should be as they’re harvested from
Craigs List want ads, and the third section is about living in an RV which is a
lifestyle inherently singed with uncertainty (where to park tonight?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, there’s a light—and lightness—in Erin
Virgil’s telling/re-telling that alleviates the dark: despair does not have a
strong presence in these tales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So
how did the author lift despair out of these dark moments?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One can’t know for sure but I suspect the
writer’s observing eye (it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">professional</i>
in its distancing!), self-awareness <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i>
compassion allows her to rise above if not survive what could be
debilitating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, this
discerning excerpt from “withdrawal handbook”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Did
you take:</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Xanax</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Valium</span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Prozac</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Cymbalt</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wellbutrin</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Effexor</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Paxil</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Celexa</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">and
were you still sad in your heart?</span></blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In
a recent post on her blog, Virgil discussed meditation, which I mention as just
an example of what I perceive to be her efforts to increase (self-) awareness
.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such seems to have strengthened this
memoir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, from the apt but
poignantly titled “want ads”—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">loneliness<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ok, so you must be normal and sane and not an
ex-murderer and all that stuff. You must be able to carry on a conversation, or
at least act like you’re paying attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You must NOT be looking for a sugar momma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You must be fairly tall (over 6 feet) and not
have a mustache. Brownie points if you are Southern. Actually, on second
thought, you must NOT be a relocated yankee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Loneliness is often marked by false bravado. I do
it too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Demanding something so specific
from the vastness of the internet: good luck.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Her
astute observation and then penetrating insight into what’s observed is
welcomingly sparkled by humor: “I am the better space cadet” (27)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Tough
circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Virgil maintains
nothing less than equipoise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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More info at <a href="http://sitwithmoi.blogspot.com/2013/02/handbook-for-withdrawal-by-erin-virgil.html">http://sitwithmoi.blogspot.com/2013/02/handbook-for-withdrawal-by-erin-virgil.html</a></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eileen Tabios does not let her books be reviewed by Galatea Resurrects because she's its editor (the exception would be anthologies she edits because they focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work. <b><a href="http://mhpress.blogspot.com/2014_02_01_archive.html#5246974897213050913">Soffwana Yasmnin engages her poem "Jade"</a></b> from her <a href="http://marshhawkpress.org/Tabios4.htm" style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">THE THORN ROSARY: SELECTED PROSE POEMS AND NEW (19980-2010) </a><i style="font-weight: bold;">. </i> Her latest book, <i><b><a href="http://gradientbooks.blogspot.com/2014/03/eileen-r-tabios-147-million-orphans.html">147 MILLION ORPHANS (MMXI-MML)</a></b></i>, is also reviewed by Joey Madia at <i><b><a href="http://newmysticsreviews.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html">New Mystics Reviews</a></b></i> as well as at <i>Book Masons Cafe Press Website</i> and <i><b><a href="http://www.literaryaficionado.com/2014/05/a-review-of-eileen-r-tabios-et-als-147.html">Literary Aficionado</a></b></i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And her latest anthology as editor, <i><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/">VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA</a></b></i>, receives an engagement </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://galatearesurrection22.blogspot.com/2014/06/verses-typhoon-yolanda-edited-by-eileen.html">this issue of GR</a></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> by</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Aileen Ibardaloza; at <i><b><a href="http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/05/22/verses-typhoon-yolanda/">Manila Standard Today</a></b></i> by Jenny Ortuoste; at <i><b><a href="http://versestyphoonyolanda.blogspot.com/2014/04/north-american-review-to-sing-of-beauty.html">North American Review</a></b></i> by Vince Gotera; and at <i><b><a href="http://globalnation.inquirer.net/104693/all-hail-to-those-who-hold-up-half-of-heaven">Philippine Inquirer</a></b></i> by Luis H. Francia.</span><br />
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