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THE POETRY PROJECT October/November 2018 Issue #256 The Poetry Project October/November 2018 Issue #256 Executive Director: Kyle Dacuyan Friday Night Readings Coordinators: Mirene Arsanios and Rachel Valinsky Managing Director: Nicole Wallace Archival Assistant: Marlan Sigelman Communications & Membership Coordinator: Laura Henriksen Bookkeeper: Eva Pou Newsletter Editor: Marwa Helal Box Office Staff: Cori Hutchinson, Anna Kreienberg, and Reviews Editor: John Rufo Phoebe Lifton Monday Night Readings Coordinator: Adjua Gargi Nzinga Audio Techs: James Barickman, Matt D’Angelo Greaves Interns: Yaz Lancaster, Ivana Montalvo, and Kallie Quist Wednesday Night Readings Coordinator: Kyle Dacuyan Volunteers James Barickman, Jim Behrle, Matty D’Angelo, Mel Elberg, Micaela Foley, Rachel Galperin, Erika Hodges, Dave Morse, Caelan Nardone, Jianna Park, Matt Proctor, Gustavo Rivera, Batya Rosenblum, and Viktorsha Uliyanova Board of Directors Camille Rankine (Chair), Carol Overby (Treasurer), Boo Froebel, Erica Hunt, Annabel Lee, Ricardo Maldonado, Jonathan Morrill, Laura Nicoll, Purvi Shah, Jo Ann Wasserman, and David Wilk. Friends Committee Brooke Alexander, Dianne Benson, Will Creeley, Raymond Foye, Michael Friedman, Steve Hamilton, Viki Hudspith, Siri Hustvedt, Yvonne Jacquette, Gillian McCain, Eileen Myles, Patricia Spears Jones, Michel de Konkoly Thege, Greg Masters, Ron Padgett, Bob Holman, Paul Slovak, Edwin Torres, John Yau, Anne Waldman, and Hal Willner. Funders The Poetry Project is very grateful for the continued support of our funders: Atlantic Philanthropies; Axe-Houghton Foundation; City Lights Publishers; Committee on Poetry; The Destina Foundation: Dr. Gerald J. & Dorothy R. Friedman Foundation, Inc.; Jerome Foundation; Leaves of Grass Fund; Leslie Scalapino – O Books Fund; Low Road Foundation; The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation; Network for Good; LitTAP; Poets & Writers, Inc.; Poets for the Planet Fund; Anonymous Donors; Brooke Alexander; Monica Claire Antonie; Harold and Angela Appel; Neil Baldwin; Omar Berrada and Sarah Riggs; David Berrigan and Sarah Locke; Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Richard Tuttle; Steve Cannon; Rosemary Carroll; Clark and Susan Coolidge; Steve Hamilton; Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Erica Hunt and Marty Ehrlich; Jordan Davis; Don DeLillo and Barbara Bennet; Rackstraw Downes; Stephen Facey; Jennifer Firestone and Jonathan Morrill; Jane Friedman; Boo Froebel; E. Tracy Grinnell; Lisa Johns and Michael Smoler; David Kermani; Karen Koch; Annabel Lee; Glenn Ligon; Gillian McCain and Jim Marshall; Tiff Miller; Lucas Reiner & Maude Winchester; Luke Roberts; Simon Schuchat; Purvi Shah; Joel Shapiro and Ellen Phelan; Kenneth Thorp; Karen Weiser and Anselm Berrigan; David Wilk. The Estate of Kenneth Koch; members of The Poetry Project; and other individual contributors. The Poetry Project’s programs and publications are made possible, in part, with public funds from The National Endowment for the Arts. The Poetry Project’s programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Poetry Project’s programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. 2 fall Contents Letter from the Executive Director 5 Letter from the Editor 6 Poetry: Imani Elizabeth Jackson 7 September - November Master Classes + Workshops 8 Poetry: Vanessa Jimenez Gabb 11 GRIEVANCES: Roberto Montes 12 Art: Maryam A. Ansari 14 Calendar 20 Reviews 22 Q&A: Ammiel Alcalay 28 Cover image: courtesy of Maryam A. Ansari 2018 3 Free Omnidawn Poetry Readings Berl’s Poetry Bookshop, 141 Front St., Brooklyn Thursday, November 15, 7–10 PM Julie Carr Ewa Chrusciel Norma Cole Steve Dickison Richard Greenfield J.D. Moyer Sara Mumolo Diana Khoi Nguyen Bin Ramke Claire Marie Stancek All readers at this Berl’s reading will also read at the Poets House reading listed below. Poets House, 10 River Terrace, Tribeca Friday, November 16, 6–9 PM Molly Laynie Julie Ewa Norma Steve Richard Bendall Browne Carr Chrusciel Cole Dickison Greenfield Myung Mi David Jose-Luis J.D. Sara Diana Khoi Douglas Kim Koehn Moctezuma Moyer Mumolo Nguyen Piccinnini Bin Martha Andrew Claire Marie Cole Daniel Tyrone Ramke Ronk Seguin Stancek Swensen Tiffany Williams For additional info visit: www.omnidawn.com/events 4 fall Letter from the Executive Director There’s a firefly in the church office flashing with some elected perpetrator of violence. It has been a its abdomen little neon telegrams which I take to summer of escalating cruelty directed at immigrants, be auspicious. It’s the end of my first summer with a summer inaugurated by silence in the wake of The Poetry Project as Executive Director. I’ve spent celebrity suicides, and it has also been a summer my mornings and my evenings here, listening to racked with much coming to terms around access recordings from our archives, reading issues of The and identity in the universe of poetry. What can Poetry Project Newsletter, The World, Telephone, poets and poems do in this time – a question whose Adventures in Poetry, reading missives and notebook permutations I have tracked across all times in our marginalia from past directors, past editors, braced history. to learn how others have acclimated themselves to a way of life saturated with poetry. And in the This is also the summer I acquired a bicycle from Ariel afternoons, I’ve been the very grateful beneficiary of Goldberg, who has recently decamped to Tucson. time in the company of friends from our community, Both the job and the bicycle, I am finding, require who have filled me in candidly on history and that I shut the more distractable channels in my mind changes, an always affectionate supply of gossip, the off, pay attention to what’s around me, and assemble many ways The Poetry Project has been for them a all this into some sort of compass for movement. It’s home. fun, and it is work. I sing to myself while doing it, I have faith in the going. Meanwhile, the season has spun forward with eclipses and uncertainty. I can hear military airplanes kd peacocking on the half hour, heralding (I imagine) Announcements We are pleased to welcome back our curators for the Fall: Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves for the Monday series; and Mirene Arsanios and Rachel Valinsky for the Friday Series. And we are thrilled that Yaz Lancaster, Ivana Montalvo, and Kallie Quist will again be joining us as interns. We also would like to extend our deepest condolences to the families and friends of members of our community who passed away this Spring and Summer: Barbara Barg, Tom Clark, Bill Corbett, and Bobbie Louise Hawkins. We will be dedicating remembrances and events to these writers in the coming year. 2018 5 Letter from the Editor Anotha one. 4. Maryam Afaq's art is clearly a poet's work; a poet's heart. I hope you clip these pieces and post them The a/c was on blast as we began envisioning this somewhere you can see them everyday. Starting on issue and now, as we finalize, it's dropped a good page 14. twenty degrees and raining outside. Here I am talking about the weather when there's so much more 5. Reviews on page 22! Featuring Carrie Lorig on Ella interesting stuff to read.... just grateful it's fall and that Longpre’s How To Keep You Alive, Timothy Otte on we're here. Alexis Pope’s That Which Comes After, and Rahsaan Mahadeo on Jasmine Gibson and Madison Van Oort’s The latest for you: Time Theft: A Love Story. 1. Welcome our new Executive Director Kyle Dacuyan! Also shoutout Reviews Editor John Rufo's coining And the office firefly :) on page 5. the term "appositional noise," for this gorgeous and insightful Reviews intro. 2. Imani Elizabeth Jackson and Vanessa Jimenez Gabb with poems on pages 7 and 11. And finally, an interview with Ammiel Alcalay (page 22) -- which Kyle and I agree, can only be described as 3. Roberto Montes comes through again with those FIRE. ever-relevant po-biz GRIEVANCES on page 12. Follow him on twitter @RobertoGMontes for more. Until the next. mh. EDITORS EMERITI: Ron Padgett 1972–1973 / Bill MacKay 1973–1975 / Ted Greenwald 1975–1977 / Frances LeFevre 1977–1978 / Vicki Hudspith 1978–1980 / Greg Masters 1980–1983 / Lorna Smedman 1983–1984 / Tim Dlugos 1984–1985 / James Ruggia 1985–1986 / Jessica Hagedorn 1986–1987 / Tony Towle 1987–1990 / Jerome Sala 1990–1991 / Lynn Crawford 1991–1992 / Jordan Davis 1992–1994 / Gillian McCain 1994–1995 / Mitch Highfill 1995–1996 / Lisa Jarnot 1996–1998 / Brenda Coultas & Eleni Sikelianos 1998–1999 / Katherine Lederer 1999–2000 / Ange Mlinko 2000–2002 / Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan 2002–2003 / Marcella Durand 2003–2005 / Brendan Lorber 2005–2007 / John Coletti 2007–2009 / Corina Copp 2009-2011 / Paul Foster Johnson 2011-2013 / Ted Dodson 2013–2015 / Betsy Fagin 2015–2017 Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative publishes unexpected genre-bending works by 20th century writers. SERIES 7 NOW AVAILABLE Audre Lorde Toni Cade Bambara June Jordan Paul Blackburn Julio Cortázar Jack Forbes LOSTANDFOUNDBOOKS.ORG 6 fall POETRY: Imani Elizabeth Jackson When we talk about history and the archive, we are defending the dead. I have to imperil myself to write these encounters with nothing. Women often make their bodies vehicles. Women often attempt to embody archives or be them. I am to hazard this journey, countering the violence of abstraction. It’s the romance of resistance that I refuse to narrate. Anti-monument. I’m always bent to the present, psychic recollections of a past that is present. These absences or losses are windows that haunt, the landscape itself a witness. Lifeworlds hoed in reaped ripped up from the fields. There are signs that suggest a haunting. __ Imani Elizabeth Jackson is from and based in Chicago. Some of her writing can be found in or is forthcoming in Gramma Press Weekly, Flag + Void, and HOLD: a journal.