The Poetry Project Newsletter

Editor: Paul Foster Johnson Design: Lewis Rawlings Distribution: Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

The Poetry Project, Ltd. Staff

Artistic Director: Stacy Szymaszek Program Coordinator: Arlo Quint Program Assistant: Nicole Wallace Monday Night Coordinator: Simone White Monday Night Talk Series Coordinator: Corrine Fitzpatrick Wednesday Night Coordinator: Stacy Szymaszek Friday Night Coordinator: Matt Longabucco Sound Technician: David Vogen Videographer: Andrea Cruz Bookkeeper: Lezlie Hall Archivist: Will Edmiston Box Office: Aria Boutet, Courtney Frederick, Gabriella Mattis

Interns/Volunteers: Mel Elberg, Phoebe Lifton, Jasmine An, Davy Knittle, Olivia Grayson, Catherine Vail, Kate Nichols, Jim Behrle, Douglas Rothschild

Volunteer Development Committee Members: Stephanie Gray, Susan Landers

Board of Directors: Gillian McCain (President), John S. Hall (Vice-President), Jonathan Morrill (Treasurer), Jo Ann Wasserman (Secretary), Carol Overby, Camille Rankine, Kimberly Lyons, Todd Colby, Ted Greenwald, Erica Hunt, Elinor Nauen, Evelyn Reilly and Edwin Torres

Friends Committee: Brooke Alexander, Dianne Benson, Will Creeley, Raymond Foye, Michael Friedman, Steve Hamilton, Bob Holman, Viki Hudspith, Siri Hustvedt, Yvonne Jacquette, Patricia Spears Jones, Eileen Myles, Greg Masters, Ron Padgett, Paul Slovak, Michel de Konkoly Thege, Anne Waldman, Hal Willner, John Yau

Funders: 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. The Poetry Project’s programs are also made possible with funds from the Axe-Houghton Foundation; Committee on Poetry; Dr. Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman Foundation, Inc.; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Jerome Foundation; Leaves of Grass Fund; Leslie Scalapino – O Books Fund; LitTAP; New York Community Trust; Poets & Writers, Inc.; Poets for the Planet Fund; Anonymous Foundations; Harold and Angela Appel; Russell Banks; Martin Beeler; Bill Berkson and Constance Lewallen; David Berrigan and Sarah Locke; Mei Mei Berssenbrugge and Richard Tuttle; Rosemary Carroll; Steven Clay; Todd Colby; Jordan Davis; Peggy DeCoursey; Don DeLillo and Barbara Bennet; Rackstraw Downes; Ruth Eisenberg; Ann Evans; Stephen Facey; Raymond Foye; Ted Greenwald and Joan McClusky; Mimi Gross; Phil Hartman; Anselm Hollo and Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Ada and Alex Katz; Florence Kindel; Doris Kornish; Susan Landers and Natasha Dwyer, Katy Lederer; John Lewin; Kimberly Lyons and Vyt Bakaitis; Gillian McCain and Jim Marshall; Mark McCain; Thurston Moore; Jonathan Morrill and Jennifer Firestone; Elinor Nauen and Johnny Stanton; Hank O’Neal and Shelley Shier; Ron and Pat Padgett; Evelyn Reilly; Simon Schuchat; Kiki Smith; Sylvie and June Weiser Berrigan; The Estate of Kenneth Koch; members of The Poetry Project; and other individual contributors.

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 / Katy 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

The Poetry Project Newsletter is published four times a year and mailed free of charge to members of and contributors to The Poetry Project. Subscriptions are available for $25/year domestic, $45/year international. Checks should be made payable to The Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church, 131 East 10th Street, New York, NY 10003. The views and opinions expressed in the Newsletter are those of the individual authors and, while everyone in their right mind might be like, of course, duh!, they are not necessarily those of The Poetry Project itself. For more information call (212) 674-0910, or e-mail [email protected].

ST. MARKS CHURCH Copyright © 2012 The Poetry Project IN-THE-BOWERY All rights revert to authors upon publication. 131 EAST 10TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10003 Contents

Letters and Announcements...... 4

Where Glaciers Meet the Sea: Rodrigo Toscano in Conversation with Cecilia Vicuña...... 6

Luxurious Time by Mel Nichols...... 10

The Helens of Sparta, New Jersey by Nathaniel Otting...... 14

In Memoriam: Jayne Cortez by Rashidah Ismaili...... 18

Events at The Poetry Project...... 22

Book Reviews...... 25

Astrological Advice from Dorothea Lasky...... 31

Cover and Interior Art (Pages 3 and 21) by Elisabeth Kley From the Director From the Program Coordinator “Once you’ve said something, you can’t unsay it / Once you Dear Readers of The Poetry Project Newsletter, hello! It was a haven’t said anything, it remains unsaid / and anything you cold, stormy (Sandy, Athena, Nemo) winter in New York but can’t say, well, it’s unsayable / All right now that we got that spring is here and it feels so good. The ecstatic, spring-loving out of the way / we need some particulars / but where did I put James Schuyler is on my mind: “The corms come by mail, are them, where are my particulars?” I’m tempted to just include planted, / Then do their thing: to live! To live!” Makes me want the rest of page 5 of Anselm Hollo’s Guests of Space, but that to commandeer a police van and drive around the East Village was a cigar catalogue he got in the mail. Today is President’s blasting Hymn to Life over the megaphone. It would be a shame Day, no mail. I just turned pages and pages of particulars over to spend the season in jail though so I’ll try to restrain myself. to Paul for the event calendar. It looks great. And on June 6 Not easy when you’re high on Vitamin B (Nature’s Prozac) and we’ll have a tribute reading for Anselm Hollo. poetry. Readings here lately have been inspiring: Amiri Baraka, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Andrew Dieck, Christine Kanownik, Other particulars: Our Spring Benefit this year—EPIC NOW: Nicole Wallace, Brett Price, Magdalena Zurawski, Allison Cobb, EPIC POETRY FOR EPIC TIMES—will be held May 10–11. We Wolfman Librarian, etc., etc. And there are great new books commissioned nine artists to interpret nine epics (classic, arriving in the world daily: new Clark Coolidge, new Collected modern, original) over two nights. Things will get started in the Poems of Joseph Ceravolo, new Rachel Levitsky, everything Sanctuary shortly after 8pm each night and will be followed by from Camilo Roldán’s new Diez Press, along with many oth- receptions in the Parish Hall. Beer has been lovingly donated ers. In keeping with the spirit of the times, this year’s Spring by Brooklyn Brewery. As with the New Year’s Marathon, all Benefit at The Poetry Project will take epic works (both old and proceeds from EPIC NOW will go toward keeping the Project super-Gilgamesh-old) and make them new too. Check out the a vital venue for poets. It worked so well last year, we’re once calendar in this very Newsletter for a description of what’s sure again going to sell tickets in advance via Brown Paper Tickets. to be a great couple of days in May. And if you’d like to help out If you want the most up-to-date information about this and at the fundraiser, send me an email at [email protected]. I other events, the best way to get it is to sign up for our weekly hope to see you here soon. email blast from our website at http://www.poetryproject.org/. –Arlo Quint Frankly, I’m excited about everything you’ll see when you be- hold the schedule of events somewhere near the middle of this Newsletter. I’ve been wanting to delve into David Rattray’s work for some time; now I am, you know, for the job. There are a lot of events to host and people to see before we take our summer hiatus. However, this is the last Newsletter letter I’ll be writing until the fall. I want to thank everyone who attended an event, became a member, made a donation, volunteered, wiped my tears with their shirts or gave me a high five. If you haven’t done any of these things yet, it’s not too late! –Stacy Szymaszek

4 The Poetry Project Newsletter ANNOUNCEMENTS

ERRATUM The photograph of Clark Coolidge that appeared in the February/March issue of The Poetry Project Newsletter (#224) was taken by Gerard Malanga.

From the Editor FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), which celebrates I hardly know what to say in wrapping up my stint as its 50th anniversary this year, is pleased to announce that the Newsletter editor, but I’m emoting! This is a unique publication recipients of its 2013 awards in poetry are Robert Grenier and of a unique organization, and I am honored to have had the Beverly Dahlen. Congratulations to both of them! chance to contribute. I am excited to walk among you again; this editorial engagement has paradoxically made me a hermit since much of it happens on weeknights. PASSAGES The winter brought some heavy losses. Rest in peace, our Thank you, Stacy, Arlo and Nicole, for steering things in friends: Anselm Hollo, Jayne Cortez (see page 18), Harvey sensible directions. Lewis Rawlings deserves much credit for Shapiro and Butch Morris. making great covers while I was sweating the interior. Chris Warrington provided art consultation that added immeasur- ably to the visual appeal of every issue. Much gratitude to Dottie Lasky and the elusive Denver Dufay for their uncannily accurate astrological readings. The best part of the job was working with brilliant and game contributors whose care and commitment make the Newsletter what it is. I love poets. –Paul Foster Johnson

ART IN THIS ISSUE

Designed to theatrically accessorize the domestic interiors in group exhibitions at Haunch of Venison and Lesley Heller of a flamboyant world, Elisabeth Kley’s ceramics are Workspace in New York (2012), Storefront in Brooklyn and made for fantasized homes that belong to the aging dandies Season in Seattle (2011), as well as at A. M. Richard Fine Art, and extravagant performers she also likes to draw, including Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, Exit Art, PS122 and Rupert Salvador Dalí, Erte, Coco Chanel, Elsie de Wolfe, Jack Smith Goldsworthy Gallery. She has written about art for publications and Ethyl Eichelberger. Many of her visual references—garish including PAJ (A Journal of Performance and Art), ARTnews, Art Russian textiles, Baroque grotesque ornamentation and Islamic & Auction, TimeOut NY, New York Press, Art in America, Parkett, art—come second- and third-generation as found in paintings Eyemazing and online in Artnet Magazine. and set designs by artists including Matisse, Van Dongen and Natalia Goncharova. In her work, these fine art and decorative Cover: Large Ethyl Eichelberger (after the photograph by elements are filtered back onto quasi-utilitarian objects. Ande Whyland) [detail], pencil, ink, gouache and collage on Japanese paper, 38” x 26”, 2005. Elisabeth Kley is a New York-based artist and writer whose most recent solo exhibitions took place at John Tevis Gallery Contents Page: Left: Large Black & White Three-Part Bottle (Paris, 2012) and the Georgian National Gallery (Tbilisi, Study with Fans, pencil and ink on paper, 46” x 35”, 2012. Right: Georgia, 2011; organized by Nana Kipiani). In 2010, a group Large Black & White Three-Part Bottle Study with Paisley Form, of her ceramic birdhouses and birdbaths were seen at Le pencil and ink on paper, 46” x 35”, 2012. Petit Versailles, a community garden on the Lower East Side, and her series of peacock prints was published by Element Page 21: Large Chanel Walking (after the photograph by Editions. Other past shows include a 2009 solo show at Rose Alexander Liberman), pencil, ink, gouache and collage on Burlingham and a 2007 solo show at Momenta Art. She’s been Japanese paper, 40” x 25”, 2007.

April/May 2013 5 Where Glaciers Meet the Sea Rodrigo Toscano in Conversation with Cecilia Vicuña

Rodrigo Toscano: Early last November, you and I had an I began in l995 by storming a school in the mountains, invigorating conversation on a park bench in Union Square. disguised as a sculpture or toy, wailing, singing and playing To our delighted surprise, we reveled in each other’s recent with the children as if we had all become wild animals. And pedagogical acts—in your case, poetic interventions, and in all this in the presence of the school principals who expected my case, concrete-political field practices. Also, we agreed that a bona fidemaestra to arrive from Santiago! In no time, we we could easily reverse whose definitional doings were whose were all dancing and feasting on the liberated power of in terms of vision and intent. communal joy. But then, to unleash their ability to speak— that’s a different matter. It has been a slow continuous process One thing I remember you expressing was your deep concern of many workshops because the school system and the whole and overt (public) wrangling with what you described as community is against speaking up, is against poetry and the bullying by contemporary global capitalist culture of youths’ idea of justice. The new, dominant social orientation is to make ability to connect with “suppressed” oral poetic traditions. You money, to simply adapt to the “modern ways.” Or is it? The new and I have known each other for more than 12 years now, and student movement in Chile is rising up against that model, and you know that I am deeply anti-metaphysical in orientation, they have mobilized 1,500,000 people in the streets of Chile to poetically and politically. Frankly, your comment coming from demand an end to the culture of profit. A new oral dimension almost anyone else might well have set me on collision course is emerging within this rebellion and my intent is to bridge with any notion of the “suppression of oral” whatever. But then the energy of that political urban movement with the poetic you related several instances as a radical anthropologist slash tradition that raises to prominence the oral poetic dimensions community organizer slash punk random deep witch from hell of knowledge. More than ever, we need it to go on! might—which greatly intrigued me! RT: A cross-connection of alienated spheres of the social For those of us locked into all our global workaday realities, metabolic, yeah, totally. The Chilean student movement could you please relate some recent experiences you’ve had of the last year has been a massive global event. Tuning in with liberating oral poetic powers in youth? to that is key. The recent Italian student movement (14-N) has been pivotal too, and before that, the Spanish (15-M), Cecilia Vicuña: Yeah! Several things come to mind. A few Québecois (Classe) and Mexican (Yo Soy 132) movements. years ago I was attending a performance of King Lear at The The effects of Occupy-inspired actions here in the U.S. and Globe, the Shakespearean theater in London. During the across the globe have been significant. While many American intermission, women minstrel poets began singing while poetry “craft” professors have been bullied into their specific they mixed with the audience. A little leaflet described how (degraded) industrial regime requirements for the “betterment” in Elizabethan times the last of these women poets were of individual poems, all these other incredibly rich poetic hanged, because they sang “truth to power.” Free speech was landscapes are being created, almost daily. dangerous then, as it is now, so they killed this powerful oral poetic tradition. Now switch to Chile. After the arrival of the One thing that has always struck me about your poetic on- Spaniards, the indigenous oral shaman/poets—who were site actions (many now documented in the riveting festschrift also miners, peasants and fishermen—created a powerful Spit Temple) has been your complete commitment to the resistance, or poetics countermovement, which consisted multiple dimensions of “site”—the people assembled, the of singing improvised poems during religious ceremonies. physical dimensions of the reading site, the time of day, the For 500 years the Catholic Church and Chilean society did ideological climate of that very week, etc. All these dimensions everything to stop them, but their vibrant mystical/political art of the reading-moment get addressed in such a way that the continued unabated. That is to say, until now, when it is fast performative distribution of a politics (not just the content or disappearing because the globalized economy has destroyed form of a particular poem) is what people experience. There’s the independent livelihood of miners, peasants and fishermen. also a kind of “hidden” quality about the process. It appears If you add the global reach of television and video games, you that the pre-semantic dimension of your poetics is as important get teenagers who are ashamed of their fathers and do not care as the fully present word. That honing in on a single word—in for their poetics. The kids don’t even know what speaking truth any language—can be a first act in the search for wide social to power means. They have been brainwashed into thinking meaning. How does this atomic oral-distributive quality of your that poetry is boring. I became aware of this and immediately performances fit into your overall social vision? moved in to counter the slow death of this tradition.

6 The Poetry Project Newsletter CV: I can tell you a story. In l984, at Poetry lives at the edge, bridging the I sometimes call these combinations the height of the dictatorship in Chile, known and the unknown. For me, the “quasars,” events of pure potential, where I was living in Buenos Aires, feeling qualities of the “real” are the unknown. nothing is planned and all is about to sad and impotent. Suddenly I saw this I think this multidimensionality is happen. But it is not plain improvisation; word emerge, sprout as a bean in my perceived as a threat to the linear it is far more complex than that. There mindscape. Not a word, only a particle: mindset, and it’s the reason why my is a setting of a field of intentions, where “com”, as in compassion, or compañero, work (and that of many poets) has been the work of a lifetime can intervene. the com in the commons re-emerging as overlooked. A conceptual framework to David Hinton writes of this process as a pulsation. I wrote in my notebook: “an deal with the fluidity of the oral mind is pure “generative energy,” a term from unknown word, a new form is coming missing, but the oral is not something the old Taoist philosophy. That body of to life: la convivencia y la conmoción.” exotic or remote, it is right here, within thought really resonates with me. I read These words don’t easily translate into us all, as unrecognized or forgotten the Tao Te Ching as a teenager in Chile, English, they mean: being able to live potential. Marshall McLuhan saw it and and it influenced me deeply. I recognized together, feeling what the other feels. said the digital age would bring back in its lines our own way of being (by I put away the note, and told no one the oral. For me, the ongoing tension the way, the Tao Te Ching is also an about it. A few days later, oral poem). At the time the first protest against the (mid-1960s), oral cultures dictatorship took place in were still running strong in Chile, the first rising of the Chile. You could have the collective force that had been double experience of hearing suppressed. Now, what is the poets sing, and you the connection between the could read as well. Poetry power pushing the particle embodied this double power. “com” into a helix (as I drew Plus, I spent a lot of time it years later for Instan) walking about the mountains. and the collective rage of a As the Chinese say, “these people dispossessed of their mountains know a lot.” One rights? You know, people day, facing the mountains at used to address each other night, I experienced words, as compañero before being each single word as an crushed. I think there is an explosion of consciousness. emotional field that cuts I was 18 years old, and I through time-space, a deep laughed so hard I woke longing for justice at the people in the other room. I core of language itself. If the laughed, understanding that ancient poets who coined consciousness and language these words were coming were one, mirroring each from that same field, then any other, playing with each word can be a time-space other through us. This was vehicle, communicating all happening in l966, in many spheres at once. the context of a fantastic revolutionary wave sweeping Now, as to the “multiple the whole of Latin America, Cecilia Vicuña. Photo: Carolina Zuñiga dimensions” of “site.” I have from Brazil to Chile. been working for a long time on a between the oral and written creates a series of poems and translations of a more vivid picture of who we are. Rosa RT: Cecilia, even the most skeptical, Yaqui poem of the Sonoran desert. For Alcalá created an excellent framework analytical, “materialist realist” poets the Yaqui, space and place are “states in her introductory essay to Spit Temple, I’ve met seem to weave self-enabling of being,” in other words, “sites” and when she asked, “What is this woman myths about their artistic development. dimensions are forms of awareness: you doing?” Something happens even before And yours are so rife with luminous see them when you are aware (a notion you read it! That’s how I came to my epiphanies! I am really surprised by this that matches the quantum view of the poetics, by staying in the question, even stream of reflective moments that call non-local). You, Rodrigo, might see them as I perform today. Again, the key aspect out to other moments, decades apart, because you are a poet and activist, and to this art is not knowing, opening up to seamlessly making one rich tapestry of also a person who as a youth actually the possibilities of the moment, to las both tragedy and joyous renewal. But traveled the desert as a truck driver combinatorias. these moments also arise out of the through many dimensions. specific conditions that you’ve lived in.

April/May 2013 7 I am wondering, is there anything the l960s, in Chile, at the foot of the home became un cenáculo, a salon in your family background that was “eternal snows,” as we used to call for political and cultural debate. Every also formative to your social-political them, the glaciers that are now melting Sunday refugees from the Spanish thinking? And were those influences fast. But to get there, I have to give Civil War and Chilean writers and what brought you to the poetics that you a little background. I was born in intellectuals met and talked for hours, compel you to this day? one of the few intervals of peace in and we, the children, heard them. The Chile. Just before my birth, there had feeling in the room was of such passion CV: Thinking of how I came to it, I been brutal social struggles, and my for social justice that any sacrifice now see many tragedies compressed grandfather Carlos Vicuña Fuentes people made for it was nothing. What into my little body, tragedies which had been in prison, or in exile many was at stake was the well-being of all, opened me up to experience the times because of his fight for civil and this idea penetrated deeply into atomic vision of words. It was back in rights. When I was growing up his my veins. It seems to me I was being

STRAW GATE

deep red guild dear friend, Merry Fortune KB Nemcosky

now in release

8 The Poetry Project Newsletter trained by the power of this emotion, Everything was alive, the light outside, published Vicente Huidobro. I read mixed in with great fun, shouting and the smell in the room, the collective Altazor and Temblor de Cielo in pocket drinking, pushing the children away, feeling of oneness. The idea of a separate book editions he made when I was 14 with us crawling back into the rooms “I,” of a self unconnected to the cosmos years old. I slept with these books under unnoticed to hear some more. and the social struggles of the people, my pillow, and I experienced the act was just not there for us. Being alive of reading as I experienced the wild I remember when Vicuña (my grandpa) was being part of this multidimensional oral speeches. Both were journeys into spoke in public and huge crowds ocean of beauty and pain. And there was the Whole Shebang. Huidobro says an gathered to hear him. I think he orally a lot of poetry in our lives. Aymara native in Bolivia transmitted his composed his speeches, and I remember vision of words to him. But for me, it is hearing not only the words, but also how My grandfather was a writer and a right there, in the memory of the land, the crowd literally vibrated, responded publisher. Neruda and Gabriela Mistral the poetics of this majestic place where physically to his call for justice. were his personal friends. He also the glaciers meet the sea.

Cecilia Vicuña is a poet, visual artist and filmmaker born in Rodrigo Toscano’s newest book is Deck of Deeds (Counterpath Santiago, Chile. The author of 20 poetry books, she exhibits Press, 2012). Collapsible Poetics Theater was a 2007 National and performs widely in Europe, Latin America and the United Poetry Series Selection. His poetry has appeared in the States. Her most recent publications are: Spit Temple: Selected anthologies Against Expression, Diasporic Avant-Gardes and Oral Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (edited and translated by Poetic Voices without Borders. Toscano has worked for the Rosa Alcalá; Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), Chanccani Quipu Labor Institute for 12 years. He works on a laptop, tethered to (Granary Books, 2012) and Sabor a Mí (Chain Links, 2011). a Droid, residing in airports nationwide, occupying poetics in She also co-edited The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry midflight. He resides in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where he runs (2009). Cecilia lives between Chile and New York. For more and writes for the North Brooklyn Runners. information, visit www.konkon.cl; www.oysi.org; www.tornsound.com; and www.ceciliavicuna.org.

Joshua Edwards Kim Rosenfield Imperial Nostalgias USO: I’ll Be Seeing You

A breathtaking cascade of parables, images, lyrics, and aphorisms. —Srikanth Reddy

In USO, language laughs in long skinny lines like tears down the snout. —Gail Scott

spdbooks.org uglyducklingpresse.org new poetry from ugly duckling presse

April/May 2013 9 Luxurious Time Mel Nichols

for Kathy Mitchell

the leaves fall and the woods fill with the sound of machines

then the dream then

comes the idea of distance the broken star the role of the not-knowing

wilderness bewildering through a text

sick saved hungry

what are you writing toward don’t know

an old ghost on a dark house the air is warm

first spring in Iowa

stare

at a blue sky cloudless suddenly white line of an airplane appears across the window look at it until it fades no one could refuse

I don’t know what anybody says

10 The Poetry Project Newsletter or why they say it

I was a bit surprised don’t know why I was surprised

a story could end

with the image of going to bed turn out the lights see fireflies cover the ceiling in the dark room like a multitude of stars

a few fly by our bed in the darkness like meteors

and this is how I became lost in the landscape

I felt like I was already a ghost

after I the saw the same boy on the same

street we spoke to each other as ghosts

I think he reminded me of a ghost made me think I was a ghost

and when we talked on the phone I felt like

a ghost trying to tell you we talked

because it was easier than looking at a self

April/May 2013 11 everyone knows

the red barn is something special when it shows up in a bleak landscape against a grey or blue

sky the plastic owl I saw at Lorine Niedecker’s house

reverse reverse reverse and fold you up like a bird on a book cover into pretty blue pixels

lack of newsprint washed away in another Walmart stampede

a leaf stuck in my pen with all these arbitrary seasons

because what is spring but a division

a train being used again as an example

a very dead thing on the other side of the river

written into a notebook for safekeeping

a place to keep account

an unholding in the slippery fog and

one grows used the weather

but the sky is cold and still and there is the hero’s dead eye

12 The Poetry Project Newsletter and I am terrible with transitions and this is how

I became lost in the landscape

a heart-shaped scar on a tree trunk where love’s initials fade

the horizon note of a leaf blower

wrapping you into my strange grammar

and what is spring but a diversion

among the trees a man forced her into the sky

creatures of the constellations flower staring back the falling leaves

and every time a barn collapses it belongs to me

Mel Nichols is the author of four collections of poetry, including Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (National Poetry Series finalist) and Bicycle Day. Her work can also be found at The Huffington Post, Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket2, PennSound and HTML Giant. She has been a visiting artist at the Corcoran College of Art & Design, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, and elsewhere, and she teaches digital poetry and other writing courses at George Mason University. New books are forthcoming from Flowers & Cream Press and Edge.

April/May 2013 13 The Helens of Sparta, New Jersey Nathaniel Otting

13 books: a palinode. Robert Seydel, Book of Ruth (Siglio Press, 2011); Jacqueline Waters, One Sleeps the Other Doesn’t (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011); Dan Graham’s New Jersey (Lars Muller, 2012); Peter Gizzi, Ode: Salute to the New York School (Letter Machine Editions, 2012); Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal (eds.), A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (The Song Cave, 2013); Joseph Ceravolo, Collected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2013); Rachel B. Glaser, Moods (Factory Hollow Press, 2013); Philip Ursprung, Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson and the Limits to Art (University of California Press, 2013); Bernadette Mayer, The Helens of Troy, New York (New Directions, 2013); Susan Howe, Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker (New Directions, 2013); The Complete Works of Cassandra Gillig, 1993-2013; the New Jersey Writings of George Thérèse Dickenson, 1993–future; Peter Seaton Readers.

What do you know of sundown? Cassandra Gillig, 13 hours ago, What do you know of our New Jersey iron saints? near Montclair, New Jersey: What an ugly bunny! What an ugly blotch! the only version of frankenstein I could find online has Westside New Yorkers are at their windowpanes subtitles in spanish im dying here The N.J. bunny is a visitor The sun is hoarse visiting their windowpanes Rosemary Ceravolo and 12 others like this.

– Alfred Starr Hamilton, “Tenement”

I wanted to write a Peter Seaton poem. “Signs and situations in mind, I glean: Left behind in New York City, & oof! (Ted associate with what takes place with other writers, in this case Berrigan), What obsolete! What lift! / geronimo of confusion the survivors of a slippery business. And words like Pittsburgh (Ceravolo) and It’s so original, hydrogenic, anthropomorphic, and Utah and Denver were music to my ears—show us that fiscal, post-anti-esthetic, bland, unpicturesque, and William forest.” (Peter Seaton in The Son Master, published by Roof Carlos Williamsian (Frank O’Hara). Left—What obsolete!—is Books in 1982; full text available online from Craig Dworkin’s what’s behind New Jersey, where Robert Smithson gave up Eclipse). Words like Utah end up worlds in New Jersey: “the painting half a century ago; where, in the same year, on world Utah” (Joseph Ceravolo in Fits of Dawn, written in 1961, March 4, Williams died in Rutherford, his birthplace, where he 300 copies published in 1965 by Ted Berrigan’s C Press, now had been a “baby doctor”2 to Smithson, whose family moved widely available in the long-awaited Collected Poems, edited from Passaic shortly after he was born in 1938. “Robert,” wrote by Rosemary Ceravolo and Parker Smathers). I wanted to write Williams in Life along the Passaic River (New Directions, 1938). about Peter Seaton, so I ended up in New Jersey looking for In the “Preface” to Book of Ruth, Robert Seydel (1961–2011), George-Thérèse Dickenson. Then I received an email that she Emily Dickinson’s closest neighbor, wrote “Ruth is the artist had “died a few years ago,” and that “Peter Seaton would know in the Book, her work taking the forms of mailings to Joseph, the details.”1 This email forced my mind to recall one of my various serial and other collages, such as Ten Tiny Collages favorite lines: “The whole scene falls a bit to the left.” for Teeny, and journal writings. Her work was first discovered among the boxes of miscellanea in the Joseph Cornell That’s Peter Gizzi, generous reader and champion of Ceravolo Study Center at The Archives of American Art, Smithsonian and Hamilton (and Waters and Glaser, for that matter), the last Institution. Later research by family members turned up a line in his poem, “Upon Waking after Reading Walser.” Gizzi’s treasure trove of material in a garage in suburban Fort Lee, Ode is a cento, gathering—reading—lines, saluting the New New Jersey. Ruth’s emblem is the hare, Sol’s the worm, or York School, “performing bibliography.” With New Jersey Work sometimes a star-nosed mole.”

Notes: 1. The confusion is not terribly surprising. As of this writing, the capsule biography that hovers above a Google search for Peter Seaton says simply “Born: December 16, 1942 (age 70),” with no date of death. Seaton died May 18, 2010. All three of Seaton’s books are available at http://eclipsearchive.org/ (formerly http://english.utah.edu/eclipse). All of Seaton’s writing will soon be available online at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/seaton/, edited by Steve McLaughlin. 2. Smithson, in an interview with Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, conducted July 14, 1972, Alfred Starr Hamilton’s 58th birthday. http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/interviews.htm/.

14 The Poetry Project Newsletter What’s left of New York? Fort Lee, New Jersey is one answer to Our own reflected light that question. And just left of there is Rutherford. Then Passaic. Hear nothing but a plow going by. If we Paterson. Further still one finds Sparta, some 30 miles left of Paterson. If you drive, you’ll pass through Parsippany–Troy ‘re sad about speaking, let’s punch Hills. If you do, you should stop and read Bernadette Mayer’s Hit kick and gouge: pleasure has certain advantages The Helens of Troy, New York. Here’s the beginning of her Has advantages you’ll learn this in time “Helen Crandall Whalen Villanelle”: It’s ruined when you ruin it or else It’s ruined when you ruin it yourself. everybody died i’m learning to control my temper Glaser, author of the book of stories Pee on Water (Publishing i took off, it was fun, i loved it Genius, 2009), asks, “Should I learn another language?,” and answers, “No! I’m getting married on a boat in five there were cameras in the store minutes.” Moods, her first book of poems, will help you i don’t have to look “become adventurous” and “have more friends,” “abstract everybody died and promiscuous friends”: this will be useful because “friends are brief masterpieces,” “you were friends with angels,” and I one helen’s enough, trust me wanna know which friend will die young, so I can spend more i love reading books time with them now. No one at all is writing poems like i took off, it was fun, i loved it Rachel B. Glaser.

people think I’m stupid Moods begins with a poem called “Sleeping ugly moon,” i went to proctor’s theatre which begins: “my soul was swimming / and ruined all my everybody died good clothing.” A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind begins with a foreword (which begins, “Allow the soul back into poetry. Everybody died but George-Thérèse Dickenson didn’t. She Admit that there is a house on top of the moon.”) by the editors, survived that slippery business, and lives in a cabin in Sparta, Alan Felsenthal and Ben Estes, who should win some kind of New Jersey (splitting time in New York: not Troy). I didn’t award (or perhaps just the praise that Peter Howard bestowed know that when I decided to call this New Jersey Work “The on Jargon, Alfred Starr Hamilton’s previous publisher: for surely Helens of Sparta.” I didn’t know she was alive when I called the The Song Cave is making the most beautiful books of poetry) number I got from her website (she’s a ghostwriter). Happily, for their efforts in gathering and arranging these perfect poems. she answered and laughed when I gasped and was delighted Here’s the first one, “Swan in June”: to hear of a revival of interest in Peter Seaton’s writing. And her own. It seems younger writers have been tracking her down The moon is a swan in June recently. Like Seaton, she continued to write without seeking The moon can paddle and paddle publication or giving readings. A trilogy of book-length works And be the moon all night long is nearly complete. She sent me a few pages from the third book. It’s tremendous writing, not surprising at all as her two No one writes about June, subtle “Guest of the Month of Maine,” published books are marvelous. I want to sample it here, but like Hamilton: Are you a friend of a box of dark June roses? / Do there’s not time, or space. I only learned that she was alive you know of the pendulum / That swings to the June chimes? hours before deadline. What made this a palinode before I And Clung in the June distance. And: knew, and what makes it one now? I don’t know. I haven’t now the time or space to share my enthusiasm for books of poetry I wanted you to know of by two younger poets born in New Jersey: Jacqueline Waters The black June bug and Rachel B. Glaser. They ask all the right questions. A poem, That buzzed silver “Pleasurologist,” by Waters: But I wanted you to know of What are the handles on the tan can? June silver, of blue silver What are the wires? During the month of June You or I didn’t have a good time Despite the pleasure we found—we found pleasure “June of Everything,” writes Susan Howe. “June of Winter,” wrote Joseph Ceravolo, the only other person (so Ron Rather cautious, found caution Padgett) who could have written Hamilton’s title, “An Apple, A lie: now we can barely find Organizationally.”

April/May 2013 15 Wormwood, says Saul. The peach sky is a The green lake is awake peach rippled by gravity at twilight. – Joseph Ceravolo, Fits of Dawn I will breath in my heart’s fumes, old,

oven, nothings. Ripe is not so much in A Crust of Bread the end. why, I often wondered

why I was a poet my words run out on me, first of all small sparrows,— saying other than I wd. most of all, I wanted

to have been a bird – Robert Seydel, Book of Ruth if I could have been a bird

ruins in reverse but I wanted the starlings to have been fed, – Robert Smithson, “Monuments of Passaic” first of all

tool october mid-jetty – Alfred Starr Hamilton

– Joseph Ceravolo, Fits of Dawn Et in Utah ego. – Robert Smithson, “The Spiral Jetty” I saw stars crumple, at a pitch away.

– Robert Seydel, Book of Ruth There’s an occult meaning in initials. – Robert Seydel, Book of Ruth O passaic elapse tin month Susteno she sicily Ran ‘yellow is yellow’ ran ran numb – Robert Smithson, Should Kid “Incidents of Mirror Travel in the Yucatan” telling some utah some yellow some ram goes nothing, Yellow Sand with Spools silence, amputee, gazelle, mischief- – Joseph Cornell chroming telemecus, voila so motif like although of an elephant. Walter Benjamin was also a attracted to the idea that single O devention o cypress letters in a word or name could be rearranged to cabalisti- cally reveal a hidden purpose. splurge harpoon galaxy triad Gross. am the silo of – Susan Howe your voice Minnow savant lackadaisical throw pavilion of I don’t think I do pavilions. No, that’s an idea that gallerists an envoy. have, they say: “do a pavilion.” I don’t do a pavilion. Pavillon! for the sun algiers of – Dan Graham my desperate conch Quay! Conch! should never... “Statement on Occasion of First Exhibition,” Marcel

Broodthaers. – Joseph Ceravolo, Fits of Dawn – David Grubbs

Frolic architecture. Reversible destiny. What is CALLED BACK in a palinode is not a node but an ode. Helen never went to New York. She stayed in New Jersey. She was not “drawn to the river of rivers of rivers” (Fred Moten on Ralph Lemon) not in Connecti- cut. Susan Howe: “La Jetée forms a sound within sound that is other than jetty.” Smithson, in conversation with Kaprow (“What is a Museum?”): “I would say that it has a contradictory view of things. It’s basically a pointless position. But I think to take some kind of point right away stops any kind of possibility. I think the more points the better, you know, just an endless amount of points of view.” No odes, just infinite nodes. No, no nodes. New York Jersey contradicts itself:

16 The Poetry Project Newsletter the peach tree, on grass so green it vibrated. New Jersey Even the spill of children on the pavement, of which I was one, after school at three Searching for you o’clock was a kind of moving painting, in such large hell, I am Seuratian I suppose. Red hats & red sneakers, Robert Lowell with breasts yellow skirts, the sky, the wind & newspapers. and a heart. What I see again we each see, Whitmans in gray Camden, under rain, taut & pulled as into I want to mourn the a picture frame of Huntington, Long Island. color of this river; it will Walter Benjamin, in a Berk Berlin no longer be where we first find that like his own also (in german) speaks for me. small, white crosses are

– Robert Seydel, Book of Ruth buoyant in reflected verdigris. Expansive, we occupy January. Someone Books will give rest sometimes against (maybe me) will use it the uproar of water falling and righting itself to refall filling against us. Swaddled by the mind with its reverberation hotel room sheets, there is no shaking stone. optimal word that functions to describe my container. Blow! So be it. Bring down! So be it. Consume and submerge! So be it. Cyclone, fire You are longing in this and flood. So be it. Hell, New Jersey, it said sterile segregation. The tide on the letter. Delivered without comment. is blank and you are yielding. So be it! I flood all dirt waters. Run from it, if you will, so be it. Dislocated second place, (Winds that enshroud us in their fold— my hands like borders. We or no wind). carry nothing through the interim; in Camden, I elapse. – William Carlos Williams, Paterson – Cassandra Gillig

Kora in Hell, NJ. PASSAIC BOYS ARE HELL (Smithson). Are words formed out of a Hades kind of delight? asks Alfred Starr Hamil- ton of Montclair, New Jersey. And also: aren’t we all lifelike? aren’t we all being a little talkative as yet? Are you afraid of time? Are you afraid of the clock / That unwinds itself in the slow parlor? How could you have been the slough of despond that skulked in the pasture? Are you a golden blonde? Why didn’t we take our golden chances? Are you a friend of sword and disaster? Did you say a picture at a January gallery? Are you a cold nymph of November? Aw, why didn’t you say pie and cake? Have you your books at a bookshelf / That stared back at you? Why didn’t you say a sheet of writing paper was for a cloud Why didn’t you say Vinegar / If they wanted Vinegar What do you know of the scorpion that rests in our flag? Do you know of long ago? Are you whistling / At the back of the dark hallway? Know of a stonewall that has windows? What do you know of others What do you know of the three riv- ers that run deeper What do you do / With a pencil / For a rusty gate? Do you believe in the man who built the moon? What do you know of New York

Cassandra Gillig, February 18, near New Brunswick, NJ: Um i just turned in a paper that starts with the line, ‘Frank O’Hara is the greatest American poet of the last 100 years; it’s a goddamn fact, and I’ll puke all over anyone who disagrees.’ Dana Ward, John Coletti, Ben Roylance, and 56 others like this.

Walter Benjamin in the Berkshires. Susan Howe: It’s sad to read that one of the reasons given for Benjamin’s suicide in 1940 was his reluctance to emigrate to the United States...Here he didn’t expect to go anywhere.

really where? / sparta new jersey – Bernadette Mayer, Memory

Nathaniel Otting found George-Thérèse Dickenson @ http://www.gtdediting.com/; Cassandra Gillig @ http://cassandragillig.tumblr.com/; Rachel B. Glaser @ http://rachelbglaser.blogspot.com/; and The Song Cave @ http://www.the-song-cave.com/.

April/May 2013 17 In Memoriam: Jayne Cortez (1934–2012)

Jayne Cortez, poet, activist, organizer and friend, passed on writers and visual artists from all over the world participated December 28, 2012. It was and is a tremendous loss and in the free, three-day event at New York University and source of grief to her family and friends. She is and will be the Schomburg Center for Black Culture and Research. missed. Thousands attended. A second conference at New York University was equally successful. In October 2011, OWWA Jayne blazed a path for poets who bravely set off in the arts celebrated its 20th anniversary with the distinguished Lady to give voice to the oppressed, created a space to spout off. of African American Letters, Maya Angelou, again at New Her words, carefully chosen, mercilessly cut through denials York University. It was there that OWWA announced its and extraneous excuses. Time was pressing and cruelty had conference in Accra, Ghana, to be held May 16–19, 2013. At to be identified and exposed. this conference we will celebrate Jayne’s life and work.

A private person, shy even, but once on stage—her Jayne organized the international symposium “Slave Routes” battleground—Jayne took no prisoners. She was an with UNESCO and New York University, which by this time active part of most progressive arts movements from the had established a joint program at the University of Ghana, 60s onward. She centered much of her work in African Legon campus. The event was a major success with an American classical music—blues, jazz and free music of international cast of leading scholars, writers and artists bop and post-bop—often performing to music and with her from the Pan-African world and Europe. own band, Firespitters (and they spat fire!). She recorded with Firespitters as well. All of these major events happened as Jayne guest edited for Black Scholar, Drum Voices and other publications Jayne was a Pan-Africanist. She early identified as an while maintaining a national and international schedule of African woman born in the U.S. Traveling and living in readings and performances. Jayne was an accomplished various countries of Africa, Jayne was comfortable on visual artist, exhibiting her paintings in group shows. In the continent from Nigeria to Algeria, Zimbabwe to South addition to all of this, she held court with her husband, Africa, and finally in Dakar. the prominent artist Mel Edwards; their children, Denardo Coleman and Ana, Alma and Margit Edwards; and grandson Jayne was equally at home in South America and read Ali. at many international arts festivals in Brazil, Costa Rica, Columbia, Nicaragua and other countries. She participated Jayne approached all of her endeavors thoroughly, in the annual festivals in England organized by the late John artistically, with great care and love. It is my honor to say La Rose. She read in many European countries, including I was and am her sister/friend of four decades. When I got France and Spain. my first academic appointment at Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey, I developed an arts event. Participants Jayne was an organizer and activist. Early on, she was a included Jayne, Diane McIntyre and Quincy Troupe, to list a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee few. (SNCC). In California, she was a founder the Watts Writers Workshops. Coming to New York, she was an integral part of Jayne lived a principled life dedicated to art and social the Black Arts Movement in the late 60s. justice. Politics—of race, ethnicity, sex, religion and class—were inextricably connected to her life; she saw no Jayne was part of the American delegation to FESTAC in separation. Jayne reminded us that the system did not care Nigeria. There she met and made lasting friends with up- about affiliations, degrees or religion. If you were a political and-coming writers in Africa such as Chinua Achebe, Ama obstruction, you would be removed. “And there it is! AND Ata Aidoo and Nuruddin Farah. Later, she would co-found THERE IT IS!” the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, or OWWA, with Ama Ata Aidoo in 1989. At OWWA’s historic first – Rashidah Ismaili conference (subtitled “Yari Yari”), more than 200 women

18 The Poetry Project Newsletter April/May 2013 19 Nightboat Books

NEW TITLES

Nightboat.org

20 The Poetry Project Newsletter April/May 2013 21 EVENTS at THE POETRY PROJECT

MONDAY 4/1 WEDNESDAY 4/10 the last Russian avant-garde group, is AN EVENING WITH CLARK COOLIDGE LEONARD SCHWARTZ recognized as one of the most influential Clark Coolidge’s longprose was one of the & PRAGEETA SHARMA poets of the 20th century. Featuring Eugene great avant-garde epics of the 1970s, long Leonard Schwartz’s two most recent books Ostashevsky, Matvei Yankelevich, Bela unseen by a wider public until now. A Book are IF (2012) and At Element (2011), both from Shayevich, Ainsley Morse and a special Beginning What and Ending Away finally Talisman House. Schwartz hosts and directs appearance by Kirill Medvedev. brings this prose masterwork into print in the radio program Cross Cultural Poetics, glorious fashion. Join us as Coolidge and archived online at PennSound. Prageeta WEDNESDAY 4/24 fellow poets and collaborators read from Sharma is an associate professor in the MFA RAE ARMANTROUT & ALAN DAVIES and celebrate this landmark work. With Peter program at the University of Montana and the Just Saying is Rae Armantrout’s most recent Gizzi, Marcella Durand, Miles Champion, Ron author of four poetry collections: Bliss to Fill, book of poems (Wesleyan University Press, Padgett, Bill Corbett, Anne Waldman, John The Opening Question, Infamous Landscapes 2013). Versed (Wesleyan, 2009) received the Godfrey, Geoffrey Young and Thurston Moore. and Undergloom. Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also a finalist for the WEDNESDAY 4/3 MONDAY 4/15 National Book Award. Alan Davies is the RACHEL LEVITSKY & AARON SHURIN ANA BOŽIČEVIČ & DON MEE CHOI author of Active 24 Hours, Name, Signage, Rachel Levitsky is the author of a novel, The Ana Božičevič was born in Croatia in 1977, Candor, Rave and Raw War, among other Story of My Accident Is Ours (Futurepoem, and emigrated to New York when she was 19. books. Odes & Fragments is forthcoming in 2013); two full-length books of poetry, Under Her most recent book is Rise in the Fall (Birds, 2013. He lives in New York City. the Sun (Futurepoem, 2003) and NEIGHBOR LLC). Her debut book of poems, Stars of the (UDP, 2009); and a number of chapbooks Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press), was a MONDAY 4/29 including Renoemos (Delete, 2010). Aaron finalist for the 2010 Lambda Literary Award. TALK SERIES: IMRI SANDSTRÖM: Shurin’s most recent books are Citizen (2012), Don Mee Choi is the author of The Morning HOWE ACROSS READING: PART ONE a collection of prose poems, and King of News Is Exciting (Action Books, 2010) and a In 2000, Imri Sandström stumbled upon Shadows (2008), a collection of personal recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award. Spinnaker in a public library in Umeå, essays, both from City Lights Books. She translates contemporary Korean writing, Sweden, sparking a dedicated readership of including Kim Hyesoon’s Princess Abandoned Susan Howe’s work. This performance will FRIDAY 4/5, 10pm (Tinfish, 2012) and All the Garbage of the present Part One of Sandström’s extensive LAURA HENRIKSEN & JULIA BLOCH World Unite! (Action Books, 2011). reading of the poet’s New England narratives Laura Henriksen’s work has previously in relation to the language and history of appeared in Boog, Peaches and Bats, Death WEDNESDAY 4/17 Västerbotten in northern Sweden. The work and Life of American Cities, and The Brooklyn READING FOR THE COLLECTED POEMS hovers in the archive, looking at what sounds Rail. She lives in Brooklyn. Julia Bloch is the OF JOSEPH CERAVOLO and spaces are generated. Imri Sandström author of Letters to Kelly Clarkson (Sidebrow Join us as we welcome Wesleyan University is an intermedia artist, a lecturer in moving Books, 2012) and coeditor of Jacket2. She Press’s long-anticipated landmark edition of image and experimental media production at lives in Southern California and teaches at the Joseph Ceravolo’s poems into the world. With Malmö University, and a founding member of Bard College MAT program. David Lehman, Charles North, Ron Padgett, the experimental lo-fi duo Kids of the Ranch. Anselm Berrigan, Peter Gizzi, David Shapiro, http://www.imrisandstrom.com/ SATURDAY 4/6, 2pm John Perreault, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Eileen DAVID RATTRAY: A RECOGNITION Myles, Susie Timmons, Timothy Donnelly, WEDNESDAY 5/1 Please join us for an afternoon of talks and Jordan Davis, Ariana Reines, Corina Copp, JEAN DAY & LARRY FAGIN readings marking the life, work and ongoing Thurston Moore, John Coletti, Anita Ceravolo Jean Day has published six books of poetry, influence of poet and translator David Rattray and Parker Smathers. the most recent of which is Enthusiasm: Odes (1936–1993) on the 20th anniversary of & Otium (Adventures in Poetry, 2006). She his death. With Joanna Fuhrman, Robbie FRIDAY 4/19, 10pm works as managing editor of Representations, Dewhurst, Eileen Myles, Gerrit Lansing, Susie FRANK SHERLOCK & DAVID BUUCK an interdisciplinary humanities journal Timmons, Garrett Caples, John Godfrey, Frank Sherlock’s Very Different Animals was published by the University of California Kimberly Lyons, Chris Kraus, David Abel, selected for the Equinox Chapbook Award Press. Larry Fagin gave his first New York Jesse Browner, George Quasha and M. Mark. and was recently published by Fact-Simile reading at The Poetry Project in front of the Press. He is the author of Over Here, The fireplace in Fall 1967. Ted Berrigan heckled MONDAY 4/8 City Real & Imagined (with CAConrad), and him from the third row. He is the author of 14 BRIAN BLANCHFIELD Ready-to-Eat Individual (with Brett Evans). books, the latest being Complete Fragments & ANTHONY MADRID David Buuck is the founder of BARGE, (Cuneiform, 2012). Brian Blanchfield is the author of Not Even the Bay Area Research Group in Enviro- Then (University of California Press, 2004) aesthetics, and co-founder and editor of FRIDAY 5/3, 10pm and The History of Ideas, 1973–2012 (Ugly Tripwire, a journal of poetics. An Army of JACKIE CLARK & BIANCA STONE Duckling Presse, forthcoming). He is a poetry Lovers, co-written with Juliana Spahr, is Jackie Clark is the author of three editor of Fence Magazine and lives at the forthcoming from City Lights. chapbooks: Office Work (Greying Ghost western edge of Tucson, Arizona. Anthony Press), Red Fortress (H_NGM_N) and I Live Madrid’s poems have appeared or are MONDAY 4/22 Here Now (Lame House Press). Her first forthcoming in AGNI Online, Boston Review, RUSSIAN UNDERGROUND POETRY FROM book, Aphoria, was published by Brooklyn Fence, Lana Turner, LIT, Poetry and Web OBERIU TO MOSCOW CONCEPTUALISM: Arts Press. Bianca Stone is the illustrator of Conjunctions. His first book isI Am Your Slave ALEXANDER VVEDENSKY Antigonick, a collaboration with Anne Carson Now Do What I Say (Canarium Books, 2012). & VSEVOLOD NEKRASOV (New Directions, 2012). Her first full-length The evening will celebrate the publication collection of poetry, Someone Else’s Wedding of the poems of Alexander Vvedensky and Vows, is forthcoming from Tin House/ Vsevolod Nekrasov in English. Vvedensky Octopus Books. (1904–1941), one of the founders of OBERIU,

22 The Poetry Project Newsletter MONDAY 5/6 DISCIPLINE (Nightboat Books, 2011). She FRIDAY 5/31, 10pm MELISSA BUZZEO & EDUARDO C. CORRAL is a member the Black Took Collective and ANDREW DURBIN & IRIS CUSHING Melissa Buzzeo is the author of For Assistant Professor of English at the University Andrew Durbin co-edits Wonder, a publisher Want and Sound (Les Figues, 2013), Face, of Pittsburgh. Chris Tysh has authored of art books, ephemera, pamphlets and BookThug, 2009) and What Began Us (Leon several poetry collections and completed a glossies. He is the author of Reveler (Argos Works, 2007). She has taught at the University full screenplay based on a novel of Georges Books, forthcoming). His writings have of Iowa and Brown University, and in the Bataille. Her latest book is Molloy: The Flip appeared or are forthcoming in the Boston Naropa University Summer Writing Program. Side (BlazeVox, 2012). Review, Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Fence, Eduardo C. Corral’s Slow Lightning, his Maggy. Iris Cushing was born in Tarzana, first book of poems, was selected by Carl FRIDAY 5/17, 10pm California. She is the author of Wyoming, Phillips as the 2011 winner of the Yale Series SAM TRUITT & CATHERINE TAYLOR winner of the 2013 Furniture Press Poetry of Younger Poets competition. He currently Sam Truitt’s books include Vertical Elegies Prize. In 2011, she was a writer-in-residence at teaches at Columbia University. 6: Street Mete (2011), Vertical Elegies: Three Grand Canyon National Park. Works (2008), Vertical Elegies 5: The Section WEDNESDAY 5/8 (2003) and Anamorphosis Eisenhower (1998). MONDAY 6/3 EVELYN REILLY & NATHANIEL TARN Catherine Taylor is a Founding Editor of SPRING WORKSHOP READING Evelyn Reilly’s recent books of poetry are Essay Press, a publisher of book-length, Participants in the Project’s Spring Workshops Apocalypso and Styrofoam, both published innovative and hybrid-genre essays. She is the will read their work, with introductions by by Roof Books. She lives in New York City author of Apart (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), Workshop instructors Sharon Mesmer, Tan when she isn’t on the road working for a mix of prose, poetry, political theory and Lin, E. Tracy Grinnell and Lewis Warsh. various museums. Nathaniel Tarn’s latest found texts from South African archives. publications are Ins and Outs of the Forest WEDNESDAY 6/5 Rivers (New Directions, 2008); The Embattled MONDAY 5/20 ANSELM HOLLO MEMORIAL READING Lyric: Essays and Conversations in Poetics and ROSS GAY & LAUREN SHUFRAN Join us as we celebrate the life and work Anthropology (Stanford, 2008); Sur les fleuves Ross Gay is the author of Bringing the Shovel of Anselm Hollo, poet, translator, teacher de la foret (Vif (Paris), 2012). New Directions Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and great friend to the Project. With Jane is reprinting The Beautiful Contradictions and Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006). Dalrymple-Hollo, Pierre Joris, Nicole (1969) shortly. His artist’s books, in collaboration with Peyrafitte, Anne Waldman, Bob Perelman, Kimberly Thomas, are The Halo, BRN2HNT Anselm Berrigan, Hoa Nguyen, Lisa Jarnot, FRIDAY 5/10 & SATURDAY 5/11 and The Bullet. Lauren Shufran is a PhD Simon Pettet, Carla Harryman, Andrei EPIC NOW: EPIC POETRY FOR EPIC TIMES: candidate at the University of California at Codrescu, Rachel Levitsky, Steven Taylor, THE POETRY PROJECT’S Santa Cruz. She received her MFA from San Barrett Watten, David Henderson and others. 2013 SPRING BENEFIT Francisco State University in 2008. Inter Arma, Open the portals to your epic life with epic her first book, is forthcoming from Fence. FRIDAY 6/7, 10pm poetry! We’ve commissioned nine artists to THE RECLUSE READING interpret nine epics over two nights. Friday’s WEDNESDAY 5/22 Contributors to Issue 9 of our poetry program: Shonni Enelow (The Iliad); Susan JOAN RETALLACK & JULIANA SPAHR magazine, The Recluse, will read their work. Landers (The Inferno); Matvei Yankelevich Joan Retallack is the author of Procedural Readers to be announced in May. Check (Zangezi); Erica Hunt (Sunstone); and Elegies/Western Civ Cont’d/—an Artforum http://www.poetryproject.org/. Rodrigo Toscano and Joshua Liebowitz best book of 2010—Memnoir, MONGRELISME, (Spine). Saturday’s program: Tracie Morris How to Do Things with Words and MONDAY 6/10 (Epic Of Gilgamesh); Elliott Sharp (The Afterrimages. Retallack is The John D. POET IN NEW YORK: READING LORCA Cantos); Corina Copp (Descent of Alette); and and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of On June 26, 1929, Federico García Lorca Edwin Torres (Futopo). Both programs start at Humanities at Bard College. With Jena arrived in New York City from Madrid and 8pm in the Sanctuary. $20 per night or $30 for Osman, Juliana Spahr edits the book series began one of his greatest works. Join us as both. Presold tickets will be available online. Chain Links and with 19 other poets, she edits special guests—who have devoted time Receptions on both nights with beer donated the collectively funded Subpress. With David to reading, writing about and translating by Brooklyn Brewery. Buuck she wrote Army of Lovers, a book Lorca—recite favorite passages from Poet about two friends who are writers in a time In New York. With John Giorno, Monica de MONDAY 5/13 of war and ecological collapse (forthcoming la Torre, Frederic Tuten, Aracelis Girmay, CYRUS CONSOLE & WILLIAM MINOR from City Lights). Paul Auster, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Wayne Cyrus Console is the author of Brief Under Koestenbaum and others. Co-presented with Water (Burning Deck, 2008), for which he WEDNESDAY 5/29 the Fundación Federico García Lorca. received a Fund for Poetry award, and The KAZIM ALI & REBECCA BROWN Odicy (Omnidawn, 2011). Recent poetry Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom WEDNESDAY 6/12 has appeared in Boston Review, Critical to Muslim parents of South Asian and Middle LEE ANN BROWN & ANNABEL LEE Quarterly, Lana Turner and No: a journal of Eastern descent. His books include The Lee Ann Brown has embarked upon the arts. William Minor’s first book,tree Far Mosque, The Fortieth Day, Bright Felon: writing a long work, N.C. ode, the first two on the outside, was published by Coracle in Autobiography and Cities and Sky Ward. books of which are In the Laurels, Caught 2010. His poems have appeared in 6x6, Dusie, Rebecca Brown is the author of 12 books of (Fence Modern Poets Series) and Crowns Coconut, DIAGRAM and La Petit Zine. He lives prose including American Romances, The Gifts of Charlotte (Carolina Wren). Past books in Florida with his wife and son. of the Body, Annie Oakley’s Girl, The Last Time include Polyverse and The Sleep that Changed I Saw You and The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary. Everything. Annabel Lee is the author of WEDNESDAY 5/15 Her play The Toaster, commissioned by New Basket (Accent Editions, 2012). Portions of At DAWN LUNDY MARTIN & CHRIS TYSH City Theater, premiered at On the Boards. the Heart of the World (O Books, 1979), her Dawn Lundy Martin is the author of A translations of Blaise Cendrars, have been set Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering to music by composer Garrett List. (University of Georgia Press, 2007), and

All events begin at 8pm unless otherwise noted. Admission: $8 / Students & Seniors $7 / Members $5 or Free. The Poetry Project is located in St. Mark’s Church at the corner of 2nd Avenue & 10th Street in Manhattan. Call (212) 674-0910 for more information. The Poetry Project is wheelchair-accessible with assistance and advance notice. Schedule is subject to change.

April/May 2013 23 WEEK 1: HHHHHHH, RRRR, PPPPP: JACK KEROUAC SCHOOL OF DISEMBODIED POETICS PRESENTS “KKKKK” MMMMMMMMMM KAZIM ALI, CARA BENSON & JENNIFER KARMIN, ANSELM BERRIGAN, SHERWIN BITSUI, JULIE CARR, RIKKI DUCORNET, LISA JARNOT, JADE LASCELLES, RACHEL LEVITSKY, ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS, JULIE PATTON, FRANCES RICHARD, CHRISTOPHER STACKHOUSE, AND LEE WORLEY

WEEK 2: HHHHHHHH, DDDDDDD, BBBBBBBBB: A NNN EEE-PPPPPPP RAE ARMANTROUT, CA CONRAD, SAMUEL R. DELANY, ROBERT GLÜCK, HR HEGNAUER, FRED MOTEN, EILEEN MYLES, KRISTIN PREVALLET, JULIA SEKO, RON SILLIMAN, ORLANDO WHITE, ELIZABETH WILLIS, LIDIA YUKNAVITCH, AND BARBARA DILLEY

WEEK 3: KKKKKKK CCCCCCCCCCC BBBBBB MEENA ALEXANDER, TIM ATKINS, OMAR BERRADA & SARAH RIGGS, LISA BIRMAN, JUNIOR BURKE, VICTOR HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ, TONYA FOSTER, C.S. GISCOMBE, BHANU KAPIL & ANDREA SPAIN, M. NOURBESE PHILIP, MICHELLE NAKA PIERCE & CHRIS PUSATERI, ELENI SIKELIANOS, MARY TASILLO, AND REED BYE

WEEK 4: TTTTT MMMM: A PPPPPPP PPPPPPPPPPP, CCCCCCCCCCC, AAAAAAAA CHRISTIAN BÖK, AMBROSE BYE, AMY CATANZANO, JACK COLLOM, ERICA HUNT & MARTY EHRLICH, LAIRD HUNT, THURSTON MOORE, BRAD O’SULLIVAN, STEVEN TAYLOR, CECILIA VICUÑA, ANNE WALDMAN, RONALDO V. WILSON, AND ROBERT SPELLMAN

SPECIAL GUESTS: AMIRI BARAKA, BILL BERKSON, ANNE CARSON & ROBERT CURRIE, JEROME ROTHENBERG, AND TOM WHITE

24 The Poetry Project Newsletter Book Reviews

Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus It is in these passages that Duncan’s vast self-awareness is re- Lisa Jarnot vealed, and it often seems as if it’s as much a revelation to Duncan (Universtiy of California Press, 2012) himself as it is to the reader. That sense of surprise, which always Review by Brett Price accompanies such moments of clarity and seems to arise sponta- neously, is shown to be the result of exhaustive and continuous After years of anticipation—with chapters surfacing from time to seeking. And Jarnot uses this relationship (between the work of time in journals and seemingly endless rumors about the various seeking and the epiphany of finding) to pace the biography. stages of its progress and publication date—Robert Duncan: The Ambassador From Venus is finally available. I’ve been looking In a recent conversation, a friend said they thought Jarnot wasn’t forward to it for what seems to be forever, and it was well worth critical enough in her presentation of Duncan’s life and work. I the wait. don’t agree with this claim. On the surface, sure, it seems that she largely keeps her interpretive hand out of the telling and instead al- The biography is thorough, to say the least. In bright detail, it lows the tone to be established by the juxtaposition between Dun- covers the incredibly unique circumstances of Duncan’s birth, can’s own account of his life and the account given by his friends, adoption and childhood (he was adopted by Theosophist parents lovers, students, colleagues and collaborators. However, Jarnot’s because of his astrological birth chart), and follows his devel- placement of these accounts—their proximity and the plain fact opment as a poet through decades of relationships, communi- of their being included—certainly carves out arcs of her own ties, places, philosophies and poems. Lisa Jarnot’s approach to interests and assumptions. She’s there in the framing. How could chronicling such a clearly inspired (and inspiring) life is measured she not be? And the strategy of keeping commentary to a minimum equally by narrative chops and investigative rigor. In straightfor- in order to let a multitude of perspectives exist together simultane- ward and lucid prose, she weaves together extensive and often ously seems to be informed by Duncan’s own habits of reading and humorous anecdotal sketches with well-chosen selections from writing, which, as the biography makes beautifully clear, sought to Duncan’s personal journals, letters and poetry, along with ancillary suspend the criteria of approval and disapproval in favor of being documents and portrayals from those close to him throughout “detectives not judges.” his life. Or maybe it’s just the fact that Jarnot herself is a poet, not a scholar, Jarnot’s use of the chronology of Duncan’s life to structure the doing investigative and deeply researched work. To me, that’s a biography is coupled with her insistence to keep the focus on major strength and one of the absolute pleasures of reading the his person at all times. And while that provides intimate views book. into Duncan’s many developing friendships and love affairs, it also amounts to following him on every stop of his insanely busy I read a lot of Duncan’s poetry in tandem with the different stages schedule of annual reading tours, which sometimes produces the of his life as it’s covered in the biography. Learning the circum- montage-like effect of whole months passing in a barrage of proper stances surrounding specific lines opens them up to a quotidian names, places and dates. No doubt, this is an inevitable reality of space that I’ve always felt his diction resists, and it was nice to have documenting such an intensely active professional and social life. so many new frames of reference. One of the biography’s major feats is that it keeps you completely glued to its pages (I couldn’t That bustle, however, is relieved by the constancy of attention put it down—woke up wondering what was going to happen next) given to Duncan’s life-long partnership with Jess and their many while simultaneously urging you to pour into the huge breadth of deep and enduring friendships. With this in mind, the most capti- writing by Duncan himself. vating sections of the book are those that get to the heart of certain alliances and disagreements between Duncan and his peers. I’m There’s total finesse of scale-shifting too. The more objective de- thinking specifically of his complicated relationships with Jack tails that Jarnot provides contextualize the writing she includes by Spicer or Denise Levertov, which were so obviously the intimate, Duncan. Likewise, the idiosyncrasies of view in Duncan’s writing formidable grounds wherein Duncan’s developing ideas as a poet particularize the arc of his life (the experience of being that life) and person were put to their material tests. I wanted as much detail as Jarnot narrates it. And that counterpoint is further tempered by as could be given and that desire was met by all the tender mo- the admission of larger cultural and historical world events. All of ments of reflection Jarnot includes, as when, in a letter to Levertov, these aspects work together to balance and create correspondenc- Duncan articulates his ability to see Spicer’s poetry in a new light es between the deeply personal and the mythic. And this seems to after his passing: be at the heart of Duncan’s poetics.

His opposition to my poetics had been so fanatical, his death The book mines that poetics and creates a rich, entertaining por- did not mean the loss of a friend. But even in this short time trait of a great poet and notoriously energetic personality. Clearly since his death, which I have accepted as certain since that the result of exhaustive research and vast respect for the life of its Monday two weeks ago, I’ve been able to read his work freed subject, it’s also a trove of cultural history and invaluable source of its person, the programmatic content is no longer signifi- material. I loved it. cant of quarrels I must have with Jack, and I find much more of meaning and feeling released...There too, such a terrible Brett Price lives and writes in Brooklyn. With Ed Steck and Natalie obstruction thrown up against any fullness of life. Häusler, he co-created and edits the small press American Books.

April/May 2013 25 The Story of My Accident Is Ours The chapters in The Story are strategies planet that sent this book to us, foreground- Rachel Levitsky under surveillance. Are we watching a ing their planet’s art history: “found objects (Futurepoem, 2013) mash-up of ACT-UP, WTO, OWS in retro- [get] reconfigured because although the Review by Ariel Goldberg spect? The Story acknowledges complicity past is nearly universally understood to be in the capitalism drug, as if in the double- destructive as a force left to itself we find Here comes a narrative from the peephole speak of a detainee’s scripted confession. it impossible to retire...” This art history to the loophole, viewing activism with a The chapters become conspirators, hungry goes on and on, including mix-ups with the perspective of distanced familiarity. “We for a lack of systematization. Gestures of words “wonder” and “worry.” pictured (and failed to sufficiently articu- independence (then codependence) send late),” yet here we are ready “to examine circuits to the base. Police brutality cata- Something is desirable about the transla- the world from every angle.” pults but so does the issue before the issue, tion of “a moment,” whether it was from asking how to address oppression without 10 or 20 years ago or into the activism Rachel Levitsky’s The Story of My Accident dogma resembling that of “The State.” that is in every present. The Story asks Is Ours illustrates both the disappointment what it means for different generations to and hope one might feel after a protest. In The Story we are given a blank screen for see ACT-UP protest documentation and a A group decides to do something and this our vague index of superstructure. What narrative perhaps related to this era. The stratagem for social change is coined issue, however specific or pervasive, can recent filmsUnited in Anger and How to “(The Project)” to remain both enigmatic we plug in to this activist history? What at Survive a Plague show how demonstrations and a bread-crumb trail. What is this in one moment feels like open possibility gets successfully incited more (but certainly not response to? At one moment it can point to jolted out of its haziness with real, scary enough) funding, research and attention the destruction of an environment under a terms like “my death.” The search for affect to the mass death of people with AIDS. I false guise: “Bridges had been blown up to begins again. What is a metaphor? or what found myself compulsively checking the protect us.” Then (The Project) brews with really happened? is our double take. news when reading The Story, then return- tension against the often mentioned “Ac- ing to the book as if it were also news. The cident” so that we come to wonder if (The “Images would help” with the reportage, Story covers the beat about the feeling of Project) is responsible for the Accident. but we then get none, rendering disconnect an adjunct wearing their “Health Insur- as the ultimate grounds for connect. We ance Now” pin on their way to teach the Without map, dictionary or guide, we are “stopped by an image” like the image Situationist International movement. were on the lookout for other emo- was a wad to gag our mouths. The Story’s tions, a range, suspecting that like world is all encompassing. “Holding on Ariel Goldberg’s recent publications include gender, the endless possibilities were to this idea that Love was nuanced and Picture Cameras (NoNo Press), The culturally and linguistically constructed potentially meaningful made us look angry Photographer without a Camera (Trafficker) only by the interests of power, which and marginal.” Love gets capitalized as if and The Estrangement Principle, selections seeks linearity and simplicity though it to reference never-ending corporate reach. of which appear in Aufgabe 11. cannot actually be so or have it so, or When Obama mentions gays and lesbians, have it be so. he is also not mentioning trans and queer people. As there is high kitsch, Levitsky Dancer Out of Sight The Story’s subjectivity toys with iterating a delivers a critique of high euphemism. Douglas Dunn consciousness born without a body, or the slyness of a multitude. But the subjectivity Inside The Story we meet minor intrusions (Ink Inc., 2012) craves some sort of rigor, some sort of su- like ants that bite and comic allergies, and Review by Annabel Lee preme self-awareness in this philosophical even a differing activist group. This group, failure, or post-life sense of self. A response the Spiritualists, appears well organized but Douglas Dunn is a thinker. He’s smart. He tactic is to state, challenge and reverse unable to analyze like (The Project) does. reads, he’s traveled, he knows a lot of heavy while grappling with the possibility of The Spiritualists provide performance stuff, like history, mythology, science. He intellectualizing emotion. Once you use an art when given the benefit of the doubt went to Princeton. He listens when people idiom you then try to erase that idiom. or infomercials when treated with cyni- talk and hangs around with a lot of intel- cism. I imagine The Spiritualists would not ligent, educated, sophisticated people like The plurality intends to solve nothing. abandon the liberal president, even if his himself. He dwells in a realm of higher- The switch between the first-person international policy includes unwavering order thinking. You’ll find out quickly when singular and plural is the main action of drone warfare and investment in the rheto- you read his writings. the book. How big is the “we” that guides ric of world domination. and retreats? Levitsky demonstrates the Douglas Dunn is a dancer who writes and experience of flatness in language we What type of activist can a text be? This his writing is infused with dance. He is one are fed and regurgitate. The grease is in book corresponds with the tenors un- of the greats. He lives a legacy. He danced demand. Language is a subject as much as derneath the megaphone, familiar to the with Merce Cunningham and was one of a political, economic, social breakdown: “I zeitgeist of Pamela Lu, Renee Gladman, the dancers in Grand Union. He is inspired am far from a reliable witness,” the narrator Juliana Spahr and David Buuck, who all by writers, visual artists, musicians and confesses a bare sadness as if stepping deal with collective thought and action in filmmakers. away from the center of (The Project). “I a time when the world is about to combust. write a letter. It is electronic.” The artist in The Story’s world uses the He is practiced at the art of composition. microphone as a messenger from a mirror He’s a great choreographer. His “uncon-

26 The Poetry Project Newsletter ventional” work flows and his artistry That says something about his character, Whatever he’s saying, his sustained efforts, leaves the reader satisfied. To read Douglas his integrity. Why write, we might ask. We his writing, like his dancing, delights, Dunn’s writing is to engage with his mind in might not ask. This book includes “An- informs and offers us quiet clarity. creating and composing. Intuition and the nual Letters,” a “Syllabus,” speeches when senses are key elements; thus his language awards were given, musings on dances lives, various and free. Precision is soft in as he’s making them, poems. Some of the Annabel Lee’s most recent book is Basket his work, not tentative, just not hard-edged writing is simply writing. His long-time (Accent Editions, 2012). or inflexible. His wit is as dazzling as his collaborator Mimi Gross made outstanding scholarship, his wisdom, his focus, and his drawings that are interspersed with the text Songs and Stories of the Ghouls hard work. and bring alive the movement of dance Alice Notley in a ravishing way. (I recently enjoyed (Wesleyan University Press, 2011) In his “Talking Dancing” he addresses what his colorful Cassations at Danspace at St. Review by erica kaufman I won’t analyze (forgive me for pulling out Mark’s, with Gross’ costumes and props.) fragments and extrapolating): He includes transcripts of interviews so his In Milton and His Epic Tradition, Joan spoken words look like writing, and they Malory Webber claims, “epic is a form Talking is talking aren’t so different from his writing. That’s that uses myth to free men of history, even Dancing is dancing... how good his writing is. He lets his writing to the extent of making history itself part write itself. of the myth.” From The Descent of Alette Not talking is not talking & not not to Alma, or The Dead Women, and now talking His writing is refreshingly self-assured and to Songs and Stories of the Ghouls, Alice Not dancing is not dancing & not not reflects his “interdisciplinarity,” which he Notley takes the traditional epic form and dancing... investigates. He knows how to engage him- both subverts and contemporizes it. Myth is self fully in the task at hand—mostly tasks not used to free men of history; instead, it Dancing is talking & not talking he invents for himself. He gives his work all reminds us of the very real destruction we Talking is dancing & not dancing... he’s got. are living in the center of, and our wars are not mythic wars. In “Homer’s Art,” Notley The piece is 16 couplets long and explores When he writes about Rudy Burckhardt’s writes, “Both of Homer’s public stories—as a relationship between words and dancing. blend of assertion and acceptance, he everybody knows—are generated by war He’s been exploring that territory for a long might well be talking about his own ap- and are male-centered—stories for men time. When we see his dances it’s the words proach. Douglas Dunn is cool: not just cool about a male world...Thus, how could a that are out of sight. like his dancing will never be considered woman write an epic? How could she now trendy and go out of fashion, but cool with if she were to decide that the times called Living, and dancing as part of living, a refined sense of detachment. This quality for one?” Notley takes on the length and is in fact mysterious, because one allows him to step back, stay back and ob- complexity of traditional epic form and sur- guesses that, consistently, there’s more serve, then compose his thoughts and see passes it through her decision to not only than what one sees. The difficulty is, if what happens. He’s patient. The process write a “feminine epic,” but to also create a and when one attempts to emphasize of writing for Douglas Dunn appears to world in which the voices of women (dead this ambiguity, the mystery disappears. be extemporaneous, rooted in a physical and alive) own the power of speech. stillness, in the moment, now and now and He explores concepts—for example, disor- now. I like his way of throwing words on Songs and Stories of the Ghouls introduces der—and the way his choreography—for the page and letting them lay there, doing the reader to a landscape where “Any- example his piece Celeste—addresses the their thing. one who’s still around, before and after world of ideas. I read into the book in a conquest, the ongoing activity, is a ghoul. Is spacious context having seen many of his Douglas Dunn is in command of that anyone not a ghoul?” Doing away with any dances multiple times. Also, I cut up and delicate balance of chance and choice. semblance of the usual epic hero structure, categorized some of his drawings and writ- Chance elements are key. His writing Notley foregrounds the songs of the dead, ing in the 70s, which became the “score” reveals that implicitly and explicitly. John and recounts the stories of women who for, or writings essential to, the creation of Cage, musician, composer, mycologist and previously only existed in the context of his Lazy Madge. So I’ve also been inside his writer seems pivotal when we dig to find “their men” (Dido and Medea). Taking writing, creating my own order out of his where Douglas Dunn’s impulse to write on these stories of patriarchal oppres- urge to write. The score for Lazy Madge is might originate. sion—where women are barbaric, vengeful included here: possible titles, notes about and stereotypically impassioned—Notley death and intentions and phone numbers, He uses smart vocabulary with a pervasive instead allows these characters to speak for notes concerning the body and physicality, sense of humor. He’s goofy and he can themselves—rescues the fallen from their and more. write about it. What a gift. authors and teaches us that even in the throes of continual war and destruction, Dancer Out of Sight is a miscellany. He tells ...forces force third-eye inner psychoki- there is still the possibility that language us his life story, he does it well, leaving netic focus emergency sinews seek neu- represents. appropriate gaps. He writes about people ral solace take tendons’ stock rerenew he cares about, like Rudy Burckhardt and newly diamonds nets umbels spiders In the beginning there was inquiry: Charles Atlas. We learn how they worked glittery... can change to enmity or enemy, your together. He helps us appreciate them. job, poet, is to hold it on inquiry long

April/May 2013 27 enough for a note of the choir—in- The final section, “Testament: 2005,” is power solely as vehicles for commerce. quiry—to transfer the letters to sound comprised of 27 poems, each distinctly Although they have a life, words stem which liquefies the statue/body so it titled. While the first two sections move in from our embodied life. Frym reminds us moves. This is moving. This text is al- and out of poetry and prose, in and out of that “without us words would fall on their ways changing. What alphabet doesn’t sonnet and song, this segment is almost en- faces,” and in doing so embraces the lyric matter, which language. It’s mine. tirely in lyric line-breaked forms. It appears “I” as an entity that gifts matter to mind. as though the book has travelled through Through Notley’s distinctly feminist multi- war, founders and foundings, Judgment Language, like money, is a social contract, vocal all-encompassing rendering of epic, and the Club. Now we’re met with ballad- and Frym is a poet who makes us aware even in a book where one feels “in Dead” like, “I”-driven verse that echoes the idea that the lines of commerce and communi- all the time, language doesn’t swerve into that the poem might “effect a temporary cation overlap and blur. She imbibes Ezra enmity—the emphasis is always on “in- change”: “I’m afraid prose won’t go deep Pound and writes, “Why thou lov’st well is quiry,” questioning, investigating, taking in. enough.” This section centers on ques- thy true heritage / This shattered beauty / Formally, Songs and Stories of the Ghouls is tions of voice and voicing, the relationship Holding up the world bank / Poetry loves in itself an “experience,” an “inquiry” into between speech and bodies, power and with love / The bon mot knows no hate / the ways mythologies become assimilated possession. “The ghouls speak in ‘poetic’ That’s what we meant in 1968.” Here, in- (“the Greeks were wrong about so much”), language, because they are souls whose stead of relaying knowledge as Pound did, the engendering of gender, the unproduc- stolen lives have been ‘prolonged’ by the she strips knowledge bare. Our heritage tive violence inherent in normative heroic poetic within them...As people lost interest and our social contract are contingent on quests. in it, it secretly became them. It is all that love. The only force that can rip through lives in one; but what if I am wicked—that abstractions such as “enemy combatant” to Divided in three sections (“Introducing is a poem.” “The poetic” fills the close of the reveal the bodies behind their representa- Carthage,” “The Book of Dead” and “Testa- book, taking over the moment in the epic tion is love. Frym is blunt and never cute ment: 2005”), the book begins in verse, hero’s narrative that usually presents some because there is no need to dress up or introducing the idea of “a breakaway cul- kind of rebirth and/or restoration of the pontificate on love, but her poems beg the ture,” and swings between prose and poem hero’s “rightful place” (e.g., Odysseus’ re- question: can such a thing as “love” exist as the reader enters Carthage, a site created turn to Ithaka and reunion with Penelope), under capitalism? by women (Dido)—“The city I founded and instead moving from poem to poem, I will found again.” The second section, each embodying the idea that poiesis is The beloved language in a capitalist “The Book of Dead,” begins with Medea— in itself transformative and active. Notley society is the one in which “She has use... “Now I am Medea, about whom there are writes, “We have this project to / change poetry is useless / The maker of these only rumors, alone again.” The section’s our silence into the beautiful city of a marks / Observer of those tulips.” The title alludes to “The Book of the Dead” and voice.” In the end, “we / had to step outside body is primary to word and tulips offer “A its notions of one’s journey through the un- him / and into knowledge / of poetry, the counter-lyric to chronology”—an alterna- derworld to afterlife. But by removing the ghoulish, timeless state.” Songs and Stories tive to the way in which words without particle, Notley creates the sensation that of the Ghouls is a book that truly invents attention will narrate time linearly and in “ghouls are amassing everywhere.” These the groundwork for a “new country” or so doing obstruct the “I” from experiencing ghouls are women, women who speak and “new culture”—one where Medea did not the simultaneity of “now.” The poem ends, act. Women in and with language. kill her children, where masculinity is not “She moans the phonemes bay-bee / Then privileged, where poetry is never a luxury, a sentence heats the room.” What gives This is a very different gendered landscape where constant war is not glorified, where the words agency (and what gives money from the typical epic where, as Webber “There is no / feminine / masculine / There value) is their literal embodiment. If bodies writes, “women appear also in more ordi- is what / I say.” have use, but poetry is useless, what is the nary roles, as mothers and companions... use? Frym asks, “In the mood to be useful? to some extent in bondage to mortality, / Don’t try poetry...wash a floor,” yet to be even though they may be goddesses.” erica kaufman is the author of censory with words one just has to “Tell the emo- The women of Notley’s book appear in impulse (Factory School, 2009). tional truth just spit it out / It’s not poetry anything but “ordinary roles,” in fact, these just human / Deed word not for profit not are women who are actively rewriting and art / Way necessary.” The only necessary retelling their own histories, reconstructing Mind over Matter: A Tribute to Poetry use of words is to tell emotional truth, and the language that constructed them. Notley Gloria Frym this is human. writes, “Nothing is unchangeable except ( B la zeVOX , 2 011) for a myth—let’s change that.” By the close Review by Anna Elena Eyre How does one speak the emotional truth? of “The Book of Dead,” everyone and Frym writes, “Love trees? Got big degrees? everything is morphing—“When my poems What can words do? This seemingly simple think / You can make poetry...before you / were or will be lost. It was because—will question is at the heart of poetry, a ques- Get down with language on your / knees... be because?—something came for us, a tion with which all poets must wrestle. bruising what can’t be said / To give matter bomb, or vengeful warriors. I remember it Some turn their backs on and others em- mind / It matters as much as no ideas but as the destruction of all my time until that brace the responsibility of its implications. cosas / Me entiendes? No se pero.” One has point. I was a people, shattered. I still car- In Mind Over Matter: A Tribute to Poetry, to come to language on its own terms and ried much inscription inside me.” Gloria Frym presents words as living, physi- feel what can’t be rendered in words—your cal vibrations that transform reality and body in dirt. No body can express what questions those who would consider their your body feels in words because only you

28 The Poetry Project Newsletter can experience your body. “To give matter We are implicated by the social contracts The Weeds mind” one has to feel the ineffability of of abstract systems, yet in poetry, we have Jared Stanley matter and realize “it matters as much as a say in them because our thoughts stem (Salt Publishing, 2012) no ideas but cosas.” Ideas aren’t in things, from embodiment. Poetry is not guilty of Review by Laura Henriksen ideas are things, ideas only exist because theft because it is not an institution run of things—because of matter. We are by greed. Rather, to share honest emotion In The Sedona Vortex Experience: How to grounded here in the language of the thing is to be attentive to our exposure to the Tune In, Find Your Personal Power Place as it is in itself—the language that is not a wild, and these exposures are held in the and Take the Magic Home! (1987) by Gaia representation but a presentation of itself matter of sound. “Held by ear page,” the (Johansen) Lamb, MA, and Shinan Naom as a thing. She advises, “And don’t insert “murmur rumor” tells of our presence even Barclay, PhD (abd), it’s explained that, brainy quotes / To fill in your own lines / if it is an unverified account whispered “The vortex energies of whirlpools move in Unmouthed before this title” because your under the breath. Poetry is the resistance a counterclockwise spiral. Spirals of light emotional truth is yours and no other can of enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay energy move through the Chakras of our speak it. because the matter of your breath can body in a clockwise direction. By imitating never be stolen or owned by another body. the positive, clockwise spiraling pattern we The difference between the matter of dol- You cannot be kicked out of your breath, can open up our dormant energies and feel lars and that of words is clear for Frym: your voice, your body, your mind, and one with the universal dance of life.” The poetry knows this. Nobody can foreclose pamphlet includes attunement exercises This pertains to me which means to me you embodied ideas, nobody can repossess and a centerfold map for driving in Sedona. Parts of speech don’t rob people your education, nobody can voice your Sedona is a red-colored municipality, and Banks do poetry only borrows emotional truth but you. Words can gift the has such strict building codes that it’s home And returns words to intimate attention love necessitates and create the to the only McDonald’s in the country Wilderness your kin and your next “brain of the new world,” the mattered ideas whose arches aren’t yellow or golden. In Thought embodied sounded of Frym’s tribute to poetry and call Sedona, the arches are turquoise. That’s Held by ear page to humanity. something I learned on a Jeep tour when I Murmur rumor was 12, visiting Sedona from Phoenix. Never foreclosed Anna Elena Eyre is deeply indebted to all Invincible In the desert, there are a lot of fake mystics of her teachers and is devoted to being in Brain of the new world and false prophets who will promise you service of poetry for the rest of her years. peace if you spin around in a circle enough

April/May 2013 29 times and pay enough. Jared Stanley knows in the poem, in this eccentric, conflicted environment more palatable to humans. them. In his poem “I Would Like to Have mystic: Everything else will be weeds. the Physicality of My Light at Least Remind You,” from The Weeds, he writes: I was an orator among the limetrees The Weeds suggests the possibility of a then different kind of relationship to the desert In my fingerless gloves had a tambourine tied to my tongue, than the whole pharmacy/aqueduct/unbe- blood squirts on my halo. a sense of loosestrife’s longing thing. The book begins and ends invasive cur tongued at my ear. with this light-headed, overheated speaker Put your zealous face on. There were alkali flat smells and borax communing in the realest possible way I’ll have clouds chunks in the paper. with the weeds and insects of the desert, Shrouding my torso, thanks. Asses’ ears. valuing and learning, sort of the opposite of manifest destiny: Almost in response to the sort of traveling The tambourine was pulled from the faith salesman speaker of this poem, on the Euphrates I compare myself to a weed or a stone opposite page, in “The Desert Brother,” he herons waded through my speech, and find the weed more wonderful, writes: then. bulbs, tubers, they endarken me and The desert was more like it was really it’s kind of likable, like those electronic If a head’s full of sky there. flowers that dance to music, danced in laying down its sand music but not in wind, there is never a faith’s a little disappointing. The thing about the truly faithful is that silence as true as a music heard from they are not for this world in the first behind a thicket of them, overhead Because while the psychics for hire and place, which is why I figure they gravitate underneath the powerline’s buzzing, revival tent speakers are multitudinous in toward the desert, the place where nobody they’re here now, and they were there the desert, they aren’t alone there. In fact, belongs, except for the weeds. Stanley’s then...poking out of the ground, a little it may be that the only reason they can sus- book is populated by the entire desert pronouncement that there is no such tain themselves in a place where (as it was cast; cowboys and cowboy movie stars, thing as ‘farthest west.’ once described to me by another person hippies and stoners, those who prepare for from the Phoenix-area) people aren’t even the apocalypse and those who prepare for It’s a remarkable book that can present an really supposed to live, is because for every aliens, but all the while there is this aware- alternative with as much humor and humil- hundred or so unbelieving missionaries ness that none of our characters belong, ity as this one. It’s a book for the mystics there’s an Anthony the Great, living out his in that they “write warning labels / for the in the postapocalypse, it’s a book for the or her days in eccentric, unwavering faith pharmaceutical company. / Weeds outlast birds, a book for the future, a book for the between the yucca and the saguaros. We this sentence.” And if it’s true that “Some weeds. see such characters in “How the Desert Did of this deserted stuff looks inhabited,” it’s Me In,” in the guy hopelessly leading his only because the weeds are still there, the friends around the desert, searching for a weeds outlast us all. So eventually, when place to be quiet, his followers not want- we’ve all left the desert, due to weaponized Laura Henriksen’s work has appeared or is ing to display any doubt and upset their kestrels and climate change, “They’ll see forthcoming in Lungfull!, Poems by Sunday, brother; “their certain brother / under what you in the marshes, the aqueducts,” in what Big Bell, Peaches and Bats, and The he was certain were stars,” and again, later was put there for the purpose of making an Brooklyn Rail. She lives in Brooklyn.

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Murder is Danielle Collobert’s  rst novel. Originally published in 1964 by Éditions Gallimard while Collobert was living as a political exile in Italy, this prose work was written against the backgrop of the Algerian War. Uncompromising in its exposure of the calculated cruelty of the quotidian, Murder’s accusations have photographic precision, inculpating instants of habitual violence. 2013 • $18 • ISBN: 978-1-933959-17-7 • Poetry, translated from the French

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30 The Poetry Project Newsletter Astrological Advice from Dorothea Lasky Aries (March 21 – April 19) Libra (September 23 – October 22) People often think of you as their own personal comedian, You can’t get enough of the fire signs this month and that’s and it’s true, you are a lot of fun (and really really funny). because you get along well with them. Maybe by getting However, what most people are not privy to is your deep self-doubt. enough, I mean in your mind and in your memories. Whatever the Or moreso, it is your competitiveness that comes to play in the case, it is no doubt that you will be communicating with every- everyday and especially the nighttime. Even with a joke you want to. one. I think we all like how sweet you can be. Still the steely gaze It is more so that you might say, you can’t ever afford to lose. Aries, is what most excites us. Eye of the tiger and some such. There you won’t. Take what you need and want this month. There is no is a lot you can do when you set your mind to it. So set it. We’re shame to it. As the Muppets once said, you only did just what you set waiting. out to do. So do it. There, I said it. Begin. Scorpio (October 23 – November 21) Taurus (April 20 – May 20) You have been really coming into your own lately and this Your lovers go on and on about how sexy you are and they month is no different. Which is a very powerful thing. You are aren’t lying. You have the clearest voice and when you hug someone, a Scorpio! We like when you show your odd stuff, with your it means something. Still, you will always long for the one you had at purple pants and chanting amulets. What about the yellow moss you first. If you are not with him or her, your true (first) love haunts you to grow by your bedside? The best thing about it is how you make us this day, swirling around like a purple- and green-feathered spectre. feel, which is very excited and safe at the same time. We know you Think of him or her a lot this month and really give into it. Write a have vulnerable sides, which are occluded by everyone. And yes, it’s poem or write several; honor what once was. Someone else would tell true, you are complicated. But by God, you’re the best that there is you to let go, but not me. Go forth. Love is for all eternity. You are the and we will never get enough of it. only one of us who knows that. Gemini (May 21 – June 20) Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21) Some time is often paid among non-air and non-fire signs You love to travel, but this month you may stay put a bit. I about how mercurial you are and it’s true, you are a little don’t mean necessarily in bodily, but in your spirit. Your flashy. But the ones who do not have faith in your long suffer- spirit found a home this winter and it wants to stay there. It’s ing will never be rewarded. You work and work and you work some against the grain a bit, but I’d make it a bed to sleep in. A home is more until the thing is done. It’s not your fault if so many things are a good thing for a spirit. Of course, we never have to tell you any- so boring. Nor should you have to explain to others why the world thing. At least five people will fall in love with you in the next day finds you charming—it’s called science. This month, your friends or so. Why? Because that’s the way that it is. The way that it is. Oh, I will finally notice all you have been doing so silently to keep them don’t have to tell you anything. happy. They are ready to reward you with endless devotion. Take what you have coming to you. Cancer (June 21 – July 22) Capricorn (December 22 – January 19) When you think of spring, you can’t help but think of Loyal, loyal, loyal and loyal some more is how we’d de- cookies. Magic cookie bars and tree bark fig newtons. Maybe scribe you. Anyone else who doesn’t think so just doesn’t a little extra chocolate on the chocolate on the chocolate of it. Well, know you well. We know you and we love you, so give us the tricks that and lilacs. This month, you may be feeling at a standstill in you like to show us. Oh, because you, like an Aries, are our most a situation where you need more freedom to do what you must. I prized comedians. Your humor is darker though, more everlasting. mean, to move forward, in the thick of it. Pay attention to the power- This month, the ground you plant will be fertile and endlessly ful people who have been in your corner all along. There is a lot of dark-seeming. It is not, though. The ground you plant on is light. change to be made. It’s about letting go of your need to control every facet of it. Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) Everyone knows how creative you are, but sometimes Leo (July 23 – August 22) you doubt yourself. Don’t do this, this month you will Did I mention how gorgeous you are, with your silky be a genius. A flying genius through the mountains and mane and clear skin? And the endless way you really suns that surround us. If you have heartache, go into yourself know how to move within it. The rest of us think about all and the many parts of you will make you whole again. Well, of this, it’s like you drip with mojo, wherever you go. Also, you have that and a new friend. Tell him or her anything, they likely truly a knack for design, but not everybody knows that. This month is a understand you. This month, when it comes to a new venture good time to redecorate things, both your home and your wardrobe. involving numbers, tell them a story instead. You know you are very good at being a leader, but sometimes you want to be led. A person will come into your life who is worth being led by. Let him or her do so. He or she is a soulmate of sorts. Trust it. Pisces (February 19 – March 21) Could it be that you have not lost, but only begun? Or is Virgo (August 23 – September 22) it that you have already ended and each time is truly a You are truly kindhearted, but sometimes your need for new time? I don’t know and you don’t either. Still, we love and the order of things gets in the way of expressing it fully. Or love and love and the sun rises in spite of itself. This month you more so, that your heart is HUGE and the world has no place for will be drawn to the color blue and cold showers. None of this is it. This month, a new friend will bring you much joy, so let it be so. a revelation. You know who you are and that’s a good thing. It’s The new blue flowers of spring will, too. Eat lots of noodles and try a good thing, Pisces. Yeah, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: a new restaurant. Go dancing with your true love at least once a It’s a very good thing for us and everyone when you find fortune. week. Even if it is in private, it means a lot to the universe. It is a very good thing that you are here.

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