The Poetry Project February / March 2016 Issue #246 The Poetry Project February / March 2016 Issue #246 Director: Stacy Szymaszek Managing Director: Nicole Wallace Archivist: Will Edmiston Program Director: Simone White Bookkeeper: Carlos Estrada Communications & Membership Coordinator: Laura Henriksen Workshop Leaders (Spring 2016): Matt Longabucco, Barbara Newsletter Editor: Betsy Fagin Henning, Rachel Levitsky Reviews Editor: Sara Jane Stoner Box Office Staff: Catherine Vail, Mel Elberg, Sam Robison Monday Night Readings Coordinator: Judah Rubin Interns: Reynaldo Carrasco, Mel Elberg, and Cori Hutchinson Wednesday Night Readings Coordinator: Simone White Newsletter Editorial & Design Consultant: Jen Stacey Friday Night Readings Coordinator: Ariel Goldberg Volunteers Vivian Bauer, Anya Bernstein, Anjali Desai, Katie Ebbitt, Mel Elberg, Micaela Foley, Cori Hutchinson, Zac Kline, Anna Kreienberg, Phoebe Lifton, Ashleigh Martin, Tori Ortega, Isabelle Page, Batya Rosenblum, Erkinaz Shuminov, Viktorsha Uliyanova, Natalia Vargas-Caba, Shanxing Wang, and Emma Wippermann.

Board of Directors John S. Hall (President), Katy Lederer (Vice-President), Carol Overby (Treasurer), Jonathan Morrill (Acting Treasurer), Camille Rankine (Secretary), Kristine Hsu, Jo Ann Wasserman, Claudia La Rocco, Todd Colby, Erica Hunt, Elinor Nauen, Laura Nicoll, Adam Fitzgerald and David Wilk.

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

Funders The Poetry Project is very grateful for the continued support of our funders

Axe-Houghton Foundation; Committee on Poetry; Dr. Gerald J. & Dorothy R. Friedman Foundation, Inc.; Jerome Foundation; Leaves of Grass Fund; Leslie Scalapino – O Books Fund; LitTAP; Poets & Writers, Inc.; Poets for the Planet Fund; The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation. *Anonymous Donors; Harold & Angela Appel; Russell Banks; Martin Beeler; Bill Berkson & Constance Lewallen; David Berrigan & Sarah Locke; Mei Mei Berssenbrugge & Richard Tuttle; Rosemary Carroll; Cassie Carter; Steve Clay; Todd Colby; Peggy DeCoursey; Don DeLillo & Barbara Bennet; Murial Dimen; Rackstraw Downes; Ruth Eisenberg; Stephen Facey; Raymond Foye; Mimi Gross; John S. Hall; Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Kristine Hsu; Ada & Alex Katz; Mushka Kochan; Susan Landers & Natasha Dwyer, Katy Lederer; Glenn Ligon; Gillian McCain & Jim Marshall; Jonathan Morrill & Jennifer Firestone; Eileen Myles; Elinor Nauen & Johnny Stanton; Eugene O’Brien; Ron & Pat Padgett; Lucas Reiner & Maude Winchester; John Sampas; Luc Sante; Simon Schuchat; Susie Timmons; Jo Ann Wasserman; Sylvie & June Weiser Berrigan; and David Wilk. The Estate of Kenneth Koch; members of The Poetry Project; and other individual contributors. The Poetry Project’s programs and publications are made possible, in part, with public funds from The National Endowment for the Arts. The Poetry Project’s programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The Poetry Project’s programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. The Poetry Project

Contents

Letter from the Director ...... 4

Notes from the Project ...... 5

Interview: Barbara Henning & Patricia Spears Jones ...... 8

Art: Oasa DuVerney ...... 14

Poetry: Amber Atiya ...... 16

Calendar of Events ...... 18

Reviews ...... 21

Community Letters ...... 28

Crossword Puzzle ...... 31

Cover image: “Untitled (If I Could)” / 11” x 8.5” / Inkjet print on acetate, paper, glazing. (c) Steffani Jemison [2012]. Courtesy of the artist.

2016 3 Letter from the Director

The 42nd Annual New Year’s where I need to go and who audience/members, book Wilson’s a cappella song (a Day Marathon was a thrilling I need to see. It calls to mind donors, local vendors, cappella=“in the manner of the celebration of the Project’s Gramsci’s “I Hate New Year’s performers, and volunteers, chapel”) which had a line “the legacy, the present moment Day”: we raised nearly $23,000 to end of money/ the end of profit/ in poetry and the arts, support the presentation of our the end of Master Charge and diversity, collective agency, and “I want every morning to be a live readings, including paying private property”– I barely kept multigenerational (and cross- new year’s for me. Every day poets more for their work. up with the “lingualisualisms” genre) dialog– which we always I want to reckon with myself, of Edwin Torres with David want and hope to generate more and every day I want to renew Read on for a list of people who Brown on drum— Jace Clayton of. I heard so many performers myself. No day set aside for contributed to this success. I and an ensemble of readers whose work is invested in rest. I choose my pauses myself, want to particularly thank the performing a sound piece by proposing fresh aesthetic, when I feel drunk with the Project staff, Laura, Nicole and Umbra poet N.H. Pritchard, cultural, philosophical and intensity of life and I want to Simone, for their creativity, and perhaps the most striking political approaches to the plunge into animality to draw stamina and acumen behind the performance I saw was by insane world we’re living in. from it new vigour.” scenes. Heroes Are Gang Leaders It’s an annual poet ritual that, I want to begin every new year (HAGL), who performed a song for me has daily implications– it immersed in poet language. I heard a lot of work that called “Flukum” (for Etheridge helps to organize my reading stopped me in my tracks Knight). HAGL is Thomas life, my social life, tells me Deep gratitude to you– our and transported me: Martha Sayers Ellis’s “language-and sound-based literary-hip jazz transbluesy” group. On 1/1 it was TSE, Margaret Morris, James Brandon Lewis, Ryan Frazier, Randall Horton, and Devin Brahja Waldman. Get their new CD “Highest Engines Near/Near Higher Engineers,” but really get to see them live to appreciate all that TSE transmits through physicality (and a slapstick in this song).

Thanks to the dear sweet brilliant (and brief) poets of the final hour. We finished 30 minutes early and had so much help I had enough energy to get a drink at Tile Bar. Powers on the rocks.

-Stacy Szymaszek

4 Spring Notes from the Project

MARATHON 2016 THANK YOUS

The Poetry Project Staff would like to extend a very hearty THANK YOU to all those who donated their time, effort, energy, food, beverages, and books to help us raise nearly $23,000 at the 42nd Annual New Year’s Day Marathon Reading:

Volunteers: Jon Allen, Miriam Kelly, Linda Kleinbub, Zac Starkman, Sara Jane Stoner, Litmus, Nightboat, Noemi, Atkin, John Barclay-Morton, Kline, Davy Knittle, Carolyn Melissa Tolve, Sophie Tulip, Operating System, Post-Apollo Julia Barclay-Morton, Jennifer Kohli, Anna Kreienberg, John Viktorsha Uliyanova, Édgar Press, Pressed Wafer, Rescue, Bartlett, Rijard Bergeron, Kropka, Gabe Kruis, Lana Ulloa, Catherine Vail, Natalia Roof, Solid Objects, Susan Mills Marie-Helene Bertino, Katharine Povitz, Sue Landers, Lindsey Vargas-Caba, Ken Walker, Artist Books, Tender Buttons, Betteridge, Stephen Boyer, Leonard, Karen Lepri, Phoebe Shanxing Wang, Phyllis Wat, Ugly Duckling Presse, United Reynaldo Carrasco, Rob Lifton, Siddhartha Lokanandi, David Wilk, Laura Wilk, Matt Artists, Wave, Wonder, and Christiansen, John Coletti, Brendan Lorber, Diane Ludin, Winn, John Wurzler, Emily Ye sYe s B o o k s Lydia Cortes, Sophie Dahlin, Kim Lyons, Filip Marinovich, XYZ, and Don Yorty Fran DeMusz, Lori DeGolyer, Jillian McManemin, Tracey Audio: Julia Alsop, Jim Behrle, Elizabeth Devlin, Ted Dodson, McTague, Kathleen Miller, Food Donors: Brooklyn and John Priest Marcella Durand and Ismael, Carley & Malka Moore, Jake Brewery, Butter Lane, Caracas, Tasha Dwyer, Will Edmiston, Moreno, Jonathan Morrill, Dave David Bowler Wines, Luke’s Lights: Carol Mullins Mel Elberg, Carlos Estrada, Morse, Geoff Mottram, Michelle Lobsters, Gillian McCain, Otto’s Megan Ewing, Dia Felix, Munizaga, Jack Murray, Marc Tacos, Porto Rico Importing Video: Robert O’Haire Carolyn Ferrucci, Jess Fiorini, Nasdor, Elinor Nauen, KB Co., Bob Rosenthal and Don Cheryl Fish, Micaela Foley, Nemcosky, Laura Nicoll, Carol Yorty, S’MAC, Sobaya, Two Photography: Ted Roeder Dorothy Friedman August, Nissen, Adam O’Reilly, Lisa Boots Pizza, and Veselka. An Joanna Fuhrman, Andrew Ozag, Nikki Padula, Estefania additional huge thanks to Phil Marathon Banner: Zach Wollard Gayle, Hadley Gitto, Ariel Palacio, Maryam Parhizkar, Hartman of Two Boots Pizza for Goldberg, Nada Gordon, Alex Penagos, Jeff Perkins, expertly coordinating the food Marathon Guest Hosts: Elinor Stephanie Gray, Ezra Green, Trace Peterson, Wanda Phipps, donations! Nauen, Christopher Stackhouse, John S. Hall, Phil Hartman, Nina Puro, Evelyn Reilly, Diana Todd Colby, Morgan Parker, Marissa Havers, Linda Hayes, Rickard, Sam Robison, Bob Book Donors: Argos Books, John S Hall, and Ariel Goldberg Dan Heffernan, Megan Heise, Rosenthal, Alan Roth, Douglas Augury, Belladonna*, Black Charlotte Henriksen, Michael Rothschild, Hailey Rozenberg, Ocean, BookThug, Brooklyn Honigberg & Brownie, Jeremy Judah Rubin, Mariana Ruiz, Arts, Burning Deck, Chax, Hovenaar, Kim Howie, Erica Elizabeth Sanzari, Sarah Sarai, City Lights, Coffee House Hunt, Peter Bogart Johnson, David Satkowski, Pali Sharwani, Press, Commune Editions, KB Jones, Adeena Karasick & Erkinaz Shuminov, Nathaniel Cultural Society, Cuneiform, Safia Southey Karasick, erica Siegel, Marlan Sigelman, Mike Edge, Fewer & Further Press, kaufman, kelly kelly, Christine Smith, Robert Spees, Meredith Futurepoem, Letter Machine,

WORKSHOP SCHOLARSHIPS FOUNDATION FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS POETRY RECIPIENT

In order to make The Poetry Project’s Workshops more accessible FCA announced Renee Gladman astheir latest recipient in poetry! to interested writers, we are happy to announce that we are now Advisors to the foundation were Tan Lin and Ed Friedman. offering full scholarships. You can visit our site at http://www. The amount of the award has increased to $40,000. poetryproject.org/events/category/workshops/ or email us at info@ poetryproject.org to see the schedule of Spring Workshops and Master Classes as well as learn more about eligibility and the application process.

2016 5 Notes from the Project

2015-16 EMERGE-SURFACE-BE FELLOWS In this third year of the Emerge – Surface – Be Fellowship, we were thrilled and honored to have received 120 applications. The range and depth of these applications illuminated how exciting this moment is for poetry in New York City, and reaffirmed our commitment to supporting its emerging poets. Choosing three fellows and six finalists was an extremely challenging task for our mentors, but they did it! In late November, it was our privilege to announce the 2015-2016 Emerge – Surface – Be Fellows, and we are printing it here for those who don’t receive our weekly emails.

The Emerge – Surface – Be finalists are Marina Blitshteyn, Alex Cuff, Julia Guez, Andriniki Mattis, Ramya Raja Ramana, and Amber Atiya. Congratulations to everyone! Fellows receive 9 months of one to one mentorship, a featured reading at the Project, publication in The Recluse, free Project workshops, and a $2,500 award. Emerge – Surface – Be is supported with funds from the Jerome Foundation.

t’ai freedom ford Nicole Sealey Édgar J. Ulloa will be working with Tan Lin. will be working with Lee Ann Brown. will be working with Tracie Morris.

t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high Born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Édgar J. Ulloa is a transdisciplinary artist school English teacher, Cave Canem Fellow, Apopka, Florida, Nicole Sealey is a Cave and post-transborder poet from Ciudad and Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poetry Canem graduate fellow and the recipient Juárez, México. He maintains a blog has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken of an Elizabeth George Foundation (mijuaritos.wordpress.com) of aural, visual, Boat, Tupelo Quarterly, Winter Tangerine, Grant. She is the author of The Animal virtual and performance poetry that The African American Review, Vinyl, After Whom Other Animals Are Named, serves as a border trauma and memory Muzzle, Poetry and others. Her work has winner of the 2015 Drinking Gourd reflection of his native city when it was also been featured in several anthologies Chapbook Poetry Prize, forthcoming one of the most dangerous in the world including The BreakBeat Poets: New from Northwestern University Press. Her according to the media. In his work, he American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. In other honors include the Stanley Kunitz emerges as an explorer, producer of the 2014, she was the winner of The Feminist Memorial Prize from The American Poetry aesthetic-historical, word-sign, word- Wire’s inaugural poetry contest judged Review, a Daniel Varoujan Award and the symbol. He feels compelled to speak out by Evie Shockley. She is currently a 2015 Poetry International Prize. Her work has through poetic performance action. His Center for Fiction Fellow and the winner of appeared in Best New Poets, Copper Nickel, performances negotiate imperialist border the 2015 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize. Ploughshares, Third Coast and elsewhere. politics, cultural memory, trauma and Her first poetry collection, how to get over Nicole holds an MLA in Africana Studies violence in addition to instigating audience is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. t’ai from the University of South Florida and and public participation. Ulloa earned his lives and loves in Brooklyn, but hangs out an MFA in creative writing from New York undergraduate degree in Language and digitally at: shesaidword.com. University. She is the Programs Director at Literature in Texas, and his master’s degree Cave Canem Foundation. in Creative Writing in New York City.

6 Spring Spring Workshops

Activities in Poetry (“Laura, my love”) Chronology of Mind : Workshop with Barbara Henning Workshop with Matt Longabucco 10 Sessions | Saturdays, 2-4PM | Begins 2/6 5 Sessions | Thursdays, 7-9PM | Begins 2/4 Location: City Lore (56 E. 1st St., New York, NY 10003) Location: City Lore (56 E. 1st St., New York, NY 10003) Over the years, I’ve developed a long list of approaches and “Our visceral realist activities after Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano experiments that have helped me generate poems (and novels) and left: automatic writing, exquisite corpses, solo performances with also helped me think differently. Most of these experiments (or no spectators, contraintes, two-handed writing, three-handed constraints) engage autobiographical material (the self extending writing, masturbatory writing (we wrote with the right hand and into the world) while at the same time disrupting or redirecting an masturbated with the left, or vice versa if we were left-handed), easy chronology. Some of the assignments will include: walking/ madrigals, poem-novels, sonnets always ending with the same writing meditation, sequential quilting, prose sestinas, research/ word, three-word messages written on walls (“This is it”, “Laura, layering, a line an hour, thinking the opposite, etc. The class will my love,” etc), outrageous diaries, mail-poetry, projective verse, function as a workshop; we will read and discuss your writing. We conversational poetry, antipoetry, Brazilian concrete poetry will also spend part of the time considering writing by others, such (written in Portuguese cribbed from the dictionary), poems in as: Matsuo Basho, Harry Mathews, Jack Kerouac, Harryette Mullen, hard-boiled prose (detective stories told with great economy, the William Carlos Williams, Hélène Cixous, Bill Kushner, Bernadette last verse revealing the solution or not), parables, fables, theater Mayer, and Ed Sanders. of the absurd, pop art, haikus, epigrams..., desperado poetry (Western ballads), Georgian poetry, poetry of experience, beat Barbara Henning is the author of three novels and seven poetry, apocryphal poems..., lettrist poetry, calligrams, electric collections of poetry, her most recent is A Day Like Today poetry..., bloody poetry (three deaths at least), pornographic (Negative Capability Press, 2015). Others include A Swift Passage poetry (heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, with no relation (Quale Press), Cities and Memory (Chax Press) and a collection to the poet’s personal preference)... We even put out a magazine... of object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United Artists). She is the We kept moving... We kept moving... We did what we could... But editor of Looking Up Harryette Mullen and The Collected Prose of nothing turned out right.” Bobbie Louise Hawkins. Barbara lives in New York City and teaches for writers.com and Long Island University in Brooklyn. This description of an ecstatic, desperate, thwarted workshop from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives always beckons, since it’s Prose, Prose!: Workshop with Rachel Levitsky when ecstatic, desperate, and thwarted that, in my experience, the 5 Sessions | Tuesdays, 7-9PM | Begins 3/1 best poems come to be. I immediately want to try out all these Location: City Lore (56 E. 1st St., New York, NY 10003) “activities” even while wondering about that enigmatic missing element this besotted parable insists upon. In our workshop, For this short workshop at the POETry Project, I invite poets and we’ll try to mark the widest possible number of perceptions and others to consider (and write) the sentence, consider (and write) practices as poetry, write fragments and exhaustive inventories, sentences and consider (and write) sentence fragments as a manner ransack books and rack our brains for assignments (and give them of torqueing the already imaginable into the as yet unimagined. We to each other), and also see what happens when we come to the will variously look at pronouns (Can I be a she?), at the place of the inevitable end of assignments and strategies— what then? We will subject, and at the challenge of completing a thought within the read some inspiring/unsettling/wild new poetry, and take some confines of the English sentence and under the assault of techno- time to talk about urgent calls in contemporary poetics to re- global capitalism. I’ll make a packet that will include, at the very interrogate the premises of whatever “activities” we might decide least: Gail Scott, Renee Gladman, Kamau Braithwaite, Bhanu Kapil, to undertake (recent writings by Cathy Park Hong, Dawn Lundy Édouard Glissant, Gertrude Stein, and Henry James. We’ll all come Martin, and Anne Boyer are a great place to start). Promise to up with our own mongrel formal interventions, then sing them to share our antipoems and other necessary creations as we go. each other with the help of each other.

Matt Longabucco is the author of the chapbooks The Sober Day Rachel Levitsky is writing a memoir through the lens of what’s (DoubleCross Press, forthcoming) and Everybody Suffers: The between Julie Christie and Warren Beatty on screen in Shampoo Selected Poems of Juan García Madero (O’Clock Press, 2014), and and McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Her last book was The Story of My a former curator at the Poetry Project. He teaches at New York Accident is Ours (Futurepoem, 2013). She is a member and was a University and Bard College, and lives in Brooklyn. founder of the Belladonna* Collaborative and she teaches in the Pratt MFA in Writing.

2016 7 Interview Jesus hung with the tough guys till they bled/ good and sealed him On November 27, 2015, Patricia Spears Jones and I met in my apartment to discuss the in some big tomb/ Known locally poems in her recently published book, A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems (White Pine as the Sepulcher. It was the drunk Press). Later the interview was clipped, edited and slightly revised. These poems reflect tank. upon Patricia’s life and the life of her contemporaries; they are lyrical, narrative, historical, PSJ: I wanted to bring him sometimes prophetic, sometimes playful, but always insightful. down. Why is this guy hanging –Barbara Henning out with all these guys. Why Barbara Henning: “Wearing I wanted to portray the people in the late 80’s, there was a bar isn’t he lofty? He’s not lofty. My Red Silk Chinese Jacket” is I was in Sunday school with that used to be a slave exchange That’s what is really interesting the first poem in your New and as having these very powerful owned by Pierre Maspero in about Jesus as a figure– he is Selected and you wrote it in the rituals and having all this the 18th Century. Now it is both ordinary and a deity. The 70’s. dignity and being was very named Café Maspero. When I Romans thought of him as a present in that deep intensity. was there people were drinking major revolutionary which he Patricia Spears Jones: The red That’s what I come from. I did and partying without a sense kind of was. Then there is this silk Chinese jacket was one not see this in anyone else’s that they were standing where other figure, the Christ figure, of the most expensive things work other than Henry Dumas, human beings were traded. who says I am here to save you I bought early on. It is a pure especially when I talk about the from sin. This is a very young silk embroidered jacket and I children of darkness. PSJ: I’m not surprised. I person’s poem and I was being still have it. One day when I remember watching a TV show a little snarky then because I was wearing it as I was walking BH: In the second part of the when I was home a couple was young, maybe 26. through Chinatown, these two poem, you write: of years ago and one of the Chinese ladies came up to me white historians said that it was BH: Then the next section you and started touching the jacket. There are no dialectics when the great to be a white man in this write about this voluptuous They said, “Good, good.” In the spirit/ Rips open the heart of the country because you could own nude woman– “There she sits in poem I was trying to figure out Children of Darkness/ and takes all these people and nobody regal nudity...” what you bring to the city and them back through the sun to told you what to do or how to what the city gives to you as I home. get there because you were PSJ: I had gone to see the had come to the city from the “the guy.” I don’t understand Gauguin exhibition. There is South. The poem explores the PSJ: That’s where the African why people get surprised. If this famous painting of this ritual nature of Pentecostalism part comes in. That really is you have power you don’t want nude woman and his face is and how it remained with me. that moment where everybody to give it up. It is either going right under her crotch. I love I realize now that this poem is takes flight to somewhere else, to be taken from you or you the visual arts. I love painting about the great migration, but I a place of liberation, exhortation are going to negotiate. The and the Gauguin myth is came at the tail end of it. I came and exaltation, too. best description of privileged fascinating to me because he out of intellectual necessity and Americans in this country is runs off– leaves everybody in maybe a little bit of economic BH: Could you talk about the by F. Scott Fitzgerald when he Paris and runs off to the islands. necessity, too; I mean I just had “Ancestress in woodblock?” talks about the Buchanans and I was trying to undermine to get the fuck out of the south. says they are careless people. the romantic myth of finding PSJ: In a museum in New We are looking at a bunch of the exotic, finding oneself BH: In the first stanza, you Orleans I saw an actual slave careless people and that’s what through finding the exotic. talk about the Children of the block. I’d never seen one I’m writing about here. And it is kind of disgusting. Pentecost being like moles in before. It was tiny. They had That painting is both utterly the “city of shadows fleeing a lot of prints and some of BH: Your next section is about beautiful and utterly horrifying. light.” the auction advertisements. the mourning bench. They were devastating. I talk BH: You write: “I paint her PSJ: The spaces you are about that in the poem and PSJ: Yes, it’s about my naked because she needs only negotiating are often ominous also about my people coming departure from the Pentecostal skin/ I paint her naked because so I am trying to figure out up through South Carolina, church because I didn’t get she has beautiful breasts/ & how to talk about that. The through Georgia, Mississippi saved. I want them to know where other thing is that the shadows and Arkansas. I supped.” It seems also like are beautiful. It is not always BH: Then you retell the Jesus a celebration of the female terrible to go into the darkness. BH: When I was in New Orleans story in an utterly different way: body. At the same time, she is

8 Spring Barbara Henning & Patricia Spears Jones compared with the ancestress in woodblock, the woman at the PSJ: Writing this poem, I slave block. realized that I just love writing about music and I had a lot of PSJ: It is a celebration. It is also fun. Some of it is about my a way of Gauguin saying in his family, but also I talk about voice: This is how I can possess Billie Holiday. In my first book it... I wrote this a long time ago. there are three poems that I was trying to figure out where are called the “Billie Holiday I was. The Chinese jacket was Chronicles.” And this is the a great way of letting me enter first one. into a number of stories I was encountering in my pursuit of I wanted to talk about the post- knowledge about life, art and war period here. I think a lot of the connections. what we are still dealing with to this day is what happened in BH: In the last section you refer World War II in the middle of to the suffering of Africans the century. So many of us were in the American wilderness. born right after that. Whenever It seems as if you identify I think about how many people “Brother to Brother/ Sister to died around the world, millions Sister” but then you separate and millions of people, and yourself with the ending: “Tell whole cities were wiped out. me/ What has Jesus done for There had to be a whole lot of you?” trauma and at the same time there is this amazing amount PSJ: All these people have of energy that turned itself into gone through hell and yet rock and roll and rhythm and there is this faith. It is a blues. really legitimate question. Oddly enough after all these BH: You are following that years, I now go to church. My development of R&B across grandfather was a minister. My the country with Professor mother was deeply committed Longhair taking up the piano to the church. My sister is a and then you are off with the minister. We are also very Fender and shiny tuxedos and proud of being black Americans you are moving across the and participating in ways to country. You write about the Photo credit: Barbara Henning improve our situation in this walking wounded and the blues country. Everybody in my that come out of the wounding. about how fast it is. When family including me in one Really wonderful storytelling you are listening to early R&B PSJ: That’s the question behind way or another is an activist. embedded in these poems. and Count Basie, Count Basie the poem and then there is It is a question, not an answer. is pretty fast, but these guys Billie, the goddess diva over There are some things you can’t PSJ: I also got to play with coming out of Texas, they are it all, and she’s wounded, a answer, but you still need to the language a lot and I love much faster, the beat much wounded goddess. I grew up ask the question. the part where I bring in the harder. It is different. It is just with all these white women as beboppers. The orioles, the kind of amazing. the female figures— Marilyn BH: In the next poem, “The flamingos, all these bird names. Monroe— as the female Birth of Rhythm and Blues,” There is a real sense of flight BH: “What made these people, goddess. We were supposed to you write about your life and going on. When people are Southern mostly, Black look up to them and I thought the development of R&B. talking about bebop, they talk absolutely/ churn up rhythms Billie Holiday was equal to rich as currents in the Atlantic?”

2016 9 them. And I thought, how can children. Please lower your rifle./ guitar strips away/ one more story; bring some emotional energy I give her that level of elevation He did. the one about the man and the into a poem? How can I play and yet remain true to the fact woman/ the one about standing with language in an interesting that she was so wounded. PSJ: She is the heroine in at the bridge/ the one told on the way so that when I write about this story. All of this is true. mocking bird’s tongue/ in a voice something, it is both familiar BH: Very cool. The birth of I don’t write much about my that scrapes the geologic layers of and heightened at the same rhythm and blues through family, but I thought that this modern times/ as if it could reveal time? I use prompts, but mostly passion, suffering and ecstatic was extremely important and I the origins of the race. I pull out from experience and song. And then you have your wrote it to honor that situation, interests those things that my own birth at the end. “Uterine and how hard it is to be from I love the sounds. I love what work explores. wall collapsing,/ so they cut my Arkansas. The black experience I do with the instrumentation mother’s belly and drag me out/ there is something that is rarely and I love that it is a lot BH: “The Village Sparkles” wailing to.” So you have this discussed. Some of the worst about disruption. And the is a later poem and it has a wailing and the music, part of massacres and some of the consequences. completely different tone with a the pain and the release and... worst lynchings all took place playful use of language. in the Delta where I grew up. BH: And then in the end you PSJ: And the connection... It is Most of the state is white and pull the reader back into your PSJ: This was fun. I remember 1951 in Arkansas and I was two very middle class. The Delta is room with your music and a German woman I met at or three weeks early, a preemie, where the cotton plantations “the slithering line from ear to Squaw Valley who wrote poems and my mother had already had were. heart,/ then back to the clock in English but was always two or three miscarriages. She against the wall.” capitalizing the nouns in her was 32 and I was the first live BH: The next poem is “New poems. Why are you doing birth. Blues.” I wanted to watch the Most of the poems we have just that? I asked. That’s what movie that you mention, but I discussed were written early. they do in German, she said. I BH: I guess we are all born of didn’t have time. Can you talk about how you wrote this poem after I came and through our time and place wrote them? What was your back from a church service and this is your story. PSJ: It is one of the funniest process? Did you do research? with Susan Wheeler. It was a movies. Very strange. “New beautiful day... It was one of PSJ: “Glad All Over” was Blues” is fun. I wanted to PSJ: They were written between these days when someone could written in the early 80’s. celebrate Robert Cray because 1975 and 1990. I just typed have been singing, “It’s raining “Glad All Over” is a song I have a big crush on him and them on the typewriter. Many men.” There were all these guys by the Dave Clark Five. The he really does have this blues of them went through many on the street, and they all were sixties were so strange in number where he wants his revisions. I wrote the Holiday all handsome, probably gay, but this way, this exuberance of girlfriend to move out. I was chronicles when I was in my that didn’t matter. It was just youth and what we could do working on my MFA at that MFA program. I am a curious, beautiful and it was funny. as young people. This poem time so there is all this stuff educated person. For instance I I was just having so much fun chronicles what happened in my about avoiding reading critical did not look up the movie, Birth with this poem. It is all about hometown when the civil rights theory and the academic of the Blues for “New Blues.” I language but it is also about marches took place. Literally critiques of the blues and the saw it on TV a thousand years desire. my neighbors were jailed and way people deal with it and the ago. It is absolutely bizarre. released. No one was killed, way in which American culture From remembering it, I got BH: Why Julia Roberts? “In thank god. The Klan chased feeds on itself and how strange the idea of Eddie “Rochester” America, who knows what is them. My family and other the recipe can be. What I really Anderson” taking a broom important / Julia Roberts or families just sat and waited. We wanted to talk about was how and using it as a bayonet. He Vagina or Julia Roberts and were prepared and this is one of the blues had changed. I also must have had an extraordinary Vagina.” the reasons I have no problem loved playing with the language amount of anger about being with black folks owning guns. in this poem. The last two put into these roles. PSJ: Because she was around They should be legal, and they stanzas I think are some of my that’s all. Her picture was should be able to keep them in best writing. BH: Do you use any language everywhere. Why not? Also she their homes. experiments when you are has a huge mouth... When the last train whistle rasps, writing? BH: and only the jet’s sonic boom/ BH: Then there is another I see my mother, who until that dazzles, will the drum kit slit the PSJ: I’m a lyric poet for the longer poem, “Saltimbanque...” day could not say shit,/ go up to air and the saxophone/ most part. So the issue for one of the troopers and politely, bends down so low/ someone me is what kind of ideas am PSJ: Let me talk about this quietly demand:/ “Sir, see these checks their back pockets as the I thinking about. How can I one briefly. When I went to

10 Spring the Virginia Center for Creative outlawed working with animals floor dust./ His tears roll away BH: Some of your later poems Arts the first time, I had and performing children. A holy laughter. saltimbanque/ in a in this collection are more been working as the Director significant number of them moment of am zinging tenderness riddle-like in their effect and of Development at the New starved to death including the and pure rage/ Under the paving with more humor. Museum. When Toni Cade animals they worked with. All stones, the beach. Bambara died at the age of of this was done because they PSJ: Yes, they are very, very 56, this was astounding to me. were street performers and BH: Why do you call this next different. I got sharper. You When I saw the headlines, I their songs were not sanctioned poem “Failed Ghazal?” picked out a lot of narrative woke up and said, “I have to by the state. poems. There are many others. quit my job.” It was the most PSJ: I call it failed because I do not think of myself as a prestigious, the best paying BH: You also have an image in it’s not a correct ghazal. They narrative poet. The later poems job I ever had or I ever will this poem of the Saigon monk are couplets, but that’s it. It is are often meditative or lyric or have. I called Marcia Tucker burning himself as a protest an elegy for my friend Peter some combination. the next morning and said I against the Vietnam War. Dee. I like that it is about the have to resign. I have to work generosity of friendship. I think BH: I picked out the ones that on my poems. Three months PSJ: I remember that picture. one of the jobs of poets is to be seemed most compelling. later, I left. In the meantime I Too bad we will only be able got the residency at VCCA for to include a few in the final the month of April. I got there What does it mean to restrain oneself? interview. And also I wanted to and slept for three days. I was How do you figure out how to undermine power? sample poems throughout the so worn out. When I woke book. What will the powerful do to you? up, I started reading things at random and there was this book PSJ: The poems in The Weather by T.J. Clarke, The Absolute That Kills and Femme du Bourgeois. That’s when I started It was in yellow and all the able to keep the names alive. Monde are more narrative while thinking about the position of other pictures were in black and the poems written since say artists. Also 1848 is fascinating white. Saffron robe. I literally BH: And you do that 2004–05 are tighter. I work to me because it’s that year can see through the black and throughout the book. As I with irony a lot more, I’m older where there were revolutions white. I think most people encountered people I didn’t and I don’t have to say as much and rebellions all throughout could. know through your dedications to say what I want to say. Europe and they were all put and mentions, I would Google down and they were harbingers BH: Like Whitman you are them and read whatever I could BH: Then there is a poem about of things to come. And there moving across the world. Then find. In a way you are keeping the George Hunt painting, were slave rebellions, many big Martin Luther King. them alive. “Love Come and Go.” I looked ones in the U.S. and probably in at his paintings online, but I South America although I don’t PSJ: I wanted to place King in PSJ: Thulani Davis said couldn’t find this particular one. know that history. Also, there jail, to show his deep humanity something to me many years was a French speaking artist in the face of oppression, but ago– we sing people into the PSJ: You can’t find it because there so I talked with her and also to show how he like those world and we sing them out of I own it. It’s hanging in my realized that Daumier was the performers was codified by the it. When horrible things happen, apartment. Mr. Hunt is a perfect figure. He was popular state. I mean Martin Luther people don’t run to prose, they Memphis painter. This is a piece and he was a famous artist, King got his ass kicked too, run to poetry because it has that is unusual for him. It has a but he had this whole cache in many horrible ways. But I that ability to connect powerful portrait of Memphis Minnie on of paintings he couldn’t show also wanted the position of emotions with ideas in one an OKEH record label with her because they would have just the clown, the saltimbanque, package. It can happen in prose, gold tooth and the words, “Love kicked his ass into jail. So this the performer to be revered— but when you really want to get come and go.” You will see it poem is about what it means that it is one of powerful ways down to it, it happens in poems. the next time you come to my to resist. What does it mean to to resist. Why else does the house. I was thinking about my restrain oneself? How do you state do so much to regulate BH: Patricia, at times your aunts in Memphis and store- figure out how to undermine “entertainment?” We have to voice is almost prophetic, like bought dresses... I love “crepe power? What will the powerful put on another face so we can Whitman or Césaire. de chine.” It’s a heavyweight do to you? The saltimbanques continue when we leave the fabric from the 40’s. You can were the street performers, jailhouse behind. I wanted to PSJ: I am the granddaughter of read that as crepe de chine or whole families with animals, give him that. a Pentecostal minister. I want crepe de Shine. monkeys, etc... and the French big. I don’t want little. Even my are such great bureaucrats. They Clown face turned towards jail- small poems, to me, are big. Sitting pretty and strumming the

2016 11 glory/ Out of the gutbucket set of don’t think so.” Given my age, ridiculously intellectual, for me. had some kind of position in bulky string/ And a girl’s memory and the fact that I had been Here I am reading something this world. My laundromat is my of love come and gone. looking even before the layoff, thousands of years old, and Zen experience. It allows me to and having a difficult time I identify with the Pakistani merge different times, different I had a lot of fun with this. getting people even to respond guy because he’s working so ways that women operate in In the introduction to this to my resume, I knew that hard... But all those women are this world, and I am there as book, Mary Baine Campbell wasn’t going to happen. workers too. They can’t do this participant-observer. These comments on my practice as to their husbands. little dramas take place and I a sustained ekphrasis– that It was horrible. Everybody I am of it and not of it. my work is in conversation knew had someone who had BH: You write: with all kinds of art and I have lost work in their family or BH: Let me read the last few been doing that from the very been cut back or didn’t get the He’s a foil/ for their husbands, lines. beginning. raise they should have gotten. supervisors, bad news boyfriends, I’m very proud of the work I did sons-in-law, sons/ who roil their Not one of us will jump into the BH: “Family Ties.” I remember in Living in the Love Economy lives in small ways and large floating wine cup pond, but it is when you lost your job and because those poems also pleasing/ to know that one existed you were going through track not only me, but also There are layers of narrative centuries before at a town’s fringe. this financial insecurity. my neighbors. I’m living on a going on here, the story of the Those centuries old breezes from Often people hide these street where I’m watching all pond, the story of the woman China brush my neck/ as we stand circumstances. What I kinds of folks really struggling reading, and the story of the here folding clean underwear/ & appreciate about the poem is to keep their homes and keep conflict between the Pakistani worrying about what to make for that it is straight-on honest themselves. man and the woman. You bring dinner. and immediate, addressing the them all together. condition that many poets face. BH: “The Fringe of Town” is That’s great. another neighborhood poem, PSJ: We are talking about PSJ: I was working for a big about a laundromat and the New Yorkers here. Anything PSJ: If you are a single woman non-profit for about ten years. Pakistani manager and his that has anything to do with in this city and you are doing I knew something was coming relationships with a group of the natural world has a sort of this stuff and see all these down the pipe because the way women in the laundromat, one complication and those ladies in people with their family stuff the financial press was starting who is ordering him around. As the laundromat would not take and these people have tons of to talk about loans. This is a this is going on, you are reading to the Floating Wine Cup Pond, clothing which is why they can year before the crash. Then about 7th-century Chinese but there are these women from yell at the Pakistani man. Also the next year all hell broke court women poets, one who is centuries past who went on the you have to figure out, “Where loose and I was in the first a princess with a Floating Wine road as performers of these am I? I see them. Do they see round of people laid off. People Cup Pond. poems and other women went me?” kept saying, “Oh you’ll find into convents. At this point of something else.” And I said, “I PSJ: “The Fringe of Town” is time, in China, women of letters BH: In your poem “Back to

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12 Spring School,” there is a community always think of him as deeply we are now? Because there is Emerge – Surface – Be. She is of people and your poems bring rooted and utterly estranged at a hell of a lot of carelessness in contributing editor to BOMB all this together. You are in the the same time. When you read this world right now, there’s a Magazine and is a senior fellow laundromat or here on the street his poems although everyone hell of a lot of anger, a hell of a at Black Earth Institute, where with the children, mothers, says they are so surreal, there lot of ugliness and brutality and she edited “Thirty Days Hath fathers, and all. “A vibration are all these things in his I am sick and tired of it. September” in 2012 and the hums this short street like poems that are just very clear recent issue of About Place blood pulsing through/ healthy and rooted in the real world and BH: I agree. I love the way Journal entitled “The Future veins: constant, predictable, lived experience and then there this poem comes back to the Imagined Differently.” This year mysterious.” is this stuff that is just wacko. I blues: “And the blues is always she was awarded a Money for think that he understood.. and Bountiful.” Women/The Barbara Deming PSJ: The last poem in the I think sometimes to be a poet Fund and in the past she has book is “The Land of Fog and is to be like that... to be very PSJ: Yes, that’s how it comes received NEA and NYFA grants Poetry.” This is the first fully much connected to this planet, around to “Wearing my Red and awards from Foundation for realized poem I wrote after walking on this earth, but also Silk Chinese Jacket” in the Contemporary Art and the New my mother died. I went to the being connected to the cosmos. sense that the questions in York Community Trust. She Cloisters for solace and came that poem are in some ways teaches for CUNY. home with these scenes in my BH: And that’s what you mean being answered years hence in head. In an odd way I think of by “cracked sage of/ Fog and understanding that the blues Barbara Henning is the author it as a companion to “Wearing poetry.” is bountiful, that if we live of three novels and seven My Chinese Red Silk Jacket.” long enough and care deeply collections of poetry. Her I’m not sure why, but I do. I just PSJ: Yes, that there is this enough, you will feel it, you will most recent is a collection watched that little girl walking wisdom but it is a wisdom that understand it and you will be of poems, A Day Like Today away and her mother kept has been extracted from a great grateful for it. (Negative Capability Press, trying to get her to do things deal of pain, I think. A lot of us 2015). Others include A Swift but she just wouldn’t. go through a great deal of pain Patricia Spears Jones is a Passage (Quale Press), Cities before we can get to the point Brooklyn-based African and Memory (Chax Press) and a BH: I think when you are in where we can write anything American poet/cultural activist collection of object-sonnets, My grief, you see things differently. that is going to explore or and author of A Lucent Fire: Autobiography (United Artists). amplify or deepen our humanity New and Selected Poems She is the editor of Looking PSJ: You do. You can say it in a and our connection. So whether from White Pine Press and Up Harryette Mullen and The way that you may not when you you are deeply invested in seven other collections and Collected Prose of Bobbie are not grieving. At some point gender or race or anything. I chapbooks. She curates WORDS Louise Hawkins. Barbara lives you don’t care if it is pretty or mean all of this stuff is really SUNDAY, a literary salon in New York City and teaches correct, you know on some important but at the end of the in Brooklyn and is a former for writers.com and Long Island very visceral level you know it day, how does it make us wiser Program Coordinator for The University in Brooklyn. is right. For some reason Bob and bigger and more loving and Poetry Project and served as Kaufman was the key to that. I caring and more careful than a Mentor for the first year of TRIPWIRE: a journal of poetics

#9 (Transnational/Translational) #10 CAConrad Special Feature #11 ¡Pop! Featuring writers such as CAConrad, Anne Boyer, Frank Sherlock, Angélica Freitas, Allison Cobb, Marianne Morris, TC Tolbert, Bruce Boone, Kim Rosenfield, Juliana Spahr, Danielle LaFrance, Cesar Moro, Ko Ko Thett, Douglas Kearney, Kate Durbin & Kevin Killian, Ye Mimi, Paolo Javier, Lila Matsumoto & Samantha Walton, Nibia Pastrana Santiago, Frances Kruk, Dawn Lundy Martin, K. Silem Mohammad, Edwin Torres, Mae Yway, R. Zamora Linmark, Angelo Suarez, Nyein Way, Nachoem Wjinberg, Juliette Cheung, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Grzegorz Wróblewski, Ulrich Haarbürste, Don Mee Choi, Mette Moestrup, Ida Borjel, Jules Boykoff, Divya Victor, Sean Bonney, Jen Hofer & Virginia Lucas, Lisa Robertson & Jessica Pujol Duran, Arash Allahverdi, Hugo García Manríquez, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Lasana M. Sekou, Miyó Vestrini, Forugh Farrokhzad, Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Shahrnush Parsipur, Víctor Valera Mora, Clemente Soto Velez & art, reviews, & much more... spdbooks.org tripwirejournal.com

2016 13 Art: Oasa DuVerney

Sikhs Do Not Equal The Taliban from The Illustrated Guide To Not Being So Fucking Racist Oasa DuVerney, 2011, graphite on paper, 20.25 x 13.25 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

14 Spring About the artists: Cover art by Steffani Jemison

Oasa DuVerney is a mother, artist and native New Yorker. It has been suggested that faith and luck are fundamentally incommensurate: for a believer, it is not luck, but rather grace, Selected exhibitions include: Thanks For Writing, 601 Artspace, that guides. But what about politics and luck? How do we orient NYC (2014); Crossing the Line, Mixed Greens Gallery, NYC (2013); ourselves in a political context that lacks a viable, enduring concept Through A Glass Darkly, Postmasters Gallery, NYC (2012); and of progress? A context in which change is accidental and arbitrary Planet of Slums, Mason Gross Galleries, Rutgers University (2010). and meaning seems incidental, redundant, or even absent?

Awards include: the Smack Mellon Studio Artist Residency (2014- My recent work explores the tension between improvisation, 2015); LMCC Workspace program residency (2012-2013), a grant repetition, and fugitivity. It is concerned with the ways that we from the Brooklyn Arts Council (2011), a grant award from the make sense of the matter of our lives– the values (this matters) Citizens Committee For NYC (2010, 2013), Aljra Emerge Fellowship, and the raw materials; the episodes, the contingencies, and the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art (2007). accidents.

Publications include: The Guardian UK, 2015, The New York Times Most of the works in this exhibition employ acetate as medium, (2012, 2011), and the New York Daily News (2010). glazing, or support for inkjet photographic prints. Several pieces are part of a larger body of work with a specific source of She received her B.F.A. from FIT, SUNY and her M.F.A. from inspiration: A few years ago, a newspaper reported that Chicago Hunter College, CUNY. public school student Derrion Albert had copied a poem called “Affirmations for Living” and posted it where he could view it while doing homework. The text is written in the present conditional tense: each phrase begins, “If I could…”, and the final line triumphantly concludes, “If I could… and I can… so I WILL!” Albert was killed while walking home from school in September 2009.

JACK KEROUAC SCHOOL OF DISEMBODIED POETICS indra's net poetics SUMMER WRITING PROGRAM 8 June 12–July 9, 2016

co-arising & interconnectedness of the multiverse, safety net of community, the curses & blessings of social media, the wilderness of the archive, hive mind, decolonized mind, new Native American writing, grids, mappings, and migrations, labyrinths of communication and performance. Four-week convocation of poets, fiction writers, scholars, translators, performance artists, activists, Buddhist teachers, musicians, printers, and editors. Readings, lectures, letterpress printing, recording studio, collaboration, and meditation. Students from other institutions or degree programs may also elect to attend for undergraduate or graduate credit. All four weeks (or any combination of weeks) are open to any interested participant for noncredit.

Faculty & Guests include: JOY HARJO, LAIRD HUNT, EILEEN MYLES, WILL ALEXANDER, ANNE BOYER, CAConrad, RIKKI see more DUCORNET, LEWIS WARSH, J. MICHAEL MARTINEZ, THURSTON MOORE, naropa.edu/swp: PAULINE OLIVEROS, ROBERTO TEJADA, JULIE CARR, SRIKANTH REDDY, TC TOLBERT, RENEE GLADMAN, DANIELLE VOGEL, ORLANDO WHITE, SHERWIN BITSUI, GLORIA FRYM, MARGARET RANDALL, ELENI SIKELIANOS, DOROTHY WANG, JENA OSMAN, SIMONE WHITE, THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS, HEROES ARE GANG LEADERS COLLECTIVE, ANNE WALDMAN, AND OTHERS.

2016 15 Poetry

once upon a time at a grade school in flatbush

a large buckra come spit on da blouse to feed us beatles nana sew, black

wit he casio– yellow skin loop round, round submarine up da ass. like a stitch through

my buster brown song, never tell nan he shoes appall, poodle heimlich ma stomach

skirt appall, limbs coated wit seashell non-aquatic slay briny thumbs scrapin

he buckra fuss, shark lyric from my gums he buckra scale. how i gag like a dog

we know lennon wit pica, hear da whistle da enemy, know of twi as i choke

da strawberry foul baby skulls up & out & torch da field my throat

chant aman fey what dialect is this k’ana & it feel so what treason!

good to be conch da buckra ever-red carryin whale click grab da ancestors

large buckra in garnet by dey socket & bang velour fall out he tiny dey head

white seat, watch us togedda-- mouth notes only we hexin he self

& whale hear. aman & i laugh & laugh fey k’ana, da buckra jus f’dat

threaten to hang me on a coat rack

16 Spring Amber Atiya

my favorite things, julie andrews or coltrane?

black as in to be: sin worse than camel toe. snap if you remember beat street blasting sal soul christmas the year i interned at a soho gallery the year an exhibit of lewd-shaped latex sold out the year i brought succotash and neck bones for lunch the year black dudes in leather eight ball jackets lined up for art the year eating in the office was banned. when the bright copper kettles i prefer the supremes to coltrane and what? come for my black card. i fuck identity thieves. i’ll make more.

midnight, the ceiling

an irregular heartbeat of boys roughhousing the ceiling sings i’m falling to pieces in pre pubescent alto, the house quakes with despair the ceiling begs mercy, mercy my nig over mortal kombat, jax wins, the air velcro’d gray with mist, who sings, an owl-eyed boy his sadness tumbles over like a basket of green tomatoes, sweetness & jade rough housing for supremacy, i’m falling to pieces mercy seeded with midnight mist & youth the scent of tulips before they die

Amber Atiya is the author of the chapbook “the fierce bums of doo-wop” (Argos Books, 2014). A proud native Brooklynite, she is a member of a women’s writing group that will be celebrating 14 years next spring.

2016 17 Calendar of Events research. Stephens, author of The Poetics All events begin at 8pm unless otherwise noted. Admission $8/Students & Seniors $7/ of Information Overload: From Gertrude Members $5 or free. Visit poetryproject.org or call 212.674.0910 for more information. Stein to Conceptual Writing (University of The Poetry Project is wheelchair accessible with assistance and advance notice. Minnesota Press, 2015) will explore the development of Grenier’s drawing practice, MON 2/1 Swift Passage (Quale Press), Cities and and suggest ways in which the poems can FALL 2015 WORKSHOP READING Memory (Chax Press) and a collection of be viewed and interpreted. Participants of The Poetry Project’s Fall object-sonnets, My Autobiography (United 2015 writing workshops, led by Montana Artists). She is the editor of Looking Up Ray and Natalie Peart, r. erica doyle, and Harryette Mullen and The Collected Prose WED 2/17 Edmund Berrigan, will gather to read work of Bobbie Louise Hawkins. JAMES HANNAHAM & DAWN LUNDY MARTIN they produced. James Hannaham is the author of the novels Delicious Foods (Little, Brown, Ed Pavli ’s new books are Let’s Let That Ć 2015), a New York Times and Washington WED 2/3 Are Not Yet: Inferno (National Poetry Post Notable Book for 2015, and God ARIEL GOLDBERG & BISHAKH SOM Series, Fence Books, 2015) and ‘Who Can Says No (McSweeney’s, 2009), and has Ariel Goldberg’s first book of poetry, Afford to Improvise?’: James Baldwin and published stories in One Story, Fence, Story The Photographer, was published by Roof Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners Quarterly, BOMB, and one in Gigantic for Books in 2015. Their book-length essay, (Fordham University Press, 2015). Recent which he won a Pushcart Prize. The Estrangement Principle, is forthcoming works are Visiting Hours at the Color Line from Nightboat Books in June 2016. (National Poetry Series, Milkweed Editions, Dawn Lundy Martin is the author of three 2013), But Here Are Small Clear Refractions books of poetry, and three chapbooks. Of Bishakh Som’s work investigates the (Achebe Center, 2009, Kwani Trust, 2013) her latest collection, Life in a Box is a Pretty intersection between image and text, and Winners Have Yet to be Announced: Life (Nightboat Books, 2015), Fred Moten figure and architecture, architecture A Song for Donny Hathaway (University of says, “Imagine Holiday singing a blind and landscape. Bishakh’s comics have Georgia Press, 2008). previously appeared in Buzzfeed, Hi-horse, alley, or Brooks pricing hardpack dandelion, and then we’re seized and thrown into the Blurred Vision, Pood, the academic journal FRI 2/12 Specs, The Brooklyn Rail, Volume 3 of festival of detonation we hope we’ve been JENNIFER FALU & LARA MIMOSA MONTES waiting for.” Martin is currently working on the much-lauded Graphic Canon series Jennifer Falu recently won first place in a hybrid memoir, a tiny bit of which appears and most recently in Little Nemo: Dream NBC-TV’s Amiri Baraka Poetry Slam and as the essay, “The Long Road to Angela Another Dream, the oversized tribute was ranked third internationally in the 2014 Davis’s Library,” published in the The New anthology to Winsor McCay. Their most Women of the World Poetry Slam. She has Yorker in December 2014. recent book is The Prefab Bathroom: been a member of the 2006, 2009 and 2012 An Architectural History, published by Nuyorican Poets Cafe Slam Teams, won the McFarland Press. national Women of the World Poetry Slam WED 2/24 in 2006, and ranked 3rd in the WOWPS in LAUNCH OF DEAREST ANNIE, YOU WANTED MON 2/8 both 2009 and 2012. A REPORT ON BERKSON’S CLASS... The collected letters of Frances LeFevre CATHY EISENHOWER & WENDY XU Waldman, edited by Lisa Birman with Cathy Eisenhower is the author of distance Lara Mimosa Montes’ work has appeared an introduction by Bill Berkson and decay (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015), in Fence, Triple Canopy, BOMB, Poor an afterword by Anne Waldman, is an Language of the Dog-heads (Phylum, 2001), Claudia, and elsewhere. Currently, she is a engaging, at times hilarious, elegant romp clearing without reversal (Edge, 2008), and Ph.D. candidate in English at The Graduate covering Frances’ time in Bill Berkson’s would with and (Roof, 2009). She is co- Center, City University of New York. She workshop at the New School with Hannah translating the selected poems of Argentine also teaches poetry at the Minneapolis Weiner, Bernadette Mayer, Peter Schjeldahl, poet Diana Bellessi and co-curated the In College of Art and Design. Her first book, and Michael Brownstein. With readings by Your Ear Reading Series for several years. The Somnambulist, is forthcoming from Bob Hershon, Lisa Birman, Lewis Warsh, Horse Less Press. Wendy Xu is the author of You Are Not Michael Brownstein, Charles North, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett, Alisa Sikelianos, Dead (Cleveland State University Poetry This reading is a co-presentation with Anne Waldman, Ambrose Bye & Devin Center, 2013) and Naturalism (Brooklyn Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Arts Press, 2015). Her writing has appeared Waldman. in The Best American Poetry, Boston MON 2/15 FRI 2/26 Review, Poetry, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. HOW TO READ 20,000 DRAWING POEMS BY In 2014 she was awarded a Ruth Lilly AMELIA BANDE & DEVIN KENNY ROBERT GRENIER Amelia Bande is a writer. She works in Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Since 1989, Robert Grenier has rejected performance, theater, film. Her plays typography as a medium for his poetry, ‘Chueca’ and ‘Partir y Renunciar’ were WED 2/10 and has written exclusively by hand. His staged and published in Santiago, Chile. BARBARA HENNING & ED PAVLIĆ color drawing poems test the limits of She is part of the Gels Collective and is Barbara Henning is the author of three conventional legibility, and have been co-founder of Publishing Puppies. Her work, novels and seven collections of poetry, her difficult for readers to access. In this slide solo and collaborative, has recently been most recent is A Day Like Today (Negative lecture, Paul Stephens will offer a historical shown at MIX NYC, 41 Cooper Gallery, Capability Press, 2015). Others include A overview based on extensive archival

18 Spring The Shandaken Project at Storm King Arts and a collection of interviews, Archive in Durham, NC, where he teaches in the Center, NewBridge Project in Newcastle, Theft (Essay Press, 2015). English Department at Duke University. Pratt Manhattan Gallery, KJCC at NYU, NGBK Berlin and Flutgraben Kunstfabrik FRI 3/4 Peter O’Leary is the author of four books Berlin. SVETLANA KITTO & NICOLE SEALEY of poetry. A new book, The Sampo, will Svetlana Kitto is an activist writer and be published in the spring by the Cultural Devin Kenny is an interdisciplinary oral historian in NYC. Her fiction, essays, Society. A new book of criticism, Thick and artist, writer, musician, and independent and journalism have been featured or are Dazzling Darkness: Religious Poetry in a curator. He relocated to New York to forthcoming in Salon, The Believer, VICE, Secular Age, is forthcoming from Columbia begin his studies at Cooper Union and Plenitude Magazine, OutHistory, Surface, University Press. He teaches at the School has since continued his practice through and the New York Observer, and the books of the Art Institute of Chicago and the the Bruce High Quality Foundation Occupy (Verso, 2012) and the Who, the University of Chicago, and with John University, Skowhegan School of Painting What and the Where (Chronicle, 2014). Tipton, runs Verge Books. and Sculpture, SOMA Mexico, and Svetlana is currently working on a novel collaborations with DADDY, pooool, Studio called Purvs, which means “swamp” in FRI 3/11 Workout, Temporary Agency and various Latvian and is the name of that country’s SABLE ELYSE SMITH & CAMEL COLLECTIVE art and music venues in New York City, first gay club. (ANTHONY GRAVES AND CARLA HERRERA- Chicago, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. PRATS) Nicole Sealey is a Cave Canem graduate Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary MON 2/29 fellow and the recipient of an Elizabeth artist, writer, and educator based in New JENNIFER NELSON & ARIEL RESNIKOFF George Foundation Grant. She is the author York. She has performed at the New Jennifer Nelson’s first book of poems, Aim of The Animal After Whom Other Animals Museum, Eyebeam, Queens Museum, NY; at the Centaur Stealing Your Wife, came Are Named, winner of the 2015 Drinking and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San out with Ugly Duckling Presse in December Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, forthcoming Francisco, CA. She is currently a selected 2015. She is a fellow of the Michigan from Northwestern University Press. Her participant in the New Museums Seminars: Society of Fellows and teaches in the art other honors include an Emerge - Surface - (Temporary) Collection of Ideas, on the history department at the University of Be Fellowship from the Poetry Project, the thematic PERSONA. Her work has been Michigan, Ann Arbor. Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The published in Radical Teacher, Studio American Poetry Review, a Daniel Varoujan Magazine and No Tofu Magazine and she is Ariel Resnikoff is the author of Between Award and the Poetry International Prize. currently working on her first book. Shades (Materialist Press, 2014) & the co- She is the Programs Director at Cave author of Ten Four: Poems, Translations, Canem Foundation. Anthony Graves and Carla Herrera-Prats Variations (The Operating System, 2015) have worked as Camel Collective since with Jerome Rothenberg. He is currently at MON 3/7 2005. They draw on narrative theater and work on a translation into English of Mikhl OPEN READING dramaturgy, combining them with research Likht’s Yiddish modernist long poem, Open readings have always been an integral into marginal histories, critical pedagogy, Protsesiyes (Processions), in collaboration part of The Poetry Project’s programming. and entertainment. Camel’s exhibitions and with Stephen Ross. They provide a time and space for writers performances have been presented at Casa of all levels of experience to test, fine tune, del Lago, Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros WED 3/2 and work out their writing and reading in Mexico City; the Trienal Poli/Gráfica de JULIE CARR & KRYSTAL LANGUELL styles in front of a supportive audience. San Juan Puerto, Puerto Rico; Overgaden Julie Carr is the author of six books Institut for Samtidskunst and Aarhus of poetry, most recently 100 Notes on Suggested reading time is approximately 3 Museum, in Denmark; and Artist’s Space, Violence (Ahsahta, 2010), RAG (Omnidawn, minutes. Sign-in at 7:45pm. Art in General, Exit Art, and MassMoCA, 2014), and Think Tank (Solid Objects, in the US. 2015). She is also the author of Surface WED 3/9 Tension: Ruptural Time and the Poetics of JOSEPH DONAHUE & PETER O’LEARY MON 3/14 Desire in Late Victorian Poetry (Dalkey Joseph Donahue is the author of seven GABRIEL KRUIS & ANDY STERLING Archive, 2013). A chapbook of prose, “The books of poetry, the most recent of which Gabriel Kruis’ work has been published Silence that Fills the Future,” was recently are Red Flash on a Black Field (Black Square or is forthcoming in Quadrant, the Atlas released as a free pdf from Essay Press: Editions), and Dark Church (Verge). A Review, Everyday Genius, & at Well http://www.essaypress.org/ep-19/. Objects book length suite of poems, Wind Maps, Greased Press. He is also a founder of from a Borrowed Confession (prose) is is forthcoming from Talisman in 2016. He Wendy’s Subway & runs the Shitluck forthcoming from Ahsahta press in 2016. lived for many years in NYC, and now lives Reading series at the Tip Top Bar & Grill.

Krystal Languell is the author of the books Call the Catastrophists (BlazeVox, 2011) and “HOW DO I GET A READING?” Gray Market (1913 Press, forthcoming 2016) and the chapbooks Last Song (dancing Participation in all series is by invitation from the series coordinator. It helps to be famil- girl press, 2014), Be a Dead Girl (Argos iar with the Project’s schedule and what the current series coordinators are interested in. Books, 2014), Fashion Blast Quarter (Flying While the series are curated, we are always CURIOUS. If you want to get our attention, Object, 2014), Diamonds in the Flesh, a mail your books and poems to the office at 131 E. 10th St. NY, NY 10003 or email us at collaboration with Robert Alan Wendeborn, [email protected]. Your email will be forwarded to the series coordinators. Coordi- (Double Cross Press, 2015), nator appointments change every two years to ensure diversity of perspective.

2016 19 CO-PRESENTED READING AT NUYORICAN gave him a 2015 Editor’s Prize. Paul has also Andy Sterling is a writer living in NYC and POETS CAFE 7PM, 236 East 3rd Street, NY, NY received fellowships & residencies from a member of Rob Fitterman’s Collective Adeena Karasick is a New York-based Kundiman, VONA, Poets House, Lambda Task ensemble. Notable publications include poet, performer, cultural theorist and Literary, Napa Valley, Home School Miami Mackey (bas-books, 2010), Supergroup media artist and the author of seven & The Vermont Studio Center. He’s the (Gauss PDF Editions, 2013) and Who Owns books of poetry and poetics. Writing first Asian American poet to represent Primos? (forthcoming). at the intersection of post-Language the Nuyorican Poets Cafe at the National Conceptualism and neo-Fluxus Poetry Slam in almost 20 years, placing 9th WED 3/16 performatics, her urban, Jewish feminist overall. Paul lives in NYC, where he works TALK: JACE CLAYTON: WHAT I UNDERSTAND mashups have been described as “electricity at NYU and coaches the Barnard/Columbia OF WHAT YOU WANT IS HOW YOU MOVE in language” (Nicole Brossard) and noted slam team. How to edit an audience? How can we, as for their “cross-fertilization of punning bad citizens, become even worse? How and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles WED 3/30 does the interaction between technology Bernstein) “a twined virtuosity of mind and CITY LIGHTS POCKET POETS: 60th and the crowd modulate our sense of ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost ANNIVERSARY possibility? Using illustrations from his in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” Lawrence Ferlinghetti launched City Lights work as a writer, DJ, and composer, and (Craig Dworkin). Recent publications are publishing house in 1955 with his own drawing on examples ranging from Billy This Poem (Talonbooks, 2012) and The Pictures of the Gone World. Number Joel and Beyoncé to Zulu digital currency Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall Four in the Pocket Poets Series, Allen manifestos, Jace Clayton will celebrate the McLuhan (NeoPoiesis Press, 2014). She Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, made end of community. Refreshments will not teaches Literature, Critical Theory at Pratt it legendary. Readings from the 60th be served. Institute and at St. John’s University in Anniversary Edition of City Lights Pocket New York and is co-founding Director of Poets Anthology include work from all Jace Clayton is an artist and writer based KlezKanada Poetry Festival and Retreat. sixty Pocket Poets numbers. With Ammiel in New York, also known for his work as DJ The “Adeena Karasick Archive” has just Alcalay, Jonathan Cohen, John Coletti, Mel /rupture. His book on 21st-century music been established at Special Collections, Elberg, Dia Felix, Stacy Szymaszek, and and global digital culture will be published Simon Fraser University. more TBA. in July 2016 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Paul Tran is the 10th ranked slam poet in FRI 3/25 the world. His Pushcart-nominated work ADEENA KARASICK & PAUL TRAN appears in Prairie Schooner, The Offing, The Cortland Review and RHINO, which

20 Spring Reviews Primitive State articulates the disconcerting, handful of known experiences other than the book and my Anselm Berrigan liminal space of shifting at semi-regular intervals,”(19) enthusiasm, for it/them, but I Edge Books, 2015 realities and not knowing or “The patter of claws as I had to share them with you. Review by Jess Mynes with generosity, in the form upload Brahms in the dark,”(31) In the short time I’ve owned of humor. Social or personal– to speculations, “Random this book I’ve re-read it a few “I’ll tell you anything, but I have most often directed at him– and boring, like the present times and each time I get stuck to warn you, I don’t consider indictments have a quixotic described as the future of re-reading line after line, it has anything to be much.”(59) In tenderness, “In the morning something else,”(61) to sage that kind of impenetrable logic. Primitive State Anselm Berrigan I’m asleep, in the evening I’m advice, “One infatuation may tells us more than anything, elite, in the afternoon I’m in drive you mad but dozens will he tells us everything we your average state of fleeting mellow you out.”(53) All and care to hear and a lot of what pain,”(29) or “No wait is worth each become equal measure, we haven’t heard before. He that hair on a cabbage head I’ve even if there’s no reward for The Devastation scrambles or distorts our point never seen before.”(8) our efforts, “I dedicate my life Melissa Buzzeo of reference just enough to to clearing away their psychic Nightboat Books, 2015 reconstitute it, while warning “I guess I let speech override debris and this is how they Review by Cornelia Barber us that it requires a new order memory and ideas, but what I repay me.”(8) of thinking, “I trained my really (think I) do is use speech When I first read Melissa instincts to turn away from the to bump into what I don’t know With shifting and re-shifting Buzzeo’s The Devastation I banal and discovered I could no and ask it for company.”(25) perspectives and registers almost sent it to my former longer order my sentence.”(3) Listening happens in real time there is a persistent sense of lover in the mail. But I really Everything comes to us in so we’re confronted with trying unknowing. We each make wanted to crawl to his house “Figures of speech,” that to make sense of information different choices that shape our on my hands and knees holding reconstitute and reconstruct as it is happening and to experiences in different ways. the book up to him, rabid in my our reality when we’ve navigate it accordingly. To be These choices inevitably leave vulnerability, in my heart-tears, assumed, “All the regal pre- comfortable with unknowns us outside or in the margins of in my invaluable desire to give conditions will be there.”(10) and to understand that the solid other experiences, “Thankfully him something, an object, to Those pre-conditions do not ground perspective (memory) my co-readers rallied to me, concretize the end, Dido’s body exist in Primitive State, whose or formal thought (ideas) offer so that I might not feel as if on the pyre, a sacrifice and pre-conditions are more aligned us is a luxury. A luxury that is facing the other way in the love-object. Someone always with the sentiment of X’s a fiction with, “Constants on foxhole.”(44) No one can fully leaves, or breaks, or can’t do it, beautiful song title, “The World the take,”(48). No amount of participate in every reality; even or dies. Then there is space, to is a Mess, It’s in My Kiss.” forethought or presumption can in his or her own everyday, mourn, to fill, to get to know, be assumed to keep up with he or she is often a stranger, to write. Buzzeo’s book seemed If truth is stranger than fiction, the velocity of reality. Trying to “All the stuffed animals in to respond to the questions Primitive State is telling the construct a sense of reality in the room staring at me.”(6). around what it meant to be left truth. There are lines that real time leads to bewilderment Being left out of some realities to gnaw on all the words and necessitate re-reading because and sometimes even, revelation, gives us freedom, freedom images from our time together. of their blunt accuracy, “We “Later, when the day’s typical to observe the goings-on and How does one say The lost the war by starting snatches of surrealist waste offer perspective, “I accept Devastation/ When it no longer it,”(62) or startling personal had wimpered out of existence, your point of loneliness as one is/ When I am not waiting for you revelation, “There is always (I all trick plays were stripped of many underlying levels of writing for you/ When we/ are not/ hate myself and want to live) and renamed tendency existence to draw upon,”(66) or intact. some overlap.”(74) Berrigan breakers.”(63) invite the perspective of others, uses shifting and alternating “I’m only, frankly speaking or In The Devastation the perspectives and expressions Because reality is a series of whatever, interested in the fuck distinctions between love and to accentuate the mutability mutable individual experiences, up’s opinion.”(36) language, loss and creative of logic and the truth of its benchmarks, such as vulnerability are always making experience. Experience is both personal identity, mean not only There are many lines in each other more complex. deeply personal and similarly several things for one person, Primitive State that I love “When I am not waiting for you abstract, “When you allow but several very different things fiercely because they don’t writing for you.” The lover is yourself to feel other people’s for different persons, “This fit anywhere else, “Voracious no longer waiting, the writer no desires reality stops being bloated distortion of personality stucco zoot moose youth longer writing for the beloved, based on tangibility.”(51) circled us, cut ups of cut ups with fashionable egret siring the event has passed, and yet In this welter, experience is in its briefcase, on occasional charm,”(34) or “…occupying there remains a “we” to negate. deeply felt and deeply personal manic release.”(18) Reality and a small contested state in “We // are not // intact.” There even if we aren’t able to grasp experience become a funhouse folio outrage, a scallion dub, remains a bullet of intimacy it fully, except in glimpses, of shifting perspectives blown thistle, being mean lodged in the gut, decomposing “It’s about reciprocity of from the personal reality of to downgrown trees…”(72) wildly through the body and indistinction disguised as abject a lived experience, “I prefer They are so unique they resist out into poetry that is not loneliness.”(5) Primitive State the glorious replication of a belonging to anything else exactly “for” the beloved, but

2016 21 that imagines the beloved as Agamben’s is the most deeply the lover “would break it off,” language,” all the love-language having once been waited for, felt in all parts. Felt in the out of the book, like a piece of traveling along this river, written for. tender lyric of The Floor, and bread to break fast from the through the body of the lover, the rich, confessional prose of egregious task of un-loving the down her throat and into her The Devastation is written The Basin. Each part reveals other. For them. Who are these heart. in four parts: The Floor; An more and more of this ruin, lovers and how is their story Object; The Sky; The Basin. while simultaneously creating told? In The Devastation and often in There is also A Preface for A new text, a new object. An Buzzeo’s work, water shifts and Work Undone and a kind of Object reads: You imagine other– what form do heals. Water is a mechanism for epilogue called Last Things. I have to give,/ Deep in the earth growth. But like anything that The book is essentially lyric, If it were not so separate if the magnetic lovers./ The earth has potential for healing there is winding through these parts, something had been saved I hot the earth fired. The spring innately the potential for harm. developing sensibility, and tone, would give you a/ piece of The water in your mouth. Like love, like poetry, water is but wandering through a dense Devastation now, here. Not like a often the undoing of its own vocabulary that leads the lovers text, like an object./ I would break The visceral integration of potential. towards and away from one it off. the remains of the other, and another, and guides the readers that pull, into one another, I come to you without scales through what feels like a whole There is a precision to this giving your lost lover form, without language to the relationship. text. Just the subtitle, An the ethics of staying away immeasurable part of/ Object, with its indefinite in life, but in language, the you that I put beside water. An Object, the second and article describing this unknown beloved lives. A golem, or your shortest of these four parts, and unmanageable thing, this own inventiveness. So, where Almost religious, certainly is three lines long and begins book, this love, that craves to does love end, trauma end, sacred, there is a feeling that with a quote from Agamben be what it is not– that craves to and language begin? “All the the water will mend and heal that reads, “What is this falling be more than text. An Object language left unfired smooth/ the lovers. Or at least take into the silence of a poem? is named and interrupts the In the river the shapes being some pain away. Mimicking What is beauty that falls? And flow of the book, and yet is a smooth becoming slit.” I the pre-verbal, recalling the what is left of the poem after its synecdoche for the whole book. imagine a river of characters, womb, water acts as a mother ruin?” Though several quotes Revealing the desire to know traveling fast, thick, and thin, to strict forces of language. and references run emotionally what happens after the poem is arabesqued and stilted, getting But Buzzeo does not pit water (as opposed to academically, ruined. What is left? No longer clean, smoothed out like the against language, or mother or coldly) throughout the book, text, but object. If they could, bottoms of stones, “All the against father, she embraces the FROM NEW! KELSEY STREET FORTY-ONE YEARS PUBLISHING LITERATURE41 BY WOMEN DEUS EX MACHINA by Jennifer Pilch PREMONITION by Etel Adnan

Winner 2015 Kelsey Street Press Firsts! Contest “There is always judged by Myung Mi Kim a conductive thread through space “A book like this, assembled for untenable from music and ruin and light, positions.” is rare and necessary.” – Etel Adnan, – Joshua Poteat “Premonition” 2015, 112 pages $15 2014, 56 pages $19

NESTS & STRANGERS: On Asian American Women Poets

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22 Spring dialectics of both. Where Everything is in Halves long stream, instead of page- memory, inserting flesh among Gabriel Ojeda-Sague throughs, which as a reading pixels and attempting a graft. Over and over, Buzzeo brings Be About It Press, 2015 experience echoes the grid I was moved by the speaker’s the lovers into the present. She Review by Jai Arun Ravine and the game’s mythological identity struggle; met with the re-lives not The Devastation kingdom under the sea. For automatic conflation of “I” with itself, not the story, but the I saw Gabriel Ojeda-Sague those familiar with the Zelda “the child-hero” in game play, feelings, re-living and re- read a bit from his chapbook mythos, its hypnotic theme he constantly tries to distance writing. “I remember the Where Everything is in Halves music similarly contributes to himself from the “bobbing” textual city.” She invents a at Snockey’s Rose Room in the structural sense of being protagonist and to reject his landscape to hold all this. Philadelphia last fall. When he set adrift, as the reader moves promise (and potential failure) Cities and seas and earth. The said it was a book of poems between poems-after-dungeons as the “chosen one.” Yet this Devastation is so large that after The Legend of Zelda: The staggered amongst those effort of pulling apart, though Buzzeo relies on the entirety Wind Waker, this nerd’s interest derived from the sea. repeated, is ultimately useless of the earth to contain its was piqued. Gabriel talked on this world; Gabriel writes, magnificence, it’s sorrow. The about writing these poems I think the game’s soundtrack “Though he is unfailingly textual city that was at once while replaying the game and must have played a huge part geometric,/ I expect his holding and being held by the consciously returning to his in Gabriel’s writing process, nautilus and composition/ to be lovers– the sexual, desire driven emotional state about ten even subconsciously, from its rewritten in my corpse.” city, the city of words and ink. years ago when his father died. dramatic crescendos to visceral “The ink on the skin instead Gabriel drew me in with the sound effects to repetitive So there is a “linkage” between of the letter.” The blood of the task (and ritual) he had set up loops that theatrically mark the speaker and Link, one that pen leaked out and transposed for himself: game play as a way objects, tasks and actions can’t really be severed. That with the body of the beloved, to work through grief. What (side-swipe, coin-grab, skull means that the speaker’s grief the river of smooth words into would happen if one invited hammer, heart container, boss must somehow be contained the heart. their grieving process to live, death). The expansiveness and within the bobbing Link. But breathe, and fight evil gods in a almost unwavering permanency how much is he programmed to The book that comes apart in my computer-generated landscape? of sound matches the oceanic hold? Really, for all its magic hand. The book that is for you. expanse matches grief’s and mystery this game world And not for you./ And for a forked As a Super Nintendo kid, overwhelm, and this seems is just a grid where quests are line. The bones held safely over what I remember most about to be the base from which vast but pre-mapped, where the ocean. The swelling survival playing The Legend of Zelda Gabriel’s poems arise. the universe appears limitless above the/ forked line. was the satisfying swish of but is coded by cascading sets Link’s sword as he demolished Imagine/ me/ naked in a waterfall/ of if/then “rules.” Given these Buzzeo’s book is real and shrubs. While my life as a becoming a small key,/ elaborate, finite constraints, unreal. It is a love-object, I gamer mostly devolved into participating in my eviction,/ the speaker’s slippage between could give it to my beloved, watching my younger brother loving the dead body/ of my “self” and “link” is like a glitch and yet in the hands of the play on later consoles, my former lover. bursting the bounds. “My form writer, the lover and the reader geek-love for other realms of is going into another,/ like the it comes apart. The book winds science fiction and fantasy Like the body becoming a repeating, tirelessly repeating/ and unwinds through the literature, film and television is small key, what strikes me child-hero,” writes Gabriel, or “I natural complexities of love and the reason that Gabriel’s project most about this chapbook are lied to you: I am outside world.” loss. What binds it is not a cover fascinates me now. My video the moments when Gabriel’s and spine, it is its own quality game days occurred in the narrator imagines himself Since Gabriel wrote poems of self-resuscitation. Life-giving, silence, separation and sudden within The Wind Waker after the game’s dungeons and feminine abundance. Even discord between parental landscape. Sometimes it’s small lengths of time spent traveling when the devastation eradicates figures, so I can understand objects that bring this to light: at sea, I vibrate with the sense love the writer finds the healing how Gabriel would find Wind the “hooks,” “gold feathers,” of each poem’s limits, whether in it. “The book that is for you Waker’s scripted world, and “silver member,” and the “fairy it’s the walls of a room in which and not for you.” The book that its “timeless” quest, a useful in a bottle.” Other times it’s we uncover information to drive is, perhaps, for the survival of container for frustration, a self-reflexivity that comes the plot and further our quest, the writer, the reader, the lover spiritual resonance, ineptitude, with being a player-character: or the sea’s vast yet pixel-bound and the beloved. After the end, and even mastery. “I put in all this hard work,/ or expanse contained by a period the chaos, the emulsion of the the child-hero does, I mean,/ of time. The transition between forked line, looking down at the I wish I could identify my fated and the horns just finish the each piece is like a door. The ocean— the memory banks, the enemy/ further into the conceit/ way.” And yet again it’s a chapbook is a succession of words and images of love and but really I mean it: / our little memory, or “apparition,” as doors, or a succession of tasks loss—rather than asking “what categories/ transform in the grief Gabriel writes, that materializes that open doors. This gridlock happened?” you write instead. sphere at an unexpected juncture: “I could be the “architectural It is so generous. And it saves imagine myself/ with cancer, reluctance” Gabriel feels, which you. The “grief sphere” Gabriel again.” might be something like digital carries and navigates in this grief. chapbook also happens to be In this way Gabriel grapples a three-dimensional grid. The with the geometry of the Zelda This digital grief is most book’s online format is one mythology alongside blood poignant in the moment when

2016 23 Gabriel writes, “WHERE IS this book, as are darkness and sections, her soft-packed, MY FATHER,/ I ask the map.” blindness. Something about the medium length sentences feel I have so many questions and Solar Maximum measure of the poet’s research– like they contain a syntactic feelings here. I mean, doesn’t Sueyeun Juliette Lee this book proposes: What does choreography-as-Morse code the map know / see / contain Futurepoem, 2015 the poet do with the language from the future, each word Review by Sara Jane Stoner everything? Yet at the same that comes when they look and phrase poised beneath time I know it cannot. Once into the brightest light and the its determination to carry as Moving– I want to add: gazing, dead, monsters simply vaporize darkest dark? To look into the much information as possible seizing, resting, burning, in a bunch of purple smoke; sun, and to look into the death registered by this relay– subject, ticking, pacing, throbbing, here, death occurs strictly of the sun, imagining the end. science, language, sky– about nesting– through Sueyeun off-grid. What happens when how things are (dys)functioning Juliette Lee’s Solar Maximum, we’re lost and we don’t know If there’s a unity in sentiment now, under what control and a book both massive and what we’re looking for? What in language after you dove into with what grace and violence. microscopic in its scale of happens when our body merges the sun, if there’s a place on the This, from “A MANIFOLD subjects, everything feels very with a border unknown? What page to be discovered that can BEHAVIOR”: very close and at the same time is that ineffable piece I am replace body heat or human voices very distant. While reading, trying to recover? Why am I unmarred by space, then it is the From the stereoscope, we it’s like you are looking into still a child? most beautiful space, the most categorize alternative kinetic something enormous (the beautiful sentence. potentials. These indices take on sky, capital, data, science) I built a shrine for my dead their own volitional energy and and that enormous thing is father. As an offering, I gave little Such extremities are managed move silently—eagerly—across looking back at you, and the pieces of purple paper. Only my with a patient stillness here. the unfinished floor. Lost scent magic of this is something like kidnapped sister ever visits. One And the quotidian in this book of magnolias permeates as we submitting to the kind of awe day, I tear the whole thing apart is positioned like an altar, navigate through the negative that might kill you or might and find my nakedness as a little constantly evolving– a radically blades. teach you about yourself and silver key. I thought the mosquitos incidental opportunity for your relationship to the (solar, wouldn’t reach it, but they have. reflection– base, triumphant, What happened in the future was economic, digital, scientific) My sister shrieks when she sees meager, elaborate, surreal, graphic. It stands now without system– a system which by the single earwig turning between witnessed, purchased, survived. a traceable semblance, rather definition exceeds your capacity my toes. Solar Maximum contains emotional in the way that we’ve to apperceive. And though you four sections, the first three come to trust anger’s initial are infinitesimally small (which When Link climbs up a rope, of which were previously version of events, the posture you forget, foolish animal) and it’s a loop of body motions and published as chapbooks. The assumed in a cry. this thing is so large, as the sound effects pre-defined in first seems like a leveling, thing looks back, suddenly code. From the top of a tree, in which a patient, attentive The second section, you’re enormous; you’re being Gabriel’s speaker, in boxers and “we” tracks and teaches a created with Cara Benson, examined at the cellular level by boa, performs a ritual within kind of shift in the world of Rachel Levitsky, and Dana the swath of universe overhead, that loop and in so doing, the aftermath (“This is the Teen Lomax, feels like a and your cells have much to breaks the pattern. His glitch- fifth day of February and it glitchy virtual sending communicate about the state of rupture of the grid is a terrible is one thousand eighteen amid brief negotiations the planet. and necessary breach. A new degrees outside”), registering of hostile landscapes, level is unlocked. Grief’s after- new ways of being, noticing, and journalistic accounts Can we distill the future down wave comes crashing down. An administrating, responding, of “MMORPGWORLD” to its sheerly psychological ending is in sight–“everyone is reflected off a haze of what (referencing “massively multi- components, balancing waving/ their fat four-fingered/ had previously been as it lives player online role-playing unresponsive/ spaces with filled hands,” indeed– and now in the language or memory. In games). By “sending,” I mean ones– an infinite duration of there’s hope in what comes this self-planet micro-macro we are taken to the locations active listening. Sky. after. futurity, there’s a sense that (in the more recent sense of the beyond “treating” the body’s word), and we are warned (in To say that Lee has written Read the full chapbook online illness, “self-help” or medical the older one): the poems in this book as for free at Scribd. advice (“Drink this. Eat that. self-to-sky and sky-to-self http://www.scribd.com/ Follow that.”) has reached a And the terms for the ordeal,/ gazings (with sky here being doc/290768494/Where- horizon limit, as though rather like speakeasies in the despotic the enormous thing that points Everything-is-in-Halves-by- being in pursuit of “the good corners of the/ trigram omniverse– to the enormity of space) is Gabriel-Ojeda-Sague life,” the help these selves they unfold as/ a negated banality to suggest one feature of her pursue is now crucial for the in narration and its designs./ So “speculative poetics,” which Jai Arun Ravine is a writer, continuation of life. many syntactic structures blown aims, she writes in her endnote, dancer and graphic designer. away by continuously transforming to “explore[ ] the various A former staff writer for Lee’s work in this book global currencies– /from won, to moods of imagined (future) Lantern Review, their second encompasses a variety of signals bento, to dragoon to coral smear spaces.” Key to mood: the book, The Romance of Siam, (see the ((double parentheticals animal, the technological, and is forthcoming from Timeless, left open–), the frequencies of “Mental Commitment Robots,” the astronomical. Light and Infinite Light. jaiarunravine.com which vary, both discursively the third section, seems to vision are stellateing centers to and aesthetically. In the prose negotiate relation: of the beauty/

24 Spring THE MFA PROGRAM IN CREATIVE WRITING AT LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY IN DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

EXPERIMENTAL I CROSS-GENRE I CONTEMPLATIVE (DIVERSITY. FREEDOM. INTIMACY.)

EXPLORATIONS IN POETRY, FICTION, TRANSLATION, AND MEMOIR.

CORE FACULTY: BARBARA HENNING, JOHN HIGH, LEWIS WARSH VISITING WRITERS INCLUDE: Bill Berkson Patricia Spears Jones Ben Willie Perdomo Anselm Berrigan Lerner Simon Pettet Brenda Coultas Jocelyn Lieu Kristin Prevallet Thulani Davis Bernadette Mayer Karen Russell Samuel R. Delany Anna Moschovakis Uche Eleni Sikelianos Linh Dinh Nduka Martha Southgate Vladimir Druk Murat Nemet-Nejat Lynne Tillman Renee Gladman Alice Notley Monica de la Torre Francisco Goldman Rich- Idra Novey Anne Waldman ard Hell Sigrid Nunez Wang Ping Fanny Howe Han Ong Colson Whitehead Erica Hunt Maureen Owen Elizabeth Willis Laird Hunt Ruth Ozeki Tyrone Williams Marlon James Ron Padgett Matvei Yankelevich

Teaching assistantships and training. Graduate fellowships. Magazine internships. Scholarships.

1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, New York For more information, contact program advisor Jake Matkov, [email protected] I 718-246-6336 I More info @ LIU.EDU/MFA

2016 25 genius/threat of the human/ an accomplishment, in that generosity of spirit invoked Although Jones is thinking animal/cyborg, of the gentle thinking through and past the in the early crown of sonnets of Roethke here, I can’t help and hard work of living while end of this book feels so urgent, “Mythologizing Always: Seven thinking of Hart Crane’s paying, pursuing communion right now. Sonnets,” which, taking cues “Voyages,” another weather- in variable internal and external from Martin Buber, describes beaten New York poem, whose terrain. Intermittent drawings “intense improvisation/ on the third section describes: “Light for synaesthetic stereoscopes. A Lucent Fire: New & Selected I/THOU axis” (23). In the final wrestling there incessantly with Shark being as color, as force, Poems sonnet, a break-up poem, the light,/ Star kissing star through as mood; shark being as Patricia Spears Jones weather wave on wave unto/ Your body something irreducible to the White Pine Press, 2015 rocking!” Both poems feature common understanding of Review by Miller Oberman Feels like San Francisco / that chill/ the increasingly uncommon shark, which could be “object Sun burns it away fast and the cut/ and highly lyrical preposition of terror,” but capable of total Patricia Spears Jones’ A Lucent on your index finger is healed up “unto,” whose most basic liquefaction. Dog as searching Fire is a book that, in spanning now/ Time does its duty by bodies function is to show a spatial home feeling, abject loyalty the writing life of a poet thus and the weather. relationship, but which also and instrumentality, warm far, begins and ends in the has a lovely way of denoting body that can indicate a “safe sun. In “Wearing My Red Silk Though written decades later, motion toward a person or space… for the sort of destiny Chinese Jacket,” the earliest the new poems here are no less destination while at the same that transmits across bodies poem here, which predates weather-soaked than the poems time indicates reaching it. and oceans.” Purchase as Patricia Spears Jones’ first in The Weather That Kills, and While Jones’ speaker often feeling in an economy which “is book, The Weather That Kills, I find I disagree with Jones’ mistakes the mocking bird cry the robotic circulation of love, “smoke rises joyous as if/ from note suggesting the new poem for an owl, there is no easy meaning the Constitution of the the ashes of a terrible defeat.” “What Beauty Does” is “one of binary of identification or United States of America.” In This poem is full of questions: the few poems that deal with misidentification here. Instead, the final part of the section, an “What bright woman turned landscape.” I respectfully argue the speaker acknowledges I and a you inform and share an the spindles;/ dyed the thread?” the opposite is true: these “other” problems, “more environment toward attunement “Who owns the sun?” In “The poems are mostly landscapes, difficult,” which are not and survival in breathing, Land of Fog and Poetry,” the in a larger sense. In the named, but seem connected parking, receiving light, visiting final poem in this collection, stunning “Self-Portrait as Shop to the poem’s final statement: the “Common Cultures.” Jones observes “these are the Window” the poem’s speaker “I stand// in front of these days where shadows would be rides a city bus on “All Hallows’ beautiful things and curb my Solar Maximum primes and welcome/ But the sun is bright Eve,” a vehicle both practical appetite for murder” (166). presses toward the final title bright bright.” and poetic for observations on section, which bears the space, race, class, and costume, from In “What Beauty Does,” the event, and polyvocality of As a relative newcomer to “the little white girl complete landscape changes drastically, poet’s theater. In the series Jones’ work, I briefly wondered; with Marie Antoinette/ Mole on the streets of Brooklyn the voices seem to multiply: but aren’t all fires lucent– bright cheek” to “central Brooklyn,” exchanged (briefly) for a visit a mythic prayer or prophecy and shining, as Ben Jonson’s where “the costumes are home/ with friends in Idaho who enters to mark the old cycle of description of the sun as the made—the best a young blood/ are obsessed with the “Great life and death, and to entreat “lucent seat” of the “day- In Diaper—complete with pins” Outdoors.” As in many of these the sun to rise again; the varied starre”? Yet I think, after sitting (166). This costumed Brooklyn poems, praise and blame are signals, lit by the possibility of with this book for a while, a landscape, changing as the found in equal measure. The their own utterance, are most better reading of “lucent” here neighborhoods change, offers poem begins with “a perfect often broken by interference is not only as bright, but as the speaker a way to make an scent: pine, sage, and cypress,” (solar storms meeting a translucent, something clear interior self-portrait: “I have and ends vulnerable earth), and the and lucid. This is fire that can often mistaken the mocking messages about the weather, be seen through, from the sun bird for an owl/ It’s a problem Where people steal/ a drop of the status of the earth, relevant rise in “What the Fire God I cannot solve. There are other ore,/ a native flower,/ a piece of scientific knowledge, the Charged Me,” and what can ones, more difficult.” Noting splendor/ day in and day out. enthusiasm of developing happen “When the night watch another kind of self-portrait as technologies– all seem to lurch ends,” which is “A fire walk as reflection, the speaker observes: For this poet, critique seems and scatter even as they’re prelude” (59) to the weather in inextricable from joy and diligently relayed. The space the new poem “Self-Portrait There seem to be cows in pleasure, each more convincing Lee creates between these as Midnight Storm,” where Roethke’s poems and birds in in proximity to the other. In poems is hard to occupy and “my winds, my rain... raise my mine. Nature is/ever present even “What Beauty Does,” both important, full of the desire for ire and lash lash lash” (167). unto this great city that grumbles critique and pleasure come life and an acute recognition These repetitions, of “bright,” and crumbles/ And yet allows with shifts in scale and motions of the beauty of space. The or of “lash” move the way fire the mocking birds song and between the personal and hands, in odd moments pressed moves, burning and beating, hummingbirds wings/ to flash like political. “Everyone is a thief together “as if in prayer” and steady but changing. a taste of the cosmos. Oh damn out west,” Jones writes, “if shaken to magically produce the wind and light/ or praise the you leave your bikes on the currencies, paper; the skin The sun circles these poems, rain and bright desire for different porch/ They disappear. If you reduced to a verge, a “limbus” revealing heat, blues, a great weather. find water, someone else will in the solar storms. What bounty of weather, and a divert it./ There are those who

26 Spring unitedartistsbooks.com

Compressed, smart and Tony Iantosa’s sentences Lisa Rogal’s remarkable Like its punning title, Daniel raucous, Sarah Anne sharpen all the senses at and strikingly original Owen’s agile first collection Wallen’s poems shimmer as once; the heard world is poems play with form and is playful but with a subtext they turn language back on as present as the seen and narrative, spinning the of urgency. The cumulative its strange self. touched. This is unfashion- daily quotidian of thoughts, effect is one of a quiet per- sistent claim to some kind — Karen Weiser able and excellent poetry. random connections and Consider reading it to a events into gold. of agency against the odds. lover so as to elicit a recip- — Brenda Coultas — Anna Moschovakis Cover by Alyssa Matthews rocal feeling, ‘or whatever.’ It ISBN 0-935992-38-3 108pp. / $15.00 will work. Cover by Leonardo Madriz Cover by Pareesa Pourian ISBN 0-935992-37-5 ISBN 0-935992-41-3 — Matvei Yankelevich 112pp. / $15.00 64pp. / $15.00

Cover by Zachary Cummings ISBN 0-935992-42-1 Available from Small Press Distribution 96pp. / $15.00 spdbooks.org UNITED ARTISTS UNITED ARTISTS BOOKS fight about the wind, others “some where backstage.” newly printed early work here the sun” (171). This attention Separating the words “some” and the new poems themselves to scale builds a kind of trust and “where” is the kind of very continue that tradition. with the reader; it doesn’t small poetic choice that changes take long to know that neither everything– a flip of stress from “BIG ENERGY” nor “Indian the trochaic “somewhere” to paintbrush, sego lily, the wily the iambic “some where” turns cinquefoil” will be left out. The our attention to the “where,” beauty of flowers, mountains, makes it a place, gives it heft. and friendship itself are Jones moves away from the not ruined by the speaker’s vagary, or even dismissal, of acknowledgment of racist “some,” to an acknowledgment historical narratives about the of a “where” that exists conquest of the American West whether or not we know where and “O, those long-suffering it is. This one added space, in white people fearful of Indians” turning a compound word back (172). into two words, brings about a shift, moving away from an Jones’ early reference to Buber’s objectifying relationship and I and Thou is telling– these towards a dynamic where poems live in the world of subject relates to subject. relationships; there are so many thous here: poems in For latecomers to the Patricia conversation with musicians, Spears Jones party, A Lucent artists, and poets, poems about Fire offers a fantastic entry the living and the dead. In a point for catching up on what sense there are no dead here, this marvelous poet has been because the other, whether up to, succinctly described by they are person or place, Mary Baine Campbell in her biographical, or imagined, is introduction to this collection allowed its own existence. In as the “value of aliveness.” “Etta James at the Audubon For those familiar with Jones’ Ballroom” Jones refers to earlier collections, both the

2016 27 Community Letters NEWSENSE ANTI-MANIFESTO to our over-rationalized communication Dear Poetry Project Newsletter, Charles Borkhuis structures by infiltrating bits and pieces of automata into any situation. My hot girlfriend Anne Boyer and I would Why do poets model their speech on like to announce that we have adopted a expository writing and grammatically Newsense celebrates an inclusive sharing of second cat. We would also like to announce correct sentences when extemporaneous unconscious, uncensored material between that we are holding a cat-naming contest. poetic-speech is readily available? Why do people from different backgrounds and I’m delighted to announce our new cat is a we poets systematically restrict poetry to experiences. It works in the gaps between very small two-year-old female flamepoint the page, planned readings, or memorized established conversational norms where sweet angel baby-adult from heaven. It performances instead of letting it enter the barriers and restrictions of “good would be irresponsible of me to not also our conversations as a free agent? It seems sense” no longer apply. Newsense is a announce that we have a ten-year-old we’ve accepted compartmentalized notions grassroots, social experiment aimed at flamepoint named Ulysses, so their names of conversation and poetic speech and reawakening a more poetic, non-linear must work well together. Please send great have dutifully adhered to this arbitrary response to ourselves and the world. name suggestions to: The New Order of St Agatha separation simply out of habit. One could Whenever old-sense becomes boring 734 E 71st Terrace argue that there’s a time and a place for and lethargic, predictable or doctrinaire, each, but in fact, there is no time and place Kansas City, MO 64131 Newsense will be there to interject wit, left for poetic-speech; we simply don’t use irony, anger, joy, or the kitchen sink into The winner of this contest will receive a it in conversation. any situation. Just the threat of old-sense prize that has not yet been decided on. It turning into Newsense at the drop of a will likely be more valuable than a handful Enter Newsense, an improvisational, poetic- hat may bring new dimensions into tired of pennies but less valuable than a dinner speech between two or more individuals thinking. Old-sensers may be forced to for two at the Olive Garden. For more for the purpose of undermining the Newsense themselves before Newsensers information on the prize as it develops, rigid constraints placed on conversation can undercut their language. please write to: by rational speech. Newsense wants to The Good-but-Not-Great Prizes Research recharge our batteries and change our Newsense operates as a surplus or overflow Institute semiotic fluid; it wants to invigorate our of useless, playful, unproductive speech c/o The New Order of St Agatha tired speech and predictable thought that lies at the heart of rationalist order and 734 E 71st Terrace patterns. OK, so why not start with phrases efficient communication. Newsense is the Kansas City, MO 64131 or unfinished sentences that may be mistake, the joke, the pun, the dream, the completed or continued by other speakers, doodle, the impossible, the invisible, the I would also like to announce that I read the leaving strings of loosely connected poetic, the unstable in every system. It’s the October/November issue of the Newsletter non-sequiturs in their wake? Exchanges remainder that can’t be absorbed and made and would like to announce, further, that I have a correction. Most of what Kevin between Newsensers should be rapid to work effectively. It’s not outside rational Killian said in his letter about Koff is true– I enough to discourage any pre-thought or order and therefore something “other”; it’s composed responses to the ongoing ebb have accidentally amassed a lot of dick pics inside the very schizoid core of rationality. from the 70s. (If you would like to take this and flow of individual sounds, words, The laws of chaos, accident, and chance archive off my hands, please get in touch.) phrases, images, or brief sentences. At a must be recognized and allowed to flow The famed picture of Ted Berrigan lost party or social gathering a few people may within any system or the system itself will to the subway, however, belonged not to start a Newsense exchange in the middle reflect a distortion of reality and petrify Elinor and Maggie of Koff, but to a then- of an old-sense conversation, which may under its own exclusivity. In a Newsense student of Berrigan’s, Arnie Aprill. Arnie’s send out spores that could infiltrate other world, pataphysics, the science of the magazine Bondage and Discipline was a conversations until a linguistic virus has exception, would be on everyone’s lips. tiny Chicago-based publication that ran for spread throughout the group. What’s a handful of issues and published writers next? Perhaps a town, a city? What just At first, Newsensers may make nuisances of like Berrigan, Notley, Eigner, Waldman, and happened? We’ve been Newsensed. No themselves, but ultimately, Newsense and one of my all-time favorites, Ruth Krauss. explanation necessary. old-sense will find supportive resonances Anyway, if anyone has found that lost and reverberations in their agonistic picture of Ted, I’m sure Arnie would love to The forerunners of Newsense might juxtapositions. Hopefully in the future, old- have it back. Maybe you’ve seen the subway include: automatic writing in Surrealist sense and Newsense will move rapidly and rats carrying it round? Please send here: group poems (exquisite corpses), non radically between rational and irrational The Society for the Preservation of Ted sequitur collages in Language Writing, states, transgressing and ultimately Berrigan’s Naked Ass c/o Cassandra Gillig improvisational jazz sessions, and improv renovating the fixed limits of speech and actors’ ensembles, just to name a few. 734 E 71st Terrace exchange between peoples. Newsense is Kansas City, MO 64131 Newsense is a thought process born on not a parlor game. It doesn’t want to just the tongue the way improvisational music change speech patterns or liven up boring I’d love to end by announcing that I love is born on the fingertips. However, since conversation; it wants to “change life.” Cheryl Clarke and am so happy she will be the accent is on group conversation not Thank you, Monsieur Rimbaud. doing a group panel sometime soon but monologues, close listening is as crucial to the project should give her a solo reading, Newsense as it is to jazz. Charles Borkhuis is a poet and playwright too, but the solo reading should be held in living in NYC. His seven books of poems Kansas City and the Poetry Project should Springing up spontaneously anywhere at include Disappearing Acts and Alpha Ruins, move to Kansas City. & just one more quick any time and lasting for any length of time, which was nominated for a W.C. Williams but VERY IMPORTANT announcement: I Newsense improvisations may become an Book Award. Dead Ringer is forthcoming love the Poetry Project’s laminator and I insurrectionist alternative to usual sense- from BlazeVOX books. His two radio plays, think they should put more money towards making strategies for effective living. aired over NPR, are on pennsound. laminators and laminating in their budget. Newsense offers a poetic alternative to the fixed nature of conversation between Thank you and love, people. It initiates a revolutionary response Cassandra Gillig

28 Spring Office Memo from The Illustrated Guide To Not Being So Fucking Racist Oasa DuVerney, 2012 graphite and ink on paper 14.25 x 10.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

2016 29 Crossword Solution

uglyducklingpresse.orgWriting is to avenge loss. uglyducklingpresse.orgAlthough the material has all melted, uglyducklingpresse.orglike melted cheese. ducklingpresse.orgWaly Salomão ugly tr. Maryam Monalisa Gharavi uglyducklingpresse.orgAlgaravias: Echopresse.org Chamber uglyuglyducklingpresse.orgduckling uglyducklingpresse.orguglyducklingpresse.orgAnd no one would help The humans left .org uglyducklingpresse.orguglyducklingpresse.orgpresse uglyducklingpresse.orgNot even the humans uglyducklingpresse.orguglyducklingpresse.orguglyducklingLaura Sims staying alive

30 Spring uglyducklingpresse.org uglyducklingpresse.org get the news get the news Crossword Puzzle

Send in your correctly completed puzzle for a chance to win a special prize!

All answers are lines from William Carlos Williams: “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” “Spring and All,” “Danse Russe,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “Queen-Anne’s-Lace,” and “Love.” g et t he new s

Across Across Down Down Across Down 4. "Of --, that greeny flower" 4. "Of --, that greeny flower" 1. "Born one instant, instant d1e. a"Bd"orn one instant, instant dead" 4. "Of --, that greeny flower" 1. "Born one instant, instant dead" 7. "dance naked, --" 7. "d7.a "dnacnece n nakeedd, -,- "--" 2. "Here is no2 .q "Hueres tiiso nno qoufe -s-t"io2n .o f" H--"ere is no question of --" 9. "the stiff curl of the -- leaf" 9. "t9h. "eth es tsitfiff f ccurrl lo of tfh eth --e le -a-f "leaf" 3. "By the roa3d. "tBoy thee r o-a-d h to tshpe i-3t-a .h l"o"Bspyit athl" e road to the -- hospital" 11. "so much --/upon" 5. "a -- wish to whiteness gone over" 11. "so much --/upon" 11. 1"2s. o"w mhitue cahs c -a-n/u bpe,o wnit"h a -- mole" 5. "a -- wish to6. w"puhriptleisnh,e fosrske gd,o -n-,5 etw. i"ogagv ye-"-r "wish to whiteness gone over" 12. "white as can be, with a --1 m2.o 1"4lwe. "h"beitseid ae sth ec awnhi teb -e-", with a -- mole" 6. "purplish, fo8.r "kyetd m,e -n- ,d tiew -i-g egveyr6"y .d "apy/uforrp lalicsk/ho,f wfohrakt ies dfo,u -n-d, twiggy" 15. "-- 'tis and pain which mingle" there." 14. "beside the white --" 14. "beside the white --" 8. "yet men di1e0 . -"-th e vheaprpyy d --a oyf m/foy8 rh. ol"auysceekth /mooldfe "wnh daiet i s-- feovuenrdy day/for lack/of what is found 16. "The -- was the first to go" there." there." 15. "-- 'tis and pain which min1g5le. 1"7-.- " P'tiass saionnd 'ti sp naoitn, f owulh aincdh - -m" ingle" 13. "-- can be complex too/but you do not get far/with silence." 18. "Look at/ what passes for the --" 10. "the happy -- of my house1h0o. l"dth" e happy -- of my household" 16. "The -- was the first to go"16. "The -- was the first to go" 15. "little -- among the living/but the dead see" 17. "Passion 'tis not, foul and1 -7-". "Passion 'tis not, foul and --" 13. "-- can be complex too/bu1t 3y.o "u-- dcoa nn obte g ceot mfapr/lwexit htoo/but you do not get far/with silence." silence." 18. "Look at/ what passes for1 th8e. " -L-o" ok at/ what passes for the --" 15. "little -- among the living/b1u5t. t"hliett ldee -a- da mseoen"g the living/but the dead see"

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