Received today:
Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, edited by Bryan D. Dietrich and Marta Ferguson (Minor Arcana Press)
I haven't been posting much as I'm trying to find a workaround the Literary Press list problem. I think I figured out a way, so poems, reviews, and updated will continue after I work through this workaround. Thanks for your patience.
Went to a memorial service today, and thought of this quote (which I sometimes include in wedding services):
“The soft bonds of love are indifferent to life and death. They hold
through time so that yesterday’s love is part of today’s and the
confidence in tomorrow’s love is also part of today’s. And when one
dies, the memory lives in the other, and is warm and breathing. And when
both die — I almost believe, rationalist though I am — that somewhere
it remains, indestructible and eternal, enriching all of the universe by
the mere fact that once it existed,” — Isaac Asimov, It’s Been a Good Life.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Just got this poster in: http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/activities/ppp/posters/2014/di%20piero.html
Text only below:
JOHNNY ONE NOTE
(Bobby Hutcherson in Oakland)
The mallet strikes but something’s off,
and so he hits again, curling that lower lip,
purses his brow, as if this sign, this minor woe,
were speech the vibes might understand,
so when he lifts bluish lids as if wakened
to the desired tone that rings now, it seems,
it sounds, under wraps, a water-ly quaver,
through the club crowd’s silence,
as it floats above us like an aerosol
trying to find a new way to escape,
passes through the wall’s mortared pores
to reverb in the cool night air of an un-
peopled sidewalk, droning toward the tracks
where a passing peopled train sucks up
and winds his finally found, wowed tone
around its wheels, held there by steel heat
one hundred miles, until it reaches the sea,
where wheels and whistle overreach
surging surf the good vibration feels
such desire for, and leaves its tedium
of the round and round, lofting to a sea
that comes and goes but finally simply goes,
as one night, this night, the cool vibes’ air
(struck finally in the changed groove of sax
and ecstatic kit) is free, finally free,
to go where we won’t hear from it again.
From “Nitro Nights” by W. S. Di Piero.
Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.
Copyright © 2011 by W. S. Di Piero.
Text only below:
JOHNNY ONE NOTE
(Bobby Hutcherson in Oakland)
The mallet strikes but something’s off,
and so he hits again, curling that lower lip,
purses his brow, as if this sign, this minor woe,
were speech the vibes might understand,
so when he lifts bluish lids as if wakened
to the desired tone that rings now, it seems,
it sounds, under wraps, a water-ly quaver,
through the club crowd’s silence,
as it floats above us like an aerosol
trying to find a new way to escape,
passes through the wall’s mortared pores
to reverb in the cool night air of an un-
peopled sidewalk, droning toward the tracks
where a passing peopled train sucks up
and winds his finally found, wowed tone
around its wheels, held there by steel heat
one hundred miles, until it reaches the sea,
where wheels and whistle overreach
surging surf the good vibration feels
such desire for, and leaves its tedium
of the round and round, lofting to a sea
that comes and goes but finally simply goes,
as one night, this night, the cool vibes’ air
(struck finally in the changed groove of sax
and ecstatic kit) is free, finally free,
to go where we won’t hear from it again.
From “Nitro Nights” by W. S. Di Piero.
Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.
Copyright © 2011 by W. S. Di Piero.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Monday, April 7, 2014
Washing his wife’s clothes
They say to lose yourself in everyday things,
to keep the grief at bay in the ordinary, in the same.
They don’t know shit.
The infusion of each other into each other wasn’t forced. Shit happened.
And now the final rinse
Sunday, April 6, 2014
DEEPENING
LOW OVER THE BALTIC STATES
Here the
road zigzags out to Sysne Point.
The horizon
feeds out a sea,
constantly
new lines that turn
and turn
over the same used-up truths.
The sky is
lumpish grey and so low
we have to
stoop. A stroke of memory
could have
lingered over the cliffs
and
brushwood for a moment
sparkled
like blueweed.
There is no
memory.
Behind the
window of the bosun´s cottage
looms an
age-bent Nietzsche
cursing the
oozing wick of the lamp:
it´s
hindering his final work,
”Tragedy is
Dead.” The rickety ladder
the old
women of the village used
when
scrubbing the sky clean in spring
is now
chopped-up firewood by the doorstep.
The
courtyard tree is hunched
like the
school-book´s Model T Ford
as it nears
the speed of light.
No heart is
great or witless.
Even the
grass keeps its head down.
It´s only
between the newly written waves
we can read,
with a bit of effort,
how history
keeps on insisting.
Kjell Espmark, translated by Robin Fulton
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Books received:
The Poems of Lesbia Harford (Sirius Books)
John Thomas Allen, Lumière (NightBallet Press)
Antonio Cisneros, Crónica del Niño Jesus de Chilca (Libros del Bicho)
Pennsylvania is one of the few states without a Poet Laureate. Time to rectify that.
The Poems of Lesbia Harford (Sirius Books)
John Thomas Allen, Lumière (NightBallet Press)
Antonio Cisneros, Crónica del Niño Jesus de Chilca (Libros del Bicho)
Pennsylvania is one of the few states without a Poet Laureate. Time to rectify that.
Friday, April 4, 2014
Books received today: Douglas Valentine, With Our Eyes Wide Open: Poems of the New American Century (West End Press).
Review:
Heather Burns, Between Career and Caution (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011)
There is something about the small chapbook form which brings to the poetry reader a little extra-an additional narrative arc often (well, usually) lost in the longer collections. The conversations between the poems, and the larger conversation of the collection, season and bring out additional flavors that make collections like Burns' effort a real treat, and continue to make the chapbook my preferred poetry vessel.
One of the strong threads throughout her work is the outside; I don't mean outsider(s) but physically outside the home. There are few navel-gazing moments in this collection, and much of her poetry has a sense of proprioceptive interplay that at times become play, but most times define the boundaries of the interaction in a way which invites us within those borders. "A Made Play" for example is nothing but a girl's outside play, with snapshots that feel as though they could be pulled from a much, much longer scrapbook without losing their focus or intent, and has an ending optimistic note that is startling because it is both rare in Burns' poems, and is pulled off effortlessly:
She is green inside,
Springy like clean crisp grass,
Shimmies the trunk of the skeleton tree
And hangs a picture on the sky.
Even when the outside doesn't seem to be involved, it sticks its head in, as in "Work" when Burns writes of the intrusion of fake flowers in her otherwise-colorless day, even though
I was tricked
The sky was wormy
And wintry still.
One could read this book as a narrative on geography, or perhaps just place in space. But the careful interplay between the poems would be lost in such a basic reading, and that is where Burns' volume rises above where it otherwise might have stayed. And while the poems nearly always maintain a carefully-maintained emotional resonance, there is an undercurrent of what I can only describe as glory, or joy, that seems to drive these poems out of Burns despite what might otherwise appear on the page. These are not religious or even spiritual poems (even "Matins" or "An Idea About Angels" are as reality-based as any other in the collection) but there is clearly a tension on the page, guiding the words while maintaining the poetic structure.
These are carefully crafted poems which deserve a wider reading. And it is my hope that Burns will continue to allow that muse within her (which I called "joy" or "glory" but might just as well simply be called "faith") to continue to work through that poetic tension which appears to be her creative engine. I look forward to following that train.
Review:
Heather Burns, Between Career and Caution (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011)
There is something about the small chapbook form which brings to the poetry reader a little extra-an additional narrative arc often (well, usually) lost in the longer collections. The conversations between the poems, and the larger conversation of the collection, season and bring out additional flavors that make collections like Burns' effort a real treat, and continue to make the chapbook my preferred poetry vessel.
One of the strong threads throughout her work is the outside; I don't mean outsider(s) but physically outside the home. There are few navel-gazing moments in this collection, and much of her poetry has a sense of proprioceptive interplay that at times become play, but most times define the boundaries of the interaction in a way which invites us within those borders. "A Made Play" for example is nothing but a girl's outside play, with snapshots that feel as though they could be pulled from a much, much longer scrapbook without losing their focus or intent, and has an ending optimistic note that is startling because it is both rare in Burns' poems, and is pulled off effortlessly:
She is green inside,
Springy like clean crisp grass,
Shimmies the trunk of the skeleton tree
And hangs a picture on the sky.
Even when the outside doesn't seem to be involved, it sticks its head in, as in "Work" when Burns writes of the intrusion of fake flowers in her otherwise-colorless day, even though
I was tricked
The sky was wormy
And wintry still.
One could read this book as a narrative on geography, or perhaps just place in space. But the careful interplay between the poems would be lost in such a basic reading, and that is where Burns' volume rises above where it otherwise might have stayed. And while the poems nearly always maintain a carefully-maintained emotional resonance, there is an undercurrent of what I can only describe as glory, or joy, that seems to drive these poems out of Burns despite what might otherwise appear on the page. These are not religious or even spiritual poems (even "Matins" or "An Idea About Angels" are as reality-based as any other in the collection) but there is clearly a tension on the page, guiding the words while maintaining the poetic structure.
These are carefully crafted poems which deserve a wider reading. And it is my hope that Burns will continue to allow that muse within her (which I called "joy" or "glory" but might just as well simply be called "faith") to continue to work through that poetic tension which appears to be her creative engine. I look forward to following that train.
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