in the post

O my bloggerissmo, hallelu for independent publishing and the diverse poetries it supports! This blogger hath received and is reading with delight The Canary put out, as ye may know, by Joshua Edwards, Anthony Robinson (also of Poetry Dailier) and Nick Twemlow. An absolute favorite is "Introduction" and "The New York School (or: I Grew Ever More Intense" by Kent Johnson--poems unfortunately too long to reproduce here. "Introduction" is the description of a proposed poetry form and "The New York School..." is an example of that form. The mated pair are odd-ball and moving and ever more intense, and the sort of brighly plumed rare birds that quite likely would not have a nest in this world without independent publishing.

Verse hath reviewed The Canary, and O my bloggerissimo, if you haven't read the issue yourself, here's a teary teaser:

IN MY DREAM AN ANGEL CAME
by Maggie Nelson

in my dream an angel came
and said, you must spend more time
thinking about the divine, and less time
imagining unbuttoning the prince of blue's pants
at the chelsea hotel. but what if
the prince of blue's unbuttoned pants
are the divine, I pleaed. so be it she said
and left me alone to sob with my face
against the blue slate floor.

all codes lead to roam

Here! hear! recent Lyn Hejinian interview and reading at the Kelly Writers House.

afterwhile click and file, see you cyber aggregator

There's an aggregator on the loose, may be the only one of it's kind, a Polka-Billied Poetry Aggregator!

all codes lead to roam

O my bloggerissimo, if ye have ever truly loved and toked, here's a poem for ye: "To Cigarettes" by Nicole Hefner at Unpleasant Event Schedule

in the post

(photo by Shanna Compton)

This blogger hath received her copy of Verse: The Second Decade, a retrospective the editors "felt best exemplified the magazine's second decade." Brian Henry and Andrew Zawacki hath with generous sensibilities collected the works of over 250 poets, emerging and well-known, from more than 30 countries. 'Twill be interesting to read and consider what's included, what's absented, and what that says about the sways o the thing. Surely someones will write PhD dissertations and such expoundings and expandings soon on the development of independent mags in the 90's--Fence, Slope, Verse, 3rd bed and their kin--that hath made possible and perpetuated the thriving,arriving, hiving, yey verily living development of American lyric poetries strongly influenced by international poetries. This blogger hopes to hear yer thoughts on this O my bloggerissimo.

If you're at all or a bit or pretty much deeply interested in the 1990's development of poetry in which 'lyric meets language ' ('language' alluding to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets), then this volume is, for historical and/or artistic purposes, O my bloggerissimo, 'tis In the Deep Heart's Corps. The scope doth prove fairly large, charged, and bountiful.

Here's one from the issue by the late Kenneth Koch, which evokes for me a bit o the evolving pleasure the what it's like to wander this enormous volume:

"To the Island of Hydra"

When I sat
Wherever I sat
It was you.
At times I was standing
Also on you.
In walking
I went
From one area, or aspect,
Of your surface
To another
Without falling down
To the rocky sea below
(Oh, your violet forehead,
Your elbows of ceaseless rips!)
Humurous, and undeveloped
You then were
(Though now I hear
You go about the Aegean
Offering tour plans
To ambitious operators.)
We had a plan
That you and I mix
Our resources and come
Up with an understanding--
I was to close the door
And you to open it
Trois fois par jour, about
One hundred times--
That way I could be sure
To spend a month on you
Which is what I desired.

all codes lead to roam

O my bloggerissimo, newlyweddeth and one to cook up a savory soup now and ayum, this blogger doth muchly say a door a bell of the following poem and did think to pass on to ye, in the case that ye missed Poetry Daily of yester yore:

"Darling & Me" by Daljit Nagra.

The barman’s bell been dinging
so I mobile the Mississ,
putting some gas on the cooker
I must soon be coming!

Downing drinks, I zigzag
home for Pakeezah CD.
Dancing in the lounge together
until she runs for my roti.

I tell her of poor Jimmy John,
his girlfriend — wearing apron
she bring on a plate to pub
his meat pie and dry white

potato! Shouting at him:
Heeya, eaht yor pukkin dinnaaah!
Then leave him tinkling
his glass of Guinness.

We say we could never eat
in publicity like that, if
when we did, wife may need
a punch in the smack.

I pull her into me — look,
like this — my fist is on
her chin, my free hand
is tickling her neck.

Giggling, she fall to the lino
til I catch her in a forearm!
Darling is so happy with us
for six quick married month,

that every night, though by day
we work factory-hard, she always
have drumstick in the pot.
Hot. Waiting for me.


                   Pakeezah – soundtrack to the Bollywood film
                                          of the same name
                                 Roti – Punjabi proverbial for dinner



Did even more so admire his "Singh Song" at Poetry International.

My bloggerissimo, you'll notice, especially in "Singh Song" Nagra's use of dialectesque/phonetic spellings that recall for this blogger reading Maurice Manning and John Berryman. Unlike Manning and Berryman, Nagra shares with the New York school an overt appreciation for the daily as marvelous and the right-now as sacred. For this blogger, Nagra's reverence for the quotidian makes his insistence on the words as they're heard in the moment feel necessary to the poem's project.

in the nows

Century Old Male Tortoise Mothers Baby Hippo After Tsunami

Thanks Sabrina Orah Mark for sending this this a wow.

Hip-hip-hippo! That's survives in the nows for wildlife.

from the desk of wilma's butler

Hat? A great fan? I always seized lonely the tractor of this blown idea.

taking a little verily cake shone

This blogger's been lost in-laws in-loves in for good behaviors visiting and celebrating 37th wedding anne-'n'vince-airy. Sorry my bloggerissimo for the sans blogging. For now, it's like holidays halycon days he'll have some more cake, I'd say, but it'll be back to the mindstone soon enough.

in the nows

Verse Press is putting the metal to the poetry, pubbing for the gold, turning a poetry, yearning a profit, cashing penned. Some folks I've heard say hey-nonny-nonny that this change for pocket change is for publicity stunt cause everybody know that selling your poetry can't make you one who hath monetarily gained. This blogger just scratches her thread, awaits to see, and hopes for the fest. What say ye?

Here's an article with the of financial soup.

ha-ha-hurrah, that's lit in the nows for tonight.

gno

This week, gno sped thru the O's and the Zarks! We did enjoy reading aloud and around the wilds and vernaculars of C.D. Wright . Her's is an inclusive poetics, "where all things visible and invisible commence to swarm." C.D. Wright says in an interview that she comes from a part of Arkansas known for its resistance to group-think joiningness, and this experience manifests itself in Wright's singular and remarkable poetry. I particularly admire and relish Wright's form of feminism in which rather than a victim's complaint, Wright's feminist poetics raises a strong "panegyric to its hole" -- for e.g.:

"Hole of Holes: world in the words of the os, an ode,
unspoken, hole in its infancy, uncuretted, sealed, not yet
yielded, nulliparous mouth, girdle against growth, inland
orifice, capital O, pore, aperture to the aleph, within which
all, the overstocked pond, entrance to vast funnel of silence,
howling os, an idea of beautiful form, original opening,
whistling well, first vortex, an idea of form, a beautiful idea, a
just idea of form, unplugged, reamed, scored, plundered,
unsubduable opening, lightsource, it opens. This changes
everything."

While celebrating the holiest howdyiest how-about-a-triste of holes, her poetics respects the male and finds him beautiful and mysterious. Poems doth abound with references to Wright's husband's (poet Forrest Gander) genitals, and gno talked about how one's partner's genitals are indeed topos of the awesome, facts in space & time that do astound--yet rarely do they get specific mention in poems. Yes, this blogger doth revel in Wright's elevation of the profane into the sacred! Gno found hilarious, touching and provocative the poems "What No One Could Have Told Them" and "Detail from What No One Could Have Told Them" in whch Wright elevates to poetry the fact of her son's peeing in a guests paperplate while having a good ol' sunlit romp.

And as a Girl's Night Out Organization, we did especially cheer at the sequence of "Girl Friend" poems and contemplated whether we would indeed ever proclaim:

"Let's nurse one another's babies
...even before

We tell what we've been reading."

gno

Last week we did read of Olena Kalytiak Davis. She's particularly interesting as a poet whose work changed stylistically between first book and second book and thusly leaves that third book as a reeling cliff-hunger. Both deal in the lores and gores and so it goes of love; the first more narratively and the second more performatively. In an interview, she's reports reading a lot of nonfiction writing on the subject of love. Farah Marklevits pointed out that the following poem evokes the Petrachian sonnet and the feudal relationship set up by those poems between beloved and lover.

"Six Apologies, Lord"
by Olena Kalytiak Davis


I Have Loved My Horrible Self, Lord.
I Rose, Lord, And I Rose, Lord, And I,
Dropt. Your Requirements, Lord. 'Spite Your Requirements, Lord,
I Have Loved The Low Voltage Of The Moon, Lord,
Until There Was No Moon Intensity Left, Lord, No Moon Intensity Left
For You, Lord. I Have Loved The Frivolous, The Fleeting, The Frightful
Clouds. Lord, I Have Loved Clouds! Do Not Forgive Me, Do Not
Forgive Me LordandLover, HarborandMaster, GuardianandBread, Do Not.
Hold Me, Lord, O, Hold Me

Accountable, Lord. I Am
Accountable. Lord.

Lord It Over Me,
Lord It Over Me, Lord. Feed Me

Hope, Lord. Feed Me
Hope, Lord, Or Break My Teeth.

Break My Teeth, Sir,

In This My Mouth.


At first, I balked a bit at the traditional S&M submission/domination relationship set up here between the lover and beloved; however, the poem set beside this one in the book complicates that relationship (tho' not defining love in a new way); she ends that poem with the word 'swallow', which of course evokes ye ol' good-times of a particular nature and nurture. The juxtaposition suggests the speaker's teeth as dangerous, biting teeth, thereby placing the, seemingly, female speaker in a position of power.

Tonight, gno goes C.D. Wright.