A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature

My book A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature has just been released by Fordham University Press. Extracts from the book can be read on Google Books here. The book is available for purchase here. For further details, see my blog:
http://commonstrangeness.wordpress.com.

"A Common Strangeness is unique among studies of contemporary poetics in being genuinely global in its perspective and its reach. At home in Russian and Chinese as well as American poetry and that of his native New Zealand, Jacob Edmond pinpoints the crucial relationships that exist between what are seemingly disparate poetic cultures. The Chinese poet Yang Lian, who lived in exile in Auckland, is read under the sign of Benjamin and Baudelaire. The American Language poet Lyn Hejinian's important dialogue with the Russian avant-gardist Arkadii Dragomoshchenko is studied carefully, and Bei Dao, Dmitri Prigov, and Charles Bernstein are treated as representative figures of cross-cultural thinking in the age of globalism. Edmond's is a provocative, exciting, and genuinely original study of the new poetics; we will all be learning from it!"––Marjorie Perloff

"This bold triangulation of six Chinese, Russian, and American poets advances lively current debates about global literature by exploring encounters that challenge the old binarisms and chart possibilities of literary singularities for a future poetics. Edmond's shrewd account of literary crossings in post-Cold War history helps us imagine how we can experience the challenge of new literary configurations."––Jonathan Culler

"Jacob Edmond addresses what he calls 'forms of textual strangeness' across contemporary poems of beautiful complexity and staying power. This theoretically astute book challenges us to read with a keener eye and to recognize how much poetry can tell us about political catastrophes, national dislocations, and promises of cultural renewal."—Stephanie Sandler

Jared Lee Loughner's poems

.





Meat Head

Awaking on the first day of school
Pain of a morning hang over
Attending a weight lifting class for college credit
Attempting to exercise since freshman year of high school
Crawling out of bed and walking to the shower
Warm water hitting my back
Eureka

Thoughts of being promiscuous with a female again
Putting on a old medium red tee shirt, light brown cameo shorts, and black Adidas
For breakfast a glass of water, cold pepperoni pizza, and two Advil
Bringing my Nano Ipod with heavy metal music
Taking the local bus on a overcast morning
Waiting with crack heads after their nightly binge
Bus is cheap, two dollars for a ride anywhere in the city
Sitting in back against a hard plastic seat
Staring at stop lights, brand new cars, and graffiti
Coming to a slow halt in front of the school
Entering the gym as the glowing florescent lights are humming
Next to the treadmills, putting a green foam mat on the ground
Stretching for fifteen minutes, loosening the muscles in my legs, back and arms
Cleaning the mat with anti-bacterial spray and a paper towel
Jogging for ten minutes, my heart beating, beating, beating
Pain in my right side of the last minute of twenty
Looking around, the cute women are catching my eye
Probably waiting for their hot boyfriends wandering in the locker room
All the men are in shape with their new white tank shirts, basketball short, and Nike shoes
Confusing look on my face of no idea what to do
Deciding to copy other men's routines of
Arm Curls, Leg presses, Rows, Squats, Military something's, and Isolated whatever's
65 minutes
Leaving the gym thinking
Waiting for the bus with alcoholics that are going to the bars early
Coming home for another shower
While grabbing the white towel, the eureka moment is lingering
Quick nap and lunch is on my mind
Setting the alarm one hour before getting ready for my next class
Getting into bed

Falling asleep





Dead as a dodo

On the island of Mauritius a heavy storm is leaving.
In the fields of the ancient wild forest a wild field of mushrooms is growing.
Snails and grasshoppers are ready for the warmth.
The old grass growing with lizards are jolting for crickets while snakes looking for lonely mice.
Falcons are flying for pray.
Shallow light Blue Ocean shimmering at each wave as the black clouds are rolling.
Waves are lapping.
Fisherman on the reefs are casting their poles.
In warm water a pack of clown fish are floating.
Tiger sharks are swimming free.
Steel drums beating in the distance.
The full moon slowly setting for the sun is rising.
At the local cemetery there is weeping.
The dodo is finally dieing.





[Source]

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Little Red Leaves, issue #5

 

 

Poésie : face B _ Journal de poésies américaines contemporaines

 

 

http://poesiefaceb.blogspot.com/

 

S/N: NewWorldPoetics

S/N: NewWorldPoetics

is a quarterly journal dedicated to the poetries of the Americas and to South/North [S/N] dialog. In each issue we will publish poetry and poetics in English or Spanish translation, introducing North American readers to Latin American poetry and vice versa. Our commitment is to a poetics of invention and exploration. This also defines our approach to translation, which we see not as an expedient but as an art form in itself. S/N will present work that challenges received conventions about poetry and poetics – but not necessarily in the predictable ways of the avant-garde, bohemian, or dissident. The poetry and poetics we present is meant to open up new understandings of poetic invention and formal exploration, in works that are as wild and unpredictable as Our Americas.

S/N: NewWorldPoetics es una revista cuatrimestral dedicada a la poesía y poéticas de las Américas, como asimismo a promover el diálogo entre Sur y Norte [S/N]. En cada número publicaremos poemas y poéticas en traducción al inglés o español, presentando a los lectores de Norte América la poesía de América Latina, y viceversa. Nuestro compromiso es con las poéticas de invención y exploración. Esto también define nuestra concepción de la traducción, a la cual no vemos como una simple mediadora sino como una forma de arte por sí misma. S/N presentará obras que desafían las convenciones pre-existentes sobre la poesía, aunque no necesariamente a la manera predecible de las vanguardias, la bohemia, o la disidencia. La poesía y poéticas que publicaremos están pensadas y concebidas para inaugurar nuevos entendimientos de la invención poética y de la exploración formal, en obras que son tan salvajes e impredecibles como Nuestras Américas.

Charles Bernstein & Eduardo Espina, editors

Issue One

Essays / Ensayos

Charles Bernstein
Roberto Echavarren
Eduardo Espina
José Kozer
Heriberto Yépez

Poetry / Poesía
Carlos Germán Belli
Régis Bonvicino
Robert Creeley
Oliverio Girondo
Tan Lin
Harryette Mullen
Tom Raworth

Interview / Entrevista
Marjorie Perloff
Enrique Mallen

Translators:
Gabriela Jauregui
Ernesto Livon-Grosman
Pedro Serrano
Rose Shapiro
Travis Sorenson
Julia Stanka
Molly Weigel

116pp., 8x10", color

Novelties of Horror

Today is either Liberation Day or Day of Deep Resentment, depending on your point of view. On April 30th, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon. I had escaped on the evening of April 27th, just hours before the bombs fell on Tan Son Nhat Airport, rendering it inoperable. On the cover of Frank Stanford's the battlefield where the moon says I love you, there's a photo of children who died on the 28th at Tan Son Nhat. Thousands of poems have been written in English about the Vietnam War. I want to share two by B.D. Trail, a poet not widely known. When he died on New Year's Day of 1992, a suicide at 51-years-old, Trail had published just one chapbook, Flesh Wounds (Richford, VT: Samisdat 1989).


The Grenading

dedicated to Captain Nguyen Van Te, 2nd ARVN Infantry Division; and to Dock Burke, "life-time friend"

The ARVN Major beat the boy
with the captured rifle sling
glancing proudly at us,
his American advisors.

An uninteresting event to everyone
except the boy who silently cringed
and shook from blow to blow.

In the madness of the war
today was near-to-normal.
There had been the usual dance to snipers,
the suck-up in the chest,
the dash across manioc fields,
the crack and whip of bullets
in time with running feet.

Looking at the photos now,
the sand is light like snow.
But then, the sand was griddle-hot
and hard to run across.

And there had been the usual harassment
of the villagers,
the pig killings and gold tooth grinnings
of the chicken thieves,
the stolen rice boiling in black cauldrons.

In our little corner of the war
the major beat the boy,
we Americans smoked cigarettes,
the Vietnamese village women cooked rice
for ARVNs down on the ground
spread out in casual circles.

The stick grenade was lobbed out of a bunker
with all the surety and disguised slowness
of a softball. And it seemed to move towards
a cookfire with measured, casual directness.

A village woman heavy in her pregnancy
caught the rolling blast of the grenade.
The fragments plunged into the soldiers.
For her the blast was a sonic scalpel
slicing, filleting, cutting
deep, deep into her belly.

Something clicks in time of crisis,
a switch to surreal slow motion.
We Americans froze in place
while the Vietnamese,
as if coming up for air,
floundered and fumbled.

Still half-frame, the image slowed
to show her baby,
her corded baby,
ease ooze
from her fish-gutted belly
and fall into the fire.

The madness was not just the fetus in the fire.
No, that was just a novelty-of-horrors.
to men who had seen minings and other mutilations.

The madness was the mother was still alive.
Split from throat to crotch,
the mother was alive and
screaming screaming screaming

I didn't shoot her and I don't know why.
No one shot her. And she kept on
screaming screaming screaming.

Dragged over the white-hot sand
on a red-wet poncho,
she screamed for two hours on the landing zone.

She died before a helicopter came.

I died back at the fire.



Our Lady of the Flies

Our infantry satchel-charged a bunker
And killed a VC nurse.
With hooks, they snaked her out.

Then one pimple-faced killer sliced out
That which is between the legs
of all women, dead or alive.

Impaled upon a bamboo stick
It glistened in the sun.

Our Lady of the Flies,
Forgive them not.

They knew what they were doing.
WITH MY SHIELD OR ON IT

When the Danang chopper plucked me out of Tam Ky,
Everything rolled by like a grim silent movie:

The whirring blades--a noisy khaki camera
The little people--extras for a biblical spectacle
The pock-faced land--Hollywood badlands

And it was right that I should see this final film clip,
For I had paid. Not in money,
But I had paid.

No one laughed or even talked much on the plane.
The Stewardesses seemed disappointed in us.
But, I heard one man say,
'At least nothing will ever be as bad as what
We've been through,'
He was wrong, of course.
Home was still ahead.

Fat women in slacks. San Francisco whores and hippies.
The forgotten nausea caused by neon. Slept-in khakis.
Patriotic old men and wonder-struck girls.
Kids saying, 'Did you ever shoot anybody in the face?'

When I flew out of the Inferno
I did not suspect I was entering into another one.

After awhile,
I missed the honest horror of Viet Nam.



Yes, there are some false moves here, and the poems' rhythm sometimes sputters, but there's no denying their tremendous power, especially in the first, which Trail considered his best. Trail has earned the right to subject us to these horrible and enlightening tableaux, not only because he was a witness--he served two tours in Vietnam--but because he has struggled mightily to sort out his and our complicities. There is no act that does not implicate the species as a whole.

.

Present Past Tense

Interviewed by Kent Johnson in 2002, Eliot Weinberger said:

The Trade Center attack will not alter the autobiographical, anecdotal, therapeutic poems of the workshops; it will merely add another subject. But it will be interesting to see what happens, if anything, on the progressive front. Their poetry has been a kind of decadent modernism and their politics has tended toward an academic pseudo-Marxism that is completely oblivious to politics as the rest of the world knows it: the infliction and alleviation of suffering. Meaning is not a capitalist construct, as they claim, but meaninglessness is, and 9/11 was an explosion of meaning in the prevailing media-fantasy unreality of the nation.

Meaninglessness as a capitalist construct. The daily flood of trivia, applauded by such “radical” poets as Kenny G, has become a staple of our media, but it’s not just fluff that gets dished up daily, and here lies the real insidiousness. Presenting in a rapid, endless succession, scandal, fried chicken, bullshit, bombs, boobs, earthquake, four wheel drive, waterboarding, singing contest, actually a pretty good documentary on the Irish in 19th century America, awesome breakfast burrito deal and more scandal, the media flatten everything and nothing sticks.

What to make of a poetry that constantly pivots away from itself? That invites nonsense, and when meaning is created, refuses to let it linger? What of a poetry that does not allow significance its proper duration, that shuns context, in sum, a poetry that imitates television, especially cable TV with a remote control for accelerated derangement? Is this poetry radical, complicit or merely inevitable due to neurological damages inflicted by said appliance?

Living inside such media-induced miasma, poetry is no longer possible, really. Sure, a reading may attract 20 uncomfortable, shifting chairs, and a yawning commuter may glance at some cutesy haiku overhead, but the current mind is no longer capable of meditation or reflection, those slow and silent processes that allow a poem to truly matter. The average American watches four hours of television a day, listens to constant music, and there's also the internet with its Facebook, texting, twitter, email and excellent porn, etc, to distract him. Two or more of these activities are often indulged in simultaneously. In a third of American households, the television is never turned off. If a poem can squeeze in sideway in such climate, it will likely just flit by, to make room for yet another ephemera, and another, and another. Conversation itself has been degraded. There is hardly a place to talk, especially one without sonic distractions. In a culture hostile to thinking, speaking and hearing, the poem has no chance.

Imagine a public that could be inspired by a poem such as this:

The Answer

Debasement is the password of the base,
Nobility the epitaph of the noble.
See how the gilded sky is covered
With the drifting twisted shadows of the dead.

The Ice Age is over now,
Why is there ice everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,
Why do a thousand sails contest the Dead Sea?

I came into this world
Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow,
To proclaim before the judgment
The voice that has been judged:

Let me tell you, world,
I—do—not—believe!
If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet,
Count me as number thousand and one.

I don't believe the sky is blue;
I don't believe in thunder's echoes;
I don't believe that dreams are false;
I don't believe that death has no revenge.

If the sea is destined to breach the dikes
Let all the brackish water pour into my heart;
If the land is destined to rise
Let humanity choose a peak for existence again.

A new conjunction and glimmering stars
Adorn the unobstructed sky now;
They are the pictographs from five thousand years.
They are the watchful eyes of future generations.

--Bei Dao, as translated by Bonnie S. McDougall

That audience is gone, I’m afraid. I don’t know China, but poet Zhang Er, co-editor of Another Kind of Nation: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Talisman 2007), told me that a Bei Dao is no longer possible in that country. The mass media have taken over. The only political voices with a public belong to a few journalists and rock stars.

Dissidence as entertainment. We’ve been there for a while, haven’t we? At the biggest corporate bash of the year, the Who earnestly belted out “We don't get fooled again,” yet no one guffawed and spat out nachos. At a White House soirée, grizzled peaceniks Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performed for our bankster-funded (and yet another) war president. Before strumming, Queen Jane even gazed at Obama and cooed, “Mr. President, you are much loved.”

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss is right. But, but, but, I can hear a chorus rising, this one is so much more articulate! A symbolic victory must count for something, no? He is black. Our usually lugubrious gated community was positively orgasmic with a kind of self-congratulation as the American version of Carlos Menem was elected. Where now, where now? Don’t stay tuned.

Images from my photo blog, State of the Union: Chicago; Philadelphia; Philadelphia; Los Angeles.

Flarf & Conceptual Poetry

Fat Man Singing

I adored the blurb you gave me so much

I wrote you a thank you blurb, all in italics

now sitting cross-legged in the faculty parking lot

the sky the color of tenure

conifers and elk-upchuck envigorating the pine-scented conservatism

nothing ma! no, we’re not enriching uranium!

oh only in dreams do I get to relapse


--from Jim Behrle's "I Can No Longer Be Friends with Professors"

Ah, the reciprocal back scratching, house of mirrors, glass bubble existence of poebiz, all tucked nicely into the military-industrial complex! Well, thank you, Jim! Soon enough, though, it will be goodbye to all that.

Memo to Kenny: We will not become more machine-like in the future. Quite the reverse. Like it or not, we'll be yanked from our virtual, surrogate existence and plopped into the splendor and squalor of life in the flesh. Down with the tyranny of the eye! Make some room for the nose, will ya?

[...]

You’re All Good

A few years ago, I got a mass email from a poet acquaintance. Sent to a dozen of his peers, this poet offered to pay “the usual fee” to anyone who would review his new book. Needless to say, it should be positive. Not quite in the loop, I didn’t know there was a usual fee, though I had already figured out that reriews of contemporary poetry weren’t primarily about literary assessment, but schmoozing. Dishonesty isn’t just rampant, it’s more or less required. The reasons should be obvious. The poetry ghetto is tiny. Sooner or later, you will pretty much meet just about everybody. This week in Denver, host city of the Associated Writing Program conference, you can probably do it in a night, if you know which after hour karaoke bar to pop in. (Do check your cane at the door, Rigoberto. I won’t be inside, waiting to give you a hug in solidarity. Maybe some other time.) In such a cozy community, even a vaguely negative review can have nasty consequences. You have just made a lifelong enemy, someone who can deny you a grant, job or reading invitation down the line. With the pie so puny, you gotta lick each crumb before someone else does. Pen a puff piece, however, and you have just gained a new ally.

[...]

Invest Here, Sensitive Soul

A while back, Joseph Hutchison posted this poem on his blog:

To Writing Programs: A Canticle

This way, that way, that way, this,

Here and there a fresh love is.

—Robert Herrick,

"To Bacchus, A Canticle"

for Seth Abramson

Realize the greatness
of your voice. Inspiration
comes in many forms.
Discover the writer's life
in New York City.
(You're not in Iowa
anymore.) Write
in Miami! Write
from the Heartland.
(We'll let our reputation
speak for us.) Write
from the heart
of writing. (The world's
focus is on our faculty.) My
words, my time, my MFA.
Otis emphasizes the writer's
ability to articulate
innovation. What makes
us different? Expect
more. Big thinking
for a big world.
Finally—an MFA
that trains you
for a career, not just
a genre. Study
your way. (Scribbling on
the ether.) Achievement!
Change the world
with words.

________________________

[1] The Voices Summer Writing Workshop

[2] NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies

[3] The New School

[4] Emerson College

[5] Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College

[6] Ashland University

[7] Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers

[8] Lesley University

[9] Drew—The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies

[10] University of Nebraska at Omaha

[11] Otis College of Art and Design

[12] Pine Manor College Low-Residency MFA

[13] Queens University of Charlotte

[14] Chatham University

[15] Western Connecticut State University

[16] Burlington College

[17] Prague Summer Program of Western Michigan University

[18] The Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University

[19] Antioch University Los Angeles

Pretty funny, I think, and thoroughly nauseating. Like everything else in America, poetry has become a racket. It promises you much more, deep meaning, fame and an oblique sex appeal, perhaps, than it can deliver. Get a loan--quick, before the bank shuts down altogether!--go into debt and in return you will be taken seriously by (mostly moonlighting) poets the rest of society doesn't give a caesura about--except during Poetry Month, of course. Just pay your tuition on time and at the end of the tunnel, you will have a comfortable, middle class career coated with a bit of bohemian juju, or so the student is led to believe. If everything goes well, you can encourage the next generation to stumble down this same path.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against young people wanting to learn about poetry or poetry writing. Those are beautiful yearnings, to be encouraged, but the system as it's set up demands a careerist mentality from both purveyors and suckers. Like every other ponzi scheme, it must entice its customers, the students, so that they don't shop at the next stall. This, it does mostly by flattery, since the poet's ego is always vulnerable and eager to vibrate. Poebiz must present its models, the professors, as somehow significant and relevant, though they may be nothing but careerist creeps. Oh shit, has the mike been on all this time?!

The mike is on?!

OK, all I mean to say is that the academy is fine and neccessary but it’s not good when nearly all of our poets are walled inside it. The academy is a utopia because that’s where our most untainted, optimistic and beautiful gather, and I’m only talking about the students, of course. Poets shouldn’t loiter in paradise. Paying through his nose, a young person drops into utopia, does a few hits of acid then leaves, but you can’t get rid of a tenured rhymeister with a crowbar, even if he hasn’t written anything in decades, if ever.

New American Poetry : 3rd anthology : New York

Third step of the new anthology of US poetry edited by Luigi Ballerini and Paul Vangelisti. This volume is focused on New York.

Nuova poesia americana. New York
Bilingual edition, pp. 975, Mondadori, 2009

Authors:

Bruce Andrews, John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, Bill Berkson, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Ted Berrigan, Paul Blackburn, Brian Blanchfield, Joseph Ceravolo, Jordan Davis, Ray Di Palma, Timothy Donnelly, Barbara Guest, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Robert Kelly, Kenneth Koch, Ann Lauterbach, David Lehman, Tinothy Liu, Lisa Lubasch, Jackson MacLow, Ted Mathys, Bernadette Mayer, Ryan Murphy, Charles North, Alice Notley, Frank O'Hara, Rochelle Owens, Ron Padgett, Nick Piombino, Charles Reznikoff, James Schuyler, David Shapiro, Gilbert Sorrentino, Tony Towle, Paul Violi, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, Marjorie Welish, John Yau, Louis Zukofsky.

John Ashbery: an interview

Tomorrow (Thursday, Oct. 22nd) at 5 p.m. Rome time (11 a.m. East Coast Time),
listen to an interview on RAI (Italian Radio) with John Ashbery on the occasion of
Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007

(translated by Damiano Abeni and Moira Egan, with an introduction by Joseph Harrison)
having won a Special Prize from the Premio Napoli.

Go to http://www.radio.rai.it/player/player.cfm?Q_CANALE=3

Webpages from Peter Ganick

experimental literary blog —> http://pganickz.livejournal.com

NEW publishers’ links:
http://chalkeditions.co.cc
http://scribd.com/arrumpress
http://sphinxtower.co.cc

NEW text ‘contexts [01-38]’ at:
http://scribd.com/pganickz

see art work by Carol Ganick and some of her students at:
www.flickr.com/photos/carolganick

Nioques, #5

*
read Recantorium in French

(watch the vid at PennSound)

Spring 2009 News & Upcoming Events [news from Litmus Press]

:::New Release:::New Release:::New Release:::New Release::: FROM DAME QUICKLY

Poetry & graphic stills by Jennifer Scappettone Paperback, 112 pages ISBN: 978-1-933959-06-1 $15.00 Cover art by Rosemarie Fiore

Available now through Small Press Distribution

The work in this wondrous first major book by Jennifer Scappettone has a phenomenal -- an excitatory -- presence, the presence of action, not thing. This book is a matrix of polytemporal energy, a linguistic carnival, ribald and resounding -- "a most implicit maze."...

-- Lyn Hejinian

LISTEN to Jennifer Scappettone now on PennSound!

* * *

and don't miss these

:::UPCOMING EVENTS:::

Wednesday, April 29th, 6:30-8:30pm

Panel Discussion with Marshall Price (Curator of Contemporary Art, National Academy Museum of Art), Jennifer Scappettone (Poet and Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago) and Rosemarie Fiore (Artist) discuss Fiore's artistic process


Thursday, May 7th, 6:30-8:30pm

"Dame Quickly, Unframed" reading and performance/projection of graphic stills from Jennifer Scappettone's new book! (cover art by Rosemarie Fiore)

Both of these events are organized and hosted by Priska C. Juschka Fine Art Gallery . Please RSVP to gallery@priskajuschkafineart.com or 212-244-4320.

Priska C. Juschka Fine Art Gallery

547 W. 27th St. 2nd Floor

New York, NY 10001

* * *

:::Embargoed Voices:::
Poesia Ultima / Italian Poetry Now

FESTIVAL OF ITALIAN CONTEMPORARY POETRY & POETICS

May 26 - May 29
New York & Chicago, IL

View all details here


In conjunction with Aufgabe #7 we welcome Maria Attanasio, Giovanna Frene, Marco Giovenale & Milli Graffi to New York and Chicago for a series of readings and discussions with translator & guest editor Jennifer Scappettone and translator Carla Billitteri.

Events curated by Jennifer Scappettone and co-sponsored by Litmus Press with the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, Poets House, St. Mark's Poetry Project, UChicago Arts Council, University of Chicago Creative Writing and Romance Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University Department of French and Italian, Chicago Poetry Center, Th!nkArt Gallery, and with promotional support from Columbia University, NYU, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

* * *

:::AND MORE:::

Saturday, May 30th, 4pm
Stacy Szymaszek & Patrick Durgin
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
NYC

Segue Series
(curated by Tim Peterson & Kristin Gallagher)


Friday, June 19th, 8pm
BOOK RELEASE PARTY!
Celebrate our two newest releases
-- and the beginning of summer --
with authors Jennifer Scappettone and Stacy Szymaszek

Short readings, snacks and wine will be provided!

From Dame Quickly, by Jennifer Scappettone
Hyperglossia, by Stacy Szymaszek

NYC, details TBA

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

FORTHCOMING JUNE 2009

Hyperglossia

Stacy Szymaszek

Aufgabe #8

featuring Russian poetry in translation, guest edited by Matvei Yankelevich

and there's more here

__________________________________ Litmus Press is supported by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency and by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. We are a proud member of the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses and rely on ongoing support and contributions from our members, subscribers and individual donors.

chaturangik/SQUARES - A chess book of collaborative poetry

CinnamonTeal Press has recently published a square-shaped thin book of bilingual collaborative poetry, where each page of the book is designed like a chessboard. Two stubs of bilingual text (English and Bangla) are placed in or over certain squares following an undercover stratagem.

chaurtangik/SQUARES is a book length collaborative poem by Pat Clifford and Aryanil Mukherjee. The book is inspired by Satyajit Ray's seminal film Shatranj Ki Khiladi (The Chess Players). The work deals with the mechanics of chess and politics in both a thematic and formal way. At times the language is opaque and confrontational. In other places there is a resigned melancholy.

Often what started as longer poems were chopped or condensed. In the end, each installment was placed into the boxes of a chess grid. The poem's use of languages is more complex than it would appear. Translation was part of the collaborative process itself, not something done after the fact. In a typical section, Clifford would start out writing in English to which Mukherjee would respond in Bengali, who would then translate Clifford's English lines into Bengali and his own Bengali into English. Critical focus would be placed immediately on the modifications and then prompt the next section. In the end, a linguistically reflected text was produced— a poem that can be read in multiple ways.

chaturangik/SQUARES
Pat Clifford and Aryanil Mukherjee
A bilingual booklength collaborative poem
Illustration by Mithu Sen
Published by Cinnamon Teal
45p/Paperback/6.25" x 6.25"
ISBN - 978-81-907296-6-6
Distributed by Kaurab

To know more about this book visit -

http://www.kaurab.com/aryanil/chaturangik-english.html

Empire in Funkville

"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetic nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem [...] One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women [...] Of all nations the United States with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall."--Walt Whitman, from his preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855.

Whitman's projection of the poet's central and celebrated role in American society never came to pass, obviously. Many of our best have been ignored, angry drunkards, suicides or madhouse inmates, while others groomed themselves into clowns, not wise fools, mind you, just giggly or lugubrious. (But clowns are born, not made, you're huffing, slamming your wireless mouse on the table.) Eliot changed his citizenship.

With his desolate blog and countable band of readers, identifiable by name, face and even favorite beer if not deodorant, the American poet lives in a forgotten dwelling furthest away from the corridors of money and power. Each morning, brushing his uninsured or just barely tenured teeth, thank god, the American poet is glad and relieved to be reintroduced to his best and only attentive reader. Speaking of arithmetic, Don King said, "If you can count your money, you ain't got none."

"Where do you shop, darling?"
"At the Mall of America, of course, and you?"
"At the Mall of American Poetry, where nearly every item is free and there's never a problem with parking."

Click on this link and buy my book, please.
I have a new book coming out, it's my best yet, you'll see.
All of my poems are online now.
The reading is free, obviously, but I'll also provide free (American) cheese, free of charge. It'll be a cheese orgy, I promise.
Please come, I'll put you on top of the guest list.
Please come, I'll grant you a backstage pass where you can meet me (unplugged), my doppelgänger and e-persona, free of charge.

Over the years, I've sold most of my books when even zinc pennies became scarce. A copy of Heinrich von Kleist, An Abyss Deep Enough: Selected Letters, Essays, and Anecdotes, for example, would yield just enough fiat currency for a packet of Ramen Pride and a very proud can of Spam. In a lost volume, I read that Walt Whitman had an office job where he slept, Bartleby like, under his desk at night. Even more fantastic, I read that a track jumping train destroyed Edgar Allan Poe's headstone before it could be erected over his grave. I learnt that a half naked Ezra Pound was kept in a cage under the sun, where he busied himself translating from the Chinese. These wretched examples gave me courage and convinced me that if the greatest poets in the greatest country with the fullest poetic potential at any time upon the earth, mankind's greatest experiment, never to be bankrupt, a shining plantation on a hill, blah, blah, blah, could be so miserably fated, then I should shut my freedom fries grinder and learn how to think and write, one botched phrase or linebreak at a time. At a 1984 Leon Golub lecture, some dork, not me, asked, "What advice would you give a young painter?" Without hesitation, he said, "Quit! It's not worth it!”

Every young writer or artist starts out believing that he or she's a chosen one. What choice does one have? One must think this way to keep going until it's too late to change or death or until one has enough of failure, rejection or poverty to agonize over a caesura. Mired in irrelevance, the American poet has nothing to lose but words.

Countries can also be led or deluded into thinking they're exceptional, none more so than the United of States of America. Its citizens have believed this throughout its history and so has a large part of the world. American exceptionalism derives from many factors, none more convincingly than the country's wealth and a range of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Millions have risked death just to live under the U.S. Constitution, and at least one man was sent to jail for translating a document explaining its tenets.

In 2003, a Vietnamese court convicted Phạm Hồng Sơn, a 35-year-old doctor, of "espionage," and sentenced him to 13 years' imprisonment plus 3 years of house arrest. His offense? In February of 2002, Sơn translated “What Is Democracy?” and emailed it to his friends. He also sent copies to many high-ranking Vietnamese officials, including the Secretary General of the Communist Party. On March 29th, 2002, Sơn was arrested and held incommunicado until his trial on June 18th, 2003, a closed hearing with no lawyers or reporters present. It began at 8AM and was over by 4PM. Now, "espionage" is when someone's hired by a government to obtain secrets from another. Sơn could only be a spy if he took Vietnamese state secrets and gave it to a foreign power. Instead, he copied a U.S. document, readily available online, and sent it to Vietnamese authorities, so he was really “spying” for Vietnam and should be rewarded accordingly. Totalitarianism breeds idiocy and this farce would be funny if it didn't destroy a man's life.

One Vietnamese went to jail for dreaming of the U.S. Constitution, another helped to shred it. John Ashcroft's top deputy and chief architect of the Patriot Act, which became law on October 26, 2001, was Viet Dinh, who came to this country as a ten-year-old in 1978.


2

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

--Walt Whitman

Whitman died in 1892, before the Age of Oil began in earnest. The oil industry started in Western Pennsylvania in 1859, with the first significant oil well named Empire, appropriately enough. Oil became the fuel and engine of the American Empire and Century, and the U.S. was the biggest oil producer in the world until the 1950's, a decade of peak American prosperity and confidence. America's most enduring and quintessential icons, Elvis Presley, Maralyn Monroe and James Dean, all came out of the 1950's. When I arrived in the US in 1975, the most popular television show was Happy Days. About the 50's, its best loved character was a greasy (oily) mechanic and biker named Arthur Fonzarelli, or the Fonz. When times were good, even a high school drop out could give two thumbs up and co-own a diner. Today, Fonzie would be lucky to work as a sales associate at Wal-Mart.

The American Dream was clothed, fed and driven by oil. Oil allowed this country to build an unprecedentedly sprawling, wasteful and alienating environment, where citizens are conditioned to spend hours sitting alone in a steel box and liking it. "It relaxes me," a poet friend told me. The car, not the eagle or cracked bell, is the symbol of American freedom, with its erratic, stop and start speed a metaphor for inevitable progress. That's why NASCAR's popularity has increased, defiantly and foolishly, in spite of high gas price and shortage, and foreign wars to insure more of the same-old-same-old. Dick Cheney, "The American way of life is not negotiable." As the oil age and American dominance peter out, it's Greek tragedy appropriate that we're being steered by a failed oil executive. In 1996, Nadine Gordimer wrote:

[...] what are the factors that affect our daily lives—running across calendar events, over trade winds and continents and national frontiers, affecting have and have-not alike? What influences the late twentieth-century world most widely, you and me, now?

Dip a finger in a dark viscous sub­stance and write on the window of our world. OIL.

There always has been awe of gold, a mythology of gold as the ultimate in material value; gold as the alchemy in which human fate is bound up. At the end of this century it is oil that has that has significance. Oil is ominously bound up with our time; it was the base of the Nobel fortune from which came the Peace Prize...and undreamt-of means of destruction. It is the "why" of many wars of our day [...] Men, women and children die, for oil, without knowing it.

U.S. oil production peaked in 1970. On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon took the U.S. Dollar off the gold standard, making it fiat money and intrinsically worthless. Still, it remained the world's reserve currency by morphing into the Petrodollar, meaning every country on earth had to buy and sell petroleum with our funny paper, an involuntary arrangement enforced by the U.S. military, with its 761 bases in 151 countries. It's the primary reason why we're in Iraq, not to liberate or chase terrorists but to make sure everyone around that gulf continues to swap oil for greenbacks. If Arabs accepted euros, yens, yuans or rubles for petroleum, the United States would quickly become irrelevant and no one would have to send us real products for our worthless paper. Drunk with hubris, thinking the world had to put up with this protection and monopoly racket forever, the U.S. became indifferent to its stratospheric trade deficits and disappearing industries. Instead of producing actual merchandises, we dumped onto the world our exotic financial instruments and toxic investments, but ponzi scams can't last forever. That's why we're bankrupt, naked and at the mercy of our creditors, friends and foes alike. It's point, game, match, so the lights will be turned off soon. Let's hope we don't go postal before leaving the court.



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Poetry Politic: A Blog in 50 Days

Daily political poetry news—from September 15th through November 4th, 2008—brought you by the citizens at Wave Books.

from Dubravka Djuric

charles,

i am sending you beautiful cover of the first anthology of us poetry in former yu[goslovia], it was published in 1952 in zagreb, croatia, and i got the copy from luka stekovic, poet who is refugee from croatia. the cover is beautiful because the cover is fine exhample of socialist modernism. it was translated by two croatian poets, ivan slamnig and antun soljan, the poet included are philip freneau, william cullen bryant, ralph waldo emerson, henry wadsworth longfellow, john greenleaf whittier, edgar allan poe, henry davis thoreau, james russel lowel, herman melville, walt whitman, emily dickinson, bert harte, thomas bailey aldrich, sidney lanier, edwin arlington robinson, edgar lee masters, stephen crane. paul laurence dunbar, amy lowell, robert frost, carl sandburg, vachel lindsay, wallace stevens, witter rynner, lola rynner, w.c. williams, sara teasdale, elinor wylie, ezra pound, john gould fletcher, h.d., marianne moore, t.s. eliot, conrad aiken, claude mc kay, edna st. vincent millay, archibald mac leish, e.e. cummings, horace victor gregory, stephen vincent benet.

dubrvaka