Stephanie Young opens by shaking her hands at her sides to denote both nervousness and excitement. She has never read at the project, and she is “profoundly overstimulated” by New York; not at all the suburbia that Oakland “has finally become”. She is somehow both conversational/accessible and profoundly authoritative: a feat for a reader, I think. She never falters, but seems to attack reading as though it were a physical task (well, I suppose it is) to be completed.
Her reading centers around a long poem - “My Life in France” - which she frames as “calling out” to its origination with friends Dana and Ally, and for a reading at Kinessa Gallery in Oakland. The poem had come out of an assignment to write either “location” or “correspondence”: this prompted a conversation in which the three friends came to the conclusion that the two are inseparable. Their friendship is a kind of a location made through correspondence. Or, in Young's own words: "A face is not a location. A poem is making a location possible".
The poem artfully mixes the mundane (“I am hurt by facebook”) and the startling, rushing
onwards in a kind of litany of locational complaint. There is an anger and a tenderness suffusing the work; as it skewers or re-routes narrative tropes in favor of an ever shifting present location, a present presently re-made, vivid enough to invoke both the past and the absent. “Looking for a resolution,” she writes “no / not this time / not a story / not a scene / not a forest for the trees / not even on their behalf.” This “even” demarcates the space outside of the poem as a space in which the story, the scene, and the resolution will be demanded (or at the very least ardently desired). The poem's strength lies in it's wish to fulfill these needs “on their behalf,” coupled with its refusal to do so as expected.
An entire section follows the life of Julia Child, writing the Art of French Cooking with her
dear friend and co-conspirator “Simka”. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that this was the story that the poem was following, at present. (Alright: I am not particularly familiar with the life of Julia Child). Is it Stephanie Young's “Life in France” or Julia Child's that we are hearing? The poem is flush with life stories, falsities, revealing asides; a kind of maddening gossip and chatter which, in Stacey Szymaszek's words makes “biography as a process rather than a product” happen.
Young had opened her poem with a quote from Bachalard: “we are unable to live duration that
has been destroyed”. “But it is not,” is the retort of Young's first line. “My Life in France” is a poem that “calls out” to the other locations where it was multiply born. In so naming, it creates a series of lines, a number of durations, drawing continuity implausibly from disjunction.
Stacey Szymaszek introduces Miles Champion by speaking of poetry as a practice which she associates with altering the pace of things: in most cases, slowing the pace down. But Miles' work, claims Szymaszek, has the effect of making one feel that a kettle is screaming and “boiling over”. Shortly after, Miles starts reading so quickly that I can literally barely understand his words. There is an urgent rush to get the words out of himself: I imagine a kind of childhood game, the desire to repeat and to repeat as quickly as possible certain tongue twisters until their meaning becomes distorted (perhaps renewed?). The sense-quickening that Szymaszek has spoken of becomes literalized in the poet's body, almost comically; but with a peculiar kind of decidedly unpretentious force as well.
Eventually I get the hang of it, of him, of listening: and the words continue to spill out; absurd, acrobatic, tangential: “red, totems, stone, leaflet, comrade, normal, blood vessel, orange juice”. And yet in spite of the apparent “absurdity” of the work, I am convinced that the absurd is only present on the surface-level. There is also a certain “rightness” that I can't quite name; the sense that an absolutely rational language has emerged to speak from chaos. “Colors do not smell when you edit them,” says Champion, “time is a colander with fresh holes”- (at which the entire audience sighs audibly with recognition) - "wet cups leaves blisters/exudation of cumbersome parts/I check faults with reverie/they loosen our heads/the rope names in their celibacy/question space/mute bells”.
Moxley reads next: Szymaszek opens by quoting Moxley as saying in an interview, “experience is not merely what happens to us”. As she reads, I find that experience also seems to be what happens around us, atmospherically, or what happens without us, or what happens to others, or what we deny is happening all the time that it is happening: a multiplicity of presents and pasts in which we are continuously implicated. “We watched the news in disbelief,” writes Moxley, as a speaker in a beautiful California garden, “eucalyptus debris/the surreality of being so thoughtlessly content.” The cherished “private self” of poetry is constantly undermined: both a self-critical and a generous stance. “I edit the pulse of my mind/distraction establishes me”: the outside filters in, asked or unasked, situating both the writer and the writing deeply in the world.
In Szymaszek's introduction, she also speaks of Moxley's work as a space in which “political injustice can never be too removed from us psychically”. This impossibility of a separation from political injustice pervades the work. There is no entirely innocent contentment, outside of the haunting knowledge of our “country's bounty as impoverishment”. Again and again, Moxley's poems return to a call for collective and individual responsibility, even as taking this responsibility often seems nearly impossible. “In relative safety,” writes Moxley “and in search of goods/nauseous with fear for the capacious sky/it feels like our carcasses have been pushed out into the open.” Meanwhile, “poems in journals have forgotten that there's a world”.
I was surprised by the plainness of much of the language in these poems – and the mastery with which such plainness was utilized. Lines almost affably conversational in tone carry the heavy weight of psychic culpability: draw us into a conversation that seems, at first, easy, and later probes perhaps too deeply. “I get more narrative by the year” writes Moxley, “saying things to get them said/feeling no leisure to take old risks”. The need to say things “to get them said” is the strategic language of a writer who refuses to forget that there's a world.
Myung Mi Kim was born in Seoul, Korea in 1957, on December 6th. She migrated to America directly following the Korean War when she was nine years old. Myung attended the University of Iowa, where she earned a degree in fine arts. She also earned other degrees from Johns Hopkins University, as well as Oberlin College. She remained in the world of academia as she went on to teach creative writing at the University of San Francisco, and now she currently is a professor of English at the University of Buffalo in upstate New York. Myung is recognized for her post-modern style of writing. There are three books of poetry she has written: Dura, The Bounty, and Under Flag. She has won 2 Gertrude Stein Awards for her works of North American Poetry. One of the most important things for Myung Mi Kim is her traditional influence from her childhood. She feels as though her abrupt removal from Korea made a profound impact on her connection with language. She stated, "There's something about being nine or so—you have enough access to the language, you feel a connection to the culture fully. And yet again, that culture is and will be embedded in you. In this strange region of knowing and not knowing, I have access to Korea as a language and culture but this access is shaped by rupture (leaving the country, the language). When I engage 'Korea'—what resemblance does it have to any 'real' place, culture, or the language spoken there? So in this effort and failure of bridging, reconfiguring, shaping, and being shaped by loss and absence, one enters a difficult negotiation with an Imaginary and a manner of listening which to me is the state of writing." What I take this to mean is that Myung uses writing to bridge the gap between a previous place in her life, and her current state of being. Language can be often times hard to articulate within speech, however poetry and creative writing have helped Myung and many other writers (especially those whose first language wasn’t English, but had it forced upon them) find a common language which they could use to communicate. In Myung’s personal life she moved a lot when she came to America because her father was a surgeon whose job placement caused them to continuously change zones. She excelled in High School, and would up graduating a year early. During high school she wrote her first English poem at the age of 14. It being such an outstanding poem not just for the fact that she was 14 year old who only recently learned English, but because it was actually beautifully written, wound up in a local literary magazine. Though Myung did not consider writing as a career until much later in life.
Jacket Magazine was founded in 1997 by poet, John Tranter. It is an online poetry publication that issues a new edition two or three times a year. Jacket Magazine has no advertizing on their site. Tranter and his volunteer contributors work for free. An amazing feat considering the amount of poetry that appears in Jacket Magazine. In 2004 Tranter brought on poet, Pam Brown to assist the team as the Associate Editor.
Tranter is based in Australia; however, Jacket Magazine reaches households around the globe. There are over seven thousand printed pages on the internet that include poetry, articles, book reviews, and photographs, to name a few. Often each issue is themed. Jacket Magazine has also featured poetry from across the globe. A quirk of the site: Tranter shamelessly promotes his books of poetry on the homepage.
Issue 39 is Jacket Magazine’s most recent edition. It contains 900 printed pages of… stuff! A poet’s dream. There’s a multitude of poets listed with their poem(s), a few poets are featured with their photograph. Issue 39 received poems from so many contributors that they had to spill some of the poetry over to Issue 40 which will appear from April to July 2010. When you click on issue 40 you are able to see the work Tranter’s done already, a list of poets, but the site is labeled under construction and you cannot click any of the links.
Apparently after issue 40 Tranter will retire from his work at Jacket Magazine, after 13 years of work. Don’t fret, Jacket Magazine is not dead to the world. All of Jacket’s servers will be moved to the University of Pennsylvania and will remain intact. However, Jacket2 will have its beginnings! The Kelly Writer’s House and PennSound will host the new Jacket2. It will continue to be a free website publication.
Here are a few links to Jacket Magazine pages I found interesting:
Octopus Books is a small press in Denver,CO since 2006. Octopus Books publishes two books of poetry a year. They accept unsolicited submissions! But...the deadline is tomorrow (April 30, 2010). You can subscribe to receive the biannual OctopusBook online. They also publish books from various poets that you can buy on their website: www.octopusbooks.net
I was surprised to find that the most recent book published by Octopus was written by none other than Matvei Yankelevich who is the editor and founder of Ugly Duckling Press. I like the interconnectedness of these small presses. The book by Yankelevich is called Boris by the Sea and it is truly a masterpiece. There are YouTubes of him reading parts of it- check it out here: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780980193824/boris-by-the-sea.aspx
Octopus Magazine is an online poetry magazine that was started in 2003. One of the only pieces of information offered on their website, besides the poetry itself, is: "It is named after a sea creature that is intelligent, lives in dens, and uses ink as a defense mechanism. Every issue features a combination of 8."
The current issue is #13 http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue13/html/main.html" and it consists of poems, reviews, and recovery projects. As you can see on the website, there are 3 columns of 8 poets. The 8th poet in each column has been translated. Our good friend and idol, Bhanu Kapil, is featured in this issue: http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue13/Kapil.htm" The review section of the magazine has, obviously, reviews of recently published books of poetry. There is a review in this issue of a SONG by Bhanu Kapil (if you just can't get enough of her... http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue13/Reinkordt.htm) The recovery projects section is very cool- here is the explanation from the website: In addition to poetry we always welcome submissions of Book Reviews & Recovery Projects. Recovery projects are brief essays celebrating a single book that you feel people should be reading but are not reading. The recovery should be about 1000 words, about a book that is at least 20 years old & out of print, but all those are flexible. The only real requirement is that the recovery inspires a reader to want to track down that book and read it as soon as possible. Please write us to pitch a Recovery Project.
I found an interview with one of the editors, Zachary Schomburg. He is both an editor and a poet himself. I think what he says is a nice blending of a poetics statement and the philosophy of his small press:
Q: How does your role as an editor influence your writing?
A: As an editor of a journal that gets a bulk of its unsolicited submissions from hip young poets in master of fine arts programs, I feel like I am at an advantage as a writer. I get to cheat and look at everyone else's tests. Mostly, I've been able to shape exactly what it is I don't want poems to do.
Mathias and I have a similar taste in poetry (though we debate quite a bit as well), so each issue of Octopus is like a snapshot of the kind of poetry I've been into since 2003. It is fair to say that reading for the magazine and writing are inextricably linked.
The poems I write are the poems I most want to read. Ultimately, I'm a slow and inspired and confused reader while I write. It's the best kind of reading I think, writing is.
I've emailed the press in hopes to find out more information. The website is rather limited.
ps sorry, but i couldn't figure out how to make the links clickable.
The website: http://www.corollarypress.org/Corollary_Press/Home.html
Corollary Press is a small press based out of Philadelphia, that publishes work by artists and poets: Christopher Stackhouse, Lynn Xu, Jason Daniel Schwartz, Pamela Lu, Bahnu Kapil, Summi Kaipa,and Craig Perez.
Corollary publishes by writers of color, Christopher Stackhouse is an African-American painter and poet He does lyric meditations on the visual line in Slip.Slip is currently sold out, and Stackhouse was also co author of Seismosis which was published by another press.
as a mark is made it becomes an image
as you make a mark you become the image
of an image making a mark—remaining
frames your tree as what was once now gone
the “ephemeral monument” to phosphorescence or
the vapor, the audience, the contrast, the sophist-
ication swollen by a bee sting, sort of reddish,
a pyrotechnist “walking the finale”—
(Slip)
Bhanu Kapil’s: an Indian émigré did a hybrid memoir of displacement, colonialism, and mental illness in Water Damage. I have read her work in The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers and was really moved by it. Kapil’s work is also sold out. Kapil and Stackhouse seem to be this presses most popular writers.Here is a small section of Water-Damage,
Imaginal technology for the map of the day is timed to open. In this way the psychiatrist can work economically with three kinds of black space at once. An economy is a system of apparently willing but actually involuntary exchanges. A family for example, is really a shop-front; a glass plate open to the street. Passers-by might mistake it for a boucherie, splashed as the customers/butcher are with blood. Transactions are frozen in place beneath a chandelier of the good knives.
(Water-Damage)
The editor of the Press is Sueyeun Juliette Lee, who is also awriter. Lee grew up three miles from the CIA, and now lives in Philadelphia, where she edits Corollary Press. Her books include That Gorgeous Feeling (Coconut Press, 2008) and UNDERGROUND NATIONAL (Factory School, 2010). An essay on the craft of teaching poetry is forthcoming from the University of Iowa's anthology Poets on Teaching (2010). All of the books at Corollary Press are hand-bound, using an Asian stab-stitch binding technique. Many of the covers were letter-pressed using an antique Adama platen press. Visually the books look beautiful. You can see them attached to this link, http://www.corollarypress.org/Corollary_Press/Mission_and_Titles.html
It looks like they have just redone their website, switching over from bog to website. The website has more of a style to it with the home page being the definition of the word Corollary. I found the website easier to monitor than the blog, it is nice to see how small presses develop.
George Oppen is an American poet who lived a very adventurous life that directly impacted his poetry. He was raised in an affluent family in New York in the early 1900s. His family moved across country to San Francisco after his mother tragically committed suicide. George was a reckless young adult. He was expelled from school which provoked the start of his traveling. He traveled through England and Scotland to attend lectures on philosophy. He returned to the United States in 1926, which is when he started attending college. He met Mary Colby at Oregon State Agricultural College. Mary got expelled from the college and George was suspended. They decided to leave Oregon together and hitchhike and sail from the West Coast back to his home state of New York. Along the way they got married.
Once back in New York, Oppen became an important member of the Objectivist poets. Louis Zukofsky, another founding member of the Objectivists, said the group's goals for modern poetry were "to treat the poem as an object, and to emphasize sincerity, intelligence, and the poet's ability to look clearly at the world." They were highly influenced by William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Oppen later published both legendary poets through his short-lived publishing company To Publishers.
George and his wife Mary became very involved as social activists during the Great Depression. His poems were published throughout his time as an activist. Soon after, though, he stopped writing entirely for two decades. Overwhelmed with political enthusiasm, Oppen eventually became affiliated with the Communist Party. After about ten years, he left his job as campaign manager and became involved with the military in an effort to fight fascism. He went on to fight in World War II. After he returned, he faced scrutiny from the House of Un-American Activities Committee. He fled to Mexico in 1950 and worked on a carpentry business.
He returned to the United States once again in 1958 with Mary. They found their way to New York once again where he reawakened his interest in poetics. From then on, he published numerous books of poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize. He was able to complete his final work, even though he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, with the help of his wife. He died from complications with Alzheimer’s and pneumonia in 1984.
Robert Creeley wrote an introduction to a book of Oppen's poems (in 2003) that sums up Oppen's "Poetics" nicely: "However different they were later to find their lives... all worked from the premise that poetry is a function of perception, 'of the act of perception'... Oppen's complex 'thinking with his poems' is a consistent and major factor in all his surviving work...much becomes clear, in fact, if one recognizes that George Oppen is trying all his life to think the world, not only to find or to enter it, or to gain a place in it but to realize it, to figure it, to have it literally in mind.”
Here are two examples of his poetry. They are both examples of ars poetica because he references the poem itself within the poem. Not all of his poetry is like this, but these are two examples that blend "America" with the individual with the poem with the world with the word, etc. He has perfected succinct and short lines. Some poems are entirely made up of couplets. His use of white space, caesura, and lacunae are well placed.
If It All Went Up in Smoke
that smoke
would remain
the forever
savage country poem's light borrowed
light of the landscape and one's footprints praise
Cecilia Vicuña is an established poet born in Chile.In 1980 Vicuña established a residence in New York City, and has lived alternatively in both countries ever since.
Her work extends poetics to a number of disciplines.As well as more traditional literary poems, Vicuña has involved herself with video, site specific and ephemeral installations (including those outside of galleries/museums), and other forms of sculptural and visual arts.
She has additionallytaught internationally and all across the United States, at Naropa, SUNY Purchase, Denver University, and the University of Buenos Ares (Universidad de Buenos Ares).
In terms ofwritten poetics, Vicuña has explored a number of themes and styles.Her work most notably fuses more canonized modern and post-modern traditions with that of the indigenous cultural and linguistic traditions of Chile.The form of this fusion frequently takes, as has often been the case in the last century, the quotidian and attempts to infuse them with their appropriate poetry, the hidden romanticisms and tales that they contain.Her poem “The Origin Of Weaving” is a perfect example of her co-habitating work.
“the first knot, begging of the spiral:
life and death, birth and rebirth
textile, text, context
from teks: to weave, to fabricate, to make
wicker or
wattle for mud-covered walls”
The indigenous practice of weaving, so common and so innate to the foundations of so many cultures, is given the most magnanimous of connotations, that of life and death.
“weave
from weban, wefta, Old English
weft, cross thread
web
the coming out
of the cross-star
the interlacing of
warp and weft
to imagine the first cross
intertwining of branches and twigs
to make a nest
to give birth”
Its practice seems to signify the life of the animal, the ecological, the cyclical time of those peasant cultures born from its womb, and finally the very linguistics that compose the poem itself.A precise cycle of communication, of wordly weaving, is enumerated here.Indeed, without any reservation, Vicuña’s poetry is then identified with life and death, the most essential aspects of nature extending even beyond humanity itself.
In Vicuña’s language the reader discovers the simply communicated, sentence like constructions that are common in ‘post-modern’ poetics.While abstraction is certainly indulged in, its presentation is simple, straightforward, and un-obfuscated.Again, her words mimic the humble practice of the weaver,popular, foundational, and yet of a definite artisanal beauty.This manifestation of the simple, the essential, seems to carry through out.
Accompanying her poetry, and intimately tied to such a poem around the nature of weaving, is her construction of the quipu.The quipu is an ‘ancient’ recording device predating the Incan Empire in the Andes.It consists of a rope or chord, intricately knotted to record numerical, and also theoretically symbolic data (tied to an unknown predilection for different colors).It served, then, as an early form of book keeping and legal exchange.Vicuña’s linguistic weaving is then tied implicitly to a physical practice.She ties poetic tradition to indigenous tradition directly in introducing these quipus into the world.
A certain mysticism seems to surround both practices, with tangible intentions attached to the placement of these talismans.The much celebrated Michele Bachelet, elected President of Chile in 2006, gave the occasion for a site specific ‘Menstrual Quipu” installation.Its significance is elaborated in a sort of prose poem “Letter to Michele Bachelet.” In it Vicuña states that she is unable to register and has thus “voted in another way,” in the form of her quipu.The statement doesn’t contain a trace of irony, suggesting that the quipu’s significance and the force of its connection is just as tangible as her literally casting a vote.
The letter goes on to invoke the power of the glaciers that had previously been condemned to foreign mining in Chile.“Now I am reading the history of Pascua-Lama and the agreements that Chile signed before you were elected, authorizing the destruction of the glaciers and my blood knows that by placing my vote at the mountain, and not in the urn I was to dream a reversal of the world,” Vicuña writes.Her quipu, while surely symbolic, is also intended to be equipped with a real magic/poetic force that will protect and preserve these traditional lands.She continues, “An ancient myth of the highlands says that as long as the camelids are grazing by the springs at the edge of the glaciers, there will be wealth and fecundity, well-being for all.”Certainly, “well being for all” has not been visited upon Chile at any time (including before the arrival of any foreign miners), but the sincerity of this evoked tradition is unwavering.
The quipu for Michele Bachelet is, importantly, “Menstrual.”The bond of woman to woman is instantly recalled in this cyclical physiology that marks all ‘adult’ women through out time.Recurring, cyclical, the shared, the traditional, all that reside in her poetics is again manifested through this ritual bond.A certain unity is sought through the activity of Vicuña’s poetics that will both preserve a culture, and wield it as a weapon of action.
Jenny Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio in 1950. She received her BA from Ohio University in Athens and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She also has honorary doctorates from the University of Ohio, the Rhode Island School of Design, and New School University.
She started out as an abstract artist. After moving to New York City she started working with text as art. The main focus of her work is the use of words, phrases, ideas, and poems in public space. When she first began creating text art she started by putting up street posters. Now she most often uses LED lights/signs. However she has incorporated many mediums in her work such as, bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches, stickers, t-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, and the internet.
Holzer doesn’t consider herself a poet though text does play an enormous role in her work. It is unclear to me when exactly she stopped writing her own “poetry” to use as text in her artwork, but more recently she has taken to using other poets’/writers’ text. She has used passages from de-classified US Army documents form the war in Iraq. Her work often talks about violence, feminism, sexuality, oppression, war, death, and power.
Holzer is most famous for her short statements “truisms”. Some are actually true and others are myths. She uses LED lights to display “truisms” on buildings, trees, and public spaces in general. Her work generally pokes at the advertising world by using phrases that mimic advertising slogans. Here are some of her "truisms":
‘a man can't know what it's like to be a mother’,
‘men are not monogamous by nature’,
‘money creates taste’,
‘a lot of professionals are crackpots’,
‘enjoy yourself because you can't change anything anyway’,
‘freedom is a luxury not a necessity’,
‘don't place too much trust in experts’.
Below are a few websites where you can see photographs of her work:
The KGBar is a communist-themed bar up a flight of stairs from the townhouse-and pub-cluttered 4th Street. At the top of the stairs I round a dimly lit corner and find myself in a high ceilinged pub room packed with people conversing before the show. The crowd seems very informal, various ages sporting different fashion senses, engulfed in the smoky and whispering ambience. On the wall hangs pictures of Lenin, Russian generals and communist propaganda, along with the salient symbol of the red army, Trotsky’s face superimposed on Saint George as he fights against the dragon, which is draped behind the bar. At the far corner of the room, near the giant, thick red curtains, is a short podium with a desk lamp, where the poets will read.
The first poet is introduced by Laura Cronk, co-host of the reading series. She first says that she hopes that the “Language Gods smile here tonight” and then segues into Michael Gizzi’s introduction. She describes his work as “grounded in the traditions of poetry without being ‘tight-assed’.” Gizzi, an ageing slender man with silver wavy hair, reads from his book “New Depths of Deadpan.” With an enunciated and measured tone, that both sets a rhythm and impedes a deeper and more profound performance, Gizzi wades through scientific phenomena and literary references, creating a space inhabited by his characters and breaking them with general statements, switching from exclamations towards an other to indentifying with a culpable self. The poems are well crafted, but he seems distanced from his work. The rubbing of colloquialisms with elite diction also creates an ironic feel, and coupled with his turns of phrase, slowly seduces me towards enjoying his work, even though I had issues with his performance at the beginning.
Next, Keith Waldrop, a professor at Brown who has translated many French Symbolist poets, including Baudelaire, is introduced to the podium. Waldrop is an old, wide-framed man with straight, long white hair and a thick, long beard. As he introduces his book, “Shipwreck in Haven” in a Midwestern drawl tinged with high resonant and nasal tones, a siren can be heard out the window. Waldrop goes into great detail about the poems, how they were published and what to expect. Then he launches into his reading. Focusing on each word and exercising control over lacunae, Waldrop crafts an imagistic and symbolic plane. The intricate and vast patchwork of images and words both submerge and enchant me at the same time. His work is symbolic, yet surrealistic. It would be impossible to relate what his poems were about, since they are all abstract yet so nuanced. I sit there, transfixed, attempting to enshrine every single fleeting word. After he finishes, the audience applauds and then goes to the bar for more drinks. I rise from my seat and introduce myself to the two hosts. To my surprise, both of them are affiliated with the New School and that many of the audience were affiliated too. I enjoyed attending this reading and experiencing the colorful dynamics of this venue and its featured poets.
Tarpaulin Sky Journal was founded in 2002 by Christian Peet. Beginning as an online literary journal, it focused on cross-genre, hybrid texts and innovative poetry and prose, and expanded to printing magazines in 2007. The journal prides itself on not being associated with any specific style or school; rather, it focuses on publishing writers and thinkers from many different paradigms and perspectives. Many of the journal's contributors had never been published before, and many are frequently published and have even won awards for their work-- diversity and eclecticism are celebrated at Tarpaulin Sky. Some of the literary journal's contributors include Juliana Spahr, Laird Hunt, and Michelle Naka Pierce. The journal also posts reviews of other small press publications.
Tarpaulin Sky Press is based out of Grafton, Vermont and began in 2006 with the intent of publishing the work of the journal's contributors. Like the journal, it is a home for cross-genre, hybrid works that would not fit elsewhere. The press is described as author-centered, with a goal of producing books that, as objects, are as pleasing as the texts they carry. In a Poets & Writers article on small presses, Tarpaulin Sky editors described as "intrigued by work that doesn’t announce its genre," and that the press "enjoys found items, lists, odd constraints and mathematical constructs [...] the non-poetic." Experimentation (with language, form, and materials) is appreciated and encouraged. Tarpaulin Sky Press produces perfect bound books, handbound books, and trade paperbacks (as well as chapbooks).
Tarpaulin Sky Press has published everything from lyrical essays to collaborative works of poetry to novellas/photo essays to works of fiction; the press is not limited to any particular form or system. Published authors include Sandy Florian, Paul McKormick, Andrew Zornoza, Chad Sweeney, and Danielle Dutton, to name a few.
Tarpaulin Sky writers and contributors frequently give readings, and Tarpaulin Sky Press frequently hosts readings and events around the Vermont area.
More information can be found at http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/about.html
Alice Notley was born on November 8th, 1945 in Arizona. Growing up, Alice lived in California, and she went on to get her BA from Barnard and her MFA from the writer's workshop at the University of Iowa.
Travel and transience seem to be common themes in Notley's life. She traveled and lived in many places growing up, living in San Francisco, Chicago, London, and Essex. Eventually she settled down on the LES and married poet Ted Berrigan. After his death, she eventually married British poet Douglas Oliver. Currently she lives in Paris.
These life experiences obviously influence her poetry. Notley is often associated with the second generation of the New York School of Poetry, but she also focuses on the desert and desert life. Notley has declared that her primary focus in writing is to create a poem, not to create a vehicle for change-- creating art for art's sake, without necessarily having a pedagogy to it. Notley has said that her voice is the voice of "the new wife, and the new mother." It is interesting to consider this perspective from Notley's stated intent.
Notley was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and has received many accolades including the Los Angeles Times Book Award for poetry. She has published many works including Disobedience, Mysteries of Small Houses, and Tell Me Again, which is an autobiographical work that features paintings, sketches, collages, and her verse.
Here are some recordings of her reading her poetry: "The Descent of Alette [A Car Awash with Blood]" : http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19854 "Hematite Heirloom Lives On" : http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19850
The Descent of Alette ["I stood waiting"]
"I stood waiting" "for some minutes" "in this very" "alive darkness—" "the air so vibrant," "the trees awake" "There were flowers," "mixed grasses," "growing lower" "in the dark," "& I was relieved" "to be near them" "after so much time" "where nothing grew" "Then" "I heard a
song" "faint & blurred," "a slow song" "I heard it" "as if through walls" "As if" "there were a room" "next to where I stood" "& someone," "a man," "sang inside of it" "The tune was sad," "& attracting" "I approached it—" "where its source seemed to be—" "& it moved away
from me" "just a" "short distance" "This happened twice" "Then I understood" "I was to follow it:" "& so it led me—" "through deep woods" "& clearings," "for" "a long while" "The voice sang" "the same melody" "over" "& over" "mournful" "& intimate" "in a language"
"I didn't recognize—" "or didn't think I did:" "it was hard to" "hear the words—" "Till at last we" "reached a meadow" "where the song" "ceased to sound," "pale & empty" "with trees around it" "Then I sank to" "the ground" "& fell asleep for" "a long time" "But when I
awoke" "of course" "it was dark"
No World is Intact
No world is intact and no one cares about you.
I leaned down over don’t care about, I care about you I leaned down over the
world in portrayal of carefulness, answering
something you couldn’t say. walking or fallen and you were supposed to give therapy to me—
me leaning down brushing with painted feathers to the left chance your operatic, broken
book.
World's Bliss
The men & women sang & played they sleep by singing, what shall I say of the most poignant on earth the most glamorous loneliest sought after people those poets wholly beautiful desolate aureate, death is a powerful instinctive emotion— but who would be released from a silver skeleton? gems & drinking cups—This skull is Helen—who would not be released from the Book of Knowledge? Why should a maiden lie on a moor for seven nights & a day? And he is a maiden, he is & she on the grass the flower the spray where they lie eating primroses grown crazy with sorrow & all the beauties of old—oh each poet's a beautiful human girl who must die.
I included these three poems of hers because they are all differently shaped. The "Descent of Alette" poems are more like prose, with a variety of punctuation and an abundance of quotations--a speaker, whereas "No World Intact" and "World's Bliss" are more of a narrative. I really like the way Notley plays with language and sound, and the way she breaks her lines. There is some level of chaos in the way the poems are structured, but there is a concreteness in her consistency of imagery and word sounds. I can feel her pushing the reader to carry the motion of the poem when they read the lines. Something that also strikes me is Notley's intent in writing poetry-- to create poems. Often I am, for lack of a better phrase, hung up on whether or not poetry is still valid if it does not serve a greater (for lack of another better word..) purpose. Notley's poetry allows me to feel comfortable with poetry that does not have an agenda, and I think that that is crucial within the art world.
Additional information about Notley can be found at poets.org- they have a lot of great biographical information and more of her poetry posted: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/767
