Works Received

Here is a list, in no particular order, of poetry books accumulated over the past 6-9 months: they were given to me for review; given as a gift from authors, publishers, editors; or I bought them. I want to acknowledge those who have sent me works, read them to me at readings, or told me a lot about how they were made. Poets and poetry publishers will sometimes give their books away (don't tell the fiscal authorities!) They do this mainly, I think, because they recognize the avid reader, a like minded poet, and because, in general, poets and publishers are incredibly generous people when they forget that the prevailing assumption has them boxed in as elitist narcissists. I think this is one reason I am happy with my chosen field--poetry is a musical way to think, and most poets have a great sense of belonging to something. Usually. My desire to post this list was prompted by a gift from Henry Israeli, publisher of Saturnalia books, and by my attendance at the CUNY Graduate Center Chapbook Festival a few weeks ago. I've had a great time over the past month hearing world-class poets read their works, and by a great amount of grace, and some tenacity, I think coming months will offer an environment where I can (AT LONG LAST) feel like a useful contributor to art & poetry efforts that are incredibly worthwhile. I have had to deal with some horrible shit.

I am sure you have had to deal with horrible shit, too.

Gary Geddes. Swimming Ginger. Fredericton NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2010.
This book is a series of personal narratives sung by the inhabitants found in the Qingming Shanghe Tu scroll, which is assumed to have been painted in the 12th century by Zhang Zeduan. Reminiscent of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, except that Geddes' poems are carefully metered, and that these portraits vividly describe lives of city folk. The urban milieu is painted here from high to low. Not quite as significant as the Canterbury Tales.

Frederick Farryl Goodwin. Buber's Bag Man. Toronto: The Gig, 2010.

Paolo Javier. MEGTON GASGAN KRAKOOOM. Brooklyn: Cy Gist Press, 2010.
Cover and 9 interior illustrations by Ernest Conception.

Abraham Smith. Hank. Notre Dame, Indiana: Action Books, 2010.

Kate Colby. Unbecoming Behavior. Brooklyn: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008.
Shhhh! I mean, this sh-sh-sure is a good poem. It is!

Alicia Cohen. Debts and Obligations. Oakland: O Books, 2008.

Lauren Russell. The Empty-Handed Messenger. New York: Goodbye Better, 2009.

Timothy Liu. Polytheogamy. Philadelphia: Saturnalia Books, 2009.
15 greyscale reproductions, cover and 11 full color reproductions of paintings by Greg Drasler.

John Yau (poems). Thomas Nozkowski (artwork). Ing Grish. Philadelphia: Saturnalia Books,2005.


Sebastian Agudelo. To The Bone. Philadelphia: Saturnalia Books, 2009.

Star Black. Velleity's Shade. Philadelphia: Saturnalia Books, 2010.
Paintings by Bill Knott.

Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg, editors. Gurlesque: The New Grrly, Grotesque, Burlesque
Poetics. Philadelphia: Saturnalia Books, 2010. Poetry and Painting Anthology.

Adonis (born Ali Ahmad Said Esber). Selected Poems. Translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa. New Haven: Yale UP, 2010.

Kay Ryan. Say Uncle. New York: Grove Press, 1991.
At her reading at LaGuardia Community College, they brought out boxes of free books and gave them away to everyone.

Sherry Robbins. or, The Whale. Buffalo: BlazeVOX, 2010.

Whit Griffin. Pentateuch: The First Five Books. Skysill Press, 2010.

Dorothea Lasky. Awe. Seattle: Wave Books, 2007.

Camille Martin. Sonnets. Exeter UK: Shearsman Books, 2010.

Ted Berrigan. Dear Sandy, Hello: Letters from Ted to Sandy Berrigan. (1962) Minneapolis: Coffee House, 2010.

Brenda Iijima, editor. )((eco(lang)(uage(reader)): the eco language reader.
Brooklyn and Callicoon, NY: Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs and Nightboat, 2010.

Florine Melnyk. Suspended Imagination. Buffalo: BlazeVOx, 2010.

Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative.
These books seem to have long titles.

Series 1.
Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn. Selections from The Collected Letters 1959-1960. Edited by Claudia Moreno Pisano. New York:Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2009.

Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara. "this pertains to me which means to me you": The Correspondence of Kenneth Koch & Frank O'Hara 1955-1956. 2 Vols. Edited by Josh Schneiderman.New York: Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2009.

Muriel Rukeyser. Darwin and the Writers. Edited by Stefania Heim. New York:Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2009.

Philip Whalen. 1957-1977 Selections from the Journals. 2 Vols. Edited by Brian Unger.New York:Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2009.

Robert Creeley, Daphne Marlatt and Fredric Franklyn. The 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference / Robert Creeley's Contexts of Poetry, with Daphne Marlatt's Journal Entries. Edited by Ammiel Alcalay. New York:Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2009.

Series 2.
Margaret Randall. Selections from El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn 1962-1964. New York: Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2011.

Diane Di Prima. The Mysteries of Vision: Some Notes on H.D.. Edited by Ana Bozicevic. New York: Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2011.

Diane Di Prima. _R.D.'s H.D._ Edited by Ammiel Alcalay. New York: Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2011.

Robert Duncan. Charles Olson Memorial Lecture. Ammiel Alcalay et.al., Eds. New York: Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2011.

Jack Spicer. Jack Spicer's Beowulf. 2 Vols. Edited by David Hadbawnik and Sean Reynolds. New York: Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2011.

Muriel Rukeyser. "Barcelona, 1936" and Selections from the Spanish Civil War Archive. Edited by Rowena Kennedy-Epstein. New York: Center for the Humanities and Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2011.

I misplaced Ivy Johnson's chapbook on my chapbook shelf. It was published by Boog City Literature. The reading was at the ACA gallery in Chelsea, where I got to see some of Romare Beardon's collage works, and a disturbingly lifelike sculpture of a nude woman. The poems were good, and there was a very good musical act playing, too.

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Sweetest Surrender

It is an unusual feeling, looking through the corrective lens of hindsight. And it is harmful to eschew foresight in making any life-altering decision. To think of what one is capable of walking into, and willingly--it defies reason. Talk about it. Tell people. From the perspective of friends, or occasional confidants, there is a sympathy that does not seem understanding enough. THIS, one decides, belongs to no one but myself, and yet, it isn't anything that one would willingly own. And what is "this"? A special form of chaos--quite real in terms of where one lives, and what one does on a daily basis--a kind of madness certainly, yet so seemingly ubiquitous that it becomes hard to extract oneself far enough to recognize one's role, take the dancer from the dance, pluck the single stalk from its field. Without wanting to, I can contribute to circumstances that are clearly destructive. I have the greatest desire to see my personal, proprietary chaos as a particular historical and social form--that I am simply acting through, and with the available means: relationships, jobs, modes of travel, clothing, food, meeting the tick-tock of constant overhead--to maintain a residence, a place, a mood, a space of familiarity. It seems so vague and abstract, really, to give narrative shapes to the broad contours of feeling that occur to one over years of time. If I think I went through a number of serious depressive episodes, each fast on the heels of its predecessor, I am reluctant to objectify my life over the past four years like that--because the clinical is so clingy. Diagnosis has to do with the elusive, imprecise nature of defining one's own nature. Or reiterating, and standing on the fact that I will define it for myself, thank you--and you may say what you please. But with a diagnosis, one gains the pleasure of working through the steps of cure and recovery. There is certainty. This thing has a name. It is my body, and my body is perfect in the fact that it will NEVER be perfect. Relief. One meets it in the gaze of another, and in polite, and not so polite rejections. Invitations declined or gone unanswered. It is the same impulse, perhaps, that brings a pissed-off crowd to the forum, to stand and say, "We have had it!" with the prevailing narrative, the controlled message. Because it IS wrong. And it IS harmful. Why can't that be said of our own personal life and circumstance? That all narrative is predictive, predicated form? That form is merely an object of study, and the object of an action based on its prediction. Because what I was living was the unpredictable, and it is still just as much what I am living with. I was welcome to chance, happy with transience, hanging with the outlaws, heaping up with the outbursts.

It all seems so gentle now, from this necessary distance. By ownmost nature, I had kept my eyes glued to the eyes of the nurse, and not on what was in the little cardboard cup. That's how it goes. I have been attempting to act from a sense of sanity, with senses that have grown and been cultivated for over half of my adult life. Working with every reserve, verging on deplete, for the sense of being precise, generous, both yielding and firm. Then, I am told, and by one whose word I count as weighty as gold: your sense of it is exactly the opposite (even if that's a bit of an exaggeration) of what will pass as normal. No, on a hurried pavement of mad hungering souls, and a million drives cascading over me like a shrapnel wind, I'll never grasp the half of it. I will be strange. It will feel good, too. In a context of chaos, it is foolish to think in terms of the normal, the pathological, the comforting and the weird. Especially here. On the gentle edge of this mossy hillside there is a truth: I have had it. And the lover of that thought: no one will take this away from me ever again.



i love you.

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