Archive for November, 2010

Brett Price, the curator for the Friday Late Night Series at the Poetry Project, decided to shake up the usual format (two readers and a $10 admission) for Friday, November 19^th.  He started as usual at 10 pm, but there were eleven readers in total, and the reading was billed as a Poet’s “potluck.” Attendees were encouraged to bring food to the reading in exchange for having their admission waived. 

The turnout was spectacular, and the pot-luck gave the evening a communal feel.  People casually gathered around, carrying on conversations and consuming pasta salad, pizza, sautéed vegetables, pies and various snacks.  I left around 1 am when the food was long gone and the reading over, and there were still lots of people hanging out and talking with the poets.  Here’s the line-up of readers:

Anelise Chen

Farrah Field

Patrick Morrissey

Kelly Ginger

Josef Kaplan

Christine Kelly

Dorothea Lasky

BREAK

Chris Martin

Jamie Townsend

Jared White

Thom Donovan

Douglas Piccinnini

Most of the poets read three poems.  Here’s Dorothea Lasky’s set-list:

1. Toast to my Friend or Why Friendship is The Best Kind of Love

2. Monsters

3. It’s A Lonely World

-steven karl

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Black Friday is often an insane day filled with shoppers pushing, fighting, and standing in dreadful lines to secure “deals.”  As we enter into the holiday season, we’d like to suggest some gifts for poetry lovers that you can purchase from home and feel good about.

Consider the Black Ocean 2011 subscription pack which includes one copy of every title they release in 2011 plus a free book and as always, free shipping for $40.00 (ships 2/2011). Destroyer of Man by Dominic Owen Mallary, Ordinary Sun by Matthew Henriksen,The Girl Without Arms by Brandon Shimoda and Handsome Vol. 3.

For $40 you can also get a 6-month gift subscription to the chapbook publishing press, Song Cave. The authors included in the subscription are Lisa Jarnot, Rod Smith, Andy Fitch, Peter Gizzi, Dana Ward, and Jennifer Moxely.

Want to make a statement about commitment?  Consider Octopus Books 2 year subscription for $64. With this subscription you will receive everything they publish (full-length books and chapbooks) through 2012.

It’s no secret that Brooklyn’s own Ugly Duckling Presse makes some of the most aesthetically pleasing books, so how about giving a year subscription?  For $150 you ( or the recipient of your gift) gets an UDP membership plus everything they publish in 2011.

Wave Books gives you the option to subscribe in soft-back or hard-back.  The 2011 SOFTCOVER SERIES consists of trade paperback collections of poetry by Matthew Rohrer, Noelle Kocot, Anthony McCann, and Anselm Berrigan, translations of Gennady Aygi (by Sarah Valentine) and Jorge Carrera Andrade (by Alejandro de Acosta and Joshua Beckman), as well as the continuation of bibliographic pamphlets and other publications and ephemera to be announced. A year’s worth of Wave poetry for the loveable price of $75: to order, visit the softcover subscription page.

The 2011 HARDCOVER SERIES consists of limited edition hardcover editions of all of our trade paperbacks, as well as bibliographic pamphlets and other publications and ephemera to be announced. Each clothbound edition is individually numbered, smyth-sewn and foil-stamped, with author-signed bookplates, and is accompanied by a publisher’s letter. The book jackets are letterpress printed with a unique paper selected by each author, and are exclusive to these editions. The signed, numbered editions are available only to subscribers and not sold in stores. The cost of a hardcover subscription is $295, including first-class domestic shipping. To order, visit the hardcover subscription page.

Subscription volumes will ship free throughout the year, as they are released.

-steven karl & Katy Henriksen

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The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the 42 winners of its 2011 $25,000 Poetry Fellowships. Winners include Kathleen Graber, Joshua Mehigan, Maggie Nelson, Allison Titus and Cecilia Woloch. All winners listed below. The NEA’s creative writing fellowships are designed ” to enable recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement,” according the its Web site. Here are the winners:

Aptowicz, Cristin O’Keefe
Astoria , NY 
$25,000

Boisseau, Michelle
Kansas City, MO
$25,000

Brown, Jericho
San Diego , CA 
$25,000

Capps, Ashley
Houston , TX 
$25,000

Carr, Julie 
Denver , CO 
$25,000

Clary, Killarney
Aptos, CA
$25,000

Denrow, Jennifer
Denver , CO 
$25,000

Doty, Catherine
Boonton , NJ 
$25,000

Falconer, Blas
Nashville , TN 
$25,000

Feldman, Chanda
San Francisco, CA
$25,000

Foerster, Richard
Cape Neddick, ME
$25,000

Girmay, Aracelis
Brooklyn, NY
$25,000

Graber, Kathleen
Wildwood, NJ
$25,000

Hall, Jamie Allen
Potsdam , NY 
$25,000

Harrison, Leslie
Sandisfield , MA 
$25,000

Hernandez, David 
Long Beach , CA 
$25,000

Horton, Randall
West Haven , CT 
$25,000

Iglesias, Holly 
Asheville , NC 
$25,000

Jeffers, Honorée Fanonne
Norman , OK 
$25,000

Journey, Anna
Houston , TX 
$25,000

Katz, Joy 
Pittsburgh , PA 
$25,000

Kennedy, Christopher
Camillus, NY
$25,000

Lewis, Lisa
Stillwater, OK
$25,000

Lindenberg, Rebecca 
Salt Lake City , UT 
$25,000

Lock, Norman 
Philadelphia , PA 
$25,000

McCallum, Shara
Lewisburg, PA
$25,000

Meek, Sandra
Rome, GA
$25,000

Mehigan, Joshua 
Brooklyn , NY 
$25,000

Moeckel, Thrope
Buchanan , VA 
$25,000

Murray, Joan
Old Chatham, NY
$25,000

Nelson, Maggie
Los Angeles , CA 
$25,000

Nienow, Matthew
Bellevue, WA
$25,000

Platt, Donald
West Lafayette, IN
$25,000

Runyan, Tania 
Lindenhurst , IL 
$25,000

Scollon, Teresa J.
Traverse City, MI
$25,000

Short, Gary
Virginia City , NV 
$25,000

Smith, Maggie
Bexley, OH 
$25,000

Sugarman, Yerra
New York, NY
$25,000

Teague, Alexandra
Oakland , CA 
$25,000

Titus, Allison
Richmond, VA
$25,000

Wardrop, Daneen 
Kalamazoo , MI 
$25,000

Woloch, Cecilia
Los Angeles, CA
$25,000

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On Saturday, Nov. 13, Poets House featured a panel discussion with Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Craig Santos Perez, and Barbara Jane Reyes.  The over-arching theme was “(Re) Writing Culture,” though each poet spoke more about the process of writing their books.  All three poets had second books released in 2010.

Sueyeun Juliette Lee spoke first.  She is the editor of a chapbook press, Corallary Press, and her second book, UNDERGROUND NATIONAL, was just released by Factory School.  Lee said that one of her main concerns is “achieving a sense of belonging” and she posited, “alienation is the root of world problems.”

Lee said that her second book is really an exploration of “national space,” both physical and psychological.  She mentioned that she is Korean-American, and that culturally she “belongs” to the traditions of Korea, but her physical space and education has always been “American.”

When her parents immigrated to the United States, she said,  they bought into the assimilation narrative, so she wasn’t raised with “stories” of her parents or relatives’ lives in Korea.  Lee said that this lack of personal knowledge results in what is “removed from the text” and that it was replaced with “research.”  The research contains fragments of a soldier’s experience in Korea, snippets of news, discussions about K-boy bands, and suicides, which thematically tie into alienation and how a “nation is a personless entity, yet (we) are deeply embodied by whatever ties us to the land, which is something other than nation.”

Lee read the first few sections of her poem, “Korea, What Is.”*  The poem explores boundaries, and further explicated her idea of perceived “physical” and “psychological” space.

Barbara Jane Reyes spoke next, and began by explaining the desire behind her first book, Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, Press, 2005).  The book begins in the mission district: “consider this procession:/ wings of black paloma dispersing and capturing air, / babies in the costumes of cherubs, / la virgen de Guadalupe on a float of roses, / a weeping siren, / a brothel girl.”

The poem continues, “we find ourselves retracing the steps of gold/ hungry arrogant spainards. walking on knees/ behind their ghosts, could we ever know how/ much blood seeped into the soil—”

Reyes’ book captures the “worldviews and collisions” that transpire and consist of the known and unknown narratives of San Francisco.  She researched the Filipino populations and their migrations within the city’s district.  She also collages the “personal  history” of the Filipino culture in San Francisco as rendered to her by her grandfather.  One of Reyes’ main concerns is the narratives that were ignored and/or went unacknowledged.  She explores U.S. involvement in the Philippines via wars and tourist industries. including the sex industries, which became the focus of her chapbook, Cherry (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2008).

Reyes said that when she worked on these books, she encountered a lot of Filipino mythology, and her second full-length collection, Diwata (BOA, Editions, Ltd 2010), gives its voice over to these mythologies.  She mentioned that through her research, she found many occasions where these myths overlapped and borrowed narratives from each other.

Craig Santos Perez said that he originally came from an ethnography background.  Most of his research began as “academic,” as he is enrolled in the Ph.D program at Berkeley.  Perez spoke at length about the shifts in ethnography and how language is “complicit with imperialism.”  He said that all of his research affected his first book, from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008).  The book explores the constant invasions by Japanese and American soldiers and how with each invasion more and more of Guam’s official language is destroyed and replaced first with Japanese, then American.

Perez said he attempts to capture what has remained as well as what was lost.  Throughout this process, Perez really wanted to capture “the personal” lived narratives, specifically of his grandmother.  He wasn’t able to do this with his first book, so for his second book, from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn, 2010), he collages narratives and fragments of his grandmother’s life and her stories.  Perez said this enables him to capture the “psychology of empire nations” through the “story-telling” of those that have lived it.

Perez said ethnography failed to allow him to tell these experiences with all of their nuances and that only poetry allows him to collage and draw from so many different fragments to create both a larger and more personal narrative. Poetry also allows Perez to incorporate maps and photos and news snippets into his work.

Reyes commented that she writes poetry because it allows for “hybrid bodies of there and of here.”  Poetry enables her to be in two places and multiple perspectives simultaneously.  It also allows for the natural progression of mixing the personal and political.

Lee mentioned that she went through an intensely religious period in her life and as she came out of that period she chose to “drop out of society” in order to examine and reorder her life.  She started writing poetry and she saw this as a rebellion against religious and political dogmas, but strangely enough it was poetry that brought her “back into the world” and it is the writing and community of writers and readers that continue to keep her fully engaged within the world.

* Thomas Fink writes about “Korea, What Is,” in his review of the book here.

** Lee’s chapbook, Perfect Villagers, is reviewed on Coldfront here.

*** Craig Santos Perez reviews Michael Gizzi’s book, New Depths of Deadpan, for Coldfront here.

–steven karl

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Jerry Williams has written a remembrance of Steve Orlen over at the Best American Poetry blog. Orlen died of cancer on Sunday, Nov. 14, according to the Arizona Daily Wildcat. Anna Clark has also written a nice piece at Isak, and the Poetry Foundation has posted an Orlen poem from its archives.

Orlen’s Somondoco Press bio reads, “Steve Orlen has published six books of poetry, including The Elephant’s Child: New & Selected Poems 1978-2005, Kisses, and This Particular Eternity. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, three NEA grants, and the George Dillon Memorial Award for Poetry. He teaches at the University of Arizona in Tucson and in the Warren Wilson MFA Program.”

Here are links to his poems:

In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas
Lewis Carroll Thinks About Time
Monkeymind
Ode to Coal
Song: the Kiss
Three Teenage Girls: 1956

Harrison writes:

On November 14th, Steve Orlen passed away as a result of a sudden terminal illness.  During the prior week he had been surrounded by family, friends, and colleagues.  Alison Hawthorne Deming shared with me that he spent that time, utterly present and Buddha-like, working on his final manuscript with his former students (accomplished poets in their own right).  Awareness of such facts tempers my grief somewhat, but makes my heart even heavier, so heavy I’m going to cover-couplet W.H. Auden:  Earth, please receive your honored guest.  Steve Orlen is laid to rest.

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Terrance Hayes has won the National Book Award for Lighthead. Other nominees included Kathleen Graber for The Eternal City, James Richardson for By the Numbers, C.D. Wright for One with Others and Monica Youn for Ignatz. You can read a review of Graber’s book here and a review of Richardson’s book here. Reviews of the books by Richardson, Wright and Hayes will be published later today. 

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