Rodney Koeneke's Blog, page 19

Butterball

Remember that commercial from the '70s or '80s where two pilgrims, one of whom looks like or might even be the first Darrin Stephens from Bewitched, appear in a modern-day kitchen as a golden turkey's slid effortlessly from the oven? Darrin Stephens Pilgrim turns to his wife: "Thou never served so juicy a bird."
Pilgrim Wife: "Thou never brought home a Butterball."

I can't find it from the usual sources (10 minutes on YouTube and Google), but that little exchange has been lodged in my head for ...

Stevens the Blogger?

"Did we expect to live in other lives?"

Stephanie Young

Since Blogger unleashed the "dynamic blogroll," I've been culling blogs that hit "1 year ago." Last week, those fell words appeared under . It won't get culled. The Well Nourished Moon was one of the first poetry blogs I was ever aware of, and I remember how it changed my sense of connection to the events and readings I haunted back then. Things suddenly seemed more personal and significant; I thought more about phrases and more about shoes. Even slow poetry nights took on a ...

Poets Theater

I knew there was a big Poets Theater Anthology on the boil that Kevin Killian and David Brazil are editing for Patrick Durgin's Kenning Editions. In advance of its Jan. '10 ('10!) release, Kenning's started posting a series of "Previews and Supplements," along with the full TOC. The book looks incredible—Charles Olson to Nada Gordon, John Ashbery to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, WW II to whatever war we were on in 1985. It could do for Poets Theater what Kenning's Hannah Weiner's Open House helped d...

Beverly Dahlen

Robin Tremblay-McGaw's posting a detailed interview with Bev Dahlen in installments over at X Poetics. Dahlen, who gave a terrific "homecoming" reading this spring with David Abel for Portland's Spare Room series, offers, among other things, a fellow traveler's perspective on the formative "Language" years in San Francisco in the late '70s, a moment that's undergone a lot of reassessment lately, from the serial Grand Piano volumes to research like Rob Halpern's, Kaplan Harris's, and Robin's o...

Status Update from the Oracle at Delphi

"…hovering between equivalence and metaphor…"

Community & Poetry

O.K., here's the bit on poetry and community by Lisa Robertson I was thinking of:

"This word community is a common currency right now in poetry blogs and certain bars. Community's presence or absence, failure, responsibility, supportiveness, etc—everyone is hovering around this word. It could be that I just feel its ubiquity since I moved to rural France from Vancouver, ostensibly away from 'my community.' When I think about it from here I feel ambivalent. I don't miss community at all. I do...

Poetry Community

Anyone know where to find Lisa Robertson's provocation from a year or two back about poetry and community? I thought it was on Harriet, but looks like she's been scrubbed from the site, at least as former blogger. She did once blog on Harriet, didn't she? And once about not liking the concept of poetic community? If you've got the URL, I'd be grateful. I found this at Lemon Hound, from an interview with Vanessa Place, but remembered a larger discussion around Robertson's comments:

LH: Do you...

Poetics from the Oracle at Delphi

Poetry as Rush that believes its own 2112.

"A Poignant Mixture of Farce and Elegy"

"… takes the dated psychological undertone of the text and turns it inside out, using the threadbare therapeutic allegory as satirically baroque wallpaper."