Paul Cunningham's Blog, page 3
July 25, 2020
Three new poems in Apartment Poetry
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WOW, I wish these were my IRL neighbors – Valerie Hsiung, Kirsten Ihns, Shira Dentz! Big thanks to editor Michael Joseph Walsh for housing three of my poems – “Aphanisis,” “Anemoi,” and “A’s Song” – on the 13th floor of APARTMENT Poetry!
A’S SONG
Athena,
my stage name
miasma
my Clytemnestra
my waste
I am coming
outside of
myself
no justice
just sap
your motto
another arrow
your asp
my, my
you came into
my dressing room
guns blazing
ready to take
aim
ready to
dissemble
my owl
These poems will also appear in my forthcoming chapbook collection – The Inmost – coming in 2020 from Carrion Bloom Books!
April 19, 2020
Six new poems in Issue 2 of Snail Trail
Six of my visual albatross poems have been published in the summer issue of Snail Trail Press, an ecopoetics journal/press. Please take a moment to also read editor Woogee Bae‘s thoughtful introduction to the issue:
March 24, 2020
Bruno K. Öijer’s The Trilogy: A Review
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My review of Bruno K. Öijer’s The Trilogy (Action Books) is now live in the latest installment of Kenyon Review‘s March 2020 Microreviews:
Poet and critic Lars Gustavsson has called Öijer “the most entrancing Swedish poet since Tranströmer” and, in her translator’s note, Häggblom reminds us that his work is importantly “steeped in non-Swedish poetry” and profoundly influenced by the “apocalyptic writings of the Sioux visionary Black Elk.” Bruno K. Öijer’s The Trilogy is a sonically startling beginner’s guide to the end times, a riveting (and Romantic) trip into the acid rain of the unknown.
Click [here] for the full review.
March 20, 2020
Jake Skeets’ Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers: A Review
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My review of Jake Skeets’ Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions, 2019) is now live at Harvard Review:
In poems like “Maar,” we follow larkspur, beeplant, and blue flax to dome-shaped ruins reminiscent of nuclear weapons testing facilities. Meanwhile, a “numb star” hangs over the horizon like a “burning bomb quiet as stone.” As recently as 2018, the Navajo Nation urged the US Congress to acknowledge the Native American workers who received no recognition or compensation after being exposed to radiation from uranium mines erected on Navajo land during the Cold War. By describing the “burning bomb” as “quiet as stone,” Skeets evokes the ghostly, unclean ruins of the over five hundred abandoned uranium mines that still stand today.
Click [here] for the full review.
February 17, 2020
Preorder These Poems Are Not What They Seem – an Anthology of Twin Peaks Poetry
Are you a fan of David Lynch’s iconic television series Twin Peaks?
I have an elegy for Carl Rodd (Harry Dean Stanton) called “Pylon” in a new anthology of Twin Peaks poetry called These Poems Are Not What They Seem (APEP Publications, 2020). The 56-page saddle stitched chapbook is currently available to preorder for $14. You can watch APEP editor Kristen Garth’s book trailer for the anthology [here] or preorder the issue [here]. Here’s some of what the editors have to say about the anthology:
The contributors to this anthology have also experienced this right of passage. They have loved, as I have loved, an impossible story of humanity and inhumanity, of a cosmic malevolence subverting every mundane aspect of domestic life, and of the devout few who struggle to understand and combat the darkest impulses and machinations of the universe. They have rendered this love, this fascination and passion here into verse.
To quote Agent Cooper, “Every day, once a day, give yourself a present.” Today let it be this book.”
Follow APEP Publications on Instagram for updates on new and forthcoming chapbooks!
January 1, 2020
Justin Wymer’s Deed: A Review
2020 has arrived and so has another exciting issue of DIAGRAM! I’m very pleased to share this review of one of my favorite books of 2019 – Justin Wymer’s Deed (Elixir Press):
“A landscape that urs might also be a landscape that makes inarticulate sounds. In 2019, it might be one that utters and murmurs with elegiac caution. Like Lorca’s paradoxically unsung Spanish poetry (“La canción, / que nunca diré, / se ha dormido en mis labios”), Justin Wymer’s Deed is an attempt to give voice to the actions and observations of the flora and fauna of what Berg calls ur-landscape, to make poetry sing the unsingable.”
Click [here] for the full review
December 26, 2019
Song of Polymers: New excerpt in Notre Dame Review
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Season’s greetings! Thanks to everyone who follows these posts and continues to support my work!
2019 might be winding down, but I have one more excerpt from Song of Polymers in Issue 48 of Notre Dame Review. Many thanks to editor Steve Tomasula for believing so strongly in my work and this ecologically charged project. And what a lineup: Vi Khi Nao, Sarah Roth, Becca Klaver, Douglas Kearney, Jennifer Karmin, Bernadette Mayer, and so many others make up this special &NOW-themed issue called “&NOW and Whenever It’s Needed.” The latest issue explores…
“[…] a time when the forces of racism, sexism, class warfare, and even planet-wide extinction have absorbed the formerly liberating forms of postmodernism to substitute fictions for reality, and ‘fake news’ for facts, all in defense of the status quo. The subtitle for this edition of &NOW is And Whenever It’s Necessary. Perhaps there has never been a time when the exploration of language, that traditional battleground for social norms, has seemed more necessary. To be a part of future &NOWs, look for us via social media.”
Copies of Issue 48 of Notre Dame Review are now available for $8.
December 17, 2019
Song of Polymers: new Albatross poems in Unearthed and Burning House Press Online
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I’ve been working on a new two-part creative nonfiction project called Song of Polymers for quite some time now. The first part is called “Song of Polymers,” a lyric essay that explores a poet’s anthropogenic response to fragments and choking hazards; lyric oddities and ancient rimes; albatross plasticity and John Cage’s fear of records. Quarterly West recently nominated this excerpt for the 2019 Best of the Net anthology.
The second part of the project is called “Metallic Vitality, or, To Drag a Lead Bird,” a visual poetic retelling of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” You can read the latest excerpts from “Metallic Vitality” in the December issue of Unearthed and a recent issue of Burning House Press Online. Keep an eye out for more excerpts forthcoming from Snail Trail Press: An Ecopoetics Press!
Please also consider (symbolically) adopting an albatross via the Oceanic Society.
December 11, 2019
Helena Österlund’s Words featured in Dennis Cooper’s ‘Favorite Poetry of 2019’ List
A heartfelt thank you to Dennis Cooper for including my translation of Helena Österlund’s WORDS on his “Mine for yours” favorite poetry of 2019 list! It feels great to be in the company of other translations like Kim Hyesoon’s A Drink of Red Mirror and Kim Yideum’s Hysteria. I’m also very happy to see some of my other favorite writers on this list – Sarah Rose Etter (The Book of X), Ariana Reines (A Sand Book), and Sam Pink (The Ice Cream Man & Other Stories)!
December 2, 2019
Helena Österlund’s Words reviewed in American Microreviews & Interviews
Many thanks to Zack Anderson for this amazing review of my translation of Helena Österlund’s WORDS in American Microreviews & Interviews:
“WORDS is a long trance, a musical syncope, a study in phenomenology, and a fairy tale fed through a tape loop. Cunningham’s translation serves as a valuable (and currently the only) entry point for anglophone readers into Österlund’s mesmerizing world”
Click [here] for the full review
