Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 31

Paul Celan, The Dark Oar, translated by Jaclyn Piudik

 

Paul Celan made Paris hishome from 1948 until his death in 1970, and while his day-to-day life wasconducted in French, he composed only one poem in his adopted language: “Ô leshâbleurs,” written for his son Eric in 1968. For Celan, a polyglot and prolifictranslator of the work of other writers – from Shakespeare to Apollinaire, Mandelstamto Char, to name but a few – there was no question that German, theMuttersprache or mother tongue, would be the language of his poems. despite hiscomplex stance vis-à-vis the German language, his native tongue itself was, accordingto his biographer, John Felstiner, “the only nation he could claim.” Yet Celanhad a long connection to French, having initiated his study of the language inhigh school in Czernowitz, later undertaking medical training in Tours between1938 and 1939, and maintaining epistolary exchanges with friends and colleagueswell before taking up residence in Paris. By the time Celan settled in France,he had already mastered the language, and his rapport with it would deepen,even though it would always be the language of his “exile.” (“FOREWORD”)

Presentedas a poem in three languages is The Dark Oar (Toronto ON: Beautiful OutlawPress, 2024), offering an original poem by Romanian-French poet Paul Celan(1920-1970) composed in German, alongside his own translation of the poem intoFrench, and subsequently, the translation from French into English by Toronto poet and translator Jaclyn Piudik. As Piudik offers in her preface to the collection,she purposefully chose to translate the poems from the French, as opposed to translatingdirectly from the German: “The Dark Oar brings Celan’s French translationsof his own German poems – 26 in total – into English for the first time. Celan’stranslations span some 17 years, from 1952 to 1969, through many phases of hislife and his writing career.” She continues, writing: “And while there are manyfine translations of the original German poems into English, the translation ofCelan’s French versions of those poems open a window into the poet’s relationshipboth to his mother tongue and to his adopted language.” There is something I findfascinating about anyone moving to write in a language beyond their mothertongue. Samuel Beckett (1906-1979) and Milan Kundera (1929-2023), for example,who also moved into France and composed works in French, each of them situatedin their own unique and very different forms of exile.

Itis interesting to see Beautiful Outlaw editor/publisher, the Toronto poet, translator and critic Mark Goldstein, expand his own explorations into Paul Celan throughpublishing such projects, following American poet Robert Kelly’s Earish(Beautiful Outlaw, 2022), a German-English “translation” of “Thirty Poems ofPaul Celan” [see my review of such here], as well as through multiple of hisown projects, including Thricelandium (Beautiful Outlaw Press, 2024)[see my review of such here], Tracelanguage: A Shared Breath (TorontoON: BookThug, 2010) [see my review of such here], Part Thief, Part Carpenter(Beautiful Outlaw, 2021), a book subtitled “SELECTED POETRY, ESSAYS, ANDINTERVIEWS ON APPROPRIATION AND TRANSLATION” [see my review of such here] and ascurator of the folio “Paul Celan/100” for periodicities: a journal of poetryand poetics, posted November 23, 2020 to mark the centenary of Celan’s birth.

ThroughPiudik’s offering, it allows for the possibility of seeing further into theprocess of Celan the translator alongside Celan the poet, catching thedifferences he might have himself seen in the shifts between language, and afurther project might be seeing just how different these English translationsmight be to others taken directly from Celan’s German. A book of companions andcomparisons, especially for those able to read German and French, as Piudikwrites:

Thus I stand, stony,
facing you.
High.

Eroded
by drifting sand, the two
hollows at the forehead’sedge.
Inside,
darkness glimpsed.

Pierced by the beats
of hammers brandishedmutely,
the place
where the winged eyebrushed me.
Behind,
in the wall,
the step where theRemembered crouches.
Facing here
animated by nights, avoice
streams,
from which you ladle thedrink.

 

Funto Omojola, If I Gather Here and Shout

 

i carry
i carry sickness into thehouse. look at the sew er pretending to
know how to wring me lookat the sew er pretending to bathe me
look at the sew erpretending to know how many scalpels were
used that day look at thegashes he has made look at the way he
reaches into belly topull out seeds look at the way he reaches
into belly to pull outseeds look at the way he cleans it look at the
seams he has made hereand here. look at the way he seems look
at the way he seams lookat the sew erlookat his disciples lookat
his disciples look at theway they seamlook at their nails look at
their calves the way theyrun in
tandem through villagesthat palm and palm and palm have
touched look at their nailsmetals
against
look at their mouths theway they spit out lookat the way they lick
their lips and grin anddive intolook at the way they’re book look at
their mouths the way theyuntidy and spread

FromNew York-based Nigerian-American writer, performer and visual artist Funto Omojola comes the full-length debut, If I Gather Here and Shout (NewYork NY: Nightboat Books, 2024). If I Gather Here and Shout holds asingle, extended prose-lyric, the book-length poem “Ceremony,” which makes fora titled work made up of a differently titled work, almost as a box within abox, as though the poem itself too big to be contained within a singleframework. “what is this tumbling place where only i am center unmoving?”Omojola writes, early on in the collection, to open one of multiple poems titled“Fig.,” “what / is this tumbling stage around me and around me where there are/ jesters and sticks curved toward my chest?” Each “Fig.” piece offers a scene,another step, across a narrative arc of swell and plague, illness and joy andresistance and beauty, writing history and family, present tense and thetensions of history that ripple across decades. “say body enter machine,”writes a further “Fig.,” “cold. how many worms per square inch how many squareinches / per worm entering machine, cold also? say girl body into machine, /lungs. how many worms legless hurdling toward machine, / lungs also?”

Thepoems are rhythmic, propulsive, pushing at and against medical crises andsystematic violence across a prose-lyric staggered into clusters, each cluster delineatedby the modesty of a single, black page. Omojola works through spirit andmachine, the body and its limitations, and the complications of seeking interventionthrough the medical system, family, faith, articulating the collisions betweencollective and the self. “the urgency precludes and i am an open mouthscreaming: an / open mouth screaming: an open stomach screaming through / machine,”writes another “Fig.” Omojola writes through song and swell, rhythmic beats andpulse. “i am saline leaking out of mouth,” a further “Fig.” writes, “componentof a child’s destiny. if you cannot make a picture of a / spear, you cannotmake a picture of hunger. if you cannot make / a picture of hunger, you cannotmake a picture of seep. alert the / guards who hold needles: the girl with thelong tongue who hides / peel between front teeth is here. adorn me with robesof men cast in / robes of kings.”

Stephanie Cawley, No More Flowers

 

Doing the crossword everyday is useless but I finish it anyway.
The government is uselessbut it intercedes daily.
In the mail I receive ahandwritten letter from a neighbor
urging me to find hopefor the future. God knows our thoughts, she says.
On Fridays I deliver bagsof groceries to old women who live alone.
One woman drinks Colt 45sand fills her apartment with smoke.
The anarchists have agood system for disposing of moldy tomatoes
and sorting bags of vegansnacks lifted from Whole Foods.
I rearrange my life formostly nothing, which will probably kill me. (“Okay”)

I’mintrigued by Philadelphia poet Stephanie Cawley’s latest full-length poetry collection, No More Flowers (Raleigh NC: Birds/LLC: 2024), a collection that follows My Heart But Not My Heart (Slope Editions, 2020) [see my review of such here], a manuscript chosen by Solmaz Sharif as winner of the Slope Book Prize. NoMore Flowers is constructed through three untitled clusters of poems,bookended by the three-page extended poem, “Loom,” and nine-page extended poem,“To the Lighthouse.” “The machine weaves cloth / so a woman can write / a poem.”begins the opening poem, “Loom,” “The machine weaves / so one woman can write /while another woman // wipes the first woman’s / baby’s bottom.” There’s anemotional rawness to these poems, one that overlays a craft that displays alyric comfort, and an ease, as the poems in No More Flowers write ofresistance, endurance, survival and simply making it through.

“Ididn’t want to write anymore about fucking.” the poem ““Normal Life”” begins, “Someonedied. Someone was always / dying. I was writing about fucking probably rightwhen somebody died. Ground / down to paste, my tooth grinds. I finally brokeinto the prison, the poet’s last tweet / before she dies. I slide into thetub, salt the water so I am a chicken in broth. My sad, / little heart, I think.”I like the way Cawley layers a Leonard Cohen quote over thoughts of sex anddeath, rippling echoes across a prose poem held by lyric bond. There’s anurgency across Cawley’s lyrics simply for the absence of it, writing anexhaustion and a grief that permeates every poem, every line. The poems are constructedacross an attempt to articulate and construct a life, blending intimacy withpublic declarations, realizing the only way inside might be all the waythrough. Or, as the expansive prose accumulation “The Completeness of the Worldis in / Danger if I Die” offers:

I feared the transparencyafforded by narrative, having to settle on an ending.
Many things happened onthe way. A detail of sunlight peering through thick
branches to touch a patchof moss foreclosed all forward motion.

We take turns searchingfor a picture of an adequately somber bird. I tune out
while the poet I don’t likespeaks about darkness and lightness with great sincerity.

There was an idea of whata poet was, and then there was Mary Shelley carrying a
box containing her deadhusband’s heart everywhere she went.

Two ruined things, anobject, and its study. a dedication to one’s ugliest forms.
One could be mean andbeautiful and the two qualities began to seem contingent.

Kevin Stebner, Inherent

 

In creating Inherent,I respond to the vibe of each typeface itself, trying to demonstrate how thesetypefaces would speak without the constraints of human language and if theyweren’t forced into the hard linearity of how words appear on the page. As bothreaders and writers, we are so often stuck to the flagpole of the left margin,to strict semantic meaning, biases of words, end rhyme, and conventions oflanguage. Instead, I am interested in how a typeface would wish to expressitself if given the freedom to do so. I want to let the letter forms move howthey will and show us their voices separate from human language. I am seekingto find what is inherent within the typeface, and what aspects of form anddesign will lead to a typeface’s own poetic stance. What is innate in a letterform? What does it want to express? I have forgone my own authorial hand to tryless at expressing an exacting statement and to allow that punctum to arisefrom the letter forms themselves. (“Explication”)

“Typefaceshave personality built into their forms.” So writes Calgary poet, artist, bookseller and musician Kevin Stebner to open the end-note, or “Explication,”of his full-length assemblage of visual poems, Inherent (Picton ON:Assembly Press, 2024). Stebner’s letterform work, as it would appear, builds onsome of the prior and ongoing work done by contemporary Canadian poets such asDerek Beaulieu, Kate Siklosi, Amanda Earl and Gary Barwin, among others. Acrossthe nine word-sections of Inherent, Stebner works through how lettersare freed from language or even meaning, one might say, into elements of pureshape, simultaneously regressing and progresing through origin, back when shapeimplied shape and only itself.

Thebook moves through and across thirteen letterformsequence-clusters—“Ultramatum,” “AdieuAdo,” “Totemic,” “Agalma,” “Significant,”“Süperiör,” “Peaceful,” “Brethren,” “Assemblage,” “Present,” “Kindled,”“Unbroke” and “WellWorn,” followed by the aforementioned“Explication”—providing an elasticity of letterform shapes and possibilitiesthat move almost immediately beyond the realm of language purpose and meaning.There’s something ancient in these forms, something complex and yet basic in anunderstand of how letters begin, evolve and continue. This is a fascinatingexploration of shape, and, if, through Kroetsch, a Phoenician might have had cause for grief, these forms could only delight.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Amy Stuber

Amy Stuber’s writing has appeared in The New England Review, Flash Fiction America, Ploughshares, The Idaho Review, Witness, The Common, Cincinnati Review, Triquarterly, American Short Fiction, Joyland, Copper Nickel, West Branch, and elsewhere.

Her short story collection, SAD GROWNUPS (Stillhouse Press) was published October 2024.
 
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I'm publishing my first book, SAD GROWNUPS, a short story collection, in October of this year. I am going to be 55, so it's kind of late to "debut," but I've been writing and publishing for a lot of years, sometimes more off than on, though, especially around the time I had kids. This book mainly contains stories written in the last five years, though a few are a little older than that. I've tried in various ways to publish a book for the last ten years (small press contests, working with an agent who tried to sell a novel I wrote alongside a collection that was pretty different from this one, etc.), so getting a book feels like the culmination of a lot of years of work. I'm sure when the book actually comes out in October, I will feel a blend of excitement and anxiety. Though I've been writing for a long time, I always feel like a fraud when it comes to talking about my writing or reading it to other people, so I think -- though I'm incredibly grateful for this book -- it's going to be a weird few months of putting myself out there in ways I'm unaccustomed to. And second part of your question: I think this is different from work I published ten years ago in that it's slightly more experimental or plays with form and structure more than I might have ten years ago.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
As a college student a lot of years ago, poetry was my first obsession. Then I remember taking a fiction class and being introduced to a few writers I loved and then proceeding to read all the Best American Short Stories and O. Henry collections my college library had. Then I read Joy Williams, Toni Morrison, Amy Hempel, Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, all these fiction writers whose work just altered me. I still love poetry so much and the poetic compression of a good short story.
 
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Most of my stories that actually work come quickly, in a day or a few days for a full first draft. I usually know if I'm laboring over a draft of a story for weeks (not fine-tuning but just the initial writing and setting pieces in place) that it's never going to really come to fruition. But for stories that come out fairly intact in a few days, I do revise a lot - at the line level and moving parts and pieces around and trying to change phrasing and eliminate overused words and make an ending stronger and change tense or perspective. This is all with regard to short stories. Novels are entirely different. I wrote two novels in three years, and I don't recommend that. It's such a different process, and I think it requires a lot more planning, thinking, mapping, and revision (at least for me).

4 - Where does  prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Oh I've done both. I tried to do a novel from short pieces - a couple of stories that became part of a larger work. And I've also tried to write a whole book from the very beginning. Neither fully worked, ha, but I will probably try to go back to them and revise in the next year or so. I don't think I've abandoned those books completely. But for a short story collection, SAD GROWNUPS came together from pieces, but I was pulling from about 60 flash and short stories to decide what this book should be. Initially, it was a blend of flash and short fiction, and then I decided the flash didn't fit, made the book feel too elliptical and stop/start. So I made it just short stories and culled a lot of them that felt stylistically or thematically dissimilar until I had a book of pieces that I think works together.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Absolutely not. I'm relatively introverted. It's why I quit teaching many years ago. That said, as I've gotten older, I think I've gotten more comfortable with readings. There's an element of acting that I can kind of lean into. I just did a podcast and actually really enjoyed it. I'm also doing a reading with a bunch of other debut authors via Books Are Magic (but at Wild East Brewing Company) in Brooklyn in October that I'm pretty excited about. So maybe my answer is not "absolutely not" but more: I'm giving them a chance. Trying.
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I don't know if this is really theoretical, but for the last few years, I've really been trying to push myself around what a story can do and be. For the last few years, that's meant consistently trying to add another element to a story, sometimes meta, sometimes another POV. I am really interested in writing that experiments without letting the experiment subsume character and emotion. It's such a hard balance.
 
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
We're all completely beholden to each other, and we should all try to take care of and protect each other. Writers, or anyone with any platform, should speak truth to power. It's hard to do sometimes because doing so means compromising livelihood for many people. Lately, I've seen people losing opportunities because they've chosen to speak up about Palestine, which I think shows how much our institutions have leaned more toward being about money or a kind of monoculture than being about creativity and people.  

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential and not that difficult. I usually love getting edits and tend to take most of them. Every now and then, I'll think, "What are you talking about/that's not what I meant at all?" defensively at first, but then after a few days realize the editor is right. 

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I constantly think of this quote, which I believe is Wordsworth: "Getting and spending, we lay waste our hours/ little we see in nature that is ours." It's kind of fundamental so not really a lightning bolt, but it's centered me throughout my life and reminded me not to get bogged down in material objects and material success when concerns about those things creep in too much.  

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I do not have a writing routine, though when I was trying to write a novel, I did write every day. I have a full-time job and work as a volunteer editor for a lit mag on top of that. So finding time to write is always a struggle. I have the time on some days but feel exhausted or uninspired. Many people I know are in the same boat. If I write 5-6 stories a year, I feel pretty good about it! But I feel like maybe I'm coming into a more productive time in terms of creative output, where I think I might have a more regular writing practice, and that feels exciting. But I think no one should force themselves into a writing routine that makes them feel bad or doesn't help their practice.  

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Poetry, music, walking, people watching.  

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Well, my current home: unfortunately a kind of fall leaves/old house smell that I don't love! But if I were being idealistic, maybe lilacs. Their smell seems kind of transportative - it's very childhood for me.  

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Definitely being in nature, observing places and people and structures. I also love photography and paintings, any museum, nature preserves, wild places in general, and music.  

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I love books, obviously, but literary magazines have been hugely important to me in the last few years. I've edited for Split Lip Magazine and have met some of my closest friends there. I also just think some of the most interesting and innovative writing is happening at litmags. They are able to exist outside of some of the capitalist concerns that tend to affect big publishing. If I'm feeling like I want motivation or want to really admire writing, I tend to go to literary magazines, both online and print.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Writer answer: write a novel I'm proud of and feel good about

Non-writer answer: drive across the country back and forth (I've done so many long road trips, but I've not gone from coast to coast as one solid venture - and I'd like to do that). A bit of an environmental nightmare, but with the right car, maybe less so. I'd also like to walk across a state by cobbling together nature trails (I do not want to be one of those people walking on highways because that sounds miserable, and I don't really want the competitive thru-hiking like the PCT).

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Vagabond! Not sure this counts as an occupation.  

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
At the beginning of college, a long time ago, I got some positive feedback about my writing from a teacher I loved. I was, at the time, a journalism major and wanted to be some kind of international journalist. I probably would have kept in that direction had I not struggled with a statistics class, dropped it, realized statistics was required for the journalism major, switched to English, and then continued on to grad school. I've quit writing a few times for long stretches, but I always go back to it. When it's going well, it's the best thing.  

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just finished Blue Light Hours and loved it. My neighbor produced the movie Fancy Dance , and I loved that, and I also recently watched The Rolling Thunder Revue for the first time, and I really enjoyed that, the way it was so immersive and you felt like you were completely in the 1970s for a brief period.  

19 - What are you currently working on?
I'm working on a sort of novel-in-stories about a family in the aftermath of their middle child's mental health struggles and his unexpected death. There's a Walden-esque reality show, a mother and adult daughter who have a relationship with the same person, and other familial unraveling and coming together. I don't know if it will work, but that's what I'm doing right now.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Stephen Cain, Walking & Stealing

 

No! I am not MadameCezanne
Nor was meant to be

Those wine bottles inyour neighbour’s garden
Have they begun tosprout?

The Art of Work in theAge
Of Mechanical Oppression

A future right turn
Overwhelm your comfortzone

A lyric in flight (“CANTOONE”)

Thereis something curious about the accumulating distances between full-lengthcollections by Toronto poet, editor and critic Stephen Cain, from the relatively quickappearance of his first three full-length collections every couple of years— dyslexicon (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 1998), Torontology (Toronto ON: ECW,2001) and American Standard/Canada Dry (Coach House Books, 2005)—to thelonger wait-times that emerged with False Friends (Toronto ON: BookThug,2017) [see my review of such here], and now, Walking & Stealing (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press,2024). Some of us have been waiting, sir.

Therearen’t too many poets these days in Canada working through poems to see wherethe language might land or extend, offering the next steps in a conversation aroundpoetics that seems to have quieted down over the past decade. Through Walking& Stealing, Cain offers himself as example of the standard-bearer foran exploration of thought and form, continuing a trajectory of sound andmeaning collision, playfully battering around a lyric too often staid or safe. Wherehave all the language poets disappeared to? With so many poets of the aughtseither shifted in poetic or publishing far less (if at all), Cain almost existsas a central Canadian counterpoint, one might say, to the west coast poetics offurther still-standing poets Clint Burnham [see my review of his latest here]or Louis Cabri [see my review of his latest here], all pushing furthervariations on a language-play through social commentary, countless quickreferences, and deliberate collision. “Canada Post- / Ashkenazi Anishinaabe,”he writes, as the eighth section of the nine-part “CANTO THREE,” “Two nationsunder clods / Anti-Semitism & assimilation // Fuck breathing fire / Spitsparks instead // Almost cut my fear / Flying my antifa flag // Smoke ‘em whenyou see them [.]” Are there any poets on this side of the country, still,referencing the work of Dorothy Trujillo Lusk (I would suggest there should bemore, certainly)?

Foryears, Cain was engaged in book-length sequences and stretches composed acrossten sections, a kind of decalogue of extended language structures, whereas Walking& Stealing exists as a triptych that breaks down into further sections—theseventeen sections, some of which are broken into further sections, of “Walking& Stealing,” the ninety-nine short sections of “Intentional Walks,” and thenine “CANTOS” sequences of “Tag & Run.” The geographic composition points,setting the moment to the music of language, is an interesting mapping acrossCain’s Toronto, almost an echo of bpNichol’s The Martyrology: Book 5(Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1982), a book I know that Cain himself haswritten extensively on, or Lynn Crosbie’s legendary “Alphabet City” abecedarianfrom Queen Rat: New and Selected Poems (Toronto ON: Anansi, 1998) [see my brief note on such here], a book that should have won all the awards afterit first appeared. The mapping of Cain’s Toronto becomes, if not directsubject, a kind of backdrop and prompt, allowing the landscape of his city tobreathe into the animation of his language. From the opening sequence, listento the poem “Stan Wadlow Park (2017/08/12),” as the second section/half writes:

Map the Moores
Lede line locations
Also Etrog the obelisks
Opposing the ovarianobjects

Short & sequesteredin
   Scarborough
No more sinister thanSarnia
Oshawa obeisance
Adolescent anxiety
    accumulators
Score on the fly
Beach bleacher bingo
Blanket the yield

Walking & stealing

Whatwas once propulsive has evolved into something more meditative, akin to a kindof walking-text, comparable to works by Stacy Szymaszek [see my review of their latest here], Meredith Quartermain[see my review of her latest here] or Bernadette Mayer [see my review of one of her more recent titles here]; Cain the flaneur, perhaps, but meandering not through thelyric narrative but across a field of language. “Articulate the known-lines,”he writes, as part of the opening sequence, “Map the Masonic / Toronto Chthonic[.]” As he offers as part of his “Notes” at the back of the collection:

Walking & Stealing is a longserial poem composed over the summer of 2017. Each section was composed at apark in Toronto & the GTA between innings of games in which my son, aPeewee AA ballplayer, was pitching & fielding. The composition time of eachsection is the length of a game, & the first draft of each section was recordedin a notebook in the shape & design of a baseball. While the impetus &origin of the poem is juvenile sports, baseball is not so much the subject ofthe poem, but the site & event that allows the poem to arise as I exploreduration, association, & subjectivity. The game of baseball also functionsas an analogue for poetic exploration; for example, the title of the poemrefers to plays in baseball (two ways in which one can gain a base withouthitting a ball), but also to psychogeographic perambulation & “stealing” aspoetic intertextuality.

 

 

Laynie Browne, Everyone and Her Resemblances

 

She’s so free she has theform of the page but it keeps reversing itself, pouring. I stop with a periodthen go on. Or begin missing. You. Not punctuation, but stopping is a form ofchecking one’s place-pulse. She’s so limpid she never checks. She-limpet.Ctenophore, her see or sea. Her sea-saw is transparent or even absent. You don’tpronounce her “see.” She wouldn’t call herself a seer, but what can you say,about her see-through signatures, her waving apparatus, her ability to breathebelow water? What would you say about rushing, allowing all of the words toenter? But they aren’t words, they are living entities, water, and somethingelse, crushed enamel, shells, sails. No. White muslin, perfectly wrinkled orpressed, like a palette, a face. Her complexion is pure dahlias and the darkpetals stick out ridgelike, on her cheeks. (“Coxbomb Seeress”)

Thelatest from Pennsylvania poet Laynie Browne is the wonderfully expansive Everyoneand Her Resemblances (Pamenar Press, 2024), following more than a dozen poetrytitles including You Envelop Me (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2017) [see my review of such here], Translation of the lilies back into lists (SeattleWA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2022) [see my review of such here], Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox Editions, 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar Press, 2023) and Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter Press, 2023)[see my review of this particular trio here]. Furthering what appear to be asequence of book-length response-texts dedicated to and for and through otherpoets— In Garments Worn By Lindens , for example, which works from and through thelyrics of a particular volume by American poet Rosmarie Waldrop—Browne’s Everyoneand Her Resemblances works through the epic structures and purposes ofAmerican poet Alice Notley [see my review of her latest here]. “What will you call this book of reservations?”Browne writes, early on in the collection. “Who are we       speaking this?” Notley has long utilized theepic as a space through which to explore voice, character and large questions,and Browne’s epic ripples with echoes of Notley’s structures, offering her ownbook-length epic of questions, hesitations and explorations; a sequence ofmonologues and dialogues more concerned with seeking out than landingparticular conclusions. “Is there a way to walk     to where I was never lonely,” the poem “TasksWhich Sever Bound Senses” begins, “without going / under    pass   lanterns made of cities we never visit [.]”

Hernarratives are gestural, sweeping out as constellation, and as comfortable,perhaps, upon the stage as on the page. Browne employs large stretches of stitchedphrases and fragments across a wide canvas, writing a language dreamed andspoken. “We might even                      deliberately obscure                                 the best / oronly    vantages       alive,” she writes, to close the poem “DifferentNames or No Names at All.” Or, as the poem “When Seeing Was Invisible” writes:

This theme of everyonelosing in mid-midnight-middling

euphemisms being mid-kiss-mid-death-mid-light

is losing as in, she ranaway to a farmlet

one big primal bed

once you’ve failed youstart talking about failure as inevitable

in the middle of

anyplace in the ocean isstill in the ocean

how I miss you who youwere

muddled middle of us ofyes of permission

where you were inside

a premonition that laterbecame us

a word I can’t say on theradio

so I’m going to leave ablank

 

Sophie Anne Edwards, Conversations with the Kagawong River

 

OTTER TYPOGRAPHY

ngig, River otter

I enjoy following theotter runs all along the west side of the River, the quieter side, people-wise.I place small wooden letters at the entrance/exit of one of the burrow holes,and a piece of my hair as an introduction. I hope for some otter typography. I wonder,however, if this is a bit invasive? If the smell of my hands, my feet, my hair,and of course the letters will keep the otter away, away from this hole anyway.

I return the next day andsurprise the otter coming up the bank. I return twice more. A couple of letters(N and V) have moved. This movement could have been the wind, notthe otter, as there are almost no tracks. I decide to stay away for a few daysto see if the otter will return to the whole. I return and replace the lettersalong the path after the recent snowfall.

Thefull-length debut by Manitoulin Island poet Sophie Anne Edwards is Conversations with the Kagawong River (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2024), a book-lengthstudy structured and presented through a blend of lyric, visual poems,photographs and archival material. Edwards offers, as Dr. Alan Ojiig Corbiere writesin his statement that opens the collection, “a creative and meaningful book”that “grapples with a decolonial approach to writing about, and with, place – aplace significant to both the Anishinaabeg of Mnidoo Mnising and settlers.” Self-describedas a “site-specific engagement with an ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (ManitoulinIsland),” Conversations with the Kagawong River emerges from “severalyears [she spent] learning to listen to the Gaagigewang Ziibi (Kagawong River)and to follow the rhythms and patterns of its flora and fauna, the weather andthe water. She invited the participation of various collaborators – woodpeckers,otters, currents, ice, grasses. The resulting poems, supported by local Edlers,language speakers, and historians, make visible the colonial, environmental,and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships toit.” As part of the poem, early on in the collection, “Conversations With MyToes Dipping into the Water at the / Bend Along the Lower River Where the WaterPools Before / Rushing Around the Bend and Over the Clay Deposits”:

To listen as a geographerand a writer is to understand the River as an animate, lively subject; is alsoto consider the marks, traces, patterns, calls, sounds, movements as texts inlanguages that I don’t speak, but might hear, feel, see. A site or a subjectwith a history, a story.

I want to hear the River,expand the definitions of subject, text, author, and listener. To attempt tolisten on the River’s terms.

There’san expansiveness to this collection, one that brings in an array of researchand conversation and collaborate to form Edwards’ study of the river and itsinhabitants, environment, ecologies and colonial interferences, comparable tohow Fred Wah and Rita Wong’s collaborative art-text, beholden: a poem aslong as the river (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2018) [see my review of such here], to Lorine Niedecker’s 1966 poem “Lake Superior” (produced in a critical edition a decade back, which I reviewed here), or even the late London, Ontarioartist Greg Curnoe’s historical excavation of his London lot, Deeds/Abstracts(London ON: Brick Books, 1995). One could also cite further recent comparablessuch as Jennifer Spector’s Hithe (Connemara, Ireland: Xylem Books, 2021)[see my review of such here] or Chris Turnbull’s Cipher (Toronto ON:Beautiful Outlaw Press, 2024) [see my review of such here] for an attention to minute, ecological detailacross a constellation of lyric and visual expansiveness. Edwards attends to alistening, a conversation, one that includes the sound of the water, petitionsto Colonial governments and traditional space, and the blend of visual forms,lyric and photographic montage is fascinating, opening up a layering of what mightbe possible through and across a poetry collection, structured akin to agallery exhibition of more than two hundred rooms, two hundred pages. As theshort lyric “August 15” writes:

She resides in herself.

 

To read a River            read the banks
            sounds                         sprayed into the air
  what she moves           over

 pen her words as      fluid
blood                              recirculating
            through the earth

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jennifer Martelli

JenniferMartelli hasreceived fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, MonsonArts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in TheAcademy of American Poets Poem-A-Day,Poetry, Best of the Net Anthology, Braving the Body Anthology, Verse Daily,Plume, The Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree, The Queen of Queens, which won theItalian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for theMassachusetts Book Award, and My Tarantella, which was also shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award andnamed finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetryeditor for MER. www.jennmartelli.com

How did your first bookor chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to yourprevious? How does it feel different?

I hadn’t written orsubmitted work for about 10 years. I completely unplugged from the poetrycommunity; we had moved with our infant daughter out of Cambridge and up to theNorth Shore, where I had no connection to poetry groups, etc. This, Idiscovered, is central to my writing. As introverted as I can be, I need acommunity of writers. Through my good friend, Jennifer Jean, I was introducedto an editor in the area, the magnificent Robin Stratton. She published myfirst chapbook, Apostrophe, and in2016, my full length, The Uncanny Valley.I was so honored to have somebody who actually wanted to publish my work!

When I look back onthose books, I see a through line, at least in terms of what I’m still writingabout: sisters, witness, relationships. The difference is that I’m older andmore willing to take chances with my voice; less afraid of what people will think.

How did you come topoetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I came to poetry afterreading Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (anovel about vampires). I was probably about 13-years old. In the book, he usesa poem, “The Emperor of Ice Cream,” by Wallace Stephens. I had no idea what thepoem meant (I’m still not sure I do), but I wondered why this mysterious poemwas in a book about vampires. Thus, my love of poetry!

I’ve never really triedfiction; perhaps I’m lazy. I do go through periods where I write non-fiction,which I enjoy, and which can be as lyrical as any poem. A while ago, I was in awriting group that committed to 100-word stories/week. This was a perfect forumfor a poet: I had to practice concision, as well as story-telling. My poemsdon’t always follow a narrative or chronological arc (this can be problematicat times!), so being in this group helped a lot. The stories tended to bebiographical or, at least meditative. I was able to complete a 1000-wordcreative non-fiction piece about a statue of the Virgin Mary in my childhoodneighborhood who, people believed, began to speak, to prophesize. This storystill haunts me; writing it as prose was a way to contain it.

How long does it take tostart any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly,or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their finalshape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

This is a toughquestion. My process can be both slow and quick. I have a poem from my 2018collection, My Tarantella, and a poemthat ends my 2022 collection, The Queenof Queens. Both poems began with the same idea but took years to form, tosplit. They are, in fact, the same poem. So, yes, some poems fill up notebookswith drafts and notes.

Other times—and thisdoesn’t happen a lot—I’m given a gift. A poem comes out almost formed. Thisusually happens when I’m reading a lot of poetry, or a lot of poetry that showsme something new, that I have a physical response to. It’s very rare, and I don’tcompletely trust this, though, which is why I have readers.

I remember hearingLouise Glück talking about this; she would go for long stretches withoutwriting, and then, complete a whole manuscript in a year! I will say that ifI’m deep in the weeds of writing a book (or what I think might become a book),the writing is a little easier; comes a little faster.

Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?

My last two collectionswere project books, meaning, they centered around a specific person (Kitty Genovese and Geraldine Ferraro). I never start out thinking, “Oh, I’ll write abook about this person.” I might get an idea in my mind—perhaps I read an articleabout them or I see an image that reminded me of the times in which theylived—and write from there. So there’s an image, or a look, that’s contained inthe poem. So, I write another poem perhaps with that image, and then another.What emerges is my own personal mythology, with imagery that repeats. In The Queen of Queens, which centeredaround Ferraro, pearls showed up in a lot of poems because Geraldine Ferrarowore them a lot; in My Tarantella,which recounts the murder of Kitty Genovese (who was murdered in 1964), leathergloves and bats show up. In a way, the subjects become prompts, thus the bookis less of an historical account, but way more personal to the speaker.

But, to simply answeryour question, no, I never start out thinking I have a book.

Are public readings partof or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoysdoing readings?

I do enjoy doingreadings, especially now that we’re back in person (though Zoom afforded me thechance to read—and to go to readings—in places that would have been harder tovisit). Readings definitely don’t slow or hinder my creative process; in fact, theyare a good way to see how the poem feels as I read it. Most of the time, I likethe energy in a reading, especially in-person.

I don’t feel as if thethought of a public reading informs my creative process. I do try to thinkabout my audience when I’m choosing poems to read. I was doing a reading with afriend, and she suggested a “round robin” format, meaning, we would riff offeach other’s poems. I really liked this, because it was a surprise for me:which poem will I read next?

Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?

This is a good question.My last two books were definitely poems of witness: they pretty much spannedthe Trump administration. This period affected me in ways I didn’t expect. Thiswas reflected in my poetry; a lot of my poems do not hide my contempt. I had afriend and fellow poet ask if I was afraid that his would alienate some readerswho either didn’t agree with my beliefs or who just didn’t want to hear aboutthem. I had to accept this as a possibility. So, my theoretical question is: doI write to satisfy readers or do I write what is my obsession/concern at themoment? For me, it came down to (and I’ll quote Claudia Rankine): “I write whatI write.” Another theoretical concern was coming to terms with my atheism,which I explore in my forthcoming book. As a person in recovery, rejecting thebelief in a (G)god was scary. Can I recover as a non-believer? This kind ofresponds to the previous question: how much should I anticipate what the readerwill absorb? Can I let this affect my writing? The answer is no, I can’t.

I guess I’m trying toanswer my own questions: how do I live in this world? why do some topics/issuesget caught in my internal sieve? why am I drawn to write about some things andnot others?

I think the mainquestion is: how can I not be invisible?

What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?

I’m going to repeat whatI heard Claudia Rankine say: “I write what I write.” My political poems (I hatethat term) or poems of witness arose from the same place that any other poem Iwrite arose (see questions above). So, whether I’m writing about a Queen ofNight tulip or the Dobbs decision, I hope that I’m writing from an honestplace. That’s the role of a writer in our larger culture: to write honestly.

As a poet, I’m not surehow much of a role I have, in terms of change, but that trying to change peopleor society has never been my goal as a poet. There’s a place for my activismoutside of the poetry world—and I’m sure some of that seeps into my creativework—but I’ve never gone to poetry for activism.

Do you find the processof working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I love working witheditors. I find it essential to have a set of eyes that I trust on my work.Having hard conversations with people I respect has only improved my books.Shout out to Eileen Cleary at Lily Poetry Review Books!

What is the best pieceof advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

About writing: “What’s astake in the poem? what are you risking?” And of course, the Rankine quote.

About life: “What’s atstake? What are you risking?”

How easy has it been foryou to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as theappeal?

I feel that my movementfrom poetry to critical prose waxes and wanes. I’ve always written reviews,though lately, I feel like my critical work has gotten a little lazy, formulaic,which is why I’m taking a break. I also go through periods where I’m writingnon-fiction; I’m not always sure why this move happens—maybe I grow sick ofline breaks!

I think these foraysinto sentences are good, in terms of keeping my own writing fresh. Criticalprose is important in my writing life for a few reasons: first, I’m readingmore poetry; second, I’m being a literary citizen, which can feel good.

What kind of writingroutine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day(for you) begin?

A typical day startsearly. As I get older, I find it harder to sleep in! So I get up, feed my cat,Maria, have my breakfast while I read the paper, watch the news. Then I go upto my office and begin my day. This might mean finishing a review or a critique,organizing my own work, revising or generating new work. I find mornings aremost productive.

When your writing getsstalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?

Walking is a huge help;when I’m stuck on a poem or even prose, moving my body almost shakes a rhythmout of me.

The other thing is toreturn to collections which have always been generative: Marie Howe, VictoriaChang, Laura Jensen, Lucille Clifton, Rachel Mennies.

What fragrance remindsyou of home?

I hate to say this, butsometimes when I smell cigarettes, I think of my mother (she quit when I was ateen). I loved how it smelled on her coat.

David W. McFadden oncesaid that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influenceyour work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Lately, I’ve beenheavily involved in visual art as a source of my poetry. I’m in an ekphrasticgroup, where we write weekly to various works of visual art. The poems I writemay not directly describe the work, but they respond to it—perhaps a color or shape.My hope is that the poems stand on their own.

I love movies, too, andthey play a big part in a lot of my work.

What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

As I mentioned, thereare poets whose work speaks to me in a way beyond the intellectual. Elizabeth Bishop, Marie Howe, Victoria Chang, Laura Jensen are a few.

In terms of simplifyingmy life, probably The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions Book of AA. It’s datedand a little too Christian for my tastes, but there’s some beautiful writingthere and some truth which transformed my life decades ago.

What would you like todo that you haven't yet done?

I would love to go tothe very tip of Chile and gaze at Antarctica. I think I’d also love to take across-country train ride.

If you could pick anyother occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do youthink you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I was a high schoolEnglish teacher for years; perhaps I would have stayed at my job had I not beengiven the opportunity to go to grad school for writing.

Sometimes, I wish I hadstudied archeology; the idea of digging and finding excites me.

What made you write, asopposed to doing something else?

I don’t think I was verygood at anything else, in terms of a creative pursuit. Or, I just didn’t havethe patience to learn how to improve. I feel like a kind of “got” writing. Withother arts, I’m just more of a fan!

What was the last greatbook you read? What was the last great film?

frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss; Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice by Nina MacLaughlin.

Great film? I shouldwarn you that I love horror. I think GetOut is a perfect film. Parasite, The Zone of Interest.

What are you currentlyworking on?

I have two manuscriptsin the works: one is a collection of poems that was prompted (or responds to)the film, Suspiria; the other is amore political collection, dealing with violence and misogyny. We’ll see howthey develop!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Lemonade (August 21, 2011 – December 5, 2024)

Ourbeloved cat, Lemonade, who turned thirteen this past August, collapsed theother night in clear distress. I rushed him to the Emergency Vet Clinic not tenminutes away, but he passed within five or six minutes of landing. What thehell happened? I was still filling out paperwork. At home and throughout thecar ride he was howling, howled, in a way that seemed frightening; collapsed onour bedroom floor and drooling, unable to move.

Noteven enough time for the Veterinary assistant to bring me into the room. It wasthe suddenness, more than anything else. An emotional whiplash. He’s activelydying, they said. His heart or a clot, although they were able to medicate himfor a bit of relief. Do you want to go in with him, even as a furtherinterrupted, saying it was already too late. I signed my name to a form. Christine,still at home, attempted to comfort our distraught children, upending theirbedtime. Aoife, who chose to remain home from school the next day, as she couldn’tstop crying. Rose, who chose to go, so she could talk it out with her friends.

Itwas somewhere in the fall of 2011 that Christine told me that she wanted eithera baby or a dog or a cat or a flower. It was a list I found startling, as wewere neither married nor engaged at that point (nor had any of that beendiscussed), a year into living together in a third-storey walk-up inCentretown. God sakes: a baby? In that moment, I had no idea if she was serious.A cat, I thought, seemed easy enough. A flower might be the wrong answer,although she did list it. Heading over to the Humane Society off Hunt ClubRoad, we chanced upon a kitten on a high perch, amusing himself by startlinghis peers by dropping down on them. This is the one. We selected this rakishblack-and-white bundle known to the staff as “Pepe,” so named as he remindedthe staff of the cartoon skunk from Warner Bros. cartoons. Beyond the culturalimplications, we didn’t think he looked like a Pepé.

Lemonade.He looked, I thought, like a Lemonade. Four months old, we officially fosteredfor a bit until he had run through some medication for a stomach issue, beforewe could fully adopt him. His stomach issue persisted, providing a variety ofmedicated food attempts before one would settle, and then, re-settle. Lemonade:the kitten who pounced on us in the middle of the night, later scratch at the closedbedroom door at all hours, pulling up carpet. We eventually placed a plasticcar liner underneath the door, to protect the floor of our McLeod Streetapartment. He was an indoor cat, unable to be out without leash (which hebarely tolerated). We watched him fall off the couch, we certainly weren’tabout to let him roam around outside by himself. We allowed him to wander (accompanied)a bit at Sainte-Adèle, preferring the comfort of bushes than the open space ofthe yard.

Hewas a polydactyl, attending extra toes on every foot, the way his pawsattempting flies looked like two catcher’s mitts on either side of any errantblack speck. He caught the rare fly that snuck into the house, which weappreciated, but he ate them, which we thought was quite gross. You’re gross,Lemonade. Soon after he arrived, I composed a short sequence of poems that appearedin my Centretown collection, A halt, which is empty (2019): “Lemonade,polydactyl (or, / the cat with twenty-two toes,),” a title that played offMichael Ondaatje’s classic The Man with Seven Toes (1971). They told usthat to declaw a cat would be inhumane, and it eventually meant we had to takehim to the vet for trimming, otherwise his nails would catch on our carpet, andwe were too likely to be scratched. As my piece begins:

this newkitten;                        bone-cleave,
            hindrance; to de-claw

 

is topick out bone; inhumane,

they tellus,

                        [see the full poem here]

Canone of you feed your brother, I would ask our young ladies. With threedaughters, he was my only boy. Aoife used to argue, pointing out that he wasn’treally their brother, and he was adopted. I would point out that I, too, wasadopted. Does that make me any less family to my parents, my sister? The ideaeventually took root, Aoife announcing to teachers and classmates that she hadthree siblings, including a brother, who was actually a cat. It counts,certainly. Aoife, who would lay her head on Lemonade’s back as he rested on ourbed. Rose would regularly come through and pet him, attempting to get him topay her attention as well.

Duringpandemic, as he required tooth extraction, I sat in a parking lot in Ottawa’seast end awaiting the results of his follow-up appointment. He and I were thesame age, then. His extraction cost enough that we began to refer to him as oursecond car, and the poem I sketched out in that parking lot became “Summer,pandemic,” a piece forthcoming in the book of sentences (2025): “Thisbody as a means // to dialogue, and his teeth held / in synaptic space. Fromthis lone parking lot // in Ottawa’s east end, veterinarian staff report hisoutbursts, frustrated // at their prodding. He is such / a mood.” [see the full poem here]

Hewas temperamental, skittish. Always acting as though, if we were both walking withinthe same room, I was clearly there to murder him, somehow. He’d scatter. Hewished to remain in our orbit, but often too far for us to reach or to pet.Kitten Lemonade, who would jump up and set his head and front paws on myshoulder whenever I sat down, something he outgrew by the time we were on AltaVista, but he was never a lap-cat. He would sit near, often on his ownblanket-space on the couch, or, eventually, in the bedroom with Christine, heldthere through two different maternity leaves, or through her recovery stretchsince her 2019 stroke. He kept good company. Lemonade attended her days, oftencomplaining when she wasn’t home, attempting to herd anyone else into thatempty space. “I know a little language of my cat,” Robert Duncan wrote, to open“A little language,” a poem that rests in Ground Work: Before the War(1984), “though Dante says / that animals have no need of speech and Nature / abhorsthe superfluous.” He communicated what he needed, the past few years more vocalin his requirements for attention, food. Cats, they say, who predominantlyspeak aloud to communicate with humans, and less so with each other.

Hewas our constant, between Christine and I; one of our first marks or measures of permanence,more important to our household than I could have first imagined. Our youngladies had known him their whole lives, this meandering cat who sniffed around duringtheir baby and toddler stretches, remaining just out of reach. Marge Piercy, aspart of her poem “The cat’s song” from Mars & Her Children (1992),wrote: “My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.” Lemonade, on hispart, required us, but he required his distance, offering our young ladies apatience far more than with us, although there was the rare time he would snapif they crossed him. Never a scratch but a warning. He understood, it wouldseem, their difference.

Respondingto my social media notification on his passing, someone offered the poem “fromJubilate Agno” by English poet Christopher Smart (1722-1771), a link fromthe Poetry Foundation website. The excerpt, at least, composed for his “CatJeoffry,” filled with reverence and Christian ardor, and this small coupletthat makes the point perfectly:

For there is nothingsweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothingbrisker than his life when in motion.