Rob Mclennan's Blog, page 77

John Levy, 54 poems: selected & new

 

Kyoto

I’m at a temple. A youngmonk in black robes walks by, looks at me, stops. He points to my long hair. Brown.Then to my goatee. Red. He touches my armpit and looks puzzled. I point to myhair. He points to my crotch. I point to my hair. He invites me in for greentea.

Thelatest from Arizona poet John Levy, and the first title of his I’ve read, isthe collection 54 poems: selected & new (Shearsman Books, 2023). 54poems offers a selection of poems composed between 1972 and 2022, withpieces having previously appeared across an array of books, chapbooks andbroadsides by publishers such as Longhouse, Half Day Moon Press, Figs, First IntensityPress, Sow’s Ear Press, The Haiku Foundation, Smallminded Books, the tel-letseries, otata’s bookshelf, Convivo, Kater Murr’s Press, Quenencia Press and TheElizabeth Press. There is something timeless about Levy’s short missives assembledhere that (without sections or earlier-publication acknowledgment throughout,simply set as a single, book-length assemblage of lyrics) don’t feel dated,given these are poems composed across a fifty year period. There’s such aninteresting consistency to his lyric approach, even within the varieties andexplorations on form and rhythm, moving through prose poems and moretraditional poem-shapes. His lyrics are deceptively straightforward, and subtle;at times, even delicate.

My Wife

My wife is painting
the ocean. It,

the ocean, looks
real

sort of, on the
watercolor

paper
because

she (my
wife, not

the ocean)
is excellent.

I
can’t

judge

the ocean.

I’mintrigued by the short, sketched-out stretches of Levy’s lyric brevity, themeditative ways in which his poems offer elements of the hush and a haltingslowness, holding far more than what might first appear. Levy is capable of somefantastic short threads, woven in that simultaneously sit as asides and part ofthe larger weave of the poem, each of which propel his short narratives: “Theriver sound behind me is traffic,” he writes, as part of “Letter to Paul Matthews/ from a Parking Lot in Tucson,” “and an American flag hangs / in front of abarber shop’s / plate glass window; the flag’s / reflection resembles / wings.”Through that particular thread, he steps aside from the narrative and simplyswirls this element in, allowing his story a further depth. Through the poems assembledhere, Levy appears to favour variations on the epistolary form, composing poemsdirectly to, around and through specific individuals, composing poems as postcards,elegies, letters and obituaries. It is almost as though he prefers the suggestionof a poem as something addressed to someone, which has an enduring charm. “DearBob,” the poem “Letter to Robert Lax” begins, “I like addressing you, though /you no longer live on Patmos / or in New York, or anywhere on Earth.”

filling Station #81 : Some Kind of Dopamine Hit

Ithas been a while since I’ve done a write-up on Calgary’s filling Stationmagazine, not having writ anything since filling Station issue #57 :showcase of experimental writing by women (2014) [see my review of such here]—anissue worth picking up, if they have any left—so perhaps we’re due (althoughwhy does the issue itself offer no more than a number and year? is this aspring issue, winter issue, autumn issue, what?). As usual, there’s some strikingwork in this issue, following a fine history and trajectory of experimentalwriting centred in those Canadian prairies. filling Station has, since Ifirst took notice of it somewhere back in the mid-1990s, one of the fewjournals I regularly attend, alongside The Capilano Review , FENCE magazine , headlight anthology , p-queue and a handful of others, for alwaysmanaging to publish fresh work, and often by writers I hadn’t previously beenaware of. For example, there’s the poem “Milk River” by self-described emergingCalgary poet Lee Thomas, a piece unselfconsciously lyric, and offering both a languidquality and a sharpness that is quite lovely, rolling down the length of the pageakin to a prairie breeze across landscape: “and I think I might love // the waythe badlands kiss the sky / how the sandstone yields / a trembling sigh, andthe prairie grass / yields to the wind,/ and we to the sagebrush night-hush, /and I think I might love // the way you transmute water into laughter / analchemical recollection of the seas / that surged across these plains.” And whois this Bertrand Bickersteth, providing some stunning poems shaped as visualsthrough the paired poem “A Black Hand Revisits”?

Thereare some fascinating visual rhythms in the poem “Words Whispered 4, 5” by Nova Scotia Acadian poet and playwright Thibault Jacquot-Paratte, staggering astaccato down the page through halting hesitations and visual strokes. As well,Calgary writer Kevin Stebner offers a short sequence of really interesting visualpieces, each of which were produced via the manual typewriter. The poems are includedin this issue with accompanying write-up, that includes: “Throughout theprocess, I’ve become quite preoccupied with the idea of stereopsis, the ways inwhich our brains perceive 3 dimensions on a 2D page. Much of what I’veattempted with these pieces is to make your brain juggle and flip an image, tryingto find that moment where a cube will fold through itself. There is a joy inbeing able to do so especially within the confines of the handful ofkeystrokes.” And one can never go wrong with a poem by Stan Rogal, offering anarrative saunter across line breaks and playful sounds and rhythm. “now Ou LiPo / is firm,” he writes, as part of his sly poem-critique “Ou Li Po Re-writesCatallus N+7,” “hearse doesn’t search for yo-yo : / won’t ask unwillingly / butyo-yo will grieve when noggin asks / womb to yo-yo, wicked glacier, whatligature’s left for yo-yo?” Did you know the issue also has a poem by StanRogal?

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Geoff Bouvier

Geoff Bouvier’s first book, Living Room , was selected by Heather McHugh as the winner of the 2005 APR/Honickman First Book Prize. His second book, Glass Harmonica , was published in 2011 by Quale Press. He received an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in 1997 and a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University in 2016. In 2009, he was the Roberta C. Holloway visiting poet at the University of California - Berkeley. He lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his partner, the novelist SJ Sindu, and teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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 don’t remember the first book I ever read, but it fundamentally changed me. The mere fact of words – lines of little scribbles that were somehow signs of meaning – shifted my basic understanding of everything.

The first book I wrote – “The Cake Who Lost Its Crumbs,” when I was three – taught me that I could sculpt those little significant meaningful scribbles. My audience was my mother and father, who were quite encouraging.

The first book I published, thirty-three years later, relined my confidence. Though Living Room found only a modest audience, it did earn me some inroads into academia, where I’ve been able to cultivate a life of the mind.

With my new book, Us From Nothing , I wanted words to again shift my basic understanding of everything. I had to try to understand who I am, why I’m here, where I came from, and where I might be headed. It took me 7 years to research and revise what became a serial epic prose poem about the most important milestones in human history.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Psychologically, from the moment I learned to read, it was the words that got me, first and foremost. The mere fact of words. I didn’t care about stories or characters. Those words were drawing attention to themselves as words. That’s the poetry. That hooked me.

Factually, I grew up in a house full of books – my parents were both teachers and readers – but the shelf with the poetry books was the only one with cobwebs on it. I think I gravitated toward it because no one else ever touched it; the poetry books could be mine, all mine.

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?
I’m an inveterate reviser. It takes at least a hundred versions of me to make one good line. Everything changes radically from draft to draft. It’s a long and fun process to mint a memorable phrase that sounds like it just appeared spontaneously at the tip of my tongue.

4 - Where does a poem 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?
With my new book, I knew I was writing a book – an epic poem – right from the beginning. But that’s the first time I ever did that. Usually, I’m just writing stuff down – I call it “collecting bricks” – and then eventually, I’ll turn back pages and look for bricks that might combine with other bricks, so that I might start building something. Eventually, the poem, like a wall or house, starts rising into view. Come to think of it, I built a lot of my new book that way also, even though I knew beforehand (once I’d curated the table of contents, at least) what the various parts of the epic poem were going to be.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I do love to do readings. I think any good poem should be read out loud. And recently, I’ve started projecting my poems onto screens when I read them to people, so that they can read along. Everyone seems enthusiastic about that. It makes public readings even more fun.

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 deeply believe that we don’t yet understand the way the world really works – coming at the whole thing piecemeal, as we have – and every time I sit down to write I’m trying to advance my understanding. I’m always asking myself, “what does poetry need, and can I help provide that?” Implicit in that question is “what does the world need, and how can my writing help?”

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?
I think everyone in the world should be a writer (and a reader). Imagine that world! In the meantime, though, I think it’s a writer’s role to show others the code to empathy, beauty, truth, and understanding.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Depends on the editor! But, in the end, I’m always grateful to have someone who makes me think deeply about my work.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 like to wake up and “have a morning.” For me, “having a morning” means ascending slowly into my waking mind with a writing apparatus nearby. But I do most of my writing these days in the evenings (“writing nights”), and I start to feel irritable if I’m not able to have a morning or a writing night for more than two days in a row.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’m an advocate of having more than one project going at a time. When one stalls, I just turn to another. Sooner or later, they all get done. And if none of my projects are calling to me, then the sparks of inspiration almost always find me during a good long walk in the woods.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I’m actually scent-sensitive, and have a very strong sense of smell. As such, I’ve worked very hard over the years to detach associative memory from my olfactory sensors. Further, my concept of “home” is shifting and modular; there is no house or place that encapsulates “home” for me. All that said, my partner – the novelist SJ Sindu – who, in the decade she’s known me, hasn’t been able to wear scented lotions or perfumes (sorry, my love!), has a natural pheromonic smell that is absolutely “home” to me. So, there’s my answer: Sindu’s smell reminds me of home.

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?
I was a musician first, and I think about everything musically. To me, every good poem is very much a musical composition. I’m also biophilic, and my first, deepest and most enduring love is birds, trees, grasses, flowers, rocks, rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, insects, and wild animals.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Franz Kafka (the GOAT), John Ashbery (GOAT poet), Gilles Deleuze ( A Thousand Plateaus would be my desert island book), Giorgio Agamben (the person alive or dead with whom I’d most like to have dinner), Anne Carson, Lydia Davis, Eduardo Galeano, Kamau Brathwaite.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I love traveling, and I haven’t yet been to Japan, Australia, Hawaii, Iceland, Greece…

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?
I’m a professor, and writing and professing (“living a life of the mind”) are my dream jobs. But if that hadn’t worked out, I’d be a professional poker player.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
To state this again in a different way… when I was so young that I found great meaning in tinker toys, I learned that there were these intricate black scribbles arranged in lines on white rectangles, and those scribbles could tell your mouth what to say, and your mouth could relay those scribbles to another person’s ear, and I thought that extraordinary transfer was the master code for everything. I started making little books when I was three or four, and I’ve never stopped.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I think Virginia Konachan’s Bel Canto is a great book. I wrote a fawning review for it. And I think Asteroid City was a great film, and I’m not even a particular fan of Wes Anderson.

19 - What are you currently working on?
What do you write about after you’ve written about everything? Immortality! It took me a while to find that next subject, but for the past month or so I’ve been on fire with my answer-call to Wordsworth’s Intimations Ode. The working title is “I’ll Never Forget.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Mahtem Shiferraw, Nomenclatures of Invisibility: Poems

 

The Eucalyptus Tree I
            after Susan Hahn

I long for it on quietnights and call it
home. It stands tall andmuscular
above the mountains. It seesme
but does not flinch. It feedsme
honey and wild winds. It callsme
child, though I do nothear.
Its leaves, a balm forblistering skin;
what comes after a cry, or bleeding?
Its aroma, like autumn,like rain,
stands green, translucentthing,
between my father and I,and the ghosts
of Gojam. It sees us: bleeding.
We carve wombs throughoutits roots
and rest our littlebodies. We bear
children the size ofseeds and fold
them into our brancharms. The rings
of fire that embrace usare blue with fear.
Everywhere we go, wesmell of death
and something sweet.

Thethird full-length collection by Mahtem Shiferraw, “a writer and visual artistfrom Ethiopia and Eritrea,” is Nomenclatures of Invisibility: Poems (RochesterNY: BOA Editions, 2023), following Your Body Is War (University of NebraskaPress, 2018) and Fuchsia (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), which wonthe Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. There is such a clarity, a concretenessand precision, in Shiferraw’s lyrics. I admire the scaffolding of her poems,one that allows a variety of gestures, whether a hand in the air, or a story, apicture, all of which holds firmly together in a solidly constructed space. “Weare made with the same thing,” she writes, as part of the poem “Sawdust,” “and/ we hum quietly. He is a fish too, telling / his daughters stories of men withlurking eyes. / We swim elsewhere and find him staring / into the open skies.He asks, what are we / doing here? He asks, are we really here alone?” She writesof grandmothers, historical truths, colonialism and cultural arrogance; shewrites of cultural truths, inheritances and children. “To be able to set acrossthe ocean, / across unnamed seas and other waters,” she writes, as part of “Wuchalle,”“and / lands, and suddenly, having arrived at the // coastal states, suddenlynot noticing / the existing communities, and instead, / deciding to takeownership—like that, / like that.” She writes what is seen and known and notknown in searing lyric, offering a clear through-line reflecting and meditatingon language, the self and the body in a cultural, communal and familial space. “Theseeds we plant are may, but / many more of us grow—,” she writes, to close thepoem “Crackling Blue,” continuing:

these ones erect andunapologetic
small conquerors of oldworlds—
though, they too, mustcarry the
weight of distraughtancestors
like heavy rocks, sinkinginto their bones
deeper and deeper
until their cracklingturns blue.

 

Matthew Cooperman, Wonder About The

 

BENZENE BURNS THEBUTTERCUP

            love at the end of the pipe
mild today    chance of scattered acids
will be spraying downroads cover mouths
evening reports a declinein light
            love in the throat
Columbine dust binscattered pistols
diversification rain inthe prairie dog towns
gas ‘em in hubris inAugust with intention
                 love in the
disturbed field adistributed harm
no pollen rest for theweary wind
      benzene burns the buttercup
weary bird in thesheening water
titmouse declares a nestfor titration
      mild today      chance of scattered seed
the distributed field atotal control
in the scattered sheens
            in the blistered throat
love at the end of thepipe

Thelatest from Fort Collins, Colorado poet and editor Matthew Cooperman, followingnumerous titles, including the collaborative NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified) (with Aby Kaupang; New York NY: Futurepoem Books, 2018) [see my review of such here] is Wonder About The (Beulah CO: Middle CreekPublishing, 2023), a looping, rolling ecopoetic grounded in the author’s homelandscape of Colorado, specifically the rhythms of the river that runs throughFort Collins. “the black sands of fire / past fire of countless andspeechless—,” he writes, as part of the poem “A RIVER IN SPRING,” “leaves blownto ash / return again green / the rivercarries throughout / alteration of weather / cloud sun cloud   the grass whitens/ the bones of the mice the fox finds / and dies another season [.]” There is adescriptive thickness to Cooperman’s rhythmic and looped lyric, one that offersan ongoing, book-length thread of extended stretches, layered upon layers ofcontinuous, rhythmic flow articulating the Cache la Poudre River, ecologicaltrauma and how deeply human activity and human thinking is tied to that land. “—whatis the progress of a river,” the same poem offers, a bit further on, “the waterthe water / the argument they drink / jars  tests   tastes // words in theirthroats / thyroidial currents / gone astray / words in their throats    something to say / or singing   a future off key [.]” Cooperman offers thecollection Wonder About The as a kind of ongoing field notes, sketchingpoems on contemporary and historical elements of the river, the landscape andthe rock face, citing sight and sand and implication, simultaneously asdocument, declaration and demand for climate action: “a kind     a kind of life    half /// below zero” (“FIELD NOTES FORWINDBLOWN LANDS”).

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Lynn Domina

Lynn Domina is theauthor of several books, including three collections of poetry: Inland Sea , Framed in Silence , and Corporal Works . She teaches English atNorthern Michigan University and serves as Creative Writing Editor of The Other Journal . She lives in Marquette, Michigan, along the beautiful shoresof Lake Superior.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your mostrecent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

              The publicationof my first collection of poetry, CorporalWorks, felt magical. I’d always believed in my work and had been submittingthe manuscript to contest for a couple of years, but still, when it won thefirst book contest from Four Way Books, I almost couldn’t believe it. And thenafter a few months, I held the actual copy in my actual hands. As a friendsaid, “Publishing a book is like getting a gift you get to keep opening.” Istill feel like that—an awe that someone else finds my poems engaging enough totake that kind of risk on.

              I’ve publishedseveral other books since, including two more collections of poetry, Framed in Silence from Main Street Rag,and Inland Sea just out from KelsayBooks. Inland Sea is particularlymeaningful, too, because in some ways it’s the most personal of my collections.It’s not that I reveal deep, dark secrets—it’s not personal in the sense ofconfessional—but the “I” speaking the poems is often very close to my realself. It’s less often a persona, in other words. Part of the reason for that, Ithink, is that I’ve returned to Michigan, where I lived until I was in mymid-20s, but where I hadn’t lived since. So the book is filled with images ofnorthern Michigan and Lake Superior. I gaze out at that lake every day, and Istill can’t believe I live here.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fictionor non-fiction?

              When I was muchyounger, I did write some fiction, but it never felt as natural to me. I’m notthat good at plot structure or dialogue. I am trying my hand now at morecreative non-fiction, so we’ll see how that goes. I think the biggestdifference between poetry and prose for me is that in the revision process whenI’m focusing on structure, I make choices more intuitively in poetry—though Ican later explain them logically—but with prose more of my choices begin withlogic.

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 firstdrafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out ofcopious notes?

              With a poem, Ioften have a page or so of false starts. I think of them as the scaffoldingRichard Hugo describes in his essay “The Triggering Town.” I don’t begin with alot of notes with poetry, though sometimes I’ll write down a bit of overhearddialogue or an image that will later prompt a poem. With prose, I often dobegin with many more notes and some kind of haphazard outline. When I look backat my notebooks, the poems I’ve finished often emerge in a shape reasonablyclose to the final draft, though many times it takes me a while to get to thetrue beginning, as I’ve said. My notebooks are full of a bunch of abandonedpoems, though, ones that began looking ok but then didn’t go anywhere. I’moften frustrated by a poem I abandon, but I tell myself that it will lead tosomething else that’s more engaging.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author ofshort pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working ona "book" from the very beginning?

I don’t often begin with a solid ideafor a unified collection, though I have written several poetic sequences thatare anywhere from 10-25 pages long. I do find, though, that once I get 50 ormore new poems written, ones that haven’t appeared in collections, themesemerge that I wasn’t necessarily aware of. My poems almost always originatewith an image, though that image might not appear at the beginning of the poemin its final form. My body almost vibrates when I lock onto the right image,the one that’s going to lead somewhere, and that’s how I know I’ve reallybegun.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creativeprocess? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

              I love givingreadings. So often we complete our work alone, and we send it out into theworld hoping someone someday somewhere will read it—but we seldom really knowif that happens. But with readings, you can feel the response of the audiencemembers, and then they often ask interesting questions. I like different typesof audiences, too, community members, students, other poets—different types ofpeople tend to notice different things going on in the poems.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? Whatkinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you eventhink the current questions are?

              One of myfoundational assumptions is that art gives our lives meaning. So, on the onehand, that idea alone compels me to write. Writing is a spiritual practice, asbeing a poet is part of my identity, not just a task I complete. Makingsomething new, art for art’s sake, can be very gratifying. On the other hand,there’s a lot going on, locally and globally, that’s very disturbing. In recentyears, I’ve found myself addressing some of those concerns in my poetry morethan I used to. Much of my current work is environmentalist; living along LakeSuperior makes that almost inevitable I think. But I’ve also written poemshonoring George Floyd and addressing immigration at our southern border. So Iguess one of a poet’s primary questions is “Who am I?” not only as anindividual, but also “Who am I?” as a member of a community, and where do theboundaries of that community lie: with my immediate family? with myneighborhood? with my country? with my planet?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in largerculture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer shouldbe?

Our responsibility is to tell the truth. So many people weencounter are intent on obfuscating reality. Writers lack access to manyconventional forms of power—most of us aren’t rich, and we don’t walk the hallsof corporate headquarters or national governments. But our facility withlanguage provides us with a different kind of very potent power, and we need tobe willing to use it.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editordifficult or essential (or both)?

              I’ve workedwith all kinds of editors. One in particular was extremely unpleasant, and I’llnever work with him again. Others, though, have been very pleasant andenthusiastic. The very best have really helped me make my work better, byasking insightful questions and seeing aspects of my work that I could developmuch further.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarilygiven to you directly)?

              I don’t know ifthis was actually advice or just an observation, but I was talking with anacquaintance at the beginning of a summer long ago. I didn’t have any plans andsaid I was waiting for something exciting to drop into my lap. He said, “oh, ifyou want exciting, you can’t just wait for it. It doesn’t drop in your lap. Youhave to pursue it.” So, sometimes I’m looking for rest, but when I’m lookingfor something exciting—which for me, usually means exploring a new place—I gofind it.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetryto critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

              I writescholarly articles and books as well as poetry and other creative pieces. Thehardest part is keeping that more abstract language that scholarly writingsometimes requires out of my other writing. It’s a matter of voice, I think,remembering which voice to inhabit. Writing book reviews, though, at least bookreviews of poetry, really complements my own poetry because I focus in a lot oncraft in the reviews.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do youeven have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

              I’m much more anight person than a morning person. So on days when I don’t have to go to work,I lounge around in the morning, entering the day very gradually. I’m able tofocus on language much more intently in the evening, which is when I write mostof my poetry. I’m not someone who writes every day, though. Some days myschedules is just too complicated. Some days I do some writing adjacentactivities like submitting work, reading a book I’m going to review, visiting aplace I want to write about, etc. But I try not to spend too many days notwriting because then it takes me too long to re-enter that writing state thatis so fruitful.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or returnfor (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

              I rely on manyhabits that help prevent my getting stalled. I go to the beach or other naturalsites. I visit art museums and attend concerts regularly. Even a hockey gameexposes me to sounds and sights I don’t regularly experience. I try to keep myimaginative well filled. Julia Cameron in her popular book The Artist’s Way assigns readers to go on an “artist’s date” inorder to observe different things, and I try to do that.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

              What aninteresting question! Maybe the smell of roast beef or meat loaf reminds memost of my childhood home—my family’s midwestern identity showed up most in ourmeals. Now I’m not so sure. My sense of smell is not very acute, which deprivesme of some experiences, but relieves me of a few others!

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, butare there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music,science or visual art?

              I’ve writtenseveral sequences of poems directly responding to visual art. In my first book,I have a series of poems called “Objects from Still Lives.” They weren’tresponding to actual  paintings, but eachone used a specific object that often appears in still life paintings as acontrolling image. My second book has a whole section of poems about Edward Hicks and his Peaceable Kingdom paintings. Many of the individual poems focuson one of the animals in the paintings. The book’s title, Framed in Silence, comes from that series. I’ve just completedanother sequence responding to the story of Judith and Holofernes in the Bible,but really inspired by the mosaics of Canadian artist Lilian Broca. Her work isjust fantastic, and I was lucky enough to see an exhibit of all of the Judithmosaics a few years ago. I think I’m going to try to publish this group ofpoems as a chapbook rather than incorporate them into a collection with otherpoems.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work,or simply your life outside of your work?

              I return toElizabeth Bishop over and over. I’ve learned so much from her precisedescriptions and from how she expresses emotion through restraint.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

              My bucket listis so long that I’m going to have to live to be 200. There are lots ofcountries that I want to travel to that I haven’t been able to yet—Iceland,South Africa, Thailand, and many others. I would like to walk the Camino. Iwould like to go on one of those long bike rides across a whole state or groupof states. I took up quilting a few years ago, and I’m particularly interestedin art quilts, like the work of Bisa Butler. I’d love to become skilled enoughto do something like that.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what wouldit be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had younot been a writer?

              I make myliving as an English professor, and I really enjoy teaching, so it’s hard toimagine doing anything else. I would like to spend a year or so teachingEnglish abroad someday, but I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to do that. SinceI’ve begun quilting, I’ve thought it would be fun to be a fabric designer, butmy skills in visual arts are so limited that that would really be a stretch.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

              That magic ofconverting experience and emotion into language that other people cancomprehend just astonishes me. I’ve been writing for almost fifty years, and itstill astonishes me.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the lastgreat film?

              “Great” is areally high bar, but I’ve really enjoyed The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, both by Rachel Joyce. I just got Maureen, the final book in that trilogy,and I’m really looking forward to reading it. I don’t see many movies, so I’llamend this question to include concerts and plays. I heard The Unarmed Child performed at Northern Michigan University lastyear, and it was the most heart-wrenching composition I’ve ever heard. And thissummer I saw several plays at Stratford, Canada. They were all great, but Wedding Band by Alice Childress wasabsolutely stunning.

20 - What are you currently working on?

              I’m hoping tohave another poetry manuscript ready by next summer or so. Some of the poemswill extend the themes of Inland Sea. I’malso beginning a series of personal essays focused on significant people andplaces that I feel some ambivalence about. Those will be different from anyother writing I’ve done.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Aby Kaupang, & there’s you still thrill hour of the world to love

 

seals are what bulletsought be

sooted sheen & mooringdrift hymn

casing dissolves todriftwood
casket to gunmetal wave

if there is an angel ofdeath
there’s  pontoon grace to land her

 

ash is a color of  the mourning sea

 

 

seals are what bulletsought be

 

buoyed lash  & slowly lute song

bell & horn atop aninlet
a shatter in a barrel

measure   warning  rhythmic

I’mquite taken with Fort Collins, Colorado poet Aby Kaupang’s latest, her &there’s you still thrill hour of the world to love (Anderson SC: ParlorPress, 2023), winner of the new measure poetry prize. According to the backcover, this is Kaupang’s fifth collection, although I’ve only seen her debut, Absenceis such a Transparent House (Huntington Beach CA: Tebot Bach, 2011) [see my review of such here] and her collaborative NOS (disorder, not otherwise specified) (with Matthew Cooperman; New York NY: Futurepoem Books, 2018)[see my review of such here], so I’m clearly behind on her stunning, meditativelyric. The poems in & there’s you still thrill hour of the world to loveare incredibly expansive, set as a suite of long poems in a book-length ongoinglyric on grief and erasure; long lyric threads composed out of space, precisionand heartbreak. “her mouth was closed,” Kaupang writes, as part of “g-tube, lightning& excursion,” “I thought it was a moment & / & then a pre-moment //but the passing of her closure isn’t yet [.]” & there’s you still thrillhour of the world to love includes eight full-colour photographs of sculptures(including on the cover) by James Sullivan, set through the text asillustration, or counterpoint, offering further evidence of this as a book ofphysicality, of living and being, and of loss, grief and disappearance. “I tooam a part of the core of the world,” Kaupang writes, as part of the extended “recovery,”“the seems of my spine glued & stitched [.]” I’m amazed by theexpansiveness and heartbreak of her lyric across such a wide canvas, a widespace; the ways her narrative threads are dismantled even as they unfurl, toreveal the bare bones of heart and heavy feeling.

Spotlight series #89 : Alice Burdick

The eighty-ninth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek, Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe, Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr, Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown, Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker, Rwandese Canadian Brooklyn-based writer Victoria Mbabazi, Nova Scotia-based poet and facilitator Nanci Lee, Irish-American poet Nathanael O'Reilly, Canadian poet Tom Prime, Regina-based poet and translator Jérôme Melançon, New York-based poet Emmalea Russo, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic Eric Schmaltz, San Francisco poet Maw Shein Win, Toronto-based writer, playwright and editor Daniel Sarah Karasik and Ottawa poet and editor Dessa Bayrock.
 
The whole series can be found online here.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jennifer Fliss

JenniferFliss (she/her)is the writer of the story collections As If She Had a Say (2023) and The Predatory Animal Ball (2021.) Her writing has appeared in F(r)iction,The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter at @writesforlife or via her website, www.jenniferflisscreative.com.

1 -How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent workcompare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I wasincredibly honored Okay Donkey picked up my first book, The Predatory AnimalBall. It was a wonderful experience, working with them, but I don’t thinkit changed my life in a substantial way. I’m still in the throes of thepublication period on my second book, As If She Had a Say.

Ithink we writers all think when we finally do X, then everything will change,but it rarely happens in quite that way. The experience with NorthwesternUniversity Press / Curbstone for my second book has been different, but notcompletely different.

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

I startedwith fiction. Shortly after my father passed away, I felt a little freedom inwriting about my lived experiences under his abusive thumb. But I was not quiteready to write it all out and say “here’s what happened to me!” So I wrote ashort story and created a fictionalized version of my real experiences. Ienjoyed the process so much that I just continued to write fiction. (Though in time,I also wrote and published nonfiction, baring myself a bit more and sharing myexperiences.)

3 -How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does yourwriting initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appearlooking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copiousnotes?

Iwrite quickly. Because I often write flash, these come out fully formed often.Oh sure, I need to go back and run edits, but the idea, the generative processis quick and flows like water. First drafts of these look similar to earlydrafts. Now I am also working on a novel, and that’s an entirely differentmonster. I need lots of time alone to dive deep. On a sentence-to-sentencelevel, it comes out quickly, but it does require constant rereading and movingblocks around like Jenga blocks.

4 -Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of shortpieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?

I havevivid dreams and a lot of stories I write get their inception there. Because mywork tends toward the flash category, they usually come out in one go. Thecollections aren’t really on my mind as I work, they’ve come together after Ihave a substantial amount of work to collate.

5 -Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you thesort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I getvery anxious ahead of readings. But I also know it’s part of the learningprocess. It’s a way to get immediate feedback, to practice taking your work offthe page. I wouldn’t say it’s part or counter of my creative process, but it ispart of the business and networking aspect of the job.

6 -Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds ofquestions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think thecurrent questions are?

I feellike I should say yes. But truly, I absolutely adore the act of writing. Sothat’s the impetus for everything I write. As a human in this world, evensubconsciously, I know that what I write is about asking questions in life. Whythis? Why not that? Why me? etc.

7 –What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do theyeven have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Awriter is an artist and all artists are storytellers (this feels like thebeginning of some kind of logic word problem!). The role of artists is integralto society, otherwise we’d be a bunch of automatons. People connect more tostorytelling rather than just facts or opinions. This is true in so many areas:see advertising and marketing or nonprofit fundraising. It’s always the storiesthat succeed in piquing people’s interests.

8 -Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult oressential (or both)?

Idon’t find working with an editor difficult. I’ve been fortunate that mosteditors I have worked with understand what I’m doing and any edits or adviceusually jells with that. Only once that I can think of have I had an editoraccept my work and then change it completely. I was still rather new towriting, so I didn’t stand up for myself and I’m still kicking myself over it!

9 -What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Be agood human.

10- How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to flashfiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

Iwrite in several forms and I’ve recently been branching out a bit, genre-wise.Switching between flash and traditional stories and nonfiction have been easyfor me. Novel-writing – which I’m working on now – is an entirely differentmonster and takes some time to get into the flow because it is so different.Genre-wise, I’m playing around with horror stories.

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

Idon’t have a writing routine. I just write when inspired. Ignore the dogma thatsays you must write every day to be a writer. That’s BS. It works that way forsome folks, but not all.

12- When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack ofa better word) inspiration?

WhenI’m not feeling inspired and not writing, I like to look at poetry. The wordchoices and imagery used by poets evokes so much and often gets my own juicesrunning.

13- What fragrance reminds you of home?

I’mfrom New York, so I’d say the smell of fresh bagels in the early morning.

14- David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there anyother forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visualart?

I amnot familiar with that quote, but if he’s saying this is exclusive, that’sabsurd. Of course writing comes from other forms of art, music, nature, science.For me, living in New York City was hugely inspiring to me. Justpeople-watching can get a ton of stories out of me. When I moved to Seattle, Iwasn’t doing as much people-watching and have had to allow the incredible localnature in as inspiration.

15- What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply yourlife outside of your work?

I reada lot, but could not pinpoint any favorite writers. I love so much of what Iread and often it comes from lesser known writers who publish at journals anddon’t have a book out. I recently got a copy of Grapefruit by Yoko Ono whichcombines writing with instructions with visual art and I can tell a lot will beinspired from that.

16- What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Go toEdinburgh during rainy season, rent a flat and read and write.

17- 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 awriter?

I workin nonprofit communications, lest one think creative writing can pay the bills!I really wish I had thought about library work. I'd love to be a librarian. Ilove reading, research, and organizing information. I love how librariesprovide incredible social work outside of just lending books too.

18- What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Thisis like asking what made me breathe.

19- What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Twobooks I recently read and loved are The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosenby Isaac Blum and A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers. Bothexcellent and unique and I’d recommend them to anyone as required reading. Nota movie, but I just finished watching Dead Loch and I absolutely lovedit and can’t stop thinking about it.

20- What are you currently working on?

Amillion things, like usual. I am about to begin a novel that I’m excited about.I have a great setting and ideas, but have to flesh out the story. And I’malways writing essays and shorter fiction – always!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Peter Gizzi, Fierce Elegy

 

Roxy Music

The old language remindsus of traditions; of nights, of tapers billowing by the window; of balmy andaromatic breezes; recalls historically, our girl asks for a poem; each week orso says, where is my poem, you don’t write no more, sluggard; I say, I don’t care,when I see you and we buckle and your shirt is on the chair and the room isblowsy, poetry don’t matter; after, when I saw you in the mirror, I wrote:poetry died today.

The latest from American poet Peter Gizziis the collection Fierce Elegy (Middletown CT: Wesleyan UniversityPress, 2023), a collection that, as the back cover offers, “reminds us that theelegy is lament but also—as it has been for centuries—a work of love.” Gizzi isthe author of numerous collections, including The Outernationale (WesleyanUniversity Press, 2007) [see my review of such here] and Now It’s Dark: NewPoems (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) [see my review of such here], aswell as co-editor (with Kevin Killian) of my vocabulary did this to me: TheCollected Poetry of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press, 2008) [see my review of such here], and the hush and halting breaks and lines that make up thiscollection demand a slowness, a slowing down; the pleasure of absorbing slowlyevery phrase and morsel of unexpected lyric turns, meanders. “When the face youcarry / is not your own,” he writes, as part of “I’m Good to Ghost,” “and thehistory in this / is a history of / haunted ground.” Through a suite of sharpturns, Gizzi composes an elegy that surrounds the heart through shortCreeleyesque lines and phrases—even to the point of a poem titled “CreeleySong,” is “composed primarily from the titles of books by [American poet]Robert Creeley”—offering a language both new and old. His elegies are meditative,as a calm once the chaos has settled. As the poem “Ecstatic Joy and Its Variants”writes:

as the oldarguments, humans, how they rhyme,
stutter, get lost

this is alsoabout conversations with the dead,
the onlyhonest definition of silence

surely you arenot listening to the words I am singing

about the lastday of my life, the gift of blood,
the perfecttext

are not allthe sounds on my lyre about you

Thisis a lyric that works through an optimism, even through the elegy, which itselfsuggests a looking back, a loss; one that perseveres. Or, as the poem “Romanticism”ends: “Today I am in love / with a dead letter office at sunset. / Leaves,veins, ribs, sunsets, / all turning to letters. / These letters becoming / alove poem, why not?”