Day X: my surface is abandonment

"a hassled, thieving life"   -A. Notley, Benediction


the universe a vast crematorium firing
under the skin
peel back blackened to sift bone
our parceled jaws
jeering--look too I have thoughts
that conflict about staying
but to all go under, a star winking
blackness, the sole cold rock dumbly spinning
round, we tried on joy & could not find
enough ways to suspend it
tatter happiness, thimble full of grimace
keeper of constraint, how you led us below
crust, a deep soiling: a boy's afternoon treasures
my daughter's head heavy pressed against my face
in sleep, there is no thing we can truly catch
and keep, what have you taken that wasn't
yours to take, we walk away with what is under
our tongues & then forced to swallow
         there is a darkness that I am always right about
when you can't be happy with what you have
you get what you deserve



"we are in charge of the stable world but our vast world of image shared in the sea of the medium of the mind is likewise in charge of us day and night we can have no thought that doesn't reflect from this sea of telepathic communion"   -A. Notley

Poets Worth Reading: 175 in 2011, Part One (1-58)

"No century in the evolution of poetry in English ever had 175 poets worth reading, so why are we being asked to sample so many poets of little or no lasting value?" -H. Vendler, reviewing Penguin's Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, ed. by Rita Dove

Since I apparently read way too many poets not worth reading according to Vendler, I thought I would further the torment by sharing all the wonderful books and poets that I have read in the last year. It didn't even take me a century to read 175 interesting poets, so you can probably dismiss this list entirely if you agree with the above statement.

I'll start with what I've read most recently and branch out including only living poets writing in this decade, in a further effort to point out the viability and importance of poetry being written NOW. I read a lot of dead poets too, so don't worry Vendler. I even cracked the Cantos again this year. I'm sure reading Mina Loy's short stories and plays makes that last gesture null and void in Vendler's eyes, but what can you do? I also may have published and/ or may be married to poets mentioned, but unless anyone becomes a millionaire or exceedingly famous from this list, who cares?

If you're not on this list, either I didn't read you this year or I've never read you and you can remedy that by sending me a book that I may or may not read next year.

Let's play:

1) Ed Sanders, Fug You
While not a book of poetry, it outlines Sanders' long commitment to poetry and revolution, and since I learned most of what I know about the 60s and all of what I know about investigative poetics from Sanders' verse, he gets top spot.

2) Bernadette Mayer, Ethics of Sleep and Studying Hunger Journals
It's a good year when you get two Mayer's to challenge and thwart your knowledge and understanding of the written word.

3) Alice Notley, Culture of One and Reason and Other Women
Reason is an older book, but I love the complicated narrative and read it often this year.

4) Anne Waldman, Soldatesque/ Soldiering with Dreams of Wartime (with Noah Saterstrom)
Waldman continues to plunge into the depths of political inquiry and social justice accompanied with beautiful half page images scrolling across the top of the book's pages.

5) Jack Collom Second Nature (unpublished) This is an as yet uncollected manuscript of Collom's life long commitment to nature and poetry; invaluable, experimental and, of course, humorous.

6) Bill Lavender Memory Wing
Poetic memoir trumping through life and the afterlife, new from Black Widow Press

7) Philip Good, Untitled Writings from a Member of the Blank Generation
Long awaited first collection from a poet long on the scene of poetry happenings over the last several decades

8) rob mclennan, C
Small chunks of syllabic beauty caught in the sparse form and space of this chapbook.

9) Deborah Poe, Elements
Examining the invisible architecture of the world through the lens of association and inference

10) Claire Hero, Sing, Mongrel
Strange, bestial, and hard to look away from--

I'm going to stop commenting on the books only because I will start repeating myself, if it's on the list, I'm saying it's worth reading:

11) Bei Dao, Endure (trans. by Clayton Eshleman and Lucas Klein)

12) Jennifer Denrow, California


13) Alison Pelegrin, Hurricane Party


14) Jenny Bouly, Not Merely Because of the Unknown Stalking Toward Them 


15) HR Hegnauer, Sir

16) Jen Hofer,  slide rule and one


17) Susana Gardner, Herso, An Heirship in Waves


18) Dara Wier, A Civilian's Journal of the War Years


19) Sergio Medeiros, Vegetal Sex (trans by Raymond Bianchi)

20) Niyi Osundare, City Without People


21) Mairead Byrne, Lucky


22) Jimmy Lo, A Reduction


23) Dave Brinks, (forthcoming) The Secret Brain: Collected Poems

24) John Sinclair Song of Praise Homage to John Coltrane 


25) Lee Meitzen Grue, DOWNTOWN


26) Danielle Pafunda, Iatrogenic, Their Testimonies


27) Laynie Browne, Roseate Points of Light


28) Kate Eichhorn, Fieldnotes, a forensics


29) Richard Froude, Fabric


30) Eileen Myles, Sappho's Boat: Poems and Pencil Poems (OK, Sappho's Boat is an older book (and I also read Inferno: A Poet's Novel), but it's a great book that I reread this year)

31)Annie Finch, Among the Goddesses


32) Elizabeth Willis, Address


33) Jamey Jones, Blue Rain Morning


34) Joel Dailey, Surprised by French Fries


35) Travis Cebula, Jamaica


36) Julie Kane, Jazz Funeral


37) Daniele Vogel, lit


38) Brad Richard, Motion Studies

39) Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker, Home/ Birth


40) Kim Rosenfield, Trama


41) Camille Dungy, ed. Black Nature


42) Anne Tardo, The Dik Dik's Solitude

43) Joan Retallack, Procedural Elegies/ Western Civ Cont'd


44) Dodie Bellamy, The Buddhist


45) Susan Howe, That This


46) Carmen Gimenez Smith, Can We Talk Here

47) Cecilia Vicuna, beforehand


48) Benjamin Morris, Coronary


49) Brett Evans, Pisa Can


50) Brenda Iijima, If Not Metaphoric


51) Peter Gizzi, Threshold Songs


52) Julia Cohen, The History of a Lake Never Drowns


53) Emma Bolden, The Sad Epistles


54) Daniel Kerwick, Attach It To The Earth


55) Kirsten Jorgenson, Deseret


56) Brooklyn Copeland, Laked, Fielded, Blanked


57) Nathan Hauke, SEWN


58) Darrell Bourque, In Ordinary Light

Fence Mother's Day Special

Fence Books is offering a great deal on a poetry anthology written about mothering, child rearing, etc. Great deal with a great line up of contributors such as: ann lauterbach, mina loy, bernadette mayer, thylias moss, hoa nguyen, alice notley, sharon olds, alicia ostriker, maureen owen, and so on.

From the Fence Email:

"Today's the day to get the perfect gift for any mother, mother-to-be, past mother, grandmother, or actually anyone who's ever been born. It's Not for Mothers Only, and we're so eager for it be read that we're offering it for $10. If you order the book today, we can guarantee its arrival at the destination of your choice by May 9.

The picture on the cover of the silhouette of a woman in a state of extreme pregnancy, with an image of a fetus kind of drifting outside of her inside a box with a dotted line around it, indicates that this is pregnancy/birth/parenting of mind and spirit--not necessarily biological and sometimes immanent. Introductions are by editors Catherine Wagner and Rebecca Wolff."

Counterpath Press: New Book from Laynie Browne

Laynie Brown has a new book out and it's an homage to an amazing Mayer book. See below the info. fresh from Counterpath Press.


Browne's book The Scented Fox (Wave books, 2006) was chosen by Alice Notley in the National Poetry Series. It's one of my favorite poetry books and I used to read parts of it to Mina at night before bed. It's a blend of lyrical poetry and prose. Another favorite of mine that is also reminiscent of Mayer's experiments in form is Daily Sonnets, also from Counterpath Press, 2007.



Here's a review for The Scented Fox where the reviewer says the poems are like vicodin. I sure did enjoy them but they didn't make me feel all itchy and rashy...well, that's just me being allergic to vicodin and all.


From Counterpath Press Email:

"The Desires of Letters, by Laynie Browne (ISBN 978-1933996-19-6)


'Motherhood and housewifery and other worldly concerns of the female artist-provider ride rampant here in this bustling exploding book of prose & poem meditations. One of our best writers does it again' (Anne Waldman). Prose, verse, letters, and plays, The Desires of Letters is a passionate commentary on writing, mothering, and the navigation of politics, community, and imagination. An homage to Bernadette Mayer's The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, the book begins at the onset of the 2003 Iraq war and becomes 'transformative . . . [in] its negotiation of the global and the domestic, beauty made bittersweet with annoyance and exhaustion, all that advice about how to raise a child and write at the same time' (Juliana Spahr)."




Learn more about the author:


Interview with Laynie Browne

Notes from Alice Notley's Inventing the Story Class

Some notes from Alice Notley (Naropa 2008)
Inventing the Story Workshop

Long poem has to keep reproducing itself

Access the obscure sound inside you, creating a set up to continue

if you have a grid, you create a form and the words come out of you

where language comes up to meet the form

sound as magical incantation

internalized the translation rather than the form

what you try to do when you write a long poem is win

what set of cultural materials do you relate to

tell all my stories but tell them again

where you write out of--be straight, not literary

you can never make a form that isn't you

keep telling the story if you have the line

analyze the frame around sound

how people are used and how they have to die

what stories are under cover

what can you tell in great detail about your city