On Robert Kelly’s Seaspel (Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2019) How does he do it, I’ve wondered of every one of Robert Kelly’s books, and I still have no answer. You can’t parse miracles, only witness them. A mosaic formed by shells of perception, the poet says about Seaspel, the latest in a series of book length poems he has written, one each year over a summer month, on the island … Read more Billie Chernicoff: On Robert Kelly’s “Seaspel”
Dans son avant-dire, le poète américain Charles Bernstein note que la poésie de Pierre Joris « renverse les hiérarchies, mais sans omettre de soigner, de tendre, de remuer, de labourer, de fermenter et de fomenter » (p. 6). Dans cette anthologie personnelle qui reprend une sélection de son œuvre depuis les années 1970, le lecteur ne peut que constater l’énergie débordante de l’écriture de Joris. Cette énergie se traduit d’abord … Read more Khalid Lyamlahy’s Review of “Canto Diurno”
Below, the opening paragraphs of RICHARD FALK‘s recent article in Counterpunch concerning his tribulations after publishing a book on Palestine. The article then broadens into looking at the various ways in which pro-Israeli right-wing zionist orgs try (& often succeed) in shutting down any sensible discussion of the question of Palestine, although mentioning the rare occasion in which the US Senate “recently overcame the polarized atmosphere in Washington to join … Read more Richard Falk on Israel’s New Cultural War of Aggression
For anyone interested in American poetry post-WW2 at its experimental, processual best, & who was not able to pick up the set of Collected Volumes (very expensive indeed) or only owns a few (there were many!) of the small-press chapbooks & books Larry Eigner published during his life-time, this is THE BOOK. Here is what Lynn Hejinian had to say about it: “Following publication of the massive (and magnificent) four-volume edition … Read more Calligraphy Typewriters: The Selected Poems of Larry Eigner
Below, the opening paras of a useful review, to say the least, of what looks like the major anthology of French poetry since 1960. I haven’t gotten ahold of the book yet, but both anthologizers, Yves di Manno & Isabelle Garron, are excellent poet-scholars, so I am confident of their collaboration. Interestingly enough, it would seem that one of the angles from where they go at evaluating the poetry of that … Read more “Un nouveau monde:” di Manno & Garron’s Anthology of French poetry 1960-2012
An interesting review of Leonard Schwartz’s book by Kathleen Eamon just appeared on the talisman website. Here the opening paragraphs, link to the full article below: Leonard Schwartz’s The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises (The University of Arkansas Press 2016) is a timely book, emerging at a historical moment that its own capacious political vision lets us find internally related to the crises in question. Much of it was written in the context … Read more Leonard Schwartz’s “The New Babel: Toward a Poetics of the Mid-East Crises”
Archipelago books — maybe right now the finest US press truly turned toward & tuned in to the world beyond these Benighted States — has just released a gorgeous 800-page bilingual tome of the Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi’s Selected Poems under the title In Praise of Defeat. The choice of poems is the author’s own, and the excellent translations from the French are by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Rather than “review” & laud … Read more Abdellatif Laâbi’s “In Praise of Defeat”
Just published on Jacket2; below the opening paras & the link to the whole piece. Healer and hunter: A review of Pierre Joris’s ‘Barzakh’ NORMAN WEINSTEIN Barzakh: Poems 2000–2012 Pierre Joris Black Widow Press 2014, 306 pages, $19.95, ISBN 996007924 My father was a healer & a hunter. Is it any surprise I became a poet & translator? (“Nimrod,” 121) “Nothing truer than fragment” — I’m quoting Robert Kelly … Read more Norman Weinstein on “Barzakh”
“The Pants of Time” is an excellent review by Benjamin Hollander on the latest book by an excellent, sadly neglected poet. Opening paras below; the rest is on its original publication platform, the Boston Review. Link to it is below the excerpt. Tiny Windows Duncan McNaughton Auguste Press Who knows or can speak of Duncan McNaughton and his poems: of the Boston-born poet (1942), now living in San Francisco, editor of the two 1970s … Read more On “Tiny Windows” by Duncan McNaughton
As I put it on Face Book a week or so ago when Aldon Nielsen’s review of SOS (Poems 1961-2013) came out: “An excellent corrective to the ignorant NYT put-down piece of a week ago. Aldon Nielsen knows exactly what he is speaking of, i.e. knows in detail the incredible width & depth of Amiri Baraka’s oeuvre — one of the major literary achievements of the second part of … Read more Aldon Nielsen on Amiri Baraka’s SOS (Poems 1961-2013)