What the Mailman Recently Schlepped In…

by Pierre Joris · April 28, 2010

… & I read, enjoyed & kept on the shelves:

[Things accumulate, especially books, & of course the first wish, desire, idea is to write & post a review for each one I like — but that’s of course a pipe dream, time just isn’t that elastic anymore, if it ever was. Thus the accumulations of titles. Though I’ll try to keep such occasional lists manageable in terms of length and timeliness, I also give myself permission to slip in older books I may have bought, picked up or been given & that I think should be mentioned.]

POETRY:

— Peter Lamborn Wilson, ABECEDARIUM, xexoxial editions, 2010.

— Alice Notley, Reason and Other Women, Chax Press, 2010.

my blurb:

What have Byzantine art and Christine de Pizan in common? The answer is: Alice Notley’s new work, the book in your hands. For more than thirsty (the typo was not intended, but let stand — something learned from AN?) years now, about once a year, the new Notley comes out, like a reliable great wine — though even among those there are good years and then great years. I’d venture that this Notley is a Grand Cru, a millesimé. No need, however, to let it age: drink it now, you can always read it again later — ‘tis the advantage of poetry, the bottle never empties.

This is an immense book, one in which Notley takes language, as she has it, “from hearsay to heresy” by the speed and awe of an unwavering attention to the seams, seems and semes of words and sentences. This is the work of an iconoclast, a semioclast, where semantics become seme-antics, and the byz-antics and -antiques from Christianity to Christine are molten down & recast into 21^st Century mental shapes in the red-hot heart-red retort of a present day alchemist of mind. Alice Notley has the uncanny ability to go from the everyday mundane to the psycho-cosmic in one warp-speed stutter or typo-graphical stumble, at what André Breton called “la vitesse grand V.” This is writing of the highest order.

— George Kalamaras, The Scathering Sound, Anchorite Press, 2009.

— Clayton Eshleman, Anticline, Black Widow Press, 2010.

— Charles Bernstein, Umbra, Chax press, 2010.

— Anne Waldman, Matriot Acts, Chax Press, 2010.

— Edward Sanders, Let’s Not Keep Fighting the Trojan War, Coffee House Press, 2009.

— Rachel Zolf, Neighbour Procedure, Coach house, 2010.

— Gerard Malanga, Thermofax, Feather Press, 2010.

— Auxeméry, Codex, Flammarion, 2001.

— Tahar Ben Jelloun, translated by Cullen Goldblatt, The Rising of the Ashes, City Lights, 2010.

Justified Margins:

— Ammiel Alcalay, Islanders, City Lights, 2010.

— Amiri Baraka, Digging – The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music, University of California Press, 2010.

Magazines:

— Wild Orchids # 1: Melville (editors: Shawn reynolds & Robert Dewhurst. contributors: Kim L. Evans, Benjamin Friedlander, Chris Sylvester, Alan Halsley, Joelle McSweeney, Courtney Pfahl, Jennifer Scappatone, Stacy Szymaszek, Geraldine Monk, Donald E. Pease, Mark von Schlegell) 2009.

— Po&sie 128-129, edited by Michel Deguy and Co. At 80, Deguy is still the driving force behind what is the best French poetry magazine going.

— Aufgabe # 9, ed. E Tracy Grinnell. Just out, Wow! a treat!