Category: Today’s Pillar of Poetry (Page 5 of 8)

Langston Huges and Black History Month

February 10, 2016 / Big Bang Poetry

From The New York Times last week:

It’s fitting that today, the birthday of Langston Hughes — the poet and leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance — is also the start of Black History Month.

His novels, stories, plays and poems opened the eyes of many to the African-American experience. And they continue to do so.

Hughes got his break while working as a busboy at a Washington hotel. He slipped his poems next to the plate of the poet Vachel Lindsay who read them and was immediately impressed.

Introductions were made and Hughes was soon a published poet. He received a full scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and his debut book, “The Weary Blues,” was released even before he graduated in 1929.

Hughes was born in Joplin, Mo., and his parents’ divorce forced him to move around a lot.

One of those moves was fortuitous. He was named “class poet” in grammar school in Lincoln, Ill. He later said he believed he was chosen because of a stereotype that blacks had rhythm.

“There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry,” he said.

It led Hughes to try his hand at writing, and the rest is literary history.

Was Poet Emily Dickinson Thinking About Relativity and Multiuniverse in 1864?

January 26, 2016 / Big Bang Poetry

In the HarvardX class on Emily Dickinson, we studied this gem. Do you think the poem discusses relativity theory in 1864, before the Albert Einstein publications of relativity theory in 1905 and 1915? And what about a multi-universe theory before Stephen Hawking?

Pain—expands the Time (967)

Pain—expands the Time—
Ages coil within
The minute Circumference
Of a single Brain—

Pain contracts—the Time—
Occupied with Shot
Gamuts of Eternities
Are as they were not—

(1864)

New Year’s Resolutions, Laurie Anderson, the Brand of You, eBook Sales

January 11, 2016 / Big Bang Poetry

Happy New Year! This very blog and all my sites were just given responsive re-vampings over the holiday break so they should be more accessible on mobile devices. This makes it a good time to revisit what this blog’s mission really is. I’ve been looking at it lately like a poetry toolbox, lots of little ideas being fashioned as tools poets can take forward into poetry projects.

Self-publishing and eBooks

I read quite a few stories toward the end of 2015 about how eBook sales have stabilized and experts surmise that they may have found their permanent sweet spot. It’s too early to tell as techno-babies continue being born. It also contradicts other reports, such as this one about “slightly fewer Americans are reading print books, new survey finds.” Smashwords also did its annual survey of the previous year's eBook sales.

And here’s a smattering of other content I came across before the end of 2015:

A short treatise on commas from the Grammar Diva
Why Author Open Mic Night Doesn’t Have to Suck (tips on how to perform at an author reading)

Laurie Anderson

Monsieur Big Bang and I went to see Life of a Dog in December. This is the new movie by Laurie Anderson, a beautiful visual poem reflecting on the nature of life and death, a project that had been inspired by the recent deaths of her husband, Lou Reed, her dog and her mother. I was so enraptured by the movie I immediately went online afterwards to get "the book" on Laurie Anderson, the coffee table book, the biography, anything! But there was none to be found. Five or six books exist on Lou Reed however. WTF?

Anyway, all I managed to find was an article here from The New York Times on her projects during the 1980s! I also found another good piece on Laurie Anderson that’s more current from NPR. It had some great life advice:

"One of the things that I had to do when I inducted Lou into – or gave a speech when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few months ago was first of all, that's a very boring ceremony. It's – just goes on for, like, so many hours. And I was trying to shorten the speech because it was getting so dull. So I tried to shorten it, shorten it. And then I thought I'm just going to mention these three rules that Lou and I had. We made them up, and they had to do with how to live with your life 'cause, you know, life goes by so fast. It's really – and a lot of times things happen so fast you don't know – how should I react? What should I do? I'm in a panic, you know. So we came up with these, and they're time-tested rules. And I'll tell you what they are. So the first one is don't be afraid of anyone. Imagine your life if you're not afraid of anyone. Two, get a really good BS detector and learn how to use it. Who's faking it and who is not? Three, be really tender. And with those three, you're set."

At the end of the movie Life of a Dog Anderson invokes the old Huck Finn quote about "lighting out for the territories." I thought about that for a long time. The new year is, after all, a time to begin anew. It’s something we say when we’re in need of a life change, light out for the territories. We’ve been in that mindset now for over 100 years. But where does one go anymore? Where can you go to start over? California is pricing out even its natives. Portland is the new “it” but is it crowding up, too? Are cities the right answer anymore? Do we start to question ownership now? Should we just start going inside? Where are the territories? Does starting a garden count? It’s also true that all of humanity didn’t, in fact, all light out. This was an idea sold to us as hip and adventurous, which is was. But is it still?

Writer Brands

There’s an old marketing adage that you can“frame or be framed” meaning if you don’t tell your story, someone else will tell it for you and you might be framed in a negative sense or literally framed for the crime.

My friend and fellow poet Christopher and I have been having good conversation about the trend of writers trying to develop their brands. He sent me an article about Diana Vreeland's heirs who have branded perfumes (and other things) under her name. With the new documentary about her (Diana Vreeland, The Eye Has to Travel) it felt the family was attempting to turn her life story into a brand.

Christopher commented that branding humans feels, well, very inhuman: "I don't think I have sufficient words to express how much I detest the prevalence of all these people fretting over their brands. It's such an un-repentantly cynical approach to furthering one's reach in the world, a mission largely predicated on realizing greater profits, whether it be of the individual or corporate variety. Indeed, that is what is so troubling to me about it; people have become so inured to the heartless devices and practices of the corporate hegemony, they are now gladly adopting the same in order to best capitalize their own sense of self-importance, or more bluntly put, their product. Self as Product. Yes, we try to "sell" ourselves everyday–to prospective employers, to colleges to which we're seeking admission, to potential mates…the list goes on and on–but this concept of purposely disembodying/distilling oneself into an aspirational brand for others to follow, covet or purchase–it smacks of such inflated self-regard."

I submitted to him that writer brands are all the rage these days on book marketing sites. The rumor out there is you can't get a non-fiction publishing deal unless "you already have a viable brand." I did a short search today and came up with these sites about the need to develop your writer brand:

What bothers me about it is how commodified we have let our art become. Instead of art being a moment making a connection between people over a painting or a book, it's full-blown capitalism from intellectuals who profess to know better and want better. You really get a sense of their attitude toward you: you're just an email address, a body to market to. I think this is partly a reflection of how cut-throat authorship is out there and, yes, part narcissistic self-regard. But it's what the "experts" are pushing in order to solve the problem of low demand and a plethora of product.

Full disclosure: I’ve been dutifully working on my brand but, to be honest, it feels ridiculous. But then is that now part my brand?

What Language Poems Used to Be About: Piet Hein

December 9, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry

In the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of encountering poetry in unlikely places. I was visiting my Aunt Nancy in Socorro, New Mexico, while she was selling her photographs at a craft fair coinciding with The Festival of the Cranes.

My aunt takes amazing bird photography around the Bosque del Apache area. One of the local gallery owners came up to her for the sole purpose of reading some poetry to her. He was excited about a new find. He saw us and hesitated. I told the main I was also excited about poetry and he introduced us all to the work of Danish poet, scientist, mathematician, inventor Piet Hein and Hein's own form of poetry called “grooks.”

Here is the poem read to us in the middle of the craft show floor:

Timing Toast

There's an art of knowing when.
Never try to guess.
Toast until it smokes and then
twenty seconds less.

Here are some other samples I found online:

Those Who Know

Those who always
know what’s best
are
a universal pest.

A Moment's Thought

As eternity
is reckoned
there's a lifetime
in a second.

Ars Brevis

There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.

The Road to Wisdom
The road to wisdom?
— Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.

Hein’s Wikipedia page had this to say about the more serious layer of his poetry:

“The Danes, however, understood its importance and soon it was found as graffiti all around the country. The deeper meaning of the grook was that even if you lose your freedom ("losing one glove"), do not lose your patriotism and self-respect by collaborating with the Nazis ("throwing away the other"), because that sense of having betrayed your country will be more painful when freedom has been found again someday.”

Consolation Grook

Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.

On our way into work, Monsieur Big Bang and I were listening to a class on the history of the English language in a Great Course class called "The Secret Life of Words" by Anne Curzan. Curzan was introducing a section on wacky English spelling and she alerted us to this poem by an unknown author called “English is Tough Stuff.” The spelling anomalies in the poem really challenge your ability to read it.

A sample:

   Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
   Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
   Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
   Exiles, similes, and reviles;
   Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
   Solar, mica, war and far;
   One, anemone, Balmoral,
   Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
   Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
   Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Walt Whitman & His Online Harvard Course

September 2, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry

Whitman, The Musical!

Check out the one-man musical on Walt Whitman! (OC Register)

Whitman, The Online Class!

I've almost finished the free Harvard EdX online Walt Whitman class found at: https://www.edx.org/course/poetry-america-whitman-harvardx-ampox-3

It's part of their archived Poetry in America series which includes poetry of Early New England and Nature and Nation (all Northeastern obsessed poetries; hopefully more to come that’s less regional).

The course is set out over four weeks. The reading load gets harder as you go. The online experience focuses on learning to annotate poems and the site has a special program for that. Either it doesn’t work in my iPad or it’s turned off in the archived experience. I'm using my Collected Works book anyway. There is not much over reading (essays, other similar poets) but there is plenty of interesting video hours you can spend on poem group commentary, readings and a tour of New York which shows mostly a woman pointing at buildings.

I am finding that the class is helping me with aspects of the novel I'm working on. I have to say, like other women over 40 (who make up a large part of the Harvard class cast), I'm enjoying Whitman much more now.

In fact, these two quotes from "Song of Myself seemed appropriate to point out, this one due to living in the Internet-age:

“I speak the pass-word primeval.”

And this one in regards to discussions here around mindfulness, sympathy and empathy:

“And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.”

Over the last few weeks, I've mentioned online classes and Mp3 lectures from The Great Courses company. I wanted to mention I’ve also used Udemy. And here's an important tip I left out earlier: don’t freak out when you sign up and see courses prices at $150. Just wait for the email sale–it comes every day or so–and inevitably courses come down to anywhere from $19 to $40! It’s some kind of masochistic sticker-shock marketing they seem to be doing.

Also check out Slideshare on LinkedIn as another resource for poetry learners and teachers that's free!

The Student Art and Poets of CNM

May 21, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry

Police Brutality Art

I have not connected yet to my local poetry scene in the ABQ. Being slightly hermitish, I need a somewhat more outgoing friend to assist in my branch out. In Santa Fe I did attend two or three readings given by a local poetry society but it was always a trial to drag along Monsieur Big Bang and I never felt comfortable going alone. It's not like poets are overly friendly at such things. Mr. BB did attend a recent Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) author’s event with me to see guest reader Arthur Sze.

CNM is not an art or liberal arts school. The school started as a technical college and has retained its core identity as a trade school. However, the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and the resulting riots against police violence did manage to inspire an art piece here that captured the attention on local news. To repeat, the controversial art piece came not from the Art Institute of Santa Fe, or the Institute of American Indian Arts or from the big boy, UNM. No, the controversial piece came from CNM. Joshua Gonzales was one of the artists who made the piece out of plastic and tape. View the news piece.

Cyber Nimbus Melodies

Meanwhile, I’ve been working with a CNM English professor on a large web-content project and recently came across some recent video work he’s been involved in with his poetry students. Patrick Houlihan hosted a well-made video poetry reading called Cyber Nimbus Melodies.

Seven or so students read about five poems a piece in our production studio. Some awesome green screen backgrounds were used (explosive lightning, fire explosions, a pastoral kitchen scene). The sound quality and lighting gave these readings some pop. The fact is I would have loved the opportunity to practice reading during my undergraduate OR graduate school years. But YouTube wasn’t even a gleam in the Internet’s eye back then. Forget about having a full production studio we could have access to. Imagine this being a class requirement!

There are also some interesting poems here. Donald Seals’ piece “The Voice of Slavery” has a surprise ending. Elements of mindfulness and lives transforming populate his pieces. Dennis Noel had a great reading delivery and I loved his poem about pride and false self-esteem called “A Deadly Sin.” He also invoked Edward Munch, fractals and Zoloft. Fabulous!

Some of the poets became emotional while reading, including Tanya Gonzales (who quotes Marcel Proust about suffering in a poem that ended strong called “Good Grief”) and Reynaldo Garcia. I liked his poem “I Am Learning.” Claire Rutland had a strong one called “Buried Alive” and a untitled poem about issues of communication. Will Vega did a poem in Spanish and talked about willpower. And Josiah Ruanhorse was full of piss and vinegar in long pieces about ancestry and sobriety. Of all the poets, I probably disagreed the most with the content of his pieces (being a working woman and all), but I’d like to check back with him in 20 years and see where he's at then with his political views.

Many of the poets covered themes appropriate to young college students: pressing on, perseverance, failed love relationships, loss and students composed plenty of formal pieces for those naysayers who believe that kids today aren’t learning their forms.

As a poetry reader or writer, it’s important to hear the sounds of different voices, literally. This is the most powerful aspect of an open reading for me. In this "me-me-me" culture—we should always try to practice the art of seeing another person and listening to their physical voice.

The Literary Magazine Reading

CNM’s production studio also posted a video recording of the literary magazine launch.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in New Mexico, poet's here love marathon readings. Each one I’ve ever attended has stretched to at least 2 hours. But this video gives you a good sense of what college poetry readings are all about. A prominent ABQ slam poet named Don McIver begins the reading after Patrick Houlihan does an initial introduction. Houlihan speaks of poems as “brain prints on paper,” as unique as fingerprints. He also talks a bit about the project of putting the magazine together.

I guess I'm beginning to recognize poet faces. I’d just seen McIver a month ago doing a reading at a local showing of the 1980s William Burroughs biopic.

As far as readings go, I like to see what people wear. I saw everything from a Scorpions band t-shirt to sparkly party tops. I don’t know if it’s the Spanish influence here in New Mexico but a lot of the kids invoke the element of blood in their poems. This reminds me of the Spanish poets I like who tend to be more fully connected with ideas of the body and mortality.

While I was at IAIA, there were no student readings that I can remember. This might be because the student literary magazine had to be recalled the year I was there due to egregious layout issues. I managed to keep my copy and blogged about it. I haven’t read the CNM magazine yet but will post more about that soon.

Meet Poet Sherman Alexie

April 28, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry

I haven’t made a post recently on poetry I've been reading. This is because I’ve been mired in New Mexico poetry anthologies. Report coming soon!

I visited the local CNM library in search of New Mexico poets. Didn’t find any. But I did find many Sherman Alexie works. Alexie is not a New Mexican poet but he is an American Indian poet from the Spokane tribe located in Washington state. Although Spokane is very different from the tribes of southwestern New Mexico, he does provide both profound and humorous insight into the American Indian Experience. I started with the oft recommended children’s novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. As described, it was excellent and a perfect place to start with Alexie if you’re a confused gringo. Truly, if you’re looking for Indian perspectives you have millions of alternatives. Natalie Diaz is a very hot Mohave poet right now. Joy Harjo is a perennial favorite of mine. But just check out this Wikipedia list.

I’m becoming really attached to Alexie in fact and the well-rounded way he talks about race reminds me of Richard Wright (just perused Richard Wright’s collection of haiku at the library). Like Wright, Alexie knows how to balance the complexities of race by using both good and bad characters from all sides. Good white people and bully white people. Good Indians and bully Indians. And the badness that ensues when trying and failing to be good.

Similar Alexie stories occur in poems, short stories and the novels, like Grandma’s stolen powwow regalia which shows up in An Absolutely True Diary and in short stories from the collection Ten Little Indians. An Indian mother singing Donna Fargo’s "Happiest Girl in the USA" is another story that shows up in different fiction and poems.

The poems in One Stick Song (2000) are also a good introduction to Alexie with poems like "Unauthorized Biography of Me," "An Incomplete List of People I Wish Were Indian," "The Mice War," "Sex in Motel Rooms," "Powwow Love Songs." In his stories and poems, Alexie can describe both Rez life and city life. What I like about his poems, they’re all different in tone and format.

The Business of Fancydancing, (1992), contains poems that are a little rougher. But worth reading are "War All the Time," " Misdemeanors," "Missing," "The Reservation Cab Driver," and "Giving Blood." Alexi is good at setting the scene and giving you a tight kick in the pants.

Philip Levine, Louis Jourdan, Leonard Nimoy, the Creator of Nutella RIP

March 1, 2015 / Big Bang Poetry

I was very sad last week to read about the passing of one of my favorite poets, Philip Levine.

Read his New York Times obit.

The first full length poetry collection I ever read in my twenties was They Feed the Lion. Levine was also the first living poet I ever read. He was living proof to me you didn't have to be dead to be a poet. He even wrote about living, modernity and about work.

He was the second poet I saw read live, the first was Tom Lux in St. Louis. The only other writer I ever saw read in St. Louis was Stephen King.

Levine was the first poet to visit Sarah Lawrence College while I was a graduate student there. That night, as he walked through the dark entryway of Slonim house and passed me on his way to the living room and I felt like a celebrity had just walked by! Imagine that? A poet celebrity! I was starstruck. I have always mythologized him and I probably always will.

We've also lost Louis Jordan. I honored him a few weeks ago by watching Gigi again. Gigi is full of great stuff. It’s slightly Proustean in its exuberance, full of Paris location shots, Louis Jordan as fluid as a dancer, Maurice Chevalier, (who is just as charming as Louis Jordan with his amazing smile), and there’s an adorable performance by Leslie Caron. And Eva Gabor is very good in her small part, too. Vincente Minnelli directed it. It’s based on a Colette novel. The score is by Andre Previn. I’ve heard the movie get a lot of flack for winning 1958s best picture and other Oscars but it’s one of my favorite movies. Full of some stunning poetic movie lines like where Aunt Alicia says, "Marriage is not forbidden to us, but instead of getting married at once, it sometimes happens we get married at last."

My favorite scene is when Louis Jordan is in a fluff over Gigi and pacing around a restaurant table where his uncle, Maurice Chevalier, is sitting. Maurice tries to calm him down with the serious suggestion to:

“Have some cheese!”

I use this suggestion all the time as a calm-down phrase to Monsieur Big Bang–spoken very Frenchly:

“Have a piece of cheese!”

Speaking of great things to eat in France, the creator of Nutella has also died.

My first taste of Nutella was where some was stuffed in a pain au chocolat outside of Notre Dame in Paris.

It was pretty mind blowing.

I haven't honored him yet but I plan to this weekend.

A few days ago we also lost Leonard Nimoy. Although not very respected for his poetry in established circles, he did publish quite a bit of it.

To view a sample: http://leonardnimoypoetry.com/

His poetry book covers look a bit like the "Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts" from SNL, but here they are on Amazon.

If this makes you miss Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts, here is the site for you: http://www.deepthoughtsbyjackhandey.com/

A Movie About a New Mexican Poet

December 29, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry

DVD Note: In November I reviewed the documentary The Life & Times of Allen Ginsberg. I rent my DVDs from GreenCine and they send me one DVD at a time. The week after my review, I reviewed the DVD with the extras which amount to a long list of poets talking about their friendship with Allen Ginsberg, some interviewed before his death and some after. I watched them all and have noted my favorites: Joan Baez, Beck, Bono, Stan Brakhage, William Burroughs, Johnny Depp, Lawrence Ferlinghetti*, Philip Glass*, Peter Hale* (especially talking about Paul McCartney and then watching Paul McCartney), John Hammond, Sr., Abbie Hoffman, Jack Johnson, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Judith Malina and Julian Beck, Jonas Mekas, Thurston Moore, Yoko Ono, Lee Ranaldo, Gehlek Rimoche* (footage of his death service), Bob Rosenthal, Ed Sanders*, Patti Smith* (footage of his death service), Steven Taylor, Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Thurman, Anne Waldman* (tells story of the founding of Naropa Institute's school of disembodied poetics), and Andy Warhol.

A Place to Stand
(click to enlarge)

Getting this screener is the result of my first Kickstarter contribution. I donated $25 dollars over a year ago, probably a pittance compared to other contributors to this very expensive movie-making process. A Place to Stand is the documentary about the life of New Mexico poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, an Arizona convict who taught himself to read and write in prison and whose entire life was transformed by poetry.

Even though the film was already given glowing reviews from The Nation and the Los Angeles Times, I wasn’t expecting this movie. After all, you get used to things being sort of half-assed here in New Mexico. And I had just seen a threadbare documentary of artist Ray Johnson called How to Draw a Bunny (2002), a great story but somewhat amateurish documentary.

I was expecting something equally homegrown with A Place to Stand. Big mistake. This thing exceptionally well-filmed. Its storytelling technique reminded me of Searching for Sugarman, very fluid, creative and professional.

Not only was this the best, hands down, documentary of a poet or about poetry that I’ve ever seen, this film was so good, I stopped taking notes. I had to stop and give this story my full, rapt attention. Monsieur Big Bang walked through the living room in gym shorts intending to work out on the treadmill in another room. But instead, he stopped and sat on the couch in rapt attention for the entire movie.

This is an unbelievable moving story about redemption and the spiritual weight of words. If DVD copies are available for sale by next year, I'm buying a stack for Christmas presents.

Extras on my screener included a featurette on the movie’s animator, author readings (indoors and outdoors), and a short on the artist Eric Christo Martinez (a former convict whose life was also transformed through art).

A primer on Jimmy Santiago Baca:

To check movie showings: http://aplacetostandmovie.com/

Poems About New Mexico and the World

December 29, 2014 / Big Bang Poetry

I went to the library and checked How We Became Human, Selected Poems by Joy Harjo to see what she had to say about New Mexico as place. Harjo is one of my favorite poets period, definitely my on the top of my list in the category/almost-genre of American Indian poets. In her first anthology I was looking for any 1970s references to New Mexico places. Harjo does come back to New Mexico quite a bit in her writing and she seems to view New Mexico as a spiritual, if not physical, home place when she references the Sandia Mountains, Albuquerque streets and the more southern Manzano Mountains.

But Harjo is really one of the most well-traveled and cosmopolitan modern poets we have. She moves through towns all across American and abroad and digs into the concrete of it all, so to speak. This fusion of urban and outpost gives her work uniqueness. Take for example her older poem "3 A.M." about being in an airport and trying to get back to Hopiland. There are also quite a few Indian themes in how she handles alcohol and the ideas of futility and fate. Like many Indian writers she's in a struggle of locating: locating her foundation of history, locating a sense of belonging, even locating asuvivor’s-guilt sense of existing, and locating forgiveness.

Harjo feels unique to me however in the sense of how she writes eye to eye with her reader. Much of American Indian poetic tone contains a spiritual distance inherent. Harjo is much more intimate. She’s not some voice-over spirit speaking from the stars. She’s on the street and across the table from her reader.

I always love to find moments of Harjo talking about the earth’s circling revolutions. This occurs again and again: “a whirring current in the grass,” “swirling earth,” “slow spin like the spiral of events.” The swirling is often coupled with descriptions of women in crisis, turmoil, madness, and lostness.

This is a great collection of poems. All her greatest hits are in here: “She Had Some Horses,” “I Give You Back,” “I Am a Dangerous Woman,” and “Perhaps the Word Begins.”

Poetry Received

As a holiday greeting, the Academy of American Poets sent me a holiday postcard with a Larry Levis quote from the poem “Winter Stars”

The newCopper Canyon Reader catalogue also came. I sensed a shift in poems this time, many more experimental poets although still with a spiritual cast. My favorite new book samples:

Erin Belieu – Slant Six ("humor and horror in contemporary American life—from the last saltine cracked in the sleeve, to the kitty-cat calendar in an office cubicle."); New York Times Review
Yosa Buson – Collection Haiku of Yosa Buson translated by W.S. Merwin and Takako Lento
Fady Joudah – Textu – a new form of 160 character long poems influenced by texting and Twitter

My autumn issue of Poetry London also came a few months ago. When I reflect back on this subscription I want to say I haven't enjoyed it. It's a bit dry and the magazine itself is unwieldy and downright ugly. But I have to admit some of their poets and reviews have stuck with me over the last few years. I still don’t like the layout, material or covers of this magazine, with such big photos you can see the pores on the chins of poets. It’s just distracting. Where's some tabloid airbrushing when you need it?

CK Williams has a great poem in this issue about climate change called “The Sun, The Saint, The Sot,” taking on an impossible topic and making it poetic. CD Wrights is included in the issue too. I always get those two confused. I liked her “Obscurity and Winter Sun” poem which is sort of about writing.

There are always a large amount of experimental, language-y poems in the magazine and whenever I read these pieces I think of the neurosis of the Internet age and how the world is full of too much information. I wonder if these poems are depictions of our minds spiraling out.

The issue provided me with a nice list of "new" poets to look up:

Heather Phillipson
Fiona Benson – Bright Travelers: A central sequence of dramatic monologues addressed to Van Gogh allows for a focused exploration of depression, violence, passion and creativity.
Kathryn Simmonds – The Visitations: I particularly want to read "Life Coach Variations."
Ciaran Berry – The Dead Zoo (available on eBook)
Bill Manhire – Selected Poems
Nancy Gaffield – Continental Drift – a book about landscapes and borders