Bachelardette

2009-07-19T19:50:00.007-04:00

New links:
Poems in the LRB
Poem in Poetry
A The Short of It at The Nation

2009-06-17T15:32:00.004-04:00

New Lingo column.
New review.
New poems here and here.
Thank you to Jack Kimball for this.

2009-05-21T20:49:00.003-04:00

My essay on Jennifer Moxley's new book, Clampdown.

And I love William Deresiewicz's essay on literary Darwinism. It starts getting white-hot about four paragraphs from the end.

Piece of (Flower) Cake

2009-04-27T23:43:00.003-04:00

Treatment

2009-04-26T21:20:00.004-04:00

I've been quite remiss in posting links to my new pieces -- my second Lingo column and my review of Fanny Howe's The Winter Sun.

Lingo

2009-03-18T10:28:00.004-04:00

I have an occasional (web-only) column in The Nation now -- on language! The first one can be found here. Stay tuned for more.

Gallimaufry

2009-02-22T09:40:00.005-05:00

The nice bloggers at The Great American Pin-Up are posting video of me reading at AWP with Craig Arnold, A.E. Stallings, and Jacob Saenz. Even if it weren't very echoey (the room was enormous -- I think that's where they put Paul Muldoon two days later) I would want the text available. Grateful acknowledgment to Poetry, where it was first published (and which was the raison d'etre of the panel).

GALLIMAUFRY

Reaching for the vinegar over the range hood
(still dashing grass wisps on the gas flames
from the exhaust vent where we booted
          that brooding sparrow)

I remember the rabbit in the Tiergarten
that perched on its spatula feet where the grass
had just started to green. The German clouds
          were unibrow.

It’s not the stretching, slightly weaving, that recalls it,
it’s the tang of vinegar, Easter egg-dye solvent.
And my gallimaufry gets going, guests for dinner,
          the requisite foofaraw.

In the soffits of the staircase a rag and a featherduster.
In the eaves the nests made of frass and cellophane.
“When it rains on a golf course it’s called Irish dew—”
          Father-in-law’s jackstraw.

“Dundee, is this an Aussie shiraz? Put it in the croc au vin.”
Cellophane and frass. Everything in the canon
went into Gargantua before he was born from the ear beneath
          his mama’s cornrows:

Augustine, Aquinas. Aristotle and Plato. Virgil and Homer.
Goliards and troubadours. Thus an ort peeking out
from a nostril, skin flakes, a slight acne, undercoat
          all colors, like a farrow;

the chuffer, snuffler, grunter, farter, pecker, whelp,
head half the size of the requisitioned teat
(Googling “mastitis” and finding “ewe,” ew)
          —the whole shebang

reeks of bedstraw. On the radio, transrational statistics;
Brigitte Bardot lashing out at the leash law in Zurich;
on an uncle’s fourth percussive sneeze the baby wakes
          —interrobang—

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T16:13:00.004-05:00

Enjoy the Poetry Festival at Web Conjunctions!

2008-12-12T10:09:00.005-05:00

Three poems in Poetry magazine this month (1, 2, 3) and a commentary on one of them by the Denver Literary Examiner.

Many thanks to the author, Robert Schwab, for the notice. And thanks to Dan Thomas-Glass for this lovely piece on my recent work in Jacket. Check out his cool stapled magazine With + Stand.

2008-11-22T14:39:00.002-05:00

My piece on Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson is live. The whole Fall Books section is stunning, and Marcela Valdes's article on 2666 is not to be missed.

2008-11-12T12:13:00.006-05:00

My essay on Ginsberg et al. in India is up at the London Review of Books. Sub req'd, etc.

Red Rover

2008-11-01T08:54:00.007-04:00

My piece on Susan Stewart's Red Rover is live.

Here is where, as Ron Silliman put it, I find "Jack Spicer behind both Devin Johnston & Linda Gregg." (Thanks to Ron for the link!)

And other recent pieces:

Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov
Loss Lieder
Helen Adam
John Ashbery
8 Takes
Top 5 for Valentine's Day
Clamor v. Quiet
Weary River

Poems:

Poetry 1, 2, 3, 4
The Nation
Jacket 1, 2, 3
The Village Voice
Penn Sound

My Book