chris at
5:18 AM
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I will say on 2: A little note of explanation/context:
While in the US over the December/January holidays, I was happy to find that 2 books had found their way to my tiny, mall-based, out-of-the way mailbox (out-of-the-way only because I cannot check it but a few times per year since I am living/working overseas), one of those generic places that gives you an address when you really have none. . . . I want to acknowledge and say thanks to those who sent them--many thank-yous, y'all!--since both books are true gems, to my mind (literally, then), and have received excellent variable sources of critical attention (shouldn't a work that is an outstanding work be able to withstand the perspectives of many rather than a narrow few????--or is that too democratic for our specialized crew de arts?).
Because these 2 are both provocative, lovely bits of unique and timely western sensibility, I packed them in my suitcases and brought them overseas with me to continue reading. So, by way of thanks, I list here the 2 books, as well as having found a couple of poems from them to highlight here in my occasional, in-the-moment reading from series * :
1. There is nothing like the experience of reading Katy Lederer's The Heaven-Sent Leaf (Peter Connors' BOA Editions, 2008) while living in what some might term a certain heartbeat of the global economy, the independent Persian Gulf state, Bahrain, a place of quixotic simultaneity, hard working folk and abundant kindnesses. In this book, each page of Lederer's poetry--every line, every word in its poetic context--is more vibrant for this particular readerly, situational context. At some point soon I will gladly say more about that--for now, though, suffice it to say how much this book hums along with startling epistemological awareness and depth--a totally admirable work of, literally and brutally: lyric economy/economical lyricism, the effects of monetary economy scouring, as reflected in lyric (as I recall the connection being a focus in one review--I think in The New Yorker). To be a "brainworker" in an economy that does not treasure intellectual work, but loves spectacular instances of the amassing of wealth by almost any means and at any cost--this dilemma affects us all, all the time, yet we have been dumbfounded by it, numbed, shelved into silence, until now--what these poems are equals a bright and shivery awakening: I am thinking akin of Dickinson's sense of truth as slanted, as integrating slowly but purposefully into light--that effect of immediacy in knowing/understanding not something new so much as something that was always already there, that effect of immediacy in knowing which we do not often find in life or in the experience of reading.
2. I am walking along the sea on a brazenly sunny winter day (temp is something like 75%F, reminds me of a summer day on Hart Prairie, San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff AZ but for the sea, which is so quiescent(acquiescient?) here it is like a cliche of consciousness, a bit of everything and nothing at once) . . . I am walking while reading Jared Schickling's submissions (Geoffrey Gatza's BlazeVOX Books, 2008), and as such, am entranced by the clash of similarities between walking-reality and the reading's musicality, its life-presence. One thing (of many) not found here (here, as in locale: Bahrain sea coast) is the humble yet prolific and oh-so-musical cicada (humbly having grid-points--vectors of use to the ear--of both rhythm and tone & scale and melody)--oh so Socratic cicada for y'all: recall the role the insect plays in Plato's Phaedrus (another thing of use to the lyric memes, Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, and everyone, ever: long wailing whistles of trains coming towards and then receding point by point: leaving, going. away.). The act of reading this book while here in this place is a completely new experience in life, curiosity about life, finding what is comparatively here and not here, there and not there (many thank-yous, Gertrude [Stein]). What a blast of contrast!! This lush description, and energy dancing linguistically, mindfully, again, against the quiescent backdrop of sea and this gulf region's urbanity.
my true xo's
to the senders
of such life's work
books!
* I will continue the reading from series. And without much explanation, since for now I find poor exposition a lacking form/response. Tiresome, quarrelsome (some-some!). Loaded with overly-assumptive waywardness, alas--Montaigne: find us!!. What I want is the immediacy of descriptive presence. I'm not finding much of that in poetry lately or in the traditional ways and sources of interpretation, however (admittedly) trained I might be in and for that. Interpretive modes feel terribly flawed to me right now, as if an over-kill of the flux and facts of presence, even though we can never totally escape interpretive modes.
And, in all: thanks for reading, y'all :-D
chris at
4:12 AM
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Wednesday, February 04, 2009
reading from Jared Schickling's (BlazeVOX [books]) edition of Submissions (2008) :
( )
"when the cat's away"
meeting in winter of some
other's den, perhaps hoops remaining
all equal on a grant
drawn from the corners of the rock to notice
that be me privilege students like this
means this so
like this time
me old grand dad spun
us into entropy's
collapsing
disorder the cat's
away before at the corner
lonesome talk with the original
fan of that old folk singer
(28)
chris at
4:00 PM
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Listening: My Funny Valentine--Miles Davis. . . .
& an oh-so-slow
connection here.
um: months long.
(smiles)
but truly, slow connection, which makes posting full of potential for redundance. now that i look at the word, it seems, well, full of re.
anyways--how's everyone????
hoping yr all doin' well.
things here are goin' ok.
o~o/
