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Swallows and Waves by Paula Bohince (Sarabande, 2016)

Some favourite passages from this book of lyric poems on "scroll paintings and woodblock prints from Japan's Edo period, which spanned 1603-1868": 


She from the spent cushion
grasps his clothing, not
to keep him but to indicate pleasure-
given loyalty.

from "Lover Taking Leave of a Courtesan"

                                           Bitter-

sweet longing becomes inflected

with song.

from "Hibiscus and Korean Nightingale"

                                             How cool

the light in this region of no awe. Welcome

middle register: sane, calm.

end of "Sparrows and Camelia"

A boatman reclines on the roof
and smokes. In mist, he is invisible,
swept along, an absent-
minded god.

from "Riverboat Party"

Adrenaline mixes with caution, ready

to ride toward what is destined. What molten gold

feels before it's poured into the ring mold.

end of "Young Samurai on Horseback"

Water holds blueness not much longer. Death

will costume it in its color, and the honking of geese

will give voice to its grieving.

end of "Descending Geese at Katana"

As imitation bends toward knowledge, so pleasure

becomes a version of love. 

from "Courtesan with Her Attendant"

A cricket on the pampas grass

outside wants in. Plotting its escape

from what looks like freedom.

end of "Crickets, Cafe, and Flowers"

                  Sensuous

admissions, the wilderness

of another breached, known.

from "Lovers in the Snow"

                                                      Delighted

against a camouflage of like-minded flowers, the yellows

and green work to keep him hidden,

safe in imagination, before the world gallops in, offering

promises of glory, real swords and real horses.

end of "Boy Dancing with a Hobby-Horse"

It seems the easiest place to obtain Swallows and Waves in the UK is Abe Books here.

Jelly Roll by Kevin Young (Knopf, 2003)

Some favourite passages:


If only I'd read

the moss on the tree!
instead of shaking

it for fruit--

from "Cakewalk"

You burn me

at both ends, send

the geese bumping

within my skin.

end of "Jitterbug"

Your bordeaux dress

uncorked, let's

breathe awhile

from "Boogaloo"

...your noisy

nudity--

O the brass of your body!

sliding, trombone-

style....

from "Break"

O the far-flung

morning, a moon

still among it!

from "Calypso"

Lady, you are my Mobile,

Alabama--lowdown & too hot

for human habitat--

opening of "Ramble"

Drive until sun stares

me down. Radio & the cicadas

with their static wings--

I am singing

to myself again.

opening of "Saxophone Solo"

Tonight even the storm

cannot calm me.

from "Slide Guitar"

Outside azaleas bloom loud

& red like ambulances

rushing to save someone

or at least try.

*

Lights out--

we navigate

the colding house,

feel for matchbooks

which you save

to bring light, I

to remember where

I been.

*

Ice turns even

the trees heavy

& helpless, all

morning falling--

a song of breaking--

winter & plunder.

from "Pastorale"

...take down

the tarnished stars, my breath

will shine them up new. 

from "Cotillion"

In the UK, you can buy Jelly Roll from Abe Books here.

Allison Benis White's Small Porcelain Head (Four Way Books, 2013)

Here are some favourite passages from this powerful, enigmatic book in prose poetry:

Please forgive me. I pray and can't make it stop. There were lambswool wigs and paperweight eyes, two factory fires. Instead of blankness, I learned to draw stars with two triangles, one upside and overlapping the other. I covered pages, then like bracelets, my wrists.

*

What should I do with my mind? Think of the way it broke until the breaking is language.

*

Unlike the other automatons who lift a hand mirror or balloon, she exists even when we close our eyes, slapping one small brass cymbal into another, frantically, to prove touching.

*

When I have a headache, I lift my hand over my eyes--if death is a failure of imagination, we are alive.

*

The mutual helplessness of seeing and being seen.

*

As with every revelation, midair, oblivion is realigned and clarified: I want to die then decide.

*

What makes the object alive is desire without relief.

*

Within the bonnet, the two-faced head is rotated by pulling a string from the torso: one face calm, one crying plastic beads on her cheeks--turning: peaceful, sad, peaceful.

Nothing in-between, no transition--I don't remember why she is suffering, why she is glad. It happens so fast: I am hopeless as I pull the string in her torso, then sick with wonder.

*

After a while, we moan and lift our arms in order to feel what she feels: her pose is agony.

In the UK, Small Porcelain Head is available from Wordery.

Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red (Vintage, 1999), fourth and final selection

Here is my last selection of favourite passages from this outstanding book:


...fifty red parrots dove and roared
like a conscious waterfall.

*

The Pacific at night is red
and gives off a soot of desire.

from "XXXVII. Eyewitnesses"

Enormous pools of a moment kept opening around his hands

each time he tried to move them.

from "XL. Photographs: Origin of Time"

...a light so brilliant it feels cold and hot at once.

from "XLI. Photographs: Jeats"

In the photograph the face of

Herakles is white. It is the face

of an old man. It is a photograph of the future, thought Geryon months later when he

was standing in his darkroom

looking down at the acid bath and watching likeness come groping out of the bones.

from "XLV. Photographs: Like and Not Like"

This is a memory of our

beauty.

from "XLVI. Photographs: #1748"

We are amazing beings,

Geryon is thinking. We are neighbors of fire.

And now time is rushing towards them

where they stand side by side with arms touching, immortality on their faces,

night at their back.

from "XLVII. The Flashes in Which a Man

Possesses Himself"

In the UK, you can buy Autobiography of Red from Hive here. 

The Great Graduating Poets' Showcase at Bath Brew House, May 2016

In what I hope will become an annual event, we held our second Great Graduating Poets' Showcase at The Bath Brew House last Friday night, and it was standing-room only! Here's a first round of photos from that excellent night.

Our compere was the tutor for the third-year poetry module this year, Neil Rollinson.

Emma Hebron

Matthew Mason displays his pamphlet.

Graduating poet Aaron Lembo and yours truly (wearing Matthew Mason's wonderful hat)

The whole gang! Well done, everyone!

Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red (Vintage, 1999), third selection

Some more favourite passages from this amazing book:


The pimiento stung his mouth alive like sudden sunset.

*

You eat like my daughter. With a certain
shall I say lucidity.

*

Black outside air tossed itself
hard against the windows.

*

Oh don't go, thought Geryon who felt himself starting
to slide off the surface of the room
like an olive off a plate. When the plate attained an angle of thirty degrees
he would vanish into his own blankness.

*

And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness.

from "XXX. Distances"

Cars nested along the curb on their shadows. Buildings leaned back out of the street.

Little rackety wind went by.

Moon gone. Sky shut. Night had delved deep.

*

He could see the harbor blackly glittering. Cobblestones grew slick. Smell of salt fish

and latrines furred the air.

*

Hardly glancing

at one another the three of them played

as one person, in a state of pure discovery. They tore clear and clicked and locked

and unlocked, they shot

their eyebrows up and down. They leaned together and wove apart, they rose 

and cut away and stalked

one another and flew up in a cloud and sank back down on waves.

*

Black night sky weighed starlessly on the windows.

*

The petals of their colognes rose around them in a light terror. 

from "XXXI. Tango"

...the elevator crashed like a mastodon within its hollow cage.

from "XXXII. Kiss"

Ancash sat very straight,

a man as beautiful as a live feather.

*

Soon they were out on the street

walking fast along Avenida Bolívar with a hard wind strumming their bodies. 

*

A winter sun had thrown its bleak wares on the sky

and people going past

looked dazzled.

from "XXXIV. Harrods"

In the UK, you can buy Autobiography of Red from Hive, supporting local independent shops, here. 

Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red (Vintage, 1999), second selection

Up on the overpass
the night was wide open
and blowing headlights like a sea. He stood against the wind and let it peel him
clean.

from "XVII. Walls"

...a night suddenly gone solid.

from "XVIII. She"

...Geryon

caught her other arm, it was like a handful of autumn.

from "XX. AA"

Each morning a shock

to return to the cut soul.

*

Outside the natural world was enjoying

a moment of total strength. Wind rushed over the ground like a sea and battered up

into the corners of the buildings,

garbage cans went dashing down the alley after their souls.

from "XXIII. Water"

Geryon's life entered a numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste.

*

...Geryon's

whole body formed one arch of a cry--upcast to that custom, the human custom

of wrong love.

from "XXIV. Freedom"

As the aeroplane moved over the frozen white flatland of the clouds Geryon left

his life behind like a weak season.

*

Geryon closed his eyes and listened to engines vibrating deep in the moon-splashed

canals of his brain.

*

Outside a bitten moon rode fast over a tableland of snow.

from "XXVI. Aeroplane"

A cold spray

of fear shot across his lungs. 

*

Four of the roses were on fire.

They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets

and howling colossal intimacies

from the back of their fused throats.

*

He moved off into the tragicomedy of the crowd.

from "XXVI. Mitwelt"

Pulling his body after him

like a soggy mattress Geryon trudged on uphill.

from "XXVIII. Skepticism"

Sunset begins early in winter, a bluntness at the edge of the light.

*

Geryon paused in his listening and saw the slopes of time spin backwards and stop.

*

It was the hour when the snow goes blue

and streetlights come on and a hare may

pause on the tree line as still as a word in a book.

*

His eye traveled to the clock at the front of the room and he fell into the pool

of his favorite question.

from "XXIX. Slopes"

In the UK, you can buy Autobiography of Red from Hive, supporting local independent shops, here. 

Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, April 2016

One of the best parts of visiting San Francisco is visiting Fisherman's Wharf. Yes, it's too touristy, but 1) the sea lions and 2) clam chowder in Boudin sourdough bread bowls. 

Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse by Anne Carson (Vintage, 1999), first selection

A first selection of favourite passages from this wonderful book:



He clothed himself in this strong word each. 

*

Before this time Geryon had not lived nights just days and their red intervals. 

* 

Facts are bigger in the dark.

from "II. Each"

...said his mother

rhinestoning past on her way to the door. She had all her breasts on this evening.

*

She was standing before him now

smiling hard and rummaging in his face with her eyes.

from "III. Rhinestones"

They grinned at each other as night climbed ashore.

from "IV. Tuesday"

Then he met Herakles and all the kingdoms of his life shifted down a few notches.

They were two superior eels

at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.

*

The world poured back and forth between their eyes once or twice.

from "VII. Change"

Her voice drew a circle

around all the years he had spent in this room.

*

A pure bold longing to be gone filled him.

from "IX. Space and Time"

He understood 

that people need

acts of attention from one another, does it really matter which acts?

*

His voice washed

Geryon open.

from "X. Sex Questions"

He could feel the house of sleepers

around him like loaves on shelves.

*

...and a fragment of human voice tore itself out and came past, it seemed

already long ago, trailing

a bad dust of its dream which touched his skin.

from "XII. Lava"

As in childhood we live sweeping close to the sky and now, what dawn is this.

from "XVI. Grooming"

In the UK, you can buy Autobiography of Red from Hive here.

Yosemite, April 2016, second of two selections

Sorry it's taken so long to post these--I've been having trouble uploading certain photos in Blogger. 

It was surprising how close to the road and to people the deer came.

After three very misty and rainy days, on the day we left it cleared considerably, and we saw the famous valley view. Glorious.

Trev and I are both hoping to return another time for a longer stay.

rob mclennan's 12 or 20 questions interview

Rob mclennan interviewed me for his blog; the result can be read here. I'd be interested in any responses....

Nerve Damage, a different kind of ekphrastic anthology

"The Poet" by Joel-Peter Witkin

Rupert Loydell sent this image to numerous poets asking for their responses in poetry, and the booklet Nerve Damage collects the results, with contributions from Annabel Banks, Sarah Cave, M.A. Duxbury-Hibbert, A.C. Evans, Mike Ferguson, Peter Finch, John Gimlet, David H.W. Grubb, Alan Halsey, Daniel Y. Harris, H.L. Hix, Aaron Kent, John Mingay, Sheila E. Murphy, John Phillips, Ian Seed, Robert Sheppard, Martin Stannard, Paul Sutton, George Ttoouli, Loydell, and myself. It can be purchased by sending £5 cheque made to R.M. Loydell or a $10 bill for US orders to Stride, 4B Tremayne Close, Devoran, Cornwall TR3 6QE. I'm greatly looking forward to reading the other poems, to see the range of responses to the image. 

Yosemite, April 2016, first of two selections

Bridalveil Fall

Squirrels with the inside of a fallen tree for a home

Yosemite Upper and Lower Falls

Big Sur, California, April 2016

Beauty upon beauty....

Elephant Seals at Big Sur, 4 April 2016

Seals are good huddlers.

So many!

Chest bump!

(Re)visiting UCLA, my alma mater, 3 April 2016, second of two

In the Sculpture Garden. The building behind it is Bunche Hall, where I took many of my Latin classes.

More of the Sculpture Garden.

This is where the Department of English was housed in my time.

Great sculptures in the square of Rolfe Hall.