Day 2 in New York was much more relaxed. I spent the first part of the day turning the first draft of my conference paper, "A Transatlantic Poet, or My British Bifurcation," into the second draft, and I composed the bios for all the panelists. Mid-afternoon, I strolled up St. Nicholas Avenue to 180th and didn't see a single white face. The shops were offering cheap clothes, suitcases, etc. and there were fresh food markets on every street. I went to Taquiera Mexicana de Los Angeles for lunch, and in spite of the waitress's complete lack of English, I managed to order a carnitas taco (scrumptious) and a chicken tamale, along with the requisite Negra Modelo. Later, back at the apartment, I wrote a poem (day 7 of my spree complete), and early evening Lytton returned.
Lytton and I took a long walk uptown to a restaurant called 107 West, where I had a delicious chargrilled chicken breast with a wonderful spicy tomato-y sauce spread over the top, mashed potatoes, and greens. We headed back toward his apartment and stopped in at a bar called Coogan's, where, over one too many pints, we "set the poetry world to rights" (Lytton's words). It's such a pleasure to talk to a fellow transatlantic poet about the continuities and discontinuities between the UK and US poetry scenes, as well as update one another on our home culture's developments.
Today I've come to Midtown, where I'm staying at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers and enjoying the quality of it all.
Monday, 28 January 2008
Sunday, 27 January 2008
Susan Wheeler's Ledger
I bought Susan Wheeler's Ledger last night and finished it today. While I've enjoyed previous works, I found this the most engaging and accomplished; the final poem, "The Debtor in the Convex Mirror," is a tour de force. A few passages from the poem appear below (though I can't replicate her lineation and spacing), but to have any sense of the piece, you must go to the poem itself.
"In the country of individuation, I struck out like a match"
"the debtor--about to receive knell to what peace he might otherwise recall--worries his page"
"how far, indeed, can the soul swim out through the eyes and still return safely to its nest? That it be possible I cannot leave."
"Sometimes a welling up: I've lost thought in images. Night: a blank. The stars just stars."
"we tread with the intensity of hounds"
"The soul negotiates its right of way. O consciousness, but not without a bargain struck without."
"In the country of individuation, I struck out like a match"
"the debtor--about to receive knell to what peace he might otherwise recall--worries his page"
"how far, indeed, can the soul swim out through the eyes and still return safely to its nest? That it be possible I cannot leave."
"Sometimes a welling up: I've lost thought in images. Night: a blank. The stars just stars."
"we tread with the intensity of hounds"
"The soul negotiates its right of way. O consciousness, but not without a bargain struck without."
New York, Day 1 (highlight: Susan Howe's reading)
I arrived Friday, to be fair, but as I arrived about 5:15 on account of Supershuttle's ineptitude, it wasn't a day so much as a night. Lytton and I went for dinner at a hole-in-the-wall (in a downbeat, not romantic, sense) Mexican restaurant, where I had mole poblano for the first time in years, washed down with Negra Modelo. From there we went to a lovely wine bar, In Vino Veritas, where, as we were already drinking beer, we tried some Belgian varieties. I wish I remember what mine was called; the description of it suggested whispers? of apple and pear, I was intrigued, and it was delicious.
On our return Lytton and I talked for a while before he headed for a late gathering with some friends (something that would never happen in London, given tube closing times) and I looked at some lit mags for a while before crashing (and crashing is the word).
This morning I woke just before six a.m., and from the sixth floor window, I could see the city below, with the sky dark overhead and the streets lit by shop signs and streetlights below. I drafted a poem, "Pleurisy," before going back to sleep for a couple hours. When I woke again, I read around a bit before drafting another short piece. Today's day 6 of my writing spree (where I write or must average a poem a day), and I feel quickened. Also, with the regularity and frequency of my writing during a spree, I tend to vary more in my shapes/forms; today, for example, I found myself writing in short-lined couplets, something I haven't done for some time.
Lytton took me to a nearby diner for breakfast: $3.50 for eggs, toast, a thimbleful (close) of juice, coffee, and breakfast potatoes. Later, we headed for Soho and the Bowery area, stopping in at Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe, where I found a (supposedly) used copy of Mary Jo Bang's latest, Elegy. From there we walked to St. Mark's Bookshop, where I bought a book I've long meant to read, Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson, recently republished with a new introduction by Eliot Weinberger.
Walking out of St. Mark's, I decided on a $100 book, $50 magazine budget for the trip. I'm going on the illusion of having U.S. money from having transferred money to my U.S. account just before Christmas, to cover my expenses on that trip and pay as many future student loan payments as possible. This illusion was probably enhanced by this week's receipt of a $100 check from The New Republic for "Postmarked."
For lunch Lytton and I stopped at a falafel place that actually sells baked falafels. With a fair dose of tahini, that balanced out the dryness of the chickpea pucks, the falafel was pretty good.
At 3:30 Lytton and I arrived at The Bowery Poetry Club. It's as cool as it sounds; I really like the atmosphere of its performance space. We were there to hear Susan Howe read, and it was good we were there early for close seats, as the place was standing room only by the time the event began.
Susan Howe read perfectly. I cannot think of a single tiny thing I would have had her do differently. She read first from Pierce Arrow; next from The Midnight, which she described as being centered on "her mother, insomnia, sewing," etc. I need to buy or borrow a copy, to read for myself the wonderful section on the bird woman (don't try imagining what this means in advance, unless you want your expectations mocked by the creative power of the work).
Lastly, she read from her new book, Souls of the Labadie Tract, and from that the poem/sequence, "118 Westerly Terrace," about Wallace Stevens' house and what it was for her to be in it. I think my mouth hung open as I admired what I heard and waited, fully engaged, to hear how the piece would unfold. That's the standard to aim for, I thought.
After the reading, Lytton and I parted, he to visit his girlfriend, I to tromp about, which lead me about Soho and into Greenwich Village. Amid this tromping I came to Mercer Street Books, where I found a painfully strong poetry section. The first "narrowing down" resulted in a stack of seven books, at which point I asked myself, Which ones do I absolutely have to buy? The answer was Susan Wheeler's Ledger, which I've been wanting to read since I learned of its existence (I've been following her since her first book, Bag 'o' Diamonds; for those of you who don't know her work, Ledger is her fourth); and Brenda Iijima's Animate, Inanimate Aims. I was curious about her book as it's a recent Litmus Press title, and she turned out to be one of the organizers of today's reading. We met when I was waiting to have Howe sign some books, and I said I'd try to make it to her signing at AWP. I was startled, less than an hour after meeting Iijima, to find a copy of her book.
I had some fairly good Chinese food for dinner before heading back to Washington Heights, the area in which Lytton lives. Nearby I picked up a bottle of Chilean reserve Cabernet, Santa Rita, luckily delicious, and climbed the six floors to Lytton's apartment (yes, six, and I've been up them four times in just over 24 hours). It's 11 here, I'm feeling sleepy, and I'll continue reading Ledger (I began reading it on the restaurant and continued on the subway; I'm about halfway through already) and perhaps do some writing. I've had a perfect day.
On our return Lytton and I talked for a while before he headed for a late gathering with some friends (something that would never happen in London, given tube closing times) and I looked at some lit mags for a while before crashing (and crashing is the word).
This morning I woke just before six a.m., and from the sixth floor window, I could see the city below, with the sky dark overhead and the streets lit by shop signs and streetlights below. I drafted a poem, "Pleurisy," before going back to sleep for a couple hours. When I woke again, I read around a bit before drafting another short piece. Today's day 6 of my writing spree (where I write or must average a poem a day), and I feel quickened. Also, with the regularity and frequency of my writing during a spree, I tend to vary more in my shapes/forms; today, for example, I found myself writing in short-lined couplets, something I haven't done for some time.
Lytton took me to a nearby diner for breakfast: $3.50 for eggs, toast, a thimbleful (close) of juice, coffee, and breakfast potatoes. Later, we headed for Soho and the Bowery area, stopping in at Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe, where I found a (supposedly) used copy of Mary Jo Bang's latest, Elegy. From there we walked to St. Mark's Bookshop, where I bought a book I've long meant to read, Susan Howe's My Emily Dickinson, recently republished with a new introduction by Eliot Weinberger.
Walking out of St. Mark's, I decided on a $100 book, $50 magazine budget for the trip. I'm going on the illusion of having U.S. money from having transferred money to my U.S. account just before Christmas, to cover my expenses on that trip and pay as many future student loan payments as possible. This illusion was probably enhanced by this week's receipt of a $100 check from The New Republic for "Postmarked."
For lunch Lytton and I stopped at a falafel place that actually sells baked falafels. With a fair dose of tahini, that balanced out the dryness of the chickpea pucks, the falafel was pretty good.
At 3:30 Lytton and I arrived at The Bowery Poetry Club. It's as cool as it sounds; I really like the atmosphere of its performance space. We were there to hear Susan Howe read, and it was good we were there early for close seats, as the place was standing room only by the time the event began.
Susan Howe read perfectly. I cannot think of a single tiny thing I would have had her do differently. She read first from Pierce Arrow; next from The Midnight, which she described as being centered on "her mother, insomnia, sewing," etc. I need to buy or borrow a copy, to read for myself the wonderful section on the bird woman (don't try imagining what this means in advance, unless you want your expectations mocked by the creative power of the work).
Lastly, she read from her new book, Souls of the Labadie Tract, and from that the poem/sequence, "118 Westerly Terrace," about Wallace Stevens' house and what it was for her to be in it. I think my mouth hung open as I admired what I heard and waited, fully engaged, to hear how the piece would unfold. That's the standard to aim for, I thought.
After the reading, Lytton and I parted, he to visit his girlfriend, I to tromp about, which lead me about Soho and into Greenwich Village. Amid this tromping I came to Mercer Street Books, where I found a painfully strong poetry section. The first "narrowing down" resulted in a stack of seven books, at which point I asked myself, Which ones do I absolutely have to buy? The answer was Susan Wheeler's Ledger, which I've been wanting to read since I learned of its existence (I've been following her since her first book, Bag 'o' Diamonds; for those of you who don't know her work, Ledger is her fourth); and Brenda Iijima's Animate, Inanimate Aims. I was curious about her book as it's a recent Litmus Press title, and she turned out to be one of the organizers of today's reading. We met when I was waiting to have Howe sign some books, and I said I'd try to make it to her signing at AWP. I was startled, less than an hour after meeting Iijima, to find a copy of her book.
I had some fairly good Chinese food for dinner before heading back to Washington Heights, the area in which Lytton lives. Nearby I picked up a bottle of Chilean reserve Cabernet, Santa Rita, luckily delicious, and climbed the six floors to Lytton's apartment (yes, six, and I've been up them four times in just over 24 hours). It's 11 here, I'm feeling sleepy, and I'll continue reading Ledger (I began reading it on the restaurant and continued on the subway; I'm about halfway through already) and perhaps do some writing. I've had a perfect day.
Friday, 25 January 2008
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Business class?
A third-year mature student of mine sent me this message the other day. I thought it was so funny I'd share it (with his permission). I mentioned I was leaving for New York later in the week and this was his response:
"I was looking at the ny flights today...232 quid if i wanted to leave wednesday (no doubt you'll be going business class now you have a publishing deal)"
Ha!
"I was looking at the ny flights today...232 quid if i wanted to leave wednesday (no doubt you'll be going business class now you have a publishing deal)"
Ha!
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
The Transatlantic Poet
A week Thursday I'll be talking at the AWP conference about an issue I've faced as a transatlantic writer, but the difficulty is in narrowing the paper down to one issue! For example, just this morning I was writing an email to Alan at Leafe, listing the corrections I'd made to the attached file of Yet. I began to write that in "The Occupation of Iraq" I'd changed a spelling from American to British English when I recalled that the poem has an American speaker; this identification is crucial to the piece, so in the end I restored the American spelling.
There are larger issues as well. Perhaps the most significant decision I've made relative to this position has been to bring out The Tethers first (though Divining for Starters was already accepted), given the polarization of avant garde and mainstream poetries in the UK. Or is that not so much about my being a transatlantic writer as my having produced two rather different manuscripts in this polarized landscape?
The only benefit I see is my participation in two countries' poetry cultures. In 2003 and '04 I focused my submissions almost exclusively on UK magazines, to enter the conversation, as it were, and now I think the submissions are about 60/40 or 70/30 UK/US--though that may change a bit after I raid the AWP bookfair (my idea of heaven) for interesting magazines!
There are larger issues as well. Perhaps the most significant decision I've made relative to this position has been to bring out The Tethers first (though Divining for Starters was already accepted), given the polarization of avant garde and mainstream poetries in the UK. Or is that not so much about my being a transatlantic writer as my having produced two rather different manuscripts in this polarized landscape?
The only benefit I see is my participation in two countries' poetry cultures. In 2003 and '04 I focused my submissions almost exclusively on UK magazines, to enter the conversation, as it were, and now I think the submissions are about 60/40 or 70/30 UK/US--though that may change a bit after I raid the AWP bookfair (my idea of heaven) for interesting magazines!
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Anthology, part 1 of probably many
Late last August, I proposed an anthology of UK women's avant garde poetries to Shearsman editor Tony Frazer. My desire to edit the anthology arose from a personal desire to have one, to learn more about the range of these poetries and bring them together for sharing with students and fellow poets who had expressed interest in such work. While Maggie O'Sullivan's anthology Out of Everywhere: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America and the UK proved an important starting point, I wanted to understand more about UK poetry in and of itself, and I wanted to update my knowledge of what was happening here.
I began by writing to poets whose work I admired and trawling the internet for other UK women poets I may not have heard of; I also wrote and spoke to other poets, female and male, to ask for recommendations. Then I came upon Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young's "Numbers Trouble" (thanks to Chicago Review for making a PDF of the article available) and Catherine Wagner's forum, "Post-Marginal Positions: Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community," which made me contextualise the work I wanted to do to an extent I hadn't before. Responses in Wagner's forum clarified the value of such an anthology for others in both the UK and US, while Spahr and Young's essay led me to reflect on the potential interpretations of such an anthology. For me, the result was that I realised I needed to develop an extended account of my reasons for the anthology's publication and contents, both for myself and for readers.
Now it's January '08, and I'm aiming for a February 2009 publication date so I can propose (and be ready for) an anthology launch reading at the AWP conference in Chicago, with a subsequent launch to occur in London. Of the established poets, Geraldine Monk and Maggie O'Sullivan have declined to participate, and I have not had any response from Denise Riley. Alternately, I am pleased that Redell Olsen, Frances Presley, Harriet Tarlo, Caroline Bergvall, and Wendy Mulford have all committed to the project, and such emerging or mid-career poets as Andrea Brady, Marianne Morris, Emily Critchley, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Zoe Skoulding, Frances Kruk, Isobel Armstrong, Carol Watts, Anne Blonstein, Claire Crowther, and others have also said yes (and I already have impressive selections from Bletsoe, Kruk, and Watts). Another dozen have work with me under serious consideration, and I am still trying to find a handful of others. I have also had a good number of open submissions from my calls on several listservs. This part of the process has been exciting, reading the range of work and feeling that the work in the anthology will be of high quality. It's a book I think others will enjoy reading, and that pleases me.
I began by writing to poets whose work I admired and trawling the internet for other UK women poets I may not have heard of; I also wrote and spoke to other poets, female and male, to ask for recommendations. Then I came upon Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young's "Numbers Trouble" (thanks to Chicago Review for making a PDF of the article available) and Catherine Wagner's forum, "Post-Marginal Positions: Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community," which made me contextualise the work I wanted to do to an extent I hadn't before. Responses in Wagner's forum clarified the value of such an anthology for others in both the UK and US, while Spahr and Young's essay led me to reflect on the potential interpretations of such an anthology. For me, the result was that I realised I needed to develop an extended account of my reasons for the anthology's publication and contents, both for myself and for readers.
Now it's January '08, and I'm aiming for a February 2009 publication date so I can propose (and be ready for) an anthology launch reading at the AWP conference in Chicago, with a subsequent launch to occur in London. Of the established poets, Geraldine Monk and Maggie O'Sullivan have declined to participate, and I have not had any response from Denise Riley. Alternately, I am pleased that Redell Olsen, Frances Presley, Harriet Tarlo, Caroline Bergvall, and Wendy Mulford have all committed to the project, and such emerging or mid-career poets as Andrea Brady, Marianne Morris, Emily Critchley, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Zoe Skoulding, Frances Kruk, Isobel Armstrong, Carol Watts, Anne Blonstein, Claire Crowther, and others have also said yes (and I already have impressive selections from Bletsoe, Kruk, and Watts). Another dozen have work with me under serious consideration, and I am still trying to find a handful of others. I have also had a good number of open submissions from my calls on several listservs. This part of the process has been exciting, reading the range of work and feeling that the work in the anthology will be of high quality. It's a book I think others will enjoy reading, and that pleases me.
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Peter Cole's "One to Bet: A Jerusalem Pamphlet"
A few days ago I finished reading Peter Cole's What Is Doubled: Poems 1981-1998 (Shearsman, 2005), and tonight I copied favourite passages into my journal, page after page--my hand aches!
The work I admire most is the prose poetry sequence, "One to Bet: A Jerusalem Pamphlet," surely one of the best prose poetry sequences I've ever read. Of course that raises the question, How many prose poetry sequences have you read, Carrie? I'm not sure, but I think I'll continue believing this to be one of the best prose poetry sequences I've read for a long time to come.
Here are a few quotations from that sequence (which fail to give any sense of the power of the whole):
"Conducive to ambling, the street, like the sound of its name, was something of a refuge for me from all things linear...."
"In the fin-de-siรจcle suck of unknowing...our increasingly pathetic idea of an origin."
"Priests, then, in the evolution of tribes that number stand-up comics among them also. So it is that one comes upon curiously vaudeville qualities in the most serious of fifth or eighth century rabbinical texts."
"...where one always pays twice, in the unfair economies of song."
"And thinking is infinite, and the angel a ladder leaned against it."
"So that the word itself, ahava [love], is like the medieval wheel of fortune that spins one into the vertigo of the full circle in motion. In medieval picture books the figures on the wheel cling as desperately when they near the top as when they begin their descent toward the foul-smelling slough of despond."
"...establishing the Edenic origin of the flinch between innocence and wit along the shifting length of the serpent."
The work I admire most is the prose poetry sequence, "One to Bet: A Jerusalem Pamphlet," surely one of the best prose poetry sequences I've ever read. Of course that raises the question, How many prose poetry sequences have you read, Carrie? I'm not sure, but I think I'll continue believing this to be one of the best prose poetry sequences I've read for a long time to come.
Here are a few quotations from that sequence (which fail to give any sense of the power of the whole):
"Conducive to ambling, the street, like the sound of its name, was something of a refuge for me from all things linear...."
"In the fin-de-siรจcle suck of unknowing...our increasingly pathetic idea of an origin."
"Priests, then, in the evolution of tribes that number stand-up comics among them also. So it is that one comes upon curiously vaudeville qualities in the most serious of fifth or eighth century rabbinical texts."
"...where one always pays twice, in the unfair economies of song."
"And thinking is infinite, and the angel a ladder leaned against it."
"So that the word itself, ahava [love], is like the medieval wheel of fortune that spins one into the vertigo of the full circle in motion. In medieval picture books the figures on the wheel cling as desperately when they near the top as when they begin their descent toward the foul-smelling slough of despond."
"...establishing the Edenic origin of the flinch between innocence and wit along the shifting length of the serpent."
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Mock-up
Hurrah! Alan Baker, editor of Leafe Books, wrote the other day to say that the proofs of my pamphlet were coming in the post, so I expected a sheaf of pages. Instead, I received a mock-up of it, with Susan Mackervoy's evocative etchings gracing the front and back covers. It's exciting to have Yet's publication around the corner and a pleasure to think I'll once again have a proper selection of my work to share. I also feel, rereading the manuscript, that it coheres, with a poetics of consciousness interweaving with a sociopolitical sensibility. (I hope that statement makes sense to someone besides me.)
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
The Poetry Reading Drinking Game
I think this game is hilarious (click on the heading for this entry to go to it). I'm tempted to choose a few rules and find a fellow player the next time I'm going to a reading where either 1) I don't expect the work to be of high quality or 2) I'm going to hear a particular poet I admire, but I'm not fond of the work of the other poets reading. Thanks to Steven Schroeder for posting it.
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