Catherine Wagner's My New Job (Fence, 2009)

What a nervy, original book! I'd dipped into it before but only recently read the whole. Here are a few favourite passages.




I lean forward on a nerve ebullient
my sweet alive and roasting in a current

from "Exercise 1 (11/28/00 PM)"

Good for M the comfortable-with-people to be away from me. tauten the cord to make it all more urgent

from "Exercise 7 (12/3/00 PM)"

The wheatrows flattened

gold, another dark

combed curve opened

like a stretchy

machine.

opening lines of "Exercise 21 (11/8/01 Am) [Back Seat of Minivan]"

Snow

starred when I looked straight up

sky dark gray, geese rose

in alarmed soft shh and hasping

long-necked geese

a-gossip all upset

*

all along I was alone to that

though everyone saw me

checking myself out by talking to them

when they checked themselves out in me

I tried to say O here have it all

     warm woolen flood     welcomer

          some spider-netting held it back,

kept growing over my warm and my intention to befriend

from "Exercise 34 (1/3/02 PM)"

All the following poems come from a section titled, "Everyone in the Room Is a Representative of the World at Large," and all the poems share that title. Each passage comes from a different poem.

I make the bird a flying fist

my violence goes on out along the stream.

---

My beast came up and hit me in the self.

---

It is not a hero

who will approach the mirror of

this appointment

and glide her thighs and torso to it.

That is me

These passages can't convey the experience of the undulations of a whole Wagner poem. For that, please purchase the book from Foyle's in the UK or your independent bookstore in the US.

"Unruly: Print into Poetry"

Here are details and images from my dear friend Susan Mackervoy's show of handbook books, prints and poems, with Sophie Herxheimer, at Marine Studios in Margate, running until 20 October. I so wish I could go!

Andre Bagoo's Trick Vessels (Shearsman, 2012)

Thanks to Vahni Capildeo for recommending this book to me--I've enjoyed it. Here are some favourite passages.


Hear this: the ocean is not meant to be lit at night
Instead of going to water I go to light

*

Your mother cannot name her great grandmother
Your father does not know where his village was

But I have such knowledge, I ensure these erasures
I follow the stop, I do not leak

from "The Unnamed Creature Said to Come From Water"

it was easy to imagine your island

a furniture wed to agile spies

        a stable is where they keep me

wrecked forever on memory

the last stanza of "Visa"

...I linger to the surface.

*

Small rooms are the best places for windows, they are so grateful.

*

But when the hermit finds a new shell, there is always a moment when the creature is vulnerable. In between rooms, there is oblivion. A risk of freedom.

*

Evidence is the foundation of everything. But it is a field wrought with dispute.

from "To the Centre of the Earth"

Each question begets violence.

It begs on behalf of its recipient.

from "And This Note Was Not an Answer"

Links to reviews, video, and online purchasing from numerous outlets are available on Shearsman's page for the book.

zimZalla and Jo Langton's PoeTea

My fondness for zimZalla and its array of avant objects--happily combining the poetic, playful and smart--meant I was delighted when asked to provide a response to one of Jo Langton's splendid PoeTeas, the "fresh" one. I was sorry though that my circumstances meant I just had time to respond with a poem using words from the tea bag (I'd have loved to create a responding object...); you can download the poem here.