Arielle Greenberg's Given (Wave Books, 2002)

Arielle Greenberg and I were on a delightful panel at AWP in Seattle: on poetry and desire. I'd read her poems here and there, but not read one of her books in toto, and now I regret the delay, as I've relished reading her first collection and now eagerly look forward to more. Here are some favourite passages:


We (the clown, the doll, the murderer and I) are in love.
With the moon.

She ascends: the sky purples, clouds, she rises, now grinning,
becoming a burning door. We love her still.

from "Afterwards, There  Will Be a Hallway"

I know thirst very well because I once belonged to that organization.

from "The Expert"

I've been teaching English at a two-year college and it isn't going well.

Every single one of my students is somehow a furious dolphin.

opening lines of "Teaching English at a Two-Year College"

To debate an aesthetic issue is to go shopping for a party

    dress. You cannot come over till you have something interesting.

last stanza of "Pathos: a ghazal"

The project that loves to hang its head out the car window and smell the ocean

from "A Proposal for a Longer Work 

(Preferring the Dunes)"

They were free to be startled by their bondage.

from "Startle"

there is us

& there is a valley & there is the tight song the air forgot

from "happy holy"

The people who sleep with their socks on,

the day is over to them, adoring and abandoned.

The inside of her long body is a yellow flower. 

Breathe here, in the small hole your life has made.

from "This Train"

I do love my breasts. they are so soft.

but I love my hair more. it's my rosetti.

from "The Teeth of Betty Page"

Night came, blue night. It knew all the terrible choices. It covered the girl like a shawl.

*

What a catastrophe! Nothing all over, blue shawls, oven mornings. The girl was in a fit, fit of smiles. What was in her pocket? What terrible jealousy was in her mouth?

Come, she said. Come choose the terrible choice.

from "The Girl"

To be a magician's assistant, you must first believe in the real as a Fact in itself. Without the real, there is no awe at its breakage. Lucy was trained in basic chemistry and liked large dogs. She was as real as they come.

*

"There is something magical about this realism," the audience exclaims, delighted, somewhat dopey on little paper cups of swirled ice cream served with tongue depressor spoons glued to the lids. "It's the chocolate," Lucy says flatly, removing the knife from between her teeth. "I invented it to make you happy."

from "The Secret History of Chocolate"

Are you male or just malnourished?

from "To My Beaux-Artsy Bedfellow"

We make marks, and in this way we are like the species of fish who leave their ink when they are frightened.

from "Berlin Series"

In front of the house, the townspeople have gathered for the nod-out into plush plush love, so easy and out.

from "Nostalgia, Cheryl, Is the Best Heroin"

      

Order Arielle Greenberg's Given directly from publisher Wave Books here. 

Thoughts Mundane and Provocative on Poetry and Desire (in progress)

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The title of this post is my working title for my paper at the AWP, to be given Friday, and I thought I'd post what I have thus far here, to begin the conversation. 

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I've taken this down after two days so I can develop the piece into a publishable lyric essay--or so I hope!

Interim 21: 1 and 2, 2002

I've long known of Interim magazine and found my interest revived when I learned some years ago that Claudia Keelan, a poet I admire, had become its editor. I've picked up issues of Interim at AWP over the years and am passing through them again before I give them away (I'm reluctantly giving loads of magazines and books away on account of my forthcoming move to a new office, where I'll have 2.8m of shelf space).


white new moon
of fingernail or bright noon of tooth
where I stand where I came to stand
where I stood and had stood
longer than my life the tree leaned
over the broken

Dan Beachy-Quick, from 'Mulberry'

...a god in worn-out dungarees,

reordering the universe of dark and light with huge paint-dappled hands....

Earl Coleman,  from 'On the Day His Lease Expired'

We wanted it come to rest tied up on the craps table,

so we would feel so very money storm then.

Crystal Curry, from 'Cherries'

To free oneself

of sententious platitudes

music the ally

silence the ally

Turn to the task

turn the task

turn it

and turn it again.

*

The easy wisdom

the impossible ambiguities

gone in an instant

the complex of time

*

Not the mighty dead

with whom you are wont to wrestle

but the humble dead

who can swat you like a fly

*

Days such as these

the presentation of events

is owned and disowned continually

in the poet's search.

*

Say an idea

and its concomitant emotions

or an emotion

and its concomitant ideas.

*

Therefore the repetition

of the text or act of love

leads inevitably

to the text or act of love

So that the consolation

appears to arise

out of a certain logic

built into the syntax

Built into the body

ears, eyes, genitals

posed against death

though "Deathward we ride"

 Norman Finkelstein, from "Track"

 awaken without casting off sleep

*

                                     But the present is

not sufficiently distant for observation.

Gordon Hadfield, from 'Via Soma'

bellwether to dust's watering hole

the horses the sheep the cows the fowl

emaciate, the vultures' virtuous compass

R.F. Marsocci, from 'Badlands'

So that it does not matter

          if name sing here or not:

what is a name inside oblivion?

Nathaniel Tarn, from 'Ancestors'

Which is all to say I feel the distance between

how the mind I call 'my'

used to be then

and is now.

Liz Waldner, from 'Double Space Time'

AWP Report No. 1: VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts

First report from the AWP 2011: the strong presence of VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts with their vibrant stall at the book fair, innovative fundraiser (with established male writers reading their favourite work by women and a dance party), and at the book fair, their splendid handouts on various issues, including why it's important to count the number of male and female contributors to magazines &c. and what it means. For further details, please see the VIDA website and more specifically their useful Resources page.

Lit mag junkie

That's me. I'm a lit mag junkie. I stand at the entrance to the AWP book fair looking as though I'm gazing at a fountain of Belgian chocolate. I set a $100 budget limit each conference and blow it every time (though admittedly that involves books, too).

Are you a lit mag junkie? What is it that drives us? A certain combination of literary delights and outstanding production values? Finding a special section that's just what we always thought should be in a lit mag, were we designing our own, like an insanely large section of short reviews?

This is on my mind partly because I'm going to that magical book fair next week and partly because I've discovered (thanks to Cathy Wagner) a brilliant, newish mag, Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion. It's edited by the outstanding poet and critic Calvin Bedient, whom I remember unimpressing markedly in my one meeting with him while I was an undergraduate at UCLA. Sadly, I remember the poem I showed him--sadly, I remember the meeting in fine detail--and have to acknowledge I understand his reaction.

Anyway, enough about youthful embarrassments. There's a generous sampling online of the annual printed issue, and I look forward to holding one before long. In the meantime, fellow lit mag junkies, come forward and tell me your favourite journals past and present, the qualities that attract you to some and put you off others--&c., &c. I know I'm not alone.