Kocik in ACTS Eigner Issue (The Extent To Which)

John Sakkis just sent me a photocopy of ACTS magazine's Eigner issue, which contains a feature by Robert Kocik. Here are two of my favorite consecutive paragraphs from the 3 page, typewritten feature:

If lines roughly the same length all share a left margin, one rectangle (the poem) has been placed onto another rectangle (the page). In L.E.'s early work, this page-bound "deadset" appearance was broken up by leaving blanks at the beginnings of lines where words had been deleted to gain immediacy. Interior and end-line lacunas were developed by dropping commas. Erasure such as this is now a matter of habit--the revision, initial. [my italics]

The question 'how much can things go together?' is asked along with questioning the extent to which poems can be made to cohere.

Sovereignty and Us: Eleni Stecopoulos' Autoimmunity (Review)

Here is a review of Eleni Stecopoulos' Autoimmunity (TAXT, 2006) that I wrote for Jacket magazine: http://jacketmagazine.com/36/r-stecopoulos-rb-donovan.shtml.

Holes in Space

-for Suzanne

If I were here and you weren’t there
In a portal in the air fighting this
Virtual feeling of there being people
On the other side of that screen and

If we were those people milling about
Briefly fascinated by the storefront
Window nearly a reflection of shadows
Of us so a window opens in the actual

World where you ask a question or
There in posing one breathe meaning
Beyond whatever was supposed to be
An art for us or poetry is a fantasy

Of poetry when to most words only
Mean what they say not what they undo
Lapses in the reenactment those holes
Being wherever we’ve really been.

A Meme for Suzanne Stein

...after her reading at St. Mark’s, 11/17/2008

1. What is communication?
2. What is the relationship shared between communication and art?
3. What is the relationship shared between your work and 70s “Live Art” (or performance-based art)? Participatory art? Tactical Media? Procedure-based art and writing? Land Art?
4. To what extent do you feel you are extending the problems of New York poets such as Vito Acconci, Bernadette Mayer and Hannah Weiner? To what extent would you like to or feel you do complicate these practices?
5. Where does poetry currently stand in relation to visual art?
6. With the rise of “social networking” tools such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as life-simulators such as Second Life, how should or could we, as culture workers/artists/thinkers, reenvision communication and participation as problems for our work?
7. You have referred to both TAXT books and your reading performances as "site-specific". How do you understand the term "site-specific" in relation to your work?
8. What (if anything) do the terms “virtual” and “actual” mean to you? "Possibility"? "Potential"?
9. In what ways do you imagine any current artistic practices to be effectively social and/or political?
10. In what ways can participatory and extemporaneous performance practices be considered more ethical/emancipatory than object-based ones?
11. Why, in the past decade, do you think (re)enactment has become such a popular art form across the arts, but especially in visual art? Why not so much in poetry/conceptual writing (Kenneth Goldsmith's Day and Rob Fitterman's reenactments of the Grand Piano project aside)?

Poetry "After Katrina" in the Newsletter

In addition to some wonderful book reviews by Paul Foster Johnson, Carol Mirakove and others, the December/January 2008 issue of the Poetry Project Newsletter (available online in a PDF format) includes a double review I wrote for Brett Evans' and Frank Sherlock's *Ready-To-Eat Individual* (Lavendar Ink, 2008), and Rob Halpern's *Disaster Suites* (Palm Press, 2008). The review addresses poetry after Katrina, and contemporary "disaster lyric" more generally.

announcing ON 1

ON

Contemporary Practice 1

edited by Michael Cross, Thom Donovan & Kyle Schlesinger

contents:
Taylor Brady, Brandon Brown, CAConrad, Jason Christie, Michael Cross, Thom Donovan, Eli Drabman, Rob Halpern, Jen Hofer, Alan Gilbert, Brenda Iijima, Andrew Levy, Edric Mesmer, Sawako Nakayasu, Tenney Nathanson, Richard Owens, Tim Peterson, Andrew Rippeon, Kyle Schlesinger, Jonathan Skinner, Dale Smith, Suzanne Stein, Ali Warren, Katie Yeats

on

Arakawa/Gins, Taylor Brady, CAConrad, Michael Cross, Beverly Dahlen, Michael deBeyer, Mark Dickinson, kari edwards, DJ/Rupture, Thom Donovan, Belle Gironda, Brenda Iijima, CJ Martin, Emily McVarish, Yedda Morrison, Hoa Nguyen, Sawako Nakayasu, Julie Patton, Lauren Shufran, Suzanne Stein, Dana Ward, Ali Warren

purport:
ON Contemporary Practice gathers writing about the practices or poetics of one’s contemporaries. While these writings may be highly anti-categorical or “hybrid,” they are ultimately for the cultivation and extension of critical discourse. If you would like to submit to ON please write the editors at oncontemporaries@gmail.com, or michaelthomascross at hotmail dot com, thom_donovan at yahoo dot com, and kyleschlesinger at gmail dot com. ON welcomes all unsolicited materials which pursue the below guidelines. For more about ON’s editorial positions, please see the first issue’s editorial, “For a Discourse”.

guidelines:
ON primarily publishes essays on contemporaries that investigate a poetics or practice. It does not publish reviews of individual poems, chapbooks, performances, etc. It also does not publish poems. ON’s editors will consider all submissions but will not provide extensive editorial feedback toward publication.

purchasing:
Small Press Distribution
1341 Seventh Street
Berkeley, CA 94710-1409
Tel. (800) 869-7553
www.spdbooks.org

published by:
Cuneiform Press
214 N. Henry Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222
www.cuneiformpress.com

Copies are available for $12.00. Free shipping in the US for all orders placed through the publisher. Send checks to Kyle Schlesinger at the address above, or paypal kyleschlesinger at gmail dot com.

Gore Memorial

-for Jane

I want to make a
memorial that is

not mythical to
bones and falling

bridges a gore
memorial a memorial

to gore and not
make reference to

any real thing
or place and pre

tend it is like
any other place

in time putting
history in the use

of mythology like
losing one's way

in a dark woods
that is ourselves

in that time with
out time when all

I wanted was to
make a gore memo

rial with you a
memorial to gore

and soldiers and
bones and bridges

real falling brid
ges because you are

here with me the
se facts are facts

and not mere ima
ges these images

won't be how they
wanted them shored.

David Levi Strauss' 15 Dispatches

Check out David Levi Strauss' blog entries on the presidential campaign at Aperture magazine, 15 Dispatches.