This is not a poem for J.A.

I need my space

The t-shirt with stars says

While the malls burn all around

The barricades being built

Until they are one with violence

The night comes it is all

They have left after

The world has ended again

This is not a poem

For John Ashbery who

Killed the subject quietly

With the kitsch of elites

We would imitate until

Our actual voices fade

Or the spaces a public didn’t make
Are finally recognized.

Some Notes on Note-Taking (after Bhanu Kapil’s Ban en Banlieue) [in Tripwire 13]

The new Tripwire contains some notes I took about Bhanu Kapil's Ban en Banlieue and composition through note-taking.

TRIPWIRE 13 : DIALOGUES

Now available as a special free PDF issue, with discounted print on demand versions from lulu, TRIPWIRE 13: DIALOGUES is full of interviews, collaborations, poetics essays and reviews, and new poetry and translations.  

Soleida Ríos (translated by Kristin Dykstra) * Tongo Eisen-Martin * Lionel Fogerty (introduced by Matt Hall) * Nat Raha * Ed Luker * Johan Mijail (translated by Amaury Rodriguez) * Yedda Morrison * Lisa Jeschke & Lucy Beynon * Sara Uribe & John Pluecker * David Lau & Brian Ang * Lara Durback * Jennifer Cooke & Andrew Spragg * Emily Abendroth & Levi Bentley * John Chávez * Hugo García Manríquez* Lesego Rampolokeng & Douglas Valentine * Oki Sogumi & Cassandra Troyan * Carlos Soto Román & Frank Sherlock * Ryan Eckes * Olive Blackburn * Gail Scott & Andy Fitch * Alireza Taheri Araghi & Rachel L’Abri Tipton * Sodéh Negintaj (translated by Alireza Taheri Araghi) * Andrés Anwandter * Ajit Chauhan * Jeanine Onori Webb on Lisa Robertson * Megan Kaminski on Leslie Scalapino * Marcelo Morales (translated by Kristin Dykstra) * Tanya Hollis * Eleanor Perry on Frances Kruk & Sophie Seita * Grace Shuyi Liew on Nests and Strangers (ed. Timothy Yu) * Kathy Lou Schultz on Julia Bloch, Megan Kaminski, & Robin Tremblay-McGaw * David W. Pritchard on Dawn Lundy Martin & Frank Lima * Chris McCreary on Gil Ott * Saretta Morgan on Douglas Kearney * Katharine Peddie on Marianne Morris * Brittany Billmeyer-Finn on Tessa Micaela Landreau-Grasmuck * Thom Donovan on Bhanu Kapil * Orchid Tierney on Kristen Gallagher.
Cover image: Yedda Morrison, from “ReGenesis” (detail). Courtesy Republic Gallery, Vancouver. 285 pages. FREE PDF.

Melissa Buzzeo's The Devastation (review)

My review of Melissa Buzzeo's The Devastation just hit the streets: She writes “not writing” (90), which is to say, writing at a threshold where to write is to enact the threat of the withdrawal of the very thing one would seem to be making: “a book that could be but isn’t” (118); “[B]ooks that lack cover or are all cover.” (20) It is to give the language the book would otherwise contain back to primary content, to matter after form, to text after words. It is to give the reader over to a process of healing towards the organization of new relations, new bodies, new books, new loves.

Communal Presence: New Narrative Writing Today (conference)

Excited to be participating in the big New Narrative jam in Berkeley later this October. And to be on a panel with Mike Amnasan, Sara Larsen, Ted Rees, and Jean-Thomas Tremblay. We will also be celebrating the launch of From Our Hearts to Yours: New Narrative as Contemporary Practice.

Here is a link to the complete schedule:
https://communalpresence.com/complete-schedule/