Rosie Stockton, Permanent Volta

 

NO MEANS

time wraps itself back up
                        before the week starts so slowly it can’t   theorize sensation
            it can’t    stay put  deep in a ditch the way                    I am
            backward dreaming
lunch break      my worst genre is sex                 talk
            how it can’t keep pace w/ the leaves’ rate of bloom inert
            under my heliological need                  pointing out the trancelike
underdeveloped trauma hypothesis                                  it is always just a hint
the way my meat doesn’t want                         to rearrange the words all the time
                        it doesn’t want lips to sip opening w/ a jaw clicking
discarded                     remember how I make flowers cry on the side of
            paved parts of day                    most private the time it already promised
no means no time to say when                         I decide to give it all away
        and for what                    I wonder            what performance
                                                                                    solves the proof of interiority

From Los Angeles poet Rosie Stockton comes the full-length debut, Permanent Volta (New York NY: Nightboat Books, 2021), winner of the 2019 Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Writing out rhythmic narrative stretches, Permanent Volta is a lively debut of music, lyric and staccato bursts composed across wide canvases, composing monologues on purpose, body, desire, work and money. Stockton writes on the distances between value and cost, on human consideration and considerations of labour, working through a lyric of subjectivity and gender, and who is allowed to choose. Stockton writes a spectrum of being, writing a consideration that there are no absolutes, or even binaries. There is some smart lyric here, composed through a poetic that remains in constant motion. “it is possible all deja vu is intergenerational,” Stockton writes, as part of the poem “MATERIAL MEMORY,” “we had learned it once but have forgotten / & we can’t explain it when it’s there. / mouthing the ghosts of phrases gives us the approximation of the thing / as if there were a thing to approximate / you’re all olive / juice & I say / ily2.” In a recent interview posted at The Believer, conducted by Ben Fama, Stockton responds:

The contradiction posed in the title is one of the main questions I was writing through in this book. As you say, if the turn is “permanent,” it exists in motion, in a constant state of becoming. I was interested in constant becoming in relation to form. Usually sonnets only have one volta, followed by some semblance of resolution in the couplet. How could a “permanent volta” refuse this resolution? I might even distill this poetic question into a familiar political question around reform or revolution: what does change look like within a given structure vs. what does it look like to change that structure? Like so many poets since the 13th century, I took the sonnet as the structure I wanted to sabotage, slow down, hustle, edge, and flood as a way to ask this question.

If the volta of the sonnet allows for the speaker to “turn” from one movement of thought to another, I wondered what tactics I might use to both perform change within the sonnet’s system and also dismantle the structure of the sonnet itself. In this way, I was interested in the historical material processes that gave the sonnet its authority. Who authored, and authorized, the first sonnet?

There is something really delightful in Stockton’s language: a striking lyric of verve and electrical impulse. There is an enormous amount of play throughout, what bpNichol referred to as “serious play.” Stockton appears to revel in poetic structure, allowing the rhythm of their sentences to flow fragmented across the length and breadth of the page in the “HAIGIOGRAPHY” poems, as nearly point-form hesitations of the title sequence, writing: “there are only / shadows / to write about / this early / in the morning // violent— / to be written / and I resist— /// I take apart / my body // to let my being / be a little more [.]”

The structural variation throughout the collection are delightful as well, as Stockton’s shifts of rhythm, narrative and breath are confident, halting and contemplative, fearless and wildly expansive. Poems are formed through accumulation, it would seem, short phrases set one against another, one after another, furthering a narrative accumulation that bounces and pings, as they write to end the poem “I WORK”: “but     I work / I will have to remind them                            as if to prove aliveness / to outshine my debt’s reputation / before the sentence begins [.]” Or, the final two stanzas of the six-stanza poem “ENFANCE V,” that reads:

Down here I know silence well, I am in charge,
I don’t have to talk to anyone anymore.
My oars are made of water,
my sapphire is made of steel. Let’s go.

Of course I am aware of the sudden chasm, this call
that casts bitter light, that dwells in my attitude.
But now it’s your turn. Tell me what unthinkable blaze
you miss me like.

 

Queen Mob's Teahouse : Ben Fama interviews Abraham Adams

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the seventeenth interview is now online: An interview with Abraham Adams by Ben Fama. Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, and Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah, Brad Casey interviewed byEmilie Lafleur, and David Buuck interviews John Chávez about Angels of the Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: Claire Freeman-Fawcett on Spread Letter, Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

If you are interested in sending a pitch for an interview my way, check out my "about submissions" write-up at Queen Mob's; you can contact me via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com

Queen Mob's Teahouse : Ben Fama interviews Precious Okoyomon

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the fifteenth interview is now online: an interview with Precious Okoyomon [pictured], conducted by Ben Fama. Other interviews from my tenure include: an interview with poet, curator and art critic Gil McElroy, conducted by Ottawa poet Roland Prevost, an interview with Toronto poet Jacqueline Valencia, conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham, an interview with Ann Tweedy conducted by Mary Kasimor, an interview with Katherine Osborne, conducted by Niina Pollari, an interview with Catch Business, conducted by Jon-Michael Frank, a conversation between Vanesa Pacheco and T.A. Noonan, "On Translation and Erasure," existing as an extension of Jessica Smith's The Women in Visual Poetry: The Bechdel Test, produced via Essay Press, Five questions for Sara Uribe and John Pluecker about Antígona González by David Buuck (translated by John Pluecker),"overflow: poetry, performance, technology, ancestry": kaie kellough in correspondence with Eric Schmaltz, Mary Kasimor's interview with George Farrah and Brad Casey interviewed by Emilie Lafleur.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include: Stephanie Bolster on Three Bloody Words, Claire Farley on Canthius, Dale Smith on Slow Poetry in America, Allison Green, Meredith Quartermain, Andy Weaver, N.W Lea and Rachel Loden.

If you are interested in sending a pitch for an interview my way, check out my "about submissions" write-up at Queen Mob's; you can contact me via rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com

Ongoing notes: late February, 2014

Toronto ON: Composed as “an ekphrasic translation of bpNichol’s ‘Allegories’ (from Love: A Book of Remembrances. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1974)” is Toronto poet and editor Stephen Cain’s Etc Phrases (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2013). There have been a small handful of chapbooks released over the past decade or so (including one from above/ground press), but some time since Cain had a trade collection of poetry, back to his third trade collection, American Standard/ Canada Dry (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2005), and his micro-fiction collaboration with Jay MillAr, Double Helix (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2006). Is Cain slowly and quietly working his way up to something, or simply in small, self-contained bursts?

Etc Phrase #16

Ebbing the ineffable.

The phonics of the palimpsest.

Expletive F exclamation.

Floating or floundering.

No horizon line.

B coming or being.

Thorny thrownnes.

E F Geworfenheit.

Still present despite the presence.

Not waving but sounding.

The chapbook intrigues in part through the playful coherence of collisons, pushing phrases against phrases to ascribe an accidental meaning. The thirty-two poem sequence of Etc Phrases makes for a wordy exercise of what jwcurry would refer to as “serious play,” counterpointing other short self-contained units he’s produced as chapbooks over the past few years. Is there a collection of collated units finally forthcoming upon that horizon?

New Jersey: Until now, Ben Fama is a name I’ve heard but never actually read, finally able to go through the poems of his Odalisque (New Jersey: Bloof Books, 2014). The seven poems that make up Odalisque are constructed as accumulations, nearly collage-works that build their individual ways up into a coherent shape, despite the sequence of seemingly-unrelated phrases he uses as building materials. His poems do seem an intriguing blend of collage, random statement and narrative flow, in the Frank O’Hara “I did this, I did that” kind of way, especially through his use of pop culture references. The final poem in the collection, “girlwithcat2.jpg,” even includes shades of what Montreal poet Jon Paul Fiorentino has been playing with the past decade or so, blending pop culture sensibilities and humour with a dark, even pessimistic bent.

FL NEUR

Fashion makes me less crazy

It should be looked at

Never discussed

It’s an honest joy

To be shocked by beauty

In the 21^st century

I was shocked when my lover was caught stealing

From Dean & Deluca

I was thinking of a line

By Robert Hass

The floor manager stopped us

We simply went to a different store

Poetry

A requiem for leisure, pleasure, thought

I cannot take your high school friend’s

Hoop earrings seriously

And every picture on my phone is obscene

Seriously, look at it—

All these fucking effetes

Boring travel stories

Details of somebody’s dreams

Champagne condensating

On leather seats

All summer long

I wish I could afford a room

At the Peninsula New York

Suites with TVs above soaking tubs

With city views

And all that sun on Fifth Ave.

I live inside it too

I am at Uniqlo

Buying underwear

And after I paid

I stayed and shopped again

A surprising second erection

After you’ve just finished

And you know it’s time

According to Wikipedia, the term “odalisque” refers to a “female slave or concubine in a Turkish harem, particularly the concubines in the household of the Ottoman sultan.” The title poem in the collection plays off that meaning, exploring ways of seeing and comprehending, and yet, the poem predominantly work through anything but, opening:

There’s a picture of you on my phone

I look at when I’m bored

It’s basically an American Apparel ad

In a world I have access to

I’m looking at it now

Or possibly through it

And listening to “Gymnopédie No. 3”

Sometimes I think it is a perfect song

I wonder what you are going to wear

To this cocktail event

At the Gershwin Hotel

We are going to tonight

Toronto ON: I’m very taken with the musicality of Marianne Morris’ Alphabet Poems (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2014), third in the NEW BRITISH POETS series edited by Stephen Collis and Amy De’Ath [see my review of the first two, here]. This is an intriguing series they’ve taken on, seemingly produced in pairs (Andrea Brady’s Dompteuse is forthcoming), and I would be very interested to hear the editors’ take on the hows and whys of curating such a series. Of Morris’ Alphabet Poems, I’m taken by the rush of the line, and the flow of the words like water, forceful and smooth and unrelenting. Alphabet Poems follows her first trade collection, The On All Said Things Moratorium [see my review of such here], which I would highly recommend. Born in Canada, raised in London, England and currently residing (according to the bio at the back of the chapbook) in Oakland, California, I can only hope that Morris manages to make her way north to perhaps read, as her pieces, as strong as they are on the page, give the impression that they are really meant to be heard to be felt, in full force.

THEIR TEETH

Something of darker mettle, they said. They requested.

Something of darker mettle. Them and their

Wants. Of organized mettle. Fuck you! I said.

Poured frayed panties from the broken neti pot into

The almost empty but resealable bag. Her earth hands.

Bag like I am.

A month on the lips, seventeen years in the hips

The holding-in sounds. The slipping-in sounds.

The groans, loaming archers, swoop low. I know

Them and a plastic container of oiled nuts.

To stop biting

At my own lips

For eighty dollars and a vial of my salt

Which I will replenish with the fat of something dead

So I can eat. A row of exes: x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Morris’ “alphabet” is expansive, complex and richly textured. And it’s hard not to be charmed by the table of contents, especially when you sound out the titles, reading in order: “WON,” “TO,” “FREE,” “FOR,” “FIVE FLEE WITH SWORDS AND TWO REMAIN BEHIND,” “SEX” and so on.