Slow Poetry in America: #7, 9-11/12

MICÓN

I am the gentle swell the

soft at the end of things hard

                      shiny water

No ham nude youth no

                but hear

adonis—striped eye   holy

grove   never hung

so much game noose as I—in

  the sea’s green

                  beard (Hamish Ballantyne)

It has been a while since I’ve seen new issues of the Slow Poetry in America Newsletter, a quarterly pamphlet series of poems, each featuring a single author, edited by Michael Cavuto, Hoa Nguyen and Dale Smith [see my review of the first three here; and the second three here; see my interview with Dale Smith on the series here], so I am very pleased to see copies of some of the more recent entries: issue #7: Clearly Present, by Cedar Sigo; issue #9: Góngora, by Hamish Ballantyne; issue #10: Pollinate, From Dark Trees, by Cody-Rose Clevidence; and issue #11/12: Nervous Incomparable Dictation / Curious Spectral Fragments, by Will Alexander (I’m still missing issue #8: Journal for Ted, by Stacy Szymaszek). I’m fond of series’ such as these, the ephemeral nature of the pamphlet working in direct opposition to the strength of the work included, and the possibility of being able to read a self-contained work, and enough work by a particular author to have a clear sense of what it is they are doing, especially as introduction (I think back to Sylvester Pollet’s infamous Backwoods Broadsides, or those pamphlets The League of Canadian Poets were doing in the 1980s).

I was curious to explore the handful of short lyrics in Suquamish poet and San Francisco resident Cedar Sigo’s poems through his Clearly Present (summer 2017). I’m fascinated by the pacings, line breaks and rhythms through these poems, almost existing as a sequence of meditative pings and bounces across the page, as the poem On The Way” begins:

Have the swallows

                              returned

            to my porchlight?

I may have left it on

                    through the night

                    I may have burnt them out

                    when the wind

                    shakes

                                the window glass

                                I step out of the house

                    hoping for the smell

                    of rain

twisted

            and waking up the earth

                                the dust

dispersed

                    over again

On the other hand, Vancouver Island poet and translator Hamish Ballantyne, a founding member (alongside Cavuto) of the pure-sound collective Sex Panic!, is a name entirely new to me. The ten short lyrics that make up his Góngora exist as a curious extension of the author’s translation work (as this pamphlet appears to be an original work, as opposed to a translation), composed as quick lyric sketches around the Spanish Baroque lyric poet Luis de Góngora y Argote (July 11, 1561-May 24, 1627). As the note at the end of the short pamphlet reads: “When Luis de Góngora lost all of his money, his greatest rival Quevedo sensed opportunity, moving quickly to buy the poet’s home and evict him. Disgraced and destitute, more unhinged every day, Góngora fled to his childhood home and began his final book, about the wanderings of a heartbroken stranger shipwrecked on an impossible island. He completed less than half of the work before he died.” Cody-Rose Clevidence’s work is a personal favourite [see their Touch the Donkey interview here; see my review of their latest here], and I suspect POLLINATE, FROM DARK TREES will shape itself into something book-length, akin to what I’ve seen of other of Clevidence’s writing. The poems are sharp, accumulative and densely-packed, composed as small moments of a far larger, more expansive work:

what doesnt bear plums, are cedars

what doesnt grow flowers, are rocks

th columbines cling to th rock-face

where th water seeps a river with a simple

harness, even th sturdy nets cast out let

th bright water rush through, come up

dripping. all fish are bass. th waters

abound with them.

California “poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, aphorist, philosopher, visual artist, pianist” Will Alexander’s Nervous Incomparable Dictation / Curious Spectral Fragments is constructed as a double issue, opening with a longer prose piece, and then a series of shorter lyric poems/prose poems. Having only been peripherally aware of Alexander’s work prior to this, there is an enormous amount to unpack in his incredibly dense and vibrant language, one that writes through human need and detailed, abstract thought to explore the requirements of both soul and body. Even as the opening sentence of the prose poem begins: “BLANKNESS as co-equal to blankness siring initial seismicity by which initial balance is shifted, is ignited beyond its prior capacity so that prior balance engaged can only gift itself by means of vertigo, by seeming ruin that never instigates demise, but opens onto a primordial plane sans replication such as names and dates and habit.” The final poem of his pamphlet, “Closing Commentary,” writes:

As an ignition worker under present planetary circumstance, I remain counter to exteriority as capturable entity. Ignition remains a maze for me. A maze in the psyche without recourse to pedestrian entanglement and its mechanical detritus. Instead language neurologically blazes and condenses as an operatic sundial suddenly spinning. Thus sonic irrigation transpires and becomes material confluence transmuting in their cells. The latter being sound that emanates from one psyche to another via what I understand to be the circular infection where one’s vibration existentially accelerates meta-cellular aspiration so that the latter begins to heighten and transmit a climate that prevails as carking psychic yoga.

Issues are $3 each, and “Subscriptions & contact can be made through slowpoetryinamerica.wordpress.com or mcavuto@gmail.com”

Slow Poetry in America, A Poetry Quarterly: #4-6

CHASE SCENE

we’re playing chess on the unfinished concourse to nowhere. you take off your gas mask and look at me. a train slides under us, the heart flutters, the homeless who sleep in waves around us. are we homeless, you say, the city unridden in your face, the lines unbuilt. you want to organize the ocean. unwrap the fish, i say. you unwrap the fish, and the fish squints. we begin where we are. the king is dead, and the queen is dead, and the night is fat with pawns. (Ryan Eckes)

Produced in Toronto by poets Dale Smith, Hoa Nguyen and Michael Cavuto [they even have a facebook page], the Slow Poetry in America pamphlet series [see my review of the first three here; see my Queen Mob’s Teahouse interview with Dale Smith on the series here] continues with “Eight Poems” by Joanne Kyger (Issue #4: February 2016), “Storm Work, An Icarus Opera in Three Movements” by Fan Wu (Issue #5; July 2016) and “5 Poems from General Motors” by Ryan Eckes (Issue #6; January 2017). Given that timeline, one might expect a new issue to appear over the next few weeks. Subscriptions and contact can be made through slowpoetryinamerica.wordpress.com or mcavuto@gmail.com

I put my son in his body. His mother,

gracious waif of bountiful giving,

gave my son his form or flesh, yet

never put him in his place. Soup

and quilt. Laundry and porcelain.

One lifetime of ill-fitting delicacies.

To put a body to a son is precise

work: less a question of upbringing than

the transmission of synapse & false start. (Fan Wu)

There is something ultimately graceful about a small pamphlet, larger than the single poem, yet more compact than a chapbook, allowing for a pocket of work by a single author. The simplicity of the pamphlet form allows for a good enough selection of work to get a sense of what the author is doing. I’ve been aware of the work of Ryan Eckes for some time now, and have been curious about what he’s been working on lately; Fan Wu is an entirely new discovery, and a delightful one. And then, of course, there is the tug that comes through reading a small selection of previously unpublished poems (all dated 2014, but for a single 2015 poem) by the now-late Joanne Kyger:

This “I” is a Very Suave Guy

with a quicksilver ear

Super pensive darkly dense but casual lines

Now you hear it, now you see it

on the threshold glaring

through eternity’s open door policy

Who was it told you all this?

We have lots of mourning doves over here

if you want to borrow some

                                                                                                  August 15, 2014 (Joanne Kyger)

Queen Mob's Teahouse: Slow Poetry in America Newsletter: an interview with Dale Smith

As my tenure as interviews editor at Queen Mob's Teahouse continues, the fourth interview is now online: an interview I conducted with Dale Smith, on the Slow Poetry in America Newsletter. 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, and an interview with Drew Shannon and Nathan Page, also conducted by Lyndsay Kirkham.

Further interviews I've conducted myself over at Queen Mob's Teahouse include conversations with Allison Green, 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

Slow Poetry in America, A Poetry Quarterly: #1-3

Knowing how to joke in the world

but not in a poem. The solemn

paintings are the ones that attract me,

& in some there’s a secret lightness,

a simplicity of heart.

If what I’m saying is true, it won’t

be “important.” Nothing knew,

not new. That I’m amazed

by the things I’ve seen in my life.

The world, its people, places. Lost

roads, traveled by pilgrims.

Ways of life, invisible traditions.

The last of so many things:

vestiges, whispers.

There’s the hint that is a rose.

What I became aware of once

in poems. Perhaps it was a song.

The scent left behind. Follow it. (Kim Dorman, “Ground”)

I’m fascinated by the first three issues of the pamphlet series/journal Slow Poetry in America, edited and produced in Toronto by Dale Smith, Hoa Nguyen and Michael Cavuto [they even have a facebook page]. American poets who arrived north a few years back, Smith and Nguyen are also the editors/publishers of the long-running Skanky Possum, a literary press which has since expanded into an occasional series of house-readings. As the website for Slow Poetry in America informs:

Slow Poetry in America is a quarterly poetry newsletter edited by Dale Smith, Hoa Nguyen, and Michael Cavuto. Each issue is printed in Toronto, ON and features one poet, and can be mailed anywhere in the world. Annual subscriptions ($10) are made on a rolling basis and will include the next four issues.

Bookstore/Institution Subscriptions are $25.00 annually and will receive 10 copies of each newsletter. Please email mcavuto@gmail.com for Bookstore/Institution Subscriptions.

SPIA subscriptions seek only to cover the costs of printing & publishing, and do not earn any monetary profit.

Reminiscent of the pamphlets produced through Rachel Moritz’ WinteRed [see her 12 or 20 (small press) questions here] or Sylvester Pollet’s infamous Backwoods Broadsides, a series which ended an impressive twelve-year run back in 2006, Slow Poetry in America is a self-proclaimed “newsletter” that shares a title with Smith’s own most recent title, produced in 2015 by Victoria, Texas publisher Cuneiform Press, as well as an ongoing poetry and critical blog. Given that, it would seem to be that the title becomes, then, an umbrella, stretching across a larger poetic, from his own personal writing, to a collective sense of editing, reading and participating.

TROUBLE

someone who’s

in trouble

sometimes

if i make

my trouble an

intellectual thing

then i can sit at the table

sometimes (Marion Bell)

The first three issues are “GROUND,” by Texas poet Kim Dorman, “8 Poems,” by Philadelphia poet Marion Bell (June 2015) and “Sound Science: Selections,” by the late Texas (by way of Panama and New York) poet Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005) from his 1992 trade collection Sound Science (October 2015), all of which exists as an introduction to poets I hadn’t even heard of previously. It is curious to see how Slow Poetry in America, at least so far, works to bring the work of Texan poets north of the border (which makes sense, given the decade-plus that Smith and Nguyen lived and worked there), and if this series is one that works as an extension of their prior work with Skanky Possum, or if it will be working to also engage with the literary community around them, in their new home in Toronto. Either way, these are compelling publications, and teasingly small, which can only entice.

PROTECTION

Sometimes I’m saying I love you

Those words in English mean

I will not let anyone hurt you

But me (Lorenzo Thomas)