Thank you, Chicago Reader (click here).

I've been shopping around a new manuscript but until then the forecast calls for Werewolf Weather (click here). I really love this cover drawing by Gary Sullivan. Thanks, Gary.

Visit and donate now:

Be sure to pay a visit to the 100,000 Poets for Change Kickstarter page (click here) !

Karmin, Trinidad, Mayer, Good - Tonight at Myopic Books Chicago

TONIGHT, Sunday, March 18 at Myopic Books, 7pm


JENNIFER KARMIN has published, performed, exhibited, taught, and experimented with language across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets. Her poems are widely published in anthologies and journals, like A Sing Economy, Come Together: Imagine Peace, Not A Muse, The City Visible, and in journals such as, Court Green, Everyday Genius, Fact-Simile, and The Brooklyn Rail.

Originally from Los Angeles, DAVID TRINIDAD has been called "a master of the postmodern pop-culture sublime." His work is also associated with the innovative formalism of the New York School. Alice Notley has written, "There is an unwavering light in all of Trinidad's work that turns individual words into objects, new facts." His most recent books are Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems (2011), The Late Show (2007), and By Myself (with D.A. Powell, 2009), all published by Turtle Point Press. His poems have appeared in such periodicals as The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Harper's, The Paris Review, and Tin House. Trinidad teaches at Columbia College Chicago and co-edits the journal Court Green.

BERNADETTE MAYER’s poetry has been praised by John Ashbery as “magnificent.” Brenda Coultas calls her a master of “devastating wit.” Mayer is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry, including Midwinter Day, Sonnets, The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, and Poetry State Forest. Recently published are her works Studying Hunger Journals and Ethics of Sleep. A former director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery and co-editor of the conceptual magazine 0 to 9 with Vito Acconci, Mayer has been a key figure on the New York poetry scene for decades.

PHILIP GOOD is the author of Untitled Writings from a Member of the Blank Generation (Trembling Pillow Press, 2011). He is a graduate of The School of Visual Arts and co-edited with Bill Denoyelles, the last of the mimeograph poetry magazines, Blue Smoke. He has given poetry readings all across America and abroad. He now lives in a former shtetl next to the Tsatsawassa and Kinderhook creeks with Bernadette Mayer.


Myopic Books Poetry Series curator: Larry Sawyer/Myopic Books/1564 N. Milwaukee Ave Chicago, IL 60622

Conveniently located near the Damen Blue Line CTA stop.

CSoP Weekly Salon: Two Sessions Only $100

The Chicago School of Poetics offers classes with video, audio, plus note and video sharing all happening in real time. We also have the ability to record online classes and replay them. Gotham Writers’ Workshop's online classes, by comparison, merely offer students the capability to comment in writing on one another’s work.

In addition to online classes, our Weekly Salon (click the link), for example, is relatively cheap: $50 apiece. Students can purchase as many workshops as they would like. A 20% discount even applies to bulk Weekly Salon workshop purchases:

2 Weekly Salon Workshops are $100 (no discount)


5 Weekly Salon Workshops for $200 (20% discount)

Who Would You Like to See at Myopic Books in Chicago?

Seeing David Meltzer, Ron Silliman, Duriel Harris, and Bill Berkson read at Myopic were some of the best moments of my writing life.  Sometimes it blurs together a bit because so many poets have read at Myopic Books in the past few years but now I would like to know. Who would you like to see read at Myopic Books?



Some of the poets who have read at Myopic Books over the past 6 years:

Aaron Fagin, Abraham Smith, Adam Fieled, AD Jameson, Allyssa Wolf, Amy De'Ath, Andy Fitch, Arpine Grenier, Barry Schwabsky, Bernadette Mayer, Ben Doller, Bill Allegrezza, Bill Berkson, BJ Love,  Brandon Downing, Bruce Covey, Carlos Soto-Román, Carol Novack, Carolyn Guinzio, Carrie Etter, Carrie Olivia Adams, Catherine Wagner, Charles Ries, Charlie Newman, Cheryl Clark Vermeulen, Chris Glomski, Chris Green, Christian Hawkey, Chuck Stebelton, Cole Swensen, Connor Stratman, Crag Hill, Dan Godston, Dana Ward, Daniel Borzutzky, Daniel Nester, Dave Awl, David Meltzer, David Trinidad, Debrah Morkun, Diane Wakoski, Donna Stonecipher, Duriel Harris, Ed Roberson, Edmund Berrigan, Eileen Myles, Ela Kotkowska, Elizabeth Harper, Erika Jo Brown, Erika Mikkalo, Erin Teegarden, Farrah Field, Francesco Levato, Gabriel Gudding, Garin Cycholl, Garrett Brown, Gary Sullivan, Gina Myers, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Ish Klein, James Bellflower, James Shea, James Yeary, Jason Bredle, Jason Pickleman, Jen Tynes, Jennifer Karmin, Jenny Boully, Jeremy Davies, Jerome Rothenberg, Jesse Seldess, Jessica Savitz, Jill Magi, Joel Craig, Joel Duncan, Joel Felix, Johan Jönson, Johannes Göransson, John Beer, John Gallaher, John Keene, John Tipton, John Wilkinson, Jon Cotner, Jon Thompson, Joshua Adams, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Judith Goldman, K. Silem Mohammad, Karyna McGlynn, Katy Lederer, Kerri Sonnenberg, Kevin Coval, Kim Gek Lin Short, Kostas Anagnopoulos, Krista Franklin, Kristin Dykstra, Kristina Jipson, Kristy Bowen, Kristy Odelius, Larry Sawyer, Latasha Nevada Diggs, Laura Carter, Lea Graham, Lewis Freedman, Lina ramona Vitkauskas, Linh Dinh, Lisa Fishman, Lisa Janssen, Liz Marino, Luis Valadez, Luis Valadez, MacGregor Card, Mark Tardi, Mark Wallace, Marvin Tate, Matvei Yankelevich, Maxine Chernoff, Megan Volpert, Melissa Severin, Michael Robbins, Michael Robins, Michael Rothenberg, Mirela Tanta, Monika Rinck, Nate Slawson, Nathalie Stephens, Nathan Hoks, Nico Vassilakis, Nina Corwin, Oni Buchanan, Patrick Culliton, Patrick Durgin, Paul Hoover, Philip Good, Philip Jenks, Ralph Hamilton, Ray Hsu, Reb Livingston, Robert Archambeau, Robert Fernandez, Roberto Harrison, Roger Bonair-Agard, Ron Silliman, Sandra Doller, Sarah Riggs, Seth Landman, Simon Pettet, Simone Muench, Stella Radulescu, Stephanie Anderson, Steve Halle, Thax Douglas, Tim Kinsella, Tim Yu, Todd Heldt, Tom Orange, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Tony Trigilio, Tyehimba Jess, Uljana Wolf, Wayne Miller, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Zach Harris

MYOPIC BOOKS CHICAGO
1564 N. Milwaukee Ave Chicago, IL 60622
Conveniently located near the Damen Blue Line CTA stop.
Contact: 773.862.4882 / Larry Sawyer, curator

Dylan Thomas: Wild Child

I was recently marveling over this poem by Dylan Thomas, "Who are you who is born in the next room..." (published in 1945) from a series of pattern poems called Vision and Prayer because of what it does or enacts so successfully and in doing so transcends its arbitrary form. I don’t have the entire series in front of me, so it may be that this particular shape has some relevance that isn’t obvious when it’s viewed out of context because apparently these shapes form a series. What seems most interesting to me is how this writing works so well to set a scene and create a poetic equation with an ending that comes as somewhat of a surprise in a visceral way with such depth of metaphor, while it almost completely resists its own rhyme scheme. It provides an almost perfect balance between meaning and form that still manages to raise interesting questions because of certain effects. I’m drawn at the outset to the two somewhat cavernous caesuras. The first comes after “In the birth.” It seems appropriate that the poet creates this gap in the line after the word birth (where the reader nearly falls in), and the second occurs after the word “alone.” Both caesuras offer a perfect physical illustration of what is being described because the reader is forced to involuntarily pause after these words, which not only gives them emphasis but reemphasizes in a very graphic way the visual provided a few lines earlier with “I can hear the womb opening.”

From the poem’s opening there is a double meaning established because dramatic tension is established succinctly in the first three words. The intentional ambiguity almost has the reader questioning himself or this might also be Thomas asking the question of himself.

Dualities cascade throughout it. In the idea that Jesus was man and god. The two physically separated rooms exist showing the reader separate from what goes on in the other room and mention of a “wall thin as a wren’s bone” seems to underscore a difference between what the speaker perceives as the natural and unnatural world. “Wren bone” is also an anagram of “new borne.” Other imagery underscores an idea that this event on some level is holy but again, a duality within the structures finds the reader noticing a shift of perspective in the mirror image of the poem that begins as the lines reach a midpoint and then recede in the second half. The poem’s structure mimics what is described, i.e., the poem itself is turning or shifting. These lines could be read in multiple ways “In the birth/bloody room/unknown to the …” or “In the birth bloody/room unknown to the…”

The poem, although only 71 words, does start with a vision and end with a sort of prayer but is Thomas describing his own thoughts on his own life that started with a similar birth but resulted in the many physical, mental and domestic problems which plagued him for years? Or is this a meditation on our relation to the natural world and the unnatural, as represented in the poem, is the overlay of religiosity that is placed upon us that begins at birth. Thomas encapsulates a prime moment, birth, which serves as a hinge between these two “worlds” i.e., the natural and the world of civilization and all the socialization that civilization entails.


As the wall is a part of the natural world or natural order, the infant is not, yet anyway, and the point is emphasized internally as the rhyme scheme pairs “wild” and “child” together as a final example of the mysterious duality that ripples throughout what might have been a poem that Thomas wrote in one sitting in a very short amount of time.

The visual pattern creates interesting parallels that otherwise might not have existed had the poem been left aligned in a ragged block. The final interesting afterthought is that the form provides the reader with an object to be stared at, which it gives it an element of spectacle. Because of its symmetry the object simultaneously resembles a box, a shape of some sort like a pyramid reflected in water, a crucifix, the human form with arms outspread, and finally and obviously a diamond. Sixteenth Century alchemist Agrippa also include this shape and its opposite, which would look like a jagged hourglass, in his “Of the Proportion, Measure, and Harmony of Man’s Body,” which included diagrams of geometric shapes aligned with the human form. These two shapes comprise the ebb and flow of the alternating patterns in the book.

By starting with such an unanswerable question, by including such vivid imagery (e.g., heart print), and ending with such a violent twist the poem registers like a minor earthquake and we stare down into its dark abyss and wonder what it meant to the author, as well as what it might mean to everyone facing the riddle of human existence.

Announcing The Chicago School of Poetics at www.chicagoschoolofpoetics.com

The Chicago School of Poetics site is now up (rollover and click it) and ready for inspection. Thanks, Poetry Foundation, for mentioning it on Harriet.







Face-to-face classes will be held at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E Washington St., Pedway East and online classes require only some basic computer system requirements for the 8-week long classes. You’ll need a computer with:
• Macintosh, Windows, or Linux operating systems.
• A microphone (most have one built in) for voice conferencing.
• A web cam for video conferencing.
• An internet connection (preferably high-speed, like cable or DSL).
and that’s it! Sign-up is quick and easy via PayPal.


Rollover and click on each of the following to read more:

• Poetics: Level I

• Erasure to Automatism

• The Poetry of Cubism and discovering your

• Personal Archeology.

Register today. Class size is limited for maximum instruction.

New ::: Myopic Poetry Series summer dates

Saturday, June 11 - Udayan Das, Connor Stratman


Saturday, June 18 - Peter O'Leary, Ray Bianchi


Saturday, July 9 - Stella Radulescu, Nina Corwin


Saturday, July 30 - Andrea Rexilius, Megan Martin


Saturday, August 6 - Christeene Fraser, Anthony Madrid


Saturday, August 13 - Mike Hauser, Noelle Kocot


Saturday, August 20 - Laura Goldstein, Chris Glomski


Saturday, October 8 - Chicago Calling w/Dan Godston: including Jen Besemer, Tim Armentrout, Eric Elshtain, Gregory Fraser, Nick Demske, Dolly Lemke, William Allegrezza, Philip Jenks, & the Next Objectivists

New interviews up at Big Bridge and WWAATD

The new issue of Michael Rothenberg’s Big Bridge includes an interview with me about my new book, Unable to Fully California plus

The letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure, the poetry of Lew Welch, and poetry by Basil King, Sandy Berrigan, Clayton Eshleman, Anne Gorick, Susan McKechnie, Robert Kelly, J.J. Blickstein, and many others, along with translations of Rimbaud by Bill Zavatsky, Rilke by Art Beck, Nakahara Chuya by Jerome Rothenberg, and 25 Venezuelan poets translated by Rowena Hill and reviews of books by Valery Oisteanu, Louis Armand, Bobbi Lurie, Ami Kaye, Jack Foley and A.D. Winans among many other features. I’m still pouring through it all.

Also: check out this mini-interview in Daniel Nester’s We Who Are About to Die where I discuss 1970s vintage leather jackets, Stanley Kubrick, Santorini, my new book Unable to Fully California, Pocahontas, 1920s Paris, and Billy Joel.

PRESS RELEASE:::::THE DUST OF SUNS BY RAYMOND ROUSSEL

For Immediate Release

2/19/2011

Contact: John Beer

jbeer@uchicago.edu

773.255.5587



The Chicago Poetry Project presents

a staged reading of the play

March 4-6; Fri, Sat 8pm; Sun 3pm.
The Charnel House, 3421 W. Fullerton St., 773.871.9046


The Dust of Suns

by Raymond Roussel

Trans. Harry Mathews



French poet, novelist and playwright Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) faced almost universal incomprehension and derision during his lifetime, for works that neglected traditional character and plot development in favor of the construction of elaborate descriptions and anecdotes based on hidden wordplay. While the premieres of his self-financed plays caused near-riots, admirers included Surrealists Andre Breton and Robert Desnos, who called The Dust of Suns (1926) “another incursion into the unknown which you alone are exploring.” Roussel never enjoyed the posthumous fame of his hero Jules Verne, but he has exercised a powerful fascination upon later writers and artists including the French Oulipo group, Marcel Duchamp, John Ashbery, Michel Foucault, and Michael Palmer. New editions of his novels and poetry are forthcoming this year from Princeton and Dalkey Archive.



Like much of Roussel’s writing, The Dust of Suns has a colonial setting. Against the backdrop of fin-de-siecle French Guiana, a convoluted treasure hunt unfolds. Along the way, Roussel fully indulges his penchant for bizarre invention and juxtaposition. The Frenchman Blache seeks his uncle’s inheritance: a cache of gems whose location lies at the end of a chain of clues that includes a sonnet engraved on a skull and the recollections of an albino shepherdess. Meanwhile, his daughter Solange is in love with Jacques—but all Jacques knows of his parentage is a mysterious tattoo on his shoulder...



This script-in-hand performance of Roussel’s play, directed by John Beer, with design by Caroline Picard, features an array of Chicago writers and artists. Performers include: James Tadd Alcox, Joshua Corey, Joel Craig, Monica Fambrough, Sara Gothard, Judith Goldman, Samantha Irby, Lisa Janssen, Jennifer Karmin, Jamie Kazay, John Keene, Jacob Knabb, Francesco Levato, Brian Nemtusak, Travis Nichols, Jacob Saenz, Larry Sawyer, Suzanne Scanlon, Jennifer Steele and Nicole Wilson.



Where: The Charnel House, 3421 W. Fullerton St., 773.871.9046



When: March 4-6; Fri, Sat 8pm; Sun 3pm. ALL PERFORMANCES ARE FREE.

The New Chicago School

[I'm reposting this here now that digital emunction is going out of business. I had linked to it when it first appeared but soon the link will dry up, I'm guessing.]


My pro­posal: That the clos­est thing we presently have to a “School” of younger, rig­or­ously inno­v­a­tive poets in the U.S. (one that stands clos­est chance of being ret­ro­spec­tively seen as akin in sig­nif­i­cance to the NY School in its first-​generation, proto-​formation years–and when I say “School” I mean in that sense of for­tu­itous con­stel­la­tion, some­thing very dif­fer­ent from a self-​identified ten­dency or “movement”) is what I’ll call the New Chicago School. It’s a list of accom­plished, exper­i­men­tal writ­ers, more poet­i­cally focused as a col­lec­tive, per­haps, than the con­tents list of the City Vis­i­ble anthol­ogy of a couple years back, and more geo­graph­i­cally focused, too, inas­much as all the poets have roots in the city, even though a few of them have recently moved else­where (though in most cases still nearby), and one now lives abroad:

William Fuller, Ed Rober­son (these first two the elder fig­ures of the group), Anthony Madrid, John Tipton, Devin John­ston, Peter O’Leary, Robyn Schiff, Bill Alle­grezza, Dan Beachy-​Quick, Michael Rob­bins, John Beer, Arielle Green­berg, Lisa Fish­man, Jesse Seldess, Nick Twem­low, Suzanne Buffam, Srikanth Reddy, Jen­nifer Scap­pet­tone, Francesco Levato, Eric Elsh­tain, Jen­nifer Karmin, Leila Wilson, Nathalie Stephens, Joshua Marie Wilkin­son, Garin Cycholl, Joel Felix, Chris Glom­ski, Erica Bern­heim, Larry Sawyer, Patrick Durgin, Joshua Corey out in the sub­urbs, Tony Trig­ilio, Daniel Borzutzky (though some­thing of a sep­a­rate case, the work of these last two, perhaps)… and a gaggle of bril­liant scholar-​editors asso­ci­ated, past or present, with the Chicago Review, along with Robert Archam­beau, on the out­skirts of town at Lake Forest.

To these names one could add an active (and often activist) group of even younger poets and pub­lish­ers: Michael Slosek, Kerri Son­nen­berg, Steve Halle, Eric Unger, Luke Daly, Brooks John­son, and Bar­rett Gordon, for exam­ple (the latter four have close con­nec­tions, and their work engages the visual arts and music scenes, as well).

For sure, there are others I’m just blank­ing on, or don’t know, and apolo­gies for that (please add). And obvi­ously (!) there are all kinds of superb poets in Chicago doing impor­tant work who don’t quite fit the avant-​aesthetic para­me­ters of the group­ing–Don Share being one promi­nent case, or David Trinidad, another.

From a poetic stand­point, what would jus­tify the set? It is a diverse group (as was the orig­i­nal NY School) and a large one, but it’s held together by a vibrant, active scene and cer­tain broad affini­ties of poetic pre­dis­po­si­tion and–quite often, and with the nec­es­sary excep­tions–affect. The tilt is towards a “scholarly,” brainy, less “pop-cultural” and more self-​consciously “critical” mode than tends to be the case around St. Mark’s, for exam­ple. And, I’d argue, the work by and large tends to be more the­mat­i­cally ambi­tious, more novel and chal­leng­ing in its reg­is­ters and forms, more earnestly in tune with the inter­na­tional than the work of the younger NY scene, still largely caught, the latter, within tonal frames of the hip, the pop, the ver­nac­u­lar, the anec­do­tal, the flarf.

I know that some of the poets above–John­ston, O’Leary, Tipton, and Fuller–have already been “aesthetically” grouped together by Stephen Burt (Bobby Baird has pointed out here that this group rep­re­sents a rhetor­i­cal and formal drift locally known for some time already as “Flood Poetry”), in his recent essay “The New Thing,” where he also iden­ti­fies recent theory coming out of the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago as key source for what he sees as a devel­op­ing cur­rent of poetic epis­te­mol­ogy. Burt is refer­ring to “Thing Theory,” as pro­mul­gated by, among others, Dou­glas Mao and Bill Brown, the latter living in Hyde Park, appar­ently. In short, these younger poets are turn­ing away from the still-​fashionable modes of lin­guis­tic and con­cep­tual abstrac­tion and towards a redis­cov­ery of “ref­er­ence” and “con­crete, real things,” tend­ing to render their expe­ri­ence with terse­ness and con­ci­sion. Though some of the poets he names, it should be noted, are not exactly laconic…

Now, I fully agree with Baird, in his post here some months back, report­ing on afore­said essay, that Burt is a ter­rific critic. I sup­pose Burt and Adam Kirsch are more or less neck and neck right now to be the next Helen Vendler, Burt the horse on the left, Kirsch the one on the right, strid­ing to the pole, pulling their crit­i­cal sulkies behind. (Though who, one won­ders, will be the next Mar­jorie Perloff?) So there’s no ques­tion he’s very good. But I find his neo-​Objectivist “Thing” group­ing to be some­thing of a stretch: John­ston, Mark Nowak, Juliana Spahr, Joseph Massey, and Jen­nifer Moxley, for exam­ple, placed in the same stable accord­ing to the poets’ (very dif­fer­ent) ren­der­ings of their atten­tions to objects and their (usu­ally wildly dif­fer­ent) the­matic appli­ca­tion of these phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal encoun­ters? Well, OK, I guess, though really, I wonder what U.S. poetry since Williams’s isn’t haunted at least a little by some manner of Husser­lian susurra­tion inside it. Come to think of it, forget Williams; even spooky Dick­in­son is chock-​full of stuff and Things. So is Whit­man, and in over­drive, though he’s not quite “con­cise,” so maybe he wouldn’t qual­ify as a “thing” poet. In any case, what’s all that “new” about the New Thing, if such a thing actu­ally exists, is not all that clear.

As you can see, I feel Burt’s argu­ment is a bit forced and con­strain­ing, a bit too much of a bit and halter, as it were. (Inci­den­tally, inter­est­ing to me, and as I wrote Burt after I first saw his essay, I’m pretty sure the first-​ever seri­ous appli­ca­tion of Thing Theory to post-​avant poetry, includ­ing quo­ta­tions from Mao and Brown, et. al, was in Eric Hayot’s 2005 PMLA essay, “Araki Yasu­sada: Author, Object.”) In any case, both Baird and John Latta have pretty neatly taken Burt apart on all this.

And maybe my grumpi­ness with Burt’s bridling clas­si­fi­ca­tion isn’t all that nec­es­sary, anyway. Supe­rior poets will almost never try to con­form to this or that critic’s tax­o­nomic cri­te­ria, and I’m sure some­one like Burt would be the last to want them to. The point I’m trying to make, though per­haps I don’t even have to, is that you don’t need–as again, the New York poets proved, or the Black Moun­tain poets proved, or the Beats proved, or even the Objec­tivists proved–any kind of solid critical-​philosophical frame to con­sti­tute a vig­or­ous “school,” or even ten­dency, of poetry. You don’t even need a quasi one. All you need is a locale(s), smart ambi­tious people, and a cer­tain affec­tive habi­tus (often found in tav­erns) that is friendly, con­tentious, gos­sipy, mutu­ally sup­port­ive, and pro­fes­sion­ally inces­tu­ous to some degree. The modal, orga­niz­ing affini­ties, which rarely funnel down to strong affini­ties of “pro­gram,” grow out of these. If some­thing is right, and who knows what that is or how it works, things flower.

So I’m making the case that there is some­thing that has devel­oped in Chicago over the past few years, an accre­tion of poetic felic­i­ties whose parts and sum are unri­valed by any other avant locale in the coun­try: St. Mark’s has a wealth of talent and enough in-​house sound for a School, but the tex­tual ambi­tion seems com­par­a­tively slight; Austin has Slow Poetry, and this is full of promise, but it’s more an embry­onic move­ment, not a School; the Bay Area has a great scene, but the crazy var­ie­ga­tion of it all (see Bay Area Poet­ics) makes any notion of School unten­able; Philadel­phia is loaded with smarts, but true Schools of poetry cannot abide ven­er­a­ble Head­mas­ters (well, OK, except­ing the Sons of Ben, during the reign of Charles I); Iowa City has the most expert prac­ti­tion­ers of the period tachisme, but that is not any kind of School, it is a career; Prov­i­dence has riches, but it takes more than stu­dents; Buf­falo is home to some fine out­lier poets, but SUNY is cov­ered in snow; Boston, appar­ently, has fallen into the sea.

In con­clu­sion, what I’m propos­ing (it would appear I am begin­ning to repeat myself) is some­thing that’s begin­ning to have a sense of the self-​evident to it already, I think, and no doubt others have noticed it, too: that Chicago, right now, is home to the most inter­est­ing and vital avant “poetic cluster” in the country.

And I feel con­fi­dent enough of the claim to name it again, even though I know the name is not all that flashy, but that’s appro­pri­ate to the city’s spirit, too: The New Chicago School.

–Kent John­son

[One hun­dred miles from Wrigley Field, in Freeport, Illinois]

Vanitas 5: Film :::: available now

Purchase Vanitas, Vol. 5 , because it's available now with: Louis Armand, Rae Armantrout, John Ashbery, Mary Joe Bang, Michael Basinski, Michael Brownstein, Tom Clark, Steve Dalachinsky, Ray DiPalma, Elaine Equi, Clayton Eshleman, Jim Feast, Richard Hell, Robert Hershon, Anselm Hollo, Jack Kimball, Gerard Malanga, Eileen Myles, Jerome Sala, Tom Savage, Larry Sawyer, Ilka Scobie, Peter Jay Shippy, David Shapiro, Tony Towle, Anne Waldman, and John Yau among others .. (that's the editor Vincent Katz,in Vienna, as photographed by Vivien Bittencourt)

Unable to Fully California (Otoliths Press, 2010)

Unable to Fully California with cover by Krista Franklin is officially available on Lulu and Amazon .






I love the clear style, unforced music. It is not so much a strange poetry as the poetry of a stranger, the way Bishop was a Brazilian in Boston and a Bostonian in Brazil. I fell in love with your “blue fruit” and “inescapable tomorrow,” also what seems like renunciation not of sentimentality but of cliché …I like even the quasi-Romantic dislocations here: “There is a beauty to ice/only a statue understands.” I’m not a statue, so I only partially understand, but that should be more than enough for Sawyer’s uncanny picnic on no grass … seemed as real as the Bronx, and I couldn’t stop thinking: I am so lucky that this poetry is so good.

—David Shapiro


The split infinitive title that is Unable to Fully California prompts the question: What in 2010 is most real? Larry Sawyer leads us in response to “the exotic trigonometry” that invokes twirled concepts, blended wines, plus deliciously intentional mistakes. In this spree of sight and sound, nouns take up residence while collocating in new roles as verbs alive in trans-plantation. The tenor and vehicle of similes yield a vivid array of bleached blond poems that skid across the page. Their x axis is transmuted from horizon line to stars as yet unnamed from which we readers readily infer we’re not in Kansas anymore.

—Sheila E. Murphy



The poetry of Larry Sawyer arrives free of any investment in a “poetics” or worldview and therefore ties its shoes on the run: “The city is a Smith and Wesson covered in noon.” The sublime lies in “covered in noon,” the waking world in the Smith and Wesson. So there’s a spontaneity of composition (anything can happen and does) that reminds us of what René Char was supposed to have been. On first impression, the poems can seem scattershot, like the art works of Niki de Saint Phalle composed by shotgun. Some of the pellets form patterns, some impressions they make are deeper than others, and some even pierce the metal canvas. Because Sawyer’s style is so open, the casual and intense find comfort in each other and the remarkable detail emerges: “What horizon / spreads in the distance / muscles ripening?” Much of this work is therefore fresh and unexpectable, like the final line of his elegy at Char’s gravesite: “Quiet snow, gossip over the hero’s grave.”

—Paul Hoover

New Myopic Poetry Dates, 1564 N. Milwaukee, Chicago, 7pm

Sunday, July 25

Devin King & Peter O'Leary



Saturday, August 7

Amy De'Ath, John Wilkinson, Kristina Jipson & Joel Duncan



Tuesday, August 17

Nico Vassilakis, mIEKAL aND, Crag Hill, and James Yeary



Friday, September 10

Catherine Wagner & Dana Ward



Saturday, September 18th

Adam Golaski & Jennifer Karmin



Saturday, October 2

Chicago Calling with Dan Godston (guests to be announced)



Saturday, October 16

Mark Wallace




Saturday, October 30

Carol Novack






Past readers at Myopic Books include:

Duriel Harris, Joel Craig, Jessica Savitz, Mark Tardi, Thax Douglas, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Jennifer Karmin, Lisa Janssen, Brandi Homan, Daniel Borzutzky, Katy Lederer, Gabriel Gudding, Patrick Durgin, Kristin Dykstra, Krista Franklin, Tim Yu, Marvin Tate, Liz Marino, Dan Godston, Bruce Covey, Daniel Nester, Ed Roberson, Francesco Levato, Gina Myers, Simon Pettet, Joel Felix, Jason Bredle, Diane Wakoski, Jenny Boully, Todd Heldt, Eileen Myles, Tyehimba Jess, Michael Robins, Nate Slawson, Philip Jenks, Garin Cycholl, Kristy Odelius, Ela Kotkowska, Melissa Serverin, Bob Archambeau, Garrett Brown, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Carrie Olivia Adams, Jesse Seldess, Arpine Grenier, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Patrick Culliton, John Beer, Kostas Anagnopoulos, Lea Graham, Jeremy Davies, John Tipton, Charlie Newman, Edmund Berrigan, Gene Tanta, AD Jameson, Joshua Adams, Carrie Etter, Dave Awl, Chris Green, Bill Allegrezza, Peter O'Leary, Nathalie Stephens, Megan Volpert, Luis Valadez, Simone Muench, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Carolyn Guinzio, Chris Glomski, Farrah Field, Zach Harris, Lauren Levato, Steve Halle, David Meltzer, Paul Hoover, Kerri Sonnenberg, Cheryl Clark Vermeulen, K. Silem Mohammad, James Bellflower, Aaron Fagin, Maxine Chernoff, Tom Orange, Fred Sasaki, Wayne Miller, Karyna McGlynn, Tony Trigillio, David Trinidad, Kent Johnson, Linh Dinh, Judith Goldman, Reb Livingston, Jen Tynes, Elizabeth Harper, Mirela Tanta, Erin Teegarden, Chuck Stebelton, Stella Radulescu, Roberto Harrison, Charles Ries, Kristy Bowen, Bill Berkson, Oni Buchanan, Donna Stonecipher, Abraham Smith, Ray Hsu and many others...

Bright Lighghts, Big City

Is the cultural mix lonelier, emptier, thinner and far less interesting now than it was in the 1960s? I would guess not lonelier or emptier, given that more are writing poetry now than at virtually any other time in American history. As to whether it's less interesting, that's a purely subjective question, but again not from my perspective, although all of these players are some of my heroes/heroines of poetry. Of course, Saroyan's poem "lighght" is still the pop-cultural, conceptual tour-de-force it always was.

New Myopic Poetry Series Dates

Come spend some time in a cozy bookstore rubbing elbows with poets and ... books. The Myopic Books Poetry Series is free, which is best of all. This, however, is an interior shot of Filter, the venerable Wicker Park landmark, while it was still kicking.

Myopic Books
1564 N. Milwaukee Ave Chicago, IL 60622
Contact: 773.862.4882
larrysawyerpoet@yahoo.com


Saturday, January 23 : Roger Bonaire-Agard & Kevin Coval


Sunday, January 24 : Nick Demske & Michael Bernstein

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IN CONJUNCTION WITH
The Chicago Review
Saturday, January 30 : Christian Hawkey, Uljana Wolf, & Monika Rinck

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Sunday, January 31 : Robert Fernandez & Anthony Madrid


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Sunday, February 7 : Philip Jenks & Allyssa Wolf


Saturday, February 20 : Michael Robbins & Daniel Borzutzky


Sunday, February 21 : Aldo Alvarez & Dave Awl


Sunday, February 28 : Jon Thompson & Lisa Fishman


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Sunday, March 7 : Michelle Taransky & Jordon Stempleman


Saturday, March 14 : Jamie Kazay & Lina ramona Vitkauskas


Sunday, March 15 : William Allegrezza & Chris Glomski


Saturday, March 20 : Seth Landman & Lewis Freedman


Sunday, March 28 : Carrie Olivia Adams & Josh Corey

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Saturday, April 3 : Laura Carter & Erika Mikkalo

Sunday, April 4 - Steve Halle & John Keene

Wednesday, April 21 - Jerome Rothenberg

Saturday, April 24 - Ben Doller & Sandra Doller

Sunday, April 25 : Barry Schwabsky & Matvei Yankelevich

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Sunday, May 2 : Connor Stratman & Philip Jenks

Sunday, May 9 : Robert Archambeau & Don Share

Saturday, May 15 : Brandon Downing & Macgregor Card

Sunday, May 16 : Aaron Fagan & Daniela Olszewska

Sunday, May 23 : Andy Fitch, John Cotner, & David Trinidad

Sunday, June 13 : Debrah Morkun & Kim Gek Lin Short

Thursday, June 24 : Greg Purcell & Joel Craig

Saturday, July 10 : Chicago/Milwaukee Poetry Fest!
Roberto Harrison, Nick Demske, Mike Hauser, Brenda Cardenas, Caryl Pagel, Larry Sawyer & more!

Saturday, October 16 : Mark Wallace

Saturday, October 30 : Carol Novack
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Metrophobia: Poetry as Last House on the Left

Are you afraid of poetry?

I’m afraid of it only to the extent that it has given me some sense of the awesome power of language to expand awareness. So, to some extent poetry is a conduit that has increased my awareness and an expanded awareness can seem to shift our perspective and unfamiliar ground can be frightening, but can’t that particular definition of frightening also be more aptly described as “exhilarating”? My two cents.

There's an interesting post at Robert Archambeau's great blog, Samizdat, re: “poetry is being read by an ever-smaller slice of the American reading public” which begs the question “is it being taught ‘wrong’”?

When poetry is defined as 'self-expression,' which is how I believe that it might be taught at the high school level, then students of poetry walk away with a stunted awareness of the possibilities of language. In fact, most would probably opt to get their self-expression ya-yas out in any other way that might be construed as more "fun." Making a movie for YouTube or starting a rock band for example. Poetry is a distinct art form with distinct tricks of the trade. If no awareness of craft is imbued in students then there won't be any appreciation of the multi-levels of meaning and the depth of observation apparent in poetry that was written by the most skilled practitioners of the art.

(And further “news” today at HuffPo about the issue.)

Of course, the fact that fewer people seem to be reading poetry can also have much to do with the fact that we’re witnessing a huge shift in how information itself is being transmitted. From newspapers and books to the Internet, for example. You’re reading this now via computer screen rather than a printed page, but I’m glad you tuned in. Here are a few poems that can help you to expand your own parameters. (This is a pic of Drew Barrymore after her first reading of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.)


Here are a few poems that are well worth the fright.

Song by Frank O’Hara

from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein

No Liquor in the House by Kenward Elmslie

Two Poems by Nicanor Parra

Five Poems by Aimé Césaire (trans. by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman)

To Brooklyn Bridge by Hart Crane

In the forest of symbols

Are poets synesthesiacs? I do know that “To taste the wine of speech” (as one poet put it) helps to describe our world in a way that illustrates the gray areas of experience—a memory is often collage. It’s a rinse cycle in the mind of every available sensory detail regarding a person, event, or period in time.






Hey, you’re doing it, like I didn’t tell you
to, my sinking laundry boat, point of departure,
my white pomegranate, my swizzle stick.
We’re leaving again of our own volition
for bogus patterned plains streaked by canals,
maybe. Amorous ghosts will pursue us
for a time, but sometimes they get, you know, confused and
forget to stop when we do, as they continue to populate this
fertile land with their own bizarre self-imaginings.

—John Ashbery, “Mottled Tuesday”


The Sufi poet Attar to describe Rumi said …"There goes a river dragging an ocean behind it." So, poets are used to using figurative language to describe and bring new life and interest to the mundane. And poets have been writing of memory throughout the ages. As Ana Akhmatova wrote in her poem “Lot’s Wife.”


There are three periods of memory.
The first of them is like a yesterday,
The soul basks in the blessings of their vault,
The body takes its glory in their shade.
Laughter has not yet passed away, tears gush,
The blot is not yet bleached out of the desk,
The kiss, like a heart's seal, is terminal,
Is singular and unforgettable...
But this does not last long before the vault
Has vanished overhead. And in some backwoods
Neighborhood, in a solitary house
Where summers leave the winters' chill warmed over,
Where spiders weave, where all things are in dust,
Where lovestruck letters lead a crumbling half-life,
Sly portraits change into their different selves.


And Emily Dickinson wrote “Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine.” I guess it’s always been this reorganization of the senses that interests me most about poetry.

Anne Salz, a Dutch musician and visual artist, perceives sound as swatches of color that she incorporates into her paintings. "The painting represents the opening of the concerto for four violins. I listen to the music while I paint. First, the music gives me an optimistic, happy feeling and I perceive red, yellow, and orange colors in a great variety with little contrast. It looks like a field of these colors. I perceive the color field as a musical chord. You can compare it with the colors of a blanket or cover made of autumn leaves." Her painting "Vivaldi" was a result of what she "saw" while listening to Vivaldi's music.

Neurologist Richard Cytowic identified synesthesia as meeting some of the following criteria:

1. Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic.
2. Synesthetic perceptions are spatially extended, meaning they often have a sense of "location." For example, synesthetes speak of "looking at" or "going to" a particular place to attend to the experience.
3. Synesthetic percepts are consistent and generic (i.e., simple rather than pictorial).
4. Synesthesia is highly memorable.
5. Synesthesia is laden with affect.

Some artists who also happened to be synesthetes include Duke Ellington, David Hockney, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Liszt, Wassily Kandinsky and the guitarist John Mayer. This claim might be a little more obvious as it relates to Kandinsky’s painting versus, say, John Mayer’s guitar playing, but the topic is intrinsically interesting. It may have been Charles Baudelaire, (first as he was in many things), to have first written in a modern way about the effects of synesthesia in his poem “Correspondences.”

Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.

Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.

There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant

That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.