Postcards from the Imagination

*snip*

Posted by Ginger at 07:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Arrived in the mail today, a little beat-up from having been unceremoniously crammed into a mailbox half its size, but still readable. I peeked at a few of the poems, but won't really have a chance to dive in until later in the week. I'm mightily impressed with the layout though. Everything about the way it's put together seems designed to focus the reader's energies on the work—116 solid pages of poetry wrapped up between two no-nonsense covers. And I don't mean that euphemistically. It's a handsome journal, but the editors have done very little spin or sell the poems—and I find their confidence terribly seductive. You can get your own copy here. From what I've read so far, it's well worth the ten bucks, even on a student budget.

Posted by Ginger at 07:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A gesture—a certain arc

               of the wrist that waves

us past the painted line—there

                               is snappish or its air is bright cold

     obligi-desirous—wrist floating out from

the body       has lifted

              warm amaretto to lips

has smoothed a jutting fiber

                  has tunneled another’s sleeve

auto- / allo- / restless / fatigued—

Posted by Ginger at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hildred Crill's "Quite Suddenly the Woods," from the second issue of The New Hampshire Review, was selected by Verse Daily for their February Web Monthly Feature.

Posted by Ginger at 08:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seth and I made our first wedding appointment today. His mother found this great place in Rhode Island, and we're going down to take a look at it the weekend after next. From the pictures it looks nearly perfect—the water, the wood, the stone, the light. It's elegant, but also historic and quite earthy. During the "Gay 90's" (the 1890's that is), it was a Casino resort. We really wanted to find a place on the water, and this looks out over Block Island Sound. We're still fifteen months from the big day, but apparently you need to do this stuff well in advance.

Posted by Ginger at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A depressing addendum to the post below.

"On Feb. 11, a Boston College student and two non-BC students committed an act of vandalism in a Newton Campus residence hall room. Directed at a student whom the perpetrators supposed to be homosexual, the incident has spurred numerous students across campus to enact hate crime awareness campaigns and bring to light the issue of intolerance.

According to University sources, the freshman male's room had the single word "homo" written on the wall, the mattress tipped over, and a jug of a liquid left on the bureau...

"It's a shame that things like this still happen, especially in light of the New Bedford incident," said Sasha Westerman, GLC [Gay Leadership Council] vice president and A&S '06, referring to the recent attack on a homosexual male. "Since gay marriage has passed in Massachusetts, hate crimes have increased."

"The Heights" is Boston College's independent student newspaper.

Posted by Ginger at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's been some eye-rolling around the blogosphere over the cover of TNHR's latest issue. Some people wonder whether it's a marketing ploy, à la Fence, and at least one person ventriloquized our motivation as "It's hip, it's hot, it's Brokeback, baby." I posted a response elsewhere, and I'm pasting my comments here for anyone else who's curious.

"[The cover] wasn't a cynical decision, and I'm disappointed if it came off that way. We chose the image well before Brokeback hit, and we had no idea it might be perceived as faddish. Do remember we're not really 'selling' anything in that we're a free, online journal.

If people find the cover boring, I suppose part of me is pleased. We weren't going for hip or provocative. Rather, we'd hoped to do our (admittedly minor) bit to say that these kinds of images belong in the mainstream—that they shouldn't be relegated to the closet, no matter how spacious that closet has become. And I particularly liked that these two men look like real men instead of Abercrombie models. I think there’s something to the theory that culture doesn’t merely express, but creates desire, and I would have been much less interested in doing the gay equivalent of Fence’s teenage cleavage."

Posted by Ginger at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The second issue of TNHR is now online, featuring: 

New Poems Mark P. Bowen, Patrick Carrington, Hildred Crill, Phil Crippen, Ruth Danon, Melissa Jones Fiori, Jennifer S. Flescher, Patricia Giragosian, Rebecca Givens, Simon Perchik, Jay Surdukowski, and Fredrick Zydek. 

Poems + Audio Adam Benforado, Jehanne Dubrow, Ira Joe Fisher, Maureen Tolman Flannery, Rich Furman,Charles Jensen, Daniel Khalastchi, Robert Nazarene, Emily Pérez, Frederick Pollack, Dan Rosenberg, Christopher Salerno, Jeneva Stone, Todd Swift, and Barry Wallenstein. 

Reviews James Richardson’s Intergalacial: New and Selected Poems & Aphorisms, Frank Bidart’s Star Dust, and Matthew Thorburn’s Subject to Change.

Artwork
Kenny Mencher & Jo Adang 

The New Hampshire Review
P.O. Box 322
Nashua, NH 03061-0322
www.newhampshirereview.com

Posted by Ginger at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Over at Silliman's Blog today. And he's not the first poet to blog about Bravo's hit 'fashion reality' series (yeah, my head's spinning from the paradox too). Charles Jensen calls it "easily the best reality show I've ever seen." Suzanne says it's "the only reality show that I've ever watched."  Peter Pereira writes, "this show has hooked me for some reason." And Seth confesses, "I am a total slut for Bravo's Project Runway."

Me too. I wake up between four and five a.m. most Wednesday mornings, and by nine at night I'm pounding coffee so I can make through the show. Thursdays on my way to school, I find myself mentally sketching the garment I would have designed had I been tasked with previous night's challenge. Like Ron, however, I can't really sew.

The pinnacle of my own foray into the world of fashion is pictured at left. Some friends of mine used to like to throw theme parties, and I constructed this little half-stitched, half-duct-taped number for a party with a medical theme. Somehow I suspect the judges would not be impressed.

Heidi: Ginger, we felt your taste level just wasn't there.

Nina Garcia: What were you thinking? It's all puckered!

Michael Koors: It looks like the love child of Dr. Flynt and Morticia Addams!

I had a lot of fun with it though, and if I had more time and money I'd definitely sign up for a sewing class. For years now, I've been thinking about ways in which I might create poetry that's more than mere text. Music & poetry. Film & poetry. Poetry & installation art. Why not wearable poems? One of the things I'd really like to do when I get to graduate school is find talented people with whom to make some of these collaborations happen.

Speaking of which, one of the poems in TNHR's second issue is a beautiful piece by Charles Jensen called "Summer Ends," which he wrote as part of a collaboration with Kris Sanford for an artist's book. Look for it later today when the issue goes online.

Posted by Ginger at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

For this week's poetry workshop assignment, we've been asked to write a poem in meter about a place. This is my place.

I was nine years-old and a huge fan of Cyndi Lauper when she decided to film the video for Time After Time in my weird little hometown. The picture is a screen capture from the video. That's Main Street, Wharton, New Jersey, circa 1984. On the right is Betty's Department Store. The Corner Super Market (aka 'The Corner Store') is on the left. It was another world. We lived up the block, and I remember my mother sending me to the store when I was as young as five with a few dollars and a note. I'd give the note to the store's owner, and he'd send me home with a bag of groceries and change. I can't tell you how many loaves of Wonder Bread or how many packs of True Blue I fetched from this corner.

Just out of view are the town library, and across the street from it our only gas station. The pumps were on the sidewalk, and customers pulled up to the curb to fill their tanks. In the video, there's a scene—right after the diner scene—in which Cyndi runs away from her boyfriend and hides in a doorway. It's the doorway of the gas station, and you can see her running between the storefront and one of the pumps. Somehow I convinced my mother to take me out at 2 a.m. so we could watch the filming of that scene. It was incredibly cold, and there wasn't really much to watch, but I was in junior pop star heaven.

You can watch the entire video in the extended post.

Music Video Codes By HotGet.com

If the video code doesn't work, try this.
 

Posted by Ginger at 01:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The editors of the Sycamore Review have some very flattering things to say about Seth and The New Hampshire Review at their website today.

Posted by Ginger at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This poem made me wonder what it might be like to have a nude sit for a group of poets—the wild intimacy of it, the dangers and discomforts which must, I imagine, be there for painters too, but which the demands of line and light force below the surface. It made me think about our love/hate relationship with words, and the frequency with which we view text as a pale mediator between our minds and our senses. But if language is performative, what would it mean to do a model with words? And not just one poet doing a lover or friend, but a whole group of poets doing a total stranger?

Nude on a Horsehair Sofa by the Sea
by Matthea Harvey 

I don’t know what to do with his body.
It looks smooth — & heavy too —
from the way the sofa’s mahogany claws
sink into the sand. Every other wave
is brown, the ones in between a light liquor
bottle green, & the strip of wet sand
the froth laps, then leaves, is glass-
brown & shouldn’t act like mud
but does. When a seagull struts by
I see the others flick their brushes
in irritation over that spot as if to
drive it away — & me, I’m avoiding
the subject, still fretting over how to paint
the word sometimes because the pebbles
only show when the water’s had a chance
to settle. I can tell he’s secretly moving
his toes along the grain of the sofa
& back, so the hairs lie smooth, then
bristle as one wave crests & another
crashes. The woman next to me sighs.
Her clouds look like dark whales floating
in the sky, her brush hovers over
them then dips down to make
an awkward dab at the spot between
the model’s thighs. It is starting
to drizzle now & each wave has a pocked
& peaked landscape of its own & people
are folding their easels & shielding
their paintings with their bodies as they run
to the striped cabanas. Perhaps he will whisk
out a cloak & wade slowly into the water,
silk billowing about his fine white ankles.
Perhaps he has to help carry the sofa. I turn
and trudge after the others, picking a path
through the driftwood littered like collarbones
on the beach. I want a way to take it all
with me — the sag of the sofa beneath him &
the curve of the ocean which is what I think
the iris must look like from inside the eye.

Posted by Ginger at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

 
I've always wanted a pair of these. When I was a kid, my sister and I used to push thumbtacks into the soles of our saddle shoes and tap our little hearts out on the linoleum tile. When it was figure skating we wanted, we poured baby powder all over the bedroom floor, gliding and twirling and bungling double axles in our stockinged feet. Hell hath no fury like our mother after that. For gymnastics we made ourselves "uneven bars" out of the backyard swing set and sidewalk chalk; we "vaulted" over the foot of the bed by getting a running start and somersaulting onto the mattress; any curb would do for a "balance beam" as would any flat surface for "floor exercise." We were clumsy children. We did none of these things well.

Other ridiculous improvisations included braces made from tin foil and stuck on our teeth with peanut butter; retainers made from wax lips and modified paper clips; Neco Wafers as "communion" because we went to Catholic school and liked to play Church.

I'm supposed to write a poem out of childhood for my next workshop assignment, and nothing could interest me less.

Posted by Ginger at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was going to post a picture of our blizzard, but with the wind and blowing snow there's not much for the camera to see right now. My muse loves it. She's given me a poem to work on today that I might really be proud of when I'm through. Being knee-deep in that work, I don't really have much to blog about, except this:  "Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good." (Correction: Ranch-owner Katharine Armstrong on Vice President Dick Cheney's accidently shooting someone earlier in the day, from CNN.com)

Posted by Ginger at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've fallen out of the habit. Time to fall back in.

Posted by Ginger at 06:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Poetry Northwest has been revived, after a four-year hiatus, under the editorship of David Biespiel. Their new website went online today at: http://www.poetrynw.org, and they will resume print publication in March with contributions from C.K. Williams, Robert Bly, Marylin Hacker, Henri Cole, Christian Wiman, Peter Campion, and more.

Addendum: The blogosphere's own Eduardo Corral will also have work in the issue!

Posted by Ginger at 07:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I'm currently locked in a poetic death-match with the dramatic monologue. Argh!

Posted by Ginger at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

NEWS (02/04/06): Philip Fried's new book of poetry, Big Men Speaking to Little Men, will be published by Salmon Poetry (Ireland) in March. Additional information is available at the Salmon Poetry website.

Posted by Ginger at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For my poetry workshop we've been asked to write a one to two page response to an individual collection of poems each week. Though these entries are not terribly deep, I thought they might be of interest nonetheless.

Juliana Spahr, This Connection of Everyone with Lungs. (U of California Press, 2005). 

Over the winter break I asked several poets for examples of work which both stood outside the mainstream in terms of its craft, and was notable for its sincerity. Several of them recommended Juliana Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs. The collection is unusual in that its seventy-five pages are comprised of only two poems: “Poem Written After September 11, 2001” and “Poem Written from November 20, 2002 to March 27, 2003.” The first is a relatively short meditation—meditative in both the literary and literal senses, as it focuses largely on repeated patterns of breathing:

Everyone with lungs breathes the space in and out as everyone
with lungs breathes the space between the hands in an out

as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and
the space around the hands in and out

as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and
the space around the hands and the space of the room in and out… 

               As the poem progresses its scope incrementally broadens, with a new spaces being added to each stanza until ten stanzas later its environs finally include neighborhoods, cities, nations, continents, islands, oceans, troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere. Unfortunately, the repetitions became tedious after several stanzas, and despite my good will I found myself skimming past the repeated lines.

               The second poem was far more engaging, evoking a Whitmanesque “I” that bears witness to geopolitical events leading up to the Iraq War. Despite its long and frequently uneditorialized catalogues the poem feels extraordinarily intimate. I once read an interview with Mark Doty in the Cortland Review in which he talked about the need for poets to turn outward and begin writing public poetry. Last year I had a chance to ask him after a reading whether he still felt that was true, and he said that one of the primary difficulties in writing about public, and political events is that they come to us in such heavily mediated forms, through television, newspapers, the internet, etc. To my mind, part of Spahr’s genius in this book is her ability to accurately represent her own experience, which is in so many ways our experience, of the daily and nightly news. For instance:

               In the news I learn that Iraq is ready for war but most people there
               are too busy to notice the refueling of ships here in my corner of
               the world and their beginning of that long journey to their corner
               of the world.

               Even as I can’t see the refueling of ships I see ten killed in the
               Bureij refugee camp by shells from Israeli tanks on Thursday and
               then one more killed in Gaza on Sunday and then five in east
               Nepal by a bomb that might have been set by Maoists and then
               one hundred and twenty in Monoko-Zohi by various means
               because of civil war.

               Beloveds, how can we understand it all?

                Spahr’s perspective throughout the poem is limited, but it’s her willingness to embrace that limitation which produces a feeling of profound authenticity. Though her style is much more literal than my own, and therefore not something I could see myself attempting to reproduce, I would like to explore the possibilities of sincere social commentary that Spahr demonstrates in this book.

Posted by Ginger at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)