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Category Archives: Literature
Curation, not Competition: Pinterest and Poetry
For those of you who haven’t ever used it, Pinterest is a link storage site (similar to delicious) that organizes bookmarks with pictures; it’s also similar to Tumblr in that you can like and share links.* Users make “boards” and … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry
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Recent novels
A few contemporary novels I’ve read recently that I liked, with rough descriptions. 1. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes This short book is so well-written, it’s all but perfect. The plot is a little weird, and it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Literature
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NaPoWriMo Day 4: Chance
I didn’t “write any poems” yesterday, so I used chance to generate one. Some people write entire poems with chance operations, but I use them to generate material for collage/sculptural poems. So I was trying to remember a quote that … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, NaPoWriMo
Editors and Poets
A few years ago, I tried to be an Editor. Mostly, I was bad at it. I accepted more manuscripts than I had the time or financing to publish. I made a really awesome magazine called Foursquare, but publishing it … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, small press publishing
Ugly Duckling’s Digital Library
If you’re left without anything “good” to read now that Ron’s sophisticated and brilliant comment box conversation has been shut down, I’d suggest these four books from Leslie Scalapino. I came to Leslie’s work as an undergraduate at Buffalo, and … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, gender
4 Comments
The Silenced Generation
I want to comment briefly on a special phenomenon I’ve seen and experienced with regard to Ron Silliman‘s blog. It seems that to some degree, poetry’s youth is being trampled, discouraged and undermined with a potential long-term detrimental effect on … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry
100 Comments
12 or 20 Questions
In which I participate in rob mclennan’s long-running interview series. Although rob has been prodding me to do this for awhile, I didn’t feel inspired to until Dottie did it. What can I say, peer pressure works.
An evaluation of the last 10 months
I’ve finished my coursework for my Library Science degree (the MLS).
Posted in Academia, job, moving
2 Comments
Corresponding Juvenilia: 1993-1995
Poems from 8th and 9th grade– because I think it’s interesting to see how what one reads affects what one writes. During these Junior High years I liked Emily Dickinson, and I numbered my poems, feeling that if the title … Continue reading
My favorite poem in 8th grade
This Alice Notley poem, available in Grave of Light, was in our Scholastic reader in 8th grade and I identified strongly with it.
Posted in Childhood, Contemporary Poetry
2 Comments
My favorite poem in 7th Grade
My rebellion poem, from Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems. Via Bartleby. The Red Son I love your faces I saw the many years I drank your milk and filled my mouth With your home talk, slept in your house And was … Continue reading
Posted in Childhood, Modernism
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Protected: Health updates etc.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
A poem I wrote in 7th Grade
The Callow Heart Inside of anyone you see There is s heart of candle-wax and a slender string That is lighted by trivial fires of orange… So that when A heartbreaking incident Occurs The wick burns crimson and after a … Continue reading
Posted in Childhood, juvenilia
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My favorite poem in 6th Grade
As far as I remember, this was my favorite poem in 6th grade. My grandfather bought me Minou Drouet’s First Poems at a library sale. (Thanks to this blogger for typing it up.) (Academics may cf. Barthes’ “Myth Today”) “Tree … Continue reading
Posted in Childhood, Literature
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Happy Bloomsday!
In the spirit of the Twitter trends #booksthatchangedmylife and #happybloomsday, 217 words that changed my life: INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Modernism, Organic Furniture Cellar
2 Comments
Reading Lists
The last time I had time to “read for pleasure” was 2005, in the short summer months between finishing my MA and beginning the PhD. I was in Sweden and few books were available there in English, so I worked … Continue reading
Posted in Literature
16 Comments
A successful failure
Yesterday afternoon I made a giant list of almost 300 contemporary female poets compiled from three lists I’d previously made. And I asked for more. By 11pm there were over 400. By midnight there were over 500. I woke up … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, gender
5 Comments
The Poem In Your Pocket
It’s Poem in Your Pocket Day! Halloween for poetry. Carry a poem in your pocket to give to someone like a valentine or trade with someone like a baseball card. Or just hoard poems in your own pocket. Bonus points … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, gender, personal
3 Comments
Let Us Cultivate Our Garden
Only two more days to vote for the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere. I voted the year that Amy King won (I voted for Amy) and I voted for rob mclennan last year, who came in second. This year the … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, personal
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Protected: Things that are not Real
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Posted in Academia, Contemporary Poetry, health
Notes from Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie was here. No one died. My notes, as they are, not cleaned up (except to be typed rather than handwritten): laughter & forgetting –> A novel of memory becomes a political novel literature to preserve the human scale… … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, politics
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It’s LIS Finals Time
And now we get to see how I’ve managed to relate my real life to my LIS life in my final projects. First complete project: a very personal, very condensed, almost to the point of being just plain wrong, look … Continue reading
Posted in Librarianship, Literature, small press publishing
2 Comments
The Philadelphia Wireman
. Joseph Massey posted these links to Facebook and I wanted to repost them because they are fascinating: the Philadelphia Wireman and a mini-gallery of his work. I’d never heard of this person until Joe posted these links about 24 … Continue reading
Posted in art, Contemporary Poetry, visual poetry
1 Comment
30 Poems in 30 Days: Thoughts on Process
April, once uncomfortably known as National Poetry Month, has been re-branded, much more comfortably, as National Poetry Writing Month. This makes us feel less passive in our minority. The challenge is to write 30 poems in 30 days. For the … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, My Poetry, poetics
7 Comments
Let’s Call a Draft a Draft
As poets, many of us are skeptical of editors. They have the power to reject or accept our poems and even edit them, and what do they know? Those of us who are visual poets are even more skeptical. Will … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, New Poetry, visual poetry
7 Comments
Dickinson’s Music: Beyond “Amazing Grace”
When I was an undergrad taking graduate courses in the Poetics Program, one of the courses I missed out on was Susan Howe’s Emily Dickinson course (I later took her very interesting Wallace Stevens course). I loved Howe’s work but … Continue reading
Posted in Literature
3 Comments
Copyright
For one of my library classes, a group of us are making a digital library of art and literature from the Buffalo area. Subsequently, and partly because of the continuous uproar surrounding copyright and other digital libraries (namely Google Books), we … Continue reading
Posted in small press publishing
1 Comment
Subscription Deals
Two subscription deals I would buy if I had any disposable income (which I currently don’t, see previous posts on unemployment): Chax Press, $70 Alice Notley, Reason & Other Women; Anne Waldman, Matriot Acts; Charles Bernstein, Umbra; Barbara Henning, Cities … Continue reading
Posted in small press publishing
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Big Night
One of the reasons why Just Buffalo‘s fantastic new “Big Night” reading series attracts so many different Buffalo arts demographics: everybody loves good food.
Posted in Buffalo, poetry readings
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I have something to say and I’m saying it and that is poetry as I need it
“Have something worth telling in the first place.” 1. Brooklyn 2. Elisa
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, poetics
1 Comment
Gender and Blogging Redux
As you may already know, there are a couple of discussions going on about gender and poetry following my original post, one at Mark Wallace’s blog and one at Harriet. There are a couple of things I want to say, … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, gender
9 Comments
How to Write a Good Bio
As you can tell from my “about the author” blog page, different media have different ideal bios. I certainly wouldn’t send that whole thing to a magazine, and under normal situations I would not send it to a curator of … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry
1 Comment
Women in Poetry (Again)
Since I am currently out of work, I am working on a few much-delayed issues of Foursquare and I am reminded that although Foursquare is not a unique project in the world of poetry magazines, it is still a sometimes … Continue reading
Posted in Contemporary Poetry, gender, poetics
8 Comments
Protected: Elsewhere
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Posted in job, Librarianship, money, teaching
Protected: National Survivors of Suicide Day
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Thesaurus Project
So here’s the short paper that resulted from the previous post…
Difficulties of Cataloging Artists’ Books
I’m doing a few of my LIS projects on artists’ books, and I’m currently doing one on contemporary poetic objects by women, incorporating works from Hex Press, Dusie, recombinant dna press, Big Game Books, dos press, ellectrique press, and a … Continue reading
Protected: Digitess
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Update
I drove to Lowell, MA last weekend, where I met the Bootstrap boys, Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher, for the first time. Bootstrap is the mother-press of which Outside Voices is an imprint, but we had never met in real … Continue reading
Posted in My Poetry, poetry readings
6 Comments
Upcoming Readings
I’ll be giving two readings soon: one in Buffalo and one in MA. Check out the Readings page for details.
Posted in My Poetry, poetry readings
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Noriko Ambe at the Albright-Knox
Although many of the assignments I have to do for my MLS degree are dull, simplistic activities, some of the larger projects involve researching things I’m actually interested in. For example, for one of my courses my partner and I … Continue reading
Gargantuan poetry reading
Buffalo kids like to do it up big. Every year during the Small Press Book Fair, we have marathon readings– this year’s lasted for (if memory serves) 7 hours. This Friday, starting at 8pm at Sugar City (19 Wadsworth), we’ll … Continue reading
Posted in poetry readings
5 Comments
Fall Readings
I’d like to set up a couple of fall readings in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Eastern Canada, and/or Great Lakes areas. Any takers? Boston, Toronto, Cleveland, NYC, Philly, DC…
Posted in poetry readings
3 Comments
Town & Gown Reading
UB Poetics student David Hadbawnik is starting a reading series with the goal of bringing “townies” (Buffalo area poets not affiliated with the Poetics Program) and Poetics Program poets together. This schism is just one of many on the Buffalo … Continue reading
Posted in poetry readings
2 Comments
K. Lorraine Graham’s Terminal Humming
Is technically available now from Edge Books. I imagine that there’s a lot of overlap between readers of her blog and readers of mine, so you probably already know this. And if you read her blog then you already know … Continue reading
Posted in New Poetry
1 Comment
Spell/ing ( ) Bound
.. . . Spell/ing () Bound is a tripartite book, arguably harkening back to the Oulipo tradition,* by Cara Benson, Kai Fierle-Hedrick and Kathrin Schaeppi. I saw it at the Dusie Press reading in New York last month, shuddered at … Continue reading
Archive Fever
I don’t think I mentioned this here. But, I am going back to school this fall for the Master of Library Science degree.
Posted in Academia, job
5 Comments
Jeff Encke’s “Most Wanted: A Gamble in Verse”
- A toss of the dice will never abolish chance. Take advantage of Jeff Encke’s “fire sale” of this amazing poem published on playing cards. Jeff writes: When you find a moment, please take a look at the card gallery … Continue reading
Posted in publishing in miniature, visual poetry
11 Comments
Dear Reader
- I’ve decided to write single poems for single readers such that writing is publication and the reader I appeal to is the one precise reader who receives the poem. This is partly practical: I don’t have the time or … Continue reading
Posted in My Poetry, poetics, visual poetry
5 Comments
Jessica Smith
