2nd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 27 :: BENJAMIN WIESSNER on HARRYETTE MULLEN
I am going to start with an admission—I have a deep and varied past with the poetry of Harryette Mullen. Her masterpiece, Sleeping with the Dictionary, opened my eyes to so many possibilities in poetry. The experience I had is described best by her line, “I’ve been licked all over by the English tongue.” Read More Read More
2nd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 :: DAY 3 :: RYAN NOWLIN on NORMA COLE
Cole (center) with Anne Waldman (l) and Marjorie Welish (r) at the Poetry Project, 2012 Norma Cole, an experimental poet and visual artist who has lived in the Bay Area since 1977, has received great acclaim for, as she puts it, her “openness to traditions and practices, artists and writings, radically divergent from her own.” Cole’s poetics derive from two major influences, George Oppen and contemporary French poets, many of which were... Read More
2nd ANNUAL NAPOMO 30/30/30 : DAY 2 :: Gary Sloboda on Buck Downs
Sifting the Workflow: A Comment On The Poetry of Buck Downs Buck Downs is a Washington D.C. poet whose work I’ve been reading for years. Downs’ poetry arrives, old school, on postcards in my mailbox on a monthly basis. As a regular recipient of his work, I’ve become a follower and admirer of Downs’ poetic workmanship, his diligent constructions. It is that sense of a steadily pieced together form in Downs’ work that leads me to think here... Read More
2nd Annual 30/30/30 Poetry Month Series :: Inspiration, Community, Tradition :: Day 1 :: Overview / Editor Lynne DeSilva-Johnson on Noah Eli Gordon and Anis Mojgani
The fisherman from Anis Mojgani on Vimeo. HOOOOOOOWOW! Poetry month is upon us once more, and do we ever have a line up for you this year! Last year we initiated a series that generated such an outpouring of goodwill and gratitude that before it was over we were already taking names to participate in the 2013 effort, which I am honored to kick off today. If you are new or newish to Exit Strata, and aren’t familiar with the series’ intentions,... Read More
EVOLUTION :: NEWS and OPPORTUNITIES
Hello, Exit Strata family! what an exciting year 2013 has already been. It’s been a while since we checked in and shared a little update about goings on with our ever-evolving organization, and there’s so much to tell you! Read on below for announcements, upcoming events, and myriad opportunities for you to submit, get more involved, and co-create! PRINT: PRINT!:DOCUMENT Series 1 (front; l-r: Considine, Runge/Kropa, Hoffman, Quinlan) As... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 30! (Could it be?) :: Lindsey Boldt on Aimé Césaire
The other night poets Julian Brolaski and E. Tracy Grinnell were in town and in a bar rotten with poets in North beach, we got to talking about translation and our varying positions on the desire vs. intimidation spectrum in relation to doing our own translations. I brought up the Martinican poet, Aimé Césaire, as an example of a poet whose writing would interest me enough to translate it. I had been saying how French can feel too precise, too clean,... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 29 :: Doug Van Gundy on Eamon Grennan
The thing that first drew me to the poetry of Eamon Grennan was his deft handling of ekphrasis and his strong, playful sense of the music that is possible within a poem. “In The National Gallery, London” from his first book, What Light There Is still stands as perhaps the most shining exemplar of these twin traits in his work. On my first trip to London a few years ago, I carried a photocopy of this poem with me. During my visit to the Dutch galleries... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 28 :: Roxanne Hoffman on Urayoán Noel
As an active participant of the New York poetry scene since about 2004, as a writer, performer, frequenter of open mics, writing workshop participant, reading series host and small press publisher, I like to think of myself and the other familiar faces on the local poetry circuit as a movement, a not so quiet conspiratorial insurgency, the proverbial flea buzzing in the ear of the silent sleepy majority. We are the defenders of free speech, free... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 27 :: Annie Paradis on Prageeta Sharma
“The heritage of being alone is to transmit truth to yourself faithfully, to still the paradigm of what opposes you in the world.” – ON LOVE, from Bliss to Fill What if you have daily access to technology, but you want to be in nature, but you want to have a web presence, but you want to find truth, but you yell at your mom, but you try to meditate, but you have an active Netflix account, but you want to be THE PUREST PERSON EVER,... Read More
AWESOME CREATORS *NEED YOUR HELP* :: SUPPORT THE OCCUPY POETRY ANTHOLOGY!
In the introduction to the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology it reads, “all movements need their poets to set the tone, to raise the questions and express the sensibility.” And so begins a tome of over 1000 pages, one that compiler Stephen Boyer originally imagined as merely a “few pages stapled together.” If you wonder how it sets the tone, you need only read the cover page, where the first words after the title are, “WE... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 26 :: Keetje Kuipers on Poets’ First Books
This fall I’ll be teaching a class on first collections of poems. We’ll be talking about theme and shapeliness, the individual poems themselves as well as the way they come together to make a collection. I’m interested in first collections because I just published my own first book of poems two years ago, Beautiful in the Mouth, and I’m at work now on a second collection. Working on the second collection has made me reflect on the first book... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 25 :: Ana Bozicevic on Marguerite Yourcenar
disclaimer, from Ana: “if you need a word about why I am featuring a novelist as a poetic influence; her work is poetic to the point of absurdity.” et alors… — I, YOUrcenar. None of my friends seem to give a shit about Marguerite Yourcenar. Sure, someone’s father read her in the 80s—probably Memoirs of Hadrian—and there was an interview in the Paris Review with her just then—just at her death. Naming her as an influence... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 24 :: Elana Bell on Aracelis Girmay
It is impossible to encounter Aracelis Girmay’s work and not be moved. She writes with such an enormous heart that you cannot help being expanded in the presence of her poems. I first met Aracelis at a teaching artist training for the Community Word Project and immediately knew that my universe had shifted. Simply being in her presence and experiencing her mind is pure poetry. Many poets are brilliant and full of heart, but I think it is a rare... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30 : Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 23: Lauren Marie Cappello on Lorine Niedecker
The way it happens with water is like this: The beginning is unclear, maybe it happened first with rain, maybe the clouds made water from vapor or notes on dreams. Also, there is the way the water moves; it is sure of itself, searching the lowest point – steady in the breaking down of it retaining its structure to the smallest division. It asserts itself in seeking to fill its surroundings, tracing a path from one substance to the next leaving... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 22 :: Tony Hoffman on Vicente Huidobro
I don’t recall where I first encountered the works of Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948)—most likely in the introduction to a collection by one of his contemporaries who came to overshadow him (Neruda or Borges). In America, at least among English-speaking poets, his work is largely forgotten; I don’t remember his name ever coming up in a conversation I didn’t initiate. But he is still well loved by people with an interest in Spanish-language... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 20:: Annaliese Downey on CA Conrad
CA Conrad gave a reading at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where I study poetry, about a week ago, and afterwards the general consensus among the students in attendance was that Conrad was “insane.” We meant this affectionately and admiringly. If the motto of the Situationists, with whom Conrad has much in common, was “Be realistic—demand the impossible!”, then a suggested motto for those wishing to proceed in the spirit of Conrad might be,... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 19 :: Jack Cooper on Hala Alyan
The Faces of Influence - John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper Faces or facets? Am I being facetious in considering fact a species of essence, even essences, precipitate—from the lot conjoined—a chemical residue, like water, plain oxygen: and if residue what of, why not, feces? Fax—is this, are they—iteration of facsimile? Effect, then, whether spelled—particularized—with e or a, Classical byproduct: aeffect,a lode of Pindarian award for aesthetic... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 18:: Ben Wiessner on Dean Young
Before Fall Higher’s table of contents Dean Young booms out a call to action: hark, dumbass, the error is not to fall but to fall from no height As soon as I came across those lines I snapped a grainy picture on my prehistoric flip-phone and sent them to the person who knows most clearly my errors, how much of that dumbass I can be. This book belonged in my apartment. It was meant to be poured over on a couch, read with dinner. His words and I line-danced... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 17:: Jim Lounsbury on Les Murray
POETRY : A DREAM SEA OF WORDS by Jim Lounsbury About ten years ago, I stumbled into a heated debate with a filmmaker friend about whether words or imagery was a more effective way to convey emotion. I argued the case for words, and he took the side of imagery. As the disagreement escalated to a passionate squabble and then to a stamp your feet and beat on your chest free-for-all, I began to wonder what gave me such a strong opinion on the issue. We... Read More
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 16:: Karen Clark on Marilyn Nelson
I want to talk about the work of Marilyn Nelson, whose poems fill me with the same mixture of awe, reverence and exultation that I experienced last month standing in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in front of the Van Gogh exhibition. It is the sense of privilege at having witnessed this miracle: that it is possible to take suffering, pain, and man’s brutal inhumanity to man and transform them, through the alchemy of art and genius, into works of... Read More