RED — Chase Berggrun (Birds, LLC)

Today's book of poetry:
RED.  Chase Berggrun.  Birds, LLC.  Minneapolis, New York, Raleigh.  2018.

Chase Berggrun climbs inside of Bram Stoker's Dracula and comes out the other end illuminated, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.  

Today's book of poetry is only ever looking for fine poetry to share, but we also want to make a point of looking everywhere we can.  Gender has become an important issue, delicate and beyond our limited reasoning, but it is important to Today's book of poetry to be blind to gender at the same time as we are trying to give unlimited access regardless of gender.  

Chase Berggrun wrote RED while transitioning gender.  As though that weren't enough to do.  But Today's book of poetry is damned glad Berggrun showed up and took on the Prince of Darkness on their own terms.

Berggrun takes apart Stoker's masterpiece from inside, word by word, using erasure as a methodology.  The resulting text, sub-text, is a hidden masterpiece.  As Chase Berggrun pares and redacts, dissects the original text, an astonishingly fresh and essential new story is revealed.  This is construction at the pyramid level, we can see the seams but are completely baffled at how it was actually accomplished.  Our hats are off.

Chapter I

I was thirty

I was a country of queer force

rushing east to see the strangest side of twilight

I was a woman      in the usual way

I had no language     but the distress and duty

I have been taught to doubt my mother and fear tradition

but my queer tongue    would not     could not shut up

The afternoon sun seemed mighty

and touched my arm with a delicate pain

A woman     kneeling in self-surrender to the new

weeping silver into great masses of greyness      the clouds

which ceaselessly walk and pause as though unmercifully urged on

Through the darkness I could see a stormy sea

a strange mixture of movements

Something slight and flickering seemed to mock my universal yes

I asked what this all meant

I struck a match

and its flame somewhere far off in the distance plunged

Suddenly a faint and endless absence

began beetling around

the howl that swept

the ruined sky

💫💫💫

Sherlock Holmes at his infinite and clever best could not have deciphered Chase Berggrun's Red out of Stoker's Dracula.  This is world class winnowing of red gold.  Not to diminish Bram Stoker's great book, but Berggrun has completed the harder task.  Somehow, beyond reason and out of sight of witnesses, Berggrun has gutted the original and discovered new fresh meat.  

     "We never refer to sadness

       as something that looks

       secrecy

       but it does"

                          CHAPTER VIII

Chase Berggrun reaches into the Gothic patriarchy, puts their arms elbow deep in to all of Stoker's horror and comes out the other side clean, bold, brave, with certainty of purpose.

      "I want to believe in a universe

       willing to understand"

                          CHAPTER IV

Chapter XXV

Note this

I have come to understand      a particular freedom

without restraining mood

aglow     as if loosened

God     you are going to be so good to me

I know a poison you do not

beginning and ending with my hand

the blackest prelude

Note the quaint seriousness of my voice      low and strained

The flesh     the rough flinch

My fast-bending hand

which subdued the whiteness of his hair

I shrink into all wives       and their hands

their hands      that loved me best    I have not forgotten

that set me free     from the thrall      my husband held over me

What I have arranged to do will be no murder

Even if it were

I know now what men feel

that special excitement when in active danger

This necessary task        euthanasia         a comfort

I am in a fever of hands

I found him whetting

the edge of his throat      driven by cold

His hands instinctively sought

my smooth arrangement

He is sure I will come at his call

but I have not lost the grace a woman has

a power he may not take away

I      with perfect nervous poise

let loose wings       a thought-strong swan

When the time comes        I alone slaughter

I alone         ultimately triumph

The tight country he had tried to invade

he kissed it         sick and keen

There is more to tell and I shall tell you

Forgive me if I seem remorseless

selfishness frees my soul somewhat

Not even God is with me now

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry treads with some trepidation, tripping all over ourselves to be gender sensitive.  Why?  Isn't Today's book of poetry just about poetry?  Mostly, but in our poetry world we want to be sure we send the right message to all of our brothers and sisters, all of whom deserve our love and respect regardless of how, when, where or why they have their present identity. Our only job is to be inclusive until the need for such discussions vanish. 

Today's book of poetry has never cared about poetry trousers, except for Vladimir Mayakovsky's "A Red Cloud in Trousers."  We only really care about the poems.

And here is where Chase Berggrun is aces all around.  RED is such a freaking pleasure to read you will be hacking into the air around you.  Sounds will come out that you haven't heard before.  Surprise, joy, satisfaction.

RED is really a master class, it is simply excellent.  Berggrun's utterly fearless burning transforms Dracula into a new and essential read, a new modern marvel.  And this time it is all about turning into the light.

excerpt from Chapter XXVII

               I was a high wind between flurries

               he was lying like a black ribbon

               I mounted his square chest

               I felt imprisoned there

               I saw him below me

               he came quickly

               a sudden cry from the south of me

               he shouted in glee

I got out my revolver

It was strange to see the snow shining brightly around us

Every instant came in bursts

The hollow sound swept the air-space

It was hard to distinguish the real

as the sun dropped lower and lower

He was unaware at first

he fell forward in an unmistakable way

and gave a quick movement of his fist

I felt no fear but only a surging

In the midst of this the sun set

No time seemed to pass besides

By now the blood was spurting through his chest

his eyes glazed with the vindictive look I knew too well

As the moment plunged into my body

I sunk to the ground

Blood between my fingers

Red upon my face

My eyes followed the falling snow

And he died

💫💫💫

Frankly, until reading Chase Berggrun's Red, Today's book of poetry wouldn't have believed you could redact gold and come up diamonds.  

Chase Berggrun take a big bow.

Chase Berggrun

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chase Berggrun is a trans poet. They are the author of R E D, forthcoming from Birds, LLC. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Lambda Literary Spotlight, Pinwheel, PEN Poetry Series, Sixth Finch, Diagram, The Offing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. They received their MFA from New York University. They are poetry editor at Big Lucks.

"Discontent and its Civilizations" Poems of Erasure by Chase Berggrun

Video: Susan Russell

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                                                                                                                        DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Joy Of Missing Out - Ana Božičević (Birds, LLC)

Today's book of poetry:
Joy Of Missing Out.  Ana Božičević.  Birds, LLC.  Minneapolis, New York, Raleigh.  2017.

Firegram

Like a river of dope

Your love came to me

A superstar--and even if celebrity is

The prostitute sister of love, its economy

Still strikes us both as true,

And so we do do the world's work. We adore.

Stars gossip with a look of love on the world's edge.

The overlooked, broken, the queer and dark--

All those Heathcliffy words

Relax into a

Sphere of unsafety--

Remember 'we were never meant

To survive'--

Her sex is the power and like

Literally my dildos have melted

From the heat 

Of that fire emoji

...

Ana Božičević is that poet you have been waiting for.  She's as dangerous as the last drink after last call.  Clever, pshaw, Ana is way ahead of the curve.  Božičević is as hard as man-made diamonds and from the Eva H.D. school of not two shits will be given for the consequences, if you can't keep up, it is not Ana's problem.

Today's book of poetry knows that I haven't quite put my finger on it but Ana Božičević writes poetry a little like some angry neo-punk Audrey Hepburn all hard edged and classy had taken over her id.  A suave and sassy, straight shootin' Patti Smith has the ego.  And the result is magic.

                                                        I

                                                        Put perfume on my soles

                                                        (I really do) and

                                                        sleep.

                                                                   I'll Never Forget the Way You Said "Sabine"

Joy Of Missing Out splashes ice-water on your poetry sleepy-face.  Ana Božičević doesn't just entertain and challenge and delight -- she does it with pace.

2 Worlds

It doesn't matter if I feel loved

Maybe I can't and it doesn't

Matter if anyone

Gets a thing I say

All that matters is I should stay

And die only when it's time

But what if it's time.

In another world they're singing

My songs off of cereal boxes

In this one I'm alone

...

Our morning read was back to fireworks.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, was in full fledged full forced full tilt boogie mode today as it was her birthday.  We showered her with poetry books, the birthday gift of choice around these parts.  Kathryn passed Joy Of Missing Out around the room like it was birthday cake and everyone was getting a candle.  

Maggie, our new intern, stated unequivocally that Joy Of Missing Out was the book of poetry she'd most enjoyed since joining the Today's book of poetry team.  She felt that Božičević was speaking directly to her and that was a good, good thing.

Even Milo, our head tech, voiced an opinion out loud.  He said it was like Božičević had channelled Lynn Crosbie's grit and Sue Goyette's sand.  Today's book of poetry appreciated the comparisons to two of Canada's finest, couldn't disagree.

<3

And even now

Even in the (I can't

Believe I'm saying

It) the Trump

Economy (not believing

Is my privilege) the greatest

Hurt is seeing

The back of someone

Who looks like you at the bar

Jet hair trans skin

But it's ok

This pain is how

I know

That love will win

...

Joy Of Missing Out fills Today's book of poetry with hope.  Božičević knows that the world is a silly place and only survivable with a good sense of humour.  She also knows that the world is a dangerous place where your heart could be taken prisoner at any moment.

Poetry like this makes us smile.  

Ana Božičević 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ana Božičević, born in Croatia in 1977, is a poet, translator, teacher,and occasional singer. She is the author of Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009) and the Lambda Award-winning Rise in the Fall (Birds, LLC, 2013). She is the recipient of the 40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism award from the Feminist Press, and the PEN American Center/NYSCA grant for translating It Was Easy to Set the Snow on Fire by Zvonko Karanović, forthcoming from Phoneme Media. At the PhD Program in English at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York she studied New American poetics and alternative art schools and communities, and edited lectures by Diane di Prima for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Ana has read, taught and performed at Art Basel, Bowery Poetry Club, Harvard, Naropa University, San Francisco State University Poetry Center, the Sorbonne, Third Man Records, University of Arizona Poetry Center, and The Watermill Center. She works and teaches poetry at BHQFU, New York’s freest art school.

BLURBS

Ana Božičević invents a new language of 21st century displacement: a displacement that occurs not just in space and in time but in heart, vision and mind. The poems in Joy of Missing Out range from Croatian farm fields and embroidered dresses to life spent online, emoji, chain stores and drugs. Always: emotion. No filter, she writes. Božičević is a master of the startling lyric: her poems transport, but they can also kick dirt in your face in the last line. Her casual poems are formidably informed and, also, great.

     -Chris Kraus

Auto-erotic (sunlit) pool life + "the funny softness at the deep end of the field" = Joy of Missing Out. Mid-ocean, is that sound of civilians being murdered, or is it Julie Andrews exclaiming in B minor on an Alpine piste? (Or meadow.) This book is full of switches. Pull the wrong one and there's no Europe. To put it another way, are there continents, cities and countrysides that, having left them, a person might never see again? Twenty-first Century 101: "Stupid pleasures" substitute in their entirety for a very real glacier, etc. I have loved Božičević's poetry for a long time, and it was a glamorous treat for me to be with it again. The extreme poetry that will never, precisely, return.

     -Bhanu Kapil

No matter what the radiant, brilliantly unbalanced work of Ana Božičević always feels right. She’s a bit of a colossus.

     -Eileen Myles

Ana Božičević 

Birds, LLC trailor for Joy Of Missing Out

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration

Tender Data - Monica McClure (Birds, LLC)

Today's book of poetry:
Tender Data.  Monica McClure.  Birds, LLC.  Austin, Minneapolis, New York, Raleigh.  2015.

Because we haven't had a "list" poem in a while and because you all know how much Today's book of poetry loves a good list poem, we are going to start off today with a hummer.

Monica McClure is a poetry assassin of the highest order.  Her aim is perfect and she is packing some serious heat.  There is very little tender in Tender Data but it is all heart.

Monica McClure

Monica, vain as two crystals in a window

Monica, proportionate face like a student drawing

Monica, passable body like a non-celebrity

Monica, competing affects getting crossed

Monica, languid like a tranquilizer napping in the sun

Monica, sensitive like an artist coming to terms with failure

Monica, signing over her paltry assets

Monica, sleazy like the nouveau riche

Monica, watching herself while watching you

Monica, like a summer in the shade of a factory

Monica, editorial like the ego ideal and like the ideal ego

Monica, effusive like alka seltzer

Monica, blushing like purple areola

Monica, disarming like a borderline

Monica, free as a stolen mink

Monica, steadfast as scotch from an Islay faraway

Monica, lost like a puppy in an undertow

Monica, like lambs in a cavern

Monica, like grey birds aerial diving

Monica, broken like tea leaves in the hand of Jack the Ripper

Monica, in love for the empire and courtly manners

Monica, menstruating with endless iron

Monica, like a truck full of hoop skirts

Monica, sculptural with Debuffet's dirty pick

Monica, saintly fallopian tubes butterflying

Monica, easy like a promise to make

Monica, sluggish as the mind in conversation with itself

Monica, kissing deep a plum cooled on mint

...

Today's book of poetry had to read Tender Data over several sessions simply because the book got too hot to handle.  These pages burn.  McClure absolutely never lets up on the gas.

McClure is fresh, these poems as crisp as new snow, and at the same time these poems know things that only a certain kind of experience reveals.  McClure sounds like she's read everything you've read and then a lot you haven't.  How did she get so wise?

Then we have to deal with the title poem, her opus, "Tender Data",  Oh my, oh my.  What wondrous thing is this?  Monica McClure's long poem "Tender Data" is surgery with an emotional laser and she lays it all open.

     "You don't have the guts for me

       Why people do evil is

       the only question worth asking"

Think Hunter S. Thompson and Erica Jong having a love child devoted to poetry and writing a new feminist manifesto for a new order.  No prisoners taken here.  McClure isn't afraid of anyone or anything.

Today's book of poetry would absolutely love to show you the entire poem but the length of the poem precludes inclusion.  But take our word for it - McClure is staking out territory with fierce intent.

Mammary

The Chateau Marmont in winter

is like a beautiful woman in the morning

on the second day of her period

It's a body rejecting its implants

Lindsay Lohan is walking around

like she owes the place

sliding into the darkest seat

with two lesbian truckers

I'm sipping an Italian aperitif

and feeling exuberant

like it's the 20th century

and a love sick Breton is whispering

messages on my answering machine

in an empty antechamber

while I check my powder on my iPhone

When I lost my academic job

I became an unskilled sex worker

and got pregnant out of professional frustration

My mother drove me to a midwife

in the first light of morning

Lazy Susans on the table spin me

another cold highball

...

Today's book of poetry regular morning read was a fiasco.  The women in our office insisted they do all the reading this morning.  Kathryn, our new intern, must have used the word "empowering" at least seven times.  She gave all us men the stink-eye more than once.

Tender Data is powerful stuff and it is gloriously relentless.  McClure struts with her time on stage because she can and we all reap the rewards.

White Girl Wasted

There's nothing inherently noble about work

At New York Dolls I could choose to sit

and let men buy my drinks

instead of hauling ice buckets

of champagne across the mainstage floor

I didn't make money when I got drunk

instead of getting men drunk

but I was not cold or sober either

My heels dangled from the bar stool

as I watched the engorged breasts of girls

tremble in the arcade-like wavelengths

weightless and bovine

A happy couple stumbled in and soon

the wife was throwing up

in our dressing room

We held her hair back

careful not to drop ashes

in her shiny blowout

I was Kathy Acker in the 80s

doing nothing exceptional yet everything

in a corset without muscles

Her husband had paid for two hours upstairs

and was up to his watches in flesh

You girls are mistaken I said

to seduce this stupid city

Then I went home no richer or poorer

than when I showed up

I wish I could get shit-faced wasted

on my own dime

and have someone I trust carry

me screaming and drooling into a taxi

I think of the words of Anastasia

the fat ballerina of the Bolshoi

"I'm going to fuck the shit out of this world."

Goodnight swans on your lakes of vodka

...

Today's book of poetry puts Monica McClure at the top of whatever list I'm making today, she should be on the top of whatever list you are making.  Tender Data will make you love poetry in whole new way.

Monica McClure

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Monica McClure is a write and performer living in New York City.  Previously, her poetry has been published in the chapbooks, Mood Swing (Snacks Press, 2013) and Mala (Poor Claudia, 2014).

BLURB

McClure may be the poster-girl for a new generation of poets: irreverent, well-read, sexy, even dirty, snarky, but ultimately fighting an earnest battle against reductiveness and easy answers to the complex problems of the Internet age: "Every citizen of this world is on trial/ I'm learning to speak legalese/ as I stroll through civil law like/ a gamine through a sample sale."

     - Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR

Word Warriors:  Monica McClure

Video: The Huffington Post

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.

Backup Singers - Sommer Browning. (Birds, LLC)

Today's book of poetry:
Backup Singers.  Sommer Browning.  Birds, LLC.  Austin, Minneapolis, New York, Raleigh, USA.  2014.

Sommer Browning has a world class sense of humour.  The poems in Backup Singers read like the liner notes off of a waitress's cheque book from a Tom Waits' song.  These little ditties are the shadows of the bullets, the echo of some footsteps, the raw retort to a loud nonsensical world. Browning puts together a slick patois for the language she is teaching us.

Sommer, I'm dying

Sommer, I'm dying. I get this message on my phone in line
at Rite Aid. Sommer, I'm dying, you scream in my ear at
the rock show. Sommer, I'm dying, you write in closing on
 a postcard from San Francisco. Sommer, I'm dying, it's my
heart. Sommer, I'm dying, can you feel this? Is it normal?
as we stomp through the snow to get cigarettes. Jesus woke up
but who muscled the boulder away? Some prince kissed the
beauty but who wrote it all down? Let's go to the mummy
exhibition. Let's read aloud Fear and Trembling. Let's slow the
flow through one carotid. Sommer, I'm dying. Present tense.
Subject. Verb. The thinning blood vessel, the soft pulsating
stone, retina shriveled and rattling around in the skull. I can
hear it when I jump. Then don't jump, I say.

...

Backup Singers has a rhythm all its own.  Some of these poems sound like statements for the defense and others like screams from the prosecution.  But they all have the same intelligent urgency about them.

Browning makes juxtapositions by breaking the ankles of the opposition.  There is a pinball energy in these poems and it bounces frantic to connect all of her dots.

When I see a tree bend I feel the thick chill of a church pew

When I see a tree bend I feel the thick chill of a church pew
cooling my ass. When I hear the clang of a flag pole I see a
head, bodiless, chewing words on a screen. When I read the news
I see my baby smile at what's behind me. When I slice an onion
and when I tongue a blackberry seed I slide into a wet bathing
suit, when I run up the cellar steps I sing Bible songs, I cheat at
cards, the city coos to its drunks at night, and the city's shores by
morning flap strips of plastic spank the beach who's your daddy
is all anyone thinks and destruction, older than regret. The pastor
in the parish hall, hidden even as he shakes every hand, and the
fingers, open it up and here's the people.

...

At times Browning is almost sweet/surreal and we love that.  Today's book of poetry also found a couple of list poems in Backup Singers and you just know how much we love those.

When you were with Emily I was with Matt

When you were with Emily I was with Matt,
when you were with Sarah I was with Paul,
when you were with Sarah I was with Brian,
when you were with Kelly I was with Pat,
when you were with Liz I was with Paul,
when you were with Sarah I was with Johnny,
when you were with Kim I was with Robert,
when you were with Liz I was with Matt and Pat and Andy,
when you were with Erica I was with Robert,
when you were with Liz I was with Jason and Robert,
when you were with Apple Pie I was with the Armenian,
when you were with Eliza I was with Noah.

...

Today's book of poetry was won over early by this crisp collection.  Sommer Browning has just become our favourite poet named Browning.  We did a straw poll in the office.  Robert may have been one hell of a Victorian with all his dramatic monologues, and Elizabeth the B. another, but we are Sommer Browning fans here.

there is a problem with your interrogative

there is a funny joke
about the best medicine for
hatred being
an umbrella -- no
a wheelbarrow

...

Sommer Browning

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sommer Browning writes poems, draws comics and tells jokes. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently THE BOWLING (Greying Ghost, 2010) with Brandon Shimoda. Her poems and drawings have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Typo, Octopus, past simple, Free Verse, The Stranger and other places. With Julia Cohen she curates The Bad Shadow Affair, a reading series in Denver.

BLURB

There is an enormous amount of joy that comes with the announcement of a new work by Denver, Colorado poet and illustrator Sommer Browning, and the recent AWP in Seattle saw the release of Browning's second trade poetry collection, Backup Singers (Birds, LLC, 2014). Given the amount of her quirky and hilarious comics were utilized as part of her first poetry collection, Either Way I'm Celebrating (Birds, LLC, 2011) [see my review of such here], I must say that a book by Sommer Browning without comics is unexpected (and even slightly disappointing). Still, there aren't many contemporary poets with her penchant for tight lines and terrible jokes (Montreal poet David McGimpsey is a rare exception), and the results are absolutely stunning.

     -  Rob McLennan

Sommer Browning

Official Trailer for Backup Singers

Video: Birdsllc

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DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.