The Sad Songs of Hell — Brent Cunningham . (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Today's book of poetry:
 The Sad Songs of Hell.  Brent Cunningham.  Ugly Duckling Presse.  Brooklyn, New York.  2017.

Absolutely astonishing.  Brent Cunningham "translates" Arthur Rimbaud like you have never imagined.  To start, Brent Cunningham admittedly doesn't speak or read French.  Just off the top of our Today's book of poetry heads we've never been quite so taken by imagined translations.

If Today's book of poetry properly understands Cunningham's technique The Sad Songs of Hell come to us through a process of "translation by excessive confidence."  The resulting poems are fanciful to say the least, we loved them.  But it did take Today's book of poetry a few minutes to figure out what was actually going on in Cunningham's The Sad Songs of Hell.  When you open this lovely chapbook Brent Cunningham's translations appear in full sized text at the top of the page.  In the lower right hand corner of each page is the original Arthur Rimbaud poem, in a microscopic font. 

Fortunately for us all, at the back of each copy of the gorgeous The Sad Songs of Hell is a
magnification lens made of plastic and with a small portrait of the young Rimbaud. Beautiful.


Sensation

mostly I use these bruised digits to make you feel
they dress dolls in peacoats, befoul menus with herb-stains
but they never forget: they're not raspberry-capped-feet—
only your bare chest opens their imperceptible vents

if you want an excuse for me here it is: I think the body's a rind
love only feels infinite & only if you're on the mounting end
it's obvious you and I have legs, good legs, like all Bohemians
but when Nature created those, she wasn't even a Woman

Par les soirs bleus d’été, j’irai dans les sentiers,
Picoté par les blés, fouler l’herbe menue:
Rêveur, j’en sentirai la fraîcheur à mes pieds.
Je laisserai le vent baigner ma tête nue.

Je ne parlerai pas, je ne penserai rien:
Mais l’amour infini me montera dans l’àme,
Et j’irai loin, bien loin, comme un bohémien,
Par la Nature, — heureux comme avec une femme.

💣💣💣

The poems. Rimbaud is only a diving board for the pyrotechnic Cunningham. Once he bouncing on the end of the board, Cunningham, there is really no telling where is going to alight and let down, even less chance of knowing; is it a somersault, a cannonball, and so on.

Brent Cunningham's odd gift for translation could be used on any text from any language and to that Today's book of poetry says "have at it." Today's book of poetry will gladly eat up whatever Cunningham is serving.

Today's book of poetry should have mentioned this earlier, Brent Cunningham is convinced he has somehow found a darker narrative than the original Rimbaud. And perhaps he has, but these poems, these delightful translation brim with light. They brighten the surroundings.


The Truth About Dormitories
like a river with pot-breath, lip synching
in green pants, another so-called "Agent
of the Sun" stands at Education's pinnacle
making, today, chocolate from melted crayons

if he's an insurrectionist I'm Ke$ha
part cream cheese, part blueberry bagel
night after night smoking that moss
staring at an internal Everglade

glaciers were crossed, on foot, to forge us
sick infants left to sleep forever
& Nature, our former workhorse, burned & spoiled

so if a marine breeze occasionally blows perfume
through the mold-specked window above his toilet
it'll only deepen the shame of this darkening coast

C’est un trou de verdure, où chante une rivière
Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons
D’argent; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Luit: c’est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.

Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort; il est étendu dans l’herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.

Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme:
Nature, berce-le chaudement: il a froid.

Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine,
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.

💣💣💣

The sun is shining in the nation's capital this morning and Today's book of poetry is feeling optimistic, we think we caught it from Brent Cunningham's The Sad Songs of Hell.  These poems are whippersnappers.

Our morning read was led by the reclusive Max, our Senior Editor.  Of course he didn't leave his office, he simply opened his never to be darkened door and bellowed.  He bellowed from his office, and between laughs and Cunningham's opus, and then insisted on reading the Rimbaud poem in the original French.  Max demanding we follow suite, so of course we did.


Androgynous Love

her pinkie, a curlicue wrapped in rabbit fur
dips into the cheese; she pulls back her hair
& then, the unexpected: vegetarians
steal the butcher's financial statements

whether your soul is gray, green or buffet-colored
makes a difference to the two kinds of people at this resort
there's the Cowboys, pissing on the poor
& the Gracious Sons, who consume them like parfait

tonight society's antenna glows red, transmitting gout
& alien horrors into the mind's buried cables
weaving a fate so singular & brutal it's unspeakable

& on a dozen rainy graves this phrase: LOVE SAVES
yet the wheel does wheel sending another corpse
through the terrible, angelic, ulcerous Asshole of the World

Comme d'un cercueil vert en fer blanc, une tête
De femme à cheveux bruns fortement pommadés
D'une vieille baignoire émerge, lente et bête,
Avec des déficits assez mal ravaudés ;

Puis le col gras et gris, les larges omoplates
Qui saillent ; le dos court qui rentre et qui ressort ;
Puis les rondeurs des reins semblent prendre l'essor ;
La graisse sous la peau paraît en feuilles plates ;

L'échine est un peu rouge, et le tout sent un goût
Horrible étrangement ; on remarque surtout
Des singularités qu'il faut voir à la loupe...

Les reins portent deux mots gravés : Clara Venus ;
- Et tout ce corps remue et tend sa large croupe
Belle hideusement d'un ulcère à l'anus.

💣💣💣


Cunningham's poems/translations are surreal but true, impossible but delightful.  It's hard to ask for more.

Brent Cunningham

ABOUT THE POET

Brent Cunningham is a writer and publisher. He is the author of the poetry books Bird & Forest (UDP), Journey to the Sun (Atelos Press), and the chapbook, The Sad Songs of Hell (UDP). He helped found the SPT Poets Theatre Festival, helped coordinate the Artifact Reading Series, and is on the board of Small Press Traffic. He is the Managing Director for Small Press Distribution and founded Hooke Press with Neil Alger, a chapbook press dedicated to publishing short runs of poetry, criticism, theory, writing, and ephemera.

BLURB

Why do I laugh hysterically merely at the title of this jubilant suite of translations and their originals plucked from Rimbaud’s Hell? Wait, what are originals, what are translations? They are all originals. Real, authentic poems. But then what is the relationship between the poetry of Rimbaud and that of Cunningham? Now we get to the cunning of Cunningham’s work. Using key cognates (true or false), a lot of freedom (free association, cf. Freud), magical thinking, and sounds, or the idea of sound, or the sound of an idea, Cunningham exquisitely and skillfully constructs, with logic and anti-logic, hilarious and/or solemn bursts of dramatically charged poems. As Norah Jones says, “It’s music, man!”

     —Norma Cole

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DISCLAIMER

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.

Defense of the Idol - Omar Cáceres, translated by Mónica de la Torre (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Today's book of poetry:
Defense of the Idol.    Omar Cáceres.  Translated by Mónica de la Torre.  Ugly Duckling Presse.  Lost Literature Series #23.  Brooklyn, New York.

"Outside your window poetry crosses the universe like a lightning bolt."  - Vicente Huidobro 

"The trees are drunk."  - Omar Cáceres

Chilean poet Omar Cáceres was assassinated in Renca, Chile in 1943.  He was a member of the Communist Party.  Cáceres  believed that his poetry was an attempt to translate the honest feelings of his soul.

When Defense of the Idol was first published Cáceres was furious.  Apparently there were so many typos that the enraged Cáceres burned all but two copies of the original book.  We can thank Ugly Duckling Presse for bringing his work to light and for the beautiful cover designed by Andrew Bourne - it is very faithful to the original design of Defense of the Idol which was originally published, in Spanish, as Defensa del Idolo (Santiago, Chile: Imprenta Norma, 1934).

Today's book of poetry was leery about posting poetry from so long ago.  The need to stay current and all that.  But when we talked to Stuart Ross, our poetry guru/editor and dear friend, he suggested that it was necessary to write about Cáceres so that an entirely new generation of readers could discover him.

Vicente Huidobro, who wrote the introduction to Defense of the Idol gives us proper serious direction, opens the door to Cáceres.  Huidobro wrote "Because the poems by great poets manifest an era's inner currents better than anything else, and because the concerns of an era's highest spirits can only be glimpsed through poetry."

Nocturne

   The trees are drunk, from nocturnal lights,

and they drag their shadows, nervous and stiff.

   Their shadows, strangling the night's winds,

shelter and rattle me, as if I were a bird.

   And my steps echo in their black boughs,

and the weakest hooks fill me with vertigo;

yet when I cast my eye on them from another, simpler pair,

they respond, swaying, that they remained intact...

   The leaves, dilating the communal shadows,

return like ruined boats to their tree.

   They cannot, oh, attain the solid banks

that the tips of heavenly bodies announce from above,

yet thick with silence they plow, quivering

through deep and frozen ponds of miracle.

   And in the nocturnal trees embracing the earth,

I find oblivion and mercy, when in despair,

while the light runs down their boughs,

thin, diaphanous...LIKE WATER BETWEEN MY HANDS!

💫💫💫

These poems, almost one hundred years old, feel entirely contemporary, modern, crisp.  Omar Cáceres was crystal clear about his intentions.  Defense of the Idol contains an essay of sorts as an end piece titled "I, Old and New Words."  In this brief essay Omar Cáceres outlines how and why he writes.  Here's a brief quote:

     

     

     "Thus, I didn't write, as I said to a poet one day, "guided by the desire to WRITE LITERATURE,        such a common affectation in this land, but rather following irresistible urges: the need to define,        by expressing them, my inner states of being and the TRUE situation of my I in space and                    time...""

Fickle Oracle

   Stellar reprieve drunk on superior breaths,

forehead blue from weariness, from hurrying its double life;

double down on the staggering night and give me that clear strength,

streamer of your bones!

   Hoisting its lung of ash, moon,

softly intertwined between the two of us;

sleep splattering from my body—wait for me:

together we will tread the solitude through which I've opened

a new way out to things.

   Led to the buttress of your solid thirst,

(headdress of frail waves, distressed hips),

the meteorite of your body sets the seasons,

from the empty arc of its skin.

💫💫💫

Our morning read was a rather spectacular spectacle.  We had guests galore this week, and as usual we made them all read.  K's father is visiting from Victoria, Otis showed up all smart and sleek, Kena came with Tomas and Freida and then, what do you know, Azaad walked in.  Today's book of poetry gave them the spiel, if they are here, they must read - and read they did.

Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, thought it was one of the better offices reading we've ever had.  Omar 

Cáceres gets the blame.

And in the spirit of poetry Today's book of poetry has a few people to say hey to.  Jim Wick, our Vermont poetry friend, helped to arrange the purchase of a small, but excellent poetry library.  And he went way out of his way to do it.  We will be grateful for ever.  Pearl Pirie was visiting last week with her find husband Brian.  She had some poetry books to drop off.  Our offices have become that place where people take the poetry the can no longer handle.  We've had to build more shelves.

Words to a Mirror

   Brother, you, I will never comprehend;

I see in you such a deep and eerie fatalism,

you could as well be the eye of the Abyss,

or a tear shed by Death, already dead.

   Without moving, in my hands, the world you seize

with the mute stupor of a deep outburst

and stone-faced you say: "know yourself,"

as if at some point my belief in you could cease!...

   For its sky-like depth, how sweet is your sense;

nobody stops loving you, each afflicted countenance

pours its bitterness onto your clear source.

   Tell me, who sleepless perpetually stays,

has some naked soul, upon its body's decay,

ever approached you, to meets its face?

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry was very pleased to be able to introduce you readers to Omar 

Cáceres.  Clearly the Chile was a hot bed of excellent poetry, Pablo Neruda was born the same year as Omar Cáceres, 1904.  My favourite Chilean poet, Nicanor Parra was born ten years later, 1914.  

Mónica de la Torre has opened up a new world for Today's book of poetry. Translators rarely get the attention or appreciation they deserve so we'd like to throw a big Today's book of poetry "Hey" in her direction.

Omar Cáceres was a new discovery for Today's book of poetry.  But we will remember him now and hopefully you will too.  Larga vida Omar Cáceres.

Omar Cáceres 

(1904-1943)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Omar Cáceres (b. 1904) was a cult poet in the Chilean avant-garde. He published one book of poetry, Defense of the Idol (1934), with an introduction by Vicente Huidobro, of which only two copies survived after Cáceres tried to burn the entire print run upon publication due to the edition's numerous typos. He had ties with the Communist Party, and according to poet Jorge Teillier, played the violin in an orchestra of the blind. He was murdered by unknown assailants in 1943.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Mónica de la Torre is the author of six books of poetry, including The Happy End/All Welcome(UDP) and Feliz año nuevo, a volume of selected poetry published in Spain (Luces de Gálibo). Born and raised in Mexico City, she writes in, and translates into, Spanish and English. She teaches in the Literary Arts program at Brown University.

Mónica de la Torre

Photo: Bruce Pearson

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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.

Omar

 mmm

\

Kholin 66: Diaries and Poems - Igor Kholin - Translated by Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Today's book of poetry:
Kholin 66: Diaries and Poems.  Igor Kholin.  Translated by Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich.  Eastern European Poets Series #40.  Ugly Duckling Presse.  Brooklyn, New York.  2017.

Today's book of poetry can't even begin to imagine the life Igor Kholin (1920-1999) endured.  The few poems in this utterly intriguing translation by Morse and Bela show an utterly unforgiving Kholin in full unmitigated rant.  It's rather splendid.

Russia in 1966 was most likely as reported, not a very nice place for most people.  Today's book of poetry lived in Eastern Europe for the best part of a year in the late 80's.  I had unrestricted freedom, access to more money than most citizens and at best it was a bittersweet existence.  Kholin shared squalor, abject poverty and an orphanage childhood are one hard anvil to pound a life out on.  As a young adult fighting in World War II he got a bullet in the head and survived.  This is a tough man in a tough world.

...

     You may think

     This shining

     Object

     Is a washing 

     Machine

     I'm not what I seem

     I'm a poet

     The only

     Man on Venus

     My parents

     Are loudspeakers

     My buddies

     Are light switches

     My best friend

     Is a blender

...

Even though his Diaries name drop an encyclopedic run on the artists and writers of the day Igor Kholin was never one of the educated intelligentsia who wrote poetry.  Kholin was an orphan who ran away when he was in grade two (if Today's book of poetry followed along closely enough) and ended up shot in the army.  After the war he was banned from Moscow for a time for a drunken fight in the street with soldiers.  Kholin may be the most outsider poet of all.

Kholin died poor in Moscow at the age of 79 and it is only now that most of his work is seeing the light of day.  Igor may be the first true pissed off, pissed drunk, piss stink poet we've seen at Today's book of poetry in a while.  He certainly paid all of his dues, some of yours and mine as well.

...

     One guy says

     I'm a genius

     I say

     Sure

     That's definitely true

     Others say

     I'm a hack

     And I agree with that

     A third says

     I killed a guy

     Indeed, I nod

     Everything people say about you

     Is the truth

     Woven

     From nothing

...

Our morning read stretched into an early afternoon vodka shower and an early evening headache.  Today's book of poetry only now remembers our love/hate relationship with vodka.  Milo, our head tech and soon to be excommunicated vodka dispensing poetry junkie, thought vodka shots suited the sentiment of Igor Kholin's Kholin 66: Diaries and Poems and he was right.  I was wrong to bring out the Becherovka.  

I know that now.

Today's book of poetry did make sure that theses short little power shots by Kholtin were given the space, time and respect they deserve.  These short poems may be the most honest window into a corner of Russia we were never allowed to see.  Igor Kholin was abrasive and completely unrepentant.  These poems are poetry time bombs from  a past that was previously impenetrable to the west.

...

     Kholin broke his leg

     Thank God

     Nothing

     Against him, but

     May he break

     His neck

     May he break

     His back

     Son of a bitch

     May he

     In the next life

     And in this one

     May his children

     May he be

     Buried alive

     May he

     Fall down the toilet

     May he

     Choke to death on shit

...

Today's book of poetry is hoping more poetry by Igor Kholin in uncovered and translated.  He makes the world seem a smaller place.  Even in his desolate disquiet Kholin finds humour, dark as a rat's shadow, but humour none the less.  Khodin is proof yet again that there is nothing stronger than the human spirit.

And that there is no one grumpier than a bitchy old poet.  Bless his cotton socks.

Igor Kholin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Igor Kholin was born in Moscow in 1920, ran away from an orphanage in Ryazan, and eventually enrolled in a military academy in Novorossiysk. He barely survived World War II (a bullet that grazed the corner of his lips came out of his back). In 1946, he was exiled from the military and Moscow for slapping a drunken comrade-in-arms. Kholin landed in a labor camp in Lianozovo, a suburb of Moscow, where one of his friends was the guard and would occasionally let him out to visit the Lianozovo library—he'd started writing poetry. When he asked to check out a book by forbidden poet Alexander Blok, he aroused the interest of the librarian, Olga Potapova, an artist married to the poet and painter Evgeny Kropivnitsky. The two of them hosted a Sunday salon out of their nearby barracks apartment, encouraging the work of young artists and a few poets, including Genrikh Sapgir and Vsevolod Nekrasov. Along with Kholin, they called themselves Kropivnitsky's students and formed a loose poetry collective known as the Lianozovo Group. Kholin's early work took the rough edges of Soviet life—the poverty, brutality and alcoholism rampant in the barracks—as his primary subject matter, while lampooning formulaic Socialist Realist poetics. The world that Kholin depicted in his poems, where abrupt death inevitably cut down two-dimensional stock characters, was too crude and inglorious to be considered poetry by official standards. Later years saw cycles of outer-space poems and a series of poetic self-portraits, simultaneously wildly superlative and deeply self-deprecating; but all of it equally unpublishable until the fall of the Soviet Union. Kholin barely supported himself with odd jobs: children's book author, writing tutor, waiter and, after the 1970s, antiques dealer. Igor Kholin died in Moscow in 1999. Kholin 66 is the first book of Kholin's work in English translation.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS

Ainsley Morse has been translating 20th- and 21st-century Russian and (former-) Yugoslav literature since 2006. She holds a PhD in Slavic literatures from Harvard University and teaches all over the Russian and Yugoslav traditions. Previous publications include the co-translation of Vsevolod Nekrasov, I Live I See, (with Bela Shayevich, UDP 2013) and Andrei Sen-Senkov's Anatomical Theater (translated with Peter Golub, Zephyr Press, 2013). Upcoming translations include the farcical Soviet pastoral Beyond Tula, by Andrey Egunov, and a collection of theoretical essays by the brilliant Formalist Yuri Tynianov.


Bela Shayevich is a writer, translator, and illustrator. She is the co-translator of I Live I See by Vsevolod Nekrasov (UDP). Her translations have appeared in It's No Good by Kirill Medvedev (UDP/n+1) and various periodicals including Little Star and The New Yorker.

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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

Blood Makes Me Faint But I Go For It - Natalie Lyalin (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Today's book of poetry:
Blood Makes Me Faint But I Go For It.  Natalie Lyalin. Eastern European Poets Series #34.  Ugly Duckling Press.  Brooklyn, New York.  2014.

Today's book of poetry was enjoying a brief break at Go Home Lake but is back in the saddle with another killer from Ugly Duckling Presse.

It started slowly, but the more I read the more intensely I liked Natalie Lyalin's poetry.  It is not unlike a movie with a foreign director who speaks in a new visual language.  The more you watch (read), the more rational it becomes, at least within that cinematic universe, and in this case in the crisp poetry of one Natalie Lyalin.

Lyalin is using a vocabulary you will have no trouble recognizing but her choice of vernacular is startling.  Blood Makes Me Faint But I Go For It is witty smart and tailored, it's a bit of a custom suit, but it fits perfectly.

Black Horse Pike

I took my wagon onto Black Horse Pike

Without blankets!

With plenty of water

With a read tiredness!

Without regret

With throbbing paws!

Without thinking

With questions!

Without direction

With my ghostly sons!

Without my daughter

With my mother's anger!

Without her rifle

With a target on my back!

Without worry

With letters and numbers!

Without a message

With a sense of exploration!

Without much concern for others

With a sense of ownership!

Without a contract

With a vague promise of justice!

Without juice

With a faulty eye socket!

Without a correction

With a small erection!

Without a wedding veil

With a bothersome tooth!

Without a way to fix it

With an arrow!

Without a weapon

With a navigator!

Without common sense

With my dear friend!

As skulls lit the road

As wheat braided itself into circles

As hawks predicted our end

...

Today's book of poetry would be telling lies if we pretended to know exactly what Natalie Lyalin is on about, exactly what she is striving for in these poems.  But we are enthused about looking further, understanding more.  Think of it this way; you could be watching a dancer and greatly admire the dancing without necessarily knowing the name of each particular step.

Blood Makes Me Faint But I Go For It certainly kicks up some spectacular dust along the way, even if we don't understand the siege of Stalingrad, even if we don't get to live all those different lives we imagined.  We can be taken along for the narrative ride, marvel out the windows of the train.

Stalingrad, 1943

There was a squawk sound and the clouds flipped to green, the sky, yellow.  I was

counting seeds and noted the moment.  It was a strange farm, a strange town, a

frightened country we were in.  There were not too many schools or children, so there

were few balloons.  I concerned myself with the sickly garden.  It needed bone meal so

I got some.  Under the moon's coloring thirty foxes circled my house and sixty wolves

circled them.  I called my grandmother to say that I would name someone Wolf, and

she thought this splendid.  We hung up, but I told her to keep living.  Keep living

though you are very far away from your country, and your friends are not coming

home.  Bad things happened, but I harvested a giant pepper and ate it whole.  And it

was very hot and also splendid.  I spied a rake and began a short-lived revolution.

...

Today's book of poetry fears we are doing Natalie Lyalin a disservice by our inability to properly express the various reasons for the genuine pleasure and fascination these curious poems create.

Perhaps Kathyrn, our Jr. Editor, said it best when she said, "You don't have to know the recipe to tell if it tastes good."  Well Lyalin can burn.  These short intense poems deliver complex tastes, satisfying textures, excellent finish.

Blood Makes Me Faint But I Go For It is from a series Ugly Duckling Presse produces called Eastern European Poets Series but there is no detailed information about what language Lyalin writes in or if these are translations, or original, written in English poems.  In the end it doesn't really matter, Lyalin connects.

I Had This Hair When My Dad Was Alive

I'm from a sturgeon's lung

I'm cut out and breathing

The weather is changing languages

All over, the equinox is taking away power

Different weird clouds keep forming

Darling things come in twos!

We are both alive and in Poland

Foreign foghorns keep sounding

In your city the police are absolutely corrupted

Farm animals are finally getting to eat succulent grasses

The invisible typewriter is suspended in space

This hair is authentic fox fur

Coffins are so tiny after dark!

Toxic sludge has made its way into the heartland!

Under a heavy rain we keep walking

Everyone is sharing photos of their babies

The waiter will not bring me juice

I keep stopping by weird French restaurants

The car lost a wheel just as I pulled up

The first snow fell and I'm angry!

This man is having a seizure on the elliptical

My family is incognito

Twenty-eight years ago things were so different!

It was hard to find boots and stockings  

In the cover of night men are sneaking into windows

Parking lots are full of unwanted baggage

We found galoshes and rubber diapers

Your new friends are much better than me

All over the world people are being birthed

Our grandmothers can no longer see too far!

She's exaggerating her stupid pain

The proboscis stunned me into silence

We thought your name would be Vladimir

My television is resting on a teeny tiny stand

This music is from Swan Lake!

My mucus is coming up yellow

The outdoor patio is really a lanai

The youngest child is always the prettiest

This wedding is full of cancer-causing sugar!

In a past life I was someone really crazy

This old old country is the grave's keeper!

The steroids are starting to wear off

This trench coat smells of urine

I've shopped with your baby!

the raccoon traps are howling

...

Today's book of poetry tends to favour the straight narrative line and Lyalin is not about that.  So why the fascination?  

Sometimes you just can't explain why you find something beautiful but Lyalin's poetry compelled us to turn page after page, hit us with some sunshine language and some of the other kind.

Natalie Lyalin

Photo: Brandon Jones

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Natalie Lyalin is the author of Pink & Hot Pink Habitat (Coconut Books, 2009), and a chapbook, Try A Little Time Travel (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010). She is a part of the Agnes Fox Press editing collective and the cofounder and editor of Natural History Press. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at The University of the Arts.

BLURBS

"Thank goodness it is time to hear more from the spectacular Natalie Lyalin! Whether they threaten or offer tenderness, her poems declare themselves in strange, flat phrases, as if unaware of how much beauty and destruction they contain, until some moment of recognition occurs and they suddenly must exclaim 'Coffins are so tiny after dark!' This book is an unpredictable delight, written in the fantastic English of a poet who can see the language for all its gaps and glamour. You are going to love having these words in your head."
     - Heather Christie

"You don’t have a time machine? You’re in luck—like a weird kid in the woods trying to build a spaceship, Natalie Lyalin has created something beautiful, messy, and magical. This book is your time machine. Get in and travel to another world which is like this world, only here it’s dirty, tragic, funny, strange, mundane, eerie, ecstatic, familiar, and a little dangerous. Being inside these poems is like living with a few added dimensions: the one where you grow wings in the kitchen, or where language is a hammer you break in case of emergency—and there is always an emergency. In Lyalin's work, survival is at hand: sometimes it’s history, sometimes it's your self, and sometimes it’s just a time and place to wear sexy gold fangs in a lemon orchard and chase you around the trees."

     - Sampson Starkweather

Divine Magnet Poetry Series Presents: Natalie Lyalin from Jerusalem

video: Joshua Bolton

uglyducklingpresse.org

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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.

I Mean - Kate Colby (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Today's book of poetry:
I Mean.  Kate Colby.  Ugly Duckling Presse.  Brooklyn, New York.  2015.

The title poem in Kate Colby's effervescent  I Mean is a stunning long list poem.  My favourite in quite a long while.  The poem "I Mean" comes in at a staggering 60+ pages and it never drags for a second.  If this poem were a train it would be on time at every station.

"I Mean" is one honking big and entertaining poem, a delight from start to finish.  A feast.  For dessert I Mean, the book, has four short essays that further serve Kate Colby's nefarious purposes. Colby wants us to know that she can create light.  "I Mean" not only illuminates, it takes some of the weight off of the world.

Today's book of poetry read Colby's essays and you should too, as Publishers Weekly said in their review, "The essays also display an erudition that can be both heady and playful."  But Today's book of poetry is going to concentrate on Colby's poem "I Mean".

from I Mean

I mean a black grid on a white field

and the fuzzy gray dots where the lines cross

that you can see but not look at

I mean "slippage"

I mean the slip-proof dots

on the baby socks

I mean things for which

names may or may not exist

I mean there are names

for what you are and for who

I mean names for things

that don't or no longer exist

I mean kicking bones

down the stairs

they're in my way

I mean in the desert

I mean everything is contained

I mean bound

I mean imminent

I mean right now

I mean immanence

...

Our kick at the can is that Colby is quite literally searching for the "what" in "what gives meaning?"

Today's book of poetry believes that naming a thing gives it meaning and Colby is naming it all.

It's hard to share the enthusiasm of a reading experience but Kate Colby's long list poem "I Mean" was fresh on every page.  Apparently Colby's curiosity is as broad as her optimism.

from I Mean

I mean I want my circumference

and to eat it too

I mean to be bigger than you

I mean contain more

I mean mean more

I mean with infinite density

I mean singularity

I mean aleph-infinity

I mean on the largest scale

I mean ontogeny, phylogeny, the camera

panning out from microbe to cosmos

I mean cochlear recapitulation of seashells

I mean fractals and vice-versa.

Seaweed. Galaxies.

I mean it's a long shot

I mean what I thought was the ocean

is only my body

I mean either a vase or two faces

...

Our morning read was a lovely tag-team type affair where we just went round and round the room, each person in turn whipping off a page of "I Mean,"  It wasn't a race or a marathon but we all felt celebratory at the end.

Reading "I Mean" reminded Today's book of poetry of a feast he was lucky enough to attend in his youth.  The first course of several was a magical steamed soup called Chawanmushi.  It was like a custard in that it was solid on your spoon - but when you put it on our tongue it melted leaving both a subtle flavour and a cleansed palette.  No easy trick.  Kate Colby can burn with the best.

from I Mean

I mean well-named horror can

be beautiful

I mean Wilfred Owen's poems

are neither horrific nor beautiful

I mean can beauty be named

or made but not both?

I mean a name turns to stone

I mean I'm totally making this up

I mean I don't know how to be a poet

I mean I'm a rebar Medusa

I mean cursed with endless construction

I mean with the dangers of addition

I mean maybe beauty can only be made

in the mirror

I mean mugging, kissy-faced,

pluckily marching in place

in the corner

I mean facing into the corner

I mean I've talked myself into

I mean thought myself

...

Today's book of poetry was reading Don McKay's great long poem "Long Sault" (1975) yesterday and was reminded how grand the long poem can be.  Today we are here to tell you that Kate Colby's I Mean is a modern epic poem.  You just don't know it yet.  Colby's narrative provides a kaleidoscope gaze onto your world and mine.

She never flinches.

Kate Colby

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kate Colby is author of six books, including Unbecoming Behavior (UDP, 2008), The Return of the Native (UDP, 2011) and Fruitlands (Litmus Press), which won the Norma Farber First Book Award in 2007. She is a founding board member of the Gloucester Writers Center in Massachusetts and currently lives in Providence, where she was a 2012 fellow of the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts.

Kate Colby

 reading at Litmus Press Spring Book Party 6/10/11

Video: srk55krs

uglyducklingpresse.org 

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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.

Pacific Standard Time - Kevin Opstedal (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Today's book of poetry:
Pacific Standard Time.  Kevin Opstedal.  Ugly Duckling Presse.  Brooklyn, New York.  2016.

Dick Dale & the Deltones are handling the soundtrack for this smooth surfing opus so hang onto something.  Keven Opstedal is someone we've never seen before here at Today's book of poetry and that is a shame.  Opstedal has been pounding out small press magic since at least 1985 from the Californian coast and Pacific Standard Time is absolutely ripe with small masterpieces.

Kevin Opstedal's rambling narrative style is a surfer's relaxed patois that he razor/laser focuses on the world, of course that surfer would have had to read Keats, Yeats, Coleridge, Bukowski, Kerouac and so on.  Opstedal is sharp and nonchalant at the same time, his reasoned voice seems familiar, he sounds like someone you think you know, or would like to - but you certainly never know what's coming.

Curse of the Surf Zombie

The late afternoon sky was like something

Miss Montana 1979 spilled on her bikini

out near the ice machine

at the Sea Garden Motel

in Pismo

       & the light was all

              nickels & dimes

                              dancing across the pavement

inside the sound of gears grinding

       just a block from the beach

The sunset haze

              reaching for the

                          pulse of the tide

                                      w/compression dings

                                      in silver mist

                                                propped against a chainlink fence

it was like the Ark of the Covenant

dissolving in a shot glass...

Still there is that light & heavy wind to contend with

& a dusty swimming pool blue turquoise sky rocking

all the way back to the Land of the Dead

w/a few thin clouds feathering out

as though they had something to say but thought better of it

a sheet of silk torn right down the middle

if knowing what knowing might be would make any difference

The tree fern whispers out the side of its mouth like Elvis

in his decline & you set aside the machete

& plunge your wrists into the beaded foam

Seagulls calling from the jetty speak the same language as Aeschylus

though w/an accent that is straight from the surf ghetto

Palm trees hovering live divine sculpture

begging for more as if it was the only way to pinpoint the

exact coordinates that will transport us to the

here & now

A norteño accordion tuning up at the bottom of the sea...

        Sheet music fluttering in the breeze...

                       Samuel Taylor Coleridge/Pacific Gas & Electric

Any meaning other than it so encumbers recognition
like a red Corvette driven straight off the pier

         "There's more concrete in the world than there are good waves"

I was spilling the last glass of water in California
translated from English into Japanese into Arabic into Klingon
& back into English

          "It all makes sense if you stand back & look at it from a distance"

I wore dark glasses beneath a desperate haircut & the
cypress trees were huddled above the beach like the Women of Thebes

           (the sky breaking open behind them
                   partly sunny w/a prevailing sense of impending doom

I had to catch the replay in glorious technicolor
all kinds of low-end torque rumbling in transition w/cracked
bells & clarinets washing up onshore with the incoming tide

           A tangle of mist laying flat on the wet sand at the ocean's edge

          Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you've been there.
          Playing Parmenides to my Heraclitus. A not quite harmonic
          convergence. Drinks were served out on the veranda.
          I preferred the rain puddles in the parking lot.

                 A fistful of sand & a rippling curtain of mist
                 is about all I'm going to need for the forseeable, I said

Standing in line at the beer store "looming" as maybe Frankenstein's
monster might on a Friday night in S. Cruz. I couldn't begin to tell you
& I won't even try weaving among the shadows. The vault of heaven is
wide open & the stars assume you know the name of every constellation
from Andromeda to Vulpecula, but that doesn't mean you can find your
car keys. The palm trees rattle their bones & a light seabreeze fucking
w/your equilibrium has you doing your best Joe Cocker imitation right
there in the parking lot. Just one of the many obstacles you'll encounter
along the path of least resistance.

Slick liquid neon palette of sunset still lingering in the heavy Pacific sky

X-number of gulls like
        hours, moments, dreams, picking up speed
               & putting it down again

        The fogmist like a leadweight
                              holds the beach in place
               when everything else is falling from your
                                         bulletproof kimono

               representing something that will remain
                              casually unresolved
               locked away where the seabreeze goes
                                        returning the sky to its default settings

& late night early morning ocean fog swamps the streets

        the wet sidewalk is as dark as your eyes by now

                Lights flickering along the pier
                already under water

                                little left to the imagination / more than enough

(you know & I know) the tempo of the Dharma
is not always so easy to dance to

          The Temple of the Drama used to be up at
          RCA Beach, it was made out of drift-
          wood & sand & the vague feeling that we were invincible

                   if I remember right I held your hand on the way down

& I made detailed drawings of your tattoos but
I can't show them to you because they are mine now
& this is how I will love you

...

Today's book of poetry simply marvelled at the partial list of books and chapbooks produced by Kevin Opstedal.  Only the irrepressible Rob McLennan could possibly compete with this sort of output.  Rob McLennan, an Ottawa institution, has over 30 books and an unknowable number of chapbooks out there in the wide world.  Take a look at this list by Opstedal.

Kamikaze Blvd,
Jungles
Sand in the Vaseline
Like Rain
Crush
The Road to Hollywood is Paved with Tacks & Suicide
Beach Blanket Massacre
Next to Dreaming, or The Phone Never Rang
9th & Ocean
Variable High Cloudiness
Nine Palms
Radio Beach
Heavy Water
Straight Up & Down
The Deep End
El Tsunami
Coastal Disturbances (Bikini Machine)
400 Hawaiian Shirts
Minus Tide
Double Impact
On The Low
Rare Surf, Vol. 2: New and Used Poems
Baja
User's Manual to the Pacific Coast Highway
Saltwater Credentials
Santa Cruz
Maybe Ocean Street
Deja Voodoo
Drainpipe Sessions
California Redemption Value
Memory Foam
The Poetikal Works of Dude the Obscure
Curse of the Surf Zombie

That old Kevin Opstedal is a tricky slick dude.  The reader is lulled into West Coast comfort, swimming at the edge of knowable civilization and then this Duane Eddy loving, cultural magpie and mystic starts dropping word bombs that burst delightful.

Today's book of poetry has a new poet we will be name dropping into every conversation.  Pacific Standard Time is one of those finds that reminds this reader of why he loves poetry.  To use the parlance, Today's book of poetry is a Barney, no doubt about it, but reading Opstedal leaves the reader Choka.

Bring Me the Head of Eddie Vedder

I had loaned her my crown of thorns
& before she gave it back she had it
cleaned & sharpened for me

The wind raking the eucalyptus
blue turquoise green & tinsel
raw beach concrete

& the 36 chainsmoking buddhas in my hip pocket
were preaching a kind of punk compassion I
could really learn to dance to

Like a message in lipstick scrawled
onto a tidepool mirror
nobody knows what it means but
everyone understands it'll break if you
drop it which is what keeps us
coming back for more

The girl with the crucified seagull
tattooed on her back
said she knew something I didn't

She told me where it was but I had to find it myself

My skull packed with wet sand
pure as the driven foam

...

Kevin Opstedal poetry machine-gunned our office this morning.  After this morning's read there were bodies strewn about the floor, camps were organized and diligent pressure brought to bear.  Milo, our head tech, wanted a particular grouping of poems, Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, had other priorities and choose an entirely different grouping.  I was stranded by some crazy high-water mark with ten poems or so that I couldn't live without.  An impasse was not passed.  We had to drag Max, our Sr. Editor, out of his warren and set him to the task.  As a result all of Today's book of poetry's inefficiencies can be blamed on good old Max.

You can send any complaints straight to me, I know how to handle them.

Cadillac to Mexico

We are as clouds that veil the 11:00 News, applying pressure to a
ruptured artery, stripping the paint off a 50 gallon drum full of Marlon
Brando's performance in On the Waterfront. The chainlinked molecules
of spring are waiting with crowbars & baseball bats. That was back
when I wore bellbottoms & beads & hung my head in shame. I thought
I had to explain myself as though there was still something left to prove.
My mistake. I meant to say Last Tango in Paris -- the final scene shot
in a parking lot in Juarex just south of the Olympic Blvd off-ramp.
November had sliced the ankles of the moon. Wind thrashing in the
trees the way a drowning man might gasp for air drawing in a lungful of
water. And in April we drove out to the beach to poison ourselves with
the sunset.

...

Today's book of poetry could play the Kevin Opstedal poetry game all day long.  Pacific Standard Time is a whale of a book in the poetry world coming in at well over 200 pages - not nearly big enough for his new audience here.

Kevin Opstedal will renew your enthusiasm for poetry.

Kevin Opstedal

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in Venice, California, Kevin Opstedal is a poet whose line leaves three decades of roadcuts across the entire imaginary West. His twelve books and chapbooks include two full-length collections, Like Rain (Angry Dog Press, 1999) and California Redemption Value (Uno Press, 2011), and his Blue Books Press, one of many of his "sub-radar" editorships, belongs in the same breath as the great California poetry houses (Auerhahn, Big Sky, Oyez...) that his own poems seem to conjure like airbrushed flames on a lemon carrying Ed Dorn, Joanne Kyger, Ted Berrigan, and some wide-eyed poetry neophyte to a latenite card game in Bolinas. “His poems,” writes Lewis MacAdams, “are hard-nosed without being hard-hearted.” As identity and ideas duke it out in the back-alley of academia, Opstedal surfs an oil slick off Malibu into the apocalypse of style.

BLURBS

No one deserves a comprehensive collection like this more than Kevin Opstedal, a tireless soldier in the fields of contemporary poetry, both as discoverer/editor and as prolific poet. An Olson without mountain, a maximus of the Pacific, Opstedal roams the beaches of Venice or Santa Cruz picking up poems ranging from the sprawling epic of history and pop culture to the compact lyric effusion of observation and feeling. He’s as liable to find a poem ransacking a tiki bar as he is pouring over an inscription on an Etruscan urn, and there’s a superb indifference to poetic fashion in favor of devotion to his own chosen household gods that any poet would do well to aspire to.There’s a moral component here too, a “punk compassion,” as he says, sifting through the detritus of America to extract the gold of time.

    - Garrett Caples

Welcome to Pacific Paradise, where the sky is swept with turquoise red sunsets–and Satan can steal a surfboard. Kevin Opstedal, master of the coastal metaphor, rides through the drama of these poems confident of where his heart is—"lapped and pummeled" by Pacfic waves. His poems take center stage in the drama of the surf zone. Take a bow, Kevin.

     - Joanne Kyger

For decades Kevin Opstedal has kept the underground lit as prolific poet, surfer, printer of books by many and correspondent to all. A chameleon of classic styles, his poems are as vital as the water we drink. Filtered through a wave of narcotic clarity and witful nonchalance, Pacific Standard Time shows us that he's capable of doing whatever the poem asks, any time / any place.

     - Micah Ballard

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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.