Chris Tysh’s Molloy: The Flip Side
Chris Tysh’s Molloy: The Flip Side, published in September of 2012 by BlazeVOX [books] is, to use the poet’s word, a “transcreation” of the first half of Samuel Beckett’s novel Molloy. It is a long...
View ArticleAlbert Schearl in Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep
David never said anything to anyone of what he had discovered, not even to his mother – it was all too terrifying, too unreal to share with someone else. He brooded about it till it entered his sleep,...
View ArticleA Book from My Library: Minimalism by Kenneth Baker
Why in the Lord’s name would I want to cover a dust jacket with stickers—why, especially, a book on Minimalism? Well, it began with that yellow rectangular sticker on the bottom left, the one to the...
View ArticleClass Notes: Improvisation within a field of constraints: Judith Butler and...
The following is my response to our writing assignment for the modern/postmodern class: compare another thinker in the class to Judith Butler’s phrase, “improvisation within a field of constraints”. I...
View ArticleMy Favorite Short Story Collections
Mark Kerstetter, Kafka/Leaves, oil sketch on paper I just found out that the 22nd of this month is International Flash Fiction Day. Who knew? I’m not sure how I’m going to celebrate this event, other...
View ArticleThe Man They Love to Hate
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to smell some degree of collusion in the fine art world when it comes to prices. I sometimes wonder when watching Antiques Roadshow if something similar (less...
View ArticleGeorges Bataille On A Life of Bullshit
I thought: “How cruel my suffering is,—no one is more talkative than I am!” —Georges Bataille, The Tomb of Louis XXX The Little One and The Tomb of Louis XXX—the two meditations by Georges Bataille...
View ArticleNicelle Davis: Becoming Judas
What if we thought about the gospel story of atonement in terms of a children’s game? — I don’t wanna play Judas. You play Judas. — I don’t wanna play Judas. You play Judas. But somebody’s got to play...
View ArticleA Review of Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn
Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn (ALL CAPS PUBLISHING) gets you three poets—Shay Caroline Simmons, Kelli Simpson and Joy Ann Jones—in one volume, so if quantity matters to you, you’ve got it here. All three...
View ArticleBest Reads of 2013
Becoming Judas by Nicelle Davis, Red Hen Press. In this collection of poems, Nicelle Davis blends personal history (involving, among other things, the Mormon religion) with popular mythology (John...
View ArticleA Review of John Ashbery’s Quick Question
Quick question: do you prefer Ashbery early or late? OK, that’s a trick question, since Ashbery has returned, in his late poetry, to the fast and loose writing of The Tennis Court Oath, albeit with a...
View ArticleA Review of Robert Vaughan’s Diptychs + Triptychs + Lipsticks + Dipshits
Preamble Looking through a catalog of books last week this title caught my eye: “Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces”. I wondered what kind of book would have the title, “Secrets to Drawing Unrealistic...
View ArticleFrancis Ponge in English Translation
New readers of Francis Ponge are advised to go first either to Selected Poems or The Nature of Things, both of which are in print and readily available. I say this even though they are two of the four*...
View ArticleRobert Vaughan and Breathless
Breathless for Robert Vaughan I dreamed that you had died and there would be no more from you but that what you had given we’d take and parse and continue to chew passing from mouth to mouth, as we...
View ArticleThree Books by Seann McCollum
1. shoplift a six-pack of love from the plaid pantry of my heart The 49 short prose pieces in this book will make you laugh and they just might put a hairline crack in your little heart. I can’t...
View ArticleFredric Brown: A Pal For Life
When I was in 7th grade I met a boy who, like me, enjoyed writing stories and poems. He and I were awarded pens for our work on the school magazine. Later on, in high school, we worked together again...
View ArticleBadiou on Beckett
rest then my mistakes are my life the knees draw up the back bends the head comes to rest on the sack between the hands my sack my body all mine all these parts every part —Samuel Beckett, How It Is, p...
View ArticleRobert Wyatt: Different Every Time
You know that saying, the devil is in the detail? I think the devil runs the show, and God is in the detail. —Robert Wyatt* Robert Wyatt’s music has been a source of nourishment for me since the very...
View ArticleThe Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett
Anyone who is as interested in Beckett as I am will have to have a copy of The Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett, but those with a less intense interest would do better to buy the fourth volume of the...
View ArticleThe Poetry of Kenneth Fearing
I’m falling in love with Kenneth Fearing: Selected Poems, a book I stumbled across in a used bookstore. Fearing’s name was familiar to me from a couple of anthologies, but they had only given me a...
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