poetry stuff today

as in literally today, june 2 i think it is...funny if i get that wrong and the blogger heading gets it right... whatever, it's summer...

here's something interesting, find of the day:

http://jacketmagazine.com/29/duplessis-d73.html

a long piece by r. du p. no comment at the moment, working on flipping virtual pages, a rare computer-time activity...but notice the photo of r.d.p. at the bottom esp. since i've loved her for some time and never saw her in person... like when you have favorite radio voices...i loved ray suarez when he did that talk of the nation years back...

in any case, her new book: Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work is coming soon from Alabama Press

see
Silliman's blog for the pic of the cover, you can also go to the Alabama site

I've also learned that Alabama will reprint The Pink Guitar...yeah!

Otherwise, to continue randomly in the swing of contemporary poetics which is rarely actually random in the sense that one might think of random as, well, random, when it is actually, random that is, ultimately organized and tends (or things that are considered random tend) to fall into patterns and predictable 'structures' or whatnot. To continue then, following my line of thought at the moment which is this actual moment of warm-sun pre-summer, post-margarita evening, having been reading Harryette Mullen's Sleeping with the Dictionary, I'll include something below:

from "All She Wrote" this is how I feel most days...

"The untied parcel service never delivered. I regret to say I'm unable to reply to your unespressed desires. I didn't get the book you sent. By the way, my computer was stolen. Now I'm unable to process words. I suffer from aphasia."

But whether she articulates or simply has the dictionary do it for her, through this book we are hit with one powerful yet simple yet subtle yet strong line of language after another. Language should be sensual, or we should have a sensual relationship with language and vocabulary and the sounds and feel of words. Go to the dictionary, Mullen tells us, just pick up the damn dusty book and have a read, or a sleep.

from "Sleeping with the Dictionary":

...the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language.

...all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illumiunated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet's nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work.


ok, so it may be a bit heavy on the overused poetic language...but the whole piece is dense with "this dictum that can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover's name." I guess you have to work through the moving and rhythmic syllables and sounds of the poems surrounding this particular piece and then maybe it is less dreamers and penetration and more, well, motivating you to turn back the covers and crawl in with some one special of a book of ("meandering" and "migratory") words.

I think some of my students actually opened some dictionaries they may or not have used in a while... thanks, Harryette.