Contradicta Aphorisms is now available from SPD
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The Health and Illness Anthology
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Mark Young's Genji Monogatari
"The Paulownia Court"
Most physical quantities- mass,
length, energy- map out her
book: objects of perfect beauty
& symmetry. Or can be
made so. There are dolls
of various kinds. Talk of the
varieties of women. Thumbnail
functions. The photograph & its
usefulness. The caption &
its reliability. Struggle & combat
occur again & again. The function
of poetry is painfully reached."
"The Paulownia Court" appeared as "Genji Mongatari IV" in
OCHO 14
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From Publisher's Weekly:
All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems Charles Bernstein. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26 (298p) ISBN 978-0-374-10344-6
This gathering of 30 years worth of work by the prominent L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet and essayist offers a rigorous critique of the art of poetry itself, which means, among other things, a thorough investigation of language and the mind. Varied voices and genres are at play, from a colloquial letter of complaint to the manager of a Manhattan subway station to a fragmentary meditation on the forces that underlie the formation of knowledge. Bernstein's attention to the uncertainty surrounding the self as it purports to exist in poetry—“its virtual (or ventriloquized)/ anonymity—opens fresh pathways toward thinking through Rimbaud's dictum that “I is another.” In addition to philosophical depth—which somehow even lurks beneath statements like “There is nothing/ in this poem/ that is in any/ way difficult/ to understand”—a razor-sharp wit ties the book together: “You can't/ watch ice sports with the lights on!” These exhilarating, challenging poems raise countless essential questions about the form and function of poetry. (Mar.)
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Music Vagabond keepaway intervew
