Ron Silliman review of Contradicta- Silliman's Blog

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5/19/10 NY Times: Arakawa, Whose Art Tried to Halt Aging, Dies at 73


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Contradicta offered as help by a reader to a blogger in a comment stream

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Don Share's selection of Contradicta, "unforgettably illustrated by Toni Simon", posted
on Squandermania 5/21/10



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Mira Schor on the new Godard movie

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Boog City 63 ed. David Kirschenbaum


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Ray DiPalma and Michael Lally at The Poetry Project Wednesday May 12

---Just a quick note to say that both poets gave first rate performances on this occasion. As it happens, these two readers are superb actors as well as being brilliantly accomplished poets at the top of their form. Each read a few published works, but focussed on unpublished manuscripts. Ray's recent poems were each stunning in their manifestations of surprise and inventiveness.In one poem Ray repeats a line a number of times, each time with a specific and unique ambience, offering, for example, the comic, reflective and ambiguous facets of each line, as if you might be turning a jewel around in the light. Ray DiPalma's mode of reading is acutely and precisely dramatic. Each poem was not only elegantly read in his carefully modulated and pleasant bass voice, but profoundly elucidated by his intricately nuanced internal interpretations as well. Hovering within and around each poem I detected a discrete dramatic persona. This is all the more amazing when you realize that Ray DiPalma's work also emanates on the printed page the penetrating eye of a great visual artist. Thus the multiple layering of Ray DiPalma's work, I would guess can only be completely experienced in eventually reading the work on the page and hearing him read it as well. How many poets can you think of are equally blessed with talents in the visual, verbal and dramatic dimensions? In this way, perhaps, Ray DiPalma is unique among his contemporaries.

Ray's was a hard act to follow. But Michael Lally was up the the task. His abilities as an actor are well known, but in this context, no doubt inspired by Ray's amazing performance, Michael was in incredibly top form tonight. After reading from a few published poems, Michael wove a mesmerizing autobiographical commentary into a selection of newer manuscripts. Michael's minutely described perceptions of his recent experiences before, during and after brain surgery for me, as I told him later, rose to the descriptive wonders of Oliver Sacks. For us, Michael made his struggles with learning how to read and write again, in tiny, gradual steps, fascinating, inspiring; in point of fact, poetic. I think also, for some reason of Christopher Knowles and Adrian Piper. After the operation Michael was unable, as he explained, to blend individual perceptions together. For that reason, trying to watch Jon Stewart and follow his subtle ironies Michael found, for the first time, strangely impossible. (After a decade of watching Stewart's bits, I am starting to feel the same way without having had brain surgery). Another example was that Michael could not be with someone and watch t.v. at the same time. Individual sounds would also be heard by his brain in a way that demanded equal attention, thus making it difficult for him to meld them together into a whole perception. He gave an example by noticing the sound of someone's water bottle very quietly popping in the audience. Michael also wondered whether the simplistic comprehension abilities of right wingers might owe something to a similar tendency toward concretization and the inability to form insights. He had us all laughing at this one. As Michael Lally wove his monologue around readings of some spare, but moving poems written before and after his operation, we were offered an unusual opportunity to glimpse the inner workings of his uniquely moving, and personally revealing creative process. I remember a poem in which he tells a young woman how much he is enjoying being in a comfortable bed after having slept in some pretty grungy ones. The woman said to him, perhaps this is why you are not more successful, you are so easily satisfied! Has Michael Lally gained enlightenment, he wonders aloud at the end of the reading? He hopes so, while we know so.

As they has been able to do for decades, on this occasion Michael Lally and Ray DiPalma, by means of their poet/actor magic alchemy, renewed our love for life's ambivalent mixture of tragedy and triumph, pain and laughter.

Jerome Sala on Michael Lally's reading [Expresso Bongo]

Lally's Alley- ML on his reading with Ray DiPalma

Lalley's Alley- 6 Months Since Brain Surgery

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Contradicta


Expect the best; people tend to give you what you expect, rather than what you want.



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All your longings know where to go, but you have to tell them when to open their eyes.

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Life ia a Time of Contraction

Drunken Boat
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Mother's Day

This was posted on Mother's Day on Wood s lot
Once again, Mark Woods gets it!

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Otoliths Issue 17

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Poets and Artists May 2010 Poets and Artists

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Gregory Vincent St Thomasino reviews our book party for Contradicta at the Zinc on Sunday e ratio


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I'm still very proud of my interview with GVST on The Argotist Online

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Gregory Vincent St Thomasino's work was included in OCHO 21 OCHO 21

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Jerome Sala's new blog-- Expresso Bongo

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Mira Schor's new blog-- A Year of Positve Thinking

Reading Carla Harryman --ed. Laura HInton-- How 2 Silliman's Blog