Wednesday, August 22, 2007
informal poll
My mind these days, as so often at this end-of-summer, feels like an unmoving swamp. I hanker for new things, new sounds, new poets. So, an informal poll: who, among that vast sea of talented & interesting writers out there, is exciting you these days? Let's leave the honored dead out of the reckoning; send me – backchannel or in the comments box – a list of the dozen or half-dozen contemporaries whose poetry seems most alive to you at the moment. Help MS jumpstart his joie de vivre.
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12 comments:
John Martone
David Giannini
John Phillips
Ed Baker
Tsering Dhompa
Jeremy Seligson
John Vieira
Bob Arnold
John Perlman
you must have a "secret" Lang Gang/Acaneamic address or
not many interested in replying!
Prob a bit of the latter, Ed. I'll be damned -- I thought I'd set the email option on the blogger profile to show my address, but I hadn't; anyway, it's there now. And thanks for the suggestions!
Mark/
If you were sitting in my study with me & asked that question (presuming you'd wouldn't want me recommending people we both know personally), I'd readily mention G.C. Waldrep's The Batteries, Camille Guthrie's In Captivity, James McMichael's Each in a Place Apart (Devin turned me on to that one), & Jay Wright's mindblowing new book Music's Mask & Measure; if this last doesn't revitalize your desire for the art, well, there's always sci fi...
Peter
Reading over your shoulder, mate.
--E
eric swanger's most recent stuff is pretty interesting. www.littleblackstar.com .... his most recent chapbooks, passages, is incredible. handbound, japanese style, with a screen printed cover, fold out pages, some of his photos, etc. but there are only 108 of them, so..........
oops.... i guess the best place, somewhat hilariously, to see his most recent stuff is here: http://heyimoverhere.deviantart.com/
Hi Mark, leaving aside poets we certainly both know to follow, a few names I mightn't have mentioned to you before:
US: Catherine Daly, Lisa Samuels,
Action, Yes (I don't specify individuals, but the scene is kicking)
UK: Richard Makin(mostly prose)
Sweden: Aase Berg,Johan Jönsson
Links to online pieces - some more substantially persuasive than others, I think, but the best I could bodge up in a short time ! mi ch a el
I'll plug a couple of friends (or one-time friends) whose work I'm fond of:
Catherine Pierce's chapbook Animals of Habit came out a couple of years ago -- she's got a new book coming out in January.
I also think Nadine Meyer's work is really good (even though she's someone I no longer really speak to ...). And Steve Gerhke.
Hmm ... all those people were in my wedding. I might be a little biased like that.
I haven't read his poetry, but Nick Flynn's memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City certainly read like one long lyric essay (or maybe a whole bunch of lyric essays strung together to form a larger narrative). It's a shame the title of the book isn't more memorable.
I'm mostly out of the loop as far as living contemporaries, but I'll try to hazard something:
Green by Sidney Wade
Midsummer by Derek Walcott
The August Sleepwalker by Bei Dao
None of those are from this decade though. Seems like most poets I read are dead. Sorry.
~Ray
Canada: a.rawlings, derek beaulieu, Ray Hsu
France: Esther Tellermann, Liliane Giraudon.
Sweden: Aase Berg
Brazil: Josely Vianna Batista
I wouldn't presume to suggest poets, but a book that gives me joie de vivre is Tibet Through the Red Box by Peter Sis.
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