Word For/ Word “with an astute awareness of the materials, rhythms, trajectories and emerging forms of the contemporary”

Cover Art, Word For/Word Volume 19

Five poems from a sequence called “The Little Words,” manipulated erasures of some George Oppen poems, are up at Word For/Word‘s volume 19. George Oppen (1908-1984), the objectivist poet, expressed often his fondness forall the ‘little words,’ and that ‘All along I’ve had a sense that the structure of a sentence closes off the little words. That’s where the mysteries are, in the little words. ‘The’ and ‘and’ are the greatest mysteries of all.’ These poems are, I hope, both homage and new life.

While there are many incredible works in this issue, I want to personally recommend poems poems by Derek Henderson, Brad Vogler, and Emileigh Barnes. See also the stunning looking Crystal Gibbins visual poems and her poetic comic/collaboration with Joshua Ware (a Phoebe contributor).

Thanks to Jonathan Minton for giving these poems such a good home, and such great company.

Gently Read Literature (n): an internet journal that hopes to be useful

Well, this is exciting. Thanks to Daniel Casey, editor over at Gently Read Literature, for giving me the opportunity to review a book I love, Joe Hall‘s Pigafetta is My Wife. He aptly titled my review: “All Voyages are Destructive” and I like it. Go check out the whole issue — read about Carl Adamshick’s Curses and Wishes (via Lisa Wells) and Emily Kendal Frey’s The Grief Performance (via Megan Kaminski, a Phoebe contributor, I might add) and many more! Also, if you haven’t, please read Joe’s book. You deserve some destruction. 

Fringe: the Noun that Verbs Your World

Much gratitude to Anna Lena Phillips over at Fringe Magazine for publishing three poems from the Here Now, Myriads manuscript as a part of the special Maps feature. Fringe is an excellent online journal with three issues per year. They roll out each issue in several increments — the poems are fresh on the ‘net today! Anna had these lovely words to say as a form of introduction on the Fringe blog:

A map of a garden can be made before the garden itself exists or after everything’s been planted. Having tried both strategies, I can say that it’s easier to do the mapping beforehand; straightening out measurements and transferring them accurately to the page after the garden already exists can be a difficult task. But then, this is what descriptive cartographers do on much larger scales, for cities, landforms, landscapes.

This week’s poems take as their subject someone from the “before” camp: Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed New York City’s Central Park, among others. Olmstead wrote,

Nature shall be employed upon it for generations, before the work he has arranged for her shall realize his intentions.

We can forgive Olmsted, who died in 1903, the he’s and she’s. He’s right that whether they’re in a field returning to forest or a park just planted with roses and fruit trees, plants require time. (Fortunately for impatient gardeners, there exist annual plants, which grow happily and well on smaller timescales.)

Moriah L. Purdy, the author of the poems, is working on a manuscript that considers Olmsted’s work and borrows from his papers. About the quote, which serves as the epigraph for the manuscript, Moriah writes, ”I think this both describes his philosophy behind his greatest parks but I also hope/believe this sentiment parallels what time does for the language of poems.”

I’m so pleased these poems found such an excellent home. If you’d like to leave some thoughts re: the poems you’re encouraged to do so via comments on the Fringe blog. Please do comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

DIAGRAM (n): A figure composed of lines, serving to illustrate a definition or statement, or to aid in the proof of a proposition.

…or, a really kickass online literary journal.

Check out my poem “Decayless” in DIAGRAM‘s issue 10.4… I have some excellent company, for which I am grateful and humbled. Thanks to the editors for publishing this little weird footnoted poem!

Enthusiasm (n): Rapturous intensity of feeling in favour of a person, principle, cause, etc.; passionate eagerness in any pursuit, proceeding from an intense conviction of the worthiness of the object.

Simultaneous Contrast, my collaborative project with potter and friend Stephanie Rozene has been exhibited as a part of the Dis/Arming Domesticity show curated by Gail M Brown at the the Wallingford, PA Community Arts Center just outside of Philadelphia since the beginning of March, but this week was the NCECA (National Council on the Education of Ceramic Arts) conference so our audience got a big boost with potters and ceramic artists from all over, as well as some additional attention from the Philadelphia arts community overall as many of NCECA’s events and exhibits are open to the public.

We received some excellent feedback in person at Thursday evening’s reception, with people thanking us for our work and offering generous praise (although often it started with, “I didn’t really get it at first…” it always ended with enthusiasm for the challenge the work presented them). We’re also thrilled with the review by art critic Edward Sozanski in the Philadelphia Inquirer who says:

The NCECA invitational is a handsome and satisfying show that articulates its theme with restraint and pleasing contrasts of form and content. If you could see only one show among the 90-plus, the invitational would deliver the flavor of the whole.

So would “Dis/Arming Domesticity,” at the suburban Community Arts Center. Curator Brown’s theme is the domestic environment and domestic experience. This is abundantly evident in work such as Stephanie A. Rozene’s Simultaneous Contrast, a wall display of a dozen porcelain serving bowls linked to presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama, each accompanied by a poem by Moriah L. Purdy.

Rozene’s installation is enchanting, not only because some of the shallow, wide-rimmed bowls are conventionally beautiful, but because it straddles the divide that separates pure function from conceptional innovation.

I couldn’t be happier with the space (a converted home made gallery for a show commenting and inquiring about the domestic? how appropriate!) and the company we keep in this show. Here are a few of my not-so-great photos from the exhibit (clicking will offer better views than the main blog page). A virtual tour of the other work in the show can be seen at Gail’s website, or in virtual tour on youtube.