Neeli Cherkovski : Broadway for Paul, by Vincent Katz

Broadway for Paul, Vincent Katz
Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

 

 

 

 

Vincent Katz will not leave New York for himself alone. Like so many other poets, most notably Walt Whitman and Federico Garcia Lorca, he gives us Manhattan. So much is incorporated here — that is the way he wants it. In Broadway for Paul, the poet shows his hometown from many different vantage points — always with a sense of love and subtle astonishment. He may have been born there, but that doesn’t stop Katz from seeing it anew.  He writes in the opening of the first poem of how “totally enamored” he is of the people who crowd the streets.  We’re told it’s a “warm mid-March evening near 39th and Park,” and then begins a cascade of observations following this information. “The light is such that I can see everyone…” There it is, that habit poets have of seeing so much — of seeing everything and everyone and then making something of it. The poet will dig deep into his city. It is his world and he will share it as such. In the second poem, he’s talking about the subway where you can “look at all the people, and each one is different”.  They are all inside of a bubble, the poet tells us: the City itself is a bubble. We are led into it slowly, the sound of Manhattan enters our pores.  The tempo of this raucous metropolis is caught quite effectively, “They carry their lunches in paper or plastic bags/They are rushing but composed”. Yes, it had to be the same city where Lorca felt overwhelmed by the monolithic architecture.  Katz has the New Yorkers’ vision to see “People in high boardrooms creating situations affecting those with nothing”.

One of the more ambitious poems in this collection is “Autumn Days & Hours.”  This poem is a rich panoply of images.  “A forceful grey covers the sky”.  Not difficult to conjure up such a coloring.  We see “punctuations of light pressing through here and there.”  Because this is a longer poem it is easy for the reader to be comfortably lost within the language. Katz pushes one mood against another and turns abruptly from shadow to light. 

His words are unified and hold onto ordinary facts that help orient his reader, “It was in the high 80s today. The view is endlessly entertaining, like a slow-moving film.”  This conversational tone pervades the collection.  The poet sticks by his reader, putting the city forward matter of factly.  Soliloquizing will not be found here, though there are our elegiac moments that underscore Katz’s relationship to his town. “River” is an artful work of concision:  “This is where I am a poet:/Right here, at the edge of the river, in the cold/Those colors at the end of day…”  And then will write, “I’m able to have my own views out here/And I can hear the water lapping”.

Yes, certainly a sense of romanticism is in this collection, yet that is not the main thing here.  Broadway for Paul is a hybrid.  There is none of the plaintive cry of Lorca or boisterousness of Walt Whitman.  This is a man coming to terms with a cityscape/landscape he has known all his life. He not only digs into the present, but walks the town historically as well. The longer poem “A City Marriage” takes care of all that. Amid the iconic features of modern New York/Manhattan, we are shown The African Burial Ground. Katz tells us how to get there: A short walk here. A short walk there. On the way to that historical place he shows many mysteries and wonders that abide. Reading the poem is like having a carousel spin you around and cast you on a path to the past.

This is a friendly book — not like, I’m an old acquaintance taking you for a trip in an environment with which I am well acquainted. There is nothing in the way of confrontation, it is more like a good conversation, in which you listen with care to the possibilities language affords.  Jump in.  Tackle the avenues.  Make the streets.  Let the poet show you the Way.

 

 

 

 

Neeli Cherkovski’s recent books of poetry include Hang on to the Yangtze River and Elegy for my Beat Generation from Lithic Press. Currently completing new edition of his biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He is the recipient of an American book award.

Michael Sikkema : An interview with Andrew Brenza

 

 

 

Small Press Intravues:
Occasional Interviews with writers working and publishing in the small press ecosystem

Interview #9: Andrew Brenza’s recent chapbooks include Geometric Mantra (above/ground press), Poems in C (Viktlösheten Press), and Waterlight (Simulacrum Press). He is also the author of five collections of visual poetry, Automatic Souls (Timglaset), Gossamer Lid (Trembling Pillow Press), Alphabeticon & Other Poems (RedFoxPress), Album, in Concrete (Alien Buddha Press), and Spool (Unsolicited Press). His newest book, Smear, was released by BlazeVOX Books in March 2021.

Michael Sikkema: You do a lot of vispo, work that really explores a verbo-visual field. I think some of our readers will be fellow practitioners and some others might not know much about vispo at all. 

Can you tell us a little bit about what brought you to making this kind of poetry? To my knowledge, it's not a thing that gets taught much in schools. 

Andrew Brenza: I agree. I don't think that vispo is taught much in schools. For me, it wasn't until graduate school that I was exposed to concrete and visual poetry as a kind of genre or poetic tradition of sorts. This was back in the early 2000s and I remember being blown away by the possibilities. It was then that I began incorporating it into my own work, but it really wasn't until about 5 years ago that I really embraced it. For me, the use of the verbo-visual field is a means of representing the complexity of modern experience and the problems of individual expression in a way that feels more honest, more accurate, than the writing of more traditional looking poems. 

It is also a way to incorporate the invisible, the non-verbal, the ineffable into the work.

M: When I personally think of "the invisible, the non-verbal, the ineffable," I think of energy fields, and the microscopic, and the gestural, the literal way a human eye scans a page, consciousness itself. Can you say more about that powerful idea? 

A: For me, this is not just an issue of aesthetics, but one central to understanding the nature of our physical reality. Amazingly, something like 80% of the matter in our universe is not directly perceivable by humans. This dark matter is everywhere and has been recently shown to produce electromagnetic fields, which means it is definitely interacting with the matter we can perceive, although the exact affects and organization are of course unknown. There may be billions of dark matter galaxies and solar systems floating around the universe completely invisible to us. Our planet may be teeming with dark matter entities. One may be sitting with you right now, helping you with what seems like the spontaneous miracle of reading and understanding this sentence. Who knows, we may rely on them to think at all. While these manifestations are of course speculative at this point, the existence of this invisible reality is not. It is fact. And then there are the theories which promulgate consciousness as an inherent aspect of matter itself like its mass, which means that, in essence, everything is consciousness. Bringing this back to vispo, yes, the use of page space and the foregrounding of the visual aspects of language are a way to engage and represent these complexities, and to disrupt and to reimagine the reading/writing process in a manner that shifts meaning away from a solely human-centered perspective to one that is at least suggestive of alternatives.

M: It sounds like you work from a place of unknowing, and so your process is exploratory? Experimental? Improvisational? Some makers are bothered by these words. Others embrace them. What do you think? 

Also, part two, do you think of your work as collaborative with the Big Is?

A: I'm fairly indifferent to these terms, though, yes, I think my work does reach toward connection with something like the Big Is. It would be nice to think that my work offers experiential representations of this magical place, this, dare I say, wholeness, but it isn't up to me to decide.

M: Do you access that wholeness when making what you make? I often do, when making poems, or collages, or vispo, or sculpture, or whatever. It can feel as though I've dissolved and now there is just the process, the flow, the charge. For me, this is an aesthetic, philosophical, meditative, spiritual, all encompassing deal. 

A: I'm so happy you wrote that, because, yes, I do feel like I dissolve, and you're the first person I've heard say it. There is also exhiliration. I don't know if it's paradoxical but I also feel most human, most alive, during these moments of creation. 

M: I agree. There is a strong feeling of connection and vitality. I feel it in the woods, or in the big lake too. Also singing or making music with others, and collaborating with other artists. Are there other moments that you experience that kind of wholeness? Have you done much collaboration? 

A: I often get a similar feeling looking at/reading visual poems that move me, which is why I think I was drawn to visual poetry in the first place. It is perhaps a fundamentally spiritual genre, for which Solt's Flowers in Concrete or Johnson's Io and the Ox-Eye Daisy are, for me, the quintessential proof. I have done a small amount of collaborating, most notably with Kristine Snodgrass, which has resulted in a book of glitch/concrete poems due out from Unsolicited Press in 2022, but I don't think I've done enough of it to really have a grasp on the process. I've also recently started a transcendental meditation practice, which, at this early stage, has sometimes felt like a free fall drop into infinite.

M: I love that you mention Solt and Johnson! I love their stuff too! As well as Snodgrass, as she is super talented, kind, and prolific. If you were going to put together a looking/reading list for people new to visual and concrete poetry, what authors/books/anthologies/other sources would you include?

A: As I'm sure you know, the visual poetry section of UbuWeb (ubu.com) provides free access to a ton of awesome visual poetry including the Solt and Johnson pieces mentioned earlier. The Last Vispo  Anthology, An Anthology of Concrete Poetry and, most recently, Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry are all wonderful. For journals, there is also a lot for free online. I like Otoliths, Brave New World Magazine, Utsanga, and Sonic Boom among others. Lastly, I have found a number of groups on Facebook (Concrete Formalist Poetry, Vispo!, and Asemic Writing: The New Post-Literate) to be very enjoyable to participate in. I think the visual poetry community is welcoming and many of its practitioners root the products of their work in gift culture, which results in a lively exchange of poetry and ideas. 

M: Can we close up our talk with you 1. linking to some of your work so the audience can look it up and 2. letting us know what you have coming up on the horizon? I know you have a spanking new book out, the collab coming out next year, etc. I'd love to hear more about it all.

A:  Sure. Below are links to three of my books, including my newest, Smear, out from BlazeVOX. Samples can be viewed for free on each of the websites. Yes, as you mention, I’ve had the great fortune to collaborate with Kristine Snodgrass, whose work is tirelessly inventive and always fascinating, on a book of concrete/glitch poems. It is called Neon Galax and is to be published during the summer of 2022, which I am really excited about. I also have two chapbooks in the works, one from Non Plus Ultra and the other from mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. These will hopefully be available sometime this summer or fall. 

Smear 

Alphabeticon & Other Poems 

Automatic Souls  

M: Thanks for this great talk, Andrew! I appreciate your time. 

 

 

 

 

Michael Sikkema sometimes edits Shirt Pocket Press, sometimes hosts a reading or two, sometimes co-curates a reading series, sometimes makes vispo, sometimes does collages, sometimes looks for the infinite in pine cones or ampersands, sometimes writes 6 or so full length collections of poems, sometimes listens to zydeco while cooking dinner.

Kim Fahner : A Near Memoir: New Poems, Penn Kemp

A Near Memoir: New Poems, Penn Kemp
Beliveau Books, 2021

 

 

 

 

With over thirty books of poetry, prose, and drama to her name—with her first book of poetry published by Coach House Press in 1972—Penn Kemp’s work is well known. She’s also explored the world of sound operas and has offered creativity workshops around Canada, often visiting schools to speak to young people about the joys of poetry. A selection of her video poems can easily be found on the internet, and some of them are poems from Kemp’s new chapbook, A Near Memoir: New Poems.

In this new publication, Kemp looks back at her life in a series of poems that span from the age of eight to the present day. Her love of art and the natural world is present in the poetry, but the theme of connection, and of community, is the thing that pulls the poems together. In a pandemic year, these poems remind the reader to cherish memories and experiences, setting out a challenge to connect with others even while the world feels—at times—socially distanced and terribly fragmented.

In poems like “Ignoring Anatomy,” “Translation,” and “When Dignitaries Visit,” the poet speaks of how art has always been a presence in her life. She recalls occasions at her parents’ house in London—back in the mid-1950s—when some of the elderly members of the Group of Seven would come to visit. Her father’s love of art is paralleled to her love of language. As a child, she writes: “I used to prime my father’s canvasses by/painting them white with gesso—a binder/mixed with chalk and gypsum.” Then, later, she waits “with paper’s white space till/words arise, images in words.” Creative process is at the heart of what she speaks of here, in her work, as she describes the parallels between visual art and poetry. Both are doorways into exploring and understanding a life’s journey and meaning. Both are ways of documenting human experience in a creative way. The creative process, she implies, is a saving grace in times of trouble, too, and one for which we should always be grateful.

The imagery and symbolism of trees is present in A Near Memoir, as well. Kemp writes of the oaks at Vimy Ridge, and, in “The Stand of Oak,” speaks to how trees “know a longer time we/can only imagine, knowing history’s record.” In “Celebrating Souwesto Trees,” the inaugural poet laureate of London, Ontario documents the destruction of trees by settlers to Southwestern Ontario, mentioning “a litany of names that belong here,” from alder, to willow, maple, and hickory, and paying tribute to her beloved Forest City. In a pandemic year, the connectivity of trees serves to remind the reader of how we are all so connected—even in times of social distancing and lockdowns, both nationally and internationally.  

In A Near Memoir, Kemp documents personal life events, but reflects on universal themes like mortality, family, love, and how we are influenced by the rhythms of the natural world. She moves from the personal to the universal—as most observant and skilled poets do—and nudges her reader to think about how they might position themselves within the complexity of their own lives, but also within the scope of their wider communities. This book is, certainly, a collection of work that thoughtfully speaks to how our lives are full of stories, and how those stories connect us, individually and universally.

 

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. She was poet laureate in Sudbury from 2016-18, and was the first woman appointed to the role. Kim's latest book of poems is These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019). She's a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario representative of The Writers' Union of Canada (2020-22), and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim can be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com

Liam Siemens : Two poems

 

 

 

 

Find a Family

 

Ottessa Moshfegh was my therapist
the summer I wanted fame

She looked at me like a dullard,
pulled cockroaches out of her incisors,

“You think you know something,”
she said, “you don’t know anything at all”

I held my ground and twiddled my thumbs
but she looked unimpressed, might have

imagined my suffocation, one
stiletto on my throat, two burgers in hand.

Her first instruction was self-immolation
by the beachside

She gathered twigs and almond oil and
looked bored while she loaded a hotdog

with all the relish she could muster,
ketchup and pig fat on her lips while I completed my pyre

“This is what I should do?” I asked
“When will you learn?” she countered

I took this as gospel and meditated
in a squat, lit the match

until it was all fire for a good second,
a good minute, bikram hot, dribbling,

but she hosed me down with an extinguisher,
and shook her head with a scowl

“You’re a fucking idiot,” she said
“Is that good?” I asked.

She was slow to show her emotions
but I knew she was happy

when I wore my bomber hat
and showed up crying

at her paper-scattered loft
on the city’s dead outskirts

she gave me two pill bottles
to eat while I stared at

ancient statues alone, finally said
“maybe we’re getting somewhere”

For three days I wandered the city
with cocktails and cigarettes

until I was shirtless
and sinking into the pavement

There were signs everywhere
that only some people understood

shirts said words that weren’t
in the dictionary, and god,

if you’d weighed all that flesh,
performed ten million brain scans

maybe you’d understand the future
I didn’t even remember my name

Ottessa was pleased, but she’d eaten
a lot of aspirin that day

She showed me a new reality TV show
where people starved themselves

to the edge of their final death
while we had something to eat.

Where was it all going?
My eyes were popping out

on their little flesh strings,
my lower back was ninety years

old, at least, cancer was on its way and
every capillary was stuffed and exhausted,

even my internal monologue sounded
like some lobotomized aristocrat

Ottessa would probably be dead
in a few decades, wouldn’t she?

Anyone with a shock of pulse remaining
would know it was time for a change

I backed away from the busted
direction, made eye-contact

with stones, slipped out of my shoes,
put on a hood, took it off, made a garland

of pines and wore it like a fragrant noose,
and when Ottessa turned

the corner with blood make-up I turned away,
put an image of myself

over a ceramic over a hood
covering my face and walked with abandon.

Where do you end up when you reject the rejector?
Me, finally falling in a field, my face-pot cracking open,

my eyes dazzling and dilating in a grassy meadow
and there, over there in a broken line, writers

that drank tea with yuzu oil, blue flowers,
some were trying on and taking off their masks,

and I watched them for a while,
and I imitated them for a while,

and then we just sat there, together,
taking turns doing this and that,

something was opening, Ottessa
was becoming one of many.

 

 

 

I Thought I Saw Joaquin Phoenix

  

I thought I saw him

he was on the sidewalk 

his eyes were squinted

you know what I mean

it was Joaquin Phoenix.

 

Joaquin Phoenix,

I wanted to say, 

Maybe it will be okay

Maybe the oceans will sink 

Yellowstone might be a dud

Trees will grow like mega-churches 

And with that I took him in for a hug,

his musty paranoid smell and knotty muscles 

Thank you, he said. I’m Joaquin Phoenix.

 

I was at a yoga session 

sprung out in down dog,

neck softening, legs lengthening, 

when I thought I saw Sappho

She wasn’t very good at yoga. 

 

Her best pose was child’s pose

Wait, I thought, child’s pose? 

I was so distracted that the teacher

came over to my mat as my mother. Stop  

focusing on Sappho’s practice and

get a move on, she said. What? 

I asked, waking up.

  

It’s time for a transformation, someone said

What? I asked 

You heard me

I looked around the room 

but couldn’t see anyone;

This made the pronouncement seem true 

I packed my bags and walked into the ocean

It was cold, and I needed to dry off, 

and I didn’t know if I’d learned what I was supposed to,

so I climbed to the top of a very tall and windy tree.

  

Of course it was nostalgic

It couldn’t have been incidental 

that a beam of light was parting the clouds &

lighting up on my forehead, but I wasn't sure 

what it was supposed to mean.

 

I walked home 

depressed &

found a woman 

with a crown

and goth boots 

& a tattoo of a

heart on her foot 

sitting on my couch.

I can see you now, I said 

I was hiding on your couch the whole time, you idiot, she said.

 

How do you respond to that? 

 

I didn’t. Instead I applied

for a gameshow and travelled to L.A. 

Soon I was sitting in the contestants

chair and — I couldn’t believe it — 

Joaquin was standing on the stage with ribbons

all over his dress clothes. Swipe right and I’m yours, 

he said, smiling shyly, but adorably, batting

his eyelashes just a smidge. 

 

He must have known I would swipe right,

but he was wrong. 

 

I saw others behind him

and I was feeling choosy, 

and I’m nothing if not curious.

 

Is that Bill Murray? 

No, it was Christopher Walken.

 

Is that Sinead O’Connor? 

No, an imitator.

 

I kept swiping left, 

dropping one sad start after another,

until the audience started to grow electric cords 

and turn on me.

 

I ran to grab whatever I could, 

but all that was left was one pencil,

and Joaquin, laying on the burning floor.

  

Help me, he said. Please.

The audience was turning into a frenzy 

Twelve year-old girls were kicking up Starbucks cups &

rating the noses of celebrities. Men were clipping their toe nails & 

screaming at everyone who told them to stop what they were doing.

 

Please help me, he said, as a group 

of hip kids locked him in a cage

 

He stared at me, helplessly, lugubriously, 

while he was carried away for selfies.

 

Write about me, he mouthed, crying, 

Write about me with that pencil.

 

I turned away emotionally  

and walked all the way home,

making sense of one more day, 

and I wrote it all down.

 

 

 

Liam Siemens is a writer from Saskatoon. Find his work at the Literary Review of Canada, SAD Mag, VICE, and elsewhere. If not there, here.