Ben Mirov
Ben Mirov grew up in Northern California. He is the author of Ghost Machine (Caketrain, 2010), and the chapbooks, Vortexts (SUPERMACHINE, 2011), I is to Vorticism (New Michigan Press, 2010) and Collected Ghost (H_NGM_N, 2010).
When I Was a Poet
By David Meltzer
City Lights Publishers, 2011
144 pages, $10.95
[Reviewer’s Note: I received a review copy of David Meltzer’s When I Was a Poet directly from City Lights Publishers last summer. While reading the book on a quick trip for a family-related emergency of sorts, I began to fill a small notebook with short bursts of a fast-clipped poem-series. This poetic assemblage mixing David’s lines between my own responses generated the gist of what became the official book review (see below)—the poem-series itself follows. I had the honor of reading this poem in David’s presence as part of a group reading celebration for When I Was a Poet @ the Meridian gallery here in San Francisco hosted by SF State Poetry Center on Sept 1, 2011. It’s a pleasure to see both versions find a home on HTMLGIANT thanks to Ben Mirov. Rock on. -pjd]
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March 28th, 2012 / 3:26 pm
March 28th, 2012 / 3:26 pm
DARK MATTER #2
Dark Matter is a publication made up of poems and songs from other places on the internet.
#THINGSIDIDNTTWEETATAWP
These are things I didn’t tweet while walking around AWP like a zombie (typos included):
DARK MATTER #1
Dark Matter is a magazine I made up last night. It’s composed of poems from other publications on the internet and some songs. Some of the poems are newer and some are older. They come from publications that I enjoy reading. The songs are songs I like and can be listened to with the poems, or by themselves.
Ben Mirov—
Sometimes I feel like Poetry wants to kill me. Not in a malicious way, but in an ambivalent way. Like it wants to siphon my life off, little by little, until there’s none left. Sorry, I guess that’s not a question.
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Ben & Amy Read Chapbooks: Photo Review Edition
Here are some chapbooks that Amy Lawless and I read recently and want to share with you.
effie by Will Edmiston (Three Sad Tigers Press, 2011)
Construction: Elegant letterpress of a cheerleader in midair after being thrown up by her teammates (from a series called Fan Death by Kristina Williamson). Thick cream card stock cover. The poems themselves are printed in whatever font a typewriter is.
Sample Poem:
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January 20th, 2012 / 7:23 pm
January 20th, 2012 / 7:23 pm
Ben Mirov—
I suck at making money. I go for long periods of time without showering. I’m self-involved to the point of megalomania. I talk shit to myself about myself. I feel like I need drugs. I feel my poems have more to offer than my personality. My work seems like a series of mistakes played out over the course of many years for everyone to observe. I turn my feelings into products. I have a strong need to be praised for my work, which I cannot explain. My poems have no ostensible value beyond their capacity to conduct oblique messages, which I have no control over.
Why are you ashamed of being a writer?
R.I.P. SUPERMACHINE
There is a part of me that thinks good things should go on indefinitely and there is another part that says for something to be really good, for it to gain some kind of worthy status in anyone’s memory, it has to die. When I think of SUPERMACHINE, I will think of the magazine that best represented the writers and writing that I cared about during the duration of its life. R.I.P.
I am going to these final SUPERMACHINE events. You should too:
Ben & Amy Read Chapbooks: Gchat Edition
My friend Amy Lawless and I like to read chapbooks and review them on the internet. We used to write these together, while drinking wine and watching TV. We live in different cities now, so we did this one over gchat. Here are our recent reviews. We hope you buy these chapbooks:
Books Without Covers
“The Internet” by Eric Amling
Here are the names of some manuscripts I’m reading with observations about the content of each manuscript and sample poems (the picture above has nothing to do with this post, except that it’s a collage by Eric Amling that I like). It would be rad if other people blurbed about manuscripts they are reading (their own or their friends or whatever). Feel free to share poems from other unpublished manuscripts in the comments. Also, if any publishers would like to contact the poets mentioned in this post in order to read their manuscripts for possible publication, please let me know and I’ll forward your requests to them.
PEN America Poetry Series
I just started editing a poetry series over at PEN America. If you sign up for the mailing list, we’ll send you new poems from rad poets 1-2 times a month (no adds, newsletters, promotions, etc). The inaugural installment includes two new poems from Chris Martin. Please check it out and sign up. I promise we won’t let you down.
Summer BF Press
Summer BF Press is run by poets Lindsey Boldt and Steve Orth from their apartment in Oakland, CA. They just released as new title called The Truth About Ted by Bruce Boone. The only do small runs of chapbooks and they have rad taste. You should visit their website and buy one of everything.
Ben Mirov—
Poets are the most jealous type of artist. One of the most jealous moments I’ve experienced is when I heard Heather Christle’s second book The Trees the Trees was being published by Octopus Books and her third book What is Amazing was forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. I’d love to hear your jealous moments (bonus points for commenting under your own name).
A Review of Your Review: Ben Mirov Reviews Jeff Gordinier’s Review of Chris Martin’s BECOMING WEATHER
My friend Amy Lawless showed me this review of Becoming Weather by Chris Martin in the New York Times (scroll to the bottom of the article). Here is my review of the review, beginning with an excerpt from the review:
“No, the author of “Becoming Weather” is not the same Chris Martin who is the frontman of Coldplay and the husband of Gwyneth Paltrow. But it’s easy to see how you might leap to that assumption, because what you often find here are the kind of well-intentioned ruminations — “The people I love / lack something sufficient / for the violence of this world” (oh, buck up, people!) — that you might expect from a pop star who lets verse pour forth in his dressing room between bites of a vegan corn dog.”
Ben Mirov is Unemployed, Reads Books, Lives in Oakland
I just moved to Oakland, CA from Brooklyn, NY. I’m unemployed, so I’m reading more books than usual. And growing a beard. Here are some of the books surrounding me and some thoughts about them and a pic of my beard.
Moving Day by Ish Klein (Canarium Books, 2011)
Usually when someone says a book of poems is “weird” it means the poems are ephemerally weird. Like the weirdness is a novelty to grab attention. Real weirdness permeates content and form, like it does in Ish’s book. The sentences and lines are like little adjustments to the readers attention. It feels like your being nudged into an ultimately more complex and valenced sensitivity of your self and the world.
sample lines: Yes, yes larval. / Larvelous was the eye—the stars, / they were wondering, “When is X coming out?” / Considering the material, X will be something!”
Nick Demske by Nick Demske (FENCE Books, 2010)
Sometimes when I read sonnets all I can think is “fuck sonnets”. I’m pretty sure Nick Demske thinks this too, which is why he wrote a book of sonnets. Feels like this book was written by your drug dealer friend in high school who was smarter and better read than everyone in your class, but was destined to burn out and spend the rest of his life as a low-level bureaucrat in the same town you grew up in. Poems feel like they are “in your face”. Some lines break in the middle of words in a way that is perturbing/engaging. Funny letter of congratulations on the back from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), better than any blurb.
sample lines: Unsanitized hypodermia. Full dorsal poetry. Homos say / What. Say what? Say when. I’m going to buttfuck / You in the mouth. I know where you live.
31 Comments
July 1st, 2011 / 2:12 am
July 1st, 2011 / 2:12 am
