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November 2011

Into the Snow

Into the Snow
By Gennady Aygi
Translated by Sarah Valentine
Wave Books, 2011
128 pages / $16 Buy from Wave Books

“Sidelined in a mass-media, technology-driven culture, the American poet seems to have a slim chance of connecting with an audience, and even less of a chance to effect large-scale change through poetry. But elsewhere in the world many poets…continue to write poetry at the risk of losing their lives and livelihoods. For them poetry is an ethical act, an act of humanity, regardless of the cost.”
– translator Sarah Valentine, in her Introduction to Gennady Aygi’s Into the Snow

Gennady Aygi’s collection of poems all speak of simple people and minimal places. Most involve a specific location, like a clearing or a forest. The simplicity is an illusion that he skillfully employs to challenge the reader to see more. The metaphors are powerful in their simplicity: as Aygi describes a “clearing in the field,” we may first imagine a meadow, but it could be that he’s referring to a transformation in the political climate—moving us from a tangible location to an intangible concept.

2 Comments
November 7th, 2011 / 12:00 pm

Kristen Iskandrian—

Well this last line from John Banville’s review of Joan Didion’s new memoir Blue Nights, I like it:

“However, it is most profound, and most provocative, at another level, the level at which the author comes fully to realize, and to face squarely, the dismaying fact that against life’s worst onslaughts nothing avails, not even art; especially not art.”

Brooks Sterritt

A ham is proud of cocoanut.

A CLOTH.

Enough cloth is plenty and more, more is almost enough for that and besides if there is no more spreading is there plenty of room for it. Any occasion shows the best way.

….

A TIME TO EAT.

A pleasant simple habitual and tyrannical and authorised and educated and resumed and articulate separation. This is not tardy.

….

APPLE.

Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, colored wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato, potato and no no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece a little piece please.
A little piece please. Cane again to the presupposed and ready eucalyptus tree, count out sherry and ripe plates and little corners of a kind of ham. This is use.

[from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein]

Craft Notes & I Like __ A Lot / 20 Comments
November 6th, 2011 / 2:47 pm

Impossible Mike

“POETRY OPENS THE NIGHT TO DESIRE’S EXCESS”

STEP TWO ON A SERIES OF POSTS DEVELOPING A THEORETICAL-FICTION TOWARDS WHAT I WILL COIN A ‘RECKLESS UTOPIANISM’

Power Quote / 3 Comments
November 6th, 2011 / 1:30 pm

Sunday Service

Sunday Service: Michael Robbins Poem

Money Bin

I got a tattoo of God. You can’t see it
but it’s everywhere. If I seem out of it,
do the math. I was put on earth.
And then you were, making up your feet
as you went along. New thinspo clanks the spank
bank. New emoticon makes a Holocene.

If you want to get in shape you have to jog
your memory of Euclid. Jesus built
a ship in a ship shape and said
there’s plenty of loaves in the sea.
Some Idaho you turned out to be.

Some money bin I, a rich duck, swim in!
The coins of you in my feathers like water
off my back. I count each red cent of you.
Now the rain with its funny money din.
The rain beats a tattoo of God any day.

Michael Robbins’s first book of poems, Alien vs. Predator, will be published by Penguin in April 2012. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Yorker, Poetry, Boston Review, Fence, and elsewhere. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Impossible Mike

UTOPIAN VISIONS OF KESHA

STEP ONE ON A SERIES OF POSTS DEVELOPING A THEORETICAL-FICTION TOWARDS WHAT I WILL COIN A ‘RECKLESS UTOPIANISM’

I DECLARE WAR ON REALISM, I DECLARE WAR ON A WORN-OUT JOY, I DECLARE WAR ON EVERYTHING.

SOMETIMES YOU GET DRUNK EVERY NIGHT FOR TWO WEEKS, SOMETIMES YOU MAKE OUT WITH A DUDE IN A CAB AND THEN YOU END UP DOING DRUGS AND PULLING YOUR DICK OUT IN A BAR YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO BEFORE, SOMETIMES YOU BUY MORE WHISKEY AND GO BACK TO YOUR PLACE WHERE YOU FUCK AROUND WITH THE DUDE IN YOUR LOFT WHILE YOUR ROOMMATE’S FRIEND SNORES ON THE COUCH BENEATH YOU, SOMETIMES YOU DON’T GO HOME FOR 36 HOURS, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET THAT YOU HAVE THINGS TO DO OTHER THAN GOING TO WORK AND GETTING DRUNK & LAID, SOMETIMES YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY TO MANIFEST THE FUTURE SIMPLY BY MAKING THE DECLARATION, SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO REALIZE THAT POP MUSICK IS A FUTURE THAT WE’RE ALL AFRAID OF, AND THE POP MUSIC THE LITERATI ARE NOT AFRAID OF IS ONLY FALSE, SOMETIMES WE ALL KNOW THAT THE WORLD IS ALREADY OVER AND FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS THING CALLED CAPITALISM? IT’S STUPID. THERE’S A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TELL YOU WHY IT’S STUPID, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LISTEN, SOMETIMES YOU KNOW THERE’S FINALLY A CLASS WAR GOING ON AND LIFE STARTS TO MAKE SENSE FOR THE FIRST TIME, SOMETIMES YOU WAKE UP NEXT TO SOMEBODY AND YOU DON’T REMEMBER THEIR NAME, SOMETIMES YOUR BEST FRIENDS SEND YOU THE BEST TEXT MESSAGES YOU’VE EVER READ IN YOUR LIFE, EVERYTHING IS SURPRISING, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN REMEMBER, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU’VE FORGOTTEN AND YOU FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST DON’T DO ANYTHING, SOMETIMES YOU TRY TO MAKE PANCAKES AND YOU USE BAKING SODA INSTEAD OF BAKING POWDER AND THEY TASTE LIKE POISON, SOMETIMES YOU READ NICK LAND ESSAYS ON THE BUS AND YOU ACTUALLY LAUGH OUT LOUD, SOMETIMES YOU KEEP FORGETTING TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF NIETSZCHE’S BIRTH OF TRAGEDY SO YOU CAN PUT IT ON YOUR PHONE TO READ WHILE YOU DRINK ALONE AT THE BAR, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET ABOUT LITERATURE COMPLETELY BECAUSE YOU’RE TOO BUSY FUCKING WITH SOME CONCEPTUAL EXPERIMENT THAT ASSUAGES YOU OF ALL MORALITY OR GUILT, SOMETIMES THIS MAKES MORE SENSE THAN ANYTHING YOU’VE WRITTEN OR READ, EVER.

LADY GAGA IS A FACADE.

LIFE IS ONLY FLOATING. FAME IS IRRELEVANT. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. MOMENTUM AS CONTRAST TO REALITY. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? WE CAN GO ANYWHERE WE WANT TO. THE WHOLE WORLD NEEDS TO DIE BEFORE WE CAN REST.