The first time I met Ben Mirov he asked me to “pound it” after I said something funny and ever since then I’ve been sort of unequivocally on-board with Ben Mirov and what he does.  I’m glad what he does is poetry.  His first two books I is to Vorticism (New Michigan Press, 2010) and Ghost Machine (Caketrain, 2010) are books I recommend to people ceaselessly and re-read often for enjoyment, relaxation, and inspiration.  Now he has this bright yellow chapbook called Vortexts to be released by Supermachine this Friday alongside Ben Fama’s likewise brightly-colored New Waves from Minutes Books.

EVENT INFO HERE

TRAILER:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjEfQQE1F5o

When I asked Ben, after I found out the name of his new chapbook, why he likes Vorticism so much (Vorticism being this short-lived art/literary movement in the early 1900’s), Ben said something like “There’s nothing really about the movement I agree with, I just think it has a cool name.”  I laughed and thought that was funny – Vorticism is funny – but his answer feels pretty indicative of how Ben’s poems work.  The poems are approachable, they don’t take themselves too seriously, yet they are full of concern, intelligence, and a veneration for poetry itself.  Take this passage from “Light from Dead Stars Doesn’t Lie”:

Vortexts, to me, feels like the next logical step in the poetic lineage established in Ben’s earlier work.  It contains the hilarious thought progressions of the poems in I is to Vorticism and the brilliant lines of Ghost Machine (e.g. “I use my eagles to touch your wolf. / Try harder to carry your wolf, I say.”) but with new formal constraints (tercets) and something else, something harder to put a word to.  It feels like Ben pushing further into his Ben-ness in search of a more perfect Ben.  There is a welcomed maturity and lyricism to the poems in Vortexts.  He’s refusing to settle, and I really enjoy reading it.

BUY HERE

EVENT INFO, AGAIN