New Readings for Summer (2006)

Mary Ruefle, “On Theme,” West Branch, number 58 (Spring/Summer 2006)

Ah, a personal essay by Our Lady of Surrealism, smart imaginative musings on a tough topic. Such as: “What I am equipped to discuss is Polartec.”

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Mark Strand, “The Canvases of Mark Strand, with an essay on the canvases by Jorie Graham,” in New Letters, volume 72, no. 2 (2006), pages 65-79.

Twombly like poems drawn artfully on canvi, five of the twelve produced and exhibited in New York. Each canvas shows the life of a poem, from [first?]drafts to finality. And an appropriate article on them by Jorie Graham. Her essay is entitled “On Revision” and is surround, enveloped, bracketed by Strand’s work, reproductions of such anyway. Bring your microfying glass. This piece is followed by an interview with Strand by NL staff. All in all a fascinating conceptual piece.

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Tony Tost, “Complex Sleep”* in Black Warrior Review, 32.2 (Spring/Summer 2006)
Sentences from an old manuscript, parts of which were revised for Invisible Bride, arranged alphabetically. Great idea.

“I cannot stand/Hours at rest in the washroom, hands and knees,/refining the senses. How to enter the lucid epoch?"

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Jorge H. Aigla. The Cycle of Learning/El ciclo de aprendizaje. Tempe, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingue, 2005.

A truly bi-lingual book of poems, with “translations” or adaptions of his own poems from one language into the other. Perhaps the poems take on a little bit more knowledge than is really possible, but nevertheless, they interest. Aigla teaches at St. Johns College in Santa Fe, and also instructs in karate.

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Claude Royet-Journoud. Theory of prepositions. Tranlasted by Keith Waldrop. Iowa City, L Presse, 2006.

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Joshua Clover. The totality for kids. University of California Press, 2006.