new from above/ground press: After Swann, by Marthe Reed

After Swann
Marthe Reed
$4

21

these dreams
stop like a clock
a malady

too irresistible
this black cavity
precisely the same

she might have a red
principle
a certain type of femininity

her subjection
fixed in
space

oh, marvelous
the tombs
of sunlight straying

impossible for me
the vagrancy
of her

detachment
that face
deliberately unfinished

present except
in a flood of blue light
that current

we imagine
almost ours
that sort of tenderness
the instant of pain
the special pleasure
and seize

the mysterious object
still alive
buried in a couch of grass

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2013
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

The text for these constraint-driven poems is collaged from the Moncrieff translation of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way, accessed via Project Gutenberg.

Marthe Reed is the author of three books: (em)bodied bliss (Moria Books 2013), Gaze (Black Radish Books 2010) and Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink 2007). A fourth book, Pleth, a collaboration with j hastain, will appear September 2013 from Unlikely Books; a fifth will be published by Lavender Ink (2014). She has also published four chapbooks as part of the Dusie Kollektiv. Her poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, New Orleans Review, HOW2, MiPOesias, Fairy Tale Review, Exquisite Corpse, BlazeVOX, and The Offending Adam, among others. Her manuscript, an earth of sweetness dances in the vein, was a finalist in Ahsahta Press’ 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Contest; her manuscript Nights Reading was a finalist for the Elizabeth P. Braddock Prize (Coconut Books). An essay on Claudia Rankine’s The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue appears in American Letters and Commentary.

Marthe Reed will be launching After Swann in Ottawa as part of the above/ground press 20th anniversary reading/launch/party on August 23, 2013.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com