some author activity: Kasimor, Eleftherion, Archer, Tracy + Sikkema,

Mary Kasimor and Melissa Eleftherion have work in the new issue of MiGoZine: Kasimor's is here, and Eleftherion's are here and here and here; Melissa Eleftherion also has some new work up at talking about strawberries all of the time, as does Mary Kasimor; Sacha Archer has new work up at Grey Borders; Dale Tracy has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month; and Michael Sikkema is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time.

some author activity: Aigen, Eleftherion, Kasimor + Earl,

Razielle Aigen has some new work up in Moonchild magazine; Melissa Eleftherion has some new work up on Headline Poetry and Press; Mary Kasimor has an essay in the Talking Poetics series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; and Amanda Earl responds to the "Six Questions" interview via Chaudiere Books.

Jessica Thomas-Drake reviews Mary Kasimor's disrobing iris (2019)

Jessica Drake-Thomas was good enough to provide a third review of Mary Kasimor's disrobing iris (2019), after John C. Goodman reviewed it over at Otoliths, and Amanda Earl reviewed such over at her blog.Thanks so much! You can see the original review here. As Drake-Thomas writes:

“you continued dancing for the pleasure of night’s/invisible black silk/with only your hips you showed the mountains/how to dance/in their moon of rock and dust/here in the night/you grow old like a moonstone,” the speaker says in Mary Kasimor’s book of poems, disrobing iris.

The poems in this book have a cool feminist goth-witch vibe that I really appreciated. There were several pieces that I really enjoyed, particularly “dropped stitches.”

In the piece, the speaker says “she knew all the stitches/to close her mouth/stitches to end her life.” This hints at secret feminine knowledge–the woman in the poem knows how to keep quiet. She knows how to play by the rules of a patriarchal society, to do what is expected of her. This, coupled with the fact that sewing was historically considered to be “women’s work” fits together seamlessly (pun intended).

“the stitches blurred/the lines inside herself/she finally spoke,” the speaker says. The action here is important. After this, the poem goes from a very stiff construction, where both the woman and the speaker are holding back. What comes after is a deluge of words.

“she spoke before herself/speaking for her garden/of dying matter/written in her journal/all that dies matters,” the speaker says. The idea that the woman in the poem has this garden that seems to be decaying is an interesting image. I’m trying to picture it, and I’m coming up with a garden of lichen and mold. However, it could also be flowers–they are in a perpetual state of growing then dying. It’s a multi-layered image that could be defined in a few different ways.

“shared memories the orchestra/of stitched culture/the connection of/boundaries the components/of noise/of repression,” the speaker says. This is the heart of this piece–despite all of society’s advances, there is still a patriarchal bent to our society. Women are still repressed. We are encouraged to be quiet and to obey.

Which is why the final line is absolute perfection: “a new language of dropped/ stitches the dress/unraveling the last/body.”

Here, the woman sets herself free through changing the “stitched culture.” She drops stitches, making a dress that is warped, imperfect. She goes against code. This is a lovely piece, with a powerful message. I love it. The line breaks in this piece are absolute perfection, particularly “of dropped/stitches.” Additionally, the lack of capitalization and punctuation is working perfectly.

I really enjoyed this book. The subtle artistry is stunning here. Kasimor’s work is absolute genius. I highly recommend disrobing iris, which is available through above/ground press.

Amanda Earl reviews chapbooks by Irwin, Lea, Baus, Dean and Kasimor,

beloved above/ground press author Amanda Earl was good enough to provide first reviews for a small handful of above/ground press titles, including Marilyn Irwin's the day the moon went away (2019), N.W. Lea's Five Mothers (2019), Eric Baus' Euphorbia (2020) and Lessa Dean's The Desert of Itabira (2020), as well as a second review (after John C. Goodman discussed such over at Otoliths) of Mary Kasimor's disrobing iris (2019), among some other titles discussed, in her "a few notes on some recent chapbooks" over at her blog. Thank you! You can see her original review here. As she writes:

Marilyn Irwin – the day the moon went away (above/ground press, August, 2019)

I am a fan and a dear friend of Marilyn’s so it comes as no surprise that I enjoyed this chapbook, from the snail on the cover to its reappearance in a poem, to the poems on not having a baby. there’s a sweet sadness to the work, mixed with a practicality about life and a concern for the environment. there’s concern. I have several favourites in the collection, but I’m particularly fond of “hum,” which begins “the first definition/of suicide/begins/with monks/robes/indistinguishable/from/skin cinder”—an unusual and memorable image. I want a book by Marilyn soon please, publishers. and so should you.

N.W. Lea - Five Mothers (above/ground press, October 2019)

I am a big fan of Lea’s writing. It’s contemplative, unusual and minimal. There is humour, playfulness, unique and powerful imagery and a consistency of tone throughout the chapbook.

Mary Kasimor - disrobing iris (above/ground press, November 2019)

I began reading these poems and then got so excited by the incantatory and exquisite imagery and sound play that I had to read them aloud. the poem “dropped stiches” stayed with me long after I read it the first time. This is a symphony of melancholy and grief, rebellion. I loved them.

Eric Baus – Euphorbia (above/ground press, January 2020)

i enjoyed these microscopic observations and musings of/on nature. These are powerful prose poems that delighted and fascinated me. The only thing I didn’t like was the font, which could have been Futura or Arial, I’m guessing but probably wrong, and what appears to be boldface for the entire collection. It is the opposite of the work for me. It is shouty and brash. That’s not what I’m reading. I’m reading softer, more subtle and delicate observations and musings.

Here are two of the poems that resonated greatly with me:

Pattern Anguish

Hawks glide above other hawks to kill escaping sky, a faraway star burning their faces.
Hum, Hurts

So the rosin, as the rain was, flowered its watts, precipitates a leaf, has been one, exhausts the teeth of animal speech, a siren under wool, hums, hurts.

Lessa Dean – the Desert of Itabira (above/ground press, January 2020)

This is an excerpt from a novella in verse entitled Manuelzimbo; a found poetry project based on the work of Elizabeth Bishop. I can’t wait to read the entire novella. The excerpt is mesmerizing. It evokes the desert paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe for me, extremely visual and startling: “We are taken to a red temple/a woman in a cloak of bones/greets us in a language/none of us know”.

I am in love with the dark imagery of this work: “The dynasty of violence threads our sleep/leaves bruises each night we shower ourselves/in superstitious rituals drink snake blood/   leave on the drowned green light”

This work also evokes the haunting imagery of the poetry of Sandra Ridley. I envisage a collaboration between Dean and Ridley. I think it would be wing-swept and haunting.

John C. Goodman reviews Mary Kasimor's disrobing iris (2019)

John C. Goodman was good enough to provide the first review of Mary Kasimor's disrobing iris (2019) over at Otoliths; thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

In disrobing iris, Mary Kasimor engages us in a continuing dance of connection and alienation combined in a dazzling balance of control and abandon. The book is intensely personal, exploring a sense of “the ownership of loss”, lost beauty (“she was once beautiful”), lost opportunity (“possibility/doesn’t know what it is missing”), and struggling to find an inner place in a world of fragments and memories, searching for a fearless grace in a fractured reality.

These poems are about interconnectedness, especially the interconnectedness of the natural world contrasted with our alienation from it. There is a tension between fragmentation and connection reflected in the interplay between words and emotions. Kasimor uses the techniques of post-modernism to create a deeply emotional landscape, similar to the way Sylvia Plath used the techniques of Modernism to express her inner world. These poems fill out the relentless intellectualism of post-modernism with searing emotion. Although criticized for lack of feeling (“I am intellectual and cold”), Kasimor’s insensitive external persona is a cover for a chasm of emotional depth too painful to acknowledge (“I left my loss in the room/with gray walls – it slept with the rain”).

In disrobing iris, we haven’t created a human world so much as deconstructed the natural world, which makes us question ourselves and search for the meaning in what we have done (“forcing/the eye/to find itself”). Nature tries to heal through ancient and eternal patterns, but finds the world too disfigured (“trembling     without a radius/in the     diagram     of broken lines”).

Sewing, a traditionally feminine occupation, is a recurring theme as a way of threading things together (“ants restring broken air”), but also as a way of making boundaries (“of stitched culture”) and as a means of repression (“she knew all the stitches to close her mouth”). The feminine is lost in mirrors, make-up, dresses of spun sugar and fractured reflections (“girl babies in the window/the de-feminization of them”). The feminine is prevented from healing the world because women are culturally reduced to commodities (“the mass of little men/digging up my fingers—two for a dollar”, “to market love and atmosphere/for the impulses of men”).

Sewing both connects us to and alienates us from meaning (“God’s life sewn shut”). The act of sewing becomes a means of revolt, making connections in a new way (“a new language of dropped stitches”) that disrupts the cultural rhetoric of oppression (“secrets/of cross stitch draw blood”), a revolution accomplished through small acts of reconnection with the natural world, achieved, not by the flamboyant ego (“I have an intuitive self-importance), but by the quiet small “i” persona (“i Sew/together the edges/to keep the Broken air/restrung”).

disrobing iris shows how our emotional identity is bound to the physical and that alienation from the natural world (“I cannot locate myself/outside”) brings alienation from the self resulting in objectification (“a thing/shaped image. a talking device”). In the end, we need to listen to the natural world and participate the endless cycle of life (“logic grips the ceaseless”), for new beginnings always start with the mundane (life squatted giving birth./I wiped off the blood,/spent the evening watching television.”).

new from above/ground press: disrobing iris, by Mary Kasimor

disrobing iris
Mary Kasimor
$5

disrobing iris 

the vase enslaved a      repetition of roses

                       placed away from a     field            

               iris dies

   a bird’s logic grips the ceaseless      function door

        the       purple in     a white room

                              the primal sky         is meat

        red is another        chance at life

                   it is     another joke

        no one should disrobe     iris

                     as there never was        perfection

breath                     happens     is a mix up

glass cutting                 edges repeat following

                  another row of stones

         makes it impossible to meet     reaction

crushed spiders         bundled on a treadmill

                              water stains

succumbing to eyes                    blue              

         bulk snow                 on the corner lot

roots of pi          collapse in the middle

        sky blue soup writes itself     a recipe

and pure          thoughts

devising knives                forks

       beyond the         spiritual means eating

all that      blood             made an ancient birth

trees spy on            the rings of saturn

      motion a magic reflex        producing us

fallen bread            on       the titanic grows

           tender mold

disputes the seating arrangements      if it

       were the ocean      rows of 16 ounce cans       

                propped up                        the cult

an installment of shoes        a purity in

                the                  flickering circus

 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Mary Kasimor, who has been writing poetry for many years, considers her work experimental. Her recent poetry collections are The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books 2014), Saint Pink (Moria Books 2015), The Prometheus Collage (Locofo Press 2017), and Nature Store (Dancing Girl Press 2017). Her poetry has been published in many journals, including Word For/Word, Touch the Donkey, Posit, Human Repair Kit, Arteidolia (collaboration with Susan Lewis), and Otoliths.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: mclennan, Saklikar, Clarke + Earl,

rob mclennan has three new poems posted at Mary Kasimor's blog; Renée Sarojini Saklikar has a new poem up as part of the "Tuesday poem" series; she and and George Elliott Clarke also have poems in The Academy of American Poets/The League of Canadian Poets "Poem in Your Pocket" Day publication; and Amanda Earl has a new poem posted on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month.