some author activity: Reid, Logan, Higdon, Houbolt + Munson,

Monty Reid is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Nate Logan has new work up at Otoliths, as well as Leavings; Hailey Higdon wrote an article on mothering for Nashville Scene; forthcoming author Kyla Houbolt has a prose poem up at Idle Ink; and Jed Munson answers the '12 and 20 questions.'

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.”).

some author activity: Barwin, Earl, Landman, fitzpatrick, McElroy + Hajnoczky,

Gary Barwin has a new poem up at NationalPoetryMonth.ca; Amanda Earl has new work up at Otoliths; the first issue of Seth Landman's Divine Magnet is now online; a new ryan fitzpatrick interview has been posted over at Touch the Donkey; a collaborative poem between Gil McElroy and his cousin, Christina McElroy, is now up at the Chaudiere Books blog; and Helen Hajnoczky has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog.

some author activity: Martin, Hall, hastain + Reed,

[a photo of some older above/ground titles Cameron Anstee picked up recently] Camille Martin has (as she writes) "been writing an illustrated exploration of the life and work of Robert Zend (1929-1985), avant-garde Hungarian-Canadian poet and artist. It features photographs, poetry, concrete poetry, collages, typewriter art, and fiction, some of it never before made public. Special attention will be given to Zend's cosmopolitan literary spirit, including his international influences and affinities. I'll be posting installments twice a week on my blog, Rogue Embryo." The first of these installments is now up; Ann Ireland interviews Phil Hall over at Numero Cinq; j/j hastain has new work in dusie #15; and Marthe Reed has new work in Otoliths #32.

some author activity: Hajnoczky, mclennan, Barwin, Tucker + Wilkinson,

[the writer at work] Helen Hajnoczky discusses her work-in-progress Magyarazni, of which her recent above/ground press title is but a part, with Gary Barwin over at Jacket2; both rob mclennan and Gary Barwin have new work up in the new issue of otoliths; Aaron Tucker has an essay in the "On Writing" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; "An Interview About Contemporary Poetry-Reviewing With Poet, Editor, and Critic Seth Abramson" by Joshua Marie Wilkinson at The Huffington Post; and Wilkinson also gets some props over at Harriet.

some author activity: Armantrout, Martin, curry + Ross, mclennan + Barwin

Catharine Wagner interviewed poet Rae Armantrout recently for POETRYEATER; Camille Martin has some new poems up at On Barcelona; jwcurry and Stuart Ross did some sound poetry improv in the open set of The Dusty Owl Reading Series, June 23, 2013 in Ottawa; rob mclennan has a new prose poem, "Life, Sentence," up at Otoliths; and have you seen the ongoing pieces that Gary Barwin has been writing for Jacket2?