Thursday, May 24, 2012
Fenn Stewart: Poets in Profile, Open Book: Toronto/Ontario
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
new from above/ground press: Richter-Rauzer Variations by Robert Manery
Richter-Rauzer
Variations
Robert Manery
$4
each exposedconsolationwithout knowledgewithout aversionseems exactindeednever utteringnever diminishingelseelusiveindeedseemedyet wegraspand wegraspwithin (from “Dilemmas”)
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2012
a/g
subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Robert Manery
studied with Bob Hogg at Carleton University in the 1980s. In response to Rob’s
complaint about contemporary poetry, Bob suggested that he should read the
language poets. This suggestion led to Rob’s continuing interest in the
possibilities and limits of meaning-making. It also led to his collaborations
with Louis Cabri, hosting literary events, including Bob Hogg’s seminar on
Charles Olson’s The Special View of History, and then publishing hole
magazine and hole books. Rob has published one book of poems, It’s Not As If It Hasn’t Been Said Before (Tsunami Editions). He currently teaches
academic writing at Simon Fraser University where he is pursuing a doctorate in
education.
Cover image/design by Robyn Laba.
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
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Amanda Earl's above/ground press 2012: notes on four chapbooks
Ottawa poet, publisher and blogger Amanda Earl (author of a couple of above/ground titles of her own as well) was good enough to review a small selection of recent chapbooks -- Rae Armanrtout's Custom (2012), Sarah Mangold's Cupcake Royale (2012), Fenn Stewart's An OK Organ Man (2012) and j/j hastain's we / cum ::: come / in the yield fields / amongst statues with interior arms (2012) -- thanks, Amanda! See a link to the original review here.
Rae Armantrout's Custom.
This chapbook is composed of four poems, three of which are series poems. In minimal language, Armantrout juxtaposes philosophical musings with tangible and fanciful images. She has a delightful sense of irony: "Someone says, "Dream bigger," handing us/an RPG." America appears as desperate and out of control. Bored souls hang from the ceilings. There is some syntax play, such as a poem that ends with the adverb "when." Also common expressions are tampered with, such as "Let volumes speak volumes." There is a feeling of strangeness, of not belonging, throughout the chapbook: "someone else's terrain." What we see on screen or in a role playing game vs what is happening in reality, how that changes our expectations to reflect the fantasy. "On screen/men discover/that their mothers/are imposters,/that their world's/unreal." There is a lack of progress, "zero surface tension," "lines of ants," "a string of stragglers on death march," an actress rooting for a lone cloud. "We maintain a critical distance."
Sarah Mangold's Cupcake Royale.
In Cupcake Royale Mangold juxtaposes the language and imagery of cake with the trappings of everyday life: colour coded medications, compost, stir-fry, sweater-folding. The main form used in the chapbook seems to be accumulation, not necessarily of objects; sometimes short, declarative sentences in the form of objective observation, instructions, same grammatical categories, incomplete thoughts. Somehow it comes across as subversive, this juxtaposition of cake with the everyday: "I'm somewhere in the middle/injectable drugs/vanilla buttercream".
Fenn Stewart's An OK Organ Man
In this chapbook, Stewart's wordplay is prevalent, including puns, foreign languages, alliteration, assonance, repetition, words of three syllables or more & anagrams. By taking text from 18th century philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, John Locke etc., Stewart has ensured that the chapbook will have an old-fashioned, antiquated feel which is juxtaposed with a general feistiness or rebellion against the conventions of the era from which she is pilfering & gives the work a certain cadence evocative of times gone by. "under what conditions -- say, heroic butchery -- / might I make manifest this trepidation? / what is it but a segment/ or a fluke of sin". The chapbook also contains a level of metatext about language itself: "this ruddy syntax," "for language, beasts, and creatures are conducive," "but really, I'm/your girl for discourse".
j/j hastain's we / cum ::: come / in the yield fields / amongst statues with interior arms (above/ground press, 2012)
in this chapbook j.j. hastain offers us prose poems that treat abstract concepts as tangible objects: "Liquid light or herds of manic." Much of the work deals with gender as fluid, as a non binary construct: "Gender here, our interactive contour." The text is full of unique & dream-like imagery, poignant observations, provocative paradoxes: "Extracting blossoms from a slaughter house." "A single ant carries the large body of a splayed moth." The poems are chock full of sensuality, poems formed of sentences of varying lengths & styles that careen drunkenly & wildly along. The work is visually strong. I can easily imagine some of these poems being illustrated with paintings or as surreal films" Like the rust colored sunflower that (while soft on its exterior) when cut turns the water it depends on bright pink." The author is a skilled soundsmith, each sentence deliberately muted or cacophonous, depending on hastain's intent.
Monday, May 21, 2012
new from above/ground press: from Lamentations by Robert Hogg
from
Lamentations
Robert Hogg
$4
The CreativeNo poet spokeFrom the balcony of the foreign mindall voice fell awayand the shatteringsilence crashedthe landwhat roseknew no sheetsnor tore from musickindness meantBut for all thatfans kept turningelectric and heatrushed back intothe made thing
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2012
a/g
subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Robert Hogg was born in Edmonton, Alberta on March 26, 1942. When
the child was nine, his father bought a ranch in the Cariboo region in the
interior of British Columbia, where the family spent three years; from there
they moved to Burnaby, and later Abbotsford and Langley in the Fraser Valley
where Hogg finished high school in 1960. He spent the next four years in the
English and Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia where
he came into contact with the Black Mountain poets and their poetics and
participated in the Tish poetry movement. After graduating in the spring
of 1964 Hogg hitch-hiked to Toronto, visited the poet, Charles Olson, in
Buffalo, and applied to study under him in the graduate program of the English
Department of the State University of New York. Hogg later wrote his doctoral
dissertation on Olson under the supervision of Robert Creeley. He completed the
course work for the PhD in the spring of 1968 and accepted a position at
Carleton University in Ottawa where he taught Modern and Post-Modern American
and Canadian Poetry and Poetic Theory until his retirement in 2005.
While at Buffalo
Hogg met and married Leslie Flaig, then a music major at the University, who
has since become an accomplished artist and photographer. During the next two
decades they raised three children on their farm in Mountain Township, about 50
kilometres south of Ottawa, where they grow organic crops and operate a
commercial flour mill and natural food distribution company called Mountain
Path Inc. At present, Hogg is working on a sixth book of poetry, and editing an
extensive anthology of Canadian poetic theory.
PUBLICATIONS
The Connexions. Berkeley CA: Oyez Press, 1966.
Standing Back. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1972.
Of Light. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1978.
Heat Lightning. Windsor ON: Black Moss Press, 1986.
There Is No
Falling. Toronto: ECW
Press, 1993.
An English Canadian Poetics, The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1. Editor. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009.
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
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Helen Hajnoczky's above/ground chapbook, A History of Button Collecting, is reviewed in Broken Pencil #55
Now THIS is some beautiful work. There are 12 pages of poetic prose in this zine, each laid out with a single unadorned paragraph at the top of the page -- no titles, no images. The writing is succinct but also so evocative and cryptically poetic that it's best read slowly. I had to pause to let each page absorb before going on to the next one. And though the pieces seem disconnected, there seems to be a common thread of memory and loss, making this is a beautiful and sad read. A History of Button Collecting was thoroughly enjoyable and continually made my brain tingle with wordy delight.
Monday, May 7, 2012
some author activity: Anstee, Betts, Bradley, Brockwell, beaulieu, Armantrout, Martin, Robertson + Ackerson-Kiely,
Saturday, May 5, 2012
The Factory Reading Series presents: Rob Manery and Robert Hogg
The Factory Reading Series
with readings/launches by:
Rob Manery (Vancouver)lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
+ Robert Hogg (South Mountain)
Friday, May 25, 2012;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)
Rob Manery studied with Bob Hogg at Carleton University in the 1980s. In response to Rob’s complaint about contemporary poetry, Bob suggested that he should read the Language poets. This suggestion lead to Rob’s continuing interest in the possibilities and limits of meaning-making. It also lead to his collaborations with Louis Cabri, hosting literary events, including Bob Hogg’s seminar on Charles Olson’s The Special View of History, and then publishing hole magazine and hole books. Rob has published one book of poems, It’s Not As If It Hasn’t Been Said Before (Tsunami Editions). He currently teaches academic writing at Simon Fraser University where he is pursing a doctorate in education.
He will be launching the chapbook Richter-Rauzer Variations (above/ground press), sections of which appeared in ottawater #8.
http://www.radio4all.net/responder.php/podcast/podcast.xml?series=Poetry+and+Poetics
http://www.rainreview.net/rain-050104.html
Robert Hogg remembers well the night in 1960 when poetry became something utterly vital, visceral and necessary to his soul. He and Frank Davey had heard Robert Duncan read from The Opening of the Field. Hogg was transported: “It utterly blew me away. And I realized that I had to create something like that or life would not be worth living.” Hogg went on to complete his BA at UBC, where he became an integral member of the TISH movement. He holds a PhD in English literature from SUNY Buffalo; has taught at Carleton University in Ottawa; and has published five books of poetry.
http://www.theeastvillage.com/tc/hogg/p1.htm
http://talonbooks.com/authors/robert-hogg
http://www.thecapilanoreview.ca/there-is-no-falling-robert-hogg/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
