New! Nico Vassilakis at The Continental Review

As the first update for The Continental Review I'm proud to be featuring these truly gorgeous, sumptuous pieces of visual poetry by Nico Vassilakis. Nico takes you down, far down into the hidden rabbit's hole of language: past the molecular level, past even its nucleotidal strains into the notion of grammar as intimate, living interplay: letter as physical conglomerate, word as organic architecture. The pieces are, to a certain extent, collaborative: the evocative, ambiant music is by Martin Bland.

20th Century Poetics

The End Of The Foetry War

I note with surprise today, while browsing through some sites I haven't visited in a long time, that Foetry.com is, as of one week, officially closed. Perhaps the reasons are personal; perhaps it has simply served its function and reached the end of its time. In any case, from what I can garner from the lettre d'adieu, Alan Cordle isn't being too specific.

I have always had somewhat mixed feelings about Foetry's project, and these have only been enhanced over its term. It was a project of contradictions, marked at once by stark necessity, massive, manifest and undeniably positive effects, limitations, and a sustained tone of Beowulfian anger.

I don't want to return too much upon this: just enough to state that what always most surprised me in Foetry's 4 year-run, was the assumption that this poetry world, their poetry world- that is, the world of the MFA's and their symbiotic organisms - were simply all there is.

Take, for instance, Cordle's public letter after Janet Holmes revealed him as the man behind the Fo, in which Cordle remarks of poetry contests that they are "still nearly the only way to publish a book of poetry." Now, it needs to be said simply: this is an absurd claim, and the "nearly" here is small compensation to the omnipresent, burgeoning Small Press biosphere, not to mention the serious, and seriously respectable, elements in DIY. Cordle's subsequent "What is wrong with poetry publishing?" then, though necessary and just, was also a cry rendered darker, shriller and more wrenching by the assumption that anything not published by Wesleyan or Ahsahta must not be worth its salt.

The admission was not explicit, but implied. Because, if Ivy League competitions are "nearly the only way to be published", it either follows that a) Cordle wasn't aware of what was being published by other sources, or b) did not take this branch seriously enough to think of it as a divergent, and positive, force.

This was always, to me, a bizarre and striking anomaly in Cordle's, and Foetry in general's, vision of poetic politics: the astonishingly blinkered view which made rise the dark, mushrooming spectre of Official Verse Culture, as if it extended to the known event horizon, engulfing all in its wake. As if there were no such thing as Effing Press, no BlazeVOX, no Dusie, no Chax, no Meritage, no Otoliths, no Edge Books, no etc . . .

Which is not to denigrate the Foetical achievement, and I believe it is one: one of clarification, watch-dogging, (self-)reflection and distinct coming to terms. All this, in spite of injustices and overstatements, was necessary. Simply, for all the good, I sometimes wondered if Cordle, in his ignoring of the massive diversity and strength of alternative publishing as an affirmative option against the few, or many, bad aspects of institutionality, didn't, in an unfortunate way, do a disservice to those involved in the good-fight by exaggerating and demonising an enemy who had always existed, who most likely always will, but who has always remained at once impassive and impotent before the desire of various poetic communities to assert the vibrancy of living and evolving aesthetics.

The World's A Funny Place

Jean Marie Le-Pen explains how, since 2 out of 3 French children of 11 years of age admit to having watched pornography, they will be thus "rendered impotent by the age of 20", and the great Gallic nation will be subsequently left wide-open to an invasion by fundamentalists "willing to be blown up for Allah". You gotta laugh.

Well, Ron doesn't seem to have appreciated The Continental Review all that much! "Weird poetry videos" is perhaps a slightly offensive link. What's so very weird about them, I do wonder a bit. Oh well . . . It's a new project, and I thought the concept at least may have interested Mr. S. There's been such positive response from others, this is a shame. Trying not to be, but I am disappointed with this.

Literature's Solitude

Novelist Richard Powers, echoing some of the same sentiments I think as Shanna Compton recently, eloquently expounds on the future of the book review over at the interesting National Book Critics Circle weblog, Critical Mass:

"I honestly don’t think our crisis is print reviews versus blogs, specialization versus populism, or even the exclusivity of the elite versus the tyranny of the majority. I think our crisis is instant evaluation versus expansive engagement, real time versus reflective time, commodity versus community, product versus process. Substituting a user’s rating for a reader’s rearrangement threatens to turn literature into a lawn ornament. What we need from reviewers in any medium are guides to how to live actively inside a story.

Reading is solitary; reviewing is the shared solitude of reading. As throughput accelerates and the cost of information falls, engaged seclusion and slow reflection become more valuable. Changes in technology change the terms of this contest, but not the stakes. Like any good crisis, this one can only be resolved through narrative – the turbulent act of figuring out how to read what’s writing us."

The News Which Stays News

A few things, so let's get to it.

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The new issue of Galatea Resurrects is so copiously prolific with abundance that it's difficult to single out the diamonds among the emeralds. Good to see Tim Peterson back in these pages with a review of the ever-interesting Thomas Fink, and Fink's review in this issue is of his usual eloquent slash erudite panache. Derek Motion raises some important questions I think, with regard to contemporary Australian poetry, in his review of Pam Brown. Eileen Tabios herself has been reviewing like crazy, and they're all worth a long read over coffee and croissants, or whatever your review-reading food of choice might be (the survey's out). Also, judging by two emails in response to my little Ashbery piece, people apparently think I've gone insane. I think I'm okay. S is for Satire, hissed the serpent.

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Very pleased overall with the initial reception of The Continental Review. Sitemeter clocked up 500 or so hits in its first two days, which was pleasantly above expectations. The feedback so far has been more or less positive: people like the aesthetics, the concept, the primary issue apparently being the lack of pure vispo in a journal so concentrated on image/text relations. Let me just say then: this was in no way a conscious editorial decision, things just panned out that way. And so yes, The Continental Review will be welcoming all spectrums of contemporary poetics, and that's why we'll be delighted to be featuring, in a little while, the work of two very prominent vispoets, Spencer Selby and Nico Vassilakis. (The gorgeous image above is by Vassilakis and John M. Bennett). Have also had other very interesting proposition for readings from some prominent figures. So far, nobody tempted by the video-reviews. Perhaps this is too scary. I'll try to put the first one up myself in a month or two.

The Continental Review Is LIVE!

So, at 4:20am on a rainy Parisian morning after a long nuit blanche, I can finally sleep, and dream of poets erecting tripods. Because, well, I am simply delighted to announce that the web’s first video-only forum for contemporary poetry and poetics, The Continental Review, has at last gone LIVE at www.thecontinentalreview.com. For the very special launch of what we hope will be a special journal, The Continental Review is featuring stellar video-readings by some of the stars of the contemporary poetry scene:

Linh Dinh
Noah Eli Gordon
Allyssa Wolf
Jon Leon
Eileen Tabios
Chris Vitiello
Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Tom Beckett

My most sincere thanks to everyone for their unfailing support in the elaboration of this project.

Nicholas

Poetry Foundation

To those on their first visit here due to Shanna Compton's excellent Poetry Foundation article: Welcome! (As Mark notes, he is link 1, I am link 2). Do feel free to say hello! Dialogue is indeed the wonder of the poetry blogosphere, and more particularly of Galatea Resurrects. Opinions are opinions, and may thus be modified or developed in being shared.

Eins, Zwei, Drei

One thing is at least clear: Ukraine were robbed in last night's Eurovision, (and I say this with no influence from my gf's kievian origins). Verka Serduchka simply has developed the most extraordinary aesthetic since Fellini's Roma. Robbed, I tell you, robbed.

This week's prize for Most Incongruent Review Metaphor goes to Lionel Shriver on Amis' House of Meetings : "I read it as slowly as I could, I savoured every page, like sucking the mints from my hotel's reception down to shards."

My submission: "I read Richard Power's new novel as fast as I could, like a horse who, spooked by the image of its own reflection in a pool, wildly and contrariously gallops towards the safety of nearby woods across a sparse Alaskan clairière."

Ornamental Passion, Passionate Ornament

Walking late in Strasbourg yesterday evening came a four-word thought which has stimulated the writing of certain poems I feared to be dead: "ornamental passion, passionate ornament". A mirrored mantra, a reciprocal serpent. Phrases like this occur I suppose to everyone now and then, and why and when they come is strange, and also strangely appropriate. In any case, this made me very happy, these words, which is perhaps a personal thing difficult to describe.

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The evening before, had the occasion to hear the reading of and have dinner with the French poet Gérard Titus-Carmel. T-C. is a well-known poet and painter, and has several times collaborated with Bonnefoy in very interesting editions. Before this, the university conference was on the question of organicism in "l'imaginaire contemporain", for which I spoke about poetry and thus had the chance to introduce the French uni participants to poets they had never heard of, such as Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Lyn Hejinian. It's moments like these - when you find yourself writing Charles Olson's name on the board - that a strong conviction for the value of Comparative Literature and its burgeoning, naive-sounding but au fond I think worthy internationality emerges. Barriers are greater than I, we, ever imagine. O, L, S, O, N.

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The Continental Review (read, sadly, me) is investing this coming weekend in a load of truly magnificent new technological hardware for its launch. Really, this little Review might send me a touch broke; but at least its broke for poetry this time, which will be my first time ever, and actually I hope, honestly, the last!

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Love to all in the blogosphere,

Taxing Taxonomy

Lists are revelatory. Take the taxonomy of American and British poetry over at the more or less reputable Literary History website. Now, I don't intend on doing a hatchet job here: just a few things catch my eye.

Firstly, in the 'Modernism' section, we have two truly fascinating lists:

Popular Modernism
Doolittle, Hilda (H.D.)
Frost, Robert
Moore, Marianne
Sandburg, Carl
Williams, William Carlos

High Modernism
Crane, Hart
Eliot, T.S.
Niedecker, Lorine
Oppen, George
Pound, Ezra
Reznikoff, Charles
Stevens, Wallace
Zukofsky, Louis

Of course, "Popular" and "High" are pretty hilarious here, for a few reasons of course, not just I think because we may want to say that a 'distinction between "high" and "popular" is a priori without much meaning' - let's say for the sake of argument that it does have meaning here, and rather concentrate on the choices. Firstly, two exceptionally important modernist women are relegated straight away to "popular" status, and it's difficult not to see this as an implicit value judgement. Popular modernism, though: it's hard to see how this could be said of Moore if the contributors list to The Dial is perused; and that said, the more shocking one for me is H.D. The poems from the phase of Pound's Imagism and Vorticism seem to me much more "popular modernism" than Doolittle's (less abstraction actually, more Eliotian 'scenes of urban life' and cultural critique {Mauberley}), which only continues the devalorising of Doolittle.

Post-factum take, though the only one in the first list who truly was, in demographic terms, 'popular', being I suppose Frost. In any case, at least Niedecker is there holding up "High Modernism" near to Zukofsky (the Niedecker/Zukofsky and Pound/Doolittle relationships hold many extraordinary parallels: at least the former is not here split).

Other shock here: are not all our Modernists Americans? The reason? There is a special category all to itself entitled "British Poetry" and which reads as follows:


British Poetry

Auden, W.H.
Brooke, Rupert
Graves, Robert
Hardy, Thomas
Heaney, Seamus
Hill, Geoffrey
Hughes, Ted
Jones, David
Larkin, Philip
Loy, Mina
MacDiarmid, Hugh
Muldoon, Paul
Rosenberg, Isaac
Sassoon, Siegfried
Smith, Stevie
Thomas, Dylan
Yeats, William Butler


Now what is interesting is that for all the diversity given to American poets (separate lists for the New York School, the Beats, the Harlem and San Francisco Renaissances, Black Mountain etc.), Brits from every generation and every persuasion are grouped under the enormous banner of Britishness.

Not to explicitly call, via a fat subheading, the likes of Yeats, David Jones and Mina Loy (above left) MODERNISTS, is bizarrely reductive, and to one outside American literary history, laughable.

I also like that one of the very few "overlap poets" is Sylvia Plath, who fits simultaneously under the headings "Confessionalist" (no complaints there) but also "New Formalism", which might seem more surprising to some.

Anyway, I'm not actually complaining: it's just interesting. Siegfried Sassoon rubbing shoulders with Geoffrey Hill? Just another reason to believe aesthetics unites more than nationality.