The Best American Poetry

Happy Birthday Frank! Michelle Dunton interviews David Lehman about Frank Sinatra

Michelle Dunton of Writing Fun interviewed David Lehman upon publication of Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World

Love Me or Leave Me (with the birthday boy)

 

 

2017 Gift Guide: Support Poets! by Stacey Lehman

Of course poetry books top your gift list but you can also support poets by ordering gifts from those who express their creativity by making things that you can wear, eat, and hold. Here are a few suggestions.Click on the image for more information. If I've left someone out please add a description and link in a comment:

 

Clockwise from top left: Jennifer L. Knox makes herb and spice-infused artisanal seasoning blends with "no preservatives, MSG, dairy or other creepy shizznit." Deanna Dorangrichia makes stunning utilitarian ceramics that honor the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. NEA fellow Molly Brodak is the genius behind the delicious and whimsical Kookie House. Find embroidered ornaments and other decorative flourishes in Matthew Mahaney's etsy boutique Ice Cream Cats. Sade LaNay's Silk Creations etsy shop sells hand-painted silk scarves and cards. Silk Creations. is a is a social enterprise program of St. Margaret's House, a day center for women and children challenged by poverty. Kristy Bowen's dulcet dancing girl press and studio makes chapbooks, stationary, and beautiful custom jewelry hair clips (I want one!). In addition to publishing A-list poets (Jennifer L. Knox, Peter Davis, two name two favorites), this year Shanna Compton's bloof books is offering a limited number of hand made notebooks in various sizes. Generous discounts are available through the end of the year via Square (code BYE2017). Paige Taggert created MACTAGGART Jewelry in 2003 and her beautiful wearable designs have gained a wide following. She too is offering a 20% discount till the end of the year. 

If you happen to do your shopping in New York's Hudson Valley, stop in at Mansion and Reed, a shop and guesthouse operated by Justine Post and her twin sister Lia. 

Books make fine gifts too! Here are three I recommend: 

"Poems in the Manner Of . . . " continues to draw rave reviews as does The Best American Poetry 2017. Mitch Sisskind's New School poetry reading was "the best ever" according to more than one in the audience. Find a sampling of the Milania series from "Trump Poems" here. For your copy of the book, contact Mitch directly.

 

Next Line, Please: And Be Careful, Darling

This week's contest proved to be A Brilliant, Creative engagement of sorts, with abecedariuses of all shapes, colors, and topics, from gods and goddesses of the world to a sampling of Ginsberg's "Howl" to an ankle bitch (bad boss).

Michael C. Rush’s “She Writes Him on the Eve of the Revolution” was quite the tour de force:

… and be careful, darling,
entering frivolous gardens
heroically. I just keep loving
my next ordeal, properly quarantined,
rousing schmucks to utter venal words
extirpating your zeal, although
by certain demands enveloped,
from gross hope impeached,
justice keeps litigating many new
obscenely-proposed quotas, reacting
slowly to undermining vandals
whose Xmas yawps zing …
Alerted by certain directions,
everyone finds great hope in
justice, kindness, love.
Many now-obsolete promises
quelled reasonable suspicions that
underlying verities were
xylophonic yin-yang zephyrs …
Attack beautifully, cariño!
Don’t ever fear going home
if joining kills laughter. My note
openly permits quitting rather
suddenly to uphold victory
without extinguishing your zest …

and Angela Ball sums up “Paris in 26 Words”:

A bored courtesan damns
Evening’s façade, goes hunting
In jewels, KOs
Love’s menace,
Not only parturition.

Quizzes retrograde symbols,
Tells us visions—
Wild xylophones, yuletide
Zydeco.

 

And one more: Emily Winakur's “Bad Boss”:

Ankle bitch cancer.
Don’t ever forget
How I jilted karma,
Laughed my no-neck
Ogre (piratous, queening,
Rancid self) to undead
Victory. Wealth
Excels. You—zip it.

And lastly, two wonderful announcements!  One, that Angela Ball and David Lehman will give a joint reading at Poisson Rouge, the New York City nightspot, on Monday, February 12, 2018 (Lincoln’s Birthday). There, they will read some “Next Line, Please” poems. And two, that Next Line, Please: Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers (Cornell University Press), will be published in March 2018! Super good stuff.

Visit the American Scholar's page to check out the entire post and to read more abecedariuses!

--Virginia Valenzuela

 

Happy birthday, Frank (East of the Sun & Fools Rush In 1940)

 

 

"The Unavoidable Sensuous Apprehension that We Were Indeed a Little Ball in Space . . . " David Lehman interviews A. R. Ammons

A recent issue of the New Yorker (the same issue that published David's poem "It Could Happen to You") included an article about the poetry of A. R. Ammons. The article mentions Ammons' Paris Review interview, which David conducted in 1996. You can read the interview here. 

Even better, you can listen to the complete interview tapes. These are a treat; as one would expect, Ammons' discussion of how he works is fascinating and filled with terrific advice for all poets, regardless of where they are in their career. 

David Lehman interview A. R. Ammons Parts I - III

(I almost stopped reading the New Yorker piece early on, when the author describes Ammons as "puttering." Clearly he never met this great genius--which I did, in Ithaca, on many occasions--or "puttering' would never have come to mind. sdl)

Introducing Mr. Ashbery: Four Instances [Howard in 1967, Koch in 1963, Lehman in 2008, and Schultz in 1996]

 

A tape of excerpts from four introductions to poetry readings given by John Ashbery was posted on January 8, 2014, by PennSound Podcast:

<<<
PennSound podcast serves up a treat — a new compilation of introductions given to John Ashbery over the years. The podcast, announced on Jacket2 last week, features enlightening introductions to Ashbery’s work by Kenneth Koch in 1963, Richard Howard in 1967, Susan Schultz in 1996, and David Lehman in 2008
>>>

https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/podcasts/PennSound-Podcast_35_ashbery_intros.mp3

"Something Wonderful May Happen" screening at The New School

 

"Something Wonderful May Happen" (2001), a documentary made by Danish filmmakers about the New York School of Poetry, will be shown at 6 PM this Friday evening December 8 at The New School, in room 502 of 66 West 12 Street.

 

Interviewed in the film are John Ashbery, Jane Freilicher, Kenneth Koch, Alfred Leslie,  Larry Rivers, Charles Bernstein and David Lehman, among others. There is rare footage of Frank O'Hara in his office at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1960s, and Hettie Jones reads FOH's "Personism."

 

Hettie Jones and David Lehman will be there, and so should you! All lovers of poetry welcome.

Next Line, Please: Abecedarius in 26 Words

This week's prompt for Next Line, Please called for variants and elaborations on “I’m going to break that marriage up” (spoken by Teresa Wright in The Best Years of Our Lives) or Norah Ephron’s “I’ll have what she’s having” (from When Harry Met Sally) or Woody Allen’s “How the hell do I know why there were Nazis, I don’t know how the can opener works” (from Hannah and Her Sisters).

There were a great deal of impressive poems which utilized one or all of the quotes, as well as an impressive amount of editorial work that is going on behind the scenes! I think it's really cool when writers can give and receive notes on each other's work.

My favorite poem incorporated multiple references to the quotes, and sounded playful and clever:

“All That’s Left Behind Lies Ahead” by Paul Michelson:

“The best days are the first to flee.”
—Virgil

Roasting marshmallows with Prometheus
as Athena cries out, Horae for Anesidora.
Can I use her crown to open a can?

I’ll have what she’s having. A seizure. A salad.
A seizure salad. Sangria. Salud.
Some ’ludes. A little solitude.

Caesarian. A shortcut, a longshot, a backrub.
Colombian necktie. Lookin’ sharp.
Lookin’ good.

Failed painter with a toothbrush mustache.
Twinkle in the eye of a tyrant.
Adenoid Hynkel, aspiring to be divine.

I figured out how to use that can opener
but I can’t get the worms back in.

Visit the American Scholar's page to read more poems, including an Abecedarius in 26 Words!

--Virginia Valenzuela

Squibs 234-243 [By Alan Ziegler]

234. As a young reporter in 1970, I was assigned to review a musical billed as a tryout for Broadway. I declared the production a “pleasant enough way to spend a summer evening, but in its current form, it’s not up to bigger and better things.” Always trying to spice my pieces, I concluded that the experience was like being served a full meal of melba toast—you come away “full but not satisfied.” A few days later, while I was reporting for a feature, a young woman recognized my name and said, “Usually these reviews are puff pieces.” She paused and added, “Yours was interesting.” And a few days later, I was interviewing a chamber group that would be performing at the same arts center where the musical was running. One of the musicians recognized my name and said, “The people from the show were talking about you. They hate you.”

235. “I’ve Got to Pass Your House to Get to My House” (written by Lew Brown, sung by Bing Crosby)

236. I spent ten minutes untangling the wires connected to a pair of headphones I put in a drawer alongside assorted wired devices. I do not recall spending any time tangling the wires before I closed the drawer. I have spent several hours of my life untangling wires, and I have never consciously tangled anything. It must be something I do.

237. In the mid-1970s I saved up to buy a reconditioned IBM Selectric II typewriter, the typesetting machine of choice for non-funded small magazines. The characters populated a tiny globe called an element. If you smooshed two keystrokes, the machine would remember which order you hit them and space the letters evenly on the page. (In effect, the Selectric had a RAM of one bite.) Writer friends came over to use my Selectric; someone commented, “Wow, I didn’t know civilians were allowed to have these.” I was told when I bought it that I would need to have a service contract with IBM because there’s a thin cable connected to a “gear shift” that tends to snap. And snap it did, every few months, but one quick call would result in an IBM repairman showing up, sometimes the same day; for the first time, I felt cared for by a giant corporation. When I took a writer-in-residence position at the Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan, I didn’t think I could write without my Selectric. I had it shipped, and a couple of weeks into the term I returned to my cottage to find the box on my porch. I plugged it in, got the motor humming and started to type. Snapped cable. The nearest service center was downstate, hours away. The next day a serviceman drove up and fixed the cable. Before long, people were knocking on my door to use my typewriter.

238. Molly Bloom: “Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby.”

239. On the way toward a glorious rainbow, a snake in the grass came across a stick in the mud. “Don't you just love the feel of dew on the belly?” the snake said, but the stick didn't answer so the snake hissed and slithered on. The snake came across a bump on a log and said, “Nice weather for the ducks; would you like to share one?” but the bump was mum so the snake hissed and slithered on. The snake came across a hole in the wall and said, “Hey there, what're you looking at?” but the hole was mute so the snake hissed and slithered on. The snake came across a hooker with a heart of gold and said, “You and me, what do you say?” But the hooker turned away from the snake because she had just accepted a college scholarship, so the snake hissed and slithered on. The snake came to the end of the glorious rainbow and spotted a pot of gold. “I'm not falling for that,” the snake hissed and slithered on.

240. I am taking Clinical Psychology in college and use that as justification for taking advantage of the free psychotherapy offered by faculty—it’s research. Talking to my therapist is like opening up with a friend, and I always feel slightly rebuffed when he says, “We have to knock it off.” We exchange a couple of cards after I graduate, and when I visit campus we meet for lunch. He tells me he’s at the college because he was miserable treating really sick patients. I ask about his wife, whom I have met a couple of times, and am shocked when he tells me that they are separated. I remember seeing a picture of his two kids, and I ask how his children are coping. He pauses with his roast beef sandwich in his hand and says, evenly, “How much do you charge?” We finish our lunch and I never see him again.

241. Two children on subway; one gets seat next to mom, his sister must stand grasping the pole. She smiles and narrates as she dances: “I get to stand up, spin around, touch the ground.”

242. In my early years of teaching I bought a briefcase, but it didn’t work for cramming books and folders on the fly. Each week The New Yorker ran a small ad for a Danish School Bag at a place called the Chocolate Soup on the Upper East Side. One of the testimonials was “This bag got me though law school.” I wanted one, badly. I was nervous about going to the store—Upper East Side, New Yorker, law school and all—and thought I had made a mistake when Chocolate Soup turned out to be a tiny children’s store. But yes, they did have the Danish School Bag, which the store owner had fallen in love with while traveling and arranged to sell in her store. Twenty-five years later I had lunch with one of my early students. I asked her what she remembered from those years when she was in elementary school coming—sometimes two or three times a week—to the Teachers & Writers Collaborative room at P.S. 75. “Your bag,” she replied. “You had the coolest bag. Then Lisa found out where you got it and bought one. We hated her for it.”

243. It’s fine to write something corny, as long as it’s fresh off the cob, hot, and sweet.

Andrey Gritsman and David Lehman to Read at the Cornelia Street Cafe

Join us at the Cornelia Street Cafe on Wednesday, December 13th for an evening with Andrey Gritsman and David Lehman, who will read their translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky, among other poems.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

 

at the Cornelia Street Cafe

Wednesday, December 13, 6 PM

29 Cornelia Street

NYC

212 898 9319

 

On Cornelia Street, where W. H. Auden once lived and was quoted, saying that "the art of living in New York City lies in crossing the street against the light."

 

The event is sponsored by Intercultural Poetry. Lehman will read his versions of "Brooklyn Bridge" and parts of "The Cloud in Trousers." Gritsman will read "Brooklyn Bridge" in Russian as well as translations of such poets as Mandelstam, Akhmatova, and contemporaries Vladimir Gandelsman and Vladimir Druk. 

 

For an enticing taste of these two poets, check out the following links to their work!

"Amnesia" by David Lehman

"5 АДАР II 5771" by Andrey Gritsman

What if "to Ashbery" were a verb? [by the Associated Press, with David Lehman's two cents]

<<<
Ashbery says he just reread an essay by Auden in which the poet called the Oxford English Dictionary "his most treasured reading" and praised the language as large, yet lenient, noting how Shakespeare would invent new words simply by turning a verb into a noun or an adjective into a verb.

Ashbery is a longtime breaker of rules, but he has so far honored the boundaries of his own name. Ashbery remains just Ashbery, a proper noun, the last name of one of the world's most admired poets. But why not pretend that the poet is an adjective, Ashbery-like, or a verb, "to Ashbery." The poet even offers a definition.

"To confuse the hell out of people," he says.
>>>

from Hillel Italie's Associated Press piece: "John Ashbery --- Movie Fan and Canonical Poet"
AP National Writer
Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Ashbery spent an hour making up variations. "To Ashbery or not to Ashbery" came first, then "To Haight-Ashbury or not to hate Ashbery," then "To Ashbury him, not to praise him." He told me about the line in one of his poems -- "mountain ash mindlessly dripping its berries" -- as his own attempt to make hay while the sun shone. He chuckled like Popeye.

There is a comic book character named "Ashbery," a teenage girl, I believe.

There is also precedent for distinguishing between John Ashbery and "John Ashbery" especially by scholars who understand the gratuitousness of the gesture but -- as with Saint Joseph in the Yeats poem -- like the way their fingers smelled. 

-- from the archives [originally posted November 10, 2008]

Letter from Berlin #5 (Suggested Listening) [by Rodney Wilhite]

Detroit techno is one of my greatest passions, ever since being introduced to Jeff Mills in the mid-90s, but I've only ever heard it specific contexts (two, to be specific: headphones, dance club), and the innovation of it never truly registered until I heard the pianist Vijay Iyer and his trio at my university last year. There was a moment in their live performance in which they locked into a syncopated, repetitive groove with single-chord piano riff and they rode it out for quite a long time, with the piano riff gradually getting more frenzied, in an acoustic approximation of the live tweaking of distortion and effects often employed by DJs.

At the time I was shocked to hear this music I've loved for so long in an academic setting, performed by a Harvard professor, no less. After buying the CD, I learned the song was titled "Hood," a tribute to the producer Robert Hood, whose track "RAGE" (as Underground Resistance) was a favorite early in my electronic music obsession. At that time, we knew nothing about Underground Resistance--their names were not on the record, there was no sleeve or liner notes, they performed with their faces covered by ski masks so there were no photographs of them on the burgeoning internet. It was a record that felt dangerous, much like Punk Rock must've felt for the generation before me, and Rock & Roll for the generation before that. More than that, it felt like a secret and talismanic thing for a small-town kid from Oklahoma to own (or even know about), a new identity outside my rural upbringing. 

And then here it was, in the most genteel of settings, but still retaining its anger and power. Techno is protest music, full stop. And we need protest music in 2017.

So here's "RAGE:"

 

And here's "Hood" (beginning at about 13:25):

 

And, why not, here's "Automatic:"

 

I appreciate the opportunity to share music on this forum. Thanks so much to Kathleen and Stacey.

-R

Meet the Press: Dante Di Stefano in Conversation with Nicci Mechler of Porkbelly Press

DD: On your personal website, you have a great quote: “In a perfect world, Audre Lorde and Joseph Campbell would sit down over a few pints of Mudder’s Milk to speak about the way our dreams and magic connect us all, teach us all—the way both are vital to a full and vibrant expression and expansion of culture & self.” Can you start the interview by talking about these artistic forbearers, and what it means to you to run a poetry press in America in 2017?

NM: Thank you. No one’s ever asked me about that one before!

The book that most affected me in college, still the one I give to friends at any opportunity, is Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. We choose pieces for Sugared Water, our anthologies, and our Porkbelly chapbooks in the place where struggle, speculative work, humor, sure voice, feminism, and the intimate journey converge. Ray Bradbury might call it tipping out the “beautiful stuff” we hold inside of us, or the voices to help “lead [us] through the dark.” Everything, for us, is about the journey, and accompanying the poet or writer along the way. Our staff interests touch everything from hiking to graphic novels, expressionist printmaking to death positivity and queer theory. We bring that to our lit.

The majority of our writers are women or female identifying, trans, non-binary, queer folx. We support the work of immigrants and expats, multicultural and intersectional work. We love first books, those starting out, and books by poets and writers well on their way. Our poets range in age from teenage to octogenarian. We look to regional artists when we can, and make a lot of our cover art in house. Running a press in 2017 America is, for us, the work of citizens of the world making way for important voices, marginalized voices—voices we need.

DD: How did Porkbelly Press come into being?

NM: Sugared Water came first, a market for genre-straddling work, for speculative work, for new writers and experimental writers and established writers trying something new, for humans letting us into their internal landscape. I decided to go with a handmade approach, a callback to years of making zines, using traditional printmaking and bookbinding methods.

After a few people sent packets of poems clearly from a series (most of our chapbooks are clusters of poems), and many of those poets had no chapbooks listed in their biographical statement (why not?), I did a lot of thinking about the books I owned and what was missing. I’d read this book is the thought that convinced this artist-writer-printmaker-bookbinder to ask for those poems to make books of them. Some generous, lovely poets (and writers!) took me up on that, and trusted a fledgling press with their book.

A handful of our titles still come from poets and writers we find in our Sugared Water queue.

DD: Tell us about Sugared Water.

NM: Sugared Water is a handbound, limited edition literary magazine. Each cover is printed by hand using traditional printmaking methods. Our most recent issue, no. 5, combines screen printing and letterpress (vintage wood type individually inked with 2-5 colors and pulled on a Vandercook Proof Press). We made 240 of our first issue, but since our storage is a box in my closet, I’ve come down to about 100 numbered copies per issue. We’re currently staffed entirely by women,

We look for work that’s sharp and image-dense, work that makes us stop and look up from what we’re reading. Work we’re thinking about days after we’ve read it. We feature a large number of women and genderqueer folx, and we make space for trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, and those living in between or everything. No hate speech. Magic, yes. Speculative, yes.

Each issue is supposed to be 56 pages, but some seasons we’re a little greedy and hit 80. 

DD: You’ve published some incredible poets, notably Chen Chen, E. Kristen Anderson, and Eloisa Amezcua. Amezcua’s Mexicamericana seems a particularly necessary poetry collection in the Trump era. Can you tell us a bit about this collection?

NM: Yes. We’re so honored to have these voices, established and up-and-coming, and I’m so, so thrilled to be part of so many literary histories. Porkbelly Press published Chen Chen’s first book. When I read a first book and have trouble believing it’s a first book, and I think—how has this ever been passed up? Why isn’t it already an object people can hold? Why aren’t people already gifting this to friends who need it?’—that feeling is why I started a press in the first place.

This collection is a light in the dark.

Mexicamericana is a cluster of poems about being, about identity, otherness, and the strength it takes to persist, to cross borders, borders sometimes separated by a dangerous line. It’s about people dying for politics, the resilience of self and identity and the convergence of selves, the fact that people are not illegal. People are not illegal.

People are not illegal.

People are dying.

And people are surviving.

And we won’t have a fucking wall.

DD: Tell us about the other amazing collections that are a part of your 2017 chapbook series.

NM: 2017 has sex and body autonomy and desire and infertility (fertility too) and so much strength. 2017 investigates survival and intergenerational trauma, erasures made from punk rags (more sex), ritual, feminist monsters with sharp teeth & blades, blood, bone, and power. Our authors this year: Amber Edmondson, Kelly Lorraine Andrews, Melissa Atkinson Mercer, Donna Vorreyer, Anita Olivia Koester, M. Brett Gaffney, Lindsay Lusby, Kristi Carter, Maggie Woodward, and Eloisa Amezcua. By the time this interview appears, we’ll have just released Apples or Pomegranates by Anita Olivia Koester, Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem by Kristi Carter (covers hand-printed in metallic ink!), and will soon release Found Footage by Maggie Woodward (including erasures!), and Blackbird Whitetail Redhand by Lindsay Lusby.

DD: Porkbelly Press also publishes micro chapbooks, collections of 8-10 pages. How does the micro chapbook as a form differ for you from a regular length chapbook?

NM: Micros tend to be single arcs or very tight clusters of work. It’s an opportunity for poets & writers to send a small sampling out into the world, though they’re curated with the same attention to design and detail as our chapbooks. It’s a taste that can be enjoyed easily in a sitting.

DD: How has Cincinnati influenced the press and your work as a poet/artist?

NM: My father worked close to the river for many years, and I often spent a portion of my weekend downtown at the jewelry manufacturing company where he served as vice president. He worked long hours, and I was there with him more than a few times when the rest of the shop was empty. My childhood is steeped in the architecture, landscape, and lore of this city, and I carry that with me today. It’s why my press is named Porkbelly, after the pork belly trade in Cincinnati. A fellow printmaker beat me to the name Steamwhistle (a local letterpress studio), paying homage to the shipping history of the city, which nestles into a wide bend of the Ohio River. Best American Poetry blog did an interview with Glass recently—Tony named his press after a major trade in Toledo; I suppose we Ohioans have a thing for industry.

DD: You are a talented visual artist. I admire the work on your website, particularly the assemblage to Emily Dickinson titled “Open Me Carefully.” How has your work in the publishing field influenced your art and vice versa? (Clearly, the stunning design of your books is one point of connection).

NM: Thank you so much. “Open Me Carefully” is an homage to a book of the same name, detailing the relationship and letters between Emily Dickinson and her childhood friend, Susan (who moved in across the hedge and married Emily’s brother). I spent a semester avoiding Henry James and mining Dickinson’s poems for erotic poems ostensibly written for Susie, of which there are many. My focus is inexhaustible now and again, always following the personal connection, the surprise, or the secret. Attention to detail and craft spring up from an education in art and writing. It’s inevitable.

Craftsmanship and the hand of the artist are important elements in Porkbelly’s line. I grew up writing stories, making art, and climbing trees to hide, to read, and to ambush my cousins with water balloons. Precision is very important in all of these endeavors.

My visual education certainly informs my writing, and when it came time to start a magazine, and then a press, it lent me the confidence and skills necessary to hand-produce books of a quality with which I’m happy, and which delight (I hope!) the recipients and authors. Though that means a double helping of self-criticism sometimes, and more stress about the occasional 1/8^th inch variation in cover size than I’d like to admit, I am honored to help in bringing these books into being.

DD: What draws you to the chapbook? What can the chapbook offer that a full length collection can’t?

NM: At Porkbelly, each chapbook is made by hand from start to finish, and I love the variety of chapbook design and presentation. I can afford to collect more small works; I can afford to produce more. Most importantly, hand-binding and experimentation in production are valued in chaps. Chapbooks don’t give you time to be distracted—they feel intimate and quirky. Chaps may contain several arcs, but it’s a distilled potion.

DD: What’s forthcoming from Porkbelly Press in 2018?

NM: More first chapbooks investigating things like navigating chronic illness with body-love (first-generation Russian-Jewish-American Minadora Macheret’s Love Me, Anyway), a first book by a Muslim woman of color (Noor Hindi’s Diary of a Filthy Woman), a book of ekphrastic poems inspired by Diane Arbus’ photographs & a poet’s journey (How Darkness Enters a Body by Sarah Nichols), erasure poems imagining the voice of Elizabeth Short reclaimed from a crime novel about her murder (Dreamland for Keeps by Sarah Nichols), and a collection of prose poems which left us speechless (Lisette Alonso’s Wednesday’s Child).

DD: Could you end the interview by giving us a poem from a Porkbelly Press poet?

NM: Yes, absolutely. Below is a selection from Eloisa Amezcua’s Mexicamericana. This poem was selected for Best American Poets 2017 and first appeared in Public Pool. In her chapbook, it’s spaced a little differently, with a lot of white space for breathing room, and several page-turns to punctuate it.

            Watching Underworld, Inc. Episode 3: Human Cargo

            The Pima County Morgue,

            approximately 110 miles

 

            from my childhood home,

            houses John Doe, Jane Doe,

 

            [sexless] Doe. Dated remains

            found in the Sonoran Desert—

 

            nameless and alone. The medical

            examiner holds a fragmented

 

            cranium, points to where

            the eyes would go. 

 

                            /

 

            I cross the border        on foot.

            My father         waits for me

 

            in the McDonald’s       parking lot

            one block         into America.

 

            I stand        in the line

            labeled             Ciudadanos.

                        

                            /

 

            Francisco, a people smuggler

            in Nogales, says his secret

 

            is training others

            to hide and survive.

           

                                /

 

            I don’t remember much           from middle school

            US History—               who lead the troops

 

            that took          Fort Ticonderoga         or who forced

            General Pemberton                 to surrender in 1863—

 

            but I remember            like yesterday

            the sound of my mother’s voice

 

            practicing         the Pledge of Allegiance

            before her                    naturalization ceremony.

                

                                /

 

            A Border Patrol agent

            explains how after five days

 

            on foot in the desert,

            skin begins to split

 

            from the burning sun—

            flesh exposed and open.

 

            Nothing can be done once

            the breaking has started.

           

                            /

 

            Gratitude is a word that comes to mind.

           

                            /

 

            In Phoenix, Magdalena buys and sells

            moneyless migrants wholesale—

 

            their families unable to pay off cartel

            trafficking rates. Three women/girls sit

 

            one room over, faces hidden with pillow cases—

            they're background. And Magdalena, she talks

 

            a tough talk, says business is business

            and business is good. Her face concealed

 

            by a black bandana and mirrored sunglasses

            reflecting the camera back into itself.

        

                            /

 

            When the show’s over,            I’ll call my mother

            just to hear      the sound of her voice.

 

            Como estas?           she’ll ask.         And I’ll lie,

            tell her things are fine the way

 

            she’d say          the same to her mother

            thirty years before                    when she moved

 

            to this country                         alone

            with her husband.                    I’m haunted

 

            by that for her.             I moved thousands of miles

            away                alone                just to feel

 

            closer. Before        we hang up, she’ll say

            Dios te bendiga, picture me signing myself

 

            or kissing a crucifix                  I can’t bring myself

            to wear.           A blessing I don’t need

          

            but I take it                 anyways.

 

Nicci Mechler is a graduate of Northern Kentucky University (BFA Studio Art, Masters in English). Between research, novel revisions, poetic alchemy, reading, retreats, and caring for roomies, rescue dogs, and rescue kitties, she makes art, edits the literary magazine Sugared Water, and runs Porkbelly Press (a micro press in Cincinnati, OH). She is also the editor and maker of several zines, including the body image zine LMLMB.

Dante Di Stefano is the author of two poetry collections: Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016) and Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, forthcoming 2019). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for the DIALOGIST. Along with María Isabel Alvarez, he is the co-editor of Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump's America, forthcoming from NYQ Books.

Letter from Berlin #5 - Dancing on our own [by Kathleen Heil]

 

Photo credit: Anton Lang

 

Living in Berlin and being indifferent to electronic music is like living in Italy having never tried pasta: you're missing out on something fundamental to the culture if you don't partake at least once. So I recently went to the city's most fabled club, Berghain, with a friend who is a Sunday regular, because it seems everyone I know in Berlin who takes their Berghain-ing seriously goes on Sundays, typically arriving in the late morning, as though headed to church.

And well, Berghain is a church of sorts, a place people love and fear and go to looking for solace and transcendence in the form of solitary togetherness in dance and ... It's also a liminal space, one its owners fiercely protect (photography is strictly forbidden). Given that the club is a huge draw for weekend Easyjetters as part of the gestalt-brand that is “Berlin,” it's kind of remarkable that Berghain has remained intact as a space of carefully constructed freedom. But, as with churches, there's also something slightly conformist and codified about the space, too (amid all the black trench coats and ripped stockings, probably the most radical thing you could do is show up [and manage to get in] to Berghain wearing high heels or a three-piece suit).

Although my favorite genre of music is soul, thanks to other people's curiosity and passion (shout out and a big thank you to Rodney Wilhite for the musical accompaniment this week), I'm slowly beginning to discover that I like some electronic music—early Detroit deep house, especially (and well, one of my favorite songs of nostalgia is this early 90s track by Crystal Waters—I remember dancing 'across-the-floor' combinations to the song as a preteen in jazz class, and my heart did a leap of recognition when Roderick George played it during a contemporary class last year—I hadn't heard the track in some twenty-odd years). So when my friend and I went that Sunday we bypassed the main room, which features techno and minimal electronic music, and headed straight for the adjacent Panorama bar, where the DJs play house and electro. As we entered, a house remix of Marvin Gaye's “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)” was playing, and I mentally genuflected to the genius that is his music. We moved toward the front, by the DJ, a small vibrant woman with Scandinavian features, whom I later learned was the Swedish pop wonder Robyn. Her entire set was exuberant and soul- and pop-driven, with enough loops and variations present in the musical structures to remain compelling to dance to; it was imbued with joy.

Thanks for being with me this week.

Yours, Kathleen

Not Night [poem by Patricia Carlin]

It’s not natural.  Not night,
the hole inside the hole.
This way, that way.
No way.  
Can you keep going?
The sun keeps going.  
Old, young, 
taking your footsteps.
Tomorrow someone will ask,
“Is this what she wanted?”
And someone will answer
“She passed this way
under the weightless wash of sky.”

-- Patricia Carlin

Patricia Carlin's books include Second Nature, QUANTUM JITTERS  and ORIGINAL GREEN all from Marsh Hawk Press. She has published widely in journals and anthologies such as Boulevard, BOMB, Verse, American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, POOL, The Literary Review, The Manhattan Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency; and she has received fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and VCCA. She teaches literature and poetry writing at The New School, and she co-edits the poetry journal Barrow Street.