The Best American Poetry

"In 1976, When She Was Born" [a sonnet by Molly Arden]

Life was dull in 1976.
Dad had to read "Ivanhoe" and write a report.
Sex was not yet Mom’s favorite sport.
The only rhyme that came to mind was "dicks."

Mom was somewhere north
of the Mass / NH border.
She was just following an order,
not calculating its moral worth.

She was on vacation
feeling unclever
and not happily after ever.

He promised to wait
for her return to the state
of eternal temptation.

See also http://www.coconutpoetry.org/arden1.html

Awards for Poetry, Plus a New Anthology (posted by Bruce Covey)

This morning I decided to launch a major new poetry award, called The Super Important Totally Awesome Major Major International Poetry Award, with its easy-to-memorize acronym SITAMMIPA.  It will carry as much prestige as the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, or National Book Critics Circle Award.  Each year a staff of experts will choose five finalists from all the nominees, then I will mail out ballots to 50 prominent poets to vote for the winners (two categories:  Full and Chapbook-length).  Each winner will receive $20 from me, plus, most importantly, all the incredible prestige that will come with the award.  I’m totally serious.  Well, I mean I fully intend to give out the awards, at least. 

Please email nominations for the 2011 SITAMMIPAs to me at [email protected].  Winners will be announced sometime around the end of January, and I’ll send out checks just after.  I’m certain we’ll get major, important coverage in all the major, important news venues.

The idea for this major, important new award came from a conversation I had today with another poet about the ways in which awards and anthologies can fragment community by creating an artificial sense of privilege or exclusivity.  I don’t think this state of poetry is anyone’s fault—it’s just that we all (well, many of us) have slipped into a mode of discourse in which we (readers and editors alike) equate a selection for an award or an anthology as some sign of objective superiority, rather than the opening gesture of a conversation.  When Rae Armantrout (deservedly!) won two of the three major poetry awards, wasn’t it also an acknowledgment of the work of Rae’s poetry community?  In addition to buying Versed, which is a terrific book, shouldn’t everyone also go out and purchase titles by Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian, and Carla Harryman?  And/or other poets with whom Rae’s work has been in conversation?  And bookstores everywhere carry these titles on their shelves?  

We can, in other words, become introduced to or begin to engage a particular poetry community through an award or anthology as entry point.

Her waking state can be termed the true yellow cling peach of romance

In a word, anatomy

She will return as a harmless subject envied by none

Neighborhood: abandoned former battlefield

Social structure: artsy/inefficacious

Favorite leisure pastime: whining/watching rented movies

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings

They have been put in alphabetical order

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove

If it is a wild tune

I threw away punctuation

Never reject anything. Nothing has been proved

Back into the city to find that lost serenity

I woke from it. Nothing anywhere lacked definition

--Lyn Hejinian, “11^th Dream of July,” from Coconut Five
 

And: 

Across sculpted surfaces glowworms manage excess with initials some call instincts and others choose to relish for their own sake. How many times has a gift become a crisis? 

Beatles do not ask this question. They ask another question. Will the debris linger on the anchor? Much has been made of baleful themes waiting to be realized. But upright legs rub together regardless of gender.

Phrasing is everything clamoring for connection organized by jealousy. Emoluments for hands scale up the spine of another's mate. Dust lit on chunk. There were consequences and results never acknowledged by either.

Crashing through the waves with their jaws interlocked, the fighters kill each other then duck under a wreck where the coolest of nights collect their orgasms.

A grandstand above is not the place to sit when the psyche below wants revenge. Such arrangements can't control a wing tickling inside the breast or the barb that curls down the smooth of a butt or the knee that picnics on the outside of a strange creature's toe. It is not safety one seeks in a shadow.

Across sculpted surfaces theories speak to me as poems. Literacy in fields of discourse crumbles amongst freaky sounds. Here are the sirens of not knowing everything. The map of whatever is stilted. More than one bird has pinched an ear, which burns in tenderness and loses a hard-on.

Alternatively, a bird pinches an ear. Alternately, a bird pinched an ear.

Alphabets like insects may triumph over the arrangements made from their parts more than is normally thought. Even as languages disappear the headspace made in the damage converts to tongue.

Between an ecstasy and its other is a factory. Bees nest inside its abandoned parts. In a photo the factory seems old and still. It is never still. The photo is a distraction used to orient brains toward the shell of their prey. 

-- Carla Harryman, “not ensnared, they wait: Noise for Adorno,” from Coconut Eleven

Best American Poetry, each year, generates wonderful conversations.  The easiest possible critical response to an anthology (and, sadly, the most common) is to list the poets who were omitted, but “shouldn’t” have been, or to dismiss particular inclusions.  We all do it—it’s this type of conversation’s default posture.  Fortunately, however, we’re at a point in poetry in which an anthology can be constructed along many, many aesthetic lines, and within each of those lines, with many, many possible and various points.  For me this is one of the greatest parts of poetry—that at the end of each year we can take time to reengage the many incredible poems we read throughout the year and discuss why and how each is “best.”

In addition to the new award above, Coconut will publish an anthology sometime around the beginning of 2013.  The anthology will be edited only by me and will include my choices of approximately 100 amazing and original poets who help to comprise what, in my opinion, is new and interesting in poetry today.  Upon the anthology’s publication, I’m going to create a blog to allow readers to post their choices for which poets should have been included.  Then, sometime the next year, Coconut will publish a companion anthology filled with only those poets nominated by readers.  The first volume wholly, individually subjective; the second, democratic.  

What do you think?  Don’t forget to email me your choices for the best book and chapbook of poetry published in 2011!

See you tomorrow, Bruce

Happy Thanksgiving! (Posted by Bruce Covey)

Well, it is Thanksgiving after all, so even though it’s a bit over-determined and even though I don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving for obvious reasons, I’m going to post some heartfelt poetry thanks by category.  My guess is that you’re busy today with family and friends and parades and food, so to those lonely few who are reading this post today, drop me a line!

To everyone who has published in Coconut magazine, and to everyone who will submit their work over the next year.  Thanks to Coconut Book authors Reb Livingston, Gina Myers, Jen Tynes, Natalie Lyalin, Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Denise Duhamel, Amy Lemmon, Kimiko Hahn, Megan Kaminski, Molly Brodak, Angela Veronica Wong, Jenny Boully, Hanna Andrews, Emily Toder, Amber Nelson, and Christie Ann Reynolds.  Thanks to new Coconut editors Kim Gek Lin Short, Danielle Pafunda, and Gina.  Thanks to Coconut editorial assistants Jess Rowan, Christeene Fraser, Ken Jacobs, Hilary Cadigan, and Lauren Schimming.  Thanks to extraordinary book designers Abby Horowitz and Megan Punschke.

To those poets, endlessly generous, who host readings and publish and promote and review the work of others:  David & Stacey, Reb Livingston, Shanna Compton, Steven Karl, Del Ray Cross, Amy King, Jonathan Minton, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Gina Myers, Matt Henriksen, Ana Bozicevic, Jen Tynes, Hanna Andrews, Brendan Lorber, Megan Volpert, Nicole Mauro, Larry Sawyer, Hoa Nguyen, Blake Butler, E. Tracy Grinnell, Danielle Pafunda, Joseph Wood, Susana Gardner, Lara Glenum, Daniel Nester, Didi Menendez, Brandi Homan, Matt Hart, Zach Schomburg, Brent Cunningham, Heather Christle, Julia Cohen, Kim Gek Lin Short, and the so many others I’ve missed. 

To all of the Atlanta poets and writers and organizations who make the poetry community here so rich and productive and various, just to name a few: Gina, Megan, Blake, Christeene, Jamie Iredell, Alka Roy, Laura Carter, Melysa Martinez, the Atlanta Poets Group, Poetry Atlanta, the AQLF, Randy Prunty, Laura Straub, James Sanders, Rupert Fike, Ashley VanDoorn, Jenny Sadre-Orafai, Casey McKinney, Jim Elledge, Kory Calico, Brigitte Byrd, Amy Herschleb, Franklin Abbott, Jake Adam York, Chelsea Rathburn, Jim May, Collin Kelley, Amy McDaniel, Christine Swint, Karen Head, Laurel Snyder, Tom Lux, Connie Stadler, Dustin Brookshire, Jessica Hand, Julie Bloemeke, Chad Davidson, Beth Gylys, Jimmy Lo, Ben Spivey, Dionne Irving.  &, in absentia, Heather Christle, Chris DeWeese, Paul Guest, Amy McDaniel, Caroline Crew, Laura Kochman, and Ann Stephenson.  & specially especially my Emory colleagues Natasha Trethewey, Kevin Young, Molly Brodak, and Alice Teeter. 

& everyone in Athens too, especially Heidi Lynn Staples, Laura Solomon, Andrew Zawacki, Jed Rasula, Lily Brown, Michael Tod Edgerton, Dan Rosenberg, Becca Myers, John Stovall, Sabrina Orah Mark, and Ed Pavlic.  

To everyone who has read at What’s New in Poetry, my reading series, over the past eight years.

To my teachers and mentors.

To all of my poet friends not mentioned above.

To the poets whose work has inspired me for so many years:  Ted Berrigan, Kenneth Koch, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Frank O’Hara, Lyn Hejinian, Leslie Scalapino, Robert Creeley, John Ashbery, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Amy Gerstler, Cole Swensen, John Cage, Elaine Equi, Bill Berkson, David Trinidad, Barbara Guest.

Thank you, everyone!!!

Love, Bruce

 

Happy Coconut (posted by Bruce Covey)

In addition to the three collections available for AWP that I talked about on Monday, Coconut will be publishing six other new books in 2012-2013.  Maybe more!  I’m going to be working with a new printer and distributing through SPD, so hopefully the books will be easier to get while still looking just as nice.  As I mentioned in a facebook post a couple of months ago, the goal of a poetry small press is always to makes sure financial losses don’t get TOO out of control—shifting printers and distribution while increasing the number of titles was a budgetary necessity for me.  My previous model was too expensive.

I’ve already mentioned two poets whose books will be out around the end of 2012—Hanna Andrews and Christie Ann Reynolds.  Hanna is one of the founders of Switchback Books and a really amazingly smart and sweet and dynamic person.  I couldn’t believe it when I learned her first book, Slope Move, was still available!  I posted one of her poems (or, more specifically, an excerpt from a sequence) yesterday.  I met Christie Ann at AWP, then heard her read (brilliantly!) at Steven Karl’s terrific backyard reading series in Brooklyn.  Christie Ann’s poems are so explosively untidy—I think you’re going to love both of these new books.  (I posted one of Christie Ann’s poems on Sunday).  (If you can’t wait any longer, Christie Ann has a rockin’ chapbook out with Ben Fama’s awesome SuperMachine.  You can buy both!)  (And Switchback titles too!) 

Around the same time Coconut will publish Emily Toder’s first full-length book, the title of which is still to be determined.  I haven’t yet met Emily in person, but she’s wonderfully sweet and brilliantly unconventional on the phone.  Here’s her poem “On Sequins”:

Sequins are mites of goodness lacking in the eyes.
I personally have no experience with sequins.
The history of sequins is that they were invented
in 6th century Arabia for good reason.
The etymology of sequins lies in the Arabic sikka 
meaning coin or die. 
In the 13th century the local public mint 
of the Republic of Venice was called la Zecca
and produced 3.5 gram gold coins called zecchino. 
Repeating this word excessively they founded 
what we know today as the sequin. 
Today we know the sequin is made of traditional 
and nontraditional materials both.
Traditionally sequins were chisels of foil. 
Nontraditionally they are the postconsumer 
plastic eyes of small mammals. 
That is nearly all we know about them. 
And that they were hot in the Reagan years. 
I have seen a sequin melt
although that is a separate meaning 
I realize. I have seen a separated 
sequin I realize. Sequins are little 
entrepreneurs but globalization
has been hard on them. 
There have been rumors they are made 
with gelatin which is hard to pull off 
in a globalized world. I would suggest 
sequins are not generally well looked upon 
in fact. They are hardly ever gazed at 
because it is uncomfortable
and unnecessary. No one goes out 
looking for them. No one has taken out 
a patent on them. Compare this 
with Tofurky. 
I have heard it said the sequin cheapens. 
It has been told to children. 
Children must be told some things. 
Children must be dressed slowly. 
They must form a peer group. 
I used to be a sequin. Now I am like a bead. 
I don’t want to talk about it. 
We were flung from the hips 
and now we are confetti. 
The history of confetti is much simpler. 
Confetti first arose in Paris 
in 1891 and was made out of casino parts.
The etymology of confetti is confection. 
Today confetti is nontoxic. 
I wish confetti was my real name. 
My real name reveals very much about me. 
Richard.

I’m really, really excited about Jenny Boully’s collection of non-prose poems, to be published by Coconut in the fall of 2012.  Jenny is of course author of The Body, plus two awesome books from Tarpaulin Sky.  Here’s a poem of Jenny’s that appeared in Coconut Two way back in 2005 (sans footnotes—forgive me, Jenny), called, “Actually, she is telling about how a dwelling becomes empty when she moves in.”

It would be wrong. It would be wrong because the promise told would never be the promise given. And so, the life that she thought she could have, the one of sea breezes, of peeling paint, of something sweet smelling from the back porch each day, of lazy cats and bad coffee, would never make itself real for her. The days of leisure, of wondering, of reading and writing, of dreaming would soon be over, replaced by a waitress apron, a jar of barely enough. And when the weariness, when the tiredness sets in, then so too does the hate, so too does the spite. (And so, do you see? Do you see what I gave up to be with you?) And years later, when trees were no longer birch and sycamore, but other trees that did not seem to sprout from mythical books, she would remember a certain picture she took before it all went wrong, in that irreproachable promise of something different. She would remember an orange boat tied to a dock, a dock that she wanted, and know that it wasn’t him but the water she was in love with.

I’m also really excited that Amber Nelson’s first book, In Anima: Urgency, will come out from Coconut in 2013! If you know Amber’s work through her chapbooks (I mentioned her earlier in the week in her role as editor of Alice Blue), this book is a little different.  Here’s one (untitled) poem:

to bear bears fallow

such farrow:

pink seeds in the mud

pinking a cool pinch

all nipples blossom—flush

Another forthcoming Coconut book is currently a secret.  But I’m also going to hold two contests—one for a first book and one for any level of experience.  I’m going to be the judge, all submissions will be non-blind, and there will be no reading fee.  Plus an anthology is coming too!

Tomorrow:  Well, I’m not yet sure what I’m going to talk about tomorrow.

Love, Bruce

 

 

Bagging the Whole "Be" Thing (Posted by Bruce Covey)

Yesterday I said I was going to talk about distribution paths for poetry, but mine certainly isn’t any kind of definitive word.  We choose how we give and get our poems; we choose which poems we love and hate, both of our own and others.  The cultural shift from canonicity to community implies that the notions of “poets anointed” or the “cream of poetry” are merely modes of discourse, rather than something objectively “true.”  Editors choose the contents of a journal as forms of self-expression in the voices of like-minded poets from the same poetic community.  Best American Poetry is an editor’s expression of a range of voices that sparks conversation about other great poems from the year, and what “best” means for each of us.  For me, the most interesting journals and anthologies make loud choices—i.e., are able to recognize the extremes of their chosen aesthetic(s).  I count BAP among the best anthologies.  I count No Tell Motel, Court Green, LIT, Word For/Word, Jubilat, Jacket, No Posit, Octopus, Columbia Poetry Review, Aufgabe, Denver Quarterly, Anti-, Ping-pong, Tarpaulin Sky, H_NGM_N, 1913, Noo, Glitter Pony, Pank, Lana Turner, RealPoetik, Shampoo, and Weave as just a teeny few of many, many, many awesome journals being published today, in a wide variety of aesthetics (see the forthcoming “links” page on the forthcoming new Coconut for a more extensive listing). 

Let’s scare you up some drama. An 18th century peepshow. A typical entertainment of the time period. Take a look. Through this peephole. The dimensions pile on, revealing a poor paint job. There I was, fearless and standing on tables. Now I am something vivid. You are some thing. Seaward. What are whales? Why are whale hunted? In your sleep I start stealing your slow-ish motions. A puddle of pale blue on the floor. The most delicate patch of it. In the city their hands smell of oranges. Soon I will stop. Matching you stroke for stroke. I count the scratches on your back. I name them like ships.

            --Lily Ladewig, from “Shadow Boxes,” from the current Word For/Word
 

The shift from canonicity to community implies that hard-drawn aesthetic “lines in the sand” are outmoded.  “Experimental” and “traditional” are meaningless, with form and narrative and epiphanies and visual poetics and Black Mountain influences and lang-po influences all thrown into the same mixing bowl.  In a room full of Frank O’Hara disciples one will find 50 radically different poets.  Similarly, we need not feel ashamed if our poetic influences include, for instance, John Berryman among a dozen great NY School poets.  This isn’t to say that all evaluative categories for poems must be defenestrated; instead, however, I propose that we consider relative value (originality, profundity) within the context of particular, vital poetic communities (or within the context of a single poet’s trajectory) as a more effective measure of greatness. 

Once in a while the contents are so varied that one cannot label a drawer. How to categorize the scrap of pulse and ankle length of twine? One begins to fail the crucial moment—pulling out anchors in flight time, wrongfaced watches. When the hinge catches, panic fuels the tug of war; one can only push or pull. The secret stash half exposed, the runner off its track.

--Hanna Andrews, from Slope Move, forthcoming from Coconut Books

The Vida numbers seem particularly devastating for me in this age of community poetics.  A vital community should, of course, not only be open to anyone, but should embrace diversity.  A vital community doesn’t make assumptions about poetics based on gender or race.  A vital community is individuals honoring the poetics and identities of its members through open conversation. 

I love hosting a reading series, even if before each event I get nervous that the audience won’t be big enough or that I’ve forgotten the mic.  More than anything I want the readers to be happy—to feel like they have a good setting to perform in.  I love meeting new poets.  I love going to readings.  I love giving readings.  I love buying and trading books at readings and conferences (avoiding the three-letter conference out of respect for Nin!).  I tend to buy books more frequently from poets with whom I’ve had contact.  I buy books full of exciting (to me) poems, of course, but I also buy books from poets I like, even if I’m not the perfect audience for their poetics.  Poets aren’t poets if we only stand in the corner and don’t join the party, even though, of course, we choose who to talk to and avoid the bullies.

I haven’t met Sawako Nakayasu in person, but we’ve emailed a lot.  I love her poems.  Her brand new book (Mouth: Eats Color: Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-Translations, & Originals) just arrived in the mail today.  On first glance it seems to question the whole notion of authorship with ("collaborative"? "translated"?) pieces written by or attributed to other poets (Mina Loy, Harry Crosby, Frances Chung).  Lines and whole poems in Japanese.  A handwritten reproduction.  The whole book an intimate conversation, as if everything is translation. 

                        Insects 

                        Insects multiplied with the speed of an electric
                        current.
                        Lapped up the boils on the earth’s crust. 

                        Turning over its exquisite costume, the urban night
                        slept like a woman.

                        Now I hang my shell out to dry.
                        My scaly skin is cold like metal.

                        No one knows this secret half-covering my face. 

                        The night makes the bruised woman, freely twirling
                        her stolen expression, ecstatic.

Tomorrow:  more about forthcoming Coconut books.

Bruce

 

 

 

Be Community (posted by Bruce Covey)

I was talking with Gina Myers last week about generations of American poets and how quickly everything has changed—that there’s a new group of emerging writers and magazines and reading series that suddenly seems to view “us” as influences and precursors rather than colleagues.  This is weird for me, because 1) I never really felt like I was part of a “present” that could have been interpreted as a “past,” and 2) I still think of myself as “emerging.”  While I think my feelings are similar to those of lots of other 30ish & 40ish poets, I also think there’s something interesting happening with schools and canons and currency and community that hasn’t happened before. 

I was also talking to one of my faculty colleagues at Emory about “generations” of students—how the generation of this year’s students is so radically different than the generation of two years ago, and how that one was so different from the generation five years ago.  This rapid turnover of attitudes, social stances, and psyches shouldn’t exactly come as a surprise—every time Apple or Google releases a new product, reality (i.e., cognition) changes.  The iPhone 4S generation (people) will be succeeded sometime next year by the iPhone 5 generation, and the two groups’ approaches to the world will be different.

            Against the railing we/Against the railing we
            Are privy/Are pricey?/Are privy
            To time in the for-ever form
            Your loving me too long/Your loving me too long
            And longingly Jackie pointed her Soul
            Gun at my face and breaking habit
            With my body I lifted myself from
            My carbon copy cunt/My carbon copy cunt
            Pulled myself apart
            I come in triplicate/I come in triplicate
            But delicate as lipstick left out on the dashboard
            In August
            We caught ourselves feeling too much/
                We caught ourselves feeling too much
            Of our atmosphere forgotten along
            With every oil spill this year

                --Christie Ann Reynolds

A couple of weeks ago I read with Emily Kendal Frey at KGB and was introduced by my wonderful hosts—Matt Yeager and John Deming—partially in terms of my past—how Coconut (my poetry magazine and publishing company) had helped to set a new standard for online publishing, was very influential, etc.  I was flattered to pieces but also (through no fault of my hosts!) a little scared—had I become a part of the past?  Emily’s work is so smart and real and fresh.  I like to think/hope that mine is too—the audience seemed to like my reading.  & at the Stain series four nights later (Christie Ann, Steven Karl, and Erika Moya, hosts), people again seemed really happy with my poems.

But then, generations—as a means of aesthetic characterization—have been replaced, haven’t they?  Currency is the choice to engage, and community—replacing canons and schools—is the lattice one engages.  “Movement” still makes sense, but only in the context of community, rather than the hitherto reverse.  I’m “present” to the degree that I choose to speak in the (poetic) language of soon-to-be 2012.  I’m “emerging” to the degree that I contribute something new.  “Influence” is no longer linear or vertical, but multi-vectored.

            Our having had
            this opportunity
            Our having had this opportunity
            to be
            together
            to be together
            is the beginning
            of a union
            is the beginning of a union
            that will last
            for many
            lives
            that will last for many lives

                    --John Giorno

In any case, I like today; there's so much going on.  Coconut Books is publishing nine new books over the next 18 months (including Christie Ann's first book, from which the above excerpt is taken); Coconut the magazine is coming back in 2012 with three new Editors (Gina, Kim Gek Lin Short, and Danielle Pafunda) and five Editorial Assistants (Jess Rowan, Lauren Schimming, Ken Jacobs, Hilary Cadigan, and Christeene Fraser); I'm currently in the midst of lots of readings and reading planning (both the ones I host and the ones I give); my own (2011) book Reveal is at the typesetters.  This week in this space I'll share all of this stuff going on with me with you.

Thanks, David and Stacy, for this opportunity.

Bruce

 

New "Coconut"

See the new issue of Bruce Covey's Coconut for fascinating new work by Nin Andrews, Stephanie Berger, Graeme Bezanson, Jackie Clark, Denise Duhamel, Sam Pink, Chad Sweeney, Eileen Tabios, many others.

Coconut # 13

Coconut # 14 is almost ready for release as Bruce Covey assembles its contents.

But it's not too late to read # 13, the memorable summer issue, which has noteworthy poems by Rae Armantrout, Terence Winch, and others.

Bruce Covey presents Natalie Lyalin

A lovely baker’s dozen weeks later, I’m sad to bring this little series of Coconut Sundays to a close! But since I must end, what better way to do so then with the parting words, “Alibubo. Bubsigtree. Grivstalbikt!” So also ends Natalie Lyalin’s spectacular poem “Jeffrey Bloodhound Sans,” which originally appeared in Coconut 6. Natalie is such a startling young poet, all of us, Readers, should turn off our tvs and rev up our search engines , looking for more of her! & more there is—in Octopus, La Petite Zine, Verse, and other cool journals! Natalie is a sweet person, co-editor of the bitchin’ mag Glitter Pony  and a graduate of UMass Amherst now living in Philadelphia. Her first book, Pink and Hot Pink Habitat, is due out from Coconut Books this spring, another appropriate place to end this little BAP feature. Please look for Coconut 14 (due out in about a month at http://www.coconutpoetry.org) and for two brand new titles from Coconut Books: That Gorgeous Feeling by Sueyeun Juliette Lee and Heron/Girlfriend by Jen Tynes (both due out in about three weeks, available here. & for my own next book, Glass Is Really a Liquid, which will be out next year from No Tell Books.

Thanks, Readers, for listening these three months, and thanks, David, for the opportunity to showcase the work of several magnificent poets!!!

-- Bruce Covey

Jeffrey Bloodhound Sans

I know him. To know is dimension,
a black bot with star spangles. Have
a sexy birthday. Have an amalgamation.
The language was just delivered and it
is good.
                       I’m holding secret.
                       This situation. Countdown. Speeches for
                       if I don’t come back. I’m not coming back.

In profile with gold necklace. The quiet ears. Study the
nose. Today I become naked Ingrid.  Would Ingrid
mind a morsel of finger fat.

Girl words. A tomato. A plum. An apricot.
                       Time is holding in a clear tube.
                       Time is lightning on a spare key.

Words that do not yet exist. Alibubo. Bubsigtree. Grivstalbikt.

-- Natalie Lyalin

Bruce Covey presents Andrei Codrescu

I’ve enjoyed Andrei Codrescu’s work for years! I can’t remember which anthology first pointed me to him, but it was before he began his NPR commentaries (you DO recognize that thick Transylvanian accent, don’t you??), and before he published his own landmark anthology American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late. I remember when my special orders for License to Carry a Gun and The History of the Growth of Heaven arrived at my undergrad bookstore; I remember how excited I was when Raised by Puppets Only to Be Killed by Research, Monsieur Teste, and Comrade Past and Mister Present all came out. The best place for you to start, however, might be to pick up a copy of his brand-spanking-new Jealous Witness: New Poems from Coffee House Press, which also contains the poem below, or, editorially, gander at his one-of-a-kind journal Exquisite Corpse  (I remember buying a lifetime subscription when it was still in its tall-and skinny paper format, when Andrei lived in Baltimore). Or his website (http://www.codrescu.com/livesite/). “Present at the Ceremony” first appeared in Coconut Nine. How happy I was when he agreed to contribute!

-- Bruce Covey


Present at the Ceremony

Art won
There wasn't even a contest
Now art is on tv every time you turn it on
You used to say that art is the great enemy
And now it's true
There was a time when that sounded like a joke
Made by an artist posed with a cigar between a neon sign for Bar
And a monk moon
Art is the greatest enemy another drink please
Then swaggering home under the monk moon weeping
The technology of the cosmos arrayed itself predictably overhead
As art advanced in the dark on the backs of stealthy products
Which entered the mouths of sleepers like serpents
In the morning everyone had strange appetites
They drove fantastic wombs to work and when they got there
Work was a game and everybody was ready to play
I have swallowed my reptiles early the police made me do it
Everybody else had to wait until the devices became user-friendly
And they put white smoke and sugar on the reptiles

-- Andrei Codrescu

Bruce Covey presents Reb Livingston

My Dearest Best American Poetry and/or Coconut Reader, if you’ve ever connected to the World Wide Web over the past five years, you surely recognize the name of Rebecca “Reb” Livingston, poetry’s most forthright and sparkly blogger, editor of one of the world’s best poetry journals (http://www.notellmotel.org/), book publisher extraordinaire, author of the fantastic Your Ten Favorite Words, the first-ever Coconut Book, along with lots of other world wonders. What most amazes me about Reb is that she never does anything in an ordinary way: No Tell Motel is one of the rare web journals that rejects the issue format (Dan Nester’s Unpleasant Event Schedule is another) in favor of a poem a day; when she and I co-hosted an offsite AWP reading last year, Reb kept pushing the format into the now famous Micropress Poetry Pageant; and her forthcoming book God Damsel, from which the laments below spring, is unlike anything I’ve ever read — a sexy, multi-toned rhetorical fugue. She’s famous not only for her inventiveness, but for her ever-grounded, ever-honest, ever-direct perspective on contemporary poetry and poetics, the person more than any other who brings listserv disputes back into focus. No one else has Reb’s energy; no one else has the same mix of hilarity, brilliance, and sexiness!! & she’s a great mom!! I adore her like no one else!!! Reb’s poems first appeared in Coconut 12.

-- Bruce Covey

 

Lament for Bust

"Because his language mistreated me, I once suckled a shepherd like a woe-dodo competing with a miscreant. My tenderness consummated fracture, birthed my alien nation. Because there was a tempest in my meadow, I bleated into my cleavage like a love-struck lamb bleeding; and my vessel ceremoniously packed with princely trinkets; and a gigolo rose among tomatoes. Because the language of the Tempest was abandoned and slack, I undreamed the entire event and weeped "Greeny trespassers stole my utensils! Oh darling spatula!" The Tempest's poised speech flattened, relieved.

Lament for Must

The Sultana, after she scribbled the poem for her thinking thingamabob, her one-time hearttrob, she scatters humbly a lament for the dead meadow, her home dubbed asylum: "The Tempest who introduced himself – his language flabberghasted. Compelled to buckle because of the Tempest, I am the Sultana for whom the Tempest thrummed to be – his language mistreated me. The macabre Tempest scrubbed in hush, I numbed for gust but did not depart. Because of this vantage Tempest I could not salvage a beholder, not one Savage beheld."

-- Reb Livingston

 

Bruce Covey presents Jill Alexander Essbaum

Jill Alexander Essbaum (once described as “a cross between Dorothy Parker and a lap dance”) is fast becoming known for her brilliantly sexy poems best represented in Harlot, her 2007 collection from No Tell Books, the cover of which depicts a nude woman embracing a phallus nearly twice her height. What I also love about her poems, however, is the intelligence behind them (“heady” as Molly Arden cheekily describes), her attention both to the traditions and possibilities of form that bring poetry’s notions of “traditional” and “experimental” into a head-on collision. In addition, I hereby nominate Jill (well, along with, in a different way, Heidi Lynn Staples) as contemporary poetry’s best punster, a skill evidenced within “Triptych,” which originally appeared in Coconut Eight. (My nomination is another opportunity for you to agree or disagree with me, O Reader, by posting your own choices!) & on top of all, there’s the theme, to quote H. L. Hix, of “religion as sex and sex as religion” swimming through her work. Twice I’ve had the opportunity to hear Jill read, which is also a treat — she has memorized all of her poems (while I can’t even seem to remember my own first lines!!). So my advice to you, Charming Reader, is to invite Jill to read in your own hometown! Or at least buy all of her books, which also include Heaven (Winner of the Bakeless Prize, 2000), Oh Forbidden (2005), Necropolis (2008), and an appearance in 2008’s The Best American Erotic Poems. Her website is here.

-- Bruce Covey


Triptych

1. Him

I let go my dress in his temple, devoutly.
I brought to him butters in lordly dishes.
He spread my legs like rumor, word-of-mouthly.

2. Hymn

Tears have a talent for falling.
That is their calling.

3. Hem

I have folded my edges.
I've serged and I have pinked.
I have finished my seams.

So it would seem.

-- Jill Alexander Essbaum

Bruce Covey presents Anselm Berrigan

When I solicited work for Coconut from Anselm Berrigan, I confess I anticipated the sort of packed, fast-paced, linguistically rich lines I’ve come to associate with this terrific poet. Instead I received something even better—a stunning quartet of beautiful shorter pieces, three of them elegies. “To K,” which addresses the tragic death of Anselm’s half-sister Kate, moved me—and continues to move me — to tears. Now however, after my father’s unexpected death earlier this summer, I understand the blankness he speaks of in an entirely new light. I hope you’ll read not only the poem below, but all four of Anselm’s pieces in Coconut Two.

Anselm Berrigan is the son of poets Alice Notley and the late Ted Berrigan, stepson of the late poet Douglas Oliver, brother to poet Edmund Berrigan, husband to poet Karen Weiser, and now father to (future poet?) Sylvie Weiser Berrigan. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including Some Notes on My Programming (2006), in which “To K” subsequently reappeared. He teaches at Bard College and Wesleyan University and is co-editor of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan.

-- Bruce Covey


To K

I'd be walking down the street interviewing myself—questions felt, unspoken answers articulated with measure lifted from interviews I'd read—& I'd read the tonalities into my voices in my head. This was, and is, how I communicate with myself much of the time. Uninterrupted consciousness began at four, when I started reading. I was prepared for Ted's death, without a word to its possibility having ever been plainly spoken in my direction. I don't care to explain that, other than to say it wasn't special, and that I was probably so prepared because he himself was, and I received that through his general calm, being what I mainly felt in his presence other than the times he'd get mad if the fifth sandwich or the right kind of pastry wasn't coming. When Kate was killed I went blank for about a year-and-a-half, a state I couldn't recognize until three or four years after having moved out of it.

-- Anselm Berrigan

Bruce Covey presents Jeni Olin

An Introduction in Thee Parts

A.  One of my favorite anthologies is Free Radicals (Subpress), edited by Jordan Davis & Sarah Manguso, in which the title is defined from physics as “unstable molecules … tending toward violent and unpredictable chemical reactions.”  Four years ago, among the many great poets in this collection (Del Ray Cross, Katie Degentesh, Jen Knox, & others), I rediscovered Jeni Olin’s brilliantly frenetic poems and immediately began to pester her to send some to me for Coconut.  I was thrilled when “Lunesta” arrived in my inbox! 

B.  Do you agree with me, Readers, that the whole “School” thing is past?  But even so, isn’t it spectacular when individuals knead our poetic dough by evoking and expanding upon particular traditions?  Jeni is one of a few poets (David Trinidad, of course, but also Gina Myers?  Brendan Lorber?  Jordan Davis?) who for me re-evoke the “New York” aesthetic — not in a redundant or overly beholden way, but by flying the tradition like a paper airplane into the present, making me want to take a train to the city again (I live in Atlanta now), breathe the air, feel the blistering white noise.

C.  With 1,588 friends, Jeni Olin is the one of the most popular (& coolest & toughest!) poets on facebook.  Her first book, Blue Collar Holiday, was published by Hanging Loose in 2005.  Both her BA and her MFA are from Naropa.

Lunesta

 

J.Crew, sushi, & my shrink on speed dial

Fueled my anthem, "She's a rich girl,"

With a light sorrow,

Today. Tiny fists pummel the cherubs

That cruise this ashen noon. This is

Par for the course.

Plus everything that kills you softly

Melting into heavy, wavy traffic.

It is misting on the mountains

Greener than lobster eggs in my heart.

Naturally, it is snowing in the cafeteria

Where you live & I am just this

Tear-stuffed piñata for your love

& every session every thing you say

Has me sleeping in clouds of fire

Like the sun.

-- Jeni Olin

Bruce Covey presents Ron Padgett

Dearest Reader, Coconut is pleased to present a poignant retelling of the demise of Empedocles, the Greek philosopher who first hypothesized the existence of the four classical elements and, according to legend, committed suicide by flinging himself into the flames of Mt. Etna. Its author, Ron Padgett, is my favorite poet, one of the very first I begged to contribute to my fledgling webzine more than three years ago! When I was in high school, his poems, along with Ted Berrigan’s, were the first poems I read and loved (in Paul Carroll’s The Young American Poets, which just happened to be in my high school library), making me think I wanted to be a poet too. His book Toujours L’Amour, along with Ted Berrigan’s Many Happy Returns, was the first contemporary poetry book I ever bought (at the Yale Coop in New Haven,CT—still in high school). His poem “Sweet Pea” is the loveliest of love poems, rivaled only by his “Love Poem,” which begins with a tribute to Ohio Blue Tip matches. Surely you already own several of his books—How to Be Perfect, perhaps, or You Never Know, or the wonderful Poems I Guess I Wrote or at least his Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms or the new selection of Kenneth Koch poems he edited?  If not, in order to promote poetic karma and natural harmony and to save your good-poetry-reader reputation, please visit your local independent bookseller upon dawn’s commencement! (Oh, and don’t forget to check out Coconut Two, where “Death of Empedocles” first appeared! Not my best-designed cover, I must admit!)

-- Bruce Covey

The Death of Empedocles

Five fingers on each hand, five
toes on each foot, that's enough.
I get into the past
which has a different kind of dust on it.
There's an old Coke bottle with dust on it
behind the bust of I think Empedocles—
Nobody from the neck down. O
Empedocles, don't jump into that volcano!
But jump he did, with his whole body,
bouncing off the rocks on the way down.
And you call this a philosopher?
I don't think he set a very good example.

-- Ron Padgett

Bruce Covey presents Lyn Hejinian

To tell the truth, Dear Reader, I feel a little silly attempting to introduce Lyn Hejinian to you!  Is she not the editor of her very own Best American Poetry annual collection (2004, my favorite of all!)?  Author or co-author of roughly three dozen books and chapbooks of poetry and essays?  Groundbreaking editor of Tuumba Press and now, Atelos?  Noted translator from Russian, literary theorist, and Berkeley Professor? Furthermore, I’ve been fretting about writing this little paragraph all week, thinking I’ll have nothing unique or groundbreaking to say (silly too to fret, considering how generous of a person Hejinian is, as evidenced by her avid support of emerging poets and small journals and presses like Coconut!  All I’ve come up with, partially inspired by the facebook-like biographical tone of the poem below, are a memory, an opinionated claim, and a little known detail.  The memory:  When she visited Atlanta, Lyn & I ate Thai food and talked about children and the process of adoption, Bush administration politics, and jazz.  A claim:  I believe Lyn Hejinian’s My Life is the most influential single volume of poetry by a living American author.  (Hey, to make this feature more interactive, would you, Reader, like to comment on whether you agree?)  A little known detail:  For three years, unbeknownst for much of that time to Lyn herself, there was a blog devoted to reproducing a line from My Life every day.  One of the things I admire most about her work is the way it changes from book to book—My Life is incredible, yes, but so is Oxota, Happily, A Border Comedy, all of her books, and her recent work (see Coconut 5). Oh, and finally, for a collective autobiography of 70s LangPo, including Lyn Hejinian, check out the Grand Piano series, just a click away.

11th Dream of July

Her waking state can be termed the true yellow cling peach of romance
In a word, anatomy
She will return as a harmless subject envied by none
Neighborhood: abandoned former battlefield
Social structure: artsy/inefficacious
Favorite leisure pastime: whining/watching rented movies
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings
They have been put in alphabetical order
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove
If it is a wild tune
I threw away punctuation
Never reject anything. Nothing has been proved
Back into the city to find that lost serenity
I woke from it. Nothing anywhere lacked definition

-- Lyn Hejinian

Bruce Covey presents Peter Davis

In an environment in which so many seem to steer their sculls between appointed lines, Peter Davis’s poems motorboat back and forth across poetry currents – satirically, yes, but also intelligently, self aware, and shrewdly critical. Davis’s brilliantly bizarre 2006 book, Hitler’s Mustache (Barnwood Press [http://www.bsu.edu/classes/koontz/barnwood]), both parodies and plays homage to precursors as varied as Frank O’’Hara, Robert Bly, and Russell Edson; tests the limits of traditional form (haiku, sestinas, and the Blues, for example); and isn’t afraid to act unassumingly goofy, putting, in the words of Amy Gerstler, "the id through a juicer." His new work tackles assumptions not of the canon, but of the writing process itself. The awkwardly plain, self-conscious tone is both startlingly ironic and subtly perceptive. Peter’s poems make me laugh aloud or shake my head, wondering how and where he unearths their chutzpah! The poem below originally appeared in Coconut 11 (http://www.coconutpoetry.org/cover11.htm). Behold its metatextuality! We do reassure you, O poem! The Best American Poetry has stumbled across you after all & reproduces you here lovingly, albeit virtually! We all wish you, O poem, a very happy tenure-line!

-- Bruce Covey

Poem that Begs for Reassurance

My experience with the world around me is that I either feel it's awful, or I feel that it is great. Right now I feel like this poem is awful. I feel like I am awful. I feel like an outcast in the literary world. Nobody reviews my work. As far as I can tell, nobody really talks about me. They do, but it's never enough. I'm not besieged with e-mails soliciting my poetry. I keep waiting for something to happen. I mean, this is a good poem. Other people seem to have so much going on. I read their bio notes and think, "Well, jeez, how do they all do it?" I say to my wife, "Honey, I always feel a few steps behind. How can I do all of that in this poem?" Some of them maintain blogs with numerous links and a lot of daily hits. Others don't even have blogs! All around me poets are winning prizes and being included in anthologies like The Best American Poetry. Some at very young ages. Some of these people, if they don't already have tenure-line teaching positions, are very strong candidates for tenure-line teaching positions.

– Peter Davis

Bruce Covey presents Anne Boyer

This week’s BAP poem from Coconut marks the fourth appearance for Anne Boyer’s “You Will Want Like Cowboys”:  1. In Coconut 4; 2. In Best of the Net 2006; and 3. In her 2008 Coffee House collection Romance of the Happy Workers.  Anne is so incredibly everywhere & all at once: A way-cool blogger with a frenetic following; guitarist in her own band; brilliant painter/collagist; co-editor (with Kasey Mohammad) of the journal Abraham Lincoln; teacher at the Kansas City Art Institute; author of chapbooks; single mother to her daughter Hazel & cat Ulysses.  Anne’s Issue 4 poems have received more hits than any other poems in the history of Coconut, and for good reason:  “Cowboys” begins with a repetitive riff on wanting, moving from a focus on the rhetoric of desire through the intangible (“ecstatic”) before landing in local, bodily, everyday Kansas.  Along the way there are references both to Goya and to Browning, a restlessness organized by association and fever.  I’d intended to solicit work from Anne — she’s one of my very favorite poets — but she beat me to it.  Everyone likes Anne’s poems!  You will too!

-- Bruce Covey

You Will Want Like Cowboys

I will want like splinters,

astonished spit, also like alphabets and minnows.

You will want at smallness,

also squirreling across the wire.

Wantings in the wilderness!

What did you think,

words?

You've seen it all before.

That's my last duchess—

all I want I've learned from her.

I want all I've learned from her.

Like Goya and church

you will fever like derangement.

You will lick no less

the ecstatic, and you will grow no more

accustomed to this dirty purse

than I to breathlessness

or pavement.

There is Kansas in the wilderness.

There is not cloudy.

All day the fingering, there your gaze,

there I will saddle up

the pillow, buckle, bobbin, tongue

I wanted from.

-- Anne Boyer

Terita Heath-Wlaz presented by Bruce Covey

"Terita Heath-Wlaz," I thought, must be a pseudonym! Her poems, unsolicited in my inbox, so daring and so spicy! & an empty google return on her name! Yet she is indeed she, no persona, a San Diego barista who doesn’t like coffee, who volunteers at an animal shelter, and who was somehow unpublished before Coconut Nine. Her poems are nimble and delicious, whipped cream & cherry on top, like this one, solicited the second time around for Coconut Twelve. Underneath the tasty surface you’ll find the serifs are serrated and the o’s and x’s are yoked & squeeze & drink their fill. Several other journals besides Coconut have also tasted of Terita’s work —— Court Green, Cream City Review, Juked, Sonora Review. She writes about poetry, her 63 houseplants, supermarkets, & food right here: vegetablemine.blogspot.com.

-- Bruce Covey


The Last Fetish

is at once sexually interesting to those with an appetite for processed trees.
In the beginning, the pulp cannot get more raw.
In the end, the binding is tight as lingerie.

I reject a eulogy at this time.
I have left it in my other pants!
I entertain fantasies of owning many, many
bookshelves, that squeeze my small body like a unified muscle.

This encyclopedia, as heavy as a breast, is mine.
I pore over it, lamenting vanilla's ill repute.
Whose orchid flowers have smooth membraned petals.
Whose rare and starchy pods are brown as mesopotamian soil.

Spare me the gluteal welts, the rug burns from fuzzy cuffs.
Hand me a huge, huge book.
I will weather the perils, the paper cuts, asphyxiation.
And coins falling from the pages into my lap.
What I get for combining bank and bookshelf.

-– Terita Heath-Wlaz

Jen Knox's "Johns" [presented by Bruce Covey]

For those who wonder whether one john really is distinguishable from another, Coconut offers you the following poem from Jennifer L. Knox, which originally appeared in Coconut 7. Jen’s two books, A Gringo Like Me and Drunk by Noon (essential members of any robust poetry collection), are available from Shanna Compton’s excellent Bloof. I adore Jen, who is over 8 feet tall, has appeared in Best American Poetry more than 750 times, is a world champion professional bowler, and loves to drink Zima.  There’s even a Facebook group devoted to Jen, formed by an FSU component of her rabid, stalker fan base.  Or you can check her out here.  I’ve solicited Coconut poems from Jen three times (she’ll appear again in a forthcoming issue!), each time asking for her weirdest work, and receiving brilliant pieces like this one.

– Bruce Covey

Johns

John Cafferty is not John Fogerty
and an ass is not a vagina.

The lawyer said so.  O!
the slight, subtle distinctions

between perfume and a urinal cake.
Just because something works

doesn't mean everything worked
out.  Hit and run's not hit and run

and back up, forward, back up, forward
and run over some more. "Friends"

don't do that to "friends," friend (please
be friendly and reply if you agree).

We don't have to get up, we get to
get up, every day and decide how easy

the listening will be: jock rock
("Tough All Over") versus vet rock

("Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"),
Xanax versus Ativan, etc.

-- Jennifer Knox