SHEILA MURPHY BRINGS IN THE NEW YEAR!

Gratitude to Sheila Murphy for her annual Holiday/New Year broadside poem:

Sheila makes such wonderful poems -- a collection of these yearly poems could be a fabulous book!  As as matter of fact, I happen to have an image of last year's so share it too ... because Poetry is eternal!

Happy New Year!

HIRAETH HERE HEAR!

DONE. Bled out the last poem and manuscript is done. The Year is Dead. Long Live the Year. I am hollow. I am light.

2016's poetics for a Happy New Year!

THE DORIS PUT ME IN ROBERT KELLY'S COMPANY!

One can always be joyous to have a poem in the company of Robert Kelly. But I have to say I’m honored at the entire company in the latest The Doris.  I’m introduced to and absolutely delight in the works of Kelsey Miller, Michael Boughn, Sophie Strand, Alana Siegel, Sherry Williams, Thomas Meyer, and Michael Ives. Fabulous work by all — thank you to editors Billie Chernicoff and Tamas Panitz. 

My poem is an excerpt from "I Forgot the Spiral That is Memory's Perspective," forthcoming in moi forthcoming AMNESIA: Somebody's Memoir (Black Radish Books!)

PERHAPS MY YOUNGEST READER ...

Eleven-year-old Noah is reading my book SUN STIGMATA!

I couldn't be more pleeeeeaaaaased!

I am thinking Noah may be my youngest reader yet (of my poetry books).  At least, I can't recall a younger reader right now.

I couldn't be more pleeeeeaaaaased!

I often find the most attentive readers among open-minded readers, and that open mind is often among children. So, thank you Noah for your attention!

I couldn't be more pleeeeeaaaaased!

BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS!

I'm delighted to share that my son returned home for the holidays bearing gifts and, for the first time, gave me and his Dad books!  They're pretty stellar -- that  1881 PIZARRO and a Star Trek novel for his sci-fi fan of a Dad. Very thoughtful of him!  You can see the family's book gifts this holiday over at our Family Library Blog.

Some of the holiday book gifts round out my latest list of Recently Bought Poetry or Other Genres by Poets, to wit:

VOYAGE OF THE SABLE VENUS by Robin Coste Lewis

SELECT POEMS by John M. Bennett

KANSOZ by Joel Chace 

25 LITTLE RED POEMS by Angela Veronica Wong

DIAGNOSIS by Alessandra Bava

A LISS by Carolyn Guinzio

(AL)MOST DELICIOUS by Cati Porter

HOLLYWOOD STARLET by Ivy Alvarez

FRAGILE REPLACEMENTS by William Allegrezza

THE UNFOLDING CENTER by Arthur Sze and Susan York

TO LOVE AS ASWANG by Barbara Jane Reyes

SPARSE ANATOMIES OF SINGLE ANTECEDENTS by Felino A. Soriano

SOME NOTES ON MY PROGRAMMING by Anselm Berrigan

I MUST BE LIVING TWICE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Eileen Myles

BENEDICTION by Alice Notley

NEGATIVITY’S KISS by Alice  Notley

LITTLE ANODYNES by Jon Pineda

FOX: Poems 1998-2000 by Adrienne Rich

FLOATING LANTERNS by Mercedes Roffe, Trans. by Anne Deeny

THE VALISE by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

SOME VERSIONS OF THE ICE by Adam Tipps Weinstein

ROBERT FROST: A One-Volume Edition of the Authorized Biography by Lawrance Thompson and R.H. Winnick, Edited by Edward Connery Lathem

ORDINARY LIGHT: A MEMOIR by Tracy K. Smith

FACING THE WAVE: A JOURNEY IN THE WAKE OF THE TSUNAMI by Gretel Ehrlich

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD: A MEMOIR by Elizabeth Alexander

THE ART OF MEMOIR by Mary Karr

APOLOGY: a novel by Jon Pineda

MAISON FEMME: A FICTION with text by Teresa Carmody and images by Vanessa Place

BELLADONNA SUBSCRIPTION including CANCER ANGEL by Beth Murray and AUGUSTMENT (TRANSLATION WITHOUT LANGUAGE) by Nathanael

CONCEPTUALISMS AND OTHER FICTIONS: THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF EDUARDO COSTA 1965-2015, Edited by Patrick Greaney

I'm looking forward to reading every single word in all of these books! Thank you, Poets!

DEAR YOUNIVERSE,

WHILST EDITING POETRY

This is what I look like when I'm editing poems, and it's past midnight:

(click on image to enlarge)

Well whatdya know. I apparently take on the colors of a Christmas tree...

"REDEEMING THE MONSTER DOLLS"

The world is often monstrous. So I saved some monsters and they've been hiding for years now in my closet. This Holiday, they were let out, albeit briefly. But brief enough for me to write about them in, but of course, a "Misfit" document over at Queen Mob'sTeahouse (thanks to curator Reb Livingston). Sadly, this piece is not fiction. You can read it over HERE.

DELIRIOUSLY YOURS

I'm honored by the company I'm in for counting down the Advent Calendar hosted by Delirious Hem. I am Day 16 with a cut-to-the-chase poem, "There Was A Company of Flexible Dancers."  Thanks to curator Susana Gardner!

This poem is also a previous of my forthcoming chap from Dancing Girl Press: The Gilded Age of Kickstarters.  Yay.

INVITATION FROM SERBIA

You're invited to visit this exhibition, read a hay(na)ku and peruse other wonderful postcard art!

Oh. And do let me translate that Serbian, to wit:

Thursday, 17. 2015. th in 19 H Club National Museum valjevo

That hay(na)ku loves to travel!

AHOY & ALOHA, BERKELEY!

Eastwind Books of Berkeley is encouraging its customers to celebrate the Holiday Season by giving the gift of Filipino-American Literature:

(click on image to enlarge)

Eastwind put on its flyer INVENT(ST)ORY as it's my newest book.  But I know they're carrying many of my other books, including

SUN STIGMATA: Sculpture Poems 

Menage a Trois with the 21st Century 

Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole 

NOTA BENE EISWEIN 

The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes: Our Autobiography

They may have some other of my books in stock (even I can't recall all of my titles). In any event, I hope you drop by for my and other Pin@y authored books!  As we say in some places in the Philippines:

A TOO SHORT NOTE RE ALFONSO OSSORIO

I wish I knew this video existed when Mom was still alive. Mom was an English teacher (whose master’s thesis was among the first to look at local (Pinoy) elements in the Philippines’ then burgeoning English-language literature). About my poetry, she said, "I love you but I don’t understand it."  If you look at this Ossorio video, his approach overlaps with mine; I could have told Mom, “Ossorio — and his works -- help explain what I’m trying to do in poetry." Pure Kapwa, the interconnection of things, is often presented with a romanticized spin; it sounds nice to say "One is All, All is One." But “All” includes dark elements. So, say with Ossorio, how does one not just make a skull beautiful but contextualize it within harmony?  His assemblages. Which, while visually harmonious are not just surface — it’s why he called his work “Congregations” — a moniker I don’t think so much relates to his (lapsed) Catholicism as to how he wished the freedom (he admired in abstract expressionism) not to result in “disaster.” That Art is to grow, not to destroy. Note in video how Ossorio's works breaks through the frame -- similarly I aspire for poems that bypass page as boundary. One of the few poems of my own I’ve memorized is a couplet: “To bring the poem into the world / is to bring the world into the poem.” Ossorio does it with an intelligent long-considered meditation that ultimately brings nature to the forefront of his aesthetic strategies. Nature —  he’s gotten there with Babaylan poetics while I’m still struggling to get there (fortunately, at the time of this video, he’s got 20 years on me so I’ve got time). While I'd love to have one of his assemblages in my home, I'd be as keen to have his library -- he's clearly a creature of the book. I'd love to know what he's read through all of his life. Reading has discernibly helped form him and his work.  Creatures of the book -- they're special; there's no shortcut to the  rewards of their illumination from just deep reading. Huge gratitude to Michael Caylo-Baradi​  for sharing the video on Facebook and allowing me to discover it.

RECOMMENDING THE PALPABLE MARILYN by AMANDA NGOHO REAVEY!

I just received my latest LinkedIntoPoetry Recommendation, MARILYN by Amanda Ngoho Reavey. It is a palpable creature -- visual, multi and trans genre, open and amazingly articulate about its multi-layered complicated concerns. In other words, everything that Poetry can be when alchemized organically by someone with an unbreakable spirit.

As well, there is an amazing essay"NOTES TOWARD TESSERAE"which provides a meaty, lucid and ravishing read.  This book is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

**

I was pleased to see Galatea Resurrects in the Acknowledgments.  GR #23 had featured excerpts from MARILYN. MARILYN's acknowledgments also reminded me of of how dreams can unfold if we allow their existence as well as time.  And when I first brewed up the idea of Galatea Resurrects -- a womanifestation of what happened to the mythological Galatea after she stepped off her pedestal, and the answer was partly to become interested in poetry -- I didn't anticipate ever getting to its 25th issue.

I received my copy of MARILYN as a gift for supporting a T'Boli school in the Philippines.  I want to purchase the book, though, to show my support and will do so to come up with a review copy for either Galatea Resurrects and/or The Halo-Halo Review.  Email me at galateaten at gmail dot com if you would like to receive this book for review.

UNEXPECTEDLY, A NEW BOOK!

Well now.  Shortly after I said I finished

Among the Princes of Wall Street, the Persistence of Winter

a publisher contacted me!  So now I'm formatting the manuscript.  I'm pleased at the publishing opportunity--this book has an interesting structure: a novella-in-verse with a Bibliography, and the latter is comprised of verse and one (short) novel.  

It'll be great to see it in print!  As a book, it should be lovelier than this:

DEFINE "GENTLENESS" AS "DRAGGING EVERYTHING UP WHOLE"

I was delighted recently to blurb (what a verb) Kimberly Alidio’s book, After projects the resound, forthcoming from the marvelous Black Radish Books (whose other books I recommend for your reading pleasure!). Here's the gurgling blurb (unedited):

“The exhausted object have no body of work,” says one poem in Kimberly Alidio’s After projects the resound. But that’s just surface. Ever lurking and in ALL CAPS even are potential poems that would affirm, "LOL AGENCY AND THE COURAGE TO SPEAK.” From the “howling on YouTube” to “Igorots at St. Louis” to the “new sardonic” to “a heart hit twice by shrapnel,” the poems skitter over, infiltrate, radiate, revolt from, and apply “karaoke studies” to interrogate both history and contemporary culture, especially cracks and what lurks within them. These poems are attuned to as many zeitgeists as reveal themselves. From Alidio’s dissecting eyes and focused hands—the “I [who] can sense the space around objects in the room because I’m often unnoticed”—the Filipino trait of Kapwa (interconnectedness) enables poems to arise and they bespeak: “This is exactly what gentleness is // dragging everything up whole—"

Speaking of publications, here's my latest Relished W(h)ines update of recently imbibed books and wines.  As ever, please note that in the Publications section, if you see an asterisk before the title, that means a review copy is available for Galatea Resurrects!  More info on that HERE. 

PUBLICATIONS

AFTER PROJECTS THE RESOUND, poems by Kimberly Alidio (see above blurb)

COME IN ALONE by Anselm Berrigan (pleasingly multi-layered and smart; does something new I’ve not previously seen with its word-frames. LinkedIntoPoetry (LPR) #210) 

ONE BLACKBIRD AT A TIME, poems by Wendy Barker (outstanding. LPR #208)

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JUDAS by Keith Holyoak (a well-considered outline from evocative roots. LPR #209)

 * CHARLOTTE’S SONGS, poems by Paul Pines (a lovely and loving father’s manifestation of paternal love. LPR #211)

 

*  THIGH’S HOLLOW, poems by Dan Rosenberg (poems writ from that sadly-momentary space of “purity” where it’s simply the poet wrestling with what language costs, momentary because the world has not (yet) intruded with its temporal concerns and the world inevitably will because there is no such thing as immortality)

THE CHOCOLATE SARCOPHAGUS, poems by Claudia Carlson (powerful, nuanced and evocative)

SAINT PINK, poems by Mary Kasimor (lovely poems with wonderful structures)

*  THE BLOODY PLANET, poems by Callista Buchen (well-done!)

WORDS ON EDGE, poems by Michael Leong (in manuscript. BRILLIANT! Looking forward to its release)

*  GREEN OIL, poems by Jean Donnelly (well-considered … but delicate)

THE CONVECTIONS, poems by Robert Kelly

THE PAJAMAIST, poems by Matthew Zapruder

LABOR, poetry by Jill Magi

TRAFFICKE, poetry by Susan Tichy

*  THE EMPTY FORM GOES ALL THE WAY TO HEAVEN, poems by Brian Teare

*  LITERATURE FOR NONHUMANS, poems by Gabriel Gudding

*  THE MULTITUDE, poems by Hannah Faith Notess

*  U & I, poems by Cassandra Smith

*  BLOOD OBOE, poems by Douglas Piccinnini

*  EACHTHINGUNBLURREDISBROKEN, poems by Andrea Baker

*  A TIMESHARE, poems by Margaret Ross

*  EVERY DAY BUT TUESDAY, poems by Barbara Claire Freeman

THE CRANBERRY ISLAND SERIES, poetry / anthropology by Donald Wellman

RINGS, poems by Jasmine Dreame Wagner

VIOLET ISLAND AND OTHER POEMS by Reina Maria Rodriguez, Trans. by Kristin Dykstra and Nancy Gates Madsen

POEMS 1959-1975 by Yves Bonnefoy, Trans. by Richard Pevear

ANGINA DAYS: SELECTED POEMS by Gunter Eich, Trans. by Michael Hofmann

PREMONITION, poetry by Etel Adnan

ILLOCALITY, poems by Joseph Massey

]ENCLOSURES[, poems by Emily Abendroth

BEAST FEAST, poems by Cody-Rose Clevidence

*  OR, THE AMBIGUITIES, poems by Karen Weiser

*  SELECTED IMPROVISATIONS, poetry by Vernon Frazer

*  MISSING WITNESS, poems by Ulrike Almut Sandig, Trans. by Bradley Schmidt

*  THE DAIMON OF THE MOMENT: PREVERBS by George Quasha

*  ROMAN EXERCISES, poems by Donald Wellman

*  ZODIAC, poems by Moikom Zeqo, translated from the Albanian by Anastas kapurani and Wayne Miller

*  THINGS DONE FOR THEMSELVES: PREVERBS, poems by George Quasha

*  ANY LIE YOU TELL WILL BE THE TRUTH, poems by Stephen Paul Miller

*  HIT PLAY, poems by Daniel Morris

*  SOR JUANA & OTHER MONSTERS / Y OTROS MONSTRUOS, poems by Luis Felipe Fabre, Trans. by John Pluerker

ANTI-HUMBOLDT: A READING OF THE NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT, poetry by Hugo Garcia Manriquez

THE GREEN RAY, poems by Corinna Copp

QUATREFOIL, poems by CB Follett

ALIEN ABDUCTION, poems by Lewis Warsh

FLIRT, poems by Noah Blaustein

BORDER STATES, poems by Jane Hoogestraat

AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONCRETE POETRY edited by Emmett Williams

I AM THE BEGGAR OF THE WORLD: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan, edited by Eliza Griswold

THE MARSH HAWK REVIEW, FALL 2015, edited by Norman Finkelstein 

FUTURES TRADING, November 2015, edited by Caleb Puckett

BLAZEVOX Fall 2015, edited by Geoffrey Gatza

OF/WITH #3, literary and arts journal edited by Felino A. Soriano

OF/WITH #2, literary and arts journal edited by Felino A. Soriano

THE POETRY PROJECT DECEMBER/JANUARY ISSUE #245, edited by Betsy Fagin

*  YOU ANIMAL MACHINE (THE GOLDEN GREEK), memoir/poetry by Eleni Sikelianos

*  A HOLE IN THE OCEAN: A HAMPTONS APPRENTICESHIP, memoirish essays and prose poems by Sandy McIntosh

*  I GREET YOU AT THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT CAREER: THE SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE OF LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI AND ALLEN GINSBERG 1955-1997, edited by Bill Morgan (a great read!)

VANISHING GAMES, novel by Roger Hobbs

[plus 5 poetry manuscripts]

WINES

2013 Cliff Lede Sauvignon Blanc NV

2012 Joseph Phelps “Insignia”

2005 Jones Family cabernet NV

2013 Vineyard 29 “Cru”

2011 Lail Vineyards cabernet

2012 Frank Family cabernet NV

2013 Paydirt zinfandel Paso Robles

1998 Noon reserve cabernet

2012 Cobb "Jack Hill" Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast

2013 J&S Selbach "Piesporter Michelsberg" Riesling Kabinett Mosel

R.H. Coutier Brut Grand Cru Ambonnay, Champagne

2013 Hourglass “Blueline” merlot Calistoga (our yummy Thanksgiving wine)

2013 Siduri pinot noir Sonoma County

2013 Deovlet pinot noir Sta. Rita Hills (CA)

2012 Cru 32 pinot noir Sonoma Coast

2012 Orin Swift "Locations 1"

2006 Jones Family cabernet NV

2005 Del Dotto cabernet

2006 Shafer merlot

2013 Peter Michael “La Carriere” chardonnay