THE CONNOISSEUR'S MANY BLESSINGS

It's just lovely to see one of the poems in THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS,get into John Bloomberg-Rissman's opus, THE HANGMAN--you can see it at Zeitgeist Spam. He conflated my poem "Menage a Trois with the 21st Century" with an artist statement by Jigger Cruz whose works he introduced me to and which I much appreciate! Anyway, I love so many things about John's THE HANGMAN, including this:

"... thus we find Ralph Cudworth arguing in 1678 that hylozoism (the view that all matter is alive) entails the ‘clubbing together’ of infinite minds everywhere (Cudworth saw this as a reductio ad absurdum of hylozoism, just as more recently John Searle has argued against pananimism on the grounds that there must be an individual mental subject wherever there is mental activity). A few years after Cudworth, we find Leibniz working out the elements of his own theory of monads, which holds precisely that the world is entirely constituted from the activity of infinitely many nodes of perception. This is what Heraclitus has in mind when he says that gods dwell in his stove; it is what preoccupies the Inuit when they suppose that in eating walrus meat they are eating the souls of ancestors; and it is the way of thinking that informs Virgil’s poetic account of the Zephyr’s power to impregnate mares."

THANKS JOHN!

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Also, even as the book is still in process of being stocked at Amazon.com, apparently it already received a review by one of its Hall of Fame reviewers. Thanks to Grady Harp for this:

Anyone familiar with the rather enormous output of poetry and experimentation written communication and style will have an idea of what to expect in this newest publication THE CONNOISSEUR OF ALLEYS (the title alone invites creativity). But then again, not necessarily, because every time Tabios sets her mind to a new project, something unique happens. This collection of works is a collection of interconnected poems, each time a poem begins a reference shines, a moment of recognition and yet that moment so embellished with fresh perspective that the result is as mesmerizing as it is exquisite poetry. Each poem begins with ‘I forgot…’ and then meanders through the maze of memory and reconstruction of the past and references to the art of word craftsmanship in a manner that immediately becomes awe-inspiring.

And you can order it now, despite the site saying it's temporarily out of stock (that's not true; it's in process of being stocked).

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Also, Here's the dedication page to THE CONNOISSEUR..., a book I dedicate to poet-editors. This means if you see your name on it and would like a copy, just send me your snail mail addy. It's not a comprehensive list so if you have acted as a poet-editor for me in the past, send me your addy anyway even if you don't see your name.