BURT KIMMELMAN REVIEW OF THE IN(TER)VENTION...

Marsh Hawk Press recently concluded a virtual book launch reading series featuring current Marsh Hawk titles by Jon Curley, Thomas Fink and Maya Mason, Edward Foster, Basil King, Daniel Morris, Gail Newman, Geoffrey O’Brien, Eileen R. Tabios, and Tony Trigilio. Before each reading, Burt Kimmelman presented a much-applauded, insightful introduction to the poets' works. These critical intros are now collected in a summer edition of the Marsh Hawk Review available HERE.

I am blessed by what Burt had to say about The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku, including the following:

Too many readers overlook a poem’s form, ironically. Tabios does not. Yet she’s always bending it. Tom Fink points out, in his introduction to The Intervention of the Hay(na)ku, that this book “involves theorizing about poetry [from] within the poems.” 

 

James Joyce found poetry too confining. Tabios must always transcend her own formalisms—their own magnitude and brilliance. What one writer lives in or with, so the other.

 

Tabios is intrinsically drawn to form for reasons to do with how aesthetics and thought touch. Robert Creeley wrote what I see as a hallmark of post-War American experimental poetry. Titled “A Piece,” the poem has five words—two each in the first two lines, one in the last. Its unobvious symmetry is evident in its reading:

 

One and 

one, two, 

three.

 

When once asked about this poem, Creeley said: “I knew that for me it was central to all possibilities of statement.”

Tabios may not know Creeley’s poems well. Nevertheless, she possesses the instinct in that non-poem. I’m awed by her intellect that’s always understated.

*****

What's interesting about this edition of MH Review is that presenting the same critic allows the reader to contextualize each take on a different poet from the same mind--you can consider Burt's opinion on Poet A based, too, on how he approached Poet B or Poet C, etc. There's a certain integrity there that's rarely accessed.

Of course: THANK YOU, Burt Kimmelman!

Summer of Emergence Reading Series: New and Recent Marsh Hawk Press Books

Contents

Introduction 

Basil King, Disparate Beasts Part 2 

Geoffrey O’Brien, Where Did Poetry Come From; Daniel Morris, Blue Poles .

Thomas Fink and Maya Mason, A Pageant for Every Addiction 

Jon Curley, Remnant Halo: A Map n’ Dice Chronicle 

Eileen Tabios, The Intervention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 

Gail Newman, Blood Memory 

Tony Trigilio, Proof Something Happened 

Edward Foster, A Looking-Glass for Traytors 

ABOUT BURT KIMMELMAN