POPPING UP IN POST-CRISIS POETICS

My and j/j hastain's collaborative book the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA is addressed in T.C. Marshall's essay, “A Secret Agent, a Spaceman, & a Talking Bear: ATheory of Doubling the Stakes in Poetry” for POST-CRISIS POETICS edited by Brian Ang. Here's an excerpt:

Eileen Tabios and j/j hastain have carried doubling into a collaborative text that combines her “sense of physicality” with hastain’s trans identity and “the idea of the poem as also a body,” all while working with her adopted son’s school life and the condition of orphaned bodies (v. my review in GR #20). This seemingly labyrinthine combination was for her “a useful scaffolding for managing personal biases and emotion so that they did not get in the way of creating the poem.” She ends this book with “A Poetics Fragment” that expresses the belief that a poem is “completed elsewhere” by others, beyond the poet’s realm of control, and that “one poem can have many different completions.” This is the essence of the noetic, where questionings and contradictions put off conclusions.

I thank the Reverend for the attention and recommend reading the entire issue of POST-CRISIS POETICS which was released last year but only came to my attention recently ... so perhaps you're newly hearing about it too.

I REMEMBER THIS I FORGOT POEM

One of my poems from The Connoisseur of Alleys is featured in the new issue of OurOwnVoice entitled

     the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA

Yes, I have a book (with j/j/ hastain) with that same title --  the newer poem is a combined reading and remix of the book ...

... because I (and perhaps the boy in the above cover) didn't want to forget.

The poem begins:

[1]I forgot other boys like Samuel and Elwin whose bones became transparent…. I forgot imagination cannot alchemize air into protein…. I forgot an ascetic’s illusion of ecstasy will always be illusion due to its condition precedent: a suffering so unmitigated it hollowed non-survivors from children to earthworms…. I forgot no one else noticing the diminishing moon’s tiptoe across the night sky…. I forgot the lucidity of ancient mountains…. I forgot staring at a photograph of a baby with belly larger than head and later arguing with my math teacher, “Two negatives do not equal a positive!” I forgot broken glass surfacing my first conception of Beauty from the lovely wink of a glass sliver, belying edges and their sharpness…. I forgot the clutter of broken objects manifesting affordable treasures when one owns nothing, or owns only dilemmas over belonging….I forgot the seeking that began without knowing whether one was beginning to stink or sing…. I forgot the differences between desires for father and fodder…. I forgot anthologies of glass.

THE HAY(NA)KU EVEN RANTS!

A poet in New York City sent me a hay(na)ku rant (that befits the times) after reading my and j/j hastain's the relational elations OF ORPHANED ALGEBRA.  Of course I asked to reprint it, because I love how the hay(na)ku keeps dancing out there!


A SURVEY
By Iris Lee


Do
you own
your own home

or
are you
just a renter

or
do you
have a roommate

or
do you
live with family

even
though you’re
old for this

way
of living
but oh! finances

preclude
having your
own living space

one
more question
are you homeless

as
in having
less home than

every
human being
ought to have

perhaps
you sleep
in your car

but
if you
have no car

you
must sleep
in the subway

and
eat wherever
and shit wherever

thanks
for responding
to this questionnaire.