Attention Span 2010 – Bill Berkson

Robert Bellah | Imagining Japan | California | 2003

Robert Bellah | The Good Society | Vintage | 1992

Curzio Malaparte | Kaputt | NYRB | 2005

Leonardo Sciascia | The Moro Affair | NYRB | 2004

Frank O’Hara, trans. Olivier Brossard & Ron Padgett | Poèmes Déjeuner | Joca Seria | 2010

Johann Wolfgang Goethe | Conversations with Eckermann | North Point | 1984

Werner Herzog | Conquest of the Useless | Ecco | 2009

T. S. Eliot, Valerie Eliot, ed. | The Wasteland, Facsimile & Transcript | Harcourt | 1971

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha | Exilée | California | 2009

J. Arch Getty & Oleg V. Naumov | The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932-1939 | Yale | 1999

Bill Berkson’s recent books are Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems (Coffee House, 2009) and Ted Berrigan (with George Schneeman, Cuneiform, 2009). Berkson’s Attention Span for 2009, 2007, 2006, 2004. Back to 2010 directory

Attention Span 2009 – Joanna Fuhrman

Rachel Loden | Dick of the Dead | Ahsahta Press | 2009

Loden’s rewriting of Creeley, Rilke and Stevens is as witty and devastating as contemporary poetry gets.

Chris Nealon | Plummet | Edge | 2009

“Ha-ha General Squier, the muzak has formed real songs.? / No longer will you fool me with your tricks, John Ashbery!” Not just witty, but actually funny.

Douglas Rothschild | Theogony | Subpress | 2009

Finally, right? Rothschild is my Virgil in Disneyfied New York City.

Aleksandr Skidan, trans. Genya Turovskaya | Red Shifting | UPD | 2008

The title perfectly captures the passionate and unpredictable shifts and leaps in this book. This is the type of book that is so good and so different from anything else I’ve ever read it’s shocking.

Landis Everson | Everything Preserved | Greywolf | 2006

I was surprised to find I liked the later poems best. “Because I never wrote it / your poem is better than mine.” Beyond perfect.

Denise Duhamel | Ka-Ching | University of Pittsburgh Press | 2009

Such a great assortment of forms here! Her prose poem in the voice of the Florida widow made me cry on the subway platform.

Rachel Levitsky | Neighbor | UPD | 2009

“The problem with representational art is the audience is often / uninterested in what you represent.”

Bill Berkson | Portrait and Dream | Coffee House Press | 2009

Okay, well, I just started reading through this, but I’ve loved his previous collections and I was excited to see my favorite poem of his from the old New York School anthology is the first in the collection.

Rane Arroya | The Buried Sea | University of Arizona Press | 2008

I recommend the poem “The Singing Shark Dream, or Toto, I Don’t Think We Are in Tegucigalpa Anymore,” a crazed rewriting of West Side Story.

Sheila Callaghan | That Pretty Pretty; or, the Rape Play | Produced at Rattlestick Theater, published in American Theater magazine | 2009 (April)

Okay it’s a play, not a book, but I wanted poets to see it or read it because it overlaps with Flarf in some interesting ways. It’s also just really funny and trenchant and has a great dramatic structure. The most misogynist play I’ve ever seen was at Rattlestick, so it was especially gratifying to see a feminist send-up produced in that space.

Adeena Karasick | Amuse Bouche | Talonbooks | 2009

“AB boasts 18.5 mm wide soft margins and padded information. It can also be used as a headrest.”

More Joanna Fuhrman here.

Attention Span 2009 – Thomas Devaney

Aase Berg, trans. Johannes Goransson | With Deer | Black Ocean | 2008

Marcella Durand | Area | Belladonna Books | 2008

Bobbie Louise Hawkins | Absolutely Eden | United Artists | 2008

Bill Berkson | Portrait and Dream: New and Selected Poems | Coffee House | 2008

Susan Stewart | Red Rover | University of Chicago | 2008

Cole Swensen | Ours | University of California |  2008

Joseph Massey | Within Hours | The Fault Line Press | 2008

Christine Leclerc | Counterfeit | Cue | 2008

Robert Polito | Hollywood & God | University of Chicago | 2009

Ted Mathys  | The Spoils  | Coffee House Press | 2009

Donna Stonecipher  | The Cosmopolitan  | Coffee House Press | 2008

More Thomas Devaney here.

Attention Span 2009 – Cedar Sigo

John Wieners | The Lanterns Along The Wall | Other Publications | 1972

Suzanne Stein | Hole In Space | OMG | 2009

Sara Larsen and David Brazil, eds. | Try! Magazine (A first year subscription) | 2008-9

Joanne Kyger | Lo & Behold | Voices From The American Land | 2009

Tom Raworth | A Serial Biography | Fulcrum Press | 1969

Kimberly Lyons | Phototherapique | Katalanche and Portable Press At Yo-Yo Labs | 2008

Micah Ballard | Parish Krewes | Bootstrap Press | 2009

Dodie Bellamy | Barf Manifesto | Ugly Duckling | 2008

Rene Daumal, trans. Roger Shattuck | Mount Analogue | Pantheon | 1960

Bill Berkson | Goods and Services | Blue Press | 2008

Filip Marinovich | Zero Readership | Ugly Duckling | 2008

More Cedar Sigo here.

Joe, I Like Your Elephantine Works

Bill Berkson – Hey Joe (1’37”). Recorded on reel-to-reel by Robert Creeley on June 15, 1971 at Intersection in San Francisco and newly archived on PennSound, where one can also find individual pages for Berkson and Brainard. • Previously on Lipstick of Noise, Berkson’s “Dream with Fred Astaire,” Ron Padgett’s “Joe Brainard’s Painting Bingo” in live and studio takes, and Joe Brainard’s “Tuesday, February 18, 1971.”

Attention Span – Thomas Devaney

Dan Machlin | Dear Body | Ugly Duckling Presse | 2007

A book I continue to read and recommend.

George Oppen, ed. Stephen Cope | George Oppen: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers | California | 2007

“Lay it on the line—” (page 203).

Bill Berkson & Colter Jacobsen | Bill | Gallery 16 Editions | 2008

Bill feels like a lost classic. Jacobsen’s drawings are beautiful. The book reads like a dream. Berkson culled the text from a juvenile detective novel. From Bill: “War broke out the following day, as agreed.”

Prageeta Sharma | Infamous Landscapes | Fence | 2007

“And I still remain difficult when it is advantageous.” No doubt—Sharma has found her register: it’s daring, brutal, and always, a pleasure. Infamous Landscapes breaks new ground for Sharma and clears the air a bit.

Alan Filreis | Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-1960 |  North Carolina | 2008

Yes, it’s a serious historical book, a major book, but Filreis’s personal voice and deep connections to mid-century modernism show how many formal concerns of the work were linked to progressive politics; it is an untold history of the so-called language/nature problem (and the reactions to it) that continue into our moment.

Sharon Mesmer | The Virgin Formica | Hanging Loose | 2008

I read Francis Picabia’s I Am a Beautiful Monster (MIT Press, 2007) and Mesmer’s Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo Books, 2007) during the same one week period. It was an uncanny pairing. Now I’m reading Mesmer’s The Virgin Formica, which is relentless and fearless, and except for Picabia’s book, may be peerless.

Christina Davis | Forth A Raven | Alice James | 2006

These are spare and unsparing poems. Davis writes: “In the history of language/ the first obscenity was silence.” There is a God.

Brandon Downing |  Dark Brandon | Grievous Pictures | 2007

B. Downing’s prowling, humour noir DVD Dark Brandon is not an intervention, but more of a break-in. These deep cultural cullings are an unsettling reflection of Downing’s one way mirror. The mirror is our age’s “own face” as Clark Coolidge might say.

Pierre Reverdy, trans. Ron Padgett | Pierre Reverdy: Prose Poems | Black Square / Brooklyn Rail | 2007

Both Reverdy and Padgett adorn the unadorned. Here is a masterful and open-hearted poet translating a kindred soul. From the poem “Waiting Room” Reverdy writes: “And the trees, telegraph poles, and houses will take on the shape of our age.”

Kevin Killian | Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow | Belladonna 117 | 2008

“Read my lips, ‘I’m into you,’ the virus seems to wriggle / through plate glass.” Is Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow the first chapbook in the Belladonna series written by a man? Bravo to Rachel Levitsky and Erica Kaufman on the series overall, and bravo to Kevin Killian on Wow.

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Noteworthy, other books and poems from the hubbub include: Peter Gizzi’s The Outernationale, anything translated by Sawako Nakayasu; Serge Fauchereau’s Complete Fiction translated by John Ashbery & Ron Padgett; Joseph Massey’s Within Hours; Joel Lewis’s on-the-level every day Learning from New Jersey; Steve Dickinson’s up-tempo Disposed; Jennifer Moxley’s The Line; The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen, edited by Michael Rothenberg; David Trinidad’s loving The Late Show. “Some of These Daze” from Charles Bernstein’s Girly Man. The Route, a capacious investigation by Jen Hofer and Patrick Durgin: “We want to say something in another language which is also ours” (page 120).

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More Tom Devaney here.

Attention Span – Dana Ward

Douglas Oliver | Whisper ‘Louise’ | Reality Street | 2005

Kevin Davies | The Golden Age of Paraphernalia | Edge | 2008

Bob Perelman | IFLife | Roof | 2007

Ariana Reines | Coeur De Lion | Mal-O-Mar | 2008

Bill Berkson & Bernadette Mayer | What’s Your Idea of a Good Time | Tuumba | 2006

Catherine Wagner | Hole in the Ground | Slack Buddha Press | 2008

Marcella Durand | Area | Belladonna | 2008

Michael Nicoloff & Alli Warren | Bruised Dick | unknown | 2008

Stacy Szymaszek | from ‘Hyperglossia | Hot Whiskey Press | 2008

Rodney Koeneke | Rules for Drinking Forties | Cy Press | 2009

Young Brandon (Brandon Brown) | You Better Ask Somebody | unknown | 2008