Posts Tagged ‘Brandon Downing’
Attention Span 2010 – Joshua Edwards
Pedro Ramos | Black Scabbard Research Centre | self-published | 2010
A pamphlet of menacing b&w coastal photos by a young Portuguese photographer who lives in Australia. It uses original work as well as photos appropriated for various media and friends. Highlights include a child sitting on a dead shark, a cliff diver, kissing teenagers, a bat being fed with a syringe, and a back-lit figure in a hoodie. Ramos is from Madeira Island, and his photos have been particularly helpful as work on a manuscript about my birthplace, Galveston, with my dad, using photos he took of the island about thirty years ago. Galveston has the dubious distinction of being featured in a forthcoming low budget sci-fi film, Monsters. Set mostly in Mexico and on the border, the movie’s scenes of devastated, carpet-bombed landscapes were filmed on Galveston after hurricane Ike. The film’s editor said “But we didn’t really need to create an illusion of mass destruction in Galveston,because it was already there, everywhere, after the hurricane. All we had to do is block out any view of the highway in the background. Otherwise, we got millions of dollars’ worth of production design for next to nothing.”
Samuel Amadon | Like a Sea | Iowa | 2010
Like a Sea is a formally restless book full of restless poems that are by turns aphoristic, hilarious, image-driven, sad, and meditative. As various as the poems are, Amadon’s voice is clear, albeit a chorus.
Rae Armantrout | Versed | Wesleyan | 2009
I heard Armantrout read for the first time earlier this year. I liked her poems before the reading, I loved them after. This book has plenty of the wit of pain, the pain of wit, etc.
Anne Carson | Nox | New Directions | 2010
I’ve mostly just stared at the pages of Nox, wishing I could place memoir and history in such elegant folds as does Carson. I think Rexroth would have gone apeshit for this thing.
Brandon Downing | Lake Antiquity | Fence | 2009
Lake Antiquity is beautiful and it makes me laugh.
Andrew Joron | Trance Archive | City Lights | 2010
What an ear! “Constellations for Theremin,” an excerpt of which is in this book, is one of the most stunning poems I’ve come across in a long time. Joron writes like someone born yesterday to parents from tomorrow.
Ayane Kawata, trans. Sawako Nakayasu | Time of Sky & Castles in the Air | Litmus | 2010
Another great translation by Sawako Nakayasu. I was lucky to read this in manuscript form, and I’ve been rereading it since. Ayane Kawata’s terrifying dreams make for awesome poems.
Ibn Khalawayh, trans. David Larsen | Names of the Lion | Atticus/Finch | 2009
One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen (designed by Michael Cross), Names of the Lion is better beheld than commented on. Larsen’s introduction and notes are excellent.
César Moro | La tortuna ecuestre y otros poemas en español | Biblioteca Nueva | 2002
I heard about Moro last summer from a Peruvian friend. Unfortunately, he’s pretty much unknown to English readers and very little of his work has been published in translation. We’re doing a feature on him in Mantis, publishing some of his French poems from Love Until Death (he wrote mostly in French, his second language, after moving to Europe in his twenties). La tortuga ecuestre y otros poemas en español consists of his first book and some uncollected early work.
Sawako Nakayasu | Texture Notes | Letter Machine | 2010
A book of surfaces and dreams, voyages and events, measurements, meals, colors, and, above all, the body pressed up against the world. Another year, another great book by one of my favorite poets.
William Wylie | Route 36 | Flood | 2010
Flood did a terrific job producing this book of b&w photos of landscapes and small town architecture in Kansas and Colorado. An introduction by Merrill Gilfillan provides some context. My dad is a documentary photographer, and I’ve always been interested in the lyrical possibilities of projects like this that reflect the essential gaze. I hope Flood publishes more photography titles, and I’m definitely going to look into Wylie’s other books.
More Joshua Edwards here. Edwards’s Attention Span for 2009, 2007. Back to directory.
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.
Third Factory/Notes to Poetry 
Attention Span 2010 – Rodney Koeneke
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Lauren Shufran | The Birds | self-published | 2010
“half Punkish ideology, half ludicrous athleticism,” all sleek Greek comic fronting “During Hella Restless Times.”
Bruce Boone | Century of Clouds | Nightboat Books | 2009
Served up last century, lost through the clouds, spiked in the now for the win.
Dana Ward | Typing Wild Speech | Summer BF Press | 2010
Lazarus reborn on Christmas as Ian Curtis.
Lauren Levin, Catherine Meng & Jared Stanley, eds. | Mrs. Maybe | 2010
What Timberlake did to sexy the Mrs. does maybe to staples.
Anselm Berrigan | Free Cell | City Lights | 2009
The socius blown through poet & getting its rhetoric high.
Ariana Reines going to Haiti | Blog of Ariana Reines | 2010
Poetics rethunk via contrails, tap taps, feet.
Brandon Downing | Lake Antiquity | Fence Books | 2009
History bending its head feelingfully to meticulously whacked lithography.
Sam Lohmann, ed. | Peaches and Bats | 2010
The regional conceived as planisphere.
Brandon Brown | Wondrous Things I Have Seen | Mitzvah Chaps | 2010
Latest stop on BB’s dromedary progress from strength to strength to strength.
Sara Larsen & David Brazil, eds. | Try! | 2010
We’re still having fun, and you’re still the one.
Lindsay Hill | The Empty Quarter | Singing Horse Press | forthcoming
Mauritania’s sand in metaphor creep to everything.
More Rodney Koeneke here. His Attention Span for 2009, 2008, 2006. Back to directory.
Written by Steve Evans
September 26, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Posted in Attention Span 2010, Commented List
Tagged with Anselm Berrigan, Ariana Reines, Brandon Brown, Brandon Downing, Bruce Boone, Catherine Meng, David Brazil, Jared Stanley, Laura Levin, Lauren Shufran, Lindsay Hill, Sam Lohmann, Sara Larsen