Attention Span 2010 – Jennifer Scappettone

Leslie Scalapino | The Dihedrons Gazelle Dihedrals Zoom | ms developed out of sound-based routes through a new dictionary; video of reading by Konrad Steiner available here | 2010

“[T]heir whole as bodies in the underground petroleum…holes spurting here and there, and the sky turned indigo, as did the ocean, now petroleum.”

As recorded on 2/14/10. Enough said. Leslie, we miss you.

Etel Adnan | The Arab Apocalypse (reprinted with a foreword by Jalal Toufic) | Post-Apollo | 2007

The illegible substance of the language of childhood persists through the blasts of civil war. To be read alongside “To Write in a Foreign Language,” available here.

Tonya Foster | mss in progress including “A Swarm of Bees in High Court” (forthcoming from Belladonna/Futurepoem in 2010), “Monkey Talk,” and “A Mathematics of Chaos: Pay Attention to Where You At/From” | extracts can be heard here | ongoing/forthcoming

“Geography can be transformative—the way a bullet to the body can be transformed.”

Edouard Glissant, trans. Nathalie Stephens (Nathanaël) | Poetic Intention | Nightboat | 2010

“Whence, for the individual, this simple obligation: to open and to ravish the body of knowledge.”

“The work of a poet appears…derisory: it is only ever the foam of that ocean from which he wants to extract a cathedral, a definite architecture.”

“Yes: we are each in this drama the overseas of others.”

I could go on. But that would be to abstract tracts of a text so urgent in contextual detail, or what Glissant calls (& Stephens translates as) the “thrashed truth of one’s materiality.” This book, published as L’intention poétique in 1969, needs to change the way “we” understand modernism, the sixties, postwar theory, etc.

Bhanu Kapil | Humanimal: A Project for Future Children | Kelsey St. | 2009

Because it’s the latest which is bound, but everything, and latest on color. See also “Was Jack Kerouac a Punjabi?” and the posts preceding her choice to defect from the now defunct Harriet. On reading: “I read in order to be a writer in the time I am in, which is a closed time. I read to open myself to time, which is the time that opens in turn to writing. I read to flee taut death; to embrace wet or sinking deaths instead.”

Henri Meschonnic, trans. Lisa Robertson & Avra Spector | “The Rhythm Manifesto” | ms, they tell me it’s available here | 2010

“Against all poeticizations, I say there is a poem only if a shape of life transforms a shape of language and if reciprocally a shape of language transforms a shape of life. I say that it is only in this way that poetry, as the activity of poems, can live in society, can do what only a poem can do for people who, without poems, wouldn’t even realize that they were undoing their subjectivity and their historicity to become nothing other than products in the market of ideas, the market of feelings, and the market of manners.” Much-needed antidote to what’s modish—in poetry, I mean. Feeding a steadily-becoming-obsession of mine with a focus on rhythm and meter in the postwar epos (early 1960s, against semiotics). Further resonance with Daria Fain & Robert Kocik’s Phoneme Choir, ongoing & described at http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/04/dance/choir-praxis.

Judd Morrissey | RC_AI | http://www.judisdaid.com/rcai.php | 2010

Text—recombinatory speakings out of Robert Coover’s Pinocchio in Venice—as panorama, 380,000 pixels—or 422 feet—long. Ends with bubbly digital schmaltz, delightsome.

Pier Paolo Pasolini | La Ricotta | part of Ro.Go.Pa.G., & supplementary material on Criterion Collection edition of Mamma Roma | 1962

I searched for this film for over a decade and recovered it accidentally when permitting myself to watch Mamma Roma for the nth time. Stracci (“rags”) is enjoined to play Christ in a restaging of the Passion directed by a Pasolini figure played by Orson Welles. Couldn’t be more of a corrective to Gibson far before the fact; censored “for insulting the religion of the state,” so that he had to remove Welles’s final line, “dropping dead was his only means of revolution.” Hypercitational: poetry, philosophy, music, film, painting of others punctures the half-hour. At one point a tableau vivant of Rosso Fiorentino’s and Pontormo’s magisterially weird Depositions, typifying this short’s neorealist mannerism or mannerist neorealism.

M. Nourbese Philip | Zong! | Wesleyan | 2008

Hauntological, as Philip notes, ululating effort to identify, localize the murdered Africans reduced by the illogic of law to cargo aboard the Zong, at the apex of Enlightenment. Alters “reading”: drowns the eye. Taught following Kamau Brathwaite’s 2005 Wesleyan title Born to Slow Horses, which also insists that the Atlantic is alive and history—despite all other proclamations and appearances—undead.

Lauren Shufran | The Birds | self-published chapbook | 2010

Riddled with antient rid-’ems: “Prior to this tryst my debt was pretty damn van- / Illa; kinkless, even—like interject- / Ing damns between my speech to impound flavors, or / Jouncing into fountains up in Rome in / Simplex Latin:.…” Just received, still trying to divine the architectonics of this padded echo chamber. “Ery spoken word performance hankers for its pri- / Vate Melos to corroborate that Venuses / De Milo and Baghdadi artifacts can still / Be looted—I mean, disinhumed—from loci all / Entombed by massacres your gifted homeboys mount- / Ed.” Close kin to Brandon Brown’s amazing translations of Catullus, another one for my short-list: but where are they? Shelves are a chaos and I can’t find ‘em. The awkward encrustations of tempo in this work—the making, the deriving—rebuke the voiding of historicity that is such the rage at present. Taking a cue from Mallarmé via Meschonnic via Robertson/Spector: “to mysteriously work toward lateness or neverness.”

Emilio Villa, ed. Claudio Parmiggiani | Emilio Villa: poeta e scrittore | Edizioni Mazzotta | 2008

Catalog of a retrospective of poetry, criticism, and artworks surrounding this crucial but elusive-by-choice border-crosser. Includes some of the poet’s concrete and visual poems, multilingual texts, collaborations with artists such as Alberto Burri, translations from various ancients, and notes toward an etymological dictionary of Italian that would do away with “positivist linguistics” and the “Romance fervor” by plumbing the roots of words in the archaic zones of Mesopotamia, the Syro-Babylonian coasts, and the pre- and protohistoric Mediterranean. So much food for thought and further work.

More Jennifer Scappettone here. Her Attention Span for 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003. Back to directory.

Attention Span 2009 – Jessica Smith

derek beaulieu, ed. | Speechless | 2009

This new magazine of visual poetry features an all-women first issue.

Norman Fischer | Charlotte’s Way | TinFish Press | 2008

Helen White, ed. | Infusoria: an exhibition of visual poetry by women from three continents | krikri | 2009

A DVD showing pieces from the 2009 exhibit Helen curated in Belgium, featuring work from 17 female visual poets.

Jeff Encke | Most Wanted | Last Tangoes | 2004

A deck of cards, each of which is illustrated and imprinted with a poem.  Fun to play with and/or read.

Alec Finlay | Mesostic Tea | Slack Buddha Press | 2009

The mesostic, John Cage’s now-neglected form, finds a home in Alec’s guide to tea. I’m not just glad to see the mesostic being used when it seems everyone is keen to write sestinas and pantoums—I like the tension between the Chinese tea names (which comprise the mesostics) and the English descriptions (which run horizontally). The cup ring that decorates the cover is a nice touch, echoing Cage’s stain artwork.

Friedrich Kerksieck | Matchbook | Small Fires Press | 2009

A tiny matchbook-sized magazine, enclosed in an actual matchbook, now on its second issue, featuring poems from a wide aesthetic range and scratch-and-sniff stickers.

Jordi Boldo + Roman Lujan | Aspa Viento | 2003

A beautiful edition featuring Lujan’s artwork and pictures of visual poetry printed on rocks.

kathryn l. pringle | RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY | Factory School / Heretical Texts | 2009

Factory School’s Heretical Texts series is completely trustworthy—every book they publish is a hit. Thus RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY is representative of a larger body of work—the editorial selection that comprises FS’s total run.

Jennifer Scappettone | From Dame Quickly | Litmus | 2009

Litmus did a beautiful job of translating Scappettone’s colorful visual poetry to the mass-produced page.

Sandra Beasley | Theories of Falling | Western Michigan University | 2008

The most traditionally lyric of this group, Sandra’s autobiographical/narrative poems stick with me. There’s still room to say something new in poetry.

More Jessica Smith here.

Google / Calls It 100% Relevant

Jennifer Scappettone – da s (3’02”). Recorded April 14, 2009 at Kelly Writers House. One of a series of poems Scappettone composed in response to the NYT obituary article “Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Philosopher, Is Dead.” More Scappettone on PennSound. Her 2008 Attention Span. “da s” is included in From Dame Quickly, just published by Litmus Press. • Tracklist here. Mirrored here.

Featured Title – Hannah Weiner’s Open House

Hannah Weiner, ed. Patrick Durgin | Hannah Weiner’s Open House | Kenning | 2006 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 5 mentions in Attention Span 2008

If only I had known sooner the ways in which she was engaged in art and performance, with her terrific inventiveness in the events of language in both private and public realms! (Sawako Nakayasu)

Not much to add to what oft’s been thought and mostly already been said about this needed book. A phenomenal display of Weiner’s talent and capability. Surely everyone should have read this by now, or else you’re the most unhip gluon. Major kudos to Durgin and the press. (Brad Flis)

Each room has many mansions. More doors, please, soon. (Rodney Koeneke)

Long-awaited. (Jennifer Scappettone)

Also mentioned by Marie Buck.