Attention Span – Patrick Pritchett

Rod Smith | Deed | Iowa | 2007

“The Good House” is a poem that is never less than itself, continually reinventing the topos of dwelling through the tropos of surprise.

Marjorie Welish | Isle of Signatories | Coffee House | 2008

Every sign is always already a form of annotation.

Joshua Clover | The Totality for Kids | California | 2006

The Romantic crisis poem cold-filtered for your drinking pleasure through the radical tradition of the Denkbild. Dude, it will make you weep.

Andrew Joron | The Cry at Zero| Counterpath | 2007

Who, if they cried, would utter zero, hallowed, forever?

Hank Lazer | The New Spirit | Singing Horse | 2005
Hank Lazer | Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays, 1996-2008 | Omnidawn | 2008

The letter liveth so that the spirit might too.

Richard Deming | Let’s Not Call It Consequence | Shearsman | 2008

Incommensurate space between the verb and the noun. Whatever we dream, whatever we group by words.

Ed Barrett | Bosston | Pressed Wafer | 2008

The radioactive ghosts of Yeats and Whitey Bulger clash by night in the abandoned remnants of Scolley Square.

Amy Catanzano |  iEpiphany | Erudite Fangs | 2008

Cellular constellations, bright with fractal intelligence.

Julie Carr | Equivocal | Alice James | 2007

The work of the work of mourning in “Iliadic.” Stop this endless war.

Jay Wright | The Presentable Art of Reading Absence | Dalkey Archive | 2008

Intelligence as a dying art. Promise of the garden and the smoke that is sweetness.

Philip Lamantia | Tau | City Lights | 2008

Vatic American nerve tree.

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More Patrick Pritchett here.

Attention Span – Keith Tuma

Trevor Joyce | What’s in Store | The Gig and New Writers’ Press | 2007

If verse is a turning, the short poems here have some of the tightest corners on the road.  New poems as if carved in stone; old folksongs from Ireland, Hungary and all over the map made new; birdsong collaged. A big book of lyric poetry plus: “not all / plants / are alike // some are / astringent / some are / salty // some sour / some sweet // some men / are short / -lived / some long // some ugly / others fortunate // weak strong / stupid clever / poor rich // was it / brevity / you wanted?”

Linh Dinh | Jam Alerts | Chax | 2007

Imagine Catullus in a tiki bar having a drink with an unemployed rodeo clown, contemplating the end of empire.  Or don’t: “Bombs / scared them away? Hell no, / We ate them all.”

Marjorie Welish | Isle of the Signatories | Coffee | 2008

Modernism as bricks in a wall you think you can tag: “WITH INDETERMINANCY WE SHALL BURY YOU.” Blue and white: are they true?

Keston Sutherland | Hot White Andy | Barque | 2007

No fire extinguisher left, they’ll be sorting stage directions for this at mid-century, looking for the way out: “He always does this. You get used to it. It is / what brains means.”

Norma Cole | Do the Monkey | Zasterle | 2006

Thinner than Spinoza in Her Youth and every bit as smart.  Here and there more flip, e.g. a waka is a 31 syllable poem: “My dog Stoutie is a stout little pal, kind of sugary, damp little nose, especially when he wants to go for a waka.” Check out “Heavy Lifting,” “The Olympics Is All in Your Mind,” and the rest: a “full sea / outside the self.”

Tyrone Williams | On Spec | Omnidawn | 2008

Cornucopia of hybrid texts. Jimmy Webb and Jacques Derrida tango on one page: “Pop ain’t s’posed to drawl and corn in the bright can’s just plain wrong.” “Derrida clarifies and develops this difference between the Platonic and Christian concepts of the soul in Chapter Three.”

Catherine Wagner | everyone in the room is a representative of the world at large | Bonfire | 2007

As if Plath read Wittgenstein aloud in the town square: “God knows the question arises from its own background / like a bas-relief, so that if one located it / one could chisel the whole thing off the wall and throw it away.”

Tom Raworth | Let Baby Fall | Critical Documents | 2008

When hungry, eat fast: “what are the chances? / what do they want with the bowl?”

Devin Johnston | Sources | Turtle Point | 2008

Not least for translations of Sappho and Propertius, and for more poise and balance than I’ve seen since Thom Gunn left these peeling shores: “Wake and sleep / sleep and wake.”

Rod Smith | Deed | Iowa | 2007

Something about the house is probably a metaphor, Mr. Jones: “Then the house / is popping.”

Frances Kruk | A Discourse on Vegetation & Motion | Critical Documents | 2008

There are other books, there are larger books, maybe you do and maybe you don’t need them: “today the Penalty is Self.”