Experimental Poetries in the 21st Century — A Foray

Note: This article appeared in the Drunken Boat blog on January 12, 2013

Experimental Poetries in the 21st Century — A Foray

by Larissa Shmailo

In a world threatened by climate change, teetering economies, and war, the landscape of experimental poetry (or poetries) in the 21th century is responding with its traditional stance of épater/engager by any-and-every means possible le bourgeois, and challenging every lexical and hyperlexical convention. But is it a contracting or expanding universe, and is it the same universe as ours, or a parallel one, or one that does not even glance at our own? What does experimental poetry seek, if it seeks at all, today?

Today, Poetry magazine has opened its doors to poets who may not have found a home there previously, publishing the likes of Charles Bernstein, Forrest Gander, and Rae Armantrout. But is experimental poetry a luxury enterprise, to be coopted by the mainstream? Or is it to be supplanted by the spoken word heritors to the folk and protest song? Or is it the very heart of an art which can provide a new thinking we can bring to our problems and perceptions?

In the 21st century, overlapping sites of activity in experimental poetry have emerged: Charles Bernstein delineates some of the movements: “Multilectical, site-specific/fieldwork; conceptual/flarf; ecopoetics; constraint-based (constructivist) work, ESL (writing in English by those from non-English regions, via web-intensified global affinity clusters); poetry in programmable media; and sound/performance in/as recording (especially the use of digital sound archives such as PennSound and UbuWeb). Newly emerging in the broad area of “bent poetics” are disability and the defamiliar body, identity formations as textual medium, nude formalism, “junk space,” ambiance, sprung lyric, mixed/syncretic poetic genre, modular prose, and ongoing collaborations with music and the visual arts. “

Sharon Mesmer states: “The most important trends/contributions are probably aligned to the Language-based multiplicities, where the reader was as much of a participant in the poem as the poet, and the strategy-based borrowings, where a foundation was laid that allowed the poet to relinquish hierarchical control, being inflected by humor and the slight return to narrative.”

The late Carol Novack, the publisher of Madhatter’s Review commented, “The landscapes I find most intriguing are populated by poetic writers playing with ‘theatrical play/dialogue,’ ‘narrative,’ digital technological forms, interweaving, connecting, and contrasting text (read or recited)with music and visual art , words unloosened from fetters to formulaic versions of poetic paradigms, writers stretching their wings in collaboration with artists of other genres, or attempting various genres within the same project.”

And what does all this mean to experimental poetry’s writers / readers / audience / victims / perpetrators / partners?

Bernstein speaks to the need for poetry’s constant motion, like a shark per Woody Allen’s definition of a growing love relationship in Annie Hall. Poetry, says Bernstein, is “always moving beyond the ‘experimental’ to the untried, necessary, newly forming, provisional, inventive. Innovation is not so much something you can map as that which resists those maps.” Bernstein often states: “Poetry is a fertilizer, not a tool,” a groundbase for “moving beyond experiment to textual action.”

Geoffrey Gatza, editor of the experimental press BlazeVox Books, comments on the umbrella of writing that is experimental, or what Ron Silliman would term “post-avant,” saying, “There is no grouping or school of poets working towards a goal in experimental writing… Each writer is… reluctant to be a part of one group working towards one idea.” Gatza, whose press includes an eclectic mix of today’s experimental voices, adds, that as always, “The experimental is open to its successes and it is open to glorious failures in the most exciting of ways, ways that traditional poetry can only sound like a beginning violinist attacking a violin.”

Editor Jeff Hansen, formerly of the web-based Experimental Poetry and Fiction, and now the online journal and blog Altered Scale, speaks about computer poetry and Issue 1, the Dada-esque sendoff of poetic vanities and one of the best examples of search engine optimization techniques of 2008. In it, Jim Carpenter’s poetry algorithm, Erica T. Carter (ETC), wrote and published an anthology of “new work” by 4,000-plus leading poets. Says Hansen: “Issue 1 is a wonderful work (and) it’s provenance as poetry is not in dispute. Loss Glazier would say if Language is code, then Code should be treated as language… It is all very exciting, the anger, the congratulations, and the other forms this discussion has taken. And no matter the outcome, it gets poets talking who may not have reason to talk before.”

Mesmer notes that today, using the Internet, communities of writers can now function as “temporary autonomous zones.” (TAZ is a term coined by Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey in his book of the same name, meaning “temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control”). Mesmer says: “We think of writing communities (the Beats, the New York School Poets, Black Mountain – you name ‘em) as groups of poets who hung out together physically in bars, bookstores, cafes, all-night diners, etc… But now, as the flarf collective has proven, they can exist in cyber-space as well, where poets communicate and collaborate as they do in temporal- space. This, of course, both adds and subtracts a dimension from the experimental toolbox.”

The Flarf movement, less a school or a set of poets, and more of a method with an end game in sight, includes Gary Sullivan, Nada Gordon, Kasey Mohammad, Rodney Konekee, Michael Magee, and Mesmer. Mesmer explains that the Flarf collective “has used the opportunities afforded by technology to continue Language’s non-hierarchical narrator impulse by using debased Internet language to create poems and thus accomplish two things via technology: taking on narrators that even we ourselves might not embrace, thus truly eluding the formal control structures of our own personal choices.”

Speaking to the use of technology in experimental poetry, Bernstein notes that “the several-thousand-years-old alphabet remains our fundamental technology, with the printing press creating a seismic change some 500 years ago. In the last 150 years we are living in the age of electronic/digital reproduction (tape recorders, radio, typewriters, computers, the internet), which changes the function of poetry in and for the culture, and so everything about poetry.” However: “This is not a choice an individual poet makes but a condition we all are in. And much of the most interesting poetry of the past 150 years, and the past year, reveals the technological unconscious of our time and space.” With Star Trek’s Borg, Bernstein warns that, to these movements, “Resistance is futile.”

Novack added, “I see the looming present future as a melting pot of voices disrobed of the tired necessity of typecasting and classification. I embrace multimedia events and online journals that promote authors who play with amazing evolving technology as if it were clay, who utilize the new communicative forms the Internet offers.”

Daniel Nester of Soft Skull Press takes issue with Bernstein’s discussions of “official verse culture” and Ron Silliman’s “grabbing people’s eyeballs” with the notion of post-avant and the School of Quietude. “These poets and others aren’t the first to make their mark by setting up other perceived aesthetics as straw man counterarguments. But that doesn’t mean it advances the art of poetry in any way.” Nester reiterates Wallace Stevens’ statement that “all poetry is experimental…if it is lively, if it is doing its job; poetry presents new coinages, mindsets, shorthands, portmanteaus, neologisms… Twitter poets are the new haiku. Can you say what you want to say in 140 characters or fewer? There’s your new variable foot!”

It has often been noted that experimental poetry speaks to change and uncertainty, also a current in Modernism. Which, as Sharon Mesmer points out, begs the question: Has nothing really changed since Modernism? Mesmer continues: “And if Modernism reflected/spoke to uncertainly, instability, fracturedness, and we’re now supposed to be getting past all that (if only because “been there, done that”) — what comes next? Certainty, cohesiveness, stasis? I don’t think so, since the basic state of humanity is not those things. But I do think there is a general impetus to heal, remake and renew right now, and so it’ll be interesting to see how poetry will roll with those ideas.”

Mesmer concludes, “The 21st century landscape seems to be a post-everything territory, fertile with possibility.” She concludes: “Whatever that New Thing’s going to be we can’t really know at this point, but it’s safe to say it will carry the indelible stamp of whatever came before but with a mind to completely redefining it (which has always been poetry’s way anyway).

Note: These interviews were conducted in 2009, and the opinions of the interviewees may well have morphed, as experimental poetry does each day, month, and year. However, this archeology of contemporary seekings in word, sight, sound, material, time, and space still has descriptive value, and is submitted in that spirit. It is not meant to trample or ignore any seedlings of the past four years.

Russian Christmas Sale: Exorcism, the Poetry CD

My poetry, CD, Exorcism, is on sale! Buy the CD with jewel case NOW for only $12.99 or in MP3 for $9.99! Single tracks $0.99.

Features "Warsaw Ghetto," "How to Meet and Dance with Your Death," Anna Akhmatova, "My First Hurricane," "He follows her," and much more! Original music composed and performed by guitarist Bobby Perfect.

www.cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo2

Video trailer for EXORCISM: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnnIz-_mUg"

"In a sea of mimics, this poet is an original voice.\" ---Doug Holder, Ibbetson Street Press

\"Shmailo reads with so much intensity, intonation, energy, in velvety and sensual voice, that to not hear this would be a missed experience....Shmailo is intense. She can shock, she can tickle, she can entrance. Shmailo poetizes devils with the same skill as she weaves words around God and Magdalene. Her poetry is as lushly sensual as it is cutting to the bone. This is about love and pain, birth and rebirth, fields of magnolias, and surviving the Warsaw ghetto... The slap of shock is appropriate. This is not merely strong performance, it is also strong in substance.\"---Zinta Aistars, The Smoking Poet

\"Larissa Shmailo does not think small. On Exorcism, she is trying to do nothing less than exorcise the demons of human evil...While this is the overarching theme of the Exorcism (and it is, for the most part, a powerful and effective theme), it is not all that is going on on this CD. There are a number of individually powerful poems here, such as “The Gospel According to Magdalene,” “Bloom,” and “Abortion Hallucination.” They all fit, some tightly, some loosely, into the larger theme, but also stand well on their own. ---G. Murray Thomas, Poetix

\"The whole CD digs...bringing forth fiery, unorthodox, visceral imagery of the Devil and Magdalena, lovers and torturers and survivors. [Shmailo] crafts breath, rhythm, and rhyme, with a relaxed and dancerly demeanor and natural authority. Highly recommended.\" ---Anne Elliott, Ass Backwords

\"Exorcism, Larissa Shmailo\'s second poetry CD, displays the remarkable range and electrifying vitality that have won her admirers worldwide. Following fast on the release of The No-Net World, Larissa Shmailo returns to her deepest poetic origins, and from there, reveals an ascendancy that will mystify and astound. Begin your Exorcism." - Eric Yost

The Poetry Project New Year's Day Marathon Reading Tues 1/1/13

Dear Friends - I will be reading at around 4:00 p.m. Hope to see you there!

There are three things to consider when the New Year’s Day Poetry Marathon sweeps you into its gracefully uncouth embrace — what it is, what it was, and who you will be when it’s over. A benefit that is also a transformative experience for artist and audience, with:

Adeena Karasick, Andrew Boston, Anna Dunn, Anne Tardos, Anne Waldman with Ambrose Bye & Devin Waldman, Anselm Berrigan, Aria Boutet, Ariel Goldberg, Arlo Quint, Arthur’s Landing, Avram Fefer, Beth Gill, Betsy Fagin, Bill Kushner, Bob Holman, Bob Rosenthal, Bobby Previte, Brenda Coultas, Brenda Iijima, Brett Price, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, CA Conrad, Camille Rankine, Carley Moore, Carol Mirakove, Charles Bernstein, Christine Elmo, Church of Betty, Clarinda Mac Low, Cliff Fyman, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Dael Orlandersmith, David Henderson, David Vogen, Dawn Lundy Martin, Denize Lauture, Diana Hamilton, Don Yorty, Douglas Dunn, Douglas Piccinnini, Douglas Rothschild, Dynasty Handbag, E. Tracy Grinnell, Ed Friedman, Edgar Oliver, Edmund Berrigan, Edwin Torres, Eileen Myles, Elinor Nauen, Elizabeth Devlin, Elliott Sharp with Tracie Morris, Emily XYZ, Erica Hunt & Marty Ehrlich, Ernie Brooks & Peter Zummo, Ethan Fugate, Filip Marinovich, Foamola, Frank Sherlock, Gordon Gano, Jackie Clark, Jamie Townsend, Jason Hwang, Jen Benka, Jennifer Bartlett, Jennifer Firestone, Jennifer Miller, Jennifer Nelson, Jeremy Hoevenaar, Jessica Fiorini, Jim Behrle, Joe Ranono, John Coletti, John Giorno, Jon Glaser, Jonas Mekas, Josef Kaplan, Judah Rubin, Judith Malina, Julian T. Brolaski, Khadijah Queen, Karen Weiser, Katy Lederer, Ken Chen, Kristin Prevallet, Larissa Shmailo, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Laura Elrick, Laura Henriksen, Laurie Weeks, Lee Ranaldo, Lenny Kaye, Leopoldine Core, Lewis Warsh, Litia Perta, Lynn Behrendt, Lynn Crawford, LZ Hansen, Macgregor Card, Maggie Estep, Marc Nasdor, Marcella Durand, Martine Bellen, Matt Longabucco, Erica Kaufman & Nicole Eisenman, Nina Freeman, Matthew Pennock, Mike DeCapite, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Nathaniel Otting, Nathaniel Siegel, Nick Hallett, Nicole Peyrafitte, Nicole Wallace, Nurit Tilles, Patricia Spears Jones, Peter Milne Greiner, Pierre Joris, Poez, Rachel Levitsky, Rangi McNeil, Reuben Butchart, Ricardo Maldonado, Rodrigo Toscano, Sarah Sarai, Secret Orchestra, Serena Jost & Dan Machlin, Simone White, Steve Earle, Steven Taylor, Steven Zultanski, Sue Landers, Suzanne Vega, Tammy Faye Starlight, Taylor Mead, Ted Greenwald, Tim/Trace Peterson, Tony Towle, Tracey McTague, Tracie Morris, Uche Nduka, Vyt Bakaitis, Will Edmiston, Will Yackulic, Yoshiko Chuma, Youmna Chlala, Yvonne Meier and others TBA.
Admission (at door only): $20, $15 for students and seniors, and $10 for Poetry Project members.

Holiday CD sale - The No-Net World

Holiday sale! www.cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo Please take advantage of the holiday sale on my CD, The No-Net World. Available in digital or jewel case for your collection; individual tracks are $0.99. Features "Madwoman," "How My Family Survived the Camps," "In Paran," love poems, translations of Pushkin and Mayakovsky, and much more! Original music by Bobby Perfect.

Please buy here! www.cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo

Please join me and Sam Delany, Rob Hardin, and other fine readers for this Sensitive Skin launch party next Sat 12/15 at 7 at Tribes, 285 E3, 2nd floor.

The Carol Novack Tribute Party in Support of Tribes

For immediate release:

Contact:
Larissa Shmailo
212-712-9865
larissa_shmailo@yahoo.com

The Carol Novack
Christmas-Hannukah-Kwanzaa-Solstice-and-Atheists-Who-Love-to-Party
Tribute Party
A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East Third Street, Second Floor
New York City
Saturday, December 8, 7:00 pm to midnight
FREE! (Donation to MadHat and Tribes requested)

MadHat Honors Founder with Gala Event: The Carol Novack Christmas-Hannukah-Kwanzaa-Solstice-and-Atheists-Who-Love-to-Party Tribute Party December 8 at Tribes

MadHat honors its late founder, publisher, eclectic anti-genre writer, and lawyer Carol Novack, with a gala reading and party December 8 at New York City’s landmark multicultural arts center A Gathering of the Tribes. The event features such poetry luminaries as Andrei Codrescu, Cornelius Eady, Bob Holman, CA Conrad, Philip Nikolayev, Katia Kapovich, Steve Dalachinsky, Marc Vincenz, Larissa Shmailo, Sarah Sarai, and many others.

Leon Dewan of Dewanatron, whose Swarmatron was extensively featured in the movie The Social Network, and the Ubudis Duo, featuring cellist Jonathan Golove and Mexican musician Omer Tamez, will provide music for the evening. Posthumous collections by Hugh Fox, Primate Fox, and Carol Novack and Tom Bradley’s Felicia’s Nose will be launched in a party atmosphere with costumes, prizes, and holiday merriment.

The late Carol Novack was a writer who tested the boundaries of established literary genres and who founded the multimedia online journal Madhatters’ Review. Known for its antic, eclectic, and international spirit, the magazine quickly became a mecca for the avant garde in literature today. Today, MadHat is a book publishing press as well as a journal, led by publisher and editor-in-chief Marc Vincenz.

In the spirit of Novack, who was also a lawyer and activist who championed the arts and underrepresented causes, the Carol Novack tribute party is being held at A Gathering of the Tribes in support of poet and mentor Steve Cannon. Cannon’s Tribes is one of the few remaining institutions committed to poetry in a neighborhood once known for poetry and the arts. The embattled arts organization is currently fighting eviction from its longtime home in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

The Carol Novack gala features some of the most important voices in cutting-edge literature. Andrei Codrescu founded Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Books & Ideas in 1983 and has taught literature and poetry at Johns Hopkins University, University of Baltimore, and Louisiana State University where he was MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English. He has been a regular commentator on NPR's All Things Considered since 1983, and received a Peabody Award for writing and starring in the film Road Scholar.

Cornelius Eady is the author of seven volumes of poetry inspired by blues and jazz. Recently awarded honors include the Strousse Award from Prairie Schooner, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and individual Fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Bob Holman is an American poet most closely identified with the oral tradition, spoken word, and slam poetry. As a promoter of poetry in many media, including the legendary Bowery Poetry Club, Holman’s current project is a PBS special on endangered languages. He is a visiting professor at Columbia University.

“The son of white trash asphyxiation,” CA Conrad’s childhood included “selling cut flowers along the highway for my mother and helping her shoplift.” He is the author of several popular books of poetry including The Book of Frank and is a 2011 PEW Fellow, a 2012 RADAR and UCROSS Fellow, and a 2013 Banff Fellow.

Philip Nikolayev and Katia Kapovich, husband and wife, are Russian émigrés bilingually active in literature in both the United States and the Russian Federation. Considered leaders in the experimental poetry movement, they are publishers of the landmark literary annual Fulcrum.

In keeping with MadHat’s international outlook, new publisher and executive editor Marc Vincenz was born in Hong Kong to Swiss-British parents. An English-German bi-lingual collection of his poems Additional Breathing Exercises is to be released by Wolfbach, Zurich (2013) and a full-length collection, Mao’s Moles, is forthcoming from NeoPoiesis Press (2013). Marc is Executive Editor of MadHat Press and Mad Hatters’ Review.

Larissa Shmailo is an award-winning poet and a Russian translator known for her original zaum translations of Alexei Kruchenych. Her books and CDs include The No-Net World and In Paran.

Please read the Carol Novack Tribute issue of Madhatters’ Review at here

The Carol Novack Christmas-Hannukah-Kwanzaa-Solstice-and-Atheists-Who-Love-to-Party Tribute Party is a free event. Donations will be requested in support of MadHat and A Gathering of the Tribes. Wine and beer will be sold, with proceeds to go to MadHat and A Gathering of the Tribes.

For more information about the event, which will be recorded for the television show Poetry Thin Air, please contact Larissa Shmailo at 212-712-9865 or larissa_shmailo@yahoo.com

The Carol Novack Christmas-Hannukah-Kwanzaa-Solstice-and-Atheists-Who-Love-to-Party Tribute Party
A Gathering of the Tribes
285 East Third Street, Second Floor
New York City
Saturday, December 8, 7:00 pm to midnight
Free!(Donation requested)

SAVE THE DATE! MadHat presents: The Carol Novack Christmas-Hannukah-Kwanzaa-Solstice-and-Atheists-Who-Love-to-Party Tribute Party

• Readings by Andrei Codrescu, Cornelius Eady, CA Conrad, Philip Nikolayev, Katia Kapovich, Howie Good, Lee Ann Brown, Marc Vincenz, Susan Lewis, Larissa Shmailo, Brendan Lorber, Bill Yarrow, Rafael Urweider, Gretchen Primack, Sarah Sarai, Patricia Carragon, Tom Bradley, and a heavenly host

• Music of the spheres by Dewanatron (The Social Network) and the Ubudis Duo (Jonathan Golove and Omer Tamez)

• Launch and ascension of Hugh Fox’s Primate Fox and Carol Novack and Tom Bradley’s Felicia’s Nose

• Art by MadHat's Artistic Souls

• Angelic ale and wine

And much, much more! Costumes encouraged.

Saturday, December 8, 7:00 p.m. until late. A Gathering of the Tribes 285 E. 3rd Street (between C&D) Contact: 212-712-9865 /Larissa_Shmailo@yahoo.com

The Unbearables vs. The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses for 100 Thousand Poets

The YouTubes are here!

part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOhiTW2r8b0&feature=relmfu
javascript:void(0); Larissa Shmailo--hostess, Bob Holman with musician Al Haji Papa Susso, Jim Feast--emcee, Tsaurah Litzky, Patricia Carragon, Thad Rutkowski, Sarah Sarai, Chavisa Woods, Shmailo, Jordan Zinovich, Annie Pluto.

part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jycWHQqv-eQ&feature=relmfu
Jim Feast--emcee, Bonnie Finberg, Jane Ormerod, Rob Hardin, Patricia Spears Jones, Ron Kolm, Elizabeth Macklin, Susan Scutti, Madeline Artenberg.

part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdewRx3Z9cc&feature=relmfu
Audrey Roth, Jim Feast--emcee, Tom Savage, Sparrow, Steve Dalachinsky, Ronnie Norpel, Carl Watson, Bernard Block, Yuko Otomo, David Henderson, Mitch Corber.

Dear Friends,

I am thrilled that Iranian poet Rahi (Mohammad Mostaghimi) has translated another poem of mine into Persian!

This poem,  "Date," has just appeared in the Journal of Interdimensional Poetry.

Thank you, Rahi! 

ممنون

Mamnoon!

Date

Good morning, blind date; like Milton's daughters, I will read to you.
Good morning, date from hell; why are you still here? I sent you a Dante with a map.
Good morning, birth date and the day that I'll marry, or die; my biography will read, I was born.
Good morning, date that will live in infamy, or in Queens, which Fitzgerald called land of ashes, preferring East Egg.
Good morning, dried-apple & fig-leaf date that covered my foremother's love, this figured by Usher as a fall.
Good morning, daylight savings time, falling, falling back, taking time from the bottom and cycling it up top.
Good morning, end-of-the-world and rapture date, since dying is a revelation (and a high).
Good morning, time, curving gently beneath my outstretched palms and slipping through my hands.

 Persian version of the poem:
 از: لاریسا شمایلو
تاریخ

صبح به‌خیر، تاریخ کور؛ همانند دختران میلتون، من برای شما می‌خوانم.
صبح به‌خیر، تاریخ دوزخ؛ چرا شما هنوز اینجایید؟ من یک دانته با یک نقشه برایتان فرستادم.
صبح به‌خیر، تاریخ تولد و روزی که من ازدواج می‌کنم یا می‌میرم؛ زندگی‌نامه‌ی من آن را می‌خواند، من زاده شدم
صبح به‌خیر، تاریخ که در بدنامی به سر می‌بری، و یا در کویینز نیویورک، که فیتز جرالد سرزمین خاکستری ، یا بهتر «تخم مرغ شرق» می‌خواندش..
صبح به‌خیر، سیب خشکیده و برگ انجیر تاریخ که پوشش عشق مادربزرگ مادربزرگ من شدی،به هیأت پیشقراول به نام یک هبوط.
صبح به‌خیر، روشنایی روز صرفه جویی در زمان، هبوط، هبوط بازگشت، صرف زمان از پایین و دوربازگشت آن تا بالا.
صبح به‌خیر پایان جهان و بی‌خودی تاریخ، چرا که مرگ وحی است (و یک پرواز).
صبح به‌خیر، زمان، به آرامی رکوع پایین‌تر از دستان قنوت من و لغزش از راه همین دستان.

                                                                         گزاشتار: محمد مستقیمی - راهی

http://www.facebook.com/LarissaShmailoPoetryandProse

Dear Friends,

My new Facebook page is up and alive! Please visit and "like"! And thanks for visiting!

oxox
Larissa

The Unbearables vs. The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

                 

The Unbearables and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses Perform

for Global Event:

100 Thousand Poets for Change

@ A Gathering of the Tribes

285 E. 3rd Street (between Avenues C and D), NYC

Saturday, September 29, 7:00 – 10:00 pm

Donation

New York City: The Unbearables (“a drinking group with a writing problem”) and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses (“we live with the contradictions of feminism”) face off at Lower-East-Side literary landmark A Gathering of the Tribes on September 29, 2012 at 7:00 pm as part of the global arts celebration 100 Thousand Poets for Change.

With rants, humor, avant-garde poetry, and more than a little outrageousness, the two famous New York City literary clans will face off downtown for a first-time ever showdown.  Poetry legend Bob Holman, Larissa Shmailo, Ron Kolm, Elizabeth Macklin, Thad Rutkowski, Stephanie Berger, Patricia Spears Jones, Sparrow, Sarah Sarai, Chavisa Woods, Stephen Boyer, Lee Ann Brown, Carl Watson, and other noted poets and writers are scheduled to appear.

September 29 marks the second annual global event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots movement that brings poets, artists, and musicians together worldwide to call for environmental, social, and political change within the framework of peace and sustainability. There are nearly 700 events planned worldwide, including:

• The Occupy Wall Street Poetry group kicks off a weekend of events in New York City with a poetry reading at the famous St. Mark’s Poetry Project.

• 25 different events in the San Francisco Bay Area, the birthplace of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, with live poetry readings by Beat Legend Michael McClure, former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass, and other major poets.

• Poetry and peace gatherings are planned in the strife-torn cities of Kabul and Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

• In Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, poets, musicians and mime artists, in response to the revolution in Egypt and the major changes taking place in the Arab World, will perform in public spaces.

Events are also scheduled in Albania, Zimbawe, Serbia, Russia, China, Algeria, Scotland, the Udmurt Republic, Somalia, Mexico, and over 100 other countries.

Like Pussy Riot in Russia, The Unbearables and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses believe in freedom of speech and seek a world in which artistic expression is open and protected, a goal sought by the larger 100 Thousand Poets for Change organization.

100 Thousand Poets for Change organizers and participants hope through their actions and events to seize and redirect the political and social dialogue of the day and turn the narrative of civilization towards peace and sustainability. Those who want to get involved may visit www.100tpc.org to find an event near them or sign up to organize an event in their area.

Immediately following September 29th, all documentation on the 100TPC.org website, which will include specific event pages with photos, video and other documentation compiled by each city coordinator, will be preserved by Stanford University in California. Stanford recognized 100 Thousand Poets for Change in 2011 as an historical event, the largest poetry reading in history. 

About 100 Thousand Poets for Change 

Co-Founder Michael Rothenberg (walterblue@bigbridge.org) is a widely known poet, editor of the online literary magazine Bigbridge.org and an environmental activist based in Northern California. Terri Carrion is a poet, translator, photographer, and editor and visual designer for BigBridge.org.

100 Thousand Poets for Change

P.O. Box 870

Guerneville, CA 95446

Phone: (305) 753-4569

www.100TPC.org

Three Girls Media & Marketing Inc.

(408) 871-0377

Emily Sidley, emilysidley@threegirlsmedia.com

Kate Barton, katebarton@threegirlsmedia.com

The Unbearables Big Book of Sex

The Unbearables Big Book of Sex by Ron Kolm

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Outrageous and hilarious - not just because I'm a contributor.


View all my reviews

The Christian Far-Right Is Near

What's on my mind? Christian Reconstructionists, formerly known as Dominionists, the extreme right wing of the Christian Fundamentalist movement (Akin is among these). Once a fringe faction, they are now a recognized and highly regarded movement in the Republican party, responsible for the planks in many state Republican platforms that undermine the Constitution’s separation of church and state and for government funding of "faith-based programs."

Christian Reconstructionists seek a Christian theocracy in the United States based on a "cultural mandate" they believe they find in Genesis which gives white Protestant males dominion over women and nonwhites. Not all of them believe in stoning gays to death, but many do. They oppose contraception and abortion. They don't like Jews. They justify racism (and slavery) based on the old “sons of Ham” interpretation from the Old Testament. They elect representatives and are trying to elect Akin to the senate in Missouri – politicians like Mike Huckabee and many others depended on their money. They have ideological ties with the growing Nazi and neoConfederate movements in the United States.

Can you tell me, based on the incidents in the current campaign season and at the RNC, that I am an alarmist to worry about these people? What do you think they will do with a president and Congress firmly in their back pockets?

I, for one, am about to get political.

The Unbearables vs.The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contacts:

   

Larissa Shmailo                                       

(212) 712-9865                       

slidingsca@aol.com

Ron Kolm

(718) 721-0946

kolmrank@verizon.net                   

                    

              The Unbearables and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses Perform

for Global Event:

100 Thousand Poets for Change

@ A Gathering of the Tribes

285 E. 3rd Street (between Avenues C and D), NYC

Saturday, September 29, 7:00 – 10:00 pm

Donation

New York City: The Unbearables (“a drinking group with a writing problem”) and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses (“we live with the contradictions of feminism”) face off at Lower-East-Side literary landmark A Gathering of the Tribes on September 29, 2012 at 7:00 pm as part of the global arts celebration 100 Thousand Poets for Change.

With rants, humor, avant-garde poetry, and more than a little outrageousness, the two famous New York City literary clans will face off downtown for a first-time ever showdown.  Poetry legend Bob Holman, Larissa Shmailo, Ron Kolm, Elizabeth Macklin, Thad Rutkowski, Patricia Spears Jones, Sparrow, Chavisa Woods, Lee Ann Brown, Carl Watson, and other noted poets and writers are scheduled to appear.

September 29 marks the second annual global event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots movement that brings poets, artists, and musicians together worldwide to call for environmental, social, and political change within the framework of peace and sustainability. There are nearly 700 events planned worldwide, including:

• The Occupy Wall Street Poetry group kicks off a weekend of events in New York City with a poetry reading at the famous St. Mark’s Poetry Project.

• 25 different events in the San Francisco Bay Area, the birthplace of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, with live poetry readings by Beat Legend Michael McClure, former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass, and other major poets.

• Poetry and peace gatherings are planned in the strife-torn cities of Kabul and Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

• In Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt, poets, musicians and mime artists, in response to the revolution in Egypt and the major changes taking place in the Arab World, will perform in public spaces.

Events are also scheduled in Albania, Zimbawe, Serbia, Russia, China, Algeria, Scotland, the Udmurt Republic, Somalia, Mexico, and over 100 other countries.

Like Pussy Riot in Russia, The Unbearables and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses believe in freedom of speech and seek a world in which artistic expression is open and protected, a goal sought by the larger 100 Thousand Poets for Change organization.

Immediately following September 29th, all documentation on the 100TPC.org website, which will include specific event pages with photos, video and other documentation compiled by each city coordinator, will be preserved by Stanford University in California. Stanford recognized 100 Thousand Poets for Change in 2011 as an historical event, the largest poetry reading in history. 

About 100 Thousand Poets for Change 

Co-Founder Michael Rothenberg (walterblue@bigbridge.org) is a widely known poet, editor of the online literary magazine Bigbridge.org and an environmental activist based in Northern California. Terri Carrion is a poet, translator, photographer, and editor and visual designer for BigBridge.org.

100 Thousand Poets for Change

P.O. Box 870

Guerneville, CA 95446

Phone: (305) 753-4569

www.100TPC.org

Three Girls Media Marketing Inc.

(408) 871-0377

Emily Sidley, emilysidley@threegirlsmedia.com

Kate Barton, katebarton@threegirlsmedia.com

Jeff Hansen's Review of In Paran

The Altered Scale Blog

Larissa Shmailo's IN PARAN (BlazeVox) by Jeff Hansen

 

  "      you see very few men have souls     and very few men have courage    the few who have the courage to follow their souls are mostly all dead     lost in leaves     people kill them you know”

                                                                                                —from “Madwoman”

What characterizes this volume of poetry, published in 2009, for me is the astonishing variety of poetics on display. Shmailo proves herself adept at wild internal rhymes, traditional metrics, prose poems, and found poems. The book is divided into three sections: Love Poems, LitCrit, and In the World. I will discuss one poem from each.

The book begins with a glorious love poem, “Personal.”

I want to know

what makes you

tick.

I want to know

what makes you

fickle; I want to know

what makes you stick.

…

forget the right answers

consult necromancers

allow the forbidden

ignore the guilt ridden

unlearn all the learning

embrace this new burning

The celebration of erotic love is ensconced in the playful internal and standard rhymes. Love becomes childlike, wonderful, as fun as hearing an unexpected confluence of sound in two words. So often, romantic love is obsessive and demanding. This is pitched at the mystery of the beloved, and she transforms the mystery into linguistic play at the aural level. This poem is as much music as poetry

The second section, LitCrit, begins with “In Paran,” which itself begins by quoting Melville: “Call me Ishmael.” She uses iambs, very long lines, and a self-consciously archaic diction to, again, celebrate, this time the speaker’s wildness:

I grew up wild and stubborn: my hand against my father

At war with all my kinfolk; my kin at war with me.

Hear the iambs and alliteration propel this declaration of independence, of will, of stubbornness, and of the will to see demons and thrive. I can’t help but think the speaker is female, in spite of her calling herself Ishmael. Yes, this is a poem in the voice of Ishmael. But it celebrates being as wild as a man (is allowed).

The most interesting poetic move, for me, occurs in "Chimera." The whole poem is below:

The use of bold and italics creates two poems within a larger poem, and the way the lines shorten as the poem unfolds feels like the last word: “cut.” This poem makes me feel the pain of illusion and disillusion, the way we never know if we know. We could be at the cinema when we are just walking down the street: Chimera.

In the “In the World” section Shmaillo addresses politics and pain, from the Holocaust to My Lai to homelessness. The latter is addressed in a loosely held-together poem, a form that echoes the very state of homelessness, called “No-Net World.” It is straight-ahead, almost journalistic.

“Now your debts mount up like garbage and a layoff’s coming soon.”

This line is typical. By the end of the poem, the accumulated weight of a life on the edge is witnessed and given voice.

I recommend this book to anyone who loves to see a poet take chances, go with anything and use everything from all of poetics, who writes as she, apparently, feels she must and not according to any “shoulds.”

________________________

Larissa Shmailo will appear in Altered Scale 2. See her audio and textual work in Altered Scale 1.

Larissa Shmailo's work has appeared in Gargoyle, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, Fulcrum,The Unbearables Big Book of Sex, and the Penguin anthologyWords for the Wedding. Her books of poetry are In Paran (BlazeVOX [books]), A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press), and Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks); her poetry CDs are The No-Net World  and Exorcism, available through iTunes and other digital distributors. Her translation of A. Kruchenych'sVictory over the Sun is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press and is currently featured on the Brooklyn Rail InTranslation Web site.

Poets Respond to Jung's Red Book at the NYU Art and Psyche Conference

Larissa Shmailo, Martine Bellen, Kristen Prevallet
Poets Respond to Carl Jung's Red Book (Liber Novus)
Saturday, July 21 – 8:00  pm
Art and Psyche Conference
NYU Kimmel Center – Rosenthal Pavilion (10th floor)
60 Washington Square South, New York, New York

$15 admission includes conference program for Saturday evening - please see the conference Web site at
http://www.cvent.com/events/art-and-psyche-in-the-city-conference/event-summary-26c0ef5efaa349c78b7e24514805b743.aspx

New poem in the new Gargoyle

My poem, "The Girl @theparisreview Says Uncool," is in the new summer edition of Gargoyle. Thanks to Richard Peabody for this pub.

Dear Friends: Here is some news about my upcoming readings and August poetry workshop, Intensive: The Love (and Sex) Poem. Hope to see you!

Love, Larissa
slidingsca@aol.com

Tuesday, May 29, 6:00 p.m.: HAVE A NYC Launch Party
Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC
The launch of the new Three Rooms Press collection of New York City-noir short stories. Featuring Kat Georges, David Lincoln, Kofi Fosu Forson, Pedro Ponce, Ron Bass, Jame Ormerod, Peter Marra, Puma Perl, Lisa Ferber, Janet Hamill, and host Peter Carlaftes

Sunday, June 10, 3:30 p.m.: Tamarind Magazine
Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune Street, NYC
A reading for the noted magazine edited by Tom Savage. Tamarind contributors to read TBA.

Saturday, July 21, 8:00 p.m.: Art and Psyche Conference, New York University
New York University Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South
Sponsored by the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association, the International Association for Analytical Psychology, and the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism. With Martine Bellen and Kristen Prevallet (open to conference participants only)

Sunday, July 22, 4:30 p.m. The New York City Poetry Festival Governor’s Island
Representing Madhatters’ Review. With Susan Scutti, Yuriy Tarnowsky, and Marc Vincenz.

SUNDAY AFTERNOONS IN AUGUST, 2-4 p.m.: Intensive Workshop: The Love (and Sex) Poem Sunday afternoons August 5,12, 19, and 26, 2-4 p.m. West 70s location: Call 212-712-9865 or e-mail slidingsca@aol.com for more information or to register.

Thursday, August 9, 7:00 p.m.: Bright Hills Literary Center
94 Church Street, Treadwell, NY
Curated by Bertha Rogers.

September 29, noon-3:30 p.m.: The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses vs. the Unbearables.
Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery between Houston and Bleecker
Every bit as riotous, hilarious, and outrageous as it sounds – cast of thousands. Part of the 100,000 Poets for Change international poetry event, with over 500 readings in over 100 countries scheduled to date— and still growing!

Coming Attraction! The Carol Novack Halloween Tribute Party – stay tuned for details!

oxo,
L

BIG BRIDGE 15th Anniversary Issue!

ANNOUNCING THE BIG BRIDGE 15 YEAR ANNIVERSARY ISSUE www.bigbridge.org * * * CONTENTS Our Feature Chapbook is Andrei Codrescu’s “bridge work” with illustrations by Nancy Victoria Davis * Guest editor, Bonny Finberg presents 30 POETS, a poetry anthology dedicated to Akilah Oliver, includes poems by Jim Harrison, Alice Notley, Patricia Spears Jones, Lynn Crawford, Ron Kolm, Louise Landes Levi, Jennifer K. Dick, Steve Dalachinsky, Karen Margolis, Yuko Otomo and others. Thomas Devaney's Big Tree Poems: An exploratory anthology of contemporary tree poems featuring George Evans, Allison Cobb, Bob Arnold, Joan Larkin, Jonathan Skinner, Paul Kane, Hoa Nguyen, Katy Lederer, Peter Larkin, Bob Holman, Elaine Terranova, Kevin Varrone, Iain Haley Pollock, Sparrow, Nathaniel Otting and others. Jonathan Penton manifests Cuyahoga Burning, a feature on current Ohio literature, dedicated to Nobius Black, with fiction, poetry, and criticism by folks like Marie Kazalia, Cheryl A. Townsend, John Dorsey and others. More poems from j/j hastain, Dale Smith, Michael Basinski, Arpine Grenier, Lakey Comess, Nicolas Ekerson, Martin Willits, Lee Herrick, Larissa Shmailo, Nicholas Karavatos, Larry Sawyer, John Roche, Jerry McGuire, Joel Chace, Jeff Side, Peter Ramon, Christine Hamm, and Yahia Lababidi * Fiction selection! Guest editor Ellen Geist is offering a 15th Anniversary Fiction Feature, multifaceted stories orchestrated around four themes by authors such as Ishmael Reed, Carole Maso, Faye Moskowitz, Jeff Friedman, Brinda Charry, Howard Schwartz, and others. And more Fiction from Camille Meyer, Jessica Chace, HC Hsu, Tina Cabrera, Kate Axelrod, Ryan Jones. John Hennessy and Ron Singer. * Translations abound! Poetry from Japan, A Contemporary Anthology of Japanese Poetry is special guest edit by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa with poems from Tanaka Atsusuke, Yoko Danno, Sekiguchi Ryoko, Torii Shozo, Goro Takano and others. Voices for Change: A Contemporary Anthology of Moroccan Poets, edited by El Habib Louai with poems by Boujema El Aoufi, Abdellatif Al Ouarari, Idriss Allouch, Mubarak Ouassat, Najat Zoubair, Ikram Abdi and others. More Translations include Selections from Stet, poems by Cuban poet Jose Kozer translated by Mark Weiss. Dreams–The–Underlinears, poems by Ilya Kutik translated by Lyn Hejinian and Jean Day. A Tribute to Andrey Voznesensky (1933-2010) translation by Alex Cigale and Dana Golin. Still Life with Snow, Dato Barbakadze selected translations by Lyn Coffin and Nato Alhazishvili with Introduction by Sam Hamill. Elvana Zaimi translations of Agron Tufa. Seven poems by Georgi Ivanov translated by Yelena Dubrovin. Tiziana Colusso translated from the Italian by Brenda Porster. Poems of Iranian poet Rira Abassi translated by Maryam Ala Amjadi and M. Alexandrian. Poetry Slam Guatemala. Golden Edition edited by Walter Gonzalez, celebrates poetry from Guatemala and around the world, * Features continue with Brian Unger, who offers another insightful installation of excerpts from the incredible Philip Whalen’s personal journals Guest editor Adam Cornford presents “Neo-Surrealism and the Politics of The Marvelous” with contributions by Sandra Simonds, Michael Leong, Ivan Argüelles, Will Alexander, Eric Baus, Charles Borkhuis, Rebecca Hazelton, Andrew Joron, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, John Yau, and others. Poems, Songs and Children’s books: A Robert Priest Retrospective: "Robert Priest: Poet/Minstrel in Utter Space" by Sheree Fitch, Daryl Jung reviews Feeling the Pinch, "Robert Priest, Dr. Poetry, and the Viral Verbal Vortex" by Lance Strate, and Jordan Zinovich scrutinizes Robert Priest's Blue Pyramids and Reading the Bible Backwards Photos and excerpts from Tom Hibbard’s 2011 Wisconsin Protest Journals. Desmond Peeples essay on maritime subcultures, "In Good Use and Good Vengeance", Akhilesh Kumar Dwivedi’s, “Multiple Responses to Nationalism: Individuals in The Shadow Lines”. Neeli Cherkovski interviews Patrick James Dunagan and Lucille Lang Day writes on Jack Foley. * Exceptional ART from around the world! Jonathan Kane returns to Big Bridge with a selection of sensual photographic collage works. Jim Spitzer’s epic artistic venture: “THE BOOK: 47 canvases of poetry and text”. Julius Keleras’ photographic study, “The Pavements of Vilnius”. An exhibition of mixed media by Shawne Major. 10 photos from the UK’s Eleanor Leonne Bennett and Henrik Aeshna’s SCHIZOPoP MANIFESTO, a gallery of visual anomalies & photopoems from Paris. * And stay on top of what’s happening with important Reviews! Goodbye Gothic Rose: David Madgalene’s “Epic Search For Love and Answers in South Beach”, a review by Christopher Luna. Harris Schiff’s One More Beat (Accent Editions) reviewed by Larry Sawyer. Neeli Cherkovski’s review of Translations from the Latin of Luxorius by Art Beck. Reflections in a Smoking Mirror: Poems of Mexico & Belize by Paul Pines (Dos Madres Press) reviewed by Eric Hoffman, Tom Hibbard reviews Ungulations: Ten Waves (Under the Hoof) by A. Di Michele and Amy Trussell, Joe Safdie’s review of Lewis MacAdams’ Dear Oxygen: New & Selected Poems, 1966–2011 (University of New Orleans Press), Michael Sonsken reviews Micah Ballard’s Waifs & Strays, David Meltzer’s When I Was a Poet (City Lights Books) and F. A. Nettlebeck’s Happy Hour, Bill DeNoyelles reviews Bernadette Mayer’s, Studying Hunger Journals (Station Hill Press), W.F. Lantry reviews Lisa Vihos' The Accidental Present, Lynn Alexander reviews Somewhere Over the Pachyderm Rainbow by Jennifer C. Wolfe, Kirpal Gordon reviews Michael Hogan’s Winter Solstice: Selected Poems, 1975-2012, Bruce Ross-Smith reviews The American Eye by Eric Hoffman (Dos Madres Press), and Cheryl Townsend reviews Kirpal Gordon’s Round Earth, Open Sky (Giant Steps Press) * Our LITTLE MAGS section features Sensitive Skin, Harbinger Asylum, Tidal Bsin Review, Yellow Edenwald Field, Lummox Journal, Meat for Tea, The International Times, Home Planet News, Iodine Poetry Journal, Stoneboat and others. * Happy 15 Year Anniversary from Big Bridge! Enjoy! PLEASE POST, SHARE, TWEET EVERYWHERE AND ANYWHERE! Donations: http://www.bigbridge.org/BB16/donations.htm