Myung Mi Kim at the Kelly Writers House, 2010. Photo by Arielle Brousse.
When the feminist poetry press Kelsey St. published Myung Mi Kim’s 1991 epic work Under Flag, a publicity blurb described it as a book that “documents” the “struggle to learn English,” an experience, the blurb goes on to say, that “resembles the experience of innumerable other US citizens in a century that has been shaped by wars and vast human migrations.”
Myung Mi Kim in New York City, 2006. Photo by Charles Bernstein.
There are so many ways for something to be unsayable. Reading a poem out loud is one of these ways. From this vantage, consider the prospect of the contemporary American poetry reading for poets who believe that “the text is not the text.” For poets who ask, as Myung Mi Kim is always asking in her work, “Who has authority?” and then are asked to appear at the front of the room and wear their author-ity by reading out loud.
M. NourbeSe Philip at North of Invention. Photo by Aldon Nielsen; click here to view her performance.
There is no reading this book; it must be read.
Zong! is a book-length poem not so much “about” but “entangled in” the late eighteenth century British court case regarding the throwing overboard of 150 “negroe” slaves by the captain of the slavetrading ship Zong during its trip from the West Coast of Africa to Jamaica. NourbeSe Philip constructs her texts in the belief that this is a story “that cannot be told … [but] that must tell itself.”
Nicole Brossard at North of Invention. Photo by Aldon Nielsen.
I admitted to write makes no sense. I am interested in consciousness. Thought follows the land of the spine. Caresses and alibis. The body in the center persists. Let’s not touch silence. Catch me in my difference. Un autre paragraph. Le peau hesitante. Le vaste complication de la beauté. We are closed to reality. Skin hesitating between philosophies and the dawn. The universe is on the page one page over. The nudity of reasoning beings. The present is not a book because of the body. Joy that traverses the rose bushes. The blind spot of pleasure. Suggestions heavy-hearted. Immensity. Sentences permeable to death and oblivion. There remained a wound in the middle of the universe — one needed to behold it. Eternity that recommences at the edge of the void. We served each other in order to exist. The poets. Light enters them in spite of themselves. Drop another ice cube in my port, if you would. Été, enfants, electricite. We propose to physically possess poetry. Syllogie. — Lines/phrases from Nicole Brossard’s reading
Nicole Brossard’s reading on January 21, 2011, concluded the two-day North of Invention conference, a gathering of avant garde Canadian poets, each of whom gave a talk and a reading at Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia.
