Gillian White

The scholar's blush

Shame as method in 'Lyric Shame'

Photo by Anthony Easton, via <a href= https://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkmoose/26 — Photo by Anthony Easton, via flickr.

Lyric Shame (2014), a method-driven reappraisal of the mid- to late-twentieth-century “lyric” poem, looks to readers’ shame as an interpretive device. Shame: that blushing state that finds us thinking of what others must be thinking and/or self-caught in the act of wanting something (something others do not think we should be wanting); an awareness of exposure or of being seen by others; a social signpost; a readable heat.

First reading of Cecil Taylor's '#6.56' (4)

Gillian White

First Readings

Well before I’ve clicked the audio file, the reading begins with the email invitation to (re)produce a “first reading” of a “spoken word” performance by Cecil Taylor. His name rings jazz bells, so I’m reading my mind, too. As a student of jazz vocals in Manhattan, I sat in with Reggie Workman, but didn’t feel free enough to accept the invitation to join his ensemble.

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From the Jacket2 team

Publishing during the COVID-19 crisis

Jacket2

Like many of you, we are adapting to increased safety measures around COVID-19 at the University of Pennsylvania and other campuses. Our work here at Jacket2 will likely be delayed and/or interrupted; our publication schedule for both commentaries and J2 content at large will be slower than usual as we adapt to the global pandemic. Many of our editors are working remotely, and we will continue to curate Jacket2 as a space to convene and sustain a life in/through poetry during times of scarcity, stress, and shifting imagined communities. We remain committed to bringing you open access content when institutional access and travel for research become compromised and complicated.

A note from the editors and publishers of Jacket2:

Reading weed acts

A review of Carol Watts's 'Dockfield'

Srishti Krishnamoorthy-Cavell

Broad-leaved (left) and curled (right) dock. Photos by R. A. Nonenmacher.

In many ways, the structure of this poetry is parabolic. Points of reference are plotted along a curve that eventually returns to the same site of origin — the dockfield — before continuing onward. This is reflected in the release and retraction of words and images within parts of lines as well as in the broader sweep and curve of deep, transhuman time to which the text aspires.

Carol Watts’s Dockfield opens with an epigraph from Emily Dickinson — “Like Rain it sounded till it curved.” This attention to sound and structure also informs the opening lines of the first poem:

Step through on a curve,
a grand elliptic.

I will find you. Always.

A message sent up from simple frequencies.[1]

Cedar Sigo: 'Stranger in Town' // 2010

His voice is like an ex-husband / knocking at the door

David Brazil

In 2008, Sara Larsen invited Cedar Sigo to read in her apartment on Oak Street. The event was put on as part of her earthworm press & projects series, which was inspired in part by the Artifact reading series. (Thanks to earthworm’s defunct blog, I can report that this reading, at which the above photo “with APPARITIONS” was taken, took place on July 5, 2008.