Go through my things god knows what you'll find. When I'm not here. I'm not here, in this poem I'm in another room, writing praises of their loveliness and terror the ones that dance through my mind not endlessly, but to be one at one with them I want to be. I want to be one, I want her to be one when the voice begins she is, and she dances. I am the voice. I praise There is no mind.
Nothing could be more purely poetic than the line, so it is perhaps less a metaphor than usual to think of Elena Berriolo's performance as a reflection on the verse line. Charles Olson was once asked, how long is a line? He put his chalk to the board and ran a line to the end and continues, chalk in hand, to walk out of the room. Berriolo's work had something of that quality, though more whimsical: I was reminded of Mary Poppins flying with and umbrella as well as 1960s performance work by Charlotte Moorman or Yoko Ono. Or then again, as the line flew away in the sky, the sky writing poems of David Antin.
This series promotes and pursues topicsin the burgeoning field of 20th and 21st century poetics. Critical and scholarly work on poetry and poetics of interestto the series includes social location in its relationships to subjectivity, to the construction of authorship, to oeuvres,and to careers; poetic reception and dissemination (groups, movements, formations, institutions); the intersection ofpoetry and theory; questions about language, poetic authority, and the goals of writing; claims in poetics, impacts ofsocial life, and the dynamics of the poetic career as these are staged and debated by poets and inside poems. Topicsthat are bibliographic, pedagogic, that concern the social field of poetry, and reflect on the history of poetry studiesare valued as well. This series will allow Palgrave to focus both on individual poets and texts and on larger movements,poetic institutions, and questions about poetic authority, social identifications, and aesthetics.
Roland Green and associates have done a tremendous job in revising Terry Brogan’s and Alex Preminger’s magisterial 3d edition of this classic work. It’s a vast compendium of poetic lore, terminology, technique, and history with an astutely chosen set of contributors. At 1664 pages, I am still cruising the book and wishing I had the digital edition as well. This is a work to dip into at any page for a wealth of detailed and often absorbingly arcane information. PEPP is up to date, with entries for new poetic developments right up to the present (yes, Lavinia, Conceptual poetry, Kootenay school, and Flarf have entries, along with my own précis on “absorption,” and new entries on antropofagia, codework, cognitive poetics, Xul, Sanskrit poetry, and many more). The index alone is worth the price of admission. Here is “F” from the topical index (available on-line):
fancy fatras feigning figura figuration fili flyting folia foot formalism formula fourteener fractal verse fragment Frankfurt school frottola and barzelletta furor poeticus