Reviews - October 2015

Sensual infrastructure

A review of Jen Currin's 'School'

I bought Jen Currin’s School at Seattle’s beloved Open Books: A Poem Emporium. A friend encouraged me to get the collection, so I did.

Dear Diane Wald

Michael Kelleher

March 13, 2013

Dear Diane Wald,

Two days ago I received a large box in the mail. It looked as if it had been bounced around in a washing machine for several days. Two corners were crushed. It survived the journey from Pennsylvania to Connecticut thanks to yards of clear packing tape wrapped around it. There were thirty-five books of poetry inside, one of them yours.

On Cara Benson's 'made'

{experimental reflection}

Laura Goldstein

It occurs to me that god made the earth in six days with a kinetic force so unimaginable it knit streams of life together in somatic sentences that make too much sense to see in words. In an alternate version of the story of creation from the Kabbalah, sparks of light become language when they reach the earth after falling through space. What’s the connection between language and energy? Our regular, everyday language holds great potential for multiple meanings but is utilized mostly for description.

Dear Danielle Pafunda

Michael Kelleher

April 22, 2013

Dear Danielle Pafunda,

After reading the first few “Mommy” poems in Manhater, I put the book down. Partly, this was because they made me feel creepy, but mostly it was because I felt compelled to look you up on Facebook. I am not sure what I wanted to find out that wasn’t written in your bio, but I looked you up anyway.

Creative defense

Pafunda's 'Natural History Rape Museum'

Megan Burns

(Italics are Pafunda’s)

Here is the tug of it, the long sweep down: You get this from binary systems agreed upon
before you
arrived. Where is
your rage?

If you have
brought it, if you
can carry it: Then proceed.