Erica Hunt sets this reading up by calling Alexander a metaphysician. One of her students said “like Jimi Hendrix.” Hunt says yes and also Aimé Césaire, Jayne Cortez. How are they all metaphysicians? What permutation of Black Magic is this political postmodern grimoire? What is it evoking?
Just before reading my bullet points and notes on Will Alexander’s poem, I read a story, saw a video that speculated on how Mars looked before it lost its atmosphere. There are speculations about how this happened, how it lost its magnetic poles, but it went from earthlike with seas and air and clouds to a rusty tomb, where our small land robots search for evidence of microfossils from billions of years ago. I thought about this kind of sifting from a whole to atomic, from the big bang’s busting to dust.
Bernstein on PoemTalk
Allen Ginsberg Sings Blake
Tuli Kupferberg
Vachel Lindsay
Jackson Mac Low
Akilah Oliver: transcription
Charles Olson
Maggie O'Sullivan
Ezra Pound
George Quasha
Naomi Replansky
Armand Schwerner
Wallace Stevens
Hannah Weiner
William Carlos Williams
Louis Zukofsky (with transcription)