Tadeusz Pióro

'The New Polish Poetry'

In Jacket 29

John Tranter

Polish girl: photo -- Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs

An selection of poems from Altered State — The New Polish Poetry. Edited by Rod Mengham, Tadeusz Pióro and Piotr Szymor. Todmorden, UK: Arc Publications, 2003. Price: £10.95. This selection was chosen by Rod Mengham and John Tranter.

[»»] Marcin Baran: Hot embitterments

[»»] Julia Fiedorczuk: November on the Narew

[»»] Darek Foks: Farewell, Haiku

[»»] Mariusz Grzebalski: Slaughterhouse / Then

[»»] Krzysztof Jaworski: I used to be a slender guy

[»»] Bartłomiej Majzel: Scrumping

[»»] Maciej Melecki: Summer, getting away from yourself

Recently in Jacket2

Near/Miss launches

Charles Bernstein

New from University of Chicago Press: paper, cloth, e-book
Audible.com has also published an audiobook of my reading of the full work.

A poem as a machine?

Margaret Rhee

William Carlos Williams wrote in his introduction to The Wedge (1944) that “[a] poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words”; or “poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.”[i] A poet and physician, Williams is most known for plums, the everyday, minimalistic, rhythmic meter and lineation.

On Lydia Davis's 'In the Train Station'

Al Filreis

In 2017 I moderated an interview/conversation with Lydia Davis. At one point I asked her to read "In the Train Station," a prose poem or microstory I have admired and puzzled over. Then she and I discussed it. A video clip of that exchange is here, below. The transcription was done by Regina Salmons. The text of the piece can be read here. Here is a link to a video recording of an 18-minute discussion of this piece with Anna Strong Safford and erica kaufman (the video is inside the ModPo site; one must register to watch). And here is a 35-minute collaborative close reading (with 20 people) of the same piece which I hosted in San Francisco.