John Mateer

Multicultural sleep

A review of 'Fainting with Freedom' by Ouyang Yu

Insouciance may be an undervalued poetic quality. In this latest collection by the Chinese Australian poet, novelist, editor, and translator Ouyang Yu, the attitude of insouciance is also a cultural strategy. It reflects Yu’s own movements as a writer and citizen, that is, situated “in Oz or China / Or both.”[1]

Infidel poetics

A review of John Mateer's 'Unbelievers'

Bonny Cassidy

Reading John Mateer’s recent collection of poems, we experience a pleasantly alienating affect of suspension from emotional involvement, political certainties, and location. At the same time, Unbelievers, or ‘The Moor’ is dominated by the condition of its speaker — a discursive, self-reflexive persona, which has been continuous throughout Mateer’s poetic oeuvre.

Recently in Jacket2

Wolgamot & Me: In Memoriam Keith Waldrop

Charles Bernstein

Keith Waldrop discovered John Barton Wolgamot’s 1944 poem, IN SARA, MENCKEN, CHRIST AND BEETHOVEN THERE WERE MEN AND WOMEN while browsing in a bookshop, as he recounts here. The poem was to remain a touchstone for him both its poetic power but also as a icon of how quixotic our poetic achievement are.

Excavating intimacies

A review of Siwar Masannat’s ‘cue’

Georgiana de Rham

From left to right: the cover of “cue,” Siwar Masannat.

Siwar Masannat is a Jordanian writer, poet, educator, and editor currently based in Milwaukee. cue, Masannat’s second book of poetry, emerges from her engagement with Akram Zaatari’s project Hashem El Madani: Studio Practices, which brought El Madani’s compelling photographs of community members in Saida, Lebanon, to a global audience.

cue
Siwar Masannat
University of Georgia Press 2024, 82 pages, $19.95, ISBN 9780820365978

Your voice in my mouth (PoemTalk #201)

Trish Salah, "The Voice" & "Detoured Come Tomorrow"

PoemTalk

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Kay Gabriel, Syd Zolf, and Levi Bentley joined Al Filreis in the Wexler Studio of the Kelly Writers House to discuss two poems by Trish Salah. The poems can be found in Lyric Sexology Volume 1: “Interlude 4: The Voice” and “Detoured Come Tomorrow.” Lyric Sexology was published by Metonymy Press in 2017. The poems can be read HERE. Our recordings of Trish Salah performing these poems comes from an interview conducted by Christy Davids in the same Wexler Studio February 10, 2017. You can hear the poems and the entire conversation at Salah’s PennSound page. This episode of PoemTalk was co-curated by Al Filreis and Syd Zolf.

October 22, 2024