Amit Chaudhuri asked me to meet him at New York's Museum of Modern Art on September 22, 2022, to talk about the museum's way of framing modern art, bouncing off a conversation we had at the museum a few years earlier. A starting point for the conversation is my essay "Disfiguring Abstraction" in Pitch of Poetry. Chaudhuri deepens and enriches my attempts to get outside the "Western Box" (as Olson called it ) when looking at some of my favorite works of art. This is the first in what will be a series of video conversations for Chauhuri's web site Literary Activism, where this video was first posted. Note: ambient sound from IPhone (vertical image).
“The mind is a blazing that gives off embers,” Will Alexander writes in the inscription in my copy of his blazing ars poetica,The Contortionist Whispers.) These three books from 2021/22, from Action, Roof, & New Directions, are an astounding contribution to North American poetry and poetics.
The struggle for freedom continues in Iran, sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who was murdered by the Iranian state for violating a mandatory dress code for woman. Last week, activist and poet Sepideh Jodeyri asked me to make a video for her friends in Iran and around the world; she posted this on IG and Twitter. I am grateful for the work she and Shahrzad F. Shams are doing in this difficult time, where hope is mixed with dread.
from World on Fire in Girly Man (University of Chicago Press, 2006)
"In a Restless World Like This Is" first appeared in World on Fire, which was published in Vancouver by Peter and Meredith Quatermain's Nomados in 2004, 24pp, with a cover image by Suan Bee. Meredith Quatermain's and Ron Silliman's responses to the book are at the EPC.
Today is the worldwide reading of the works of Salman Rushdie, sponsored by the Berlin Literary Festival. Watch Pierre Joris talk about the attack on Rushdie, with my introduction. Joris's essay was published this month in the Brooklyn Rail.We both then read from The Satanic Verses -- listen to the audio linked below.
"In a Restless World Like This Is" first appeared in World on Fire, which was published in Vancouver by Peter and Meredith Quatermain's Nomados in 2004, 24pp, with a cover image by Suan Bee. Meredith Quatermain's and Ron Silliman's responses to the book are at the 