Reviews

On Cara Benson's 'made'

{experimental reflection}

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.

Dear Andrew Levy

Michael Kelleher

June 6, 2013

Dear Andrew Levy,

In my copy of Nothing Is in Here, on page one, a mark shaped like an upright rectangle with the top left corner shorn off at a steep angle sits between the words in the phrase “vanilla middle.” It looks as though it could be an inkblot. I found myself wondering if this stray mark had meaning, sitting as it did in the middle of the phrase “vanilla middle.” But why would the “vanilla” middle be black?

I made a mental note to return to the mark once I’d finished the book.

(Soma)tic poetry reading enhancement

Andrea Rexilius's 'New Organism'

CAConrad

MAKE SOUP but you are reading. Make your body from soup infused with poems. Read pages from NEW ORGANISM directly into the vegetables. My soup had parsnips, cauliflower, beets, and sweet potato, with sautéed brussel sprouts and garlic-filled polenta fritters. READ these marvelous poems INTO the parsnip, “Discontinuous residence of story / Aperture in the holding space,” then float it in the pot of heating water. The soup absorbing poetry and we will taste these poems. Read into the water just before it boils, “Society writes her desire, fucking, end-stopped, overflowing.