Reviews

Devisable matter and sheer overjoy

A review of Peter Richards's 'Helsinki'

Even though I might try to define Helsinki in Peter Richards’s latest collection of the same name, I don’t think it would be all that constructive an endeavor. It is, however, important to note that location is integral in that it is a reoccurring motif as well as the gesture of the book’s title. But when I say location, I hesitate to affirm the specificity that the wordimplies; rather, the locative forces that energize Helsinki do more to strip the idea of location of its specificity, transforming the lyric into a mode that sustains placelessness, a medium through which lush imagery and skewed perspective enact a state of being instead of a particular setting.

The poetry that populates Helsinki’s five sections does not have titles, only three addition symbols at the top of each page occupying the spaces where titles might go.

Literature's nuisance: (Riding) Jackson's memoir

A review of 'The Person I Am: The Literary Memoirs of Laura (Riding) Jackson'

Becky Peterson

Rarely do authors talk back to the literary apparatus — criticism, reviews, biographies —that builds up around their work. In the two-volume collection of Laura (Riding) Jackson’s “literary memoirs,” (Riding) Jackson does just that, while also providing new insights into her theories on literature, ethics, and the topic of memoir itself. As (Riding) Jackson wrote in 1984, she faced “a stream of published erroneous representations of myself, my thought, my writings” (2:229).

A longer stay

A review of Stacy Doris's 'Fledge: A Phenomenology of Spirit'

Maxine Chernoff

Media vita in Morta Sumus (In the midst of life we are in death). — Bobulus Noctar, 10th century

As with all last words or nearly last words, we are left wanting more. For, if we have known the writer and her work, we want to hear the words spoken in her own voice. We want more words, more books, a longer stay. We are left with Fledge: A Phenomenology of Spirit, the book Stacy Doris finished shortly before her death in January 2012 at the age of forty-nine. The project as any — but with the additional urgency of it being her last — asks the reader the fundamental questions — what state of being/mind preoccupied Stacy Doris composing this last book?

The snapshot poem

A review of Frances Chung's 'Crazy Melon’

Cristiana Baik

Photographs furnish evidence. — Susan Sontag

Poetry as virtual community

A review of 'The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography'

Luke Harley

Maude Fife Room, UC–Berkeley, November 18, 2011. As eight of the ten “pianists” — Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Kit Robinson, and Barrett Watten — worked their way through a performance and Q&A session of The Grand Piano, a few things quickly became discernible.[1]