Commentaries - June 2012

Writing through wikileaks

Using Matthew McCabe's Mesostomatic, I made a mesostic poem using "Julian Assange" as the spinetext and the wikipedia entry on wikileaks as the sourctext.

From 'America a Prophecy: Anthology as Collage' (Dekanawideh, Whitman, Pound, Stein)

[In a previous posting on Poems & Poetics I followed Susan Howe’s lead in calling attention to the effort by George Quasha & myself – in America a Prophecy (1973) – to create a new form of anthology, not so much a ranking of notable American poets as a juxtaposition of disparate, often incongruous voices, putting collage or assemblage at the service of a new omnipoetics, “from pre-Columbian times to the present.” While that much was clear to some at the time of first publication, to others – like Helen Vendler in a characteristically obtuse review of the book – the point of the work was clearly beyond their tolerance or comprehension. What appears here, then, are the four opening poems from America a Prophecy, brought together as a foretelling of the total work to follow. That work, after a long hiatus, is newly re-available through Quasha’s Station Hill Press – a limited printing but enough to get the book back into circulation. ]

Poetics@, ed. Joel Kuszai: EPC Library epub edition

Poetics List book from Roof, 1999

POETICS@
conversations from the first years of the Poetics List
Edited by Joel Kuszai
Preface by Charles Bernstein
(Roof Books, 1999)
new from EPC Digital Library
epub (e-book format), mobi (Kindle), pdf

What's in the mags?

brief 44 / 45 – Oceania (2012)

brief 44-45 - Oceania
photograph by Scott Hamilton / cover design by Brett Cross

It’s not that easy to keep a literary magazine going in New Zealand. Longevity is, of course, not always the point of such projects. Sometimes a journal – Oriflamme (1939-42), Morepork (1979-80), AND (1983-85), the pander (1997-99) achieves its aims in a few issues, and can then be safely consigned to the library shelves – or the backrooms of secondhand bookshops.

Brian Reed and Harryete Mullen: new essay collections from University of Alabama Press

20 percent discount on all series tiles

Use discount code: MCP when ordering. Orders from MCP series are eligible for free shipping.