Commentaries - October 2015

An interview with Black Ocean

Into the magic

Black Ocean's Carrie Adams responds.

Black Ocean, publishing quality books of poetry that you may have heard of, responds to my query. My hope is that you'll check out their amazing catalog after you find out what publisher and co-founder Carrie Adams has to say about the press and its history and influences.

a. How did you get the name Black Ocean?

Quiet now

C.A. Aguilera. Photograph by Dita Aguilera G.
C.A. Aguilera. Photograph by Dita Aguilera G.

Whereas Nelson Villalobos articulates visual qualities so important to the poetic gesticulations of Angel Escobar, Carlos A. Aguilera captures Escobar’s motion in terms of theater, another arena of expression that was important to the poet. Aguilera depicts Escobar’s lyric selves on stage, jerking through poems with the grace and awkwardness of marionettes. His remarks culminate with the audience's stunned and necessary silence.

Mikhl Likht: 'Processions V'

Translation from Yiddish by Ariel Resnikoff & Stephen Ross

Quick now

Villalobo & Escobar, San Miguel del Padrón, 1987. Photo by Eva Leal Lavandera.
Villalobo & Escobar, San Miguel del Padrón, 1987. Photo by Eva Leal Lavandera.

Angel Escobar’s awareness of motion is one of the many elements that make his poems undeniably powerful.  To me, as I translate his poems, there is no doubt that Escobar (1957-1997) created multivalent, energetic work, and that a quick reading of one or two poems at least hints at his range. Other writers, at the very least other poets, must recognize the surety of his movements. 

A slowing 9: Necessary unsayability (or: what the poetic makes)

Image: looking back is for the birds (detail), 2012 by Jennifer Wroblewski

At some point, yesterday or long ago, you read a poem and something happened to you: and you thought, or you didn’t quite think: yes. And this affirmative recognized a need, or a touch, or more precisely an answer to a question you hadn't even asked. The question hadn’t existed until the work appeared to create it, opening that space, revealing a gap.

At some point, yesterday or long ago, you read a poem and something happened to you: and you thought, or you didn’t quite think: yes. And this affirmative recognized a need, or a touch, or more precisely an answer to a question you hadn't even asked. The question hadn’t existed until the work appeared to create it, opening that space, revealing a gap.