Thursday, December 27, 2018

One of the most important literary magazines of the period between 1950 and 1970 was James Boyer May’s TRACE, edited and published in Los Angeles. One of its contributors is largely forgotten today, though he was a poet whose literary “career” was similar to George Oppen’s, in that both had a significant period during which they devoted themselves to radical political activity rather than give precedence to writing poems.

Here are some links to background information to Lowenfels, who deserves to have more scholarship done on his work with the same degree of thoroughness as Michael Davidson and Stephen Cope addressed the poetry and notebooks of George Open in recent decades. In fact, this new scholar’s initial work will be somewhat easier because that person can easily and directly access much of Lowenfels’s work thanks to the Upenn website; there is no excuse for scholars not to begin to embed his work more prominently in their critiques of 20th century American literature.

http://wap.mlb.com/pit/news/article/20181214301867134/

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Lowenfels.php

http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/prose/walter_lowenfels.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lowenfels

The following material was first printed in issues 33 and 35 of TRACE magazine.

“Paragraphs” by Walter Lowenfels

A poem comes from a new misreading of history.

You have to write quickly these days. Otherwise your style changes and your particular theme loses itself.

What does Gautier’s “arcana of daily travail” mean? That you
have to get closer to the point where the poem writes itself automatically.

For me poems have been a way of living rather than a way
of literature. It was only when I quit thinking that poems were actually possible that I began to make them.

Something in every poem escapes the moment it has been created
– the underlying totality the poet carries with him. On the other hand—something is added – the totality the reader carries with him. When the two are close to one you have the minimum basis for a poem.

The poem ought to be read to end the instant it begins.

The poem has to get worse and worse. Only so it gets better and better. As the grass of the world goes deader, the grass of the poem goes whiter.

* * *

PARAGRAPHS by Walter Lowenfels

I don’t agree with anybody, and the only way I can indicate it is
a poem.

Tomorrow’s poem is still an exile from a land we are trying to find.

That a poem ends is just as mysterious as that it begins.

If it can be said in half the words, it is twice as good.

We have to live poems to make poems…

If you take dancing seriously, a poet is a man without a tongue,
shouting at an audience without ears.

(issue 35)

Sunday, December 23, 2018

At the end of yesterday’s post, I listed the half-dozen books by poets that I would recommend from the shelves of 2018’s publications. Not everybody has enough time, however, especially during the holidays, to peruse an article, so I am providing the “short list” version today, with best wishes for the holiday week! Once again, I would emphasize that not a single one of the books on my list of favorites yesterday made any list by other critics. The politics of book reviewing appears to be just as fragmented as our political landscape. Today, I am expanding my initial list to a total of ten titles, which does reflect some overlapping, discrete preferences.

TOP HONORS TO:
If This Is Paradise, Why Are We Still Driving by Brendan Lorber (Subplot)

(and in authorial alphabetical order)
Wobble by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan)
Feeld by jos Charles (Milkweed)
Strata by Ewa Chrusciel (Omnidawn)
Shell Game by Jordan Davis (Edge Books)
City of the Future by Sesshu Foster (Kaya Press)
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes (Penguin)
Ghost Of by Siana Khoi Nguyen (Omnidawn)
Wade in the Water – Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf)
Sidebend World by Charles Harper Webb (University of Pittsburgh)

Of course, one is always trying to catch up with one’s stack of book to read. The particular book I am most looking forward to reading in the near future is Like by A. E. Stallings (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), and hope to review it sometime in January, 2019. Its absence from the above list should not be taken as an indication of its likely quality. Unfortunately, though, I am not on any book reviewing list, and do not receive any free copies of books.

THE HEFTY FAVORITES:
In many ways, it’s unfair to compare huge collections of poetry with individual collections under 120 pages. I am, therefore, picking two large volumes I would highly recommend separate from shorter collections.
Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017 by Michael Lally (Seven Stories)
Monument: Poems New and Selected by Natasha Trethewey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Note: A few weeks ago, I posted a review of Webb’s book, and for those wishing to read additional commentary on it, here are some links:

Walking a Loose Rope: ‘Sidebend World’ by Charles Harper Webb

Sidebend World by Charles Harper Webb

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/60511

Postscript: I certain wish the companies that control keyboard instructions would not require me to correct their decisions about what I want to appear on the screen. When I type Mr. Lorber’s last name, I would like it to remain Lorber, and not suddenly appear as Lobber. In the same manner, when I type “Sidebend World,” I would prefer that “Sidebend” not to show up on the screen as “Sideband”! I suppose I should be grateful that Mr. Lorber and Mr. Webb did not each decide on the other’s titles, so that I had to correct the following “suggestion: “Sideband World” by Brendan Lobber.