Tag Archives: Alicia Ostriker

Books

Eliot Katz’s Unofficial Study Guide for “Tweets from Hell”

January 2, 2020

As a way of prepping for Suzanne Lummis’s world debut presentation of “Tweets from Hell” at Beyond Baroque tomorrow evening (Friday, January 3; 8 p.m.), I would recommend as an unofficial study guide the long excerpt from Eliot Katz’s manuscript in progress, which has just been published in Dispatches from the Poetry Wars:

Excerpts from President Predator: Poems for the Trump Years 

For those in the NYC area, Katz will reading with NY State Poet Laureate Alicia Ostriker and Colorado-based poet Jim Cohn (www.poetspath.com) at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, near Houston, NYC) on Monday evening, January 27, from 6-7:30 p.m. More information about this reading is posted on the Calendar section of www.bowerypoetry.com.

Books Ground Level Conditions Painting and Sculpture Poetry

Fernando Lozano — “The Faces Behind the Torture”

The winter (2014) issue of Prairie Schooner features a very substantial portfolio of poems entitled “Women and the Global Imagination,” edited by Alicia Suskin Ostriker.  If you have time to read only one poem in the issue, let it be Zimbabwean poet Batsirai E. Chigama’s “Democracy” on page 70.

I wish I could have had a copy of Chigama’s poem with me to post last night alongside a show of paintings by Fernando Lozano, “The Faces Behind the Torture.” Lozano’s show opened at the end of January and will be closed by the time anyone reads this posting, but Gary Leonard’s “Take My Picture Gallery” deserves praise for refusing the let the issue of American hypocrisy be discarded or muted. In particular, I want to praise the piece entitled “Illegal,” in which Rumsfield, Bush and Cheney all seem to stare at some common point of erased reality; Rumsfield’s upthrust chin punctuates their commitment to ideological purification, all of it in the name of “Democracy.” If their ideal has a statue in its harbor to greet emigrants, it is the hooded, tortured figure to their side, whose suffering and degradation represent the price that others must pay for this trio’s fantasy.

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The Spring issue of the San Pedro River Review, edited by Jeffrey Alfier and Tobi Alfier, is now out. It features poems around the subject of “fathers” and the poets selected by the editors include Christopher Buckley, Don Kingfisher Campbell, Marcus Clayton, Marsha de la O, David Diaz, W.D. Ehrhart, Bruce Guernsey, Adrian C. Louis, Ramsey Mathews, Bill Mohr, Naomi Shihab Nye, Gina Valdes, and Fred Voss.

The issue costs $9.00 and is well worth it. The next submission period is the month of July.

http://www.sprreview.com

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The newest magazine in today’s posting is AMERICAN MUSTARD, which is primarily available on-line, but print copies are available by purchase to the contributors and any interested readers. The second issue has many poets whose work I am familiar with and would highly recommend to all of you.

http://americanmustard.weebly.com/issues.html
FEATURING

Suzanne Allen
Olivier Bochettaz
Alan Britt
George Gordon N. Byron
Marcus Clayton
David Diaz
Larry Duncan
Shane Eaves
Rick Lupert
Tamara Madison
Zach Mann
Jax NTP
Rene Prade
Mae Ramirez
Kevin Ridgeway
Gideon Rock
Patty Seyburn
Olivia Somes
Lynne Thompson
AJ Urquidi
Janea Wilson
Cecilia Woloch