Friday, February 03, 2006

Reading Material

Delightedly received today: The latest issue of Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics (#30-31, Fall 2005-Winter 2006). This one has nutty goodness in every bite, friends, including new work by Hank Lazer, John Olson, and a bunch of others, reviews by Susan Smith Nash, Tony Tost, and Norman Finkelstein (and a bunch of others), and a selection of North Carolina Poets edited by Joe Donahue. The centerpiece of the issue, however, is a memorial festschrift for Gustaf Sobin, who died last year. There are pieces here – mostly poems – by some very fine poets indeed: Peter Cole, Forrest Gander, Pierre Joris, Robert Kelly, Cole Swensen, Charles Tomlinson, Michael Palmer. There's a snippet of new work by Susan Howe, a piece of something called Souls of the Labadie Tract:
I'll borrow chapel voices
Song and dance of treble
bass for remembrance Stilt-
Walker Plate-Spinner air
piebaldly dressed heart's
content embroidered note
Distant diapason delight
Like most of the excerpted Howe I happen upon, it makes me itch to get my hands on her next book.

Yes, and there's my review of Michael Heller's latest, Uncertain Poetries: Essays on Poets, Poetry, and Poetics. But don't let that put you off of running out and buying a copy.

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