tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44112459660924731122024-03-21T14:05:03.482-07:00ASEM ALTARCURTIS JENSEN // VERSE / PROSE / TRANSLATIONCurtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.comBlogger69125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-17670703723279185422011-07-15T10:52:00.000-07:002011-07-15T10:57:08.342-07:00THESE SIGNALS PRESS 002<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv96usaiYNCUgQWfcmX7ZrelM-n2idNheMtNfgn7aRDKPU2eGXLBj2NKrwZNoIb7_x_b2WBqx9l4IIbNp443XnYq5xSOUpzSvrPkSi9XxKrxD27INzmY_vbHeqnWa1mo11pGnLMFqSmYA/s1600/On+Feltmaking+pic.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 238px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv96usaiYNCUgQWfcmX7ZrelM-n2idNheMtNfgn7aRDKPU2eGXLBj2NKrwZNoIb7_x_b2WBqx9l4IIbNp443XnYq5xSOUpzSvrPkSi9XxKrxD27INzmY_vbHeqnWa1mo11pGnLMFqSmYA/s320/On+Feltmaking+pic.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5629639556037374690" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">On Feltmaking</span> is availble on NYC's These Signals Press.<br /><br />Check it <a href="http://thesesignals.blogspot.com/2011/05/cuhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrtis-jensen-on-feltmaking.html">here</a>.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-7950323366764705242011-05-01T14:22:00.000-07:002011-05-01T14:25:42.314-07:00FROM SUGAR HOUSE REVIEW: CHRIS MARTIN'S BECOMING WEATHERfrom SHR Spring / Summer 2011: <a href="http://www.sugarhousereview.com/contact.html#martin"></a><br /><br />Becoming Weather by Chris Martin (Coffee House Press, 2010)<br />Reviewed by Curtis Jensen<br /><br />Chris Martin, in Becoming Weather, tracks between registers closely situated and theoretically distant, registers loosely coordinate with the particularly experienced the abstractly removed. Becoming Weather is significant in that it addresses the dual registers of human experience, the instant and the infinite, by poems which both contain and enact this duality. That is to say Martin manifests the dualism of Becoming Weather’s content by means of its tensioned form and vice versa. From Disequilibrium, the first section of Becoming Weather:<br /><br />6<br />What we ask ourselves<br />Now is—What is forgivable?<br /><br />I move to bare<br />the little splitting<br />inside as it<br /><br />reds between<br />the pink on the end<br />of my finger<br /><br />Somehow this coincides<br />with a faith in<br />the world as a place<br /><br />In 6, Martin attends to that which we ask ourselves and the pink on the end / of my finger, the abstract and critical and the close and experiential. In terms of content, the compositional field of the poem is marked. Extending from 6 to Becoming Weather as a whole, Martin’s pathos-rich poetic voice traces across the book a weave both local and global, highly personal and highly public. A sort of inscape is formed, but unlike Hopkins, Becoming Weather does not explicitly intend its instresses of poetic attention to some logocentric being or trope or combination of the two. Martin calls to the reader early in the text:<br /><br />I’m asking you<br /><br />if it’s possible to refuse<br />to go blind—I for whom<br /><br />the divers tones<br />of a mental life meld<br /><br />at once<br />So is it<br /><br />the infinite or<br />the instantaneous<br /><br />quality of movement<br />that frightens us more?<br /><br />Martin marks his registers, instantaneous and infinite, and he situates his poetic voice in a differential position between them, between I and for whom, between subject and object. Martin’s vocation is to voice the inspired moments of his existence, to sing the correspondence between instance and infinity, between spots of time and high virtues, between epiphanies close at hand and the void beyond what is not at hand. Romantic and late-romantic poetics are applicable to Martin’s poems, but fail to account for the formal signature of Martin’s subject/object position. Thus Martin is set with the task of both seeing and saying:<br /><br />8<br />Can I say the air<br />is beautiful?<br /><br />Can I spend my whole life<br />as a guest inside the eccentric<br />balloon?<br /><br />Let us release<br />these appearances<br />and in so<br /><br />doing hold<br />fast to what burden<br />bodies make<br /><br />thick returning<br />to us their<br />unconscious care<br /><br />Can I spend my whole life as a gust<br />outside the eccentric balloon?<br /><br />Can I see the air<br />as beautiful?<br /><br />A follow-up question to stanza 2 could be: if not a speaking subject, then what? By inverting the opening couplet into the closing couplet, saying and seeing bind together in chiasm; Martin demonstrates the two acts’ integral interrelationship in the formation of the speaking subject. For Martin the poet must attend to both inside and outside, must attempt both saying and seeing. But how can one do both, how can someone be both inside and outside? In order to manage this duality, an ethics of instability (see Ted Mathys’s interview with Martin, soon to appear on coffeehousepress.org) is practically entailed and a poetics that privileges movement between registers is deployed. Across the poem and the book Martin flickers (and he must) between subjectivity and objectivity, the instant and the infinite in order to attempt both. Martin’s poetic voice tends towards a reflection of something essentially dualistic by function of its demonstrated vocation as well as its chosen subject. In this way, Becoming Weather is a rich working out of Martin’s poetics, a poetic vocation dually composite of a self-declared and content-determined set of imperatives.<br /><br />I’m a man<br />becoming weather<br /><br />None of this is to suggest that Martin aims for the expression of an imagined algorithm of nature—though the moment that one of Martin’s poems seems to alight on a mimetic perch, it just as quickly veers away. But this figure happens less in the way a finch flits instinctively about and more in the way a deliberately composed loop is shaken out from a lariat. Accordingly, as often as the poems of Becoming Weather appear to manifest themselves, Martin clearly composes them.<br /><br />Now if you would<br />gently tip<br />the assemblage<br />I will breathe<br />my torrent<br />once more<br /><br />Both contingency and composition hold places of privilege in Martin’s poetics. In Becoming Weather, perceptions follow one another quickly, but simultaneously Martin affects a subtle, tense chord between an emphasis on the open field and the particulars brought to position in that field. This tension is reflected in the poems’ movements between registers concrete and abstract. Across the book, Martin achieves the radical Disequilibrium he sets out to enact. Martin both sings, to borrow more terms from Charles Olson, from a position of objectism, and sees from a position of objectivism. Though at times the work tips too far towards it theoretical ground, threatening to topple irrecoverably into the discourses of critical thought, it does not. Thus the work achieves through form an enactment of its own content, and it does so in the pathos-rich timbre of Martin’s poetic voice. Martin’s poetic inheritances are in this way clearly present in the book’s figures (Oppen, Guest, and Berrigan are mentioned the book’s last section, Chorus); the book presents a flush document of Martin’s movement into a deeply dual poetics from a position informed by late modern poetry.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-82542324521346842412011-03-12T10:47:00.000-08:002011-03-12T10:52:09.057-08:00EVENTS IN A SEQUENCE<iframe width="600" height="700" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Locomotive+Springs+road,+UT&aq=&sll=37.926868,-95.712891&sspn=55.058457,49.130859&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=41.816361,-112.757492&spn=0.358223,0.411301&z=11&output=embed"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=Locomotive+Springs+road,+UT&aq=&sll=37.926868,-95.712891&sspn=55.058457,49.130859&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=41.816361,-112.757492&spn=0.358223,0.411301&z=11" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map</a></small>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-9405738202260047742011-02-07T09:51:00.000-08:002011-02-07T09:52:30.399-08:00Interview w/ Kevin Spenstfrom <a href="http://kevinspenst.com/">http://kevinspenst.com/</a><br /><br />Through the site Precipitate, I came across the work of Curtis Jensen, a poet who has lived and worked in Utah, Wyoming, Ukraine and now Brooklyn. He maintains a blog at the end of waste and was good enough to answer the following questions:<br /><br />How do you work your way through revisions? Do you have any tricks or theories to removing commas, words or lines?<br /><br />I usually work through revisions in pencil, on paper, reading / speaking to myself out loud as I write.<br /><br />Regarding punctuation, it depends on the poem or set of poems. Over the last year or so I’ve drifted away from using commas and end punctuation, and now I’m sort of drifting back. If I am using punctuation, I usually have an imagined hierarchized scheme for it all–certain symbols mark sentence-interior phrasal breaks, other symbols mark sentence-end phrasal breaks.<br /><br />If a line sticks in my ears or for my eyes (I try and give my ears more attention as a general rule, but that doesn’t always work out), I piece the line out in a sort of hashed up phrase-level sentence diagram, or I scan it with my own mongrel version of Derek Attridge’s phrasal scansion, or I do both.<br /><br />I look for points at which more syntactic energy can be built in to the poem (lately this has seemed to be a function of keeping an eye out for the chance to exploit the charge between subject and object by way of predicative ambiguity, but there’s more than 1 way to pluck a goose when it comes to this stuff) and more formal patterning or variation can be teased out of the poem.<br /><br />Once I’ve moved through a round of all of that, I usually type and print a draft sheet of the poem. More often than not I try out drafts at readings–there’s something about getting a poem in your mouth in front of an audience in the charged space of a reading that can really show where poem is charging itself or not.<br /><br />Most poems, after a couple rounds of all of this, settle out into something close to finished.<br /><br />Robert Lowell wrote that “Revision is inspiration.” To what extent do you think that’s true? How would you rewrite Lowell: “Revision is __________”<br /><br />Revision is usually for me a function more of composition than of generating text. But not always.<br /><br />Any pet peeves when it comes to editing your work or someone else’s?<br /><br />I’d rather not do either when I’m out in an icestorm. In fact I’d rather just avoid icestorms.<br /><br />Are there any lines from an early draft of a poem that you’d like to share? What ideas, principles or gut feelings guided you through those changes?<br /><br />I’m working on a longer project about John D Lee, a figure from Mormon history. Last night at Prospect 60WANU5, from a new poem I’m working on in which I sort of throw Lee’s voice, I misread<br /><br />A friend is one’s second self,<br />& you are my third wife, loyal<br />To all ends the word of God is holy<br />As are our bodies our wealth<br /><br />as<br /><br />A friend is one’s second wife<br />You are my third, loyal …<br /><br />The formal integrity of the stanza holds up with the change, it’s nice to have wife out of the 3rd line, and its pretty ridiculous to take on the voice of a polygamist and say things like that, so I think I’ll keep it. It was a complete moment of parapraxis–I as guided by my inability to read.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-77607102046992986342011-02-03T10:16:00.000-08:002011-02-03T10:32:03.118-08:00WILLIS ARNOLD SESSIONS 1.23.11<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uTu1SRf3b-XvH5bFFKFUnFTcg64wob1UtcXYDll2NGoMnNxbC0g6gCyYhoWGJqOIcDSDh063p_WI0Gds54nqwO2FUcozEUQ9kLrWKPrEJRAX9LGHj7Y-sGVCiGs-SbIW4F7ebJxw_6o/s1600/IMG_8562.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9uTu1SRf3b-XvH5bFFKFUnFTcg64wob1UtcXYDll2NGoMnNxbC0g6gCyYhoWGJqOIcDSDh063p_WI0Gds54nqwO2FUcozEUQ9kLrWKPrEJRAX9LGHj7Y-sGVCiGs-SbIW4F7ebJxw_6o/s320/IMG_8562.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569529359730295586" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> LYMAN WYOMING<br /><br /><br />See the homestead in white to indicate<br />No trees no water which is accurate<br />Though a map of such scale won’t explain.<br /><br />How to see the homestead see its pole barn<br />Hand-drilled flagstones<br />Now there is nothing.<br /><br />Where the mindeye began on the ground<br />Memory ends the barn roof assumes<br />An axon hillock.<br /><br />Where the blue-blank scoria meets the open<br />The soma along which we run<br />I see the map I see us.<br /><br />With open sights fire on the coyote<br />Fire across the desiccate flat.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />MOUNTAIN VIEW WYOMING<br /><br /><br />—Season she's done her best to tear down<br />The southfence to get at the diversion<br />Ditch how I come to be here let alone<br /><br />How here come to be<br />So little water I ought<br />To be getting in the winter wheat<br /><br />I mend the line she's busted<br />She's torn her leg she's tied to it<br />If she's hurt again she might quit<br /><br />Giving milk worse still push through<br />The southfence to the co-op field<br />O I know I can't hope<br /><br />To pay for this was back 2 years <br />Snow so much the mail couldn't get<br />This far out they held it in town<br /><br />Which was fine<br />Because there was no mail. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br />LOOP KINEMATICS<br /><br /><br />Loose flights of crows crows seen unheard move<br />Latidudinal across clay furrows of fields<br />To woods especially to spruces for their needles<br />Then back above houses at the road<br /><br />Leading out of a village down a slope before the ponds<br />Which have been drained by the pondskeeper<br />His consorts pluck crucian & carp<br />From the mud in dozens they do so with tridents<br /><br />As you come down the slope your legs loose-feeling<br />& your back each footfall gravels the myelin sheath<br />You pass the assemblage thin-firing the fish<br />Someone waves you wave back the electric sun<br /><br />Dendrite trees beyond which is a station<br />From there final words neuron by neuron.<br /><br />From there final words neuron by neuron<br />Dendrite trees beyond which the station<br />Place of departure place of reconstruction<br />Though 6 kilometers distant from where you run<br /><br />Now out the village up the long grade<br />The valley itself a firing place<br />Firing places in unwitting shapes<br />Walnut trees a rotten fence chests the tread<br /><br />Thin bus tire in viscous & other wheels.<br />Your hand is closed you are not from here<br />But here you have a home you leave from there<br />Having run your loop you’ve displaced nothing.<br /><br />Loose flights of crows crows seen unheard flights<br />Latitudinal across clay furrows of fields.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> INVENTORY<br /><br /><br />From the left there my 1st wife<br />My 2nd wife agreed<br />To the 3rd who entails the 4th<br />So I have 4 beautiful wives<br /><br />My 2nd wife agreed<br />As do I agree to The Principle<br />So I have 4 beautiful wives<br />We live together we are a family<br /><br />As do I agree to The Principle<br />Of Celestial Marriage eternal cooperation<br />We live together we are a family<br />We are individuals we are all agents<br /><br />Of Celestial Marriage eternal cooperation<br />Fulcrums at a hard paradox<br />We are individuals we are all agents<br />We each in agency choose obedience<br /><br />Fulcrums at a hard pivot<br />My daughters & my sons so many work<br />We each in agency choose obedience<br />Putting up the season's hay<br /><br />My daughters & my sons so many work<br />Don't you find it pleasant to watch them<br />Putting up the season's hay<br />One of many things we do here<br /><br />Don't you find it pleasant to watch them<br />If you'd like I could name them<br />One of many things we do here<br />Then you'd have a clearer sense of the place<br /><br />If you'd like I could name them<br />You could compare them to your family<br />Then you'd have a clearer sense of the place<br />We might even feel an affinity<br /><br />You could compare them to your family<br />Experience is difficult to account for<br />We might even feel an affinity<br />In such an inventory<br /><br />My 2nd wife agreed<br />From the left there my 1st wife<br />So I have 4 beautiful wives<br />The 3rd entails the 4th<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />ALDEBURGH<br /><br /><br />As though a spirit or group of entrained spirits come out of the river over me leering from the blunt hilltop I see a vertical form within which as within a lightshaft are held dust particles distinct points in space & so in motion & there is a pulpit whitewashed walls dark pews & their corresponding embroidered cushions a slate roof a triptych window illuminating human forms in a vortex of flame a father & son embracing a gyre over an estuary channel this is a church in which I along with other figures constitute a complex of figures which is a figure itself that shimmers on the neuronal layer of the rear walls of my retinas & so this complex churchfigure I take onto the sulcic surface of my brain in dozens of distinct areas this reflection takes on the damp brainsmell of that place of heartwork so I have taken in the church have you in your mind’s eye achieved stabilization of an image I have not.<br /><br />I see the frame broaden as the church flickers there I discern perhaps the room in which the churchfigure is worked now I see no longer only the church risen at the hilltop its interior distinct points I see also that from the spire emerges in compliment another spire from the slate roof an inverse roof from the floor a mirrorfloor so are the figures of this church oriented metonymically a complimentary nexus all surfaces intersecting every line expanding arrays of distinct points within & without constituent relational planes perhaps extending to infinity as it seems the complimentary churchfigures do though such distances myself I’ve yet to see perhaps by means of vision I am not equipped to do so I am here here is my conscious self centered in this multivalent churchfigure of distinct points flickering intersecting planes which constitute a figure of consciousness as there at the retina & correspondingly at the unfurling braintopos shimmers the churchfigure as would retinotopically shimmer other figures come there from the hilltop or some field of view or a pane of glass extending in all directions at once<br /><br />Which the church does hold its center which is composed of distinct points the windows pulpit slate roof pews & so forth which has been discussed which is the center of this church where this began which I see shot through with multiple panes of glass the church-on-church figure intervaled by the infinite glasspanes of projected linear time & on glass is light so the figure takes further shapes as accordingly do the retinotopic figures I discern the panes of glass constitute pairs I discern the pairs of panes move out from the center of the churchfigure which I discern expands & the figures of my experience emerge in the interelational space between the glasspanes now I’ve come into light flickering between the glasspairs that widening space bares something of the external world’s relation to the active topography of the brain.<br /><br />So. There is light now on dozens of distinct areas of my brain. Dawn shines through words cut through a steel scallop words in color of infinite gradation color beyond the measure by which I could ever hope to discern though there nonetheless are the figures of the words constituted in light these words of Benjamin Britten’s: I hear those voices that will not be drowned. Sulcic in its form is the vertical scallop which shimmers in the dawnlight as is the brain sulcic & as is also the shingle sulcic & iced-over this morning the shinglestones in the ice hold their surface then the ice gives way the stones of the shingle composite of the beachberm these stones move out one foot comes to be between them & on the stones & ice again another foot holds then also comes to be between them again again again as she & I & her father make our ways out of Aldeburgh towards Thorpeness which drifts away.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />CHICKENCOOP<br /><br /><br />& steel mesh there is dung there in the shed<br />Is shadow galvanized hare-brained feather fibers<br />Soiled cellulose nestbowls yellow as Father’s<br />Watchchain elktooth steel to his watchpocket shadow<br /><br />Beneath the makeshift palletfloor there voles<br />& mice are beetles too after which hens jab<br />June grasshoppers vibrate or a worm warm dab<br />Of sun in the coopshade a wasp growls<br /><br />From the eaves from empty space thin & freckled<br />Her fingertips, wrist, forearm plunge out the light<br />Dab to the nestbox the shadow below a churl-white<br />Hen slips to darkness in hand she takes mucus & blood<br /><br />Splotched an oval a keratin-knobbed egg<br />A warm oblong enfoldment of circles: behold.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-66215138578204504022011-01-26T17:18:00.000-08:002011-01-26T17:22:02.969-08:00PROSPECT 60WANU5<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://observatoryroom.org/files/2011/01/prospect-6owanu5-promo-image.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 212px;" src="http://observatoryroom.org/files/2011/01/prospect-6owanu5-promo-image.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><a href="http://observatoryroom.org/2011/01/18/prospect-60wanu5/">PROSPECT 60WANU5</a><br /><br />A reading with poets Jen Bervin, Corina Copp, Abraham Avnisan, Gracie Leavitt, and Curtis Jensen<br />Date: Thursday, February 3<br />Time: 8 PM<br />Admission: $5<br />Presented by the Hollow Earth Society<br /><br />PROSPECT 60WANU5, a collective effort, promises one vivifying night of poetry, all sorts. Presenting works centered in/around language, our readers explore, perform, inform other fields (the canvas, the stage, the actual tilled or untilled field), are curious about each other, and ask/invite questions throughout the evening. On Feb. 3 we make available a host of new/exclusive print and sound offerings. Past Prospect readings, changeable and with a budget of $0, have taken place, in all weathers, at pop-up stores, parks, and living rooms. All afterward have migrated from these locales to bars where continues casual, vital conversation, plus general merriment, among readers and audience members alike. More at: prrospect.blogspot.com<br /><br />Schedule:<br /><br /> * 8:00 PM Works presented (short breaks between presentations)<br /> * 10:00 PM Further casual social interaction at Canal Bar<br /> * 12:00 AM Gowanus burns<br /><br />About the presenters:<br /><br />Jen Bervin is a poet and visual artist whose work brings together text and textile in a practice that encompasses artist books, poetry, large-scale art works, and archival research. Her poetry/artist books include The Dickinson Composites (Granary Books 2010), The Desert (Granary Books 2008), A Non- Breaking Space (UDP 2005, web-only), The Red Box (2004), and Nets (UDP 2004), currently in its fifth printing. Her most recent work,The Silver Book, was published by Ugly Duckling Presse. She recently finished a geocentric scale-model of the Mississippi River, 230 ft. long, composed of hand-sewn silver sequins. Bervin will teach at Vermont College of Fine Arts and Harvard University in 2011. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.<br /><br />Corina Copp is a playwright, poet, and wishful thinker living in Brooklyn. Recent work includes essays on Jean Day, Hannah Weiner, and Sarah Ruhl; a chapbook for minutes BOOKS; and texts that can be found soon or now in Cannot Exist, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket2, SerieAlfa, Supermachine, Aufgabe, and Antennae. Plays: Tell Only One (Small Press Traffic Poets Theater Festival, Jan. 2011); WALTZ (CSC/E. 13th St. Theater, July 2010, dir. Meghan Finn), and A Week of Kindness (Ontological Incubator/Brick, 2008). She’s performed her own work and that of others in London, NYC, and elsewhere. CC is the editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter and co-curator of The Twenty-Five Cent Opera of San Francisco at Barbes.<br /><br />Abraham Avnisan is a poet, visual artist, and would-be psychoanalyst living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His work explores the space where poetry and the visual arts exchange furtive glances. He has been published in the Brooklyn Review, Boog City Reader, Onesies: a Chapbook Anthology Project and eoagh: a Journal of the Arts (forthcoming). His work has been exhibited at Centotto Gallery in Bushwick, Arts in Bushwick’s BETASpace Festival, and the Figment Arts Festival on Governor’s Island. He received his M.F.A from Brooklyn College.<br /><br />Gracie Leavitt (sick about the market, charmed by invention, for whom syntax is a function of the soul) is an MFA candidate in poetry at Brooklyn College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Sentence, Word/For Word, Sugar House Review, Washington Square, Caketrain, 2River, Fourteen Hills, La Petite Zine, and elimae. She recently collaborated with Kolekt::f to stage the original full-length play PITCH at La Mama E.T.C. and has further designs on such multidisciplinary productions.<br /><br />Curtis Jensen’s work has appeared in Try!, The Sugar House Review, No, Dear, Precipitate and The Equalizer. He has lived and worked in Utah, Wyoming, Ukraine and now Brooklyn. He maintains a blog at theendofwaste.blogspot.com.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-85309481577764377952011-01-03T17:33:00.000-08:002011-01-03T17:34:29.013-08:00THE PORTABLE BOOG CITY READER<a href="http://welcometoboogcity.com/boogpdfs/bc67.pdf">Get it.</a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-3103350938457682422011-01-03T17:32:00.001-08:002011-01-03T17:33:00.752-08:00LIT 19 COVER<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://htmlgiant.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Lit19_covers_12142.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 1030px; height: 648px;" src="http://htmlgiant.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Lit19_covers_12142.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-70926559808210243782010-12-09T15:27:00.000-08:002010-12-09T15:28:54.873-08:00NEW YEAR'S DAY MARATHON READING @ POETRY PROJECTfrom <a href="http://poetryproject.org/program-calendar/37th-annual-new-year%E2%80%99s-day-marathon-reading.html">poetryproject.org</a><br /><br />37th ANNUAL NEW YEAR’S DAY MARATHON READING<br />January 1, 2011<br />2:00 pm<br />Saturday<br /><br />Poets and Performers for 2011 include: John Giorno, Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Philip Glass, Suzanne Vega, Taylor Mead, Eric Bogosian, Anne Waldman & Ambrose Bye, Foamola, Anselm Berrigan, Ariana Reines, Peter Gizzi, Liz Willis, Ted Greenwald, The Church of Betty, Thom Donovan, Tim Griffin, Todd Colby, Tom Savage, David Shapiro, Jonas Mekas, Josef Kaplan, Judith Malina, Albert Mobilio, Alex Abelson, Bill Kushner, David Freeman, David Kirschenbaum, Diana Rickard, Don Yorty, Dorothea Lasky, Douglas Dunn, Alan Gilbert, Alan Licht w/ Angela Jaeger, Charles Bernstein, Christopher Stackhouse, Citizen Reno, Cliff Fyman, Corina Copp, Aaron Kiely, Adeena Karasick, Bill Zavatsky, Bob Holman, Robert Fitterman, Rodrigo Toscano, Brenda Iijima, Brendan Lorber, Brett Price, Corrine Fitzpatrick, Curtis Jensen, Dael Orlandersmith, David Vogen, Derek Kroessler, Diana Hamilton, ARTHUR’S LANDING, CAConrad, Akilah Oliver, Douglas Piccinnini, John S. Hall (King Missile), Samita Sinha, Sara Wintz, Secret Orchestra with special guest Joanna Penn Cooper, Shonni Enelow, Bob Rosenthal, Brenda Coultas, John Yau, Julian T. Brolaski, Evelyn Reilly, Filip Marinovich, Douglas Rothschild, Drew Gardner, Eleni Stecopoulos, Elinor Nauen, Eve Packer, Jo Ann Wasserman, Joanna Fuhrman, Dustin Williamson, E. Tracy Grinnell, Ed Friedman, Edwin Torres, Eileen Myles, Elliott Sharp, Emily XYZ, Erica Hunt, Erica Kaufman, Evan Kennedy, Joe Elliot, Joel Lewis, Frank Sherlock, Gillian McCain, Greg Fuchs, Janet Hamill, Jeremy Hoevenaar, Jeremy Sigler, Jessica Fiorini, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jim Behrle, Julianna Barwick, Julie Patton, Michael Lydon, Lisa Jarnot, Maggie Dubris, Marcella Durand, Marty Ehrlich, Merry Fortune, Michael Cirelli, Kristen Kosmas, Laura Elrick, Lauren Russell, Leopoldine Core, Nina Freeman, Paolo Javier, Patricia Spears Jones, Paul Mills (Poez), Michel Scharf, Mike Doughty, Karen Weiser, Lewis Warsh, Linda Russo, Penny Arcade, Peter Bushyeager, Rebecca Moore, Mónica de la Torre, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Nathaniel Siegel, Nick Hallett, Nicole Peyrefitte, Pierre Joris & Miles Joris-Peyrefitte, Kathleen Miller, Katie Degentesh, Kelly Ginger, Ken Chen, Kim Lyons, Kim Rosenfield, India Radfar, Tonya Foster, Stephanie Gray, Susan Landers, Tony Towle, Tracie Morris, Valery Oisteanu, Wayne Koestenbaum, Will Edmiston, Yoshiko Chuma, Nicole Wallace, Arlo Quint, Stacy Szymaszek and more T.B.A<br /><br />General admission $20/Students & Seniors $15/Members $10.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-63330387825391665962010-11-06T16:10:00.000-07:002010-11-06T16:11:16.094-07:00PRECIPITATE 1.3: HELL'S GATEget it while its hot:<br /><br /><a href="http://precipitatejournal.com/home/journal/issue-3/">http://precipitatejournal.com/home/journal/issue-3/</a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-9015093391988460212010-11-06T09:33:00.001-07:002010-11-06T09:33:53.333-07:00PERIPLUM<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga7MZQHMGoBp-_rzz5-NT9x2BIxe1tQyFidxD1FT17gdi1M0XeHxUC1pvvGPtja341rkhv7dbLn6B1vQynExjdE1KF2bYaGJHhRPsv5mrhAeTpV0rlpGuZIsC0ABCiKzJQdS37YciuOcw/s1600/island.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 242px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga7MZQHMGoBp-_rzz5-NT9x2BIxe1tQyFidxD1FT17gdi1M0XeHxUC1pvvGPtja341rkhv7dbLn6B1vQynExjdE1KF2bYaGJHhRPsv5mrhAeTpV0rlpGuZIsC0ABCiKzJQdS37YciuOcw/s320/island.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5536475820355524162" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-69591259177512324992010-11-03T06:28:00.000-07:002010-11-03T06:30:21.082-07:00FROM BLOG.BESTAMERICANPOETRY.COMfrom http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2010/10/ben-and-amy-read-chapbooks-.html<br /><br />November 01, 2010<br />Ben and Amy Read Chapbooks<br /><br />Here are some chapbooks we like. Maybe this will make you read them.<br /><br /> The End of Waste and The Harrowing Halychyna by Curtis Jensen<br /><br />Self-published. See curtisinterruptus.blogspot.com.<br /><br /><br /><br />Poems: Welcome to the greatest “zine” moments of the year. The typos do not detract from the enjoyment of this chapbook. Obsessive editing can be really annoying anyway. Sandbox in Hell V1.2 is a great poem; coupled with the visuals of cow/boar/horse/deer skulls creates a "bad-ass" feeling.<br /><br /> Construction: Feels like a skate/punk/straight-edge/vegan recipe zine your little brother photocopied at Kinkos back in high school. Probably goes well with Black Flag or Gorilla Biscuits. Deer skulls a-plenty.<br /><br />SANDBOX IN HELL VI.2<br /><br /> You are Sisyphus,<br /><br />Not pushing the rock, but in the sandbox.<br />Really not many likenesses except that<br />Whatpowers may be have doomed you here,<br />From now until the rest of whatever.<br /><br />The trick is that there’s nothing under<br />This sandbox, nothing but a way out<br />Six inches beneath your big dumb feet,<br />Nothing but a change of scenery.<br /><br />You’ve geen given a flat-nosed shovel.<br />You’re on your hands, you’re on your knees.<br />You’ve choked way up the shovel-handle:<br />You could cut through the ceiling below.<br /><br />Maintaining the level sand around you,<br />You are diligent in senseless effort; <br />You motor your perpetual doom;<br />You are in this eternity, youre in it<br />On your hands and on your knees;<br />You bring about your own impulsion,<br />You’re in the sandbox with yourself<br />Till all the lights at last go out,<br />Til maybe even after that.<br /><br />Whether your sandbox surface lays plumb<br />Has no bearing on your place in torment.<br />You being you, you’re there with yourself.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-33653392599607761942010-10-31T14:01:00.000-07:002010-10-31T14:02:21.897-07:00NOV 8 @ POETRY PROJECThttp://lesfigues.blogspot.com/2010/10/nov-8-poetry-project.html<br /><br />holy smokes:<br /><br />Monday, November 8th<br />8pm<br /><br />Brandon Shimoda<br />& Jennifer Karmin with guest performers<br />Cara Benson, Claire Donato, Thom Donovan,<br />Curtis Jensen, Pierre Joris, Michael Leong,<br />and Ronaldo Wilson<br /><br />at The Poetry Project<br />131 E. 10th Street<br />New York, NY<br />admission $8<br />students & seniors $7<br />http://poetryproject.org<br /><br />BRANDON SHIMODA was born on the west coast of the United States, and has since lived in nine states and five countries. His collaborations, drawings and writings have appeared in print, online, on vinyl and on walls. Recent books include The Alps (Flim Forum Press, 2008), The Inland Sea (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2008), Lake M (Corollary Press, 2010) and The Bowling (Greying Ghost Press, 2010), a collaboration with Sommer Browning. He is currently on the road, and lives nowhere.<br /><br />JENNIFER KARMIN, in a polyvocal improvisation with seven NYC writers, will perform a selection of cantos from Aaaaaaaaaaalice, published by Flim Forum Press in 2010. Karmin curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. A proud member of the Dusie Kollektiv, she is the author of the Dusie chapbook Evacuated: Disembodying Katrina. Walking Poem, a collaborative street project, is featured online at How2. In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools.<br /><br />CARA BENSON is author of a book of interconnected pre-elegiac texts for plants animals humans and earth called (made). She teaches in a NY State prison.<br /><br />CLAIRE DONATO lives in Brooklyn, NY and received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University. Recent poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Octopus and Action Yes.<br /><br />THOM DONOVAN edits Wild Horses Of Fire weblog, now in its 6th year!, and coedits ON Contemporary Practice. He is an ongoing participant in the Nonsite Collective and the Project on the Commons.<br /><br />CURTIS JENSEN's work has appeared in Try!, the Sugar House Review, Precipitate and The Equalizer. Previous to Brooklyn, he has lived and worked in Utah, Wyoming, and Ukraine. He maintains a blog at theendofwaste.blogspot.com<br /><br />PIERRE JORIS is a poet, translator, essayist & anthologist. He has published over forty books, most recently Aljibar II (poems) and Justifying the Margins (essays). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited the award-winning anthologies Poems for the Millennium.<br /><br />"MICHAEL LEONG" is an anagram of "helical gnome"; he is the author of several books and chapbooks of poetry including e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009), Midnight's Marsupium (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010), and Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions/The Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming).<br /><br />RONALDO V WILSON's Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man, won the 2007 Cave Canem Prize, and Poems of the Black Object, the 2010 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-7623512956773351952010-10-23T07:28:00.001-07:002010-10-23T07:34:40.868-07:00TRY MAGAZINE: MAITLAND GLOSS OF MIDDLING LOVEjust got the word that rj maitland's gloss of middling love (from the harrowing of halychyna) will be in <a href="http://phillysound.blogspot.com/2010/04/try-magazine.html">try! magazine</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48Z5u7AMersJJ0WdJAK-takYBJBRsDHJ6tOE48ukGU-VeG_OZ0Dl8nCLxQ4TPr8sAh3EBA9aPM-t5J867qsw7nehZV5NC-FPutHFT-iLCkm0DU-cx51egVJavlujzJ8sXpA4R-HNA3bo/s1600/9.26.09.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48Z5u7AMersJJ0WdJAK-takYBJBRsDHJ6tOE48ukGU-VeG_OZ0Dl8nCLxQ4TPr8sAh3EBA9aPM-t5J867qsw7nehZV5NC-FPutHFT-iLCkm0DU-cx51egVJavlujzJ8sXpA4R-HNA3bo/s320/9.26.09.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531249844522995634" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-63709879698850285242010-10-16T08:09:00.001-07:002010-10-16T08:09:54.321-07:00SPILLWAY<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Monticello_Dam_view_of_spillway_spillway.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 254px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Monticello_Dam_view_of_spillway_spillway.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-45045010816448313882010-10-07T08:00:00.000-07:002010-10-07T08:01:51.729-07:00Sugar House Review: Review of Macgregor Card's Duties of an English Foreing Secretary<a href="http://www.sugarhousereview.com/sneak_peek.html#jensen"></a><br /><br />Duties of an English Foreign Secretary by Macgregor Card (2009 Fence Books)<br />Reviewed by Curtis Jensen<br /><br />An electric generator is a device that transmits mechanical energy into electrical energy. A simple AC generator consists of a strong magnetic field, conductors that rotate through that magnetic field, and a means by which a continuous connection is provided to the conductors as they rotate. Each time a complete turning-over is made by the rotor, a cycle of alternating current is created. Thus a rotational energy is converted into an electrical energy. Rotation over time can be graphed as a sine wave, fixed points along the wave’s curve corresponding to events along a rotation’s unfolding in the flow of time. If such a waveform is centered on 0, its point of equilibrium, and its high peak is 1, then its low peak must be -1. The line of a sine wave turns and returns (or returns and turns) to its high and low peak as it unfolds in time.<br /><br />In the poem, “Nary A Soul” in Macgregor Card’s Duties of an English Foreign Secretary, Card’s speaker states:<br /><br />If I could<br />If I no could<br /><br />If I could: high peak. If I no could: low peak. Here the waveform is centered on I, the couplet’s subjective equilibrium. The peak to peak voltage of the couplet is something like the relative value of could + the relative value of no could. In this case, the peaks are understood to be of a class of subjective possibilities, If I could: the speaking subject in the conditionally possible mode; If I no could: the speaking subject in the conditionally impossible mode.<br /><br />As the figure rotates its conductive high and low peaks through the charged field of the poem unfolding in time, energy is generated. Of course various devices might be operationalized to conserve and/or also generate more energy:<br /><br />If I could<br />If I no could...<br /><br />If I could could could<br />No, could NO could could...<br /><br />The figure of the first waveform is present in the second couplet, but its material spine has been reordered in rhythm, repetition, and variation. If oscillation can be understood as repetitive variation in time about a central value (a point of equilibrium) or inversely between two or more different states (in this example could and no could, but the states need not be opposing), then oscillation is what’s happening here.<br /><br />From “The Merman’s Gift”:<br /><br />“Take care.”<br />“Take care forever, no!”<br /><br />Another reversal, another oscillation. From “The Libertine’s Punishment”:<br /><br />Something is moving beside me<br />Nothing’s supposed to be there<br /><br />Equilibrium here is the position between the something that is and the nothing that is not. Oscillation occurs in the charged field of presence, absence, expectation, fear, doubt... Cartesian geometry is insufficient to the task of this field’s mapping as there are too many planes for it to express.<br /><br />In Duties of an English Foreign Secretary, Macgregor Card searches for (and finds!) those figural planes capable of expressing and so transmitting the energy of his nimble, terrifying, hilarious, melodic and significant poetic oscillations between sets of peak values: contemporary cityscapes to depth charges of historical conventions and texts; plunges into the complexities of a relationship (romantic and platonic modes both) to recoilings back from the social milieu; the subjective plane of present earth to the objective heights of the air, which turns out to be just as contingent in its flickering phenomena as anything perceived at the firmament. In the wash of the work’s music, points of equilibrium blister out of the text as certain subjective perspectives. Often roles such as juror, maudit, and my favorite: the sun’s own paned ajudicant. Roles are taken up or avoided, embraced or shunned, constituting another oscillational plane of the text. Oscillations set into the fields of other oscillations, e.g. in “Gone to Earth” a social interaction in the air permutates to a private kind of night in the tomorrow possible on the ground.<br /><br /> Often feeling talked about<br /> or bored<br />I’ll start to count, but it will pass<br /> Haven’t seen one beast today<br /> Gone to Earth<br /> It is too near–maybe I can tell<br /> It’s difficult to clear the air<br /><br />Tomorrow I will find a kind of private night<br /><br />Card is at all times clearly conducting the oscillations of the poems in Duties. He does not do so from behind a shroud, like an idiot tractor-driver with a paper bag over his head expecting the children at the field’s edge watching him to believe the field plows itself; nor is he standing on one foot on the tractor seat, with his scalp dyed red and his clapping hands, screaming at the children over the knocking engine to collectively acknowledge a projection of his self. Card is clearly present as the conductor within each poem of Duties, driving the works’ turns and returns phrase by phra se. Card shows the movements of his hands in his struggle with the material of the text in its necessarily non-Cartesian geometry, and Card’s secret suit lies in this open handling of the poems’ material. Furthermore, through motif, melody, pathos, humor, rhyme and theme and variation, and other devices, Card beckons the reader to join him in the poems’ oscillations and transmission of energy, in the working out of its movements. It is in this aspect of his work that Card draws his cues most significantly from the Spasmodics, the group of Victorian era poets characterized by their verse dramas and lengthy introspective soliloquies. The Spasmodics ascended quickly to popularity, and just as quickly to derision, their namesake taking on a derogatory aspect in most modern criticism in spite of its link to canonical figures like Tennyson and Browning. Sidney Dobbel is a Spasmodic Poet who Card has promoted outside the text at firmilian.blogspot.com and acknowledged within by Duties’ title and inscription.<br /><br />Card’s struggle to manage the sonic/linguistic material of the poem is something that can be heard and read throughout Duties. In essence, Card shows his work at every turn (or return), thus his authority is transparent in his open struggle with the text’s material. We see, in fact, we hear and therefore feel, phrase by phrase, how Card made his compositional choices. Paradoxically it is Card’s quickness and poetic skill, his nimbleness in music, word play, and phrasal movement that makes the book wholly his own. So we have another oscillation, between transparency and mastery. But at certain moments it is this mastery that can sling the reader from the text. Certain moves perhaps might be considered over-nimble, moves so quick as to wrench the reader from the poem and into the dirt of pragmatics’ arena. Perhaps that is the cost of such productive experiments in the generation of energy through poetic oscillation. Nevertheless, through his precise management of affective devices, the motifs, melody, pathos, humor, rhyme and theme and variation mentioned previously (devices of which Dobbel was a master), Card by in large supports the reader through Duties’ interelational unfolding, and in so doing he harnesses Duties’ high-charge oscillations to powerful poetry.<br /><br />What geometries then could describe the energy dynamics of interelational oscillations such as those that Card executes in Duties of an English Foreign Secretary?Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-41954709292081273332010-09-24T11:02:00.001-07:002010-09-24T11:02:28.783-07:00CENTER PIVOT IRRIGATION<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624.jpg/626px-Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 626px; height: 600px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624.jpg/626px-Crops_Kansas_AST_20010624.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-32320426886563850792010-09-24T10:59:00.000-07:002010-09-24T11:00:06.945-07:00POETRY TIME 9.25.10Poetry Time<br /><br />Season 3 Episode 1<br />SEPTEMBER 25th 8pm<br /><br />JUDITH GOLDMAN<br /><br />CURTIS JENSEN<br /><br />CATHY WAGNER<br /><br />390 SENECA AVE.<br /><br />CORNER OF SENECA AND STANHOPE<br /><br />ENTRANCE ON STANHOPE<br /><br />BEER<br /><br />RAFFLE<br /><br />POETRY<br /><br />+videos by Brandon DowningCurtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-67091152182506162782010-08-16T08:55:00.000-07:002010-08-16T08:57:38.125-07:00POETICS APPLIED 2: BEN MIROV'S GHOST MACHINEfrom <a href="http://electricliterature.com/blog/2010/08/16/smash-the-construct-to-remember-its-ghost-ben-mirovs-ghost-machine/">Electric Literature</a>:<br /><br /><br />Smash The Construct To Remember Its Ghost: Ben Mirov’s GHOST MACHINE<br /><br />Sean Patrick Hill, in his review of Ghost Machine for Bookslut, keys in on the GM’s formal likeness to Berryman’s Dream Songs. If Berryman drew upon a stansaic frame and meter and rhyme as formal vehicles for his work’s constellated expression of ‘character,’ what then does Mirov draw upon? Parallel syntactic structures and repetition set in a field of recursion. With these devices Mirov reifies GM’s figures and tropes where they set in their sentences into symbolic objects that hold meaning (though that meaning is never wholly clear), echoing and refracting one another across GM’s.<br /><br />From Eye, Ghost:<br /><br />Eye wake up in a construct. Eye lay on my<br />bed and sweat. Eye replay final moments. Eye try to<br />picture her face. Eye program a future version of myself<br />to remember it, slick with seawater, ringed with wet hair.<br />Eye go to a little shop where they sell machines<br />that keep you up. Eye lay the crumpled body next<br />to a convenience store.<br /><br />Mirov recursively gathers the key figural elements of Ghost Machine into “Eye, Ghost,” the long significant section at the center of the book, substituting the speaking subject’s prior I, with the psychically-charged eye. I plan to be another language in the body of deer in “Sleepless Night Ghost” permutates to Eye plan to be another shadow in the body of deer in “Eye, Ghost.” In such recursions and refigurations, GM’s symbolic objects take on the status of motif. Grave and persistent motifs, to borrow language from Valéry, which affect the ear, the open path set deeply and directly into the reader’s cognitive copse. In so doing, Mirov lays and overlays feedback loops of sound and syntactic shape on the reader’s short term memory.<br /><br />Mirov’s genius lies in his ability to centripetally reel those loops towards the book’s gravitational core. This reeling-in has an obverse aspect: it amplifies the skips and twitches of the poems’ associative nimbleness and stop/start iterations and erasures, essentially heightening the centrifugal dynamics of the text while deeply compressing its figures. The result is overwhelming, a gut-wrenching torsion, a whirl of implosion and disbursement something like the psycho-emotional blastvaccum of love’s abrupt termination. As such the emotional terrain of GM is figured into the motif-rhythms of the poems themselves. The shape of the blastvaccum in its inertia of absence manifested in the medium of memory is taken up in the recursive form of GM, and it is in this figuration that Ghost Machine is noteworthy literature.<br /><br />Mirov’s speaking subject is never seen. We perceive the character, the subject of so many of GM’s predications, by its reflection in the poems’ mise-en-scène. This array consists of the bars, public transportation, streets and bedrooms of the poems, and these settings’ correlating locational props, all which reflect the presence of the speaking subject in the text, but do not explicitly show him. Instead GM’s character emerges in a sort of gestalt from the collage; those other characters the speaking subject encounters are reflective detritus as much as are the coffee, drunk food, clothes, furniture and the rest of the array of twenty-something object-markers that populate, nearly wash out, the poems.<br /><br />From “Wave Machine”:<br /><br />… J calls me a shitface with tears in his eyes. We meet<br />at 8 and grab a bite to eat. Someone says my name is Booth. She<br />Gives me my third drink for free. Z laughs whenever a kid starts<br />a fight. There isn’t enough sex to go around.<br /><br />That is, with the exception of her. The compliment of GM’s speaking subject, her, is in memory a subject previous to the speaking subject of the text, a prior agent which predicates the speaker in having caused the determining factors which constitute speaker, which bring the speaker into existence. In Eye, Ghost, by a similar degree as to which her lies prior to the speaker, the figure of the eye, the perceiving organ of the ego, projects the poem away from the speaker. In this the speaker exists in the space between the absent her and the present eye in the pronoun of pure consciousness, I (more Valéry), which has by displacement become absent itself.<br /><br />…Eye remember<br />being in the ocean with her. Eye probably won’t see her<br />for years. Eye put on a clean t-shirt.<br /><br />GM is the powerful poetic trace of its speaker’s slow, painful reorientation towards recovery in the vacant, psychic wake of failed love. But the speaking subject does not recover, and so Mirov avoids the most abhorrent pitfall available to him considering the essentially not-quite-adult preoccupations and material of the world of the poems. In fact the speaker does not even enter the state of recovery; GM closes with the ghost of recovery looming in the figure of “Ghost Couple”:<br /><br />I’m granted a dream of an unglowing girl.<br /><br />Recovery projected through the dream-ether onto the object of desire. An adjective, an authorial gesture, unglowing, traces the attempt to demote recovery, the speaker’s object of desire embodied in the absent her, from its ideal status. But the adjective is an inadequate lever for the mass of the dream, the gesture fails, and nothing in the dream is shifted to the plain of the real.<br /><br />What is Machine? It is authorial resistance to collapse made manifest in poetic form. It is the material surface of Mirov’s poems brought about in the unfolding of time amid the collapse-zone of a failed relationship. It is the speaker’s gestural traces drawn into sentences, sentences constituent of predication, subject through the verb to the object, sentences which function as charged syntactic units patterned into Ghost Machine’s emergent form. What is Ghost? It is that which has brought the speaker into existence, but also that which the speaker cannot apprehend.<br /><br />“Ghost Transmitter”:<br /><br />The knowledge of my receivers grows dim.<br />I can only misquote what the voice tries to say.<br />I will probably never see it in the mirror.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Previously: Juxtaposition, the Modern Sublime, Poetry Responding to The Deepwater Horizon Disaster.<br /><br />-Curtis Jensen works and studies in Brooklyn, but he’d rather be here. He maintains a blog.Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-8600308452307989292010-08-11T18:57:00.000-07:002010-08-11T19:00:25.789-07:00POETS FOR LIVING WATERSGulf Coast's Poets for Living Waters project has posted three poems, which is awesome.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/three-poems-by-curtis-jensen/">http://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/three-poems-by-curtis-jensen/</a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-62832188058045912162010-07-21T14:40:00.000-07:002010-07-21T14:41:36.040-07:00ALTERNATING CURRENT<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1aJB1JyQqMb2cHpenDH9X9avLdWAh3Yo8LAJqfIMTOg8cK8DNdyqkcyxbWIox07a-QN6TP82Nn3XCJrP9dWEqjuR2NJK3HkwXyzNje8i6KkS-OAg-GRWQ7GImOEhK72d0vGEqd35jSGs/s1600/800px-Highvoltagetransmissionlines.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1aJB1JyQqMb2cHpenDH9X9avLdWAh3Yo8LAJqfIMTOg8cK8DNdyqkcyxbWIox07a-QN6TP82Nn3XCJrP9dWEqjuR2NJK3HkwXyzNje8i6KkS-OAg-GRWQ7GImOEhK72d0vGEqd35jSGs/s320/800px-Highvoltagetransmissionlines.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496477886787298162" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-2760165558851626772010-07-14T07:20:00.000-07:002010-07-14T07:23:30.653-07:00POETICS APPLIED I: ELECTRIC LITERATUREFrom <a href="http://electricliterature.com/blog/">electricliterature.com/blog</a><br /><br /> Column Note: POETICS APPLIED<br /> In pursuit of those methods, techniques, theories and figures that can contribute to one’s own poetry by their application in poetic praxis, Curtis Jensen comments on, reviews and analyzes contemporary and past literatures from the perspective of an emerging poet, which he is.<br /><br />Say for instance a subject is confronted with the endless array of a system of signification, as is often the case in the postmodern context. This array of unending signification happens to resemble a cloth of red silk, extending in all directions at once. The subject is struck by the overwhelming vastness of the array and the beautiful silken resemblance, and sets about to express this. The subject, an artist, selects elements that are distant (and so contrasting), and draws them together in juxtaposition, fashioning their figure into that of a cloth rose. The figure is a fine aesthetic object, and each time the artist re-encounters it, she projects the unbounded context of the vast and terrifying array of signification into it, re-expanding the array’s unbounded context, and re-accessing the sublime.<br /><br />Now say for instance this example permutates: the unbounded array, a horrific oil spill, and the artist, a poet powerfully struck by the vast unbounded context of the spill’s disastrous unfolding. The poet selects contrasting elements from the complex of the oil spill, perhaps a little girl playing on the beach with a broken containment boom and a dead, oil-drenched turtle; the poet fashions these elements into a juxtaposed figure, perhaps including a couple other figures to go along with the girl and the turtle; the poet attaches a title to her work, something like Oil Spill, or Oil, or The Girl and the Oil Spill and the Dead Turtle, and then the poet posts her poem on her blog. Again, it is likely that the poet, when re-encountering Oil Spill or Oil or the Girl and The Oil Spill and the Dead Turtle, is able to access the sublime that sparked her poem. Other poets and readers who share with the poet an awareness of and a perspective on the disaster’s unbounded context (its material, social, political and human implications) are able to project this context into the juxtaposed figures of Oil Spill, or Oil, or The Girl and The Oil Spill and the Dead Turtle. Such a projection invokes the fear, despair and terror of the unbounded and uncapped disaster still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, and so accesses the sublime. In this way the Oil Spill or Oil or The Girl and The Oil Spill is an affirming poem.<br /><br />But what of, say for instance, the poet’s brother-in-law? He encounters the rose figure at work one afternoon while responding to the day’s emails; he recognizes the figure as an aesthetic object of great skill and craft, appreciates it as such, and goes on with his business till knocking off early to stop by the local pub for a tall glass of cool beer before heading home to dinner with the artist/poet’s sister and their two small children. The rose figure does not facilitate his accessing the sublime because he is not already familiar with the array’s unbounded context, he is not informed previously of a theory of signification systems, and the rose figure in its compression does not bring him any closer to becoming conscious of it. This is not to suggest that the brother-in-law is not capable of becoming conscious of semiotic theory, but that the rose fails to invoke an encounter with the sublime, the encounter that the artist had set out to express.<br /><br />When the brother-in-law encounters Oil Spill or Oil or The Girl and the Oil Spill and the Dead Turtle, he does not share with the poet the same consciousness of or ideological perspective on the disastrous oil spill, and recognizes the poem as an aesthetic object only, knocks off work early to enjoy a cold beer at the bar before heading home to dinner. Again, this is not to say that the poet’s brother in law cannot become conscious of the disaster’s unbounded context, but that the poem failed in invoking for the brother-in-law an encounter with the sublime nature of the disaster.<br /><br />As a class, poems in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster seek to express and comment upon the horror, fear, despair, disgust, anger, and frustration felt as a result of the disaster’s unfolding. Most of these emotions are attributes of the perception of the sublime. The postmodern sublime differs from the romantic sublime in that it is a refiguration of the subject-object interaction characteristic of the former. In postmodernity, practically all aspects of the natural world have been effected by human activity, hence the postmodern sublime is understood to be the subject and a human-effected object in its unbounded context. In theory, such an encounter sparks overwhelming sensations, and so accessing the sublime initiates a powerful affective mode in poetry. Accordingly, poems written in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster (Gulf Coast’s Poets for Living Waters features the bulk of the best of these) share a tendency to attempt to access the sublime. Such attempts are intended to further the poet’s expression of, comment upon, or protest against the disaster.<br />I suggest that the poetry responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster over-relies upon the device of juxtaposition, and that in this over-reliance, it has failed to access the sublime.<br /><br />The ecopoetics movement has taken a vanguard position in contemporary poetry, its supporters writing and criticizing some of the most compelling poetry written today. The poetry circulating in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster is not all the result of the ecopoetics movement, but the primary themes of the two camps, ecopoetics and practically everyone else writing about the disaster, overlay one another.<br /><br />The poems circulating in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster are influenced by a prominent maxim of the ecopoetics movement: show the bird and the bulldozer together. This maxim presumes that the bulldozer and the bird are causally related, which, in the postmodern context, they often are, perhaps as a function of the destructive development of habitat as in the case of, say, a landfill or a subdivision or a catastrophic oil spill.<br />Though the bird and bulldozer maxim does lend itself to juxtaposition, it does not oblige the poet to rely upon it as a primary figurative device. Juxtaposition, by bringing together unlike terms for comparison, engages a contrast that results in powerful compression. Often juxtaposition is deployed for rhetorical purposes, say perhaps to defamiliarize some traditional literary convention, as the modernists were apt to do, or as in the case of poems in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, to convey that the disaster is a giant horrible mess and a manifestation of a deeper set of highly destructive practices. (Jonathan Skinner mentions the bird and bulldozer maxim in his excellent and free literary journal, ecopoetics. See his statement from a talk presented at AWP in issue 4/5, specifically for his compelling (and I feel accurate) ethical arguments. For another treatment of the bird and bulldozer maxim, Christopher Arigo works at the topic in his review of Juliana Spahr’s last book in How 2, as well as explicating the role of the postmodern sublime in ecopoetics).<br /><br />But for those that don’t share a similar awareness of the context of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and who encounter these highly compressed poems, what then? The poems’ figures are art objects that elicit an aesthetic response, but because of over-reliance on compressive devices such as juxtaposition, the poems do not facilitate the reader’s access to the sublime, and therefore fail in achieving their intentions. Furthermore, such poems do not bring the reader, the poet’s brother-in-law, or anyone else not broadly sharing the same ideological perspective, any closer to sympathy with the poet’s position in regards to the material, social, political and human aspects of the disaster.<br /><br />I do not mean to insist that poetry must take a rhetorical position. I mean to insist that in relying upon highly compressive figurative devices such as juxtaposition in its treatment of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the poetry circulating in response to the disaster is affirming, but not convincing, thus failing in its rhetorical intentions. Showing the bird and the bulldozer is an ethically sound maxim; I hold it as an imperative in my own work. But reducing of vastly complex material, social, and political contexts to selected elements figured in compression results in poetry of affirmation, whether it is poetry in response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster or otherwise. And, Poetry of affirmation is poetry which holds very little significance.<br /><br />-Curtis Jensen works and studies in Brooklyn, but he’d rather be here. He maintains a blog at theendofwaste.blogspot.comCurtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-68215680223708418092010-07-12T06:04:00.001-07:002010-07-12T06:05:51.099-07:00MICROBURST<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7HHFiIvBcqe_pcfWhTD9Cmn2NFMk3-A-0_BpX2B5KDK69MAINyn7b1KHniPSSBPmWuB8Zw0YN80BOYws1u814mDvO8pqxHnBNhgQnJ0YOt1XkjwTjKqsZI_JI9bvS094SflSuLAcwRQ/s1600/220px-Downburst_wind_damage_vaughan_CN_rail_yard_east_side_near_Keele_street_23_04_07.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 211px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje7HHFiIvBcqe_pcfWhTD9Cmn2NFMk3-A-0_BpX2B5KDK69MAINyn7b1KHniPSSBPmWuB8Zw0YN80BOYws1u814mDvO8pqxHnBNhgQnJ0YOt1XkjwTjKqsZI_JI9bvS094SflSuLAcwRQ/s320/220px-Downburst_wind_damage_vaughan_CN_rail_yard_east_side_near_Keele_street_23_04_07.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493005201345993218" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-90734463114183312352010-06-22T08:17:00.001-07:002010-06-22T08:17:56.675-07:00DEEP BOREHOLE DISPOSAL<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Deep_borehole_disposal.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 720px; height: 960px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Deep_borehole_disposal.png" border="0" alt="" /></a>Curtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4411245966092473112.post-25346712636329762072010-06-21T13:42:00.001-07:002010-06-21T13:42:57.993-07:00VESSELS OF OPPORTUNITYVESSSELS OF OPPORTUNITY<br />BP_Summary_Report_VOO_Incident_5_26_2010<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Why don't you provide respirators?</span><br />In the effected estuaries<br />Volatile organic compounds [VOC's]<br />Rarely present as negative indicators<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">What happened?</span> Whether these individual<br />Health complaints were due to exposure<br />Or otherwise weathered cruedoil as a source<br />Of inhalational exposure is unlikely<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">What you need to know:</span> vessels were provided<br />A hydrocarbon-based degreasing terpene<br />[Pineoil] & the likely cause of the problem<br />Was its use when unproperly dilluted<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">What we changed:</span> as a result of this<br />The terpene was recalled & replaced<br />Moreover if used under high temperatures<br />Stress & stroke risks are increased by respiratorsCurtis Jensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094215389583629919noreply@blogger.com0