Crane Giamo // Delete Press // Fresh to Death Fridays

Fort Collins poet and printer Crane Giamo sent a beautiful package last week, and I've been dying to share it with you, dear readers. I first came across Crane's Delete Press (coedited with Jared Schickling & Brad Vogler) when I got my hands on C.J. Martin's lovely WIW?3: Hold me tight. Make me happy. I was immediately impressed by how Crane and his coeditors thought through the material nature of the book. Delete Press books arrive in elaborate packaging and often feature a number of different printing styles in a single production, including letterpress printing and silk-screening. This is certainly true of the new Delete Press number, Rachel Levitsky's Renoemos (cover reproduced below), which came packaged in an elaborate handmade envelope with an expertly silk-screened cover and letterpressed backboard.

Crane also included a little trifold broadside of his own poem "Human Kinetics," and while you can click on the image to read the poem, I've had to embed it sideways, so I've reproduced it here for easy reading:

this fact called human
kinetics: allayed arose
from place the out of
forsakens: of this real
motion regained: real
cresting threshold it's
flesh in breathed and
forms not stagnant at
which: our falter past
carbon sent scored in
braids: exited to exist 

And since it's Friday and I haven't seen much of Crane's own poetry, I asked him to send on some new work for Notebook Fridays, which I've recently redubbed "Fresh to Death Fridays" for obvious reasons! The poems are a bit difficult to reproduce in blogger's editor, so I've used the Acrobat reader to maintain fidelity to the original. World, meet Crane Giamo (click the corner to enlarge):

Haecceities Alert!

So, SPD is currently listing 3 copies of Haecceities, and as far as I can tell Cuneiform HQ only has a dozen or so more. When these are gone, the first edition of Haecceities is officially sold out; while there will be a second edition, it might not arrive until late next year, so if you've been meaning to pick up a copy, do so NOW!

And mark your calendars: It looks like Bill Berkson, Kit Robinson, and myself will be doing a Cuneiform Press Showcase at Moe's Books on Wed., January 19th (thinking ahead a bit, I know, but it doesn't hurt to plan!). What a lineup!

From "Starry Messenger"

Susan Gevirtz's "Starry Messenger" ends with a pretty perfect suite of poems; I thought to reproduce a few of them here to tie up my focus on Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger.
It's often difficult to tell where one poem ends and another begins, but I'm pretty sure the following constitutes "Falling Objects":





          Falling Objects

If one gives us music
the other ear turns it to air

which to worship ear or air


In the dark before that is not it

rummaging for

an object

said where

the sun is the center—why doesn't the moon fall out of the sky

                                 well we wither

                                 well we alter well

and unto alarm's sunder



we edit so much
throwing bones outside
the casting circle

     high winds on a man in a tower while the earth rushes through its errands

on a train moving 19 point five miles per second


But I have tested the sum

rest with it

whose agreement is ours

while planets spin around us


a bird leaves its branch

outstripping worms to the west

in a flight for north and eastward worms

sees over these problems

dropping fast through rotation

as if orbit is not our venue

or supposition easy prey

to a bird hanging on for dear life

lets go for an instant

yet is not lost forever

sings gaily instead

a little anthem of rest


being heavy braves the elements

on hollow bones braves

our oldest ancestor

inertia

____________________



And this one's called "Night letters" (Susan read this one at the Green Arcade a few months back and totally killed it)

Night Letters*
     --of gloves and masks


-coils of barbed wire
          strung among the clouds-     crowns of thorns

-restricted firmament- halo


here runway whisperer
          -in the clutches of wake-



Above the shrill voice of the cicada
     turbo drones
     cockpit to cabin calls
     wish in noise inaudible


If conversation is
     source

then dream is the outsourcing

people example
who only talk with food in their mouths

a language of warble

stranger water
has visited us here

suffocating under
gratitude's burden

*Letters left in mosques to warn of impending violence 

____________________



Okay, I can't hep myself, one more:



          How I loop the loop


When Bitterjuice the lion wraps its tail

around the sun we call it

eclipse


The three stars of Orion's belt are zebras
failed hunting failed hunted the stars are
before us and may pursue




sun rise     moon set     spine bending     tree falling

     and so June
          7,000 years ago

also called

the remains of that sky
                             air ruins
                   in Timbuktu

Susan Thackery on Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger

At this point, it should come as no suprise that Susan Thackrey's writing is without fail always pitch perfect (see, for instance, her Listening Chamber edition, Empty Gate, for pacing, balance, pitch, timing), and yet, I'm always astonished by how effortlessly she hones in on what's at issue. I realize now, after finishing her epilogue for Susan Gevirtz's Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger, that I should have let her do the talking for both of us from the outset. After reading Thackrey's brilliant Oppen Lecture (of which I recently found extra copies in O Books storage if anyone's interested ) I have complete faith that she can effortlessly articulate what everyone else is struggling to express. Certainly true here. Here's Thackery in full (with deep respect):

Epilogue. Words said after other words. And how can an epilogue be written after Susan Gevirtz has led and let us into the "sheer territory" that is the literal existence of these poems, territory so diaphanous in its terms of existence that "no flag can plant there." (This read the day before the Democratic Convention, when it was said aloud, that the American flag is still, still planted on the moon). "The grip of the reliable," says the poem of our general situation, is an impossible attempt to get a grip, and "a sad mantle."

In this sheer territory, the poet says, for every traveler in every air plane, "here is traded for here," making every "here" both ubiquitous and a situational fiction, every perceiver who might say "Well—here we are!" either a confabulator or a liar, or maybe both. The elements of what once might have been a narrative disappear as "here is traded for here." Wasn't the title of the fictional autobiography in Tolkien Here and Back Again? But what in the name of any sky-god you might care to call upon could the title Here and Back Again have to say of any imagination of changing place as a mode of transformation?

Time, in these poems, is equally undone. As the poet begins to recite the beginning of one tiny story by Hans Christian Andersen, she writes, "there was once," the almost iconic phrase of beginning imagination, linking time and place—but she moves it immediately, inevitably, to the phrase "there was a," without naming an object, seeking safety in linking place to thing, if only the thing could be named. But this, too, proves untenable—so the words of the poet shift into "there was trespass"—because in this state of being every boundary that shaped a world or a time or even a constellation in the sky is gone.

Neither can personal experience, eyes that see, be trusted, only those other "caffeine-bruised" eyes of the air traffic controllers, staring at the sky-prostheses of their screens, themselves linked to instruments, creating a continuously changing pattern in the sky, filling up the sheer sky invisibly in a way that leads to visible life or death for the passenger.

If words dividing space and time and personal experience have become useless to describe their once separate fields, then cause and effect, even in Hume's sense (or perhaps especially in Hume's sense) that the occurrence of an event at least seems to follow or be followed by another event that is always, for us humans, so similar as to be predictable—cause and effect are also impossible words. So Susan's poems set up their own terms—"cause is effect." So no one is permitted to return to that field either.

The sky, more depthless and wider than the sea, has been a field of imagination, not of trespass, long before the Pleiades were painted on the wall of Lascaux cave 17,000 years ago. Only 150 years ago Holderlin could call the sky the "eyes blue school" and wander it at will. Now it is a situation, not a field. Now, Susan Gevirtz says, we are always inside it. But hidden within this poetry are notes of other possibilities. Although we are always inside, an airplane, a language, a set of facts learned too soon, she asks "how many off-screen landing strips get by" the controllers. Fact, she says, can always be outsourced to dreams, and new stars and words can be seen by the "naked eye." Here utter receptivity to the enormous contemporary flummoxing of imagination presents her, presents, with the present.

A mode of being known to Galileo, known, as he said, and as the poet quotes:

"to no one before the
Author recently perceived them
and decided that they should
be named."

Susan Thackrey
September 2008
San Francisco

AERODROME ORION

"Story of a sky too spacious for flight"

"Aerodrome Orion," the first half of Susan Gevirtz's new diptych for Kelsey Street, Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger, is a huge poem, itself perhaps too spacious for (one way) flight. 

First line:

"Trade     here for here"

Susan gets tons of mileage out of an economy of language: in just four words and a little space Gevirtz localizes the role of trade in economies of air and sea, their subsequent technologization in order to improve this economy, the obvious analogue between the two mostly due to their technologization, and we, the product, carted around, replacing good for good, here for here, leaving here for there which is basically here, without really changing anything, etc.etc. "the business of the day below the night withers the day"

Gevirtz perfectly captures the weird ambiance of redeye travel, where everything's crepuscular and suspended and somehow slow-motion-frantic (a parallel and maybe even identically different economy from day-life: a kind of zombi alternate reality) and rubs it ruthlessly against the lyric version of sea-travel-by-constellation in order to produce just the right amount of friction. All these bodies in all these planes "sailing" the skies at the whim of air-traffic-control's "caffeine-bruised" eyes, "eye sockets toward Helios."

I'm kind of in awe of how Gevirtz enacts overly-sensitive receptors (hyperacting to the din of numbness that is a life in transit) in language without ever really referring directly (and in super lush language to boot); this coupled with ruminations on market, speed, myth, territory, trust:

     "No song
unless wind is a song
Steel   no idea but song
no song   sheer territory
where no flag can plant
only where and whose only consequence"

"Even in the Faraway
whether the wind is cold, the forehead affixed, the passenger of thirst
compressed
Whether that which is thick with oxygen is wool or flesh either way
the surreptitious opening of locks the reverie of looks, the stewardship, the
storm watch
the reversion
alarm's comfort habit"

She does this thing (Susan does) by playing with the term "patient": both noun (a person undergoing treatment, a sufferer or victim) and adjective (one's fortitude in the face of tribulation, steadfast and quietly calm). "Lie back" she writes "to become patient." Dropping back the seat, "undergoing" as subject/victim and bearer of stasis (moving all too fast). All of this with one of the best ears in town:

"a remunerating speech is required of you
ventriloquist for news anchors, stringers
tense lax harsh or leashed
falsetto colossal no matter
to the paver"

A lyricism (this from Deleuze's Francis Bacon, which I'm reading concurrently: "Rhythm appears as music when it invests the auditory level, and as painting when it invests the visual level") coupled with the drone of recirculated air, dim reading lamps, elbows wedged against armrests and other elbows. These rhythms of nocturnal lives lived in terminals, aerodromes ("air courses"), throats and eyes dry, pelted by florescent light, stretched out on worn carpet, so many heads propped by so many book bags: this made music by a "kinetic emporium" of bodies carted around in space.

ANALOG

Classic Mags: MAPS

In anticipation of a larger feature on the new selected poems of John Taggart, I present evidence that I do in fact own the very first issue of MAPS! If I'm not mistaken, MAPS was inaugurated at Earlham College in 1965 when Taggart was but an undergraduate. Featuring the tagline "One draws a map to show where one is," Taggart clearly situated himself on a very particular post-objectivist map pretty early in his career. This issue features work by Paul Blackburn, Clayton Eshlemen, and Kenneth Irby, along with a short poem by Taggart after Ornette Coleman (a practice, writing after/with jazz musicians, that finds pride of place in his mature work). Here's Taggart's first editorial statement (he must have been, like, 23 at the time?!):

In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant writes of the need for making new maps of man's consciousness now, and of the past as seen from that now. The maps would be of those regions just discovered, somewhat known, but not to the extent of the older areas or of the most recent projections, MAPS, then, takes its title and purpose from Kant's observation. These poems are not on the furthermost borders of the avant-garde. They are of the now in the continuum sense of "being"--eyes open, perhaps screaming, but not leaping out of the present--and, occasionally, they are of the past as renovated by those open eyes.

These poets are of all ages and come from everywhere. The attempt has been made to shape a vital synthesis of several perspectives to avoid the monotonous sameness of various in-groups whose actions share the shrilling triviality of Medieval schoolmen.

John Taggart

editor   

Speaking of magazines...

Little Red Leaves, one of my very favorite online journals, just uploaded its 5th issue.

This from the editors:

We are excited to announce the official launch of **Little Red Leaves Issue 5** -- our biggest issue yet with over 30 new poets, extended project features from Carmen Giménez Smith and Robin Tremblay-McGaw, an interview with Brenda Ilijima by Thomas Fink, a gorgeous selection from the Paros Translation Symposium as well as 5 new e-editions.


===Please check it out at: http://littleredleaves.com/LRL5/5home.html ===

Included in the issue:

Special Feature from the **Paros Translation Symposium** edited and introduced by Joseph Mosconi. With Susan Gevirtz, Angelos Parthenis, Steve Dickison, John Sakkis, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Eleni Stecopoulos, Katerina Iliopoulou, Liana Sakelliou, Mairi Alexopoulou, Maria Laina, Phoebe Giannisi, Siarita Kouka, Socrates Kabouropoulos, Thanasis Maskaleris,and Vassilis Manoussakis.

New Work By: Hugo García Manríquez, Stan Apps, Valerie Coulton & Ed Smallfield, Amina Cain, Carolyn Guinzio, Roberto Tejada, Jimmy Lo, Justin Audia, Travis Macdonald, Tasha Marren, Cindy Savett, Kelli Stevens Kane, Aby Kaupang, Carrie Hunter, Amanda Ackerman, Judith Goldman, Jared Shickling, Brad Vogler, Matthew Cooperman, Beverly Dahlen, Karen Hannah, Arkava Das, Christine Kanownik, Laura Wetherington, Burt Kimmelman, Nathalie Knight, William Allegrezza, Meg Barboza, Adam Fagin, and Matt McBride.

Project Features: Carmen Giménez Smith. Selections from Goodbye Flicker; Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Selections from THE MELMOTH LETTER

Thomas Fink Interviews Brenda Ilijima

++Plus 5 New e-editions++ http://littleredleaves.com/ebooks/index.html

Sarah Campbell's Everything We Could Ask For, Brian Mornar's Three American Letters, Mathew Timmons' Sound Noise, Gloria Frym's Any Time Soon, Eléna Rivera's Remembrance of Things Plastic.

With many thanks to all our readers and everyone included!!

Ash Smith, CJ Martin, Julia Drescher, and Chad Heltzel

LRL5 Editors
http://littleredleaves.com/

Classic Mags, Pt. 1

Thinking about magazine culture this week, I got a hankering to highlight some favs from yesteryear in an effort to isolate what works (for me) in a poetry magazine. Leland Hickman's Temblor is a bonified classic—a magazine I still find scattered throughout Bay Area bookstores in the often neglected journal section (if said bookstore even has a journal section! Props to Moe's and Green Apple). For me, Temblor stands as a kind of paradiscal model of what a magazine can be. The large 8 x 11 format means lots of room on the page, and lots of space for longer contributions. Notice how often the word "complete" appears on the cover? 

The design here is super simple and immediately offers up what's inside. The solid color changes with each issue. No nonsense here, for sure (this was certainly a model we were mindful of when designing ON: Contemporary Practice). And holy cow: take a look at Hickman's chops as an editor: Shurin's City of Men, Scalapino's Delay Series, Howe's Heliopathy, Cole's Letters of Discipline. And needless to say, these early issues are critical to scholars of late 20th-century poetry as many poems featured here only appeared here, or at least in dramatically different drafts.

I'm thinking now that it would be super useful to start digitizing the Temblor run, along with, say, ACTS, Maps, etc. Craig Dworkin has already started archiving crucial magazines such as LANGUAGE, THIS, Tottels, etc. at Eclipse. What do you think, Craig? Anyone interested in helping to scan?

Heavy Rotation

Date Palms / On Psalms (Root Strata)

Contemporary Indian Ragas drenched in  minimalist drone. Comprised of Gregg Kowalsky (of Tape Chants fame) and Marielle Jackobsons (of Darwinsbitch). Both Mills composers from a few years back...Vinyl only...

Salem / King Night (IAMSOUND)

Damaged "Witch House"? I hate the trendy label but certainly ghostly for sure, buried in cough-syrup-drenched screwed beats with layers and layers of choral voices? Or something?

Expressway Yo Yo Dieting / Bubblethug (Weird Forest)

The dude from Indignant Senality (the guy who made those records for Type sampling only dusty Wagner records) returns with another chopped and screwed WAYYYYYYYYYYYY slowed down and totally deconstructed dj mix (I guess?). One of my favorite records of the year so far...

Swans / My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to Heaven (Young God)

Equally as brutal as, say, Cop or Filth (well, maybe not THAT brutal), but featuring more fully developed song writing chops. Way better than circa 80s Swans FOR SURE!

EMBANKMENTS

This seems as good a time as any to mention that Damn the Caesars editor Rich Owens has a new book out on BlazeVOX, and it's really, really good.

[Take this:]

MISREADING HEIDEGGER

under nail in the new dusk

we live in a house
we can never hope to own

dwelling on the banks of
indefensible investments

thorny tendrils descend

curled behind teeth
ungainly—unfurled like flags

[Or this:]

TECHNICAL LETTER

alone to rest—tired of rest
return from chance
                        sable wind
bent subordinate over tombs
grieve—undisturbed
sick to death of uncertainty

[Or this:]

PATCHENESQUE

Daydreaming on the production line
they come to me across
a tangled ribbon of conveying—

                                  aluminum cans
like a formidable army marching
ten abreast beneath fluorescent bulbs
flashing like silver teeth in the sun.

[You probably realize now you need this]

DAMN THE CAESARS

While I'm on the topic of favorite mags, I thought to mention Rich Owen's Damn the Caesars, which, like P-QUEUE, also features real editorial vision with careful design and lengthy single-author-selections (and is coincidentally also a Buffalo rag (or was a Buffalo rag until very recently)). I guess I'm puzzling through the great divide between editor and compiler--that magazine culture nowadays thrives on the very principals poets generally abhor: like, say, the market-driven impulse to fill the page with as many heads as possible despite deep and often antagonistic aesthetic difference; that more and faster and cheaper are generally better...

For me, reading DTC means studying it's editor's obsessions through a carefully orchestrated conversation/argument/song. The magazine often features large, uninterrupted swatches of transcontinental voices, often with a single chapbook length feature wedged down the center in grey text-stock. Last issue (#5) featured tons of great stuff from Roberto Tejada, Stephen Collis, Kaia Sand, and Alan Halsey, with a forty-page feature by Tyrone Williams (!) and a twenty-four-page feature by Brenda Iijima. AND THEN, as if that weren't enough, we get a lengthy interview between Tyrone and Brenda where, among other choice cuts, Brenda exclaims:

"I think that line about the peaceable life of rabbits might be the one faded button on the rotting garment that is romanticism in that opening sequence from Remembering Animals. Romanticism quickly morphs into expressionism. Several lines into that poem a commando instructor disembowels a rabbit and flings the organs onto the students in a classic desensitizing exercise used by marines in training during the Vietnam War--thus the title: Rabbit Lesson..."

So there's that. But also, besides these generous lengthy selections, Rich writes amazing editorials, a detail of the Modernist "little magazine" sorely missing in the current glut of dime-a-dozen "author showcases." The compiler can't write an editorial, because the complier is missing the very frame that allows editorializing at all. Check out what Rich does with frames here (click to enlarge):

DTC's current issue features all kinds of interesting contributions including an essay by Dennis Tedlock reexamining the relationship between Language writing and his seminal ethnopoetic mag Alcheringa and a feature on Allen Fisher's visual work. We also get a bunch of Mike Baskinski, Keston Sutherland, Carrie Etter, etc. etc. A must have. Pick it up here.

Notebook Friday: Me

Slow News Day

Some Poems by Andrew Rippeon

As a follow-up to my post on P-QUEUE, I thought to mention that editor Andrew Rippeon is also a very, very skilled poet, though there's little public material to read (a deeply troubling fact that promises to correct itself if younger editors do their jobs and figure out who they should print!). I've included the two pieces I have: the Vigilance Society edition of Rippeon's Priest, and a short-run broadside of some stanzas from FLIGHTS. Rippeon's modesty is simultaneously enduring and maddening, so if you're interested in obtaining a copy of  P-QUEUE or one of these stunning print objects, you'll have to be in touch directly here: arippeon {at} buffalo {dot} edu. Click the arrow in the top-right corner to see full-screen.

P-QUEUE 7

P-QUEUE is one of Buffalo's best kept secrets, printed by one of my favorite people in the world: Andrew Rippeon. As expected, the newest issue is really spectacular: super careful editing, fewer authors showcasing a more comprehensive body of work, statements of poetics addressing the material included, thematic issues with regular regional import, editorial statements(!). The mag was inaugurated by Sarah Campbell in 2004, the year after I moved to Buffalo, and it has consistently been one of the few magazines I regularly read from cover to cover. The format is perfect, and after all these years, the design elements from the first few issues continue to satisfy: pocket-size format, letterpress cover (I printed at least one of them, if I remember correctly), inserts, printed vellum, a penchant for visual poetry, etc. etc. etc.

Issue 7 is dedicated to the polemic, and sports a killer editorial by Rippeon followed by a shitload of heavy-hitters: Rich Owens (19 pages!), Craig Dworkin, Julia Bloch (22 pages!), Janet Neigh, Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw, Duriel E. Harris, Dawn Lundy Martin, Ronaldo V. Wilson, Steve Zultanski, Bhanu Kapil, Robert Fitterman, Patrick Durgin, Alessandro Porco, Craig Santos Perez, Vanessa Place, and Sarah Dowling.

This mag along with, say, Damn the Caesers, Try!, and very few others continue to renew my faith in the magazine as a critical ecology showcasing a very particular conversation between very specific poets, rather than the more generic model of featuring a stand-alone one night stand by hundreds of poets. Young, aspiring editors take note...A must for folks interested in small press culture.

Don't sleep. Check it out here.

Susan Gevirtz in Buffalo, 2006

Reminiscing about Aaron Shurin's reading in Buffalo sent me searching for my introduction to Susan Gervirtz's portion of the event, which I present for your pleasure below. I think my first exposure to Susan's work was Black Box Cutaway (maybe for a class at Mills?), but my most memorable experience was reading Hourglass Transcripts while on an incredibly uncharacteristic vacation to Maui (!) facilitated by my brother who somehow got hooked up with a timeshare through his work and then somehow invited me to go and I somehow had money to buy a ticket (!), so I brought Hourglass Transcripts and Scalapino's Orchid Jetsam and fought what I experienced as profound boredom by renting a little scooter called "The Mosquito" which allowed me to scoot around the island between deep meditations on Susan's and Leslie's work.

Susan's poetry perfectly embodies the umheimlich for me: I always expect to recognize it (for some reason), but everytime I return to the page I feel disoriented and a little dizzy and/or giddy. As a thought experiment I sometimes try to distill a poet's work to a single stylistic strategy that could somehow speak for her (I think about poetry a lot!), but I've never been able to do it with Susan, which is a testament to her ability to engage on the poem's terms alone. David Brazil is always like "Hey Michael, I read something about blood relics or the Law or meats or something and I thought about you," but everytime I try to do this with Susan (and I try! I try!), I return to her work and I'm totally off the mark. Which is, I think, something I wanted to get at (however obliquely) in this introduction, but then I talked about something else (which is kind of what Susan's poetry does? Maybe this is the thing?!). It's still a solid introduction, though:

Susan Gevirtz’s poetry performs incredibly agile, acrobatic gestures-in-place; not progressive, per se (at least not linearly so), but “vertically-simultaneous,” as if one were looking down the cylinder of a kaleidoscope, each layer of the mantle, each autonomous syntactical unit stacked vertically in time while synchronically extending at the pace of its own measure—perhaps what Gevirtz calls “time collapsed to its cuticle” in Linen Minus, her first book published by Avenue B in 1992. We are introduced to her incredible ear in this book’s title, Linen Minus, the short “i” shifting its tonal register to spin through the triple turnstile of “n” sounds, landing in the long “i” of minus, two syllables diffused, both mine and us; however, while the title acquaints us with Gevirtz’s attention to sound, syllabics, symmetry, it doesn’t quite prepare us for the torque of language, the incredibly nuanced friction of increment. She writes,

plait sunday noontimes
water lattice
          division
by light nocturnal
ripple     as the shore
lassoes   “The room
was too full.          Things were speaking
to her.”

One can imagine a kind of sonic disembodiedness as the words sit firmly in the architecture of the letters, the sound blown through the room (the definition of stanza: literally "a small room"); however, Gevirtz tethers her ear to the disjunctive syntax and visual dissymmetry of the poem’s infrastructure to keep us firmly planted in the work. This tendency is perhaps most evident in her recent volumes, Black Box Cutaway, published by Kelsey Street Press in 1999, and 2001’s Hourglass Transcripts, published by Burning Deck. As a professor of “visual criticism” at California College of the Arts, and author of Narrative’s Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson, Gevirtz can’t help but sustain her dissonance in what Leslie Scalapino calls the “extinction of images,” the dissolution of the seeing subjects’s hierarchical narratives in the eye’s reflection of its own process. She writes,

          It was called “summer”—yet no
gravity in the middle that word The weather
          came up fever:           glaze burnished metal sky.
Glass sun on redwoods. Morning unstoppable. In the mirror, legs
turn to marble—succulent and stark as the surrounding magnolia flesh
          in all stages of bloom

Her attention is amplified in Black Box Cutaway (a book Barbara Guest claimed “heralds an exciting attitude toward the page as arranged on a camera lens”) in which (quote) “the page of screen turns / walk the letters across the screen—pull them.”

Here, as the image dissolves in the sound of its own reflection, in the fosse of particulars, Gevirtz expresses “the strange thing / for which there were no words.”

Please join me in welcoming Susan Gevirtz to Buffalo.