Alli Warren handed off the newest issue of her magazine Dreamboat the other day, just shortly after I'd finished reading Conrad's Albion number, and it contains this very-difficult-to-read (and certainly-difficult-to-write) (soma)tic ritual "Healing for a Pedophile." Despite its brutality, it highlights, for me at least, Conrad the shamen: our foremost "ethicist" (I'm certain he'd challenge this term) in a world in which "the good" exists somewhere between praxis and possibility. Whenever I hear folks challenge the efficacy of poetry, I think about what Conrad's writing does: that, despite this "villainous planet" (as he has it above) his poetry continues to pry open spaces in which language and thought recalibrate our biological temporalities and remediate the toxins in our bodies. While these poems are sometimes painful to read, I'm awed by where he finds himself, where he takes us as readers, and ultimately what he's able to produce as a result of these experiences...
As a side note, this new Dreamboat contains additional work by Marianne Morris, Amanda Nadelberg, and Alan Bernheimer (new installments from The Spoonlight Institute), and the prior issue featured new stuff from Anna Vitale, Jasper Bernes, Ara Shirinyan, and Jocelyn Saidenberg. If you're interested, contact Alli directly...
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