“What’s going on?”

Review

A review of ‘Documentary Poetry’ by Heimrad Bäcker

Jill Magi
From the cover of ‘Documentary Poetry’ by Heimrad Bäcker translated by Patrick Greaney.

It is the question that Marvin Gaye asks — “what’s going on, tell me what’s going on?” — that needs asking at the beginning of an essay about documentary, poetry, the Shoah, the book Documentary Poetry, and the lifework of Heimrad Bäcker.

Eugene Ostashevsky (SideGig #2)

Podcast
SideGig

In this second episode of SideGig, Eugene Ostashevsky sings his poem “Second Peepeesaurus” to the tune of “Heroin,” by the Velvet Underground, with Paul and Kevin backing up on guitar and bass. Ostashevsky also recites “First Peepeesaurus.” All three, in conversation, discuss the origins of the Peepeesaurus in a prehistory of potty training, Ostashevsky’s possibly non-existent and possibly extensive musical influences, the philosophical systems of Spinoza and DJ Spinoza, and the importance of rhyme for young poets immersed in the Russian poetic tradition.

The force of chance, or vital matters

Review

On Marie de Quatrebarbes’ ‘The Vitals’

Matt Reeck
From left: Quatrebarbes’ book ‘The Vitals,’ Marie de Quatrebarbes (photo by Wiktoria Bosc).

Because language is our primary means of communication, we tend to forget that language is material. Yet, when we read, we see something, and that thing transmits a neural impulse in the brain (which is itself material), and an effect is produced. Knowledge and sensation have their own forms of materiality internal to our minds. We also tend to forget that language is essentially hermetic. Language isn’t “open”: interpretation always takes place; not even the most clear-minded user of language with the most specific intention is enough to hide language’s hermetic, obscure nature. 

Make touch poems (PoemTalk #210)

Podcast

Muriel Rukeyser, “Waking This Morning”

PoemTalk
From left: Al Filreis, Kathy Lou Schultz, Jane Malcolm, Evie Shockley

Kathy Lou Schultz (visiting from Memphis), Jane Malcolm (Montreal), and Evie Shockley (down the Turnpike from New Brunswick) joined Al Filreis to talk about a poem by Muriel Rukeyser. The poem is titled “Waking This Morning” and it was first published in the book Breaking Open in 1973. Our recording of the poem can be found at Rukeyser’s extensive PennSound page – one of the poems she read for the vinyl release of The Poetry and Voice of Muriel Rukeyser put out in 1977 in the Caedmon records series. Our poem is the second cut on side B of the album. This special episode was recorded before a live audience in the Arts Café of the Kelly Writers House. 

“The sounds in-between”

Interview

A conversation between Jay Ritchie and Georgiana de Rham

Jay Ritchie
Georgiana de Rham
From left to right: Jay Ritchie (photo by Stacy Lee), Ritchie’s book “Listening in Many Publics,” and Georgiana de Rham.

On a wintry February evening, I shared a drink with my friend Jay Ritchie, a poet, intermedia artist, and PhD student living in Tiotià:khe/Montreal. Surrounded by the ambient noise of Montrealers enjoying a Friday night at Les Verres Stérilisés, we talked about his recent poetry collection Listening in Many Publics — a book of three long poems which are themselves composed of individual, interlinked poems (Invisible Publishing, 2024). After our conversation, Jay created a sound collage from the recording of our interview and music he composed for performances of poems from the collection.  

Emily Wilson (SideGig #1)

Podcast
SideGig

In this inaugural episode of SideGig, Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and celebrated translator of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad, chants the original Ancient Greek text as well as her own translation of a passage from book eight of the former work, with accompaniment by Kevin and Paul on bass and guitar.

“A wound lives in whatever isn’t spoken”

Review

On torrin a. greathouse’s ‘DEED’

Marcus Zhang
From left to right: torrin a. greathouse (photo by Tarik Dobbs), greathouse’s book ‘DEED.’

Will language ever be enough to undo the violent effects of itself? torrin a. greathouse’s most recent poetry collection, DEED, does not answer the question — since it is one of the unanswerable inquiries — but its exploration of language and desire brings moments of acceptance.

The halo he sees when the light shines

Review

On Robert Gibbons’s ‘Under the Great Divide with Ed Dorn’

Richard Hoffman
From left to right: the cover of “Under the Great Divide with Ed Dorn,” Robert Gibbons (photo by Joseph Schuyler).

Robert Gibbons’s Under the Great Divide with Ed Dorn is a book of witness, of presence seeking to perfect itself. Every poem in it arises from the intersection of a given place with time and consciousness. That there is more to an encounter, a photograph, a streetscape, a snatch of music, or a memory than we at first realize is a given for this poet, as is the radical subjectivity that plays the spider to his dynamic webwork.

Vancouver to New York City

Interview

Catching up with Kevin Davies

Kevin Davies
Scott Inniss
From left to right: Kevin Davies, Davies’ book “FPO,” and Scott Inniss.

As a low-level worker (“copy chief”) in a boutique marketing firm, I of course came across this abbreviation a lot on the documents I inspected. “For position only” seemed appropriate for what I saw as the haphazard, seemingly random work I managed to eke out from 2007 to 2013.