Last Bender

Thomas Hardy: At the War Office, London                           I Last year I called this world of gaingivings The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly, So charged it seemed with circumstance that brings                     The tragedy of things                         II Yet at that censured time no [...]

The Jivin’ Ladybug is an exciting poetry journal I just came across via Silliman’s Blog. The link is to a poem by Will Alexander, and as always his hypnotic surreal jazz is compulsive, propulsive and explosive. i sometimes think Alexander is the only contemporary poet I can stand. He leaves theory shivering in its shorts.

from the Paris Review Interview, 2005: GILBERT: “I think serious poems should make something happen that’s not correct or entertaining or clever. I want something that matters to my heart, and I don’t mean “Linda left me.” I don’t want that. I’ll write that poem, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about [...]

Alfred Starr Hamilton to the Rescue! A while back New Jersey poet Lisa Borinsky tracked me down in my office to ask if I had any Alfred Starr Hamilton material. Why would a totally unknown poet and novelist living in Ithaca have any archival material relating to an obscure poet who at first appears to [...]

The serious scholarly activity of PhD poets, sane and measured as it is, or purports to be, is simply professionalism, ventriloquism, transvestism. In the arts there are no rational theses, just the dressed up rantings of hallucinating primitives. Poets are witch doctors in suits, shamans with TVs, witches who ride old Volvos instead of broomsticks. [...]

On False Naivete Not long ago i sent my curmudgeonly friend Philip a Kimya Dawson song I like, and he sent back a curmudgeonly reply, to the effect that he loathes Kimya Dawson and all of her ilk because he loathes false naiveté. I do still love the song I sent (Underground) but find his [...]

Farfalla Press blog has posted a YouTube recording of Weldon Kees reading three poems. Weldon Kees has been a favorite poet of mine for years, since Bill Ford, my formalist adversary, introduced me to him. Farfalla has also put me in their links, so I happily reciprocate. http://farfallapress.blogspot.com/ . The other poet I associate with [...]

I’ve always worked on Maggie’s farm. I’ve always hoped and dreamed there was a way out but Maggie’s farm has grown from one end of the universe to the other . Maggie’s farm has flattened the earth. You can’t walk out of it. There is no edge or beyond. “I try so hard to be [...]

Here’s a good poem for a bleak day, by Yeats, at the end of his life. Some poets you admire and some you love. Milton and Wordsworth I admire. Coleridge and Yeats I love. A Stick of Incense Whence did all that fury come, From empty tomb or Virgin womb? St Joseph thought the world would [...]

This morning I went to Ron Silliman’s blog and followed a link about ‘the deep image poets’ to a post by a poet who is reading a book of criticism about the Deep Image poets, bly in particular. The gist of the post is that while a lot of deep image poetry sucks, not all [...]