Lea Graham reviews Michael Anania’s “Nightsongs & Clamors”
IT’S ABOUT TIME This past June marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Michael Anania’s first book New Poetry Anthology (Swallow Press, 1969). This is particularly important given that his newest book of poems Nightsongs & Clamors—his nineteenth book, continues his commitment to modernist aesthetics, but also because this current work deals so much with time
Erin Lyndal Martin reviews Franny Choi’s “Soft Science”
CONSCIOUSNESS RAISED “This is a test to determine if you have consciousness,” Franny Choi writes in Soft Science. Clearly referencing the 1950’s Turing Test that evaluates artificial intelligence, Choi reappropriates that line of inquiry to reconsider the way that otherness is constructed in opposition to autonomy. The book’s epigraph from cyber-feminist Donna Haraway (author of The Cyborg Manifesto) is precisely
Joshua Corey reviews Amish Trivedi’s “Your Relationship to Motion Has Changed”
E PLURIBUS UNUM Your Relationship to Motion Has Changed Amish Trivedi Shearsman Books $17 paperback, 84 pp. January 2019 Amish Trivedi’s second full-length collection takes its epigraph from Joseph Ceravolo, who assembled Transmigration Solo, a collection of his earliest poems, by intuition and feel. “Whether I chose for contrast or for similarity of mood, I don’t know,” Ceravolo
Republic Cafe by David Biespiel reviewed by Craig Brandis
Republic Café is David Biespiel’s sixth book of poetry. It is arguably his finest work. Loosely based on Alain Resnais’ romantic drama film Hiroshima Mon Amour, this book-length poem borrows the movie’s main storyline and recasts it as a shape-shifting Noh play, presented in 54 numbered sections. The story follows two lovers over a 36-hour period as they meet and
Like by A.E. Stallings reviewed by Devin King
LOST OBJECTS At the beginning of Book Two of Lucretius’ The Nature Of Things—Book One, you’ll remember, sets up that the universe is built from atoms and the idea of the clinamen—Lucretius writes what to me is one of the more difficult of his arguments to adjust to a present ethics of encounter. Here’s A.E. Stallings’ translation of the lines
Mystery and Surprise: Two Chinese Poets; reviewed by Alexander Dickow
The contemporary Chinese poet Mang Ke and the Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin (9th century) could hardly be more different. The former, particularly in the later poems of the chronologically arranged collection, seems fresh and spontaneous, capricious; the latter hermetic and mysterious.
