March, 2024

March, and fresh from a session with Virginie Despentes’ Cher Connard as I write tonight, I want to say a few words in praise of my – yes, unfashionable, and really rather ugly — Kindle. First, let me admit: I have no formal studies in any foreign language; I am an autodidact. Which is to say: my French is abysmal. Most important for me, then, is the dictionary look-up feature. I know, I know, I should simply read the work in English. But, of course, many of the novels I want to read, like Despentes’, and even more non-fiction titles, have not been translated; also, I am too lazy for the constant back and forth of a paper dictionary. Not to mention, even given my rudimentary…skills, I think there is a special delight in reading whatever one can in the original; how else to learn, for instance, that “cartonner” is slang for anything — a film, a song — that’s become a big hit (though, literally, it is to wrap something up in cardboard), or what “la pine” or “la foufoune” might be? (I’ll let you look those up.)

Too, aside from the above, there is the matter of the Kindle’s portability; in lieu of barbells, try lugging around Yann Moix’s Naissance. Also price: in my experience, usually less than 2/3 of paper editions. Not to forget the device’s adjustable illumination, should one wish to avoid the pillow-over-the-head-with-a-peevish-sigh of a bed partner.

On the other hand, absolutely none of this means I’ll be clearing out my bookcases anytime soon. E.g., are you (as it would appear from this newsletter) often on the hunt for small press contemporary poetry? More miss than hit, in my experience. And who, when reading digitally, doesn’t also long for the joys of discovery in browsing a favorite bookstore of a free afternoon, and the vaunted but quite real sensuality of printed matter? (Worth noting, as well, in the case of my Kindle or the Nook, forking over your precious dollars to a corporation will probably feel more than a little treasonous; for some, a dealbreaker, I’m sure.)

Anyway, I suppose I could go on, but such are my thoughts at the moment.

So, enough.

Onto, now, this month’s short essay from Joseph Campana, who considers John Blair’s “Winter Storm, New Orleans”, contending, among other things, that it “inverts the affective fallacy”. (Please note the slightly askew formatting — received from his iPad.)

I’m visiting New Orleans this weekend, and I realized as I flew in I couldn’t name a classic “New Orleans” poem I might think about or write about. I started digging around and of course there are so many hurricane poems—some born, no doubt, out of hurricane prayers, which are not uncommon in the churches of this storm-stricken coast. And there are poems full of flora and fauna and food with an abundance shocking even in Houston. And there were poems about (or in the idiom) of the blues. And there are so many great poets in New Orleans. How to pick? I texted a friend who grew up here (his favorite is Marcus B.  Christian’s “I Am New Orleans” and I wish I had time to unleash his other recommendations here: perhaps he should write a column soon for the newsletter.)

I found it increasingly hard to choose. Until I landed on John Blair’s “Winter Storm, New Orleans.” This is not a poet whose works I know  (although I am embarrassed to discover he’s in San Marcos, TX, just  down the road from me). And the poem may not scream New Orleans (with the iconic sound of a second line) but I found it quiet, moving: not what I expected.

Deceptively quiet, might be a better way to put it. It seems gentle at first, the earth washing itself perhaps in rain. Isn’t it comforting when we think of weather as that which cleanses, not that which destroys? Of course, the we addressed by the poem, you and I reading it, may be lovers of the earth, but we’re the ones washed away and with us “experience.” Experience feels somewhat euphemistic here, like we are the remains of what happens when lovers love, and we are to be washed away. Something’s awry. We might think it’s the weather. Turns out we are the problem. Winter storms may seem strange in the steaminess New Orleans is known for, which is why “the idea of snow /  is wrong here / somehow unbearable.” But what if it is humans who cause “the shudder of flesh / touched by foulness.” We are the foulness, perhaps, and the “mud” pulls at our feet like sorrow because sorrow is so often what people bring to the land. In a way, the poem inverts the affective fallacy. If it was (and still is) for some critics a fallacy to assume it rains when we’re sad (or it storms when King Lear is angry), maybe the inverse would be that it rains when the earth heaves with the sorrowful weight of people. That weight can be  so heavy, snow is like an invading “yankee whiteness” and even the  city is, and always was, a “weathered ruin.” Ruins can be gorgeous and admirable, but if all settlement, all cities, are already ruins, whatever their age, then how exactly might even mighty weather wash the land clean?

There’s something else in this poem I note—this poem about a city but largely without people. It captures that feeling of what happens when a lively place that is all about bustling crowds of people—stops in the middle of a storm and clears out. All you see is a city without people, rain falling but not on people, and even “the wind / stumbles across the street / and is gone” because no one else is on the street. The poem records something like an aberration—a winter storm in New Orleans—for a time, 2024 and beyond—when aberration becomes the rule when it comes to weather. How will we read the earth, how will we read  cities, when they do not yield what we expect and when? Not all surprises are delights.

Winter Storm, New Orleans
by John Blair

If it could, the earth would wash
you and all of us from her as a lover

washes away experience. That’s what
all this is about. Winter, even here,

is the shudder of flesh
touched by foulness.

The mud pulls at your feet
like sorrow. If you try, you can find

something even of comfort
in the dead smell of coat-leather;

for a moment the wind
is the voice of grief,

slashes inward with a fistful
of cold rain, then dissolves too

into insensible drizzle.
The idea of snow

is wrong here, somehow
unbearable. So you watch for it,

the random lights dropping
new through the trees, yankee

whiteness like a chrysalis to
change your life. The wind

stumbles across the street
and is gone. The city settles

like the weathered ruin
it always was.

Yes — I think we’ll take Joseph’s suggestion that we see if we can impose on Mr. Blair to write a guest column for this newsletter, soon.

Penultimately, a note of hearty congratulation to Hélène Cardona,  former Plume editor, marvelous poet, actress, and translator, whose translation of  Franco-Syrian poet Maram Al-Masri’s The Abduction (White Pine Press, 2023), won the 2024 Independent Press Award in Poetry: https://www.independentpressaward.com/2024winners/9781945680618

Finally, our habitual nod to a few of our contributors who have books recently published, soon-to-be, or fresh acceptances.

Diane Seuss             Modern Poetry: Poems
Jean Valentine         Light Me Down: The New & Collected Poems of Jean Valentine
Fady Joudah            …: Poems
Victoria Chang          With My Back to the World: Poems
Jay Hopler                Still Life
Andrea Cohen          The Sorrow Apartments

That’s it for now – be well — as always, I hope you enjoy the issue!

Daniel Lawless
Editor, Plume