TWILIGHT CANTOS by Iván Argüelles

Iván Argüelles

TWILIGHT CANTOS

Poetry, 149 pp., $14 US

ISBN 9781938521553

From the beautiful, askew opening line of this book, “as much are the years gone now as snow,” to the profound concluding speculations—“Is the world made in the shape of language?”; “A lifelong search for sound in meaning”— 'Twilight Cantos' reaches into a darkness few books, few films, few songs, few symphonies, few paintings—few artists—even recognize. Argüelles has always been a powerhouse, but there is a lifetime singing in every line of this book. —Jack Foley

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TAXONOMIC DRIFT by MARK YOUNG

I thought I had died & ascended to the heathens when I read this book. So excited to discover that adherents to — practitioners of, yet — the poésie maudit that I espoused are still active, even if they are living in some far-flung geography like Patagonia or North Queensland or Novaya Zemlya, & even if the technology they embrace & write about has moved past sewing machines & umbrellas & into realms that I, in my wildest moments, could not have imagined. I am in love! — Isadore Ducasse, author of Les Chants de Maldoror. MARK YOUNG is a poet, visual poet, and the Editor of OTOLITHS.

$12.00 US

ISBN 9781938521560

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CONTAINERS PROJECTING MULTITUDES: Expositions on The Poetry of John M. Bennett by Jim Leftwich

Jim Leftwich

CONTAINERS PROJECTING MULTITUDES:

Expositions on Th Poetry of John M. Bennett

Jim Leftwich takes on the enigmatic, complex poetry of John M. Bennett in a series of explorations of Bennett's books. Leftwich, a poet, is an authority on Bennett's ways of writing. His expositions include essay-like discussions, close readings of individual poems and lines, and glosses, hacks, and re-writings of Bennett's texts. The re-writings create new poems and are ways in which Leftwich inhabits and/or illuminates the originals. At each chapter's end, there is an email exchange between the two, discussing or clarifying aspects of the preceding exposition. The book is a fascinating journey toward the heart of a unique poet, whose work is generally impossible to approach using standard critical methodologies. This is a great opportunity to examine not only the mysteries of John M. Bennett's poetry under the sharp magnification of the mind of Jim Leftwich, but a way to engage with Leftwich's remarkable work as a poet and thinker about poetry.

281 pp.

ISBN 9781938521546

$20

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IVAN ARGÜELLES ON
CONTAINERS PROJECTING MULTITUDES

two ladders opposed to a similar molecular weight, light at the source of a resemblance to meaning freewheeling devices snorted
and capsized and downruled beyond the fierce of echo

OK stops a sop to plunge milk back into its doughnut, hole a , fuse relicts of a zombie in noontime decay which is language at its worsted suite a best refitting of shoes on the wrong feet or tooth in its dreamy , monsters from the Id

which is the two of these bustards wingless floating in a black sun sky, to die!

can you picture a tongue in its jail-slot, or nose quivering with green-sea snot slobbering lips to kiss a void and then, some a while back in the illustrated century of typescript a disease called man, the soul an arcane penny whistle and soot and rusting hieroglyphs in neo-cryptic mayan

say this is a critique of a series of beaks beech books beakers pamphlets dow jones reports about the loss of poetry in the twenty figged century, scalpel and boot in hand and a device much like a micrometer ready to blow sky , high ! "Visual poems are scattered throughout the book." un hunh you bet

looking more like a hat with eyes Bennett puzzles over what Leftwich left undiscovered a rock mired in its own detritus unable to move from the literary socket until at first , of course , residual drizzle bloating the ham sandwich yesterday's lunch in a daze of calendar switches which makes every Tuesday a blasphemy

structure and determination

to be read while coughing socks

CONTAINERS PROJECTING MULTITUDES

DROPPED IN THE DARK BOX by John M. Bennett

DROPPED IN THE DARK BOX

John M. Bennett

 

Poetry makes things happen, makes us happy, makes us happy by making things happen.

Concoct meanings as you wish, sort and sift them at your pleasure, discard them in the end and simply (which in context means complexly) enjoy the machinery of the poem at work. This is the what and the why of many a Bennett poem. It takes some effort to get to it, but it is always worth the work. Poems make things happen. Little things, yes, but worlds are made of little things, lives are made of little things. A poem should mean and be and do, simultaneously and sequentially. 

Open this book to page 12 and read "found the fistula," which might be thought of as a kind of mini ars poetica...Read a poem once and you know that it exists. Read it twice and you might think you know some of what it means. Read it three times and you suspect it of nonexistence. The poem will not sit still for your inspection. It will not stand for scrutiny. While reading it the fourth time you suspect you have some sort of slithering, slippery, shape-shifting chimera before your eyes. It is made of signs and sings and sounds and sooouuunds, slimy shifting symbols and sticky surfaces...Poetry makes things happen, makes us happy, makes us happy by making things happen.

 - Jim Leftwich

$15

146 pp.

ISBN 9781938521539

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I reMEmber petrOLeum by Jim Leftwich

I reMEmber petrOLeum

Jim Leftwich

242 pp., $18.00, ISBN 9781938521522

I reMEmber petrOLeum is a single long poem of 391 cantos or a series of 391 poems, both structures are valid, that can be read or experienced as a vast mirror in which you will see yourself and the world which is your matrix. When you read it again or look again into its pages, you and the world you see will be different. This is not “confessional” poetry, nor cultural critique, nor political posturing, but something quite different: it is an authentic immersion into a self through the medium of written language. And because it is so complete and fearless in that immersion, in its unflinching consciousness and unconsciousness, a self, or all selves, are revealed. This is why you will see your own unique beings and worlds in this book. Leftwich writes passages of both apparently clear diction (again the road,/what it wants is always in/ruin, opening/like a lip), and passages of apparent ambiguity or aleatoric syntax (I & Yes/I/less & less/a guest inside a guess); he uses word play to indicate the shifting nature of “reality” (feELeRs gRiPping/fiLTeRs gripPing); there are passages and moments of beautiful surrealism (I LiKe the uMBrella/Flying in the underworld); in short, his skill with written language is such that there seems to be no barrier, no hesitation, between his intention or experience and his writing of it. It is remarkable that this entire book was written in less than three weeks. His is an authentic and powerful human voice speaking thinking mumbling explaining stumbling being blindingly clear. -John M. Bennett

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