David Jaffin’s Eye-Sensing has made the long sea-voyage to Ontario. Look for its listing soon. Dan is almost finished the negotiations over our new relationship with BookMobile pod services. Don Wellman’s long-overdue book will be first up, followed soon by Mike Heller, and Alan Halsey. We’re still awaiting the arrival of Jane Nakagawa’s book at Ahadada West.
Jonathan Monroe’s great collection of prose poems Demosthenes’ Legacy will soon be at press.
Yoko Danno’s Songs and Stories of the Kojiki continues to generate much interest, as does Masako’s Story by Kikuko Otake.
Burton’s book made 28th on the SPD best-sellers list.
Still in negotiations with Rane Arroyo and the fine novelist Tom Bradley.
Ekleksographia is in process. The Haptic poetry anthology is also in process.
We have E-chaps from Maurice Skully, Judith Katz-Levine, and others and dreams to start an Ahadada New (Experimental) Playwrights series.
Just saw the notice on the Buffalo List. Rest well, James. I’ll lift a cup of coffee to you, since my liver can take no more long hours at Axel’s. Jess
Thank God that nature gave us a Sarah Palin look-alike with the ability to deflate demagoguery with a mere roll of the eyes and a wink! I love Tina Fey!
Obama’s great victory resonates all the way back to the beginnings of slavery in the United States. It is a great and important victory and a mighty step towards redress and healing the rift that has torn American society apart for decades. Obama needs to be where he is at this time and this place, no doubt about it. But there’s one problem that no politician has addressed in a real way and this problem transcends our history, our society, our civilization, and strikes at the very heart of our world. That problem is global warming and nothing short of a dramatic change in our concepts of who and what we are on this planet will help us. Building more cars, however “energy-efficient” they might be and paying someone to plant a tree when someone else builds a factory is not going to save us. That’s all smoke and mirrors. My hope remains that Obama will be the first American president to meaningfully address this problem. That’s my litmus test for him. This is not something that we can all do, as Dan asserts. We can’t blame ourselves when the brain surgeon we’ve hired decides that he would rather not tangle with the tumor that is slowly draining the life of the patient before him. This is something that our President–our political specialist–must do for us. Yes, I’m hopeful, but my hope is tempered by the fact that every day that this problem is not taken care of, is a day that brings all of us–of every race and nationality–closer to an existence far worse than any scenario that our present president may have ordered to be deleted in the name of better business.
The pundits are going over-board about Obama’s win, and I’m afraid that my friend Dan Sendecki’s excitement at being part of a new generation of young people saving the world is somewhat premature. American politicians–indeed all politicians–take on the tone of alchemists and snake-oil salesmen the closer election day looms. The simple fact is, that maugre the wonderful symbolic victory of an African-American standing at the helm of America’s ship of state for the first time ever, Mr. Obama was the lesser of two evils. His particular problem–that of being truly an inexperienced politician–is now ours. The problems remain and continue to worsen, and once the cheers and the honeymoon fervor dies away we will be left with a mortal man–albeit a gifted orator and one of keen intelligence–but one of limited experience of the give and take, the rough and tumble of real international politics. My observation tells me that the Clintons–and one in particular–will make their best effort to realize a 2012 come-back–which means that Obama’s road is going to be a rough one in the days ahead, even among his own party members. Not to mention the fact that Obama may become–without intending to be so–a reason for even more racial division in the country. This is indeed an historic moment and one worthy of celebration, but the sooner Obama starts to tackle the problems of the economy and the security of the United States and the world with real actions the better. It’s time to get over our collective relief that America will no longer be run by an inarticulate, arrogant buffoon. Now we must hold Obama to his promises and push for the change he so glibly trumpeted from sea to shining sea. Yes, I’m jumping with joy–but it’s a joy that’s tempered by the fact that the world continues to grind on, savings continue to decline, and methane gasses continue to bubble up from beneath the melting ice caps at the North and South poles. The sooner Obama wakes up and starts to face these kinds of problems in a less-than-alchemical manner the better I will like him. History can go by the wayside as long as this man can help save the environment for my children and their children’s children. In order to do that he will have to face the impossible: the further slow-down of the American economy in the name of the environment. Is he up to that task while China asserts its right to replace a million bicycles with a million cars? When push comes to shove, will he be able to face down the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned America about? Or will he go the way of every American politician and begin to back off once he gets a sense of what his “change” may cost him once more lay-offs happen and the panaceas he proposes show themselves to be what they are–not realizable given the autombile industry’s stranglehold on the American economy, and the continuing yen for central heating, microwave ovens, color televisions, SUV’s and other symbols of the American life-style. Can Americans sacrifice that life-style so future generations will be able to breathe fresh air, or will they continue to drive their cars across town to do some shopping instead of taking a bus or even taking a walk? Time will tell, but time–quite frankly–is running out. So let’s celebrate, and talk about new paradigms and young generations saving the world, but then let’s see if this new president can walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. God help him, and God help us all.
I want to give a mention to three fine books that have found their way to Ahadada East during the last few weeks. Two are from BlazeVox books (www.blazevox.org,) and one from “Country Valley Press,” (www.web.mac.com/countryvalley) a publisher I’ve never heard of.
Eileen Tabios’ The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys: Her Biography Through Your Poetics is a self-portrait done, not in pastels, but in various critical takes on the poet and her work. I can’t say too many good things about this book because my response is there too. All I can add to what appears on pages 86–87 is that I meant every word of what I wrote. Eileen Tabios is an adventurous writer; a virtuoso of language and an inventor of forms that she increasingly ties to her own ethnic roots and the history of her family. This book is indeed a bunch of “keys” to what she does and what she is. Ron Silliman, Thomas Fink, Barbara Jane Reyes, and Leza Lowitz are names among the key-makers that I recognize.
Skip Fox’s For To, with a dark cover that evokes a geological rift, is full of accumulations of intelligence; an extended monologue spoken by someone part Hamlet, part rock-hound, part hustler perched, precariously, at the top of a heap of words of every shape, size and variety. Fox is the Minnesota Fats of post-post-modernity running the table while the yokels oggle. He can do every game anyone’s invented, and then some. “You want Nietzsche? Here’s Nietzsche.” “You want Wittgenstein? Here’s the towering W.” “You want Olson-speak?” “I want speak Olson.” “Voila! Olson it is!!!” You want quantum zaps of freshperson-blush-inducing scatology? Here you’ll find more curlicues of cork screw coproliths than any Colorado outcrop can net you at sun-down, and he can give you the history of each nodule, you betcha. He comes up to you like a masked magician shouting, “pick a form, any form! I can deliver.” And he does with astonishing facility. In short, Skip can fart onto a strawberry shortcake and quantify the result. (Seriously.) Bad jokes abound; groaners turn into screams. There must be some kind of music that these lyrical meditations could be set to, but it would have to be the same drones and pluckings that seem to emanate from those odd figures, part bird, part reptile, part anatomy chart, that populate Bosch’s vision of hell; or rather, let me rephrase and relocate that: these fulgurations fit the stale environs of an academic meeting room. These are the dead-end zingers that some Wilson scholar at the end of their patience might wish to hurl at the dean after a day of endless discussions of nothings divided and multiplied by nothings. (And perhaps will someday!) Isidore Ducasse was transmogrified into Lautreamont by a lot less.
Every dog has his day and Ed Baker has had his with the beautiful production of Restoration Poems 1972–2007. This is Ed before his discovery of “Stone Girl” or whatever the heck he calls her.
The
poems
are
thin
slivers
of syn-
tax
that
end
with
some-
thing
a-
bout
fashion-
ing
some-
thing
with
your
hands.
Honest workmanship abounds in these pages as Ed goes about restoring an old house (John Penn’s 1723, near Hanover, PA. I used to drive past it when I lived near there.) to its original integrity. Good stuff, I’d say, though if I were designing the book I’d give more context to the series. A brief introduction by Sir Ed would have done the trick.
Sheila sent the good news about Ron’s take on >2: An Anthology of New Collaborative Poetry. Thanks to Ron, Sheila, M.L.Weber (of Sugarmule) and congrats to all the fine poets included in the anthology! Jess
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