We’ll see how long this lasts.
BOOKS+READ+++++++++++++++~~~N.K. Jemisin ~~~ The City We Became // A fun, frenetic read about five avatars of the city joining together to repel the para(?)-dimensional threat of all the multiversals NYCs being replaced by some kinda suck/dead city. Perfect to get me through several grueling flights. But found the characterization and sense of place a bit thin. And I would have tolerated a slowing down of the plot for more roving detours into/around the city. This was my intro to Jemisin. Should have started w/the Broken Earth trilogy, I think. ++++++++++++++++++++++ Zapatista Army of National Liberation ~~~ Did You Listen? Compilation of Communiques of the EZLN, December 2012 – February 2013 ~~~ Goofing, pop-culture conversation & revolutionary rhetoric ~~~ “10 – If he or she is a ghost of those that have disappeared, NOT A ZAPATISTA. P.S. THAT APOLOGIZES – Oh, I know you expected something more serious and formal. But, isn’t the tone and style of this missive better ‘proof of life’ than a photo a video, or even an autograph?” ~~ ++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Reuben Gelley Newman ~ chapbook on Seven Kitchens Press (Cincinnati) edition of 100 ~~ Feedback Harmonies ~~ “I’m on a dwarf planet, in a hive of sound and gravity, / the lush architecture of a cello, strings rustling softly / against the stars, thick with sixteenth notes, sweet” ~ poems about Arthur Russell. I’m a sucker for poetry about music. Upper limit song and all. +++++++++++++++++ +++ + ++++ = + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +++++++++++++++++ adjacent islands // islas adyacentes by Nicole Cecilia Delgado, translated by Urayoán Noel (Ugly Duckling Presse, Doublecross Press, La Impresora. w/riso postcards +++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ++++++++++++++++ The Essential June Jordan, edited by Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller (Copper Canyon, 2021). Many poems are fire. Impressed w/compression that can tilt from cutting wit to warmth in a split second. Struck by the numerous lines Jordan draws between the black experience and settler-colonial violence in the U.S. and Palestine. The paratexts leave much to be desired, particularly any kind of biographical sketch that might help contextualize Jordan’s work. And the particulars of her biography are riveting—like her split with Audre Lorde over Palestine. Picked this one up on a lark killing time before a reading. ~~~~ “ What will we do / when there is nobody left / to kill?” ~~~~ “and there / inside the mommasoft / life-spillin treasure chest / the heart / breaks” ~~~~~~~~ “How many of my brothers and my sisters / will they kill / before I teach myself / retaliation? / Shall we pick a number? / South Africa for instance” + + + + ++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + ++ + Day Bed by Zach Savich (Black Ocean, 2018) ~~~ “It was a world / if you walked in it, / long enough to wish to stay” “I burn my tongue / to see if it’s warm. It’s not enough / but I trust / what isn’t.”~~~ I read a lot of furious work but sometimes need poems like deep equanimous pools. Savich is good at making and sustaining that space, each line holding interest. Would love to flip flop between this and Zhuangzi.+ + + + + + + + + + + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + Travelogue for the Dispossessed by Vincent James Perrone (Ghost City Press, 2021)~~ “The lunacy of sunrise / in Nebraska, bludgeoned by sky / …. / … –arced against acres of corn, all landscape / murderous and calm as smoke” ~~ Like a noir-road trip where the fact of U.S. settler-colonialism is common sense, w/some philosophically pungent couplets bent across the break. + + + + + ++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++ +. + + + + + + + + + Crude Editions #4: intervals of by David Koehn & Rebecca Resinski (Blue Bag Press) ~~~ “exact / glances / break / us” + + + + + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Stuart Hall, Selected Writings: On Marxism, ed. Gregor McLennan (2021) ~~~ This was a schooling. A lot stuck, a lot shifted and honed things. The discussion of the debate surrounding and dynamics of base & superstructure particularly helpful. “Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A Theoretical Overview” felt particularly relevant for its larger propositions (“The role of hegemony is to ensure that, in the social relations between classes, each class is continually reproduced in its existing dominant-or-subordinate form”) and the finer distinctions Hall makes in the roles of subcultures in post-war class relations. “Black Crime, Black Proletariat,” though feels foundational in rethinking our understanding of class, racialization, criminalization, and coloniality. Here’s a sample: “In fact, black labour can only be adequately understood, historically, if it is also seen as a class which has already developed in the Caribbean—vis-à-vis ‘colonial’ forms of capital—as a cohesive social force. In the colonial ‘wage-lessness’ was one of its key strategies.” Simply put, he’s trying to make legible previously unrecognized forms of class struggle, and I think one of the great invitations of Hall is to apply his discerning vision to our own contemporary moment to recognize its specific contours. There’s a lot of narrow thinking on who composes the working class and what class struggle looks like. + + + + + + + + +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + + + + + + + ++++++++++++ + + + + + + + Ointment Weather: Insurgent Poietics for Desperate Times (Cloak, 2025) by Thom Eichelberger-Young ~~~~~~ Densely layered, heavily footnoted prose blocks drawing on the techniques of documentary poetry for a moment of mass surveillance, transnational genocide, and a layers of complicity w/in these violences. Remarkable capacity to traverse the personal and political, local and global, to move from the quiet rooms of museums and the environmental racism of a highway project in Buffalo to the lens of an imperial killing machine. Hard to do this one justice in these little notes.
BOOKS+RECEIVED++++++++++++ A whole mess of stuff from betweenthehighways press +++++ Love the chaotic energy & excess of this mailer.
JOE HALL 