Gently Read Literature just published my review of Carrie Olivia Adams’ Intervening Absence. Thanks GRL.
I still chew on the poems in this book. They’re good.
Gently Read Literature, by the way, is worth attention. They strive for more comprehensive reviews of books which incorporate a substantial amount of quotation–they let you encounter the texture of the stuff.
Blowing out 2009 with one of my (& our) favorite people in DC–Sally Keith. This is the last thing you should do before you leave town. Assuming you leave town. Hardcore DCists, come and say goodbye to your carpetbagging friends.
Plus, beer!
Thursday, December 17th at 8 PM
Big Bear Cafe 1st & R NW Washington DC
www.cherylsgone.com
Sally Keith’s new poems will appear (or have) in: A Public Space, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Literary Imagination, and Black Clock. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Design and Dwelling Song, and teaches at George Mason.
Karen Leona Anderson is the author of “Punish honey,” chosen by Evie Shockley for Carolina Wren Press in 2009. She received an M.F.A from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an M.A. from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and her Ph.D. from Cornell University, where she wrote a dissertation on poetry and science. Her work has appeared in ecopoetics, jubilat, Verse, Indiana Review, Fence, Volt, and other journals. She is an assistant professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Casey Smith teaches writing, poetry, and print culture history at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Recently he has collaborated on poetry projects with visual artists, Vesna Pavlovic, Nilay Lawson, and Kerry McAleer-Keeler, and he has something in the works forthcoming with Ward Tietz. To the best of his knowledge, he has not been subjected to alien abduction.
In 2008, cabaret artist Maureen Andary was awarded a Young Emerging Artist grant by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to produce her debut album, “Nostalgia”, and was selected as a finalist in the 2008 Mountain Stage New Song Contest, one of the premier showcases of emerging musical talent in North America. Maureen sings classic jazz and blues as well as original songs that are inspired by the chord changes of 1930s pop music. A native Washingtonian, she has been nominated for two Wammies by the Washington Area Music Association this year and performs as part of the indie pop duo The Sweater Set.
After reading for the GRE Lit test the past several months, I came to this, the first chapbook I’ve read in a long time, with my brain violated by all the Victorianism–shell-shocked–& still digesting some shifts in my “personal life” (some crappy, some better (living here)).
In the halo of fire surrounding an encounter with a destroying goddess/beloved, Your Name… is erotic, esoteric, and makes the frightful what we should desire–exactly what I needed to read.
Some of the best lines here take gestures that might seem absurdly gothic–
In the dark there is only darkness and
And push forward, unblinkingly–
The darker things dark clings to
–imploding our initial resistance to it through sheer excess.
Sample poems here. Beautifully printed too.
The kind of short line making, couplet use, and the correlating rhythms seems related (cousins maybe?) to what Schomburg is doing in Scary, No Scary. It seems deceptively simple. I’m looking forward to more.
That’s all. I’d hate to ruin my enjoyment and maybe yours by saying any more.
JOE HALL 