Category Archives: Poetry

Stepping Out by Stepping In

Lew Welch, transcribed. Step out into the Planet, Draw a circle two feet round. Inside the circle are 300 things      nobody understands and,      maybe, nobody’s ever seen. How many can you find? Lew Welch 6/12/64 Can you hear the intonations … Continue reading

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Composition in Contraries

Plank versus bridge. Some thoughts. D’après Miss Moore Going Over To throw before some way what is a gang plank to a bridge? Not just the appropriate tool at the appropriate place. A bridge is full of particulate plurals. A … Continue reading

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Premises and Premises

Within a few paces, one straddles the erotic, the synesthetic and the memento mori. Because an opulent tongue contours my hip bone Because the music arrived in ochres, greens, yellows Because I wanted the music to articulate me Because lacking … Continue reading

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The Curled Kitten

Warm is a Circle Written and Illustrated by Hilary Thompson Hantsport, Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press, 1979 It was the title that attracted me to this book, I thought it had something to do with synesthesia. What I discovered is true … Continue reading

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Dépayser

Modes of Being Out of the World Sara Guyer Reading with John Clare: Biopoetics, Sovereignty, Romanticism explores the poetics of homelessness. It takes on an existential character. For example, about the poem “I am” she references Bridget Keegan Bridget Keegan … Continue reading

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Liminal Ball Tossing

Oana Avasilichioaei Limbinal As suiting a book about margins and perimeters, the book begins with a poem called “Bound” which itself begins with an apostrophe to “Border” which I misread as beginning “Border, you tenderly.” Border, you terrify. Border, you … Continue reading

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Fiddlehead Farrago

Other titles in the series are Touch Will Tell and Walk With Your Eyes. The one that interests me is Listen to a Shape. It seems to harken more to the synesthetic experience. All are with words and images by … Continue reading

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Purrfect Pun

In the age of cat videos, one comes across an apt little bit of verse from John S. Crosbie in Crosbie’s Book of Punned Haiku. (New York: Workman Publishing, 1979). There is nothing worse Than poems about cute cats It … Continue reading

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They Are Other

Marilyn Dumont The Pemmican Eaters The anaphora would be oppressive if these last three lines were not broken off into a separate stanza. these are not the lines between English and French these are not the lines between oral and … Continue reading

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Stein – Ashbery – Chiasson

To – from – of William James described consciousness as the “alternation of flights and perchings,” suggesting that we tend to overvalue the “perchings,” the nouns or the primary verbs in a sentence that steal the spotlight from the little … Continue reading

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