Recent Reading

With Li Sci on hold, more recent reading and micro "reviews"...

0.10 by Craig Watson
Poetry that investigates the nature of perception as it relates to real and imagined architectural spaces. I think this book was prnited in the 80's by Awede Press which is no longer active, but known for their very fine letterpressed editions.

Mani by Roberto Harrison
I had just finished his other chapbook when Mani arrived in the mail. This work makes the manifold world manifest with mantra-like clarity.

Blindsight by Rosmarie Waldrop
Each image is a lens, each lens a map. Moving contours of insinuation, memory overlapping reference. Oblique, strategic and luminous.

Red Juice by Hoa Nguyen
The compression she achieves while keeping the poem bouyant--wow. Joyous, tangential minis rich with goddesses.

Eureka Slough by Joseph Massey
Pacific, solid verse in the Objectivist tree.

O New York by Trey Sager
Trey's work winds like a tendril down the page in a momentum of aches and humors. A fitting ode to the city I love from a distance and within.

Meteoric Flowers by Elizabeth Willis
Lots of words I've never seen next to each other before, but seeing them there they feel familiar-- like, how has this never been a sentence before? "As a lever, I fail before dog-eared magnolia things." Every line of these prose poems is an invention, not an improvement upon or combination of existing gadgets, but bright points of eureka light cast with tenderness and verve.

**

I am struck by the resurgence of the fine art chapbook- as exquisite objects and containers of compelling, innovative texts like those found on the imprints Ugly Duckling Presse, Answer Tag Home, Atticus Finch, Effing, Gong Press. A good sign that poetry is in robust health is the artful and painstaking work of the individuals animating publications like these.