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Love your comment, Amy, how great the way you describe the poem's delight in the unsolvable: "that delight, rather than any complete understanding, is the juice we can wring from being alive."
The New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty): Dean Young [by Angela Ball]
Chaos Magic for Beginners Don’t we all love when the announcer gets choked up? When the roller coaster gets stuck, that an octopus can eat one of its own hearts when stressed enough and aren’t we all? Don’t you like to know stuff? Sperm leaves the penis at 28mph, in many countries being bird-poo...
Thank you for this beyond-generous comment, David.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty): Dean Young [by Angela Ball]
Chaos Magic for Beginners Don’t we all love when the announcer gets choked up? When the roller coaster gets stuck, that an octopus can eat one of its own hearts when stressed enough and aren’t we all? Don’t you like to know stuff? Sperm leaves the penis at 28mph, in many countries being bird-poo...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty): Dean Young [by Angela Ball]
Chaos Magic for Beginners Don’t we all love when the announcer gets choked up? When the roller coaster gets stuck, that an octopus can eat one of its own hearts when stressed enough and aren’t we all? Don’t you like to know stuff? Sperm leaves the penis at 28mph, in many countries being bird-pooped-on is considered lucky, Goya’s skull is still missing although the last thing my mother said no one understood and I’m okay with that. Let’s try to take pleasure in the contradictory heavy footfalls on the roof, whatever the dog’s dug up. Let’s appreciate the pyramid’s false floors, trap doors, the detective who’s yet to realize he’s stalking himself. It’s okay to be a demon, to be a thrown angel on the spectrum. Maybe you just feel too much, too much serotonin so even swans make you crazy, anyone talking on their phone in the elevator. Nothing needs a reason to happen, the cause of all this has yet to occur if it ever will. Often it’s like being fed to raptor hatchlings or trying to get information from a corpse, possibly your own. Almost everything doesn’t work. I like when the lovers can somehow stay together. I like when the tower collapses, that sense at the end that it’s never over --Dean Young I think one of the most important lessons and permissions I have tried to absorb from the originals of the New York School is the sense that anything language can do can be in a poem, be it cri de coeur or blunt information, if the poem and the poet's receptivity is open and playful enough. –Dean Young Dean Young's most recent book is Solar Perplexus. His poems have appeared a dozen times in Best American Poetry. The New York School Diaspora (Part Thirty): Dean Young The title of Dean Young’s “Chaos Magic for Beginners,” is a welter of contradictions—“magic,” as a skill, depends on utmost precision—what is “Chaos Magic” and how begin to impart its principles? Perhaps the way is demonstration, and “Chaos Magic for Beginners” is wonderfully demonstrative. The poem’s outer subject is expressed in its title, its inner one in the pattern of its imagery: things being blocked or unblocked, expressed. Bird poop turned awkwardly proverbial, a famous skull on the loose. Extractions, ingestions. Its method is not so much “ultra talk” as ultra thought—expression so swift as to almost precede formulation. The poem begins with schadenfreude prompted by a broadcaster’s fallibility. The late Jon Anderson once said, “The secret of poetry is cruelty.” It may also be the case that chaos is its secret. Who can explain the wonder of reading Young’s list of comic frustrations and striking oddities—the stuck rollercoaster, the heart-eating octopi (that we resemble), the speed of sperm, the great artist’s cranium, ending with the scalding mystery of a mother’s last words--lines that might also be read, as I did at first, as the mother saying, “No one understood. And I’m OK with that.” With “Let’s... Continue reading
Posted Jun 28, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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I am helpfully informed by the author that "Dean" is primarily Dean Young--and only secondarily the academic functionary I take him for.(Why did I not listen to the capital letter? Who knows?) Dean Young, what a refreshing oracle. I am glad for your presence in this poem. Obviously, I must count myself among the errant.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Nine): Matt Hart [by Angela Ball]
DEAR BERSERKER The light came into my dream from the right, so I opened my eyes to a mulberry bicycle that Sam stole heavenward in a poem of many errors. Then I was puffed rice or a poisonous enjambment. I ate a bowl of scrambled eggs. I could’ve sworn I was drowning in the engines of an airport...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Nine): Matt Hart [by Angela Ball]
Posted Jun 14, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Thank you, Leah Martinson. So glad you enjoyed.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Eight): Claudia Keelan [by Angela Ball]
Life-Sentence(s) One full-grown woman A recently born child A gleam of sunshine & Pointed hill One saint in a silent movie Agee in a cab Martin King on a Memphis balcony Clouds when examined under glass Salt water on solid rock Jesus on the cross Father in the guest room 4 to 6 feet Now Stupid...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Eight): Claudia Keelan [by Angela Ball]
Life-Sentence(s) One full-grown woman A recently born child A gleam of sunshine & Pointed hill One saint in a silent movie Agee in a cab Martin King on a Memphis balcony Clouds when examined under glass Salt water on solid rock Jesus on the cross Father in the guest room 4 to 6 feet Now Stupid Fucking White Man Then A pebble and a clod The Future Mr. William Blake The stars of the southern hemisphere Moisture The climbing up Doris Lanard The climbing down Robert Creeley Overhanging ferns and lilies A level and brilliantly white sea A little haystack Port Desire The first landing Flaccid Overlook Entropy’s missed triumph Your luminous body Mine --Claudia Keelan Claudia Keelan's most recent books are We Step into the Sea: New and Selected Poems (Barrow Street) and Ecstatic Emigre: An Ethics of Practice (University of Michigan Press). She is the editor of Interim and the Test Site Poetry Series. The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Eight): Claudia Keelan Claudia Keelan’s enthralling “Life-Sentence(s)” is thirty-three end-stops. Thirty-three doors. Lives and deaths our experience may elaborate. Is abundance and disappearance, both playful and solemn, like Frank O’Hara’s in such poems as “Talking the Sun at Fire Island." The first line, “One full-grown woman,” suggests a catalogue. But instead we taxi thirty-three runways for imagination. Their directions different for each reader. But not runways, because that suggests that the context, the universe inhabited, is consistent. The mortalities of the first twelve lines alone encompass quotidian fact (in the woman and “recently born” child), the fevered world of a silent movie, geography, literary history, chemistry, martyrdom, and familial grief. The poem’s cross-sections interrogate time’s givens: Now Stupid Fucking White Man Then A pebble and a clod The Future Mr. William Blake The stars of the southern hemisphere Throughout the poem, contextual shifts jolt, disrupt memory. The snatch of invective, “Stupid Fucking White Man” prompts many sad examples. Pebbles and clods endure in their lowly ubiquity—here, two paragons of the indistinguishable. To think of William Blake with the honorific accorded a living man, moving about the world, makes him again an agent of eternity that we leap from into stars. The quotation above reveals a signal part of the poem’s method: diverse entities alternate with familiar markers: “Now”. . .”Then”. . . “The Future” . . . that suddenly seem to us insubstantial. We live a world not of progress, but of disordered parallels. For me, looking up “Doris Lanard” yielded a jumble of similar names, but also the heading “We have found Doris,” a poignant assertion. Here, in finding “Robert Creeley,” we dwell on a great poet entrained by a litany of small and large beauties: Overhanging ferns and lilies A level and brilliantly white sea A little haystack Port Desire A tumble, a plane, a cone of sustenance, an inlet of longing. Claudia Keelan’s vivid and unsettling “Life-Sentence(s)” contains no period, no confining mark of closure. Ending, it gives us “The first landing,” that may remind... Continue reading
Posted May 31, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Isn't it lovely! Indeed. Thank you, Annette.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Seven): Major Jackson [by Angela Ball]
Nothing to See Here, Move Along All through my days, elaborate silken rays coming through screens carrying its own occult. I am in the habit of questioning love which is a storm of rare light silvering spider webs in a sacred forest, the silent clock in the town square, the heavy footprints of t...
Thank you bunches, Karen Beckworth. Glad you are reading.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Seven): Major Jackson [by Angela Ball]
Nothing to See Here, Move Along All through my days, elaborate silken rays coming through screens carrying its own occult. I am in the habit of questioning love which is a storm of rare light silvering spider webs in a sacred forest, the silent clock in the town square, the heavy footprints of t...
So glad you enjoyed, Elliott!
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Seven): Major Jackson [by Angela Ball]
Nothing to See Here, Move Along All through my days, elaborate silken rays coming through screens carrying its own occult. I am in the habit of questioning love which is a storm of rare light silvering spider webs in a sacred forest, the silent clock in the town square, the heavy footprints of t...
Thank you for these home truths, Stanley Moss.
A PRELUDE but one that fits now, and refreshes. Every young poet should read.
"A Booster, I Hope" [by Stanley Moss]
A Booster, I Hope There’s a teacher of poetry who teaches her own verse Snakes Breasts and Nothings to a class who must buy her book at full price if they want to learn from her how to make a poem. Who was the authority who gave her the authority to pull out students’ eyes her twenty G...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Seven): Major Jackson [by Angela Ball]
Posted Apr 5, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Denise, what a pleasure to read this memoir confirming my suspicion that the best poets begin in luck, confusion, difficulty, and persistence. What a great invitation to the book. I agree with Karen Beckworth's comment wholeheartedly.
“On Becoming a Poet”: featuring Denise Duhamel, Geoffrey O'Brien, Phillip Lopate. . .
New from Marsh Hawk Press: On Becoming a Poet: 25 Original Essays & Interviews Edited by Susan Terris Sandy McIntosh’s Chapter One Series presents 25 writers at their most candid and expansive about how they became who they are. The writers who talk about their education or self-education – in ...
David, thanks for posting this brilliant poem. Especially love "when the id of March exposed the ego's feet of clay." And the boffo last couplet.
The Ides of March [by David Lehman]
The Ides of March The origin of every fortune is a crime. The ides of March are a dangerous time. The ideas of March originate in wind. Madness may spring from a mind that hasn’t sinned. The guides of March have scary stories to tell. The family money came from a corpse and an oil well. The ed...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Six): Chad Foret [by Angela Ball]
Posted Mar 22, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Collin, that's a great association--thank you!
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Five): Mary Ruefle [by Angela Ball]
Müller and Me Wilhelm Müller, 1794-1827 I am an ordinary fauna, one who can’t remember if a fife is a rifle or a flute. After all, there’s strife and fight in it, but on the other hand it’s a short sweet word that rhymes with life. The way the cemetery looks made of books and the library is a gr...
Denise, I love your comment. Thank you!
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Five): Mary Ruefle [by Angela Ball]
Müller and Me Wilhelm Müller, 1794-1827 I am an ordinary fauna, one who can’t remember if a fife is a rifle or a flute. After all, there’s strife and fight in it, but on the other hand it’s a short sweet word that rhymes with life. The way the cemetery looks made of books and the library is a gr...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Five): Mary Ruefle [by Angela Ball]
Posted Mar 8, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Thank you, J. Guaner, for your apt comment.
Annette Boehm, thank you for your appreciative words.
David, thank you for your kudos and for pointing out the Deerfield Academy connection--uncanny.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Four): Collin Callahan [by Angela Ball]
Deerfield Crossing Sheet lightning pulses like blood vessels in the sky above the post office. It is Sunday empty. I caress the edges of failed delivery in my pocket and continue on the acid- rain pocked sidewalk to the station. Down the block, a dog fights his leash toward the smell of angel ha...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Four): Collin Callahan [by Angela Ball]
Posted Feb 22, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Thank you, JQ Zheng, for your generous comments.
Thank you, as well, Sarah Gelder, for your words here.
Kevin Thomason, I appreciate what you have to say here.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Three): Donald Revell [by Angela Ball]
SENESCO SED AMO “Starlight is almost flesh.”—Basil Bunting One life, not one among A thousand others of quail Like tipsy mandarins crowding The cold of a low wall Along a line of trees, the angel Promised me and nothing More, nothing to weigh. Menippus and Lucian Be with me now as I Fee...
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Three): Donald Revell [by Angela Ball]
Posted Feb 8, 2022 at The Best American Poetry
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Yes, Olga Ponomareva, Jianqing Zheng is great at describing the delta, that he knows so well.
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Two): Jianqing Zheng [by Angela Ball]
Birds of Passage We roll out of bed before sunrise, put the two pull bags in the trunk, crank up the engine, and back the car out of the driveway; we have a two-hour drive to the airport in Memphis to catch the flight to Japan. We cross the Yazoo River Bridge, pass Baptist Town where the bluesm...
Thank you for your comment, George Drew!
The New York School Diaspora (Part Twenty-Two): Jianqing Zheng [by Angela Ball]
Birds of Passage We roll out of bed before sunrise, put the two pull bags in the trunk, crank up the engine, and back the car out of the driveway; we have a two-hour drive to the airport in Memphis to catch the flight to Japan. We cross the Yazoo River Bridge, pass Baptist Town where the bluesm...
How good to see this affecting poem by Herbert Gold. I met him and his wife at a reception after Gold's fine reading at Ohio University. I was a young undergraduate with lots to say; they were friendly and kind.
"Other News on Page 234" [by Herbert Gold]
Someone famous will die that day, My day, And the newspaper will report: “More obituaries on page 24.” For the curiosity of some, the regret of several, and the grief of a few. Those few, they matter, So they have a nice walk in the Marin headlands Shadowed by a weary and worn mountain (s...
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