For Dust Thou Art by Timothy Liu Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. $14.95 No bland heterosexist suburban poems of backyard sparrows here, Timothy Liuâs latest book, For Dust Thou Art, offers a smorgasbord of impudent isms: onanism, terrorism, âjism,â and solipsism. Titillating perhaps, but stick to the salad bar. The bookâs title from Genesis 3:19 misleadingly window dresses a store of randy words, from âgood head easier to get than a vintage Merlotâ from the first section of the book to âlinen falling off our laps as boytoys batheâ from the last section of the book. They sandwich some unsurprising poems in the middle that fetishize 9/11ââA firemanâs boot / exhumed at lastâstrange trophy / from rubble still too hot to touchâ or âEvery possible pleasure to be indulged for the world was at an end.â The middle sectionâs mediocrity begs the question: what of the failure of any poet so far to achieve a âWastelandâ from 9/11? While these poems may stimulate, they fail to surprise, much less catalyze new understanding of people and …
This month we reach into the archives and feature Thom Gunn’s “Modes of Pleasure” which appeared in the Winter 1960-1961 issue of the magazine. It ran alongside poems by Donald Hall, Philip Levine, Vladimir Mayakovsky, William Stafford, Sister Mary Gilbert (now known as Madeline DeFrees), among others.
For the month of July we decided to embrace the spirit of summer vacation and feature the reading lists of our staff and volunteers. Amanda Bennett: “Heavy, heady stuff…” What Good Are The Arts? by John Carey Don’t Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff Monkey Luv by Robert M. Sapolsky Why Do I Love These People? by Po Bronson Gatsby’s Girl by Caroline Preston William Bernhard: “This is what I have in my queue, which is often mercurial.” The Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes The Boy on the Step by Stanley Plumly The Wild Iris by Lousie GlĂŒck Without End by Adam Zagajewski The Plague by Albert Camus Her Husband by Diane Middlebrook David Biespiel: “What’s stacked in the living room…” Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert District and Circle by Seamus Heaney The Curved Planks by Yves Bonnefoy Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt (“Actually this is in the car, and I admit, I’ve been reading it in traffic and in waiting rooms…”) Selected Lyrics by Cole Porter The Complete Prose of Marianne …
One could hold up a leaf as a fine example of yellow’s / exacting workmanship.
C.K. Williams reads the sports page Robert Bly visits Chaco Canyon Marilyn Hacker faces disease Richard Kenney interviews a muse Jock Sturges discusses poetry and photography Plus: Talvikki Ansel, Peter Campion, Henri Cole, Debora Greger, Campbell McGrath, Stanley Plumly, Nance Van Winckel Cover art by Jock Sturges THIS ISSUE IS SOLD OUT. Get new issues in your mailbox. Subscriptions are available starting at $15.
Youâre asleep inside your old guitar.
I’ve been interested in the ghazal as a form for a long time, an interest that was awakened by Adrienne Rich’s free-verse ghazals on one hand, and on John Hollander’s witty exposition-by-example of the “formal” ghazal in his prosody handbook Rhyme’s Reason. For me, as for many others, the interest took focus with Aga ShĂĄhid Ali’s work in the form, and with his essay on the ghazal tradition, which appears, in different versions, in the anthology Ravishing Disunities and in the essay anthology An Exaltation of Forms.(Marilyn Hacker) Ghazal: Style Unmistakable, that consummate style pierces the incoherence of her late style. One of them liked to tease out a game for hours; the other had an eight-minute-check-and-mate style. Count stresses; number feet: you’ve got the meter, but there’s no metronome to calibrate style. Words from a dictionary; form-schemes from a textbook provide a trot; they don’t translate style. The urban innocent, one more gay man whose fantasy and flesh respond to straight style. And here is one more student shy of reading the classics, for …
