Happy New Millennium Approaching
As the Beast makes its final Slouch to Bethlehem, here at the end of 1999, a few things to pause gratefully for:
Poetry is being spoken here, written here and talked about. This is a good thing, a sweet balance to digital transmission -- the content, Lordy, is deep and rich and complex, and we need these poems all over the place to sculpt the human.
Sapphire's new book of poems, Black Wings & Blind Angels (Vintage paperback, 2000), makes it clear that besides being the best poet writing these days, she's getting better. Sestinas and villanelles rule, but these fancy-pants forms are simply sheetrock: she's framed out the dumb inequities and insensitivities with poems that lift and challenge. She takes a pitchfork to the pain.
Jack Collom's new CD, Colors Born of Shadow, a collab with musician Ken Bernstein, moves his butter growl poet hollers through the languages trills of birds, bitter weeds and hilarious backyard dogs. This is a poet driven who doesn't care where he's going, and folks, that direction is sweet. Colors follows his appearance in Autonomedia's Polemics (1998), with fellow Naropa mentors Anne Waldman and Anselm Hollo.
Cause for great celebration? Jose Garcia Villa, original Filipino modernist, is finally in print with a simply gorgeous new collection, The Anchored Angel from Kaya Productions. Eileen Tabios has given ample room to Villa's brilliant flighty poems and prose -- at once the definition of “experimental” and romantic -- and digs into his extraordinary life as consummate West Village recluse with pieces by Jessica Hagedorn, Luis Cabalquinto, Luis Francia, and Nick Carbo. Try his “comma poem”, “#110”:
Here's how we want to waltz with change! Already the new Chancellors at the Academy of American Poets have Richterized the landscape. Winner of the Tanning Prize this year: Jackson Mac Low, the country's foremost sonic-chance technician, huzzah! And this year's “Fellowship” goes to none other than our truest National Treasure, Gwendolyn Brooks.
Bob HolmanAt,the,in,of,me,
Mor,real,than,unreality--
There,greens,an,infinity,
Ripens,and,does,not,fall:
Fruit,of,very-whole,
My,saint,my,prodigal.
Unbody,and,end,only--
Vision,and,end,only--
More,ill,more,beautiful,
More,still,more,musical,
Than,deathand,rose,in,love,
Than,rose,and,death,in,love.Happy new Millennium.
Don't sit on the trillium.
More about Sapphire on the Net:
- She performed in the DIA Center for the Arts reading series in contemporary poetry last year & an excerpt from her poem “Rabbit Man” is posted at their site.
- Sapphire was a guest on NPR's Talk of the Nation in 1996, soon after the publication of her novel Push (Random House, 1997) -- the entire show, including listener call-ins & Sapphire's responses, is archived & available for RealAudio listening at the NPR site.
- Her first collection, American Dreams (Random House, 1996), includes both poems & prose pieces.
- A photo of Jack & detailed resume are at Big Bridge, where his chapbook Slice, a collaboration with artist Nancy Davis, was featured in Issue #2.
- His comments on children's poems & teaching poetry-writing to kids are excerpted from his book Moving Windows: Evaluating the Poetry Children Write (Teachers & Writers, 1995) & posted at WriteNet, the Teachers & Writers Collaborative's site.
- You can read about his most recent collections, Arguing With Something Plato Said (a Few Environs Poems) (Rocky Ledge/Cottage Editions, 1999) & Dog Sonnets (Jensen/Daniels chapbook, 1998), at BarnesandNoble.com.
- His poem “Sophisticated Prose” & an interview about invention, inspiration & the prose poem were featured in Writenet's Poet's Chat series in June/July 2000.
- PinoyLit has a detailed biography of Villa in its Filipino writers archive.
- His earlier books, Appassionata: Poems in Praise of Love (Bravo Editions, 1995) & Parlement of Giraffes: Poems for the World's Children (in Tagalog, Bravo Editions, 1995), can be special-ordered online from BarnesandNoble.com's network of book dealers.
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