The final poem in my “Archives” series, “Archives of Spring,” is out in The Decadent Review. The whole series can be accessed here. Enormous thanks to Dimitri Kaufman, editor of The Decadent Review, for presenting these poems in such a wonderful fashion over the past year. And if you want links to each individual other poem, here they are: “Archives of Summer,” “Archives of Autumn,” and “Archives of Winter.”
Reading at Bushel
At 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 26, 2023, I’ll be reading poems—including some new ones (never before heard!)—at the Bushel Collective as part of a release event for the State University of New York at Delhi’s literary journal, Agate Literary and Arts Magazine. Bushel is located at 106 Main Street in Delhi, New York.
Update
Here’s a picture of my reading at Bushel. Thanks to Peter W. Brusoe for the pic.
“Cute Noise Indeed” in Who Dis?
A short poem assembled from language from a few of my tweets (below), “Cute Noise Indeed,” has been published in Who Dis?, “a journal of fake poems for the misinformation age.” The journal has “NO MASTHEAD NO CONTACT NO TRUTH / NO GODS NO IDOLS NO MATTER,” and “all appearances are by determinative actions employing chance.” As such, I did not compose this poem nor am I responsible for its publication, despite being listed as its author. The original tweets it was assembled from:
“2021.05,” “2022.03,” and “2022.04” in The Kitchen Sink
As I mentioned in my last post, my work appeared in two different publications today. The second: More sonnets from my ongoing sequence, “2021.05,” “2022.03,” and “2022.04,” are in The Kitchen Sink, a brand-new publication based in Oneonta, New York (where I currently reside) run by recent graduates of the State University of New York at Oneonta. Thanks to Alexis Ochi and the other editors for accepting my work. I’m also thrilled to have these poems published alongside work from one of my students at Hartwick College.
“2021.06,” “2022.01,” and “2022.05” in IceFloe Press
My work appeared in two different publications today. First, I’m thrilled to have more recent sonnets from my ongoing series, “2021.06,” “2022.01,” and “2022.05,” as part of a series of pandemic “Dispatches” at IceFloe Press. Thanks especially to Robert Frede Kenter for championing these poems and for the amazing visual poem collage he made to accompany my work.
“2022.06,” “2023.02,” “2023.03,” “2023.04,” and “2023.05–06″ in D.O.R (Deadly Orgone Radiation)
I’m delighted to have “2022.06,” “2023.02,” “2023.03,” “2023.04,” and “2023.05–06”—five very new sonnets—out in the second issue of D.O.R (Deadly Orgone Radiation), the journal publication of Lachlan J. McDougall‘s press, LJMcD Communications.
Spring Semester 2023: Syllabus
Because I am the 2022–25 Cora A. Babcock Chair in English, I have a course release each spring for the next three years. As such, I’ll only be teaching one class this semester, but I’m super excited about it: ENGL 412 Advanced Poetry Workshop.
Paul Benzon to Deliver the 2022–23 Babcock Lecture at Hartwick College: “The Poetics and Politics of the Paralegible”
Paul Benzon will deliver the 2022–23 Babcock Lecture at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 5, 2023 in the Eaton Lounge of Bresee Hall at Hartwick College.
“The Poetics and Politics of the Paralegible”
What are the politics of writing—not at the level of language and discourse, but rather at the level of materiality and of the inscriptive mark itself? What might approaching writing as a material, visual practice have to tell us about issues of cultural identity, history, and power.
In the 2022–23 Babcock Lecture, Paul Benzon will explore these questions through a discussion of a mode of experimental writing he calls the paralegible. As the term suggests, the paralegible exists in the liminal space between the legible and the illegible, troubling the relations between the mark and the letter, the visible and the invisible. Simultaneously conjuring the desire to read and refusing that desire, it foregrounds questions of writing, authorship, and the textual trace. Turning to recent work by three artists—Renee Gladman, Hương Ngô, and Shirin Salehi—Benzon will show how the paralegible activates the political potentialities of writing that is at odds with language.
Paul Benzon (he/him/his) is an assistant professor in the English Department at Skidmore College, where he also teaches courses in the Media and Film Studies Program. He is the author of Archival Fictions: Materiality, Form, and Media History in Contemporary Literature (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021), and his writing has appeared in College Literature, electronic book review, Media-N, Narrative, and PMLA. His current project, from which this talk is drawn, considers how contemporary literary and artistic experimentations with print textuality, the book as an object, and textual and alphabetic design reckon with questions of historical trauma and social justice.
“Archives of Winter” in The Decadent Review
The third poem in my “Archives” series, “Archives of Winter,” is out in The Decadent Review; spring is forthcoming. (“Archives of Winter” originally appeared at Dispatches for the Poetry Wars, and was reprinted in the Poetics for the More-than-Human-World anthology.)
Fall 2022 Links
Nuclear and Environmental
Max Bearak, Raymond Zhong, and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, “Deadly Floods Devastate an Already Fragile Pakistan.”
Katie Rogers and David E. Sanger, “Biden Calls the ‘Prospect of Armageddon’ the Highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
David Wallace-Wells, “The World Took a Bold, Toothless Step Forward on Climate Justice” and “Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming into View.”
Somini Sengupta, “‘A Reason to Act Faster’: World Leaders Meet on Climate Amid Other Crises.”
Max Bearak, “Climate Pledges Are Falling Short, and a Chaotic Future Looks More Like Reality.”
Brad Plumer, Max Bearak, Lisa Friedman, and Jenny Gross, “UN Climate Talks End with a Deal to Pay Poor Nations for Damage.”
Catrin Einhorn, “Researchers Report a Staggering Decline in Wildlife. Here’s How to Understand It.”
The Hyperarchival Parallax 