It’s been a dark week, so a tiny ray of something else: more sonnets from my ongoing sequence, “2022.07,” “2022.08–09,” “2022.10,” “2023.17–18,” and “2023.19,” are in Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Thanks to Strider Marcus Jones for taking these!
Poems
“2023.26,” “2023.27,” and “2023.28” in Magazine1
Delighted to have “2023.26,” “2023.27,” and “2023.28” from my ongoing sonnet sequence in the third issue of Magazine1.
“2022.11,” “2023.01,” “2023.11,” “2023.12,” “2023.13,” and “2023.14” in Pamenar Online Magazine
I am thrilled to have poems in Pamenar Online Magazine again! Check out: “2022.11,” “2023.01,” “2023.11,” “2023.12,” “2023.13,” and “2023.14.” Thanks to Ghazal Mosadeq for her support and the amazing journal and press she and her team have put together.
If you’re in Oneonta and want to hear some more poems from the manuscript these come from, stop by CANO’s Writers Salon on November 21. I’ll also be reading from 2013–2017: Sonnets on Wednesday, September 25 for Hartwick College’s Visiting Writers Series.
Hartwick College Press Release about My New Book
Hartwick College has put out a press release, “Routine, Rejection All Part of the Process, Says Poet,” about my new book, 2013 – 2017: Sonnets.
2013–2017: Sonnets
Now available! 2013–2017: Sonnets, my third book of poetry and the first volume of my American Sonnet sequence, has been published by LJMcD Communications. It can be ordered through Amazon.
2013–2017: Sonnets is the first volume in Bradley J. Fest’s ongoing sequence of American sonnets, a project concerned with how the distributed networks of the twenty-first century construct and filter time. Continuing the program of poetic assemblage explored in his first two books, these poems were composed consecutively as emergent temporal snapshots documenting certain experiences of what it was like to live precariously in the overdeveloped world between 2013 and 2017. Over the past decade, this ongoing experimental sonnet sequence has become: a complex encounter with time and its twenty-first-century rhythms; a document of artistic maturation; a personal archive of occasions, moments, days; a continually refreshed confrontation with the global computational hyperarchive; a discography of popular music; an extended reflection on contemporary literature, art, and culture; an increasingly multiplex meditation on the sonnet; an historical record of the troubling national situation in the United States; and a work of mourning for a world disappearing into climate emergency. The second volume, currently in progress, begins in 2018.
Eternal thanks to Lachlan J. McDougall for bringing 2013–2017 into the world and to Taylor Baldwin for the cover image.
“2023.29–30,” “2024.01–02,” “2024.03,” “2024.05–06,” and “2024.08–09” in Does It Have Pockets?
I have five brand-new multisonnets, “2023.29–30,” “2024.01–02,” “2024.03,” “2024.05–06,” and “2024.08–09,” in Does It Have Pockets? I’m thrilled to have these all together in a great July issue.
“Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis” in boundary 2
I am honored to say that my interview with the great poet and critic Rachel Blau DuPlessis, “Something Worth Leaving in Shards: An Interview with Rachel Blau DuPlessis,” has just been published in the most recent issue of boundary 2. (This link should provide access for three months.) I am deeply grateful to DuPlessis for corresponding with me during the summer of 2020. In lockdown with no childcare, corresponding with DuPlessis via email to conduct this interview (when I had a spare moment or two to do so) played a large part in keeping me sane during that difficult time. A huge thanks also to Racheal and Aviva, who were right there every day along with me while this interview was being conducted.
Here’s an abstract of the interview:
This interview with poet, essayist, literary critic, and collagist Rachel Blau DuPlessis was conducted via email correspondence between June 11 and August 29, 2020. Author of over a dozen volumes of poetry and half a dozen books in modernist studies, poetics, and feminist criticism, DuPlessis reflects broadly on her career in this interview. She discusses the ongoing role of feminism in her writing and thought, the forms of the fold and the fragment, the relationship between her poetry and criticism, her work in and on the long poem, and her post‐Drafts poetry, including her (at the time) most recent book, Late Work (2020). The interview concludes with a conversation about the relationship between poetry and theorizing practices and a meditation on writing during a global pandemic.
For my writing on DuPlessis: “‘Is an Archive Enough?’: Megatextual Debris in the Work of Rachel Blau DuPlessis.”
And for previous interviews: “Isn’t It a Beautiful Day? An Interview with J. Hillis Miller” and “An Interview with Jonathan Arac.”
2013–2017: Sonnets Will Be Published by LJMcD Communications in July 2024
I am absolutely thrilled to announce that 2013–2017: Sonnets, the first volume of my ongoing sonnet sequence, will be published by LJMcD Communications in July 2024. I’ll update this page with more information when I have it, but for now, here’s a description of the book:
2013–2017: Sonnets is the first volume in Bradley J. Fest’s ongoing sequence of American sonnets, a project concerned with how the distributed networks of the twenty-first century construct and filter time. Continuing the program of poetic assemblage explored in his first two books, these poems were composed consecutively as emergent temporal snapshots documenting certain experiences of what it was like to live precariously in the overdeveloped world between 2013 and 2017. Over the past decade, this ongoing experimental sonnet sequence has become: a complex encounter with time and its twenty-first-century rhythms; a document of artistic maturation; a personal archive of occasions, moments, days; a continually refreshed confrontation with the global computational hyperarchive; a discography of popular music; an extended reflection on contemporary literature, art, and culture; an increasingly multiplex meditation on the sonnet; an historical record of the troubling national situation in the United States; and a work of mourning for a world disappearing into climate emergency. The second volume, currently in progress, begins in 2018.
Also, thanks much to my very good friend Taylor Baldwin for the amazing cover image: The Interpreter (2010).
“Archives of Spring” in The Decadent Review
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.
The Hyperarchival Parallax 