“Postrock” in Always Crashing

I am beyond delighted to announce that my long poem, “Postrock,” which I composed between June 2021 and July 2022 and which was supported by the Cora A. Babcock Chair in English and a number of Faculty Research Grants, has (finally!) been published in Always Crashing. This is probably the piece of writing that I am the most proud of among everything I have ever published, and so I am just utterly thrilled to be able to bring it into the world. I am forever indebted to James Tadd Adcox and the other editors of Always Crashing for their ongoing support of my work.

“Postrock” is the concluding and last unpublished poem from an unpublished manuscript (also titled Postrock and seeking a publisher!) in which I endeavor to perform what I’m calling a weird phenomenology: seeing everyday objects anew by mediating their perception through lenses of poetic, environmental, and cultural influence. In particular, “Postrock” draws explicit inspiration from John Ashbery’s Three Poems (1972), is a sustained meditation on space, and, like all the poems from the manuscript, was composed while listening to postrock music. The poem is also in conversation with a large number of other texts, including books about space by Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Blanchot, Henri Lefebvre, and others, and it was composed using a variety of formal constraints, including being composed as an unbroken, nearly twenty-thousand-word paragraph.

“Dead Horse Bay” and “Archives of Winter” in Poetics for the More-than-Human World Anthology

“Dead Horse Bay” and “Archives of Winter,” poems from my current ongoing project, Postrock, have been reprinted in Poetics for the More-than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary, edited by Mary Newell, Bernard Quetchenbach, and Sarah Nolan and published by Spuyten Duyvil.

The anthology was originally published online as a special issue of Dispatches from the Poetry Wars“Poetics for the More-than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry and Commentary.” Other contributors include Rae ArmantroutRachel Blau DuPlessisJane HirshfieldCynthia HogueAngela HumeMichael McClureJohn ShoptawStephanie StricklandHarriet TarloEdwin Torres, and many, many others.

Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 5: July 16–August 15, 2020

Black Lives Matter

Ishmael Reed, “America’s Criminal Justice System and Me.”

Anthony Bogues, “Black Lives Matter and the Moment of the Now.”

Colin Dayan, “Police Power and Can’t Breathe.”

Dwight Garner, “Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste Is an ‘Instant American Classic’ about Our Abiding Sin.”

Jane Hu, “The Second Act of Social-Media Activism.”

Jonathan Levinson and Conrad Wilson, “Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles to Grab Protesters off Portland Streets.”

Shane Harris, “DHS Compiled ‘Intelligence Reports’ on Journalists Who Published Leaked Documents.”

Ken Klippenstein, “The Border Patrol Was Responsible for an Arrest in Portland.”

Katie Shepherd and Mark Berman, “‘It Was Like Being Preyed upon’: Portland Protesters Say Federal Officers in Unmarked Vans Are Detaining Them.”

Charlie Warzel, “50 Nights of Unrest in Portland.”

Conrad Wilson, Dirk Vanderhart, and Suzanne Nuyen, “Oregon Sues Federal Agencies for Grabbing up Protesters off the Streets.”

Gillian Flaccus, “Judge Blocks US Agents from Arresting Observers in Portland.”

Richard Read, “Out of Portland Tear Gas, an Apparition Emerges, Capturing the Imagination of Protesters.”

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Links in the Time of Coronavirus, Vol. 4: June 16–July 15, 2020

Black Lives Matter

Gina Cherelus, “How We Juneteenth.”

Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.”

R. H. Lossin, “In Defense of Destroying Property.”

 

Coronavirus

b2o Review, “COVID-19 Dossier.”

Hortense J. Spillers, “Apocalypse Now and Then.”

Charles Bernstein, “Herd Immunity.”

Nathan L. Grant, “Horseman No. 5.”

The A-Line Editorial Staff, “Convergence 5: Apocalypse Now and Then.”

Adrian Parr, “Pandemic Urbanism.”

Neil Vallelly, “The Coronavirus Decade: Post-capitalist Nightmare or Socialist Awakening?”

Umair Haque, “If Life Feels Bleak, It’s Because Our Civilization Is Beginning to Collapse.”

Hamilton Nolan, “There Is No Plan (For You).”

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“2016.31,” “2016.33,” “2016.36: Preface,” and “2017.01: Afterword” in Always Crashing

More poems from my ongoing sonnet sequence, “2016.31,” “2016.33,” “2016.36: Preface” (a long prefatory poem), and “2017.01: Afterword,” are in the third issue of Always Crashing. I’m delighted to share the pages with Louis Armand, Jill Khoury, Joe Sacksteder, Claire Marie Stancek, John Trefry, and many others.

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There will also be a two night reading celebrating the issues release at 7:00 p.m. on May 28 and 29, 2020, via Zoom. RSVP at https://bit.ly/2WGDD7d. I’ll be reading for a few minutes on the 29th.

Summer 2019 Links

I had the privilege of meeting Richard Siken when I was quite young–an undergraduate at the University of Arizona–and he gave me lots of good advice on the poetry world (and life), conversations I still cherish. Please help him out.

Stroke Recovery Fund for Poet Richard Siken.

 

Nuclear and Environmental

Alenka Zupančič, “The Apocalypse Is (Still) Disappointing.”

James Livingston, “Time, Dread, Apocalypse Now.

Ted Nordhaus, “The Empty Radicalism of the Climate Apocalypse.”

Jessica Hurley and Dan Sinykin, eds., Apocalypse, special issue of ASAP/Journal.

Frame, Apocalypse.

Brad Plumer, “Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace.”

Damian Carrington, “Why The Guardian Is Changing the Language It Uses about the Environment.”

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