New Books in Poetry

New Books Network

Interview with Poets about their New BooksSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Episodes

Mentioned books

Dec 14, 2014 • 53min

Rountable on the Poetry of Xu Lizhi

When Xu Lizhi committed suicide on September 30, 2014, he left a substantial body of work for his brief 24 years. In his poetry, he displayed an awareness that haunted him and now haunts us. He was a factory worker for the infamous Foxconn who produces most of the world’s iPhones. The bleak reality and gray landscape that Xu Lizhi inhabited in his work feels other-worldly and rare. But he is not an anomaly. The sad truth is that his poems could have been written by many different workers spread out over many nations. As well as setting his social media to post of “A New Day” after his passing, he leaves us with these final thoughts: I want to take another look at the ocean, behold the vastness of tears from half a lifetime I want to climb another mountain, try to call back the soul that I’ve lost I want to touch the sky, feel that blueness so light But I can’t do any of this, so I’m leaving this world We have entered a time of global awareness and it is coming through in our art. The movement, once again towards Social Realism, is art’s way of having us pay attention to something entering our collective consciousness. In a virtual roundtable, myself, Mark Nowak, Shengqing Wu, and Rodrigo Toscano come together to discuss Xu Lizhi’s poetry, craft, and the life he drew from. We also talk about the state of labor poetry and from where the next surge of poets may be emerging. The terrible question is, if Xi Lizhi had not killed himself, would we even know that this poet and these poems existed? Would they call out so loudly if not from the darkness? Pertinent Links: https://libcom.org/blog/xulizhi-foxconn-suicide-poetry http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/12/the-haunting-poetry-of-a-chinese-factory-worker-who-committed-suicide/ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2014/11/xu-lizhi-1990-2014-poet-and-foxconn-worker/ http://www.businessinsider.com/foxconn-factory-workers-suicide-poems-2014-11 Accidental Death of a Poet Xu Lizhi’s “Sina” (Chinese Equivalent to Twitter) http://www.weibo.com/u/1766211094?sudaref=www.google.com.hk Another Chinese Poet to look out for: Sunset by Zheng Xiaoqiong translated by Jonathan Stalling and Xian Liqiang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Nov 25, 2014 • 46min

Ailish Hopper, “Dark Sky Society” (New Issues Press, 2014)

I won’t say Ailish Hopper‘s collection Dark~Sky Society (New Issues Press, 2014) is “about” anything because that would do it a disservice. These poems are human. They move like legs on a street, like a mind at work that calls you to ruminate with it. Because we can’t understand everything, we have to be comfortable in that space of being unsure. Hopper calls it “Art out of Ignorance” and I agree, but wonder if it is not also “Art out of a Refusal to Misunderstand.” It is not easy to stay in an uncomfortable space until you hit on a truth. It is also difficult to accept silence as a part of communication but this poet does and what she has discovered, she shares with us in this collection. “Dark Sky Society” does not see its own bravery. It does not draw attention to its confrontation of everything “place” can mean. And it does not apologize. The poems implicate themselves, and in turn implicate anyone who has ever dared to wonder, “How and why does our world work in this way?” I strongly encourage our listeners to pick up a copy of this collection to witness the ways in which Hopper reminds us that the song, the visuals, and the voice of the poem can engage the senses in a brilliance of stimuli and, in turn, the mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Oct 14, 2014 • 38min

Becca J.R. Lachman, “A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford” (Woodley Press, 2013)

About twenty years ago, I heard William Stafford read his poetry for about twenty minutes. For a young aspiring writer like I was then, he was mesmerizing, a mix of poetic energy and grandfatherly wisdom, with a high-spirited charm. I think it was the first poetry reading that I attended in which I realized that poetry didn’t have to be solemn and ponderous to be profound. All of us in the audience laughed a lot. And we were moved. It was only after the reading, after I’d said how enjoyable I found Stafford, that some bitter professor-type said something like, “You know, that’s just his shtick. He’s a much darker poet.” I was troubled, and the remark sent me into Stafford’s work to see if it was true. I was happy to discover the same joy in Stafford’s poetry as I’d experienced in hearing him read, but there was more to it. His was a complex vision, and, to this day, I can recall lines of his that I read over two decades ago. I’m not alone in this experience of feeling as though Stafford’s presence and poems haunt me. Readers sent letters to Stafford by the thousands, and his fellow poets responded to him in life and in verse, though not always with praise. In honor of what would have been Stafford’s hundredth birthday in 2014, editor Becca J.R. Lachman has gathered together a collection of these poems. A Ritual to Read Together (Woodley Press, 2014) offers us an intimate portrait of Stafford’s legacy, from his abiding sense of place to his promotion of nonviolence to his work as a mentor and teacher. The collection takes its title from one of Stafford’s poems about the importance of listening to one another, of telling our stories. It opens: If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. I sat down with Becca to chat about her experience of assembling an anthology under the star of Stafford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Oct 8, 2014 • 17min

Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ross Gay, “Lace and Pyrite” (Organic Weapon Arts Press, 2014)

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Aimee Nezhukumatathil & Ross Gay Lace & Pyrite Organic Weapon Arts Press, 2014 Two gardens, 500 miles apart, managed to be in conversation with one another over the span of five seasons. What came of their conversation was this collection of epistolary poems by two brilliant poets. Part exchange, part mediation on hands in dirt and the deep well of winter, this collection offers sustenance to the mind as the garden does to the body. We do not need technology to connect us; our innate connections already exist– we just have to recognize them, nurture them, and watch them grow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Oct 7, 2014 • 13min

Rachel Moritz, “Many Forms in Water” (above/ground press, 2014)

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Rachel Moritz Many Forms in Water above/ground press, 2014 Born of a connection to Theodor Schwenk’s 1965 text Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air, this collection seeks to inhabit that infinitesimal space left between water and that which holds it. Not everything that conforms to its container is formless– sometimes, like Moritz’s verse, a liquid will become a gas and a gas will become all things, inhabit every scant surface of the earth we’ve been given. Moritz can make words pour, flow, and puddle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Oct 3, 2014 • 15min

Nikki Wallschlaeger “I Would Be the Happiest Bird” (Horseless Press, 2014)

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Nikki Wallschlaeger I Would Be the Happiest Bird Horseless Press, 2014 It is transient, it is migratory, it embarks from the restlessness of youth and family and lands in self-actualization. I’ve never/ thought of myself as much of a threat, sitting here in a room w/ cats & a space heater trying to figure out/ how birds flying in the sky still has relevant meaning, how not caring if it does means more than// a thesis or carefully splattered book (the trick is believing in yourself long enough so that the words/ come out more or less honest, pitting vulnerability against craft.) I Would Be the Happiest Bird interrogates our “where?” and calls to piece of us that still looks up and wonders, “if I could fly, how far would my wings take me from here and would I ever come back?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Oct 1, 2014 • 18min

Daniel Borzutzky, “Bedtime Stories for the End of the World!” (Bloof Books, 2014)

Chapbookapalooza 2014 Daniel Borzutzky Bedtime Stories for the End of the World Bloof Books, 2014 This is a collection in which the synaptic leaps have their own synaptic leaps. In direct confrontation with neoliberalism, Borzutzky holds nothing back. His verse levels the page like a chainsaw, leaving the surreal, bloodied and bare. “At times like this he thinks: I can say just about anything right now. This is, after all, a bedtime story for the end of the world. I am moving beneath ground and not sleeping and trying to cross the border from one sick part of the world to another” Prepare to be altered by these poems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Sep 29, 2014 • 15min

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