WHETTING EXCERPTS: …In queer poetry, desire blooms, and yes, I may just marry my dog— …Beyond that debate, we remain, in all our queerness, anomalies writing aloud the unimagined territories that language spearheads and explores. They may fear adventure in my world, but I inhabit theirs in multiple ways—and am them. …Queer poets especially locate…
Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers How about a pleasant poem to start your month off right? Ugly Duckling has smartly created a Eastern European Poets Series that we Americans might benefit from. I am currently immersed in Lidija Dimkovska’s most excellent book, DO NOT AWAKEN THEM WITH HAMMERS, translated by Peggy Reid – yay!…
How strange would it be if our Mormon pop icon started reciting, by heart, a German Dadaist’s ‘nonsense’ verse? “Marie Osmond became co-host with Jack Palance. In the format of the show, little topic clusters (like ‘weird language’) were introduced by one of the hosts. In this case, the frame was Cabaret Voltaire. Marie was…
The gentleman in a little Swedish town re-wrote Antidotes for an Alibi, cleverly-so, making old news young again –> Thanks, Lars! ~~~~ (a king’s alibi) a machine played back the story. mother phoned father to me. enchanted the little kettle dripped hints of home-ground coffee. a cornershop spirit. an old minstrel show. warm featherbed &…
Not long ago while viewing the Société Anonyme: Modernism for America show at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., Ron Padgett stood before a painting and said something favorable, which in turn prompted me to ask, “What makes this a good painting?” Now mind you, I was asking a man who has viewed thousands of…
Excerpt from Logically Consistent Poetry by Kurt Schwitters, 1924: Classical poetry depended on the similarity of human beings. It regarded the association of ideas as unequivocal. It was wrong. In any case, it was based on associations of ideas: ‘Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’ (On the hill-tops all is tranquil.’). Here Goethe is not simply…
AMY KING 