One might argue that Rothschild s thesis in Theogony could be reduced to That which is not there is all that is the case. Although the book collects poems from as far back as 1997, it is a volume profoundly about the events of September 11, 2001 from the perspective of someone who lived in close proximity to the fallen towers. —Ron Silliman, Silliman’s blog My favorite book of poems for 2009 so far. And a long time a-coming. But finally here it is: as close as possible to a Douglas Rothschild Collected. The pleasure of Theogony starts in the hand: the square format, perfectly suited to the work, and the pleasant, solid, yet casual heft of its 210 pages. —Pierre Joris, Nomadics About the Author Douglas Rothschild’s life has been one long miasma of failure, disappointment, coffee & overarching desire. Though he has not yet accomplished anything of note, Mr. Rothschild intends to continue on for some time yet. Some of this life, such as it is, has been chronicled in Bill Luoma’s WORKS & DAYS & Jennifer Moxley’s THE MIDDLE ROOM....
Benjamin Friedlander speaks with ungainsayable clarity of what we had thought to forget —Robert Creeley Is melancholy good? I think Ben Friedlander has the moodiest ear for it in the field, and wit to match. Where he takes this immodest gift is to a tangled interstice where idiom intersects with the body’s fault lines. Uncannily the reader has almost had these thoughts. The attraction feels sideways, vertiginous. We receive, with these poems, the shapeliness of tact. Then suddenly he shows us the tax we pay to Rome —Lisa Robertson As a poet, scholar, editor, and translator, Benjamin Friedlander has dedicated more than half a lifetime to rigorously engaging with the concepts and practices of contemporary poetry, and this much-wished-for book provides a beginning survey of that commitment. Gathered here are poems from the first ten years of his wide-ranging, critically probing, and intellectually ambitious poetic project. This book will amaze, defy, and remind again how not to be made complacent by what poetry offers —Alan Gilbert In his earliest books of poetry, collected here from 1984-1994, Ben Friedlander constructed an argument–not simply an argument for postwar lyric poetry, but an argument for the relevance, even survival, of a poetic urge that casts its long shadow into all corners of art. —Rob Fitterman...
Moxley’s detailed and lushly-written memoir is set largely in San Diego and follows her life thus far from childhood to marriage. Consistently focused on poetry and poets, it dwells on the curious ways Americans now find their way into the literary life. “There was a secret force deep in my psyche which, like a Cold War double agent, worked in tandem with my insecurity, a sort of wicked interior spy that emerged at the most inopportune moments to make sport of all my fears and fill me with crippling self-doubt as regards my natural fitness to live the life of the mind”–from the text. Jennifer Moxley teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Maine. Her books of poetry include Imagination Verses, Often Capital, The Sense Record and The...
Harrison’s practice in Os is coherent both in modulation and argument—not a modest achievement given certain habits of our radically inclined. Out of the dense corners his poems inhabit or perform—indeed, as “red horses / drink their fields in finished sentences”—the poems travel a familiar defiance, to the degree that their particular instance of manufacture remains largely difficult to ascertain. However, the mood is as immersive as it is prepared to situate and make links in definition of larger claims to reverse or bifurcate the assumptions of our social identities and the rhetorical representations that make them a liability. —Roberto Tejada Roberto Harrison was born in Oregon to Panamanian parents; he and his family moved to Panama when he was a year old, and then to Delaware in 1969. Harrison pursued studies in mathematics and computer science as an undergraduate; after a year of graduate work in mathematics at Indiana University, Bloomington, he traveled in the United States, Europe, and North Africa. His collections of poetry include Counter Daemons (2006), Os (2006), elemental song (2006), reflector (2008), and Urracá (2009)....
Camille Guthrie transposes the pastoral themes of the medieval Unicorn Tapestries with those of modern, urban life in an ingenious reimagining of both. Amidst her flora and fauna we encounter a lookout, a boyfriend, informants, hunters, poets, and a rock star—all fresh translations of familiar figures. Here the unicorn becomes a blank figure for the beloved, knowledge, and vision. The allegory of the hunt becomes the pursuit of the elusive prey of meaning. As in The Master Thief (Subpress, 2000), Guthrie agilely uses traditional and modern poetic forms. These fearless poems invite the reader to be startled by ideas and ambushed by beauty. Camille Guthrie’s sharp eye for lyric detail, her use of shifting connections, narrative fragments, quotations, and demarcations have produced a haunting and powerful collection of meditations. This sequence is the work of an impressive new voice in American poetry. —Susan Howe A captivating composition. A loving trap. —C. D. Wright Camille Guthrie is the author of the poetry books Articulated Lair (2013), In Captivity (2006), and The Master Thief (2000) (all Subpress books), and the chapbooks Defending Oneself (Beard of Bees, 2004) and People Feel with Their Hearts in Another Instance: Three Chapbooks (Instance Press, 2011). Born in Seattle, she has lived in Pittsburgh and Brooklyn. She holds degrees from Vassar College and from the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Brown University. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and on web sites, including Arsenal, Art and Artists:Poems, Chicago Review, Conjunctions, No: A Journal of the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and The White Review. She raises two children with her husband in upstate New...
