As other second–generation immigrant writers, Chin-In Chen addresses the American experience from a position of both belonging and not-belonging, which is clearly evident in her collection The Heart’s Traffic. The collection crosses embodies boundary-crossing beyond the typical use of plot (though that is present as well), and results in a comingled impression of life from the perspective of an immigrant and her family. As with many poetry collections, the evidence of the collection’s conceptual identity (in this case, border-crossing and existing in multiple realities concurrently) presents initially with the cover of the book. However, the reader will notice quickly that Chen’s collection follows through with these concepts in nearly every poem. Continue reading “Reflection on Ching-In Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic”
What Makes for a Successful Literary Submission?
So many submissions come in to the literary magazine I help staff – a relatively new literary magazine – that examining the framework of a “successful submission” becomes a lesson in self-reflection. From my experience working on various literary journals, the submissions that find a way through the editorial process have similar characteristics, even though the journal, the editors, and the submissions may be vastly different. For the most part, this framework can relate across different literary journals with different scopes as well. At the broadest level, I see the framework resting upon awareness. Continue reading “What Makes for a Successful Literary Submission?”
A Short Reflection on Laura Kasischke’s “Space, in Chains”
Even the cover reflects the contents of Kasischke’s poetry collection. Both the title – Space, in Chains – and the Rothko abstraction on the front point at the nearly ungraspable poems in between the covers. But the reasoning behind the ungraspable-ness may be the ungraspable subjects and themes Kasischke meditates on through these poems. That is, the poet approaches and interrogates the unknowable, and attempts to enlighten through the medium of abstracted understanding. Continue reading “A Short Reflection on Laura Kasischke’s “Space, in Chains””
Upcoming Reviews and Reflections
This entry has been replaced by the index of reviews and reflections.
Reading the Writing of Love
Kim Addonizio’s What is this Thing Called Love reaches through the looking glass.
If that is not clear enough, where a confessional poet’s version of these poems might harp on the “woe is me” shtick, Addonizio manages to allow the reader to experience these poems as though they come from inside, and not from the page. So, not that we are reading a memoir, but experiencing all the love offered to us. Even reminding the reader in a subtle way of other personal experiences. Sometimes, I can almost imagine being the speaker. Whether that is a fault of Addonizio’s writing, or my own empathy, I do not know; but I have an understanding, a connaissance, that is drawn out by the poems in this collection.
A New Draft (an excerpt)
Disclaimer: I don’t normally post poems here, because I feel that they have a much better chance at legitimacy if they live a long revision life and see the light of publication in a real venue, not my own blog… However, because of the nature of this poem and my slight intoxication, I have decided to request feedback over the internets, which are known for their fair and balanced opinions.
Written tonight, this draft is rant-y, and liberal. I post because I want feedback, but I’m not entirely sure about the politics…
**edit: if it seems cut-off, it is. This is the first third (about) of the poem**
See for yourself after the jump.
A Contest I Just Heard About:
I’m not eligible, but The Nation is holding it’s annual student writing contest, check it out:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/160571/nation-student-writing-contest
On the Control of Movement through Image, pt. 4
Although Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” Basho’s haiku, and Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” may be a-logical, each of these is still afforded a movement down the page. These movements are governed by and served by the creation of a networked dialectical space through linked comparisons of image. This space allows for Pound’s “intellectual-emotional complex” to generate intuitive comprehension in a reader at some level.
Continue reading “On the Control of Movement through Image, pt. 4”
On the Control of Movement through Image, pt. 3
In the case of longer poems, movement control through image becomes a much more involved task. John Ashbery assumes this task in his long poem, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” which reflects on Parmigianino’s painting of the same name. While the impetus for Ashbery’s poem is ekphrastic, and he returns often to this originating source, he eschews the traditional impulse to control the movement through narrative or language. Most longer poems rely on either narrative (as in epic poems), or rhythm/rhyme constructions (as in ballads) to control their movement. Ashbery, in contrast, uses image to control the movement of his poem. Because this method is non-linear and a-logical, teasing out the movement of the poem can become difficult, as has already been shown.
Continue reading “On the Control of Movement through Image, pt. 3”
On Controlling Movement through Image, pt. 2
Pound writes in his essay “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” that “an image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” (200). In the next issue of Poetry, Pound provides a succinct example with his poem “In a Station of the Metro.” Each line presents an intricate image, and to extend Pound’s imperative, creates that “emotional and intellectual complex” in the interplay between the two images:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .
Continue reading “On Controlling Movement through Image, pt. 2”