The Spoils: January 2013

2013 began in a state of panic and pressure, as I struggled to finish my thesis, at least in a form ready for defense. At the end of my efforts: a 24-page poetics essay for an introduction and a 13-page appendix with some “notes on composition” bracket 56 poems. If that seems short, the prose section especially, it’s only because I had to wrestle all sorts of ideas out of my paper in the hopes of streamlining what was an unwieldy beast I could barely control back then. Now I can somewhat breathe again, this draft of my thesis with my critic, who will point out any revisions that have to be made before giving me the green-light for defense. Now I can finally rave about the great titles I received in January:

Useless Landscape or, A Guide for Boys by D.A. Powell

and, part of my wife’s Christmas gift to me, three books each from three small presses:

Madame X by Darcie Dennigan

The Invention of Glass by Emmanuel Hocquard (Cole Swensen and Rod Smith, trans.)

I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say by Anthony Madrid

Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me by Mark Leidner

Experiments I Should Like Tried At My Own Death by Caryl Pagel

Crash Dome by Alex Phillips

Balloon Pop Outlaw Black by Patricia Lockwood

Hider Roser by Ben Mirov

Dear Jenny, We Are All Find by Jenny Zhang

 

Top row: Canarium Books

1. Madame X by Darcie Dennigan
2. The Invention of Glass by Emmanuel Hocquard (translated by Cole Swensen and Rod Smith)
3. I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say by Anthony Madrid

 

Middle row: Factory Hollow Press

1. Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me by Mark Leidner
2. Experiments I Should Like Tried At My Own Death by Caryl Pagel
3. Crash Dome by Alex Phillips

 

Bottom row: Octopus Books

1. Balloon Pop Outlaw Black by Patricia Lockwood
2. Hider Roser by Ben Mirov
3. Dear Jenny, We Are All Find by Jenny Zhang

Five from iO Poetry

From the latest issue:

1. Nate Pritts (“Today’s sunlight is entitled ‘Crisis.’ // It plays gentle havoc with the soft parts / of me…”)
2. Natasha Kessler (“You are an outline, a strand of light draped across a new bone.”)
3. Matthew Guenette (“You Hank like Williams. / Johnny like Cash. / Kiss like kissing.”)

(More Guenette. More Kessler. More Pritts.)

From an older issue:

1. Anthony Madrid (“If I play favorites with my holy books, I hope I may be forgiven. I’m /Lately immersed in the Sex Code of the New Hammurabi.”)
2. Franz Wright (“Massive languor, languor hammered; / Sentient languor, languor dissected;”)

MADRID Impresses Me

A poem entitled “I Have Passed Too Many Years Among Cool Designing Beings” certainly gets me curious, and so I clicked and read my first Anthony Madrid poem. Then I went on Google and found several others:

1. two poems (“Let’s Watch This Lily-Colored Devil” and “No More Epigrams Against Sluts”)
2. four poems (“Between Myself And A Lover Of Spencer,” “In The Stones Of A Bull,” “The Tempter Will Go Us One Better,” “That She Is In Love With A Wretch Like That”)
3. “Crows, Too, Have A Means of Purring” (hilarious reader comment near the bottom of the page)
4. “Beneath Your Parents’ Mistress”

All of the above feature what seem to be certain trademark quirks of a lot of his poems: long lines arranged in couplets, quirky titles and a warped imagination, ending with a usually-capitalized admonition to himself (“MADRID, do you not see your poetry gives comfort to the wicked?”).

EDIT: I stand corrected. Madrid writes in the ghazal form. I’m embarrassed to not have identified it as such. I’ve yet to seriously study the form, so I didn’t know much more than the repeated elements like rhyme (qafia) and refrain (radif). I certainly didn’t know about the final couplet (makhta) containing the poet’s pseudonym (takhallus).

Not all his work proceeds this way though, “Rhymes” is composed of short lines arranged in quatrains (yes, they rhyme). Of the five poems here, despite their long lines and couplets, only one (“The Having A Rich Stock Of Wine”) features that address to himself in the penultimate line.

Based on this feature story, I know where to go next. First, Michael Robbins. Then, Anthony Madrid. See you soon, Stephanie Anderson. (Sooner than I think, this slightly variant version of the previously-linked article contains poems by all three.)

A few years ago, I wanted to get into the University of Chicago for its cinema studies faculty; now I want to go for the poetry.