#11: You've Not Seen Nothing Like The Mighty Quinn
In a Toronto skyscraper, a shortstop is giving genital herpes to a woman who, before being allowed into the shortstop's suite, signed a non-disclosure agreement that contained a clause — unread, in this case — about the health risks of sexual contact with the shortstop, a clause that the shortstop added to the paperwork around the turn of the millennium, when he could no longer bear the shame associated with mentioning the STD, which he is now able to avoid thinking about—besides, obviously, when he has an outbreak. (“Errors,” Joe Truscello, Hobart.)
The Vichy-aligned government of Martinique once banned the paper Aimé Césaire was hoping to use to publish the magazine Tropiques. The South African magazine Staffrider captured Soweto slang, black working class voices, the difficulty of culture to breathe in such a moment in South Africa (which — incidentally — pairs well with how Césaire characterizes Martinique at the beginning of Tropiques’s run, “Sterile and silent land. It is of ours that I am speaking”), and more. These were clearly magazines of ‘the margins’ that then moved into a certain kind of acceptance.
Neither of these magazines moved from the comfort of Harvard to the comfort of Brooklyn at the beginning of that borough’s millennium gentrification and then enjoyed almost immediate acknowledgement and acceptance upon their debut, as was the case with a magazine like — for instance — n+1.
All of which is to say: it’s easy for some of us to gloss over the fact that publishing can be empire and empire impacts marginalized communities in a multitude of ways. It’s easy for us to ignore the fact that contemporary society sits upon a figurative river delta’s worth of information networks.
All of which is to basically say what Nicanor Parra has already said (before taking back everything he ever said) —
Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
All of which all of which is to say that any discussion of poetry could just as easily have been a conversation that hinged on a kind of proactive affirmation instead of whatever transpired in a certain section of Twitter over the past few days: instead of talking about what was talked about, we could have instead been talking about “baseball canto” or how Lucille Clifton wants to remind you that “these hips are free hips”; that “Rain is when the earth is television” (and how you could pair that poem with “Quilting The Black-Eyed Pea” and creative line breaks from Mork and Mindy); that Pedro Pietri is here with “Puerto Rican Obituary” whenever you’re ready; that Diane di Prima wants to remind you that you are not alone; that Ishmael Reed does not want you to read this poem; that Leonard Cohen wants to teach you how to speak poetry; that Nikki Giovanni wants you to notice embryonic eyes; that Patricia Lockwood wants to talk to you about a rape joke; that Terrance Hayes has dedicated one sonnet (of many) to his past and future assassin; that Danez Smith wants to introduce you to a neighborhood of royal folks; that D.T. Robbins is inviting you to play a game of ‘Would you rather?’; that Ocean Veong is inviting us to find flashes of grace in a burning city; that Keorapetse Kgositsile wouldn’t mind if we burned all the maps; that Rita Dove is here to tell us about how Munich must have whipped young Shakespeare’s ass to ice; that the fry cook is out here saying crazy things while the dishwasher is laughing that good clean laugh; that we’re here to celebrate the all but perfect evening on the lake; that we can speak love poems through the lens of post-colonial thought, even if our names aren’t Mahmoud Darwish; that Robert Frost can dunk a basketball; that we once saw the ghost of Rumi driving through the streets of Tehran blasting the metal band Confess or the beloved ghosts of the band Yellow Dogs from his speeding vehicle, his long white beard flapping in the wind; that the boy looked at Johnny … but Johnny wanted to run; that a penguin has always already only ever been a million penguins; that there was a point here once, long ago; that I have a magnolia tree and a fig tree outside my door and am still thinking through what to do about that; that I’m writing this at midnight and am wondering what it will mean to wander out into the yard and pick a fig in the middle of the night; that — sure, why not — I’m a fig tree in the night, listening to waves of cicada sounds slowly coming to shore …
I too know what it’s like to be so unfree so close to
the gleaming pyrite of Atlantic City. To never know
what your body feels like without the sticky grit
of tiny rocks smashed into tinier rocks (“Ode To Valerie,” Patti Creamer, HAD)
ZINE(S) OF THE WEEK: Dumplings: A Poetry Zine / Building: A DIY Guide to Creating Spaces, Hosting Events and Fostering Radical Communities / Pigeon Zine: We're Not Flying Rats /
CHAPBOOK OF THE WEEK: “I Am Trying To Fall In Love With Myself But Instead I Keep Falling In Love With Unemployed Noise Musicians Who Do Coke and Believe in the Power of Crystals.”
OF NOTE/UPCOMING:
LitHub is “looking for micro-essays (500-700 words) about how you and your students are doing as classrooms re-open this fall. Rate is $150 per piece; submit pitches or essays to info@lithub.com by 9/14!”
Cornell College is looking to build their faulty pool for their low-res MFA program.
9/16: “Colson Whitehead in Conversation with Barbara Vandenburgh.”
Donate to Cajun Navy Relief.
Above: Doug Aitken, migration (empire) - linear version, 2008.