JKD at POEZIBAO on Florence Trocmé’s Anthologie Permanente

POEZIBAO:

An ANTHOLOGIE PERMANENTE
For those of you not in France, or as of yet unaware of the astounding resource for poetry-lovers that the site POEZIBAO (written & run by FLORENCE TROCME) offers, let me just say, check it out! I do, of course, mention this today as I am thrilled to have made my first poetry entry onto the site! Yes, see

http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2007/11/anthologie-p-20.html for 2 translations into French [one by Jacques Demarcq (+click his name here & you can also see his own works & hear him read his own poems!) & the other by Christophe Lamiot Enos(+click his name to see work by him at Poezibao, too!)] from my chapbook Enclosure (a Blazevox ebook, directly at: http://www.blazevox.org/ebk-jd.pdf for those who have forgotten the English text!), called En Clos in French.

I’m pretty psyched to be included in Poezibao! It’s a site I have been reading for years—& thanks to Jacques & Christophe, I now have some poems out there in French in cyberspace, too!

FYI on POEZIBAO: it hosts hundreds of author bios, reviews of work, listings for forthcoming literary events in Paris as well as other parts of France. Florence Trocme has also conducted debates, posed & responded to poetry-related questions (I was part of those who responded to a questionnaire on women & writing/publishing), & she has written on this site many reviews of readings past, catching authors in photos, capturing at times unexpected first meetings between poets. POEZIBAO is a space to watch: keep an eye out for new poetry book suggestions, or notes on exciting new critical or interview books focused on POETRY & poets! In the early stages of this site, one would run into Florence at practically any event one went to, where she was snapping pics & jotting down notes for postings she made later that same evening! This love of poetry, of the written, read, performed, reflected-upon aspects of the poetic word which Florence Trocmé is committed whole-heartedly to, is rare & energizing.

L'ANTHOLOGIE PERMANENTE: What’s more, Florence runs a daily “Anthologie Permanente” where she posts daily a few poems by an author of her choice. This is where my poems appeared. She said that at first she tried to have one woman, one man rotations, but this has fluctuated over time. However, this attention to gender-equality in publishing, her commitment not only to poetry, but to poetry of all genres, from whatever groups, subgroups, in various styles, from various publishing houses or even nationalities (though translated into French) is needed as we move into the 21st century where so many possibles are possible! Evidently, she is restricted visually by what the website can do with line and space breaks, but she reads widely and does her best to showcase a little over everything every year.

Sign up: if you are interested in receiving her "Anthologie" daily in your email box (f.trocme@poezibao.com)—a nice morning pick-up, starting each day with a different poet’s poems! // Sur simple demande à f.trocme@poezibao.com, recevez chaque jour l'anthologie permanente dans votre boîte aux lettres électronique

HEROES: A break for Pop Culture

Breaking from the PhD, Heroes supplies a nice twist to life, therefore, for those who are watchers, here is my review of episode 9 and reaction to some of the "complaints" viewers have launched against the writers of this quite extra-ordinary NBC TV show.

Cautionary Tales...

.....Smart titling "Cautionary Tale”: or rather, tales, as there are so many potential fable-lines in this simple, 42 minute popular sci-fi American TV episode. The "best twist" of this season so far: the passing via blood of an extraordinary capacity to someone who has not had that "skill" in their DNA before. The potentials this introduces into the season and the series as a whole are extraordinary--bravo!
.....In fact, the writers of this series should be commended for their hard work and constant attention to ways in which one can complicate a story such as this, maintaining and adapting what we know of characters, being patient enough to "slowly" (for an action show at least) show us who those characters are and where they are coming from and (always potentially) going to go to next. Furthermore, this show is wonderfully multilingual--sections in Japanese, Spanish, English, etc.--demanding more of the general writer than an all-English, all-American series.

.....Those who want Heroes 2 to grip them faster and have been hard on this series should perhaps re-examine how season one also developped--quite slowly, really--but the intricate layerings of plotline, character interweavings and potential outcomes got most of the world hooked on the show by December/January. Again this fall, the writing is smarter than many critics have given it credit for. Certainly, there was perhaps a drop in interest merely because the viewers knew the general capacities of these characters and had already seen a year of a "saving-the-world" scenario, but the writers are starting to move past that, to get viewers engaged differently in the show's characters and turns.
.....Taking it to the next level, which it appears Heroes is and will be doing, is a difficult, arduous task. But the writers are already managing it--for who we trust is always shifting, what we thought we knew last year also begins to develop differently, and therefore how we become engaged in the stories the authors are telling us about the series is starting at this stage--which is, if one re-examines last year's series, pretty parallel in time frame--to engross and "hook us".

.....Additionally, as in this particular episode, moral reflections the show might supply viewers with which may make them reflect on their "real" outside-the-realm-of-the-show world, are adding a nice depth to Heroes. For example, this episode may evoke questions we have about our own accepting or not of death as portrayed in Hiro's tale today, how one perceives ideas of "fate"/what one takes of "superstition" or "predictions" as seen in the tale of Claire's father, professional and personal interaction loyalties as shown in Suresh's tale, potential abuses of power by a "good person" as are being developped in the mind-reading to mind-control character's tale (how/where does a "good person" go bad?), and finally how one interacts and sees the importance of family--certainly an American obsession since the 50s as a topic to look at via TV, cinema and books. Fabelesque, multi-lingual, action sci fi in a second season: it's a lot to manage! Give the authors credit where it is do--great work!!!

Are we ("women") Poets?

7-9 November in Clermont-Ferrand, an amazing conference with an inspiring mix of academic/university presentations on the questions of women’s poetry, or poetry by women, called “Voi(es)x de l’Autres: Poètes Femmes XIXe-XXIe siècles”, with readings by poets such as Marie-Claire Bancquart, Claude Ber, Marilyn Hacker, Béatrice Bonhomme, Marie Etienne, Marielle Anselmo, myself & others, a film projection of a documentary on Vénus Khory-Gata & a soirée in a gallery with amazing art shown by Annie Bascoul, Brigitte Batteaux, Muriel Richard-Dufourquet, Diagne Chanel, & Nandre. Unusual for my experiences (though mine are not yet so numerous) at conferences in France, because this conference opened itself to a non-academic public & environment as well as a very academic one, & as such a wonderful three days of non-stop dialogue between artists, academics, artist-academics, authors, publishers, etc was born—thanks very much to the organizers, including Patricia Godi who has a new book out on Sylvia Plath—read online the article by Florence Trocmé (also present at the conference to talk about her site, Poezibao) on this biography of Plath: HERE: http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/fiches_de_lecture/index.html (scroll down to it, 2nd article I believe).

For me, this conference comes at a time when I am (yes, still) trying to bring my PhD dissertation on, conveniently for the colloque, 3 women authors—Anne-Marie Albiach, Susan Howe & Myung Mi Kim—to a close. I am already dreading the possible defense questions regarding my selecting 3 women when, for me, the choice had nothing to do with gender & everything to do with a natural progression in my own study of authors & poetics—that is, form & technique, not theme or origins. I selected three authors that, here in France at least, had been, in my view, somewhat forgotten by the general criticism, or criticism which addressed the questions of form, visual & typographical writing, & how that linked to lyric & notions of narrative—a “dire” as it were. Certainly, I could just as well have selected male authors working in a parallel vein, but perhaps somewhere I do agree with the citation by Susan Gervitz in the Spahr/Young article that “Across the ages from older to younger & in reverse, I think there’s a responsibility for women to attend to one another’s work.” After all, having studied more men myself throughout my life, I felt that Albiach, Howe & Kim’s work needed attending to, & it was also asking me questions I felt like addressing in a PhD; it was for me a natural progression from the tradition of men I had studied in depth throughout numerous survey courses as an undergrad, from the lyric poets that I had studied among whom I had been encouraged to read mostly men, & then to get to a 20th century where I had likely read even numbers of men & women but had personally still written more critical work on men. So it was a choice for me to study them as a natural progression, & I felt it would also help me seek answers I have about myself & my own formal (not gender related) work & development over time.

This said, I did note at the conference that it felt as if the poetry studied was in general (with some exceptions, such as a great talk on day one about Columbian poets & formal revolt,) far more traditional formally than works I tend to be focused on myself, or my own writing. Among talks on Anglophone authors, there were no presentations on G Stein, Hejinian, DuPlessis, Drucker, et al, & many on Plath, even Plath’s daughter, as well as presentations on A Rich, Dickinson, Stevie Smith, the Brontes, Browning, Gwendolyn Brooks, L Neidecker, Rukeyser, & H.D. There were also comments made about “the new opportunities online for publication” but it seemed as if no one at the conference had ever heard of hypertext works (which I doubt, but it was just the way people spoke of online works) or were even aware that in Paris there are annual ePoetry conferences & a current call for a contest for an ePoetry work, making more elaborate use of the web than simply posting a text online instead of a page. This said, academia is usually behind the times in what it selects to study & present at conferences, & many of the anglo authors presented are less well known here in France (some are not yet even translated into French) than in the states where they are sort of the cannon for a teenage girl who is becoming aware of poetry & the permission to say things that the confessionalists made possible.

However, the end result of all this is that at this point in my PhD I feel I am ending up now relegated, it seems, or feels, to a side-category of critics, those who are women studying women, as if we were some sort of minority. Moreso, of a poet studying “weird” or “unreadable” poetries (the number of gasps alongside “do you find her work readable?” that I receive upon introducing myself & my subject to professors at conferences here in France makes me want to roll my eyes!!!)

So, I think—& kept thinking throughout the colloque in Clermont-Ferrand, about the article just published in the Chicago Review by Juliana Spahr & Stephanie Young (see link below, in last paragraph), asking many questions regarding “womens’” poetry stemming from questions about whether we still need poetry anthologies that fore-front women’s writing apart from bi-generderd anthologies.

In parallel, one may ask, do we still need a conference only focusing on women’s poetry? One of the men present at the conference said that in fact he felt that he (as man) was questioned far more than I (as woman) am/would be regarding the choice to focus on women authors. I was surprised by this, having in fact not considered what it might be like for a man to select a woman or women authors as their focus for a PhD in France. I suppose I need merely recount that at this, one of the few conferences this year focused on women’s work (not one author, but conferences like this which are open to a wide range of authors & authors writing in a wide range of languages) &, furthermore, on women’s poetry (the number of conferences focused on prose seems to me significantly higher in general) that the number of men in the room was always minimal. I started to take count at one point, how in one of the presentation rooms two days in a row there were 4 presenters, & 29 audience members, of which 4 were men (both times) & in these cases, the four men were often different men, whereas more women tended to stay for two to all three days of the conference. On another day, there were 40 people in the room & 5 were men. I kept asking myself, if I were in the states at a similar conference, would the situation be the same—as in, would there be such a cast difference in the number of men & women present? Feel free, those of you in the states, to let me know!

This said, despite what I feel about women being studied, I still don’t feel that women are a minority (& I don’t see myself as a minority) at this time in publishing, at least in the realms I am currently reading; in presses I tend to keep my eye on. Yet I do question whether more women are hermetic in their working methods, work habits, life as authors, in their ways of not sending out work—& whether some young men have established a kind of dynamic of prolific writing & publishing that is less a product of or within an “anxiety of influence” (Bloom) but is rather a positive, bolstering, exciting, even perhaps rather a game-like, almost amusing competition to publish & write more books, get more prizes, not be left behind by friends who also are getting 3 or so books per year onto the market (ie, I think here of the surprising number of manuscripts that Brian Henry, Noah Eli Gordon, or currently Joshua Wilkinson are getting out there—& great for them! I would like to see some of the women poets I know send their work like this as well, but many tend to hold onto it, not submit it, or wait to see if one book is taken before sending another they have finished). Women I know are also not, or purposefully not, joining groups or shy away from bi-gender groups, writing exchanges, etc. Just as (I gather) many women invited to join Oulipo in France have declined the offer, women I know tend to shy away from many group collaborative moments in a gesture of self/time or some other mysterious form of protection. Men I know (not all, but some) tend to do the opposite. Certainly, these are my own generalizations, my own current observations among my own restricted number of friends. But I have started questioning myself in relationship to these personal observations, asking myself questions—being, as I am, at the same time really hermetic at this stage of my life (my PhD at the root of that) & also extremely motivated to send off work, play online on the rewords blogsite, etc, in new public collaborative ways, ways that for me are lifelines at a stage when otherwise I might drown under my own personal need to be an academic, to write critically, & thus to lose the side of me that is the lifeline, the author.

I see that much is being reflected on questions of gender anthologies & the like, & currently debated. I therefore wanted to point to two debates, the later of which is ongoing. First, perhaps see Poezibao’s series of questions about "pourquoi si peu de femmes poètes de grande stature ?" women & writing, the questions Florence asked many authors are at: http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/04/une_grande_enqu.html & the responses in a generalized grouping can be read at: http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/04/grande_enqute_d.html & a sub-debate on the formulated question itself is at: http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/05/lenqute_de_poez.html Then you can read some specific detailed responses from some of the authors selected at these links, which often address how these women poets perceive they are seen here in France versus how they perceive women poets seen in other countries—quite interesting:
http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/10/enqute_de_poezi.html , http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/09/enqute_de_poezi_4.html ,
http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/09/enqute_de_poezi_3.html ,
http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2006/09/enqute_de_poezi_2.html

Secondly, the article, in the Chicago Review, I had read just before going to the conference, & now I see there is a lot of ongoing online debate surrounding it, is up on the Chicago Review website: Juliana Spahr & Stephanie Young’s really interesting article which springs from questions (& responses to) of whether or not there are equal numbers of women authors, publishers, editors in the “innovative” poetry scene & which ends with a great call or invitation for answers, conversations, projects, etc to address how “poetry or poetry communities might do more to engage the living & working conditions of women in a national/international arena” They invite your emaile responses to this, so get involved, reflect, open up this arena….: click HERE or cut & paste http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/CR_532_Spahr_Young.pdf To see their article & to read some of the pdf filed responses that the CHICAGO REVIEW is so kindly making possible, go to: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/

Self Portrait With Robert CreeleyS

Click Self Portrait with 2 Creeleys to hear my SoundPoem. Another version HERE.

I wrote it in French after listening to the YouTube video of Creeley linked off Nicholas Manning's blog, recording my own voice in layers over it in a lowtech home version of things. But the sound of my accent in French felt wrong, so I translated & adapted it back into English for the above mp3 files.

Any preference? Leave me a comment!

ENCLOSURES at BlazeVox Books

I have admired BlazeVOX for awhile, their site is fun, http://www.blazevox.org/ you can download FREE eBooks by fab authors & purchase lovely printed books by even MORE fabulous authors--William Allegrezza, Noah Eli Gordon, Kazin Ali, Ray Bianchi, Peter Jay Shippy, Amy King, Michael Gessner, & many more! But what's not to like about a book editor who pre-announces that they are "publishers of weird little books" & "a place of refuge", or of which Ron Silliman says on his blog "...approach with caution"? 'Weird', but lovely: humourous, serious, violent, ephemeral, moving (physically), penetrating, these books are so varied that what seems most to link them together is the sense that each one is a project on its own, seeking to make its space and way, & which BlazeVOX gives voice & page & webspace to. Dedicated to works in an experimental vein, BlazeVOX books often move around the page, opening multiple sites for voices, eye. Or, they are sieved down to only their most essential lines, sometimes giggly, sometimes grabbing you by the throat. OFTEN these books put to question the delineation between genres (ie poetry/theater in Benjamin Buchholz's "playlet poems" entitled Windshields). Some of the books are minimal, others come at the reader with a lined denseness encroaching on the eye, the mind, the self.

So, I am really excited to have a work among their new set of eBooks this fall! Please read ENCLOSURES, a collection from a longer work still in progress. These are my Lili poems, a character who moves through these very visual pages in her own darkness. Poem from Enclosures previously appeared in Cutbank 67. The electronic chapbook at BlazeVOX is available in free pdf download: http://www.blazevox.org/ebk-jd.pdf

& Thanks to BlazeVOX editor Geoffey Gatza for his AMAZING cover layout and photo! You can read some of his own works on the BV site or order copies, too, of his collections!!!

Cutbank 67 + New Book by Claude Royet-Journoud

It never stops, the flow of words seeping under the cracks of the door, books, chapbooks, periodicals of friends, acquaintances, authors I admire or just had the luck of meeting! But here is a journal I am just thrilled to be in myself. I admire the feel of it, the lovely artwork by Louisa Conrad, and the afternoons it has provided me with excellent reading: Cutbank 67 (order a copy online, submit for their next issue and do subscribe via http://www.cutbankonline.org/)

Besides a few poems of my own from the forthcoming eBook chapbook at BlazeVox, Enclosures, you can find: Fiction by Danielle Dutton, Charles McLeod, Edan Lepucki, Leslie Jamison, Matthew Ira Swaye, and Daniel Mueller, Poetry by Patricia Goedicke, Sarah Gridley, Erin M. Bertram, Seth Abramson, Robb St. Lawrence, Sandra Miller, Jennifer Pilch, Morgan Lucas Schuldt, Nathan Hoks, Brent Armendinger, Kismet Al-Hussaini, Carey McHugh, Hanna Andrews, William S. Barnes, Karyna McGlynn, Matt Shears--a poet I was thrilled to be introduced to the work of in this issue!!!-- and Julie Doxsee. There's also an Interview by Jane St John with fiction author Aimee Bender.


SECONDLY: CLAUDE ROYET-JOURNOUD
I was delighted to find, on this grey Wednesday in Paris, a bright yellow-covered book which had arrived from sunny Marseille: Go and pick up a copy NOW! It is Claude ROYET-JOURNOUD's newest collection entitled La Poésie Entière est Préposition, Eric Pesty Editeur, Marseille, 12euros. I'm certain you can get copies from Michele Ignazi bookstore, rue de Jouy in the 4e Paris, or order directly from the publisher via http://www.ericpestyediteur.com/ Please note, this is a PARTNER PIECE to the book by Claude Royet-Journoud coming out with P.O.L. in early November, entitled: Théorie des Prépositions.

AFTER-WORDS

Please note--this has now become part of a collective blog site called ReWords, and so do go and check out this project en cours: http://rewords.blogspot.com !

I have always been a fan of the response poem, the putting of voices into dialogue. So, as I sit in my little cell-like room in Paris pounding away at the PhD which feels like my personal Sisyphisian boulder, I have this week taken up the habit of riffing off of the poems and prose paragraphs that fellow writers have shared with me such as Cole Swensen and, today, Sandy Florian. And so, in the spirit of the web being a web, intricate invisible lines spidering between our solitudes, here is my response to Sandy Florian's text which she wrote and put up today on her blog: http://thetreeofno.blogspot.com/2006/06/tree-of-no-other-to-speak.html. My response is here, a poem ping pong, as it were! from Oct 5, 2007:

Like a Wakening Form of Being

so that the flame preserved might still be kept
.....................so that I may be so unduly, so undulatingly
wired in the incandescence of this
…………………….whirling after the six-shooter in the near day
asking for intervention, waves
…………………….askance in the alcove of all this
so that I may be sleeping may be preserving
…………………….so that the horn-hymn-whipporwhorl birdcall
in the ignition of the bic of the zippo
…………………….interminable stance sentence of the sun’s scope
or captain’s wake devoid king
…………………….or son’s of kings on the angled threshold
thrush of neck exposed to the dark of this
…………………….threat of a legend of a whispering wind
under marked doors dimples dire demands
…………………….ululating dime stores and piled pick-ups dusted
perchance pleased or pleading
…………………….prayer-bound-up in mesh, rugged roped, cuffed
or simmering in the knelt-by furnace
…………………….or encroaching desert, mounds, and burials
should impel, me to compel, me to
…………………….sons and then the staunch vermillion, the burgundian
sky of this or broached topical units labelled lineage
…………………….scraped shoulder putting the back up to beam to
veer past the mythology and behold
…………………….eye in the, still central nervous brachial retchings
flame fortuitous as language, Babel or Babylon,
………………flagging in the lugged-along limping of what could only be
tide-netted
…………………….a state

NEW on SHELVES and SITES

Branching out, to find a space where my critical mind meets the poetic, & where translation speaks to the poetry I write, I have been very excited to be part of a series of projects and publications this spring & summer, many of which are available through the internet. If you are interested, here is where some of my critical writing in French, a video interview in English, translations from French to English & new poems can be read or seen/listened to.:

▪ Video Interview: of Cole Swensen on The Continental Review, Summer 2007, a site created & edited by Nicholas Manning. Video is 39 min 47 secs. You can also watch interviews with or readings by poets Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Joshua Clover, Linh Dinh, Jordan Stempleman, & many others. As Manning writes, “The Continental Review … aims to become the primary stop for video content related to contemporary poetics on the web.” Give it a watch at: http://www.thecontinentalreview.com/


NEW POEMS in PRINT:
▪ I was thrilled to have my poem “Fast” (pp34-42) appear in this summer’s Denver Quarterly, v. 41, n° 4, edited by Bin Ramke & Danielle Dutton at the University of Denver, CO. The poem cites a few fabulous lines by Norma Cole & finds itself in an issue of the journal which includes one of her new essay’s (on why she does not think of herself as a "translator") as well! (How fortuitous!) This issue of the Denver Quarterly also includes some wonderful poetry discoveries for me, such as the poems by Emily Anderson that open the issue, & two poems by Graham Foust that I adored--in particular for his language's odd rhythms. If you are interested in picking up the issue, you can get a single copy for $10, or subscribe for the year for $20 to DENVER QUARTERLY, UNIVERSITY OF DENVER, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, 2000 E ASBURY, DENVER, CO 80208 Further questions and inquiries, contact them at 303.871.2892. For more info, to submit for future issues or to see info on this issue at: http://www.denverquarterly.com/--& also read a beautiful excerpt by Martha Ronk there!

▪ Holly Melgard & Nick Urban came to Paris in the summer of 2006 and wooed the entire poetry community here with their hipness & energy. On Holly’s return to Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, for her senior year, she put together a truly magnificent volume of the Slightly/West Literary Journal, with inspiring works by everyone in the entire issue, including well-known authors such as Rodrigo Toscano, Lytle Shaw, Laura Elrick, Nathalie Knight, Cole Swensen, Parisian locals such as Michelle Noteboom, Barbara Beck, photographer Antonio Meza and myself (with the poems “Early Obsessions…”, “Resonance and Reality 1”, “A Hostile Replication” & “A Dark Continent” pp109-120) & finally really exciting works by her fellow students such as Corwin Peck (who we all got to meet this summer in Paris when he was visiting), Andrew Olmsted, Grant Miller & Meghan McNealy. The issue is available for free through Evergreen (see http://academic.evergreen.edu/groups/slightlywest/) or you can contact Holly or the current editors for more info or to acquire a copy of the current issue at: slightlywest@yahoo.com

▪ One of the first magazines to take poems from my first book, Fluorescence, had been Phantasmagoria, edited by Abigail Allen in Minnesota. Therefore, re-reading the old issue, I decided to submit new work and was thrilled to have it appear in their beautiful issue this summer alongside an array exciting & varied works. If you are interested, “The Brain’s Volume Controls” appears in Phantasmagoria, v.7, n°1, summer, and can be ordered at: Phantasmagoria English Dept. Century Community and Technical College White Bear Lake, MN 55110. Abigail Allen, Editor. The magazine is bi-annual and will be looking for new works, too, so keep it in mind for your own writings!

TRANSLATIONS:
A new art for me, I have started to submit more translation work & am thrilled to be included in the following reviews:

▪ “Un Système Latéral” from fin, n°13, 2002 (pp 13-31) as “Interview” between Jean Daive and Claude Royet- Journoud (pp202-227), in the triple issue of Verse edited by Andrew Zawacki & Abigail Lang (who was of great help to me when she did a rereading of this interview I translated). The issue is on “French Poetry & Poetics”, v 24, n° 1-3, August 2007, & focuses entirely on France & French contemporary poetry & poetics, including works by Suzanne Doppelt, Emmanuel Hocquard, Pierre Alfieri, Benedicte Vilgrain, Frederic Forte, Ian Monk & tons of others. This is really an anthology of what is happening in poetry in France today, and this 365 pages long-volume is available at the Verse site, http://versemag.blogspot.com/ where there is a complete list of authors followed by a list of translators & reviews in the issue. They offer also a special blog price: $12 postage-paid through November 15. Pretty amazing for such a tomb! Send check to: Verse, English Department, University of Richmond, Richmond VA 23173.

▪ Poem “Tristan Commentaries” (p135) by László Bárdos, from Hungarian, in La Traductière, n°25, June 2007. This poem was translated as part of a group project in June of 2006 at the maison de la poésie for the festival franco-anglaise de la poésie, Paris, run by Jacques Rancourt. More info on that festival, their projects since, & many other poems in translation can be found on: http://www.festrad.com/.

▪ Poems “Night II” and “Night III” (p84) by Christophe Lamiot Enos which appeared in Tears in the Fence, N°44, Devon, UK, November 2006, will also be forthcoming in Spring 2008 from Greywolf Press in the NEW EUROPEAN POETS ANTHOLOGY edited by Kevin Prufer & Wayne Miller, the French selections were chosen by poet & translator Marilyn Hacker.

▪ 3 poems by Albane Gellé from her collection "Un bruit de verre en elle" (Inventaire-invention) are forthcoming in Conduit! I adore Gellés language use, and in these one-sentence prose poems, I really enjoyed trying to recapture the meanderings and weavings of the French in English. More details about where to see these translations as they appear!

CRITICAL WORK:
▪ Yep, I am a PhD student, trying to sprint down that last stretch of paper-covered land to the dissertation, written in French of course. So it was immensely exciting for me to have a chapter appear in a collection of essays & talks edited by Judit Maar and Jean Bessière entitled: L’Écriture Emprisonnée, L’Harmattan, Paris (Cahiers de la nouvelle europe n°7) 2007. ISBN : 978-2-296-03132-6. Prix : 31 euros. My chapter, “Myung Mi Kim et l’emprisonnement du poète dans une langue étrangère” (pp15-26), follows the introduction to open the first section in this vast array of essays reflecting on various real & metaphorical notions of the imprisoned writer—from those who chose their bonds, such as Oulipo’s authors, to those who stumble into them, such as Myung Mi Kim, to those who were actually victims of imprisonment under forceful regimes throughout history all over the world, in Greece, Hungary, Russia, African countries... For a full list of authors & essays titles, or to order your own ebook copy (print versions seem already out of print!) (or one for a library), see: http://www.harmattan.fr/index.asp?navig=catalogue&obj=result

▪ Read ONLINE: Book Review: “Poetry/Fiction…the debate (debacle) continues to Murmur.” On Laura Mullen’s Murmur (Futurepoem 2007), for How2journal, v3, issue 1, in “alerts” section, June 2007. I love How2, so to appear among MANY of my favourite authors & thinkers was a real pleasure! See their works in this issue, too. http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_1/index.html

▪ Read my l’il Article: “Paris: Towards a New Anglophone European Writing?” (pp 178-182) in this last summer’s issue of Bordercrossing Berlin: The English Language Literary Magazine, issue 2, Berlin, Germany, June 2007. They are also calling for works of poetry & prose for their December 2007 issue, number 3. To order issue 2 or see more on them, go to: http://www.bordercrossing-berlin.com/

▪ Not everything is about getting into print, and I really enjoyed this past June being part of La journée doctorale de la SFLGC at The University of Denis Diderôt, Paris VII: held on June 2, 2007, & where I presented a contextualization of my PhD dissertation in the form of a fifteen minute talk aimed at raising issues & questions I have encountered during my work; followed by discussion. My presentation title was: « VISUEL et POETIQUE aujourd'hui : une méthodologie “formelle”? » I talked about Mallarmé & Apollinaire’s visual works, where they emerged from in the past, & where we have come today given the merging of visual work which is more iconographic with works using a visual scoring, the eye of music. Both methods intertwine in the works of many of my favorite contemporary poets.

Fishing Trip to Ontario Canada !!!

Just back from Ontario, Canada, where my parents and I went to Lake Vermillion and stayed at the Fireside Lodge. This goes to show that writers do more than just write! It was in fact a great place to also read in the evenings and scribble and listen to a lot more SILENCE then I ever have in Paris! Anyway, I had a fun week out in Northern Ontario. Lots of days out on the boat. I learned some valuable lessons, such as :
1) Hats sink --fast.
2) Sunburned lips can make you look like you got a free collagen treatment (unfortunately, I didn't get an Angelina Jolie body to go with)
3) Romaniam fisherman look like special forces combat troops
4) Rain gear--only keeps you so dry if it is going to really pour and pour and pour…which it did.
5) How to get a medium sized fish of my own in the boat (28 inches-long northern, as you see in the above pics, and a few 17 and 17.5 inch smallmouth bass—the smaller fat fish you see in the above pics) and net a big one (Dad's 39 inch which did this astounding full-body leap into the air about 100 feet from the boat after I had asked him how big it was and he had just said "not THAT big" and so I was holding the normal net and realized that wasn't gonna cut it--I had to use the big body net where you lean over the edge of the boat with it and, no, I did not fall in—and you see his pic aboe with the big fish) and how to NOT get in a really big fish of my own--dad called that moment "catch and early release"! Unfortunately, I had a little luck and unluck and had a few of those moments!
6) Knots, knots, knots--boat & dock knots, slip knots, square knots, anchor knots, hook knots, leader knots, not knots that then let the fish get away knots...
7) Weeds and rocks and more kinds of underwater weeds....a nuisance on and offshore, though in which the fish hide...
8) How to catch a musky--yes, I did! A tiger musky—it is in the pics above, looks like a northern but in fact fights different and has these nasty teeth! All my life I have seen very few people manage to get a musky, and once I saw my burly cousin Dave pulled off the dock in the rain in Wisconsin when he had hooked a musky—evidently a bigger one than I am holding here!
9) Once the weather is nice, mosquitoes in Canada are like an attack force! I even swallowed one myself, he was so anxious to get near me!
10) A muskrat is not a beaver, but they are CUTE!
11) Moose swim. I learned this, via a photo but despite this I did not see one. (frown and pout) I also saw very few people--all day on lakes and no people!!! Lots o' loons, though.
12) Hearty eating takes on new meaning up in Canada--and they say US portions are a surprise!12) LAYERS!!!: We headed out onto the lake around 7 h 30 every morning and if the weather wasn't too damned cold (the first few days I was in 5 layers! Including the plastic ones--2 pairs of socks, thick shoes, heavy jeans then 2-layered raingesar gortex pants over the jeans, 3 shirts (including the turtleneck) then a sweater and sweatshirt and then the big plastic raingear and windbreaker coat with hood, a hat and over it that hood. Wow, eh? What can I say, the pictures above will certainly be a sign of a new beauty look! Rugged girl 2007!

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little side-track from my usual "read my writing" blogs, and hope that you all have had a great summer, too!!!

Reading at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris

Virginie Poitrasson and I are reading from a piece I wrote in two languages at the event organized by Sarah Riggs (who also read) at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, 8 March 2007. Other readers at the Soirée included Donna Stonecipher, Etel Adnan, Safaa Fathy, Vanina Maestri, Véronique Pittolo, Ninar Esbar, Leïla Marouane. For me, this was a great honor and I wrote my first 2-language poem in response to Edmond Jabès work for the event. MP3s of the readings should become available through Radio France next week, in case anyone is interested in listening in! This photo was taken by Mexican photographer Antonio Meza.

SEE some NEW WORK by JEN DICK at:

POEMS Online:
In DOUBLE ROOM #7, plus I just love Nin Andrews’ poem in this issue!!! It is really a great feeling to make it onto the inspiring site for Double Room, where I have a few poems from my now-under-submission manuscript Circuits alongside some really smashing works such as Nin Andrews amazing prose poems and selections by Stephen Ratcliffe! I also admire Double Room’s intros, written by editors Peter Connors & Mark Tursi, reflecting on notions of genre, & questions of where to place prose poems/flash fiction 5and Connor’s own home web site is worth thumbing through, too). The editors always encourage their authors to respond to a sentence by someone else on ideas about this exciting between-genre, and those are all really fun to read in this, their 7th issue. (Find: “Brain in a Box 1”, “Atomic Choreography 2” and “Brain in a Box 2” on Double Room, Winter 2007, issue 7. www.webdelsol.com/Double_Room)
Issue 7 at: www.webdelsol.com/Double_Room

New Poems In PRINT:
American Letters & Commentary 2006 includes my poem “Coda” alongside an excellent array of work, including poems by Kurt Brown, Xue Di, both poetry and visual work by Barbara Guest, theme work on “Fear” by Jena Osman, Andrew Kozma and much more! Order a copy through http://www.amletters.org/

Los Angeles Review—See the recent issue, N°3, in which one of my poems “It was a wedding of Strangers…” (dedicated to Sophie Calle & Anne Lauterbach) appears alongside many of my fellow Parisian Americans, thanks to Cecilia Woloch getting us to get our work back over all the way to the coastline of lovely California! The review, produced by Red Hen Press, is beautiful, large format with a diverse range of work.

Diner Magazine—inaugurating its annual, larger issues, Diner includes my poem “Theorizing about Theorizing”. A great magazine out of MA, one to support and keep your eye on (not because of my work, but because of the editors and all they are doing!!!) subscribe or order online via: http://spokenword.to/diner

Recent CRITICAL WORK in PRINT or ONLINE:
Review of Marilyn Hackers “Essays on Departure: Selected Poems” forthcoming in Tears in the Fence, UK, summer 2007.

Book Review: “Eclectic Directions: Jennifer K Dick reviews Anabranch by Andrew Zawacki.” Jacket Magazine, Australia, July 2006. http://jacketmagazine.com/30/dick-zawacki.html

older PROSE and, yep, some recipes in:
Jack Mackerel 9.0: All-Food Edition 2005, Seattle. Story,“The Regime”(3p) alongside some fun work by John Parker and many others at: http://jackmackerel2005.blogspot.com/ http://jackmackerel2005.blogspot.com/

GOOD READS for WINTER 2007

Hey all--

There are a ton, but here are a few books I would like to recommend as you snuggle down for wintery hot chocolates (spiked with a generous dash of brandy or peppermint schnapps!)

POETRY:
Laura Mullen's MURMUR (Futurepoem Books, 2007) : exciting language, lush with natural landscapes, scattered thoughts, motives, seascape, this poetry-crime book stretches all our notions of genre, is captivating, smart and also beautifully printed/bound. A must-read, and for fun re-read Poe's "A Telltale Heart" with Mullen's subsection of the same title!

Alice Notley's ALMA OR THE DEAD WOMEN (Granery Books, 2006): Again, exciting language, all of Alice's own, "a mythopoetic structure" says Mark Irwin correctly in his blurb. This massive volume could easily keep you inspired and reflecting on Notley's characters and their world, but also our own, your and my place in it, etc.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson's LUG YOUR CARELESS BODY OUT OF THE CAREFUL DUSK (University of IA Press, 2006) Wilkinson's title already introduces the language you will find here, captivating, unique, mysterious, broken. This "poem in fragments" is like scenes through a viewfinder, not quite but almost piecing together, like memory.

Anne Carson's DECREATION (Vintage, 2005) This is another brilliant book from Carson, I loved reading on the edge of sleep in a train on my way to Berlin her "Every exit is an entrance (in priase of sleep)". Always alive, startling us by trying new forms, this is a book to revel in!

TRANSLATIONS:
Danielle COLLOBERT's works by Norma Cole!

Claude ROYET-JOURNOUD's work "theory of prepositions" by Keith Waldrop (out with La Presse, 2006)

Marie Borel's “Wolftrot” Translated into English by Sarah Riggs and Omar Berrada.

CLASSICS:
DANTE: return to Ciardi's translation of the INFERNO for a good winter read!

GOETHE: pairs well with the Dante. I am reading Gérard de Nerval's version in French.

OVID: again, a never-tire-of-this read, Metamorphoses, I liked Rolfe Humphries translation.

NOVELS:
Zadie Smith's WHITE TEETH (Penguin, 2000) is good, engagin, with lively characters--and the first 7 pages are simply great!

Richard Powers THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS is a book I have yet to recover from, lyrically written, captivating and thought-provoking tale of loves then and now, a book to pair with listening to the various Goldberg recodings. Powers also has a new book I hear is FAB too!!!