JUST OUT: Tears in the Fence 62 with Of Tradition and Experiment XII

It is so lovely to be a part of the continued tradition of the UK

magazine run by David Caddy called Tears in the Fence. Their most recent issue--NUMER 62!--is now out and ready for order from http://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward

My article "Of Tradition and Experiment XII: On Beauty and Reading" (pp109-117) is a personal exploration of what draws me to a poem: music, vision, thought/perspective. It is a kind of conversational retrospective of my reading experiences with poetry, with short close reads and thoughts on my favorite poems and authors, going from John Donne, Thomas Hood, Robert Frost, Gerard Manly Hopkins, Carole Maso, Anne Carson and Michael Palmer to Myung Mi Kim, with a brief tip of the hat to Erin Mouré, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Nathanial Mackey, N. NourbeSe Philip and Craig Santos Perez.

To give you a sense of the momvent of my essay, in it I write these following snippets: 

"The mind leaps in beauty and is ensnared. A poem combines music, vision and thought and, in so doing, pierces the body...escaping its enclosure within a single time or moment as it opens to something many call universal." (p9)

"It is for the love of the music that I first read any poem..." (p111)

"To seek refuge in language, in poetry, as a peripheral space, a space not like and also not unlike society..." (p114)

"Of course, how does one define beauty? For me, the light of the lines and spaces in [Michael] Palmer combine with a kind of texture in the meaning, and that combination is beauty, hard and cold, warm and light at times. There is also something ineffable, fragile in a thing of beauty, and Palmer's poems capture that..." (p115)

"Many of the authors like the ones I find I am now reading and am excited about reading appear to be attempting to recalibrate the self within a sense of the nation (or nations) and its history." (p116)

Here is the announcemnt and information CC'd from the TITF wordpress blog about the most recent issue so that you can order your own, thus keep the magazine alive. It is FULL of amazing poetry and closes with a long section devoted to book reviews and reflections on poetry and poetics today.

Tears in the Fence 62 is now available from http://tearsinthefence.com/pay-it-forward and features poetry, fiction and essays from Simon Smith, Nancy Gaffield, Patricia Debney, Andy Fletcher, Michael Farrell, John Freeman, Afric McGlinchey, Anamaria Crowe Serrano, Anamaria Crowe Serrano & Robert Sheppard, Sarah Connor, Samuel Rogers, Rose Alana Frith, Michael Grant, Charles Hadfield, Mike Duggan, Dorothy Lehane, Vicki Husband, Hilda Sheehan, Andrew Darlington, David Miller, Karl O’Hanlon, Amy McCauley, Rupert Loydell & Daniel Y Harris, Sam Smith, Rodney Wood, David Greenslade, Lesley Burt, L.Kiew, Graheme Barrasford Young, Andrew Lees, Michael Henry, James Bell, Rhys Trimble, Sophie McKeand, Haley Jenkins, Alexandra Sashe-Seekirchner, Richard Thomas, Alec Taylor and Steve Spence.

The critical section consists of David Caddy’s Editorial, Anthony Barnett’s Antonym, Jennifer K. Dick’s Of Tradition & Experiment XII, Alan Munton on Steve Spence, Andrew Duncan on Kevin Nolan’s Loving Little Orlick, David Caddy on Gillian White’s Lyric Shame, Robert Vas Dias on Jackson Mac Low, Laurie Duggan on Alan Halsey, Chris McCabe on Reading Barry MacSweeney, Mandy Pannett on Angela Gardner, Mary Woodward, Ric Hool on Ian Davidson, William Bonar, Steve Spence on John Hartley Williams, Linda Benninghoff on Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, Notes On Contributors
and Ian Brinton’s Afterword.