George Vance reviews LILITH

I am very honored to read this review published on May 1st on the

University of Arizona Poetry Center website. George Vance, a long time reader and aficianado of Beckett, really delves into his reading of the fragmented nature of Lilith in his kind reading of the book, a reading which feels thoroughly the longtime Gerard Manly Hopkins study he has also done. I feel honored to be the recipient of this "Valentine to 'Lilith'" as he has titled his article. Enjoy: 

https://poetry.arizona.edu/blog/valentine-lilith

Lilith is available for purchase from CORRUPT Press BOOKS at: https://www.corruptpress.com/books/lilith.shtml

The Enigmatic Torque of Elena Rivera summer reading project 1

The enigmatic torque of Elena Rivera

Summer project—I have a particular knack for starting projects. There is excitement in that new breath, all hope and possibility in the emerging unknown encounter—it is like taking off along a road you had never noticed was right there, in your own neighborhood, and hoping it will lead you to see an entirely new city. Determination, of course, is part of project creation—and an initial sense of duty, as well as the desire to see the project flourish and be completed one day. You start with the belief it will. I am starting with the belief it will. To make that possible, I’ve realized from many prematurely abandoned projects that it is wise not to put too many constraints on the project, not to demand too much of yourself every day.

And so, on this, my first official night of the French “vacances”, entering a summer of completing critical and creative books, I have decided to read more—and that my newest project, my summer reading project, will be to post little mini thoughts about the books and chapbooks that I read in my friend’s houses, at the BNF, on the road. Not reviews—but a note on something that caught my eye or ear. Something of note in the reading of the day.

Today I begin with a little booklet I perused but had not read with attention before tonight. It has been among the pile of books to review that never got reviewed (I do what I can, but am only one me!) The first reading here on the train that is rushing at 300KM/hour towards Paris from Mulhouse, dipping southward towards Belfort then over to Dijon, the sun still bright in the evening sky, was so quick to complete I began again and gave it a second read, and then a third—it is On the Nature of Position and Tone, by Elena Rivera (Field Press: New York and Chicago, 2012).

I have two sets of thoughts on this chapbook: one is on the book itself—folded and bound with string that has been carefully planned to tie so that the interior knot opens the chapbook to the title page for Part II—Already on Different Sides. The chapbook is printed on a slightly off-white paper, just a tinge of the egg cream tone to it, which is comforting to look at. The black and white cover image is a gorgeous, seductive photo (by unknown) of Vanishing Ship (third state), a sculpture by John Roloff. The image seems a mirror or a kind of botanical garden glass greenhouse-ship’s bow emerging from the forest which perhaps contains unbeknownst to us (or even the artist) the first page, the first stanza of Elena’s delicate, mysterious poem—which also seems to be just hinting at the unseen, underground body behind the few visible words “just” emerging from the “fog” she mentions so often in this book-length poem:

In a field of blooming thistle

a sensual response

Give me oblivion

as of emotion

Here, two unpunctuated couplets signaled as such by the use of capitalization and by the rhyme of the second, already evoke-provoke-elicit reactions, but not intellectual ones, instead they are “sensual”. The called-forth response is about feeling and about the attempt to not feel, to forget in the witnessing instant. But forget what? The prickle of thistle, or its bright flash of inviting color? Which do we choose to imagine, to see in our minds, to reach out to? To suckle or get stabbed by? A thistle is a hardy, strong plant, a weed with hidden sweetness, which seems to be groping for release, and here there is the voice of the one (presumably Elena, the poet) seeing the thistle’s moment of blooming as if it is responding—but to what? The poet? A rain that has passed? Summer? Another season? Or some more opaque connection only known to a plant’s roots?

I could sit all the hours of the train ride and keep looking into that field and that combination of oblivion-emotion, but what surges forth is the command “Give me” that reoccurs later in the book as Rivera writes a few pages on: “Give me rapture!” and later still “Give me choices” and near the end “a rattler” says “Give me a twist”. There is a need, as she tells us in: “Chorus: Need more, seek more, want more” and “at the crossroads needing something more to go on” as well as “Went to the wishing circle to wish for the wish that would turn the world//around”. The longing, like all desires, remains unquenchable in this chapbook. Meanwhile, these landscapes delicately sketched with gaps and elliptical lines stretching towards various horizons, is pocked with the possibility of disaster (loss: “Mourning the morning in the evening” or “her fall”; fire: “Which tree will be resistant to fire”; unknown: “it all happened so quickly”; accident/hunting: “Dear deer mowed down”; amnesia and loss: “What am I without my memory/My family”) or with the option of release into some state of wonderment.

As I close the chapbook, I select the last option, returning to her line near the start of Part II: “I have...been shaken by reading the ocean”. That seems like a great way to spend the summer, reading the ocean, watching in wonderment the way the world undulates regardless of what is happening within us, or around us, or to us. I am here “Trying for buoyancy on the surface”.

*

Book Review at Jacket2 of Donna Stonecipher's Model City

So excited to see my book review of DONNA STONECIPHER'S fabulous book MODEL CITY (called "The Urban Interior-Exterior Ideal")  up and available for perusal. And I am also very thankful for the edits and close readings of Kenna over at Jacket2, who helped get this polished like a shiny little stone!!! Enjoy! https://jacket2.org/reviews/urban-interior-exterior-ideal

FYI: Future book reviews are cookin' in the pan, so keep your eyes peeled for announcements as they arrive on your screens--perhaps next fall.

Recently Received / Recently Acquired BOOKS and CHAPBOOKS

April 2013 folds into May 2016: When a blogpost gets lost in the draft files and then re-emerges:

It seems worthwhile to note once in a blue moon what JOY is brought to any day where I go downstairs to discover a slightly puffier than a bill envelope and rip it open to uncover the gorgeous book that has somehow wended and wound its way possibly on trains, planes and automobiles as well as the back of the bike of our local post office worker (really, she bikes, it is awesome) to here.

Some of the very exciting recent mailbox pleasures from April 2013 which I had in a draft blog post since then include:
Anne-Marie Albiach's Celui des "Lames" (Eric Pesty, 2013)
Jane Lewty's BRAVURA COOL (1913 press, 2012)
MURDER by Danielle Collobert (one of my favorite books in French) now in an English version translated by Nathanael (Nightboat Books, 2013)
Rachida Madani's Tales of a Severed Head translated by Marilyn Hacker (Yale U Press, 2013)

But also there are the 2013 acquired in person books I wanted to tell people about in April of that year, such as:
Brandon Shimoda's Obon
Zachary Schomburg's Scary, no scary (O Books, 2013)

May 2016 shout outs about exciting new arrivals or newly acquired reads, most picked up in NYC on my recent visit include:
Dominique Maurizi Langue du chien (Albertine, 2011)--FYI Dominique will be reading at Berkeley Books of Paris on May 19, 2016 at 19h30
Tears in the Fence's newest issue (62) with a stunning new cover design
4 of the newest books from Nightboat--poetry collections by Michael Heller, E Tracey Grinnell, Brenda Iijima and Maged Zaher!
Early Linoleum by Brenda Iijima (Counterpath, 2015)
Visual Poems and Performance Scripts by Jane Augustine (Marsh Hawk Press, 2015)
3 books, including the fabulous, dense and rich Memories, Dreams and Inner Voices by Michael Ruby (Station Hill of Barrytown, 2012)
Bonny Finberg's Kali's Day (a novel!)
Epître Langue Louve by Claude Ber (got that at Ivy last week--it is fabulous!)
Actes from the colloque "Traduire le rêve" N° 53 of Etudes de Langue et Littérature françaises de l'université Seinan-Gakuin, numéro spécia for the 150th anniversary of Franco-Japonais relations (from Spring 2010)

If you never had time, in 2013, I published a few articles and book reviews, such as on Elsa Von Freytag's Body Sweats (on Drunken Boat), Of Tradition and Experiment articles for Tears in the Fence UK and poem/translation in N° 9 of RoToR magazine, in RoToR's FIRST BILINGUAL edition including my poem "Full Throttle" as well as 2 other texts which I co-translated with Anne Kawala.

In April 2013 we were all awaiting the exciting issue 11 of VERSAL--which you can still order!--and watch for 2016 news on Versal as we launch a call for work sometime this year and get ready for the next issues of the magazine. Versal has been focused on VERSO, its reading and talks series, and the next VERSO will be June 5th 2016 which I will curate--see full information at VERSO site: FIXITY/THE VOID is our Gemini alchemical theme.

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.

Thank you Luxembourg Review...

I am pleased to announce that Nathan Hassall has kindly reviewed my book CIRCUITS (corrupt press, 2013) in The Luxembourg Review (click HERE to read the full review). I am deeply thankful to Nathan for his rich, honest and in-depth review where he writes:

"Enigmatic and esoteric, Dick has created a poetry collection unlike any other I have encountered."

and

"One of the tasks of poetry is to make the work relevant to the day, as poems become as much of a historical artifact as they do a cultural magnifying glass on contemporary society. There are abundant times where Dick achieves this fundamental aspect of poetry."

and

 "...the imagery is vivid and interesting, tossing the reader between the taxing natures of mysterious wordplay and academic psychology."

and

"Overall, Circuits is a collection for anyone who is intrigued by science and art formulated together into poetry. Dick’s intellectual platform is fascinating and her work echoes human behaviour dressed up in metaphors using neurons, thought patterns and lab experiments."

and

 "Circuits is an interesting collection which captures intrigue, contemplation and inspiration..."

For anyone who is interested in knowing more about Hassall, he is the author of Nascent Illusion (2009), A Conscious Void (2011), and Of Gods and Gallows (2015) and says that he "endeavors to study an MA in English and Creative Writing at a British University in 2016". Again, the full review of Circuits by Nathan Hassall is on The Luxembourg Review at http://theluxembourgreview.org/2015/08/04/circuits-by-jennifer-k-dick-a-review/ 

Compte Rendu de Traduire: Trasmettre ou Trahir et INVITATION à notre SOIREE pour le lancement du livre le 11 mars 2014

Stephanie Schwerter et moi-même sommes ravies de vous annoncer la publication d'une recension par Claire Placial de notre ouvrage Traduire: Transmettre ou Trahir? Réflexions sur la traduction en sciences humaines sur le site Lectures
http://lectures.revues.org/13613

Nous voudrions aussi vous inviter à venir en discuter à notre soirée de lancement - débat + table ronde autour du livre qui aura lieu le 11 mars 2014 à 19h à Paris au Comptoir des presses, 86 Claude Bernard, Paris 75005. J'y serai, avec Stephanie Schwerter et Jean-René Ladmiral. La soirée sera animé par Yan-Mai Tran-Gervat de Paris III (voir les informations complètes en bas de cette page) Pour procurer un exemplaire du livre: aller ICI

En amuse-bouche, nous vous conseillons également la lecture de l'annonce de notre soirée fait par le sociologue et Professeur Roland Pfefferkorn de l'Université de Strasbourg, Faculté des Sciences Sociales. Dans son texte paru dans le quotidien Echo (le 20 février 2014), il évoque le problématique du temps qui peuvent se passer entre la parution d'un ouvrage important (surtout d'un ouvrage scientifique ou philosophique) dans sa langue maternelle et la publication des traductions (et des traductions de qualité) qui paraitront par la suite dans d'autres langues à travers le monde.

VENEZ NOMBREUX pour notre SOIREE DEBAT 

et TABLE RONDE le 11 MARS 2014 à 19h

Le Comptoir des presses, 86 rue Claude Bernard, 75005 Paris

En paraphrasant Umbero Eco se pourrait-il que la langue du monde soit la traduction?  Peut-être. Mais le passage d’une langue à une autre n’est pas un acte technique mais relève de la compréhension de la société où les mots une fois accueillis doivent véhiculer du sens et de la pensée, et pas uniquement communiquer du contenu.

Le Comptoir des presses : 

86, rue Claude Bernard, 

Paris 75005. 

Téléphone : 01 47 07 83 27

Review to launch you into the new year

WISC-TV Channel 3000 Madison

2014 is already underway it seems, and remarkable events that will go into record books and be talked about for decades are upon us here in the Midwest, USA where record lows are keeping us inside sipping hot chocolates and playing board games with friends who are also free from work on this mega-chilly first Monday of 2014. Newspapers have dubbed this blast of cold (here in Madison, WI it is -23F with -41F windchills, as you can see in this image from WISC-TV Channel 3000 Madison) the result of a "polar vortex" with arctic winds coming down from the North. Certainly all the talk about global warming is currently on pause. What I am admiring here is how cold cold days like this bring bright sun and a kind of crystalline clarity--the snows over the lake reflect the brightness back and make sitting indoors by the heater a pleasant moment for reading in the sunlight as we await the summer and listen to a little music. This is one of those days when I tell myself that, yes, I have now experienced the winter of 2014 and so am ready for the next season's shift. Of course, there will be months still of lingering winter but for me the tides of the seasons could shift anytime now and I would be ready (yes, I do prefer the steamy hot of summers to this!) 

But to make the start of 2014 even brighter, I saw today that the new issue of Drunken Boat --number 18--is now up online--it includes many great things, such as fiction by Kirk Nesset or Kimberly Nguyen and reviews of books, as Shira Dentz the reviews editor points out, by "Amy Gerstler on Elaine Equi, Michael Mejia on Chris Ware, Kelly Lydick on Sandy Florian, Jennifer K. Dick on HR Hegnauer, Jessica Treat on Jac Jemc, and Andrew Najberg on Arthur Smith. Also in this issue, Nathan Hauke interviews Paul Naylor about his recent book and longstanding work as a publisher of contemporary American poetry." Drunken Boat thus also includes my review of HR Hegnauer's SIR, a book published by Brenda Iijima's lovely and ever-exciting Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, a publishing house that most often favors the high-caliber, high-quality publication of chapbooks but who found this work so compelling that after putting out a selection as a chapbook selected the full-length volume for publication in 2013. I am not the only one to find this first book by HR a treat, Poetry Foundation employee Mairead Case included it as one of her choices for "best reads" from 2013 and a great dialogue about it by Rachel Levitsky and Ariel Goldberg appeared in Jacket 2 in December. 

So, for your reading pleasure before or after you have read HR's book SIR:

*** My review of Hegnauer, "Entwinging Presence and Language" on Drunken Boat 18: http://drunkenboat.com/db18/entwining-presence-and-language-review-hr-hegnauers-sir-jennifer-k-dick

*** Mairead Case's choice on Poetry Foundation's 2013 staff picks : http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2013/12/the-poetry-foundations-2013-staff-picks/

*** Rachel Levitsky and Ariel Goldberg's dialogue about it in Jacket 2: https://jacket2.org/commentary/language-limitless-body

Readings Readings step right up--the 24th and 29th June 2013 plus new poetics publications

Bhopal's Flowers playing in Mulhouse, Pl de la Réunion

The end of June is nigh, we did our fête de la musique to officially ring in summer on the solstice (photo Mulhouse, center stage, with the Bhopal's Flowers lead singer up their strummin and hummin for us!) and yet the summer is not yet so very summery. It is like being up in the North Woods on some Canadian lake with a strong, cool breeze but also some nice, clear days with afternoons that are reminiscent of Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. And much is underway. First--for anyone in Paris, please come out and see me this week if you have the time! I am reading twice and attending many other readings and vernissages this week.

IVY WRITERS exciting event for Color Treasury--June 24th at 19h30: Color Treasury is a small artbook press based in Texas and Paris here to read from work and launch new works. Authors who are part of the initial newspaper-style magazine COLOR TREASURY 003 will be reading at this event, as will art chapbook Paris-based author Jonathan Regier (for COLOR TREASURY 002) and NY author who works for New Directions and NY Book Review, Jeffrey Yang. These two fabulous featured poets will be accompanied by myself, Jennifer K Dick, as well as founder of the press and publisher Sarah Lariviere, and poets and artists included in the magazine Christine Herzer and Jacob Bromberg. We promise to make this a lovely, low-key evening of conversation and good poetry. Works from the newspaper by poets who are not able to be present will also be shared.

Jeffrey Yang, 

Jonathan Regier, 

Sarah Lariviere, 

Christine Herzer,

Jennifer K Dick 

and 

Jacob Bromberg. 

AT: DELAVILLE cafe, 

34 blvd Bonne Nouvelle, 

75010 Paris, 

M° Bonne Nouvelle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLWT_9uneFM FOR PROMO EVENT VIDEO ON YOUTUBE

AT 19h30 

le 24 juin 2013

Join the IVY Writers Paris FB group on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/101898279922603/?fref=ts 
See more about Color Treasury at: http://colortreasury.tumblr.com/  

SATURDAY 29th June REID HALL translation seminar reading to close off what will begin tomorrow--a long, exciting week of poetic exchanges and translations. I am very very excited to be working with Jean-Michel Espitallier and cannot wait to see what we decide to work on this week. SO JOIN US for the closing reading and sharing of the week-long productions:

L'ANNUELLE READING AT REID HALL

FEATURING/AVEC:

Chet Wiener

Esther Tellermann

Omar Berrada

Sarah Riggs

Jennifer K. Dick

Jean-Michel Espitallier 

Jody Pou

Jean-Jacques Poucel

Abigail Lang

Thalia Field

Nous célébrerons les traductions et les collaborations qui auront été faites au cours du séminaire de traduction Tamaas autour d’un verre et en bonne compagnie. /// We'll be toasting the mutual translations and collaborative projects we've been working on during the previous week's seminar with a glass of wine and good company.

DETAILS:

Saturday June 29, 2013/samedi 29 juin

7pm/19h

Reid Hall 

4 rue de Chevreuse

75006 Paris

métro Vavin 

Organized by Sarah Riggs and Cole Swensen   
with the association Tamaas: www.tamaas.org



THEN Announcing also a few PUBLICATIONS:

First off, if you have not seen it, the beautiful new ISSUE 11 is out from VERSAL. For a Jounal is a Fish, as you will see, and this one is worth netting! DO order a copy and help keep us thriving. It is a great summer gift for yourself or a friend or a dozen friends! Info on ordering is at: http://www.wordsinhere.com/versal_home.html

ONLINE I invite you to read my book review of that MASSIVE collected works by Else Von Freytag-Loringhoven which is now up on Drunken Boat issue 17:  "Joyriding the Subtext: A Glimpse of Elsa Von Freytag Loringhoven's Uncensored Writings" at http://www.drunkenboat.com/db17/body-sweats-uncensored-writings-elsa-von-freytag-loringhoven Yes, I know, it is a wordy review for a wordy book!

And just going up is the newest poetry and poetics issue 7 (lucky number!) of Canadian magazine "17 seconds" (anyone else noticing an echo of 7s and 17s?) in which I have an essay up on Susan Howe's poetic collage essay on Chris Marker called 'Invisible Collisions: Considering Susan Howe’s Reform of the Poetic, Critical and Autobiographical Essay'. My essay about essays and Howe's work will be available at:  http://www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds/ later this week, so check it out! IT is a revised talk from the SAES conference in 2009 and has been seeking a home and time to settle. Feel free to share your reactions too! I am really excited to be in an issue of "17 seconds" even though I am not a Canadian! Excellent poetry and interviews and writing on poetry can be found there. Check out their past issues while waiting for this newest one to go up!

Note for French readers: Susan Howe's essay that my work is discussing has been translated beautifully and skillfully into French by Béatrice Vilgrain and Bernard Rival at Théâtre Typographique (in the collection DEUX ET) and for anyone who does not know the original English text, it was anthologized in a film studies book in the States. 

As for poetry--a new chapbook with Estepa Editions and artwork by Kate Van Houten will be out in Fall 2013. It is called CORRUPTION and a small selection from it will be appearing in the Paris Lit Up magazine and 3 others appeared in Color Treasury 003. So come by the reading and take a peek!

PASSIONATE POLITICAL COLLABORATION: A review of Jennifer Karmin's '4000 words 4000 Dead & Revolutionary Optimisim...'

It was one of those emails from one of those fantastically creative friends that just came along on the right day to get a response--a word. A single word. One to be added to so many others. Then addressed, arranged, painted with, reflected on. A word as mark, as tombstone, as flag, as spark of life. Jennifer Karmin's invitation to check out her show and then send her 1-10 words, as she explains below, to hand out to pedestrians, paint, install in her art commemorative project, was one of those things I just participated in, off-handedly, to see what syllables came to mind as I looked at her art project online and thought on her topic.

As Jennifer KARMIN explains the origins of her new chapbook:
"In April 2008, I began collecting 4000 words as a memorial to the 4000 dead American soldier who had been killed in Iraq.  Submissions came from friends, students, writers, activists, soldiers, and those who read about the project online.  I asked each person to send me 1-10 words, gave parts of the poem away to pedestrians during public performances across the country, and painted the words using the American flag as a writing utensil in two installations."

Now those lists have again taken new form, been redialogued, in a chapbook free to read online in  4000 Words 4000 Dead & Revolutionary Optimism / An American Elegy: 2006-2012 at:  http://www.jillmagi.net/sites/default/files/Jennifer%20Karmin%204000%20Words%204000%20Dead%20chapbook_0.pdf


IN this kind of political My Life-esque booklet the lists come and go, numbered, between and around and amid long textual blocks of sometimes words and sometimes whole lines in the first 9.5 pages (if one looks at pdf page 4 as pages 1-2 of a booklet). This  chapbook echos the theme of memory, recollection in word collection, and nostalgia found in Lyn Hejinian's now-iconic collage autobiography My Life. For 4000 Words... opens here, in lower case as if already in the middle of its thought or speech: 
                                      "sad and memory children april quicken burning" 
                                                                                              (Pdf p4, left side, which I call p1)
The accumulation of sound that follows is, on some pages, deafening. A cacophany. A yelling to be heard. 'PEACE' cries one, 'lost youth hope now destruction' murmurs another. But then, halfway through page 10 (pdf p8, right side) there is a horizontal gap, a kind of margin, break, breath. This is followed by the very direct and also moving:

 Here the word gives way to the O at once opening of the mouth, the call to be heard, the call to make heard, the surprise -- O!--and the sigh --O-- as well as the numeric deletion, the zeroing, the erasing, the bodies lined and lined and lined generically over fields in battles--the Os in rows making lines, visible lines, as of meaning, of a story, or a graveyard, or a regiment, a company, a set of troops lined up to head out, to head onto the next page.


There, too, the pages that follow are more dialogic--in a titled poem "Revolutionary Optmism" which opens with questions which are asked of America on page 11 and 13 where the lines go back and forth and are printed in a bold typeface while, on the facing pages (p12 and 14) a set of tercets and couplets wend their way like a river down the page, thinking aloud, in a frail, old-fashioned typeset that recall memos and telegrams. These floating tercets and couplets are all in very different voices--potentially of a torturer ('loosen/this guy/up for us'), an idealist ('tears are wiped away and replaced with peace') as well as politicians, or even a member of clergy at the end, etc. These particular pages recall what Jennifer said about the origins of this project--as she explained: "4000 Words 4000 Dead is a companion piece to Revolutionary Optimism, a response to Abu Ghraib based on confessions from Iraqi prisoners, sympathy cards, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Both texts were published together as a chapbook by Sona Books for Veterans Day 2012 and released online for Memorial Day 2013.  More info here."

But following these 4 dialogic pages, the 00000s return, and on the online pdf the pages recall tombstones or perhaps oddly the image from the old, colorized biblical tales of Mosses with the 3 tablets who, in that film version I recall seeing every Easter waiting for my parents to awake, drops 2 so we all end up with the 10 commandments and not 15. Here, too, there is a little bit of stumbling from some outside source--the photo of the page gives them this aspect of being about to close up, crumble, shake. There is a tremulo as the Os pass from pp 15-16 to where they again trail back into the mix of prose block and word lists on the top of p 17 (Pdf p12, left hand side). Here the O gives way to the incantation of O-m. At once 'Om' of meditation, of joining all to one, but also almost a very American Oh my exclamation or even a partial echo of the many poets who have cried out in their poems "non omnis moriar" (I will not wholly die) where this OM is part of the whole, the entirety of each of us, sewn together in sound-site on these little pages. 

Jennifer then spills from the abstract O-M into the very concrete all-caps HEART which she follows by the organ's more abstract, sentimental forms: HEARTBROKEN HEARTFUL on the same line and one begins to get worried about the sentimental boat one might be falling into, too saccharin, the wholehearted bleeding-heartness of this, and then the text catches itself and adds two more soundplays off of this base beating organ: HEARTLESS HEARTY. Here, Jennifer has moved the reader at once to a counter-emotion (the heartless instead of heartful) but then better yet is the tactile, the weighted, the body and almost perky happy "hearty", with the hefty undertone of voice and body that clearly shift this and embarks the text on a kind of set of counter-listings. 

From this point to the end of the book, Jennifer Karmin continues to deepen the varied explorations on the page that she has set up between the named dialogic poetry pages, the prose blocks, the numeric lists and the OOOOs in rows until the text begins to take on a percussive feeling, repetition, variation, juxtaposition, shift of sound, image, tone, voice, piling and piling and piling atop one another like... perhpas those bodies, those wars, those pasts, those lost reasons, those justifications? The list certainly goes on. Hers? It comes to a halt about 80% down the final page:

Here on the Pdf p15, right side Jennifer Karmin's 4000 words comes to a close on the word "artemesia" but that also drifts, like an ambrosia, into the air, not dotted or held in place by any punctuation, still gaining a list-momentum, it invites the reader to turn back, add on, keep hearing the sounds and reflections. :

And oddly, as she follows the final page of the text with her explainer notes, lists of venues from the shows and performances and also lists--as I will do here--those who, like me, contributed 1-10 words to her, their names, my own, feels also like it is part of the 4000 dead, connected to them in some sort of pre and post-language sounding space. It felt like a homage to creation as much as to loss and war and rebuilding, reading and looking at this chapbook. I hope that you, dear readers, friends, family, strangers, travellers, will also find this chap and project as exciting and worthy of sounding out, sighting, reflecting on, admiring as I have. Thank you, Jennifer Karmin, for making a few syllables into resonant sound.

 
Jennifer Karmin's list of 
Contributors to 4000 Words 4000 Dead include: Jeff Abell, Emily Abendroth, Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Carrie Olivia Adams, Kelli Russell Agodon, Manan Ahmed, Malaika King Albrecht, Charles Alexander, Will Alexander, mIEKAL aND, Andrew Axel, Carol Willette Bachofner, Ed Baker, Jenni Baker, Anny Ballardini, David Baratier, Barbara Barg, Thomas Barton, Michael Basinski, Robert Bearak, John Bennett, Linda Benninghoff, Cara Benson, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Cameron Bishop, Joe Bly, Jan Boudart, Jessica Bozek, Lee Ann Brown, Laynie Browne, Kate Burrows, Amina Cain, Steve Cain, Teresa Carmody, Christophe Casamassima, Mars Caulton, Han-hua Chang, Maxine Chernoff, David Chirot, Matthew Clifford, Rachel Coburn, Robert Elzy Cogswell, Esteban Colon, Alanda Coon, Stephen Cope, Colleen Coyne, H. V. Cramond, Justin Crontieri, Barbara Crooker, Kathy Cummings, Sima Cunningham, Steve Dalachinsky, Catherine Daly, Tina Darragh, Heather Davis, Joseph DeLappe, Tom DeRoma, Michelle Detorie, Jennifer K. Dick, Joanie DiMartino, Claire Donato, Carol Dorf, Samuel Dorf, John Dowling, Julie Downey, Colleen Doyle, Kath Duffy, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Kate Durbin, Patrick Durgin, Ellen Elder, Susan Eleuterio, Laura Elrick, David Emanuel, Joy Emanuel, Laura Esckelson, Yvonne Estrada, Erik Fabian, Annie Finch, Jennifer Firestone, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Audrey Fitting, Tiffany Florestal, Richard Fox, Libby Frank, Audrey Friedman, Nick Fryer, Gloria Frym, William Fuller, Sasha Geffen, Paddy Gillard-Bentley, Dan Glass, Lara Glenum, Dan Godston, Russ Golata, Elliot Gold, Laura Goldstein, David Gonzales, Philip Good, Arielle Greenberg, Kate Greenstreet, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Gwen Gunn, Therese Halscheid, Duriel Harris, Roberto Harrison, Carla Harryman, Lisa Haufschild, R. Joyce Heon, Larkin Higgins, Elizabeth Hildreth, Jen Hofer, William Honey, J’Sun Howard, Luisa Igloria, Brenda Iijima, Siara Jacobs, Lisa Janssen, Valerie Jean, Judith Johnson, Kent Johnson, Pierre Joris, Bhanu Kapil, Mary Kasimor, John Keene, Pratibha Kelapure, Kit Kennedy, Ali Khan, Helen Kiernan, Matthew Klane, Jacob Knabb, Shareen Knight, Virginia Konchan, Kathy Kubik, Donna Kuhn, Katie Kurtz, Kathleen Larkin, David Lazar, Elizabeth Lazdins, Andre LeMoine, Richard Ledford, J. A. Lee, Janice Lee, Genine Lentine, Ruth Lepson, Andrew Levy, Stephen Lewandowski, Deet Lewis, Robin Rice Lichti, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Malin Lindelow, Jennifer Lizak, Dana Teen Lomax, Carmen Lopez, Bonnie MacAllister, Bill MacKay, Jill Magi, Charlotte Mandel, Douglas Manson, Elizabeth Marino, Mario, Beth Martinelli, Michelle Mashon, Ginny Masullo, Bernadette Mayer, E. J. McAdams, Joyelle McSweeney, Gwyn McVay, Philip Meersman, Daniel Mejia, Miranda Mellis, Mark Melnicove, Nicky Melville, Philip Metres, Erika Mikkalo, Niki Miller, Caroline Morrell, Judd Morrissey, Robin Morrissey, Gregg Murray, Tim Musser, Beverly Nelson, Celeste Neuhaus, Mary Ni, Lynda Perry, Michael Peters, Allan Peterson, Andrew Peterson, Cindy Phiffer, Cecilia Pinto, Vanessa Place, Janna Plant, Deborah Poe, Kristin Prevallet, Paula Rabinowitz, Francis Raven, Monica Raymond, Marthe Reed, Timothy Rey, Margaret Ricketts, Rosalie Riegle, Andrew Rippeon, Christopher Rizzo, Jenny Roberts, Kenyatta Rogers, Anne Marie Rooney, Sarah Rosenthal, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Linda Russo, Becky Sakellariou, Lisa Samuels, Thomas Savage, Davis Schneiderman, Carrie Santulli Schudda, Susan Schultz, Steve Scott, Jeremy Seligson, Dennis Serdel, Anne Shaw, Lindsay Shields, Shu Shubat, Earl Silibar, John Simon, Laura Sims, Beth Snyder, Juliana Spahr, Cassie Sparkman, Donna Spector, Karin Spitfire, Christopher Stackhouse, Chuck Stebelton, Jordan Stempleman, Rachel Storm, Hillary Strobel, Renée Szostek, Stacy Szymaszek, Estelle Tang, Shaunanne Tangney, Gene Tanta, Michelle Taransky, Mark Tardi, Marvin Tate, Catherine Taylor, Michael Thomas, Tony Trigilio, Eric Unger, Nico Vassilakis, Marian Veverka, Matias Viegener, Erin Virgil, Anna Vitale, Gale Walden, Sue Walker, Julene Weave, Josh Weckesser, Natasha White, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, S.L. Wisenberg, Anne Woodworth, Clotilde Wright, Samantha Yams, Andrew Zawacki

Again, see for free the online PDF of this boo 4000 Words 4000 Dead & Revolutionary Optimism / An American Elegy: 2006-2012 at:  https://sites.google.com/site/jillmagi/Home/sona-books