FOUR LECTURES ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Wave Books, 2024

PAM REHM ~

 

Confirmation

Wild birds form
distances
for a restless eye

They retain
then edify
the soul's longings

I have lived as of late
unpracticed

My faith essentially
eroded

I am possessed now
with duration

As there is no measurement
to the turning
of a leaf into soil

Being also descends
with a slowness

Innocently enough
to witness

This river
awakened by the morning sun

A vale of close light
A light incarnate

Spiritual Life

I was not sure how
my children would dream

They saw further
than sheltering

They heard clearer
than my prayer

I could not feel my rescue
Intently enough

They held me tighter
than my grip

They led me across
my indigence

and were my abundance
when I got there

Sprung up like
wild herbs

I had always hoped
To find

______________
Pam Rehm

Inner Verses

Wave Books, 2024

DG NANOUK OKPIK ~

 

When White Hawks Come

I dreamt the spirit of the codfish:

in rafters of the mind;

fly out into the winter's blue night;

mirth off alder tendrils sashay;

while I set up my winter tent;

four panels long—beams suspend

blubber strips aged in a poke seal bag;

a bluejay lands on the windowsill wing feathers —

shadowing the sun as a new moon; as blue, lapis

icicle time melts—when white hawks come.

_________________________

dg nanouk okpik

blood snow

Wave Books, 2022

TOMAZ SALAMUN /JOSHUA BECKMAN ~

 

I'm usually

somehow shy

about reading

my young

poems

because they don't

go with this

body anymore

it was '64

so probably I was twenty-three

or maybe twenty-two

I don't remember

no I started one in '63

so I was twenty-four

or twenty-three

p. 3

_________________

from TOMAZ

Beckman / Salamun

Wave Books, 2021

_________________

• The author of more than forty poetry collections, with more than a dozen in English translation, Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun (July 4, 1941–December 27, 2014) is considered to be one of the most prominent poets of the Eastern European avant-garde. He published his first collection, Poker, in 1966 at the age of twenty-five. Early in his career, he edited the literary magazine Perspektive, for which he was briefly jailed on political charges. He later studied Art History at the University of Ljubljana before attending the University of Iowa and then becoming a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University. After, he was invited to exhibit his work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, Šalamun lived for periods of time in the United States, working as the Slovenian Cultural Attaché in the 1990s and later teaching at a number of American universities, including the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Alabama. Celebrated through many accolades, he was the recipient of the prestigious Jenko Prize and Slovenia’s Prešeren and Mladost Prizes. Šalamun passed away on December 27, 2014, in Ljubljana. 

  
  

  

  
  

  
  

HOA NGUYEN ~

Unrelated Future Tense

with me being a bastard

and Saigon tea   will ask about my language

people will ask about bar girls

even without food in the poems

they will smell fish sauce and pho

ask about 'the war' which is to say

about men fathers and soldiers

about white Americans what

about them

about them

about white Americans what

about men fathers and soldiers

ask about 'the war' which is to say

they will smell fish sauce and pho

even without food in the poems

people will ask about bar girls

and Saigon tea   will ask about my language

with me being a bastard

__________________________

Hoa Nguyen

A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure

Wave Books, 2021

photo ~

1956, Vinh Long province. On the back of the original photograph, for the apparent purpose of giving it to someone unnamed, it says in her handwriting as follows:
“This is a glorious time, in 1956.
In those days I was a flying motorist artist—
this is the sole memory of my life.
For my friend, to keep as a memory…
The flying motorist artist”
Her Vietnamese name was Nguyễn Anh Diệp (April 21, 1941 – June 9, 2019). When she left Vietnam for North America in 1968, she became Linda Diep Lijewski. She does not leave the photo for the friend but takes it with her.

SCENES WITH PHILIP WHALEN ~

This is the design, cover photograph, and overall

Philip Whalen while alive book I fell for

over 50 years and I still hold it close to my heart.

I'm more than grateful that the good folks at Wave Books

have reissued the masterpiece, with this cover photo

as frontispiece at least, and an afterword

by David Brazil.

(Wave Books, 2020)

TERRANCE HAYES / ETHERIDGE KNIGHT ~

I’m reading one more interesting book on an open field theory of poetry and its place, this time by Terrance Hayes and all about Etheridge Knight, a poet I followed closely for almost 50 years, in some ways reminding me of another I love Chester Himes, both ex-prisoners, a great deal of their work being done through the inmate and prison perspective. In other words, always a prisoner once out. Himes took off for Europe (like Baldwin) because of the outcast feeling; Knight took it out on himself with drugs, violence, even to his wives and partners etc., Sonia Sanchez was one, who continued to love him and was always an equal. Long ago I used to read to my all women students in the boarding school each winter “Feeling Fucked Up” one of the most liberated and celebratory poems from that era. The young women were startled then ( 80s ) at the freedom of language. “You can do that?” they’d ask. I told them they could do anything if it improved the page, taking that old saw one more step. Hayes catches the importance of all this time and writes well, including some sketchy loopy ink drawings that are perfect. 

Wave Books

 TO FLOAT IN THE SPACE BETWEEN

Terrance Hayes

PHILIP LAMANTIA ~

C A P L E S

O N

L A M A N T I A

Wave Books

2018

ERNST MEISTER ~

Still to

tell, still to

tell . . . my

memory

asks me, and I

stare at it.

Am I alive?

I ask my room, —

I ask

the space in the expanse

and lastly:

Are you, space,

what I know?

-

When we're

stripped right

down to

clay, then

the talk of

what's singable

is right.

The man who is born,

thought through to the end —

it echoes back.

-

Many

have no language.

Were I not myself

replete with misery, I

would not

move my tongue.

-

If we would once again

be given eyes

after some time

in the corpse, in death . . .

As we made love,

you examined

my cranium

very closely.

-

Look into the opened hand.

Departure

keeps showing up there.

A sound is present

and doesn't end

against the edges of the hills.

-

At the end of days,

what kind

of stammering will come

from mankind's mouth,

when difficulty

becomes a cripple,

if anything at all,

and the heavens' coldness

freezes the acts over.

Language formally,

this romance,

when the song already

lost its head.

-

Someday,

when the last ones

are doing well for themselves

above the ashes,

when love

is the most blind

since the times, when those

who themselves forgot,

children of untimed,

are completely forgotten . . .

we — you all

in the unstoppable

starry

misfortune.

-

Think, in the

quintillionth year

you won't

be allowed to be homesick

for person and Earth.

THIS, that you

were a child

of the universe,

is gone,

and where

is the unholy one,

the mother with her

wits about her,

and where

the star that shone for us?

I'm reeling.

I also wished,

before it ended, I'd see

a dream.

-

Wisdom, the idle wise,

might even a cut go

sharply across the eyes.

Unable —

all that love and guilt, all

that honor.

Also never to be ashamed,

as on days that

taste good.

———————————————

Ernst Meister

Of Entirety Say the Sentence

Wave Books

translated from the German by

Graham Foust, Samuel Frederick

WHAT IS POETRY? ~

Edited by Anselm Berrigan

2017

W A V E      B O O K S

This is a big, fat, mama mia anthology of

interviews with poets drawn all from 

The Poetry Project Newsletter

over 25 years —

who you might imagine is, yes, in here

and it's good for you.

MARY RUEFLE ~

Wave Books, 2016

A tidy and fascinating collection of tales, or call them prose, poems, prose poems

it won't matter, all is good.

I just don't have the time at the moment (I'm framing a building) to type

out the two longer pieces that thrill me here —

"Pause" and then a long piece about shrunken heads.

Pause is menopause.

It's never been survived in better hands.
Here is a link to the piece first published in Granta:
https://granta.com/pause/

HOA NGUYEN ~

Mekong I

River as sift

and sorter

Raw fruits and sell the wares

"Floating market"

Stone    pebble    sand

The silt and new islands

There were 9 months

9 dragons       but they change

as the letter is a triangle

She could be seen as

swan or generalized white

bird      Goddess that ate the earth

How to strand       become

mangroves    stranded

and braid your oiled hair

Vivid swoops that coil

a mouth and canal steered

Row from here to there

Birthday Poem

Illuminated behind a skin

a grey       the sky with fat

fast slants of snow

First Horse poet    This is a birthday

poem    squeaky underfoot

the snow and Jeannine's cookies

I drive husbands and fathers

to early deaths    Push the knife

into the cake to cut it

Me the supposed bringer of ruin

(money)    Covered in fondant and

violet flowers

It's my birthday    My eyes are older

Leave

Mouth       A pictured lip  

in a kiss      What it leaves

out

           Cloaking your mouth

with your hands to say

no more breathing you in

Gather the firm clever thing

from the moment looking away

and the weather quiet

with the turning book

Bark of the trees

you love     then leave

Redbud

Live Oak

Hackberry

_____________________

H O A     N G U Y E N

Violent Energy Ingots
Wave Books 2016