VIZ OTOLITHS, I ASK TOI

Have you heard the latest anti-binary?

in Moi poem "SEEING THE FOREST", part of a series on the "poetry world," which is in the brand new OTOLITHS 4! Edited/published adeptly by the adept Mark Young!

Many great offerings -- including (which resonates in my mind as I've begun to prepare the next issue of Galatea Resurrects -- Thomas Fink's review of Bruna Mori's Derive (with accent over first e). Bruna's book is GREAT, of course -- I say, of course since moi Meritage Press published it. But Tom's review also shows why he is simply one of the most discerning poet-critics now writing today. CHECK out his engagement--click on excerpt below to go:

While the post-9/11 atmosphere, in Blakean terms, might be considered a time of “experience” after the “innocence” of U.S. invulnerability, Mori enacts a reversal. Before 9/11, the city’s collective “affect” was one of confidence based on the “experience” of industrial and post-industrial development. Deep insecurity triggered by the terrorist attacks releases a preverbal, primitive affect that returns people to an “umbilical” dependence on perilously simple “thinking.” The “horse” and “birds,” like the earlier “boat,” are tropes for transportation, but ones that suggest potential for liberation. The idea that “an unremembered poem” has disabled these modes of transit and coercively appropriated “the time” indicates that this “poem”—though “properly” “concerned” with national security—merely shores up a threatened collective ego and fails to interrogate global relations, including NYC and the U.S.’s place in these relations, critically in order to develop useful forms of international negotiation.

And I love this excerpt because Bruna's Derive (obviously I'm biased but let me say it anyway) is one of the most beautiful poetry collections out there -- and yet, as Tom the critic notes, obviously political and timely. And I appreciate the comparison elsewhere in the review ("lines ... are extremely long, thus conveying perceptual expansiveness or burgeoning expression")to Mei-mei Berssenbrugge; do you know how difficult it is for any poet to write something that would even evoke Mei-mei (who is so unique in herself)? Nice job with that discernment, Tom! Nice job, Bruna!