THE ALLEGREZZA GENEROSITY

Ever since Mark Young's fabulous The Allegrezza Ficcione (again--get this book: my prediction for the first 21st century literary classic), I chucklingly think of Bill Allegrezza's projects as "The Allegrezza something...", hence this post's title. Which is to say, I continue to be floored by Bill's immense expanse with his "The Daily Glance" project. And, recently, he mini-reviewed Aileen Ibardaloza's traje de boda. Bill's lovely glance at Aileen's is HERE.

E-HEARING!

I see many interesting things on the NZEPC's "Home & Away 2010" symposium....but so far I've most enjoyed hearing the sound of Mark Young's voice. Click on link and listen to his talk "Widening the Community: Otoliths and how". Many of my blog's readers are familiar with Mark Young and Otoliths. You'll enjoy listening to his voice, too.

Check. Still on my Bucket List: an in-person meet where I cheerfully give him a hug -- this Dude understands community in the 21st century! To wit:

"It's community. It's all frontier ..."

LOVE ME SOME POET-EDITORS!

My newest Kapwa-based project, a special themed issue on Poet-Editors has just been released by Otoliths. I talk more about this issue's rationale in my Editor's Introduction from which I think one can glean several indigenous values: community-making, holistic-ness, volunteerism, cultural advocacy (and I'm not just talking about myself but about many of the 43 poet-editors who discuss why they volunteer their efforts as editors). So I hope you enjoy this issue.

AND! Concurrent with the issue's release, a special Shout Out about it is posted at the Poetry Foundation Blog by Barbara Jane Reyes--click HERE for her lovely SHOUT through the hallways of Harriet's house.

Now that's a way to announce a new issue! For convenience, here's the Table of Contents to the Poet-Editor Issue:

Eileen R. Tabios: Introduction

Burt Kimmelman: Three Essays
Editing the Words of Poets beyond Their Poems
The William Bronk-Charles Olson Correspondence
“Art As a Way”: Absence and Presence, Aesthetics and Friendship in the William Bronk – Robert Meyer Correspondence

William Allegrezza | Ivy Alvarez | Anny Ballardini | Joi Barrios | John Bloomberg-Rissman | Ana Božičević | Garrett Caples | Brian Clements | Bruce Covey | Del Ray Cross | Patrick James Dunagan | Elaine Equi | Adam Fieled | Thomas Fink | Luis H. Francia | Geoffrey Gatza | Tim Gaze | Crg Hill | Aileen Ibardaloza | Vincent Katz | Jukka-Pekka Kervinen | Mark Lamoureux | Amanda Laughtland | Timothy Liu | Dana Teen Lomax | Joey Madia | Sandy McIntosh | Didi Menendez | Lars Palm Guillermo Parra | Ernesto Priego | Sam Rasnake | Barbara Jane Reyes | Christopher Rizzo | Patrick Rosal | Sarah Rosenthal | Susan M. Schultz | Logan Ryan Smith | Jill Stengel | Fiona Sze-Lorrain | Jean Vengua | Mark Young

And here's Otoliths' announcement below--delighted to have the Poet-Editor issue contextualized within Otoliths' FOURTH BIRTHDAY! To wit--

Issue #17 of Otoliths, the southern autumn, 2010 issue, has just gone live. Four years old today!

&, since it's also May Day, I was going to have Billy Bragg singing "The Internationale" as background—you can, if you've got a server that opens links in a new window, still have it: just click on the link—but there's enough in this issue to allow an unaccompanied announcement. As befits a 4th birthday issue, it's a bit more packed than normal. In addition to the usual broad selection of paintings, prose, photographs, sermons, assemblages, poetry of all shapes, sizes, & styles, &, as always, a large offering of vizpo, the issue also includes two special features; one of which, since it was to have been a complete issue of another journal which has, unfortunately, gone into hiatus, is actually magazine-sized.

In the standard part of the issue you'll find work by Michael Farrell, Marilyn R. Rosenberg , Eric Arnold, Jim McCrary, Reed Altemus, Adam Fieled, Bob Heman, Tim Wright, Samit Roy, Caleb Puckett, Charles Freeland, gustave morin, dan raphael, Philip Byron Oakes, Dorothee Lang & Karyn Eisler & Susan Gibb, Sam Langer, Geof Huth, Esa Mäkijärvi, Scott Metz, Andrew McEwan, Felino Soriano, Travis Macdonald, Paul Siegell, Alan Davies, Kirsten Kaschock, Raymond Farr, John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett & Sheila E. Murphy, Jeff Harrison, Letitia Trent, Michelle Cahill, Valery Oisteanu, Irving Weiss, Martin Edmond, Carlos Soto Román, Jim Meirose, SJ Fowler, Felipe Cussen, Grzegorz Wróblewski, James Mc Laughlin, Michael Steven, Arkava Das, Michael Caylo-Baradi, J. D. Nelson, Jal Nicholl, Jenny Enochsson, Joe Balaz, Glenn R. Frantz, Michael Brandonisio, Jon Curley & Gg Re, sean burn, Bobbi Lurie, Jeff Klooger, Richard Kostelanetz, Silvio De Gracia, David-Baptiste Chirot, Alexander Jorgensen, Anne Gorrick, John Moore Williams, Marcia Arrieta, Mara Patricia Hernandez, Bill Drennan, nick-e melville, Corey Wakeling, John Martone, Jessie Janeshek, Thomas Fink (reviewing David Lehman's Yeshiva Boys), & Emma Smith.

The first special feature is ROCKPILE on the road, with poems by Michael Rothenberg & David Meltzer, photos by Terri Carrión, & an introduction by Larry Sawyer.

The second special feature is POET-EDITORS, curated & introduced by Eileen R. Tabios. 43 poet-editors respond to the question: "What is (or has been) your favorite editing project and why?" The respondees, who also provide—sometimes quite extensive—samples of their work, are: William Allegrezza, Ivy Alvarez, Anny Ballardini, Joi Barrios, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ana Božičević, Garrett Caples, Brian Clements, Bruce Covey, Del Ray Cross, Patrick James Dunagan, Elaine Equi, Adam Fieled, Thomas Fink, Luis H. Francia, Geoffrey Gatza, Tim Gaze, Crg Hill, Aileen Ibardaloza, Vincent Katz, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Burt Kimmelman, Mark Lamoureux, Amanda Laughtland, Timothy Liu, Dana Teen Lomax, Joey Madia, Sandy McIntosh, Didi Menendez, Lars Palm, Guillermo Parra, Ernesto Priego, Sam Rasnake, Barbara Jane Reyes, Christopher Rizzo, Patrick Rosal, Sarah Rosenthal, Susan M. Schultz, Logan Ryan Smith, Jill Stengel, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Jean Vengua, & Mark Young.

& if that isn't enough, the print parts of the previous issue of Otoliths, the southern summer 2010 issue, are now available from The Otoliths Storefront.

SCOOP OUT THIS REVIEW!

Scoop Review of Books' review of Mark Young's PELICAN DREAMING: Poems 1959-2008 starts out promisingly (though I say that mostly because, for some reason, it made me snort out a laugh):

Mark Young is an enigmatic figure in the history of New Zealand literature.

I like enigmatic peeps -- they usually make Moi grin. Anyway, click HERE FOR THE ENTIRE REVIEW by Scott Hamilton; here's an excerpt:

                  Whether he is wandering over Grafton Bridge or lying down in a seedy flat, Young perceives the microcosmos around him in a manner that is both sensuous and objective. Despite his eye for detail, he is never short-sighted: he can appreciate the connections between the little world around him and the rest of the universe. A poem called ‘The Distances’ shows Young’s ability to balance the familiar and the faraway:

                                    I am a believer

in the miracle of shortwave. Quito,

Ecuador or Radio Peking. The NHK

or the VOA. Pop or propaganda –

you have your choice amongst the

electronic music of the night ether.

Caught in its web, I am a Columbus

searching for new countries, turning

the dial slowly, hoping to hear

station identification through the static

& distortion.

                                    This is 1 a.m. Auckland;

a time of dead houses, where only

the streetlamps perforate the darkness.

But in Australia it is

11 p.m. E.S.T., & in Cairo

it is eight hours earlier. To turn

the dial is to turn back the clock.

1 a.m. Auckland. The night is just beginning.

                  With their peculiar combination of super-localism and internationalism, poems like ‘The Distances’ sidestep the terms of the long-winded debates about nationalism and regionalism...

Why not acquire a copy for yourself through HERE?! You won't be sorry! Or, if you will be sorry, it'll be for the right reasons!

WHEN MERITAGE DREAMS OF PELICANS

Reading Mark Young's PELICAN DREAMING is encouraged by Tom Hibbard's review at Big Bridge, evocatively titled titled "Magritte's Razor".

Do check out other offerings from my loving and loveable press which reveals what can happen from poets who make instead of simply inherit language (hence, the press itself is named after "meritage," a word created to describe the Bordeaux-style of wine-making that uses California-grown grapes).

THE INAUGURAL GALATEA'S PUBLISHER AWARDS

I am delighted to announce the inaugural recipients of the GALATEA PUBLISHER AWARD:

No Tell Books

and

Otoliths Books

So what does this award mean? It means I admire these two independent presses for their commitment to poetry and how said commitment has resulted in fabulous poetry books. No Tell Books is published by Reb Livingston and Otoliths by Mark Young. For receiving this HIGH HONOR, they get the prizes of (1) this blog post (yay!) and (2) that their catalogues will be available to reviewers in the next and 11th issue of Galatea Resurrects (GR).

What peeps who don't review for GR don't know is that, usually after each issue, I email a list of books to the reviewers and, as "payment", they can if they wish choose two books from that list. That list includes most books published by my own Meritage Press and whatever spare inventory I have about (including of my own books). Well, many reviewers keep on reviewing for GR and the list doesn't change much. So I decided that for each issue I should include the catalog of a deserving poetry publisher(s) for GR reviewers who've reviewed for more than one GR issue. Hence, No Tell Books and Otoliths -- if a GR reviewer expresses interest in their books, I'll buy it for them. For each issue, I'll choose another poetry publisher(s).

Hopefully, this also will encourage y'all out there to consider reviewing for Galatea Resurrects -- many lovely titles available HERE.

Certainly, such should also facilitate poetry book-buying, always a problematic issue, di ba?

ANOTHER REASON TO READ ABOUT THE PELICAN'S DREAMS!

Nicholas Manning reviews Mark Young's long-overdue PELICAN DREAMING: Poems 1959-2008 over HERE at JACKET!

Nicholas has several gems in his review, all encouraging Moi to preen over having published Mark's own BRICK. Here are three excerpts below which should persuade you -- if you are the discerning poetry-lover type -- to BUY THIS NECESSARY BOOK!

For instance:

Across the entire latitude of the forty-nine years of poetic life encompassed here, we are witness then to an extraordinarily wide-ranging and diverse poetic praxis, ranging from vispo to experimental sonics, free series to procedural play. This formal diversity is rivaled only by a comparable cultural and contential scope.

Indeed, the extent of this engagement is perhaps what begins to indicate to us one of the important differences between Mark Young’s poetic, and those we may mention as possible forbears. He is, for instance, a consistently more political poet than Frank O’Hara, yet also consistently successful in the subtlety and rhetorical cleverness manifest in his political engagement. Perhaps we may even say, in reference to Young’s poems, that if O’Hara’s tone was his engagement–style the marvellous substance and clothes the beautiful man–then Mark Young often seems to take the original flair of O’Hara’s cosmopolitan insouciance, only to then use it to devastating argumentative effect. Against the heavier political anger of an Ed Dorn or Alice Notley, Young consistently surprises us then with the sting at the end of his apparently more idiomatic rhetorical tale.

A second for instance:

This is as precise and detailed as the best of high-Objectivist Zukofsky–a sink or a mantis perceptively transformed–though there are elements here too, quite obviously, of Frank O’Hara, William Carlos Williams, and perhaps even Robert Creeley. There is precision here but with a perceptive, phenomenological depth. The formality is not dry or overworked, the occasionality never sentimental or gratuit. In this way, the two aspects harmonize one another: they exist, not only together, but with an extraordinary complementarity. It is perhaps for this reason that Young’s poetry seems almost more comfortable with itself–with its status as well as with what it has to say–than much of the poetry of the New Americans which constitutes its vital, and readily declared, lineage.

A third for instance:

It is perhaps for this reason that what I feel to be one of the most achieved and complex sequences here–from Series Magritte–is another example of form and occasion’s stunning complementarity. For, though each poem here takes as its apparent origin an image by the aforementioned surrealist, this sequence of very strong poems is far beyond mere ut pictura poesis. It is also more than any unidemensional ekphrasis: the density of effect here belies the simplicity of its presentation, and the results are unexpected, and always impressive. The following poem, ‘Not to be Reproduced’, is reproduced here in its entirety:

Shown from the back the
subject is androgynous–think
k.d.lang in her man’s suit
phase. It is a portrait of the artist
as a young (wo)man. It is not
a portrait of the artist. Magritte says
it is not to be reproduced
though he reproduces it
anyway. We do not see
the face. Magritte does not
produce it. Or reproduce it.
Is not reflected in the mirror
for what comes back from there
is not mirror-image
but reproduction. Almost as if
we were peering over a shoulder
only to see the shoulder that we
were peering over. But it is
reflection. The mantlepiece
is reflected & the copy of
Edgar Allan Poe’s Adventures
of Arthur Gordon Pym that rests
upon it is partially reflected. It
is a book about an imaginary
journey. Magritte’s painting
is a journey of imagination about
what happens between two points
that are the same point
though there is distance
between them. He says it is not to be
reproduced. It is reproduced here.

Btw, doesn't above just also make you want to read a well-written review? (Hint: if not, take a look at the reviewer's photo at bottom of review--Nicholas is hot!)

Anyway, y'all know what to do. I've led y'all to the trough. Now DRINK! For your own good!

MAKING POETIC HISTORY!

A MERITAGE PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

A RELEASE Special Offer for:

PELICAN DREAMING: POEMS 1959-2008
Poems by Mark Young
Selected and with an Introduction by Thomas Fink
ISBN: 978-0-9794119-5-3 
Price: $24.00
Release Date: Summer 2008
Distributors: www.MeritagePress.com and Lulu at http://www.lulu.com/content/1955266

Meritage Press is delighted to announce the release of PELICAN DREAMING: Poems 1959-2008 by Mark Young, Selected and with an Introduction by Thomas Fink.

Mark Young was born in New Zealand, but has lived for more than half his life in Australia. First published in 1959, his work has appeared in a large number of both electronic & print journals, & he has been included in many anthologies. His publications range from the first book on modern New Zealand painting through more than a dozen collections of poetry & his co-editorship with Jean Vengua of two anthologies of hay(na)ku to a speculative novella, the allegrezza ficcione. These days he spends most of his time editing the e-zine Otoliths & nurturing the steadily-increasing catalog of its print publishing arm.

To celebrate the release of PELICAN DREAMING, Meritage Press is pleased to offer a special disounted release arrangement good through August 31, 2008.  You may order the book for $19.00 (a 21% discount from the book's $24 retail price) plus free shipping/handling for orders throughout the United States.  (For non-U.S. orders, please email us first at MeritagePress@aol.com.)  Send a check made out to "Meritage Press" to

Eileen Tabios
Publisher, Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

About this project, Mark Young shares:

"My father died when he was 93, &, even then, his death was at least partially due to complications from an amputated leg. Which means there are longevity genes in my family. So it's somewhat ironic that the earliest poem in this selection / collection, "Lizard", written when I was seventeen -- 'When one is seventeen, one isn't serious' wrote Rimbaud, in error, but he can be forgiven for he was only fifteen when he wrote the line -- stems from feelings of mortality brought on by the teenage angst that beset me at the time.

"As the subtitle of this book indicates -- Poems 1959-2008 -- those feelings were somewhat premature. But they're still around, since my vision of a neat fifty years of poetry was taken over once again by similar feelings: I wanted the book out there in order to make sure that I was around to see it.

"There is a rough chronological order to the book, based on the order of the books from which the selections were made, but that is for convenience. I have nearly always followed the maxim 'Let the poem shape itself.' So there are streams & themes that overlap across collections, across times, in a variety of concurrent styles. As Thomas Fink wites in his Introduction:

"If anyone these days is hanging onto a notion of consistent stylistic evolution as aesthetic merit, this volume will do its best to disorient them, as Young's 'many mansions' feature a variety of architectural modes. Could one predict the flights of Betabet from the unified narrative of 'Grafton Bridge,' much less 'Lizard'? 'George W.'s Language Primer' and 'Maxims for Tom Beckett' are both very funny poems, but their humor is achieved in extremely different ways. If someone didn't know who wrote either 'The Baggage Card' or 'The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even,' would s/he necessarily assume that the same author was responsible for both? Mark Young has the courage to be traditional, imagistically or narratively direct, discrete, serial, surreal, 'experimental,' and 'difficult' in the same season, year, or cluster of years. The reward is ours'."

"Tom's selection was done with total independence. All I did was give him the poems, in a variety of formats -- e-books, chapbooks, full collections, blog postings, manuscripts -- & let him have his way with me. Or, at least, my output. My gratitude for & pleasure with what he has selected & written to in his Introduction is immense. I have gained insights from his insightfulness. The reward is mine. &, I hope, yours."

***
For more information, please feel free to contact MeritagePress@aol.com