REVIEW OF EILEEN TABIOS' POEM IN TWO MHP BOOKS

Eileen Tabios has received a review of her poem, "What Can A Daughter Say," which is a linchpin poem in her 2007 book THE LIGHT SANG AS IT LEFT YOUR EYES, and was subsequently reprinted in her 2010 Selected Prose Poems project, THE THORN ROSARY.  (The poem was also reprinted in her Selected Catalog Poems project, INVENT(ST)ORY.)  Here's an excerpt from the review by John Bloomberg-Rissman:

In fact, speaking generally about Tabios’ work, this is one of the things I like best about it…. I’m always left with a bit of a mystery. Which I think is thought and emotion producing. Which is great.

Click HERE for entire review which appears in THE HALO-HALO REVIEW, September 2015.

MARK DOTY TO JUDGE THE 2016 MARSH HAWK PRESS POETRY PRIZES

Marsh Hawk Press is delighted to announce its next judge for its Annual Poetry Prize: Mark Doty! Here is part of his bio from the Poetry Foundation:

Since the publication of his first volume of verse, Turtle, Swan, in 1987, Mark Doty has been recognized as one of the most accomplished poets in America. Hailed for his elegant, intelligent verse, Doty has often been compared to James Merrill,Walt Whitman and C.P. Cavafy. His syntactically complex and aesthetically profound free verse poems, odes to urban gay life, and quietly brutal elegies to his lover, Wally Roberts, have been hailed as some of the most original and arresting poetry written today. The recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, Doty has also won a number of prestigious literary awards, including the Whiting Writer’s Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the National Poetry Series, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for first nonfiction, and the National Book Award for Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (2008). A long-time resident of Provincetown, Massachusetts, Doty teaches at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Be sure to check our website for more information on the contest!

PAUL PINES ON "JAZZ AT THE LAKE"

Paul Pines is interviewed about the "Jazz at the Lake" concert series for which he's the long-time curator.  Here's an excerpt:

Q: How did you get involved in Jazz at the Lake, and what were you doing – personally and/or professionally – before that process started?

A: I had long had a friendship with the poet William Bronk, who owned the lumber company in Hudson Falls and was an American Book Award poet. I would take R & R at his place and got to know other writers in the area. Shortly after my novel, “The Tin Angel,” was published in 1983 and broke into The NYT Sunday Book Review. In 1984, I was invited to spend six months at the Crandall Library [in Glens Falls] giving a creative writing course on a grant from the NYS Council on the Arts. I was living in Belize at the time and had every intention of going back to my little house on the beach in Rum Point. Christine MacDonald knew John Strong {of the Lake George Arts Project}, who was playing with the idea of starting a jazz festival in Lake George. When he learned I was in residence, he called me to see if I would help him set up a festival because he had no idea what was entailed. I told him I was willing to do that but would probably be leaving for Belize shortly after that. Instead, I met my wife, Carol, and 31 years later I am still curating the festival.

Go HERE for the entire interview.

PAOLO JAVIER READS WITH JOHN KEENE

Counternarratives: A Fiction and Poetry Reading John Keene and Paolo Javier With Listening Center Sunday, September 27 3pm The Brooklyn Rail @ Industry City  in collaboration with Nightboat Books 253 36th Street Third Floor, Ste. C304 Brooklyn, NY 11232

John Keene is the author of the novel Annotations (New Directions); the text-art collection Seismosis (1913 Press) with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and the short fiction collection Counternarratives (New Directions). He also translated Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer (Nightboat/A Bolha Editora). He has published his work in a wide array of periodicals and anthologies, and has exhibited his artwork in Brooklyn and Berlin. He teaches in the departments of English and African American and African Studies, which he chairs, and also is a core faculty member in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark. Paolo Javier is the former Queens Poet Laureate (2010-14), and author of Court of the Dragon, a new book of poetry published by Nightboat Books. His other full length books include The Feeling Is Actual (Marsh Hawk Press), 60 lv bo(e)mbs (O Books), and the time at the end of this writing (Ahadada), which received a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award. He is the recipient of grants from the Queens Council on the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts, and has enjoyed residencies at the Millay Colony of the Arts, The AC Institute, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace. Ongoing collaborations include: a synthervention with electronic outfit Listening Center (aka David Mason) of the entire text of Court of the Dragon; and two new comics projects with artist Alex Tarampi.

CHARD DENIORD THE NEW POET LAUREATE FOR VERMONT

Congratulations to Chard deNiord for his new appointment as Poet Laureate for Vermont!

JON CURLEY REVIEWED IN NEWPAGES!

Congratulations to Jon Curley for receiving a fine review by Benjamin Champagne in NewPages.  You can see the review HERE. Meanwhile, here's an excerpt:

Curley illustrates precisely what is in the root of his traditional use of non­traditional language in identifying the problems of transcending the past while remaining honest to it. This results in the final selection of poems entitled “Whiz Bang!” These poems move in a fashion similar to the phonetic pattern that he has been building since the beginning. Each one explodes just as intended. The purpose of each tightly wrapped little poem, shows off the purpose of each tight phoneme and syllable: to build and restructure the present. Though it is not the last poem, it is a fitting end to a reading of Hybrid Moments:  

Whiz Bang!
Hunting for metaphors, the mournful mage
Encountered siphons of situations that
Washed over him, cleansing him of 
The notion that semblance can ever be 
Summoned and, qua, qua, qua, that’s that.

A PAUL PINES ESSAY in Numéro Cinq

Paul Pines brilliantly explores of the legend of the Fisher King, the wounded god, the limping savior, myths of transformation and healing, and Charles Olson’s great poem “The Kingfishers”.

 TROLLING WITH THE FISHER  KING:

                A FORENSIC EXPLORATION

                         By Paul Pines

                              

 http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2015/08/07/trolling-for-the-fisher-king-starting-in-gloucester-paul-pines/

        There shines in us, though dimly in darkness, the life and the light                  

        a man, a light which does not come from us, which however is in

      us, and we must therefore find it within us.

                                                                    Gerhard Dorn – Philosophia specuativa