Chicago Review back issues from December 2005:
Palinodes.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> And absolutely humming with strange variability on the tattered modernist furniture Set your eyelids at half-closed, provoke nothing, remember nothing. Chorus of nay-sayers (with a tangible humbleness): No! Though my object is history, not neutrality I am prepared to ...
On palinode.(Critical essay)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> We have now reached a stage of experimentation with new collective constructions and new synthesis, and there is no longer any point in combating the values of the old world by a Neo-Dadaist refusal. Whether these values be ideological, artistic, or even financial, the ...
The weather: a report on sincerity.(Critical essay)
Dec 22, 2005; ... I'm interested in the weather. Who isn't? We groom for the atmosphere. Daily we apply our mothers' prognostics to the sky. We select our garments accordingly; like flags or vanes we signify. But I'm interested in weather also because cultural displacement has shown me that weather is a ...
Lifted: an interview with Lisa Robertson.(Interview)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Date: Saturday, 19 March 2005 Time: 12:32 PM Site: Tate Modern Materials: Two paper cups of coffee (one black and one white), two metal chairs, one medium-sized square table, atmospheric noise (din, espresso machine), a range of windows and doors, an ...
A reading diary.(Diary entry)
Dec 22, 2005; ... 26 JUNE 1995 A comment made by Adriaan Peperzak at last year's annual Comp Lit conference sticks with me and comes to mind while trying to write about Lisa Robertson's XEclogue. Peperzak is a conventional, even stodgy philosopher in his 70s who has written on Plato, Hegel, ...
We lunch nevertheless among reinvention.(Critical essay)
Dec 22, 2005; ... In Debbie: An Epic, Lisa Robertson writes back to the Aeneid to retrieve previously unexpressed histories buried under old linguistic systems of power. As an alternative epic hero revisiting Virgil in an alternative epic universe, Debbie imagines the ways in which we are unconsciously ...
Site surfeit: Office for Soft Architecture makes the city confess.(Critical essay)
Dec 22, 2005; ... That mute paysage possesses knowledge; it sees you too. Any language that would heed these facts--that could live up to land or cityscape now, and to its contents encompassed by the presently omnipresent term "site"--has to plot out a hearkening, not an anthropological or aesthetic ...
The adventures of Lisa Robertson in the space of flows: we die and become architecture.
Dec 22, 2005; ... It's a line from the first page of Lisa Robertson's poem "Utopia/," found in her 2004 chapbook Rousseau's Boat. I'm not quite sure what it means, but it takes on a sort of focal force in the midst of a poem actively in the thrall of time: In the Spring of 1979; At about midnight in autumn; ...
Utopia/.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> In the spring of 1979 Some images have meanings, and some have a change in soul, sex or century. Rain buckles into my mouth. If pressed to account for strangeness and resistance, I can't. I'm speaking here for dogs and rusting ducts venting steam into rain. I wanted to study ...
Lisa Robertson: a checklist.(Books on philosophy and literature)(Bibliography)
Dec 22, 2005 ... Books XEclogue. Vancouver: Tsunami Editions, 1993. Debbie: An Epic. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1997. [Published in the UK by Reality Street Editions, 2001.] XEclogue. 2nd revised edition. Vancouver: New Star Books, 1999. The Weather. Vancouver: ...
From Clear as Clare.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> owed much to a golden russet leeks in the thatch as a charm against lightning handing out handbills to Jacobins in the street foundry's foundling / flusk for the fields the fields our church the thirsty pasture of varied tints green ripening grain and ...
The age in its cage: a note to Mr. Mendelssohn on the social allegory of literature and the deformation of the canonymous.
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> If you're visible, you're not a good ADVANCE GUARD. If you become visible, you're soon dead ADVANCE GUARD. If the enemy see you, they shoot you. And your COMRADES will have to proceed without the information you were sent out to send back. What were you tracking, what were ...
From a little useless geometry.
Dec 22, 2005; ... POINT Beginning or end? Visible to the eye? the microscope? the myopic? So much for definition applied in public. Coiled up and withdrawn within itself, nevertheless a stronghold of vectors. I'd say a point's not meant to start a sentence, but no one's immune to anger, greed ...
The Hands.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> languish in his lap, bodily plumage. The idea of Use, dictator overthrown. All inferior magistrates, free to ascend. That's history leaning over our sewing. That's the fixer-upper smile I have applied to my own missing body. Yes, Dad, I answer. Affect-emphasis neutral. Follow ...
Solar Plexus.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Beatific illumination on the in-breath. The cavity of the lung, occulted with sparrow wings, isn't listening again. If ...
Solar Plexus.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The unappreciated quiet, wherever it has gone, defines the cough. Help him lean over to change his socks. Tin soldiers in the hope box melt when forced to march beyond the two-dimensional. One exaggerated sigh, deafening in the prophesy-testing bathroom. Architectually speaking, ...
The Blood.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Lying down on his front lawn, I see that each white body in the flock of white-bodied gulls wears its wing shadows differently. I'd have stayed there watching forever and starved happily ...
The Liver.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The drowning is bursting with fins. His flannel nightshirt, steadfastly fraying, another button missing, unfazed by our love for it. I push the singularity of event aside and try to fit us in last night's forgiveness. An effectively blacked-out window isn't a sun god ...
Dear Jenny.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Dear Jenny, I feel I am growing smaller, the map on my lap is the world not the map of the world and the steering wheel is one of those rings that are thrown to the drowning to save them, Jenny, why do we need motels when we can sleep in parking lots, your head on my lap, or ...
The predicament of modern poetry (the lyric at the pinch-gate).(Critical essay)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Thesis 1: Always a genre of the wound, the lyric is now often in a valedictory state. Confessedly self-belated. Dog-dayed. Dog-eared. Thesis 2: Done for, unless it takes its lumps, links itself to what flies off at a tangent or acts against it. Elaboration of the ...
"Clack" the Summer Parallel's.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> "clack" the summer parallel's fine layer of shag sticks, breaks the eggshell (speckled red containers, head full of stars) of merely ...
They were Hard to Kill, those Places.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> I could say get in the car and go stepping calmly ashore but we cover more ground as the hero crumbling to be remembered. Some New England stone wall is the boundary of my letter to the Ave Maria air a love like a hedge in the to and fro or the natural history of the island ...
To Touch Inhabited Creatures.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> In the barometer of flight on the fender of the pillow's release look down into the dislodged rain it's not what you would expect the problem of talking to that which has died a theorem fades forward into the room look down into the dark screen fluttering knee deep in every ...
Quivering in the Common World.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> like the world's largest record player skipping at the center of the earth the streets tilted axis underneath loops chorded grace into each gauzy room, space tinted large and currant-like quivering in the common alpine ling we are veiled ...
The Sad Small Beauty of an Aerial View.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Street runs its lines folds, unfolds in creases lisp little scripts permanently banner-like float by as liquid crumbling under touch a motor-sore well of shadows compressed ...
From Guard of an Eaten Collage: a Guard.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> It is night. In the embracing happy man Just released from ninja fights Along a fallen tree Over a madman's gorge A short chop at the air With the edge of the affected hand Places the chops like flowers Evenly along a central stem Funny charwoman It's a nice night I ...
From Ambient Parking lot.
Dec 22, 2005; ... The recording of "Ambient Parking #25" went off without a hitch. Production efforts approached the sublime. We watched in rapture as the parking lot cooperated with our long-armed mike and seemed to relax into the session. The seven-inch vinyl single was released two and a half weeks later ...
Hat, Overcoat, Gloves.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Across the street from the Comedie Francaise is the Regency Cafe, and in it there's a hidden room with an easy chair, and a table. When I enter, the unmoving dust is already on its feet.Between my rubber lips, the ash of a cigarette sheds smoke, and in this smoke one ...
All right? Does the Pale Metalloid make you well ...(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> All right? Does the pale metalloid make you well? The incendiary, civic metalloids leaning over the atrocious river of dust?Slave, it is the circular time in which both auricles form guttural, sliding, quaternary rings.Lord slave, at last one can see in the ...
Spain, Let this Cup Pass from Me.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Children of the world, if Spain falls--it's a mere saying-- if she falls from the sky downwards, let two earthly plates grab her forearm with a halter; children, what an age this on the concave brows! How early in the sun what I was telling you about! How soon on your chest ...
The Happy Life.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> When I approach the meadow, Or now go to the field, Still I am tame, even pious, And walk through thorns unharmed, My clothes flutter in the wind As my mind happily asks What lies within us, until The day's dissolution. Before this peaceful image, Where the green trees ...
The Stroll.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> You lovely woods along the way, Painted on a green slope, Where I like to rest all day, Paid off by lovely silence For every thorn in my heart And when my mind is clouded By grief for thought and art, So costly from the beginning, Your lovely views of the valley For ...
18:49:46.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> And on the wheel. While the count of all we had no doctor on board the Pharaon towards the rue de la Plata, the swindler, the growing darkness: sometimes the ...
18:51:25.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The steward will be sunk before night. Then he came forward again on board the frigate took a long time the Canadian struck it to her small home area, is ...
18:53:14.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> This is black, we do not know how to account for this I believe the stories of the vessel, a happy in this house, with? Why not? It was generally known. I ...
18:54:16.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> I am able to, and carried on at great speed. Marriage is broken. They break the ice at these two creatures, united by the way in which you must take it for ...
18:55:30.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> Then you are quite as much freedom as one has to those men and things which passed over the face of the arm of the law, the infant death rate of two worlds! Not a thing ...
18:57:48.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> In other words, should I have known me long, the fire from the ideal. But if only the effort to control mind, serving as a pleasure; while he was merely there ...
The vortex.
Dec 22, 2005; ... I Canoes glided through the forest of dead trees. In the fourth month of the Aztec year, before the onset of the rainy season, they would go up to the Hill of Stars to find the tallest, straightest, most beautiful tree. They carefully tied its branches so that none would break, ...
A Western Garden.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> The fog dictates lost sailors tumbling in the waves. We're almost home the sine and cosine sing, the clear single azure dome and shiny air all say. The wood grain is deeper than a forest deeper than the sea. The solid indication of space in time these whorls testify ...
The Battered Vessel.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> As transported across impossible deluges I am loath to be guided by any such alarm | Pink-skinned pussies haven't taken yet to suck Back from birth | waters of beautiful colour Admittedly | my insouciance around this equipment | Moves as flames in crops of English cotton | ...
Thirty-Nine Among the Sands, His Steps.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2005; ... <Pre> or riddle there: who may have sailed the Alde, and out into the sea, but still was not the helmsman, she was he, the captain's daughter, child too of children's strategies on tidal rivers where the toy wooden soldiers rose in marshmist reeds and tipped their Bismarck helmets ...
Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation.(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. Edited by Victoria Chang. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. 194 pp. $19.95 If lyric poetry is the most introspective of all literary forms, the most remote from public and political concerns, how should we read lyric poems ...
Invisible Green: Selected Prose.(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Donald Revell. Invisible Green: Selected Prose. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2005. 187 pp. $14.95 Let's begin with Revell's pantheon, or, perhaps I should say, his guest list. Pride of place belongs to Thoreau, who gives Revell his title: "Methinks my own soul must be a bright ...
Eye Against Eye.(A Faithful Existence: Reading, Memory, and Transcendence)(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Forrest Gander. Eye Against Eye. New York: New Directions, 2005. 80 pp. $14.95 Forrest Gander. A Faithful Existence: reading, memory, and transcendence. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005. 149 pp. $24 What would it be like to pull the curtains aside and suddenly ...
The Book of Jon.(The California Poem)(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Eleni Sikelianos. The Book of Jon. San Francisco: City Lights, 2004. 116 pp. $11.95 Eleni Sikelianos. The California Poem. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2004. 195 pp. $16 Eleni Sikelianos's most recent books--The California Poem, a wide-ranging book-length poem ...
The Woman from Hamburg and Other True Stories.(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Hannah Krall, The Woman from Hamburg and Other True Stories. Translated by Madeline G. Levine. New York: Other Press, 2005. $14.95 Hannah Krall's remarkable The Woman from Hamburg and Other True Stories is a sustained meditation on the impact of the Second World War on everyday ...
Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century.(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Patrik Ourednik, Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century. Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive, 2005. 122 pp. $12.50 Among the commonplaces of literary criticism is the idea that any literary work, in particular any stylistically unconventional work, must teach its readers how ...
Marginalien.(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Alan Halsey, Marginalien. Hereford, UK: Five Seasons Press, 2005. 415 pp. $49.50 Alan Halsey's hefty, exuberant Marginalien, a retrospective that gathers a generous portion of his work since the late 1980s, contains twenty-three sequences, well over half of them the complete ...
Matter.(Book review)
Dec 22, 2005; ... Bin Ramke. Matter. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004. 87 pp. $16 What would it take, after a century of anti-humanism, to write a humanistic poetry that was both credible and rigorous? Bin Ramke's answer to this question is Matter, his eighth book of poems, in which he ...
Can a computer make a period style obsolete?(NOTE)(Critical essay)
Dec 22, 2005; ... The poems in this issue by Gnoetry and Eric P. Elshtain were written in a little over eight minutes on 30 November 2005. Their titles mark the time of their composition. Elshtain set the form--three four-line stanzas, lines between five and ten syllables--and selected the following five ...