Archive for the ‘March End Prill’ Tag
Hell’s Printing House: Luffere & Oþere: Amoretti from Marchend Prill (2003)
Aside from the pages of little magazines and those of certain, indulgent anthologies, by poems really first made their way in the world in the form of chapbooks. I hadn’t yet published a full-length trade edition, when I went on a “European tour” in 1996, reading in Munich (twice), Heidelberg, and Amsterdam, two self-published chapbooks, Gloze (1995) and On the Phantom Air Ship Mystery (1995), my calling cards.
Joachim Utz, the sponsor of my reading at Heidelberg University’s Anglistiches Seminar, observed that my chapbooks reminded him of William Blake’s. This new category of post takes its inspiration from his remark. “Hell’s Printing House” will showcase my chapbooks, describing them, detailing their contents, linking poems that have already been published at Poeta Doctus, and presenting a new recording of one of their poems.
It is hoped these posts fill the lacunae between full-length collections, assuring those (apparently) few (and valued) readers who follow my production with interest that I am hard at work, going my own direction, at my own pace, trusting those intrigued might be charmed enough to tarry along….
The first five chapbooks I’d bound were made to collect and “publish” work otherwise unpublished in periodical or book form. Luffere & Oþere marked a departure, as it was the first chapbook that collated the poems I was to perform at a reading. At the time, Ilona Martonfi organized (among many other events) an annual Valentine’s Day reading, “Lovers and Others,” and kindly invited me to read. I don’t remember exactly what reasons I gave myself at the time, but it seemed somehow appropriate to have the poems I would read ready in print-form for interested parties, a good opportunity to issue a new chapbook, a practice I was to maintain for many years. Luffere & Oþere are the oldest forms of the words ‘lovers’ and ‘others’ in English.
Not only was this chapbook the first made for a reading, but it is also the first with original artwork (in this case, two collages) for the flyleaf, outer and inner:
However much amor is one of the great poetic themes, it’s not one I have often dared (except for one poem, known only to my closest friends). However, at the time, I had written a poetic sequence, an extension of the concerns motivating X Ore Assays and Seventh Column, that was to be published years later in 2011 by Book*hug, March End Prill. This sequence, compositionally, adhered to a resolutely Surrealist poetic (“the dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason and outside all moral or aesthetic concerns”), informed as much by Breton as by ethnopoetics:
Songs are thoughts, sung out with the breath when people are moved by great forces & ordinary speech no longer suffices. Man is moved just like the ice floe sailing here and there in the current. His thoughts are driven by a flowing force when he feels joy, when he feels fear, when he feels sorry. Thoughts can wash over him like a flood, making his breath come gasps & his heart throb. Something like an abatement in the weather will keep him thawed up. And then it will happen that we, who always think we are small, will feel smaller still. And we will fear to use words. But it will happen that the words we need will come of themselves. When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves—we get a new song.—Orpingalik
At any rate, I combed through March End Prill and abstracted a sample of, if not all, the poems defensibly “erotic.” The titles are their first lines or the first words thereof:
Contents
- falling asleep
- she was coming for supper
- durée
- dear Wife
- we must really be out of touch
- Can’t wait for you
- mornings spooned
- When I get the chance
- my old friend dumped his
- Godammit! Love’s
- Bedrock
Here’s a new recording of these poems, for those who missed the reading!
Next month: For a Few Golden Ears (2004).
NoPoMo 2018 (4): something cheeky
she was coming for supper
he sliced two fresh avocado
egg yolk lemon wedge squeeze dribble
& dill then olive oil drizzled in & whisked
sauced over slices fanned out
over one side of the plate the other
halved boiled little new pink potatoes
tossed in chopped purple onion
grape seed oil red wine vinegar
& a tsp Dijon
the main dish cubed pears
eggplant Szechwan marinated firm tofu
chopped celery & ground ginger
sautéed in olive oil with a drop of sesame
dripped in for a hint of the Orient
a big bottle of Uncle Ben’s
Sweet Soy Sauce dumped on
all served on Shanghai noodles
he wore his nicest apron
but no pants having plucked
each fine wiry glossy black hair
from around his anus washed
oiled & perfumed so its folds
and puckers glistened in the candlelight
From March End Prill (Book*hug, 2011)
NoPoMo 2018 (3): A Post-secular poem avant le lettre
Lift the flame
Luciferous hissing
blue out the lighter
Light the incens
uous resins
crackle in the bowl
Father
Son &
Holy Ghost
Each cardinal direction
dawn morning sun
in branches
orientation
sinister
Southern Cross
Antepod
Abendland
Ol’ Rope-a
accidental occident
all that’s left’s
True North
“I believe”
Lichen yellows
Shady bark
From (Book*hug, 2011)
For the moment, a poem…
Wise Kung Fu
Waited out
One whole moon
on ‘is lutestrings
What tunes could fill those twentyeight days a woman’s monthly round
Did he have a copy of the classic anthology at his fingers’ tips
Asleep fingers twitch dreamquick licks
from March End Prill
Saint Patrick’s Day 2003
Below is a poem from my 2011 volume March End Prill (BookThug) marking an intersection of the calendar’s circle and history’s line of singularities.
Saint Patrick’s Day 2003
libera agonalia nefastus publicus
I’d love to tell of sudden fish
late end of January Friday afternoon
New Square Fish Market New Square NY NY Luis
Luis Nivelo single handed lifts a flashing carp on the scale 20lb
Then out and down club up to club it for Sabbath gefilte
tzaruch shemirah hasof bah !
Diablo! 57-year-old Skver Hasid Zalmen Rosen
11 children “Luis, what?!” I heard that fish talk!
tzaruch shemirah Old Abraham
buried last week? Adonai? hasof bah
“account for yourself
“the end is near
“pray & study the Torah”
St Patrick’s: Shamrock Irish triple deities
long before Patrick’s Trinity; Roman festival
of Mars, an enormous phallus paraded
through the streets: green for sex festivals the fashion;
Middle Ages the day Noah boarded the Ark:
World Maritime Day.
…Saddam Hussein’s got 48 hours…
…the Day of Iraq’s Liberation is near…
…do not destroy oil wells…
…do not follow orders to use Weapons of Mass Destruction…
…“I was just following orders” no excuse…
…we are a peaceful people…
…not intimidated by thuggery or murder…
…new and undeniable realities…
…a policy of appeasement toward…
…plotters of chemical, biological, or nuclear terror…
…the just demands of the world…
…to overcome violence…
…the future we choose…
…& may God continue
to bless America
Thursday morning Kenneth Masterson out the front door for his paper
“five or six dead fish about 10 or 12 inches long out by th’edge of my yard”
in the street more some rush hour road kill more across
“don’t look like they’ve been hooked”
might be white bass no ponds or lakes near
“really bad storms I wonder if some twister didn’t just pickemup & dropem”
imagine being “jess a pohet”
in Baghdad; who gives a fugg
if you care little abt Saddam
& less abt Geawge Dablya,
jess wanna pen yr little
quirky sufi scrapings
in peace, pumpin yr 2 wives — thassall
ye kin afford– chewing yr majoun like:
you’ll be incinerated along with them
maddogs jess ’cause ya happen to be an Iraqi!!!
I believe it ain’t unright fr me to
feel some solidarity with benighted pohets
‘n’ artists cowering in bum shelters,
disfigured into faceless monsters a la
Saddam. I is dead certain
there are more than one confreres there
who write Je est un autre — only we
aren’t allowed to see them, knowem.
Is there such a thing as Iraqi samizdat
how to send ’em secret artists a sign?
Poem newly up at the BookThug blog for Poetry Month
Ever wondered who the guy on the cover of March End Prill is and what he’s got to do with the book? BookThug has posted “What the Hell…” that might help clarify the issue, here.
March End Prill sampler
BookThug has just posted a generous sample from March End Prill, readable here.
March End Prill reviewed in The Pacific Rim Review
James Edward Reid provides a sensitive appreciation of March End Prill. Just scroll down to page 36…