POET

Lisa Jarnot (1967 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Lisa Jarnot is a poet whose collection, Sea Lyrics, was described by Contemporary Women Poets contributor Kathleen Fraser as "a sequence of thirty-one highly compressed, lyrically recycled prose poems, the 'I am' speaker like a 1990s female version of Whitman hallucinating through the territory of northern California. Avocado, bridge, pit bull, albatross, hot tub, and shiny truck are interchangeable parts, repeating with the build of Ravel's Bolero." In another review, Fraser wrote, " Some Other Kind of Mission is a brilliant tour-de-force of collaged notes, handwritten letters, drawings, found/reconstructed texts blackened out with magic markers, leaving tiny words or all 'e's and commas. It is word games, secrets, misnamings, fun-poking at academe. . . . and her version of on-the-road, NOW, in full, Living Black & White." Fraser called Jarnot "a tight-rope walker, and her reader must be willing to enter that precarious journey with her, able to tolerate the uncertain space that drops beneath her securely stretched and knotted rope."

American Book Review contributor Sherry Brennan wrote that Some Other Kind of Mission "is inhabited by lance, pierre, paris, helen, pigs, prawns, chickens, crawfish, kmart, walmart, terns, trucks, lanes and miles, meridians, and medians. In its style and subject it is indebted to such writers as Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Gertrude Stein, and Rosmarie Waldrop. It also reflects the New York School poets' interest in the visual." Sulfur reviewer John Olson compared reading the book to viewing the canyons of Utah for the first time. Olson said that "the landscape is at first bleak, threatening, otherworldly. But as time is spent bending down and picking up rocks and noticing the ceaseless flux of light and color, the richness of the land begins to inundate the senses." Village Voice reviewer Albert Mobilio felt that the book, "drawing as it does on the Stein tradition as filtered through poets like Clark Coolidge, is fated to meet with incomprehension outside the narrow precincts of (pick a term: postmodern, avant, Language) poetry." "These are haunting, perplexing narratives of the inénarrable," wrote John Ashbery in the Times Literary Supplement. Ashbery chose the collection to be included in the publication's list of International Books of the Year.

Jarnot was interviewed by Daniel Kane for WriteNet online. Kane asked her how she saw the poem "Emperor Wu," which follows the sestina form, fitting into "the overall plan." Jarnot explained, "There are a lot of pieces in Some Other Kind of Mission that use collage. This Emperor Wu sestina is also a collage poem. Most of the material comes from the I Ching. A lot of it comes from a recording I have between Bob Dylan and an obsessed fan of his. There's also the refrain 'like they say,' which is a phrase Robert Creeley sometimes uses in his poems." "I think poems are always collage on some level," continued Jarnot. "We're surrounded by messages in the culture all the time. . . . Collage is a way to force awareness out of the random flow of information that's constantly bombarding us. A lot of the work I've done comes out of advertising, flyers off the streets, or signposts. I actually physically collected a lot of these pieces of paper, which then contributed to the visual collages of this book. I'd lay these papers out on the table, and put them together like I would put together a jigsaw puzzle."

Jarnot is editor, with Leonard Schwartz and Chris Stroffolino, of An Anthology of New (American) Poets. The works were previously published in small press editions, journals, and chapbooks by thirty-five young poets, and the selections reflect a variety of social and political concerns, including the AIDS epidemic and the global ecosystem. "This anthology is the best, so far, to present their work," stated a Bloomsbury Review contributor. Nina Zivancevic reviewed the anthology for American Book Review, saying that "these new voices are very fresh and new inasmuch as they tend to eschew old, already traditional issues in poetry. . . . and mainly engage themselves with themes and subjects relevant to our contemporary, often hungry and disillusioned times." A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that the collection "will be a treat for any reader looking for an alternative to the current bloc of mainstream poetries, and helps solidify the emerging contribution of a promising generation."

In her collection titled Ring of Fire, Jarnot calls up images of the waterfronts of Oakland and San Francisco. A Publishers Weekly reviewer who called Jarnot's voice "sure, lyric," said she covers these areas with "a love for gaudiness that recalls everybody from Lou Reed to Bob Dylan to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Yet the overriding note is a mournful clarity."

CAREER

Poet, author, and editor. State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, archivist of the poetry and rare books collection, 1987-89; Brown University, Providence, RI, instructor, 1993-94; The Ear Inn, New York, NY, reading coordinator, 1994—; The Labor Institute, New York, NY, educational curriculum consultant, 1994—; Long Island University, assistant professor, 1995—; Project Poetry Newsletter, New York, NY, 1996-97; Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute, instructor. Editor of poetry magazines No Trees, Buffalo, NY, 1987-89, and Troubled Surfer, Oakland, CA, 1990-92

BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY

Phonetic Instructions, Northern Lights Press (London, England), 1989.
The Fall of Orpheus, Shuffaloff Press (Buffalo, NY), 1993.
Sea Lyrics, Soho Letter Press (New York, NY), 1996.
Some Other Kind of Mission, Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 1996.
Heliopolis, Rempress (Cambridge, England), 1998.
The Eightfold Path, Abend Press (San Francisco, CA), 2000.
(With Bill Luoma and Red Smith) New Mannerist Tricycle, Beautiful Summer Press (Brooklyn, NY), 2000.
Ring of Fire, Zoland Books (Cambridge, MA), 2001.