Throughout the life of the online literary journal Octopus, various writers have showcased out-of-print or hard-to-find works through the magazine’s “recovery projects.” These projects offer close readings and commentary on books by poets like Laura Jensen, Kamau Brathwaite, Paul Mann and Wong May, among others, and have been offered alongside the new poetry and reviews of contemporary work that are the mainstays of the site (poets include Paul Muldoon, Barbara Guest, Sarah Manguso, Joyelle McSweeney, Robert Kelly, Linh Dinh, and on and on).
In the past two years or so, Octopus has recovered old work less and showcased new work more, but the just-launched 11th issue recovers the recovery project, shining a light on Joe Brainard and Rochelle Owens. It’s the type of thing that Jacket does incredibly well, as does the Chicago Review, but the lines between the canonical and the new are delightfully blurred over at Octopus in ways unique to the vision of the editors, Zachary Schomburg and Mathias Svalina (and for a while, Tony Tost).
The print arm of Octopus has been busy as well, just releasing its second full-length title, Tuned Droves by Eric Baus (the first Octobook was Undersleep by Julie Doxee).
Baus’s poems call to mind what Reuven Tsur calls “Cognitive Poetics,” work arranged to foreground the way language affects consciousness. Much of Baus’s verse occupies itself less with traditional ideas of sound and sense, and more with what effect sound and syntactical patterns and their variations can have on consciousness.
They’re serial poems that call for immersion, casting a spell that binds more and more upon further readings, though they do have a seductive lyricism from the start (”When a boy’s mouth collapses into itself, tiny flames release from his limbs”). It’s work in the spirit of Gertrude Stein, Three Poems-era John Ashbery, Nathaniel Mackey, Renée Gladman, and Bhanu Kapil (off the top of my head) and to mark the occasion of its publication, I’ve made a little movie of the Tuned Droves poem “Inside Any Good Song Someone is Lost.”
“In the past two years or so, Octopus has recovered old work less and showcased new work more…”
Posted By: Amish Trivedi on February 16, 2009 at 10:34 amInteresting you say that considering that Issue 9 is half Recovery Projects. I guess that’s summer 2007 now, so almost two years.
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Hey Amish,
Posted By: Travis Nichols on February 16, 2009 at 5:00 pmTwo years or so turns out to be a little less, you’re right. I had talked with Zach and the feeling I got was that most of those recovery projects from 9 had been written, edited, and such earlier, and so he felt that Octopus had showcased the old less in their recent incarnations. But thanks for keeping me on my toes wrt chronology (I appreciated your Ceravolo take in #9 as well).
-Travis
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