Sherwin’s poem January 4, 2012: I’m a Sherwin Bitsui fan because his poems have a calm murmuring forward motion that I deeply trust and a surrealism that feels older than French and may be engaging both poet and reader in scarier transitions than the deliberate disordering of the senses not that I am dumping on Arthur Rimbaud. But Sherwin Bitsui writes “in” Native [...] by Eileen Myles

Peter’s Poem December 31, 2011: I suppose I could quote from Peter’s poem that begins: Between autumn and spring I sleep inside a column streaming semen from the sky a time for mapping and counting is done and it feels really good just letting the waves make their own history and I already I feel good, satisfied. The year is ending. And Peter’s sonnet-ish [...] by Eileen Myles

Mary Jo’s Poem (or else Dante’s) December 28, 2011: Look! It’s the beast with the pointed tail, Who leaps tall mountains and shatters barriers— Stone wall or high-tech weapon. Look! It’s him Who stinks up the world. If you are ever knocking around New York on Maundy Thursday which I can tell you this coming year is on April 5th you should go up to John the Divine on the upper west [...] by Eileen Myles

ALBERT’S POEM December 13, 2011: Albert’s poem starts off elegantly: The whole of it is winged,  . . . and honestly if the poem continued on as elegantly I would likely put it down. But instead it dips away: …this science of speaking about large things in pocket size you do it by letting likeness creep in, makes me resemble you the  [...] by Eileen Myles

DANIEL’S POEM December 1, 2011: It keeps changing shapes and sometimes it looks like prose. It’s in a collection of poems that all call themselves something with the word “Book” in the title. Like this one, “The Book of Broken Bodies.” It goes: The Book of Broken Bodies is itself a broken book. The cover is torn; the pages are ripped out; and the ink has smeared [...] by Eileen Myles

NAOMI’S POEM November 30, 2011: I hate to use the poem on the back of the book but that’s the one I wanted. I was at the San Francisco Zen Center last week and Paul Haller, the abbot, a man who I have heard speak many times and I have often thought if I had a teacher it would be him - for instance in the course of a Zen talk Paul once said, “pattern is contact” which I [...] by Eileen Myles

HERMAN’S POEM November 16, 2011: I think someone literally shoved a pile of books in my hand this fall. I think I was stooped and looking at his stuff – Here, take em, he growled like I might be a little too shy to accept this gift. Most of them I owned and I deposited the books on one of those ledges that surround little peed-on trees in the east village. But I kept the [...] by Eileen Myles

RAE’S POEM November 8, 2011: I like when Rae tells us in a reading that her poem has sections that are separated by numbers but she’s not going to read them.  I mean there’s a world of information in that remark about how a poem appears on the page and what we don’t need to think about when we are hearing it. What’s implied I think is how much more we do get – [...] by Eileen Myles

ROSA’S POEM October 31, 2011: I was just looking at this poem by Rosa Alcala called “Pedagogy.” It’s a poem about a woman looking at another woman and each of them is a woman of “another” generation and “another” race so the narrator’s looking (perhaps) across an enormous divide. Yet looking is the place where all these distances meet. This looking happens [...] by Eileen Myles

ANSELM’S POEM October 25, 2011: Anselm Berrigan’s poem is sixty five pages long. It ambles, it shrugs, it generally has an only stoic relationship to meaning. Like meaning might be someone he has a working relationship with. They always nod when they see one other. Yet I wouldn’t describe Notes from Irrelevancy as a poem that is opposed to meaning. No it’s just a [...] by Eileen Myles