Returning to the Poem May 20, 2013: A man dressed in a loose kaftan pedaled vigorously on his bicycle. Suddenly, he flew out of his seat and crashed to the side of the road. I ran out of my car to check on him, and then returned to search for my cell phone, only to find a stranger attempting to open the car's passenger door to steal my bag. I pleaded with the stranger to hand me [...] by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Sarah Mangold: ‘Writing, Moving, Practicing’ May 15, 2013: Things were astounding enough/the passenger ferry/the steeple/enough to make you die of astonishment —Sarah Mangold, from "I meant to be Transparent" To be transparent, if it is a material, is to let light pass through so objects behind are made visible. To be transparent is also to transmit heat without altering bodies. To be [...] by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Writing ‘About’ (Part II) May 10, 2013: Part II I was introduced to the term "Tibetan refugee" at a young age, as the poet Tenzin Tsundue was. I understood the word to signal a feature of a sentient being, so I thought my classmates were Indian "refugees." The word "refugee," announced and used in English, signified fixed images of despair, displacement, and death. It did not [...] by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Writing ‘About’ (Part I) May 6, 2013: [caption id="attachment_66993" align="alignright" width="500"] Poet Tenzin Tsundue[/caption] I am often asked if I consider myself a "Tibetan poet" and if I write about "Tibetan things." To explore the possible identities and characters within reach, I rephrase and translate the questions: Are the poems political? Are the poems personal? Are [...] by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

On Knowing: Quasi-intelligibility, or Good-bye National Poetry Month! May 3, 2013: In On Photography, Susan Sontag discusses Walter Benjamin’s ideal work of literary criticism. According to Sontag, for Benjamin, the ideal work of literary of criticism would be made up of nothing but quotes. Sontag writes: “Benjamin’s own ideal project reads like a sublimated version of the photographer’s activity. This project was a [...] by Roger Reeves

Deterritorializations: Repetition, Stutter, Report P.S.: Catabolism, Or Translation as a Destructive Metabolism, Or Your Exchange Value May 3, 2013: [caption id="attachment_66929" align="aligncenter" width="500"] View from Highway 170 off-ramp at Sherman Way, North Hollywood.[/caption] We can take refuge/in something other than the mind for image does/not always follow content. —Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, from “Catabolism” Catabolism, according to various online dictionaries, is a [...] by Jen Hofer

Quasi-unintelligibility (Coda) May 3, 2013: “I have the greatest dislike for explanations,” an emphatic Stevens once wrote to Ronald Lane Latimer, the pseudonymous editor of Alcestis Press, a small and short-lived leftist publishing outfit in New York City back in the 1930s. “As soon as people are perfectly sure of a poem they are just as likely as not to have no further interest in [...] by Timothy Donnelly

Towards a Poetics of the Phatic (Part 2) May 3, 2013: In one sense, the phatic is perhaps the oldest and most fundamental dimension of poetry. The impulse to speak in meter or rhyme, for example, is relatable to the infant impulse toward babble, the delight taken in hearing oneself—or others—speak. Many of the same features Jakobson assigns to the poetic function (repetition, soundplay, etc.) [...] by K. Silem Mohammad

Nick Piombino’s Fait Accompli Blog 10th Anniversary May 3, 2013: The tenth anniversary of Nick Piombino’s blog Fait Accompli will not pass without comment. Following the NYC events of 9/11 Nick felt a strong need for literary community and dialogue and began to communicate frequently with poets on the Suny/Buffalo poetics list. Speaking further about the origins of Fait Accompli / Nick has said [...] by Alan Davies

Deterritorializations: Repetition, Stutter, Report (the second of two brief forays with a P.S. to come) May 2, 2013: I want to explore a word that has taken hold of my consciousness and the hum of my interior thoughtscape—a word I realize, as I try to write about it, I don’t quite know how to articulate (which is, perhaps, precisely the articulation this particular word requires). I first encountered the term “untranslation” in Felipe [...] by Jen Hofer