Monday, May 9, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Novica Tadic's Dark World
Sticks for the Roasting
Novica Tadic’s collection, Dark Things is an ode to Memento Mori. His collection reads like an old German woodcutting from the 15th century come to life in words. But Tadic doesn’t just remind us of the death that awaits us all, he presents a world of utter hopelessness where to survive is to somehow be complicit in the miserable world of his wandering speaker.
Perhaps my favorite poem and the one mentioned by Charles Simic in the introduction, “Armful of Twigs, Dream,” exemplifies this idea of complicity. The speaker carries an armful of twigs to a communal roasting of someone he can’t see, and “doesn’t know who is being/burnt alive or why” (5-6). This kind of involvement is evident in my poem, “I am Birdshit and Bits of Twine.” It is in one sense becoming the thing it detests while critiquing it. The speaker is BP, the speaker is the bird ingesting the oil. But what Tadic is able to do with this collection is much more refined. It is the difference between a pelican’s gawky plunge into the ocean to catch its prey, and the osprey who glides down feet first, snatches its prey and flies away all in one great swoop: Tadic naturally being the latter of the two.
Tadic’s speaker is tormented by the “Midnight Lady” who sits on his bed “as if it were her work table” (21). The poem offers the picture of a someone almost paralyzed by fear, reading the piece, one can almost taste the metal of fear in one’s mouth. It is true that the end of Tadic’s poems may offer a kind of “silence” as Timothy Henry points out in Verse, but for this reader, at least, the silence is almost always pregnant with the possibility of violence. It will not be quiet for long. At the end of “Midnight Lady,” is the beginning of the horror.
This silence/violence dichotomy informs my poem, “Night Noise and Rabbit Twitch,” which was inspired by my reading of Dark Things. I am working on this idea of writing a collection on gender-based violence. “Night Noise” chronicles the terror of the victim who knows what’s coming and the inability to do anything about it save wait. There is no “gun to start a fire” nothing to defend against the predator at her door. She can struggle and fight, and will—but ultimately, I think the poem shows she will lose this battle. The speaker is left to the mercy of her tormentor, or as Tadic writes in “About the Knife,” “mercy walked away from me/now, quickly, you do the same” (10-11). There is no god of redemption, what is crucified in the poem “Soldiers Song” is “nothingness” (13).
Tadic’s speaker may identify himself as “god’s messenger” but after reading the collection one must ask, god of what? What this reader came away with is that there is true evil in the world. In “You are Mighty” a title reminiscent of something one might find in an Evangelical hymnal, the thing that had no motherly birth is also the thing that would rip out human flesh “with pliers” (10).
There is much beauty in Tadic’s poetry too, if one takes Keat’s notion of beauty into account. It is a world devoid of hope, a kind of existentialist dream filled with “bottom creatures and venomous stars” (“Hatred” 10). I return to my 15th century woodcuttings and engravings. They are beautiful--even in the terror they evoke, and there’s no question these are responses to a Christian god of love. What the 15th century Europeans knew and what we sometimes forget in our shiny world of material things, is that the world is full of pain. Tadic’s collection seems to posit that there just might be something out there keeping a record of whate we do and we will be punished—here or hereafter. The only hope present here is that of the existentialist—that there is nothing after, but I am not convinced this is Tadic’s message. Pain and suffering seems to be the norm here, not the exception. The final poem offers us “the Lord’s breath,” but this is not a rope from which we can climb aboard a boat safely, it just may very be the rope the lord of dark things will tie into a noose.
photo credit: Stewart Ferebee
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Local Poets, Local Inspiration!
The Santa Cruz Weekly chose my poem, Sparkle in this week's Local Poets, Local Inspiration section, check out the link below. Here's the poem:
Local Poets, Local Inspiration
Sparkle
At the edge--
spotted stones
and roiling kelp.
The day facets me in its diamond.
Wind-chimes are silent,
Buddha’s stone head bows.
A gap in the fence could tell--
mouth opens,
closes on a dahlia,
on a rosebush stripped to thorns.
A beheaded sunflower stem
holds a hummingbird’s silhouette.
Bees comb and primp the blonde sky.
Waves fall down--
spotted stones
and roiling kelp.
Shadows slink and slip
with the earth’s music.
With a mouth full of stones, I sing.
Local Poets, Local Inspiration
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Ping-Pong Magazine at the Beat Museum tonight! November 12th
WEST COAST PING-PONG Release party!!!! in conjunction with Parthenon West
The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California is hosting the West Coast Release party for Ping•Pong, a international journal of the arts and literature at the Beat Museum.
The Ping•Pong West Coast Launch Party will take place at the Beat Museum on Friday, November 12th, with featured reader Kim Addonizio. There will also be readings by the editors: Christine Hamm, Jessica Breheny, James Maughn and Maria Garcia Teutsch, as well as contributors, Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts and Judy Halebsky. Readings will begin at 7:30 pm. The event is free and open to the public.
Ping•Pong’s release party is in conjunction with Parthenon West magazine. Parthenon West’s readers include the fabulous Erica Lewis and outstanding Russell Dillon.
Come by and have a glass of wine with us and marvel at the wonder of the Beat Museum,
and swing your hips to the music of DJs Krystal Simpson and Aaron Gonzalez. Paintings on exhibit by Paris-based artist Jean-Noel Chazelle.
------
Book information:
Ping•Pong
A Literary Journal of the Henry Miller Library
2010
ISSN #1083-0944
Paperback, 161 pages, $12.00
------
Contact Information:
Christine Hamm, Poetry Editor
inktastesbitter@yahoo.com
Maria Garcia Teutsch, Editor-in-Chief
maria@henrymiller.org
831-755.6943 (office)
Magnus Toren 667-2574 (Executive Director, Henry Miller Library)
Highway One, Big Sur, CA 93920
www.henrymiller.org/ping_pong.html
Reader Bios:
Kim Addonizio is the author of five collections of poetry including Tell Me, a 2000 National Book Award Finalist. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA Fellowships, the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award, and other honors. She has published two instructional books: Ordinary Genius, A Guide for the Poet Within; and The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (with Dorianne Laux). She has a word/music CD with Susan Browne, “Swearing, Smoking, Drinking & Kissing,” available from CDBaby.
Russell Dillon was born in New York during the mid 70s and hasn't been able to get over it. However, in an effort to put the past behind him, he's attended a number of schools in various places, learned things at each one of them, and received degrees from Emerson College and the Bennington Writing Seminars. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alligator Juniper, Big Bell, Forklift, Ohio, and Tight, among others. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he does almost everything life asks of him.
Erica Lewis is a full-time fine arts publicist in San Francisco. She received her MFA from Mills College and received the 2008 Mary Merritt Henry Writing Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in P-Queue, Ur Vox, alice blue, Work, The Walrus, and Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets
Christine Hamm, one of the Ping Pong poetry editors, is a PhD candidate in English Literature and an MFA candidate in poetry. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. She teaches English at CUNY, and has performed all over the country. She has two books, The Transparent Dinner and Saints & Cannibals, and her third book is forthcoming from Blazevox. Christine was a runner-up to the Poet Laureate of Queens.
Maria Garcia Teutsch is Editor in Chief of Ping-Pong magazine. She also serves as president of the board of directors of the Henry Miller library in Big Sur, Ca. She is widely published, and has three poetry chapbooks, Surrender Dorothy, Fractured Fortunes and there are no cars on this highway.
Jessica Breheny is the author of a chapbook of short
stories, Some Mythology. (Naissance Press, 2010) She
teaches writing at San Jose City College and serves as the
fiction editor of Ping Pong : The Literary Arts Journal of
the Henry Miller Library. Her work has appeared in elimae,
580 Split, Fugue, LIT, Other Voices, and Santa Monica
Review and is forthcoming from Avery. She is the author of
a collection of short stories and a young adult novel.
JAMES MAUGHN lives in Santa Cruz, CA, where he a poetry
co-editor for the literary arts journal Ping Pong,
published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library. He also
coordinates A New Cadence Poetry Series out of the Felix
Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz. His first book, Kata, was
published by BlazeVOX Books in 2009. Work has appeared in
Otoliths, Lungfull, Parthenon West Review, TinFish, Big
Bell, Sentence, Moria, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dusie,
MiPoesias, and Horse Less Review. He is a member of the
Black Radish Collective, and his second book, Arakaki
Permutations, will be published by Black Radish Books in
2010. Another book, These Peripheries, will be published
by Ahadada Press.
Judy Halebsky the author of Sky = Empty, the 2009 winner of
the New Issues Poetry Prize, judged by Marvin Bell. She is
a contributing editor and translator for the bilingual
poetry journal Eki Mae. Residencies at the MacDowell Colony
and the Millay Colony have supported her work. Originally
from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she spent five years in Japan
studying art and literature on fellowships from the
Japanese Ministry of Education. She teaches writing and
world literature at Dominican University of California and
is artist-in-residence at Theatre of Yugen.
Jessica Breheny is the author of a chapbook of short
stories, Some Mythology. (Naissance Press, 2010) She
teaches writing at San Jose City College and serves as the
fiction editor of Ping Pong : The Literary Arts Journal of
the Henry Miller Library. Her work has appeared in elimae,
580 Split, Fugue, LIT, Other Voices, and Santa Monica
Review and is forthcoming from Avery. She is the author of
a collection of short stories and a young adult novel.
JAMES MAUGHN lives in Santa Cruz, CA, where he a poetry
co-editor for the literary arts journal Ping Pong,
published by the Henry Miller Memorial Library. He also
coordinates A New Cadence Poetry Series out of the Felix
Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz. His first book, Kata, was
published by BlazeVOX Books in 2009. Work has appeared in
Otoliths, Lungfull, Parthenon West Review, TinFish, Big
Bell, Sentence, Moria, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dusie,
MiPoesias, and Horse Less Review. He is a member of the
Black Radish Collective, and his second book, Arakaki
Permutations, will be published by Black Radish Books in
2010. Another book, These Peripheries, will be published
by Ahadada Press.
Judy Halebsky the author of Sky = Empty, the 2009 winner of
the New Issues Poetry Prize, judged by Marvin Bell. She is
a contributing editor and translator for the bilingual
poetry journal Eki Mae. Residencies at the MacDowell Colony
and the Millay Colony have supported her work. Originally
from Halifax, Nova Scotia, she spent five years in Japan
studying art and literature on fellowships from the
Japanese Ministry of Education. She teaches writing and
world literature at Dominican University of California and
is artist-in-residence at Theatre of Yugen.
- Show quoted text -
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)