The Best American Poetry

New "Coconut"

See the new issue of Bruce Covey's Coconut for fascinating new work by Nin Andrews, Stephanie Berger, Graeme Bezanson, Jackie Clark, Denise Duhamel, Sam Pink, Chad Sweeney, Eileen Tabios, many others.

Coconut # 13

Coconut # 14 is almost ready for release as Bruce Covey assembles its contents.

But it's not too late to read # 13, the memorable summer issue, which has noteworthy poems by Rae Armantrout, Terence Winch, and others.

Bruce Covey presents Natalie Lyalin

A lovely baker’s dozen weeks later, I’m sad to bring this little series of Coconut Sundays to a close! But since I must end, what better way to do so then with the parting words, “Alibubo. Bubsigtree. Grivstalbikt!” So also ends Natalie Lyalin’s spectacular poem “Jeffrey Bloodhound Sans,” which originally appeared in Coconut 6. Natalie is such a startling young poet, all of us, Readers, should turn off our tvs and rev up our search engines , looking for more of her! & more there is—in Octopus, La Petite Zine, Verse, and other cool journals! Natalie is a sweet person, co-editor of the bitchin’ mag Glitter Pony  and a graduate of UMass Amherst now living in Philadelphia. Her first book, Pink and Hot Pink Habitat, is due out from Coconut Books this spring, another appropriate place to end this little BAP feature. Please look for Coconut 14 (due out in about a month at http://www.coconutpoetry.org) and for two brand new titles from Coconut Books: That Gorgeous Feeling by Sueyeun Juliette Lee and Heron/Girlfriend by Jen Tynes (both due out in about three weeks, available here. & for my own next book, Glass Is Really a Liquid, which will be out next year from No Tell Books.

Thanks, Readers, for listening these three months, and thanks, David, for the opportunity to showcase the work of several magnificent poets!!!

-- Bruce Covey

Jeffrey Bloodhound Sans

I know him. To know is dimension,
a black bot with star spangles. Have
a sexy birthday. Have an amalgamation.
The language was just delivered and it
is good.
                       I’m holding secret.
                       This situation. Countdown. Speeches for
                       if I don’t come back. I’m not coming back.

In profile with gold necklace. The quiet ears. Study the
nose. Today I become naked Ingrid.  Would Ingrid
mind a morsel of finger fat.

Girl words. A tomato. A plum. An apricot.
                       Time is holding in a clear tube.
                       Time is lightning on a spare key.

Words that do not yet exist. Alibubo. Bubsigtree. Grivstalbikt.

-- Natalie Lyalin

Bruce Covey presents Andrei Codrescu

I’ve enjoyed Andrei Codrescu’s work for years! I can’t remember which anthology first pointed me to him, but it was before he began his NPR commentaries (you DO recognize that thick Transylvanian accent, don’t you??), and before he published his own landmark anthology American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late. I remember when my special orders for License to Carry a Gun and The History of the Growth of Heaven arrived at my undergrad bookstore; I remember how excited I was when Raised by Puppets Only to Be Killed by Research, Monsieur Teste, and Comrade Past and Mister Present all came out. The best place for you to start, however, might be to pick up a copy of his brand-spanking-new Jealous Witness: New Poems from Coffee House Press, which also contains the poem below, or, editorially, gander at his one-of-a-kind journal Exquisite Corpse  (I remember buying a lifetime subscription when it was still in its tall-and skinny paper format, when Andrei lived in Baltimore). Or his website (http://www.codrescu.com/livesite/). “Present at the Ceremony” first appeared in Coconut Nine. How happy I was when he agreed to contribute!

-- Bruce Covey


Present at the Ceremony

Art won
There wasn't even a contest
Now art is on tv every time you turn it on
You used to say that art is the great enemy
And now it's true
There was a time when that sounded like a joke
Made by an artist posed with a cigar between a neon sign for Bar
And a monk moon
Art is the greatest enemy another drink please
Then swaggering home under the monk moon weeping
The technology of the cosmos arrayed itself predictably overhead
As art advanced in the dark on the backs of stealthy products
Which entered the mouths of sleepers like serpents
In the morning everyone had strange appetites
They drove fantastic wombs to work and when they got there
Work was a game and everybody was ready to play
I have swallowed my reptiles early the police made me do it
Everybody else had to wait until the devices became user-friendly
And they put white smoke and sugar on the reptiles

-- Andrei Codrescu

Bruce Covey presents Reb Livingston

My Dearest Best American Poetry and/or Coconut Reader, if you’ve ever connected to the World Wide Web over the past five years, you surely recognize the name of Rebecca “Reb” Livingston, poetry’s most forthright and sparkly blogger, editor of one of the world’s best poetry journals (http://www.notellmotel.org/), book publisher extraordinaire, author of the fantastic Your Ten Favorite Words, the first-ever Coconut Book, along with lots of other world wonders. What most amazes me about Reb is that she never does anything in an ordinary way: No Tell Motel is one of the rare web journals that rejects the issue format (Dan Nester’s Unpleasant Event Schedule is another) in favor of a poem a day; when she and I co-hosted an offsite AWP reading last year, Reb kept pushing the format into the now famous Micropress Poetry Pageant; and her forthcoming book God Damsel, from which the laments below spring, is unlike anything I’ve ever read — a sexy, multi-toned rhetorical fugue. She’s famous not only for her inventiveness, but for her ever-grounded, ever-honest, ever-direct perspective on contemporary poetry and poetics, the person more than any other who brings listserv disputes back into focus. No one else has Reb’s energy; no one else has the same mix of hilarity, brilliance, and sexiness!! & she’s a great mom!! I adore her like no one else!!! Reb’s poems first appeared in Coconut 12.

-- Bruce Covey

 

Lament for Bust

"Because his language mistreated me, I once suckled a shepherd like a woe-dodo competing with a miscreant. My tenderness consummated fracture, birthed my alien nation. Because there was a tempest in my meadow, I bleated into my cleavage like a love-struck lamb bleeding; and my vessel ceremoniously packed with princely trinkets; and a gigolo rose among tomatoes. Because the language of the Tempest was abandoned and slack, I undreamed the entire event and weeped "Greeny trespassers stole my utensils! Oh darling spatula!" The Tempest's poised speech flattened, relieved.

Lament for Must

The Sultana, after she scribbled the poem for her thinking thingamabob, her one-time hearttrob, she scatters humbly a lament for the dead meadow, her home dubbed asylum: "The Tempest who introduced himself – his language flabberghasted. Compelled to buckle because of the Tempest, I am the Sultana for whom the Tempest thrummed to be – his language mistreated me. The macabre Tempest scrubbed in hush, I numbed for gust but did not depart. Because of this vantage Tempest I could not salvage a beholder, not one Savage beheld."

-- Reb Livingston

 

Bruce Covey presents Jill Alexander Essbaum

Jill Alexander Essbaum (once described as “a cross between Dorothy Parker and a lap dance”) is fast becoming known for her brilliantly sexy poems best represented in Harlot, her 2007 collection from No Tell Books, the cover of which depicts a nude woman embracing a phallus nearly twice her height. What I also love about her poems, however, is the intelligence behind them (“heady” as Molly Arden cheekily describes), her attention both to the traditions and possibilities of form that bring poetry’s notions of “traditional” and “experimental” into a head-on collision. In addition, I hereby nominate Jill (well, along with, in a different way, Heidi Lynn Staples) as contemporary poetry’s best punster, a skill evidenced within “Triptych,” which originally appeared in Coconut Eight. (My nomination is another opportunity for you to agree or disagree with me, O Reader, by posting your own choices!) & on top of all, there’s the theme, to quote H. L. Hix, of “religion as sex and sex as religion” swimming through her work. Twice I’ve had the opportunity to hear Jill read, which is also a treat — she has memorized all of her poems (while I can’t even seem to remember my own first lines!!). So my advice to you, Charming Reader, is to invite Jill to read in your own hometown! Or at least buy all of her books, which also include Heaven (Winner of the Bakeless Prize, 2000), Oh Forbidden (2005), Necropolis (2008), and an appearance in 2008’s The Best American Erotic Poems. Her website is here.

-- Bruce Covey


Triptych

1. Him

I let go my dress in his temple, devoutly.
I brought to him butters in lordly dishes.
He spread my legs like rumor, word-of-mouthly.

2. Hymn

Tears have a talent for falling.
That is their calling.

3. Hem

I have folded my edges.
I've serged and I have pinked.
I have finished my seams.

So it would seem.

-- Jill Alexander Essbaum

Bruce Covey presents Anselm Berrigan

When I solicited work for Coconut from Anselm Berrigan, I confess I anticipated the sort of packed, fast-paced, linguistically rich lines I’ve come to associate with this terrific poet. Instead I received something even better—a stunning quartet of beautiful shorter pieces, three of them elegies. “To K,” which addresses the tragic death of Anselm’s half-sister Kate, moved me—and continues to move me — to tears. Now however, after my father’s unexpected death earlier this summer, I understand the blankness he speaks of in an entirely new light. I hope you’ll read not only the poem below, but all four of Anselm’s pieces in Coconut Two.

Anselm Berrigan is the son of poets Alice Notley and the late Ted Berrigan, stepson of the late poet Douglas Oliver, brother to poet Edmund Berrigan, husband to poet Karen Weiser, and now father to (future poet?) Sylvie Weiser Berrigan. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, including Some Notes on My Programming (2006), in which “To K” subsequently reappeared. He teaches at Bard College and Wesleyan University and is co-editor of The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan.

-- Bruce Covey


To K

I'd be walking down the street interviewing myself—questions felt, unspoken answers articulated with measure lifted from interviews I'd read—& I'd read the tonalities into my voices in my head. This was, and is, how I communicate with myself much of the time. Uninterrupted consciousness began at four, when I started reading. I was prepared for Ted's death, without a word to its possibility having ever been plainly spoken in my direction. I don't care to explain that, other than to say it wasn't special, and that I was probably so prepared because he himself was, and I received that through his general calm, being what I mainly felt in his presence other than the times he'd get mad if the fifth sandwich or the right kind of pastry wasn't coming. When Kate was killed I went blank for about a year-and-a-half, a state I couldn't recognize until three or four years after having moved out of it.

-- Anselm Berrigan

Bruce Covey presents Jeni Olin

An Introduction in Thee Parts

A.  One of my favorite anthologies is Free Radicals (Subpress), edited by Jordan Davis & Sarah Manguso, in which the title is defined from physics as “unstable molecules … tending toward violent and unpredictable chemical reactions.”  Four years ago, among the many great poets in this collection (Del Ray Cross, Katie Degentesh, Jen Knox, & others), I rediscovered Jeni Olin’s brilliantly frenetic poems and immediately began to pester her to send some to me for Coconut.  I was thrilled when “Lunesta” arrived in my inbox! 

B.  Do you agree with me, Readers, that the whole “School” thing is past?  But even so, isn’t it spectacular when individuals knead our poetic dough by evoking and expanding upon particular traditions?  Jeni is one of a few poets (David Trinidad, of course, but also Gina Myers?  Brendan Lorber?  Jordan Davis?) who for me re-evoke the “New York” aesthetic — not in a redundant or overly beholden way, but by flying the tradition like a paper airplane into the present, making me want to take a train to the city again (I live in Atlanta now), breathe the air, feel the blistering white noise.

C.  With 1,588 friends, Jeni Olin is the one of the most popular (& coolest & toughest!) poets on facebook.  Her first book, Blue Collar Holiday, was published by Hanging Loose in 2005.  Both her BA and her MFA are from Naropa.

Lunesta

 

J.Crew, sushi, & my shrink on speed dial

Fueled my anthem, "She's a rich girl,"

With a light sorrow,

Today. Tiny fists pummel the cherubs

That cruise this ashen noon. This is

Par for the course.

Plus everything that kills you softly

Melting into heavy, wavy traffic.

It is misting on the mountains

Greener than lobster eggs in my heart.

Naturally, it is snowing in the cafeteria

Where you live & I am just this

Tear-stuffed piñata for your love

& every session every thing you say

Has me sleeping in clouds of fire

Like the sun.

-- Jeni Olin

Bruce Covey presents Ron Padgett

Dearest Reader, Coconut is pleased to present a poignant retelling of the demise of Empedocles, the Greek philosopher who first hypothesized the existence of the four classical elements and, according to legend, committed suicide by flinging himself into the flames of Mt. Etna. Its author, Ron Padgett, is my favorite poet, one of the very first I begged to contribute to my fledgling webzine more than three years ago! When I was in high school, his poems, along with Ted Berrigan’s, were the first poems I read and loved (in Paul Carroll’s The Young American Poets, which just happened to be in my high school library), making me think I wanted to be a poet too. His book Toujours L’Amour, along with Ted Berrigan’s Many Happy Returns, was the first contemporary poetry book I ever bought (at the Yale Coop in New Haven,CT—still in high school). His poem “Sweet Pea” is the loveliest of love poems, rivaled only by his “Love Poem,” which begins with a tribute to Ohio Blue Tip matches. Surely you already own several of his books—How to Be Perfect, perhaps, or You Never Know, or the wonderful Poems I Guess I Wrote or at least his Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms or the new selection of Kenneth Koch poems he edited?  If not, in order to promote poetic karma and natural harmony and to save your good-poetry-reader reputation, please visit your local independent bookseller upon dawn’s commencement! (Oh, and don’t forget to check out Coconut Two, where “Death of Empedocles” first appeared! Not my best-designed cover, I must admit!)

-- Bruce Covey

The Death of Empedocles

Five fingers on each hand, five
toes on each foot, that's enough.
I get into the past
which has a different kind of dust on it.
There's an old Coke bottle with dust on it
behind the bust of I think Empedocles—
Nobody from the neck down. O
Empedocles, don't jump into that volcano!
But jump he did, with his whole body,
bouncing off the rocks on the way down.
And you call this a philosopher?
I don't think he set a very good example.

-- Ron Padgett

Bruce Covey presents Lyn Hejinian

To tell the truth, Dear Reader, I feel a little silly attempting to introduce Lyn Hejinian to you!  Is she not the editor of her very own Best American Poetry annual collection (2004, my favorite of all!)?  Author or co-author of roughly three dozen books and chapbooks of poetry and essays?  Groundbreaking editor of Tuumba Press and now, Atelos?  Noted translator from Russian, literary theorist, and Berkeley Professor? Furthermore, I’ve been fretting about writing this little paragraph all week, thinking I’ll have nothing unique or groundbreaking to say (silly too to fret, considering how generous of a person Hejinian is, as evidenced by her avid support of emerging poets and small journals and presses like Coconut!  All I’ve come up with, partially inspired by the facebook-like biographical tone of the poem below, are a memory, an opinionated claim, and a little known detail.  The memory:  When she visited Atlanta, Lyn & I ate Thai food and talked about children and the process of adoption, Bush administration politics, and jazz.  A claim:  I believe Lyn Hejinian’s My Life is the most influential single volume of poetry by a living American author.  (Hey, to make this feature more interactive, would you, Reader, like to comment on whether you agree?)  A little known detail:  For three years, unbeknownst for much of that time to Lyn herself, there was a blog devoted to reproducing a line from My Life every day.  One of the things I admire most about her work is the way it changes from book to book—My Life is incredible, yes, but so is Oxota, Happily, A Border Comedy, all of her books, and her recent work (see Coconut 5). Oh, and finally, for a collective autobiography of 70s LangPo, including Lyn Hejinian, check out the Grand Piano series, just a click away.

11th Dream of July

Her waking state can be termed the true yellow cling peach of romance
In a word, anatomy
She will return as a harmless subject envied by none
Neighborhood: abandoned former battlefield
Social structure: artsy/inefficacious
Favorite leisure pastime: whining/watching rented movies
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings
They have been put in alphabetical order
Like a piece of ice on a hot stove
If it is a wild tune
I threw away punctuation
Never reject anything. Nothing has been proved
Back into the city to find that lost serenity
I woke from it. Nothing anywhere lacked definition

-- Lyn Hejinian