Poetry is impossible. Is it this pressure that makes me write it?




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vale Jackson Mac Low 1922-2004

Belatedly, wanting to acknowledge the passing of Jackson Mac Low last week. There's an obituary at The New York Times and here's more info on Mac Low . The poem below is from his series of Light Poems. 1ST LIGHT POEM: FOR IRIS -- 10 JUNE 1962 The light of a student-lamp sapphire light shimmer the light of a smoking-lamp Light from the Magellanic Clouds the light of a Nernst lamp the light of a naphtha-lamp light from meteorites Evanescent light ether the light of an electric lamp extra light Citrine light kineographic light the light of a Kitson lamp kindly light Ice light irradiation ignition altar light The light of a spotlight a sunbeam sunrise solar light Mustard-oil light
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Questions, but no answers: while editing a manuscript

I’m in the process of editing something so all these strange questions come for me. I have no answers. Well, not exactly. And not while I’m in the midst of this process. What might a book be saying or declaring? Is what it’s not saying as important? But how can we know what it’s not saying? Does a book actually say anything? Didn’t someone write? Well, did they? OK, does even the writer know what they re saying? Could you write a book about what the book isn’t about? What are the words not saying? Is it the words, each of them, or the phrases, or the sentences or lines? Who is or isn’t in the poem? Who is knocking on the door to come into the poem? (Oh, so, here’s a metaphor!) Who doesn’t give a shit? Are these simply random, stumbling questions? Are any questions random? Is it a return of the repressed? What are the book’s gestures? ‘Wo es war, soll ich werden’, anyone? Is the book a symptom of something? So, the book
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here and now

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There’s a new anthology of Australian poetry just hit the decks. I think the official publication date was early January, but there were plenty copies in bookshops before Christmas. I bought one in one of my favourite bookshops, Kinokuniya, in Sydney, in December. There’s some discussion about it going on Laurie Duggan’s blog , especially about the cover. I’m not so keen on the cover but others I know think that it’s fine. And there is always going to be the usual argument about who is in and who is out, and why. I've been left out of enough anthologies and been in a few (I'm in this one, for instance), and have said my piece on that a few times too many in the past, so perhaps it's not the place to join that discussion for the moment. I’m more interested in John Kinsella’s comment in one of his introductory essays (you can read all of this essay on the Penguin website ): “The publication or presentation of innovative verse-novels, prose poetry, hypertextual poetry, multim
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