E.ratio 23 2017 - New Publication Announced

Contemporary experimentalist tour de force Gregory St. Tomasino introduces yet another astounding issue of E.ratio, one of the several interesting and captivating experimental poetry journals currently in publication in the US, no. 23. These poems are fresh, imagistic, filled with language play, and a convalescence of logos and affect that infects the reader with a kind of intellectual passion. Well, I admit to speaking from experience here.

Poetry & Water: A Book Tour through Ireland

To launch the publication of Thin Matter, Alifair Skebe went on a motocross book tour of Ireland, reading at various sites associated with nature and the ancient, indigenous cultures of each region of Ireland. The book is very much aligned with the intersectionality of the metaphysical with natural spaces and natural imagery. This post is a chronicle of the readings at those spaces that resonate poetry through water, integrally attached to the ancient, sacred feminine.

Reading at the protected, ancient Druidic gardens at Blarney Castle.

Poetry Bay Fall/Winter 2016 - New Publication Announced

What a fantastic publication! I'm so honored to be included in the Fall/Winter issue of Poetry Bay online. I hope you'll check out my poem "Do Not Remember Me/As Disaster" --the title taken from a line from a Charles Bernstein poem and the last in a three part series.

In this issue, I am quite taken with Hettie Jone's "The Driver" and Joe Weil's "Green Bottle." All around, a fabulous issue.

Interview with Barbara Walters' Alien Stunt Double

November 1, 2008

You have just published your second book of poetry. What is it about?

El Agua Es la Sangre de la Tierra is a long poem sequence that captures the landscape of the Albuquerque, New Mexico region. The poem weaves the thin story line of a girl who was murdered at the Sandia Mountains amongst deep, lyric images of ruin, colonization, and fertility.

Did you really write the poem?

Yes, alien child, I did, although at times, it feels like a dream. Or a dream of an alien probe taken on a ship in the Ruidoso area. It was a kind of dream composition.

Lest You Believe That One Person Cannot Make a Difference

...listen to these words in excerpt from Robert F. Kennedy's 1966 "Day of Affirmation" speech to South African students: "Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." The full transcript of Kennedy's speech can be found at this link: http://www.rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/unicape.php

Matuschka and Cindy Sherman Retrospectively: From Dolls to Women

A labyrinthine collection of female images in various photographic styles does not quite capture Matuschka's autobiographical retrospective. The walls of the pocket Sohn Fine Art Gallery pack iconic photos across the 40-year span of her career. Light filters from the picture windows and the open door into the two white rooms, lending a clinical feel to the place. Tucked into a corner next to some jewelry cases hangs the famous Beauty out of Damage, as though it were just another photograph in the series, one amongst her many important works.

Looking back at these highlights from her career, it becomes apparent that Matuschka's portraiture begins to show agency, only after she gained notoriety for the photograph of her breast cancer scar. In so many of her photos, her self-image is passive. Even in Beauty out of Damage, the artist's face is turned away from the camera, as though she hides from both the camera's gaze and her wounding. As cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the somber image becomes a political statement, and its critical reception read the image as representing “agency.” Although a passive positioning of the body, Matuschka's image ironically shifts from her identity as model, photography assistant, and object, to one that actively expresses with the intent to raise cancer awareness.

Hunger and "Law"

Kafka’s parable “Before the Law” can be read as metonymic, metaphoric, and symbolic. In this, the writing is a fiction or an allegory for something ineffable, this experience of “Law,” expressly the “Law” that exists only for the individual to understand. The doorkeeper says, “No one but you could have been admitted here, since this entrance was meant for you alone.” The doorkeeper indicates that the door is a gateway to an entrance that the “country man” ultimately possesses: his entrance meant for himself alone.

Truth and Writing

A series on thinking through Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write

We have developed ways of coping with our oppression in society. We cover up our true self with things that do not truly reveal our thoughts and beliefs, unless we are in the presence of like-minded individuals or persons we can truly trust.

"Total Loss"

Memory and Perception III

Hejinian offers a different form of witnessing experience in Writing Is an Aid to Memory. Of course, authoring texts in the twentieth century is an altogether different matter. Given the advancements and discoveries in time and space, energy and the mind, over one hundred years marks a significant shift in the affects of these discoveries on thinking about perception and authorial point of view. 

Memory and Perception II

Playing the Acoustic Guitar

to march across strings

fretted glide

silken web

and gangly leg

who tilts his head

to bend of string

and music curve

sways on bobbing neck

A conceit poem amongst the early notes for this series. 

Memory and Perception, I.

Continuity and brevity – to go on: This series of posts will look at the poetics of perception in the work of Wordsworth, Lyn Hejinian, and Gertrude Stein, among others.

There must be sufficient reason to continue – having something to say, a PURPOSE. This is basic composition. To narrate is to tell a story, an event, a happening; something happens or happened. And the lyric is a brief descriptive moment of epiphany, discovery, and emotion. Nothing happens. Save in the mind, in place of the speaker, persona or between the speaker and another, perhaps one who s/he views. I am thinking of the Wordsworth poem “The Solitary Reaper,” wherein the speaker is looking on – he witnesses the field worker and has an emotional experience in his perception. But the happening is truncated. It is not a story per se of an event unfolding but the story of the speaker’s mind and the fluidity of thoughts and feelings attached to the experience. The reader is invited to have a similar experience inasmuch as the poet-witness ministers. One is not drawn into his experience, because his is a telling; rather one is invited to have an experience of the mind.

Poetry, Memory, and the Arts

The following essay is a collection of notes written in preparation for the poetry performance “Prophesy,” written and performed by Alifair Skebe at The Fuze Box in Albany, New York on March 19, 2004.

Photo by Dan Wilcox



Looking for the Gods

It’s the recognition that makes remembering special.

Shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies, we know how to speak many false things as though they were true; but we know, when we will, to utter true things.
The Muses, Hesiod, Theogony.

Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, begets nine daughters known as The Muses.

Poets can gain admittance to both collective memory and personal memory through a creative process understood as The Muses. When invoked, praised, and worshipped, the muses speak through the body and art of the poet. Through inspiration, a taking in of the breath, their voices move through the body with free access to the mind. However, when the poet tries to capture them to possess them, a kind of madness ensues. The muse is lost; the poet despairs, or worse even, spiritually dies like Hesiod’s fanatical king who falls, dashing his head against a rock.

Poetry Reading Tonight

I am featured reader this Wednesday, June 10, at the Live From the Living Room open-mic. The event is hosted by Don Levy, and will be held at the Capital District Gay and Lesbian Community Center, 322 Hudson Ave., Albany, NY, at 7:30pm.

Poetry Reading--New Series

Come out this Friday, February 20, 6:30pm to a New Poetry Reading Series Hosted by Douglas Rothschild.

Hear six poets including me, Natalie Knight, Anna Eyre, Randall Horton, Dan Nester, & Cara Benson!

Townsend Park Bakery Cafe, Washington Ave. Albany, NY.

directions: on washington ave. about halfway between lark & henry Johnson blvd. on the south side of the street.

NEMLA Annual Convention--Paper Presentation

I'm delivering a paper at the NEMLA 40th Anniversary annual convention at the end of the month in Boston:

"Spitting at the Firing Squad": Severance and Dependence Shape Gwendolyn Brooks' New World Woman

Friday 2/27/2009; 11:45am; Panel "The Face that Moves in My Mirror" Turning Rage inside out in American Literature and Culture; Chair: Susan Gilmore

New Poems Published

Check out Rhino and The Louisiana Review.

http://www.rhinopoetry.org/pages/magazinemain.html

"Taking Her to Lunch"

http://www.lsue.edu/LA-REVIEW/

"Spring Visit at Tezcuco"

Finishing Line Press Proudly Announces the publication of:

El Agua Es La Sangre de la Tierra (Water is the Blood of the Earth) by Alifair Skebe is a limited edition chapbook of poems written in English. The collection's subject is the New Mexico landscape around Albuquerque and considers colonization and the vibrancy of 'native' images still present in the landscape. Immaculate Conception, the book’s cover art, is an original painting by Ms. Skebe.

“stream of blood
on soil
remembers
a doubling”

El Agua Es la Sangre de la Tierra is in advanced/pre-publication sales through February 8, 2008. Pre-publication sales will determine the number of copies printed by the publisher. Please make sure you purchase a copy before February 8, 2008. All sales during the pre-publication period include free shipping within the USA (please add $3.00 for orders shipped internationally). After February 8, 2008, please add $2.00 shipping. Books will be shipped after March 7th.

To order, you may complete and mail the following order form, along with payment, to Finishing Line Press, or you may visit www.finishinglinepress.com and click on “NEW RELEASES & FORTHCOMING”. Authors are listed alphabetically.

If you have already purchased the book, please consider forwarding this announcement to friends or institutions who may be interested

Order Form

Please send me ______ copy/copies of El Agua Es La Sangre De La Tierra (“Water is the Blood of the Earth”), by Alifair Skebe, at $12.00 each (add $3.00 shipping fee for international orders and $2.00 shipping fee for orders placed after February 8th).

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