Eileen R. Tabios. The Inventor: A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography.
East Rockaway, New York: Marsh Hawk Press, 2023. 110 pages. Paperback. $18.00.
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Poetry
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Fast Talk With Writers is a collection of conversations with 20th century writers working at the height of their powers in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. They talk about their intentions, influences and mentors, politics, myths, annoyances, best sellers, and their craft. Interview with Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Robert Bly, David Citino, Evan S. Connell, Annie Dillard, Carlos Fuentes, Donald Hall, Charles Johnson, Gordon Lish, Reginald McKnight, Joyce Carol Oates, Edouard Roditi, Ronald Sukenick, Eudora Welty, and Paul West. George Myers Jr.’s books include Atmopheric Landscapes of North America, Worlds Without End and Mixers: On Hybrid Writing.
As far as I can tell, my first “A line from…” poem used as its prompt words found in a Ron Silliman piece. Jackson Mac Low, Charles Mingus, Paracelsus, Gunter Grass, Friedrich Durrenmatt, & Calvin Coolidge weren’t far behind. But three years before them came “A poem beginning with a line from Foucault” & “A poem ending with a line from Pablo Neruda.” & before them all — in my multiverse, at least — was Robert Duncan’s “A Poem Beginning with a Line from Pindar.”
There is a history which is there to be taken advantage of. Chance meetings, long associations, stochastic processes. Google as partner on the dance floor. Out of it, along one — dare I say it? — line, have come more than 500 of these “A line from…” poems, encompassing poets, musicians, politicians of many persuasions, scientists, painters, actors, philosophers, as well as all of the American Presidents & some of the sycophantic staff of one of the more recent.
So who’ll have the next fangoogle with me?
Mark Young
(issues 1 to 70)
Planet M
ISBN: 978-1-7368160-6-6
$19.95 USD
94 pages
Sampler for with the slow-moving turtle…A FREE DOWNLOAD…
I find the Cantos of Ezra Pound wide-ranging in subject & style, & note that they borrow heavily from the work of others, from Homer & Chinese sources through to contemporary historical records. Pound has the ability to blend & merge these — often quite extensive — quotes with his own rhetoric; which has a great deal of depth & beauty, & so becomes great feedstock for basing a series of centos on. The poems in this collection, written over the last six years, have the Cantos as their source — not just the words of Pound but those of those others who are embedded. Two bites of the cherry, as it were; & I hope my CENTONES reflect favorably on us all. — Mark Young
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