Three Things I Have that I Think You Would Like to Have

1. Small Town X a lovely journal with great poems by some of my more recent faves Jess Mynes, Gina Myers & Joe Massey (his poems seem almost monstrous in relation to what I've seen in the past--fourteen lines!). Some interesting poem-with-occasional-image from Sabrina Calle. There are great poems by new-to-me Mairead Byrne, who works the Tate/Simic/Edson fabulist/surrealist mode from a Irish political point of view that is truly affecting.

2. Speaking of Jess Mynes (& kind of Joe Massey since their first pub was a set of his poems) Frame #2 is pretty damn wonderful. With its beautiful & simple hand made construction & hand-fitting size the form of this magazine again fits the contents. Frame seem most interested in the epigrammatically leaning poetry, but not airy elliptical stuff, nor imagistic snapshots. It's a kind of NY school approach to the personal in a small space. For most of the ten poets the page seems like a, uh, frame to draw your attention to the work of the lines & when it works adds pressure to the poem (OK, Michael Schiavo & Logan Ryan Smith don't really fit this, but I'm trying to make a generalization here). I'm particularly taken with Aaron Tieger's poem "Sunday Shift" & Amie Keddy's poems that almost seem simple but have a fascinatingly disturbed foundation. (Oh, Jess Mynes is also in it, which is why I had that weak segue.)

3. Cabinet is the cocktail party conversation that I will participate in for eternity after I die.

School starts on Monday. Teaching. Learning. I'm sitting in on Anthony Hawley's Avant Garde Poetics class & reading a lot of Levinas for the first time in my Jewish Phil class. Both of these make me excited.