Dutrope; Me; Li-Young Lee

Thanks to C. Dale Young (who learned about it from another blogger), I've discovered Duotrope, extraordinary site listing lit mags, response times, etc. As CDY was saying, it's more searchable that Jeff Baher's compilation. It's also more international (it has quite a few Canadian magazines), links to websites, etc. I think I'll put it on top of my magazines list.

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I've lined up a gig at Noches de Poesia, which has fast become Montreal's premier multicultural poetry venue, and one Montreal's premier poetry venues period. (Well, there are only about three or four of them.) I'll be reading along with four others (as well as performing some music) on Wed., Nov. 1 starting at 6:30. Further details here.

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This weekend I read through Li-Young Lee's Rose, which I recently received in the mail along with a batch of other books. I love this poet's emotional warmth and depth, his disarming ease and innocence of expression. Poignant works about childhood and father -- a kind of looming (yet disturbing) hero-figure -- blend into beautiful poems about his own fatherhood, woven together by such elemental motifs as hair, blossoms, fruit -- and despite what that descrption may suggest, nary a word trite or precious (tho he he does verge at a couple of points. Good for him, I say.)

The reason I ordered Rose is that about a year ago in The Sun I came across some damned good poems from that book. Here's one of them. (And here's an exerpt of the interview with Lee in that same issue -- and I see now that Ilya Kaminsky is one of the interviewers. Interesting.)

Of course, it's often best to read first books first: that's where so many poets quite definitively define themselves, and from what I had read of Lee, I wanted to see that. Now I'm inclined to order his latest, perhaps, and work backwards.

P.S. I see also now that there's an interview with Li-Young Lee in the current issue of Rock Salt Plum Review. Very interesting. I'll have to read it when I have a free moment. My essay is also there, but funny, it didn't leap out at me that Lee was featured in the same issue perhaps because I hadn't read much of him yet.

Dancing In Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky

David turned me on to this poet back in October. I finally received the book through Amazon in early January, and read it straight through during a busy crazy week when I had no time to post anything of significance. I was saving ideas for a lengthy review, but since have passed on to other things. David's mini-review is in any case so well crafted and has such interesting links that that it seems almost redundant to say more -- except read this amazing poet! For starters, I'll post this poem here, which begins his collection. Astonishing that someone born in 1977, who spoke no English until about 10 years ago when he immigrated to the US from Russia with his family, and who besides all that has been deaf since the age of 4, could compose word-music in his adopted language of such wondrous skill and depth:

AUTHOR’S PRAYER by Ilya Kaminsky

If I speak for the dead, I must
leave this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.

If I speak of them, I must walk
on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through the rooms
without touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking, “What year is it?”
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition, and the darkest days
must I praise.

David's onto something

David (Eclectic Refrigerator) has done a couple of exquisite posts lately in a blog-collage style we've dubbed blogollage, or webstiche. Check today's post about a certain amazing new poet named Ilya Kaminsky or more particularly, his commemorative post two days ago on Thelonious Monk.