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Fecund by Katie Ebbitt

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Fecund is composed of two sections/long poems: “Hysterical Pregnancy,” which originally appeared in chapbook form, and “Fecund,” a long poem with forty sections set off by bold faced, upper case Roman numerals. There’s one line in the book with 8 words, but otherwise the lines are exceedingly spare (1-5 words), leaving a sea of breathing white space on each page.   These short lines and spacious pages bespeak a tendency in current left margin-justified, broken line poetry of reformulating the line as a stanza made of several short lines:   to walk public ground   see a middle name   cut in stone mothering cementation   Ebbitt’s lines are cosmetically minimal, as though “cut in stone,” cemented. In actuality, though, the lines have a roving quality that, in my reading, ushers you on to the next piece quickly. Rather than feeling overly-crafted and tight, these short lines instead feel unfinished (uncemented) and open, liable for mo...
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Cahoots, direr than we'd-- by Thomas Delahaye

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While reading  Cahoots ,   I was also reading  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland .  In the Introduction to the edition of  Alice  I have, Hugh Naughton distinguishes  Alice  readers who “simply wish to enjoy the story as a story, and rebuff all efforts to interpret it” from readers who feel the work’s nonsense warrants interpretation.  “Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”    The latter readers feel, Naughton writes, “that it is meaning and not meaninglessness which makes Carroll’s nonsense expressive.” Therefore, the nonsense that characterizes Carroll’s work may be read as the characteristic element of the story, driving it forward enjoyably (if meaninglessly), without pressure to be interpreted. On the other hand, nonsense is the work of something meaningful, deeper, that could be interpreted.    “The first thing I’ve got to do,” said Alice to herself...
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Failures of the Poets by Anthony Robinson

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  “Foreign Object Damage,” a poem about an eighth of the way through  Failures of the Poets , begins: “We are not driven to belief by sadness, / but to sadness by belief.” Rather than belief offering consolation for sadness (redemption), the sadness comes simply because you believe. While these lines may be read religiously, the way I heard them was worldly in nature. If you didn’t believe in the world  being  something other than it is, you wouldn’t be sad.    The world Robinson describes in “Foreign Object Damage” is a world “of coffee cups, zip drives, // & too many fighter jets.” Lest that diagnosis be read as indication of a particular stance about consumption, technology, and war, the poem immediately changes course, with Robinson writing: “Or not enough fighter / jets,” at which point he confesses that    it’s become so hard   to tell: to tell anything anymore is a grave & heavy program.    Rather than sadness borne o...
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