Experimental Ruminations by Ali Znaidi

Experimental Ruminations by Ali Znaidi
Fowlpox Press, 2012

Yesterday I received an email from a poet in Tunisia named Ali Znaidi submitting his poetry chapbook Experimental Ruminations to me for a possible review on this site. I hadn’t heard of him before, but I searched for some of his work online and found some real treasures. Here’s the opening of “Talk to Me, Apple,” published in The Missing Slate.

Talk to me apple

before a hungry

mouth devours you.

Talk to me apple

before the sun

dries your skin.

Talk to me apple

before a knife

peels you from

extreme to extreme.

I’m really looking forward to reading his chapbook Experimental Ruminations. Here’s a link where you can download the chapbook for free.

Znaidi’s poems are raw in the best sense of the word: they’re strong and undisguised. They are not exquisite artifacts, like fine china, kept behind glass for some special occasion. His poems resemble the chipped plates and bent forks we use everyday because, as Znaidi’s poetry often reminds us, everyday is the true special occasion.

Keep track of Ali’s forthcoming work by visiting his blog.

And here’s his page at UniVerse showcasing some more poems.

The Complete Absence of Twilight by Howie Good

The Complete Absence of Twilight by Howie Good
MadHat Press, 2014

I remember discovering Howie Good’s poems here and there in various online journals and enjoying them immensely, but I didn’t realize how amazing his writing was until I read his chapbook of prose poems Strange Roads (Puddles of Sky Press, 2012). His work felt like someone took 6 of my favourite writers (Charles Simic, Franz Wright, Novica Tadic, Stuart Ross, James Tate, and Michael e. Casteels) and blended them onto a single page. And yet, at the same time, a Howie Good poem is its own breed of beast and sounds like no one else.

One of the interesting things about Howie Good’s poetry is sometimes a line from one poem will appear in another. For example, the poem “Shoot to Kill” starts with the line “A 9-year-old girl wearing a black-and-white Halloween costume was shot in the shoulder by a relative who mistook her for a skunk.” And the poem “Artificial Hells” has a slightly modified version of the same phrase as its penultimate line: “A 9-year-old Pennsylvania girl wearing a black-and-white Halloween costume was shot in the shoulder by a shotgun-wielding relative who mistook her for a skunk.” Almost the same, but not quite, and reading them back to back has a haunting effect similar to reading different headlines of the same tragedy. Or it’s like a broken pen in a washing machine, leaving its ubiquitous stain on different clothes. It creates a strange kaleidoscope effect. The imagery seems to be coming at the reader from all angles, and we surrender to it. 

His latest book is the chapbook The Complete Absence of Twilight from MadHat Press. I haven’t read it yet, but I will. And I know I’ll enjoy it when I do. Even without having read the book I recommend it to anyone looking for some good gasoline to throw on their inner fire.

Nothing More to Lose by Najwan Darwish

Nothing More to Lose by Najwan Darwish
NYRB Poets, 2014

A few weeks ago I visited Novel Idea, the independent bookstore in Kingston, Ontario, to pick up a book I ordered (Lisa Jarnot’s selected poems, Joie de Vivre, City Lights Spotlight No.9, 2014). While I was there I browsed through the bookshelves. A slim collection of poems caught my eye, Nothing More to Lose by Najwan Darwish, NYRB Poets, 2014, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid. I flipped through the pages, reading a poem or two, then put it back on the shelf and left. But something about the book continued to haunt me, and later at home I looked up some of Darwish’s poems online, finding lots of samples, especially at Poetry International. Here's a poem that stuck with me:

IN THE TRAP

The mouse in the trap says: 
History is not on my side
the reptiles are all agents of mankind
and all mankind is against me
and reality too is against me
Yet despite all this I have faith
my progeny will prevail 

Darwish's poems are banged-up and battered, bruised by the world, but there’s also something very lyrical and soothing about them. They’re like the finely tuned gears of a precise clock missing its hands. You don’t know what time it is, but you know the moment is now, and it won’t last long. Looking back I wish I’d bought the book. And if it’s still there the next time I visit Novel Idea I’ll get it without a second thought. Even though I haven’t read it yet I highly recommend this book.  

SKIN by Tone Skrjanec

Skin by Tone Skrjanec

Tavern Books, 2014

I organized my bookshelves the other day and found a chapbook called Sun on a Knee (Ugly Duckling Press, 2005) by a poet named Tone Skrjanec, and it reawakened my admiration for the writer. I googled Tone Skrjanec’s name and discovered he has a new book called Skin (Tavern Books, 2014) translated by Ana Pepelnik and Matthew Rohrer. Rohrer is one of my favourite poets, and it’s always exciting to watch him apply his remarkable poetic gifts to translation.

I found a sample of 4 poems from the book posted at Circumference, and reading them was like walking along a sidewalk after a storm, trying not to step on snapped power lines.

                         … i catch your fire only sometimes for a moment

in my palms. sometimes the night is black, the lights are out

yet everything glares and sparkles like we’re by the sea,

from one side sparkles the sea from the other, the world.

from [night is warm. it smell like boiled cabbage and krizia.]

The back cover copy of the book states:

"The underlying poetic procedure is assembly. His aim is to magnify and celebrate. His work in SKIN is humming with the landscape, the city, and as the title suggests, the human body. Škrjanec's is the poetry of a mindful observer."

 

I like those words, and reading the sample poems really inspired me to look around at my own life and see what I could magnify and celebrate. If the rest of the collection is anything like the 4 poems I read then I’m sure it’ll be an amazing book. I’m looking forward to reading it one of these days.