Tag: poetry

Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

December 14, 2012 by E. Rowan

I’ve been putting together a syllabus for an undergraduate poetry workshop, and I decided I wanted to teach a section on speculative poetry. It’s something I’ve been interested in recently, and want to learn a lot more about. (Suggestions?) Anyway, I was excited to see that the Pulitzer Prize was given to a young, black woman poet writing speculative poetry earlier this year, and so I got Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. I haven’t read any of her earlier work, […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal, Teaching • Tags: Life on Mars, poetry, poetry syllaubs, Pulitzer Prize, science fiction, science fiction poetry, speculative poetry, teaching, teaching poetry, Tracy K. Smith

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Red Missed Aches… by Jennifer Tamayo

November 27, 2012 by E. Rowan

There are several narratives at work here: one of gender identity, the feminist body; a second of immigration and national body; a third of multi-linguality and the fragmented tongue; and finally the images constructing their own narrative of collage and erasure, a body of memory half-erased. This is a complex, surprising, astonishing, engaging work. Clearly rooted in contemporary feminism, there is a scary-sharp intellect at work here that makes the book almost a little intimidating. Like you know there’s a […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: avant garde, feminist, hybrid, jennifer tamayo, poetry, red missed aches, red missed aches read missed aches red mistakes read mistakes, switchback books

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Anomalous 7: Translation

November 16, 2012 by E. Rowan

Well, despite all sorts of technical difficulties including no internet this week, we launched the newest, latest issue of Anomalous! And I’m so happy about this issue. It has some really amazing artwork by Mike Edrington, for starters: After Life, a series of photographs made at the University of Iowa Natural History Museum and super eerie. It also has one of the coolest translation features we’ve done. Last year I read engulf — enkindle by Anja Utler translated by Kurt Beals (Burning Deck) […]

Categories: Poetry, Publishing, Translation • Tags: alexander blok, anja ulter, Anomalous, Anomalous Press, brandon holmquest, burning deck, engulf enkindle, essay, experimental, fiction, gaston fernandez, german, german poetry, interactive poetry, jen zoble, jennifer zoble, Kurt Beals, melina kameric, memoir, mike edrington, multiple translation, non-fiction, online journal, online literary journal, online magazine, online publishing, pierre menard, poetry, prose, russell scott valentino, russell valentino, russian, serbo-croatian, serbo-croatian fiction, serbo-croatian literature, short story, spanish, translation

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The Sound Mirror by Andrew Joron

November 13, 2012 by E. Rowan

The insistant wordplay at first seems a little self-pleased, nearly insignificant. The challenge of what Joron is doing is to bridge the gap between seemingly-nonsensical wordplay and philosophical reflection. As the collection progresses and the sound becomes slightly more open, less enamored of itself, I am forced to slow down and engage with not just the sounds but the saying of the words. If two facing mirrors = infinity Then I have seen the back of your head, Beauty Hunter. […] His […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: andrew joron, erica mena, flood editions, philosophical poetry, philosophy, poetry, science fiction poetry, the sound mirror

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Micrographia by Emily Wilson

November 12, 2012 by E. Rowan

I got Emily Wilson’s books because I have a letterpressed broadside of hers, made by the inestimable Sara Langworthy, my former printing teacher at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. The poem on the broadside is “Small Study,” and the language in it is so lush, so finely wrought, that I wanted to read more. She has two books, The Keep and Micrographia and though I’ve been reading The Keep (her first book) longer, I’ve found it much slower going. Micrographia however was a faster read. I […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: broadside, emily wilson, erica mena, micrographia, poetry, sara langworthy, the keep, university of iowa press

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Littoral by Giles Goodland

November 8, 2012 by E. Rowan

I found this book through the Oxford English Dictionary, which quotes from the book for the definition of the following words: alterne (n); letty (adj.); old land (n); pack (n1); pantheistical (adj); piend (n); planated (adj); puberulent (adj); quop (v); rames (n); ravel (n2); remanent (adj); resection (n); ripple mark (n); ruga (n); rush (n1); tardigrade (n and adj). Tardigrade was the word I was looking up, and I was intrigued by the title in the quotation, and so ordered […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: giles goodland, littoral, poetry, prose, reading journal

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Gratification, at what cost?

November 7, 2012 by E. Rowan

I just did something I feel terrible about. I bought two books from Amazon. The books are not used, they’re not out of print, and they shouldn’t be particularly hard to find. They’re both published by independent presses (as are most of the books I buy and read), both good-sized and (I thought) well-distributed presses (Counterpath and City Lights). And I didn’t start at Amazon, to be fair. I started by calling the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, MA, where I go […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Amazon, Grolier, Harvard Bookstore, independent bookstores, poetry

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Voyager

November 6, 2012 by E. Rowan

I just finished reading Srikanth Reddy’s astonishing erasure Voyager. I’d love to teach this book, and possibly I will this summer in a course on artistic appropriation. Because I think this is the best example of an erasure-text I’ve seen. It’s so wholly controlled, there’s no question that the work of the poem is inseparable from the poetic intent of the erasure work. Still, it’s clearly engaged with its source text, constrained without being limited. A commentary not just on its source text, but […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: erasure, experimental, poetry, political, srikanth reddy, voyager

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What Counts

November 5, 2012 by E. Rowan

I recently ran into one of my former poetry professors, someone who had a profound impact on my development as a writer, and a reader, of poetry. I’m a notoriously lousy contact, so we hadn’t seen each other in a while, and he was happily surprised to learn that I was just starting an MFA in poetry. He was very surprised that I was at Brown. I am, according to him, the first creative writer from my undergraduate institution, UMass […]

Categories: Poetry • Tags: brown, experimental, experimental poetry, experimental writing, innovative writing, joyelle mcsweeney, MFA, poetry

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Begin Again

November 2, 2012 by E. Rowan

Well, it’s been a while. I moved, twice, landing in Providence, where I’m happily reading and writing away towards an MFA in poetry at Brown. So I think the tenor of this is exploration is going to shift a little for me. I’m still deeply engaged in translation (I have some new translation work out in Words Without Borders – stunning short story by Ricardo Menéndez Salmón I’ve translated as Life in Flames), that will be apparent. And I’m still invested in […]

Categories: Poetry, Publishing, Translation • Tags: Anomalous, Anomalous Press, brown, erica mena, MFA, poet, poetry, Pushcart, pushcart rankings

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E. Rowan Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

Tag: poetry

Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith

Red Missed Aches… by Jennifer Tamayo

Anomalous 7: Translation

The Sound Mirror by Andrew Joron

Micrographia by Emily Wilson

Littoral by Giles Goodland

Gratification, at what cost?

Voyager

What Counts

Begin Again