Critical Reflections

A long-awaited follow-up to the Canadian poet's first volume of criticism, North of Intention (recently in reprint from Roof Books), Steve McCaffery's Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics doesn't disappoint. With rigor and a spellbinding range of reference, McCafferey explores language as it operates beyond the control of the conscious reader or writer. Whether sussing out the relationship of Milton editor Richard Bentley to postructuralism, or of prosodic master Joshua Steele to Derrida's Grammatology, or looking beneath the surfaces of figures like Sade, Jackson Mac Low, Charles Olson and Emmanuel Levinas (for whom ethical relations with the "other" are negotiated in the space of a grapheme). While heavily polysyllabic, the book offers the attentive reader with an interest in radical poetic theory a wealth of rapid insights. (Northwestern Univ., $29.95 paper 328p ISBN 0-8101-1790-8; $89.95 cloth -1789-4)

Spin Cycle: Selected Essays and Reviews 1989—1999, the first prose collection from poet Chris Stroffolino (Stealer's Wheel), eschews literary criticism as a method of canonization or categorization and argues against theory-based dissections of texts, preferring a kind of generative criticism that, in his own introductory words, might "further the discussion of contemporary poetry and its relation to culture." Thus it makes sense that he discusses, in 23 essays, everyone from James Tate and John Yau to Erica Hunt, John Godfrey, Jennifer Moxley and Barrett Watten—writers who choose to explore and explode the boundaries of and between genre, narrative, identity and social critique. Stroffolino is suspicious of the notion of literary lineage, believing it to be a heavy handed method of academic and avant-garde side-choosing. He portrays ideas of writing and, just as crucially, living with writing as a series of examinable choices. (Spuyten Duyvil [SPD, dist.] $14 paper 265p ISBN 1-881471-64-0; Oct.)

Spanish-Language Diaspora

Replete with image-laden longing, Francisco X. Alarcón's Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes/Sonetos a la locura y otras penas, a bilingual collection translated by Francisco Aragón, has calculated as well as accidental impact, where words separate from their speaker: "when I say, 'here hums another voice/ that dreams and delights in cornfields,'/ I'm unnailing the shutters/ trying to block the view." Alarcón, who teaches at University of California at Davis, has won the American Book Award and the Chicano Literary Prize, among other honors. (Creative Arts, $15 paper 78p ISBN 0-88739-450-7; Sept.)

First writing during the unrest and activism of early 20th-century Catalonia, Josep Carner (1884—1970) was later pressed into government service but continued to write poetry, becoming a model for younger Catalan poets. His book-length poem Nabí (Hebrew for "prophet"), published in Buenos Aires in 1941, now appears in an English/Spanish edition, translated by J.L. Gili (1907—1998). Based on the biblical story of Jonah, this deeply religious poem explores the complexities of faith, dogma, uncertainty and forgiveness through the experience of a prophet who, "recalcitrant,/ and still confused," talks back to God: "Neither Your threats frighten nor Your comfort revives,/ and You appear less resolute,/ like one that wanting to sell a rug/ brings down the price." Carner imagines Jonah's dialogue with Jehovah throughout his travails, and his internal transition: "in the belly of a fish, I have faith.// ...I felt sheltered like an unborn child." An introduction by Arthur Terry provides a fascinating background for this rich work. (Anvil [Midpoint Trade, dist.], $12.95 paper 120p ISBN 0-85646-330-2; Oct.)

Distinguished Cuban poet Pablo Armando Fernández makes a meeting place for different cultures, for myth and history, for nationality and exile, for sorrow and pride in Parables: The Selected Poems, culled from his 40-year career and introduced by Margaret Atwood. Fernández often alludes to biblical rhetoric and imagery as he gives precise descriptions of vague icons ("What the dead mouths say is that man/ came in the change of light") and sweeping political configurations ("Revolution,/ in the beginning are the words,/ heroic, it is difficult to tell the facts"). Though his work has been published in English-language periodicals like the New Left Review and Arts in Society, this is his first Spanish/English volume. Recipient of the Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1996 for lifetime accomplishment, and formerly the Cultural Counselor to the Cuban Embassy in London, Fernández has returned to Cuba. (Mosaic, $15 paper 220p ISBN 0-88962754-1; Sept.)

Recent Experiments

Albert Murray's "Aubades: epic exits and other twelve bar riffs" evokes the "freight train" and "sawmill whistles" of hard labor before the "singer" gets around to romance. In the next piece, the blues are abandoned in favor of a pert, mock-officious speech peppered with civic jargon, delivering dangerously offhand opinions about scarecrows and "municipal cleanup budgets/ for red letter day celebrations/ of legendary heroic actions." In Conjunctions and Reiterations, Murray (The Spyglass Tree), a novelist and nonfiction writer and winner of the National Book Critics Circle's Ivan Sandorff Award for lifetime achievement, displays a terrific range of voice, rhythm and interest. Whether in the slow blues refrains or in a later poem that mixes academy-speak with black vernacular, his prosody always seamlessly supports his content, his eye and ear jointly keeping time. (Pantheon, $20 80p ISBN 0-375-42141-6; Nov. 21)

Experimenting in the "fantastic traffic of narratives," esteemed poet Robert Creeley (Windows) and artist Archie Rand collaborated on the making of Drawn & Quartered. For one day Creeley, undertook a somewhat improvisational, chance-based writing process, riffing off of Rand's 54 lithographs, one quatrain for each drawing—mostly watery figures can be solitary, pressed en masse into a box seat, standing playing a flute, riding a horse, etc. Creeley's accompaniments are by turns silly, sorrowful, exclamatory, enigmatic. All of them use rhyme, often of the slant variety: "Have you known each other long?/ Long before you were born!/ Have you both been happy in marriage?/ I think it's proven a commodious carriage." (Granary, $15.95 paper 112p ISBN 1-887123-45-8; Oct.)

Affiliated with the Poetry Project of St. Mark's and co-founder of United Artists Books, prolific New York School poet Lewis Warsh (The Origin of the World) offers Touch of the Whip. Short, intimate, restrained prose narratives take in Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Steiglitz, or bereft, pill-popping lovers ("two people with our feet on the ground and hair on our heads"). Slow-paced, fragmentary verse is composed of long, unconnected declarative sentences: "After you left, my hair turned gray in a few days// Perhaps we want to put ourselves back in the picture." Long committed to experimental poetry, Warsh further distinguishes his varied oeuvre with this varied collection. (Singing Horse [SPD, dist.], $14 paper 112p ISBN 0-935162-21-6; Sept.)

For several years a fluctuating group of poets has participated in an exercise whereby they write at an appointed time every day, wherever they are. Culling writings from the middle of the night, "to see what 3:15 [a.m.] mind looked like," The 3:15 Experiment presents an unedited month's worth of these writings from the project's four originators: Bernadette Mayer (The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters), Jen Hofer, Danika Dinsmore and Lee Ann Brown (Polyverse). Readers are privy to the way "[s]entences make and unmake slowly," to the writers' dreams and imaginings, their waking first perceptions, ideas, memories, rhythms. It's heartening to watch this energetic, curious quartet in action. (Owl Press [SPD, dist.] $14 paper 124p ISBN 0-9669430-3-1; Sept.)