I recently received in the mail a copy of Kent Johnson’s newish book from Shears­man, Homage to the Last Avant-​Garde. It’s some­thing of a selected poems in minia­ture, col­lect­ing work from other books like Epi­gram­mi­ti­tis and I Once Met, as well as one poem, “Into the Heat-​Forged Air,” which first appeared in the last issue of Chicago Review.

Anyone who knows Kent at all will rec­og­nize that the advice he offers his son Brooks in “Sentimental Piscatorial”—”stay low, walk slow, / and lay the fly right along the veloc­ity // changes”—is not advice that he seems ever to have much trou­bled him­self with, a fact the world is richer for. His poems are full of prose, indi­rec­tion, and fun, and his jaunty mock eru­di­tion (like the appear­ance of Roberto Bolaño’s vis­ceral real­ists in a foot­note to “A God”) is pos­si­ble only because he’s got more than enough of the real thing.

I like Kent’s work because he refuses to hide the ambi­tion and earnesty that drive him, but what sets him apart from his peers is that he also does not mask the embar­rass­ment and self-​recrimination that those twin qual­i­ties inevitably inspire. This alone makes the book worthy of rec­om­men­da­tion, and it’s just barely enough to for­give the fact that dig­i­tal emu­nc­tion didn’t make it into “Poetry Blogs (of the Fourth Gen­er­a­tion) in Zürich.”

If you’re still not con­vinced, read Linh Dinh’s take on the book here and then buy it here.

In lieu of orig­i­nal thought, a few items of pos­si­ble interest:

+ John Conroy is back! But he’s on WBEZ now instead of writ­ing for the Chicago Reader. (This is not exactly news, but a story today–not up yet on the WBEZ web­site–reminded me to men­tion it.)

+ Emily Wilson (the clas­si­cist, not the poet) reviews John Tipton’s Ajax: “He suc­ceeds bril­liantly at cre­at­ing a living, con­tem­po­rary Sopho­cles. His ver­sion is a chill­ing mirror.” (The original’s in The Nation, but trapped behind a paywall.)

+ Marty Riker inter­views the Flood fel­lows: “Just for the record, I was not, in fact, an angry young man. Con­fused and obnox­ious, but not really angry.”

+ Auf­gabe’s edi­tors undo “Numbers Trouble”: “Should we be thank­ful or irri­tated that the draft is gendered?”

+ Danielle Allen speaks for her­self on the Obama Muslim smear: “Worse than mud.”

+ Kent John­son is still not sure about “A True Account of Talk­ing to the Sun at Fire Island”: “‘It is a real mys­tery, that poem.’”

I’m very pleased to announce the launch of Chicago Review 53:4 & 54:1/2, a 368-page triple issue with a spe­cial sec­tion ded­i­cated to the life and work of Bar­bara Guest. The issue costs $18 and may be pur­chased here, or you can sub­scribe to CR for a year–good for three issues–for just $25 here.

The Bar­bara Guest fea­ture includes three pre­vi­ously unpub­lished plays by Guest and a port­fo­lio (edited by Cather­ine Wagner) of five uncol­lected poems. The fea­ture also includes crit­i­cal and per­sonal responses to Guest’s work by Charles Altieri, Eileen Myles, Donald Revell, John Wilkin­son, Mei-​mei Berssen­brugge, Martha Ronk, Andrea Brady, Brenda Hill­man, Nancy Robbin, Patri­cia Dien­st­frey and Rena Rosen­wasser, and Gar­rett Caples.

The issue also includes:

[Read more]

It’s hard to know if we have talent. Here and there, a drunken
grad stu­dent expresses admiration….
—Kent John­son, “To John Bradley”

If you’re read­ing this, chances are you’ve prob­a­bly already seen Linh Dinh’s encomium to Kent John­son at the Har­riet blog. If not, go have a look and remind your­self of what you already know—in Dinh’s words, “Kent John­son is a deadly seri­ous, bril­liant subversive.”