Poetry Makes Things Happen : Poems, Essays, Texts, Afterwords, Blurbs, Notes

Leftwich, Jim

ISBN 10: 1938521692 / ISBN 13: 9781938521690

Published by Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 42572256-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Poetry Makes Things Happen : Poems, Essays, Texts, Afterwords, Blurbs, Notes
• Publisher: Luna Bisonte Prods
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1938521692
• ISBN 13: 9781938521690
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

For Jim Leftwich, the boundary between poetry and criticism, or more accurately, between poetry and writing about poetry, is extremely porous. This book should make that very clear; in fact, here it is sometimes hard to tell whether a text is “original poetry” or his writing “about poetry”. Which suggests that the distinction may not be all that important. (Another such book is one he wrote focused on my own work, or using my work as a springboard, Containers Projecting Multitudes: Expositions on the Poetry of John M. Bennett, 2019.) This is perhaps an outgrowth of his practice of making “hacks” of others' poetry and texts, which is in itself a means of entering into, and remaking aspects of, another's work, using a wide variety of processes ranging from the arbitrary and deliberate, to the improvisational and purely intuitive. What this does is to turn the process of writing about poetry on its head. Instead of applying a preordained critical method or theory to a text, Leftwich presents, as it were in “real time”, an account of what it was like, of what happened, when he read the text. We thus have a narration of a real experience of reading. For me, and for many of us in this new literary avant garde, this is vastly more interesting and useful than the use of a text to support or illustrate a particular literary (or other) ideology. Leftwich's work in this regard is unique, exciting, and represents real progress in the “problem” of “how to read poetry”, and of how to write it as well. -¬ John M. Bennett

About the Author

Jim Leftwich (b. 1956-) is the author of BURSTING PRESENTS (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020), BE/OND SEH FLINGES (with Steve Dalachinsky, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020), CONTAINERS PROJECTING MULTITUDES: EXPOSITIONS ON THE POETRY OF JOHN M. BENNETT (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019), I REMEMBER PETROLEUM (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019), and others. An innovative and dynamic poet from Charlottesville, Virginia, Jim Leftwich founded and edited the influential avant-garde literary journals Juxta and Juxta Electronic, with co-editor Ken Harris, in 1994. During the 1990's, he was intensely active as a correspondent, theorist, and critical writer in the area of avant-garde poetry and writing, and was an influential figure in the development of ideas and consciousness for the new literary culture he was involved with. He was also influential in the promotion and distribution of the work of many of his fellow poets and writers. He himself has produced a significant body of literary work, work which is textual, conceptual and/or visual. Among his earlier books and chapbooks are Dirt (1995), Khawatir (1995), Gnommonclature, a collaboration with Jeffrey Little (1996), Plasm, Plasm, Plasm (1997), Sepher Viscera, a collaboration with Jake Berry (1997), The Passion of Indifference (1997), Improvisations, Transformations (1998), Sample Example (1998), and Doubt (2000). Several more recent books of his have been published by Luna Bisonte Prtods. His autobiography was published in 1996 in vol. 25 of Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. Author City: ROANOKE, VA USA