A(A) E-Reading #4: National Poetry Month Edition, April 29, 2022

Featuring Rachel Neve Midbar, Justin Hamm, and John Compton. Hosted by David Sykes and Sabne Raznik.

 

A(A) E-Reading #4: National Poetry Month Edition

Dear Kinfolk,

This is just a reminder of our National Poetry Month reading coming up. This will happen on April 29, 2022 at 7 pm EDT. If you want to attend, register at EventBrite.

https://www.eventbrite.com/.../aa-e-reading-4-national...

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely,

Sabne Raznik

Poetry/Art Edi(itor)

 

A(A) E-Reading #3: National Poetry Month Edition Video

Go Down the "Rabbit Hole"!

Introducing my third full-length poetry collection, "Rabbit Hole"!

It marries the found poem with Gertrude Stein and deconstructs existing language to riff on the concept of the deterioration of language as signifier. Just as at the beginning of the 20th century there was the development of a concept that was at the time called New Morality (sin is a fallacy; do whatever feels good to you), so here in the beginning of the 21st century there is developing a concept that language itself need have no concrete meaning. Facts are in the mind of the beholder. The very fabric of reality as it has been known is unraveling. How we as humans communicate with our world, with other humans, even ourselves is fundamentally shifting. The ability to think and reason is changing. And while all that is serious in nature with consequences that have yet to be determined, this collection approaches it in a fun, almost mocking manner. This is Alice in Wonderland with language itself - you are Alice. As the poet, I am the Chesire Cat, you could say.

In his introduction to the book, George Fillingham writes: ""I want the reader to imagine a dream, a dream of the sort that is not quite a nightmare where the dreamer wakes in terror but rather a dream where the dreamer is led on from curiosity to curiosity, image to image, and, confused perhaps but no less surprised by the images, wakes with a head scratch and begins the day, thinking about the world as a much stranger place than when the reader laid down to sleep ... [In the poems where the language is more] extreme . . . the deconstruction of language . . . [mirrors] the shattered state of language today and the impossibility to understand discourse of any kind anymore. It is as if language itself is designed to disguise meaning rather than convey it."

Are you brave enough to go down the "Rabbit Hole"?

Available today on Createspace; Amazon and other merchants and channels within the week.

National Poetry Month 2016 Challenge Facebook Group Workshop

National Poetry Month is upon us. This year, to mark it, I am hosting a workshop in the form of a closed Facebook Group.

 The workshop is centered around a writing challenge. The challenge is to write one poem a day throughout April, so that when the month wraps up each participant has 30 poems. If, for any reason, a participant misses a day, then it can simply be made up on another day, so long as the end total is 30. Collaborations are also welcome, if any wish to do so. Length, form, or genre don't matter. The only criteria is that each poem must be a "found" poem with a nonpoetic text as its source. Sharing results is optional.

Although the Group is closed, if any like to join they can message me as the administrator at my Facebook Page "Sabne Raznik".

Join the National Poetry Month 2016 Challenge Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1028734460530372/.

Happy National Poetry Month!

National Poetry Month 2015 with Sabne Raznik: Three Giveaways

So we're well into National Poetry Month 2015 and it's an exciting one! I hope you'll spend some part of it with me. I have arranged for three contests this month as follows (pay attention to contest end dates and details, since they are not the same):

Goodreads Giveaway

The Goodreads Giveaway can be entered at the link above. There are two (2) copies of "Linger To Look" up for grabs, both signed and dated. The contest is run by Goodreads and the winners chosen randomly. Runs until April 30, 2015.

Amazon Giveaway

Same story here. Two (2) copies available, this time unsigned, since they will be shipped direct from Amazon. Runs until April 16, 2015.

#LTLSelfie Giveaway on Facebook

Post selfies of yourself with any or all of my books on my Facebook Page and use hashtag #LTLSelfie. I will collect these photos and upload them to their own photo album on my Facebook Page. The most creative shots will win hand-proofed and signed galley prints of "Linger To Look". The contest ends on April 30, 2015, but the selfies don't have to!

Happy National Poetry Month and have fun, everyone!

Adam Zagajewski's "Another Beauty"

(Originally published on Yahoo! Voices on April 21, 2011)

This is a uniquely written book that will echo in your consciousness for some time and readily welcome repeated readings.

It's difficult to catagorize this work. It reads like several genres at once. It has the lofty, heady, thought-provoking euphoria of poetry. It is compiled like a collection of quotes or vignettes. Time is not linear in this book. No, the memories recounted herein are written exactly as the flashes of meandering imagist thoughts that memories really are, colored as deeply by emotion and perception as by fact. Ultimately, this is a memoir of the Polish poet's years as a university student in Krakow in the 1960's and '70s.

Zagajewski grew up in Gliwice, next door to an empty, silent, and not yet fully acknowledged Auschwitz. He fully describes the ghetto of Krakow's Kazimierz District- he calls it "the graveyard quarter"- , once the home of the city's Jews who had been systematically murdered by the Nazis and which by then was almost empty and open to the elements and whatever weeds wanted to grow in the cracks of the floors.

He labors under the expectations of an ever-watchful Soviet state. He dwells much on how he managed to teeter on the fence between cooperation with totalitarianism and resistance to it. The colors of this book are dark- grays, browns, blacks, with an occasional wisp of indifferently blue sky. Most of his memories are of winter and heavy, reeking furs. But it is plain he very much loved Krakow. Perhaps his youth is accountable, but he seems to manage a happiness there that evades the rest of the poor and struggling population. It was anathema to throw anything away, even if it had broken, because there might be a time- and often was- when finding some way to force the broken piece to work was necessary for survival. People patched their clothes and bragged about how many decades they wore them. Elevators existed but were seldom operational. Zagajewski paints for us the vivid recollections of youth in a world of old, beaten, disillusioned, or deeply compromised souls- some of whom seemed to have had their souls completely stolen or killed outright. He shows us a people, including himself, who remained religious and frequented the churches and cathedrals as more than tourists. This, it seems, was coldly tolerated by a wearying regime. In fact, places of worship become havens of art as the book progresses, at least in his mind.

He talks about music a great deal. He dwells mostly on classical music and its masters, but he does open a window to the jazz bands that would frequent Krakow in the winter, and brought a completely foriegn but vital breath to the place. He also loves birds, particularly the contrast between swallows and blackbirds.

Woven throughout are excursions into the present: into beautiful, erotic Paris and very briefly to Houston, Texas, U.S.A.. These are the cities Zagajewski splits his time between now. His discussions of Paris are almost mythical in their fantasy. It stands in sharp contrast to the misery of Krakow, which is softened only by his youth and the dominant question of his life:

How to reconcile poetry and philosophy? (Interestingly, in an age when Freud was revered as a god, he did a master's thesis in defense of introspection under a professor who regarded Freud as a fraud of the worst kind. The unusual insight that shows impresses me.)

This book is a necessary read for anyone who loves poetry, is interested in history, remembers what it was like to live in the terrible shadow of the Cold War, and who loves life- the joys and the sorrows. I can't imagine a better book to have spent National Poetry Month 2011 with.

Learn more about Adam Zagajewski.

Buy "Another Beauty" on Amazon.

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