-
Mexico Books 2009: Immanent Visitor
I can’t pretend to understand the writing of Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz. It seems to arise from the imaginal without taking on the perceptual particularities we’ve come to expect from poetry in the long wake of Imagism and Objectivism (no, not the silly philosophy of Ayn Rand). For me, reading Saenz is similar to reading Blake‘s prophetic books, but Saenz doesn’t seem to be presenting a coherent visionary system; his poems are more surreal than symbolic—but in many ways even stranger and more compelling than almost any surrealist poetry I can think of.Read More
-
The Openness of Coral Bracho
Readers of this blog know I’m a fan of openness. But defining “openness” is impossible: the very nature of it defies definition. And it’s easy to confuse it with “anything goes.” I once fell to arguing with a friend who insisted that anything an artist says is art is art; some poets have made the same assertion for their own writing. Can I be a fan of openness without sharing that assertion? I guess it comes down to suggesting the kinds of openness I’m actually a fan of.Read More