Only 1% of the deep sea's floor has been discovered. I'll repeat, (written out for our memory), one percent. How much of our brains do we use again? Well, they now say it's much more than the now mythological assumption of 10% but we know there's an ocean of untapped potential there. William James insisted in 1908: "We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources" (The Energies of Men) How many deep sea creatures do we still discover each year? The new psychedelica frogfish is completely covered in swirling concentric stripes and the US scientific journal Copeia says its "overall impression…was of an inflated rubber ball bouncing along the bottom". The Lion's Mane Jellyfish resembles the victorian skirts of a woman in the throes of passion, the see-through single blob with eyes creatures who live below any visible light remind us of middle of the night loneliness, volcanic vent tube worms and crabs, perhaps bleached white by the 400 f.+ degree temperatures, look like rage that has long past, nudibranchs, hallucinatory florescent pink, green, orange, blue and purple soft creatures can dance, be toxic, change sex, and the "spiral poo worm" speaks for itself. Woo me in these unfathomable fathoms of discovery, show me photographs of deep sea creatures and the other great unknown, deep space, and I will be ecstatic, forever transformed.
There are many great unknowns in our little universe, including unknown poets. Writing what you don't know you know is a familiar consolation of the art of poetry. Poetry seeks out the unknown, seduces it into the light. David St. John, in addition to his regular classes, teaches film and poetry, music and poetry, and the vast cross-over unknown divide between the arts. One of our great poets, former Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz who said he was "living and dying at once," enticed all the paradoxes of the unknown's mystery. Today's west coast award-winning poet is Lynne Thompson ( Beg No Pardon, Perugia Press, 2007 ). Her work haunts the future and the past, and so too, defies anonymity. Here's one, from her variety of styles:
Come Back Mister Scissorhands
In my dreams, his name is Hunger Unspoken. His name
is House Still Sleeping, is Cigarette, Wolf, and Cold Coffee.
Under my lids, his name cascades like snow,
slips away like black jade, one minute paraìso
then suddenly cara-de-cão or ninho des vespas
and I am as old as I am. In my useless reveries,
I speak more softly than the dying
when I call to him: night horn? root of a scream?
Knowing, finding the unknown, being known, and even un-knowing ourselves in poetry's act of reinvention, we discover language engendered by motive. Andre′ Breton's meditation from Mad Love reinforces what happens when (and how) we seek out the unknown: "Desire, the only motive of the world, desire… I wander in the superb bathroom of vapor. Everything around me is unknown to me… I am looking for you." One of the very best "unknown" (amazingly not yet fully published) poets, William Wadsworth brings classical knowledge into the contemporary realm, his passport-crossing over desire's many borders. I love the end of "The Authority of Elsewhere" found in his chapbook The Physicist on a Cold Night Explains, Breakaway Press, 2003.
…I wander out
beyond these premises to prove
that extravagant darkness is what I love.
I am told there is a fabulous beast
which certain populations east
of here consider sacred,
or so, according to some authority, is not an unfounded
fact. The authority of elsewhere sleeps in my bed,
she is undercover, she is naked,
she leaves every word unsaid.
What we love can be synonymous with who we are and with how we use language. In Heather McHugh's brilliant essay book Broken English she wrote " if you think you know yourself, you haven’t looked far enough — into that distance where your strangeness is. You hold more than you know, and that is how knowing opens.” Tupelo Press poet Karen Ann-Hwei Lee address her readers by saying " We are still strangers, but love will help us navigate the unknown."
There's so many vibrant unknown presses, sites, magazines, and it seems it is our duty to seek them out — to seek them out ( the process of poetry itself), like Darwin (below) in search of the next rare beetle:
"One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one."
I would like to bring your attention to just a few and thank you in advance for listening to this week's blog. Once again, apologies to the many poets not yet mentioned: I will keep you in mind. Thank you & Cheers! Elena Karina Byrne
>WILA (Women In Literary Arts) is a newly founded organization co-directed by poets Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu that will bring together both women and men who are interested in issues involving women's writing, both aesthetic and professional.
>Brilliant poet Gail Wronsky ( http://gailwronsky.com/ ) and her husband, fiction writer Chuck Rosenthal, along with an all-star author board ( Molly Bendall, Alicia Partnoy, Kevin Cantwell, Keren Kevorkian, Francios Camoin, Ramon Garcia, and Aw Deannuntis ) have started the very exciting WHAT BOOKS PRESS, An Imprint of The Glass Table Collective : http://whatbookspress.com/about.html
Here's the description:
We are a collective of diverse, LA-based writers and artists whose work defies ready classification and spans the full scope of the past quarter century. We are poets and fiction writers, essayists, political activists, a painter, a film-maker.Among us we have published a long list of books from small literary presses, to New York commercial presses, to regional presses, international presses, and university presses. Our work has appeared here and abroad in journals, art galleries, theaters, and film festivals. We have come together to create, promote, and celebrate new books of literary writing and astounding art.
>Important local Sites & Places:
The all-important Poetry Flash : http://www.poetryflash.org/
The growing Tebot Bach Press: http://tebotbach.org/publication.html
Fabulous West Hollywood Book Fair: http://www.westhollywoodbookfair.org/
Poetry Super Highway: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/
Beyond Baroque: www.beyondbaroque.org
The World Stage: http://www.theworldstage.org/
Red Hen Press: http://www.redhen.org/
Les Figues Press : http://www.lesfigues.com/lfp/index.php
Video's best Poetry LA: http://www.poetry.la/
Ruskin Art Club: (site temporarily down) http://www.ruskinartclub.org/
There's so many wonderful somewhat unknown writers, a mix of many Southern California poets and others not yet mentioned (I'll try to remember as many as I can): Dina Hardy, Marty Williams, Jeffrey McDaniel, Victoria Chang, Joyce Jenkins, Daniel Tiffany, Jim Natal, Richard Fox, Noah Blaustein, Maureen Alsop, Charlotte Innes, Dorothy Baresi, Sissy Boyd, Catherine Daly, Teresa Carmody, Lawrence Bridges, Peter Harris, Kathi Stafford, Rex Wilder, Holaday Mason, Jawanza Dumisani, Alicia Partnoy, John Fitzgerald, Sam Pereira, Bruce Boston, Vanessa Place, James King, Peter Harris, Gloria Alvarez, Imani Tolliver, Jennifer Kwon-Dobbs, MIchael Clifton, Larry Cokler, Helen Cardona, Dorothy Baresi, MIchelle Mitchell-Foust, Chin-In Chen, Mindy Nettifee, Cecilia Woloch, Kate Gale, Brian Tracy, Sholeh Wolpe, Marjorie Becker, Terry Wolverton, Gretchen Mattox, Liz Gonzales, Neil Aitken, Elizabeth Bradfield, Jenny Factor, Michael C. Ford, Patty Seyburn, Gabriel Meyer, Carroll Kearley, Kate Buckley, Stephanie Brown, Sarah Maclay, Allison Carter, Christine Wertheim and once again, new on the scene Lynne Thompson, Cathy Colman, Amy Newlove Schroeder, and Brendan Constantine…. ! (I'd tried!) Here's to all beginnings… xoxoxo