Cuteness is a Landscape

Amy De’Ath was born in Suffolk, England in 1985. She studied at the University of East Anglia, UK, and in Philadelphia, US, before moving to Australia and then London. Her publications include Caribou (Bad Press, 2011) Erec & Enide (Salt, 2010), and Andromeda / The World Works for Me (Crater Press, 2010). Her work is featured in a number of UK anthologies published this year. For three years she lived and worked in London, where she was recently Poet-in-Residence at the University of Surrey. She now lives in Vancouver, where she is beginning her PhD on contemporary poetry and theory at Simon Fraser University.

[Click post title for audio.]

Portraits - Distillation

Elizabeth Guthrie is a poet and performer living in London and doing research for a practice-based PhD in text and performance at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a co-editor of Livestock Editions and the former poetry editor of Bombay Gin. Her work has appeared in Onedit, Requited, Klatch, Bombay Gin, Pinstripe Fedora and American Drivel Review, with a pamphlet, X Portraits, out through Crater Press, a chapbook, Yellow and Red, through Black Lodge Press, and the collaborative chapbook with Andrew K. Peterson, Between Here and the Telescopes, through Slumgullion Press. She is poet in residence at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London and has performed for POLYply, Crossing the Line, Desperate for Love, Crater, Openned and in the seminar Poetic Corners within the Exhibition Cornered Rooms at the Waterside Project Space. She continues her search for the Art of Memory.

[Click post title for audio.]

Dr. Zizmor Gently Cleanses Your Skin With a Fruit Wash

Nada Gordon is the author of Folly, V. Imp, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, foriegnn bodie, Swoon, and Scented Rushes. A founding member of the Flarf Collective, she practices poetry, song, dance, dressmaking, and image manipulation as deep entertainment. She blogs at ululate.
[Click post title for audio.]

La Grande Dame Est Morte Vive La Grande Dame

Originally from Brooklyn, New York, T.A. Noonan was raised in the South. She is the author of two hybrid-genre collections, The Bone Folders (Sundress Publications) and Petticoat Government (Gold Wake Press), as well as the chapbooks Darjeeling (Ahadada Books) and Balm (Flaming Giblet Press). Her writing has appeared in Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, The Superstition Review, RHINO, specs, Phoebe, and Harpur Palate, among others. "The Trouble with Correspondence," her essay exploring the relationship between witchcraft and body image, was recently named a Notable Essay in the 2011 edition of Best American Essays. She is the Assistant Editor for Sundress Publications and lives on Florida's Treasure Coast with her husband.

Divining for Starters

American expatriate Carrie Etter has lived in the UK since 2001 and
published two collections: The Tethers (Seren, 2009) and Divining for
Starters (Shearsman, 2011); the poem here comes from the latter. She
also edited Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets
(Shearsman, 2010).

Chicken

Catherine Wagner's latest book is My New Job (Fence 2009). City Lights will publish Nervous Device in 2012. She lives in Oxford, Ohio.

The Hills

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and performance artist. She is author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books, 2009), E! Entertainment (Blanc Press, diamond edition, forthcoming), ABRA (Zg Press, forthcoming w/ Amaranth Borsuk), as well as the conceptual fashion magazine The Fashion Issue (Zg Press, forthcoming), and five chapbooks, including, most recently, E! Entertainment (Insert Press, 2011).

Filmscript

Sarah Rosenthal is the author of the cross-genre book Manhatten and several chapbooks, the most recent of which is called The Animal. Her interview collection A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Writers of the Bay Area was published by Dalkey Archive in 2010. She had has received the Leo Litwak Fiction Award and grant-supported residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain, and Ragdale. She writes curricula for the Developmental Studies Center in Oakland. For more info, please visit acommunitywritingitself.com.

Archaeology

Ivy Alvarez is the author of Mortal, a book of poems that examines the relationship between Dee and Seph — modern-day reinventions of Demeter and Persephone — and how the spectre of breast cancer affects them.

Midwinter

Gina Myers is the author of A Model Year (Coconut Books, 2009) and several chapbooks, including False Spring (forthcoming from Spooky Girlfriend Press).

In This Plate, My Loose Follicles Pour Around Me

Danielle Pafunda is the author of several collections of poetry including Iatrogenic: Their Testiomines (Noemi Press), My Zorba (Bloof Books), and the forthcoming Manhater (Dusie Press Books 2012).

weather or not

Evie Shockley is the author of four collections of poetry—the new black (Wesleyan, 2011), a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks—as well as the critical study Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (Iowa, 2011). Her poems and essays have appeared recently or are forthcoming in journals and anthologies such as Callaloo, The Nation, Cura, TriQuarterly Online, Contemporary Literature, Black Nature: A Century of African American Nature Poetry, A Broken Thing: Poets on the Line, and Home is Where: An Anthology of African American Poets from the Carolinas. Shockley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where she teaches African American literature and creative writing.

[Click post title for audio.]

Beware

Kaia Sand is the author of Interval (Edge) Remember to Wave (Tinfish) and Landscapes of Dissent with Jules Boykoff. She lives with her family in Oregon.



[Click post title for audio.]

Creche

Pattie McCarthy is the author of Table Alphabetical of Hard Words(2010), Verso (2004), and bk of (h)rs (2002), all from Apogee Press. She is also the author of L&O (2011), from Little Red Leave e-editions. Her work has appeared recently in 20012, Elective Affinities, Lana Turner, and elsewhere. She is a 2011 Pew Fellow in the arts; teaches literature and writing at Temple University; and lives just outside Philadelphia with her husband, Kevin Varrone, their three children, her mother, and their Great Dane.

[Click post title for audio.]

A Nuisance Story

Jess Rowan's work has appeared in West Wind Review, Sprung Formal, NOÖ Journal, Phoebe, etc, and with Maurice Burford in the collaborative chapbook Prithee (Abraham Lincoln Press). She is also a shiny new Editorial Assistant at Coconut.

[Click post title for audio.]

Rose Window I Felt Cold

Wanda Phipps is a writer/performer and author of six books including Field of Wanting: Poems of Desire and Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems. Her poetry has been translated into Ukrainian, Hungarian, Arabic, Bangla and Galician. Her website is: mindhoney.com.


[Click post title for audio.]

Saint Festive's Illegitimate Child

Daniela Olszewska is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, Citizen J (Artifice Books, forthcoming) and cloudfang : : cakedirt (Horse Less Press, forthcoming). She sits on Switchback Books' Board of Directors and serves as Associate Poetry Editor of H_NGM_N. Daniela is pursuing her MFA at the University of Alabama, where she teaches creative writing in conjunction with The Alabama Prison Arts & Education Project.

[Click post title for audio.]

Hors de combat

Kristine Snodgrass’ collaborative work with Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton is forthcoming in a book, TWO THIEVES & A LIAR (JackLeg Press 2012). She lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

[Click post title for audio.]

BECAUSE THE SHELL HALF-SWALLOWED HER

Susana Gardner's second full-length collection, HERSO An Heirship in Waves was published by Black Radish Books this fall. She lives in Zürich.

[Click post title for audio.]

Owl Pages

Laynie Browne's most recent books include Roseate, Points of Gold (Dusie 2011) and The Desires of Letters (Counterpath, 2010).

[Click post title for audio.]

Unshot

Kate Greenstreet's books are The Last 4 Things and case
sensitive, both from Ahsahta Press. Her site is at kickingwind.com.

[Click post title for audio.]

In-Sights

Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese regularly publishes translations of contemporary Polish poetry into English. As a translator and writer, she has been involved in the Metropoetica project – ‘Poetry and Urban Space: Women writing cities’ (www.metropoetica.org). She is a contributing editor to Poetry Wales and co-editor of Przekładaniec. A Journal of Literary Translation (Kraków, Poland). Two years ago she moved to Copenhagen. She has been working on a sequence of poems about learning to live in a third language.


[Click post title for audio.]

the fairly cwen

Elizabeth Treadwell is the author of two books of prose and five of poetry,
including Chantry (Chax, 2004) and Birds & Fancies (Shearsman, 2007).
Her long poem, Virginia or the mud-flap girl, is forthcoming from Dusie in 2012; and a section of it, Ancient Celebrity Tune-rot, will appear as a Least Weasel chapbook in fall 2011. Treadwell's work has appeared in a number of anthologies, most recently Gurlesque (Saturnalia, 2010), and was discussed as part of “The New Thing: the object lessons of recent American poetry” in the Boston Review.

[Click post title for audio.]

Facing the Window the City Goes By

Elisa Gabbert is the author of The French Exit (Birds LLC) and Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press). Recent work can be found in Another Chicago Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Open Letters Monthly, and Sentence. She lives in Denver and blogs at The French Exit.

[Click post title for audio.]

Russian Woodpecker

Rob Ray makes site specific electronic installations, wondrous public games and experimental videos. He has recently relocated to Los Angeles, CA from Chicago via Rensselaer's Electronic Arts MFA Program in Troy, NY.

[Click post title for audio.]

Animal

Camilo Roldán is a poet and translator living in Brooklyn, NY. He is
the author of a chapbook of translations, Amílkar U., Nadaísta in
Translation (These Signals Press), and his poems have appeared in
Metazen, Leveler, Lungfull! and Pank.




[Click post title for audio.]

Dim Evenings

Megan Kaminski's first book of poetry, Desiring Map, is forthcoming from Coconut Books (2012). She is also the author of five chapbooks of poetry, most recently Collection (Dusie 2011). Her poems have recently appeared in American Letters & Commentary, CutBank, Denver Quarterly, Third Coast, and other journals. She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Kansas.


[Click post title for audio.]

Pitch

Carol Watts lives in London, where she co-directs the Centre for Poetics at Birkbeck College. Her poetry includes the collections with Reality Street, Occasionals (2011) and Wrack (2007), the chapbooks When blue light falls (Oystercatcher, 2008, 2010), this is red (Torque Press, 2009) and brass, running (Equipage, 2006), and the artist’s book alphabetise, now an eBook (Intercapillary Editions, 2011). Her work also involves mixed media – photography, drawing and collage. It includes Horrid Massacre: A Récit, a sequence told through shopping receipts, currently online in part at Ekleksographia. Her poetry has been anthologised in the Reality Street Book of Sonnets, Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets, and her ‘Zeta Landscape’ series in The Ground Aslant: An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry. She is currently working on a three stage collaboration with Will Montgomery: Pitch was first exhibited in the worksetting gallery in Huddersfield UK in December-January 2010-11.

Will Montgomery teaches in the English department of Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of The Poetry of Susan Howe (New York: Palgrave, 2010) and the co-editor of the essay collection Frank O'Hara Now (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2010). He has released his audio work on nonvisualobjects, Entr'acte and Cathnor. www.selvageflame.com, http://www.rhul.ac.uk/english/staffdirectory/home.aspx

[Click post title for audio.]

Breath

Deborah Poe is the author of the poetry collections Elements (Stockport Flats Press 2010), Our Parenthetical Ontology (Custom Words 2008) and several chapbooks--most recently a four-part edition excerpted from her manuscript "the last will be stone, too," as part of the Dusie Kollektiv (5), Poe's work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Peep/show, Bone Bouquet, Trickhouse, No Contest, Peaches & Bats, Horse Less Review, Mantis and Denver Quarterly. For more information, please visit www.deborahpoe.com.

[Click post title for audio.]

Eggs Internacionale

Lina ramona Vitkauskas (Lithuanian-American-Canadian), b. 1973. Selected by former Pulitzer Prize-finalist, Brenda Hillman, to receive the Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award in 2009. Author of poetry book THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2010) and chapbook Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006). Finalist – Summer Literary Seminars Poetry Contest (2011). Illinois Arts Council Award Nominee – (by Another Chicago Magazine, 2009). Can be heard on Chicago Public Radio’s (WBEZ) Chicago Amplified (Woman Made Gallery, Women’s History Month; Harold Washington Public Library, National Poetry Month; Series A–Hyde Park Art Center; Future Perfect + New Media Series). Translator for UniVerse: A United Nations of Poetry. Published in TriQuarterly, Sharkforum, The Prague Literary Review, The Chicago Review, The Toronto Quarterly, Van Gogh’s Ear (Paris), VLAK (Eds. Louis Armand, Edmund Berrigan), The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007), Aufgabe, Drunken Boat, White Fungus (New Zealand), MiPoesias, Paper Tiger (Australia), and the In Posse Review Multi-Ethnic Anthology (Ed. Ilya Kaminsky). MA in Composition & Rhetoric: Creative Writing,
 Wright State University (2000). Often entertains the notion that she is a comedian, astronomer, herbal alchemist, chanteuse, and/or spy.


[Click post title for audio.]

Sometime I'll Perfect My Adoration

Shanna Compton is the author of For Girls & Others, Down Spooky, Gamers, and The Blank Verge, forthcoming from Bloof Books in spring 2012. "Sometime I'll perfect my adoration" is excerpted from that collection and originally appeared in the Awl.

[Click post title for audio.]

The Young Men Are Glistening

Anne Boyer is the author of My Common Heart, Joan, The 2000s, Ma Vie
en Bling, Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse, Selected Dreams with a Note on
Phrenology, and The Romance of Happy Workers. She lives in Kansas.

[Click post title for audio.]

In Aporia: The Annual Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading

In Aporia: The Annual Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading
September 12, 2011 at 7pm

Lang Café, Eugene Lang College
65 W 11th street, NYC

The annual Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading honors the memory of Lang professor Akilah Oliver, a radical poet, feminist, and activist. The first of this annual reading series, this event will feature the work of work of Oliver's contemporaries Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Rachel Levitsky and Lang Alum, Lauren Nicole Nixon, along with Oliver's former students Erik Freer, Karl Leone and Kaley Foley.

Rachel Levitsky is the author of Under the Sun (Futurepoem 2003), NEIGHBOR (UDP 2009) and the forthcoming novel,The Story of My Accident is Ours (Futurepoem 2011 or 2012). She is also the author of seven or eight chapbooks, most recently a prose work, Renoemos (Delete Press 2010). Levitsky teaches Writing and Literature at Pratt Institute, Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Poets House and Bard Prison Initiative. She is a member of Belladonna* Collaborative--a hub of feminist avant-garde literary action: www.belladonnaseries.org. Four of her mini-essays on Confinement can be found online: http://poetryproject.org/tag/rachel-levitsky. With Christian Hawkey and a bunch of their students, she recently opened The Office of Recuperative Poetics, a mobile installation of cultural recollection and reanimation.

Julian Talamantez Brolaski is the author of gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011) and several chapbooks. Advice for Lovers is forthcoming from City Lights in spring 2012. Julian lives in Brooklyn where xe is an editor at Litmus Press and plays country music with Juan & the Pines (www.reverbnation.com/juanandthepines). New work is on the bloghermofwarsaw.

Lauren Nicole Nixon is a Brooklyn-based artist representative and poet. Nixon holds an M.A. in Arts Politics from NYU and a B.A. in Dance and Culture/Media Studies from The New School. Recent and forthcoming work is published in Bone Bouquet, The Tulane Review, apt, 491, Jelly Bucket, No, Dear and In Posse. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Erik Freer is an undergraduate student at The New School in the dual degree program pursuing a BFA from Parsons the New School for Design in Communication Design and a BA from Eugene Lang College the New School for the Liberal Arts in Writing. At Parsons his focus is on Information, Print, and Typography and at Lang his focus is on Poetry and Play writing, with a minor in Japanese. Erik possesses a deep interest in ideas of mapping (or un-mapping) and the visual representation of information. Erik dedicates his spare time to any and everything cultural and creative he can produce and experience.

Kailey Foley is a poetry major in her third year at Lang. She resides and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which is often detrimental to her health if not instrumental to her writing. Her favorite poetry includes that of Charles Bukowski and the female Language poets. She spends most of her time composing 90's power-hour playlists and thinking about syntax. Kailey has had pieces published in Voice and Moth Mouth literary magazines and online at Spillway publications. Cool, whatever.

Karl Leone is a junior at Eugene Lang College of The New School and is honored to be taking part in this fall’s reading honoring his dear friend, mentor, and teacher Akilah Oliver. As an actor, Karl’s New York stage credits include “Marat/ Sade,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Laramie Project,” and “Undermilkwood. 4 Recent film credits include “Keep the Lights On” dir. Ira Sachs and “Going Out” dir. Leah Samuel. Most recently, Karl has been concentrating on the genre of poetic drama and is developing a play called “Our Aporia” influenced on the writings of Oliver’s “A Toast in the House of Friends.”

HOT TEXTS: NYC: Tuesday July 26

HOT TEXTS: Tuesday July 26

Curated by local poet activists Krystal Languell and Emily Skillings, HOT TEXTS is a new reading series in Brooklyn, New York that celebrates innovative writing rooted in the body, desire, sexual politics and the erotic sphere. HOT TEXTS is an extension of the Belladonna* Collaborative.

Performers for the evening include:
R. Erica Doyle, Lila Zemborain, Susana Gardner and Paul Foster Johnson

Tuesday July 26
8:00-9:30pm

The Way Station
683 Washington Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Rsvp on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/5vkdf6n

SEAM RIPPER: Table of Contents

SEAM RIPPER: Women on Textual & Sartorial Style

Introduction by Kate Durbin | "Revenge of the Slip Dress Sluts"

Conclusion by Becca Klaver | "We Feel Sartorial Joy": Last Thoughts on SEAM RIPPER

Contributors

Ana Božičević | Broke Poets and Spring Fashion: Things More than $1

Becca Klaver | OUR STYLE: A Collage

Jillian Mukavetz | fabric girl

Stacy Gnall | An Abridged History of Costume

Michelle Detorie | Fashion and Writing Show

Kate Durbin | N O BIKINI

Catherine Daly | What I Wore

Angie Kirby | Diana in the Bath

Cristián Flores García | What Can Poetry Teach?

Arielle Greenberg | from Locally Made Panties

Marisa Crawford | from Reversible

Khadijah Queen | 3 Poems

Jackie Wang | THE SKIN-CLOTH: Race, Fashion, Hygiene, Writing, and Embodied Movement Through Space

Danielle Pafunda | from The Book of Scab

Dolly Lemke | Orsino and Joanna: left to their own adornments

Yvette Thomas | The Panoply of Silk

Amy Boutell | Behind the Scenes of My Novel-in-Progress about Vintage Fashion & Surrealism

Anna Lena Phillips | desiderata

Nicole Steinberg | From a Closet of Grief

Jessica Bozek | "trunk to the blow": a poem-dress

Lily Ladewig | 5 Hats

Jennifer Tamayo | CUSTOM & CLOTHING

Danielle Roderick | The Pantsuit

jojo Lazar | 4 Poems

Susan Yount | Socks of Fire

Angela Veronica Wong | On Looking Like

Elisa Gabbert | "Some Notes on Fashion"

Dana Teen Lomax | from All Made Up

Rosebud Ben-Oni | "No Las Olvidadas"

Gina Abelkop | "Our Non-Angelic Halo: Psychic Connection via Time Travel via Fashion"

Carrie Murphy | "Reticule" & "Armored"

Ingrid Pruss | "Ad Fontes"

Kari Larsen | "I am an Institution of Shadows on a Street Black as Windows"

Becky Peterson | "Clogs"

Alexandra Marzella | "OKay."

Amaranth Borsuk | "IDEM THE SHAME"

Amanda Montei | "Four Poems"

carina finn | "this is the girl of the moment"

Daniela Olszewska | "White Dresses, Red Soles + Oil Paintings: Some Notes on Emily Dickinson, Christian Louboutin, + John Berger"

Andrea Quinlan | "Crinoline Hems Trailing in the Mud: A Tribute to Vintage"

Allison Layfield | "What Is It, and How Do You Use It"

Caolan Madden | "FRILLWHIPPER"

Cole Cohen | "Drag City: Some Sketches on Writing and Performance"

Daisy Rockwell | "Wedding Dress"

See the call for work.

“We Feel Sartorial Joy”: Last Thoughts on SEAM RIPPER

We would be walking down the street in the poetrycity. Gauze would be everywhere. The day would be big, halting, gracious, revocable, cheap. We’d be the she-dandies in incredibly voluptuous jackets ribboning back from our waists, totally lined in pure silk, also in pure humming, and we’d be heading into the buildings with knowledge – that is, ephemeral knowledge, like leafage or sleeves or pigment. The streets are salons that receive abundantly our description. The buildings are charming. And our manners are software. We feel sartorial joy.

—Lisa Robertson, “Lucite (a didactic)”

We wanted to enact revenge. We knew there were both mean-spirited and high-spirited ways in which to do this. As an effort toward the latter, SEAM RIPPER stands primping smartly as an attempt to get back at some of the superficial, dull-edged treatments of the relationship between poetry (and femininity) and fashion (and women’s bodies) that were coming at us full force.

We said, Uhhh, nooo. We scoffed, Fuck fashion shame. We trilled, We feel sartorial joy! We thought, Oh, you have no IDEA how it really is for us! We thought we’d better tell you.

When I wrote to Kate Durbin with the spark of a revenge fantasy, the idea was that we would get back at O: The Oprah Magazine for stealing Kate’s ideas without giving her compensation nor credit, and get back at The New York Times for allowing one of their small slots reserved for poetry coverage each year to be devoted to David Orr’s belittlement of fashion, femininity, and poetry in one fell swoop. (This is the same prestigious publication that somehow only managed to devote 35% of its book reviews to women authors in 2010. For some terrific, much more in-depth responses to Orr’s article, see Emily Warn, Jessica Winter, and Kate Zambreno.)

Poetry & Fashion & Performance: Together 4Evah

It may be said that poetry, which is printed on hot-pressed paper, and sold at a bookseller’s shop, is a soliloquy in full dress, and upon the stage.

—John Stuart Mill, “What is Poetry?” (1833)

Our goal was to put women’s textual and sartorial style together in a complex way that left no room for simple equivalences. The pieces we’d receive for SEAM RIPPER, we hoped, would help demonstrate how masks, personae, costumes, performance, painting, etching, and scribbling are acts that cross between bodies, pages, canvases, screens, and genders. There was no way to separate these terms out, but there was a need to show just how fascinatingly they could be mixed and remixed.

The response amazed us. Not only were women eager to create works for SEAM RIPPER on very short notice, but they were able to do so because they already had poems, essays, sketches, or visual art that spoke directly to these issues, and yet were idly sitting in some subfolder, waiting for the right venue. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many of these pieces were available yet unpublished. When the response to the VIDA Count turns toward the question, “Why aren’t women submitting?” we should remember that the fact that certain topics and styles are seen as frivolous by certain editors (one more time: The New York Times said fashion + poetry = girly + silly merely two months ago!) has an effect. It is internalized.

What Is Existence?!

Two of the charges most frequently levelled against poetry by women are lack of range—in subject matter, in emotional tone—and lack of a sense of humor. And one could, in individual instances among writers of real talent, add other aesthetic and moral shortcomings: the spinning-out; the embroidering of trivial themes; a concern with the mere surfaces of life—that special province of the feminine talent in prose—hiding from the real agonies of the spirit; refusing to face up to what existence is. . .

—Theodore Roethke, from “The Poetry of Louise Bogan”

There will always be people who feel threatened by women saying and writing and making what they really care about. They will criticize it, and they will even say it doesn’t exist. I’m not kidding. When discussions of the Gurlesque first started cropping up on blogs, this was a common criticism: “I don’t buy it,” or “it doesn’t exist.” Some people are waiting for genealogies, for critical frameworks, for perfect-bound anthologies to appear in order to legitimize exciting aesthetic tendencies that others see plainly. Gaga Stigmata catches the same flak, as Kate knows well: critical art and writing about Lady Gaga can’t be real, can it?! Last year, AWP rejected a panel proposal with Kate, Arielle Greenberg, Danielle Pafunda, Elline Lipkin, and me called “I Was a Teenage … Girl: Writing Girl Culture.” Why? We’ll never know, but probably because girls don’t exist. We’ll just have to hold the alternative sleepover-séance we’ve been joking about, the one where we make ourselves invisible. Invisibler. Ghosts in skanky slip dresses.

Poetry and Girls and Beauty, Conflated Again!

Somehow poetry and the female sex were allied in my mind. The beauty of girls seemed the same to me as the beauty of a poem. I knew nothing at all about the sexual approach but I had to do something about it.

—William Carlos Williams, I wanted to write a poem: the autobiography of the works of a poet

Now that we slip dress sluts have enacted our revenge—and now that we have the delight of seeing that revenge-in-practice tends to look bloodier and dirtier and more glittering and varied than revenge-in-theory—I am much less interested in sticking my tongue out at the Oprah-machine and the NYT-machine and much more interested in looking at just what it is we have here, exactly, in an alternative space operating under unconventional guidelines. Unlike O magazine, we did not ask for your bra size; unlike O magazine, we said it was up to you whether you wanted your body in your piece; unlike O, we in fact simply published everything we received, including some pieces we solicited.

What these pieces know can tell us something about other ways of knowing. We should keep making a language for these ideas and keep using it, and, with Lisa Robertson, keep “heading into the buildings with knowledge,” knowledge that sometimes goes unsaid but is in real need of articulation. I know that what is true for me—that my writing style developed alongside my sartorial style, self-fashionings laced up in one another—must be true for Kate and for so many other women writers. The ways style and writing relate to one another seem perfectly obvious to all of the women included in SEAM RIPPER, but we now know even better than before that this sort of knowledge is trivial, inscrutable—or, yes, possibly invisible—to the wider culture, even in publications devoted to women or literature.

Fooled Ya!

The poems a reader will encounter in this book are neatly and modestly dressed, speak quietly but do not mumble, respect their elders but are not cowed by them, and do not tell fibs. . . .

—W.H. Auden, from the introduction to Adrienne Rich’s first book, A Change of World, 1951

But we feel sartorial joy, and although there may be some freedom in inscrutability, we’d rather you read and look at what we’ve made. We’ve strung some words. We’ve made some images. We’ve tried to bring a whole vocabulary that women have, and sometimes share, into the light.

The quotations from men poets (wait, don’t I mean “male poet”? Nope. See Delirious Lapel’s note on the use of “man poet”) scattered throughout the piece have been offered as a sort of proof for the fact that women, femininity, beauty, decoration, fashion, and poetry have been jumbled up in some lame analogies for quite a long time now. The ways contemporary poets are disrupting these correspondences (see again Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics, and of course this and other features on Delirious Hem), seems to me much more interesting than reinscribing-via-airbrush an equivalence that puts equal signs—or dollar signs!—between these terms. So, I’d like to end with a different equation, one that’s meant not only to mess with received notions of the likenesses between these terms, but is interested in asking you to insert your own symbols, to decide for yourself what the relationship between these terms is, and to write, and make art, about it.

women ≈ femininity ≠ beauty $ decoration ∞ fashion ≤ poetry

Bio: Becca Klaver is the author of the poetry collection LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and the chapbook Inside a Red Corvette: A 90s Mix Tape (greying ghost, 2009). She attended the University of Southern California (BA) and Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and is now a PhD student in English at Rutgers University. A founding editor, with Hanna Andrews and Brandi Homan, of the feminist poetry press Switchback Books, she is also editing, with Arielle Greenberg, Glow in the Dark, an anthology of poems for teenage girls. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Broke Poets and Spring Fashion: Things More than $1

by Ana Božičević

I've been reading with delight all the poets' fashion-takes here on Delirious Hem, in wake of Oprah's poets-wear-spring-fashion piece, where beautiful poets were depicted wearing thousands of dollars in clothes. (Full disclosure: I was one of the, apparently, dozens of poets who did the casting call for Oprah's fashion thing, and witnessed the pristine cafeteria of the Hearst building.) Some poets (bless their hearts!) may be able to afford pricey duds, but I have a sneaking suspicion many are more like me -- self-sustaining and modest of means. It's interesting to be this in a city/culture that is all about ka-ching. What came of this casting, after the novelty and the gentle humiliation of the brief experience wore off, was I started paying more attention to how much $ I was wearing -- a closer consciousness of the monetary and thus cultural value of my clothes. Simultaneously I've been reading Eileen Myles's "Inferno," which champions (poet-style-wise) this devil-may-care I-found-my-shirt-on-a-stoop one-dollar-in-my-pocket downtown carelessness -- awesome but also quite conscious.

In the spring, I revisit dresses. This winter I've been on a menswear kick (mostly mental), but with the sun I've begun rooting around for dresses. I have a love/hate relationship with femme attire -- I can never just wear it without analyzing its implications to death -- but the spring endorphins are helping and this week, I'm enjoying just wearing a dress. Since I don't want to spend money on clothes, I dug deep for some outfits from my existing trove. Here are two (the one on the left is today's):

And here's the rundown of how much these duds cost:

#1
glasses: $3.50, H&M
scarf: gift from India (thanks, Priya!)
jacket: gift/loan from Amy (thanks, Amy!)
bracelet: $3.50, H&M
dress: mother's or grandmother's? -- found in a drawer at the farmhouse
belt: $6, H&M
tights: $4, H&M
shoes: $19, Payless
purse: gift from sister-in-law (thanks, Zoe!)
book bag: free with free NYer subscription (gift from sister-in-law -- ditto)
TOTAL outfit: $36

#2
jacket: gift from Amy
dress: $25 or something like that, H&M
belt: $6, H&M (same)
raincoat: ancient hand-me-down
tights: $4, H&M (same)
shoes: $19, Payless (same)
purse and book bag: see above (free)
TOTAL: $54

The only item purchased "this season" are the sunglasses. The old ones broke. Boringly + busily, over the years I've picked up quite a few items from H&M, two of which are conveniently located on my walk to and from work. No mystery there. But what I've really enjoyed about this exercise was noting all the hand-me-downs & gifts. People have given to me and I'm wearing them, in a way. It's ... how to say... priceless, my friends.

What kind of dollar-store treasures are you wearing? Speak to me of the people (Grandma is the best brand!) you're sporting. There's a store close to our house called "THINGS MORE THAN ONE DOLLAR." I love how it could be two or a thousand. It could be anything.

Bio: Ana Božičević is a poet and translator. Her Stars of the Night Commute (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009) was a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry finalist. She is a PhD candidate in English & Program Manager at The Graduate Center, CUNY, where she helped found Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, and the Annual Chapbook Festival. With Amy King, she co-edits the journal esque.

OUR STYLE: A Collage

by Becca Klaver

I win Most Original Style, but I get it all from you.
The shock, the prank, the glamour.
The British spelling, the American, our own secret.
A freak & I learn how to use it.
How else would you know me in a square of blonde?
Four heads bobbing & bleaching.
I pick the box reads Wild Fire.
Rinse thoroughly, alternateen smirking
straight into the principal’s office.
He says wipe that lipstick off she says
is that underwear
or outerwear. She thinks she knows.
Later I’ll love
that word liminal. For now I ask to see the handbook.
Shimmy around
in the highlighted phrase, or otherwise distracting.
It’s an offering,
a tagline. A freak & I learn how to use it.
They make me rub
with toilet paper & soap or wear my gym clothes.
Too late,
I’ve already posed for the video yearbook.
My mom drops off
a cardigan. A lawyer, no time for frivolities.
She asks to see the handbook.
I learn how to promqueen, to pirate, to play
mermaid with just a smidge of
iridescence.
It isn’t costume, it’s myth. A way to bring inner to outer
& then go back in again.
Words do, too.
There were slanting avenues. Farwell, Melrose, Milwaukee.
If we went anywhere, there.
Mostly I just took what you gave me.
You gave me your makeup, your made-up words.
Your trailing vowels, your hand-me-downs.
We traded.
I confess, I never liked shopping. Bad lights, hot brain,
stranger yap yap yap.
You gave me an excuse. A surplus of good good goods
in the local economy
called BFF, in the barter-or-bribe stall called Sisters.
I asked you
what you remembered & you told me. Shirts, shoes, scripts.
You used
such great verbs. You told me—

The local bridal shop was having a huge sale to commemorate the royal nuptials, so I made a last-minute appointment and wouldn’t you know! I feel like it’s “our style” so I knew you’d approve. We shared a preppy J.Crew charcoal gray sweater during high school that you would wear over your vintages dresses in the wintertime. My grandma sweaters complimented your grandpa pants. Your side ponytail was pretty fresh. We share a love for side-ponytails at Packers games. Your painted jeans in 8th grade made me decide we needed to be friends. And then I tried to make you over into a hippie, and in your apartment in Milwaukee years later I realized that you are the real authentic hippie. In high school you wore slip dresses before I ever dreamed of becoming an exotic dancer. In high school plaid was super cool so I used to rummage around Dad’s closet to find shirts that were too small on him but not too big for me. After a while, I started grabbing his old t-shirts too. You and I always had diverging memories of who had which shirt first. Teen Wolf was the most coveted by you and we used to trade back and forth (though I’m sure you remember it differently). Ironic t-shirts were coming back but most of them were knock-offs: Cheap Chinese shit, as Dad would say. Small Is Beautiful was always a bit too small (“I can’t tell them apart but I know they’re stacked”). And who could forget Take a Chance on Romance—the shirt I coveted most, not only for the sing-song value but because it was about romance languages. We had to buy all our clothes from those resale shops while Dad put all his money into Ace Video and Jorgy’s. We always looked better with a cigarette pressed between our lips, or held like a cigar. I think we were more enamored with the style than the nicotine, at least for a while. I close my eyes and I see you in a short black nightgown in your LA apartment wearing platform sandals as slippers—I’ve never worn enormous flip-flops as house shoes, but I like to hang out late into the morning hours in pajamas, and every time I do I think of/pretend to be you. The blue velcro tennis shoes you eventually made your own after they didn’t fit in my move-and-fit-everything-in-two-suitcases first trip to Holland. Our hands are the same but our feet are different so now it just makes me happy to see you wear them. Fingernail painting and blue platform shoes. Fingerpainting with fresh ground pepper on New Year’s Eve. Of course we have handwriting and voices in common, and I am not talking about our “language” which is a combination of Heather’s “native” valley girl and strawkerrrs, but our schizo voices. My handwriting has never been as beautiful as yours, but I remember in high school thinking that if I used a gel tip pen, or held my pencil like so, or if I drew tiny drawings below my thumbnail, I’d have pretty handwriting like you, or maybe even pass a history exam. Bee chasing and sick-note writings at a picnic table outside school with great mom-handwriting flourish. It coulda been a cottage industry. I think we all learned to type on AOL IM. At least I did. What I’m getting at: I have ripped off your style—down to the nubby tights and the obsessive application of lip product. Getting back to the wedding gown. I was seized by a sudden and Becca-esque desire to “go big or why bother.”

—The bigger the better the tighter the sweater, the girls
depend on us. Frilly, frivolous, indulgent, impossible,
over-the-top, to feel physically as if the top of my head
were taken off. Frou-Frou print on the easel when you
first walk into our shared apartment, Los Angeles, 2001.
You gift me things pink fuzzy & aglimmer, you mail me
a swirly red dress, rubber stamp with my name on it.
Just today you send two unicorns charging on yellow,
KNOCK YOU OUT. You stare at my shirt & ask if you
gave it to me. No, we each bought it separately at our
favorite store back home. (O Moxy, sayonara, adieu.)
I go back to LA seven years later & what I really want
to see is your shoes. I take a picture & post it online.
You break your neck & I buy us the same blue velvet
scarf, think it’s kind of a shame we don’t have the same
neck brace. Screenwriters want to know why I’m so
short, where are my platforms. In some cities, we walk.
In some cities we carry. Alls I need’s traction & access
to other people’s closets. Now we live far away, only see
slivers of wardrobes. Now we live close enough to share.
No, I will not bring my own shampoo: I wanna smell like
you. I like when old stuff hands off, buffs up, turns new.

***

Four Klaver sisters in ascending age order: Fro, Becca, Annie, Jessie.

Scan of original map of my plot to become prom queen.

Success: me as prom queen, Milwaukee, 1998.

Self-portrait for Feminist Media Art class, Los Angeles, circa 2000.

Me in my black-haired "Snow White" phase (left) and my sister Annie wearing Take a Chance on Romance, a t-shirt mentioned in "OUR STYLE."

Me and my high school BFFs (L to R: Jeff, Jenny, Heather, me, Austin), who contributed to this piece, in Los Angeles, circa 2001.

Self-portrait from hand-drawn invitation to my 21st birthday party.

My current Facebook profile pic: me after the Destroyer show at Webster Hall, April 3, 2011.

Bio: Becca Klaver is the author of the poetry collection LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and the chapbook Inside a Red Corvette: A 90s Mix Tape (greying ghost, 2009). She attended the University of Southern California (BA) and Columbia College Chicago (MFA), and is now a PhD student in English at Rutgers University. A founding editor, with Hanna Andrews and Brandi Homan, of the feminist poetry press Switchback Books, she is also editing, with Arielle Greenberg, Glow in the Dark, an anthology of poems for teenage girls. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY.