Cosmopsis Quarterly 3 Released

Hello all! After a lengthy absence, I'm pleased to announce the release of Cosmopsis Quarterly 3. This issue has the same great format (poetry and short fiction) with over a dozen authors new to the Cosmopsis world (and a handful of familiar faces).

Click your way to our web site (www.cosmopsis.com) for more information and to order a copy. Discounts for multiple copies and subscriptions are also available. Plus, as William Michaelian reminds us in his fabulous collection of poetry, Winter Poems, you can always burn your copy if you get cold.

Review of Winter Poems

Many thanks to Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press for publishing Irene Kornonas's thoughtful review of William Michaelian's Winter Poems. We wish Doug, whom the City of Somerville must certainly consider poet laureate, much luck with the latest issue of the Bagel Bards anthology.

William Michaelian: Recently Banned Literature

It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon — oops. Wrong script. I meant to say, it’s been a busy month in Oregon. Among other things, I’ve launched Recently Banned Literature, a blog that contains poetry, notes, and other literary odds and ends that I’ve chosen to classify as “marginalia,” mostly because I like the word. Almost all of the entries are mercifully short — as I vow this one will be. They contain links to updated pages on my main website (there are currently 1,023 pages), as well as others to sites of genuine literary interest. I’ve even included an archival portrait (a wonderful pencil sketch done by a complete stranger) from 1982.

William Michaelian reads on Armenian Poetry Project

A recording of William Michaelian reading his poem, “I Can Imagine,” has been added to the Armenian Poetry Project. The archived page can be accessed here. The poem is part of his Songs and Letters, an extensive collection of poetry and prose he began in 2005.

William Michaelian: "No symbols where none intended."

The following paragraphs about Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot; The Unnamable) are taken from the March 3, 2008, edition of a daily newsletter I receive from www.todayinliterature.com, a worthwhile website that I heartily recommend.

Samuel Becket's Watt was published on this day in 1958. The “Addenda” which Beckett attaches to the end of the novel begins with this instruction: “The following precious and illuminating material should be carefully studied. Only fatigue and disgust prevented its incorporation.” The Addenda concludes with a playful and cryptic counterpoint: “no symbols where none intended.” Taken together, these statements reflect Beckett’s career-long attempt to tease his interpreters — in these program notes for Endgame, for example:

"Endgame does not want to be anything but a mere play. Nothing less. No thought, therefore, as to riddles, solutions. For such serious stuff we have universities, churches, coffee houses, etc."

Beckett scholar Raymond Federman says that one passage from Watt “may be Beckett’s best explanation of his own work.” It describes Watt standing transfixed before a painting of an almost-complete circle and a blue spot, the myriad possible meanings overwhelming Watt “to the point of bringing tears of incomprehension to his eyes.” Watt wonders if the circle and the spot were “the playthings of chance,” or if they might “eventually pause and converse, and perhaps even mingle, or keep steadfast on their ways, like ships in the night”…:

And he wondered what the artist had intended to represent (Watt knew nothing about painting), perhaps a circle and its centre in search of each other, or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and its centre in search of its centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and its centre in search of a centre and its circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of its centre and its circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of a centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of its centre and a circle respectively, or a circle and a centre not its centre in search of a centre and its circle respectively, in boundless space, in endless time (Watt knew nothing about physics), and at the thought that it was perhaps this, a circle and a centre not its centre in search of a center and its circle respectively, in boundless space, in endless time, then Watt’s eyes filled with tears that he could not stem, and they flowed down his fluted cheeks unchecked, in a steady flow, refreshing him greatly.

William Michaelian: The Addison Street Poetry Walk

A while back, I mentioned The Wall Poems of Leiden, an outdoor poetry project in the Netherlands. A similar project is the Addison Street Poetry Walk, located in downtown Berkeley, California. A 296-page companion volume featuring the commentary of former Poet Laureate Robert Hass was also released by Heyday Books in 2004.

Simplicity, Sincerity, Sonority: A New Voice in American Poetry

The following excerpt is from an excellent review of William Michaelian's two books of poetry, Winter Poems and Another Song I Know, posted recently online. The review is by Russ Allison Loar, a journalist, writer, and poet who lives in Claremont, California. The complete review is available at Amazon.com and on the Powell's Books website.

We are not living in an age of poetry, sad but true. The greatest lines of our most famous poets no longer enter our everyday vernacular. Shakespeare and Robert Frost, among others, still remain in our vocabulary, but the age of technology and the omnipresence of mass corporate culture has replaced the role of the poet in our society.

When one discovers an original poetic voice, a voice that actually matters, it is reason to take notice, to take out the iPod earbuds and try once again to read a book of poetry and enjoy it. This time, you will not be overwhelmed by obscurity, nauseated by pretentiousness and bored by irrelevance.

William Michaelian is a poet that matters, and most of all, he is a poet who communicates what matters, those small parts of everyday life that are the finest moments of our lives — moments of observation, insight and awakening.