But the idea of transformation has always been something that I romanticize in a work. I’m cautious of it but I also need it to connect my thoughts with the process of making. That’s really important.
—
Nari Ward
From “Without Looking” (After Magritte) by Kimiko Hahn
- Rosa Barba by Joan Jonas
- Barbara Kasten by Leslie Hewitt
- Agnieszka Kurant by Sabine Russ
- Soon-Mi Yoo by Paul Dallas
- Alejandro Zambra by Daniel Alarcón
- Tom McCarthy by Frederic Tuten
- Matana Roberts by Christopher Stackhouse
Interviews
- Samara Golden by Kristin Lucas
- Christian Thompson by Sean Lowry
- Kevin Kline and Bruce Schultz by Zachary Lazar
Artists on Artists
- The Slanted Life of Emily Dickinson by Rosanna Bruno
- Four Poems by Rae Armantrout
- Making Tom (Return): Behind the Scenes by Jeffery Renard Allen
- Night Ride by Colin Dickey
- Ravalushan by Mohammed Naseehu Ali
- Masses and Motets: Another Francesca Fruscella Mystery by Jeffrey DeShell
- Line and Light by Jeffrey Yang & Melissa McGill
- From “Without Looking” (After Magritte) by Kimiko Hahn
First Proof
- James Mackay’s Derek Jarman Super 8 by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
- Margaret Morton’s Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan by Claudia Steinberg
- César Aira’s The Musical Brain: And Other Stories by Ryan Chapman
- Benny and Joshua Safdie’s Heaven Knows What by Sara Driver
- P. Inman’s Written: 1976–2013 by Ian Dreiblatt
- Seth Price’s Folklore U.S. by Ben Fama
- Florentina Holzinger and Vincent Riebeek’s Kein Applaus Für Scheisse by Lauren Bakst
- Renée Green’s Other Planes of There by Thom Donovan
Editor's Choice
Plate 4
The Lost Jockey
He holds a lantern at the end of her
driveway. I wouldn’t say lost so much as
condemned and disoriented. Nothing I
love lives here long. Any longer. At one
time—acorns would knock on the roof,
the screen door squeak-slam, a kettle
whistle in the kitchen. Then the taste of
mold. He knows as fact, I easily hurt.
Plate 18
An End to Contemplation
Linoleum. Pink bear named Pinky.
Radishes. An empty milk carton by
the sink is full of coffee grounds and
eggshells. By the stove, pine. Cat turds.
Cat turds by the phone. I close the
kitchen door so I can phone. It’s 1970.
It took me four days to hitchhike from
Saginaw—Mother’s purple kimono from
her mother. Blue linoleum. I hit my sister.
Plate 47
The Acrobat’s Ideas
Tights and gloves leave an impressive
impression. But against clouds, snow, or
skirmish—?
Plate 33
The Finery of the Storm
In the hurricane, we heard a crack,
looked out, and saw her slow crash.
That willow was dead meat since he’d
excised and burned the heart, a wasp
nest! (How fine their fury!) The stump
resembles a stupa. Stupor.
Plate 70
The Annunciation
Just as my nieces drown their dollhouse babies
in the dollhouse tub, so I would
images: her dry eraser in his office.
Kimiko Hahn is the author of nine collections, most recently Toxic Flora and Brain Fever, both prompted by rarified fields of science. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY.
Related
As an Indigenous poet, Belcourt is creating space for himself and his community in “a world we did not want, a world that we did not build for ourselves.”
All the experts say I’m sane.
Some even say I might acquire insight someday.
Increasingly, poems reach me physically, testing my physical and emotional boundaries—looking for places they might get inside, frequencies at which I might hear, poking at sensuous dead zones.
Originally published in
BOMB 131,
Spring 2015
Featuring interviews with Rosa Barba, Soon-Mi Yoo, Agnieszka Kurant, Tatiana Bilbao, Alejandro Zambra, Tom McCarthy, Matana Roberts, and Barbara Kasten.
