Of Note if You're Me Or Some-Body Else: Brolaski on Stephens' Absence Whereas

Lots of fine content in the April-May Poetry Project Newsletter (just now getting to it), including and especially a mini-essay/review of Nathanael Stephens' Absence Whereas (Nightboat, 2009). Brolaski treats so many aporias in this book not only via the terms it wrestles with (or "puts off" as Brolaski notes)--the "littoral spaces" between selves, body and text--but does so, aptly and with an admirable depth and (as far as I read it) insight into the work's tracings. Tracings, as in intertextual convergences--ropes that tie through the voids these strokes on the page, tracing the work through Bataille, through (especially) Glissant (who N. has translated). This, my reading of a work of incredible studied rawness and poetic depth, has got me wanting to double back on it now, now as I am hoping in the next weeks to get my hands on Stephens' latest.

Rich Owens writes on the paradoxes and possibilities of commoning in various environments, including the virtual (this, the blogging), in the new issue of PPNL, which, if my procrastination keeps up, I'll certainly be reading as the tree outside my window begins to thaw. Onward...