Complete New Orleans Tribute Issue

2010 SUPPLEMENT

 

FEATURED POETS OF 2010

Wendy Babiak  Jim Christy  Hans Plomp  Robert Priest

 

FEATURED ARTISTS

Photographing the Ninth Ward
Images of New Orleans After Katrina by John Rosenthal

 

Ed Coletti  Jeff Crouch  Diana Magallon  John Martone  Spencer Selby

 

FICTION
edited by Vernon Frazer

Tom Bradley  Seth Phelps  Stefani Christova  Jordan Zinovich
Jefferson Hansen  Joe Clifford  Christopher Brookhouse  Andy Stewart

 

REVIEWS

Allan Graubard   Paul Martinez Pompa   Jack Foley   Roberts French   
Steve Dalachinsky & Yuko Otomo
  Billey Rainey  Wanda Phipps

An Interview with Choreographer Edisa Weeks
Interviewer: Wanda Phipps

 

FEATURES

 

Photographing the Ninth Ward
Images of New Orleans After Katrina by John Rosenthal

 

Diane di Prima
A Retrospective Collection of Essays

 

Home Again, Home Again
A Memoir by Ron Loewinsohn

 

Perfiles de la Noche / Profiles of Night
Mujeres poetas de Venezuela/Women Poets of Venezuela

A Selection from the Bi-lingual Anthology
Original complete text selected and translated by Rowena Hill
Co-edited by Pen de Venezuela and bid & co.
Selection for online edition by Terri Carrion

Poetry by
María Auxiliadora Álvarez, Edda Armas, Enriqueta Arvelo Larriva,
María calcaño, Laura Cracco, Ida Gramcko, Patricia Guzmán, Veronica Jaffe,
Maritza Jiménez, Rowena Hill, Martha Kornblith, Luz machado, María Isabel Novillo,
Cecilia Ortiz, Hanni Ossott, Yolanda Pantin, Emira Rodríguez, Margara Russotto,
María Clara Salas, Elizabeth Schön, Blanca Strepponi, Ana Enriqueta Terán,
Alicia Torres, Elena Vera, Carmen Verde Arocha, Miyo Vestrin


 


 

2009 ISSUE

 

CHAPBOOK:
A Time in Fragments
  
Poem by Clark Coolidge; Drawings by Nancy Victoria Davis

 


 

FEATURES

 

Big Bridge New Orleans Sturm und Drang Anthology
edited by Dave Brinks and Bill Lavender
Introductory notes for work by 30 artists and 90 writers whose work will
double the size of this issue when it appears at the end of summer.
 

Slow Poetry
Edited by Dale Smith
One of the most refreshing and promising developments in poetry in recent years,
Slow Poetry does not propose another sectarian or clique position, but rather methods
of reading and attitudes toward production which could apply to most genres in the
current scene or likely to emerge in the near future. The approach has a strong base
in concepts and needs made more apparent than ever by current ecological and
economic concerns.

 
Beauty Came Groveling Forward:
Selected South African Poems and Stories

edited by Gary Cummiskey
This collection was meant to show the diversity and spirited character of current
South African writing. It contains work by some celebrated writers, and some whose
work has not received wide circulation even in its home country. Without the
problems caused by canon formation or trying to be totally comprehensive, this
group of poems and stories is free to work outside the stereotypes and preconceptions
of South Africa and allow the participants to show what they can do as individuals.

 

All This Strangeness:
A Garland for George Oppen

Edited by Eric Hoffman
Commentary on Oppen has grown slowly, unobtrusively, and steadily, until it now forms
a major body in itself. This collection of essays evaluates that body of criticism in less partisan
terms than many of its predecessors, seeking to focus on individual poems and prosody in
a broad historical context, going beyond the dichotomies that dominated the 20th Century and
making room for further types of relevance in current literary and social dispensations.

 

Sephardic Proverbs
Collected and translated by Michael Castro
Proverbs act on many of the same principles as other miniatures, such as haiku. Like stand-alone
couplets and quatrains used in everything from toasts to insults, they also include a strong element of
collaboration and evolution. As a look at a tradition or a type of poem, this collection can stay with a
reader a long time.

 

Post-Beat Anthology
Reprint from the Chinese anthology, with brief intro
Edited by Vernon Frazer
How would you edit a collection of poems with that title for a Chinese audience? Probably not the
same way Frazer has. That's one of the things that makes it interesting and refreshing.

 

as per Le Roman de la Rose, for example
An Anthology of Middle East Genocide Edited by Arpine Konyalian Grenier
How does the cruel and unusual work for you through art, whether it comes from
direct experience or direct/indirect memory. Be Genet, for example; lemon to lemonade,
for example. How does one turn to Le Roman de la Rose (a Middle Ages Poem) when
one is mired in or sorting out or faced with what happened or what is happening that is
cruel and unusual due to human intolerance: racial religious cultural gender related and other.

 

Charles Olson and the Nature of Destructive Humanism
by Craig Stormont

 

One Man Blues:
Remembering Thomas Chapin
Reminiscence by Vernon Frazer

 

Excerpt from
Autobiography
by David Bromige

 

The India Journals
by John Brandi

 

Genius and Heroin:
by Michael Largo
In this essay, the author reviews his own book. The themes of psycho-chemistry may
stretch back to pristine civilizations in China, Egypt, and Mexico, but they seem inexhaustible.
Perhaps associate chemicals with genius is because our brains produce such sophisticated
bases to start with, and self-review also finds a base in that phenomenon.

 

WAR PAPERS (3)
Poems and essays against war.
Sub-features by John Bradley, Joel Lewis, Philip Metres, Vincent Katz, Francesco Levato, and
Louise Landes Levi, plus reflections from around the world on the election of Barack Obama,
and, of course, Halvard Johnson's continuing anthology of anti-war poems.

 

A Retrospective of the Publication Work of Karl Young

 


 

ART

Enigmas
paintings by Jim Spitzer
As a regular contributor to Big Bridge, these paintings, variations on an enigmatic
theme, show Spitzer's continuing evolution, as well as being koan-like meditations
in their own right.

 
The Kingdom of Madison:
Photographs from Madison County, North Carolina

by Rob Amberg
Selections from three sets of photos, exploring a still relatively isolated place,
where landscape still has functional meaning. When Amberg arrived, not as a tourist,
but as one seeking community "Planting was still done by the signs of the moon.
Water came from springs and heat from forests" and traditional music still part of
daily life. These photos add to the tradition begun in the WPA projects of the
Great Depression, but decidedly retain an identity of their own.

 
These Are My Angels
by Tasha Robbins
Small paintings done in Brooklyn on found cardboard by one of the Post-Katrina
diaspora. Celebrating the C-Train stop at Franklin + Fulton Avenues, as the artist writes,
they "kept my heart, eye + hand moving with a spirit of life close to the timbre and
vibration of the Crescent City, still healing. . .

 
Lectura en Tránsito
Project Created and Directed by Carmen Gloria Berríos
Set based on combination of public art and poetry from Santiago de Chile.
Poems translated by Terri Carrion and Carmen Gloria Berríos.

 
Animal Night Photography
by Felicia Murray; notes by Louise Landes Levi
New techniques in photography allow us to make photographic images of phenomena
we could only imagine in previous eras. We might debate whether the nature of cameras
and software brings us any closer to the spiritual world, but these haunting images of
animals should make us feel less alone, and more in touch with the continuum of life.

 
12 Collages
by John Brandi
These colages can be read as a non-verbal counterpart and extension of his India Journal
and related work.

 


FICTION

 
Fiction by
Mel Freilicher, Eric Beeny, Stefani Christova, Lynda Schor, David Madgalene,
Stephen-Paul Martin, Mark Wallace, Susan Smith Nash,
Richard Martin, Peter Conners, Ann Bogle, Jeffrey Hansen, Carol Novack

 

 REVIEWS

Reviews of:
Wanda Phipps, Lewis Warsh, Simon Pettet, Larissa Shmailo, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Ed Sanders,
Bill Berkson, Colter Jacobsen, Mark Young, John Roche, Philip Gounis, Rich Kruse, Michael Rumaker,
Annie Le Brun, George Kimball, and Ashis Gupta.

Reviewed by:
Kirpal Gordon; Svitlana Matviyenko, Garry Parrish, Jackie Sheeler, Jim Feast, Allan Graubard,
Charles Thorne, Barbara Henning, Tom Hibbard, Steve Elmer, Stephen Lewandowski
Joe Wetteroth, Vernon Frazer, Leverett T. Smith, and Katherine Hastings.

 


 

LITTLE MAGS  

Plastic Ocean

Green Dragon

Untamed Ink

 


 

ROCKPILE

ROCKPILE is a collaboration between David Meltzer — poet, musician, essayist,
and more — and Michael Rothenberg of Big Bridge Press. David and Michael will
journey through eight cities in the U.S. to perform poetry and prose, composed while on the
road, with local musicians and artists in each city. ROCKPILE will serve to educate and
preserve as well as to create a history of collaboration. It will help to reinforce the tradition of
the troubadour of all generations, central to the cultural upheaval and identity politics that
reawakened poets, artists, musicians, and songwriters in the mid-1960s through the 1970s.
The project will end with a final multimedia performance in San Francisco.


Check out the ROCKPILE Blog for calendar and discussion!