New from Black Buzzard Press: IN FRAGILITY by Michael Graves

IN FRAGILITY

by Michael Graves

$15.95

Black Buzzard Press

ISBN 0-978-938872-47-8

Soft Cover, 86 pp.

Praise for In Fragility:

"Emotion recollected in fragility, these poems lucidly etch the power of darkness that endures, that returns. These poems are amazingly lucid, which gives them a paradoxical power."

--ROBERT VISCUSI, author of the novel Astoria (American Book Award winner) and of the poem "Ellis Island"

"This grave book deals with such volatile elements as alcohol, sexual frustration, and apostasy. The reader will watch fascinated as Mike Graves burns his fuse down to the stick of dynamite he holds in his hand, for these poems approximate a searing self¬murder note addressed to any reader strong enough to peruse it. Only a poet as skilled and knowledgeable as Graves could render raw and repressed emotion with such acute control of form and diction, such range of allusion. But reader beware: you are about to take your own life into your hands."

--GEORGE HELD

"To adapt a phrase from James Joyce, whom Graves is influenced by, In Fragility offers readers the curve of multiple emotions. While traversing sentiments of aloneness and aloofness, and both objective and introspective, these poems are at once bleak, menacing, disturbing and humorous. They bespeak a stark sobriety often in conflict with itself and, through the effective use of metaphor and the recurrent theme of alienation, achieve a narrative coherence."

--A. NICHOLAS FARGNOLI, Dean of Humanities, Molloy College, Rockville Centre, NY, and President of The James Joyce Society.

Title Poem:

IN FRAGILITY

Speak to her
In fervent prayer
And fevered need
With brimming heart,
Shaking like a poisoned cup
And soft, sick gut,
Of where you rose
From nothingness
To nascent consciousness,
Inheritor of world
And family legacy,
Consuming time
And fragile self
That can't connect
Although it grow
In pain, organically,
Enthused by hope
And every false approach
Fear and circumstance allow

About the Author:

MICHAEL GRAVES is the author of a full-length collection of poems, Adam and Cain (Black Buzzard, 2006) and two chapbooks, Illegal Border Crosser (Cervana Barva, 2008) and Outside St. Jude’s (R. E. M. Press, 1990). In Fragility from Black Buzzard Press is his second full-length collection.

In two thousand four (2004), he was the recipient of a grant of four thousand five hundred dollars ($4,500.00) from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. He is the publisher of the small magazine PHOENIX. Many years ago, he was a student of James Wright and organized a conference on James Wright at Poets House in 2004. And he became a member of P.E.N. a couple of years ago.

In addition to leading a James Joyce Ulysses’ Reading Group, he has published thirteen (13) poems in the James Joyce Quarterly and read from them and others of his poems influenced by Joyce to a gathering of the Joyce Society at the Gotham Book Mart.

Watch Michael Graves on YouTube.com at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjGZeKfSW8g, an in depth interview and a reading. (Credit: Poetry Thin Air)

Valery Oisteanu remembers LOUISE BOURGEOIS (1912-2010)

Louise Borgeois

Louise Bourgeois (1912-2010)
by Valery Oisteanu

Sculptures are almost melting, crying of loneliness
Aggressive ecstasy and malicious joy
Gigantic spiders stand still, in a frozen position
The spider-mother had passed into infinity
Mirrors reflecting other mirrors, as a portal
The old doors that were never opened
Her octagonal room a sequence of doors
Move slowly, almost invisible, closing opening
Two dark limbs are chopped off
And lay there on a slab of dark granite
The grand dame of Confessional art
With the dark latex phallus under her arm
Talks to Freud and Lacan, May 31, 2010
Something dark and uneasy about her
Her head appears like a surreal house
No eyes but windows, no face but steps
A garden of phalluses grows under her
She will harvest them on a full moon
Eccentric, sadistic, abstract-geometric
Totemic, Iconic, Ironic
All of that and much more
The Louise we knew, will not return.

Maman, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.

– Louise Bourgeois

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois, French-American artist and sculptor, nicknamed the "Spiderwoman" for her spider structures or Maman, died of heart failure on 31 May 2010 at the age of 98. She is credited as the founder of "confessional" art, best known for her disturbing and symbolic sculptures exploring birth, sexuality and death from a woman's point of view.