SELECTED POEMS & POETIC SERIES by THOMAS FINK

MARGARET H. JOHNSON Engages

Selected Poems & Poetic Series by Thomas Fink

(Marsh Hawk Press, New York, 2016)

Convention and Desire: Decoding the Jigsaw Hubbubs, 1 through 23

            Selected Poems & Poetic Series proves words defy gravity in the hands of Thomas Fink. In the Jigsaw Hubbub series 1 through 23, he offers insights into modern-day machinations, targeting areas of familiarity in unfamiliar ways and alluding to a society and culture bereft of emotional consequences. Particularly notable is the manner in which the poet chooses to expose aspects of living in a disengaged, fragmented society which somehow is held together by tradition and vestiges of hope.

            In the Jigsaw Hubbubs, each of the 23 poems takes shape as a helix swirling beyond the familiar into spaces unknown. While holding to poetics of past and present, we peer into spaces we only thought we knew. We observe movement inside cubicles and detect interactions which offer points of reference but no easy access to meaning. Entrapment comes to mind, yet nothing seems permanent.

            The language used in Jigsaw Hubbubs 1 through 23 creates a puzzle or kaleidoscope of thoughts and experiences that offer new perspectives based on images of life being lived without emotional commitment, populated by inhabitants extracting substance from intangible moments for the sake of achieving oneness with the rest of the world. Interactions between words and phrases in the Hubbubs invoke interpretations that defy logic, deny calibration and repel conciliation. Yet, beyond a world of untoward situations and circumstances where time zones seem to collide, there is a sense of tenacity. Despite threatening to disengage past from present in their impact, words take refuge in reflections of history and traces of humanity so inhabitants remain grounded in cultural context and human experience.

             Decoding the Jigsaw Hubbubs is a process. At first, words seem resistant, offering no frame of reference, only allusions, juxtapositions and discordant images. Slowly, meaning is offered up. Cacophonies settle into synchrony, colloquialisms emerge, and the poems begin to unveil undisputed truths concealed within a fragmented universe in which the familiar is deconstructed into remnants from which new concepts and fresh poetics are formed. The following descriptions highlight observations which at first resist conceptualization but somehow find a mood of acceptance:

• A woman's face:  "Habitual facial mode of just been punched" (22);
• After cosmetic surgery: "The torn rose of a face...Nervous narcissus rhapsody" (18);
• Movement: "Progress is trying to speak in hiccups" (12);
• Workspace: "In the minimum security of a rabbit hutch" (7);
• Employees: "'Lubricated gnats in necktie tourniquets" (7).

Poetic form and juxtaposed images, familiar and absurd, create new realities that require suspension of disbelief and gradual acceptance of the unimaginable.

            Yet, with the Jigsaw Hubbub series, we are not left to decipher meaning on our own. Gravity based on shared knowledge takes command as memories are beckoned to bridge gaps between what we know and what we must come to accept. The poems are hinged on cultural sanctity, notions of familiarity, and traces of hope:

            1) "who peers               there? & now

            we'll see her all the livelong night." (6)

            2) Reason to Boycott

            Despair." (20)

            3) "...primal jones: glid     ing from Point

            D to point Q to point N." (9)

            4) "Plaid neighborhood." (4)

            5)                                 "Dead,

            Death, &                     Beyond.

            Guess who         was supposed

            to be captain? Grace..." (4)

            In the example Jigsaw Hubbubs, juxtapositions create new associations attached to familiar words, concepts and colloquialisms:

• Example 1) especially the phrase, "livelong night," beckons memories of song lyrics, "I'll be working on the railroad all the livelong day";
• Example 2) evokes memories of a time in U.S. history when boycotts and despair dominated culture and politics;
• Example 3) evokes memories of public transit, especially riding the subway in New York City; 
• Example 4) is reminiscent of a time of hopefulness when achieving the American dream-- identical houses in nicely appointed neighborhoods separated by similar white picket fences-- signified social aspirations and communal connectivity;
• Example 5) suggests the paradoxical nature of reality which consists of human experience and desire for sublimation or reconciliation. In example 5, an arsenal of words allude to contrasting or commingled realities. Contrasts like arrogance and humility or life and death are accepted as conventional and familiar. New associations and meanings are forged when a series of words are presented in rapid succession: “Dead, Death and Beyond/Guess who was supposed to be captain Grace.” Notions of Death are sublimated by desire and hopefulness which extend beyond the present moment – shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond or at Guess, but The Guess Who, a successful rock band, also comes to mind and two words juxtaposed, “captain Grace,” invoke images of heroism, hope and redemption based on common knowledge of “Captain America” and “Amazing Grace.”

      Without warning, the poet plumbs our psyches for shared memories and cultural experiences that ground and connect us, even inspire us, despite challenges of living in a fast-paced, fragmented society.

            The Hubbub series is not for the fainthearted nor meant for shrugging off, more akin to a galaxy of ruminations presented in twists and turns with threats of blowing apart. The Hubbub poems rely on the familiar to explore the unknown, dispersing glimmers of humor and traces of hope along the way. Notions of apathy and fragmentation are invoked but balance is achieved in satirical rifts that reveal positive moments in serendipitous ways:

                                    "Get me

            anything they don't have" (17).

           

            "They     gave me

            all the              money

            back--              every fuck

            in' dime" (21).

            The Hubbub poems are reflective, satiric, playful, demeaning, bemoaning, hopeful and they reveal vestiges of life amid the sway of opportunistic chatter which dissipates once uttered, leaving only traces of attitude or what might be mistaken as such. The poems remind us that we can't take it with us and in fact, why try? It's the way life is lived in "minimum security rabbit hutches" (7). We get glimpses into cubicles where the dress code requirement is "sunglasses and a laptop (14) and "the epiphany is that one is supposed to supply content" (14). No solutions or saviors in this reality: "Plaid neighborhood     I don't     have pants" (4). So be content with what's available: "No eros without the unsure"(11). Yet, in reality, Eros has left the building.

            This series of Hubbub poems cleverly crafted by Thomas Fink can be stark and unsettling, but there is refuge in conventions of the familiar and there is hope in traces of humor and aspects of desire. Jigsaw Hubbubs 16 and 22 seem to depict the language and general mood of the Jigsaw Hubbubs:

            She feels like a

            permanent extra, as

            though lodged, an

            afterthought, in a rusty

            Clapboard af  fair squatting

            in gray tulips, where sunshine

             doesn't shine, & the

            cat is bigger than the child...(16)

                                    ****

                   Complacency is rotten

           for  the per                  petually com

  placent &,                                   more so, for

          the ones                         who suffer

            them. Yet                those whose

  habitual facial                             mode is “just

 been punched”                     could use a

          Touch of that.           Dried flood...(22)

Reading Thomas Fink's Selected Poems and Poetic Series, specifically Jigsaw Hubbubs 1 through 23, is an exploration, a delightful experience of witnessing a new universe unfold.  After some decoding, we gain access and are catapulted into spaces in which concepts and images appear to defy the pull of gravity. Trepidation looms, yet we never leave the ground.

            Holding to what we know, we scramble through a jigsaw of experiences that appear fragmented, disconnected and bereft of meaning. At the outset, common knowledge only leads to misconceptions and questions. Threats of a harsh reality predominate. Finally, with little to go on except traces of culture and humanity, we begin to accept the unnatural formation of stark realities. Unfamiliar concepts and images begin to merge with pieces of reality that we know and recognize, and access to this destabilizing, unfamiliar world of people, places and concepts is granted. Discordant images become reflections of truth, and this new world makes all the sense in the world.

            Reading Thomas Fink's Selected Poems and Poetic Series, Hubbubs 1 through 23, we are guided by a sense of familiarity based on conventions, what we already know and accept. We witness detachment as well as notions of hope reflected in experiences of people we may or may not recognize but who share common bonds of cultural experience and humanity. After traces of history and culture are unveiled, a desire to know more incites imagination, and new concepts and relationships are ascertained. To navigate this world created in the Jigsaw Hubbub series, we rely on the balance between what we know and what we hope to find out. The usual controls are clearly not in working order and the power button is found outside a conventional body of knowledge. Known concepts threaten to disengage; yet we remain grounded. An “invisible trap door” stays unlocked throughout the entire experience and anyone can escape at any time. But why would we?

*****

Margaret H. Johnson's desire to explore interests in poetry, photography and curriculum design led to an early retirement from her position as Lecturer of English at the City University of New York. Her publications include scholarly articles, selected poems, and poetry reviews. Nonfiction works on writing for self-mastery are in progress. Her book of poems is scheduled for publication in the fall, 2017 and she plans to publish a children's book also in 2017.  She coordinates a poetry/performance collaborative which promotes poets and poetry in her local community and she develops workshops for writing and emotional mastery. Beyond interests in writing and poetry, she is a freelance photographer and sustainable living advocate.

FEATURED POET: JEAN VENGUA

FIVE POEMS by Jean Vengua

MANIFEST DESTINY

Something festers. Nodes of light, scarlet spines, memory. Passing trauma gestures by the side of the road, waves from the flooded shore. Thought shivers, seeks metaphors while flesh gets right to the point, clinging to its makeshift raft. Mind desires completeness; sentence thought to the cage of speech, in the cage of writing, in the cage of print, in the cage of a pixel. Tell me. I want to penetrate you, the stories inked into your skin. You, my own. Own you. Is fleshiness its own language? I don’t know. The thumbs know, the swollen eyes and broken throats. Tell me.

THE MYSTERIES

There is uncertainty about the functions, the mysteries of the body, what rituals might be appropriate to unlock its speech. Pressures build behind the left ear and along the back of the neck; pinpoints spark the left shoulder, and now the muscles give in to a formal rictus; how, some mornings, one rises still fastened in its clasp. Yet, water penetrates. I watch a documentary about flooding; the pressure expands, sentences flow into each other, lose proportion, bubble up. The whole population migrates toward the freeway. They travel toward a dome, a river, a jugular vein; transformations sever control from the eye. Tear down barricades. Supplicate.

The body, panglawasnon, as foreigner martyr saint. I could take a piece of flesh and cut it into small pieces, each symbolizing a letter or syllable, a falling or rising taken into the mouth as communion. Could say words over my feet or my hands, light incense to scent my breasts, my hair. Take these letters; cut them into wafers, mix into a poultice, burn in a pyre, scatter over the soil, the internet.

SELF INDUSTRY

is this what it is to be
human a constant manu-
facture of selves. clipping
the threads, stitching the
hem. by hand or machinery,
a cottage industry. careful
to shape the settings and
stages. this is where she
lives. these the implements;
changing syntax to adjust
to a stereoscopic, flickering

politic. and when i hears

the voice of an other, i

takes it up in mimicry until

handcrafted self dangles

from the needle’s point:

biography,

novel,

poem,
pictogram—fading

on the rock wall,

clinging to the threads

of a new angel, thrashing
in the wings.

PEARL

she is refreshingly
limp after
pain

as if the
mind had
finally

extracted a particle
of horror
and

now looking at
a black
pearl

in the palm
can only
remember

a vague sadness
passing
shadow

CROSSING

she
inhabits flesh
shifts sites, altars

reality
borders upon
borders that open

why
not cross
that divide

or

has it
already crossed you?

*****

Jean Vengua is the author of Prau, a collection of experimental poetry (for which she received the Filamore Tabios, Sr., Memorial Prize (Meritage Press), and a chapbook, The Aching Vicinities (Otoliths Press). With Mark Young, she co-edited the First Hay(na)ku Anthology, and The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II. In the mid 1990s, Elizabeth H. Pisares and Jean Vengua formed Tulitos Press and published and edited the Debut: the Making of a Filipino American Film by Gene Cajayon and John Manal Castro, and The Flipside, by Rod Pulido. Jean's poetry and essays have been published in many journals and anthologies. She is editor of the literary/art journal, Local Nomad and lives in Monterey, CA. Her book, Corporeal, will be published by Black Radish Books in 2019.

OXYGEN by JULIA FIEDORCZUK

EILEEN TABIOS Engages

Oxygen by Julia Fiedorczuk, Translated by Bill Johnston

(Zephyr Press, Brookline, MA, 2017)

There are several ways to delight in Oxygen by Polish poet Julia Fiedorczuk, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston. One can appreciate, as suggested by Brenda Hillman in her Prefatory Note, how “contemporary ecological writing, language theory and feminist studies all inform Fiedorczuk’s poetry.” Or—make it And—one can appreciate how Fiedorczuk’s inspiration from the “hard sciences” of physics, astronomy, chemistry and microbiology are at ease with personal poems from the poet’s “intensely experienced life,” as suggested by Bill Johnston in his Translator’s Introduction. As both Hillman’s and Johnston’s ways are discernible from reading through the collection, my engagement focuses instead on the narrower point of view of Fiedorczuk’s language, which was what moved me to do this review.

Specifically, I was struck by the organic manner in which Fiedorczuk involved language—its poetics, its elements, its metaphors—in her poetry. For one, her relationship generated such pleasing lines as:

for salt is on the tongue’s tip and is the dot over the i

—from “Lands and Oceans”

and the river will release a drop of blood

in the place the star has pierced:

two commas in the supple dance of life,

cyclops and daphia

—from “Evening”

The sadness of our stories upon a winter sky

—from “Oxygen”

…sleep

eases the hard shapes of specters and the poem

lets its braids down like a sea

—from “Eclogue”

yet I’m writing to you in the air, I’m wearing the rain

—from “on the way”

(Thus,) One also can take away quotable wisdom, like

…one lost word

would be the fall of kingdoms

the stoppage of time

—from “for S.F.”

some poems cannot be written any longer.

some could not be written until now.

—from “Psalm 1”

I believe I focused on language because I sensed a pervasiveness in Fiedorczuk’s tie to words—that while she may write about other things, she sooner or later will have to self-consciously refer to words. Indeed, she seems—in a positive way—self-conscious as a poet. When I came across her poem “Relentlessly Craving,” I nodded at the logic of its compulsiveness. I don’t know anything about Fiedorczuk’s personal life so I’ll take—and easily believe—Johnston’s word for it that it is “intensely experienced.” But what I do glean from reading Fiedorczuk is that she is chosen as much by Poetry as she chose to be a poet. Here is an excerpt from “Relentless Craving”—an effective ars poetica for Fiedorczuk:

 (click on image to enlarge)

I relish this fine introduction of Julia Fiedorczuk to an English readership. Recommended.

*****

Eileen Tabios is the editor of Galatea Resurrects. Her 2017 poetry releases to date include two books, two booklets and six poetry chaps. Forthcoming this fall are two new poetry collections, MANHATTAN: An Archaeology (Paloma Press) and Love in a Time of Belligerence (Editions du Cygne/SWAN World). Her books have been released in nine countries and cyberspace. More info about her work at http://eileenrtabios.com

"ROMEO AND ROMEO" by AHMET GÜNTAN

PETER VALENTE Engages

“Romeo and Romeo” by Ahmet Güntan

published in Eda: An Anthology of ContemporaryTurkish Poetry edited by Murat Nemet-Nejat

(Talisman House, 2004)

Murat Nemet-Nejat writes in the intro to Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry, published by Talisman House: "What is ecstatic in eda involves a blurring of identities, in pain, at the same time moving from object to object, unifying them in a mental movement of yearning, dance of dispossession." In this context, what struck me about Ahmet Güntan's "Romeo and Romeo" (featured below) is exactly this blurring of identities between the lover and the beloved. Romeo gazes into Romeo's eyes: Narcissus gazing into a pool. The poem begins with an image of seeing, "Seeing me    he came from you" Narcissus loses himself as he reaches for his own image: "More than me you, I'll remember, I / sleep in you" So this is the Sufi destruction of the ego, the blurring of identities enacted in the poem. Not Buber's I / Thou but the blurring of distinctions between the I and the you . Furthermore, the speaker, the I, is alone like Narcissus: "I'm with myself, alone, for myself, / walking around, me, taking you out / who, u-turning, takes within you, me." This Other arises from the speaker himself as much as it can be seen as someone "outside" of himself. But this is a moment among many moments in the sequence of poems where this kind of Cartesian rationality breaks down utterly, the distance between lover and beloved is blurred, one flows into the other. Finally, I'm not certain it is accurate to say that the speaker is addressing another person in the material sense. At first it seemed to me that two people were meant but then I realized that instead they are in a process of unification on a spiritual plane, where individual ego is subsumed in ecstasy.  What I mean is that there is a lover addressing his beloved in the poem but the distinction between the two doesn't hold because the ego is not there. It is as if Narcissus having drowned emerged on the other side of life somewhat like Orpheus in the famous scene in Cocteau's film. Indeed, the speaker is a kind of Orpheus figure: "in sleep you depart, from me, / in sleep I forget, I, I / depart, from you." And in another poem: "You are leaving, don't, stay here I said, he said / I don't go far he said, he says. / am not leaving, I'm staying, I said." The desire of union and the pain of departing in this poem is so heightened that the reader feels this "dialogue" can only be occurring on a spiritual plane. You feel the "mental movement of yearning, the dance of dispossession." 

And so the poem ends with a consummation of this love on a higher plane but this is not final. The following lines, that conclude all of the poems in the sequence except the last one, show a kind of reversal of linear time: "what runs away, follows" and "what doesn't stop    stop." Time is not measured the same way when the lovers' identities are merged. Perception has changed: "I want to start from scratch." But each of these phrases are preceded by the phrase "Once more, once more, once more" So it is not as though the time is static. Here is the "weaving of past and present into one continuum, which is the Sufi essence of time. In this perception the splits between past, present and even future disappear into a simultaneity - into movements of perception." In this space of consummation time is not split into past, present, and future. Just as the idea of linear time interrupts the perception of a continuum, so does the ego create a distance between the I and the other.

One last thought on Güntan's poem. Nemet-Nejat mentions, in his essay on "Romeo and Romeo," that "the sleep and wake-up times of the two appear out of sync with each other, one waking up exactly when the other is going to sleep." Sleep is also when the body is at rest: it is in a state of non-being, egoless, and not subject to rational thought. For these reasons, it is most receptive to the penetration of the other in a spiritual sense. The waking relation to the dream state confirms that there is an alternate mode of experience, one that is perhaps more real in a sense than what we see when we are awake.

I would like to close with this section from my translation of Philostratus The Elder’s Images that I thought would be interesting in the context of this poem. In it Philostratus is describing to a boy a painting of Narcissus:

Now I want you to notice certain tiny details that give the painting a greater sense of realism; look, for example, at the painted dewdrops that drip from the flowers and look at that bee settling on a flower – now you might ask yourself whether a real bee has been deceived by a painted flower and yet, on the other hand, perhaps we are the ones who are deceived and a painted bee is in fact real. I do not know the answer. Let us leave this question for now. Rather, let us resume our discussion of Narcissus.  Now the painting hasn’t deceived you, Narcissus, nor do you occupy yourself with a thing made of pigments or wax. But you don’t realize that this is just your reflection in the pool as you gaze into it; instead you are tricked by the resemblance of your image in the water. Now if you changed the expression on your face, or made a gesture with your hands you would see that the image changes. Instead, what do you expect to happen? You act as though you had met a friend and you wait for him to do something. Do you expect the very pool to somehow enter in conversation with you? Of course you don’t. And this young man before us cannot hear anything we say, he is too preoccupied with gazing into the pool, and so we must discover the meaning of the painting ourselves. 

~~

                                                ROMEO & ROMEO (1990-1994)

                                                by Ahmet Güntan

                                                           

                        The Hour of Sleep

Seeing me    he came from you

wanting himself, love, I was in you,                              

let him take from me, the wanter, what he wants 

I am near you, I came near you, me,                                                     

hasn't flown yet, will go then,          

you, time then, for your want.          

Waited for your arrival, with you,             

near, next  someone someone, with me

I’ll love him, he forgot it before, 

Forgetting, he slept, the before, with the one there,

but he says he compares tears to me, his better self,           

sleeping forget, said, hey you, the one here.

More than me you, I’ll remember, I               

sleep in you, me                                    

if you want to see, come, look where I sleep.      

Romeo, my Romeo's leaving me,                                                   

when you wake up, turn back, my lover, here, towards you,

as I sleep, me, on the road you meet, me, I'll meet you.

I had arrived, here, I want to find, here, again,

as I wake up be near me   you found me           

only I love as much as you love me, you.           

Don’t lie, love invisibly, me,                                          

there where you spent the night 

search me, can you sleep, then, near me, in you.

Let's sleep, let's, one-two-three-thirty,

four-five-six-thirty, seven-eight-nine-thirty,

ten-thirty, sleep time.

Once more, once more, once more,

I want to start from scratch. 

Once more, once more, once more,

what doesn't stop    stop.                            

Once more, once more, once more,

what runs away, follows.

                                   

                        Lullaby

I'm with myself, alone, for myself,

walking around, me, taking you out,                 

who, u-turning, takes within you, me.

I won't be, here, you,

from where you sleep, I continue, as I wake up, me,

where you forgot, I start, as I forget, you. 

I won't forget, what I forgot, fooling, you,                 

you forgot what you did, did me, 

you sleep when I wake up, in your sleep tell me, me, what you got to tell me.

What I sleep with, before I asleep, give to me,

wake up, you  I feel sleepy  I must go, to me,                 

sleep with me, see what turns up, turns to where I turn, to you.            

Sleepy, you can wait for my waking up, what it will give is me,

waiting to wake up I see, you,

in sleep, waiting waiting for your waking up, in me.          

Little left, to my sleep, if you feel unsleepy, follow,          

you forget what you forgot, the target in sleep, me,

what I'd forgotten I didn’t, I, you.

Once more, once more, once more,

I want to start from scratch.

Once more, once more, once more,

what doesn't stop   stop.                   

Once more, once more, once more,

what runs away, follows.

                        Sleep

Sleeping you depart,

forgetter of your leaving is, me        

as I return from sleep, get,

you return from sleep, you.

As I return from sleep                                      

if you return into

me, there forget

what it forgot, you.

Sleep with me, you,

in sleep you depart, from me,

in sleep I forget, I, I

depart, from you.

The sleeper departs, departer sleeps,

the mark in sleep, me,                             

I'll lull to sleep,                        

in me, what repeats itself.

Once more, once more, once more,

I want to start from scratch. 

Once more, once more, once more,                   

what doesn't stop     stop.                                     

Once more, once more, once more,

what runs away, follows.             

                        Dream

Looks for a simple thing: your looking for me 

I do not object to, he'll pursue his objection,

I do not look for you the way you do

me, the one I look for does exactly as I want him to, me.

Very simple, it, to me, you will show me,

as you look in your manner for me, I’ll still be there,

whatever turns up, fetch and show me,

in my searching place, I'll find and return me.

Very simple, what I look for is pure, not in you, you aren't in me,   

come, find me, I am asleep in you,                   

you were fooling me in my sleep, me

from me, come, sleep in it, you, desiring me 

Very simple, it’ll make me sleep, your sleep, me,             

without knowing with whom I'm falling, in love with you,

didn’t catch on, someone, he is looking for me                               

fool him, show him, again to no one        

I want to return to the beginning, once more, 

lie down, if you want to forget, lie down then forget      

is there someone by you who knows, who can know

you’re sleeping, now then forget me.            

Once more, once more, once more,

I want to start from scratch. 

Once more, once more, once more,                   

what doesn't stop     stop.                                     

Once more, once more, once more,

what runs away, follows.                                

                        The Hour to Wake Up

Come, he said, let's carry it together, he said.

As much as I can carry, I said.

As much as you can carry, he said.

You are leaving, don't, stay here I said, he said

I said don't go far he said, he says.

am not leaving, I'm staying, I said.   

Sleep makes one rest he said, I said.

Sleep erases things he says he said, I said

I listen to the bitter end, I said he said he says

He opens, I said, the door, I said,

to me I said, it's true I said.      

there, I said, is visible, I said, the arriver, I said.

He's shutting it to me, he said,

I'll open it, don't you worry I said, he said.

Justice Romeo!

Justice, my Romeo!

                        Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat[1]

---

[1] Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry, edited by Murat Nemet-Nejat (Talisman House, 2004). "Romeo & Romeo" was originally published in Turkish in Turkey in 1995 by Yapi Kredi.

*****

Peter Valente is the author of A Boy Asleep Under the Sun: Versions of Sandro Penna  (Punctum Books, 2014), which was nominated for a Lambda award, The Artaud Variations (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014), Let the Games Begin: Five Roman Writers (Talisman House, 2015), two books of photography, Blue (Spuyten Duyvil) and Street Level (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), two translations from the Italian, Blackout by Nanni Balestrini (Commune Editions, 2017) and Whatever the Name by Pierre Lepori (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), Two Novellas: Parthenogenesis & Plague in the Imperial City (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), a collaboration with Kevin Killian, Ekstasis (blazeVOX, 2017) and the chapbook, Forge of Words a Forest (Jensen Daniels, 1998). He is the co-translator of the chapbook, Selected Late Letters of Antonin Artaud, 1945-1947 (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2014), and has translated the work of Luis Cernuda, Gérard de Nerval, Cesare Viviani, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as numerous Ancient Greek and Latin authors. He is presently at work on a book for Semiotext(e). In 2010, he turned to filmmaking and has completed 60 shorts to date, 24 of which were screened at Anthology Film Archives.