Saints of Hysteria A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry

by Trinidad, David; Duhamel, Denise; Seaton, Maureen

• ISBN13: 9781933368184
• ISBN10: 1933368187
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-06
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press

Summary

Collaborative poetry grew out of word games played by Surrealists in the 1920s and taken up later by Japan's Vou Club and then by Charles Henri Ford, who created the chainpoem, composed by poets who mailed their lines all over the world. Yet, for all its rich history, virtually no collections of collaborative poetry exist. This exhilarating anthology remedies the omission. Featured are poems by as many as 18 people in a dizzying array of forms: villanelles to ghazals, sonnets to somonkas, pantoums to haiku, even quizzes, questionnaires, and other non-literary forms.

Author Biography

David Trinidad is the author of more than a dozen books, including Peyton Place: A Haiku Soap Opera, Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems, The Late Show, and Plasticville, a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. He has received awards from The Fund for Poetry and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and his work has appeared in numerous periodicals and several anthologies, including Best American Poetry, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology.

Denise Duhamel is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including: Blowout, Ka-Ching!, and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems. Duhamel has received grants and awards from numerous organizations, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and she served as the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2013. She teaches creative writing and literature at Florida International University and lives in Hollywood, Florida.

Maureen Seaton has authored fourteen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative--most recently, Stealth, with Sam Ace; Sinéad O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds, with Neil de la Flor; and Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen--and a memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, winner of the Lambda Literary Award.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. i
International Chainpoem	p. 1
Pull My Daisy	p. 3
Masterpiece	p. 5
A Postcard to Popeye	p. 7
Crone Rhapsody	p. 9
The Car	p. 12
St. Bridget's Neighborhood	p. 13
Song Heard Around St. Bridget's	p. 16
St. Bridget's Efficacy	p. 17
Reverdy	p. 19
Waves of Particles	p. 21
Within the Dome	p. 22
Inner Landscapes	p. 24
Noh	p. 27
Think of Anything	p. 29
from Memorial Day	p. 30
A Crown of Western Sonnets	p. 44
Freeze the Moment	p. 48
Slow Flurries	p. 49
from Polar Ode	p. 52
Masters of Suspense	p. 57
Driven North by Poverty	p. 59
Today the Nuclear Bombs	p. 61
A Hilarious Sestina	p. 64
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do	p. 67
Seven for Roy Rogers	p. 68
Milk Punch or Whiskey?	p. 70
Full Moon	p. 72
Debris	p. 73
Little Chinese Box	p. 74
Black Mink	p. 75
Thundering Undies	p. 76
I Got Easy	p. 77
From a Continuing Collaboration	p. 78
Strategy	p. 83
from Black Holes, Black Stockings	p. 85
S.O.S.	p. 97
Strawberry Blonde	p. 98
Anger Turned Inward	p. 100
Graphic Winces	p. 102
Cataract	p. 104
White Mink	p. 105
Hot Pink	p. 106
All Ears	p. 108
Renga	p. 120
Tenebrae	p. 125
A Lover's Complaint	p. 126
from Sappho's Gymnasium	p. 129
from A Library Book	p. 140
Chinook, 7 Poems (Like Non-existence)	p. 144
The Secret	p. 151
Listening to a Storyteller	p. 153
In the Cities of Someone Else's Anxiety	p. 154
The Bluest Day	p. 155
The Night She Removed Her Pearls	p. 156
Sky	p. 157
The Other Side of the Sky	p. 158
Dental Records Prove We Were All Children	p. 160
To My Kidney Near My House	p. 161
Four Attempts toward a Theory of True Names	p. 163
The Singing Animal World	p. 166
Enchainement	p. 168
Falstaff	p. 169
The Literary Community	p. 171
The Bus	p. 173
The Car in a Maze	p. 175
from Vacationland 2	p. 176
The Red-Tailed Monkey	p. 178
The Spring Years	p. 180
Chain Chain Chain	p. 182
Haiku	p. 199
from Sight	p. 201
from Sunflower	p. 210
No More Linda Smukler	p. 216
Social Etiquette	p. 218
Crawl Space	p. 219
Observer of the Obvious	p. 220
A Crown of Spells to Ward Off Susans	p. 222
Madame Bovary	p. 226
Madame Bovary 2	p. 227
Caprice	p. 228
The Origin of Olive Oyl	p. 230
82 Reasons Not to Get out of Bed	p. 232
Five Orgasms	p. 237
Gay Parade	p. 240
Mercy	p. 241
Waiting for the Cat Food to Come	p. 243
Dollar Store	p. 245
The New Prosperity	p. 246
Art in America	p. 247
Derivative of the Curve: 2	p. 248
Robotics	p. 249
Cereal Monogamy	p. 250
Somonka	p. 252
Somonka	p. 254
A Game of Chance	p. 257
Romeo's Half-Wake	p. 258
Screen Memory	p. 259
Lessons from the Kitchen	p. 262
Ifugao Red	p. 263
Logogriph	p. 265
All Saints' Day	p. 267
The Great Cuban Sculptor	p. 269
Sestina for Horse & Destiny	p. 271
Soul #1	p. 273
Spin	p. 275
Days of the Week	p. 276
Where We Live Now	p. 277
Thirst	p. 279
What Is She Doing Right Now?	p. 280
Soldier	p. 292
Fugitive Car	p. 294
The Life	p. 296
Another Avenue	p. 297
She Dreams about Being Jung	p. 299
Horror Movies We'd Like to See	p. 301
Term	p. 305
Testament	p. 306
Jangling	p. 308
Architecture Believes in Formalism	p. 309
A Note on Process	p. 311
Equitable Deviation	p. 313
Zombie Dawn	p. 314
Riparian	p. 329
As If I Was a Cloud Expert	p. 334
I Think You Get the Privilege O	p. 335
from Cartographic Anomaly	p. 336
from TRI / VIA	p. 343
from Braided Creek	p. 349
Alaska	p. 351
The Slave	p. 353
Ghazal As Menu or with Adumbration	p. 355
Now It's Tomorrow As Usual	p. 357
Sprung Flung	p. 364
About the Contributors	p. 367
Acknowledgments	p. 389
About the Editors	p. 397
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