It’s refreshing, in this age of ubiquitous self-promotion, to pick up a book modestly titled My Poems Won’t Change The World, the first substantial American anthology of Patrizia Cavalli’s work.
J. Mae Barizo
J. Mae Barizo is a prize-winning poet and cultural critic. Recent writing will appear in Boston Review, Nylon magazine, and Denver Quarterly. She lives in Manhattan. You can find her on Twitter, @jmaebarizo.
Posted inArt
Great Outdoors: The Biennial of the Americas in Denver
In Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard envisions the house as a “vertical being,” with two symbolic poles: the irrationality of the cellar and the rational consciousness of the roof. “Up near the roof, all our thoughts are clear … Here we participate in the carpenter’s solid geometry.” The same can be said of Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen’s “Mine Pavilion,” a radiant wooden structure constructed in downtown Denver, which recalls the mining settlements erected when gold prospectors flocked to what would become Denver City.
Posted inBooks
Luminous Loss: Karen Green’s “Bough Down”
At the start of Karen Green’s prismatic first book, Bough Down, it is June. “Does it begin like this?” she writes, and describes in glittering prose a pastoral arrangement of household objects: garden hose, cigarettes, fuzzy pills, artichoke stalks. The items seem innocent enough until they become intricately linked with the narrative surrounding the aftermath of the suicide of David Foster Wallace, the author’s late husband.
