Welcome to Week 3 of the Hidden Cathedral Poetry Celebration. First, Michael Joyce will read for us from his most recent book.
His friend, Cathedral Arts visionary and writer, Eugene K. Garber, wrote a short review below. The two friends had planned to give a talk together for our 2020 festival which was postponed due to the pandemic. But Michaels’s poetry is not bound by time or place, as Gene indicates:
“Light in Its Common Place is a truly extraordinary work…...It reaches deeper into darkness and into the possibilities and limitations of language. It dares to do things with "poetry" that are not done by anybody else that I know of. I could go on…..”
Biography: Michael Joyce is Professor Emeritus of English and Media Studies at Vassar College. His fifteen books and several digital works— most recently the poems, Light in its Common Place, from Broadstone Books, 2020— span a career as novelist, poet, critic, theorist, digital literature pioneer, and multimedia artist. His poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals and he has published three prior collections of poems: A Hagiography of Heaven and Vicinity (Broadstone, 2017), Biennial (BlazeVOX, 2016) and Paris Views, (BlazeVOX, 2012).
Below is another reading from the Broadstone Books October 2020 book launch (which you can access in its entirety here).
For part 2 of week 3 of the Hidden Cathedral Poetry Celebration, Marly Youmans reads
“Christening” by Mischa Willett, and “No’” by A. M. Juster from his recent book, Wonder and Wrath.
I was particularly struck by this poem by A.M. Juster. It touches on a theme we are led to in our poetry reading groups—a tendency toward self-destruction which is a side-effect of the affliction of creative people—I would call this chronic pain caused by acute perception. But what is important here is that, as Marly points out in her introduction, Juster has a direct message for those who make creative work.
Marly has included more information about the poems and poets in the notes beneath the videos on YouTube’s website, so please go to the site and scroll down if you are interested. See you next week.
—Brynna Carpenter-Nardone, Director of Cathedral Arts