a review of Kemeny Babineau's 'AFTER PROGRESS'

a review of Kemeny Babineau's ‘AFTER PROGRESS’ (above/ground press, 2012) by writer and dg associate Cassie Leigh:

AFTER PROGRESS implies that there is a halt in development, and this is the exact impression that Kemeny Babineau, editor of literary rag magazine The New Chief Tongue, gives in his aptly titled chapbook. In fourteen short poems, Babineau playfully uses language to provide a commentary on society and the difference between the past and the present. Although all of the poems are completely gripping and unique in their own ways, each one points towards a specific question: where are we actually heading in our world?

Specifically, we have the poem, Neighbour Cutting Gross Grass. Babineau contrasts imagery and description of a “Doomed god” and the “Manichean line” with men trimming their lawns and killing the weeds that grow there. The initial line states, “What some men are reduced to”, which immediately begs the comparison between the days of war and military, and the current days of battling with the hedges and the lawnmower. The fire is still in the hearts of men, but Babineau seems to imply that the need for this fire is gone, causing it to misdirect. The main impressions of this poem are that of vanity and obsession over things that barely matter. It forces us to realize what we have become in the current age.

Every piece within this chapbook seems to dictate the same message as Neighbour Cutting Gross Grass. Babineau implies that there is a sense of false progress, in which image and speed are a greater concern than actual movement towards a greater good. We are moving at a pace on par with the old days, but we have lost the purpose behind the constant rush. Although the heavier message is ever-present in the text, it is through Babineau’s graceful flow of words like music on paper that an element of hope is delicately introduced. Through a seemingly planned collection, Babineau recognizes the issues of society, but offers them more as a call for a change than a simple discussion on the negative.

This is a strong chapbook that carries Babineau’s voice through the carefully chosen words. We are able to recognize the underlying issues that slyly present themselves through clever language games, as well as relating the reader to the very honest discoveries that they seek to uncover. The world is forever changing, and I think that it is through Babineau’s words that we are forced to examine this state of constant movement that we seem to be stuck in, and whether or not we can ever find a way to move forward instead of just running on the spot.

Kemeny Babineau reading for Grey Borders Reading Series

Cassie Leigh has a mysteriously absent last name. She spends her days dealing with money, and her nights dealing with art. A current resident of St. Catharines, Cassie is co-editor of Irregular Artifact Press and has had work published in the anthologies 'looking for trees' and 'lapse'. Cassie has also won the Eleanor Abram Prize for fiction two years in a row - 2009 and 2010. In film, Cassie took part in the script creation of Apollo Boy, the recipient of the People's Choice award in the 2011 Brock University's Render This! film festival. Currently, Cassie has book reviews forthcoming from Broken Pencil and Bookshelf 2.0.

Kemeny Babineau lives near Brantford Ontario. He runs Laurel Reed Books and edits literary rag magazine The New Chief Tongue. Babineau’s latest work, After the 6ix O’Clock News, is published by BookThug.

another killer review thanks to Cassie Leigh!

you can find out more about Kemeny's chapbook from the above/ground press site!

want your chapbook/book reviewed by dg?! we'd love to check it! 

throw us an email -> deadgender.mag@gmail.com :)

Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s 'Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed' reviewed

a review of Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s 'Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed' (above/ground press, 2012) by writer and dg associate Amanda Roth:

Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed is just that, but also so much more.

Paige Ackerson-Kiely, currently of Vermont, has authored the poetry collections My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Ahsahta Press, forthcoming), and In No One’s Land (Ahsahta, 2007)—which won the Sawtooth Poetry Prize—and a limited edition art folio/collaboration, This Landscape (Argos Books, 2010).

Ackerson-Kiely’s first chapbook from above/ground press is a collection of prose poems which combine to produce a memoir dealing with the death of a girl in a small town, and an authority figure’s pursuit of justice amongst internal struggles of his own. It is with fervor and beauty that the author weaves together individual scenes to provide a unique display the whole storyline.

The immediacy of the title bleeds through the pages of this chapbook, displaying context with a certain severity:

Thicket of weeds upon which her body ballooned. Dark dirty water I had to drink once. / There was nothing else around that I could see.

And yet, there are touches of the sporadic and perplexing tendencies of an overactive mind. This inner conflict is a reoccurring theme throughout the collection.

You’re cold again. Her delicate finger pointing to the hall that touches me some nights until I shivered. You’re so far away. You’re an iceberg in the ocean and you will melt and be forgotten.

The intensity of the narrator’s thoughts is overwhelming and enthralling. It is only by understanding each piece of the puzzle arranged by Ackerson-Kiely in this collection of poems that the audience is able to witness the greater narrative within.

Paige Ackerson-Kiely

Amanda Roth is a freelance writer based in St. Catharines, Ontario with a strong passion for literature that explores historical, political and humanitarian themes. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Brock Press, The Cord and The Martlet, as well as online at Grey Borders Reading Series and The Buddhist Channel. She has also contributed to Irregular Artifact Press. You can find her online here.

Paige Ackerson-Kiely authored the poetry collections In No One’s Land (Ahsahta, 2007), My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Ahsahta, forthcoming) and a limited edition art folio/collaboration, This Landscape (Argos Books, 2010). Paige lives in rural Vermont, edits the poetry annual A Handsome Journal, and works at a homeless shelter.

thank you so much to Amanda Roth for this great review! :)

find out more about Paige and Candle Burning in a Shed from above/ground here!

xx

a review of Rae Armantrout’s ‘Custom’

a review of Rae Armantrout’s 'Custom' (above/ground press, 2012) by writer and dg associate Cassie Leigh:

Language is a tricky thing. It can be used to tell us with a point-blank simplicity how things really are, or it can be used to envelope the truth in irony and elegant words that force a deeper look into what is between the lines. Rae Armantrout, part of the first generation of Language poets on the West Coast and 2010 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, finds a way to give us both in her chapbook Custom.

At first read, Armantrout’s presentation is simple and graceful. The words fall into perfect place in the four poems (pulled from the scheduled 2013 release of a manuscript titled Just Saying), and we are lulled by the methodic and flowing nature of her poetic voice. There is something just below the surface, though, that begs for interpretation. Something past the beauty in her words calls out with a darker irony. I found myself reading and rereading these four poems, overwhelmed with what came out of each different examination.

Specifically, Armantrout’s title poem ‘Custom’ uses the everyday speech that she is best known for, but we are presented with a deeper question that is loosely hidden behind the simplicity. We are given an airport, a hotel, a plaid duvet and constant movement from terminal to terminal – and they are all regular, simple proclamations that sit on the surface of her words, in plain view. But with her last lines, Armantrout states that,

We are almost money. / We can wait at high speed.

The image of moving between terminals becomes the representation of people as nothing more than a transaction for big corporations, and any personality that could be represented from person to person fades away as quickly as the stripes of an old, plaid duvet.

The language of Rae Armantrout’s Custom remains vast and open. I find that there are so many layers to her writing that there will always be more that you can pull out from the grace of her words. From a simplicity to a complexity that begs for fight or flight, the journey that she takes you on in four short poems is overwhelming, subversive, and completely worth the trip.

Cassie Leigh has a mysteriously absent last name. She spends her days dealing with money, and her nights dealing with art. A current resident of St. Catharines, Cassie is co-editor of Irregular Artifact Press and has had work published in the anthologies 'looking for trees' and 'lapse'. Cassie has also won the Eleanor Abram Prize for fiction two years in a row - 2009 and 2010. In film, Cassie took part in the script creation of Apollo Boy, the recipient of the People's Choice award in the 2011 Brock University's Render This! film festival. Currently, Cassie has book reviews forthcoming from Broken Pencil and Bookshelf 2.0.

Wesleyan published Rae Armantrout’s most recent poetry collection, Money Shot, in January of 2011. Armantrout’s previous book, Versed (Wesleyan, 2009), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was a finalist for the National Book Award. Next Life (Wesleyan, 2007), was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by The New York Times. Other recent books include Collected Prose (Singing Horse, 2007), Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2004), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001), and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Her poems have been included in anthologies such as American Hybrid (Norton, 2009), Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1993), American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Tradition (Wesleyan, 2002), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford, 2006) and The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2008. Armantrout received an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. She is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, San Diego. Writing in Poetry magazine, Ange Mlinko has said, “I would trade the bulk of contemporary anecdotal free verse for more incisive, chilling poetry like Armantrout’s. The poems gathered here [in Custom] are from a manuscript called Just Saying due out in 2013.

thanks so much to Cassie Leigh for this lovely review!

find out more about Custom from above/ground press here!