Poetry Mixtape Volume V

I don't think I've written any poetry since 2008 that Ally Harris hasn't edited, annotated, crossed out, or signed-off on. We were in school together at Iowa and wound up taking the same workshop all four semesters. I remember the first poem of hers I ever read had some line about the untwisting lipstick of a dog boner; she's an incredibly gifted writer and an equally talented, extremely rigorous reader. She included liner notes for her poetry mixtape, so I'm pasting them along with the images below.

Ally Harris has two chapbooks of poems, Her Twin Was After Me (Slim Princess Holdings), and Floor Baby (Dancing Girl Press). Her poetry has recently appeared in TYPO, Sink Review, FANZINE, Pinwheel, and Bayou Magazine. She is the Poetry Editor of Heavy Feather Review and lives in Portland, OR.

~~~~~~~~ALLY HARRIS MIXTAPE~~~~~~~~
(click images to EXPAND)

1. Preamble to the Instructions on How to Wind a Watch by Julio Cortázar.

When Jeevan and I took a poetry course together, she lent me this book & I never returned it to her.

2. City Built at Night (excerpt) by Hannah Black

Hannah Black’s essays make me feel awful, powerful, jealous, boring, electrocuted, stupid, and stupidly alive, deafly alive.

3. To the Heart by Tadeusz Różewicz

Originally found in Postwar Polish Poetry, edited and translated by Czesław Miłosz

4. LVII from Sampson Starkweather’s The First Four Books of Sampson Starkweather

Sampson Starkweather is a New York poet, which is to say we have friends in common. Once we were at this annual writer's conference (fuck) sitting at a table with a bunch of friends after a reading, talking, I think about Gwar on Joan Rivers, or Man of War, something really fucking metal. This conversation felt like redemption, somewhat, from the endurance of the so many obligatory Poetry Cheeseplates of my past. I guess I'm saying this about Sampson because his poems are really pretty sweet for a guy with long hair and a leather jacket.

5. Karla Kelsey’s thoughts on reviewing books, published in Evening Will Come

Book reviews are difficult, unlauded, under/unpaid work. I admire the intensity with which Karla talks about her standards for writing a review. To her, the book review should create meaningful dialogue and community for and about literature. As an editor of Heavy Feather Review, I read a lot of book reviews, and I think all the time about certain ethical questions revolving around the review, like do we write about it if don’t feel strongly? Do we publish if the review is poorly considered? The ethics of review. I should like to write more on the subject.

6. On Fear (excerpt) by Mary Ruefle, from Madness, Rack, and Honey

“On Fear”—an iconic Ruefle essay, one that has for sure inspired other essays on the same subject.

7. Sections of Baudelaire’s Intimate Journals

My friend Alan Felsenthal of Song Cave gave me this book by Baudelaire called Intimate Journals, published on City Lights Books. Looking back on it after a few years, B. provokes in me some powerful guffaws.