Long Poem Magazine 12 edited by Lucy Hamilton & Linda Black

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Issue Twelve is as eclectic as ever and features long poems by Salah Niazi, translated by the author from the Iraqi with David Andrew, Patricia McCarthy, Martyn Crucefix’s versions of parts of the ‘Daodejing’, Richard Berengarten, Jeri Onitskansky, John Greening, Norman Jope, Tamar Yoseloff, Ben Rogers, Varlam Shalamov, translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler, Alexandra Sashe, David Andrew, Alistair Noon’s Pushkin inspired travel narrative, and W.D. Jackson. Linda Black’s editorial offers insights into the current reading habits and recommendations of several contributors. Alexandra Sashe ‘neither wrote nor read poetry’ until she discovered Paul Celan: ‘The predominance of Language, which writes itself, which dictates itself … this same Language lived by the writer, becomes a new entity, something other: “essentialized”, and, faithful to its centripetal life, increasingly personal …’.

Sophie Herxheimer’s ‘Inklisch Rekortdinks’ series of dramatic monologues impressed sonically and thematically. Based on the experience of her father’s family who emigrated to London in 1938 and written in the Lenkvitch, a sort of German Jewish – English hybrid accent, of her paternal grandmother, they probe identity and immigrant experience from alienation through war and assimilation to friendship and domesticity. The sumptuous language and narrative angles make the world of Herxheimer’s poems sparkle.

Vis efferi Snip off Dill I fezzer
on my feinly slizzered Kewkumpers
I re-azzempel Leipzig
Birch Treez, Promenaats.

Vis efferi chop off peelt Eppel
es it sutds into my Disch
for Pie – zerburban Etchvair
ordinerry: I kerry on.

Timothy Adés’ ‘The Excellent Wessex Event’ uses the Oulipo univocal lipogram omitting a, i, o and u to produce a narrative poem in rhyming couplets drawing upon the film version of Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd. This one hundred line sequence comes with a set of multi-language footnotes all with the same impediment.
Lucy Sheerman clearly articulates the relevance of Lyn Hejinian’s My Life as ‘a touchstone for experimentation with the representation of thought in the field of the long poem’ in her essay feature. Sheerman quotes Juliana Spahr on Hejinian’s achievement:

Hejinian works rigorously against a capitalsed ‘Self’ or
any stability of the self. Her subjectivity, more empty
than full, concentrates on the ‘separate fragment
scrutiny.’ It is defined by fluctuation, by the
move from ‘I wanted to be’ to the lack of fixity of ‘I am a
shard.’ Or, as she writes citing the title, ‘My life is as
permeable constructedness’ (93). One of the crucial
distinctions between the multiple subjectivity of current
autobiographical criticism and Hejinian’s fluctuating
multiple subjectivity is the absence of stability in
Hejinian’s subject. Instead of offering full multiple
identities, My Life is a process-centred work that
calls attention to the methods by which the
autobiographical subject is constructed by both author and
reader. Hejinian’s constant resignification of subjectivity
confronts head-on the constructed reality of
autobiography and the reader’s seduction by this
construction.

Sheerman concludes with a number of challenging critical comments, which makes the essay immensely valuable and more than a informed introduction.

Long Poem Magazine is a veritable feast of the strange and familiar taking the reader on a wonderful journey.

David Caddy 25th November