2011 April

On Agamben’s Concept of Sovereignty

Giorgio Agamben’s seminal works of political philosophy, Homo Sacer and State of Exception, contain problematic and undefined conceptions of sovereignty. His tergiversation demands, first, an explication of his deployment of the concept. This leads to the articulation of three dissents from his position, along historical, material, and geopolitical grounds. Those dissents recall the work of […]

guttering

by lewis levenberg set up a ladder carry up a bucket muck the muck out (sweet earth undisturbed for ages dead leaves twigs et cetera slowly composting without shit trash food or bugs even) (thirty feet above the ground saplings sprout tenuous tenacious from the loam) (black water silt-laden rain water stone-filtered layered leaf and […]

Slap Happy Endings

by Tom Bair Much has been made of ABC’s latest high-gloss ensemble situation comedy, Happy Endings. The network debuted their suggestive title on Wednesday past, and boldly followed this premier by engaging the viewer with their crusty tip, or, in suit-speak, aired another episode. The jokey-thing just made could refer to the layer of cum […]

Juniper

by Dana Jaye Cadman Here the night spreads across the breast of day and yawns one aching grey breath onto the river, the ceiling swings low over while the Parlor City hugs me drunk between muse and rot. A juniper. What forgives of us? What of us can enter or be entered– these ambitious limbs […]

Old Lady

by Gad Nusinov click to see full size

Witness to What: Exploring the Genre of Witness Part 2

Witness Literature as a poetic movement has taken on the task of accumulating, compiling, and arranging documentation of the human race’s catastrophic failures. Keeping with our example, Carolyn Forche’s Against Forgetting is an expansive anthology of world literature, organized by event (ie “World War I”, or “the Spanish Civil War”), beginning with “the Armenian Genocide” […]

Witness to What: Exploring the Genre of Witness

by Tom Bair I will concede that I am, have been, and will continue to be wary of Witness Literature. I am also aware that a part of me shrugs my shoulders to any act of poetry which attempts to disown its own witness. Well, let me be clear: I have not known a poet […]