Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee reviews Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics edited by Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Growney.

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American artist Joseph Keppler, center.  From the Seattle Group show Spirit Resonance at the Ouch My Eye Gallery, Seattle, WA.  See here for photos of his sculpture.  

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The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop, the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves.

(Episode 12, “Cyclops,” circa 335, 341.)

Anything strange or wonderful?


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The English poet Alan Halsey at the Hay Poetry Jamboree a few weeks ago.  “The Salem chapel is where the readings took place.  Although I must have walked past it a thousand times I’d never noticed the date of its foundation, right at the start of the English Republic . . . of course boomtime for chapels, in the absence of an earthly king. . . .” 

Photo by Scott Thurston. 

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   I have not loved the world, nor the world me, —
   But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
   Though I have found them not, that there may be
   Words which are things, — hopes which will not deceive,
   And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
   Snares for the failing: I would also deem
   O’er others’ griefs that some sincerely grieve;
   That two, or one, are almost what they seem, —
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. . . .

Byron, from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

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Modulations is the new volume of eidetic poetry by Márton Koppány. 

There was a time when pictures and writing were not as separate as they are today, a time when the picture was given not just to show but to tell; a sort of “picture-writing.”  And each “pictograph” was as an aperçu, at once an insight into and a brief digest of the thought to be communicated.  The poet Márton Koppány has found for himself a form most becoming of his intuition; each panel here is an aperçu into that space where picture and writing are one, that space where the mind knows the word in the figure of its substance, that space that is language-in-eidos.  And so I see Koppány’s panels as “eidographs,” as urtexts of “eidetic poetry.”  

Cover image, “or,” by Márton Koppány.  Published by Otoliths.  Cover design by John Moore Williams.  

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The Math-Art Graffiti Wall at the Bowery Poetry Club.