march 2006 | news archives | the len sousa pages

I used to think it was simple pettiness that made me grimace at first seeing one, then another poem of Elizabeth Bishop’s published in magazines like The New Yorker late last year. The poet had passed away several decades before, yet her work was still being published in recent magazines. And the poems, all taken from a collection of drafts and unpublished work, were hardly the kind of material for which Bishop was admired. Thankfully, poetry critic Helen Vendler agrees:

Although there is nothing reprehensible about a young poet’s attempting a Petrarchan sonnet, there is something reprehensible in printing this feeble item in The New Yorker without explanation and signing it “Elizabeth Bishop,” especially when the poem is listed (in [Alice] Quinn’s “A Note on the Text”) as one of the “Drafts Included That Were Entirely Crossed Out by Bishop in Her Notebooks and Papers.” Maybe it should have been printed in The New Yorker entirely crossed out.

Drafts that were entirely crossed out by their author strike me as an odd choice for publication, even as a tribute from the magazine to the poet (Bishop published many poems in TNY during her lifetime). As reference material, I can’t fault a book of Bishop’s drafts for what it presents; learning about the processes of a writer can interest both readers and other writers -- and, for me at least, prove that these great poets were indeed human. But publishing early, unfinished work that the author herself had discarded in a renown literary magazine? There ought to be a greater scale for choosing work to publish than merely an author’s name.

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Speaking of Shakespeare, if anyone has any extra cash lying around (say $6.1 million), I’d certainly appreciate this first folio that’s going up for auction in July:

I gots me a new article in the latest issue of The Mercury. It’s about Yanni. (Oh yes.)

My original title was Yanni Changes Tune—Smacks His Bitch Up which, had the paper kept it, would have made the first sentence (“you old firestarter” — Prodigy fans, anyone?) make a little more sense. But even with the PC title, I still get a kick out of seeing that creepy mug shot.

There’s a box below the article for people to leave comments, so please post something!

I changed the links in the poetry and prose sections to HTML pages so they’re easier to read and quicker to load. The PDF files are still available on their respective pages.

Would having an article published in this issue of the People’s Press be considered in six degrees of Natalie Portman? See page two for my take on the MySpace obsession.

Also check out my review of a Scott Gibson, Alan Hague, and Mike Cellemme show from last December on pages 12 and 13 of the same issue.

Damn. I want to interview Natalie Portman.

I’d like to collaborate on a libretto with a musician/composer. If you are one or know one who might be interested, please contact me.