In 1968 or 1969, Bernadette Mayer spent part of an afternoon reading The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 by Andrew Sarris.1 She hated it. She wrote a letter to…
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Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
The Making of Memory: An Interview with Lisa Pearson of Siglio Press
I spent many hours of the otherwise fretful Covid spring and summer of 2020 preparing to review the new edition of Bernadette Mayer’s Memory, published by Siglio Press. The particulars…
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
Manly Things
Couplet I adore you it’s my habitI want manly things & should not, women come to me1 Bernadette Mayer’s poetry is finally getting the attention it deserves. But what form…
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
Introduction
reading a poet’s life preconceived ends real life of the poet impressions accidental animals’ intelligence 1 If the last half century has a poet of daily life — of its dreams, babies, children,…
Contemporaries Essays, The Midwinter Constellation
You
Synecdoche is a problem. We let parts stand in for wholes, because we can handle parts, and we are overwhelmed by wholes. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the whole…
Contemporaries Essays, The Midwinter Constellation
Bloch
In 1980, Bernadette Mayer writes a letter to Alice Notley wondering what would have happened if William Carlos Williams and Gertrude Stein had married and given birth to their mothers:…
Peer Reviewed Articles
Contemporaries Essays, The Midwinter Constellation
Anderson
“I know our / dates did not align, my / day your night, a slight / thing, I tell / myself,” I wrote at the end of December 23, 2018…
Contemporaries Essays, The Midwinter Constellation
Andrews
“I’d like to know / What kind of person I must be to be a poet”1 Bernadette Mayer writes, in Midwinter Day. Of course, I have asked myself the same…