24.1: CANDYLANDS

Poetry Editor Michael Farrell
Released 2006
Index of Poems | Pandora Archive (NLA)
Contributor Notes

In February 2004 guest editor Michael Farrell went on a one-month meet-as-many-poets-as-possible trip to the U.S.A. Lucky you, we said, and bring us back some poems! CANDYLANDS (2006) is the result: an eclectic selection of works by Catherine Daly, Kevin Killian, Judith Bishop, Devin Johnston and others.




Mary Jo Bang: Definitely

What is desire But the hardwire argument given To the mind's unstoppable mouth. Inside the braincase, it's I Want that fills every blank. And then the hand Reaches for the pleasure The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes, It will …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Mary Jo Bang: "In Order" Means Neat and Not Next

Mary Jo Bang is the author of four volumes of poetry, including Louise in Love and The Eye Like a Strange Balloon. Individual poems have appeared in the New Yorker, The New Republic, Verse, Jubilat, and two volumes of Best American Poetry (2001, 2005). The recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, she currently teaches and serves as Director of the Creative Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Michael O'Leary: Detroit 2001

for the tricentennial In the evening, out on Belle Isle when the forest floor expires a moisture from the warmth of the day (more like late May than anytime in April) and laces a fine haze among the newest saplings, …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Michael O'Leary: The Chills

The street quite still. Down the long corridor a light, several doors and a single pine. Conversations on the wires are quiet, sequestered from here to there, ear to ear. The most intimate jokes get lost sometimes, even simple questions …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Srikanth Reddy: Voyager

In November last year, when every day was a round of doubts and tension, I became interested in the fate of a machine which had been launched into creation and disappeared during my boyhood. The thought of it roaming our …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Srikanth Reddy: Section E

This is not a history of the world. I acted as I did. If it helps I have come to appreciate the frailty of memory – things that never happened & the things that did happen. * Dr. S. just …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Stacy Szymaszek: from hyper glossia

in a glass tube crushed in his hand the names blended into him he spoke to the boat RUDDER MAST SKULL                outfitted in plumes                he crossed ________ I pay          homage in repetition of your turns of phrase our cues to leave     someone …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Roberto Harrison: [pollera de nubes] from Counter Daemons – 4D

i am a leaf on a tree, a node in a network of motes in the air i light up, i placate, i diffuse with the trade at the fair i blow up your body of l¬?grimas here i am …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Roberto Harrison: Introduction to Counter Daemons

There are a few computer science ideas that form part of the basis of this poem. Letters such as i,j,k,a,b,c,m,n,x,y and z are commonly used by novice computer programmers as variables, especially as “counter variables,” hence, and for other reasons, …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

John Tipton: Chorus 1185-1222 (of Sophocles' Ajax)

where will it end the count of the years wandering the toll the statistics of missiles in flight that fall back to the ground where a crater accuses? better hurled into space or into the crowd in Hell than to …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

John Tipton: Chinati (for DJ (because he wanted to know))

welcome to Texas, Devin Johnston a windmill has your name stubborn & American at off-rhyme to the arroyo-creased angular region here bald redheaded buzzards eat a rabbit struck by what it only understood as supernatural the birds bring to mind …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Judith Bishop: Fabliau of Arkansas

The farms came dressed in battered ends of harvest wheat, silver silos (four buttons to a sleeve), and at the neck, a brooch of cloud, alabaster over shadow. Two rivers reconnoitred at a town well known to both, and exchanged …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Judith Bishop: The Fireworks Maker of Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri

Light suffuses these hills, ungraspable, consumed by corn and watermelon. Morning fog presses long contusions on the light. There are days, many days, I think it's not a human sustenance, this sun of empty hours, shafts leaching all it falls …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Devin Johnston: Edges

1 One could fall asleep and float a hundred miles off course, or rob a restaurant in broad daylight, or weep openly on the air. Contretemps could snap the line that anchors date in memory, uproot the smell of eucalypts, …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off

Devin Johnston: Mockingbird

We live each other's death and die each other's life, borrowing a cold flame from sycamore in early leaf. This morning, after heavy rain the street erupts with birds: grackles sharpen swords and cedar waxwings strip the vines, declaring love …

Posted in 24.1: CANDYLANDS | Comments Off