Denise Low Interviews Kenneth Irby: Podcast

Photo by Denise Low, 2011

Here is a link to my March, 2015 interview with Kenneth Irby, winner of the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America. Although he was never at Black Mountain, he is closely associated with BM experimental poets and numbered several among his friends. William J. Harris writes about Irby for Jacket2, "Ken Irby should be ranked with such contemporary figures as Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley, Lyn Hejinian, Ed Dorn, Robert Duncan, and Rae Armantrout." See  Jacket2 for a collection of poems, letters, essays about his work, and miscellany.  This is one of the few online podcasts of Irby, and it will only be available for two weeks. After that, purchase it through the newletters.org website. Many thanks to Angela Elam for editing the 1 1/2 hour interview into a program. http://www.newletters.org/on-the-air/irby-2015

Denise Low Reviews Richard Siken and Amy Gerstler for the KC Star

Richard Siken's War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon) and Amy Gerstler's Scattered at Sea (Penguin) are both intense, well written books. The latter begins: "What to do with gazillions of factoids accumulating in the Age of the Internet? A Shakespearean sonnet cannot present Facebook news feed in a mere 14 lines. Or can it? Poet Amy Gerstler, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, has found a way to celebrate the infinite branching of knowledge. She collages it in exuberant, endless scrapbooks interspersed with her own life story. She makes rich poetry. Divisions in the book are “Kissing,” “Womanish,” “Dust of Heirs, Dust of Ancestors,” “What I Did With Your Ashes” and “Only at Certain Sacred Locations.” The last considers reincarnation and the journeys of “A Terribly Sentimental Fork,” among other surprises. Each of Gerstler’s poems has a personal voice, overlaid with a Babel of images."

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article25366783.html#storylink=cpy

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http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article25366783.html