Dear Friends of Big Bridge,
We are pleased to announce the final Supplement of Big Bridge's Epic Tribute to New Orleans. When we set out to offer this tribute to the magical and great City of New Orleans we had no idea it would take two years and three installments. Gratitude to Jack Krick and Mary Sands Woodbury for webmastering us through this enormity. And thank you for your patience in allowing this tribute to evolve. There is no shortage of wonders to be found within!
Love to you all! And LONG LIVE NEW ORLEANS!!!
BIG BRIDGE
http://www.bigbridge.org
Complete New Orleans Tribute Issue
2010 SUPPLEMENT
FEATURES
Photographing the Ninth Ward
Images of New Orleans After Katrina by John Rosenthal
Diane di Prima
A Retrospective Collection of Essays
Home Again, Home Again
A Memoir by Ron Loewinsohn
Perfiles de la Noche / Profiles of Night
Mujeres poetas de Venezuela/Women Poets of Venezuela
A Selection from the Bi-lingual Anthology
Original complete text selected and translated by Rowena Hill
Co-edited by Pen de Venezuela and bid & co.
Selection for online edition by Terri Carrion
Poetry by
María Auxiliadora Álvarez, Edda Armas, Enriqueta Arvelo Larriva,
María calcaño, Laura Cracco, Ida Gramcko, Patricia Guzmán, Veronica Jaffe,
Maritza Jiménez, Rowena Hill, Martha Kornblith, Luz machado, María Isabel Novillo,
Cecilia Ortiz, Hanni Ossott, Yolanda Pantin, Emira Rodríguez, Margara Russotto,
María Clara Salas, Elizabeth Schön, Blanca Strepponi, Ana Enriqueta Terán,
Alicia Torres, Elena Vera, Carmen Verde Arocha, Miyo Vestrin
FEATURE POETS
Wendy Babiak Jim Christy Hans Plomp Robert Priest
FEATURED ARTISTS
Ed Coletti Jeff Crouch Diana Magallon and Jeff Crouch John Martone Spencer Selby
FICTION
edited by Vernon Frazer
Tom Bradley Seth Phelps Stefani Christova Jordan Zinovich
Jefferson Hansen Joe Clifford Christopher Brookhouse Andy Stewart
REVIEWS
Allan Graubard reviews Gherasim Luca
Paul Martinez Pompa reviews Francesco Levato's translation of Tiziano Fratus
Jack Foley reviews Katherine Hastings
Roberts French reviews Anne Valley-Fox
Art Beck reviews Neeli Cherkovski
Steve Dalachinsky & Yuko Otomo review Gerald Nicosia
Billey Rainey reviews Stephen Bett
Wanda Phipps reviews a performance by Delirious Dances
An Interview with Choreographer Edisa Weeks
Interviewer: Wanda Phipps
2009 SUPPLEMENT
CHAPBOOK:
A Time in Fragments
Poem by Clark Coolidge; Drawings by Nancy Victoria Davis
FEATURES
Big Bridge New Orleans Sturm und Drang Anthology. Edited by Dave Brinks and Bill Lavender. Introductory notes for work by 30 artists and 90 writers.
Slow Poetry Edited by Dale Smith . One of the most refreshing and promising developments in poetry in recent years, Slow Poetry does not propose another sectarian or clique position, but rather methods of reading and attitudes toward production which could apply to most genres in the current scene or likely to emerge in the near future. The approach has a strong base in concepts and needs made more apparent than ever by current ecological and economic concerns.
Beauty Came Groveling Forward: Selected South African Poems and Stories. Edited by Gary Cummiskey. This collection was meant to show the diversity and spirited character of current South African writing. It contains work by some celebrated writers, and some whose work has not received wide circulation even in its home country. Without the problems caused by canon formation or trying to be totally comprehensive, this group of poems and stories is free to work outside the stereotypes and preconceptions of South Africa and allow the participants to show what they can do as individuals.
All This Strangeness: A Garland for George Oppen. Edited by Eric Hoffman. Commentary on Oppen has grown slowly, unobtrusively, and steadily, until it now forms a major body in itself. This collection of essays evaluates that body of criticism in less partisan terms than many of its predecessors, seeking to focus on individual poems and prosody in a broad historical context, going beyond the dichotomies that dominated the 20th Century and making room for further types of relevance in current literary and social dispensations.
Sephardic Proverbs. Collected and translated by Michael Castro. Proverbs act on many of the same principles as other miniatures, such as haiku. Like stand-alone couplets and quatrains used in everything from toasts to insults, they also include a strong element of collaboration and evolution. As a look at a tradition or a type of poem, this collection can stay with a reader a long time.
Post-Beat Anthology. Reprint from the Chinese anthology, with brief intro. Edited by Vernon Frazer. How would you edit a collection of poems with that title for a Chinese audience? Probably not the same way Frazer has. That's one of the things that makes it interesting and refreshing.
as per Le Roman de la Rose, for example. An Anthology of Middle East Genocide Edited by Arpine Konyalian Grenier How does the cruel and unusual work for you through art, whether it comes from direct experience or direct/indirect memory. Be Genet, for example; lemon to lemonade, for example. How does one turn to Le Roman de la Rose (a Middle Ages Poem) when one is mired in or sorting out or faced with what happened or what is happening that is cruel and unusual due to human intolerance: racial religious cultural gender related and other.
Charles Olson and the Nature of Destructive Humanism by Craig Stormont
One Man Blues: Remembering Thomas Chapin. Reminiscence by Vernon Frazer
Excerpt from Autobiography by David Bromige
The India Journals by John Brandi
Genius and Heroin: by Michael Largo. In this essay, the author reviews his own book. The themes of psycho-chemistry may stretch back to pristine civilizations in China, Egypt, and Mexico, but they seem inexhaustible. Perhaps associate chemicals with genius is because our brains produce such sophisticated bases to start with, and self-review also finds a base in that phenomenon.
WAR PAPERS (3)
Poems and essays against war. Sub-features by John Bradley, Joel Lewis, Philip Metres, Vincent Katz, Francesco Levato, and Louise Landes Levi, plus reflections from around the world on the election of Barack Obama, and, of course, Halvard Johnson's continuing anthology of anti-war poems.
A Retrospective of the Publication Work of Karl Young
ART
Enigmas paintings by Jim Spitzer. As a regular contributor to Big Bridge, these paintings, variations on an enigmatic theme, show Spitzer's continuing evolution, as well as being koan-like meditations in their own right.
The Kingdom of Madison: Photographs from Madison County, North Carolina
by Rob Amberg. Selections from three sets of photos, exploring a still relatively isolated place, where landscape still has functional meaning. When Amberg arrived, not as a tourist, but as one seeking community "Planting was still done by the signs of the moon. Water came from springs and heat from forests" and traditional music still part of daily life. These photos add to the tradition begun in the WPA projects of the Great Depression, but decidedly retain an identity of their own.
These Are My Angels by Tasha Robbins. Small paintings done in Brooklyn on found cardboard by one of the Post-Katrina diaspora. Celebrating the C-Train stop at Franklin + Fulton Avenues, as the artist writes, they "kept my heart, eye + hand moving with a spirit of life close to the timbre and vibration of the Crescent City, still healing. . .
Lectura en Tránsito. Project Created and Directed by Carmen Gloria Berríos. Set based on combination of public art and poetry from Santiago de Chile. Poems translated by Terri Carrion and Carmen Gloria Berríos.
Animal Night Photography by Felicia Murray; notes by Louise Landes Levi. New techniques in photography allow us to make photographic images of phenomena we could only imagine in previous eras. We might debate whether the nature of cameras and software brings us any closer to the spiritual world, but these haunting images of animals should make us feel less alone, and more in touch with the continuum of life.
12 Collages by John Brandi. These colages can be read as a non-verbal counterpart and extension of his India Journal and related work.
FICTION
Fiction by Mel Freilicher, Eric Beeny, Stefani Christova, Lynda Schor, David Madgalene, Stephen-Paul Martin, Mark Wallace, Susan Smith Nash, Richard Martin, Peter Conners, Ann Bogle, Jeffrey Hansen, Carol Novack
REVIEWS
Reviews of: Wanda Phipps, Lewis Warsh, Simon Pettet, Larissa Shmailo, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Ed Sanders, Bill Berkson, Colter Jacobsen, Mark Young, John Roche, Philip Gounis, Rich Kruse, Michael Rumaker, Annie Le Brun, George Kimball, and Ashis Gupta. Reviewed by: Kirpal Gordon; Svitlana Matviyenko, Garry Parrish, Jackie Sheeler, Jim Feast, Allan Graubard, Charles Thorne, Barbara Henning, Tom Hibbard, Steve Elmer, Stephen Lewandowski Joe Wetteroth, Vernon Frazer, Leverett T. Smith, and Katherine Hastings.
LITTLE MAGS Plastic Ocean, Green Dragon, Untamed Ink
ROCKPILE. ROCKPILE is a collaboration between David Meltzer — poet, musician, essayist, and more — and Michael Rothenberg of Big Bridge Press. David and Michael will journey through eight cities in the U.S. to perform poetry and prose, composed while on the road, with local musicians and artists in each city. ROCKPILE will serve to educate and preserve as well as to create a history of collaboration. It will help to reinforce the tradition of the troubadour of all generations, central to the cultural upheaval and identity politics that reawakened poets, artists, musicians, and songwriters in the mid-1960s through the 1970s. The project will end with a final multimedia performance in San Francisco. Check out the ROCKPILE Blog for calendar and discussion!