Lytton Smith @ GW

by J J Cohen

We at ITM write frequently about new critical modes and the interface of the scholarly and the creative. If you happen to be in the DC area and would like to hear from someone who accomplishes such innovations well, come see Lytton Smith deliver a talk entitled "The Unending Medieval and the Edges of Poetry" and read from his work. Details here.

And, for your poetry reading pleasure, here is movement III of Smith's sequence "Monster Theory," from The All-Purpose Magical Tent. (I can't get the spacing to work out so I've ruined the careful typographical layout of the poem, unfortunately)

III
An imagination of cartographers
A fumbling of daughters An aloneness of [monsters]
A warmongering of sons
A body of woodsmen A liminality of [monsters]

A confusion of daughters An expectance of hermits
A body of townswomen
A luminosity of torchbearers An affection of hermits

A deconstruction of record-keepers
A secondsight of burghers
A hic est monstrum of [monsters] A faraway of [monsters]
A one town over of [monsters]