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Paper, $17.95 US ($20.00 CAN)

ISBN 978-0811217231

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Poetry State Forest, by Bernadette Mayer

“One of the most interesting, exciting, and open of late-20th century experimental poets.”
—Tom Clark, San Francisco Chronicle

Called “a consummate poet” by Robert Creeley, Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1945. A most prolific poet, her first book was published at the age of twenty-three. Many texts later she continues to write progressive poetry from her home in East Nassau, New York. For many years Mayer lived and worked on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she was the Director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project from 1980-1984. Bernadette Mayer has received grants and awards from PEN American Center, The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art, the NEA, The Academy of American Poets, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

“The richness of life & time as they happen to us in tiny explosions all the time are grasped and held up for us to view in [her] magnificent work.” —John Ashbery

“Mayer's work is marked with Dorothy Parker's bite and bawdiness and Gertrude Stein's inventive discourse.” —The Antioch Review

“All her work is full of brilliant observations, humorous and sometimes astounding conclusions, and amazing juxtapositions inspired by linguistic associations, patterns of movement, chance, mathematics, whim, and imagination.”
—Michael Lally, The Washington Post

Download "The Real Finch Sock Sonnet" from Poetry State Forest.

EXCERPT: "Solstice Anthem Against Fear," from Poetry State Forest

If nothing happened

A big ugly man with flowers on a skateboard

Yet I do want your company

Do you speak Bardo?

This untaught being into another way of seeing

That could be spent making love which is all

I write on the line I tremble

Your hovering over me your

Inexact laying of the clothing in heaps on the pain, you father

Why do you ever request me to be on time

Amounts paid under this agreement will he reported to the Internal Revenue Service

Say who you are, your name

Artists Call against U.S. Intervention in Central America

They took out the roots of his beard & he became a car

My other is not here, it?s my fault

Could you lend me. . . . maybe you could be the one . . .

We have to leave and enter the building, we are forced to, this is not a prison

Make sense-lacing, they were listening having hearts

Hills that were shoved bare, clearcutting the Atlantic coast pine forests

Three times like eggs the Ode to Joy was played

I dislike the primary tradition of paradise

We had made a deal when we were young to do this adventuring

I?d like to know about politics and also mourning

Could you please send United Artists, I want to see Ted?s recent work.

Dear Parent, I am inviting the girls in the class to my home for a cookie party

I?ll wander the streets on my nights not here, I have no conscience for my books

Such impression of the straws of your leaves & by your leave again I will not leave you yet not

Little solstice be stripped of your clothing

He, not you, but reading her, pretends to know what love is, what?s words?

If something happens to you, you were present like a foostep, Mr. Dash

Hand, late, in sonnet or utopia gives way, she asks to steal money today

To calm the limbs while love or eating smile at fear or silence

I write without lines I tremble like a circle

The consultant named herein is an independent contractor

Sweet world of voice, no book and no logic

Your name is Vincent Price, Stonehenge or Artists Call, Darwish

Mary I dream you have hotdog stands in your apartment

Another angel bends to touch your breast and his mouth

We all do that like the plum of Williams? we?ve learned from

Now who is openinq or closing the door?

Do you speak Bardo?

There might be tap water, I am being only

No one has eaten enough of the tiring salads of the breeze you wait for in this heat wave

There is no nothing like in Brooklyn

Could you lend me some money . . . your apartment?

You eat the food for me, I watch

Make sense-lacking, hands held up to say wait or no

Hills that were stripped for newspapers, hard criminals to assassinate

The levelled flowers of your skirt, of your sheet move quickly

Slowly we?re exhausted by your hands held up as if to say wait

To leave, I doubt I am allowed a new tree or blank of leaves, a quashed divided window

?The sun and I are on the level, Artists Call against U.S. Intervention in Central America

Why did you leave me so much like hiding by being the tall boat or something

By the end of the comparative alphabets come the deaths to double you not again

I will walk each girl home to her own house

what insanity, port of saints, to fall or lie down, never to sleep

To stand, the state, the stanza, the room, prostitute

Description of consultant services rendered: poetry reading

A sun, a cool day, a new tree or blank of leaves, Tom is busy trying

Say who you are, your name in your voice

Reliance, lilac, a surface, accidental war, Marie

The sound of the door dreams quietly like the jazz mistress

Do you speak Bardo?

her mouth will be on yours therefore of sun in the art of night

Slowly we?re exhausted by your hands held up as if to say wait or no!

Yet I do want your company, you?re busy and in the dream, of a person for another person, of course there?s food, there?s a restaurant

As a woman you are wrong or you are scared sacred, you can say things

Were you expected to kill the animals?

There is no nothing like in Brooklyn

Could you lend me torture . . . or your place? with man, with woman?

To have the violent you must be rich enough for doors & help is unnatural to attention

The times are changed as over they are anger, you wake listening

This non-royal fear is ancestral, a primary tradition like paradise, poetry, a companion, cupbearer or guard

I watch a brave man shave, he?s alone in the dark

Such impression of the straws of your leaves & I will yet not leave you, stay with me, my home & speak

In despair we are as prosperous as the state

Leave & leave the harmed part alone like fasting

to calm the limbs like love the fear, to eat to cure the silence, a stand, a stanza, how many are sleeping?

Do you speak Bardo?

Solstice be stripped of your clothing, another angel bends to touch his mouth

And you may sleep therefore of darkness in the art of day

Slowly we?re exhausted by beauty, hands held up as if to say no

Yet I do want your company

If you have an appointment, let it fall loosely this time like your clothes and your hair without any fear

Without any fear

Without any fear

   

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