Ariana Reines

Ariana Reines has been directing occult wisdom for years to write her poems.  Her book MERCURY asks us to reimagine alchemical processes with the changed goal of transfiguring the spirit rather than looking for gold.  MERCURY was a conversation she had with the sun, or rather the day the sun spoke directly to her.  Keep a lookout for her forthcoming book A SAND BOOK which was a literal channeled document, and unlike anything that I have ever read, relaying plans for the future we already know is on its way.

Hoa Nguyen

The poet Hoa Nguyen currently lives in Toronto with her family and extraordinary community of witches and poets.  Her book RED JUICE is a collection of 3 earlier books, including one of my favorites, "Your Ancient See Through."

Hoa uses herbs, tarot, astrology, meditation, and many other tools for poetry as if maintaining the hull of an amazing ship for a very long odyssey across her life.

Her latest collection VIOLET ENERGY INGOTS is stunning and was nominated for a Griffin Prize.

Alice Notley

When I interviewed Alice Notley about how she wrote her book Mysteries of Small Houses, her explanation became one of the most unique rituals I have ever heard of for writing poems.  If you know her writing well the book looks like a "New and Selected" collection when flipping through it, but it is not, they are all brand new poems.  Here is why:

She put herself into a trance to visit the house she lived in when she was four.  Once she was in this particular house there was a door inside that she could open, and that door led to every other house she has ever lived in.  And she would go through that door and into the other houses where her ritual began to absorb the time and all that went with that time in her life.  She would then write a poem in the style she was writing when she lived in that house.

The POWER of these poems is immediate.  Her fearless voice comes through any fog we might be carrying when sitting down to read.  This is a sample of her reading "C'81" from the book, and it was an honor for her to dedicate the reading of it to my mother who hates poetry, but likes this one.

Merle Hoyleman

Years ago Black Mountain College poet and publisher Jonathan Williams was working on my book The Book of Frank.  Jonathan passed away before the book could be published, and then Wave Books picked it up, but my time with Jonathan in his massive house on top of Scaly Mountain in North Carolina was one of the most extraordinary times of my life.

He would tire of my questions about what it was like working with Charles Olson and Buckminster Fuller, so I started asking about his tens of thousands of books in his house.  I asked him to show me a book on all those shelves that I had to read.  He handed me this book with a magnifying glass.

Merle Hoyleman's ASP OF THE AGE is something we can have our local libraries order through interlibrary loan for us.  The reason for the magnifying glass is because she insisted that the publisher publish her poems as facsimiles of her handwriting with yellow ink on white paper.  Difficult reading until you get used to her script, but once you get it, WOW, it is such a spectacularly strange and beautiful book of poems.

At dinner that night I started asking about Merle.  Jonathan said that she was the only author he was unable to work with once they got started.  She would call and scream.  He was confused and took a flight to Pittsburgh to visit her in her home to work on the book with her in person.  He said she was like anyone's grandmother with a tidy hair doo and apron, baking and cooking and laughing with Jonathan in the kitchen.  THEN she abruptly put her knife down and said, "They have returned."  He asked, "Who has returned?"  It was as if she had not heard him and walked into the living room.

In one corner of the living room, the walls were completely bare of any art and sitting in the corner was a chair and small table with paper and writing tools.  She stood facing the corner of the ceiling above the chair and table while SCREAMING at what she called The Scum, which was a group of spirits who would visit through this ceiling portal in her house.  Jonathan said her screams terrified him like someone was being murdered.  Then she calmly said to The Scum, "Okay, okay, I hear you, I am sitting down now."  And then she sat at the table and began writing for the next two hours without stop.  All of her poems were messages from The Scum.

The book Jonathan tried to publish is titled LETTERS TO CHRISTOPHER.  They are poems, and when he could no longer work with her James Laughlin of New Directions gave it a try because he was also enamored with her poems, but Laughlin also had to eventually stop working with her because she would call and scream.  The only copy of the book that exists is the one that Jonathan typed from her handwritten pages, and it exists at the SUNY Buffalo Special Collection.  If you ever find yourself in Buffalo, New York, take the time to read LETTERS TO CHRISTOPHER.  You will have to do so in the library as it is never allowed to leave the room.

Hannah Weiner

The late Hannah Weiner saw words, often on the foreheads of others, and these words helped her write her poems.  Poet Eileen Myles tells the story of being at a large loft party in NYC in the 70s where she saw Hannah across a crowded room and thought to herself (not saying it out loud), "I wonder if Hannah sees words on my forehead?"  Hannah abruptly faced Eileen and walked across the room toward her to say, "I see no words on forehead today Eileen."  There are many such stories from the poets of her time.

Please see this link to learn more about her.

Something unacknowledged in the writings about her is how these psychic abilities were a burden to her, and how she developed a deliberate obsessive-compulsive behavior to cope.  She writes about this herself very openly more than once.  In her opus CLAIRVOYANT JOURNAL (which you can read for free online at this link) she writes about her frustration at the words stalking her like a menacing force she needed to escape.  Here is an excerpt where she tells us of her counting technique to rid herself of the words: