Every Night in Magic City is cinematic in a way that answers MC Hyland’s interest in films like Fernand Leger and Dudley Mitchell’s Ballet Mécanique—and, in her great humility, the poet does not approach as a projectionist; rather, she attempts to step back out of her desire to be “a vehicle for light” (7): “a woman becomes a curtain & light moves through her as she moves” (“The Split-Faced Man Cannot be Touched” 17).

Hyland’s poems are dreamy even as they chasten us to wakefulness. As Every Night in Magic City attends to the currents of film and water (both mediums of light) it is increasingly evident that currents both obscure and sharpen our sense of what is at stake in them. Clarities reveal the murky ecstasy of living in the world, arriving like “a lizard’s submerged eye [that] drifts woozily upward” (“Strange Rock Shapes Behind The Highlighting Leaves” 7) and the lens is often “Vaseline-smeared” (“& Then Allowed to Climb” 12). Which is to say, these are poems that are deeply invested in the convulsiveness of the real and in the consideration of shifts of human awareness.

Every Night in Magic City is also incredibly warm and full of genuine kindness. Hyland’s attention always gives precedence to the greater activity of circumstances: “You held/ my hand as we ran to see all these things” (“The Pinned Coat Arm of the One-Handed Man” 8). Conscientious of the poet’s position as thief (as framing arrests activity by stealing moments away from the totality), she picks pockets lovingly like Charlie Chaplin (as her pockets are being picked): “I am picking your pocket with extraordinary affection” (“Strange Rock Shapes Behind The Highlighting Leaves” 7). There is always the sense that the poet is abandoned to the poetry: “dear mister almighty I speak/ by a telephone out of the passing parade” (“The Split-Faced Man Cannot Be Touched” 16). This is also apparent as the wear of experience gives way to process: “aged by sun exposing the film” (16), and the poet is left “Sliding along the street where my hands/ come to rest” (“Caught Around the Dark Submersions” 23).

Recognizing their own temporality, the poems of Every Night in Magic City awaken to a realization that “The Law Always Speaks in Unison” (24). Their organization comes from elsewhere, goes elsewhere. The facts that Hyland attends to are written across the body like “So Many Forms of Superimposed Transport” (18). As “these words shifting upward” move across the screen (18), they score a transcendence “rising through the funeral veil into a kind of viscous light” (“Caught Around the Dark Submersions” 23).

In this sense, Every Night in Magic City serves as an important reminder of Rimbaud’s assertion that departures are always arrivals, and Hyland’s poems are truly departures that arrive “re-entering where we have always been” only to find it new (“The Split-Faced Man Cannot be Touched” 17). “Chaque Soir à Magic-City” enacts this transformation: “made of light where we remove/ our clothes & adieu/ so beautiful!” (13). It in no coincidence that this adieu comes such close proximity to “arrival” (13). Looking back we see that the edge have departed from in “Strange Rock Shapes Behind The Highlighting of Leaves” has changed, shifted: “Bursting stars at the shifting edge” (“Even the Face Unmoving” 21).

One more thing, it is a good book that ends by acknowledging that there is, finally, no one to drive the car; it is a testimony of refreshing innocence: “the steering wheel comes/ loose// & then the body of the car descends from a ceiling into the room full of schoolgirls” (“The Law Always Speaks in Unison” 24). Read MC Hyland’s Every Night in Magic City soon as you get the chance. You’ll be glad you did.

I’m new to the Slash Pine family. So, in many ways this is hello.

I wanted to post this Céleste Boursier-Mougenot video in case you haven’t seen it yet.

I have been thinking about John Cage’s sense that “(Music) is instantaneous and unpredictable” (Themes & Variations). Grateful for the amplification of these finches at the end of a stressful year filled with anxiety about moving, the economy, the job market, earthquakes, hurt paws, oil spills, hateful legislation, and the fact that friends who write beautiful poems struggle to feed their children. At home, far away from home, every day is a struggle to relinquish agency in order to acknowledge poverty as thanksgiving (when I know helplessness is a promise to wakefulness). Like Neil Young sings, “All my changes were there.”

What am I talking about? Keeping the faith. Again, Cage: “Music is permanent; only listening is intermittent (Thoreau)” (Themes & Variations). Amidst all this noise, there is much to be thankful for at the first edge of summertime—the music of Boursier-Mougenot’s finches attends to the arrival of a wider perspective. (An organization that Thoreau calls “Higher Laws.”)

Here’s to what is left of my Evan Williams for Cage’s reminder that “our ears are now in excellent condition” (Themes & Variations).

Nathan

Thanks so much for all of the suggestions. I think every few months, I’d like to compile new lists with new folks who have their ears to the ground.

• Leaf Weather, Shira Dentz, Tilt Press
• Saying Things as an Engine Would, Mike Sikkema, H_NGM_N Books
• Every Night in Magic City, MC Hyland, H_NGM_N Books
• Museum Armor, Lily Brown, DoubleCrossed Press
• In the Living Room, Nathan Hauke, Lame House Press(somone else suggested our editor)
• The Black Eye, Brian Foley, Brave Men Press
• Another Random Heart, Sara Veglahn, Letter Machine Editions
• The Love of Freak Milways and Tango Wax, Kate Schapira, Cy Gist Press
• Whatever You Love of Weapons You Love for Weapons, Mathias Svalina, Brave Men Press
• The Heart is Green from So Much Waiting, Sampson Starkweather, Immaculate Disciples Press
• June, Lynn Xu, Corollary Press
• The Plesyre Barge, Jon Cone, Greying Ghost Press
• Fugue Engine, Tim VanDyke, Cannibal Books, forthcoming
• A History of Waves, Haines Eason, PSA
• About Birds, Stacy Kid, dancing girl, forthcoming
• Scatter Plot, Myron Hand, Willow Books, forthcoming
• Run, Kim Gek Lin Short, Rope-a-Dope Press
• Instructions for a Painting, Molly Godack, GreenTower Press
• Guarding the Vilions, Misty Harper, PSA
• Cold Work, Cecily Parks, PSA
• The Making of Collateral Beauty, Mark Yackich, Tupelo Press
• At night, the dead:, Lisa Ciccarrelo, Blooding Pudding Press

Finally, summer is here. Time to get some air, read some good books, and see the sites semesters usually conceal.

Anyhow, we here at Slash Pine are looking for suggestions of chapbooks–not only who we should read, but perhaps give some attention to on the blog. So, please, do send us some suggestions.

Also, looking to add a list of other chapbook and independent presses. Who should we put up and link? Self-promotion is not frowned upon if done in the spirit of brother/sisterhood.

Also, look for the new crew to start blogging on what they bloody well please. 

Next up for me: poetics of space.

So, AWP, Hawk & Tide, and Slash Pine Poetry Festival. I think I slept fifteen hours the entire month. But it was exciting and exhilarating, especially the festival, where we were running away from tornado warnings and having rain so hard you couldn’t see directly in front of you while driving. Instead of rewriting the whole report here, just check the events out up in our events link and read over the reports. Alexis Orgera, one of the readers and just bang-up solid human being, wrote up a nice piece for us in HTMLGIANT.

Highlights of last month included but are not limited to: hearing about U of Kansas undergrads getting lost on the backroads of Arkansas; fighting ambient noise in a Whiskey Distillery in Denver; working Danny Plunkett, intern for Slash Pine Press, to death by hauling chairs in a thunderstorm that may or may not have turned to hail; watching Abe Smith twist himself into a pretzel while reading about Hank Williams; feeling my brain completely go into lockdown as I MC’ed the entire festival, culminating in speaking in mono-syllabic grunts as a way to introduce the final festival readings; taking in handmade festival anthologies sewed link-stitch style by Patti herself; eating tons of pie from PieLab supplied for the undergrad reading; meeting dozens of new people I’ve never seen before.

But now it’s may, the grant reports are about filed, and it’s time for some downtime and quiet. But here be some exciting news for the press:

1. We welcome Melissa Hull, Brian Morrison, and Nathan Hauke on to team Slash Pine. Patti and I need some help as apparently both of us have other jobs than to make books and plan poetry readings.
2. We also welcome Heather Momyer And Nathan Hauke to the editorial staff. Heather, Nathan, Patti White, Abe Smith, and francine j. harris will be reviewing the manuscripts about done trickling in. We’ll read through May>July, get some final manuscripts on the table, and then take it from there.
3. We also, finally, will put Brent House’s new book online for sale. We sold a good deal at AWP and the poetry festival. But alas, now we need to get it online for sale.
4. Even though we sold out, we also want to put the 2010 anthology online–from Hank Lazer to Adam Clay to Jeanie Thompson to Michael Mejia to…you get the idea. These things were real beauties.

And now we get ready for the Fall. More news on undergrad exchanges, hike poetry readings, book news…next couple months, we can crawl out of our holes, see what’s going out in the world around us, and just generally write about other chap presses and reading series. Yippee.