Nathaniel Mackey

From Atet A.D. "Astnote": An Excerpt

No doubt by now you’ve heard the news of Monk’s death. What can one say? No doubt there’ll now be outpourings of appreciation, much of it from hitherto silent sources, long overdue. It can never amount to more than too little too late. I’m reminded of how I learned of Duke’s death in 1974. I was living up north at the time, in Oakland, and was in the habit of listening to the Berkeley Pacifica station, KPFA. Every weekday morning they had a program called “The Morning Concert,” two hours of what’s commonly called classical. So exclusively was European and Europederived “art music” its regimen that when I turned on the program one morning late in May and heard “Black and Tan Fantasy” I knew it could only mean one thing. Well before the announcer came on and said so I knew Duke was dead. In any event, the way we heard that Monk had died is that Onaje called Lambert the day the news broke to ask if we’d play in a memorial gig at his club that night. It came as no surprise, Monk having been in a coma for more than a week, though that’s not to say it had no impact. Still, as I’ve already said, what can one say? We agreed with no hesitation to take part in the gig, even though Penguin hadn’t yet come out of hiding and even though we didn’t know when he would. If playing the gig turned out to mean playing without him we were ready to do so. Penguin’s retreat, of course, had given rise to a good deal of comment, concern and speculation among us. Drennette even ventured to wonder out loud one day what kind of trip it was he was on, did he go off that way often and, if so, why do we put up with it. This struck us as a little harsh and to me at least it suggested she had a deeper emotional investment in Penguin’s doings than she let on. Aunt Nancy wasted no time speaking up. She called Penguin’s “trip” an “occupational hazard,” repeating Baraka’s line that music makes you think of a lot of weird things and that it can even make you become one of them. Clearly, she suggested, Penguin had. I spoke up as well. Penguin’s retreat, I said, struck me as related to something he once told me about Monk. I recounted his telling me of Monk getting into moods in which he’d answer the phone by grumbling, “Monk’s not here,” then hang up. Penguin’s own telephonically announced retreat, I suggested, amounted to a kind of from Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer 1996)

From from a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, Volume Four

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now, a while that seems like years though it’s only been weeks. A bit of melody held me up, the beginnings of a piece I’ve been wanting to write but can’t. It would be a piece, were I able to write it, the sleek skein of whose retreat would limn an interpolative truth. Retreat, I mean, would imbue the receipt the piece would bestow—imbue and ambiguate such receipt (grudging receipt). Which is where the wrench or the rub I’ve been up against comes in: how to ambiguate receipt without foreclosing on receipt. Foreclosure is the risk I’ve run and evidently succumbed to, unable, as I’ve been, to get on with or get beyond the mere bit of melody which has held me up. Grachan Moncur III’s “Frankenstein,” however, encourages me to believe I can. That he wrote it as a waltz, more exactly, keeps me from giving up. It seems he speaks to retreat and receipt’s cautionary rhyme and revision by pushing waltz’s restrained embrace a bit farther, furthering such restraint via titular monster-held-at-bay (extenuation confounding stark, Frankensteinian stitch with ur-rhapsodic stitch). I’ve let myself be taken up with this more than I probably should have, tending more toward shutting down on other fronts than makes any sense. Still, sense or no sense, that’s how it’s been. Sorry to’ve been silent so long. We’ve made some decisions regarding Orphic Bend you should know about. Here are the pieces we’ve decided will be on it, in the order in which they’ll appear:

Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality and Experimental Writing

This highly regarded and frequently referenced work of literary criticism is essential to any study of avant garde poetics.Nathaniel Mackey addresses the poetry and prose of a number of authors not commonly grouped together: black writers from the United States and the Caribbean and the so-called Black Mountain poets. Although they are seemingly disparate, these writers are united by their experimentation with style and form. Mackey, an important contemporary poet and critic, focuses on the experimental aspects of their work rather than on its subject matter or authorship to show that they all share an implied critique of conventional poetic practices.Mackey analyzes the work of Black Mountain poets Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson, African American poets Amiri Baraka and Clarence Major, and Caribbean writers Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Wilson Harris. He frequently brings the work of these authors into dialogue and juxtaposition, noting the parallels and counterpoint that exist among writers normally separated by ethnic, temporal, or regional boundaries. By insisting that their experimentation unites these writers rather than marginalizes them, Mackey questions traditional notions that underlie conventional perceptions and practice.In his epilogue and bibliographic essay, volume editor Michael Conniff suggests new directions for further research and offers a comprehensive survey of the evolution of major writings, theories, and methodologies in the field.