Matt Henriksen, Phil Cordelli, Brandon Shimoda, Dot Devota, Lucas Farrell
@ Flying Object, April 2011

A few weeks ago I posted this conversation between Matt Henriksen and Brandon Shimoda on HTMLGiant. Its spooky & brilliant. See it here.

MATTHEW: I don’t understand “through” as a process of knowing, only as a motion witnessed (“the duck passed through the rising smoke”). I think we know “in.” The women I admire in my personal life, as suggested by the poetry I most admire by women, seem to have a larger “in.” They live more intimately with the world than any men I know, and that intimacy brings a wealth of abstract connotations and connections, which must make their worlds larger and more real. I have a grandmother who can empathize straight to the bottom of anyone’s despair, and so she directs her action with kindness. I’m tightly bonded with my daughter, but by father-daughter actions, play and goofiness. Katy and Adele have a mother-daughter “in” while they sit on the couch nursing that I can’t sit “in” on. Maybe because our mothers pass us on into the world they remain in us partially and represent a larger intimate unknown that brings us comfort. But I don’t know that. I know marriage changed me and made me a feminist. In my marriage, at least half comprised by the pure feminine instinct, I feel more privy to the logical nature of tenderness—which I formerly attributed to values, as an act of rebellion against the will to power. Didn’t a woman give birth to Nietzsche? But after mother-love, we make a choice to love another. I don’t know if that love exists.

Also good news: Cannibal Books is not yet dead. New chapbooks by Dot Devota, Adam Roberts & Tom Andes are now available.