movable TYYPE

by Kathleen Fraser

Kathleen Fraser’s inventive new book showcases poems from four recent collaborative artist books that exhibit “her longtime love of words as objects into play” (The New York Times). These new poems, many created through her unique collage and hand paste-up techniques, continue Fraser’s ambitious exploration of the boundaries of language and the limits of the page.

Genres: Poetry

184 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2011

About the author

After graduating in English Literature, 1959, from Occidental College (California), Kathleen Fraser went to NYC to work as an editorial associate for Mademoiselle magazine, pursuing her poetic studies with Stanly Kunitz at The 92nd St. Y "Poetry Center" and, briefly, with Robert Lowell and Kenneth Koch at The New School. At this time, she began to meet a number of New York poets associated with Black Mountain, The Objectivists and the New York School. Among these poets, those to have most important influence on her work were Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest and George Oppen. She later counted the works of Lorine Niedecker, Charles Olson and Basil Bunting as having a serious impact on her poetics. In 1964 she won the Frank O'Hara Poetry Prize and the American Academy's "Discovery Award". Other writing fellowships have included two NEA Poetry grants, in 1971 and 1978, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry in 1981.

After seven years as a journalist - writing and editing - and the publication of her first book - Change of Address [Kayak, 1968] - , Fraser was invited to teach as a poet-in-residence for two years at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where her university teaching career began. She taught, subsequently, in contemporary literature and writing programs at Reed College and at San Francisco State University where she remained as a Professor of Creative Writing through 1992. In her early years at SFSU, Fraser directed The Poetry Center and founded the American Poetry Archives.

From 1983-1991, Fraser published and edited HOW(ever), a journal focused on innovative writing by contemporary women and "erased" or neglected texts by Anglo/American modernist women writers, together with associate editors Frances Jaffer, Beverly Dahlen and Susan Gevirtz and contributing editors Carolyn Burke and Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Fraser has just completed a manuscript of essays - Translating the Unspeakable - on those American poets and poetics having a particular impact on her own writing and thinking.

She has published twelve volumes of poems and two children's books, including What I Want (1974), Magritte Series (1977), New Shoes (1978), Each Next, narratives (1980), Something (even human voices) in the foreground, a lake (1984), Notes Preceding Trust (1987) , When New Time Folds Up (1993) and WING (1995). Her most recent collection, - il cuore : the heart - New & Selected Poems ( 1970-1995), was published by Wesleyan University Press in the Fall of 1997. Fraser splits her time between San Francisco and Rome where she lives with her husband, the philosopher/playwright Arthur Bierman, from March through June . She has lectured and given readings at a number of Italian universities and has translated Lampi e acqua, a book-length serial poem by Maria Obino (excerpts published in AVEC), and a selection of poems by Toni Maraini, Daniela Attanasi, Sara Zanghi and Giovanna Sandri (published in Thirteenth Moon, "Italian Women Writers" issue).

Reviews

[Tessa!]

honestly this was a good book but i have to do a group project on it so for no reason other than that ive got to resent it

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Movable Tyype is divided into three parts...

The first, "20th Century", is perhaps the most accessible. They are interesting, but, unlike the poems of the second part, the interest is primarily in the content rather than the form. My favourite poem in the first part is a "whodunit" dedicated to one of my favourite poets, Barbara Guest...

Chapter 1

Known as a "road murder" list
of three nightdresses tenderly held but
reduced to two by the missing concept


Chapter 2

She: And even as we stood there waiting...
Voice: ...the quicksand began to quiver.

She: You heard the thunder over the sea.
Voice: I saw the see-saw bang against the sea...

She: ...and by chance
Voice: ...the boy crouching for shelter.

She: Solitary?
Voice: A black figure.

She: Among the many, you mean?
Voice: In the physiological dark, I mean.


Chapter 3

Suspicion fell on the sister, on Constance, a gift of a certain age,
beneath the anxiety of the dunes, the "else" of sheltering, the
less hard away.


Chapter 4

A: The grandfather, a professional detective...
B: cut on the continental model...
A: within the London Police Force.
B: [rolling his eyes...] Serious, this force!
A: Criminal elements, naturally.
B: The missing garment must bear evidence.
A: You mean "The clue of the missing nightgown"?
B: I read it already, this morning.
A: You've always "already" read it. I did not read it this morning.
B: I found the third nightgown. And there was nothing missing about it...
A: ...though something else?
B: If this were a shut case, Sir, but it is open...
A: Ah, open!


Chapter 5

She was able to produce only two elements
of quicksand's slippery evidence.
Imminent, expecting you
to do something fragrant,
say "Some (other cleaver) lover."

Little gun mare.
Night dream weapon stairs.
The clue of the missing not-
quite-rue (or "full of rue").

She flew high,
white hover in her
missing-few night gown. Now

not quite true.


Chapter 6

still...
expecting something more,
more from the mare of fidelity
outside the ring-fence endowment.
With fragile recompense that skill
irregularly wide at the hover
thereafter plausible
lover's chaste skull-bone and scar


Chapter 7

Reader who supposes
you are the better part of your own
porcelain scandal. A story must be capable,

stabilized in beeswax (rolled cylinder
of heated evening fictional plots), re

solving your six sides
with light at sliced lid.
Light gridlock,

big starry night swerve.
- A whodunit, for Barbara Guest, pg. 27-33

The second part is a collection of four collaborations with artists ("hi dde violeth i dde violet", "WITNESS", "SECOND LANGUAGE" and "ii ss"), all of which demonstrate the range of Fraser's formal and typographical experimentation.


- hi dde violeth i dde violet, pg. 74


- S E C O N D LANGUAGE, pg. 106


The third part, "SURVEILLANCE.surveillance", contains a selection of Fraser's work from 2008 to 2010. The poems of the third part vary from poems to prose (possibly, although they aren't identified as such), and everything in-between. My favourite piece in the third part is inspired by a quote from one of my favourite theorists, Antonin Artaud...

"Proust described 'the intermittences of the heart': someone should describe the intermittence of being." - Antonin Artaud

singular, to take in fully any aspect of the body without
its cotton t-shirt and sturdy black denims - to think
of his skin just after rising, sex asleep now in its ambient
staggering into darkness - perception of elbow and knee joint
held in stillness as if a mechanical device were perched
to advance the film, one more frame moved forward,
numerically fluent (yet his pulse is electrical
and muscular), stopped intent of metallic aperture

.

you were not on the verge of disappearing or
re-emerging to become a tree, each side of your body
now holding the wished-for rope of descent - possibly,
perilously down the worn stairs to wet sand and piled
driftwood core of cypress trunk with no evident measurable
pulse, storm-washed, drained of mineral, the stain
plowed under, under

but you were waiting for something fully formed that
in side-step would alert you, pull you to its intermittent claim on you,
this rescuing being a rendering-up of today's shed margin.
- being intermittent, pg. 157

[Emma Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

witness literally gave me chills

[cy · Rating 3 out of 5]

in theory i am giving this four stars