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    Instant Classic
    Instant Classic
    Instant Classic
    Ebook93 pages36 minutes

    Instant Classic

    By Erica Kaufman

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    About this ebook

    Poetry. LGBT Studies. Women's Studies. INSTANT CLASSIC is precisely that; as soon as you start reading it, you say, oh, yeah, of course, why didn't I think of that? Exploring the pathways of grammar-twisting, women's, queer poetry and poetics in a single form that encapsulates many possibilities, Kaufman's book is one of the few that links us all. Erica Kaufman is the author of INSTANT CLASSIC (Roof Books, 2013) and CENSORY IMPULSE (Factory School, 2009), and the co-editor of NO GENDER: REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND WORK OF KARI EDWARDS (Venn Diagram, 2009). Recent poems can be found online in Little Red Leaves and Elective Affinities, and in Lungfull!, The Death and Life of American Cities and Parkett. Prose and critical work can be found in: Rain Taxi, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Jacket2 and in The Color of Vowels: New York School Collaborations (ed. Mark Silverberg, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). Kaufman is the Associate Director of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. 
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRoof Books
    Release dateDec 1, 2013
    ISBN9781931824552
    Instant Classic

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      Book preview

      Instant Classic - Erica Kaufman

      INSTANT CLASSIC

      INSTANT CLASSIC

      erica Kaufman

      ROOF BOOKS

      NEW YORK

      Copyright © 2013 erica kaufman

      ISBN: 978-1-931824-55-2

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2013955367

      Cover art by Nicole Eisenman

      Untitled, 2012

      Monotype on paper, image size: 23 x 17 1/2 in

      Courtesy the artist and Koenig & Clinton, New York

      Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg

      Photo: Thomas Mueller

      Acknowledgments: Some of these poems have appeared in Little Red Leaves, Elective Affinities, Parkett, Where Eagles Dare, The Death and Life of American Cities, Lungfull!, and Mrs. Maybe. Sections of this work have appeared in chapbook form from Least Weasel/Propolis Press and Belladonna (as part of the material lives series). Thanks to the editors/ publishers of these presses: Karen Randall, Rachel Levitsky, Emily Skillings, Krystal Languell, and the Belladonna Collaborative.

      INSTANT CLASSIC is meant to be a conversation, and this conversation would not have transpired without the support of many people —teachers, mentors, friends, family. Thanks to Wayne Koestenbaum (whose courses gave me the space to write this work in the throes of academia) and Joseph Wittreich (who taught me to love Milton). Thanks also to Sondra Perl, Ammiel Alcalay, Mark McBeth, Eileen Myles, Joan Retallack, Anne Waldman, John Coletti, CAConrad, Matt Longabucco, Tina Darragh, David Buuck, Jane Sprague, Karen Weiser, Carley Moore, Rebecca Brown, Anselm Berrigan, Frank Sherlock, Brandon Brown, Cathy Eisenhower, Ken Jacobs, Charles Bernstein, Stacy Szymaszek, Judah Rubin, Corina Copp, Dana Ward, Thurston Moore, Nicole Eisenman, E. Tracy Grinnell, Charles Bernstein, Simone White, mom, dad, Rebecca, Dan, Isabel, and Bomber.

      This book was made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

      Roof Books are distributed by

      Small Press Distribution

      1341 Seventh Avenue

      Berkeley, CA. 94710-1403

      Phone orders: 800-869-7553

      www.spdbooks.org

      Roof Books are published by Segue Foundation

      300 Bowery

      New York, NY 10012

      seguefoundation.com

      for my parents

      INSTANT CLASSIC

      Contents

      Preface

      Instead of an Argument

      Part I

      Part II

      Part III

      Notes

      Recent & Selected Titles

      PREFACE:       to tell you

      these forms of beauty have not been to me

      as is a landscape to a blind man’s lie

      (Tintern Abbey by Wordsworth)

      1.

      a teaspoon

      of ketchup is more

      than capitalism important

      the problem of how

      to read billboards, lawyers,

      diction as the experience

      of embracing the leeches.

      i don’t control my own

      metaphors, humanized

      amputation a straw taken

      to the puss of the road.

      2.

      if she never photographs

      the hair on the mirror

      i’ll wear the face

      of upright lamentation

      half fixed melancholy

      half i can still sidestroke

      and say, you need to have awe

      to be mercenary.  or, look at me

      as if you are grooming a tree.

      Instead of an Argument

      AFTER THE FIRST edition of Paradise Lost (1667) proved itself to be far too difficult to be a bestseller, John Milton’s publisher, Samuel Simmons, asked the author to give his readers a little help. The result of this is

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