Dec 16

Poetry Book Review: BLIND SPOT by Teju Cole

Reviewed by Janette Jameson

“To look is to see only a fraction of what one is looking at. Even in the most vigilant eye, there is a blind spot. What is missing?” –Teju Cole

“I want to reduce the number of sparks. I want to embed hesitation and lack of certainty in it.”

Reading and distilling Blind Spot is an invitation accepted to walk into the many layers of Teju Cole and remain open to his world, which consists of Art History,  Philosophy, World History, Racism, Poetry and Photography.

His photographs and words tantalize, stretching and allowing for one’s world view to become skewed-altered.

He switches time, space and depth within a poem and within his collection. He plays with caught situations of the ordinary by throwing them out and then on to the next page. As he travels the world, he enters deeply as he wanders into workplaces, alleyways, meeting strangers who feed him banquets and then is face to face with a reminder of Nazi Germany or Bloody Sunday.

His approach to the subject is spot on, indirect, mysterious, no questions asked or many raised.

The relationship between photograph and prose is likewise synchronized or not, and crafted for tension in front of what could be emerging in the swamp of non-verbal knowing.

He takes you into art history, the big and the small, from painters – Hammershoi – to tile makers. He suggests a philosophy of perpetual deferral, to never reach destination, and then slings to Turner’s Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and the Dying.

He sees beauty, poetry and protest in simplicity. The presence of human evil and witness go hand in hand as he reveals emerging and past violence.

He replicates images: shroud, drapery, reflected pictures in windows, work sites, empty chairs, the backsides of streets. He repeats them as an accent before or after a poignant frame.

In photographs, he captures minutes before they are lost in a stream of narrative. In his prose, he lengthens and expands upon moments of stillness.

As I approached the end of over 300 pages, it was almost as if he had been asking all along, are you going to stay with me? Do you want to get closer to my simmering truth? Towards the end it is there: racism in America grounded in the past of others around the world and in time. The “what next” is not there; that is up to us. Shrouds and coverings are gone. It is in the eyes looking out and looking in.

Poetry Out Loud County Competition

Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation contest for students, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, and the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is proud to announce that we will be holding our county-level competition at the MJC Little Theatre on February 12th. Our county winners have earned places at the state level in recent years, so don’t miss the chance to witness this year’s contest!

Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog

Join us for the Second Tuesday Barkin’ Dog reading on February 11th at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto.  Featured poets include Zaid Shlah. An open mic will follow the featured reading, so bring a poem or two to share.

Poetry on Sunday Series

Come join us at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock for 2020’s first installment of our quarterly reading series! Click the image at right to download the PDF flyer, and see below for bios of our featured readers.

Barbara Swift Brauer is a freelance writer living in San Geronimo, California. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies as well as in art exhibitions and installations. She is the author of two collections from Sixteen Rivers Press: Rain, Like a Thief (2019) and At Ease in the Borrowed World (2013). With portrait artist Jackie Kirk, Barbara is coauthor of the nonfiction book, Witness: The Artist’s Vision in “The Face of AIDS” (Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996).

Bethanie Humphreys is a writer, editor, and mixed-media visual artist. She is a Sacramento Poetry Center board member, SPC Art Gallery curator, Associate Editor for Tule Review, and was Editor-in-Chief for the 2015 American River Review. Her chapbook, Dendrochronology, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019, and her poetry, short fiction, and art have appeared in various publications in the U.S. and U.K. including:  Artemis, Nonbinary Review, The Found Poetry Review, American River Review, and Sacramento Voices. She is a California Certified Naturalist and teaches creative writing workshops as a certified Amherst Writers and Artists method instructor.

Maya Khosla is the poet laureate of Sonoma County (2018–20). Her new poetry book is All the Fires of Wind and Light (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2019). Her work in the natural world has led her into the wild, to the page, and to the screen. She has documented forests, fire scientists, and firefighters talking about ways to be wise about wildfire. Maya’s work has taken her across coastal India, Kenya, and the United States. Her poems have also been collected in Keel Bone (Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, Bear Star Press) and in Heart of the Tearing (Red Dust Press). Her essays have appeared in Flyway, Yes Magazine, Humans and Nature, and elsewhere. She has written for the films Village of Dust, City of Water, and Shifting Undercurrents, and is working on a film about being “Firewise” in a time of climate change.

Poetry Book Club

MoSt is pleased to announce another installment of our Poetry Book Club! Join us for a conversation about  Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky. Copies of Deaf Republic will be available at the downtown Modesto library to check out in the near future.

The book club will be held Wednesday, January 22 at 6:30 in the conference room at the downtown library and will be facilitated by Stella Beratlis.  See you there!