This Week at No Tell Motel

Paige Taggart tells fifty-two men that she loves them this week at No Tell Motel.

Featured Poet Rebecca Loudon in the new Galatea Resurrects

Tom Beckett interviews Rebecca Loudon & 3 poems

Poems begin for me from practice. When I am practicing my violin, when I am practicing drawing, when I am practicing writing. I used to write every day in notebooks. Not just poems, but anything I thought of. Then I switched to my blog to continue my daily writing practice. I believe that the mastery of any art comes from mastery of practice. It’s kind of weird. I don’t think many poets think in terms of daily practice. Maybe it’s from spending a lifetime as a musician. But we have these muscles, not even muscles—tissue, tissue memory. Practice strengthens that tissue memory. When I practice Bach every day then it’s my tissue memory that can perform Bach, not my fingers, not my brain. My brain just gets in the way of things, slows me down. It’s the same with writing. I’ve learned to have a notebook by my side pretty much all the time to jot down ideas. This is practice. This and reading.

John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews Loudon's Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home and Cadaver Dogs

Rebecca Loudon reviews Aase Berg's With Deer

Bestest Poetry Books of 2009

Titles selected more than once by No Tells contributors:

(5) Stars of the Night Commute, by Ana Božičević (Tarpaulin Sky)

(3) The Book of Frank by CA Conrad (Chax Press)

(3) The Dance of No Hard Feelings by Mark Bibbins (Copper Canyon)

(3) The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)

(3) Museum of Accidents by Rachel Zucker (Wave Books)

(3) Ohio Violence by Alison Stine (University of North Texas Press)

(2) Areas of Fog by Joseph Massey (Shearsman Books)

(2) Censory Impulse by Erica Kaufman (Factory School)

(2) Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler (Penguin)

(2) Hecate Lochia by Hoa Nguyen (Hot Whiskey)

(2) A Million in Prizes by Justin Marks (New Issues Press)

(2) No Theater by Chris Tonelli (Brave Men Press)

(2) Saint Nobody by Amy Lemmon (Red Hen Press)

(2) Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)

(2) Skirmish by Dobby Gibson (Graywolf Press)

(2) Sunny Wednesday by Noelle Kocot (Wave Books)

(2) Temporary Bunk by Lori Anderson Moseman (Skank Books)

(2) A Toast in the House of Friends by Akilah Oliver (Coffee House)

(2) Tuned Droves by Eric Baus (Octopus Books)

(2) Slamming Open the Door by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno (Alice James Books)

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Jenn Koiter

Jenn Koiter's selections:

This Awkward Art by Conrad Hilberry and Jane Hilberry (Mayapple Press)
A father and daughter juxtapose poems that address the subjects they share: his grandson/her nephew, snow, Vermeer, the childhood death of her sister/his daughter. It may sound gimmicky, but, given that they are both darn good poets, it actually works, and works well. Loved this book.

Incident Light by H. L. Hix (Etruscan Press)
In his first published book in well over a month (I jest, of course! Though I am starting to consider Hix the Joyce Carol Oates of poetry publishing), Hix writes about an artist friend who learned when she was 49 that the man who raised her was not her biological father. It's eerie and gorgeous, with language as precise as we've come to expect from Hix. Mythologizing the ordinary. Dig it.

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Jenn Koiter lives in Wyoming, and she is planning to start her own conspiracy theory in which Candy Jones does, too. Probably with the witness protection program, in Lusk.

Best Poetry Books of 2009 - Martha Silano

Martha Silano's selections:

National Anthem by Kevin Prufer (Four Way Books)
So many books released this year with National, Republic, and American in the title, but Prufer’s rises above with its post-apocalyptic gems about America’s darkest hour ; they’re smart, lyrical, and almost always left me going “sheesh, how did he pull that off?”

Speaking of books with American in the title, Kary Wayson’s American Husband (Ohio State University Press) is a long-awaited miracle. Gaaawd, I have loved Ms. Wayson’s work for over ten years and am so, so happy to see she finally has a book we can all have and hold. Even at her dreariest (“My umbrella isn't in case but the cause
of the rain
coming down, and my soul is a shovel buried in the flowers”) all order of lyrical-masterful-rain-spattered-tulip springtime flows from her pen.

Lucia Perillo’s Inseminating the Elephant (Cooper Canyon) because Perillo gives MS the finger and makes us laugh at the same time.

Rachel Zucker’s Museum of Accidents (Wesleyan) because poems like “Lines to Stave Off Suicide” remind us what it felt like to be a country paralyzed with fear and grief.

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Martha Silano's books are Blue Positive (Steel Toe 2006) and What the Truth Tastes Like (Nightshade 1999). New work is just out or forthcoming in The Journal, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, The Best American Poetry 2009, and Starting Today: Poems for the First 100 Days. Martha teaches at Bellevue College, near her home in Seattle, WA.

This Week at No Tell Motel

Reb Livingston cremates the hemlouts and stresses everyone out this week at No Tell Motel.

Best Books of Poetry of 2009 - Deborah Ager

Deborah Ager's selections:

Saint Nobody by Amy Lemmon (Red Hen Press)

Now You're the Enemy by James Allen Hall (University of Arkansas Press)

0°, 0° by Amit Majmudar (Northwestern University Press)

The Hardship Post by Jehanne Dubrow (Three Candles Press)

Answering the Ruins by Gregory Fraser (Northwestern University Press)

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Deborah Ager is publisher of 32 Poems Magazine. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, New Letters, New England Review, New South and other "new" places. Her book is entitled Midnight Voices.