Fountain Square, Baku, New Year's Eve 1999

The fountains surge at mechanical intervals against the Caspian night, their waters catching fragments of light from small fireworks that bloom and die in children's hands. Their sound mimics conversation—the rhythmic murmur of voices just beyond comprehension, like the Russian phrases that drift past my ears, half-familiar syllables that force me to strain for meaning that hovers always just out of reach. Art nouveau facades curve around the square in elegant contradiction—wrought iron railings twist into filigree dreams while Soviet concrete slouches behind them like a guilty secret. I stand among the cobblestones, foreign feet on ancient ground, watching elegant women drift past in their narrow-shouldered blazers and dark lipstick—the careful glamour of a decade that promised everything and delivered fragments.

photo by susan smith nash

The kimancha's bow draws across steel strings, weaving mugham's modal lamentation through the crowd. This is music that builds meaning note by note, like Wittgenstein's language games—each phrase a world, each ornament a way of seeing. The musician's eyes close as he navigates the ancient pathways between joy and sorrow, his instrument's voice threading through conversations that switch between Russian's familiar harshness and Azeri's liquid syllables, languages dancing around each other like cautious lovers constructing reality from borrowed words.

Wind from the Caspian carries the eternal scent of oil and gas seeps, that petroleum incense persistent as the fires that once burned without end from this earth. The wind is relentless, constant as the flames that now burn in hearts rather than temples. I think of Zoroastrian altars, of Leyla and Majnun's doomed passion, of Dede Gorgud's twelve tales that shaped meaning from nomad memory long before empires learned to name this place. The fountain spray catches my cheek, cold and sudden against the warm breath of ancient fires, and I am reminded that language, like love, like revolution, constructs the world it claims to describe. Here in Azerbaijan, at the crossroads of empires and languages, meaning shifts like the wind patterns across the Caspian.

The old Soviet buildings lean against art nouveau's flowering iron, concrete socialism crumbling into capitalism's uncertain embrace, while the mugham continues its spiral ascent through modal territories that know no borders. Above it all, Persian arches and Islamic geometries remember older grammars of power.

Tonight feels less about reconstruction than about witnessing—the way midnight fireworks illuminate faces caught between worlds, between languages, between the weight of empire's end and the lightness of small hopes ascending like sparks into the winter sky. In planters between the fountains, olive trees stand patient as prophets, their silver leaves catching wind and light, while winter roses cling to thorny stems with the same stubborn grace that keeps the human spirit flowering in the harshest seasons.

The kimancha falls silent, and in that silence, the wind carries whispers of Majnun calling Leyla's name across the centuries, while gas flames flicker in the distance like punctuation marks in an endless sentence we are all still learning to read. Here, among the poppies that will push through cracks in concrete come spring, among the jasmine that perfumes summer nights regardless of which flag flies overhead, I understand that the human heart rebuilds itself with the same persistence as these ancient fires—unvanquishable, eternal, finding ways to bloom even when the world above seems to crumble.

Yeni il mübarək, someone calls out, and the New Year arrives with the taste of petroleum and the promise that the spirit, like these olive trees, like the fountains that flow regardless of empire, endures and renews itself from sources deeper than any human design.

Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. 

Norman, OK 

A Visual Poetics Coup de Dés of Meaning: Thomas Fink's Selected Poems

 Thomas Fink.  Selected Poems and Poetic Series. East Rockaway, NY: Marsh Hawk Press. 2016. 244 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9964275-0-0

This stunning collection includes examples from some of Thomas Fink’s most innovative and subversive work.  His work subverts the subversive, thinking specifically of all the concrete poetics that followed Malarmé’s Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard (1897) that has been used as the foundation for so many visual poets, including John Cage, John M. Bennett, Jesse Glass, Dick Higgins, F. A. Nettlebeck, Rochelle Owens, and Armand Schwermer, just to mention a few.  The visual poets subvert reading and meaning-making practices by add the aleatory, while Fink systematizes the strategies for generating meaning from a visual poem, particularly in his series that use the same form. 

For example, subversion of the subversive occurs in “Jigsaw Hubbub” where a Figure 8 / vertical Infinity sign is used several poems. The reader automatically resystematizes his / her method of approaching the poems, and looks for similarities and differences.  The same can be said for the “Goad” series where the upside down Greek letter Omega suggests the end of meaning (a common conceit in the twentieth century), but the fact that the shape is the same for each of the “Goad” poems instantly imposes at least two types of strategic meaning-making processes: first, comparing the shape of the upside-down Omega in each for raw semiotic meaning, and second, in the words themselves and the meanings forged by reading from right to left, descending from line to line. 

The collection of work is particularly fascinating because it is arranged chronologically and we can see a timeline of textural and thematic innovation. The collection begins with 1993’s Surprise Visit. The poems serve as an antidote to the then-ubiquitous L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, and are intertextual in the sense that they evoke and import an entire body of exogenous work. Perhaps the most delightful example is “Louise Bourgeois” which one cannot read without thinking of her big daddy longlegs spider sculptures, her bold prolificity, and the workshop where basically everything was cubed, drilled, formed into serviceable art (which is to say that it beckons itself to be in the service of EveryPerson).

Excerpts from Gossip (2001) reflect the giddy sense of having dodged apocalypse, until, of course, apocalypse showed itself to be a narrative characterized by its innate multiplicity.  Such inescapability from deterministic narratives is reflected even as natural phenomena are considered to be random, are likewise subjugated to narrative, as in “Reprise”

like a refugee

and every time you kiss me it’s like 

another little piece of my

lightning striking again … (p. 13)

After Taxes (2004) incorporates poetics of unparalleled sweetness, with a palpable desire for meaningful connections that flow through dreams, memories, and the actual experience, past or anticipated. “In Memoriam” is either a letter from a grandfather to a grandchild, or from a grandchild to a grandfather, or simply from / to childhood to later life, a homage to the ability of language and letters to forge enduring bonds and to affirm life. 

Dusk Bowl Intimacies stretch from 2011 to 2015. Each has more or less the same formal structure: A block prose poem followed by a minimalist verse, three to eight lines in length. The voice is the persona of an older woman, possibly a grandmother. She is an inquisitive spirit who investigates the underlying assumptions in the ways that language embodies everyday life, and then closes with lines that assert a personal commitment or an exhortation. 

“Home Cooked Diamond” and “Jigsaw Hubbub” are visual poems. As mentioned earlier, “Jigsaw Hubbub” toys with infinity, and subverts the popular notion widely espoused in the twentieth century that a visual poetics liberated language, thus unleashing an infinite number of potential meanings, and thus finding a way to define infinity.  “Jigsaw Hubbub” puts a playful stop to that, while “Home Cooked Diamond” has enough variation in the shape and textual arrangement on the page to look like shadows from a tree as the day progresses, looking “slant” and also into a mirror. 

“Home Cooked Diamond” has the feel of a memoir and an awkward road trip with  parents whose flaws are all too obvious to the children, which makes the telling all the more uncomfortable. The struggle one has to read parallels the emotional struggle in the author’s voice. It’s strangely emotionally compelling. 

--- Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. 

The Irreducible Uncertainty of Poetics in Hedge Fund Certainty: Thomas Fink

Thomas Fink. Hedge Fund Certainty. Meritage Press and I.E. Press. 2019.  ISBN: 978-1-934299-14-2

The beauty of poetics is its irreducible uncertainty.  The meanings are unmoored, allowing the reader to do what she / he would like. They can attempt to lash meanings to a limited number of options which may prove satisfying for some (especially those who consider the interpretive enterprise as a kind of exegesis). 

However, the real joy of discovery engaging in a sense of play.  The process involves observing the words, the structure, the syntax, and arrangement on the page and then embracing all the possibilities as they come to mind. 

A hedge fund is probably as far from certainty as one could imagine, so Fink’s play on the idea of certainty gives rise to ideas of gaming the system to have a positive outcome. The collection begins with “Yinglish Strophes.” All are in English, but with Yiddish syntax and arrangement, line breaks, and subjects that create an intense sense of place and of character. The words trigger a deep sense of nostalgia and loss: .. “Never later / was I back Russia the same once” (Yinglish Strophes 25). 

It is delightful to see the long poem, “Subprime Mortgage Bargain Lot” series. The title alone is amusing, because most readers will see that this has everything to do with rolling the dice and losing, seeing something you thought you possessed, whether it be the meaning of numbers on a page, or your ability to agree on a value with other readers. 

Hedge Fund Certainty evokes Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés Jamais n’abolira le hasard (1897). Translated to “A throw of the dice will never abolish hazards (or risk)” Mallarmé created a concrete / visual poetry notable for the aleatory aspects of the word choice, and the open arrangement on the page. 

Likewise “Subprime Mortgage Bargain Lot” is seemingly aleatory, and it gives you the choice to read the words in clusters or straight across the page.  Further, the words break in unusual places and words interject themselves.  The result is a vertiginous race to the bottom of each page. It is a thoroughgoing condemnation of greed and the brutalization of humanity as wholesale wealth redistribution occurs: “Out with / your ragid / daydreaming / that costs / & costs / the hard / working” (from “Subprime Mortgage Bargain Lot 16). 

The collection ends with “Prohibitionism,” which proclaims a message of hope: a telethon for poetry, that would suggestion unity, but the arrangement on the page denotes separation into opposing clusters of words (or camps), although the last line suggests a coming together: “walls / curve  toward  one  another.”  

-- Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.

Interview with Valerie Fox, Ph.D., Drexel University

We are delighted to have the opportunity to interview Valerie Fox, who has developed online courses in writing and poetry. In addition to teaching and writing, Valerie has taught in Japan and has edited award-winning literary publications. Her innovative poetry and writing in poetics have been widely published.

What is your name, and what is your involvement with e-learning?
|Valerie Fox. I've been teaching online courses for about five years. I teach writing and poetry at Drexel University, and writing and research for Excelsior College.

Valerie Fox, Ph.D.

How did you get interested in distance education?
I was asked a few years ago to teach and help to develop blended freshman writing courses at Drexel. Our students take a lot of credits, and they appreciate being able to take part in e-learning. The transition to teaching fully online (including distance) courses was a natural one.

What is your favorite new trend in distance education?
This may sound vague...but I just notice a willingness to "go with" the technology and the possibilities--at departmental level, but also higher levels. I can't speak to the institutional (or overall educational) reasons behind this; I suspect they vary considerably, depending on discipline, institution, etc.


What is your favorite technology?
I don't really have a favorite. I like including lots of various audio and video sources as suggested if not required offerings. Specifically, I've had some good success asking small groups to create websites. This isn't anything new--it's really just adding a creative or creative writing element to an assignment. The visual learners, as one would expect, do a terrific job with this. It builds their confidence.


What kinds of instructional materials do you use in elearning?
Creating materials is something I enjoy, so the flexibility of being able to combine various sources and media definitely is a plus. I guess (like everybody) for a while I was using youtube a lot, and I make a point to combine the easily accessible sources/links with those requiring the use of library databases. A librarian recently told me about archive.org and I've been using/recommending it a lot.


How do you use textbooks in e-learning?
Having a textbook can help ground the learners that might be new to this, so I think at least one book should usually be required. Teaching English and writing, it isn't hard to work required readings into writings/discussions that can be efficiently read and graded. Blackboard Vista Media Library is an excellent tool also, making it possible to easily add suggested readings, videos etc. to a course. Students can be allowed to add to the Media Libraries and sometimes I give extra credit if students add items of interest.


What are your favorite social networks? How do you view them in e-learning?
I participate in various forums and writing groups. Because I enjoy this, I simply try to recreate what I think are their best features in my course websites. It isn't always possible, but often it is. I hear more and more about students using non-official means to communicate about class work and activity. This helps to replicate the before-and-after-class information sharing that students sometimes miss from a face-to-face class. I acknowledge this but don't interfere with their bonding, with their assisting of each other.

What is your favorite quote? or, what's a book that caught your eye recently?
Recently I read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and thought it was terrific.