Before Starting Over: Selected Writings and Interviews 1994-2005

"Before Starting Over" is an informal chronicle of several important developments in English-language poetry during the nineties and the turn of the century, most importantly Asian American poetry, digital poetics, and the changing face of poetry's "experimental" wing. There is nothing pious about the approach: one chapter is a distillation of conversations and controversies that occurred on the internet via the author's blog, "Free Space Comix", while another is largely composed of playful and polemical "poetics" statements geared toward a popular -- i.e. non-elitist or -insider -- audience. Consquently, nothing is taken for granted, whether it be the efficacy of a central literary Tradition, or the primacy of the "marginal" or aesthetic "lineages" that are valorized in smaller writing communities identifying with either the "avant-garde" or ethnic minorities (or both). Included are several book reviews by the author that attempt to create a language for discussing the most "difficult" poetry of the past fifteen years energetically and engagingly, in a manner that is neither sugared up nor requiring a doctoral degree to decipher.Several interviews discuss strands of "digital poetics" that were not discussed in the author's "Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics", especially notions of "hacktivism," internet publishing and the poetics of the anti-war blog "Circulars". All in all, the experience of reading "Before Starting Over" is in which the reader is invited to disagree, to argue, but most of all to feel as passionate, troubled yet optimistic about poetry as the author, one of the more active and intelligent (uh huh) poets and critics to mobilize both the internet and journalistic print publications to examine and champion emerging strands in writing.

Table of Contents:
PREFACES “Poet-Critic” I. SIX REVIEWS Tan Lin, BlipSoak01 Christian Bök, Eunoia Kevin Davies, Comp. Bruce Andrews, Paradise & Method; Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry Alice Notley, Disobedience W. S. Graham, New Collected Poems II. ASIAN AMERICAN POETRY Voicebox In Search of Lost Time: Walter K. Lew’s Excerpts from Dikte/Dictee On the Introduction to The Open Boat Remote Parsee: An Alternative Grammar to North Asian American Poetry III. A POETICS OF VIRTUOSITY A Poetics of Virtuosity IV. REFLECTIONS IN A GLASS HOUSE After Language Poetry Veronica Forrest-Thomson Fence Letter Ezra Pound Open Letter to Brendan Lorber Frank O’Hara Bruce Andrews, I Don’t Have Any Paper So Shut Up (Or, Social Romanticism) A Poem for Tyros When Lilacs Last in the Door Jeff Derksen, Dwell Tim Davis, Dailies Jennifer Moxley, Wrong Life Suzanne Dathe of Grenoble, France – Can We Win? (On Carol Mirakove’s Poetry) Steve McCaffery, Three Books V. SILLIMAN COMMENTARIES Blogs, by Marianne Moore Silliman Commentaries VI. DIGITAL POETICS Interview with Sylvia Egger Statement for Orono, Maine Iowa Review Web Interview Statement for Slought Brooklyn Rail Interview Towards a Poetics for Circulars Interview of Albanian Arts Magazine VII. LITTLE REVIEWS Jeff Derksen, Transnational Muscle Cars Bill Luoma, Works & Days Stacy Doris, Conference Dan Farrell, Last Instance Renee Gladman, Juice Kenneth Goldsmith, Day Jessica Grim, Fray Pamela Lu, Pamela: A Novel Christophe Tarkos, Ma Langue est Poétique: Selected Work Rodrigo Toscano, Partisans Jose Garcia Villa, The Anchored Angel: Selected Writings Darren Wershler-Henry, The Tapeworm Foundry Harryette Mullen, Muse & Drudge Susan Wheeler, Source Codes Joel Kuszai (editor), poetics@ Caroline Bergvall, Goan Atom

About the Author :
Brian Kim Stefans was born in Rutherfrod, New Jersey in 1969. He has published several books of poetry, including Free Space Comix (Roof, 1998), Gulf (Object Editions, 1998) and Angry Penguins (Harry Tankoos, 2000). Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics, a book of experimental writings that both explored and described the nexus between digital technology and poetry, appeared from Atelos in 2003. He is an internationally recognized digital artist and has run the website arras.net, devoted to new media poetry and poetics, since 1998.