Krystal Languell, 2013 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, read at The Poetry Project on October 14, 2013. Her mentor for the program, Anselm Berrigan, introduced her. Here is the introduction and video of her reading!
Krystal Languell
Lets the poems — tough, funny,
taut, built from real Indiana-noir
ground up– be environments to
add to, often or semi-often using
the feint of declarative phrasing
to see her surfaces with rough
feeling while keeping the visual
sense working by sticking things
in assigned corners: the deadbolt
in need of a charge, the pep rally,
the possibly temporarily acceptable
head of hair going by, the addressed
& accused stock photo. There is,
in her newer long work, a parley
with abjection, which can be made
useful, & rendered accurately
when squared up by the continuity
of a life, but can’t, most likely, win
a thing. “The water would feel good
unitl it knocked you down.” The
environment sorts what we select
for pressure’s sake. Languell leaves
in the trouble, “making poetry like
bad church,” — a poem says that,
keeps moving, building on the city
interiors few have the stomach to
re-assemble through the wear on
their own form….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LON05iUimaY