Leslie Scalapino

A renowned language pioneer, Leslie Scalapino’s new book is It’s go/in quiet illumined grass/land, a long poem from Sausalito’s Post Apollo Press. Other recent books include The Tango (Granary Books), reprint of her novel, Defoe (Green Integer), and a poetic mystery novel, Orchid Jetsam (Tuumba). Alice Notley says of Scalapino’s latest book: "An enlightened work singing of death, physical pain, social fearfulness, and where when or whether one is. The intricate variable stanza, almost danced (like a Greek strophe) sounds one of Scalapino's favorite themes: inside and outside, the cruelty outside and the illumination also there, as in here, in space and in time. The stanza leads one through the space and time of the poem word by word. You can't stop."

"Leslie Scalapino's writing takes place in the fickle, monumental and often beautiful present: now. (If there were no present tense, her writing alone would have invented and identified it.) But it expands back and forth, pumping like a systole, into the primitive past and the unimaginable future. We in the Bay Area are spoiled, for we get to have Leslie Scalapino with us almost all the time." -- Kevin Killian

September 26, 1997 & September 13, 2002

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