Aimee Herman - meant to wake up feeling

Aimee Herman - meant to wake up feeling

Aimee Herman's powerful new collection, meant to wake up feeling, addresses the complexities of identity, gender, memory, and body image. This is a book of surprise, humor, intimacy, fallibility, renewal. A treasure map of metamorphosis. Anne Waldman writes, "Visceral, insistent, beyond transgressive…Gratitude to Aimee Herman for getting under our skin, and moving poetry-in-discourse into the feminist present and future where we study and yearn for the salvation of humanity." Herman's work takes you on a personal journey of understanding a body's identity and, in turn, helps us understand who we are. These poems revel in Cummings' forms, Bukowski directness, and Kerouacian playfulness. For a generation set on defining itself, this book is a step in the right direction of realizing the only definition is ourselves. In Herman's own words, "Walk away from formula, resuscitate the dark inside, look for new bulb of light."

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praise for meant to wake up feeling

Aimee Herman’s latest volume of poetry, meant to wake up feeling, could be described as poetic counterterrorism. Rather than mounting a series of covert actions, however, these poems intimately resist the terrorism of the powerful (or the righteously normative) against the embodied other. The book lives up to its title and its mission, as both model and process of resistance....The work done in this book is desperately necessary. The next time someone grumbles about the uselessness of poetry, put these poems in their hands." - Jay Besemer, Rain Taxi (volume 20, print edition)

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The grace, honesty, and bravery with which [Herman] addresses issues that many won’t touch with a ten-foot pole will shake you to the core. - Lily Rex, Blotterature

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Visceral, insistent, beyond transgressive, meant to wake up feeling does just that. It is a palpable writing of the body in Helene Cixious's demanding and powerful sense of the act. Gratitude to Aimee Herman for getting under our skin, and moving poetry-in-discourse into the feminist present and future where we study and yearn for the salvation of humanity. —Anne Waldman, author of "Gossamurmur" and "The Iovis Trilogy"

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meant to wake up feeling is an extraordinary book and Aimee Herman is a major talent. She mixes and remixes, configures and reconfigures language inventing new language and visual art. She says, "Do not live just because you can." meant to wake up feeling is a series of individuals: an epic poem, a sexy political queer song about the body definition/redefinition relationship, diS-ease and transcendence. —Pamela Sneed, author of "Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery" and "KONG and Other Works"

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Aimee Herman speaks to her and all generations past and present with these strong transcendent poems and ever-pressing issues. As Herman puts it "i am in-between the sentence structures of my body." A body of work, which I kept embracing as I fell in between these fragmenting lines of poetic thought. Always questioning, Herman asks: "if you steam open the body / will you find what was really there?" and answers "alphabetized psychosis." I say yes and perhaps a bit of uneasy (dis)comfort as well. To misquote Herman: Dear Aimee, every time I turn these pages I believe in you even more. Keep these transmissions coming.—Steve Dalachinsky, author of the PEN Oakland National Book Award winner "The Final Nite"

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Aimee Herman continues her profound, unflinching explorations of love, violence, and the physical body in poems that are exquisitely crafted, dangerous and thrilling. meant to wake up feeling definitely lives up to its name. —Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters" and "Toxicology"

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bio

Aimee Herman is a Brooklyn-based poet and performance artist looking to disembowel the architecture of gender and what it means to queer the body. Find Aimee's poems in the anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2013), in the full-length collection to go without blinking (BlazeVOX books, 2012), and the recent chapbook rooted (dancing girl press). Aimee is an adjunct professor at Bronx Community College, a faculty member with Poetry Teachers NYC, and a writing mentor/workshop facilitator for the Red Umbrella Project through their memoir writing drop-in classes specifically for those in the sex trades. Aimee was recentlty mention in Witty Bitches list of Potent Female Artists You Should Know, Now. Read more at: aimeeherman.wordpress.com.

Aimee Herman, meant to wake up feeling

Publication date October 10th 2014

$16.00

ISBN: 978-0-9857317-4-8

Purchase through IndieBound, amazon, Barnes & Noble, or order online or in person at your favorite bookstore (e.g. Powell's, McNally Jackson, Tattered Cover, Word, Bookshop West Portal, or Greenlight Bookstore.) For international orders, all great weather for MEDIA books are quickly and easily ordered through any local online or bricks-and-mortar store.

Also available through the wondrous Espresso Book Machine. Like an ATM for books, it will print you a copy in minutes. Find it at McNally Jackson (NYC), NYU Bookstore (NYC), Tattered Cover (Denver), and many other stores.

A Humble Barnacle: An Interview with Eric Alter

INTERVIEW BY THOMAS FUCALORO

Eric Alter is a poet who wrestles with cultural identity and truth—and tries to make them submit themselves to a laugh or a gasp from the audience. He is backed by the full credit and standing of Long Island University and holds a MFA in Creative Writing. His work has recently been published by Overpass Books, Brooklyn Paramount and great weatherfor MEDIA. He is also a 77.4 ton Sherman tank, editor of NYSAI press, and a bass player in the band Giga Herbs.

TF: So you recently made a poetry vid where you break down the borough of Staten Island called Where From or This Was Meant to Be a Pride Poem. How did it came to be? What did you hope to accomplish with it?

EA: "Where From or This Was Meant to Be a Pride Poem" started, like many of my poems, inside a car. I was driving and it was one of those moments where the words just came, seemingly out of nowhere, and were formed into the exact lines of poetry that the poem holds today. During the time that it was written I was focusing a lot on how people come to define themselves by way of their geographical setting. I had come to witness various moments of geographical pride and was intrigued, perplexed even. I thought to myself, How does a place define a people and how does it define the individual? Is it by choice or by circumstance?

Being from Staten Island causes many people to make assumptions about your character, personality and background. They fall into the stereotypes about mafia, the dump, the suburban endlessness of it all. And all this is true to an extent but also a faulty way of characterizing a person. I imagine it to be as reliable as judging the flavor of a pie while only tasting a crumb of it.

So this poem is attempting to put those stereotypes on the spot by bringing attention to the broken parts we actually can fix. Simply identifying it and saying, "Yes, I am from here, so what? Come and see for yourself." I was searching for a way to be prideful about the land mass I lived on but found it did not define me—yet it was how people on the outside defined me.

TF: Your poem "Driving" has just been published in the great weather anthology I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand. Can you talk a little about it?

EA: The poem "Driving" surprisingly was also written in a car. The first half was written during some travel I did from Wisconsin to New York. I was visiting a childhood friend, painter Dan Schein, and we took on the seventeen-hour journey in his little truck. The road, at long stretches, does something to your mind. The sitting still of it all. The fast movement of it all. The bad food rest stops and geography flying by. The kinship of taking on such madness with a handful of close friends. The first half of driving is attempting to link the sentiment of this Wisconsin to New York journey with the driving trip I was on a few weeks later while on tour with my band Giga Herbs.

The physical act of driving reminded me very much with the subconscious act of living. The ups and breakdowns. The beauty and the restlessness. The hunger for escape.

TF:  In "Driving" you have the line It's leaving home/ and inevitably/ It's coming back. What do these lines mean to you?

EA: That line is really focusing on the idea of escape. How we yearn for it. How it's been presented in writing. We are inundated with stories that call for shotgun movement.  And they appeal to a young and idealistic mind. Often what is lost in those stories is the need to reflect and return. So that line is a sort of call to self-reflection and the idea that we can find a home within ourselves.

TF: So you are an editor for the Staten Island based literary press NYSAI. What is your role?

EA: My role in NYSAI Press has been as a co-editor of the magazine and is beginning to grow into other roles, such as grant writer and slam host. The prospect of grant writing excites me greatly because funding for literary based arts on Staten Island has been lacking and the other editors and I want to change that. Helping create a slam team in Staten Island causes me to get goose bumps. I really look forward to providing a safe place for a slam to exist on the Island of Staten because I think there are actually hundreds of poets out there, with vibrant voices, who are just waiting for the right group of people to operate. Being a part of that team sort of gives me purpose for the moment. So look forward for the Staten Island Advanced Slam.

TF: You are becoming a figure in the slam scene. How has slam has influenced your writing and performance? Do you have any advice for young poets who want to get involved in slam?

EA: I had no idea that I was becoming a figure. There are so many amazing poets on the slam scene in New York City that I'd say I was more of a humble barnacle on the bottom hull of the massive ship known as Slam. Just last night I was at the Sidewalk Café, where the Urbana team hosts their weekly workshop, open mic, feature and slam.  I have grown to need the slam community, specifically Urbana, to the extent of carving Tuesday nights out of my work schedule in order to attend every week. Workshops with peers have propelled my writing and shown me the unlocking power of editing. Watching performers like Jared Singer, Jeanann Verlee, Omar Holman and Thomas Fucaloro has created a desire within myself that not only calls for meaningful writing but heartfelt, captivating performance. The slam scene really provides a continuation in the education of poetry for me. It's like an MFA but with way more booze and socially aware writers.

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Read Eric Alter's poem "Driving" in the great weather for MEDIA anthology I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand.

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