Oliver Bendorf | Poet

My first forays into bookmaking

Oliver — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:14:27 +0000

Here are my first forays into bookmaking, with poems I wrote. Materials are ink, watercolor paper, suede and ribbon. The blue one is accompanied by a tiny glass penguin and the green one has a little glass bird. Each book (& its animal companion) tucks into a wooden box. (I modeled the binding after Laura Davidson’s great Tender Buttons, tenderly, which I got to see at the Kohler Art Library here at UW on a field trip, thanks to Jesse Lee!) In the fall, I’ll be taking an Artist’ Books course as my elective and I am very excited.

Summer plans

Oliver — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:22:22 +0000

Well, I’m really excited to get word that I’ll be taking an advanced workshop with Henri Cole this summer, at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore. Two weeks of poeming in the woods in Upstate New York does not sound half bad.

Schizophrene by Bhanu Kapil

Oliver — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:51:53 +0000

I reviewed Bhanu Kapil’s new book, Schizophrene (from Nightboat Books) for Devil’s Lake. Hint: I recommend it.…

Glitter Tongue launched!

Oliver — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:25:01 +0000

It’s over here! After a marathon weekend of making proof edits and getting ready for the launch, it’s been so thrilling to have the world connect to it and be as excited about it as I was/am. The project has had really sweet write-ups/shoutouts from Autostraddle, Lambda Literary, Feministing, Sycamore Review, and more places. Also, one of my favorite features is the little share buttons below each individual poem. So, you know, go check it out.

Queer love poems, or, how does a fish write a poem about water?

Oliver — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:33:38 +0000

This week, I am writing queer love poems with a handful of other queer writers whom I love and admire in both internet and IRL ways. Margaret Rhee, Tamiko Beyer, Ching-In Chen, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Meg Day, and I have all signed on for a collective challenge, based on something Margaret posted on Facebook about queer love being so good, but so hard. Ain’t it? I must admit to feeling a little overwhelmed by the broadness of “queer love poem,” as I feel that so much of what my brain and heart are chewing on lately is queer love. How does a fish write a poem about water? I might need to give myself a more specific constraint. I am excited and honored to get to read what my fellow poets write, and thankful for the internet for allowing this kind of spontaneous collective project. It’s exactly the kind of “alone-together” community that I like to write in, and that I feel is so important!

New post up at OP

Oliver — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:30:49 +0000

Read it here: I Am The Least Difficult of Men.

I’ve gotten a lot of really meaningful feedback on it, including from a college friend Amy who shared a quote with me, which I will share here (emphasis mine):

“I have been told that there are two human responses to the perception of chaos: naming and violence. When the chaos is simply the unknown, the naming can be accomplished effortlessly — a new species, star, formula, equation, prognosis. There is also mapping, charting, devising proper nouns for unnamed or stripped-of-names geography, landscape, or population. When chaos resists, either by reforming itself or by rebelling against imposed order, violence is understood to be the most frequent response and the most rational when confronting the unknown, the catastrophic, the wild, wanton, or incorrigible. Rational responses may be censure, incarceration in holding camps, prisons, or death, singly or in war. There is however a third response to chaos, which I have not heard about, which is stillness. Such stillness can be passivity or dumbfoundedness; it can be paralytic fear. But it can also be art.”

- Toni Morrison, “Peril,” Burn this Book

My poem “Dog Days” on Verse Daily

Oliver — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:49:47 +0000

I’m really pleased to share that my poem “Dog Days” is today’s featured poem on Verse Daily. Check it out. Thanks, Verse Daily!…

queer eco-poetics

Oliver — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:05:44 +0000

Huge congratulations to Tamiko, whose book – We Come Elemental – a collection of queer eco-poetics – will be published by Alice James Books! Tamiko’s bough breaks is dear to me, and I’m so excited to have more of her work in the world to read. (Here are her “Notes toward a queer::eco::poetics.”)

Last day of teaching

Oliver — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:05:40 +0000

…for the semester. Here’s the Beginning Creative Writing Workshop, after our class reading, sated with pizza and end-of-semester loopiness.

English 203, Fall 2011: Imagery in Poetry

Oliver — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:20:08 +0000

Team ENG 203.1 (Fall 2011) has some things to tell, er, show you about imagery in poetry! In class, my students went scouring through the following poems for images, and then drew what they found, right down to the “rags of green weed” hanging off Bishop’s fish and the “two cannons” of Neruda’s socks. Here are the results! You can hover over each thumbnail for more information, and click to see a larger version of each.

“The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop
“Ode To My Socks” by Pablo Neruda
“Crepe de Chine” by Mark Doty
“My Son The Man” by Sharon Olds