Five Minutes Can You Spare Me

Claire Donato lives in Brooklyn, writes across genres, teaches, runs, and practices yoga. Recent writing has appeared in the Boston Review, BOMBlog, LIT, 1913: a journal of forms, Evening Will Come, and Octopus. Her first book, Burial, is now available from Tarpaulin Sky Press. For more information, visit her website.

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still images from »material studies« by claire donato

have a look at the videos here: https://vimeo.com/clairedonato

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Thanks to Anatol Knotek (whose art practice I admire so much!) for featuring Material Studies—networked vegan edible language sculptures I’ve been recently making—on Visual Poetry (a blog I teach). <3

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Three Poems in FANZINE

Up today at FANZINE: three poems I wrote about the militarization of universities, architecture, black metal, debt, Ps & Qs and all things glitchy. Life is but a █ . Thanks to Blake Butler and Casey McKinney for giving this language a home. My once-pink love is once again pink.

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Since 2011, I’ve been writing a book called Noël. An excerpt from it (“The Thought Has a Mind of Its Own”) was published today in PLINTH, alongside the title poem from my forthcoming book, The Second Body. These pieces are in good company alongside other pieces by Lital Khaikin, Purdy Lord Kreiden, and Alina Popa, among others. My gratitude to Garett Strickland for being such a patient and thorough editor.

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Meditations in an Emergency

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12.5 Review: “Burial” by Claire Donato

The time that must have gone into sculpting this text is staggering and belies its size. It seems to have been lovingly groomed; fawned over even.

The mundane aspects of dealing with funeral parlor folks (or the groundskeeper at least) and the numbness one feels during intense grief is wonderfully conveyed in this book. I’ve never seen but for some reason it often came to mind while reading this book. Some good friends of mine swear by it.

My wife makes this sinfully good, French death-by-dark-chocolate cake. It’s all butter and egg, moist and murder on the arteries. Whenever she makes it I can’t tell if she’s trying to bump me off or tell me she loves me. The heart-shaped cake mold ought to be a clue but I have my doubts sometimes. Anyhow, I’d pair this book up with a slice of that cake and a double espresso.

You’d do well to avail yourself of Ms. Donato’s texts and contexts in the end matter. Aside from providing a glimpse into the glorious gloomy headspace that helped birth this book it should keep you busy for the next few years or so.

READ MORE

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Grateful for Judson Hamilton's constellatory review of my book Burial (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2013) in Queen Mob's Teahouse: "The time that must have gone into sculpting this text is staggering and belies its size."

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This language—originally from Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 movie The Magician, appropriated by many—passes through my mind at least once a day. 

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I’m tweeting as my high school self (see above photograph) all month as part of All-Time High, a netprov (networked improv narrative) I co-conceptualized with Jeff T. Johnson that launches from the following question: What if everyone who ever lived was back in high school together, including you? In other words, this time around, Morrissey’s my classmate, and I still refuse to dissect anything (”cut class, not frogs”). 

JJ and I developed All-Time High with Meanwhile Netprov Studio founders Mark C. Marino (Los Angeles, CA) and Rob Wittig (Duluth, MN), two of the best people I know, both on- and offline. Check out our website for the project here, and join us via Twitter using the hashtag #ATH15.

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Aphorisms for Poems @ The Sensations Feelings Journal

A new set of my Aphorisms for Poems are up at The Sensation Feelings Journal, edited by Connie Mae Oliver and also featuring work by my friend and current neighbor Ted Dodson, along with many others. 

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This blog still exists. I am one year older and thinking about animals. In lieu of writing, I have been drawing melancholy comics. In lieu of drawing melancholy comics, I have been facilitating conversations between brilliant architecture and creative writing students Pratt Institute. Most days, I dress in black. In 25 days, I will move out of the apartment I've lived in for six years. This move will coincide with the placement of Georges Perec's "The Apartment" in my Introduction to Transdisciplinary Writing syllabus. 

Here is a photograph of me and my band Sonic Youth.

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"Aphorisms for Poems" are on my mind...

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Ashtanga! 

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Saturday mid-afternoon light / cats love handstands

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Recommended Reading

Read Owen Hatherley's brilliant and scathing essay "Lash Out and Cover Up: Austerity Nostalgia and Ironic Authoritarianism in Recession Britain" from Radical Philosophy, then burn yr vague nostalgia.

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Wish You Were Here: The Perks of Being Banned

I wrote about Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower for PEN American Center's Banned Books Month feature. Here is a snippet of the piece, which is called "Wish You Were Here: The Perks of Being Banned":

The humanities are in crisis, they say, and I am telling you this because the banning of books is another kind of restricted access: If you reduce the amount of time devoted to the humanities or completely eliminate them from a curriculum, you extend the practice of banning books.

Thanks to PEN, Stephen Chbosky, and the inimitable Danniel Schoonebeek. It is necessary to write about what's at stake!

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Where did the lightning come from, and at what point in the dream? 

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Here's a sample of some work happening in my premodern lit course at the School of Visual Arts, where we're reading Sappho (cool and comforting as ever) and excavating / re-constructing our own damaged texts. 

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Sappho (trans. Anne Carson), from If Not, Winter