BAX 2016
Best American Experimental Writing
Best American Experimental Writing
Edited Seth Abramson, Charles Bernstein, Tracie Morris , Jesse Damiani
Sales Date: 2017-02-17
An annual anthology of the best new experimental writing
BAX 2016: Best American Experimental Writing is the third volume of this annual literary anthology compiling the best experimental writing in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. This year's volume, guest-edited by Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris, features seventy-five works by some of the most exciting American poets and writers today, including established authors—like Sina Queyras, Tan Lin, Christian Bök, Myung Mi Kim, Juliana Spahr, Samuel R. Delany, and even Barack Obama—as well as emerging voices. Intended to provoke lively conversation and debate, Best American Experimental Writing is an ideal literary anthology for contemporary classroom settings.
Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris—Guest Editors' Introduction
Seth Abramson and Jesse Damiani—Series Editors' Introduction
Samuel Ace—Private Prisons
Diana Adams—from Oulipo-Pied Poems
Steven Alvarez—tupontu
Mark Amerika—from Locus Solus
Jennifer Bartlett—from The Hindrances of a Householder
Lesley Battler—Peak Oil Exile
Christian Bök—The Nocturne of Orpheus
Anne Boyer—The Animal Model of Inescapable Shock
M. K. Brake—Taxidermy for Dummies
Brandon Brown—Zedd ft. Foxes, "Clarity"
Lonely Christopher—Christmas Day, Mother's Day, and Return to Fire Island
Maxwell Owen Clark—Prosodic Retardation
Mark Z. Danielewski—from The Familiar
Kevin Davies—from FPO
Nathaniel Davis—from "This Is When I'm Speaking"
Samuel R. Delany—Email to Tracie Morris, November 21, 2015
Erik Didriksen—[My mem'ry gazes back on young romance] and [I notice my belovèd on thy arm]
Craig Dworkin—from In Quire, March 27, 2015
Kevin McPherson Eckhoff—from Their Biography: An Organism of Relationships
Tim Fielder—from Matty's Rocket
Richard Foreman—The Roper's Daughter
Tonya M. Foster—In Tongues
Peter Gizzi—Song
Jody Gladding—Five Poems
Mira Gonzalez—from Selected Tweets
Jean Grae—Crux
E. Tracy Grinnell—from "death / is an / innumerable / accuracy"
Gabriel Gudding—from "Amnicola"
Joseph Harrington—Cotton Still Tops in Area Economy
Jen Hofer—from "Interventions: Notes on Translating Intervenir"
Erica Hunt—Should You Find Me
Darius James and Tân Khánh Cao—Light Headed
Patricia Spears Jones—Self-Portrait as Shop Window
erica kaufman—[how speech might help]
Jake Kennedy—Elegy for Harold Ramis
Myung Mi Kim—from Civil Bound
Michael Kirby—from Glossary
Sonnet L'Abbé—XXIII, XXXIII, and LVII
Monroe Lawrence—No modernism
George E. Lewis—Soprano Part for Impromptu
Tan Lin—621B
Corbin Louis—Buck Moon, Hooves, and Claim Number 1468981
Janice A. Lowe—Boy Flower Tamir
Chris Mann—from The Use
D. S. Marriott—The Bunker
Jimmy McInnes—Begin Speech With
K. Silem Mohammad—from The Sonnagrams
Wangechi Mutu—from The End of Eating Everything
A. L. Nielsen—from Tray
Jenn Marie Nunes and Mel Coyle—from SAGEN
Barack Obama—from "Remarks by the President at the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches"
Shelagh Patterson—)-(
Julie Ezelle Patton—from "Do Process"
Trace Peterson—After Before and After
Sina Queyras—The Jailor
Aoife Roberts—from the fact-check of Valeria Luiselli's The Story of My Teeth
Lisa Robertson—from "Notes on Form and Belief"
Metta Sáma—there is no flash
James Sanders—from "Plants (Mistakes)", Mesoscape, and Plants (Jimmy Connors)
Jennifer Scappettone—Imagine a Cinder-Wench
Richard Schechner—The Humane Society
Carolee Schneemann—from "A Response to Maura Reilly's 'Taking the Measure of Sexism: Facts, Figures, and Fixes'"
Sarah Schulman, Jack Waters, and Stephen Winter—from Jason and Shirley
Dread Scott—Runaway Shot and If White People Didn't Invent Air
Rod Smith—Poem
Juliana Spahr—Went Looking and Found Coyotes
Fakhair Spence—[The last writing of me]
Moez Surani—from " Operación Opération Operation O "
ko ko thett—the burden of being bama
Edwin Torres—Of Worship and Flight and Bang Bawl Bocconi Birds Unspaced
Richard Tuttle—Pain and Construction of Envy
Imani Uzuri—no denial
Elizabeth Willis—Plot
Matvei Yankelevich—from Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt
Young Paris—Kaké!
Acknowledgments
Contributors and Digital-only contributions to BAX 2016 can be found at bax.site.wesleyan.edu
David Gibbs—This Is Our Business
Rachel Eliza Griffiths—The Undressed Syllable
Amy Marengo —wishbone drying; this cloudbank; close lightning
Tom Mirovski—How to Make a Nature Poem
Sawnie Morris—elegy for a baby albatross of midway atoll
Azizaa—Black Magic Woman
Erykah Badu—Dial'Afreaq
Kendrick Lamar—The Blacker the Berry
CHARLES BERNSTEIN is author of Pitch of Poetry and All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems. He is the Donald T. Regan professor of english and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. TRACIE MORRIS is the author of Rhyme Scheme, Intermission, and handholding: 5 kinds. She is professor and coordinator of performance and performance studies at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.  SETH ABRAMSON is the author of five poetry collections and is an assistant professor of english at the University of New Hampshire. JESSE DAMIANI is a former Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing fellow and current contributing writer for Indiewire and The Huffington Post. He lives in Los Angeles.
"What an astonishing collection! BAX 2016 goes there and rassles back an orchard of trap doors, sidewinding Up-escalators, and statuaries of agitated calculations. What binds this vital assemblage is discontent: not just with what writing and editing do, but with what living drives us to write."
~Douglas Kearney, BAX 2015 guest editor
"What an astonishing collection! BAX 2016 goes there and rassles back an orchard of trap doors, sidewinding Up-escalators, and statuaries of agitated calculations. What binds this vital assemblage is discontent: not just with what writing and editing do, but with what living drives us to write."
~Douglas Kearney, BAX 2015 guest editor