Weeks 12–13: Frank Sherlock's "Space Between These Lines Not Dedicated" (2014)

We're moving on from Europe back to North America as we close out the term, with two US poets, and a bonus day of Jamaica-born Claudia Rankine to boot. Whenever I teach this class I make sure that we spend a little time on our own country's poets because the US is part of the world (of course) and I think it's important to trace the sometimes-invisible traces of American identity in contemporary writing just as we'd trace the Australian influences in Pam Brown's work, or the Canadian aspects of Fred Wah's work. This semester, however, I've made that process a little easier in choosing two poets whose latest books are very deeply entrenched in the cities that they call home.

We'll begin with Space Between These Lines Not Dedicated by Frank Sherlock, the current Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. "How lucky I am to be a poet in my favorite city in the world?," he wonders, continuing, "This city raised me, beat the hell out of me a few times, and still reveals the magic of Philadelphia Brotherly Love." While Philadelphia looms large over Sherlock's work as a whole, he's also turned a sympathetic eye to other cities, from post-Katrina New Orleans in Ready-to-Eat Individual (a collaborative book with Brett Evans) or New York during Occupy Wall Street as seen in "Love Letter November 15," the poem that begins this book, and as those locales and agendas might suggest, Sherlock's work is infused with an uncompromising political point of view. Frank also demonstrates a supernatural awareness of voice, of phrasing, of the ability to place a well-worded line, and these pieces are very much tied to performativity — ideally, they need to be heard live, though the poems' careful arrangement on the page helps create a sort of vocal score for the reader. 

Moreover, much like a visual artist, Sherlock's airy placement of individual words, phrases, and stanzas develops a very interesting tension between the minimal and maximal. Many of these works were first published as small-press chapbooks (I'll bring in a few for you to look at), and so, in a way, each page exists as an individual sub-poem within that book, just as each of those books serves as an individual poem within the collection. 

Here's our reading breakdown for Space Between These Lines Not Dedicated:

• Thurs., November 13th: "Love Letter November 15" to "Unlike the Trees"
• Tues., November 18th: "Very Different Animals" to "Feast Day Gone and Coming"

Here are some supplemental links:

• Sherlock's PennSound author page (contains audio for many of these pieces)
• Sherlock interviewed on WHYY's Radio Times
• the Pew Center Fellows' Q&A with Sherlock
• the Philadelphia Review of Books reviews Sherlock's latest
• Rob McClennan discusses the book
• Philadelphia Poet Laureate homepage
• In his role as Philadelphia's Poet Laureate, Sherlock is working with the Bartol Foundation to launch a city-wide poetry project inviting residents to "write their block." Read more about it here (n.b. Sherlock's chapbook, Neighbor Ballads, mines similar ground)
• in case you were wondering what Sherlock's title means (it's something seen frequently around Philly and other old cities) Philadelphia Weekly has the answer