aaron belz
+ blog: http://belz.wordpress.com+ poems: http://meaningless.com
+ contact: aaron@belz.net
+ curriculum vita: http://belz.net/cv.html
The Jerk: A review of Robert Crawford's The Bard | Books and Culture, January/February 2010
Where Have All the Poems Gone? | ByFaith, Issue Number 19, February 2008
Fractals: New poetry by Foust, O'Brien, and Zawacki | Comment, January 15, 2010
Walter Bargen's Days Like This Are Necessary | St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 20, 2009
Mary Jo Bang's The Bride of E | St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 15, 2009
Regrets of a former "young William Faulkner": Charlie Smith's Word Comix | Comment, September 4, 2009
Poetry's next wave: American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry | Comment, July 10, 2009
Adrian Matejka's Mixology | St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 31, 2009
Angry Notes: Devin Johnston's Sources | Comment, October 24, 2008
Browsing poetry: New books by Haxton, Simic, and Salamun | St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 17, 2008
Six-Pack: The charms and annoyances of "collected poems." | Books and Culture, July/August 2008
Eliot's Rebellious Heirs: A review of Adam Kirsch's The Wounded Surgeon | Books and Culture, September/October 2007
Mary Jo Bang's Elegy | St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 30, 2007
Geraldine Kim's Povel | Boston Review, Jan/Feb 2006
Ray McDaniel's Murder (a violet) | Boston Review, Apr/May 2005
The Innocence Mission | Paste, Issue 8, Feb/Mar 2004
Mystic River | Metaphilm.com, Winter 2004
John Ashbery's Chinese Whispers | Boston Review, Oct/Nov 2003
The Lord of the Rings: What Harvest? | ChristianityToday.com (Originally published as "Father of Epic Fantasy" in Books and Culture, Spring 2003)
Late for the Sky: Jackson Browne | Paste, Issue 5, Q3.2003
Everything I Needed to Know, I Learned From Steely Dan | Paste, Issue 4, Q2.2003
Planet-Like Music: A Review of Sidney's Apology for Poetry | Comment, Spring 2003
Colleen Carroll's The New Faithful | First Things, November 2002
Standing in the Shadows of Motown | Metaphilm.com, Winter 2002
John Gallaher's Gentlemen in Turbans, Ladies in Cauls | Boston Review, Oct/Nov 2002
Cate Marvin's World's Tallest Disaster | Electronic Poetry Review 4
Y tu mamá también | Metaphilm.com, Summer 2002
Mike Topp's I Used to Be Ashamed of My Striped Face | Jacket 16
Vincent Katz's Understanding Objects | Jacket 16
Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century | Books and Culture, Jan/Feb 2002
Jorie Graham's The Errancy | Books and Culture, Mar/Apr 1998
Charles Bukowski's Bone Palace Ballet | Publishers Weekly
Jaime Sabines' Pieces of Shadows | Publishers Weekly
Steven Johnson's Interface Culture | Books and Culture, Nov/Dec 1997
Symbol Pleasures: Jodi.org | The Riverfront Times
The Interface Hackers | Wired 5.07
essays, etc.
Uncannily Midwestern | St. Louis Magazine, August 2007
John Vanderslice and St. Vincent at the Billiken Club, May 2, 2007 | Paste Magazine, May 2007
The Ten Jens Reading | Poetry Foundation, April 2007
Unexpected Lines (Scott Lowenbaum feature) | St. Louis Magazine, December 2006
Family Business | St. Louis Magazine, October 2006
Do We Care? Do We Dare? | St. Louis Magazine, September 2006
Time Well Spent | St. Louis Magazine, June 2006
The Five Aarons Reading | Poetry Foundation, February 2006
What is to be done...about schooling? | Comment, September 2005 - V. 24 I. 5
Not a Synod but a Salon | Christian History, Issue 81, Winter 2004
A Leopard Among the Bannas | Christian History, Issue 79, Summer 2003
Missing a Beat: Saying "Kaddish" for Allen Ginsberg | The Riverfront Times
The Rules Have Stayed the Same | Books and Culture, Jan/Feb 2000
Is This a Great Time or What? :-) | The Riverfront Times
Spring 2000 teaching journal |
Featured at Writenet.org
Lovely, Raspberry (Persea, 2010)
"Aaron Belz's poetry reminds us that poetry should be bright, friendly, surprising, and totally committed to everything but itself. Reading him is like dreaming of a summer vacation and then taking it."
"Belz is one of the brave few whose ears are attuned to the comic amid the contemporary. He writes in the tradition of Richard Brautigan, never afraid to let the awkward intensity of address and visual snap of juxtapostion hijack the poem's more solemn duties. Reading Belz is like watching an intimate comic performance; it's stand-up poetry meant for you alone."
The Bird Hoverer (BlazeVOX, 2007). Available through SPD or Amazon.
"Aaron Belz is a gravely hilarious poet. The poems from The Bird Hoverer are part Discovery Channel, part History Channel, part E!—his ferocious intelligence, his love of glitz, and his wry take on relationships (both human and animal) are irresistible. Belz's voice is bold, wise, inimitable." —Denise Duhamel
→Tony Trigilio, Boston Review
→Aaron Lowinger, ARTVOICE
→Katie Lewis, University News
→Marc Kipniss, Jacket
→Kristina Marie Darling, Rattle
→D. B. Timothy, The Bagpipe
→Adam Fieled
→Vincent Howard
→More info at BlazeVOX
Plausible Worlds (Observable, 2005). "Aaron Belz offers us a poetry of exhilaration and exuberance where the self is drowned in a flood of pop cultural referents fading as quickly as a television commercial or a movie trailer. Following William Carlos Williams's dictum that poetry should be about 'those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose,' Belz fearlessly embraces postmodern phenomena like vacuous celebrity or spam mail."
→François Luong, MiPOesias
→Ron Silliman
→More info at Observable
Alex Dickow's French translations have been published at Sitaudis.com and La République Mondiale des Lettres.
Thirty Illegal Moves in the Cloud-Shape Game | The Washington Post
Direction | Boston Review
Famous Palindrome | McSweeney's
Five Beginnings of Jokes | No Tell Motel
Train to Mehlville | Gulf Coast
New Movie | Jacket
A Horseshoe of Roses | Exquisite Corpse
Pantene | Shampoo
Map Tools | Fine Madness