Akilah Oliver: "poetry extends the limit of its frame"

Akilah Oliver (1961-2011)

... Poetry like the body

extends the limit of its frame. I was just

reading over old emails between myself

and kari edwards. she says at one point

as we discuss the intentionality of entering

into an aporia, "human life is a bleep in

the evolutionary conundrum that we as

humans have applied meaning to and in

doing so, for the most part, do things that

are based on contemporary belief

systems that we attempt to maintain as a

sense of permanence or purpose."

Perhaps so, but I miss the humans.

Poet, teacher and activist Akilah Oliver died unexpectedly last week in Brooklyn. This email appeared in Poetry magazine, February 2009, in response to Charles Bernstein's "Manifest Aversions, Conceptual Conundrums, & Implausibly Deniable Links," Her most recent book of poems is A Toast in the House of Friends (Coffee House Press, 2009).