Jocelyn Saidenberg

Poetry. California Interest. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. A serial poem written at the beginning of each day for one year by the prolific poet and long-time editor Jocelyn Saidenberg, KITH & KIN imbricates dreams, waking, friendship, and grief. In reproducing everyday banalities of mourning, Saidenberg finds herself "in proximity to others who are also with me, ones who mumble, who yell in rage, who are recently or long dead, who dream of me at night."

Finally! Bartleby speaks his mind. In 1853, Herman Melville published the short story “ Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” an icon for generations of resisters, and in the story all Bartleby repeats is one statement. According to Christian Nagler’ s “ Afterword,” “ It may be the most reproduced meme in American letters: I would prefer not to.” Jocelyn Saidenberg has given Bartleby full voice in Roof Books’ Dead Letter. “ Let’ s not keep Bartleby inert, not maintain him as an empty sign. Let’ s not remain industriously bewildered, not translate his preference into an unassimilable ambivalence between acceptance and refusal, not take moderate interest in him, not take it just as far as enigma,” says Nagler. Here we have the actual Bartleby laid out before us, his desires, his frustrations, and finally his revolt. Rarely has one person’ s point of view been so long awaited.