Column073 — November/December 2005
The Latest Generation of Xenovernacular Poets
Volume 37, Numbers 11-12, November/December 2005
Blue Book.
Justin Katko. 16 pp; 2004; Pa;
Chapultepec Press, 111 East University,
Cincinnati OH 44219. $3.
Logopolis.
Justin Katko. 52 pp; 2004; Pa;
Chapultepec Press, 111 East University,
Cincinnati OH 44219. $3.
Nine Out of Ten Terrorists Agree
That Brini Maxwell is the Next Martha Stewart
Justin Katko. 24 pp; 2004; Pa;
Chapultepec Press, 111 East University,
Cincinnati OH 44219. $3.
SHEME!
Justin Katko.
SHEME
My main subject for this column is Justin Nathaniel Katko aka justincase, who just sent me three of his chapbooks. He interests me because he is in the twenty-something generation of what I’m now calling “xenovernacular poets (as opposed to “orthovernacular poets”), and among the most talented of them. He’s also not merely xenovernacular, but xenovernacular on many fronts.
His principal poetry, though, seems to be a kind I’m very tentatively calling “complex arbicollagic poetry,” until I or someone else comes up with a better name for it. Dating back to the DaDaists (give or take a decade or two), it is an ARBitrary or seemingly arbitrary merging of COLLAGing of numerous disparate elements. It has always been popular among the xenovernacular poets I’ve been associated with but seems even more popular with such younger ones as Katko. It is also not infrequently produced by mainstream poets, including such highly esteemed ones as John Ashbery and Jorie Graham. These latter specialize in the jump-cut and stick to one expressive modality. They also play it pretty safe so far as vocabulary and grammar go, using real, properly-spelled, full words and little that is ungrammatical. Indeed, about their only daring involves jumping unexpectedly from on subject to another.
Poets like Katko, on the other hand, use graphic as much as verbal matter in their complex arbicollagic poetry, and include neologisms, word-fragments and who-knows-what in it. Explicit science can get into it, too, as opposed to the discussion of science that gets into some of Graham’s work. To illustrate Katko’s brand of complex arbicollagic poetry, as well as introduce his poetry to you, I’m now going to turn to what I believe is his first chapbook, SCHEME! (which is currently available only in electronic form at the URL given above.
It begins with a quotation form Rimbaud about Rimbaud’s creation of “phantoms of a future night parade,” and a jokey few lines about “the infos contained in this book (spelling) the difference between life and lives,” an Anti-Copyright notice and Katko’s e.mail address. 15 pages, each of which contains a surrealistic schematic, follow. They are typewritten into a standard blue book of the kind college students answer examination essay questions in. the first one has columns of I’s for its vertical sides, and numerous asterisks, dashes, and terms like “2 VOLTS” and “N9″ within. “JAMDATA,” “RAW NERVES< “8 YEARS” and “MTV” infuse something of the personal into the piece to play off the mechanico-abstract elements in it. Ergo, for me: brief flashes of life in something near-maximally unliving–plus suggestions of life as data, life as voltage, existence scientifically diagrammed.
The second frame in Katko’s sequence resembles a flow-chart as well as a schematic. It is biologicalized with a reference to “mammalian” and topicalized darkly by the line, “LASERBOMBED BCUZ DRM BLDT TEHRAN ETC;” Gertrude Stein is mentioned, and Ezra Pound quoted (“THE AGE DEMANDZ”) in a little box built of plus-signs. It even has a joke: “APPLICANT/APLLICAN,” and an infraverbal poem in the vein of some of Richard Kostelanetz’s inventions: “BARB/ARIA/N.” Something about “barbarian’s” being a combination of “barb” and “aria” an’ maybe something else seemed apt here.
There is much more to be said about SCHEME!, and the other two chapbooks mentioned above that he composed at around the same time he composed it, but I want to save space for a brief snapshot of Katko consisting of answers he gave in the summer of 2005 to a few questions I e.mailed him.
Here’s what he said about an internship he was serving at the time: “As the Xexoxial hypermedia intern, I like with mIEKAL aND and Camille Bacos in one of the several habitable buildings of Dreamtime Village, an international anarchist community carved out of a barely breathing rural town in southwest Wisconsin. I was daily involved in bringing old titles back into stock, bringing out new titles, using In-Design, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver to update titles and send out press releases to various e-lists and mail-art contacts. Libraries are solicited with form letter and enclosed catalog l l l I have worked on various collaborative projects with mIEKAL and Camille, chapbooks, films, websites, documentaries. I help daily with garden work and give rides to fellow community members. I play drums while mIEKAL plays sax. I stay in contact with my institutional connections and inform them of my accomplishments and productive well-being. I am present in every moment to help undo the unstructuring of do.”
At that time, he also told me about his press, Critical Documents (whose first magazine, Planarchy, will have been published by the time this column appears). “Critical Documents,” he said, “is an experimental pioneer in books, audio, and video. I am affiliated with Miami University (Ohio) as a graduate student in the English department and an undergraduate in the school of Interdiscipinary Studies. I am collaborating on and field testing text/viseo works with Keith Tuma and have a collaborative chapbook of visual poetry with mIEKAL aND out from eighT-pAGE press.”
I asked Katko how he’d become mIEKAL aND’S interm partly out of curiosity, but also because I thought somewhere a poetential intern might want to know. “We;;,” he replied, “cris cheek introduced me to the work of mIEKAL, and thru electronic networking I proved myself worthy of the position. Keith Tuma, the chair of the English department at Miami University would be a good contact for possible interns at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. His e.mail address is “[email protected]” . . . And you should know that Xexoxial doesn’t pay me. I’m living on grants from the Honors Department.”
Katko is pleased with what he’s learned as an intern. He goes on to say, “i am in correspondence with many whose work i support, but have found few such individuals of my own generation.”