Column080 — March/April 2007
A Visit to a Webzine
Small Press Review,
Volume 39, Numbers 3-4, March-April 2007
Poets Greatest Hits: Bob Grumman, 1966-2005.
Bob Grumman. 23p; 2006; Pa;
Pudding House Publications, 81 Shadymere Lane,
Columbus OH 43213. $10 ppd.
www.puddinghouse.com.
Sugar Mule #26. M. L. Webster, editor.
An Anthology of collaborations
guest editor: Sheila Murphy
Sugar Mule
It would seem that the Internet is taking over my literary life. Except for what’s in one recent chapbook, all my poetry for the past few years has appeared on the Internet– principally at my blog, but several other places. I no longer send work to any non- electronic periodicals or publishers. Actually, I no longer submit work anywhere, I just send it, sometimes, to some editor soliciting it–such as Jennifer Bosweld who last year invited me into her press’s series of Greatest Hits, which resulted in the chapbook just mentioned. I’ve drastically cut down on my prose appearances both electronic and in print (except for my blog entries). This is my only column anywhere now. After twenty years of pushing my poetry and criticism at the poetry world hoping for recognition and getting just about none, I’ve given up. This column and my blog satisfy my need to make my my art and ideas known. And I have won recognition from those who count. So there, BigWorld!
Since I brought up Bosweld’s Greatest Hits series, I ought to talk a bit about it. Bosweld started it in 2000 as a parallel to pop singers’ greatest hits CDs. Each contributor is asked to select 12 poems for his volume that he considers to be those “most often requested for reprint or performance.” That was hard for me. I picked the very few anyone ever mentioned anywhere as having read, heard or viewed, plus the two hangable mathemaku that I’ve actually sold (for hunnerts of bucks, each!) And I didn’t forget the haiku that won a best-of-issue prize (of one dollar) from the magazine it was first published in. (“oncoming stepfuls/ of dry-leaf noise and/ a cold sky’s red kite!”) Four of my twelve poems are solitextual (i.e., solely textual) Two are mostly textual. Only one is a pure visual poem. The others are mathemaku.
Okay, now to the main subject of this installment of my column, an issue of a webzine called Sugar Mule that guest-editor Sheila Murphy devoted to solitextual collaborations. I was invited to submit to it but couldn’t any of my few appropriate collaborations (mostly with jw curry aka Wharton Hood), my house being almost as disorganized as my mind. But Geof Huth found a poem he and John M. Bennett had written together, and that I had then slightly revised. Sheila accepted both the Huth/Bennett poem and the Huth/Bennett/Grumman poem. So I was in. Meanwhile, Sheila suggested I collaborate with Geof. He was amenable, so we made a few new poems for the issue, which was fun (and interestingly educational).
The following excerpts should give some idea of the range of the material in the issue, most of it what I’ve taken to calling “neocontemporary” to distinguish it from the “paleocontemporary” poetry dominating the mainstream. The first is from Murphy and K. S. Ernst’s “Words To Start,” which serves as a preface to the issue:
as though form had lost its felony/
amid the penmanship
triggers speech unstained by boundaries with promise
interior case catching the smallest current of women
My second specimen is from “Who Feed Their Leaves, ” by Mary Rising Higgins and George Kalamaras:
Asphalt howl sunblinds
Route 66 brakeride west
Heartnerve, wordsway mum
I was busy looking up
My blame as spilled into sky
Signature heat swim
Heartbrain beats in utero
Closed curve space earth strings
Protozoan gentle tongue
God, not more geography!
I mustn’t overlook the now-fabled team of John M. Bennett and Jim Leftwich, who are represented by two poems, “Clank” and “Clue.” The first begins, “cusp an door an lift an lot an lump an loot an/ pest an lump an lawn an blast an crush an plot an,” the second, “pork an pot an puke an pencil an clung an clock an/ bone an shawl an joints an flops an blinker an fester an”
Almost as interesting as the poetry are some of the Contributor Bios, which were supplied by the contributors themselves. For instance, among them is Nico Vassilakis’s: “storm tainting sprays of robust loss in mid collapse and blanketed affirmation when you cease to identify with what is absent though a description of portions found denuded remain.” Andrew Topel provides the proper pronunciation of his name in his bio, and tells us that “Andrew” is a noun used “to name what changes shape.” Its etymology? “And (&) from the bowels of other universes, and Rew, proper name and short for renew; a person who is sewn in ink.” “Topel” is a verb with several meanings, one of which is “to form poetry as if from language robed in Swahili.”
My own bio, which I quote for contrast (and Gross Ego-Building), is embarrassingly conventional: “substitute high-school teacher living in Port Charlotte, Florida, whose specialty as a poet is visiomathematical poetry, but who also composes conventional poems (mainly about an alter ego called Poem), infraverbal poems (i.e., poems that happen mostly or entirely inside words) and unmathematical visual poetry. A critic, too, he is notorious for believing visual poems ought to have words, and for his attempt to provide a proper taxonomy for all forms of poetry. He has a website, comprepoetica.com, from which one can go to his poetry/poetics blog, po-X-etera. He’s had some things published.”
Close to forty pairs or trios have poems in the issue–usually two or three. Here are the names of just the last nine groups participating: Nico Vassilakis and Robert Mittenthal, John Crouse and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Michelle Greenblatt and Tom Taylor, Susan McMaster and Penn Kemp, David Baratier and Sean Karns, Mackenzie Carignan and Scott Glassman, Frances Presley and Tilla Brading, Maria Damon, mIEKAL aND, and jUStin!katKO, Tom Beckett and Thomas Fink. They and the ones unnamed have done some fascinating things here.