The overt code is a very simple one I often use in my cryptographiku. The less direct one is identical to the one I used in “Cryptographiku for Basho” except that its colors, shown below, are the negatives of the colors used in the other poem:
Small Press Review,
Volume 42, Numbers 7/8, July/August 2010
this is visual poetry
by Marton Koppany
chapbookpublisher.com
443 Main Street, 2nd FL | Kingston, PA 18704 | USA
1-570-762-6140 and [email protected]
$10 plus postage. 2010. Pa; 16 pp.
You creeps who skip my column because it treats weird stuff will miss out badly if you skip this one, for it’s about a set of chapbooks opportunities Dan Waber is making available. Dan, in partnership with Jennifer Hill, runs Paper Kite Press (http://wordpainting.com), which has been publishing books of poetry for going on 8 years. “When we first started Paper Kite Press we published trade paperbacks and chapbooks,” he says. But the press gradually got away from chapbooks due to the comparatively high costs of publishing them, along with the generally low returns that resulted.
Just last fall, though, he happened to have three manuscripts by friends on hand that he thought ideal for chapbooks but not for longer books. In hunting via the Internet for chapbook publishers, he learned to his surprise that there was just about none around, anymore.
That led to his founding a completely separate little company that does three things: 1) publishes chapbooks under the Naissance imprint; 2) does file conversion for people who want to self-publish or publish their own imprint; 3) does the file conversion and the printing for people who just want finished books delivered to them.
Naissance generally publishes what I call linguexpressive poetry (poetry in words alone, as opposed to “plurexpressive poetry,” like visual poetry, which is words and graphics and/or some other mode of expression). A published author in this series is paid ten copies of his work. So: NON-EXPERIODDICAL WRITERS ARE WELCOME!!!
One feature of Naissance is that if you do your own layout and submit it to Dan by e.mail, with a $10 payment, you will get a guaranteed response in 24 hours. Either he will accept your submission or send back your files, converted to files that are ready for conventional double-sided signature printing–wich means re-ordering the pages, for example. This seems a good deal to me, but if you don’t like it, you can submit via regular mail at no charge. Dan will also print books for a reasonable fee. Visit his site for details.
Because I’m mainly a visual poet, Dan’s most recent venture, the this is visual poetry series, is more up my alley. About it, he says, “Having solved all of the other problems in the world, I set myself to the last remaining task of importance: affordable short run color printing so that visual poetry can achieve the audience it deserves.” It would appear he’s publishing a dozen new titles in this series daily. Go to http://thisisvisualpoetry.com to see whose work he’s done chapbooks of. Among them, as of this writing, are John Martone, Ruggero Maggi, Carol Stetser, K. S. Ernst, Marilyn Rosenberg, Marton Koppany, Kaz Maslanka, Scott Helmes–and, of course, ME! Otherwise, why would I be writing about it, right?
I found my experience with this line of titles close to amazing. After consulting the easy-to-follow guidelines one can click to from thisisvisualpoetry.com, I gathered 15 of my visual poems, all but one or two in color–which wasn’t easy, for I’m not prolific. I needed 17 pieces, 16 for the body of the book and one for the cover, so I added a couple of textual designs. I e.mailed jpg copies of these and a photograph and bio to Dan (yes, one drawback is that you have to have a computer and access to the Internet to get published). My submission was accepted within an hour. A week later, with only one day of back&forth to get my back-cover photograph right, five copies of my book arrived at my house as my payment. (I can also order more copies at half price.) If ten million copies of the thing are sold, it won’t put anything in my pocket, but that’s a little unlikely. And, of course, if that happened, I’d be able to sell my originals for fabulous prices, and get on tv.
The collections in the series vary widely. Most consist of works without words, or without meaningful words that I call textual designage–and not poetry. My impression, though, is that they are all first-rate. One that is, for sure (and is visual poetry, most of it), is Marton Koppany’s One of my favorites in it I like mainly because I saw it wrong. To me it was a floating hat in an empty blue sky above ocean. Title: “Vacation.” The idea of a person having a vacation that’s so relaxing he turns into air–but keeps his hat on–for some reason very much appeals to me, both as a wry joke and as a lyrical celebration of Pure Serenity. Leaving oneself.
But it seems there is a question mark under the hat. Once Marton pointed out its presence, I could see it, but it’s faint. It shows up much better in his recent Otoliths collection, which I expect to cover in a later column. So, a question mark is on vacation. That’s probably as pleasantly anti-stress an idea as my misreading–a question freed from all forms of questionability, jauntily afloat above tides lazily coming and going. . . .
There are many other serene explorations of various punctuation marks and related typographical symbols in Marton’s haiku-deep collection. Pretty pictures of clouds and ocean, too.
To date, Dan is pleased with his new ventures. They are, as a group, in the black, something that can’t be said for most such small press endeavors–and near-miraculous for any such endeavor involved with visual poetry. Also near-miraculous to me is that Dan only needs to spend a half hour or so a day, a couple of days a week tending to said ventures. Most of what he does, he says, “is either well automated or made very efficient by it.” Or he doesn’t do it.. His day job, incidentally, is Sales & Marketing manager for a company that makes diamond tools for a variety of hobby markets, which no doubt accounts more than a little for his high level of competence in his second occupation. (Or third, as he’s also an excellent poet.)
Next up for him as publisher, he hopes, is a series called “sixteen thousand words”. Like the this is my visual poetry series, this will also consist of 16 page full-color chapbooks but they’ll include pictures that string together to tell narratives. “Visfiction,” he dubs it. I eagerly await the day he decides a series of visual poetry criticism is in order–although he may already be open to that.
Charles Alexander
Poet, Book Artist, Critic, Publisher
Alexander was born in Honolulu, grew up mostly in Norman, Oklahoma, was educated at Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has lived in Tucson for most of the last 14 years, including at present, with his wife Cynthia Miller, one of the premier visual artists of the American Southwest. His e.mail address is [email protected].
Charles Alexander’s books of poetry include Hopeful Buildings (Chax Press, Tucson, 1990) and arc of light / dark matter (Segue Books, New York, 1992).
Two chapbooks are forthcoming in winter 1998: Four Ninety Eight to Seven from Meow Press (Buffalo, New York) and Pushing Water from Standing Stones Press (Morris, Minnesota).
Alexander has also published reviews and critical essays on contemporary literature and culture. He is the founder and director of Chax Press, which was begun in Tucson, Arizona in 1984; Chax moved to Minneapolis from 1993 through 1996, and returned to Tucson in the summer of 1996. Chax is a publisher of handmade letterpress books and trade literary editions, both of which explore innovative writing and its conjunction with book forms. Through Chax Press, from 1986 to the present Alexander has organized literary readings, talks, workshops and presentations by artists. From 1993 through 1995 Alexander was executive director of Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the nation’s most comprehensive center for the arts of the book, both in terms of programs and artists’ studio facilities. As its director, Alexander completed the production of the visual/literary artists’ book, Winter Book in 1995 with visual artist Tom Rose.
In addition he has directed educational programs and a variety of
artists’ residencies, creative productions, and other works. He was the
organizer and director of the 1994 symposium, Art and Language: Re-Reading the Boundless Book, one of the foundational symposiums in the recent history of the book arts. From this symposium, he edited the formative collection of essays, Talking The Boundless Book: Art, Language, and the Book Arts (Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, 1996).
Alexander has given poetry readings, lectures, and workshops throughout the country at colleges, universities, art centers, and other locations, including at the University of Alabama, the University of Arizona, theState University of New York at Buffalo, Painted Bride Arts Center in Philadelphia, Small Press Traffic in San Francisco, Canessa Gallery in San Francisco, the University of Washington, Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Scottsdale Center for the Arts, and many more. Alexander has also performed poetry in galleries and art centers, has collaborated with musicians and dancers, and in general brings to poetry a broad sense of artistic and collaborative possibility.
Poet Robert Creeley writes that Alexander’s work “hears a complex literacy of literalizing words. By means of a fencing of statements, sense is found rather than determined. The real is as thought.” And, concerning his 1992book, arc of light/dark matter, the poet and critic Ron Silliman writes, “Now Charles Alexander pushes the envelope of what is possible in writing
ven further, to the ends of the universe. And beyond. . . This is the most
sensuous, intelligent, rewarding writing I’ve read in ages.”
Christopher W. Alexander
Poet/Critic/Publisher
Alexander’s regular address is PO Box 522402, Salt Lake City, UT 84102; e.mail will reach him at [email protected].
Born 25 March 1970, in Akron, OH, he is espoused (unofficially) to Linda V. Russo and is the father of one child.
He works as a computer tech teacher. He has a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a master’s from Boston University. Besides composing poetry, he writes cultural criticism and acts as a press collective co-ordinatoror editor. He likes both classical and hardcore music (composers: Bach, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Ives, Cage; bands/musicians: The Minutemen, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus), film (Derek Jarman’s TheGarden; The Last of England), politics (Intifada, IRA, American domestic; foreign affairs), hiking, bicycling, painting; sculpture (Picasso, Diego Rivera, F. Kahlo, Duchamp).
Among the books closest to him are The Brothers Karamazov and Berger’s A Painter of OurTime; he is also high on the play, Woyzeck. He describes his religious outlook as buddhist/none, marxist. He enjoys following pro basketball, but only Chicago games & only occasionally. He practiced Tae Kwon Do for 10 yrs., now lifts weights, jogs, goes on extended hikes, bicycles, cross-country skis, and occasionally goes snowshoeing.
About his background in science and philosophy he says, spent 2 yrs. of my undergrad studying genetics, got bored; moved over to american lit. “I do read a good deal of philosophy,” he says, “particularly Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Wittgenstein, Derrida, the polit. philosophy of the Frankfurt School critics (esp. Adorno), Foucault, M. Bakhtin; V. Volosinov, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, etc.— focus on political & language phi.
About his life-in-general, Alexander says, “complicated, but good overall. L.& I are relatively poor, but happy together, nominative press collective is taking off a bit, my poetic work is good if difficult.”
He had work in n/formation 1: spring 1997 and is currently viewable on the web at http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce. His book, Dusky Winders (nominative press collective, 1996) has been reviewed in Taproot Reviews. The contemporary poets important to him are Robert Creeley, Donald Revell, Charles Bernstein, Barrett Watten, Tina Darraugh, Peter Inman, Ron Silliman, Alan Halsey, Susan Howe, Peter Gizzi, David Bromige, Bruce Andrews and Susan Gevirtz. His favorites from the past are Zukofsky, Oppen, Williams, Stein, Spicer, Duncan and Apollinaire.
Critis he deems important are Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, M. Perloff,
David James, Walter Benjamin, Michael Davidson, Barrett Watten, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Bruce Andrews, Steve Evans. In describing his tastes in poetry, Alexander says, “I respond most favorably to innovative form, but not as pure utterance.” He is “interested in a poetics that reflects a commitment to leftist politics of some variety — not necessarily overtly (expository) but that raises questions of the epistemological variety.
not interested in a liberatory politics of the signifier; or pure music any more than in naively content-driven verse.”
As a critic, he aims for a reading of particular works in the context of their material conditions, poetry as a reflection /or criticism of its culture of origin. He tends to think of poetry in terms of “a Bourdieulian field of poetic production, in which participants take positions that have meaning in relation to the field as a whole. we seem to suffer from a polarization @ this point — or rather not so much a polarization, which violates the spatial metaphor, but an antagonism —wherein some sectors of the field dominate in
terms of monetary capital, recognition (by mass-market media organs) by virtue of the accessibility of their work (in terms of a middle-class view of art — largely affirmative or comprehensible in terms of that class; pretensions to universality, e.g., conforming to common sense, etc.). This is light verse, even @ its most critical, because the criticism it lodges is always given in terms of the dominant, so partially serves a recuperative function; positioned elsewhere in the field, variably antagonistic but united by their lack of /or distain for monetary capital are various innovative poetries.”
He goes on to say that “if one is concerned with the politicization of poetry, it’s important to realize the value of other kinds of work, even if one still priviledges one mode. My chief interest is less in the antagonism between poetry communities than in possible critical-rhetorical strategies characterized by the whole of poetry as a genre, both innovative;
dominant — despite the fact that, clearly, my tastes run to the former. He recommends the following for entries in the Comprepoetica Dictionary: Electronic Poetry Center (http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc), n/formation
(http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/), UbuWeb, Fluxus Online, Poet’s House (NYC), Misc. Proj. (Atlanta zine), Talisman (N.J. journal), Situation (D.C. zine), Impercipient Lecture Series (Providence, R.I. journal), Mirage/Period(ical) (S.F. zine), Mass. Ave. (Boston zine), lyric (S.F. zine) and Antenym (S.F. zine).
Click <a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem2.html”>here</a> to read naldecon series, a sample of his work.
Click <a ref=”http://www.reocities.com/comprepoetica/compoems/poem3.html”>here</a> to read Joel Kuszai’s Globigerina Ooze, Alexander’s choice of another contemporary poet’s work he likes.
Kit Austin
Poet
Austin’s street address is 814 N. Dodge Street, Iowa City IA 52245; her e.mail address is caroline-austin@uiowa; and her phone number (319) 337-6124.
She has had work published in 100 Words and River King Poetry
Supplement.
Among the contemporary poets important to Austin are James Merrill, Frank Bidart, Gary Soto and Cynthia Macdonald; among those of the past she considers important are Whitman, Dickinson, Keats, Stevens, Shakespeare, Eliot, Rilke, Cendrars, Yeats, Hardy. Edmund Wilson is the one critic she names as important to her.
She welcomes any feedback about her poetry. For a sample of it, click <a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem36.html”>here</a>.
For Matthea F. Harvey’s Frederick Courteney Selous’s “Letters To His Love,” a favorite poem of Austin’s by someone else, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe1493/poem37.html”>here</a>.
Maura Alia Bramkamp (BRAM camp)
Poet
(street address) 266 Elmwood Ave #307
(city&state) Buffalo, NY 14222
(e.mail address) [email protected]</p>
(affiliations/organizations)
National Writers Union, member
Italian American Writers Union, member
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Lifetime Subscriber
(publication credits)
<i>The Buffalo News</i> (essays)
Amazon.com Editorial Review: <i>Welcome To My Planet: Where English is Sometimes
Spoken</i>, by Shannon Olson
<i>ARTVOICE</i> (Buffalo, NY)
Buffalo Spree (Buffalo, NY)
<i>The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal</i> (San Francisco)
<i>Switched-On-Gutenberg</i> (Internet Seattle-based)
<i>Exhibition</i> (Bainbridge Island, WA)
<i>The Woodstock Times</i> (Woodstock,NY)
<i>synapse</i> (Seattle, WA)
<i>convolvulus</i>
<i>Half Tones to Jubilee</i> (Pensacola, FL)
Signals (Olympia, WA)
tight (Guerneville, CA)
Spillway (WA)
The Healing Woman (CA)
The Wise Woman (CA)
105 Magazine (New Paltz, NY)
POETALK (CA)
<i>cups: a cafe journal</i> (San Francisco, CA)
<i>Arts Journal</i>poems & interview (Poulsbo, WA)
<i>Coffee House Quarterly</i> (CO)
<i>Higher Source</i> (Bainbridge Island, WA)
And others………
(list of works)
CHAPBOOK
<i>Resculpting</i> (Paper Boat Press,1995)
ANTHOLOGIES
<i>This Far Together</i> (Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, 1995)
<i>Go Gently</i> (The Healing Woman, 1995)
<i>Bay Area Poets Coalition 1995 Anthology</i>
<i>Husky Voices</i> (Univ of WA, MFA Anthology, 1998)
(where written up)</p>
<i>Women’s Work</i> (Seattle,WA, 1995)
<i>Arts Journal</i> (Poulsbo, WA, 1996)
<i>The Healing Woman</i> (1996)
<i>Small Press Review</i> (Pick of the Month & Review, 1996)
<i>synapse</i> (review, 1996)
<i>The Kitsap Herald</i> (1995)
(contemporary poets important to Bramkamp)
Charles Simic, Jana Harris, Billy Collins, Lynda Hull (deceased),
Seamus Heaney, Lynn Emmanuel, Carolyn Kizer,
Mark Doty, Raymond Carver, Nikki Finney,
Jane Kenyon, Ai, Gillian Conoley, Patti Smith
Larry Levis (deceased), Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forche,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Nancy Willard,
Richard Hugo, Theodore Roethke, Carol Ann Duffy,
Marlene Nourbese Philip & many others
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Colette, Muriel Rukeyser, Paul Celan,
Rilke, Rimbaud, Edward Lear, Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop,
Samuel Beckett, Eugene O’Neil, W.H. Auden, Frank O’Hara
And many more……….
(critics important to respondent)
Eavan Boland, bell hooks, Adrienne Rich…
otherwise, not particularly interested in criticism. I think going through an MFA program
ruined it for me.
(tastes in poetry) I’m most drawn to narrative, lyrical, and prose poetry. Yet, I
read widely and try to sample styles outside my usual references.
(impression of contemporary poetry) Ever-changing. Expanding, shouting, fighting
amongst our many selves, loud, soft, chilling,consoling, alienating & inviting.
(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)
<i>Switched-On-Gutenberg</i> (Internet)
<i>The Cortland Review</i> (Internet)
<i>SketchRadio.com</i> (Internet)
<i>Small Press Review & Small Magazine Review</i> (Dust Books)
<i>The Directory of Poetry Publishers</i> (Dust Books)
<i>Directory of Literary Magazines</i> (CLMP)
.
<b>Michael Basinski, Poet</b>
Basinski lives at 30 Colonial Avenue, Lancaster NY 14086; his
e.mail address is [email protected]; his phone number 716 645-2917
He was born 19 November 1979 in Lisbon. He is 6 feet tall and weighs 165 pounds. His
eyes and hair are brown, his ethnic background Polish. He got his Ph.D. at SUNY,
Buffalo. His occupation, says he, is working, his vocations, etc. His characterizes himself
a pagan in both religion and politics. He claims not to enjoy anything in the arts besides
poetry, or have any interest in sports. He enjoys nothing in science or philosophy, either.
In answer to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey question that asks a respondent to name
the first poem that comes to his mind right then, he said, None.
Basinski has published in many periodicals including <i>First Offense, First Intensity,
Angle, Torque(Toronto), Kiosk, Essex Street, Washington Review, Chain, Boxkite,
Leopold Bloom, Taproot, Generator, Arras, Explosive Magazine, RIF/T, Yellow Silk,
Benzine, Sure, Another Chicago Magazine, Lyric&, Mirage no.4(Period)ical, Lower
Limit Speech, Juxta, Wooden Head Review, Synaesthetic, Small Press Review</i>, and
other WEB and Email magazines.
His books include: <i>[Un-Nome]</i>, The Runaway Spoon Press; <i>Idyll</i>, Juxta
Press; <i>Heebee-jeebies</i>, Meow Press; and many others. He has been written up in
<i>Texture, Small Press Review, Taproot Reviews, Exile, Poetic Briefs</i>, etc.
He says that the poets of yesteryear important to him are Those before the coming of
circles. His tastes in poetry? Glitches and witches. His impression of contemporary
poetry? Angels and beasts.
<b>David Beaudouin, Poet</b>
Beaudouin resides with his wife, family and Dawgs at 2840 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD
21218. His e.mail address is [email protected], his phone number is 410-467-0600. He
was born 3 February 1951 in Baltimore.
Beaudouin got his degree in 1975 from Johns Hopkins. His religion is Quakerism, his
main political belief, Keep right except to pass.
His credits include the following chapbooks:
<i>Catenae,
American Night,
Human Nature</i> and <i>
Gig</i>. He was last published on the Net in <i>Enterzone</i>.
Contemporary poets of importance to him are
Bernard Welt,
Terry Winch,
Kendra Kopelke,
Kim Carlin,
Jenmny Keith,
Ron Padgett and
Anselm Hollo. Earlier poets of importance to him are
Frank O’Hara,
Charles Olson,
Joe Cardarelli, and
Elliott Coleman.
About contemporary poetry, he says, Well, it’s a mess, but I’m not
cleaning it up this time.
He enjoys going to the movies<i>any</i> movies. He sums up his background in
philosophy and science with the following single sentence: When I was 10, I invented the
Buddha in my bedroom.
About his life, he says, Well, it seems to be moving along.
.
.
.
<b>Thomas Bell, Poet</b>
Bell lives at 2518 Wellington Pl., Murfreesboro, TN 37128. His telephone number is
(615)
904-2374; his e.mail addresses are [email protected] and [email protected].
Born 18 February 1943 in Milwaukee, he is married and has two children. He is right-
handed; about this he says, I write right and draw left. poetry depends on where
i’m coming from. i right write and draw to an inside straight.
He describes his religious denomination as democrat. His occupation is
psychologist, for which he got the necessary degrees from the University of Wisconsin –
Milwaukee, Marquette, and the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology. He is also
an
editor and librarian. He’s had work published on
paper and on the Internet.
One contemporary poet who is especially important to him is Allen Davies, and he
considers William Carlos
Williams the most important poet of the past for him. He names no critics he favors
but throws his support to those who are experimental experiential.
Click<a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem24.html”> here</a> to
read The Flowers, one of Bell’s poems.
Visit <A HREF=”http://www.public.usit.net/trbell”>Bell’s HomeSite</a> for
more of his poems.
<b>Ken Brandon, Poet</b>
Ken Brandona painter as well as a poet (actually, both combined, much of the time)was
born 10 February 1934 in Seattle, Washington. He now lives with his wife, Maru Bruno
Flores, in Mexico. His mailing address is La Danza 6, San Miguel de Allende, GTO.
37700 Mexico; his phone number is (Mexico)(415)-2-7098. A graduate of the University
of Washington in Seattle, he has three children: Ansel, Mateo and Dylan.
According to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey form he filled out,
Brandon makes his living under dim eyes passes the trail market. His religion is Zenjoko,
his political affiliation good. As for the poets who have influenced him,</p>
<pre>
the other poets
I throw in the fire
to get hot
</pre>
His hobbies are confidential. In answer to the survey question about what techniques and
subject matter are of value to him in poetry, he says, Technique is self without trying for
any subject matter. Regarding contemporary poetry, he says, As I think of it, it defines
itself automatically.
Brandon is a publisher who has put out 19 issues of the zine, <i>Iz Knot</i>, as of 1997.
His work has not been much written up. My own stuff grips my interest, he says in
response to the query on the survey about what books he reads, or movies he goes to, and
so forth. He describes his background in philosophy and science as normal. As for the
sports he watches or participates in, information about that, he says, is confidential.
On life-in-general, Brandon says:</p>
<pre>
finding his path less taken
misled the dead gardner
for a while
</pre>
To view an untitled sample poem by Brandon, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem31.html”>here</a>. </p>
<b>Janet Buck</b>
Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry, humor, and
essays have appeared in <i>The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Melic Review, Sapphire
Magazine, The Recursive Angel, Southern Ocean Review, Lynx: Poetry from Bath,
Apples & Oranges, Oranges & Apples, The Rose & Thorn, San
Francisco Salvo,
Poetry Super Highway, Poetik License, Mind Fire, Astrophysicist’s Tango
Partner
Speaks, Perihelion, Oracle, Poetry Motel, Feminista!, Calliope, The Beaded
Strand,
New Thought Journal, Medicinal Purposes, 2River View, Kimera, Free Cuisinart,
In
Motion, Athens City Times, Conspire, Idling, remark, BeeHive, Gravity,
AfterNoon, A
Writer’s Choice, Niederngasse, Shades of December, Maelstrom, The Oracular
Tree,
Red Booth Review, Poetry Heaven, Tintern Abbey, Arkham, hoursbecomedays, The
Artful Mind, Oatmeal & Poetry, Black Rose Blooming, Apollo Online, Masquerade,
Pigs ‘n Poets, Savoy, The Poet’s Edge, Allegory, GreenCross, Online
Writer,
Poetry
Cafe, Oblique, Locust Magazine, The Poetry Kit, Pyrowords, Vortex, Ceteris
Paribus,
The Suisun Valley Review, Illya’s Honey, Fires of Autumn, Orbital Revolution,
A
Little Poetry, Dead Letters, King Log, Peshekee Review, The Green Tricycle,
Pogonip,
Chimeric, Poetry Repair Shop, 3:00 AM Magazine, Wired Art from Wired Hearts</i>,
and
hundreds of print journals and e-zines world-wide. A print collection of
Janet’s poetry
entitled <i>Calamity’s Quilt</i> is soon to be published by Newton’s Baby Press.
For a sample of her poetry, A Writer’s Prayer, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem49.html”>here</a>.
<b>Bill Burmeister (BER my stir), Poet</b>
Burmeister resides with his wife, Diana, at 8018 Lakepointe Drive, Plantation, Fla 33322.
His
e.mail address is [email protected]. A Florida native of Armenian
(mother) and German (dad) descent, he was born 22 March 1961, in St. Petersburg. He
works as an Electronics Engineer, having gotten his bachelor’s and
master’s in that field at the University of Central Florida. His hobbies include
reading folklore, following baseball, listening to jazz/blues music, raising plants, amateur
astronomy, good wine and cigars, and collecting stamps.
He has several works in progress (as of late October 1997): poem/play (1 yr); first
chapbook of poems; translations of a play by the (deceased) Ecuadorian poet Gonzalo
Escudero and poems from Jorge Guillen’s <i>Cantico</i>.
Among the contemporary poets important to Burmeister are
John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, A. Child, Clark Coolidge, Henry Gould, Lyn Hejinian,
Simic, J. Tate, Revell, Paz, Yau, L.Scalapino, B.Hillman, S.Howe, D.Ignatow, M.Strand,
M.McClure, B.Guest, R.Bly . . .
Earlier poets important to him include Homer, Dante A., Milton, Shakespeare, Blake,
Wordsworth, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Loy, Williams (WCW), Pound, Breton,
Char, Zukofsky, Oppenheim.Celan, Loy, Joyce, T.Roethke, Carroll, Jorge Guillen, Lorca,
Neruda, Gonzalo Escudero, Spicer, Duncan, Patchen, Antonio Machado, Dickinson,
Wallace Stevens, Unamuno, Gustavo Adolpho Bequer, Beckett, D.Thomas, Muriel
Rukuyser, Rilke, J.Taggart . . .
Among critics, he particularly values the work of Blanchot, Bernstein, Perloff, Sartre,
Bachelard and Paz.
About his tastes in poetry he says, I have a fairly open, generous approach to poetry,
especially in what comes to me from the past. For poetry in the present, I look for the
writing as thinking, metaphysical, meditative, stream of consciousness, chance, new
surrealism, playfulness with language, nonsense, energetic lively language, reinvented
language, and so on. I look for innovation, but not necessarily formal innovation. What I
like most, I get from the avante-garde, but contentment with the avante-garde is an
impossibility by definition. The avante-garde is not the beginning and the end of a
particular kind of poetry, but rather only the beginning, and maybe not the best possible at
that since a new dialogue has been begun with all of literature and history, the past as well
as a future.
As for criticism, he says, I don’t consider myself a critic as such, although
naturally, I recognize the importance of maintaining a critical ability since this has been
and will continue to be an essential part of literature. For me, taste, appeal, enjoyment,
and enthusiasm must be considered at the personal level as much as any aesthetic, but can
never be
forced upon another as aesthetic. I tend to believe that poetry
is a lot like religion in that a kind of faith is necessary to
hold the poem together. It seems to me that the poem is a delicate, but patient entity that
outlives time-sensitive criticism (such as identity politics and other socio-political agendas
in the guise of criticism). Good critical writing is that which goes before or after good
writing: it informs, enlightens, and expands readership rather than merely decodes and
justifies.
Outside his field, Burmeister enjoys reading novels by James (<i>The Wings of a
Dove</i>), Faulkner (<i>The Sound and the Fury</i>) Kafka (<i>The Trial</i>) Gunter
Grass (<i>Cat and Mouse, Tin Drum</i>), Thomas Mann (<i>The Magic Mountain</i>),
the science fiction of G.Bear, Simak, Asimov, and D.Brin (before he choked), and Plays
by Beckett (<i>Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s last tape</i>), Gonzalo Escudero
(<i>Parallelogram</i>), the short word plays of Gertrude Stein, and the plays of
Sheakespeare. He collects books of black & white photography (Weston, Man Ray,
Irina Ionesco) and films (Wells, The Marx Brothers, D.Lynch and more). He is also
building a collection of original paintings by Latin American painters such as the
contemporary Ecuadorian Arauz. He listens to John Cage, experimental jazz (A.Braxton
and others) and acid jazz, and classical music.
About his interests in science and philosophy, he says, i tend (right now anyway) to be
partial toward the Spanish philo. Jose Ortega y Gassett, J.P.Sartre, Kierkegaard, Derrida,
& Kant.
For philosophy of science, I have tended toward Einstein, Newton, Asimov, and Faraday.
Burmeister was educated in hard sciences up through elementary modern physics (theory
of quantuum electrodynamics, statistical mechanics, etc.), in mathematics
up through essential calculus, linear operator theory, diffential equations and boundary
value problems (applied).
In answer to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey question about the present world situation,
he says, I’m wondering for how long we can survive this ludicrous zero-sum game
known as the ‘Global economy.’
For a sample of Bill Burmeister’s poetry (with a brief commentary on it by
Burmeister), click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/soho/cafe/1493/poem11.html”>here</a>.
<b>Harry Burrus, Poet/Publisher</b>
Burrus lives with his wife, Megan, at 1266 Fountain View, Houston, Texas 77057-2204.
His telephone number is (713) 784-2802; his e.mail address, [email protected]
He was born in Denver, reared in St. Louis. Moved to Houston in June 1977. He is six
feet one and weighs 175 pounds. His parents
were university professors. His father was the first Pro Football player with a PHD. He
himself holds advanced degrees in Film, Dramatic Arts, and Poetryand is active as a
collagist, photographer, screenwriter and filmmaker as well as a poet and the publisher of
<i>O!!Zone</i>, which he describes as a
modest literary-art zine.
His poetry books include: <i>I Do Not Sleep With Strangers, Confessions of a Tennis
Pro;
Bouquet; A Game of Rules; Without Feathers; For Deposit Only; the Jaguar
Porfolio</i>; and <i>Cartouche</i>. He has also co-edited with Peter Gravis of Black Tie
Press,
<i>American Poetry Confronts the 1990’s</i>.
Burrus’s poetry, photographs, and collages have appeared in various publications
and
exhibitions in the US and abroad.
Says Burrus about making a living, I gain dinero via photography, scripts, workshops, and
various other artistic
pursuits (and years ago as a tennis pro).
About religion and politics/nationalism (and money), he finds that most people
cannot discuss without harboring ill-feeling and/or distrust for those who
possess views different from their own. Hence, I tend not to engage in these
areas unless it is with those capable of out of body experiences.
He has difficulty specifically determining what poets and critics and other influences have
been important to him. The aggregation is subtle and ongoing. Travel, for sure, is a
primary player. On the goat path and with the
aroma of donkey dung filling the surrounding air, I witness and pick up
juxtaposition, impact, resonance, and cultural unravelings. On these
excursions I shoot a lot of film, make journal entries, and ambient sound
recordings and always use the material. I never know how or when or in what
form the work will appear, but it eventually does pop up somewhere, either in
poems, art of some kind like a collage, or, perhaps, a story emerges.
I am drawn to openness, curiosity, and a willingness to take chances. I like
strong personalities. I favor high energy and experimentation. The seduction
has been more from artists and filmmakers, rather than poets, although a few
poets have landed a stroke or two. A few personalities that quickly come to
mind are: Ernst, Magritte, Man Ray, Buñuel, Resnais, Cartier-Bresson,
Schwitters, Godard, Bergman, Newton, Rausenberg, Matta, Isidore Ducasse,
Pessoa, Prevert, Bowles, Wenders, and Gysin.
I tend to appreciate those engaged in multiple activities and skilled in
different pursuits. Peter Beard and Bruce Chatwin come to mind. Journeymen.
I enjoy Henry Miller’s writing about watercolors more than his novels. I
enjoy the independence of his watercolors.
I make extractions from movements (Dada, Surrealism, The Beats, etc.), pulling
on the dynamism or a particular tack something I notice that I might employ
in my work. I may utilize or value aspects of the thinking that goes into a
work more than the work itself. Burroughs’ and Kerouac’s and Lawrence’s
ideas, for example. I also value their dedication.
Previously I read a lot of poetry and poetry publications, but I became
disenchanted with the likes of APR and Poetry too much sameness. Even
newcomers and alternative journals, which broke away from the writing school
content and were, at first, exciting and fresh, even they slowly lost their
zest and started wearing that familiar uniform. There is, however, still
energy in various zines and micro-presses, so, choice is out there. One must
forage for the interesting which is the same with people.
My engagement with international visual poets, mail artists, and photographers
provides visual stimulation, plus insights into other cultures. Myriad
personalities have opened to me and my exchange with them I eagerly maintain.
I find correspondence or working on a collage or making a photograph more
intriguing than being a spectator of some sporting event.
Burrus cites three critics who write well about their topics: Walter Pater, John Simon, and
Marvin Bell.
The last full collection of poetry Burrus has read (as of 15 November 1997 was
Bukowski’s <i>Betting on the Muse</i>; last
non-poetry book: <i>Breaking the Maya Code</i>, by Michael Coe.
Click <a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem18.html”>here</a> to see
Blue Mirror, a poem from Burrus’s <i>A Game of Rules</i>
(name of respondent) Brandon
(pronunciation of respondent’s name) Carpenter
(street address) 4616 S. Rusk
(city&state) Amarillo, Tx 79110
(e.mail address) [email protected]
(phone number) N/A
(po-type) Poet/Critic
(affiliations/organizations)
Denver Word Affiliate
Vocal Velocity Records
(publication credits)
Poetry Cafe
Anvil
Poetry Shelter
Pauper.com
Sharptongue
(list of works)
A flame of the heart in the hands of Dread
Discombobulate the Dissemated
Muddy’s Cafe: Out of the Mud
Sharptongue
(contemporary poets important to respondent) Ben Ohmart
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Baudlelaire
Rimbaud
Ginsberg
Kerouac
(tastes in poetry)
Avant-Garde
Beat
(description of criticism) Pick out the truth of the piece, show the path to find these truths
and uplift the reader, author, editor and other critics.
(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)
Realpoetic
(sample of respondent’s poetry) members.tripod.com/Carpenter_B</p>
<hr />
</body>
</html>
.
<b>Joel Chace, Poet</b>
(pronunciation of respondent’s name) Chase
(street address) 300 E. Seminary St.
(city&state) Mercersburg, PA 17236
(e.mail address) [email protected]
(phone number) 717-328-3824
(affiliations/organizations)
Poetry EditorAntietam Review and 5_Trope electronic
magazine.
(publication credits)
My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print journals and
magazines such as the following: <i>The Seneca Review, The Connecticut
Poetry Review, Spinning Jenny, Poetry Motel, No Exit, Pembroke
Magazine, Crazy Horse, Kudos</i> (England), and <i>Porto-Franco</i> (Romania). I
have also published work in Electronic Magazines such as the following:
<i>Ninth St. Labs, Recursive Angel, Highbeams, Switched-on-Gutenberg,
Kudzu, Pif, The Morpo Review, Snakeskin, Slumgullion, PotePoetZine,</i>
and <i>The Experioddicist</i>.
(list of works)
Northwoods Press, in 1984, published my collection of poems entitled
<i>The Harp Beyond the Wall</i>. Persephone Press, in 1992, published my
second book, <i>Red Ghost</i>, which won the first Persephone Press Book Award
and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in that same year. Big Easy
Press, in 1995, brought out a collection entitled <i>Court of Ass-Sizes</i>.
In June, 1997, came a full-length collection, <i>Twentieth Century
Deaths</i>, from Singular Speech Press. <i>The Melancholy of Yorick</i>
(Birch Brook Press) and <i>maggnummappuss</i> (nominated for a 1998 Pushcart Prize)
appeared in 1998, and a bi-lingual edition of my poems is being prepared in Romania.
(where written up)
<i>Slumgullion, Pif, Mind Fire, A Writer’s Choice, Next,
No Exit, Grab-a-Nickel, Small Press Review</i>.
(contemporary poets important to respondent)
Jake Berry, W.D. Snodgrass, Adrienne Rich,
Jack Foley, Robert Creeley.
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Jack Spicer, Thomas McGrath, Muriel Rukeyser,
Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman.
(critics important to respondent)
Jack Foley, Muriel Rukeyser,
Marjorie Perloff.
For two samples of Chace’s poetry, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem48.html”>here</a>. He’d
appreciate any feedback on it that you’d care to e.mail him.
<b>Blaise Cirelli, Poet</b>
Cirelli was born 1 January 1952 in Philadelphia. He describes himself as having a
Buddhist leaning and being Leftist Apolitical. His publication credits include
<i>Agniezewska’s Diary, VIA, Zaum, Blind Donkey </i>and<i> Talus and
Scree</i>, and his
etry’s been written up in the San Louis Obispo Local newspaper. Contemporary
poets he admires include Michael Palmer,
Lyn Hejinian, Mei Mei Bruseenbugge (spelling?), Robert Hass, Ron Padgett and Robert
Pinsky. He also admires the work of Ezra Pound,
Homer,
William Carlos Williams,
Loraine Niedecker,
Frank O’Hara,
Shelley,
Browning and
Tennyson.
Critics important to him are
Charles Altieri,
Helen Vendler,
Marjorie Perloff and
Forest Gander.
As a reader of poetry, he enjoys Experimental, Meditative Lyric poetryand <i>not</i>
Nature (Because how can you not like nature? I’d rather be in nature than read
about it). His impression of the current scene is that There seem to be a lot of
diocre poets getting published.
Among his favorite books are: <i>The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
<i>and</i> The
Sorrows of Young Werther</i>. He lists two favorite movies: <i>Black Robe</i> and
<i>Il Postino</i>. The sculpture of Henry Moore is important to him. About philosophy
he says, I wish I could understand Wittgenstein. On life-in-general: Some peop
are born with failure, others have it thrust upon them. His
Favorite name for a cat: Spot (if it has spots); Favorite food: organic turnips.
For a sample of Cirelli’s poetry click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem4.html”>here</a>.
<b>Dark Poet, Poet</b>
Dark Poet’s address is 555 this isn’t real, Punta Gorda FL 33982. His
e.mail address is [email protected], his phone
number,(941) 555-9992.
(affiliations/organizations) NA
(publication credits) NA
(list of works) NA
(where written up) Conspiracy boards all over
(contemporary poets important to respondent) na
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent) Poe
(critics important to respondent) na
(tastes in poetry) na</p>
You can find a sample of Dark Poet’s work by clicking <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem45.html”>here</a>. His attitude
toward getting feedback on it: Sure. It’s a rough draft.
<b>Catherine Daly (DAY lee), Poet</b>
Daly lives at 533 South Alandele Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90036.
Her e.mail address is [email protected], and is affiliated with
UCLA Extension and various listservs.
So far (late 1998), Daly has gotten about 80 poems into print but has not yet had a book
published. She has the following
manuscripts sitting around her house, however: <i>Engine No. 9, Locket, Manners in the
Colony, Dark Night</i>, and <i>The Green Hotel</i>.
The work of Barbara Guest and some of that of Barbara Hillman
has been important to her, and she likes the work of Todd Baron, Spencer Selby, Karen
Volkman, Ann Lauterbach (her favorite poetry teacher), Janet Holmes, Jeanne Marie
Beaumontthe last three of
whom have been especially supportive of her efforts.
She considers the usual suspects among the poets of yesteryear
important to her, and she admires the criticism of Susan Howe.
About poetry she says, I expect a great deal of thought and feeling to be behind a poem,
and I tend to like poems which reflect ideas. Because I studied religion and philosophy
and math, I am particularly sensitive to the misuse of many ideas commonly placed into
these categories.
She likes her poetic narration true, not fictional.
A critic as well as a poet, Daly prefers to express critically what (she feels) the poet
attempts vs. succeeds at doing. For example, she says, Wallace Stevens mentioned that it
was really what he attempted that pleased him about his work, but that he never achieved
anything near that in his poetry. For a sample
of her criticism, her first book review, an impression of contemporary poetry, can be
found in <i>American Letters & Commentary</i>, 10th Anniversary issue.
She thinks the American Contemporary Poetry ’scene’ is very much like
the alternative music scene of the 80s, and perhaps what the truly alternative music scene
still is: an incredibly generous but fragmented variety of subgenres waiting for someone
like Kurt Cobain to come along and steal all of the riffs and jam them together on a
national stage.
See Daly’s web site for links to poems of hers that have been published online:
http://members.aol.com/cadaly.</p>
<b>Michel Delville (del VIL), Critic</b>
(pronunciation of respondent’s name) [delvil]
Delville lives at Alllée du Beau Vivier 38, 4102 Seraing, Belgium. His e.mail address is
[email protected]; his phone number is ++ 32 4 3374386.
He has two books coming out in 1998: <i>The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and
the Law of Genre</i> (Gainesville FL: UP of Florida), and <i>J. G. Ballard</i>
(Plymouth: Northcote House).
He considers the following contemporary poets of importance:
Henri Michaux, Ron Silliman, Vasko Popa,
Miroslav Holub, Francis Ponge, Madeline Gins,
Paul Nougé, Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob, Pierre Alferi,
John Cage, Peter Redgrove and Rosmarie Waldrop.
As for poets of the past, he lists Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire,
Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Milton and Dante as
the heavyweights for him.
He notes four critics as being important to him: Marjorie Perloff, Roland Barthes, Frank
Lentricchia and Gérard Genette.
<b>Debra Di Blasi, Poet</b>
(pronunciation of Di Blasi’s name) dee BLAH-see
Di Blasi’s mailing address is 5932 Charlotte St., Kansas City, MO 64110, her
e.mail address is [email protected].
(affiliations/organizations)</p>
Missouri Arts Council Literature Panelist
PEN Center USA West Member
The Authors Guild, Inc. Member
The Academy of American Poets Associate Member
The Writers Place Member
National League of American Pen Women, Westport, MO Branch
Member Chair, Short Story Committee</p>
publication credits
BOOKS:
* <i>Drought & Say What You Like</i>, novella, New Directions Books: New
York, NY. March 1997 winner Thorpe Menn Book Award
* <i>Prayers of an Accidental Nature</i>, short story collection, Coffee House Press:
Minneapolis, MN. May 1999.
* Gass Pain, hypertext essay (Dalkey Archive Press/The Center for Book Culture,
www.centerforthebook.org)
*many published short fiction, articles, essays, reviews
list of works
FICTION
* <i>What the Body Requires</i> (formerly titled <i>Reprise: Reprisal</i>), novel (See
AWARDS)
* <i>The Fourth Book</i>, short story collection, in progress</p>
SHORT STORIES
*Czechoslovakian Rhapsody Sung To The Accompaniment Of Piano. <i>The Iowa
Review</i>. December 2000 (See RADIO / AUDIO and PERFORMANCE /
INSTALLATION / THEATRE)
* Blue, Recollection, and Exiles. <i>The Prague Review</i>. Winter 2000
*Snapshots: A Geneology. Show + Tell anthology of Kansas City writers and artists,
Potpourri Publications: Kansas City, MO. June 2000
*The Buck. Potpourri literary journal. Fall 1996
*Blind. New Letters literary journal. Spring 1996
*Drowning Hard. Cottonwood literary journal. 1995 anthologized in Moondance e-zine.
1997
*I Am Telling You Lies. Sou’wester literary journal. 1995
*Chairman of the Board. TIWA (Themes Interpreted by Writers and Artists) literary and
visual arts magazine. 1993 (See RADIO / AUDIO)
*An Interview With My Husband. New Delta Review. 1991 anthologized in Lovers:
Writings By Women, The Crossing Press. 1992. (See AWARDS)
*Delbert. <i>AENE literary journal</i>. 1991
*The Season’s Condition. Colorado-North Review literary journal. 1990 (See
FILM and RADIO / AUDIO)
*Where All Things Converge. Transfer literary journal. 1989</p>
NONFICTION
*<i>The Way Men Kiss</i>, memoir, in progress
<i>Gass Pain</i>, hypertext, The Center for Book Culture casebook on William H.
Gass’s The Tunnel, H.L. Hix, editor. November 2000
(www.centerforbookculture.org)</p>
Essays
Millennium Garden: Paintings by Jim Sajovic. Published in art catalog. September 1999.
Out of the Garden, Into the Cave. 1997 (See AWARDS)
What Three Cheers Everywhere Provide. Anthologized in Exposures: Essays By Missouri
Women, Woods Colt Press: Kansas City, MO, March 1997 (See AWARDS)</p>
Articles (for SOMA arts magazine: San Francisco, CA)
We’ve Got Joe Montana. 1994
I Am Writing To You From the Middle Of Nowhere. 1990
James Rosenquist: Seeing/Not Seeing. 1990
Diamanda Galas: Honesty Inside A Clenched Fist. 1989
Rising From the Ash Heap of Performance Art, Rinde Eckert Takes Off. 1988
Otto Hitzberger: Cutting Away. 1987
Miró. 1987
Jonathan Barbieri: Missiles Across the Border. 1987</p>
Art Reviews (for <i>The New Art Examiner</i>: Chicago, IL)
Jane Ashbury. 1985.
Marilyn Propp. 1984,</p>
SCREENPLAYS / FILM
Screenplays Produced</p>
<i>Drought</i>, 16mm, 28 min. 1998 (premiere) 1993 (written)
Based on the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.
Produced by Breathing Furniture Films/Lisa Moncure & Michael Leen,
Screenplay by Debra Di Blasi, Lisa Moncure, Michael Leen, Directed by Lisa Moncure,
Photography by Michael Leen, Sound Design by Jim McKee/Earwax Productions,
Starring Jessika Cardinahl & Jack Conley, Production esign by Megan Ricks
& John Matheson, Editing by Jennifer Jean Cacavas, Radio Program Music by
Allen Davis.</p>
SCREENINGS:
o National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, November 2000
o Ragtag Cinema: Columbia, MO. June 2000
o Universe Elle, as part of the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival: Cannes,
France. May 2000
* Broadcast rights purchased by Independent Film Channel. Premiere broadcast
November 23, 1999
* Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee: Kansas City, MO. April 1999 (see AWARDS)
o Göteborg Sweden Film Festival: Göteborg, Sweden. Feb. 1999
o Festival Internacional de Cine de Bilbao Spain: Bilbao, Spain. November 1998
o Sao Paulo Mostra Internacional de Cinama: Sao Paulo, Brazil. October 1998
o Figueira da Foz International Festival of Cinema: Lisbon Portugal. September 1998
(See AWARDS)
o Webster University Film Series: St. Louis, MO. September 1999.
o Sarajevo International Film Festival: Sarajevo, Bosnia. August 1998
o Recontres Cinemágraphiques Franco-American D’Avignon, France:
Avignon, France. June 1998 (See AWARDS)
o Charlotte Film Festival: Charlotte, NC. June 1998
o Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival: Toronto, Canada. June 1998 (See
AWARDS)
o New York/Avignon Film Festival: New York, NY. April-May 1998
o New York Women’s Film Festival: New York, NY. April 1998
o Taos Talking Pictures Film Festival: Taos, NM. April 1998 (See AWARDS)
o American Film Institute Film Festival: Los Angeles, CA. World premiere: October
1997 </p>
<i>The Season’s Condition</i> — Super 8, 10 min.
Based on the short story of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.
Produced and directed by Lisa Moncure, photography by Michael Leen. </p>
SCREENINGS:
o Toronto Film Festival: Toronto, Canada. 1998
o American Film Institute Film Festival: Los Angeles, CA. 1995
o Bay Area Film & Video Poetry Festival: San Francisco, CA. 1994
o Culture Under Fire Film Festival: Kansas City, MO. 1994</p>
Screenplays in Pre-Production
<i>My Father’s Farm</i>, original short documentary in pre-production, based on the
essay Out of the Garden, Into the Cave by Debra Di Blasi. Produced/written/directed by
Debra Di Blasi.
<i>Intruder</i>, short screenplay in pre-production screenplay by Debra Di Blasi.
Producer/director Edward Stencel.</p>
Screenplays Unproduced
The Hunger Winter, original feature in progress co-written with historian Hal Wert
The Shortest Route Home, original short screenplay
The Walking Wounded, original feature-length screenplay (See AWARDS)
The Significance of Dreams, original short screenplay
Taming Wild Geese — unproduced original feature-length screenplay
Staring Into The Sun — unproduced original feature-length screenplay </p>
RADIO / AUDIO</p>
<i>Czechoslovakian Rhapsody</i>, radio adaptation from the short story of the same
title. Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE): Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998
Kansas City Fiction Writers: Vol. 1 — short stories (The Season’s Condition and
Chairman of the Board) recorded for double CD set, limited edition featuring Kansas City
fiction writers. Art Radio: Kansas City, MO. Release date December 1998
Dreamless Dream, radio adaptation from the short stories Blind, Stones, and Our
Perversions. Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation: Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998
An Interview With My Husband — chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi. Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser, directed by
Art Suskin, stage management by Nancy Madsen, premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO, October 1997
Drought — radio adaptation of the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi, produced
and adapted by YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Corporation), Helsinki, Finland o broadcast
premiere May 1998</p>
PERFORMANCE / EXHIBITIONS / THEATRE</p>
Unbroken View, multimedia installation collaboration with visual artist Sharyn O’Mara
assisted by sound designer Chris Willits. Premiere exhibition: Edwin A. Ulrich Museum:
Wichita, KS. November 2000-January 2001. Traveling to Juniata Landscape Museum:
Juniata, Pennsylvania. September 2001.
Czechoslovakian Rhapsody, multimedia performance based on the short story of the same
title by Debra Di Blasi. Written/directed/produced/performed by Debra Di Blasi.
Premiere Ragtag Cinema, June 2000
An Interview With My Husband — chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi. Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser, directed by
Art Suskin, stage management by Nancy Madsen, premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO, October 1997</p>
(where written up)</p>
<i>The New York Times Book Review
*Publishers Weekly
*Book Forum
*ForeWord
*In Print
*The Kansas City Star</i>
many, many others</p>
contemporary poets important to Di Blasi</p>
Louise Gluck
Larry Levis (deceased)
Billy Collins
H.L. Hix
Galway Kinnell
Mark Strand
Marilyn Hacker
many, many others
poets of yesteryear important to Di Blasi
Sylvia Plath
T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeats
many, many others
critics important to Di Blasi: Not particularly interested in criticism
tastes in poetry: As a fiction writer, I am most fond of narrative poetry, although I enjoy
anything brilliant that contains aural lyricism. Content is important only in that it helps
illuminate a ‘truth’ I already know or confronts me with one I have not yet
discovered.
impression of contemporary poetry: Wonderful. The range of styles and voices is a
pleasure.
zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary: Virtually every serious literary journal
that publishes poetry deserves to be on this list.
.
Marilyn R. Rosenberg’s “Drift”
Consider, first, how important the large-lettered words wobbling all over the place in it are, particularly “drifts,” “procrastination,” “puddling, babbling, whirling,” and, in just the right place, “lingers,” linging with the “ling” words headed toward it. Equally important are its graphics, which include a small school of fish and gorgeously splishy brushstrokes in various ocean colors. “DRIFTS,” as it is actually spelled, can easily and very appropriately be taken for “DREAMS.” Changes of colors along sharp edges turn the work into a throng of rectangles working geometric precision against the swirl of all else, to suggest blocks of time in motion, being lost . . . On the other hand, the procrastination is allowing for–well, the eventual dreams the whirl of the creative subconscious yields that I find to be one essential component of this composition. Final result: words and graphics working together in the reading center and the seeing center of the brain to slow an engagent into a Manywhere-at-Once at the heart of ocean depths and mysteries only dreams can reach.
Note, incidentally, the difference between what I said about Marilyn’s work before reading what she said about it, and her slant. Neither of us is wrong, nor will you be (necessarily) wrong to find things in the work neither she nor I found. An artwork is of value to the degree that it can plausibly suggest a great many things, so long as none of them significantly contradicts the best of them (and there is always a central best meaning to an artwork all sensible people agree on such as the fact that this one is about the ocean).
Bob Grumman
Small Press Review,
Volume 35, Numbers 3/4, March/April 2003
Another South
Bill Lavender, Editor
277 pp; 2002; Pa and Cloth;
The University of Alabama Press,
Tuscaloosa and London.
www.uapress.ua.edu. $27 and $60.
An American Avant Garde: Second Wave, An Exhibit
John M. Bennett and Geoffrey D. Smith, Curators
80 pp; 2002; Pa; Rare Books & Manuscripts Library,
The Ohio State University Libraries, 1858 Neil Av Mall,
Columbus, OH 43210. $15.
An American Avant Garde: First Wave: An Exhibit
Featuring the William S. Burroughs Collection
and Work by Other Avant-Garde Artists
John M. Bennett and Geoffrey D. Smith, Curators
48 pp; 2001; Pa; Rare Books & Manuscripts Library,
The Ohio State University Libraries,1858 Neil Av Mall,
Columbus, OH 43210. $15.
I have to interrupt my memoir of the Ohio State University affair to announce the publication of an anthology called Another South. As any longtime reader of this column would have no trouble guessing, it includes work by me–including the mathemaku I wrote for Jim Leftwich, and mentioned in my last column, in fact. Leftwich has a nice chunk of work here, too, as do others in my crowd such as Jake Berry, David Thomas Roberts and A. di Michael. We four and James Sanders (whose “Poem with Referee,” labels illustrations of football referees’ signals with such texts as “internally/ pans/ Night./ hissing” with a text that begins “Donkey Kong may/ been kissing you// with a bulletproof vest”) are the only ones contributing visual poetry, or anything near it, to the collection. I have to boast that I am the only one contributing mathematical or cryptographic poetry to it!
The many textual poems (and prose pieces) here–by such as Skip Fox, Ken Harris, Joy Lahey, Mark Prejsnar and Stephanie Williams (34 writers are represented in all)–cover about as much of the textual poetry range as I’m familiar with. Here’s one by Joel Dailey that I quote not only because I like it and deem it representative of the best work here, but because it takes a whack at the Establishment I’m in close sympathy with:
Poetry fro Dummies
for Helen Vendler
Cheekbones goes business
Allegedly dangerous
Day breaks legs
Nostalgic Hindquarters open
Influential bleeps
An entire infrastructure teed off
By face averted
By Pyres buzz flight
New “upright” position
yoohoo
Discovered today on the river Bobs
Rooster continuation
by rooster gulp
(Note: the “fro” may be a typo, but I like it, so suspect it was intentional.) How “southern” Dailey’s poem is, I wouldn’t know, but Hank Lazer has much of interest to say in his excellent introduction about that aspect of the poetry in this anthology. There, he refers to what he calls “kudzu textuality.” About this, he says, “What I have in mind is the sort of complex, stuttered, overlapping sounds as in these passages from my ‘Suite Quintet for Nathaniel Mackey’ (Callaloo 23, no. 2 [2002]: 670-673):
exited out else
the only where
he’d be / stam
stamp stammer
…
his the integral
blips into song
remainder as reminder
…
shucked hush
lattice of gladiola
red bud steps
down into flower
…
day’s eye
to daisy &
dasein
thus has
designs upon
you
“Such knowing enters first by faith in sounds, a pathway first governed by a submission to the associations of kindred sounds and thus akin to syntactic or graphic kudzu textuality that I have already been describing.” But surely such concentration on sound over sense goes back to the origins of poetry, and flows through such writers as Hopkins, Stein, Joyce . . . Here, too, I would say there is a concentration of imagery over sense, as well. Which is all to the good. (Of course, what I like most in Lazer’s poem are the mathematical terms in the second stanza!) In any event, we can see from Lazer’s and Dailey’s work quoted above (and in the main portion of the collection) the way grammar is currently broken by many of our best poets to get us more effectively “down into flower.” There is much of this in Another South.
There. Now I can return to the catalogue for the Ohio State exhibit. this time to a section of it labeled, “Serials, Books and Manuscripts.” It lists small-press–in most cases actually micro-press–journals and publications from 1975 that were on display at the exhibit. As such it serves as a fascinating overview of the almost entirely unknown history of burstnorm poetry and related arts of that time to the present. Just the names of the publications are revealing, and entertaining: Unmuzzled Ox (whose publisher is SPR’s own Michael Andre), CLWN WR, Perspektive, Xerolage, Shattered Wig, Koja, Pavement Saw, Remixponse Categoriarray, Poethia: Writing-online, Crayon, Caliban, Juxta, Lost and Found Times, Loose Watch, Generator and many more. Michael Andre was the publisher of the issue of Unmuzzled Ox from 1989 that is on display. CLWN WR (from 1980) was previously called Clown War, according to the text–which includes this charmingly lyrical/nutto quotation from Lyn Hejinian: “sharing the toy/ and all-some banana.”
I’ve discussed Shattered Wig (to jump around in this lazily here-and-there column) before. The issue of it on display dates from around 1993. One of the texts quoted from it is by Al Ackerman (whom I quote or re-quote as much as possible, so exactly and eloquently does he state the over-riding aesthetics of this column): “Look again, Lurcher,” grated Ling. “This thing you’ve been calling the White Bat–DOESN’T IT REALLY LOOK LIKE A GIANT BURRITO STANDING ON END?”
The exhibit is up-to-date enough to include quite a bit of Internet material–Poethia, for example, which contains this, from Mark Peters: “Police arrived./ Former glory./ Foam rubber./ Talented Chef./ Even potatoes.” Jump-cut poetry with a vengeance, but strangely compelling–for me, at any rate. Similar in technique is the following, from Loose Watch: “make one’s blood/ the blood// a law violation// sleep.” It is by jwcurry and Mark Laba.
There are several items here that Richard Kostelanetz was responsible for. Among them is his still horrendously under-rated Openings & Closings of 1975, which includes, in its entirety, the following fiction: “In the beginning, as I said,/ was the end.” John Perlman, Jeffrey Little, Ficus strangulensis, Clark Coolidge, Spencer Selby, Peter Ganick, Vincent Ferrini, Crag Hill, Dick Higgins, John Byrum, Jackson Mac Low and Ivan Arguelles are just a few of the other stand-out bustnorm poets with work listed in this section of the catalogue, accompanied by always provocative and instructive quotations from it. It features several vibrant color reproductions, as well. It alone makes the catalogue worth getting for anyone who thinks it important to jump ahead of Vendler with regard to where American poetry has most arrestingly been for the past quarter century, and where it may be headed. But there is much more of value in this catalogue. So, I’ll probably discuss it some more next issue.
Lost & Found Times,
#53-54, March 2005. Edited by John M. Bennett.
92pp; Pa; Luna Bisonte Prods.,
137 Leland Avenue, Columbus OH 43214. $10.
The final issue, or double-issue, of Lost & Found Times deserves more discussion than I had space for in my last column, so I’ve decided to devote this entire column to it. Let me begin with a poem in it by someone new to me, Steven Paschall. Names New to me have always popped up in Lost & Found TImes. It has been a leader, probably the leader, in introducing new names to the public. This issue has a plethora of long-known names, too: Richard Kostelanetz, Me, Sheila E. Murphy, S. Gustav Hagglund, LeRoy Gorman, Hugh Fox, John Grey–let me stop there to say that I remember Grey as a fine plaintext poet, but not very burstnorm, yet he begins a poem here, “ye ow puddle beef” and ends it with, “*r^A^Xi r-f- &.”–to indicate the effect Lost & Found Times has had on at least one poet. This, needless to say, is mainly due to its editor John M Bennett, and his partner, Al Ackerman.
Ackerman? What can I say? One of his many pieces here is a hack of a Bennett/Leftwich poem which begins, “A minder nuts sport can be viewed in two ways: / -exclude bronze nature/ -‘explode your clothes.’” If you don’t realize the importance of the quotation marks around “explode your clothes,” you’re missing a fifth or more of what’s going on in the poem. Bennett? The issue is full of his stuff.
At first, I was going to cover just one or two of his poems, but there were so many I finally decided simply to list all the new or semi-new (and certainly unmainstream) devices he uses in them: (1) wrong-sized, wrong-font letters three places into each line of “TAH” to vertically spell, “rietoietpk,” an anagram for “riet poetik” but much more, including “kite,” partly because an isolated k is next to the r at the top of “rietoietpk”; (2) “screen drip” spelled a letter at time up and (more or less) forward, from the first line of “kcolf,” to form a rectangle of lettering, except at the bottom where more weird things happen, and then down and forward until it is just above the line two words from where it started for who knows what reason (but many possible ones hover just beyond my mind); (3), a combination (done with Jim Leftwich) of scrawled lettering that suggests some kind of fracturing, and. smudged irregular cut-outs from (apparently) newspapers; (4} the frequent use of words spelled one or more times forward, and once or more times backward as in “.Dellecnac” and “Rudder,” a poem of Bennett’s I discuss in my contribution to the issue; (5), dots and/or umlauts over and inside various letters in a text with straight-edged margins, and two large circles overlain on the text, one to the right and more off the text than on it, the other the same to the left (this one done with Jessy Kendall)–I can’t articulate the point of this but think it has something to do with a mix of perspectives that almost seems a kind of opti-sophical illlusion in which two opposed ideas come into and retreat out of focus. . . (6) a Bennett frame of Rs half rectilinear, half irregular, around what looks in this tiny reproduction to be a mad finger painting (to which Thomas L. Taylor has contributed one of his signature Handprints, and Jim Leftwich done who knows what)–and (7 through 77), but I can’t spend my whole column on them!
So, to “*alternate version if color abilities are unavailable*,” the poem by Steven Paschall that I was going to begin this column with but got side-tracked from. It’s a warped mirror poem, the last line mirroring the first, the second-to-last mirroring the second, etc., lots of parentheses, and very ragged margins left, as well as right. In other words, Bennettian version of Cummings. Again, it’s hard quickly to articulate why this is effective, but there’s a shimmer to it conventional poems don’t have (aIthough, yes, you traditionalists out there [as if any traditionalists would be reading th!i!s!], conventional poems have virtues this one hasn’t.
Many great drawings by Ackerman are here. (Have I mentioned him before?) In the vein of Ackerman, Haddock has a 5-panel comic strip on how to “Swell Yr. Nuts to 10x their normal size!” (Wait, could that be Ackerman? He does use a lot of pseudonyms, but not John M. Bennett, whatever Dan Gioia has said.) But there is more than one hilarious tale by Rupert Wondolowski in the Ackerman vein in the issue, and I know he’s a real person!
Reed Altemus guests in one or more poems of Bennett’s. Pulp-Collagist Supreme Malok is here again, this time with a work that, among other things, features an inducement to “Teach your mouse INVISIBLE VALUE” partly under a very happy adult male face. John M.’s wife, C. Mehrl, joins in, as well–with a fascinating hack of a Washington Post article about Kerry in which words are deleted but nothing (except the title) changed. It begins, “But it turned out to tee up the foot and to/ take lumps for his various hard love,” and ends, “Kerry said he opposed gay marriage, but favored gay marriage./ His nuanced Kerry’s recent church of Kerry, ‘I’m going to question his soul.’”
Other treats include some great “melds” from LeRoy Gorman, such as “pubersty,” “breign” and “lostery”; John Elsberg’s ripply neato homage to Andy Warhol, which consists of the repetition of “THECAN’SBEAUTY- ISINITSUNSEENSTAINS” except that each line drops the first letter of the line above it, and puts it at its end, so the poem’s second line, for instance, is “HECAN’SBEAUTYISINITSUNSEENSTAINST”; and another fetching poem by someone I’m not familiar with, Murtagh, is just a five-line free verse poem with five is missing. Hmmm, a good paraphrase of it would be:
s mply
l ght
w thout
t me
Rats, I’ve run out of space with dozens of terrific pieces unmentioned. Sorry.
It is now 25 September 2011. A few ideas I had the idea for this project but am only now beginning it. The plan is to store ten visual poems by others that I especially like and attach an appreciation to each that I hope will help others get as much pleasure from them as I have. I’ll add an artist’s statement, too, if I get one. I also hope others will attach comments about one or more of the specimens here. Rules: a hundred words or more; gush about how much you like (or dislike–negative comments are as welcome as positive ones) the piece you are writing about can be included but won’t count toward your hundred or more words requirement; an indication that you are a student if you are. I will publish every commentary I like with the piece it’s about, and put all others on a second page–except for the best student commentaries, which will go into a special student section.
The first of the ten visual poems is Marilyn R. Rosenberg’s “Drift.”
The second is Márton Koppány’s “Poem–for Karl young (and Laszlo Kornhauser)”
Small Press Review,
Volume 43, Numbers 5/6, May/June 2011
Serif of Nottingblog
Blogger: Gary Barwin
http://serifofnottingham.blogspot.com
National Poetry Month
Web-Master: Amanda Earl
http://nationalpoetrymonth.ca
http://www.angelhousepress.com
textimagepoem
Blogger: Jim Leftwich
http://jimleftwichtextimagepoem.blogspot.com
Nonlinear Poetry/Machine Language
Blogger: Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
http://nonlinearpoetry.blogspot.com
http://nlpoetry.livejournal.com
http://jukkapekkakervinen.blogspot.com
I’m not sure, but my impression is that the micro-press has been almost entirely replaced by a huge number of blogs and websites, some of them (like mine) with audiences of no more than ten or twenty. The “micro-net?” In any event, like the micro-press before it, the micro-net is where 96% of the most innovative poetry is being displayed and discussed. Don’t expect to read about them in print anywhere but here.
One that specializes in minimalist infra-verbal poetry that is also often visual is Gary Barwin’s Serif of Nottingblog. Its chief virtue, for me, is its infraverbal poetry, for instance, a poem one of the three stanzas of which is “w(and/or)d.” Another pwoermd (or one-word poem in Geof Huth’s lexicon, and–for a long time now–mine, as well (and Barwin’s) that is part of a series is almost “huh?” but its u has been replaced by an upside-down h, which–in the particular font used–looks exactly like a u except for its downward stem–to wonderfully capture the essense of “huh?” Then there are “ywhy, ewher, wh^t, wh en,” and “who” spelled with an upside-down m in place of its w. I fear it takes a special kind of mind to appreciate these, to feel the “who-ness” of the “who” viscerally, which is a primary function of poetry, for instance, rather than read it without possessing it in any way.
Barwin does much else at his blog (practically daily!), often combining photogaphs and pwoermds or ordinary words. He reviews a range of material, too, including at least once a political speech.
Needless to say, I had to discuss something here with a poem of mine in it. The one-artwork-a-day gallery for National Poetry Month that Amanda Earl of Angel House Press, supervised is it. My “Cursive Mathemaku No. 1″ is 10 April’s selection. As I recall, I made it in about an hour–after working for days on another making similar use of cursive words for important display in Modern Haiku, that doesn’t seem anywhere near as good as this one.
The other artists with work in this gallery, in order of appearance, skipping me, are: Eric Zboya, Camille Martin, Gil McElroy, Marton Koppany, Matthew Stolte, Reed Altemus, Satu Kaikkonen, mEIKAL aND, andrew topel, Bob Grumman, Helen Hajnoczky, Joel Lipman,Aileen Beno, Vern Frazer, Bill DiMichele, Chad Lietz, Anatol, Christine McNair, Gary Barwin, Pearl Pirie, John M. Bennett, Marcus McCann,,Geof Huth, John C. Goodman,,derek beaulieu, Megan Zucher, Sheila E. Murphy, Lily Robert-Foley, kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Michele Provost. A lot of first-rate stuff here, although as often as not, not visual poetry (which I continue claiming ought to have words at its center).
Angel House Press, which is responsible for the gallery, includes a store for chapbook sales, but also an essay series, and has an annual online pdf magazine at www.experiment-o.com.
John Crouse and Jim Leftwich have countless short poems called “Acts” at Leftwich’s blog, extimagepoem. Here’s a randomly-chosen sample:
ACT SIX THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED EIGHTY FOUR
rodent sermon softball: “remember began named”
solemn havoc software: “turn heart immense”
sudden amphibian judgment: “patiently with ten”
sailboat overcoat salamander: “with another then”
occasions missionary mittens: “order every at”
incinerator indent hatching: “broken golden handed”
babies essence esophagus: “knew idea three”
essays ketchup alligator: “pioneered many purpose”
hallelujah almanac windmill: “mind february sessions”
winces audiences wigwams: “all thinking inches”
wreck willow puffin: “speed tone playing”
pulley pulpit pumpernickel: “into suffering mind.”
A dada word-collage. I have to admit that I don’t know what to make of it. That some kind of church service may be going on I infer from “sermon” in line one and “pulpit” in the last line, and “missionary” and “hallelujah” later on–which makes “ten” possibly refer to the Ten Commandments? While we remember Genesis, the “began named?” A fun playground of verbal music and sharp images to associate off of. More I can’t say.
Leftwich also has a number of non-representational photographs that I assume have been computer-manipulated at the site. I find most of them visually arresting, even appealing, but can’t figure out why Poems 2011 is the general title he’s given them.
A gorgeous tropical-seeming work of abstract-expressionism by Peter Ganick & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen is on the home page of Kervinen’s nonlinearpoetry blog. Above it we are told he’s moved the blog to nlpoetry.livejournal; some quite beautiful (2008) abstract-expressionist textual designs by Kervinen are there, but at the top of the page we’re told he’s moved his blog again, this time to jukkapekkakervinen. There we find more textual designs and texts like the following:
*g$JTs
fbKbOgr+
HZ6bW2C&DAO
L
Ad”k&
)r=C
P@
0+
9DX7
Qq
&hATVEiPX”
Now, it happens that I did a brief question and answer with Kervinen at otherstreamunlimited.com about works like this. Me: “I feel slow, but is what you do, Jukka, is write a program that generates a text, which becomes your artwork? If that’s the case, mustn’t the program build the final text from something else–a preliminary text or at least collection of symbols or something?
Taxonomically, it seems to me (so far) that your poems of this kind are found texts that your programs take you to, but I think of such texts as being like texts resulting from, say, textual matter gathered from a book or other source by means of some formula . . . But you say you don’t have a preliminary text, which is where I’m confused.”
Jukka: “Yes, that’s what I do, all the time, write programs which generate texts (as well images, music, videos etc). For these texts, no, there are no preliminary texts, dictionaries or collection of symbols. Just numbers, the program generates numbers according the rules I’ve made, the numbers are converted to characters (ASCII, or equivalent, there are many different character set in old 8-bit computers I use). There are many types of programs I write for generating texts, some of them use dictionaries and/or other sources, however my “goal” has always been standalone abstract, cybernetic machines, which generate everything, without any sources, just the machine (and, unfortunately–me, choosing (what to keep in) the (resulting) texts, although I’ve developed various means to eliminate my intuitive selection process as well). Hope I’m not confusing more :)”
I think I understand him.
Small Press Review,
Volume 39, Numbers 11-12, November-December 2007
David Graham’s Poetry Library.
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
Entropy and Me. Blogger: Halvard Johnson
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S.
Webmaster: Tom Beckett
http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com
Muse of Fire. Blogger: Jeff Newberry
http://museoffireblog.blogspot.com
NarcissusWorks. Blogger: Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com
Poetry Blogs. Webmaster: David Graham
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/Blogs.html
Tad’s Opus 40 Blog. Blogger: Tad Richards
http://opusforty.blogspot.com
Ursprach. Blogger: James Finnegan
http://ursprache.blogspot.com
As I hope I’ve shown here over the past year or more, there are an enormous number of good blogs out there about poetry, none of them getting a tenth of the notice pop artists’ and airheaded political partisans’ blogs are getting, of course–but out there. With this column, I’m wrapping up my survey of poetry blogs (and related websites). I’ve skipped an enormous number of excellent poetry blogs, but hope what I’ve written gives a reasonably useful beginning idea of their scope at present. If not, well, most of the blogs I’ve mentioned have lists of links to other blogs you can use to find out more about them.
For instance, David Graham runs an amiable little website called Poetry Blogs that, as of this writing, lists links to twenty blogs, with brief comments like this, regarding Tad Richards’s blog: “–not just poetry, but any man who loves both John Prine & Sonny Rollins is A-OK with me.” Poetry Blogs is part of a larger website, David Graham’s Poetry Library, that has similarly valuable sub-sites with links to poets’ home pages, poetry publishers, poetry journals, poetry essays, the full texts of books (free!) and craft tools (such as dictionaries, books on prosody, etc.).
I mentioned Poetry Corner Curator/Editor Anny Ballardini’s NarcissusWorks in one earlier column, but too briefly, so I thought I ought to return to it here. (albeit, still too briefly). All kinds of stuff is in it, including frequent first-rate photographs of Italian landscapes (and cityscapes), Anny’s own writings and (more often) texts she’s found elsewhere, like the one she describes as “a good article on Gary Snyder in the Guardian Unlimited sent by Jeff Newberry to the New Poetry List” from which she extracted the following two paragraphs: “Snyder points out that the San Francisco poetry renaissance was already advanced, in the work of Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer and others, before the subversive Ginsberg gang arrived from the east coast: ‘They just publicised it.’
“The last letters Snyder received from Kerouac, who died in a broken-down state in 1969, were ranting and insulting, but Snyder remains affectionate towards the man who mythologised him in a cult novel before he reached the age of 30. ‘Jack was a dedicated person. As a Buddhist he had some very good insights. It was all mixed up with his French-Canadian Roman Catholicism, but so what? It’s hard to know why people self-destruct. They do so for reasons of deep and ancient karma, qualities of their character they were born with.’”
Tom Beckett, by the way, interviews Anny at http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-anny-ballardini.html. Beckett’s E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S, which has more than a dozen excellent interviews of poets by Tom and other poets, is an excellent poetry resource.
Another blogger who sprinkles his blog (Ursprach) with quotations from others, although posting his own thoughts, too, is James Finnegan. I generally find them a pleasure to disagree with. Here’s one of his own sayings: “A poem of concept is generally lesser in the weight than a poem of content.” For me, the best poetry is substantially both conceptual and . . . contentual. I strongly sympathize with Finnegan’s contention in one of his entries that because “The acoustic effects of language are dismal compared to those of music . . . no one is much interested in words devoid of their meanings”–but he’s wrong that few are interested in asemic texts, as they’re called, by their many makers.
Halvard Johnson, whom I consider an intellectual nihilist (because, among other things, he seems–entirely uncombatively–to believe that all texts are equally valuable) is one who would defend “words devoid of their meanings.” Nevertheless, his own poetry at his Entropy and Me blog is only a mite loopy, not asemic, as in his:
Sonnet for the New Year
Pleistocene campfires flickering in the distance, deeply
rooted slogans chat it up with money barons. Medical
malpractice suits us just fine, thank you very much.
For instance, well-delivered apologies salve all wounds.
Partial reconciliations break step when crossing a bridge,
miraculous transformations no longer expected or offered.
Higher disease rates unrelated to education or health costs
speak volumes to our well-tuned ears. Biology urges us
to seek out music in the company of other people. Yahweh
and other loud cellphone talkers gather to break bread to-
gether, airwaves atremble with salutations, with greetings.
On everyone’s lips, prospects for reelection, for theatrical
productions that do not close in a month or less. And soon,
all spats aside, someone texts us a toast, and all follow suit.
Jeff Newberry’s blog is a good place to go to get an idea of what conventional thirty- something poets are doing and thinking. Here’s a musing of his from one of his entries: “In between midnight feedings, I’ve been rereading John Donne, a poet whose work I’ve always admired, from the very first time I read ‘Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God.’ Lately, I’ve been going through Donne’s early love poetry and have been wondering why on earth I didn’t take him as a model back when I was writing angsty She-doesn’t-love-me poetry. Donne’s early work manages to make a pleading & pitiful persona (a whiney, unrequited lover) quite compelling. His skillful handling of metaphor and his witty word play are the key here.”
The final blog I have room to say anthing about is Tad Richards’s Opus 40. It’s a fun blog containing Tad’s deft caricatures of contemporary poets, fine photographs, his own poems, and news items like one about the American Academy of Poets’ new website feature, Poetry Map, which shows the states with all kinds of poetry resources and local poetry- related landmarks, poetry event sites, and the like labeled. But, Richards complains, “Marvin Bell is not listed in Iowa, and his importance to the state (he’s an ex-poet laureate) and to the Iowa Workshop cannot be overstated.”
The map of New Mexico’s overlooking long-time state resident, Witter Bynner, gives him an excuse to quote a poem of Bynner’s:
I COME AND GO
I come and go
And never stay.
I pick and choose
A night, a day,
I find, I lose,
I laugh along,
I will not know
Right things from wrong.
I pity those
Who pity me,
I ask no boon,
But being free . . .
And so the moon,
My polished stone,
Shines and shows
I lie alone.
Too bad about Witter’s not being on the map, but I feel confident that at least a hundred American poets more than twice as good as he aren’t on it, either. And with that slam of the American Poetry Establishment, I close. Content.
Small Press Review,
Volume 42, Numbers 11/12, November/December 2010
Comprepoetica
Blogmaster: Bob Grumman
http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492/spr-stuff
http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492/spr-stuff
The Pedestal,
Issue 57.
Edited by John Amen.
April 21-June 21 2010;
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/
Slab,
Issue 57, 2010.
Edited by Amy Choate and Caitlin Svetahor
Yearly; 215 pp; Department of English
Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock PA.
slablitmag.org. $10/copy.
I’m not really obsessed with the definition of visual poetry, I just talk about it all the time. One of the reasons for that is that I consider it a cardinal example of what I consider the “nullinguistic” assault on the idea of language as a means of communication prevalent in the West at this time. Not that mysticism beyond the power of puny words to describe hasn’t always been a potent force in all the tribes of earthlings, but the twentieth century seems to have bought into it more idiotically than any previous era.
“Nullinguist” is my term for people consciously or unconsciously out to destroy the meaningfulness of language, mostly by refusing to accept that any word should have a stable meaning. I tilt lances with them mostly regarding the meaning of “visual poetry,” which for them has no set meaning. Hence it is that as co-editor with John M. Bennett, of a gallery of artworks called visual poetry in The Pedestal, I wrote the following in my preface (John also writing an able preface giving much of the other side): “In the field of what I call visio-textual art, I am considered eccentric, for almost everyone in it believes that a visual poem is no more a kind of poetry than a mongoose is a kind of bird. I disagree, so consider many of the works John Bennett and I have chosen for this gallery to be what I call ‘textual designs,’ rather than visual poems.
“For me a visual poem is a poem combined with graphic elements that is able to provide an engagent an aesthetic experience that is at some point significantly and simultaneously verbal and visual. For instance: J. Michael Mollohan’s “Yellow Flower,” which you see as both common flower and uncommonly glorious sun (and ultimate living result of sunlight) at the same time as you read the word for it. The textual designs I speak of lack sufficient words to do that. Some, indeed, have no words.
“So, considering my attitude about visual poetry, why so many textual designs and so few visual poems in the gallery? Because, first of all, I recognize my view to be a minority view and am democratic enough to feel the majority should rule (even when INSANELY WRONG). More important, I consider the textual designs we chose to be significantly superior aesthetically to the visual poems they beat out. Indeed, for me the works Scott Helmes terms his “visual haiku” here and elsewhere are the best visual artworks of our time, so what if most of them are not, by my standards, poems. Fortunately for my loyalty to poetry, John and I still managed to find a number of fine visual poems among the submissions besides “Yellow Flower,” so, I feel, we have done our duty to it as well as to textual design.”
I should add that our gallery has works by Tom Cassidy, Guy R. Beining, K.S. Ernst, Jim Leftwich, Andrew Topel, Paul Thaddeus Lambert, Marilyn R. Rosenberg, Baron, Reed Altemus and Márton Koppány, as well as one apiece by me and John (because we felt them useful as a guide to our prejudices as editors) besides the two already mentioned. All in full color.
After our gallery is a short story by Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, “Deck Building Deck Building. In it, a journalist, out of curiosity, investigates a $45,000 deck contractors had attached to the home of a Vietnamese-American doctor which collapsed, causing injuries to the doctor that months later led to his death. Excellent character study of both the doctor and journalist, and fascinating study of a not usually-written-about an ethnic group in America.
The issue boasts a fairly substantial review section, too, and ends with a gallery of audio recordings selected and introduced by Zachery Kluckman of audio-recordings of what I guess you’d call stand-up comics: J.W. Basilo, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Molly Kat, Tufik Shayeb, and Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, that seemed quite polished to me.
Note: unlike many such venues, The Pedestal pays contributors, in case anyone reading this might be interested in submitting to it. It’s no avant garde publication, but a good one. And, as an Internet publication, it’s out there for viewing more or less permanently.
Aimed at a similar audience is the once-a-year, Slab. Like The Pedestal, it does venture into the otherstream to a degree, for this issue has poetry by Experioddica stalwarts, Guy R. Beining (with a poem that contains a striking image of “spotless/ morning/ fed/ to/ fowls/ with/ feathers/ like/ water”) and Richard Kostelanetz (with more of his deft minimalist word-games), which is why I’m reporting on it here (aside from the fact that my coverage of magazines has slipped a bit of late). There are a lot of good short stories and poems here, and some “creative non-fiction.” Among the latter is a charmer called “The Legend of the Hubcap Lady,” an (apparently) autobiographical essay about a woman new to an American Indian community who shows up at a great powwow thinking that paper plates would be provided so not bringing any plates or bowls–so uses the hubcaps of the family car instead and becomes a local legend, laughed with instead of at.
Characteristic of many short stories I’ve lately been reading is Mickey Hess’s affecting “The Old Man and the Tree” about the quietly believable big-brother relationship of a high school teacher in his thirties with a gifted but screwed-up boy in one of his classes that, after several years pass, piddles away, the boy still screwed-up.
Of the many poems more conventional than Beining’s and Kostelanetz’s is one by long-time small press poet, B. Z. Niditch that I’ve decided to end this installment of my column with because of how effective I find it in spite of being highly conventional–about spring, of all standard poetic subjects!
When Spring Begins
Ice spreads
its paperweight shadows
by the undertow shore
after a muffled winter
white sugar drifts nod
near the bicycle rider
who parks by the beach gazebo
through mountains of sand,
the one-eyed sunshine
unlocks trees
of tasseled snow,
Poseidon waves to his lovers
asking us to break dance
on a frozen morning.