Thursday, April 30, 2009

Etude's 6 and 8


So here are two etudes that i had not posted. I don't know how else to do it, so i took a screenshot of etude 6 and this is the image.













Also, here is etude 8. I found this etude to be near impossible. I am inexorably tied to myself, and my mind cannot comprehend the ability to become someone else.  This is a completely foreign concept. This few meager lines took far too long, and are pretty piss poor, but this etudes instructions are impossible, as far as I know.

Future phosphorescence

Mispronounce my presence

Treetops approach rooftops

Where my dreams meet

 

Images of luminary

Make it hard to be binary

One on another

Replaced in my vision

 

 

Final Etude

Took one of my poems, used the vocabulary of old bill faulkner.

Orig:


Final:

Perhaps you will, as so many Southern gentlemen have, take to writing to telling but at its core are wringing hands and a hard blooming in a cold field, humorless and profoundly and sternly prophetic out of all proportion to the actual years even of a child who had never been young.

The eternal 43 year old black lace framing up this not-shapes like not-country pressing towards the telling whether for sister or father or nothusband a nameless child of the South. We dissemble, the high hysterical brow, on stairs and from among the faces holding him, screaming and vomiting. The man, her husband and father of children naked and panting and bloody to the waist in a summer of wisteria driven out of whatever ogreworld of Jackson the not-yet faint shot, pounding on stairs, feet hanging with the static rage and impotence of children.

Undoes the all, presupposed evil as owing to some irrationality between two moons balanced maybe, though, happens is never but like ripples maybe through that wet umbilical cord of the Mississippi.

It is a new time, when asked “air you, air you” a brother a murdered and she a widow before a bride it is a beautiful life that women lead. It is now the father who is the natural enemy of the son told in a succession of periods of utter immobility like a broken cinema film unraveling in the not-wind, not-sound and falling by dead gestures, furious attitudes in sunset.

criteria for self assessment

Here is what I have written down in my notes. Everyone please add or qualify if you remember better than I did.

Requirements for this class:

Etudes
Statement of poetics (both the one from the beginning of the term and a new or revised one)
Self-evaluation
Portfolio
Cover letter to a journal (two paragraphs; explain how you know the journal; give the titles for your poems or the first line in brackets; give a description of your work; thank the editors for their consideration)

Self-evaluation criteria:
Completion of requirements
Engagement with readings
Attendance
Participation (balance between class discussion, blog, extra readings, attending poet's readings, etc.)
"Effort" (the work you put into your final portfolio in particular)
Quality of portfolio as a cohesive series, an integrated whole
Self-perception of poetic quality
Abstract idea of how well you achieved your goals at the beginning of the term

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Etude 8 / Of the Now

if i come home to you sitting there one more time
and see that expression on her face again--

*britney pregnant AGAIN by her long-lost cousin
tonight on the SOUP!
-click- who will he choose?*

don't promise again--
how can you actually demand respect?
no more of your fucking excuses.
be a man.


--


he picks up his shoes he straps them on he grabs his keys he shuffles out the door
then his shoe trips against a rock but he catches himself, managing not to fall
he takes 12 steps from the house to the driveway
he gets in his girlfriend's car and closes the door
they drive to church five over the speed limit
he gets out of the car and closes the door
he takes 53 steps to the sanctuary
A inquires after his health and B asks when he's proposing
and he fields these questions again politely with a graceful smile
he sits down and flips open his Bible to Isaiah
pages shuffle softly against fingertips
children squirm babies whimper people whisper
mouths sound too loud gross shut up
he turns the hymnal to number 143
muffled wails of colicky infants in the cry room

fuck off, narrator! shut the fuck up!

he puts down the hymnal and quietly extricates himself
ignoring the concerned look from his girlfriend
he hurries outside in 28 long strides
he tries to pray in the cold windy parking lot
but can't hear over himself

what the fuck is wrong with me? why is this happening?

seeing a latecomer sail into the parking lot,
he retreats to the far side of the building out of plain sight
counts the contents of his wallet
and thinks about his last trip to the liquor store.

Ars Poetica

What follows is my translation of Ars Poetica from class. This is a translation of the entire poem.


Begging
To be
Spoken

Apart from that
Which has been called
Us

I feel it
Once again
On the weather

Approach and identify
For I
No longer am able.

Etudes 6 and 7 - Officially caught up!

Etude 6: it's a circle! but not Claire's circle, so I'm not a total cheat. Sorry it looks all sloppy; it was way too difficult to try to get those stupid strips of paper to lay flat long enough to stick, let alone make the circle look perfectly neat. I tried, though.




Etude 7: This was the trauma etude. I decided to use it to mess with my vellum stuff, so that if you read through the pages it tells one story but if you read the pages in succession it reads differently. I posted it so you can read the pages consecutively and then the whole thing at once. It felt a bit contrived in places, but overall I like it and it was good exercise. The I is totally indistinct in this piece, which was very different for me.




Etude 8 - of the Now

Also not about someone in the class, which I think is pretty obvious when you read it.

~~

Oh just don’t I can’t even listen to you
can’t hear you trying to restrict me
I’m big, practically old now
I could feed the world or crush it
even without a training bra
I am a tigress and
my claws are coming in which by the way
is about the best metaphor ever so
really what you need to know
is that I’ll climb any fence you set up

and eat you

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Final Etude

Hey everyone, I was supposed to post this awhile ago and failed massively. So, let's do it now and just have it done prior to the final reading (?).

Going off the translating idea from class last Wed. and thinking about our evolution from the first on the semester, let's translate something into one of the vocabularies we stated be liked (or disliked) in the first etude. This is really pretty open, so do with it what you will.

Friday, April 24, 2009

PoeTRYing as hard as we can

Considering having another poetrying gathering at my place next week. Midweek? Whoever's interested please drop a comment saying when you might want to work on stuff. 

I have 2 extra computers at my apt that people can work on. OH EXCESS. 

If people come would like to talk about the physical portfolios. Have yet to construct mine. Am wanting to do a handmade book I think. 

dz

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

My translation of "Ars Poetica"

I only got through about 2/3 of the poem but I wanted to show you what my idea was anyway.

You can read across the lines or down the columns.




Method: took every other line, starting with first ("Between shadow and space, between trimmings and damsels") and split them in half. The left halves, translated, became the little trios down the left side; the right half became the bits on the right side. Took the other lines (beginning with "endowed with a singular heart and sorrowful dreams") and translated them down the middle, in sets of four lines. Got the idea from the "betweens" in the first line of the poem.

That was an awesome in class exercise and I will try it on other stuff I think!

P.S. Just realized I accidentally reversed the "sides" for the last bit (drunkeness and guest translations).

Poems by Renata

Renata Treitel
 
NOW
 
Now of now, now
Of before of after
A two-string violin
Sun
Now through slatterns
Lanterns of joy
Before sense made
Sense
Senseless the birds    
Excruciating two
strings of
before stringing
Down in the dying something
Of before
After a run
Entrance of
Later sun through
slatterns
 
 
Renata Treitel
 
NOW
 
Music
Of coffee-perk
In stuffy red curtain
Smoke runs around
And stretching a jaw in a double take
Of voices
Oh yeah fine
State of Oklahoma
Look for Alexander but meet Fraser
Goody goody
Didactic
Il Cuore of intertextuality
The long-gone De Amicis  
Food for a child’s heart
children I don’t know
Who can
a white goose whiter than butter
Borrow from Dante
A text of appropriations
Who translates borrows
Borrow the burrows of semantics
Dig into a past existing in the mind
More real more real
Than this din gyred room
Stuffy
Slouched words and yawns
Bumping into each other
Eluding the ear

Neruda

Reading Residence on Earth felt a little bit like standing under a waterfall. It has beautiful moments, but it reminded me of Whitman. Apologies if people feel deeply attached to Whitman, but his prolific attempts to capture the whole universe in his poetry sometimes feel contrived and pretentious, and I had a similar experience with Neruda. That being said, he does have some beautiful lines. I wonder what people think of the poem "Taste" and what Neruda's theory of language is from that poem. Also curious about the (enormous) question as to whether poetry can be translated out of one language to another.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

fun with translation. about current events and the recession

An umbrella dinners: A succession, and
not more. Others in the garden of the House
intelligence. Some have my dinner for you.

More than 750 took part in today's world,
including the freedom of action
your party experience with taxes.
On the other side, the New Government
and the New Washington and the
nation as a whole.

Some diners my umbrella for you.
Change the garden of the intelligence.
A sequence, and no more. What are
some of the most important tax protests,
the United States? Other you,
Obama is the sugar protocol .

Others say that the dinners were on the way.
A straw possibility of the Great and cry,
space     space      intelligence or fuel,
financial and political support for current and former leaders.
"Bad," which will help dinners at risk of loss of houses.
It must and the United States,
including one of the freedom of working.

Science more events throughout the day,
the journalist and the Host on the screen.
Supporters of the need for the protest,
including broadcast and rally said
they are independent of local transport

Context, the idea of growing demonstrations
and explosions that “Evil”
justifies a time of frustration release
in some diners my umbrella.
Some have my for you.

Etude of the NAOWWWWW

Sorry, it is not anyone from class. it is someone else THAT I KNEW LONG AGO (or maybe even recently!)

It’s awkward, is all
Not the nipple of
Uncomfortable

Not in this bed,
And not everyone needs
Someone to eat with

It is just pushing buttons
Not like buttons between
Thighs, but buttons

Inauthentic,
Is all it is,
Perhaps we shouldn’t

Talk anymore
Something under bed
Unsettles this thing we have here.

I do not expect
You to make this
Time for me

Because it is
Saturday night, and you,
Bird-dogging

I would rather
Play giants
And boil wort


WHATCHOOTHINKABOUDAT

Russ's etude

OK I did this a long time ago and never posted the results bc I didn't think going in and back out of one language was interesting enough. So this time I went further with it, going in and out of Polish, Finnish, German, Albanian, Filipino, Korean, Greek and Italian.

I used a poem I had thought was going into my Norway-related project, though I have since scrapped the project.

ORIGINAL
Night now is never black only gray or maybe purple indefinably. Doves congregate elsewhere and leave us the pigeons. Unfaltering electrical dusk conquers stars and hovers. At home they won’t wear socks to save themselves. Where I am is somewhere else, all knee-high knitted things and permanent cold winters lightless and lasting five months. Candles that softened the blow blown out before bed for safety under defenseless covers. I was frozen. Oh! not by the snow and rain by a constant delirium a nakedness of self an unsureness a discomfort a terror. A convincing inner social advertisement for letting land lock us for belonging and a familiar social milieu. I was wrong. Nothing is sure in life but death and taxes let me ask you mister: do you prefer death? Then consider this: will you give us back your poor?

FINAL
The evening is not exactly black and gray Purple
5th Acquisition pigeons We dove from other parties
Well, lamp at dusk, and Stars Supernatant The house,
the State does not wear socks If I, Socks, a strong currency
and low resistance to light and cold winter 5 months
Before going to bed, gently blow the candles security
This is a specific objective I was frozen Oh! No
storm of snow and rain The uncertainty of the complaints,
and naked terror Convincing Social Commission
Advertising, language and our social block for rent
     I Wrong          But nothing about life and death,
taxes, and I ask the Lord: If you are dead?
    To give us a bad situation

jubilat

jubilat
4) URL: www.jubilat.com
Address:
jubilat
Department of English
452 Bartlett Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003-0515

Guest Editors: Cathy Park Hong, Evie Shockley, Editors-at-Large: Jen Bervin, Christian Hawkey, Terrance Hayes, Michael Teig
Here are some people who have been published:
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Brett Fletcher Lauer, Ken Rumble, David Mills, Lisa Olstein, Grace Lee, oh, and did I mention DAVID EFFING GOLDSTEIN?
The journal is run out of the Writing Program at UMass Amherst.

This is the mission statement: “From the first issue onward, jubilat has aimed to publish not only the best in contemporary American poetry, but to place it alongside a varied selection of reprints, found pieces, lyric prose, art, and interviews with poets and other artists. Rather than section off these varieties of work, the magazine creates a dialogue that showcases the beauty and strangeness of the ordinary, and how experiments with language and image speak in a compelling way about who we are.”
Submissions:
As of 2007, jubilat is only accepting submissions online:
“Submissions should include three to six poems in one .doc, .rtf, or .pdf file, and individuals are encouraged to submit no more than three times per year. We are amenable to simultaneous submissions; however, please notify us immediately if your submission is accepted elsewhere.”
There is this neat little thing on their website called a “submission manager” and you can just enter your information and upload your file that way. Fun!

Anouncements and Reminders

In class, we discussed having the final reading for class on Thursday, May 7, 7-9 PM.  Russ and Whitney: PLEASE REPLY IMMEDIATELY IF THIS DATE/TIME IS BAD FOR YOU.

Your final poetry portfolio will be due at the reading, so please bring it with you.  Also, remember to include a cover letter to a journal that you submitted poetry to.  Time to send something out into the world! (And you are ready for it, trust me).

For our last class meeting (boo hoo), please read Neruda, Residence on Earth, and Albiach, A Geometry.  We’ll discuss the global reach of innovative verse and discuss what impact national identity might have on the writing of experimental poetry, if any.

Other important upcoming events:

This Thursday, April 16, Danielle is having an Etude Party at her place(USA South #1817 behind John Mabee Hall and parallel and closest to Delaware), so if you’ve fallen behind on your assignments, this is a peer-pressurey way to catch up.  Please drop her a line for details  <d.z.matheny@gmail.com>.

Saturday, April 25, OGEW is having a meeting at my house at 5:00 PM.  The festivities will include a reading by Caleb Puckett, who will be leaving Tulsa for Kansas in May.  Come wish him a fond farewell, have some food and drink, write some poetry, and talk shop.  

TU’s literary magazine, Stylus, is having a reading from it’s new edition (which will be available for purchase) May 3, 7:00 PM. Claire Damn Edwards will provide more details henceforth.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Grant's Etude of the Now


No warning label needed for this one (I think?)

Claire's Fairytale Etude


etude party

OK guys. I think I have posted about two of my etudes. The rest are in various states of doneness, and some but a gleam in my eyes. I do intend to finish them all--it's just a matter of concentration and time. SSOOOOO, anyone interested in an etude-finishing (or portfolio working-on) party? I'll make tea and maybe scones or something. We can chat a bit and then scatter to various corners of my apartment to write.

Just let me know. Everyone's welcome--surely someone wants a peek at my pad. :) Then you can write a poem about what a mess I am.

I'm definitely going to be working on stuff Thurs aft/eve.

Padgett and Fraser

There is something lovely about Padgett's work. When you take out all the breaks it sounds almost like regular sentences, but I think he has a really good grasp of how to force an interesting rhythm on the reader.

Fraser's work was more difficult to me. The disjointedness of it made me feel like I was slipping through the different pieces that make up her poems. I kept grasping and not quite catching anything.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

re: Etude of the Now

Kathleen Fraser

Just a little bit about Fraser: I was interested in the recurring theme of particularity in her writing. Her poems are extremely specific, down to dates and names of people and places. She talks in one of her most recent poems, "Yomei Mon...", about her family's ashes are scattered and that this gives her "no specific location for my grief". I wonder if the particularities of daily life become a tool for her, a way to create order out of apparently random occurrences. Language could be a system, a frame, for thinking about the apparently pointless cruelties of life--as in "La Reproduction Interdite"?

Ron Padgett

Have been reading the Ron Padgett book, and was struck by a line:

"I am immured inside the world of whistling"(22) Which brought to mind what Kate Pringle has been researching about sound and sound having mass. There are heavy sounds and light sounds, and the idea of conceptualizing a sound as opaque and solid is very intriguing to me. It demands the break down of how we have heretofore conceived of the world around us, of mass and physics and so on.

For me it seems that poetry always comes down to how it blows the world apart or throws our way of thinking into question.

Another interesting thing about Padgett is his use of myth and fairy tale. In Fixation, he writes of a crucifixion scene, in J & J he retells the story of Jack and Jill, focusing on the trauma of their fall down the hill. In both stories, the trauma is lessened in some way, perhaps because they all live through them.

There is some redemptive quality in the writing--that is, the writing seems to redeem the trauma. Jack and Jill fall safely into a haystack placed there by "the great artist"(10). In "Fixation", it seems that the person being crucified overcomes the pain through noticing the pastoral beauty of the world. In both cases, it seems that the poet redeems the trauma in some way.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Tinfish Press

Tinfish
1) URL: www.tinfishpress.com
Address: Tinfish Press
47-728 Hui Kelu Street #9
Kaneohe, HI 96744
2) Susan M. Schultz
3) Here are some people who have been published:
-Afaa Michael Weaver, Meredith Quartermain, Ryan Oishi, Jane Sprague, Deborah Meadows
4) Recently, the journal has been publishing poets who combine visual and poetic elements.
A poem I liked is called “A clock out of water” by Eric Paul Schaffer which is in volume 17. I also like “Skin n.” by Tiare Picard

Submissions:
There is no real deadline for submissions because, according to the website, they publish sporadically, about once a year.
You can send a selection of up to six poems, hard copies, to the address above.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Bathroom

Uhhh confession, I picked this one based on the name. Actually a lot of these journals and magazines have really great names. Anyway.

www.bathroommagazine.wordpress.com
thebathroommagazine@gmail.com

Editor: Nicholas Michael Ravnikar

I like the mission: “The Bathroom wants to publish writing that exhibits intellectual irreverence and satirical sloppiness.” This goes for writing of various genres as well as visual work and “undefinables.” Editor Nicholas Ravnikar is seeking pieces that “investigate the art as a product of the linguistic and/or cognitive process.”

Browsing through the archives, most of what was published was poetry, and it’s fairly “experimental,” without being too out there to be unenjoyable (subjective, much?). Lots of the poems published have really great images and phrases.

Submissions: The Bathroom asks for submissions 3-5 pages in length, with some specific guidelines/suggestions for formatting. They want the submissions in plain text in the body of the email, but also attachments of separate works.

People published: Pat Clifford, Megan DiBello, Travis Cebulla, Matt Specht, Mark M. Geise, Donald Illich, Michael Sumrak, Davis Strauss

(Looks like mostly men, opposite of Fringe Magazine.)

Here’s a poem they published that I liked.

bodhranii instructions by John Dey

rain         many        drops

rain    where falls,    down        o so drops

sound halo for objects

delight the inner-thing of – yes – hum

come to stasis my, ground

the vertical cross-brace is against the back of my hand
the horizontal cross-brace is resting on the back of my
wrist

now around me

clear see

Fringe Magazine

FringeTheMagazine@gmail.com
http://thenounthatverbsyourworld.blogspot.com/

Editor-in-chief: Lizzie Starks (Jenkins, she loves Buffy, too.)

Poetry editor: Anna Lena Phillips

Fringe is an online journal (for practical and environmental purposes) that publishes four times a year.

Recently published:
Megann Sept, Casey Wiley, Kelley Calvert, Anna L. Cates, Margarita Engle, Elaine Batcher, Jennifer Coke, Doug Cornett, William Walsh (These are just random names, whatever.)

Style & Editorial mission:
Fringe has a published manifesto, so you know these people have an explicit motivation for their work. They aim “to fight against the homogenization of culture and the loss of revolutionary literature at the high-literary and popular levels” by publishing work at the “fringe.” Ahh, the title makes sense. “We are about writing that confronts and questions.” I am wondering whether it must be out-and-out political/economic, or whether they are into confrontation and questioning of language, etc.
The style of the poems published varies. Some are more “out there” than others, which are more referential. The “message” of most is evident, for example, there were a couple poems published that deal with Cuba and American consumer culture. One poem by another guy reminded me of Caleb Puckett’s work. It was a conversation between two old grannies.

Submission info:
Fringe publishes a variety of written genres besides poetry, including “unclassifiable.” They also accept sound files, which is good if someone wanted to use a multimedia approach with their poems. (For example, maybe Zoe could submit a recording of her two-person poem that she and Whitney read at our class reading.) It appears from the names listed that most or all of the editors are women. This hints that it might be a good place to submit feminist or gender-related work.
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis, but unsolicited submissions for poetry are currently closed until May 1. Submissions should contain four to seven poems, or just one if the poem is long. (Longer than 40 lines is their guideline here.)
They also just started (today!) a round robin story on their blog, with finished submissions due by June 15 and the results to be published some time after.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Conduit

Conduit is an interesting publication. They seem to like to blend lots of different areas of thought, as is evidenced by their "about us" statement: "Conduit is a biannual literary journal that is at once direct, playful, inventive, irreverent, and darkly beautiful. Despite common sense and the laws of economics, Conduit has been thwarting good taste, progress, and consensus for over ten years. Conduit publishes distinctive voices of literary merit—experimental to accessible, established to emerging—in snazzy volumes, featuring work that demonstrates originality, intelligence, courage, and humanity. Conduit champions a fresh mix of writers. If that isn't enough, Conduit reaches beyond the literary by interviewing astronomers, ethno- botanists, artists, graphic artists, and historians, et cetera, believing a vigorous imagination is one that is cross- pollinated by diverse areas of human inquiry.

They have a website: http://www.conduit.org/#

Their submission policy is as follows: Conduit is looking for previously unpublished poetry, prose, artwork  and photography (b/w) that demonstrates originality, intelligence, courage, irreverence, and  humanity. Please send 3-5  poems or 1 prose piece (up to 3500 words). Do not send original artwork. Include a self-addressed stamped  envelope. Reporting time is 9 weeks to 9 months. Payment  in copies. Future issues include Failing Famously (Risk and Invention) and Bad Connections (Fun of Forgetting). These titles are primarily for our own amusement. Submissions are evaluated at the nexus of their merit and our taste, rather than whether or not they match any theme. If you haven't seen or read Conduit before, we recommend you sample our mad concoction before submitting.

This seems like an interesting place to publish. There's a lot of mixed media stuff, as well as "experimental" poetry. One of the poems that I looked at had a diagram in it. Given their aptitude for mixed areas of thought, those poems using your favorite vocabularies seem to be the kind of thing this publisher goes for.

Pringle

Simply can't let go of the habit....

I read Right New Biology and was bewildered. For one thing, I'd like some idea as to how her title and the actual content of her work fit together: the poems seem to deal in politics extensively, gathering and reworking political (American) rhetoric. Is the title an ironic comment on ways in which rhetoric could mask the possible reduction of the person to a cog in a political machine? Or does she perceive something possibly good or organic about current politics? Or is she attempting to document a change in contemporary politics and society? Why the word "Right" in her title? I sense fragmentation and alienation from the form of her work, the chopped up words, misspellings, and capitalization. Perhaps reflective of a pull between conflicting parts of current culture? Does the work offer any resolution to conflicts? Don't really know.

BlazeVOX Books

BlazeVOX is pretty awesome. They published "Human Scale" by Michael Kelleher, which I read last semester with Jenkins. It's pretty wicked. Anyways.


They publish all kinds of things, from chapbooks to full length books, and a journal as well. Their editor is listed as "Ezra Pound"

CONTACT

They aim to publish pretty new stuff, and they're style seems to fit well with the kind of stuff that our class is publishing. Also, they have listed on their website that "BlazeVOX [books] had recognized a deficiency in our publication catalog. We are now ing the process of developing a book series that promotes the work of women who are courageous, innovative, definition defying writers. "

That seems to be right down the alley of everyone except me and Jenkins.

They have an interesting submission policy: Articles of submission depend on many criteria, but overall items submitted must conform to one ethereal trait, your work must not suck. This put plainly, bad art should be punished; we will not promote it. However, all submissions will be reviewed and the author will receive feedback. We are human too. Please send your work.

Recent publishees include:

In general this seems to be the kind of place that you should submit a very finished and polished work to. However, they definitely seem down our alley, and are worth checking out, I just suggest that work is edited and polished before it is submitted to them.

Cannibal Press

Cannibal Press is located in Fayettville, AR.


Cannibal Books publishes hand-sewn literary journals and chapbooks which focus on divergent and emerging poetics. While our products fit into the category of book arts, the focus is entirely on presenting daring work from a broad range of styles. An aesthetic definition cannot define the hunger. Founded in Brooklyn, NY in 2004, Cannibal Books currently nests in Fayetteville, AR.

Recently published:
Four Cities by Kazim Ali
Luminal Equation by Maureen Alsop
House by Sommer Browning
Into the Eyes of Lost Storms by Karla Kelsey
Sycorax's Retinue
 by Laura Goode
You do damage by Kate Schapira
Yellowcake by Jared White


Holding a reading featuring:
Carolyn Guinzio
Kevin Holden
M.C. Hyland
Keith Newton
kathryn l. pringle - (our very own)
Amish Trivedi
Joseph P. Wood


An editor is not listed, though all queries can be sent to flesheatingpoems@gmail.com

They seem to do chapbook series' a lot, and also publish a journal which is currently in its 4th issue. From what they're publishing, they seem aimed at the more nontraditional stuff (aka circle poems might be right down their alley).

Monday, April 6, 2009

We need a new meeting place.

The Collective has abruptly closed today.

Where shall we meet now?

The Collective

Farewell Friends
Today at 3:02pm
Tulsa—
We must inform you that as of Monday, April 6th, The Collective is closing indefinitely. We have been struggling against the downturn in the economy for a few months now. With expenses escalating, and an extremely high rent payment, we were unable to continue serving you. After extended negotiations with our Landlord in an attempt to purchase the building, we could not come to an amenable agreement that benefited both parties. We hope you enjoyed your patronage here, and we hope that we were able to bring some comfort and happiness into your lives. We will continue to try to serve Tulsa in the capacities that we can in the future. Comments and concerns can be sent to thecollectivetulsa@gmail.c
om. As always we will try to respond promptly and honestly.
It is important to say that our closing is not due to a lack of support from this community. Word of mouth, news outlets and return customers helped us to be more successful than most businesses starting out. We thank you for your continued patronage. Everyone would like to think that they made a positive change on their environment. We would like to think that The Collective created a community atmosphere and arts-based business that hadn’t previously existed in this location. Thank you for making this possible for us, and thank you for the opportunity to serve you. We are deeply saddened by this turn of events, and if nothing else, please continue to support locally owned, Tulsa friendly businesses for they are the lifeblood of our community.

The Collective Team

While I have many sad feelings about this, a more pertinent question comes to mind: where are we going to meet for class on Wed.?

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Wheelhouse Magazine

Wheelhouse Magazine

1. http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com/ no physical address
2. David Michael Wolach
3. People in it:

Amy King
Juliet Cook
Stan Apps
Rob Halpern
Carl Novack (check his out, it's an mp3)
Tasha Marie Glen
Kate Switaj



4. What they say: "We welcome both new and established writers' submissions. However, we do favor the new writer. We especially welcome non-mainstream work, work that has of yet no agreed upon name or categorical framework. We are pluralists regarding text arts, but we are not eclectic. When we open submissions we take great pleasure in disruptive, performative, and philosophically violent poetic expectoration. Poems: if Billy Collins has been "an inspiration" to you, do not send us your poetry. Not that there is something necessarily wrong with your poetry, but there is, semi-factually, something wrong with Billy Collins. Poems that experiment with language as material, interrogate normative grammatical structures, explore ideas as cultural artifacts and not merely givens, and that may be accused of falling prey to the difficult poetry epidemic of 1912 are especially welcome. As are: translations, ekphrastic work, sound and visual work, and collaborative ventures. We really love good collaborative pieces. Please send 3-10 poems. We like to get a deeper sense of your writing than, say, the lone poem, could give us." They are pretty out there.

Other important info:

Submission is rolling. They have done a chapbook series in the past and might do it again in the future, so keep an eye out for it.

Wicked Alice

Wicked Alice

1. http://sundress.net/wickedalice/ no physical address
2. Kristy Bowen
3. People recently published by Wicked Alice:

Rachel Dacus
Jen Blair
Bethany Carlson
Elizabeth Bruno
Kelli Rush
April Dressel
Suzanne Grayzna

4. From the horse's mouth: "Wicked Alice is a women-centered poetry journal, dedicated to publishing quality work, by both sexes, depicting and exploring the female experience. New issues online are released in April, July, September, and December. The annual print edition includes selected works published during the previous year online." From the work I've seen this zine is only moderately experimental. But I felt it important to include a journal that focuses on feminism.

Other important info:

Submission period April 01, 2009 to Saturday, May 30, 2009. 2-5 poems. wickedalicepoetry@yahoo.com.

Mannequin Envy

Mannequin Envy

1. http://www.mannequinenvy.com/ no physical address
2. Has lots of editors, but the main poetry editor seems to be one Patrick Carrington
3. People recently published by Mannequin Envy:

Essa Élan Aja
Markie Babbott
Michael Caylo-Baradi
Russell Brickey
Bradley W. Buchanan
Adam Chesler
ChrissyBird
Donna L. Cowan
Suzanne R. Harvey
Peycho Kanev
Thomas Kent
Blake Lynch
Donal Mahoney
Tim Mayo
Bryan Mitschell
Micki Myers
Daniel A. Rabuzzi
J. Sullivan
Twelve O' One (1201)
Jill C. Wickham
David M. Wolach

I am not on the up-and-up with modern poets, I admit.

4. They style is somewhere between "Rolling around in wet paint while naked" modern and "feasibly intelligible in accordance to the standards of normal people" modern. The editors usually go for stuff that is emotion evoking, or at least provoking in some way. They're pretty open.

Other important info:

The submission reading period is April 15-30. Requires submissions of 2-5 poems. Allows "adult content". They publish in winter.


P.S.
I think I left the information for the other two mags on my thumbdrive somewhere. Still trying to find it.

Yeah, I know.

Etude of the Now

Here is your étude, dearest classmates.

1. Pick a random person from the class. Perhaps put the names in a hat and draw one one.
2. Now, pretend you are this person. Fix everything you know about this person firmly in your head. Set your own ego aside, and BECOME.
3. As this new person that you now ARE (who is admittedly not the person you were trying to become, but whatever) pick a subject that would be uninteresting or distasteful to you.
4. Write a poem about it using the I form.
5. Under no circumstances reveal yourself (i.e. the person the that other you chose to become)
6. Have fun.

If you break any of these rules you shall surely die a painful death.

Friday, April 3, 2009


Here is the result of last week's etude assignment.

I wanted to make the text on the slightly lowered lines run diagonally, but I couldn't find a way to do that on my laptop. Suggestions?

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Howe

So I'm hoping that I read the right book for this week.... The Nonconformist's Memorial by Susan Howe. We read the Howe sisters in the Jenkins/Goldstein iteration of this course. They're both pretty interesting, particularly as explorations of the intersection between poetry and faith. I find Susan Howe more difficult to grasp than Fanny Howe, especially in this book. On the back cover of my copy, a reviewer calls the book "verbal static", which is a fairly good description, I think, of the reading experience. Occasionally a phrase or line or set of lines speaks clearly through the accretion of verbal material. Throughout the book, she pursues the theme of writing, what it does, how it interacts with that which cannot be said/written--the "Ghostly", both in the old Puritan sense (i.e., Holy Spirit) and the spirit-walking-from-the-grave sense. So that also interacts with the theme of the body, both the human (and, for Howe, feminine) body and the body of work or the body of the book--how the body houses the "ghost", or fails to do so, and what happens when body and spirit are separated.

Journal? Review: ZSWOUND

...Okay, so I'm not completely sure how to tackle this one. Or even if it's a proper journal. But I think it is, somewhere under all the mystery, and even if it's not it's an interesting experience nonetheless. It's at www.zswound.blogspot.com. There appear to be several parts, but it's difficult to understand completely because every part of the site is part of the art. This is what I can tell you for certain:

- There is a part that takes contributors, so you can send in submissions. Where? I don't know.

- The whole site is a big experiment that I think is dedicated to mixing all types of communication as messily as possible. The goal is not sense or meaning, but maybe just the destruction of all of the boundaries we put up between different languages - say, Russian and Java.

- I can't quite tell which parts are active and which are not, but it seems like the blog I linked to is the main active portion, and other experiments that are more focused (see zswounderground.blogspot.com) are offshoots from there.

Anyway, you should go to the site and dig around a bit; there is a ton of content there, especially because it consists of several linked journals.

Journal Review: Bombay Gin

Name: Bombay Gin - www.naropa.edu/bombaygin/

Who They Are: Bombay Gin is actually a literary journal run by Naropa University, which is okay because Naropa is this crazy little liberal arts Buddhist-inspired university out in Boulder. They have a dept. called (I kid you not) The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - so they must be okay.

What They Do: They are interested in poetry of all kinds - "innovative poetry, prose, and hybrid text" - and also publish some interviews, art, whatever really. They use the phrase "counter-poetics," so take that for what you will. They have published, among others, Charles Bukowski, Charles Bernstein, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, and Lyn Hejinian. Pretty serious stuff.

Submission Logistics: I'll just copy-paste, since they're so succinct:

"Submissions to Bombay Gin are accepted between September 1 and March 1 of every year. Submissions sent at other times will be discarded.

Please submit 1–8 pages of previously unpublished poetry, prose, translation, artwork, interviews, hybrid work or otherwise. Submissions will be considered for the fall and spring issues of Bombay Gin as time and space allows.

For TRANSLATIONS, please include both the original language and English version; it is the writer’s responsibility to receive publication rights for the original piece.

ARTWORK should be submitted on a CD as a PDF or jpg, with minimum 720DPI; all artwork will be published as grayscale. Unsolicited manuscripts are read anonymously, so include your name and contact information only on the cover letter. Please include an S.A.S.E. so the board can respond to you once selections have been made.

Bombay Gin accepts electronic submissions at bgin@naropa.edu.

Submissions are also accepted at the Writing and Poetics Department in the Arapahoe House or mailed to:

Naropa University
Bombay Gin
Writing and Poetics Department
2130 Arapahoe Ave.
Boulder, CO 80302"



I think this college sounds really cool, and the journal also sounds pretty awesome. It's $8 for an old issue and $12 for a current one, so I didn't get one, but I feel safe taking this at face value because everything about the environment this journal comes from speaks to the avant-gardeness of it all.

Journal Review: Bathhouse Journal

Name: BathHouse Journal. www.bhjournal.com

Who They Are: It's a journal published by Creative Writing graduate students at Eastern Michigan University, but apparently not really connected to the uni in a formal way.

What They Do: BH makes 2-3 issues a year; each one is centred around a different topic. The latest one was about "hypermedia"; the one before focused on the Russian poetry scene. One of their main overarching goals, though, is to explore intermedia and "blur the line of traditional forms." Every issue I looked at had some submissions that were part poetry, part media of some kind (Flash movie/ in-life experiment/ etc.). I was thinking of Crystal in particular when I looked at this one, but it looks like they accept a pretty wide range of stuff.

Submission technicalities: They plainly state that they are open to all forms of "linguistic art," but ask that all submissions be limited to fewer than 3,000 words. They prefer email submissions to EIC@BHJournal.com when possible; when that is not possible, you have to include a SASE so they can return the work:

BathHouse
Eastern Michigan University
Department of English
612 Pray-Harold
Ypsilanti, MI 48197

You have to include an artist statement and a short autobiography. They read year-round but only publish a few times a year, so response times will be variable. If you get impatient, resubmit your work because apparently they are better about responding to resubmits than work that has been sitting there gathering dust for some time.

Note: They don't publish previously published work except in extreme circumstances.