On Charlie Brown & Altered Scale 2: a Preview

This is the introduction to AlteredScale.com 2, which will be up on September 21.

there are no gods

by Jefferson Hansen

                        for Billy & the crew at MW,

                        bartenders who know how it's

                        done

when the water goes brackish

and flows only against you

when salt shows up in all

the wrong places, drying,

come to me

when the leaves go back to branches

and curl back into buds then

into grey barren arms that

have forgotten everything

come to her

when grass goes brown and curls

back into the ground to spite

our thirst for green and the sand

blows everywhere and about

come to him

when the car goes orange and flakes

with rust when it needs yet another

quart when you can’t get the mileage

you need just to make it to work

come to them

when the bartender’s eyes crust

with boredom and refuse to even feint

at the therapist role and the clerk

lectures you on buying cigarettes

come to them

when the half and half has gone sour

and all the dishes have nothing but

crust in the bottom and the washer

and dryer decided not to work

come to him

when the wind whistles about your

ears as dead as granite but more threatening

simply for moving like an eye’s

sharpness from another

come to her

when the ground becomes only

crevice and you feel out every step

like descending stairs in darkness

only, with earth, the dirt crumbles

come to me

all we have is each other.

Poem by Anne Gorrick

An amnesia prayer

(after “Folio #1” as suggested by Google)

A rarely executed move in chess, a rarely seen animal

The side of a Rauschenberg shift

Assemble language

Florescent flutter, flash idiom, fractional pollen

Flippant, flirt, eyelash slang, A flat minor, a flood of paper, campfires

Cameralism, without a name, without limits or rage or pain

Or training wheels or supervision

Witchhazel profiles temptations, provocations

Papillon, Narcolepsy Magazine, readymade breakup, an old lady cadence

An event of geographical ethics in spaces of affect

Event opal, postcolonial shame, grammatology

International intervals, nouns never sleep and are not compounded

Pre-owned wedding dresses, preoccipital notch, styles of preoccupied attachment

Thoughts of the self and food in 1985

Approval matrix, are art and joke synonyms?

Scary maze game, Vinyl King, search the sheets for static

Strobist, words containing the letters z,q,x,j,v

Words caught by the sun, in nets of golden wires

Scheduled rumors dance in stadiums

Less line numbering, scars and chords

Serpents in my hands, worse than Serbian film

Traffic light, mixed drinks and mixed greens

Mix and burn swimwear, mix a little Goose in this juice

Your serious plans, your prudence, your moisturizer and champagne and tigers

A little cake, dragons and lithium, comets over Corn Island

Seemingly unrelated aggression, lyric sleep defines the carpet

Endless, unsolvable meaning, acts of culture

Alligator facts and allergic reactions, trees are a logic problem

Manswers, death etiquette, party favors, party dresses at the Parthenon

Competencies, periphery, decorations disappear in the solidworks

Inflammatory diary, in Latin American emphasis, in latex

Enlarged nuchal translucency

Non-shedding dogs converting large numbers to scientific notation

Numerology and nudie jeans

Prank call this phone number

I love you, I miss you, I speak a little French, I Google you

I made a game with zombies in it and then manifested my soulmate

Manipulation under anesthesia, histrionic and hidden fields

She novelized her static and sent a postcard to Henry Purcell

A secret virus, a demure maiden, a worn path in the clouds

An amnesia prayer, a snowman’s bones

Etaqua in Bubbleland, shaky shaky, improvident

Handwriting, hatching leopard gecko eggs, red jumpsuit apparatus

Socket, cough, white wine

Comparison charts, her breathing was coherent

Use the word “coherent” in a sentence

When “chaotic” means “dictionary”

We’re controlling metamaterials here

Non-coherent fault trees

Even her footwear was famous

Heretics and heartbreak in the hereafter

He is less educated than her, less attentive

Is lizard lick towing real?

Is less accessible that field, than property

Sleep smoking, the sodium in sea salt, less studied languages and diseases

She studied the behavior of infinite sequences

Nonobservance of his Agrippa

For a heist in France, studied facial expressions, the forensics of fried chicken

Fluid mechanics, fluctuating asymmetry, joke, fever, workweek

A Venetian bestiary and its plaster of sincere interest

Trace, touch, crouch, pause, engage

When the critic cries, “Dollhouse!”

Cross-eyed palmistry, patterns, palm trees

The paper eyelashes on her astrodentist

Astronauts are particles as smooth as hoarfrost, teacups

As temperature increases pressure, the solubility of gases and solids,

volume and resistance

She wanders alone through photography

His eyes are like sparrows, like Japan, or fidelity

The earth’s summary, all red in explanation

Waves of ammonia among her cloudy trophies, her mattresses

She is a two-premise deductive argument, an illusionist

Her house is an illustration, her ferns fear god

Wrong conclusions autotune her head through a windshield

Dog years, cat years, gerbils years, geology

In general, what is meant by the texture of a rock or the cause of a sea breeze?

In gestures, their origins and distribution, their dynamic language dimension

What is the gesture and participation in the activity of searching for a word?

Skin overnight in antonym

Nothing of value was lost, but you know the end of this story

New moon blossoms and ruins, priceless, pernicious

She is patient, she is parachute, she is papering the windowpanes

She is part of the music continuum

Part of the hemoglobin that binds oxygen

Hibiscus and hipbone, part of his parole conditions

His bones are made of coral, glory poured out like a pasture

Is percocet on the periodic table?

Themeforest, corrupt water, atelier

A transient madness toward advanced mathematics

A transfer in heat between particles of a substance

_____________________________

Poems by Anne Gorrick will appear in Altered Scale 2.

She describes herself this way: "My work inhabits a space embodying both place and machine, and is informed by living near New York's Hudson River my whole life.  I also am captivated by all kinds of mechanical gardens - trains and their tracks, cars, tools, senseless metals.  I am currently working on a series of poems that are experiments with translation engines, creating sense into nonsense back into sense again.   I am hostage to the accident, the fragment, the unexpected.  The experience of putting language through a mechanical process makes words more into things and then somehow more malleable, more surprising."

Interview with Bruce Holsapple

Poet Bruce Holsapple's latest book, Vanishing Act, (available from Small Press Distribution and  La Alameda Press) contains the wit, irony, and attention to detail we have come to expect from him. The first half of the interview involves general questions about the book. It ends with a short discussion of Bruce's recording company, Vox Audio ( PO Box 594 Magdalena NM 87825), which puts out cd recordings of poets reading their work.

The second half of the interview focuses on a specific poem, namely, the first one in Vanishing Act, "title?." I will let Bruce introduce himself his own way, but I should say that he and I knew each other when we were both students at SUNY-Buffalo in the late 80's and early 90's.

Could you give us a few biographical markers that will help us better understand you as a writer?

I grew up in rural Maine in the 1950s, edited a small press in Portland, Maine in the 70s, then wandered off (Washington, Vermont, Texas, New York), working a proverbial variety of jobs, before finding my way into central New Mexico, where I now work as a Speech-Language Pathologist.  As you know (because we met there), I earned a Ph.D. in English at SUNY Buffalo in 1991, studying with Robert Creeley, Joseph Conte and Charles Bernstein.  I taught briefly at New Mexico Tech and UTPB in Odessa, Texas.  I’ve got six books of poetry in print, Air-Rose (1973), Total Eclipse (1977), Sweet Nothings (1984), Tourist (1994), Observations (1994), and now Vanishing Act, plus a couple new books in manuscript.  An essay on Philip Whalen recently appeared in Paideuma, and one on the verse line in William Carlos Williams appeared last fall in a special edition of English Studies in Canada.  I’m working on a book on Williams.

The title, "Vanishing Act," I find myself quite drawn to. Why did you choose it?

Well, because it works several ways, like in the ironic sense of all of us vanishing, being erased at various speeds—not an act at all, really—& there’s a lot of recognizing that limitation in the book, but also as a kind of self-parody, with the speaker as some dopey magician doing vanishing acts, presto!  Or my vanishing into New Mexico; I live out in the country, no phone service, etc.  But more importantly the sense of becoming “indivisible,” seeing thru yourself, becoming “the view looking.”   I mean, there’s a great concern with subjectivity, lyric voice.

Most of the poems are in the first person singular. It seems to be a version of your self, or your self in the making, that you refer to. Am I correct? When you use the 2nd person "you," you seem to be addressing yourself. Could you tell us what lies behind your choices concerning voice?

The poems are basically lyric, & concerned with voice, but as I say, the lyric subject is more or less under watch, tho who is watching is up for grabs.  As you say, whatever we are, we’re in the process of remaking ourselves, & the poems involve self-transformation.  The pronouns do drift off-base, shift in reference, as perspectives shift.  I think of self as dialogic, emerging from an outside conversation we learn to engage, “oneself as other,” as Ricoeur puts it (& of course Rimbaud before him).  

Vox Audio — You seem to be making an effort to get on record NM poets who might otherwise be lost. Is this accurate? I am wondering what you think of the notion of the "minor" poet as a positive marker. What can a minor poet accomplish that the major ones, in the Norton anthologies, cannot?

Vox has two missions.  One is to preserve poets reading who wouldn’t otherwise get recorded, like Gene Frumkin or Jim Bishop, and two, to build community.  The physical facts of voice are instrumental to how the poems mean, so important to the poetry community.  I don’t think of major and minor, but I do think in terms of cultural change, poetry’s work, and of the people I actually know— who’s in front of me; that’s what’s local,.  But the Vox project extends from Maine (Wright, Wilde, Sharkey), thru Buffalo (Sylvester, Clarke), Toronto (Boughn), Indiana (Kalamaras), Texas (Huffstickler, Bird, Welsh), into New Mexico (Higgins, Tarn, Rodney, Moore, Goodell, Tritica, etc.), where I live.  

                        Title?

You clutch too much, friend

try too hard, like there were a pose

you could freeze into place

& it would be there for you

a point of reference,

Me & What I Believe

you feel like falling in love

you feel like mourning the loss

all this melting snow

endless rehearsals

a slippery dance floor

You try figure, arrange, classify

like you could capture events

make the connections

a 3 ring circus & you the master of ceremonies

you pull out the plastic

“Customer Service.  This is Angie

Can I help you?”

My favorite color is beige

My favorite turtle is soup

She talks math, loves algebraic expressions

Substitute zero for x & solve for y

It’s the economy, stupid

your credit is stretched

What pain that attachment brings!

another force inside

speaking thru you  

using your voice            

locked  sick  feet  speed

pray  read  frog  stop

you want to go away & not care

It’s the passion I feel

what she engenders

causes me such loss

What I feel for you

What you produce

a boost into the air

no forwarding address

bee  gift  crowd  stew 

owl  boy  involve

skid  flip  call  crash

Won’t somebody make contact?

the ice is closing in

I’ve broken to new depths!

short green leaf

short eye grass

shot glass

fall short

near high

go between

impossible gap

It’s hopeless

nobody likes you

you need to cut your throat

snow  fire  spoken  star

mobile  tire  goal 

Dear X:  You’ll know I’m invested

by how rigid I get.  If we met

I’d pose, tell a joke, etc. 

I’m not so much making claims

as paying off deficits

I want to see those connections

how the tree lights up

a locus of identity

something reflected back

not exactly “I want”

but “therefore”

this forgetting dust

this insistent sand

this abandon

these babies born every day

in every city

proliferating what?

Mothers

death

dharma

diapers

new shoes

that’s exactly what I want:

to keep walking

1. In this poem the "pronouns," as you call them, switch around a bit. You go from addressing a "you" to a first person stance.

Okay, can I give some of the background?  We regulate behavior by self-talk, private speech, as with commands like “be brave” or say with scolding our “self,” and there’s extensive use of self-talk in the book.  But speech is communal.  There’s not much distance from the imperative “be brave” to second person “you,” hence addressing oneself as other.  In this instance, there’s an emotional shift, right?  A sense of exasperation.

2.  In several places you simply list words: "locked   sick   feet   speed / pray   read   frog   stop," and later "Mothers / death / dharma / diapers / new shoes." This seems to me a quite original technique, and it appears throughout the book. What is it's function?

Well, there are models in Whalen and Duncan, but hey, wait a minute—you use word lists too!  Is this a trick question?  Yes, I use word lists in fairly systematic ways, mostly as a structural device  to keep the notes bouncing, up in the air.  Sometimes it’s a flat surface, sometimes like scratchy noise, sometimes for transitions, sometimes just elliptical speech.

3.  The first stanza seems to be held together, in a tightly wound manner, by rhyme, off-rhyme, and assonance.

Hopefully the sound values ring thru-out, and the rhythm, and voice.  Word lists are often knitted into the text by sound contrasts.  Sound values are key.

4. I love the sly humor: "My favorite turtle is soup," for example.

Thanks, I’m told the humor is pretty dry!  The book is about conflict, impasse, developing flexibility, transformation.  Self-deprecation—or getting distance from oneself (learned from Whalen)— was an important way to unlock from cherished thoughts.

5. The poem seems to shift focus each stanza, although remain united under a certain set of concerns: effort, attachment, loss, passing thoughts. Do you see it this way?

Yes, a trajectory gets established & you’re off to the races, one word to the next, as far as “it” takes you.  Go with the Force, Luke!  Lots of jumping about, drifting off topic, shifting perspective, feints, various forms of address, rhetorical ploys, who knows where you’ll land. Hopefully on your “feet.” That’s exactly right.

6. Anything you would like to add?

It’s physically a beautiful book, thanks to Estelle Roberge’s cover painting, and Jeff Bryan’s design.   We kept the price low so people would take a chance.

_______________________

You can view Bruce's work in AlteredScale 1. He will also appear in AlteredScale 2.

Bruce Holsapple works as a Speech-Language Pathologist in Magdalena, NM. He’s published six books of poetry to date. His most recent book is Vanishing Act (La Alameda 2010). His poems have appeared in House Organ, Blue Mesa, First Intensity, and Sin Fronteras. An essay on the verse line in William Carlos Williams’ poetry recently appeared in English Studies in Canada. He has also recorded poetry under the aegis of Vox Audio for the last eight years, producing CDs by Margaret Randall, Howard McCord, Nathaniel Tarn, Janet Rodney, Joseph Somoza, Alvaro Cardona-Hine, Todd Moore, Gene Frumkin, and Mary Rising Higgins, among others.

This interview originally appeared at my former blog, experimentalfictionpoetry.blogspot.com

Poem by Larry Gilmore

01 11 10

possible path walking down and up

I copied it from a signpost

placed there by a lost traveler

scratching his head in the dark

I’ve never studied form

which is why this has so much

the moss upon the rock

it’s the best I can do under the circumstances

clichés, all of it stolen, ripped off

it’s all and only what I’ve heard

or read rattling about my cranium

like dice thrown upon the page

we walk along the river

my head cocked to the right

I breach the phenomena storm

on the far side of life

I walked so far I thought I’d die

but on life went

dragging me on to the next time

the kid stood outside throwing rocks at the inside

they just wouldn’t quite penetrate

things go bump in the night, stark, raving, naked

he defecated on a plate before a crowd

the crowd urged him on and on…

tonight I felt enchanted

Jazz radio scoring the mood

wine wine wine wine wine

the debauch must go on

the  Dionysian Bachanal

what a comfort

_____________________

Poems by Larry Gilmore will appear in AlteredScale.com 2. He lives in San Francisco.

Poem by Marc Vincenz

Static

In that year

that was not a year

when the days

were not like days

& the sky was bird-

less, we listened

for the sound of bees,

& hearing nothing

but the wind boxing the panes

we began to hum & buzz & drone

becoming the grey matter

before words.



_____________________________

Marc Vincenz will appear in AlteredScale.com 2.

Marc Vincenz currently lives in Iceland. His poems and translations have appeared in many journals, including Washington Square, The Bitter Oleander, Exquisite Corpse and Guernica. Recent publications include: The Propaganda Factory, or Speaking of Trees (Argotist, 2011) and Pull of the Gravitons (Right Hand Pointing, 2012). A new English-German bi-lingual collection, Additional Breathing Exercises, is forthcoming from Wolfbach Verlag, Zurich, Switzerland (2013).  Marc is Editor-in-Chief of Mad Hatters' Review and MadHat Press.

Film by Nico Vassilakis

_________________________


Nico Vassilakis will appear in AlteredScale.com 2.
Nico Vassilakis works with both textual and visual alphabet. Recent books include  Staring @ Poetics (Xexoxial Editions, 2011),West of Dodge (redfoxpress, 2010), Protracted Type (Blue Lion Books, 2009), staReduction (Book Thug, 2008), and Text Loses Time (Many Penny Press, 2007). His Vispo videos have been shown at festivals and exhibits of innovative language art. He was a founding member of the Subtext Collective. Nico, along with Crag Hill, edited THE LAST VISPO: A Visual Poetry Anthology 1998 - 2008 forthcoming from Fantagraphics Books (Fall 2012). Samples of Nico's work can seen at http://staringpoetics.weebly.com.

Short Fiction by Laura McCullough

Like Living

He owned a motorcycle and had a black belt in karate. He was blond and Italian. Taking classes. Wanted to be a detective.  Brought in the cycle for show and tell; it went with an essay he read to class. Then that news about him stepping in front of the train out of Atlantic City. The line to Philly stops in Absecon; stops in Egg Harbor. That’s where he did it, just near the crossing, just beyond Hoene’s Café where you can get eggs anytime of day, and pork roll and real locally made scrapple which is a mush of meat scraps—pork, beef, even deer around here—formed into a loaf and sliced and then fried, damn it’s good especially when it’s crusty and I don’t mind telling you I like it with ketchup. And a little bit of maple syrup spilling off a pancake to sweeten it, too, is nice, and though I haven’t had any in years, it makes me think of the south Jersey Pine Barrens, and of usefulness, a gastronomic pragmatism, using all the parts just like in a good hot dog, what the hell, and I don’t know why my student stepped in front of that train, except we love to ask why, to try and understand, but I wonder about his buddies, the other cops, his family, the Emergency folk called to the scene, the volunteers looking for parts, how they live with it, how the sound of the train makes them feel, how living in Jersey is like living anywhere, some train always coming, some tracks always ending nowhere.

Hold On, Please

When I woke that morning and went out to my little blue car with the paint peeling off the right side and opened the door to get in and found the note from my boyfriend telling me why he was leaving me this note in the middle of the night instead of knocking on the door and waking me up to talk or fuck or get some water or maybe a beer, that he was going to shoot himself because he couldn’t stand it anymore, I stood there reading his loopy handwriting like it was some kind of crazy love letter or a poem or a joke or a grocery store receipt or a brown leaf blown off the yard and into my car, but how could it get through the window, what is this? Is it for me? Shit, I better call him, and he didn’t answer, so I called his best friend, who said, yeah, J shot himself in the mouth with a rifle on the north end of Brigantine beach, and I said that’s a cruel joke, why would you make a joke like that, and the friend was dead calm, and said it again, and I said what I said again, only this time edging toward screaming, and you’re a jerk to say this thing, and why are you saying this, and he said call the Brigantine police, and so I hung up and called, and they said, hold on, please, and that silence was a space I know as a wound, as a pocket without a bottom, all the loose change of my life slipping out into the dirt.

________________________________

McCullough's work will appear in AlteredScale.com 2. 

Laura McCullough's next book of poems, Rigger Death & Hoist Another, is forthcoming in 013. Her most recent books are Panic, (Alice James Books), and Speech Acts (Black Lawrence Press).  She edits Mead: the Magazine of Literature and Libations at www.meadmagazine.org  Visit her website:  www.lauramccullough.weebly.com

Buck Downs—Three Untitled Poems

I guess I must

suppose I put

myself in place

of the screaming

girl cicle singing out

call the doctor

or dig me out,

out of this forehead

out of this mess at

at least two removes

there are too many

answers to how long

are you gonna be

anyway ? living

in the used record-

and-tapes as if another

heavens to betsy

is waiting to come out.

money and its inversions

men die for the lack of

no, they do not die for

anything at all, trust me.

now I am getting smashed

up front w/it in the crowd

where there is no quick

end to the surge of the flow

going home sick to wish

for a clock that wont tell

them when to go home.

going off on five kinds

of search for the active

ingredient. I have lost

my direction & everyone

knows it. when a lovely

flame dies, they say smoke

gets all in your clothes,

hair, and I cut my hair

but I couldn't cut my clothes.

_______________________________

Buck Downs is an independent writer and self-publishing consultant who lives in Washington, D.C. His latest book of poems is YOU CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF WHAT YOU REALLY DON'T NEED, available at www.buckdowns.com.

Shut Up, Bird

by Jefferson Hansen

Shut up, bird,
your chirping bores
into me like
water torture
I guess.
Why not find
a human tune
go Waylon
Jennings
on us talk
about being
"lonesome ornery
& mean"? That
we can relate
to
As is
you speak only
to your own
species
bugging me
& at least
some of
them.

Pedagogy by Chandler Lewis

__________________________________________________________________________

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Chandler Lewis will appear in AlteredScale.com 2.

Poet and public school teacher Chandler Lewis lives in Nyack, New York.  His most recent chapbook, Illuminated Aluminum, won the Spire Prize in 2009.  His work has appeared in onedit, Zafusy, Shampoo, Prick of the Spindle, Radioactive Moat, whyarewenotinparadise?, Tool a Magazine, and Dances to Death.

New Visual Representation for AlteredScale.com

AlteredScale.com, the Internet multimedia journal with which this blog is associated, has a new visual representation—"Lima Lando," abstract photo by Andrea Canter (©2012 Andrea Canter, used by permission). Thank you, Andrea. You can see more of her work in AlteredScale.com 1, and she will also appear in AlteredScale.com 2. Also check out jazzink.com, her website, and her blog.

2 Poems by Chandler Lewis

_________________________________

Click on text to enlarge.

Chandler Lewis will appear in AlteredScale.com 2. 

Poet and public school teacher Chandler Lewis lives in Nyack, New York.  His most recent chapbook, Illuminated Aluminum, won the Spire Prize in 2009.  His work has appeared in onedit, Zafusy, Shampoo, Prick of the Spindle, Radioactive Moat, whyarewenotinparadise?, Tool a Magazine, and Dances to Death.

Poem by Mary Kasimor

de kooning’s sun

This FLOATing braiN holds Globes served INFORMALLY

As BREAST of blue GOOD bye Emerald RAiN and obsessed Spacy

Angel GirLS &HERA’s moon G(R)azing LIBERated Cunt MULTI-

colored fruitS OH wholly Mary to UNKNOWN time to  time as

Nothing MORE than SPACE  &minimalist inertia STRETCHed

mountains over the LAND I have tried everything ONCE &

Down the ROAD  from space to SPACE I returned to mother

Sonand holy ghost to de kooning &space walking forever I

cannot get LOST I CANNOT get lost &THEN there is venuS

_________________________

Mary Kasimor's poetry will appear in AlteredScale.com 2. She has been published in many online and print journals including Moria, Yew Journal, Mad Hatter's Review, Reconfigurations, eccolinguistics, Cannot Exist, Big Bridge, BlazeVox, and Otoliths, among others. In 2011 she received a fellowship from the US Poets in Mexico. She has two books out: silk string arias (BlazeVox Books) and & cruel red (Otolith Books).