Untitled

 by Andrew Lundwall 

(Click to isolate)

(collage on paper)
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Andrew Lundwall lives & works in NYC.

DJANGO

by Jack Foley

the illiterate

(the illiterate)

professor

(professor)

speaks with his guitar

(speaks with his guitar)

he is a dark gypsy

(he is a dark gypsy)

with mustache and sly smile

(with mustache and sly smile)

he is speaking farrrrum farrrrum

(he is speaking farrrrum farrrrum)

on a subject of the most

(on a subject of the most)

immense, immediate, life-changing

(immense, immediate, life-changing)

interest

(interest)

and his chords tell us

(and his chords tell us)

what we can do

(what we can do)

what we can do

(what we can do)

Improv / improves sings the guitar

(Improv / improves sings the guitar)

to a classroom masquerading

(to a classroom masquerading)

as a night club

(as a night club)

or a concert hall

(or a concert hall)

the professor

(the professor)

rat a tats & riddles

(rat a tats & riddles)

roars & rambles

(roars & rambles)

tells us with superb intelligence

(tells us with superb intelligence)

of Charlie Parker

(of Charlie Parker)

and of wild

(and of dark)

                 gypsy

                 (gypsy)

                                    ways

                                    (ways)

      *     *     *     *

Al Young published this poem, in different formatting, on his website.

Click on "wild blue yonder" for the poem.

_________________________

Jack Foley’s radio show, Cover to Cover, is heard on Berkeley, California radio station KPFA every Wednesday at 3; his column, “Foley’s Books,” appears in the online magazine Alsop Review. He has published 11 books of poetry, 5 books of criticism, and Visions and Affiliations, a chronoencyclopedia of California poetry. In 2010 Foley was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and June 5, 2010 was proclaimed “Jack Foley Day” in Berkeley. A webfestschrift celebrating his life and work can be found in the current Tower Journal: www.towerjournal.com.

Website: www.jack-adellefoley.com/ 
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Foley_(poet)#Biography.
Jack Foley contributes regularly to this blog.

At the Intersection of a Barroom Conversation

by Richard Martin

I’m not crazy

People talk

The television is on

And everyone knows

Where you are

It’s about location

You’ve seen the maps –

Conversation among stars

This is the spot where you wave

To the Celebration Parade

Why just the other day

I met the love child of Walt Whitman

He bopped me on the head

And went to the store

For Dr. Pepper

That had to be a diversion

A way of taking a topic

And making it the main topic

What we call in the trade

A cosmic usurpation

There are moments of growth

In language

When the god of meaning

Comes home to narrative

And smiles like Santa Claus

___________________________

Richard Martin is the author of five books of poetry, including White Man Appears on Southern California Beach(Bottom Fish Press, 1991) and Under the Sky of No Complaint (Lavender Ink/Fell Swoop, 2013). His work has appeared in Fell Swoop, ACM, Exquisite Corpse, Gargoyle, Artichoke Haircut, Shattered Wig (post) and unarmed. He is also the author of boink!, an antimemoir, published by Lavender Ink (New Orleans, 2005) and four chapbooks. A past recipient of a NEA Poetry Fellowship, he founded and coordinated the Big Horror Poetry Reading Series in Binghamton, New York, from 1982-1996. He lives in Boston.

Awake

by Nathan McKay

I awoke and wandered through a house

Built atop crooked foundations, filled with rooms

Of shifting mirrors reflecting epiphanic moments

Of undiagnosed perspectives. Outside, the sky

Was fractured by fire, tremors echoed in the wake

Of twilight hours, an all encompassing rhythm of discord

That gave definition to futile gestures.

I stared out through godless windows in search of a redemptive melody

To reconcile ought and is, only to find that the spirit is empty

And the flesh is weak.

Nathan McKay

February 2013

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Nathan McKay appears in AlteredScale.com 1.

Three Poems by Vernon Frazer

Lesson Teaching Postures

conscious appliance, tutorial banner

reticent as blue dismay left unturned

a diffident shrugs a protest of measure

*

sibilant outcry hissing the mark at left

political sunscreen, melanoma dismissed

as retribution fee for deeds left unscaled

the measure a corollary token of protest

*

its manner hefts an unstated disarray 

into limbo pits gnarling treasured rugs

that lay paling while their dye drained

into the gnashing alarm pit clusters

*

through a beauty better left unseen

the carafe pours ambivalent carnage

the mustered fit’s true disdain its craft

Leverage Left Behind

rotisserie divisors

a nightmare’s insouciance

apparel maneuvers

delayed

quadrant pressure

replayed

devising a fulcrum passage

*

leverage disdains advice

when fragments measure

the weight of the cornered 

pellagra dynamo

turned epiglottal remnant

in chaste pursuit

*

a parallel conundrum nexus 

ramps past a breathing exit

Delayed Landing

scoring a transfusion 

adage brackets liminal badger 

retention before vestige passes 

rocket their gloried centrifuge 

backing enables chancing 

where collateral castors renewed 

bracket hunters against versions 

aching tinted refrains 

a windowed agate view below 

its aching mileage demands

encyclopedic transfusion mixture

fueling exhaust to the last fume

until surface room slowly urges

gloomy servants upward 

to stitch harness emulators a racquet 

dance interval pageants 

turned angular

as the padding lecture 

that braced pseudonym prefects 

for larceny thatches 

stormed umbrella rain parcels 

left there to digit 

or defy odd betting 

when razors turn nasty tables 

into lapel fiber formally tired

indigo merchants to the contrary

malediction a forethought 

entry to mop steamed futon leakage

assembly parts careering 

wider than a stolen luxury on vacation

all filler removed from the apron

doubting the consequence of truth

as matter transforms its energy

to patrons bearing stamped rubbers

approval sealed against outcome

patchouli shores inflect their diction

where outlets stumble 

their couriers left magi 

to fill the mountain tadpole 

libertine footage inquest phenomena 

purged the guessing narrative 

impediment screens that charge 

impact cross-gifted

as revelatory addenda sputum

protocol left unvarnished 

teal immigrants who lubricate 

large intervals warm stations roam

through lethargic mandibles 

torn to frenzy polish a glad-hand 

routing the distention current south

no admixture left as appointed 

or fixed against the diction lid

a splenetic half-time differential

waving the mast bandit’s disguise

against a clipper wind offshore

in search of reelection boners

clinging free to covert beach flares

flashing red against the night

their mirrors held in low stead

on bombast circuits 

aching maple badinage 

when diffusion bracelets turn 

vapor appellants to nostril flattery 

in vortical descent glands

refusing patronage ousters loosely

before the form delays infusion

costly elements raking in 

rebound cash throttles 

motorcade swagger

leather struts 

impending gloom

or untied rumors 

to lash the ripple

inflections darken the passage

to empty tamale gestures 

tempting a tedious outcry 

piñata to lessen puncture wounds 

left for dread

against the guarded cornucopia 

reminiscent table music buried

and calypso quarantined 

adages disjointed vantage evaporated

a thatch of gadget facilitators 

mentoring the distention clauses 

that sweltering ventricles align

after radish polarities 

that felt the root of betrayal 

rotting soil when replacement fertilizer 

stocks rebound analogues 

of soot betrayal

the fledglings cling the most 

to the fringe 

of an empty pledge

no matter bituminous ornament

cling fibers again wedged there 

for the aching thread 

turned bare as a mackerel platter 

tape offsets the disguise 

of a plain sight’s hide

ridden ambiguous circle clatters

beyond the charted plains 

drift pontificating larger hand manuals

during confessional screening

rooms for rent 

at an hourly rate

that rested labels find applicable

to plasma threaders 

on cell break 

lingering where legends impinge

categorical declaratives 

on repose or ventilate 

their silent subterfuge

to mixed castes in mid-production

the flight delayed 

its captive urge

pontoons held its landing at bay

________________________

Vernon Frazer is a regular contributor to this blog and has appeared in all AlteredScale.com issues thus far, and will appear in AS 4, out in September.

Large Chunk

by Jukka Pekka-Kervinen

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Jukka-Pekka Kervinen will edit a gallery of music for the next AlteredScale, and a special section will be devoted to his own work. He has appeared in AlteredScale.com 2 and 3.

He is a Finnish composer, writer and visual artist. He studied musicology and composition in University of Helsinki in 1981-88 and has worked since then as a teacher, freelance composer, writer, visual artist and publisher. He has worked with algorithmic composition and experimental music, verbal and graphic scores and computer-processed sound synthesis as well textual and visual works, publishing more than 30 books of experimental and visual poetry, also in several magazines and anthologies, and exhibited his visual art and poetry in several countries.

Kervinen’s Webpage

Three Paintings

by Mark Opdahl

(Click to isolate and enlarge.)

Summer Red Square (watercolor, 11x7)

Chester (16x20)

acrylic paper (9x12)

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Mark's bio: "I have been painting since grade school in Minneapolis MN. Even though my journey through life has taken me to many places and down a number of paths, painting has been my one continuing preoccupation. I currently work out of my studio located south of Duluth MN.

I graduated from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, then won the Max Beckmann scholarship in painting at the Brooklyn Museum of Art." 

"Under the Sky of No Complaint" (Lavender Ink/Fell Swoop) by Richard Martin

by Jefferson Hansen

This sophisticated poetry book consists of five sections, four of which originally appeared as stand-alone chapbooks. Each uses specific formal devices—from sonnets to free verse to meter—while Martin’s thematic obsessions appear throughout—language, love, humor. Martin also makes liberal use of collage and parataxis, which puts him squarely in the Pound-Williams tradition, in spite of his occasional use of tradition.

In the first section, “Sideways,” Martin uses, for the most part, vaguely iambic lines and punctuation as he flits and digitizes from one thematic perch to another. And this linking of the organic—“perches”—with the technological—“digital”—is apt since Martin makes our greatest technology, language, into a langorous, comedic organism.

            Language moves to stillness.

            We have the details: old pond

            In the ancestor’s neighborhood.

            Your fear of barns and tall grass. (20)

These lines illustrate this section best. You can feel the vague iambic rhythm. He uses a lot of end-stop. Language as an entity quickly gives way to empirical particulars. Unlike high LANGUAGE poetry, where language is opened to reveal its complicity in social structure, Martin places language squarely in our thoughts, affections, and evolving desires.

In the second section, “Sound Nets,” Martin turns to 14-line sonnets. In his hands, the traditional form becomes funny, talky, and lacks punctuation:

            Boat of blond strangers has too many opinions

            Time to float     Current of thought

            less than Nile but not my exotic mother (62)

The third line quoted above provides a typical example of Martin’s humor. He yokes together disparateness in a manner that shocks, amuses, and throws us into reflection. “Current” clearly relates to “Nile,” but how does it relate to “thought”? How is such “current” related to the “mother,” and why is she, apparently, more “exotic” than the Nile? These questions provide the openings, the breathing, the possibilities of this poetry—not any answers.

Thank goodness.

In the section “Under the Sky of No Complaint” Martin uses few formal devices nor even hints at meter. But the title poem of the section, in two-line stanzas, hilariously riffs on the tensions between our “cell phone” world and Romanticism, the pull of the old and “The School of Advanced Poetics,” and the academicized AP writing course. The poem seems frustrated with the boxes into which writing and thinking is put, the fetishizing of the new, the needless denigration of what might still be useful or fun from the past.

“Strip Meditation” consists of a series of numbered poems, most in regular stanzas:

            In time we will

            Overcome everything

            If we are the immense universe

            & not some egomaniacal

            Splinter of light in the mind (119)

Martin is way too sophisticated to be uttering the cliché in the first two lines. I did a double-take: until I hit the ironizing of the next two lines. I laughed out loud. These switchbacks and double-takes are typical of this book.

The final section, “Skylark,” ends with the title poem. And it is magnificent. Divided into three numbered sections, it is further digitized by leaping from each stanza to the next in terms of image/thought/thematic nexus. We reflect not so much on the relationship of one line to another, as we do in much of the rest of the book, but on the relation of one stanza, as unit, to the next:

            Under the constellations of heaven

            There are plenty of options

            Instead of forests we could have

            More superhighways (for instance)

            Witness the cellar of oranges

            Climb lemon steps at the sun’s request

            Squeeze the light in you

            Into shapes of day (148)

The first stanza’s nexus—space, options, landscape—gives way to a whole different one—surrealism, fruit, instructions in the form of verbs. Here the openness, the breath, the possibility comes in the intertwinings and the gaps between stanzas.

This is a big-hearted book by a complex and assured poet. I have never before encountered someone who, while remaining committed to various formal investigations, combines a reflection on the nature of poetry and language to the use of digitized techniques to a variety of ends.

___________________________

Richard Martin is a regular contributor to this blog.

For years, he ran The Big Horror Reading Series in Binghamton, NY. He is the author of Dreams of Long Headresses: Poems from a Thousand Hospitals, White Man Appears on Southern California Beach, Modulations, and Marks.