Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Untitled

 by Andrew Lundwall 

(Click to isolate)






















(collage on paper)
___________________________

Andrew Lundwall lives & works in NYC.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

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 Journalwww.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.




Thursday, July 25, 2013

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 SwoopACMExquisite CorpseGargoyleArtichoke HaircutShattered 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.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

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

________________________

Nathan McKay appears in AlteredScale.com 1.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

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.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Large Chunk

by Jukka Pekka-Kervinen

__________________________

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

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Three Paintings

by Mark Opdahl

(Click to isolate and enlarge.)


Summer Red Square (watercolor, 11x7)

Chester (16x20)

acrylic paper (9x12)

__________________



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." 

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

"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.


Terrence Folz Reading From "Bunt Burke"

  Terrence Folz's chapbook  Bunt Burke will appear from The Circulatory Press in August 2021. The above film features him reading some o...