AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading: Featured Artist Jonathan Brannen

The AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading took place at Boneshaker Books in Minneapolis on July 21. The first two videos display Jonathan reading his poetry, and the third shows him singing an original Americana song. In the next week, videos by the other participants will appear.


 







"Like Birds Embrace the Sky" (words, music and performance by Jonathan Brannen)

[Sorry about the camera angle. I forgot to adjust when he sat down. But you can still hear it. --Jeff]

AlteredScale.com Issue 4: Out and the Launch Reading is LIVE

AlteredScale.com Issue 4 Launch Reading

****At 5 pm Central Time today (July 20), AlteredScale.com Issue 4 is out and live on the Internet****

To celebrate, we will have a launch reading:

Sat., Sept. 21 at 7 pm

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S  Minneapolis, MN 55404
(Corner of Franklin and 23rd Avenue)

(612) 871-7110

Featuring: Jonathan Brannen

Jonathan Brannen is the author of twelve volumes of poetry and five books of visual literature, including two books by TheAlteredScalePress—Sway and turning point. Recent collections include this is visual poetry (this is visual poetry chapbooks, Kingston PA, 2010), a sequence of full color word art; Mona Lisa (Avantacular Press, 2010), a sequence of visual poems he created combining computer constructed images and photocopying between 1975 and 1982; and Deaccessioned Landscapes, a collection of technically innovative sonnets (Chax Press, Tucson, AZ, 2005). His poetry and fiction have been anthologized in five countries on three continents and translated into two languages. He grew up in Florida and currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Also appearing:
Leigh Herrick
Tom Cassidy
Elisabeth Workman
George J. Farrah
Terrence Folz
Ann Bogle
Lenora Drowns
Ann Tweedy
Gretchen Marquette
& maybe more

Jonathan Brannen at Uptown Writers Group June 15, 2013

__________________

Jonathan Brannen appears in all AlteredScale.com issues, and will be the featured artist in AlteredScale.com 4, out in the fall. He has two books out from TheAlteredScalePress, and has published widely. His work has been translated into three languages.

AlteredScale.com Issue 3 Re-launch Launch: Jonathan Brannen

The raucous AlteredScale.com issue 3 Launch Reading, which began by quoting punk band The Magnolias—"complicated fun"—and ended with a fist-pumping yell, "Let's party," was not video recorded because of technical difficulties. Five of us who participated in the reading came over to christen my new apartment with a....party....and a reading. I made pesto, cole slaw salad, chicken, and guacamole. The Brannens brought fine cookies. Dan and Mary brought bread, cheese, and beer. I was even in dress pants. We were mighty bourgeois. A good time was had by all.

Jonathan Brannen will be the Featured Artist in AlteredScale.com 4. His poetry has been translated into three languages. He is also a visual poet, in addition to being an Americana and electronica musician. Two of his books are available at TheAlteredScalePress.com.

{This is the first in a five-part series. All five of us are part of the Uptown Writers Group, which includes visual artists and musicians, in addition to writers. If you live in the Twin Cities area and would like to get involved, contact me at jh4090 (at) gmail.com.)

Before the First Snow Flies

____________________________

Jonathan Brannen contributes often to this blog, and he has been in AlteredScale.com 1 and 2, and will also appear in AlteredScale.com 3, out later this month. This selection is taken from his album, "time stained streets." (Contact blog editor if you would like a copy.)

He is the author of twelve volumes of poetry and five books of visual literature, including Deaccessioned Landscapes, a collection of technically innovative sonnets (Chax Press 2005). His poetry and fiction have been anthologized in five countries on three continents and translated into two languages. He grew up in Florida and currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jonathan Brannen Reading from "Sway" and "Turning Point"

Jonathan Brannen reads from two new chapbooks at The Triple Chapbook Launch on February 1.

Purchase Sway and Turning Point at TheAlteredScalePress website.

 

__________________

 Jonathan Brannen appears in AlteredScale.com 1 and AlteredScale.com 2. He will also appear in AlteredScale.com 3, out next month, and will be the Featured Artist in AS 4.

Poems by Brannen, Kasimor, Folz in Honor of Chapbook Launch Feb. 1

TheAlteredScalePress Triple Chapbook Launch

Fri., Feb. 1

The Bookhouse in Dinkytown

429 14th St. SE, Minneapolis, MN.

USA

Jonathan Brannen-(2 titles) 

                              —SWAY

                             —TURNING POINT
Mary Kasimor—DUPLEX
Terrence Folz—DEAD PARROTS

Jonathan Brannen has published about two dozen books and chapbooks of poetry, prose, and visual poetry over a long career. He is best known for deaccessioned landscapes (Chax). He is also a perceptive country music songwriter, with an excellent cd "time stained streets."

Mary Kasimor has published three full-length poetry collections, including & cruel red (Otoliths). This is her second chapbook, the first being the electronic cruel red (ensemble jourine).

Terry Folz is seeing himself in book form for the first time. He has supported and participated in the Twin Cities' open mic scene for years. 

Purchase books here: TheAlteredScalePress

______________________

House Warming

by Jonathan Brannen

         They had faded into the traces of a modest life but today the police are at the door and no one is smiling. There is a certain strength here, there is the clatter of wooden hearts, there is no convincing form of advertisement. An overt sky descends upon the window as if what's ordinary always makes the impression of ordinariness. There's a resemblance between light and years to someone who's only passing through. In the background, leaning against the blind wall, sleeping guitars and somnambulant musicians are performing some function, perhaps a memory which can't be shaken. What's natural to say in other surroundings, may be unnatural  if said in isolation. And even if this is only conditional, it does say something about the past.

in egg land

                 by Mary Kasimor

fish rust belches out the pacific wearing

a sole of foot  that grew from

bed monsters’ weird

scarce rotating water a soul scape

washes & nibbles & sorry never

not from the view

from thinking large is larger & life

is a hole in the fence

a view & a hole in

the heart between fingers a marble rolled

down a sidewalk be fearless & wary

of chalked philosophies

plato’s tongue unwinds

he spat into the wind

it didn’t talk back 

escape in symbols

the drummer donates the heart

to body bursting

enlightenment a dim light heart

in hallways at night blood

& darkness blue in light

non-oxygen from

hard times flaming in decision

& gun fluorescent a totemic

tree blazing lawn lingering

inside curtains gigantic tale of

small hands & feet tongue stuck

to a tree growing into the bark

another baby missing

bird got away 

Untitled

by Terry Folz

I.   Dead letter carry-on.

     Pigment parcel mandate.

     Genuflect.

     And spit conniving

     picture-paint spatters.

     Beefhearts feed cast members.
     And no one goes home alone.
     Pray for the parrots
     in the rectory.
     Telegram edicts paper the windows.

II.    Lapdogs.
       I am isolated in box fear.


III.  Joggers on the treadmill.
       Manuscript for radial pain.
       I fold dilapidated picture postcards
       inside the pages of a temperate rain magazine.
       Calling cards optional and extraneous.


IV. I kick my way through
       broken puzzle cardboard.
       Sitting white and cold.
                                                        2012

Outcroppings by Jonathan Brannen

 time is transparent

                        as though I were an empty street

                        or an empty sheet of speechless paper

                                                arrested by scenery

                        as the plane takes off

                        subdivisions look

                        like crop circles below

distance

            this dance

            of dislocation

                                    there is a sequel

                                    to these events

                                   

odd numbers

silent letters

the local sense

of things

                                                two images

                                                blocks in space

                        achieving

                        nothing

to distinguish between margins and boundaries

                                                no longer sleep

                                                just inertia

to protect actual truths as much as lost opportunities sometimes it is neces­sary to forget the dif­ference between the possible and the possibilities

the unpainted pier

on the distant shoreline

the smell of rain

moving in

a steady light now

scattered in time

another moment

for reflection

the shiny surface

                        of direct objects

                                                the fiction of history

what eyes conceal

            of voices that will not be denied

                        of choices despite history

of lives that have

taken place

every representation

is a distortion

a change of tone

built up in absence

of speech

                                    what space is for

                                    for what space is

                                    for space is what

                                    what space is for

vanishing on waking

images hard to retain

                                    to construct a refuge

                                    of incongruity

                                    an artifact constructed

                                    from fictions of youth

                                           summer and salary

time is solid

                 rain hangs

                 in the air

                                    everything that is

                                    is as blind as the rain

_______________________

See Brannen in AlteredScale.com 1 and AlteredScale.com 2.

Jonathan Brannen is the author of twelve volumes of poetry and five books of visual literature. His most recent collections are this is visual poetry (this is visual poetry chapbooks, Kingston PA, 2010), a sequence of full color word art,Mona Lisa (Avantacular Press, 2010), a sequence of visual poems he created combining computer constructed images and photocopying between 1975 and 1982, and Deaccessioned Landscapes, a collection of technically innovative sonnets (Chax Press, Tucson, AZ, 2005). His poetry and fiction have been anthologized in five countries on three continents and translated into two languages. He grew up in Florida and currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.