Axiomatic Memories

by Vernon Frazer

_________________________

Vernon Frazer is a regular contributor to this blog. He appears in all AlteredScale.com issues, and will appear in the fourth, out in September.  

black chorus

by Mary Kasimor

knowing that IT fucks with your head while simultaneously talking in the room’s textures the ROsy rosebud is not innocent nor is the laurel. then we talked more about it and came TO no agreement.

I did not care for the feel of THINGS LIVING in the mind in

MY birdHOUSE. after I fell out of a tree I was good for something

but I didn’t know what gave me substance.

cups of water and

hands ON KEYs making a black chorus

let me open the window to SEE THE unsteady paralyzing

light of croWS.

_____________________

Mary Kasimor is a regular contributor to this blog. She also appears in AlteredScale.com issues 2 and 3, and she guest edited a poetry gallery in issue 3.

Anti-Praxis Study 1

by Leigh Herrick & Tom Cassidy

__________________________

Leigh Herrick & Tom Cassidy will appear in AlteredScale.com issue 4 in fall of 2013.

Leigh Herrick is an engaged poet, writer, and recording artist who trains in Middle Eastern and Afro-Caribbean hand drumming.  She has produced two CD's: JUST WARand MONOCLE MAN, and is at work on a third.  Herrick ’s poetry has won numerous awards and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.  Her newly released book isHOME FRONT: Poems of the Bush II Years.  For more information please visit www.LeighHerrick.com.

Tom Cassidy's written and drawn works have appeared in hundreds of smallpress and mainstream publications, as well as galleries and museums around the world. His works are archived in dozens of art institutions, often under his own name. With John Bennett and Scott Helmes, he co-edited Vispoeology (2007), an international anthology of visual literature for the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, where he also co-curated None of the Above in 2009. In 1976, Tom co-founded the Portland performance poetry troupe The Impossibilists, who were reunited in April, 2008, for a series of shows by the Oregon Heritage Commission. He is currently a board member, performer, and curator for Cheap Theatre and Patrick’s Cabaret.

Verisimilitude: Hugh Livingston's "Sound and Place: Minnesota," a New Music Composition

by Jefferson Hansen

(On Sunday, July 7, Zeitgeist New Music Quartet performed Hugh Livingston's "Sound and Place: Minnesota" at Caponi Art Park in Eagan, MN.)

“Verisimilitude.”

Life like.

The key to this word, for me, is “similar.” Similar implies not the same, not “as”— a gap between the thing and the representation. The representation hints at the thing.

An art park carved in woods. Bird sounds on small audio players in bird cages spread around the area. A toy piano. Many different sorts of percussion instruments, from clavinets to tubes to chimes. A clarinet. The percussionists and clarinet player wander about the crowd, around trees, on a chalked out path.

The random—

> Many people brought their kids to the performance. They did their usual did: cries, questions, just talk. The parents bustled. Part of the piece.

>“Real” birds.

>Traffic from nearby Diffley Road.

>My friend Jonathan saying, “It might be better if we follow them.” A park worker toward the end beckoning us to climb a hill to hear the final sounds—of the composed piece, considered narrowly.

The improvised—

>A clarinet walking and winding among the kids and parents and people. Sometimes playing directly to specific individuals. A wide variety of percussionists, sometimes darting from tree to tree, like birds, and appearing to hide, face to the bark. Like woodpeckers?

>To what extent was the toy piano improvised?

The composed—

>Directions for movement for the musicians—like choreography. (The chalk line).

>Various keys and other foundations. "Faith in good musicians," Livingston told me.

The prerecorded—

The bird songs in the cages.

All four elements—the random, improvised, composed, and prerecorded—bumped, interpenetrated, overwhelmed, commented on, responded to each other. Engaged in polyphony, harmony, call and response. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. Does it matter? The random is part of the piece.

The piece ended with all the musicians sitting atop a hill and gently tapping large, tubular chimes. One by one, the musicians dropped out, until one tapped quieter and quieter, until he was below hearing. A man coughed. The traffic. A child asked for something. I heard “real” birds.

Verisimilitude creates counterpoint.

The art of this piece will reverberate with me next time I go hiking. The bird sounds will bounce against what I heard in those recordings in cages, I will see the “wild” birds framed by their not being in cages, I will hear their songs against the quiet tapping of those long chimes. I will see them dart from branch to branch as the percussionists darted from tree to tree, and then leaned against them like woodpeckers.

Art is nature is art.

Art is not nature is not art.

Art like nature like art.

The night was hot.

_________________________

Livingston Sound

Zeitgeist

Heather Barringer, percussion; Patti Cudd, percussion; Pat O'Keefe, woodwinds; Shannon Wettstein, piano

Zeitgeist is one of the leading New Music quartets in the world, and we in Minnesota are blessed to have them.

quit mumps

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

Cure the Day

by Richard Martin

*

Form precludes

Void announces a day of games

Sun consents master

On TV

Language wrestles reality

Tell the story

Stay the line

Fun

Funky

*

Simple body pleasures

Across the fluid highway

Dawn on

Now the cacophony of regret

Wafer-thin moon stalls

In mid-sentence

The lost kiss of dreams

Bird alarms

Planes overhead

*

Cliffs of mind

In suspended animation

The wild dance of invisible particles

Hurricane of feathers on a windy day

Time as vision

In the collapsed talk

Of strangers

Rocks tumble into new fields

Of sea

*

Blank perception

Advanced reconstruction

Clouds or motion detectors

In a racket of wit

The soft floor of yesterday –

Polished version

And mistaken charm

Half-priced doldrums

And pure speed

*

Street-crossing addiction into past

The haze of what’s still

Not there

Quiet repetition of planets

Through space

Umbrella of rain in a silver hand

Maps and trinkets

Turquoise smile in a house

Of dust

*

The lapse of relaxed moments

Usurps consciousness

Puddles of space congeal

Into sticks and stones

Verbs tighten belts –

Caucus with blinding might

Something gives

In the vicinity of red lights

Mirrors party alone

*

Forsythia howls yellow

It’s a declarative day

Eyes feast magnolias

The sun busy at the tips of buds

Halts revision

On a handful of dreams

The entire syntax of air

Chirps

Language sounds truth

*

Survival cage swings open

There’s no direction

In popular music

Quiet streets proclaim

The cessation of commerce

By majestic rivers

Full orchestras tune up

Citizens with flowers

And all that jazz

*

Bridge of light made from words

Transfigured portals

For embedded suffering

History concludes one

Full star alert –

Appraisal

Of absolute position

Urge to run…

Cure the day

______________________________

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.

The Rough

by Susan Lewis

proffers somewhat

else

or         mangle

or         capitulate

& decap

(size)

til the slick bits

expire

used or             skewed

through odd

angles

& hints of        glisten

(eye surprise) 

brush,

say you

or shovel

 (+ ungrimed scalpel)

+ sacrifice

your precious

a la days of       yore

& stretch for                what you

never knew      to

_______________________

Susan Lewis is a regular contributor to this blog, and she both guest edits a gallery and appears in AlteredScale.com 3.


 Susan Lewis webpage