Ongoing notes: early April, 2023: Micah Ballard,

Covid still has me low, so this is all I could get done for today.

San Francisco CA: I’m appreciating the opportunity to go through further work by San Francisco (by way of Louisiana) poet and editor Micah Ballard, through his chapbook Muddy Waters (San Francisco CA: State Champs, 2022), a title that notes, according to the colophon, has poems “written at Muddy Waters coffeehouse / in San Francisco between march and June 2022.” The author of a plethora of books and chapbooks over the past dozen-plus years, I’d been wanting to delve a bit deeper into his work, as he not only co-edited an issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors], but has work in the next issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal]. Along with a preface by Garrett Caples and postscript by Rod Roland, the twenty-five short first-person narratives in this collection are composed as lines of accumulation, offering scraps of observation and immediate moments propelled with an electric energy of narrative speed. The poems suggest themselves as being timeless, but offer anchors to the immediately contemporary across fragments, scraps and moments that pose as larger narratives. As the opening poem, “CHILDREN OF THE NEW DAWN,” opens: “Very fentanyl / half a face, the other / diffused of light. Very Avedon / or Penati, a little Modigliani / & off balance. Laughing gas under suspicion / cracking a nail on your zipper / Everything I do is underneath.” Or, as the opening of Garrett Caples’ preface poem, “Muddy’s Report,” begins: “the coffee in this swamp / tastes much as you’d expect [.]” These poems really are electric, charged with something I am still working to determine, but am enjoying a great deal, either way.

ULTRA DAB

Sensitivity
is my virtue so I morph
into all things
wobbling around
in my wonderful burnt skin
talking in innuendoes
to bay with the cadence
of unflattering daylight
& this congregation
of zombies w/ bare midriffs
seeking acquisition
I apply some blush and mascara
& give us some life
prone to vest up I evoke
another vortex and hug the air instead
then jump back into
this wireless abyss of popular opposites
which you’re totally not
but you’re not, not

 

Touch the Donkey supplement: new interviews with Caples, Coultas, Murphy, Turnbull/Gardiner + Ross,

Anticipating the release next week of the thirty-sixth of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the thirty-fifth issue: Garrett Caples, Brenda Coultas, Sheila Murphy, Chris Turnbull and Elee Kraljii Gardiner, and Stuart Ross.

Interviews with contributors to the first thirty-four issues (more than two hundred and thirty interviews to date) remain online, including: Leah Sandals, Tamara Best, Nathan Austin, Jade Wallace, Monica Mody, Barry McKinnon, Katie Naughton, Cecilia Stuart, Benjamin Niespodziany, Jérôme Melançon, Margo LaPierre, Sarah Pinder, Genevieve Kaplan, Maw Shein Win, Carrie Hunter, Lillian Nećakov, Nate Logan, Hugh Thomas, Emily Brandt, David Buuck, Jessi MacEachern, Sue Bracken, Melissa Eleftherion, Valerie Witte, Brandon Brown, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Jack Jung, Amanda Auerbach, IAN MARTIN, Paige Carabello, Emma Tilley, Dana Teen Lomax, Cat Tyc, Michael Turner, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Tom Prime, Bill Carty, Christina Vega-Westhoff, Robert Hogg, Simina Banu, MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty, Lisa Fishman, Kate Feld, Isabel Sobral Campos, Jay MillAr, Lisa Samuels, Prathna Lor, George Bowering, natalie hanna, Jill Magi, Amelia Does, Orchid Tierney, katie o’brien, Lily Brown, Tessa Bolsover, émilie kneifel, Hasan Namir, Khashayar Mohammadi, Naomi Cohn, Tom Snarsky, Guy Birchard, Mark Cunningham, Lydia Unsworth, Zane Koss, Nicole Raziya Fong, Ben Robinson, Asher Ghaffar, Clara Daneri, Ava Hofmann, Robert R. Thurman, Alyse Knorr, Denise Newman, Shelly Harder, Franco Cortese, Dale Tracy, Biswamit Dwibedy, Emily Izsak, Aja Couchois Duncan, José Felipe Alvergue, Conyer Clayton, Roxanna Bennett, Julia Drescher, Michael Cavuto, Michael Sikkema, Bronwen Tate, Emilia Nielsen, Hailey Higdon, Trish Salah, Adam Strauss, Katy Lederer, Taryn Hubbard, Michael Boughn, David Dowker, Marie Larson, Lauren Haldeman, Kate Siklosi, robert majzels, Michael Robins, Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Strickland, Ken Hunt, Rob Manery, Ryan Eckes, Stephen Cain, Dani Spinosa, Samuel Ace, Howie Good, Rusty Morrison, Allison Cardon, Jon Boisvert, Laura Theobald, Suzanne Wise, Sean Braune, Dale Smith, Valerie Coulton, Phil Hall, Sarah MacDonell, Janet Kaplan, Kyle Flemmer, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, A.M. O’Malley, Catriona Strang, Anthony Etherin, Claire Lacey, Sacha Archer, Michael e. Casteels, Harold Abramowitz, Cindy Savett, Tessy Ward, Christine Stewart, David James Miller, Jonathan Ball, Cody-Rose Clevidence, mwpm, Andrew McEwan, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Joseph Mosconi, Douglas Barbour and Sheila Murphy, Oliver Cusimano, Sue Landers, Marthe Reed, Colin Smith, Nathaniel G. Moore, David Buuck, Kate Greenstreet, Kate Hargreaves, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Erín Moure, Sarah Swan, Buck Downs, Kemeny Babineau, Ryan Murphy, Norma Cole, Lea Graham, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Oana Avasilichioaei, Meredith Quartermain, Amanda Earl, Luke Kennard, Shane Rhodes, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Sarah Cook, François Turcot, Gregory Betts, Eric Schmaltz, Paul Zits, Laura Sims, Stephen Collis, Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, damian lopes, Pete Smith, Sonnet L’Abbé, Katie L. Price, a rawlings, Suzanne Zelazo, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold, Amish Trivedi, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel, Deborah Poe, Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming thirty-sixth issue features new writing by: Pam Brown, Kathy Lou Schultz, Shane Kowalski, Hilary Clark and Ted Byrne.

And of course, copies of the first thirty-four issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe? Included, as well, as part of the above/ground press annual subscription! (did you know that above/ground press turns thirty years old this year?) We even have our own Facebook group. It’s remarkably easy.

Garrett Caples, Retrievals

 Poets tend to enjoy reading, so when [Kenneth] Rexroth points out a deficiency in this department, he refers not to quantity but kind. The very pleasure poets seek in the act of reading renders many of them incapable of pursuing any topic to its necessary depth, because doing so would likely compromise their enjoyment. They might have to read some pretty boring shit in order to get the information they need to take an informed position. Their own emphasis on aesthetics, poetics, the formal aspect of writing leaves them vulnerable to oversimplification and elegance where substance must prevail and prone to purely theoretical articulation where particularity and application are all that matter. For all its theoretical politics, the present Eurocentric avant-garde displays little curiosity about the actual mechanisms of American imperialism that dictate our day-to-day life in the form of the ubiquitous crap we make other peoples make for us next to nothing. Such realities are too ugly and complicated for theory, and theory’s shown itself unable to cope after 9/11. When the twin towers collapsed, a lot of elegant ideas went with them. (“Philip Lamantia and André Breton”)

Lately, I’ve been going through San Francisco poet, editor and critic Garrett Caples’ collection of essays, Retrievals (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2014) [see my review of his most recent poetry collection here], an assemblage of interrogations that circle around a central core of surrealism across the early and middle parts of the 20^th century. The twenty-one essays collected here move from André Breton and Philip Lamantia into Barbara Guest, Richard O. Moore, John Hoffman, Richard Tagett, Marie Wilson, Jean Conner, Arthur Jerome Eddy, Sylvia Fein and multiple other writers, artists and critics, many of whom were well known during their individual periods of activity, but overlooked across and through the years that followed. Originally composed as individual pieces for a variety of journals, magazines and other venues, the essays gathered together offer exactly what the title suggests, attempting to retrieve or reclaim individual names of artists across decades’ of work, most of whom touched upon the central core of surrealism. As he offers to open his essay on Jean Conner, “Becoming Visible”: “When I began work on Retrievals, gathering those essays I’d written on various writers, artists, and ideas that, for one reason or another, had dropped off the cultural map or never fully made it on, I could resist the temptation to add a few more.”

There is such wonderful discovery through these pieces, as Caples writes about seeing a particular artwork and working to dig up information on that particular artist, for example, working to follow a particular loose thread as far as it might go. The pieces are simultaneously critical as well as personal, allowing his wealth of inquiry and research into forms both informative and highly readable. His piece on spending time with Barbara Guest’s last work, as well as spending time with her across her final few years, is quite lovely. Other pieces touch upon his association with City Lights, having been poetry editor there for a number of years now: “As 2013 is the 60^th anniversary of City Lights Books,” he writes, to open his piece “Apparitions: Of Marie Wilson at City Lights,” “I’ve been reflecting lately on its lost history. When I started working there, for example, I came across a catalogue from sometime in the early ‘60s, advertising City Lights publications to the rest of the trade, and I was immediately struck by the appearance, not just of the press’s own titles but the full list of various Bay Area small presses—Oyez, Auerhahn, and White Rabbit, if I remember correctly—which often enough were only available in the bookstore’s then-downstairs poetry section. In a way, City Lights was Small Press Distribution (SPD) avant la lettre, distributing small poetry presses not because it made money but because it was a cool thing to do.”

I’d been a few weeks attempting to find my way into the collection, but found the prologue, “Wittgenstein, A Memoir,” had such an intimidating weight, that I could only find my way in, and way through, by starting to read from the centre of the collection (his piece on Barbara Guest, actually). In certain ways, this collection reminds me of Douglas Crase’s more recent collection of essays (collected across decades of his own critical work on poets and poetry, although covering much of the same period of American poetry) [see my review of such here], in that both collections have allowed me and my own reading new spotlights on a variety of writers that may have fallen into the long shadows of others, especially across the decades since. Some interesting elements through his collection I hadn’t previously considered including Caples’ assertion that surrealism, at least André Breton’s assertion of it, was far more multicultural a movement than anything else occurring during that period across American/French art, writing and thinking, or even the fact that the CIA was deliberately and quietly promoting Abstract Expressionism over surrealism, concerned, in part, over any possibility of revolution or revolt that surrealism might prompt. What is interesting, as well, is Caples’ work around assessing and reassessing the work and life of Philip Lamantia (Caples was also the co-editor of the 2013 collection, The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia), a poet I had little to no prior knowledge of. As the essay “Philip Lamantia and André Breton” begins:

That the standard biography of André Breton by Mark Polizzotti, which has all the appearance of being exhaustive, nonetheless excludes Philip Lamantia is a disservice not only to both poets but to the reader as well. For surely the reader would be interested to learn that, during his Second World War exile in the United States, Breton admitted but one American poet into the ranks of surrealism—let us not count Charles Duits, who wrote in French and receives ample coverage—that this poet was only 15 at the time, that he went on to become one of the major poets of a generation that includes Creeley and Duncan, O’Hara and Ashbery, and that he was still alive and living in San Francisco at the time of the bio’s original publication.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Garrett Caples

Garrett Caples is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Lovers of Today (Wave Books, 2021), and a book of essays, Retrievals (Wave, 2014). He is an editor at City Lights Publishers, where he curates the Spotlight poetry series. He has edited or co-edited books by poets such as Philip Lamantia, Frank Lima, Stephen Jonas, Samuel Greenberg, Michael McClure, etc. He lives in San Francisco.

1 – How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book, The Garrett Caples Reader, came out in 1999. I don’t know that my life changed because of it, simply because that’s what I was trying to do with my life, be a poet, be a writer. But there was obviously a great deal of psychological satisfaction in having a book under those circumstances, and I was grateful to have friends like Jeff Clark, who made it happen. I would say the poems in that book are more purely form-driven than the poetry in my current book, Lovers of Today. I never think about form anymore; the form just naturally imposes itself as the poem goes along. But there are things in my first couple books I look back on now and think, how the fuck did I do that?

2 – How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non–fiction?

I would say I came to poetry last; I tried to write fiction in high school and college, but I wasn’t any good at it, even though I was already a good writer in a technical sense. A lot of becoming a poet for me was realizing that what I was actually responding to in literature, textures and tones, was more suited to poetry. I write fiction now, but it’s a result of being a poet, establishing a kind of voice to manipulate, rather than actual storytelling.

3 – How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but for me, “copious notes” are the death of writing. If I have everything mapped out, writing is a grind. Especially poetry. The poems are strongly improvisatory. The prose is often dictated by length; I have so many words, and have this many things I want to say about the matter at hand, so it’s a question of how to flow the piece so I can touch all of those things I want to say. Otherwise there are no answers to these questions. Some pieces are fast, some are slow, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

4 – Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

A poem usually begins as a few lines in a notebook or on a piece of paper, or ugh, my phone if it’s the middle of the night and I don’t want to wake my wife up. If it gets serious at all, it transfer to my desktop or laptop pretty quickly. With poetry, I never work on a book until it’s time to assemble one. I write poems and when there are enough poems and an opportunity to publish, I gather them up.

5 – Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Neither part of nor counter; they’re not really part of my creative process. At most I can glean if a poem doesn’t come across, but sometimes even then, it’s just the wrong room for it. If I stumble over something, it might mean there’s something wrong with a line that needs to be fixed. I don’t mind reading; I’ve given some good ones. But hardly think of myself as performing artist.

6 – Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Is this a good poem?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I don’t really think there’s “a role” for the writer; different writers do different things for different reasons. For myself, as an arts journalist, I tend to be most useful when I’m drawing attention to something or someone who deserves to be better known. As a poet, I try to be entertaining, as I think that’s a neglected area of endeavor in today’s poetic discourse.

8 – Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I’m a bad person to ask, as I’m much more frequently the outside editor rather than the author. I tend to do a lot of what an outside editor would do on my own behalf as a result. At the same time, I’ve enjoyed working with Joshua Beckman at Wave immensely, and I definitely sought and incorporated his input more this time around with Lovers of Today than with my previous book of poems, Power Ballads. Also Heidi Broadhead was fantastic to work with when we putting together my book of essays, Retrievals, and the amount of fact-checking and quote-checking they did was astonishing. Wave in general is a deluxe accommodation for a poet.

9 – What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

“If a poem isn’t written in THE ZONE, then forget it.” —Philip Lamantia

10 – What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

Unfortunately, I have to have a full-time proofreading job to survive, on top of my part-time job as an editor for City Lights, so I don’t have the luxury of a writing routine. I do it when I can for as long as I can. I’m sort of always working, which doesn’t feel great, but it’s the only way I’ve been able to get anywhere as a writer/editor. In March 2019, I published pieces in the Paris Review and the New York Times and I literally ended up in the hospital. I’ve since been trying to find a way to maintain my productivity without killing myself and I still don’t feel like I’ve figured it out yet. But even with the job, I feel like I’m doing what I want to do with my life, so I feel extremely fortunate.

11 – When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

As Tom Waits once said, I usually end up taking advantage of myself.

12 – What fragrance reminds you of home?

I’m not prepared to disclose this.

13 – David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Music definitely. I learned a lot about how poetry works from song lyrics, if I’m being candid. I’m thinking a song like David Bowie’s “Panic in Detroit,” that seems to flirt with a narrative as it moves from line to line, but there actually is no narrative you could articulate from the lyrics. There’s a lesson in that song about how to write a poem, or at least there was for me. I’ve taken some things from rap, in terms of working a syntax against a rhyme, or how to off-rhyme, or switch from one rhyme to another through free association. I picked up a lot from a song like “Light Sleeper” by Saafir and Hobo Junction.

14 – What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There’s a million really. Philip Lamantia. André Breton. Barbara Guest. Marcel Schwob. Frank Lima. Andrew Joron. Brian Lucas. Will Alexander. Kit Schluter. Micah Ballard. Leonora Carrington. Margaret Randall. John Wieners. Diane di Prima. David Meltzer. Samuel Greenberg. Alden Van Buskirk. Djuna Barnes. Norma Cole. Nicholas Breton. A ridiculous question.

15 – What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I’d settle for writing a few more prose books I’d like to write. I feel like I’m on the brink of a book of poet’s fiction, but it’s not long enough yet. Sorta fables in the Oscar Wilde sense.

16 – If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Urologist to the stars.

17 – What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I was good at it. I would have liked to be a musician, but I sucked at it.

18 – What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Taxi Night by Cliff Fyman. Holy Motors by Leos Carax.

19 – What are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on an interview with rob mclennan, but I’m almost finished.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

new from above/ground press: G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #21 : guest-edited by Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples

NOW AVAILABLE: G U E S T #21
produced also as CASTLE GRAYSKULL 1.5
directed by Skeletor
edited by Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples

see here for Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples’ introduction and biographies 

featuring new work by:

Colter Jacobsen (as Teela)
Anne Waldman
Brian Lucas
Carrie Hunter
Roberto Harrison
Neeli Cherkovski
Raymond Foye and Bob Flanagan
Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta
Tamas Panitz
Gregory Corso

$5 + postage / + $1 for Canadian orders; + $2 for US; + $6 outside of North America

Canadian/American/International rates (including shipping

Canadian orders $6.00 CAD American orders $7.00 CAD International orders $11.00 CAD

Author biographies:

Neeli Cherkovski lives in San Francisco and has published many books of poetry and prose. His most recent poetry collection is ABC (Spuyten Duvyil).

Gregory Corso (1930–2002) was a revolutionary poet of the spirit. He was the author of over a dozen books of poetry and one novel, in addition to posthumously published collections of plays, interviews, and correspondence.

Bob Flanagan (1952–1996) was a poet, musician, and performance artist, famous for exploring themes of sado-masochism. He was published by Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar magazine, David Trinidad’s Sherwood Press, and Hanuman Books.

Raymond Foye is a curator, publisher, writer and editor. He is currently editing the Collected Poems of Rene Ricard.

Roberto Harrison’s most recent book of poetry is Tropical Lung: exi(s)t(s) (Omnidawn, 2021). He was Milwaukee Poet Laureate 2017–2019 and is also a visual artist.

Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the Poetics program at New College of California, was on the editorial board of Black Radish Books, and for 11 years, edited the chapbook press, ypolita press. She has published around 15 chapbooks and has two books out with Black Radish Books, The Incompossible and Orphan Machines, and a third full-length, Vibratory Milieu, out with Nightboat Books. She lives in San Francisco and teaches ESL.

Colter Jacobsen splits his time between Ukiah (Haiku spelled backwards) and Surprise Valley, both in California. Besides being an artist and musician and living with 16 animals (30,016 if you count the bees), he DJs as Coco, once a month for Nomadic Nightcap, KZYX community radio.

Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta is a Nicaragüense Jewish Californian artist and poet. They are the author of The Easy Body (Timeless, Infinite Light) & the forthcoming La Movida (Nightboat Books). Tatiana grew up east of the Los Angeles River, and has lived in the Ramaytush Ohlone village of Yelamu for the past decade.

Brian Lucas’s most recent publications are Lost Comets (Two-Way Mirror Books, 2021) and Eclipse Babel (Impart Ink/Bootstrap Press, 2015). He lives in Oakland, CA where he also paints and makes music under the Old Million Eye moniker.

Tamas Panitz is the author of Toad’s Sanctuary (Ornithopter Press, 2021), and The House of the Devil (Lunar Chandelier Collective, 2020). A book of poems, The Country Passing By, is forthcoming from Model City, as is a book of his interviews with Peter Lamborn Wilson, called Conversazione, from Autonomedia. Tamas Panitz is also a painter, whose paintings and stray poems can be found on instagram, @tamaspanitz.

Anne Waldman: Recent projects include album SCIAMACHY. Levy-Gorvy & Fast Speaking Music (with William Parker, Laurie Anderson, Guru Moe & others) 2020, Goslings to Prophecy with Emma Gomis (Lune, 2021), Perdu Podcast: HAFEZ .2021, I Wanted To Tell You About My Meditations on Jupiter, Fast Speaking Music, Mexico City 2022. The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics Summer Writing Program at Naropa opening in June 2022. Forthcoming: New Weathers: Poetics from the Naropa Archive, Nightboat 2022 and BARD,KINETIC, Essays, Poems, Memoir, Coffee House Press 2022.

Castle Grayskull: a magazine of ‘verse

 

Dick Gallup’s Things to Do

Modulate your feelings

Make the spaces real 

Keep the intellect in tune

Charge your batteries regularly

Remember what happens. (Donald Guravich)

Patrick James Dunagan was good enough to send along a copy of the first (and possibly only) issue of Castle Grayskull: a magazine of ‘verse (San Francisco CA: fall 2021), a side-stapled full-size journal containing an incredible wealth of contemporary poetry, many of whom are either San Francisco-based or have publishing relationships with City Lights Books (or: both). The list of contributors is over fifty names strong, and includes Clark Coolidge, Gregory Corso, Margaret Randall, Edmund Berrigan, Ammiel Alcalay, Joshua Beckman, Norma Cole, Kit Schluter, Cedar Sigo, Stacy Szymaszek, Ryan Newton, Sophia Dahlin, Eileen Myles, Philip Lamantia, Gillian Conoley, Chris Carosi, Anselm Berrigan, Dunagan, Jeffrey Joe Nelson, Will Alexander, Josiah Luis Alderete and Diane Di Prima. At sixty pages in length, the scope of this collection is stunning. Published by “S. Keletor” and edited by Micah Ballard and Garrett Caples, the second of whom a poet who also edits at City Lights Books, there is a simultaneous element of established and subversive elements mingling through this collection, from elements of form and production, to some of the well-established contributors running through a printed, side-stapled offering. “even the / sense / sets beat,” Norma Cole writes, to close her short lyric, “from Lost Dance.” Or “Stranglers in Love” by Julien Poirier, an extended, single-page rush to a punch that ends with: “where you and I were once locked / midair / like a couple of sumo wrestlers / in a soap bubble / like a couple / of spelling bee finalists / in an elevator / demolishing each other in a fury / whose key ingredient is trust. / It was exhausting / but we got what we came for.” Or, as the final stanza of Edmund Berrigan’s “Dream with Doug in It” reads:

Trust no one’s advice, but know their point of view,
see the world through other eyes, can I borrow
your vision, so much repeats from stage to stage,
borrowed wisdom with age expanding the shroud.

How could anyone not be charmed by an editorial, “From The Desk of Skeletor,” that opens: “Every now and again, I get the urge to read poesie, and yet all the landscape of poetry publications these days is a vast wasteland of online nothingness, very often just a PDF of a bunch of poems with so little editorial investment the poems appear in the same font in which the poem submitted his or her or their work! WHAT?!?! This is unacceptable in a day and age in which an editor has so much at hand, so many fonts that the editors of yesteryear would have given their eyeteeth to have at their disposal. It won’t do, my friends, it won’t do.” This is a publication put together relatively cheaply by someone (or multiple someones) with a remarkably good (combined) editorial eye (or eyes), able to produce a single-issue (possibly) one-off of work that is just too good to not get out into the world. There is the sense of what bpNichol referred to as “serious play” in the work of all of these writers. While those who found and continue poetry journals, there is something uniquely wonderful about the oddly-distributed one-off, reminiscent, slightly, of the sequence of journal one-offs that Stuart Ross has been producing over the years (The Northern Testicle Review, for example), or even some of the more ongoing, occasional and sadly-defunct journals such as Vancouver’s TADS (George Bowering et al) or Toronto’s COUGH (Victor Coleman, Michael Boughn et al) [see my review of the last one I saw here], or even our ongoing The Peter F. Yacht Club (although the editorial suggests that “Skeletor” might not approve of my design work on such). There is just some incredible work here, some of which really needs to be seen to be believed.

Naturally, there’s no contact or ordering information anywhere in the publication, although I would suspect that copies might be possible through the Bookstore at City Lights.