Just released

Now out from Sandy Press.

pheromones
Mark Young
80 8.5" x 8.5" pages
Published by Sandy Press
ISBN: 979-8994936894
URL: Amazon
Available on Kindle ($US6.00) and in paperback ($US19.95)

Mark Young’s fascinating new collection of visuals, pheromones, contains works of very different styles, but a deep sense of humor (of understatements) is a common denominator. In the opening sequence, variations of mazes are paired with Samuel Beckett titles, and playfully referred to as endless Uber voyages. (I tried to replace two titles with each other: they worked a lot worse.)

Some of the works in the book are partitioned into color fields and based on dialogue with their titles and with the words (oftentimes word games) written into/across the fields. In Opprobrium “Justice /just is/ unscaled”. As much as a joke, it is also the realization of a truth.

Others are expressive freehand digital images like Will he wake?, where a framed question mark is surrounded, outside the frame, with a few dots (berries? full stops? blood drops?), and curves (elementary signs of presence?).

Young’s visuals get their poetic force from the multifaceted (dis)connection between titles and images. The effect is a motion of the mind in-between, back and forth. One of my favorites in the book, La Sagrada Familia, consists of nothing but pixelated shapes and dark gaps between them, but it becomes a mysterious, low key reference to the basilica. The only difference is, that while the basilica is still in the making, Young’s piece feels fully completed.

—    Márton Koppány


pheromones by Mark Young is a wide-ranging collection of visual poetry in which words, images, typography, collage, color, and abstraction continually interact. The book moves freely between minimalist word constructions, digitally manipulated photographs, geometric abstraction, found imagery, and text-image collage. Young treats language not simply as something to be read but as visual material: words are displaced, fragmented, condensed, repeated, erased, or placed in unexpected relationships with images. Pieces such as "The Tenth Word," "A Small Fugue," "Bashō Condensed," "divulge," and "Einsteinium" demonstrate how a few words, or even individual letters, can generate associations that move simultaneously through poetry, humor, philosophy, and graphic form.

Throughout pheromones, Young draws upon an unusually broad field of cultural references. Samuel Beckett becomes the basis of the comic "Beckett List," which transforms titles such as The Unnameable, Krapp’s Last Tape, Malone Dies, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Watt into a sequence of works involving "Uber." Elsewhere, the book invokes or plays with Bashō, Bach, Burroughs, Rembrandt, Saint John of the Cross, de Chirico, Goya, Rauschenberg, Whistler, Man Ray, Philip K. Dick, and figures from popular culture. These references are rarely straightforward homages. Instead, Young subjects cultural history to punning, substitution, juxtaposition, fragmentation, and visual transformation, allowing high art, literature, music, popular culture, and everyday language to occupy the same imaginative space.

The collection is also notable for its sequences, which give the book a larger structural rhythm. "The Calculations" develops a related visual vocabulary through "abacus," "Burroughs," "computation," "proration," and "substitution." Another sequence, "Scenes from the lives of the pepper trees," takes its overall title—and the titles of its individual pieces—from the poem by Denise Levertov: "Cats are stretching in the doorways," "Berries of modest red," "Marimba, marimba — from beyond the black street," "Let him sleep," and "Will he wake?"

—   harry k stammer

A line from Yuri Gagarin

Do not discount the small things. The
innovative use of acrylic paint in a
time of geopolitical uncertainty may
create unexpected opportunities or

push out the boundaries of creativity.
The concept of human challenge is of-
ten overlooked in favor of using AI & 
agentic automation trends to power 

charge & change. We are aware of this.
Yesterday the planet was a dirty shade of
beige. Today the Earth is blue, & we are
out removing plastic, replanting trees.

A Jekyll & Hyde hay(na)ku

This is not who I am.

I am not what you see.

arachnids

on the glass, alas

The birth of Cubism ficcione

Pablo Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles
 d'Avignon, long considered as a sem-
inal work in a new painting style, was
originally a naturalist rendition of the
eruption of Krakatoa. In the period
between its painting & its first display
protagonists of what would later become 
Négritude decided that, with some modi-
fication, it could be reconstructed to be 
reconstrued as a counter argument to 
the painter's denial of cultural appro-
priation in his interest & use of African 
elements in his preliminary sketches. His
Paris studio was burgled one night &
the changes made. In the morning, when
Picasso saw the upgraded painting, he
decided he both liked it, & saw in it 
the potential of a new movement which 
he could then be at the forefront of. 
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et sem-
per, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.

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The New Dance

is a trapezoid, with the corps 
split & aligned in parallel while 
the principals follow their own 
appointed steps at both ends. In
geometry are called the legs; & 
that seems inappropriate for this 
sort of setup where we focus on
the entire body of the soloists &
their range of movements while
the corps shifts their weight from 
one foot to another, a sense of
movement while remaining in
the one spot. This new dance is
called Diamonds in the Sky With
Lucy, a psychedelic pop song ref-
ence. No mention of geometry.

BIRD LIVES!

 

geographies: Derby

 

eggsistential

He confused paltry with poultry;
was surprised when he went

looking for chickens in the fields &
found only a few scrawny weeds.

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recently at Series Magritte

Le Paysage de Baucis


I have discovered how to paint the emptiness between a hat 
& a man’s suit without suggesting ‘the invisible man.’ 
— René Magritte, letter to André Bosmans, 19 February 1966
Let's face it, the face isn't
there. Well, not completely.
The major aspects — eyes,
nose, lips — proportionate,
in place, posed & poised 
between a starched collar & 
a hat — no, not the usual 
bowler but a fedora this 
time around. Nothing there
to suggest the mythic con-
nection that the title implies
except perhaps disguise. Un-
less the emptiness of the suit
might be intended to conjure 
up the image of a landscape 
after a major flood has swept 
everything away. Which may
be a way to bring the myth be-
hind the title into the picture, 
though it won't be included in
this poem. Instead, a reference: 
Ovid, The Methamorphoses, Book
VIII, lines 611 through to 724.

Inside the melon cart

 

geographies: Peak Hill

 

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From the archives

9/13

This written for the future, 
something to look back on, to see 
what my thoughts were
at the time. A commentary on what
is now before me, how you feast
on the dead, play replay after replay,
from different angles, rewritten
as choreography, a Hollywood blockbuster
with the producers wanting to make sure
the audience gets its money’s worth. It is 
what you’ve come to expect; but most
movies are cleaner, have stars that are
paid more for their one performance
than this whole episode would have cost
to carry out. Think on it. Brood on the
implications of what you’ve learnt
in the two days since. The stand-in pilots
had work visas, lived next door,
supported themselves & contributed to
the economy of the country 
they have just put on notice. The airlines 
paid for & provided the bombs. 
The extras paid for their own parts. 
There was no need for rehearsal.


9/13/01
Originally published in the Muse Apprentice Guild
Included in Sun Moon's Mother

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The future of creative writing?

A Star Rises in the East

 

wednesday newstrip

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from Turandot

No one should sleep! No one
should sleep! & you also, Prin-
cess, in your cold room, watch
the stars that tremble with love
& hope. My mystery is hidden
inside me, locked away. No one
will know my name. I will speak
it only upon your lips when the
light shines again, & my kiss will
both dissolves the silence & make
you mine. (No one will know his
name, & we must, alas, all die!)
Disappear, oh night. Set stars! Set
stars since, come the dawn, I will 
win. I will win. I will conquer all.

Songs / I wish / I had written

Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park

wednesday newstrip

Selling off the U.S.

wednesday newstrip

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Sponsored results: a found poem

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How To Apply Makeup

FaceMask For Glowing Skin

Benefits Of Chia Seeds

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wednesday newstrip

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