geographies: Kiev

criss-crossing the weeken'd mind

Pablo Picasso
The Old Guitarist

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

Wallace Stevens
The Man with the Blue Guitar

Out from Otoliths — James Maughn's These Peripheries

Now out from Otoliths

These Peripheries
James Maughn
Cover image by Susan Harlan
100 pages
Otoliths, 2012
$14.95 + p&h
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-3-4
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/these-peripheries/12841058

In a kaleidoscope of shifting voices, James Maughn embraces world poetry in his immensely creative new collection. Maughn's poems unlock new ways for us to think about voice, poetic interactions, and the structures of free verse. Each poem is written 'following' the work of another poet, either a contemporary writer or a recent translation from earlier literature. "These Peripheries" tenderly and with great skill, create a formal and nuanced conversation on contemporary poetics. Maughn's poems, traversing geographies and cultural locations, unsettle the concept of translation as a concrete, fixed mirror and opens it up, like the door of a bird cage, to immense possibilities, infinitely expanding the journey of both the new poems and the source poems. It is a stunning collection which takes a new shape every time I come to read it. —Judy Halebsky

Today the
postman brought
me a pair of
elevator shoes
that took me
straight to the
top floor. Pity
about the
music that
came with them.

from today ...

 
 
 
passive
active
 
 

from some years back . . .

 
 
 
passive
active
 
 

geographies: Callide

s t r a t a s
t r a t a s t
r a t a s t r
a t a s t r a
t a s t r a t
a s t r a t a

notes from a broad

It's not that I think the world is broken, just that pieces keep falling off. At least, that's what I assume the debris around me is. & everywhere I go, more, & different, debris. Clips on YouTube, search results from Google, memories for sale on eBay, trivial newsbites from trivial news-sites; all mixed in with lines from millenium-old novels, fragments from mythology, subtexts, signs in shop windows, gall & philosophers' stones, lines from the decades of pop I have lived through, thoughts I & others have had. Or may still yet have.

It's a kind of bricolage, which means I'm a kind of bricoleur. I take these things I find around me & put them together; at least I try to. Not to repair the world but to see how the found objects look when rearranged—a parallel universe perhaps, a history or histories rewritten. Or, perhaps the world as it really is, because everything I write about comes out of the world around me.

We are subjected to information overload these days. So much so, in fact, that it becomes impossible to take it all in. Warhol's 15 minutes of fame has been reduced to 15 seconds so it fits as a soundbite in the evening news. Where it blurs, sandwiched between competing 15 seconds, goes digital & we lose the last few words because the pre-programmed ads come in over the top & we end up not knowing if it was the grapple tackle or the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan that caused the floods in, was it, Pakistan. Peccavi, cabled General Napier. I have Sind. It's a funny old world, & I milk the humor as much as I can.

geographies: Byfield

Youth Illustrated

                         Now that reality shows
              have developed some
                                 sort of deep metaphysical 
                    connection with live-action 
                            games where players 
                  dress up in costume & 
                                        get involved in areas 
                           derived from the Greek 
                       like weapon trajectory 
                                   calculations & image 
                                 processing, renting 
                                 Camelot on DVD &
               singing along with it
                               just doesn't register
                       any more. The competition 
                   to narrow down the
                                  pool is heating up—
                         not the contestant pool 
                           but the wannabe guest
                 judges all dressed 
                                  up & running behind 
                             the circus trucks.

Issue twenty-five

of Otoliths has just gone live.

a view from the moon
(from a music of the spheres)
Andrew Topel

This, the southern autumn, 2012, issue, marks the sixth birthday of Otoliths; & lined up in the impressive May Day parade are Charles Freeland & Rosaire Appel, Joshua Comyn, Sam Langer, Scott Glassman, Emmalea Russo, Ed Baker, Enola Mirao, Charles Borkhuis, Aaron Crippen, Louie Crew, Kristine Snodgrass, Bobbi Lurie, Jim Meirose, John M. Bennett, Anne Gorrick, Philip Byron Oakes, S S Prasad, Eszter Takacs, Christopher Brownsword, Tony Brinkley, R/B Mertz, Lakey Comess, Adam Fieled, Keith Higginbotham, Sandy McIntosh, Les Wicks, Raymond Farr, Joe Bussiere, Kirk Marshall, Walter Ruhlmann, Connor Stratman, Gary Barwin, Sarah Crewe, Joel Chace, Michael Ruby, Paul Pfleuger, Jr., Eryk Wenziak, Sam Truitt, Andrew Nightingale, Jeff Harrison, SJ Fowler, Catherine Vidler, Andrew Topel, Howie Good, Jill Chan, David-Baptiste Chirot, Leigh Herrick, Yoko Danno, Scott Bentley, Reed Altemus, Mathew Abbott, Tony Beyer, Sheila E. Murphy, Thomas Fink, Thomas Fink & Maya Diablo Mason, John Martone, Anne Elvey, Daniel Y. Harris, J. D. Nelson, Andrew Topel & Márton Koppány, Bogdan Puslenghea, Bob Heman, Elizabeth Welsh, Samit Roy, Jordan Lofton, Scott Metz, Paul Dickey & Ira Joel Haber, Spencer Selby, Stuart Barnes, Ali Znaidi, Kathup Tsering, Tim Gaze, Michael Brandonisio, John Pursch, Marcia Arrieta, & Alexander Jorgensen.