March Edition 2009
this issue
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a note
from the editors
In this edition we will be displaying submissions from both emerging and established poets in the same
section of the review. We have also mixed the artwork with the poetry so we hope you enjoy the cross-section of talent and variety being offered
and look forward to more submissions from you for 2009. We welcome contemporary poetry, articles and reviews
from all parts of the world. Please follow the guidelines at the bottom of this page and don't forget
to include a short bio as well as a photo of the author.
Regards,
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featured
chapbook release
When Hephaestus Fell & other poems
by Sarah Tampus Cabrera
Phillipines
Concept and content: “When Hephaestus Fell & other poems” is an art & poetry chapbook celebrating the triumph of hope in times of adversity, the strength of the will and the person’s enduring spirit in times of struggle. It contains 50 poems and 25 artworks on the pain and pleasures of self-definition, love, memories, societal contradictions, self-expression, spirituality, and the process of forging strong guiding principles to live by. It also contains other poems by featured poets.
The book launching will be held at Kukuk's Nest, Gorordo Ave., Lahug, Cebu City, 7 PM, on March 13, 2009. The event will involve poetry reading of 10 poems from the book (by different readers), intermission performances by young musicians and performance artists, and will culminate with an open-mic poetry reading. There will also be a call for submissions of poetry, short-stories and artworks for the next chapbook. Approximately 100-150 people are expected to attend, coming from schools and universities all over Cebu.
Publisher:Lightbulb Publishing
Language: English
To obtain a copy of this release by Sarah Tampus Cabrera please use the following link:
http://lightbulbpublishing.blogspot.com/
Link to Sarah Cabrera's website: http://www.sarahcabrera.co.cc/
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emerging artist
Bettina Burch
I have been published in international and local magazines and newspapers; have my work in several private collections; have attended the Museum School, Harvard University, and have my B.A. from Principia College.
For more information contact:
email: bettinaburch@gmail.com
website: www.bettinaburch.com
jimi by Bettina Burch
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links to other sites
Wheelhouse Magazine
http://www.wheelhousemagazine.com
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in the spotlight
Tiziano Fratus
Italy
Tiziano Fratus (1975) is poet, translator, editor, director of Festival and Edizioni Torino Press. He published nine books of poems in Italy; his poetry has been translated and published in Usa, Argentina, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, Uk, Slovack Republic, Singapore, Hong Kong. Last books: A Room in Jerusalem (Brooklyn, 2008), Doubleskin (Singapore, 2009), 5PX2 (Edinburgh, 2009). It’s forthcoming the anthology of all of his poetry, La bottiglia di Klein (Klein’s Bottle, Lugano/Torino, 2009).
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selected poem
american chlamydosaurus
[to thomas mcgrath]
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in a murky photograph you’re wearing a jersey jacket that’s probably black or dark blue or anthracite gray
and I imagine you walking out of your house sticking your shirt cuffs into the first sleeves you come upon next to the door tossing your head into the frame of the mirror without paying any attention to what the glass reflects
you combed your fingers through your hair pulling it back knitting the wrinkles on your brow and narrowing your eyelids
maybe you had even just finished writing that poem in which you describe the indifference of people to the news of (your) death
as I reread you in your language that is as discreet and stealthy as a cat’s sense of timing I told myself how you were capable of writing new verses after bleeding to death for roughly thirty years
working yourself up over cities that disappeared after an inky voyage and not just from the plowed-up soil of north dakota all the way to the rivers of roads in the realist paintings of that asia minor of the intellect in which you asked yourself for refuge
on the old continent they are still blinded by the clothing that was applied to protect the decency of the nudes in the sistine chapel and deafened by the few names that are ill-digested and always the same recycled in the anthologies that are photocopied from generation to generation
nobody wants to be tired out or be given too many alternatives of species
by Tiziano Fratus
Note:
he is a poet who wrote a long poem in four parts, Letter to an imaginary friend. The complete version was published by Copper Canyon Press in 1997. The exact quote is Los Angeles Asia Minor of the intellect Exile. In Italy, there is a trace of this poem in the book Nuova Poesia Americana. Los Angeles, Mondadori, 2005.
Translation: Gail McDowell.
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featured site
Bentspoon is a blog run by Ross Priddle from Calgary Canada, an eclectic mix of links to visual poetry, covers, poster art and small
press with links to artists including himself and other publications from John M. Bennet, Lawrence Upton and many others. Featured (below) from a link I found on this site
is XAM by Ann Bogle with a link to a PDF download of this publication. A good find.
XAM by Ann Bogle
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When I wrote XAM: Paragraph Series in 1998, I was in those cities and locations cited in these passages. I see the pieces as related prose poems. A prose poem, as I have practiced it, is two pages or fewer in length and uses language, rather than temporal events, as the first given. Glimpses of action, person (not as in fiction, “character”), and scene may also appear in them. Prose poems are less calculating than fiction and less tightly crafted than a short story or short poem; they are less pre-meditated. Perhaps they are more rhythmic. My friend,
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Michael J. Kelly, admitted to finding the rhythms in XAM to be difficult to follow. It reminds me that rhythm is something also personal. The best rhythmic writing would be “beatest.” Yuan is my codeword for today.
—Ann Bogle
ANN BOGLE's writings include letters, journals, poems, prose poems, literary essays, short stories, and short novels. She has written a book of mixed-genre prose (story, aphorism, essay, and diary) called Work On What Has Been Spoiled. Her short stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Fiction International, Gulf Coast, Washington Review, Black Ice, Cool Hearts, Submodern Fiction, and Poetic Inhalation. A selection of mixed-genre passages titled "This Was Called War at One Time" appeared in Neuromantic Fiction, an anthology published by altx. She received the MFA in fiction from the University of Houston in 1994. She was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board grant for mixed-genre writing in 1998 and has since been nominated to have a chair named for her along with other Minnesota writers at the Minneapolis Public Library.
XAM
with Lithokons by mIEKAL aND
2005
28 pages
8.5x11
b&w and color
ISBN 0-9770049-1-0
ISBN 978-0-9770049-1-1
A PDF of this publication available for download here
from XEXOXIAL at www.xexoxial.org
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A review of Daniel Borzutzky's
'one size fits all'
by Joy Leftow
Borzutzky’s poetry is a strange exotic and eclectic mix; a conglomerate of words that while I read I wonder who is this dude who strings these words together like this. Sometimes I know what he is saying from one sentence to the next. Sometimes one sentence follows the thoughts and sequence of the one before and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t exactly know what to do so I follow along because he’s strange enough to make me want to. Although I read the lines in bewilderment I laugh and feelings are aroused.
'one size fits all' published by Scantily Clad Press opens with the prick of misgiving glides on references to Milton and Blake that seep out in dry sardonic humor,
closing with "Suddenly I was old, and had no one to fucking talk to.", the classic death of the poet. Borzutzky outright admits that poetry becomes the property of the reader once published ...woohoo :), I like that! “I do not own this poem; it is the responsibility of the poetic community.” And, “If you can’t feel the tickle on your genitals that this poem provides,” please masturbate safely within the confines of rubber walls and maybe then size won’t matter.
I visualize the scenario from his poems with his unique illustrations and I treasure his concepts; i.e., you don’t have to be a winner to win. Sometimes you may as well scratch your ass instead of your head for all the good anything will do you in society’s grip.
Borzutzky has trapped me and remade me in his image. This collection is written for the poet exorcizing familiar demons in spurts of more traditional views and references. The general notion being if you haven't lived it how could you possibly write about it and if you did live it would you be crazy enough to write it and if you did write it would anybody understand or read it ... right? I laugh and go back to what I read before. I think that could be me, that is me he’s talking about not only himself. I relate to the artist’s lament about how the industry prostitutes ethics.
“The problem, said the critic, remains one of imagination and its insistence on the distinction between thought and action”. We all have to live with criticism, poets especially, since strong and different works always raise suspicions and hard penises. “Poetry lives here,” she replied, “but he will chop you up and kill you, and then he’ll cook you and eat you,” along with attachable and detachable prosthetics to demonstrate how we either give or shed an artificial piece of ourselves - very unique imagery and this is what makes Borzutzky more cool. A daring risk-taker appeals to me. “I vomit a poem onto a stack of bloody cows and win a Pushcart prize.” I do understand - I think I do…
What I like the most is that Daniel Borzutzky does not fit the mold. I like his differences, the folly and play in his voice, his humor and sarcasm; I feel his triumph and growth develop. The voice of Marguerite Duras mixes with Milton and “the colored girls go.” I can ask for no more; I’m getting all the visceral stimulation I need.
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featured artist
by Meme Arte
Mexico
About Meme's Art
A tradition long in years and venerable in custom sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of critical estimation. For reasons of ambivalence rather than judgment, I call it didactic art. Its claim to instruct and to reveal aspects of human behavior; social, personal, political, to the moral scrutiny we might otherwise neglect.
This narrative and realistic art in modern life is relegated to the bin of "illustration". Illustration" and art, plus helps us see sardonic humor..
The man inhabiting the exquisite graphic landscapes and interiors of Meme's world, his eyes drooping with melancholic acceptance of his choices, none of which will ever pan out in his lifetime is "everyman" living in the existential dilemma, where, as the Rumanian-French philosopher Cioran says: "To wake at three in the morning and contemplate suicide appears to be that which is most normal." Meme is Godot, and Quixote too, and Dante. He is Bruno Schulz and Dimitri Haramozov and he is Adam.
In Meme's pictures the wry humor and tough characterization sharpen the image into a condensation of wit more punchy than brutal. Memes predecessor may be Draumier. Meme's depiction of his principal protagonists possesses tenderness and tension of sexual desire not found in the great French graphic artist.
These canvases filled with beautiful, adroit drawing and painted with love, whose protagonist lives the existential dilemma of fugitive in his own body and an emigrant in his own country make us laugh in self-recognition and ask our indulgence to sympathize with anxiety where the only memories are those of the future.
Meme Arte's website:
http://www.meme-arte.com.mx/
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