The Big Book of Revolutionary Poetry is seeking submissions

Calling all feminists, wizards, queer theorists, ex-Black Panthers, Christians, green activists, avant-gardists, Kabbalists, vegans, Hawaiian nationalists, kickboxers, punks, hip hop evangelists, New New Leftists, pink-haired emo warriors, organic gardeners -- submit your work for The Big Book of Revolutionary Poetry, edited by Sparrow and Mickey Z.

Send up to 3 poems to: Sparrow or Mickey Z.

Also, please forward this announcement far and wide, post it on your website or blog or Facebook page, and tweet it if you must. Thanks...

P.S. Please don't reply to find out what we mean by "revolutionary." As they say, if you have to ask...

COUNTERPUNCH SEEKING POETRY SUBMISSIONS

A friend of the co-op, Marc Beaudin, is now the poetry editor over at CounterPunch, and they are looking for some new poetry blood. Check out the link, submit your good material, and pass the word along to your poet friends.

G   O       H   E   R   E

Dreaming in Black and White: Wisconsin Noir and the Justified Poem by Michael Kriesel

Wisconsin’s First Form:
Dreaming in Black and White:
Wisconsin Noir and the Justified Poem
By Michael Kriesel

Crossover poems are increasingly popular in Wisconsin’s thriving poetry community: a member of my online writing group is churning out a series of great science fiction poems, pithy vehicles for social comment; my own manuscript of occult-themed verse is making the rounds of the book contests; and at a recent writing conference a Milwaukee poet handed me his latest chapbook, Misadventures of the Paisley Cowboy.

Then there’s the hard-boiled crime genre being worked by Madison area poet John Lehman, who recently published a book of verse noir—Acting Lessons, Parallel Press, 2008. Filled with murky mazes and existential ambushes, the work is in a short form devised by Lehman a few years ago, called the Wisconsin justified poem.

Looking like cubes of newspaper column, the poems are defined not just by their form, but also by a noir-ish feel and tone. They usually explore Wisconsin topics, are often rural, and at heart “inspired” by Wisconsin winters.

Here’s a taste, from Closed Until Spring:

This is the season of Ed Gein
and Jeffrey Dahmer. Sleep days,
fish through ice, pry firewood
from frozen mounds of snow.
Buy wine at the gas station. Court
darkness. Speak to no one. This
is winter in Wisconsin. Write
horror stories. Embrace the cold.
(John Lehman, Acting Lessons)

“They give the impression of a rigid form,” Lehman explains, “so that the language within the poem can be casual and conversational…more Midwest, and yes, more Wisconsin. They resemble their larger cousin, the prose poem.”

Magic Lunch Box

If you’re unfamiliar with prose poems, here’s a quote by Louis Jenkins, an acknowledged master of the form:

“Think of the prose poem as a box, perhaps the lunch box dad brought home from work at night. What’s inside? Some waxed paper, a banana peel, and half a peanut butter-jelly sandwich. Not so much, a hint of how the day has gone perhaps, but magic for having made a mysterious journey and returned…the prose poem is a formal poem because of its limits. The box is made for travel, quick and light. Think of the prose rectangle as a small suitcase. One must pack carefully, only the essentials, too much and the reader won’t get off the ground. Too much and the poem becomes a story, a novel, an essay or worse…the trick in writing a prose poem is discovering how much is enough and how much is too much.”
(Nice Fish: New & Selected Prose Poems, Holy Cow! Press 1995)

The prose poem has a dual nature, as its name implies. “On the one hand, there’s the lyric’s wish to make the time stop around an image, and on the other hand, one wants to tell a little story,” comments Charles Simic, a former U.S. Poet Laureate. “It must dazzle, and it must also have a lightness of touch. I regard the comic spirit as its true Muse.”
(The Poetry of Village Idiots, Verse 13, no. 1, 1996)

The God Of Flow

All of the above holds true for the Wisconsin justified poem. But John Lehman cites an additional element—flow. It’s what gives poetry its real dynamic, claimed Robert Frost.

“Most poets break lines by phrases or concepts,” says Lehman, “but Frost carries us with his flow from one line to the next, then stops us in our tracks.

His head carved out of granite O,
His hair a wayward drift of snow,
He worshiped the great God of Flow
By holding on and letting go."
(These are lines about Frost by Robert Francis)

“Frost believed we further enhance the dynamics of the poem’s flow by stretching the spoken sentence over the line of poetry,” Lehman explains. “Frost’s famous narrative poem The Death Of The Hired Man is a classic example.”

Pulled Around The Corner

The Wisconsin justified poem, unlike the standard prose poem, pays attention to line breaks and their relationship to sentences. It pulls the reader around the corner and only stops movement when the end of a line corresponds with the end of a sentence. In addition, the lines seldom end with prepositions or articles, but with nouns, adverbs, and verbs.

As forms go, it’s a soft one. The rules are few and fluid: conversational style, noir tone, and Wisconsin topic. Keep it short and justify the text.

“I think its informality seems particularly suited to the voice of a Wisconsin narrator who might romanticize a little more if the winters weren’t so long and so dark,” muses Lehman. “The mutterings of someone in a farmhouse kitchen alone, late at night listening to the wind.”

Film Noir’s Influence

Film noir’s a big influence on the poems. “In a way the noir films were not realistic,” observes Lehman, “but a kind of theatrical romanticizing of the forties. People enjoyed them partially because they were escapist.”

That escapism sometimes bleeds into a comic surrealism, as in The Nut Bread Murders:

A friend sends a loaf of nut bread that’s dense
as a kiln-dried brick. I tell my wife it reminds me
of something my first wife would bake. Is this
a mistake? No, because upon hearing it she
makes me a fluffy coffee cake with a brown-sugar
and chocolate-chip topping, and I deduce there
may be a lesson about women here (how one
can be played against another). So I call my
first wife who asks what the hell I want. Hmmm.
Later, I decide to put her in a novel I’m plotting
as a character out to poison everyone with her
goddamn nut bread while I, the hero, am saved by
a stripper named Brown Sugah. Writing comes fast.
It’s February in Wisconsin and I am going nuts.
(John Lehman, Acting Lessons)

Giving It A Try

As a poet who’s muttered his way through his share of Wisconsin winters, the first time I saw the form it intrigued me enough to try it. Eventually I had a short manuscript that won a nationwide book contest, demonstrating the form’s appeal even to non-cheese heads (though the judges were fellow Midwesterners, over in Indiana).

Here’s the title poem from that collection:

Soul Noir

I just walk out of the Neon Toad
when this big guy grabs my shirt,
spins me around like a carnival
ride and slams me up against the
bricks. All I see is cartoon stars
but his voice cuts right through.
“Lie to yourself on your own time,
punk.” Then I’m on the sidewalk
sitting up and no one’s there. It
was my conscience. Bastard finds
me anywhere.
(Michael Kriesel, Soul Noir)

Soon after I started writing in this form/genre, I came to understand that noir’s romanticism also can be viewed as starkly stripped-down realism. Its flavor is similar to the oddball existentialism running through Wisconsin’s landscape like a vein of smoky quartz. Maybe that’s why the two combine so well. I offer another of my own examples:

Wisconsin Noir

Waiting for the sheriff, Ed Gein forks
apple pie in Plainfield’s only diner.
Barns slump like slaughterhouse cows.
At the crystalline heart of the state, Rib
Mountain oscillates: quartz monadnock
tinting our dreams through winter nights.
In the end, spring arrives, green and gold.
The Packers win the Super Bowl.
(Michael Kriesel, Soul Noir)

Transcending Landscape

The Wisconsin justified poem transcends regionalism by combining a specific form with a specific tone. The form’s uniquely suited to the tone of the material expressed. But it’s the tone most of all that gives the poems their distinct character—not unlike the dialogue in noir films.

These poems work the way haiku and watercolor do to capture the mood of a place, expressing the way our lives resonate with our state and sometimes finding In the Middle of Nothing, Greatness:

I pass a sign on Highway 26 that states
Juneau is 5 miles away, Oshkosh 53.
I saw the same sign just ten minutes ago,
but listen, when I check my gas gauge
(then, it had been a little below a quarter)
now, I swear, it shows half full. And there,
around a curve, against the steel November
sky, in a field of cornstalks far as a crow can
see—are you ready—rises an assemblage
of grain elevators more magnificent than
the Cathedral at Reims.
(John Lehman, Acting Lessons)

In Sprecher’s Tavern, Lehman observes: “Living in Wisconsin is a lot like the tavern that sells rifles and beer. It doesn’t make much sense, but it feels right when you’re there.”

That’s how these poems work. But how well do they work? Does it feel right? That’s the final test…and something only poets and readers and time can decide. The best test of any form is whether the force it contains could manifest as well in any other shape.

Here’s hoping more Wisconsin poets add to this new genre—a form and tone unique to where we live.

----------

Acting Lessons By John Lehman
ISBN 978-1-934795-04-0 HERE

Shorts: 101 Brief Poems of Wonder and Surprise By John Lehman
ISBN 978-0-9741728-2-8 HERE

Soul Noir By Michael Kriesel
Platonic 3Way Press, PO Box 844, Warsaw, IN 46581. $5.

I’d like to thank Carroll University Poetry Professor B.J. Best for his help in preparing this article. The article has appeared in the print publications: Small Press Review, Free Verse, Rosebud, Wisconsin People & Ideas, and Chiron Review.

IT'S NOT ENOUGH OF ELVIS BY PAUL FERICANO [CHAPBOOK REVIEW]

It's Not Enough Of Elvis
By Paul Fericano

The Shave and a Haircut Poetry Series
Poor Souls Press/Scaramouche Books
PO Box 236
Millbrae CA 94030
25¢

This is a nicely-printed, nicely-trimmed, professional-looking, short, thin, quarter-page, saddle-stapled book of one single poem, laid out in an artsy fashion to cover the pages. It blows my mind that this is 25¢, as a huge amount of the printing must be coming out of Paul's (or another press owner's) pocket, since just the colored cover alone is 25¢, not to mention the two stamps it took to mail it. So he isn't making any money on it, which means it must be a labor of love (and made possible by a grant from the Charles J. Parrot Foundation, Chevy Chase, Maryland). You can tell that it is a labor of love by the delicate way it has been lovingly crafted from start to finish.

This consists of nice paper, nice printing, even a vellum sheet between the cover and inside pages; and big fat typeface that stretches the words out so this one single poem fills the space, and even then it's only printed on small chunks of the page, front side only. So, yeah, mostly a novelty and a very quick read.

The poem, itself, is quite vague. I can't entirely tell if it is even pro-Elvis or anti-Elvis, since I could easily read it with an angry tone or a sad tone and get two different emotional results. One thing is for certain, however: it is all about Elvis.

it's not enough of Elvis
it's just not enough
it's not enough of Elvis whiskey decanters
Elvis toilet paper
Elvis condoms
Elvis impersonators singing Elvis songs
to Elvis fans [...]

I would like to know what's not enough of Elvis? What is this random "it"? To what is this dummy-pronoun referring? I can't quite grasp its reference throughout the entire read, as the title line is used over and over. As I said, the poem's quite vague, fairly loose, experimental while still maintaining sense within the individual lines, themselves, although nothing is really pieced completely together for you. You are left to decide what is not enough of Elvis and whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing and how it all affects the author.

After my favorite few lines,

[...]
we dig up the grave
and sell little envelopes of Elvis plots
we pulverize the casket
and market little vials of Elvis coffins
we auction off the corpse
and sell every last bone to the highest bidder [...]

Fericano begins listing Elvis parts being auctioned off to the world, which I think is the elusive reference to what's not enough: every last part of Elvis sold, bought, and gone, and still we can't get enough.

There, that was quite the analysis of one poem, cutely packaged and well-put-together into something that I'm sure Elvis lovers will find quite pleasing. The poem is enjoyable, the price is certainly right, and the author is very pleasant. You can't go wrong for a quarter, and you can easily stick this book inside a card as a great novelty gift for an Elvis lover.


[Review by leah angstman]

AN INVENTORY OF LOST THINGS BY KARLA HUSTON REVIEWED BY CHARLES P. RIES

AN INVENTORY OF LOST THINGS
By: Karla Huston
32 Pages / 23 Poems
Price: $8
Centennial Press
P.O. Box 170322
Milwaukee, WI 53217
www.centennialpress.com
ISBN: 0-9797994-1-4

Review By: Charles P. Ries
Word Count: 426

Women have a distinct view of the erotic and love’s secrets. In reading Karla Huston’s new book of poetry, An Inventory of Lost Things, I enter into the ebb and flow of feminine romantic imagination. While not all of twenty-three poems of this collection focus on the heart’s yearning, a good number do and comprise the central theme of this eloquently written book of poetry.

Huston approaches her topic from a number of angles. In [the] final stanza of her poem[,] “The One on The Left[,]” she says,

But you can’t take your mind off the boy,
barely twenty, going on the rest of his life –
going off for an afternoon at the shore. God knows
what they’ll do on the blanket
when it’s floated behind the vine-covered fence.

And again these lines taken from the closing of her poem, “Your Marie”:

You should know her hair was chestnut,
a flag of copper stars glittering
against the curve of her neck
and the strand that kissed her cheek
I knew you’d kissed when she left you
for the last time while her hips rolled
when she walked away
and her breast swayed in dreams
even now the ones you prayed into.

Her book of poetry would easily fall into the category of great chic lit. Huston poems are thoughtfully narrative and carefully designed. There is no spare air in these poems. Each is complete from beginning to end.

I am reminded, as I read this collection, of the seminal book on women’s sexual fantasies, My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday. Our two genders reflect so differently on the erotic and on romance. Huston is masterful at understanding the sensual wonder world of the woman. As in this section from her poem “Rewind” demonstrates,

If she could, she’d take the first
bus out of happyland, find her own
little place and read sweaty novels
for the rest of her life. He’s weary
of the honey-I’m-homes
and the honey-dos and the honeyed
hams.

And again from this section of her poem, “The Plastic Surgeon’s Wife”:

When they make love, she fears
how he’d like to improve her –
a little lift there, a little tighter there,
fill her breasts with vanilla,
admire the suction in her soul –
his reservoir, never full.

This is a wonderful exploration of the feminine mind, by a writer uniquely suited to explore this undulating landscape of passion, yearning, and lost things.

__________________________________________________________
Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory, and five books of poetry. Most recently he was awarded the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association “Jade Ring” Award for humorous poetry. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot. He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore and a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. But most of all he is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. You may find additional samples of his work here.

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR STEVE ALMOND

Five Questions for Steve Almond
Interview conducted by Andrew Ucci

AU: I admire your narrative voice. How did you go about developing that?
SA: I really just try to tell the truth about the stuff that matters to me most deeply. I'm not trying to "find" a voice so much as to tell the right stories. It's those stories that create a voice.


AU: The author must find an audience for his work. When you write, do you try to engage an intended audience, or do you instead let the audience find you and your work?
SA: I think authors of literary fiction really need to find their stories, the characters they care about. That's what matters. The audience comes later, if at all. But you can't worry about who's going to read your work while you're writing it. That pulls you out of the art, and into commerce. When I'm writing to make money, for a publication, obviously I have to think about their needs. But when it's my own stuff, I'm loyal to my characters, first and last.


AU: Do you find young or new writers getting hung up on the same things in their development? Or is it rather more of a case by case basis?
SA: Less experienced writers tend to make the same set of mistakes: they withhold information from the reader and overwrite and cast about in search of a plot and fall into summary -- all problems that arise from insecurity.


AU: Is art, for many, a coping mechanism?
SA: "A coping mechanism" makes it sound a bit diagnostic. I'd say it like this: certain people feel the need to get the stuff inside them out into the world, and art provides the most imaginative and beautiful way. It doesn't make the artist happy all the time (consider Van Gogh), but helps them deal with unbearable feelings.


AU: When you begin a new story, where do you begin?
SA: That's really a case-by-case basis. Sometimes it's an idea, or a line of dialogue, or an image. But the good stories always revolve around the stuff that I'm obsessed with. That's how it works for me -- I have to care passionately, I find, or the reader wouldn't give a damn.

BRUCE DETHLEFSEN'S BREATHER REVIEWED BY CHARLES P. RIES

BREATHER
By Bruce Dethlefsen
83 pages / 59 poems / $15
Fire Weed Press
Send Check or Order To:

Bruce Dethlefsen, 422 Lawrence St, Westfield, WI 53964

Review by Charles P. Ries
Word Count = 308

Bruce Dethlefsen doesn’t write many books of poetry. It’s been six years since he came out with his second book, Something Near the Dance Floor by Marsh River Editions. And one doesn’t see much of his poetry in and around the small press, but my-oh-my, when he decides to show us his good stuff, he comes out swinging. In this, his third and largest collection of poetry, Dethlefsen does most everything right. He is a master of drawing word pictures that are at once narrative stories, melodies, and free association free-for-alls.

The book is broken into five sections that broadly define the thematic mood of Dethlefsen’s mind: migrant, knots, poet warrior, secrets, and autopsy. There is great kindness here, and a mind with a very wide reach.

Here are two poems from Breather:

Playing the Field

you hover
you say I’m not your first flower
your first lover

you lower yourself
how hoverly
how loverly
then leave

oh bee
my honey boy
oh baby mine
come back to me

And

When Somebody Calls after Ten P.M.

when somebody calls after ten p.m.
and you live in wisconsin
and you’re snug in your bed

then all’s I can tell you
somebody better be missing
somebody better had a baby
or somebody better be dead.

In Breather, Dethlefsen flows from the concrete to ethereal. He orbits around the collective unconscious like a Jungian astronaut - his interior radar big enough to find meaning in both the great moments and the small nuances of life. This is the blessing of the mature poet – one who has lived hundreds of lives and can bring this diversity of experience to us as a numinous pool of images to soak in. Breather is an exceptional collection of poetry.

_____________________________________________
Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of THE FATHERS WE FIND, a novel based on memory, and five books of poetry. Most recently he was awarded the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association “Jade Ring” Award for humorous poetry. He is the poetry editor for Word Riot. He is on the board of the Woodland Pattern Bookstore and a member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. But most of all he is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. You may find additional samples of his work here.

ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE - LOS ANGELES

MARC BEAUDIN'S TRAILER FOR THE MOON CRACKS OPEN

Please check out this new trailer for fellow co-op author Marc Beaudin's new book, The Moon Cracks Open.

KEVIN COLDEN'S NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL: FISHTOWN

IDW presents
Kevin Colden’s
award-winning true-life crime tale,
Fishtown,
in deluxe hardcover format

"A fresh version of an old true crime pulp novel."
-Philadelphia Weekly

“Stark and chilling”
-Comicon.com

(San Diego, October 8, 2008) In 2003, the city of Philadelphia was shocked by an act of violence so brutal it almost defies description. The ensuing trial and intense media scrutiny unearthed the story of the murder of a 16-year-old boy who was led into an empty lot in the city’s Fishtown section by his girlfriend and beaten to death by three boys he knew—one of them his best friend.

IDW Publishing’s upcoming, fact-based, fictional hardcover graphic novel's author and Philadelphia native, Kevin Colden, examines the motives of the murderers through loosely-based characters, imagined conversations, and confessions directly aimed at the reader.

Inspired in 2005 by newspaper articles, television coverage, and snippets of trial testimony, Colden originally intended to create a more fact-based account of the story, but hit a roadblock due to inaccessible trial transcripts and ongoing litigation. Says the author, “At that point, I began to think about the reaction the public was having to the story and wrote the events how I imagined they occurred. When I finished the script I realized I had hit on a deeper emotional truth than the facts alone could have shown.”

In March 2007, the first chapter of Fishtown was awarded a self-publishing grant from the Xeric Foundation which Colden declined in order to publish the piece as a weekly webcomic at ACT-I-VATE.com, a web-based collective of established and up-and-coming cartoonists. “I mistakenly put Fishtown online before hearing from the Xeric committee. It turned out there was a conflict with their policy regarding simultaneous web and print release, so I chose to decline the grant money and take my chances with the limitless potential of the web.” The Xeric Foundation remained supportive of Fishtown, and in 2008, partly as a result of Colden’s decision, reversed their policy to now support concurrent web serialization for grant recipients.

Fishtown presents a chilling portrait of teenage angst gone horribly wrong by threading fact with fiction, reality with fantasy, and weaving a tapestry of connected vignettes that add up to a devastating treatise on the human condition. In its yearlong run at ACT-I-VATE, it garnered near universal praise for its confrontational and unflinching dramatization of the events leading seemingly average kids to turn into vicious killers.

Fishtown, a 120-page hardcover-with-dustjacket (ISBN 1-60010-273-8, Diamond order code SEP08 4143) will be in stores on November 12, 2008.

About IDW:
IDW is an award-winning publisher of comic books, graphic novels and trade paperbacks, based in San Diego, California. As a leader in the horror, action, and sci-fi genres, IDW publishes some of the most successful and popular titles in the industry including: television's #1 prime time series CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation; Paramount's Star Trek; Fox's Angel; Hasbro's The Transformers, and the BBC's Doctor Who. IDW's original horror series, 30 Days of Night, was launched as a major motion picture in October 2007, by Sony Pictures and was the #1 film in its first week of release. In April 2008, IDW released Michael Recycle, the first title from its new children's book imprint, Worthwhile Books.

About Kevin Colden:
Kevin Colden is the author and artist of numerous graphic short stories and novellas including Strangle/Switch at ZudaComics.com, Todt Hill at The Chemistry Set (with writer Neil Kleid), and RED (with writer Elizabeth Genco). His work has appeared in anthologies from Alternative Comics, Desperado Publishing, and SMITH Magazine, and is on display in the permanent collection at MoCCA. He lives in New York City.

Maggie Begley Communications
Office: 310-301-1785
email

REVIEW OF HOSHO McCREESH'S NEW BOOK

For All These Wretched, Beautiful, & Insignificant Things So Uselessly & Carelessly Destroyed...

poems by Hosho McCreesh

52 pages
ISBN 978-1-934513-09-5
5" x 8" trade paperback
Available from sunnyoutside

The book arrives, perfect-bound and brooding, sitting on my desk waiting for devouring. So I have a little time to let the cover sink in while I finish up other tasks, to relish its secret contents for a few days. The title is long, hard to chew into and digest at first, leaving you with questions, for how can beautiful be lumped in with wretched and insignificant so seemingly carelessly? And what things, exactly, are we talking about? I mean, doesn't that really smush everything into the same breath? And isn't everything eventually destroyed?

A further look inside the book shows you that all the titles are long. A closer look at the titles shows you that they are more like stage directions, the setting of the scenery that is important for the characters to know and possess with their entire being, but unspoken to the audience who only gets to glimpse it through the characters' full understanding of possessing it. The long titles, one being actually six words longer than the poem itself, really become part of the full poem, its first breath, its initial opened arms of welcome, a tribute to thought, to making the complete dialog have meaning that no "Untitled #12" or "Chapter One" or "[insert any generic title into these brackets because it sounds like something you might think has something to do with this poem]" can even come close to touching with the full ten feet. The small amount of space between the title and the first line of each poem also indicates that it was a very conscious decision to have the titles remain a full part of the poem, only separated by an italicized text size.

Despite the poetic, long-winded, stalwart titles, the poems themselves are meticulously simple, a paradoxical straight-forward tone lingering among heightened intensity; well-chosen to be small, well-placed to be exact, well-read to become huge.

The book is divided up into two sections, almost like chapters, although I must admit that after several quite clear-headed reads, both technical and emotional, I have not quite figured out these "chapters," how they divide the work or their true meaning. The titles of most of the poems and sections are snippets of genius taken from the poems, themselves. You read them singly, and they leave you pondering, out of context and poetically heightened, leave you wondering what the two sections of the book mean, how they are broken up and sectioned off, how the title of the book fits in with the poems and sections. When you read the lines within the context of the poems, namely with the poem For All These Wretched,/ Beautiful, & Insignificant Things/ So Uselessly & Carelessly/ Destroyed... that contains both the title of the entire book and the subcategory title of the second section, you start to get it, how it is all entwined. The title poem, which expounds on how a pig farmer in Canada has killed 49 prostitutes and fed them to his stock while the world goes on, unaffected and still thriving in the remedial, is really the sum of this book, which lends it quite nicely to being chosen as the book's title. If ever there were an "equal sign" for a book, this poem is it.

The wordplay is powerful, albeit the occasional mouth- or eyeful on the first read. But on a second and slower reading it is captured fully, obviously, becoming clear, as bare as the sketches of skeletons that adorn the pages, dripping with metaphors that are chocolate and butterscotch topping on a sundae, rearing with similes as headstrong as horses, the words are whole and unaffected by trivial things, no matter how uselessly and carelessly destroyed.

McCreesh's words are a beautiful commentary of our times, how we waste the gorgeous and revel in the mundane, how we squander the important and value the unnecessary. The poetic and romantic is contrasted with the raunchy and realistic. Such an example is the very first poem, It Was Paris, Those Rainy Old Streets,/ The Soft Glow of Wrought-Iron Lamps,/ The Sun Setting Behind Grey-Faced Buildings,/ The City Vibrating With Some Kind of/ Romantic, Sad Song..., which speaks of a romantic misty night interrupted by the realism of a floating empty can of dog food down the Seine. This thread runs throughout the book and brings you back again to the book's title that first held so many questions, now getting answered quickly, repeatedly, loudly through each page turn.

There is confusing clarity in the words that find repetition on these pages: "painfully typical," "dizzy," "truth," "death"... tied together with the common bond of destruction. The words are trying to make sense of madness or the finding of curiosity in small collapses of judgment of profoundly ordinary or imperfect or geniusly everyday people. An example from This Dizzying, Senseless Place,/ This Place Where We Simply Waste Time/ While Looking for a Better Way to Die... is "& what if she would've/ just/ taken/ the/ ear,/ if that would've helped him,/ encouraged him to keep at the canvas[.]" Here McCreesh makes sense of the madness of this well-known artist who needs no introduction, this beautiful, wretched person, all these people being uselessly and carelessly destroyed by each other, in an attempt to say, hey, what if we accepted people's gestures, strange as they may seem? Maybe it would help them out? Help them not be quite so destroyed?

It raises more questions; although blame is a harsh reality, how much of it belongs to us for the destruction of those people and things around us? How many figurative ears have I not accepted from someone reaching out with a token of what he sees as kindness -- or as McCreesh puts it, "a gesture, an offering,/ a talisman of something/ deep & honest & true," -- and what I see as disgusting? This touches on another running theme of the book: giving back, how we could have changed the course of things with our actions, from Hitler to Van Gogh to Mussolini, if only they had been showed love, how different it could be -- complete with poem indents like little conversations with one's self, a schizophrenic back and forth of contradiction or thought-switching, a private "what if" in mid-thought.

McCreesh's most recently aforementioned poem, a serious stroke of genius, makes me want to change the way I view the gestures of others. And that is what makes this book, his words, and specifically this poem, so important to the literary world, what separates those who can truly hold a pen from those hacks who started poetry blogs just because their neighbor's friend's cousin did it, too.

The poems are personal, yet universal, which is maybe the hardest challenge of writing poetry, and one that McCreesh masters with the ease of the best of them. One specific example for me is with Homeless Man at a Bus Stop on Central Ave. Here in Cambridge, we have a Central Square on Mass Ave, about ten minutes from my house, that this poem could easily be referencing. In this piece, McCreesh tells a tale of a bum who, before he could ask for change, gets involved in a conversation with a stranger and then can't ask for change because it would look bad. It reminds me of my own anecdote of two bums, sitting outside 1369 Coffeehouse in Central, who got hot chocolate instead of booze money from me because I beat them to the punch before they could ask for change. Any poet who can truly evoke those memories, past thoughts, or personal anecdotes is reaching across the personal/universal threshold to say something that is actually meaningful to the masses, and really quite beautiful, which brings me to my next point.

With death being one of the most-used words in this collection and the whole feel of the black and white book being dark and ominous, it is easy to lose track of the beauty, but don't let yourself. Because it is there with a vengeance, only masked beneath some darkness. There is a reason, however, that "Beautiful" is one of the largest, boldest words on the cover, but it's up to you to unmask the beauty. When you do, it is your hidden treasure, and you will cling to it long after you have closed the cover.

McCreesh's beautiful words aside, there is always the technicalities, hanging around stubbornly like that obnoxious little sister who won't keep her fucking hands off your ponytails. This book has very few, but nonetheless, it is fallible as all wretched and beautiful things are. First and foremost, I always hate to see misspellings in a perfectly glossy gem as this, but I can't overlook the obvious misspelling of Machu Picchu in one of the poems, having been there myself and seeing no way that I can allow the proper noun to be botched by poetic license, but there are no other obvious mistakes that I see, save for that ever-used-but-shouldn't-be "towards" (which for some reason, they say is okay in Britain...ugh) instead of "toward" (as in the line "floating towards me" that should grammatically read "floating toward me," if you want to draw swords).

As with most books, I tend to have a stand-out stanza or line, and in this review, I want to end with one of my favorites from It's an Ugly Gamble,/ An Exhausting Routine,/ All These Days & Nights We Face,/ Ugly, Exhausting ---/ Yet Necessary:

"It is, after all, the only way
to truly understand how
too much sorrow
erodes our hearts...

almost as fast as
too little."


Dude, buy it. You will not regret it.

POETRY AT JAMES'S GATE: OCTOBER 6, 2008

POETRY AT JAMES’S GATE

Featuring:
Elizabeth Quinlan: author of Promise Supermarket
Molly Lynn Watt: author of Shadow People
Doug Holder: author of The Man In The Booth in the Midtown Tunnel
Christy Page: Jamaica Plain Carpenter Poet, published in Break Time

WHERE: James's Gate Restaurant & Pub
5-11 McBride Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
WHEN: Monday, October 6th, 2008, 6:30 p.m.
The pub will be open, people can order drinks or food.
Reading at 7:00 p.m. in the restaurant

NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL BY DAN NOLAN

Business Casual Stag Devil Death Boy, the graphic novel by Dan Nolan, is a dark surrealish satire set in an office. The characters see themselves in the reflection of Business Casual Stag Devil Death Boy's sunglasses and take his silence for understanding. Dulled by the banality of the office, and comforted by the reflection of familiarity, they find themselves at ease with his presence and ignore his outrageous appearance and any potential implications that it might have. It's a tale as old as time, taking place in an office near you. Business Casual Stag Devil Death Boy was written, illustrated, produced, and published by local comic creator Dan Nolan.

Check out a free preview online at Wowio (no registration required) or directly download the PDF version for free. Look for the print version in a comic store near you (if you are local, you can find it at Pandemonium Books in Central Square or Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square, Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts) or buy it online through the ComiXpress print-on-demand store.

Also check out the website, the artist, the blog, the merchandise store, and the Facebook group; or contact Dan directly.

POETS NEEDED FOR STORYTIME AT IMPROV-BOSTON

Jessica Sutich has been running a storytelling show at Improv Boston, full of true stories told without notes. Sutich is a comedian and improvisor, but she started the show with the hope of gathering people together from different artistic communities in Boston. The stories that people tell run between 5-10 minutes, and the style is similar to shows that are going on in New York and LA (The Moth, Sit 'n Spin, etc.)

Sutich is actively trying to get people from the writing community (both prose and poetry) and people from the slam poetry community in Boston/Cambridge area to get involved with this improv storytime, in hopes that they will not only bring great stories but also different styles and approaches to telling stories to audiences.

If you are interested, have any great stories, know anyone who might like this, or just plain want to know more, contact Jessica Sutich.

SOMERVILLE [MA] SMALL PRESS READING: SEPTEMBER 25, 2008

A Celebration of Somerville Small Literary Presses
Ibbetson Street Press and Cervena Barva Press Readings

Somerville Library/Central Branch
79 Highland Ave
Somerville MA 02139

Thursday, September 25, 2008
6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Free


Ibbetson Street Press Authors:
Lisa Beatman will read from Manufacturing America: Poems from the Factory Floor
Gloria Mindock will read from Blood Soaked Dresses
Richard Wilhelm will read from Awakenings


Cervena Barva Press Authors:
Mary Bonina will read from Living Proof
Doug Holder will read from The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel
Catherine Sasanov will read from Tara

CONFESSIONS OF A WHITE HAT REVIEWED BY MICHAEL KRIESEL

Ed Galing's chapbook, Confessions of a White Hat, published by Propaganda Press, has been reviewed by renowned author Michael Kriesel. Michael's review of the book will be printed in Chiron Review, Free Verse, and Small Press Review.

In addition, both Michael and Ed have poems featured in Propaganda Press' latest collection of poetry by various authors, Poiesis #1, available for $4 [which includes shipping] from Alternating Current, PO Box 398058, Cambridge MA 02139, USA. Checks made out to Alternating Current, or Paypal to alt.current@gmail.com [Please send an email to the same address to let us know of your purchase while the website shopping cart is temporarily down. Sorry for the purchasing inconvenience.]

Michael Kriesel's review:

Confessions of a White Hat
By Ed Galing
2008; 36pp; Propaganda Press,
POB 398058 Cambridge,
MA 02139. $5.

Reviewed By Michael Kriesel

Poetry as history is Galing’s specialty. Plus he tells a damn good story.
Ed’s an inspiration to me. He’s 90 years old, lost his wife a year ago, and still keeps writing. Writing well. Even writing cheerful 2 and 3-page letters on an old electric typewriter to any small press poet who drops him a line.
I hope to do as well someday.
Galing’s known for story poems about Depression-era New York, back when teenagers would sneak into burlesque shows. Days when the refrigerator held a giant block of ice. Priceless, entertaining, vivid snapshots of a world long gone.
Confessions of a White Hat recounts Ed’s 17 years in the Naval Reserve, which he joined after his Army discharge at the end of WWII. A few photos interspersed make this a slice of history up close and personal. The poems are on a par with Thomas Michael McDade’s own fine Navy tales.
Highly recommended!



[Thanks Michael]

REVIEWS FOR ED GALING'S NEW CHAPBOOK

The newest release from Propaganda Press, "Confessions of a White Hat" by Ed Galing, has garnered a little local attention. Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press, The Somerville News (Arts Editor), and the official blog of author Ed Galing, has reviewed the poetry chapbook on Galing's blog and in the Off The Shelf section of The Somerville News:

I speak to 91 year old Hatboro, Pennsylvania[,] poet Ed Galing on a regular basis, and I am amazed that despite his advanced years his mind is still sharp, and he continues to regale the small press with his prolific output of poetry and prose. Ed at this stage in the game is being discovered and is being published in such top shelf [magazines as]: Pearl, Margie, Rattle[,] and others.

I am also glad that a local press: Propaganda Press, headed by [Cambridge] resident Leah Angstman, has published a new [chapbook] from Ed. Ed has written extensively about his days as a boy on the streets of the Lower East Side of New York City, his stint as an occupation soldier during World War ll, and his life in America as a Jew, family man, and the many other roles he has played in the long expanse of his lifetime.

His latest book "Confessions of a White Hat" deals with his time as a naval reservist in the post World War ll Cold War era. In characteristic Galing style[,] he gives the reader the taste and texture of the Navy-life, as he knew it. Here Galing describes the milieu, and the sensibility of his place and time:

The Beginning

we are a motley
crew
as motley as
you could ever wish
for; fresh out of
other branches
of the service,
after world war
two,
the reserves
wave a silver
platter before
our eyes;
ex-marines
soldiers
coast guard
waves
we all clamber
on board,
not willing to
forget the
military yet;
the cold war
is still on;
unrest in other
parts of the
world,
the russian bear,
i had to be nuts
but six months
after i get out
of the Army
i am now a
member of the
naval air
on active duty
at an air station
four miles from
home,
and the fat is in
the fire once
again.

Ed tells me that Leah Angstman is going to publish more of his work so that he can speak to us well after his death. Let's hope that Ed stays around on this earthly plain for some years to come.

Nipping the rumors: We are, in fact, publishing more of Ed's work. Due out Friday we have:

• Diner, reprinted poems from 1999, $5.
  
• Bargain Basement and other selected poems, reprinted poems from 2001, $4.
  
• Out On A Limb, reprinted poems from 2002, $5.
  
• Shadows On The Wall, reprinted poems from 2006, $4.
  
• Chasing The World Never Catching Up, a new chapbook of collected works, $4.

Chapbooks of Ed's due out before the end of the month:

• Loose Ends, reprinted poems from 1999, $6.
• Raising The Roof (and other poems), reprinted poems, $4.
• Rooftops (A Poetry Collection), reprinted poems, $5.
• Senior Center, reprinted poems from 2001, $5.
• Lower East Side Poems, a new chapbook of collected works, $5.

All of these chapbooks are available by sending check or money order made out to Alternating Current to Alternating Current, PO Box 398058, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA, or electronically via Paypal, sent to the address alt.current@gmail.com. Please send us an email to the same email address letting us know your purchasing wishes. Advanced orders are accepted. We are sorry for the purchasing inconvenience while the website is down. If you wish to review any of these publications, please let us know the details, and we will send you a press kit.

PUBLIC EVENTS CALENDAR AND ACTIVITIES LISTINGS

WE WANT YOUR EVENTS:

The idea behind the public events calendar [see it] is that it is a directory of events for you, of you, by you. We want your artistic events, so let us know what is happening in your area, no matter how big or small.

Each listing on the calendar starts off with the closest largest city, if the event is not nationwide, so you can see at a glance if the event is applicable to you. The arrow in the upper right of the calendar screen gives you a dropdown key of calendar subjects by color, so you can narrow the calendar down to show only events that are important to you.

This calendar is a free, great, public place to list your artistic, social, political, or scientific event. Here's how:

Email us with:

• Closest big city to the event, if it is not national or Internet-based
• The who
• The what
• The where, as exact as possible
• The when, including time and time zone, and if the event repeats, etc.
• The why
• The how
• A copy of a flier or photo, if you have one, and photo credit name/link
• Any links/contact info where people can go to find more info
• Other necessary info: cost, 21+, sponsors, parking, etc.

Your event will show up as soon as we can upload it! We do reserve the right to refuse to list someone's event if it doesn't comply with our standards, ethics, or general overall good-for-the-peeps gut feeling, but if you're being cool, then we probably won't refuse it. Send in as many as you want (but please check to see if they are already listed, first! No repeats!)

SEVEN PUBLISHING SECRETS THAT CAN HELP YOU SUCCEED

I recently got an email from the pool of peeps over at Outskirts Press that detailed the "Seven Publishing Secrets That Can Help You Succeed." I just thought it was interesting and quick, so I am passing it along:

1.) Keep all your rights and get a non-exclusive contract.
2.) Set your own royalty and retail price for your book.
3.) Professional interior formatting and typesetting should be included.
4.) Personal marketing guidance after publication should be included.
5.) Have access to flexible print runs from 1 to 1000s.
6.) Be sure your author price is below wholesale, regardless of quantity.
7.) Receive distribution through Ingram; Baker & Taylor; and Amazon.

Outskirts Press is a print-on-demand publisher, and apparently, they do all these things, or they wouldn't be telling me that a good print place does all these things. What I will add is this:

1.) Be sure you get rights to an eBook. EBooks are the future of the world.
2.) I would also say you should get distribution through Barnes & Noble and Borders, too, since those are huge booksellers, and ultimately, it costs the printers beans to go through them.

THE BLOGGING GEORGETOWN BLOG SHOWS US SOME LOVE

The cool folks over at the Blogging Georgetown [Seattle] blog stumbled upon our Artopia blog post and quoted/linked us in one of their posts. We don't know these peeps, but we appreciate the link, and we want you to scurry over to their blog and check it out. If you live in the Georgetown/Sodo area of Seattle, they have some fabulous links and resources on their blog.

[Photo credit link]