Differentia Press: Poetic Collections of the Experimental Spectrum

2020-07-13T21:34:00.000-07:00

2011-12-11T10:06:00.001-08:00

UNIVERSES

John Crouse

To read UNIVERSES, click the cover

From UNIVERSES:

Troops uvulas tempos underclothing teaspoons,

Grammars generations grapefruits handwringing

Eyelets kingdoms leaks crowned accident leagues.

Spawn mastodon massachusets pimples blow

Raggedy cancer mantis electric beans. Containment

Rooks tarantulas candles classics, tempers tricky

Waylays, stencils the sounds footsteps takes

Unsteady aim. Ditches corsets reactive sheets

Steps toward epilogues secret manners enslaved

Head saves wings that might someday be metallic.

Toward the beginning of a stream turns aortas to

Upper adores, dictionarys, tempests playbooks massages

Cartoons iterations thefts stencils than mammary glades

Reboots. Prepositions hinges than braless endows.

Heavy freedom beefs plainsong jelly amasses,

Disintegrates dragonfly battleships toothaches interpretive

Umbrellas ventriloquists whitecap. Graffiti velvets pedigree

Sighs. Valor throbs handcuff ventilator clown meridian

Vestiges sty. Pro musk postscript litterbugs retch hatchways

Handlebars revivals steamships lisps. Masterpiece ambulance

Gin chowder quiz mousetrap, jug pushover aliments

Manatee. Pretty about ghoul, pranks liver juniper preschool

Astronaut sugar purposes runways purr. Thesaurus puppet

Thickets steals thermal law goat theories. Loin macronflowers loll.

Sumac wheel pocketknife romp. Uncle shoal, who else? Extract

Exact spunk. Spleen decals glockenspiel flipper. Hyena past

About UNIVERSES:

Sung & said & thought & read, read-thrus cast outright, fleshed or imagined, & foundered @ eye- & brain- stem, reader, participating or outcast, wordy or mums or mumbles the words, any reconciliation or raillery flys off @ the mouths as smiles or frowns purr ours, supersonic alphabet soup, as needed. Characters finishing characters sentences @ line ends as stand- ins, rabbits from hats, cables to splice algebraically, understudys voiceovers, thoughts aloud,as disconnecting dots readers eyes connecting stage & page teases. Characters charactering, letters pinned on shirts, penned hearts on sleeves, writing infinitely different same open books like alphabet speaking for it- & them- & our- selves.

John Crouse

Encomium for UNIVERSES:

"What do we learn about universes from John Crouse'sUNIVERSES? -- the universe is orderly, it goes lineated from A to Z --- itscategories [A to Z] are important, we find them in upper case. the 'contents', usuallyshort and pithy sentences with skewed wisdom and humor, in lower case, are lesspretentious. The Universe is not the universe, it is the UNIVERSES. Theexistence of multiple universes is acknowledged -- present astronomical theoryconcurs with this view and Crouse capitalizes [no pun] on this description bynoting we have UNIVERSES -- or, 'All VERSES are UNI-que and/or UNI-versal. Aswith the best poetry, it is abstract and self-referential. Of course, in thisself-preoccupied era, we can wonder about the meaning of self-referentiality,however, the reference is to the poem. The poet is the poem, the poem is thepoem, all of us are UNI-que, and all of us are UNIque poets in this/theseUNI-verse[s]. All poets can be honored to read this work by Mr. Crouse."

Peter Ganick

Photo of John Crouse

2011-10-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

A POETRY

Peter Ganick

from A POETRY

canyou keep a secret?

thesequence of this secret is nothing but its own stating.

thereis nothing behind or before it.

literatureis not of its concern.

agrain of sand is mindstyle enough

forits intention to thrive.

canyou keep a secret?

so,again, we wander streets, beaches—

anywherethere are tides from which

wecan be harangued no lecture other than

thatis offered & inscribed here.

canyou keep a secret? we asked.

somewherein an art magazine an artist wrote the first person singular pronoun and

meanteverybody.

so—whynot use everybody’s pronoun—we.

Encomiums for A POETRY:

The monotonous experience of trudging thru everyday reading-scapes'disposable closures necessitates Ganick's POETRY of pure & precise chance(-taking) openwork. His detours reauthenticate via strides reshaping &strophes rebooting reading/living experience along paths of least resistance.Even as mountains are moved & walls walked thru, Ganick's manifoldsituations pathway supersonic turtles unleashing living/breathingpanoramas' pointed loitering toward magnetic north as true north'sderivations. Baudelaire's "botanist of the sidewalk", Ganick,breaking mama's backs & busting chops as any causeway-rooting gangliaplumber "on a routine walkabout" must, surgically roves his precision& polyphonic wondering, rollicking & astute, fine & dandy. Gethis drift.

JohnCrouse

Peter Ganick's always sharp modalities have taken on a new registerhere. Space filters "things" with the emotions of light, discoveryand ambiguity, as if "meaning" itself had become a music of silence.At one point Ganick declares "space emerges victorious"! Here weare reading a "poem" ("untitled poems for a wednesdayevening") or the multiple variants of space between the lines orstanzas of the poem, as if we were going from sleep into eternity.Ganick's spare music engenders many ends without beginnings. Sun Ra reminds us"space is the place". And it is music we are hearing and waiting tohear in the midst of the intricate pauses, a jazz of distances andnon-substantiation. A world where surfaces don't matter is a labyrinth of unheardmusic, a space of intervals and reverse mirrors. Is there a way to exit fromthe poem? Ganick suggest in the last line that "noon's steward inventsears."

ivan arguelles

In A Poetry,Peter Ganick grapples with the universal questions of life froma perspective more personal than many of his other literary meditations.Opening with reflections on his father's passing and their final discussionsabout the nature of existence, Ganick’s inquiry examines life, philosophy andlanguage through a free form exploration grounded in personal reflection butfueled with an alchemist's exalted vision of life’s cyclical transformationfrom lead to gold and back, revealed with as deft a grasp of its illusivenature as one can gain.

Vernon Frazer

Peter Ganick has published over 200 books of poetry.He was publisher of Potes & Poets Press, an important avant garde poetrypress, from 1980-2000. Now he runs white sky books and supervises the blog ex-ex-lit.blogspot.com, a forum forexperimental-experiental literature. He is active in the visual art field,having recently had a book of art criticism, 'thoughts on abstraction in art',accepted at the Barnes & Noble NOOK Bookstore. For a day job, he has been apiano instructor in the West Hartford CT area for 39 years. He lives in WestHartford with his wife, the artist, Carol Ganick.

2011-02-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage

By Matt Hill

from One/The Dysfunction of Moments:

Blaming becomes the new cancer of discourse
As a trajectory of disorder defaults to what?
Taking the disagreements outside no longer works either …
So many impairments due to driveling pronunciamentos,
All forfeiture reigns supreme by falsely appeasing the critics …

The flayed minions are in such a hot mess,
The Prominati turgid w/ their status inanities,
The nympho-vixens graduate into a lucid harlotry,
While A LOVE SUPREME does it up in the background …
The focus these days has fallen into some major arrearage …

These de-trendings slipping into unprosperity
Below the faux earthquake weather days,
The further falls in the social scale so sadly sanctioned …
& doing nothing only gainsays my what …?
Times such as these surely pry men’s holes …

However, it is best to move off the confrontations
In this eccentric wilderness of fiery whelpings …
Hell really doesn’t need another ground-zero,
Especially as the battlefields remain so full of fear …
Also, any fallback to Plan D will only obfuscate further …

About Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage:

Composed under the flarings of loose cullage and “disjunctive synthesis”, Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage strives towards the capture of elusive imagery slumbering within the ubiquitous white noise of our quotidian wayfarings. Representing a mixed grill of transmundane gleanings and highly-tempered vents & railings, this book promotes a caustic balance underwritten by the full stun vernacular of feral bricolage.

Bullroaring like a short block V-8 Chevy redlining down philistine boulevards in the narrow pre-dawn hours, some of these terse passages signify the countering forces of hope and sustaining love as they insinuate through the spectacle arenas of our mundane conundrums. And yet, many other stanzas are just flat out surly, albeit unapologetically proud, pronouncements of brazen survival episodes acquired on a questionably doomed mudball spinning away in galactic space.

Within Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage, emanations from street jargon vignettes & poetic whatnot channel and redistribute the collective pain and intrepid hopes through our looming mortal terminality. In the background are the grace notes & observing intensities of Beckett & Berryman, fostering an optimistically cynical courage for both long-shot players and pilgrims of the fresh metaphor.

Matt Hill

Encomiums for Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage:

Bristling with barbed insights, Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage offers a critique of everyday life under late capitalism, replete with caustic humor and lyrical openings. The vernacular has rarely been turned to such high purposes as here. It’s a testimony to the perseverance of the poetic spirit against all odds! There’s a no-holds-barred approach in this book that I find invigorating and hopeful. It seems to embody the dictum attributed to the imprisoned Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci: “Pessimism of the intellect; optimism of the will."

Andrew Joron

Matt Hill's aptly titled Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage, delves into a present tense that morphs even as it is felt. The ensuing journey, visceral-made-virtual, invents a new self into a perpetual series of refinements occurring at high frequency. The poet's sensibilities are uncannily astute, revealing the previously unimaginable to be the new reality.

Sheila E. Murphy

Matt Hill has authored four books of poetry & prose poems, several chapbooks, and has also edited two compilations of various quotations. He served as editor/publisher of the Marshall Creek Press series of experimental literature chapbooks (1995-97), and presently lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Other books by Matt Hill:

The Cloud Reckoner, Wingspan Press, 2007

Parataxis, BlazeVox Books, 2008

Amalgamated Fragments, forthcoming

The Radius of Insight, forthcoming

2010-11-11T07:30:00.000-08:00

Chilean Sea Bass is Really Just Patagonian Toothfish
Charles Freeland

from Chilean Sea Bass is Really Just Patagonian Toothfish

Please don’t inform me of any alternatives. I’ve been growing an inch or more every year since they started

enriching the oats, started cataloguing the frequency of the thunderstorms as if they hoped to find there some

pattern like that the geese follow when they are over the Upper Platte. Or that creature termed leviathan, cause of

social sterility because it is identified with Egypt and Babylon. Just as if these places weren’t already desirable in

themselves. Destinations one discovers while trolling the brochures at the truck stop.

About Chilean Sea Bass is Really Just Patagonian Toothfish

In Chilean Sea Bass is Really Just Patagonian Toothfish, Charles Freeland continues the experiment in longer prose poetry form he began with Eros & (Fill in the Blank). It is a work equal parts narrative, Menippean Satire and old-fashioned hoax, another in Freeland’s growing oeuvre to ask the marginally important questions like Where are we? and What’s next?

Encomiums for Chilean Sea Bass is Really Just Patagonian Toothfish

“How do we discern the truly essential ingredients?” asks Charles Freeland in this passage that serves up a combination platter of the frivolous and the significant with a rhythm reminiscent of life itself. Cultural detritus pollutes the field of our vision in the form of junk food, bar codes, and phantom pains. Natural landscapes are filtered through a force field of attention deficit disorder. What gets lost and what remains visible in this land of distractions and information overload mode? Sometimes it seems “we only register when something is amiss”. This piece moves in a way that captures both the suppression and surprising expressions of the day to day; the chugging routine and the startling little rifts in the routine, when suddenly a truly singular image or genuine moment comes to the forefront and asserts its own unique individuality.

Juliet Cook, author of Horrific Confection

Lyrically wry, mapping the periphery of earshot with a richness of language pliable as the mind, Charles Freeland’s Chilean Sea Bass is Really Just Patagonian Toothfish is a masterfully woven narrative, a voice with big shoes filled. Prose absolved of the prosaic, poetically carving out a sensibility of the infinite in the protean, the human after all. A stunning achievement.

Philip Byron Oakes, author of Cactus Land and Sard

Twice the recipient of the Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, Charles Freeland lives in Dayton, Ohio where he is Professor of English at Sinclair Community College. His books include the collection Through the Funeral Mountains on a Burro (Otoliths) and the book-length poem Eros & (Fill in the Blank) (BlazeVOX). His website is The Fossil Record (charlesfreelandpoetry.net).

Other Books by Charles Freeland:

Deviled Ham and a Picture of Jesus: Twenty Grubb Tales (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming)

Through the Funeral Mountains on a Burro (Otoliths, 2009)

Eros & (Fill in the Blank) (BlazeVOX, 2009)

Eulalie & Squid (Chippens Press, 2009)

Furiant, Not Polka (Moria, 2008)

The Case of the Danish King Halfdene (Mudlark, 2008)

Where We Saw Them Last (Lily Press, 2007)

author photo by Kamari Stevens

2010-11-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

for good behaviour
by lars palm

(witch trial & (t)error)

trees spawning dark matter don't matter much anymore. any more moorings to cast off? are we talking about a revolution? something about the number of them per minute. the hour stretches into seconds. served by deadpan cops along with the summons & the rubber bullets. shedding your mortal coil. coining another phrase for excavating any number of cavities. caving in through the door. before. & after climbing that tree

About for good behaviour

in for good behaviour i have collected a handful of prose poems. what i'm after in doing so is, maybe, to play with the borders of the form. where does it turn into essay, narrative prose, nonsense?

lars palm

Encomiums for for good behaviour

These are wonderful parenthetical novellas. Within "a snap of ... fingers," these inquisitions -- ranging over Pinocchio to addressing cats to white colonialism in Zimbabwe -- provide a welcome "kick in the head".

Eileen Tabios

Le Roi est nu!

The King is naked. Radical ingenuity is what Lars Palm requires from his readers. In non/sensical alliterations he leads you through colorful associations, the ends of which join in an un/perfect circle, clean and transparent. And we are here because we have wanted to since long.

Anny Ballardini

These prose poems find lars palm putting together jigsaw puzzles from the pieces of history. He makes them fit by including not just history but a sense of drama, playing, and play. Dedications give the pieces scotch tape so that they may be affixed to our consciousness. Linguistic nuances make history sound like pieces of sharp, avant jazz, an analogue to Ornette Coleman except with their own rhythmic systems. It's a system to get lost in, and an extended song no one is likely to forget.

Adam Fieled

it has been said that he's a poet & translator. it has been said that he runs a small ungovernable press. it has been said that he works in health care. all these things, & several more, can be questioned. what might be said is that lars palm lives in malmö (sweden) with his wife

Other books by lars palm:

mindfulness (Moria, 2006)

on stealing lips (The Martian Press, 2006)

is beside the point (Big Game Books tinyside #34, 2007)

riot (self-published, 2007)

some hay (Meritage Press tiny book series, 2007)

death is (by the skin of me teeth books, 2007)

the (ungovernable press, 2008)

östergötland (a found poem) (ungovernable press, 2008)

mispell (ungovernable press, 2008)

in the news (ungovernable press, 2009)

over this here rainbow (Wheelhouse Press, 2009)

cantar de mio corman (Teeny Tiny, 2009)

fragments from this (chalk editions, 2010)

when the earth moves in (Open Palm Press, 2010)

don't be quiet, start a riot – split with Adam Fieled (weekend press, 2010)

whomeanswhat (Sacrifice Press, 2010)

Author photo courtesy, Petra Palm

Read a review of for good behaviour, written by Bill Allegrezza, HERE.

2010-10-31T12:35:00.000-07:00

SCAPES
Adam Cornford

(Click HERE to read SCAPES)

from THE GREEN STAR

after Lin Carter

As the green star rises

we runaways from Steel Planet wake

in branching shadow

under

the green star we

descend below lawn-wide leaves into expanded origin

Green star, engine of transmutation glowing in every cell, let us take passage on your Green Star Line

As the green star

rises

lemur tongues inscribe

death-script around porticos of bark

a snail-car trailing silk

steam traverses

midforest aisles

Green star, attractor of the currents of leaves, the fractals of insects, draw us into your viridian spiral

About SCAPES

These poems explore territories at various levels of the imagination—from the inscription of biography into the poet’s hands, by way of the worlds created by visual artists and fundamental physicists, to the infinite vistas we are able to perceive when we cleanse the doors of our perception. The poems are formally various but share key underlying themes. Central to these are two dawning understandings derived from physics and cosmology: that we are surrounded by infinities of other universes in which everything that can possibly happen does happen; and that mind is integral to the very existence of space and time. Also permeating the work is the vision of William Blake, who understood these realities in his own way two centuries ahead of science.

Adam Francis Cornford

Adam Francis Cornford, born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, came to the United States as a student in 1969. Since then he has lived almost entirely in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he has worked as a commercial painter, youth counselor, nonprofit director, teacher, professor, and freelance editor and writer. From 1987 until the closure of that institution in 2008, Cornford led the Poetics Program at New College of California in San Francisco and also taught in its undergraduate Humanities program. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines in print and on the web, and he has published three full-length poetry collections: Shooting Scripts (1978), Animations (1988), and Decision Forest (1997) as well as several chapbooks. Recent or forthcoming publications are on DeepOakland.org, Counterexample Poetics, Newport Review, and now Differentia Press among other places. Cornford has collaborated extensively with the composer Daniel Steven Crafts on lyrics and libretti. He is currently working on a science-fiction novel, a sequence of “translations” of works of visual art, and a monograph on William Blake’s epistemology in relation to modern science. He lives in Oakland, California.

2010-10-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

The Fire District

By Michael Bernstein

an excerpt from The Fire District:

the Fire
District
screams
(is dreamed.in-
to solidity

its cinder
blocks churn,
get up&replace
each other

in the
dense
frieze of
slums.a
balance
is struck—

whirring
&dumb.

Encomiums for The Fire District:

In The Fire District the tangible world blurs. Each gesture of the poem is a skirmish of inner and outer landscapes. Here, what boundary is safe? What is a boundary that is not unshifting? What is a hem that cannot also be a hemorrhage, hemorrhaging Moon? It's Francis Bacon to my ears.

Kerri Sonnenberg, author of The Mudra (Litmus Press)

The packed stanzas of Michael Bernstein’s “The Fire District” present themselves as knots, or fists, of attention, but take on even greater weight in relation to neighboring stanzas: “to en- / voke.the / onyx win- / dows gleam // blistered / w/jet- / wash& / bright // dead leaves.” The tone is dark (“for the / lesion / streets”) but also near mystical, like a revelation from or within fire. Thus the precision of the word “slurred,” as heat melts together things that had been distinct presences. This is the work of a very promising poet, able to envision the living and dying processes that turn about us and within us.

Paul Hoover

Michael Bernstein's Poems are necessary. They are a vital seeing and piercing through the veils of isolation and false safety that stop too many of us. His huge heart is on fire through these small but powerful links toward real communion. His poems are generous, grown from the depths of a knot in the darkness, a generative and replenishing engagement with our inner worlds.

Roberto Harrison, author of Os (Subpress) and Counter Daemons (Litmus Press)

Michael Bernstein is the author of the chapbooks cinderbook (Gold Wake Press, 2009), the rot to light (Gold Wake Press, 2010), 8s (Scantily Clad Press, forthcoming 2010), imaginary grace (Recycled Karma Press, 2010), from “a heap of swords and mirrors” (Bedouin Books, forthcoming 2010), the transit illuminate (mud luscious press, 2010), nanostars (greying ghost press, forthcoming 2010), the Fire District (Differentia Press, forthcoming 2010), Well (Splitleaves Press, 2010), and death ray (Minutes Books, forthcoming). His poems have appeared in magazines such as Puppy Flowers, milk, Moria, BlazeVOX, and New American Writing. He currently co-edits the online literary arts magazine Pinstripe Fedora, and has written book reviews for Gently Read Literature and Tarpaulin Sky. Michael lives and writes in Wisconsin.

2010-09-05T11:33:00.000-07:00

Rummaging in the Attic

by Constance Stadler

thaw

… warmth

came the thaw

as it always comes

but through embryonic sight

the death of the icicle

was not mourned

rather, each transmogrifying droplet

was savored in singular rite of passage.

swollen liquefaction.

slow bulbous form, released

burst, leaving a wake of abundant

children

and the thing itself,

this shape shift stalactite

of bright dancing water

soft ripples

fading, fading

illumed firm

moist

as all beauty, ephemeral, yet savored

the dénouement is epiphanic

… the heart floods …

I will soon see you, my chimera,

on sparkling, watered

substant

pavement

About Rummaging in the Attic

This compilation was written in the months prior to a major life-change. As such, “the theme” is the inner reactions and refractions on what goes through a mind when experiencing shadings of ending and imagined beginnings. Memory and contemplation on the mosaic of being human came to the forefront as readily as a child’s free form association. The reader is welcomed to share this exploration of meaning and reflection in the womb of change.

Constance Stadler

Encomiums for Rummaging in the Attic:

The attic. Repository of memorabilia, joys, sorrows, fears, relics, heirlooms, secrets, truths denied, origins forgotten and the aborted dreams of generations. Pantheon of LATER. Merely opening the door is to risk being swept away. The lure of the attic is undeniable: equal parts romance, apprehension and surrender, it offers promise and peril in one augural exchange of escaping bated breath. Reading Constance Stadler’s spellbinding collection of ‘poems from the attic’ opens a new kind of cognitive door: a transformational revelation that the same void which allows captive ideas and images to escape allows fresh air and light in to reveal a world of buoyant, ebullient healing affirmations. Rummaging in the Attic is a poetic breath of life to fill the sails of the world-weary and spiritually stagnant – a welcome breeze to quell the swelter of the mundane.

Rich Follett, author Silence , Inhabited, co-author (with Constance Stadler) of Responsorials and Featured Artist, Counterexample Poetics.

Constance Stadler is a poet's poet. Rummaging in the Attic had me rummaging through the writer's and my own closets in the dark recesses of internal wounds. And I'm a better man for it...

Nobius Black, editor of Calliope Nerve

This collection is a stained glass soma fountain perfectly remaking itself over and over again. In a lost era of poetry where a collective indolence has led us to a less is more mentality, with its soupçon of imagery and fear of emotional depth; Stadler offers us a viable escape, a prism rather than a prison. And with this sterling invitation comes a new challenging way to freely explore fresh, uncharted realms of light and shadow, impossible to imagine, until now.

William Crawford, author of “Fire in the Marrow” (NeoPoiesis Press, 2010) and recent Pushcart Prize nominee.

Constance Stadler’s latest collection of works is rendered with a silken touch. Her words and thoughts are revealed in a poetic mastery that can only be penned by this magnificent poet. Her articulation of words and verse remind me of an explorer, searching out and finding secret and sacred texts.
She has a way of placing the reader at ease; allowing them to flow through these pages with a calm and serene eye. Each page brings the reader closer to this serenity. Constance is an articulate author with a huge vocabulary, and a well-crafted loved for the art of poetry.
Constance has been writing for many years. The former editor of South and West, she has published over four hundred and fifty pieces of poetry. Her latest two chapbooks have also been recently published, Tinted Stream (Shadow Archer Press) and Sublunary Curse, (Erbacce).

Troubadour21 rates Rummaging in the Attic at 5 stars. We look forward to many more works from this outstanding poet and author, and find it the most sincere privilege to read and review her works.
Constance Stadler is a poet to read daily, for each piece of art that she renders is another gem to be placed into our poetic jewelry boxes. Those of which are of the greatest value.
Rummaging in the Attic is one of those gems. A must read for every poetry connoisseur.

W.B. Burkholder, Content Editor, Troubadour 21

*This review originally appeared at Troubadour 21

Stadler is one of the best living poets today precisely because of her original make-up: her anthropological understanding of the world which enables her to avoid the wishy washy romanticism of much contemporary language; her extraordinary range of linguistic prowess which frequent lunges to the dictionary will only make the reader richer. Structuralism and Psychoanalysis have been taken on board and i almost dare say: intellectually surpassed. Yet the poet is not under any illusions, nor under the influence of some master guru thinker. But in the final analysis, her greatness lies in staying faithful to her nerve ends, to her body, her refined sensibility which may lead her occasionally to deplore her instinctual dislike of her epoch's bad taste. Hence when visiting her attic, up the serpentine stair of her mind, the visitor-reader-poet will oscillate between the poles of intellectual defiance and deep passion, between the unwavering eye of the social scientist and the sea-bound adagio of the violinist, between the deserts of North Africa and Emily Dickinson's garden. Between amiss and bliss, between perish and cherish, Stadler's poems of multiplicity stand proudly under the momentary sign of the rainbow. Nothing stands for long these days. The guillotine of disgust and filth are never far so poets have to provide the tools of resistance within their poems with multiple reading possibilities and escape routes. We are writing in code for an unknown future. Stadler must and should be read now, everywhere as she stands ever proudly within the great heritage of American female voices.

Dom Gabrielli, author, "The Parallel Body" and "Eyes of a Man"

Read a review written by April Michelle Bratten, editor of Up The Staircase, HERE.

Constance Stadler has been writing, publishing, and editing poetry from the ‘prehistoric’ epoch of print journals to modern e-times. She was a former editor of South and West and is currently a contributing editor to several zines. She has published over 1,000 poems and three chapbooks in her ‘first manifestation’ as a poet and has recently released her first two chaps in 20 years, Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer Press) Sublunary Curse (Erbacce) a full manuscript, Paper Cuts (Calliope Nerve Media) and a collaborative work (with Rich Follett), Responsorials (NeoPoiesis Press).

Her most recent work appears in such 'zines as BlazeVox, ditch, ken*again, Pen Himalaya, Rain Over Bouville, Clockwise Cat, Unlikely Stories 2.0, Hanging Moss, Neonbeam, and Gloom Cupboard. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been ‘Featured Poet’ for the Guild of Outsider Writers, Counterexample Poetics and The Poetry Warrior.

Thank you to Duane Locke, for providing all images within Rummaging in the Attic

2010-07-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

Featuring:

Duane Locke

John Swain

Constance Stadler

William Crawford

Melissa Dulaney

Caleb Puckett

Howie Good

Kevin Reid

Travis Macdonald

Lisa Cole

Samuel Hiram Duarte

Philip Byron Oakes

Luke Johnson

Russell Jaffe

Francis Raven

Irene Koronas

Serena Tome

Michael Mc Aloran

PJ Bach

Ser2

2009-12-05T09:42:00.000-08:00

The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper

by Andrew Taylor

Endanger Fencing

A blinding division walk the Brecon Beacons
amongst pale horses at Easter

creatures caught in traps shot in the back
of the head a countryside of carnage

from the beginning hotels near Heathrow
twenty four hour rolling news

a chance to study war how I’d have liked you
to walk with me around cities at night

drinking whiskey and listening to shock
radio like a bad mistake I ponder

anonymous scream pilots descend
at half mile intervals in a seated night

I was unaware that you would wait for me
like the ghost ration of a slow light I isolate

About The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper

Turn for Home, the first collection stems from a three year residency at Liverpool Architecture and Design Trust (LADT) as does the latest collection Make Some Noise some six years later. A lot of poems were written during those three years. Cathedral Poems from 2005, is the result from a two month residency at Liverpool Cathedral. Poetry and Skin Cream is a more personal and reflective collection written after Andrew Taylor's estranged wife passed away. Another residency at a Liverpool artist led gallery space, produced the poetry of Temporary Residence. And the Weary Are at Rest (Sunnyoutside Press, 2008) can be seen as a companion piece to Poetry and Skin Cream. The poetry is personal and reflective and spans the residencies and gathers material from Taylor's doctoral thesis. With The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper, Taylor has gathered further material written outside of the residencies and taken influence from the vagaries of life.

Andrew Taylor

Encomiums forThe Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper
Forging an inside-out syntax that stretches emotion and organizes content
according to each poem, Andrew Taylor in The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian
Supper wields concretes like Nordic axes hacking their way through the
numbing malaise of impossible relationships amidst a spiritually bankrupt
culture. The result is arresting...often thrilling. His unique subconscious
stream ignites the concrete world of “pilots,” “echo guitar,” “relics,”
“kettle,” and “wood smoke” along the way, thereby fuelling our intelligent
senses.

Alan Britt,
Poet
author of Vegetable Love (2009)

With simple ingredients Andrew Taylor builds a complex palette. Although it is a rich palette it never overshadows those simple ingredients, but instead showcases them. The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper, is a meal that should be savored.(and if you want to find out what those ingredients are i recommend you read it)

James Darman,
Poet
author of Getting Fat on Thin Lines and The Silence of Sunday

Andrew Taylor's latest collection is a perfect example of how to write more avant garde poetry. You should do so, as Taylor does, without losing touch with the faculty for observation and unconventional phrasing that is one of the hearts of poetry, and, most important, you must, absolutely, do so without losing touch with your heart and your common humanity. So this book is a gem, Taylor is one of the few christians who doesn't piss me off.

David McLean
Poet
http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com

Andrew Taylor's lines are singular and evocative. No word is out of place but in the crafting of the poems immediacy and vitality is not sacrificed. Andrew Taylor's clear voice rises beautifully above the cacophony of cliched mediocrity that passes for poetry in the 21st century.

Misti Rainwater-Lites
Poet
http://ebulliencepress.blogspot.com

In the age of internet instant fame, perhaps the most valuable asset to a contemporary poet is having a truly a unique voice. Metaphysical, whimsical yet, when need be, searing, Andrew Taylor is unique, indeed. His most recent eBook The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper (Differentia Press) is a quintessential illustration of such rarity. In Endanger Fencing we contemplate:

anonymous scream pilots descend
at half mile intervals in a seated night
I was unaware that you would wait for me
like the ghost ration of a slow light I isolate

Then move to Strummer Telecaster a seeming techno-rip poem that seizes with an ending that seizes: my country/ will you ever recover? /my heart.

We move on this misted surreal journey to the realm of Lost: I hear the planet crying such Teen Angst/ withdraw from use… and we are left in the miasma of an elusive dancing vision.

There is a wonderful dry wit that toys with the reader throughout but the reader is taken into confidence as we see in Been Listening to the Pailies have you?

the pound is worthless against the dollar
they are stripping the Chelsea Hotel
of its history in an effort to make more money
room 211 is partly demolished

How clever

The reader is guaranteed to be pushed out of comfortable closets of perception, engaged, entertained and enlightened. To say a ‘must-read’ has become quite jejune, thus it should be used sparingly. The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper ~ a must-read.

Constance Stadler
Poet and editor
author of Paper Cuts (2009)
http://conniestadler.blogspot.com/

Andrew Taylor’s The Metaphysics of a Vegetarian Supper transcends the typical meatless dinner and subtly touches the senses. I especially like the juxtaposition of spirit and nature against a sensual landscape, as in the opening poem, She Strokes Bees,”and, later, In Heels she feels closer to God, in which “pink flowers emit…the smell of death,” and “green-haired girls compare tattoos…and share their drugs.” Color, sou nd, music, food, drink rush through the collection, grounding us with the final lines (“Pitching Camp’):
She feels as though her heart is
walking around in front of her

whereas I feel as though mine is melting
A lovely collection, full of grace.

Puma Perl, poet,
author of Belinda and Her Friends

I’m in love with this book…

Lara Konesky, poet,
author of Next to Guns

Andrew Taylor is a Liverpool poet and co-editor and publisher of erbacce and erbacce-press. He has a PhD in Poetry and Poetics which he gained under the supervision of Robert Sheppard. He supports Everton Football Club and sometimes blogs HERE.

Other books from Andrew Taylor

Make Some Noise, (Maryport: Original Plus, 2009)

And the Weary Are at Rest, (Boston: Sunnyoutside Press, 2008)

Temporary Residence, (Liverpool: erbacce Press, 2007)

Poetry & Skin Cream [2nd Edition] (Liverpool: erbacce Press, 2007)

Cathedral Poems, (Poole: Paula Brown Publishing, 2005)

Poetry & Skin Cream, (Liverpool: erbacce Press, 2004)

Turn For Home, (Liverpool & Bristol: The Brodie Press, 2003)

2009-11-29T09:15:00.000-08:00

Other Cruel Things

by Ray Succre

How to Write This Poem

The just-shy of four gave an aggregate blue—
you know this; summery days are full of that color,
as are certain corals and puffing moods.

What I should be doing is introducing the point:
My son is an ant-killer, half in confusion,
and half less than kind.
The themes of this poem are cruelty and weight,
in Summer three-quarters past three.

Let me start here: Nothing happened.
Little emmet nest spoiled, little lives spilling.
My son at their outskirts devastates the line-gang,
each ant, in turn lost beneath a foot.

The climax of this poem is when I describe
his killer eyes as well-cut jewels of June.

After this, to end the poem anew,
I add that we soon pass into the stomach of our home
to ease away and unseat the hotness from our blood.

About Other Cruel Things

My process is trying to put something different in each poem, to re-examine certain themes in differing styles and narration. So the experiment pretty much falls on each poem, individually, and how they might play with one another in the order of the book, somewhat back and forth between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person.

Ray Succre

Encomiums for Other Cruel Things

Ray Succre is a poet of unusually original and captivating fascinations—a lover of the cadences and delicacies of language who writes poems that slip needle-like beneath the skin of conscious experience. In an unconventional yet refined style void of sentimentality, he crafts well-oiled machines that effortlessly capture the reader. Other Cruel Things is a book to be read again and again.

Andrew David King

Ray Succre writes with a word-drunk surrealist on one shoulder and a world-loving angel on the other. His poems sing like no one else’s. There are enough lovely images in just a few pages of Succre’s new collection to light the way to Elysium. There are more lovely images in just those few pages than most poets employ in their lifetimes. I’d say Other Cruel Things is the acme (so far) of Succre’s fascinating and firecracker career. This book hit me like a fresh wind, though, really he’s been saying these things all along, things like “If it should happen/that I believe too much, too, I'll grow a garden,” and “She likes to hear about sex./I do not tell her what I know.” One of my favorite poem titles, not just of his but of any poet’s is “How to Write this Poem,” because it is a collaboration between reader and writer that Succre is after. And, he admonishes us in the opening poem, “I’ve no answer. Let’s talk.” The poet longs for the opening of a dialogue. Other Cruel Things is a book to savor, a book to read and reread. A book to listen to. I hope it garners Succre the larger audience he so richly deserves.

Corey Mesler, author of The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores

Ray Succre lives on the southern Oregon coast, U.S., with his wife and son. He has been writing for fifteen years, his poetry having appeared in over four hundred journals and publications spanning dozens of countries. He began writing novels in 2007. Other Cruel Things is his first published book of poetry.

Other books available from Ray Succre

(Novels)

Amphisbaena
Tatterdemalion

2009-11-19T07:09:00.000-08:00

2009-11-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

Morphometries: The Collected Poetical Works of Jack K, A National Poet of Little to Middling Importance

By Dr. Kane X. Faucher

from When the Organs Melt

The chorus of
This bland zeitgeist
Is the omnipresent
Refrigerator hum.
It keeps cold and sterile
The mesostrata of
Culture that resists
Nostalgifying (imagine!)…
Slapdash retro and knockoffery.

When the organ melts
Turn off the light,
Unplug the stovetop cerebrum otiosis
A bite of today, a shit for tomorrow,
A clapping of hands
The parade has passed,
An empty street
A litter-bound corridor
The wearing of feet,
And the organ melts.

About Morphometries: The Collected Poetical Works of Jack K, A National Poet of Little to Middling Importance

Morphometries is a dual-use text which features a collection of poems by Kane X. Faucher along with a "sidebar" narrative on the misadventures and eventual ruin of middling poet, Jack K, and his profiteering publisher Paul Epistolas. Meant as a wry satire on the state of Canadian Literature, readers may enjoy both the poems on their own as well as the running narrative. Percolating alongside these staged poems, devised to appear as though written by Jack Krist throughout a lacklustre career of self-indulgence, art-house experiments, and a resolute lack of finding his own reliable poetic voice, these poems are culled from Faucher's own meandering collection spanning a decade of poetic assays - some resounding, others playfully botched in the way they strike incoherent attitudes. The poems themselves may have some merit in themselves, and this establishes a tension between the derogatory sidebar proem and the content which is attributed to the failures of Jack Krist.
The selection of characters for the sidebar proem is inspired by Nietzsche's polemical harangues against the way the apostle Paul fictionalized and altered the life of Christ in order to ensure a coherent moral tablature of obedience. In this text, Paul takes the role of the publisher whose only interest is to exploit his poets for his own profitable gain. Jack Krist, as a mirror of an "authentic" Christ whose life was doubtless quite messy and contradictory to accepted scripture, finds his career as a Canadian poet at the mercy of Paul's finagling skullduggery.

Dr. Kane X. Faucher

Kane X. Faucher is not from Toronto, nor does he currently reside there. He never toured with Judas Priest. He is not yet a genetically engineered 12-ton people-devouring squid, nor does he offer his seat on the bus to just anyone. He cannot be reached by cell phone or fax machine. He has never flown in a hot air balloon, nor does this interest him in the least.

Anubis may proceed with the scales.

2009-10-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

Eye on the Universe

By Gail Gray

Stumbling

My beliefs, hang in this buried place,

disintegrate, brittle as ancient gauze,

tomb wrappings

caked with the leavings, the offerings

of philosophers and prophets.

My hands hold shreds of Hegel, dust bits of Sartre.

I can’t stay centered among the living dead.

Reminders: don’t believe what you see;

don’t believe what they say.

The actual world’s beauty

waits beneath the sham

it’s luster opaque beneath the hollow stare.

Once it shimmied behind a veil;

Once it quivered beneath the sea;

Once it strode between dust storms.

This is just a test.

I must remember this is just a test.

when we regain our senses

there is only awe.

Eye on the Universe investigates the interconnections between quantum

physics, philosophy, metaphysics, transcendence, the arts, purpose and the

actualization of the authentic self. As a travelogue along incompatible

tangents in a state of fluctuating paradox, Eye on the Universe exposes the

miracle in everyday life, the realm layered behind what we perceive as

"reality." Both hidden and viewed in our inner and outer universes, that

realm summons each individual, reminding them to forget their conditioning

as they awaken to remember their true core.

Gail Gray

Encomiums for Eye on the Universe:

Reading Gail Gray's "Eye On The Universe" I am reminded of Tom Clark

back when he was saying things that were worth saying. Gail's words

reach out toward the otherworldly but then return to the one we know

without getting lost. Because of this, the words speak of "universes"

you may not be familiar with, but instead of excluding you, they grab

and yank and cause you to experience a space that you would not

otherwise occupy unless Gail had brought you there.

—Joseph Goosey, author of "thirteen poems written inside your local

zaxby's" and "Wet and Dripping"

Gail Gray, grew up in Lowell, Mass but now lives in Greenville, SC, USA. She is the author of three books of poetry, The Hazard of Waking Up, Spirals in Copper, and Planetary Tension and two collections of shorts stories, Dark Voices and Memories and Monsters. She is the owner of Shadow Archer Press and the editor of Fissure, a magazine of experimental art and writing. Her short stories have been published or will be published in Morpheus Tales, Pear Noir!, moonShine Review, The Howling, Exquisite Corpse, Cover of Darkness 2009 anthology, Dark Gothic Resurrected, Sinister Tales and The Foliate Oak. Her poetry has been published or is upcoming in The Asheville Poetry Review, Counterexample Poetics, Deep Tissue Magazine, Cokefish, Exquisite Corpse, Eviscerator Heaven, Being, Big Swollen Toe, Sisyphus, Zygote Abstract Libertine, Gloom Cupboard, Main Street Rag, sein und werden, Clockwise Cat, Shoots and Vines, and the anthology, America!.

www.shadowarcherpress.com http://www.myspace.com/fissuremagazine myspace.com/fissuremag

Ciocanel Razvan of Romania is a 22 year old designer,web designer and web developer. As someone interested in computers he studied Informatics and Mathematics at Gib Mihaescu College and Informatics at the University of Craiova where he received his license.

In the past he worked with companies in the United States as a web developer, but now works with Alin, Ion and Mihai on a company they founded, AjaxMasters (ajaxmasters.com), doing websites and designs for clients all over the world. In his spare time Razvan works with photography and digital art with many examples posted on DeviantArt. (chocksy.deviantart.com)

2009-09-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

Vibrant Ghost

By Peter G Res

From Neon Soliloquies:

And the clouds
would be ribbed dragon scales
like bright rinds echoing night:
where was my kimono?
Purple and violent among fireflies
burning jade as night
falls to its side tells us to leave
well enough alone the house
is crashing into light.

Sing in a slap of night. What great
clay palms squashed your sorrow?
I’m glad.
Go off to darker galaxies of mind
bring back radio
active casseroles with pills
lined inside. We’ll eat with the moon
break mother down to our bellies
glisten and fly.

About Vibrant Ghost

Vibrant Ghost was born out of the poverty of illness. In particular, it is meant as
an emotional/philosophical/poetic offering to my beloved mother’s struggle with
shingles in the throat and mouth, so that her pain might end. The collection was
compiled at 4 am on July 18th, partly of a new series of poems written in almost
complete isolation (“Neon Soliloquies”) along with a handful of haphazard musings
on death and dream. July 4th to the 30th was a time of constant ER visits, failed
prognoses, and harrowing probabilities for us. During this period, I spent any and
all time I had away from care giving, in the dark comfort of my workspaces, to
pen my reticent frustrations in poems and letters. What has surfaced is something
altogether emergent.

Peter G Res
August 9, 2009
Old Tappan, New Jersey
4:04 A.M.

Encomiums for Vibrant Ghost:

Vibrant Ghost, though written by a young man, is essential. The poems are passionate, odd,
full of images that stick, and smart. He's no beginner. He's real.

—
Carol Frost

This is urgent and powerful poetry. Res' rhythm is impeccable; his facility with disruptive
images compelling. Res' poetry has the scent of madness about it, but it is a madness we
know: the madness of loss and struggle, of mortality. As the solid metaphors collapse into
bizarre yet beautiful juxtapositons, we see our confrontation with the demise of those we
love mirrored in the collapse of standard meaning-carrying deivces. The metaphor dies,
like our sense of the world, when we confront the death of those we love. It is this, above
all, that draws me back again
and again to this powerful work.

—Dr. J. Jeremy Wisnewski, Phd. Editor, Review Journal of Political Philosophy
Author of Wittgenstein and Ethical Inquiry (Continuum 2007) The Politics of Agency (Ashgate 2008)
and Ethics of Torture (Continuum 2009)

"Cannons of bone marrow,” the setting “a prescription,” a sense of suspension, of the
impending shades these poems,
their layered rhythm a mantra of family and illness. Powerful and evocative, Peter Res’s
poetry comes “crashing into light.”

—Francesco Levato Executive Director, The Poetry Center of Chicago
Award-Winning Author of Marginal State (Fractal Edge Press 2006)
and the Acclaimed Art-Poetry Film War Rug (2009)

Peter G Res was born in Paterson, New Jersey in
1985. He was raised in an open and giving household, under the patient guidance of his parents
Peter and Barbara and in the constant amusement and inspiration of his twin sister, Julia.
While there, he developed a love for dogs, an uncanny ability to perceive ghosts, and a rich
awareness of the familial spiritualism that fuels his expression. Peter received his Bachelor
of Arts Degree in Philosophy from Hartwick College in 2008 and he is currently a Joel
Oppenheimer Scholar at the MFA program in poetry at New England College. His work can
be found at Abjective, Tinfoildresses, Collective Fallout, among other venues. Peter is also an
active philosopher and proud member of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary
World. He has lived in France and Australia, and currently resides in his hometown of Old
Tappan, N.J. where he is presently engaged in dialectic with present past and future identities.

2009-09-06T17:48:00.000-07:00

2009-08-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

thirteen poems written inside your local zaxby’s

By Joseph Goosey

FIVE

The realty magazines all smell of fruit.
The colors are Easter in a dramatic family. The legs
are bronze statues
that do not touch: Popsicle sticks peeled apart
at a child's luncheon. My Indian
wife has such an uneven tan line
so I suspect that when I met her in the Peace Corps
she was just a tourist
and faking.
I slaughtered a goat for a 10:15 tee time
but he had swine flu anyhow and I remain
comfortably
vegetarian.

About thirteen poems written inside your local zaxby’s

Hardly written inside a Zaxby's at all, Thirteen Poems Written
Inside Your Local Zaxby's, addresses such lofty topics as suicide and
such trite topics as Australian pop singers. This is my attempt to
grab small instances of living as they appear in a Zaxby's or a
bookstore or a country club (where I have the privilege of parking
people's cars) and tear them apart. Though mostly not written inside
Zaxby's, almost everywhere you go may as well be a Zaxby's. Some of
these poems are my attempt to explode upon the page and whether or not
I have succeeded in doing so is up to you, dear reader. Also, large
portions of this collection were, in fact, written inside of a
Wendy's.

Joseph Goosey

Encomiums for thirteen poems written inside your local zaxby’s

Joseph Goosey writes modern America with a complex attentiveness. I
like the way each line weaves and turns before settling into a
startling resolution, and I love how happily he allows the ordinary to
be extraordinary. Funny and reflective, these thirteen pieces can be
enjoyed and ruminated upon in equal measure.

--Adam Robinson, Editor of Publishing Genius Press, Author of Adam Robinson And Other Poems

Goosey delivers 13 taut poems tinged with witty and quirky
juxtapositions which are calibrated to tickle the imagination and poke
fun at the absurdity of the human condition.

--Brian Fugett (editor/Zygote in my Coffee)

Joseph Goosey, born 1986, lives in and dislikes

Jacksonville, Florida. He has two print chapbooks available, "A Comfortable

Place With Regular Sunshine" and "Wet & Dripping." Other poems have shown

up in places such as No Posit, IsReads, and The Portland Review. He is working

indefinitely on a novel which he will most likely abandon.

Other books from Joseph Goosey:

Wet And Dripping - Shadow Archer Press (Chapbook)

A Comfortable Place With Regular Sunshine - Poptritus Press (Chapbook)

26 Poems That Will Not Win Me $15,000 Dollars (E-Chap) - Origami Condom Press

2009-08-07T17:11:00.000-07:00

Soliloquies from A High Wall Hidden Cemetery

By Duane Locke

from The eternal return:

I now recall my past
When these now scattered bones
Were intact
And were covered with that glorious flesh
And its glorious neutral networks.

My mnemonic aid
Is the two bullet holes
Surrounded by cracks

That look now like
Tiny twisting dark rivers
In my time-browned skull.

About Soliloquies from A High Wall Hidden Cemetery

My presentations of what might be called dramatic monologues of the dead are
really confessions from the cognitive unconscious of the living. Finally, the dead
become consciously aware of what they suppressed during their lives by
self-deception and strong adherence to false beliefs that were passionately
believed to be truths. People while alive exists not as embodied beings, but
apparitions, live indeterminate lives as slave mentalities to traditional values,
the status quo and popular opinion, live fortified by self-deception, faith in fictions
as realities, and murder their potential to be a fully realized human beings by faith
in a disembodied mind and the concomitant false and degraded concept of corporality.
People have lived too long by a false reason, the Platonic-Cartesian inheritance, and
by a false irrationality which was only a failed and desperate attempt to find an
alternative replacement for the prevalent falsity of disembodied mind reason.
To recognize one’s mental enslavement is to be free, and I hope I have provided
recognitions, recognitions poetically conveyed through the emanations of the unsayable
that arise resurrected from my words that in the poetic process become
sur-words, transformed, no longer the words from the dead language of lies
most people speak.

Duane Locke

Encomiums for Soliloquies from A High Wall Hidden Cemetery:

In Soliloquies from a High Wall of a Hidden Cemetery, Duane Locke remains true

to Appollinaire’s credo that poets pay attention to their immediate environments, thus

avoiding affectations inherent in ancestral lexicon. Locke works as comfortably

with current surroundings as he does ancient mythologies, and armed with his razor

lexicon, Locke weaves a lucid aesthetics into a brilliant tapestry that

includes many themes, two in particular: the death of the living through repressed

desires, the living dead who can only glimpse their wasted lives after death, plus

romantic love expressed unsentimentally as any human could, a love simultaneously

enlightened, bleak, infinite and doomed, but above all “this-worldly.” Locke in this

new book continues his incredible run of brilliant poetry.

—Alan Britt

The unstoppable Duane Locke gives one more last word to the dead and they
are just as confused as the living when they drift to annihilation …my bones,
bones now haphazardly scattered disconnected… The reader is put inside
the coffin of one who is trying to figure out what great and bawdy role he played
in history while lamenting the loss of his tragic pretensions …my coffin is
now scraps and scattered on my bones. The author’s genius allows us to
listen to insights achievable after death. Locke finally removes the mythical
angel’s finger pressed to a newborn baby’s lips as well as Chaucer’s Troilus who
looks down from the spheres at his melting obsession for Criseyde on this
litel spot of erthe.

—Amelia Arcamone-Makinano

In SOLIOQUIES FROM A HIGH WALL HIDDEN CEMETERY, Duane Locke
continues the momentum of his exploration in "Voices from a Grave: Homage to Edgar
Lee Masters." He delves in the quest for identity in a complex and thought-provoking
way. It strikes both a personal and a universal chord, because it is about one of the most
basic desires of human existence: self-discovery. For a book to have such power goes
beyond pure accomplishment into the realm of life affecting. After experiencing the
soliloquies, the reader is sure to be poised on a rich inward journey. SOLIOQUIES
FROM A HIGH WALL HIDDEN CEMETERY is definitely another pinnacle in Duane
Locke's staggeringly amazing literary career.

—Anna Donovan

In Soliloquies from A High Wall Hidden Cemetery, Duane Locke has once again
surpassed the expected. This book of poetry is indeed brilliant, beautifully written, spell
bindingly and shockingly real as it pulls you into the graves of each stunning mind; I
come away searching for my own breath with each read.

—Mist Willes

This book is a marvelous expansion of the theme pursued in Duane Locke’s Voices from a
Grave: Homage to Edgar Lee Masters. But there, in tribute and excelling, Spoon River
anthology, there was but one narrator. Here in Soliloquies from a High Wall of a Hidden
Cemetery, we meet many: the man who When alive I wore a wild boar hair shirt. Who, in
reflecting on a life of self-torments, imagines an identity shape shifting with Soren
Kierkegaard, Thomas More, and a medieval scribe. He is intimate with pain:

The pain of a hair shirt torturing my flesh,
Although I have no flesh. I feel the pain
Of wanting someone to love, and having
No one to love. At the same time, believing love, an illusion.
But pain is different when dead, for there
Are no doctors, drug stores, pain killers available.
There are no psychiatrists for unrequited lovers.
There is no hope
The pain will ever stop.
When dead, pain is meaningless, but alive
Pain
Is
Joyous.

Then there is the cynical scholar who is amused at stories of bombastic eulogizing and
parodies them fruitfully in his obvious self-contempt and loneliness.

I can see my tombstone: “Professor
Of Philosophy, Werther Warner,
Who brought Hegel to the French,
Gave Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Sartre, Derrida,
Deleuze, Levinas, Lacan, Fondane their start.”

The poems go on and gloriously so, a man contemplates the placement of his bones in
ancient Egypt pining for a woman who was not his wife in life. A soul concerned with
lack of memory and a multitude of ‘interpretations’:

I am not ever sure that my name
When alive was Dunner Morno,
For I remembered I was called
By a number of names:
Bartleby the Scrivener, Hunger Artist,
Stephen Dedalus, the Artist
Of the Beautiful, Underground Man,
Steppenwolf, Philip Carey
And Sam Spade.

I don’t know who I was when alive,
But I always daydreamed I was Vermeer
I identified myself with the Vermeer
In the painting in Vienna
When he made a public appearance
He turned his back to the audience.

Every poem, every life depicted in this volume is deep, complex, and a worthy
companion to the reader. Locke’s genius infuses each and all with so many textures,
hues, reflections, conflicted emotions that we must let ourselves be taken away. The
questions of identity, the meaning of “life”, these are brilliantly addressed by the author
in poetry which consistently stuns. This is a volume you ignore at the peril of your
‘immortal artistic soul’.

—Constance Stadler, author Tinted Steam, Sublunary Curse and Paper Cuts

Duane Locke lives a hermetic life in the sparsely populated
part of rural Lakeland, Florida. He has had, as of August, 2009, 6,389 different poems published
in print magazines, American Poetry Review, Nation, etc, and e zines, Counterexample Poetics,
Pen Himalaya, etc, and 20 books. His latest two books published in 2009 are YANG CHU’S POEMS,
376 pages, published by Canadian publisher, Crossing Chaos (can be ordered HERE, or HERE) and
VOICES FROM A GRAVE, published in England by erbacce-press (can be ordered HERE).

He is also a painter and photographer. An account of his painting can be found in
Gary Monroe’s EXTRAORDINARY INTERPRETATIONS (University of Florida Press,
2003).

His sur-photography is widely scattered over the internet, and he has done many book covers.

His interests are insects, post-modern philosophy, cognitive science, and opera.

More information can be found on Google, click Duane Locke. Currently, he has 481,000 entries.

Other books by Duane Locke:

1968: FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
1968: INLAND OCEANS
1969: DEAD CITIES
1969: THE SUBMERGED FERN IN THE WAISTLINE OF SOLITUDE
1969: RAINBOWS UNDER BOARDS
1974: THE WORD
I975: IMMANENTIST SUTRAS
1976: STARFISH MANUSCRIPT
1976: VARIOUS LIGHTS
1976: FOAM ON GULF SHORE
1986: DUANE LOCKE, POEMS
1992: WHOEVER RAISES THE QUESTION OF REPRESENTATION IN OUR TIME
1995: WATCHING WISTERIA
1996: GEORGE SAMSON’S LOVE SONNETS
2002: SQUID’S DARK INK
2002: FROM A TINY ROOM
2002: THE DEATH OF DAPHNE
2004: OBSERVATIONS: ART AND POETRY
2009: YANG CHU’S POEMS
2009: VOICES FROM A GRAVE

2009-07-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

Poets of the experimental spectrum are often marginalized, delineated, italicized and cataloged from the vantage point of vigilant unawareness. The poets presented here exist as a uniform antithesis to this esoteric brand of subjective identity, collocated with intrinsic misunderstanding.

will provide a creative option, a residence for poets challenging the slim, definitional categorization, and will proudly endorse a poetics constituting splays from conventional and quotidian creations. As the term differentia avers, our press will distinguish poets from another brand, through highlighting a stylized example of necessary, anti au courant poetics.

Felino A. Soriano

Founding Editor and Publisher, Differentia Press

2009-07-14T17:40:00.001-07:00

2009-07-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

2009-07-13T21:58:00.000-07:00

(b. 1974, California) is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the founding editor of Differentia Press, and is also the founding editor and publisher of Counterexample Poetics, an online journal of experimental artistry. As a poet, he has authored 36 collections of poetry, including Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008), r (please press, 2009)

and Realities of Bifocal Translations (Blue & Yellow Dog Press, 2010) . The internal collocation of philosophical studies and love of classic and avant-garde jazz is the explanation for his poetic stimulation. Details are at his website, Felino A. Soriano | Poet of Philosophy and Jazz Coöccurrence.