Otoliths Is Five Years Old and...

Issue 21 is live! I'm happy to have work in the issue and to be in such good company. Happy Birthday, Otoliths! And thank you, Mark Young, for keeping this vibrant registry of contexts in play.

And speaking of Mark Young, he has a new book out from Dysphasia Press (no contact info is provided in the book, nor is a price noted, so I'm not sure what that says about availability*). It is a stunner called Geographies.

If you are a regular reader of Mark's personal blog you'll be familiar with this recent series of often hysterically funny poems. Here's one of my favorites (and one of the most brief):


Godmanchester

Courtesans a-
bound in the
grounds of
the Grand Mal
Croquet Club.

I want to say that, often when reading Mr. Young, I tend to have elliptical seizures.

*contact me, if interested, and I'll send you the ground address of Dysphasia Press.

Read and Recommended

O Fallen Angel by Kate Zambreno (Chiasmus Press, 2009). A terrific first novel in which three voices grasp for purchase on reality. A terribly beautiful feminist parable.

Where Art Belongs by Chris Kraus (Semiotexte(e), 2011). Searching art journalism. I, for one, want to read everything Chris Kraus writes.

The Name of This Intersection Is Frost by Maryrose Larkin (Shearsman Books, 2010). When I interviewed Anne Gorrick for Eileen Tabios' e-zine Galatea Resurrects, Anne quoted Maryrose as saying "It's better to be adventurous than good." That advice made me want to check out this writer. I've not been disappointed.

Capital by Giles Goodland (Salt, 2006). A masterful work of sampling. The zeitgeist explored through every nuance and connotation of "capital. " A beautiful and profound book.

Patchy
lawn. Patchy
house. Patchy life.

Notes from/toward SELF-LOVE

1.

Bald
Clean shaven man
In a robin egg blue camisole.

I look at him
Looking back at me.
We make a mirror unfold between us.

It’s hard
To see what another
Sees ( let alone say it).

I am you who
For a brief teary moment
Wears a craved camisole.

Truth is
There’s nobody in the mirror.
No Miss on scene.


Indoors
The scent of hyacinths
Is overwhelming.


2.

He says he’s going
To change his name
To Charlotte because it
Is mostly harlot and that
Appeals to him.

On & Off: Couplet Therapy

for Jim McCrary

Electricity is weird

& I'm wired.

Really, we ought

To get going.

Recently Received

Nancy Huth's A Space for It

Nancy Huth's chapbook in the this is visual poetry series from chapbookpublisher.com is an investigative tour de force. Photos, of interiors usually--but also, usually, exteriors are bleeding in. A few words arrayed across the surface of each mise en scene. The one word which always recurs being "it." So, literally, each page is a space for "it." I hope many readers will find a space for this book in their libraries.

<p>Po Doom by Jim McCrary (Hanks Original Loose Gravel Press, PO Box 453, Arroyo Grande, CA 93421) $7. The crankmeister is back, ripping and tripping and consigning yours truly to "couplet counseling" among other things.

Peace Conference by Thomas Fink ( Marsh Hawk Press ) . Fink is at the top of his game. Which is something to see and savour. He is a master of open, shaped sequences which continue from book to book. More of his Yinglish Strophes, Dented Reprises and Nonce Sonnets, among other things. I'm particularly taken though by his extraordinary new series, Dusk Bowl Intimacies. I'll be awhile trying to learn from and absorb this important volume.

The anxiety contained within the heaviness of waiting.

This has been a tough week. Earlier there was the medical misadventure. Today our gas has been shut off because a number of leaks have been located in the house lines. (We live, I should note, in a house which is over a hundred years old. The infrastructure always needs tweaking.) So, no heat, no operating stove, no hot water. Until, hopefully, the plumber and gas Co. resolve things tomorrow. It will, I suspect, be at no little expense. Sigh. * I've been thinking a lot about the current political situation in the US. (NB: I work in Public Health, am a union member, and an hourly wage earner, in the great state of Ohio.) I've been thinking, too, a lot about fascism. Do we really want corporations to run things? Do you really think corporations are people? And if they are, are they the kind of folks you want to hang with? Is spending money how corporations talk? And how come when they talk they only seem to want to limit what peeps who think differently from them want to do? I, for one, love most people. I can't say the same for most corporations. * I've been thinking, too, a lot about the New England transcendentalists. Am reading right now Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia by Richard Francis (Yale, 2010). It's a pretty wonderful book about a very specific quest for perfection which was always already destined for failure. It's a great evocation of an intellectual/emotional milieu. Bronson Alcott and his family, Emerson, Thoreau and a great cast of others figure in the story. * So, have been feeling pretty down lately, but keep trying. Dug up some deeply rooted hosta plants and removed as much yard waste as I had energy to do. I'm trying. *

Am not going to go on about this, but had an unplanned ride in an ambulance today to a Cleveland area emergency room. Scary, that. No doubt the bill will be scary too. It hasn't been a wonderful day.

However, it is great to see a new Galatea Resurrects on the virtual news stand. Go here to read it: http://galatearesurrection16.blogspot.com

Experience is structured By turns. A naked torso In a dirty mirror. Between the lines, On reflection, One wants more.