Mark Young (12)
Author of Otoliths Issue 15 (Pt 1)
For other authors named Mark Young, see the disambiguation page.
Works by Mark Young
Otoliths Issue 15 (Pt 1) 1 copy
Otoliths 47, Part One 1 copy
Otoliths Issue 1 (Pt 1 & 2) 1 copy
Otoliths 57, Part One 1 copy
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review of
Mark Young, editor, Otoliths issue fifty-six, part two
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 31, 2021
I wrote in my review of part one of this ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto ): "It appears online 1st & then is available, somewhat expensively IMO, as POD hard-copy." Part One is Black & White, Part Two is color. I shd qualify my "somewhat expensively IMO" comment by noting that the printer, who I believe is Lulu, is a bit more expensive than other printers but show more has a reputation for quality. That quality might not be so obvious in the B&W part but in the color it's glorious. For people who revel in the eye candy of art bks this is definitely a treat - whether one likes the art or not hardly even matters! The lusciousness of the color is sensually overwhelming.
What complicates Otoliths, I think for the better, is that it isn't so much an "art" bk as it is a Visual Poetry / Asemic Writing (etc) bk. While that distinction might seem excessively esoteric to people just looking at the work in terms of broader categories, it's probably important for both the creators of the work & for people trying to come to terms w/ it. Or maybe I'm the only one who cares about such nuance.
Then again, my claim of textual underpinnings is refuted by the 5 paintings by Judith Skillman that start off the volume after the ToC. These are easily categorized as "art" so if you try to come to terms w/ them you shd be careful that you don't 'buy' the Brooklyn Bridge.
The piece that follows, Hao Wang's "Night, Moon and Dream: A Collage of Poems by Li Bai and Other Ancient Chinese Poets", helps make the transition between "art" & visually emphasized textuality. 1st there's a color image, easily enuf interpreted as representational: a sun (or moon), a sky (seemingly a night one), & some hills. This is followed by 2 lines of black txt in Chinese. Then the ideograms in red w/ their names next to them. Then an English translation in black. This pattern follows throughout. The poems are simple. Here's the 1st in translation:
"The moon shines on my bed brightly.
So that I mistook it for frost on the ground." - pp 10-11
I found these exciting (although I found the periods a bit mystifying).
Texas Fontanella's work appears in collaboration w/ 3 other people: John M. Bennett, C. Mehrl Benett, & Stuart Wheatley. What I'm about to say about this is something that just isn't done in poetry world. In Poetry World, one must scratch everyone else's back. Or else find one's self banned to the outskirts where the ill-mannered louts live & prance. Fontanella uses a technique of taking pre-existing texts & scratching out all but the chosen words. This technique fascinated me when I 1st saw it in Tom Philips's A Humament (1970). In fact, I found it stunning. I was a little less stunned when I saw the technique used in Crispin Hellion Glover's Oak Mot but the bk is so lovely & Glover's such an extraordinary person that I was still impressed. But Fontanella's use of the technique 50 yrs after Philips's use of it just seems done-to-death: How can anyone be satisfied w/ still using this technique w/o adding one jot of originality?! Beats me. Of course, what 'saves' Fontanella's work (somewhat) is the collaborator's part.
John M. Bennett's work is original, his 'spidery' handwriting is distinctly his own & serves to both present words & a unique visual. In his collaboration w/ Fontanella (pp 20-28) & his solo work (96-103) crumpled brownish paper towels are used to add to the texture. I find the effect extraordinary. Sometimes the paper towels seem like faces in profile to me. I think of d.a.levy & of Trash-Po.
Jim Leftwich provides some "dirty vispo" on pp 53-67. It's not quite trashy enuf for me to think of it as Trash-Po: Is "Dirty Vispo" a genre? Then Leftwich & John M. Bennett collaborate on pp 68-79. Bennett gets around, his "Lost & Found Times" is missed.
Then there's Kek-w's "HOT HOUSE C" (pp 29-30), another extraordinary work, one that succeeds for me as short fiction (w/o being Flash Fiction). Here's an excerpt:
"I tried to comfort her but the security-guard arrived and kicked open the door. He cried out in anquish at the sight of us sat there together. "Damn it, girl — I took good care of you and now you pay me back by running off with that amnesiac ex-husband of yours!" He shot her and blood blossomed unexpectedly on her forehead, like some terrible devil-cactus that only flowers once every century." - p 30
The color, the color.. it's just so overwhelming. Take Michael Rothenberg's artwork on pp 38-52. At 1st, I'm reminded of Paul Klee, then of Gary Panter. I'd ordinarily prefer work that doesn't overly remind me of anyone else's work but that's a hard call given that I've looked at & enjoyed so much, there's so much to compare to. Still, despite my impression of derivativeness, the quality of the color just pushes Rothenberg's art into a realm of pleasure where the rest doesn't matter that much.
There's enuf variety of media to keep an old jade like me satisfied. Daniel de Culla used colored pencils for his work on pp 80-82.
My own "Butt Poem"s 002-006 appear on pp 89-95. Butt Poetry, a term probably coined by me even tho it's so obvious that many people might've used the term before me, is inspired by "Butt Calls": a Butt Call is a phone call made unintentionally on someone's cell-phone, usually when the phone's in their back pants' pocket, by having pressue applied to the phone's screen, usually set to a shortcut. A Butt Call is easily identified as a call one receives where all one hears from the phone when one answers are muffled environmental sounds. A Butt Poem, at least as I originally conceived of it, is a text accidentally generated & sent accidentally in a similar way, thru a txt messaging app. "Butt Poem #001" appeared in an earlier issue of Otoliths. I lowered my curatorial standards for some of these poems b/c I was eager to add to the pantheon. All 8 of the Butt Poems made to date can be seen here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/ButtPoetry.html .
Following these are the afore-mentioned John M. Bennett solo poems (pp 96-103). I find them so visually stimulating to look at that even tho I've been reading his poetry for decades I still find these particularly remarkable. It's as if he's poured every skill he's honed for so long into them, making a fantastically rich stew.
It's strange: in my sparse reviewer notes I tended to pass over the work that's more obviously VisPo & to call attn to work that's more straightforward art. Hence, the paintings of Marilyn R. Rosenberg (pp 121-125), who I think I've previously thought of as VisPo (although I don't really know her work at all), presents work that I just note w/ "aesthetics, art". The closest aspect of a few of the pieces that evoke textuality to me might be gestural strokes vaguely reminiscent of asemic calligraphy - not that there's any reason from Rosenberg's presumed POV for there to be any textual underpinnings at all - I'm just musing over my early statement "that it isn't so much an "art" bk as it is a Visual Poetry / Asemic Writing (etc) bk" & then I go on to somewhat disprove my assertion: there's plenty of art here.
Karen Greenbaum-maya presents an image & then some prose. The latter begins:
"Chicken and the Egg
"Daughter's tattoo froths Hokusai sea foam. Mother's new tattoo cradles a pearl, sealing off a flinty irritation. Daughter signs up for hot yoga class. Not for pregnant women. Mother posts selfies from Bikram, sweat soaking her skin-tone sports bra. My heart center is connecting with the universe. Daughter goes vegan, won't eat what had a mother. Mother inhales smoothies green with kale, bitter with celery. Daughter interns high on the navel of the world in Bolivia, seeking language her mother can't eavesdrop. Mother hikes Machu Pichu. Why don't we learn tennis, she says. Daughter gets a new tattoo, in skin-toned ink." - p 127
It seems like I've been seeing Karl Kempton's typewritten geometric VisPo since the 1980s. He's dedicated & very good at his craft. His "Word" (p 131) has 4 touching hexagons w/ interiors that present a variety of shapes & relations depending on how one perceptually flattens & deepens one's perception of the space evoked. Each hexagon is formed by repetitions of one of the 4 letters in the title. His "Untitled presents the same geometrical pattern w/ the negative space creating the armature previously created by the letters. The negative is filled w/ what look to me like periods but their imperfect circularity is ambiguous.
Pat Nolan's "I Remember Tom Clark" (pp 155-161) is a memorium to a poet that may not interest many non-poets but it interests me. I'm reminded of when I last saw poet Anselm Hollo w/ Jane Dalrymple in their home in Boulder. Anselm died not long thereafter. Anselm was wholy immersed in poems & poets. It was such a pleasure to witness his pleasure in talking about such things. He talked about Tom Raworth. The sincere joy he got out of his respect for Raworth's personality & work were a reminder of what life can be like at its best: appreciation unadulterated by pettiness.
Olivier Schopfer's photographs of "Windows" (pp 162-177): such a simple idea.. but what a special selection!! Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland, & if all these windows are located there I'm impressed with the city - but I suspect the photographer has visited multiple areas to get such amazing shots - perhaps San Francisco & New Orleans?
Kristian Patruno presents a variety, some of wch are repurposed signs. The 1st one, entitled "Hate Speech", takes a Jesus Saves sign that excoriates "Drunks", "Homosexuals", etc, & leaves an encircled vertical "HATE" to bring out the subtext. (pp 238-243)
Michael Brandonisio (pp 318-321) presents several pieces - one of wch has the words "SAINT GERMAIN" on it w/ a caption underneath: "The Quest for Immortality" (p 320). This resonated for me personally b/c of my movie entitled "Ledger of St. Dermain" ( https://youtu.be/vkSSfTcXV2s ).
The above cursory review is entirely too short, this publication is very rich. If you just like LOOKING AT THINGS PEOPLE MAKE you'll probably be delighted w/ this one. show less
Mark Young, editor, Otoliths issue fifty-six, part two
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - January 31, 2021
I wrote in my review of part one of this ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto ): "It appears online 1st & then is available, somewhat expensively IMO, as POD hard-copy." Part One is Black & White, Part Two is color. I shd qualify my "somewhat expensively IMO" comment by noting that the printer, who I believe is Lulu, is a bit more expensive than other printers but show more has a reputation for quality. That quality might not be so obvious in the B&W part but in the color it's glorious. For people who revel in the eye candy of art bks this is definitely a treat - whether one likes the art or not hardly even matters! The lusciousness of the color is sensually overwhelming.
What complicates Otoliths, I think for the better, is that it isn't so much an "art" bk as it is a Visual Poetry / Asemic Writing (etc) bk. While that distinction might seem excessively esoteric to people just looking at the work in terms of broader categories, it's probably important for both the creators of the work & for people trying to come to terms w/ it. Or maybe I'm the only one who cares about such nuance.
Then again, my claim of textual underpinnings is refuted by the 5 paintings by Judith Skillman that start off the volume after the ToC. These are easily categorized as "art" so if you try to come to terms w/ them you shd be careful that you don't 'buy' the Brooklyn Bridge.
The piece that follows, Hao Wang's "Night, Moon and Dream: A Collage of Poems by Li Bai and Other Ancient Chinese Poets", helps make the transition between "art" & visually emphasized textuality. 1st there's a color image, easily enuf interpreted as representational: a sun (or moon), a sky (seemingly a night one), & some hills. This is followed by 2 lines of black txt in Chinese. Then the ideograms in red w/ their names next to them. Then an English translation in black. This pattern follows throughout. The poems are simple. Here's the 1st in translation:
"The moon shines on my bed brightly.
So that I mistook it for frost on the ground." - pp 10-11
I found these exciting (although I found the periods a bit mystifying).
Texas Fontanella's work appears in collaboration w/ 3 other people: John M. Bennett, C. Mehrl Benett, & Stuart Wheatley. What I'm about to say about this is something that just isn't done in poetry world. In Poetry World, one must scratch everyone else's back. Or else find one's self banned to the outskirts where the ill-mannered louts live & prance. Fontanella uses a technique of taking pre-existing texts & scratching out all but the chosen words. This technique fascinated me when I 1st saw it in Tom Philips's A Humament (1970). In fact, I found it stunning. I was a little less stunned when I saw the technique used in Crispin Hellion Glover's Oak Mot but the bk is so lovely & Glover's such an extraordinary person that I was still impressed. But Fontanella's use of the technique 50 yrs after Philips's use of it just seems done-to-death: How can anyone be satisfied w/ still using this technique w/o adding one jot of originality?! Beats me. Of course, what 'saves' Fontanella's work (somewhat) is the collaborator's part.
John M. Bennett's work is original, his 'spidery' handwriting is distinctly his own & serves to both present words & a unique visual. In his collaboration w/ Fontanella (pp 20-28) & his solo work (96-103) crumpled brownish paper towels are used to add to the texture. I find the effect extraordinary. Sometimes the paper towels seem like faces in profile to me. I think of d.a.levy & of Trash-Po.
Jim Leftwich provides some "dirty vispo" on pp 53-67. It's not quite trashy enuf for me to think of it as Trash-Po: Is "Dirty Vispo" a genre? Then Leftwich & John M. Bennett collaborate on pp 68-79. Bennett gets around, his "Lost & Found Times" is missed.
Then there's Kek-w's "HOT HOUSE C" (pp 29-30), another extraordinary work, one that succeeds for me as short fiction (w/o being Flash Fiction). Here's an excerpt:
"I tried to comfort her but the security-guard arrived and kicked open the door. He cried out in anquish at the sight of us sat there together. "Damn it, girl — I took good care of you and now you pay me back by running off with that amnesiac ex-husband of yours!" He shot her and blood blossomed unexpectedly on her forehead, like some terrible devil-cactus that only flowers once every century." - p 30
The color, the color.. it's just so overwhelming. Take Michael Rothenberg's artwork on pp 38-52. At 1st, I'm reminded of Paul Klee, then of Gary Panter. I'd ordinarily prefer work that doesn't overly remind me of anyone else's work but that's a hard call given that I've looked at & enjoyed so much, there's so much to compare to. Still, despite my impression of derivativeness, the quality of the color just pushes Rothenberg's art into a realm of pleasure where the rest doesn't matter that much.
There's enuf variety of media to keep an old jade like me satisfied. Daniel de Culla used colored pencils for his work on pp 80-82.
My own "Butt Poem"s 002-006 appear on pp 89-95. Butt Poetry, a term probably coined by me even tho it's so obvious that many people might've used the term before me, is inspired by "Butt Calls": a Butt Call is a phone call made unintentionally on someone's cell-phone, usually when the phone's in their back pants' pocket, by having pressue applied to the phone's screen, usually set to a shortcut. A Butt Call is easily identified as a call one receives where all one hears from the phone when one answers are muffled environmental sounds. A Butt Poem, at least as I originally conceived of it, is a text accidentally generated & sent accidentally in a similar way, thru a txt messaging app. "Butt Poem #001" appeared in an earlier issue of Otoliths. I lowered my curatorial standards for some of these poems b/c I was eager to add to the pantheon. All 8 of the Butt Poems made to date can be seen here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/ButtPoetry.html .
Following these are the afore-mentioned John M. Bennett solo poems (pp 96-103). I find them so visually stimulating to look at that even tho I've been reading his poetry for decades I still find these particularly remarkable. It's as if he's poured every skill he's honed for so long into them, making a fantastically rich stew.
It's strange: in my sparse reviewer notes I tended to pass over the work that's more obviously VisPo & to call attn to work that's more straightforward art. Hence, the paintings of Marilyn R. Rosenberg (pp 121-125), who I think I've previously thought of as VisPo (although I don't really know her work at all), presents work that I just note w/ "aesthetics, art". The closest aspect of a few of the pieces that evoke textuality to me might be gestural strokes vaguely reminiscent of asemic calligraphy - not that there's any reason from Rosenberg's presumed POV for there to be any textual underpinnings at all - I'm just musing over my early statement "that it isn't so much an "art" bk as it is a Visual Poetry / Asemic Writing (etc) bk" & then I go on to somewhat disprove my assertion: there's plenty of art here.
Karen Greenbaum-maya presents an image & then some prose. The latter begins:
"Chicken and the Egg
"Daughter's tattoo froths Hokusai sea foam. Mother's new tattoo cradles a pearl, sealing off a flinty irritation. Daughter signs up for hot yoga class. Not for pregnant women. Mother posts selfies from Bikram, sweat soaking her skin-tone sports bra. My heart center is connecting with the universe. Daughter goes vegan, won't eat what had a mother. Mother inhales smoothies green with kale, bitter with celery. Daughter interns high on the navel of the world in Bolivia, seeking language her mother can't eavesdrop. Mother hikes Machu Pichu. Why don't we learn tennis, she says. Daughter gets a new tattoo, in skin-toned ink." - p 127
It seems like I've been seeing Karl Kempton's typewritten geometric VisPo since the 1980s. He's dedicated & very good at his craft. His "Word" (p 131) has 4 touching hexagons w/ interiors that present a variety of shapes & relations depending on how one perceptually flattens & deepens one's perception of the space evoked. Each hexagon is formed by repetitions of one of the 4 letters in the title. His "Untitled presents the same geometrical pattern w/ the negative space creating the armature previously created by the letters. The negative is filled w/ what look to me like periods but their imperfect circularity is ambiguous.
Pat Nolan's "I Remember Tom Clark" (pp 155-161) is a memorium to a poet that may not interest many non-poets but it interests me. I'm reminded of when I last saw poet Anselm Hollo w/ Jane Dalrymple in their home in Boulder. Anselm died not long thereafter. Anselm was wholy immersed in poems & poets. It was such a pleasure to witness his pleasure in talking about such things. He talked about Tom Raworth. The sincere joy he got out of his respect for Raworth's personality & work were a reminder of what life can be like at its best: appreciation unadulterated by pettiness.
Olivier Schopfer's photographs of "Windows" (pp 162-177): such a simple idea.. but what a special selection!! Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland, & if all these windows are located there I'm impressed with the city - but I suspect the photographer has visited multiple areas to get such amazing shots - perhaps San Francisco & New Orleans?
Kristian Patruno presents a variety, some of wch are repurposed signs. The 1st one, entitled "Hate Speech", takes a Jesus Saves sign that excoriates "Drunks", "Homosexuals", etc, & leaves an encircled vertical "HATE" to bring out the subtext. (pp 238-243)
Michael Brandonisio (pp 318-321) presents several pieces - one of wch has the words "SAINT GERMAIN" on it w/ a caption underneath: "The Quest for Immortality" (p 320). This resonated for me personally b/c of my movie entitled "Ledger of St. Dermain" ( https://youtu.be/vkSSfTcXV2s ).
The above cursory review is entirely too short, this publication is very rich. If you just like LOOKING AT THINGS PEOPLE MAKE you'll probably be delighted w/ this one. show less
review of
Mark Young edited Otoliths, issue sixty-three, part two
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 19-20, 2022
I've been published in 4 issues of Otoliths: 27, 49, 56, &, now, 63.
1356. tENTATIVELY, aN iNTERVIEW
- correctly credited to: Alan Davies & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- written mainly in 2010
- published in online electronic form as part of "Otoliths 27" (October 29, 2012)
- edited by Mark Young
- Rockhampton, Australia / cyberspace
- ISSN 1833-623X
- show more target="_top">http://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/alan-davies-tentatively-interview.htm...
1862. "Butt Poem #1 (for Karen Lillis)"
- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- published on April 29, 2018 as part of Otoliths issue forty-nine, the southern autumn 2018 issue
- This issue is dedicated to Jill Chan, Spencer Selby, & Philip Byron Oakes, all regular contributors, who have recently passed. They will be deeply missed.
- Contributors to this issue are: Mercedes Webb-Pullman, Lauren O'Connor who interviews Louise Landes Levi, Aditya Shankar, Simon Perchik, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Dawn Nelson Wardrope, Kyle Hemmings, George Messo, Sanjeev Sethi, R. Keith, Joseph Cooper, Mary Cresswell, Drew B. David, Jim Leftwich, John M. Bennett, Steve Dalachinsky, Lynn Strongin, Daniel de Culla, Seth Howard, David Lohrey, Rose Knapp, Philip Byron Oakes, Darren C. Demaree, Francesco Levato, Holly Friedlander Liddicoat, Kathleen Reichelt & Randee Silv, Olivier Schopfer, Willie Smith, Thomas M. Cassidy, Carol Stetser, Andrew Topel, Michael Thomas Nelmida, Dah, Pete Spence, Jasmine Nihmey-Vasdi, J. Crouse, Heath Brougher, Clara B. Jones, fátima queiroz, Andrew Hale, Penelope Weiss, Adriána Kóbor, József Bíró, M.J. Iuppa, Linda King, Alyson Torns, J. Ray Paradiso, Sheila E. Murphy & Douglas Barbour, hiromi suzuki, AG Davis, Márton Koppány, Francine Witte, Jeff Bagato, Joe Balaz, Izzy Oneiric, Daniel f. Bradley, Jesse Glass, Jeff Harrison, Karl Kempton, Richard Kostelanetz, Eileen R. Tabios, Scott MacLeod & Texas Fontanella, Cecelia Chapman, john sweet, Lakey Comess, Michael Mc Aloran, Tony Beyer, Sudhanshu Chopra, Bruno Neiva, Jon Cone, Joseph V. Milford, Mark DuCharme, Raymond Farr, Keith Polette, Matthew Jenkins, David Baptiste Chirot, gobscure, Sabine Miller & Richard Gilbert, John Levy, Tom Montag, Natsuko Hirata, Linc Madison, Pat Geyer, Eduardo Padilla translated by Anne Gorrick, Joseph Salvatore Aversano, Keith Nunes, Bob Heman, Simon Brown, Jack Galmitz, Pat Nolan, Marcia Arrieta, Jack Kelly, Johannes S H. Bjerg, M; Margo, Carla Bertola, F. J. Bergmann, Ruggero Maggi, Michael Gould, Robert Ford, Carolina Skibinski, Alberto Vitacchio, Tim Wright, Michael Brandonisio, essa may ranapiri, Thom Sullivan, Brendan Slater, Madeline McGovern, Ken Bolton, Paul T. Lambert, J. D. Nelson, Shloka Shankar, Gavin Yates, John Pursch, Matthew Hall, & Marilyn Stablein.
- the whole issue is entered here: https://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/issue-forty-nine-southern-autumn-201...
- my page is here: https://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/tentatively-convenience.html
- Part one, the b&w part of issue forty-nine of Otoliths, 302 pages, $US 16.45, Direct link: http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-young-editor/otoliths-issue-forty-nine-part-one/pa...
- Part two, the full color part of issue forty-nine of Otoliths: 256 page, $US 41.45, Direct link: http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-young-editor/otoliths-issue-forty-nine-part-two/pa...
- my page dedicated to the 2 volumes of Otoliths 49 in book form is here: 2018.05 Otoliths 49
1979. "Butt Poems 2 - 6"
- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- published online as part of Otoliths issue 56 on February 1, 2020
- edited by Mark Young
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2019/11/tentatively-convenience.html
- also available in hard-copy
2035. "Anti-Macron; Anti-Passeporte Sanitaire; Building an Extension"
- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- published online in Otoliths, issue 63, the southern spring issue, October 30, 2021
- My pages:
- labeled by the editor as "Two Visual Text Pieces":
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2021/08/tentatively-convenience.html
- labeled by the editor as "Adding an Extension":
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2021/08/tentatively-convenience_23.html
Alas, I won't be published by them anymore. I submitted a piece called "Sentimental Journey" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/SentimentalJourney.html ) for issue 64 & got this reply from Mark Young, the editor: "I'm sorry, but I disagree strongly with some of the things you put forward here. Certainly you're entitled to your opinion, but I won't be a party to them so I'm going to pass." Ah, & there you have an example of the era of what I call the "New World Odor". Mark's email was polite enuf & as the editor I grant his right to make this editorial decision - but how many people has he rejected before? & on what grounds? & wd the rejection have occurred a mere 2 yrs before? Before the QUARANTYRANNY & its attendant censorship set in? I perceive the Medical-Industrial Complex as an out-of-control juggernaut working very little in the interest of health & very much working in the interest of sociopathic conscience-free experimentation. Are the Big Pharmaceutical companies really that far away from the times when Bayer used concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs? I think not. The juggernaut needs to be put in its place, it needs to be actually serving the interests of health rather than the greed of industry. But expressing such opinions these days is verboten - & it's the liberals, hypothetically former champions of free speech, who're most adamant about suppressing any opinions contrary to the absolute domination of the globalization police state.
That sd, this issue, like all the others I've seen is gorgeous. As usual, the printer, Lulu, has done an excellent job w/ the color & clarity - that makes these bks expensive but one is not likely to have any complaints about the quality. Unlike the previous issues I've seen, this one doesn't come in 2 parts, one black & white, one color; it comes in FIVE parts - thusly making it too expensive for most people I know. I hope libraries are buying the complete release.
As I've pointed out in my previous Otoliths reviews ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1001592-otoliths , https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto ), Otoliths mainly shines as a Visual Poetry publication but has the charm of not being exclusively such.
A friend of mine recently sent me a short Giorgio Agamben article, translated from Italian to English, in wch the author quotes the poet Dante Alighieri. ("Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian philosophy and radical political theory, and in recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world." - https://iep.utm.edu/agamben/ )
"Leave it to scratch where the itch is
"They will not say: times were dark,
but: why have you been silent?
Bertolt Brecht
"But nevertheless, once every lie has been removed,
all your vision makes it manifest
and lets you scratch where the itch is.
That your voice will be troublesome
in the first taste, vital nourishment
will leave then, when it is digested.
Dante Alighieri
"There is a piece of paper somewhere on which the names of those who, in a world of lies, have testified to the truth is written. This sheet exists, but it is illegible. Then there is another sheet, perfectly legible, which records these same names: it is in the hands of police officers and journalists."
Alas, one won't usually find socio-political work like that of Brecht & Dante & Agamben in this issue or other issues of Otoliths other than in my "Anti-Macron, Anti-Passporte Sanitaire" contribution. Most of the work is artistic eye-candy, very enjoyable for me to look at but not much there for me to think about - beyond formal considerations, i.e..
Still, the pleasure I get from this eye-candy is far from insignificant. &, yes, I love my own work & I'm glad to have it presented here. I remember being in Berlin many yrs ago & visiting my friend Graf Haufen at his video store. On the TV was a political candidate that Graf described as something like a "nazi". He asked me what I thought of him. The candidate looked like calculatedly 'normal' guy, no distinguishing marks, just another fresh-faced guy w/ short hair shaking hands & smiling. I sd he looked just like an ordinary American politician.
So what do we have now? The World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders", graduates like Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007 (how meaningless these party names are); Jacinda Arden, Prime Minister of New Zealand; Alexander De Croo, Prime Minister, Belgium; Emmanuel Macron, President, France; Sanna Marin, Prime Minister, Finland; Carlos Alvarado Quesada, President, Costa Rica.. all these powerful people, smiling, clean-cut, seemingly implacable. The French have President Emmanuel Macron creating Draconian laws that essentially disenfranchise millions of people in the bogus name of 'public health'. President Emmanuel Macron oppressing truckers w/ military force. The sooner France gets rid of Macron & his neo-illberal pro-globalization, the sooner they'll be able to at least attempt to restore the ostensible basics of their society: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". Same goes for all the rest of the "Young Global Leaders", the people who feel qualified & entitled to tell the rest of us how to live.
My 2nd piece in this issue is an 11 photograph essay documenting an addition I built on my house, an addition that expands my (M)Usic Rm. I made striped pants, a striped vest, & a striped sarangi case to match the paint job of the room. Us intellectuals don't only sit at our computers all day, even old guys like myself build things, in this case some fairly ambitious things.
I don't mean to ignore the work that precedes mine in the 1st 30pp of this issue. Michael Orr, e.g., presents "7 Spoems", visual poems made out of white plastic stir sticks, spoons, numbers & letters, & sporks. I enjoyed those.
Demosthenes Agrafiotis presents 4 photographs on 2pp entitled "NARRATIVE". These appear to be monochrome, tinted purple. Parts are soft focus, I think of the films of Man Ray.
Some fairly complex collages (presumably w/o glue) by Keith Walker follow. Each seems to feature text in the body of the work & what might be taken for a caption at the bottom. The 1st image, e.g., has "OBSOLETE ABSOLUTE" in somewhat large print in the image & "THIS IS WHY BIG SUBJECTS CAN COME OUT WHEN YOU'RE NOT MAKING EYE CONTACT" in much smaller print. Variously colored signatures adorn the following "APPROVAL SHEET" on the next page w/ once again small font "THE POWER OF DESIGN CAN MAKE IDEAS TANGIBLE AND MAKE YOU THINK".
The Joy of Color. Muted color from Jim Leftwich, bright colors from Ira Joel Haber. Bright colors, spring & summer brought to us in any season, is there anyone who doesn't enjoy them?
& then there're the titles, words that may or may not lead to our contextualizing the images. Christian ALLE's marked-over photos, the 1st of a woman in what might be old-fashioned clothing. It has the title/caption "Ainsi que des méduses hirsutes": "As well as shaggy jellyfish" is what Google Translate provides me w/ - but we all recognize "méduses", Medusa, the mythical woman whose hair was snakes, people who looked in her eyes wd turn to stone. That cd come in handy.
hiromi suzuki provides a series of 2 panel images: one side seemingly black but w/ faint gray images & white text, the other side somewhat high contrast black & white images. The series is called "Stills from Daily Specials", the idea of a menu's daily specials apparently inspiring such text as "Parrot Isle Jumbo Coconut Shrimp & "Two Delectable Lobster", otherwise seemingly unrelated to the adjacent images although the very faint image under "Wild-caught Lobster Tail" is of a knife & fork.
Susan diRende's titles seem, perhaps, what I expect from image makers, from artists, from painters; the titles seems to be attached to a painting depending on what feeling/circumstances are evoked for the painter after the painting's done - or, perhaps, while the painting's in progress. E.G.: "Sunrise" is dominated by reds, yellows, & whites & has a horizontality to it w/ a bit of circular motion in the top half.
Bill Wolak's titles might be more surrealistically evocative & less descriptively evocative. An image of a multi-tiered machine birthing what might be golf balls, or ping-pong balls has the title "The Ladder of Memories"; a mirrored image of hair is titled "Pale As the Ankles of Dawn".
& then Gregorz Wróblewski provides a somewhat monochromatic series w/ a title of "Waiting for Puffin". "Puffins are any of three species of small alcids (auks) in the bird genus Fratercula. These are pelagic seabirds that feed primarily by diving in the water. They breed in large colonies on coastal cliffs or offshore islands, nesting in crevices among rocks or in burrows in the soil." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin ) When I think of puffins I think of a publishing subsidiary of Penguin Books. Since the title is singular rather than plural perhaps it alludes to a character known to many but not known to me. For all I know, these images are arial photographs, they seem somewhat topographical.
One delectable work follows another, I enjoy looking at them all - but move on from one to another fairly quickly. Then I come to Jon Kemsley's "self-non-self" wch I made a reviewer's note-to-myself about that reads "A little different" but, looking at it now, no, I don't really find that to be significantly true. I'm reminded of the CoAccident Letraset collages of the late 1970s. That doesn't mean I don't like the piece, it just means it doesn't surprise me.
Joe Balaz IS a little bit different, perhaps esp w/ his "Someone Needs Attention" wch spoofs author's bios & poetry zine names. Y'know how people often say a catchy phrase & then say 'That wd make a good band name!' Same goes w/ zine names. It doesn't mean that the band's music wd be of any interest or that the zine's contents wd be. Here're a few of Balaz's examples: "Luminous Shrine, Atomic Mouth, Glittering Presence, Magnificent Hue, Blazing Wheels, Cream of the Inner Temple, Huge".
Johannes S. H. Bjerg provides us w/ a neologism that may or may not've originated w/ him: "drawritings". That seems roughly synonymous w/ "asemic writing" but is enuf different that I can imagine the distinction proving useful.
Jeff Bagato displays 10 arrangements of variously colored objects. There's no overlapping of the objects so one side of each is displayed fully & neatly. I enjoyed looking at these, it's not a pattern recognition exercise, it's more of a theme & variations.
I found nick nelson's "the way you wear your hat" funny. One character is criticizing another's style:
"the way you wear your hat, always perfectly straight on your head, never the slightest deviation to the left or right, or backwards or forwards. there is something brutish and totalitarian about it, portending an authoritarian personality, i bet you voted for trump, didn't you?
"i beg your pardon, i did no such thing!" - p 275
Ha ha! In this new rage era of pompous condescending neoilliberals I've been hearing that "i bet you voted for trump" nonsense quite alot. (See my "Breaking News!" movie: https://archive.org/details/breaking-news_202202 , it's only 5.5 seconds long so if you have a short attn span you'll probably make it all the way thru anyway).
Isabel Gómez de Diego provides 3 photographs, apparently of things encountered in public squares, some sculpture, a table w/ flowers on it, & an outdoor installation that has some hay w/ prop versions of knightly fighting objects on it: shields, swords, cross-bows, helmets - & a death-like figure hitting a drum. The people walking in the background are wearing anti-COVID-19 masks (ie: not costume masks).
Being somewhat familiar w/ the work of some of the people in this issue I found most of the work to be similar to previous work I'd seen by them. An exception was the work by Guy R. Beining. It was refreshing for me to see this work as significantly different. I recall the older work as usually black & white (although I may be misremembering) & to have a different type of formal coherence. This work is colorful & has contrasting sections.
There're 52 contributors to this issue & I've only touched on rudimentary commentary & description of a few of them. If you can afford it, this wd be a great addition to your visual poetry &/or art bk library. It saddens me that I won't be contributing to Otoliths in the future but I won't abide being censored - & although a case cd be made that my exclusion from issue 64 is 'editing' or 'curating' it's still tantamount to censorship to my mind & today's censors are no more acceptable than those that tried to stop James Joyce's Ulysses & William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch. IMO what I have to say is important, people don't have to agree w/ it but they shd at least get a chance to read it. show less
Mark Young edited Otoliths, issue sixty-three, part two
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 19-20, 2022
I've been published in 4 issues of Otoliths: 27, 49, 56, &, now, 63.
1356. tENTATIVELY, aN iNTERVIEW
- correctly credited to: Alan Davies & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- written mainly in 2010
- published in online electronic form as part of "Otoliths 27" (October 29, 2012)
- edited by Mark Young
- Rockhampton, Australia / cyberspace
- ISSN 1833-623X
- show more target="_top">http://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/alan-davies-tentatively-interview.htm...
1862. "Butt Poem #1 (for Karen Lillis)"
- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- published on April 29, 2018 as part of Otoliths issue forty-nine, the southern autumn 2018 issue
- This issue is dedicated to Jill Chan, Spencer Selby, & Philip Byron Oakes, all regular contributors, who have recently passed. They will be deeply missed.
- Contributors to this issue are: Mercedes Webb-Pullman, Lauren O'Connor who interviews Louise Landes Levi, Aditya Shankar, Simon Perchik, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Dawn Nelson Wardrope, Kyle Hemmings, George Messo, Sanjeev Sethi, R. Keith, Joseph Cooper, Mary Cresswell, Drew B. David, Jim Leftwich, John M. Bennett, Steve Dalachinsky, Lynn Strongin, Daniel de Culla, Seth Howard, David Lohrey, Rose Knapp, Philip Byron Oakes, Darren C. Demaree, Francesco Levato, Holly Friedlander Liddicoat, Kathleen Reichelt & Randee Silv, Olivier Schopfer, Willie Smith, Thomas M. Cassidy, Carol Stetser, Andrew Topel, Michael Thomas Nelmida, Dah, Pete Spence, Jasmine Nihmey-Vasdi, J. Crouse, Heath Brougher, Clara B. Jones, fátima queiroz, Andrew Hale, Penelope Weiss, Adriána Kóbor, József Bíró, M.J. Iuppa, Linda King, Alyson Torns, J. Ray Paradiso, Sheila E. Murphy & Douglas Barbour, hiromi suzuki, AG Davis, Márton Koppány, Francine Witte, Jeff Bagato, Joe Balaz, Izzy Oneiric, Daniel f. Bradley, Jesse Glass, Jeff Harrison, Karl Kempton, Richard Kostelanetz, Eileen R. Tabios, Scott MacLeod & Texas Fontanella, Cecelia Chapman, john sweet, Lakey Comess, Michael Mc Aloran, Tony Beyer, Sudhanshu Chopra, Bruno Neiva, Jon Cone, Joseph V. Milford, Mark DuCharme, Raymond Farr, Keith Polette, Matthew Jenkins, David Baptiste Chirot, gobscure, Sabine Miller & Richard Gilbert, John Levy, Tom Montag, Natsuko Hirata, Linc Madison, Pat Geyer, Eduardo Padilla translated by Anne Gorrick, Joseph Salvatore Aversano, Keith Nunes, Bob Heman, Simon Brown, Jack Galmitz, Pat Nolan, Marcia Arrieta, Jack Kelly, Johannes S H. Bjerg, M; Margo, Carla Bertola, F. J. Bergmann, Ruggero Maggi, Michael Gould, Robert Ford, Carolina Skibinski, Alberto Vitacchio, Tim Wright, Michael Brandonisio, essa may ranapiri, Thom Sullivan, Brendan Slater, Madeline McGovern, Ken Bolton, Paul T. Lambert, J. D. Nelson, Shloka Shankar, Gavin Yates, John Pursch, Matthew Hall, & Marilyn Stablein.
- the whole issue is entered here: https://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2018/03/issue-forty-nine-southern-autumn-201...
- my page is here: https://the-otolith.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/tentatively-convenience.html
- Part one, the b&w part of issue forty-nine of Otoliths, 302 pages, $US 16.45, Direct link: http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-young-editor/otoliths-issue-forty-nine-part-one/pa...
- Part two, the full color part of issue forty-nine of Otoliths: 256 page, $US 41.45, Direct link: http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-young-editor/otoliths-issue-forty-nine-part-two/pa...
- my page dedicated to the 2 volumes of Otoliths 49 in book form is here: 2018.05 Otoliths 49
1979. "Butt Poems 2 - 6"
- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- published online as part of Otoliths issue 56 on February 1, 2020
- edited by Mark Young
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2019/11/tentatively-convenience.html
- also available in hard-copy
2035. "Anti-Macron; Anti-Passeporte Sanitaire; Building an Extension"
- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
- published online in Otoliths, issue 63, the southern spring issue, October 30, 2021
- My pages:
- labeled by the editor as "Two Visual Text Pieces":
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2021/08/tentatively-convenience.html
- labeled by the editor as "Adding an Extension":
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2021/08/tentatively-convenience_23.html
Alas, I won't be published by them anymore. I submitted a piece called "Sentimental Journey" ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/SentimentalJourney.html ) for issue 64 & got this reply from Mark Young, the editor: "I'm sorry, but I disagree strongly with some of the things you put forward here. Certainly you're entitled to your opinion, but I won't be a party to them so I'm going to pass." Ah, & there you have an example of the era of what I call the "New World Odor". Mark's email was polite enuf & as the editor I grant his right to make this editorial decision - but how many people has he rejected before? & on what grounds? & wd the rejection have occurred a mere 2 yrs before? Before the QUARANTYRANNY & its attendant censorship set in? I perceive the Medical-Industrial Complex as an out-of-control juggernaut working very little in the interest of health & very much working in the interest of sociopathic conscience-free experimentation. Are the Big Pharmaceutical companies really that far away from the times when Bayer used concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs? I think not. The juggernaut needs to be put in its place, it needs to be actually serving the interests of health rather than the greed of industry. But expressing such opinions these days is verboten - & it's the liberals, hypothetically former champions of free speech, who're most adamant about suppressing any opinions contrary to the absolute domination of the globalization police state.
That sd, this issue, like all the others I've seen is gorgeous. As usual, the printer, Lulu, has done an excellent job w/ the color & clarity - that makes these bks expensive but one is not likely to have any complaints about the quality. Unlike the previous issues I've seen, this one doesn't come in 2 parts, one black & white, one color; it comes in FIVE parts - thusly making it too expensive for most people I know. I hope libraries are buying the complete release.
As I've pointed out in my previous Otoliths reviews ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1001592-otoliths , https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto ), Otoliths mainly shines as a Visual Poetry publication but has the charm of not being exclusively such.
A friend of mine recently sent me a short Giorgio Agamben article, translated from Italian to English, in wch the author quotes the poet Dante Alighieri. ("Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian philosophy and radical political theory, and in recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world." - https://iep.utm.edu/agamben/ )
"Leave it to scratch where the itch is
"They will not say: times were dark,
but: why have you been silent?
Bertolt Brecht
"But nevertheless, once every lie has been removed,
all your vision makes it manifest
and lets you scratch where the itch is.
That your voice will be troublesome
in the first taste, vital nourishment
will leave then, when it is digested.
Dante Alighieri
"There is a piece of paper somewhere on which the names of those who, in a world of lies, have testified to the truth is written. This sheet exists, but it is illegible. Then there is another sheet, perfectly legible, which records these same names: it is in the hands of police officers and journalists."
Alas, one won't usually find socio-political work like that of Brecht & Dante & Agamben in this issue or other issues of Otoliths other than in my "Anti-Macron, Anti-Passporte Sanitaire" contribution. Most of the work is artistic eye-candy, very enjoyable for me to look at but not much there for me to think about - beyond formal considerations, i.e..
Still, the pleasure I get from this eye-candy is far from insignificant. &, yes, I love my own work & I'm glad to have it presented here. I remember being in Berlin many yrs ago & visiting my friend Graf Haufen at his video store. On the TV was a political candidate that Graf described as something like a "nazi". He asked me what I thought of him. The candidate looked like calculatedly 'normal' guy, no distinguishing marks, just another fresh-faced guy w/ short hair shaking hands & smiling. I sd he looked just like an ordinary American politician.
So what do we have now? The World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders", graduates like Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007 (how meaningless these party names are); Jacinda Arden, Prime Minister of New Zealand; Alexander De Croo, Prime Minister, Belgium; Emmanuel Macron, President, France; Sanna Marin, Prime Minister, Finland; Carlos Alvarado Quesada, President, Costa Rica.. all these powerful people, smiling, clean-cut, seemingly implacable. The French have President Emmanuel Macron creating Draconian laws that essentially disenfranchise millions of people in the bogus name of 'public health'. President Emmanuel Macron oppressing truckers w/ military force. The sooner France gets rid of Macron & his neo-illberal pro-globalization, the sooner they'll be able to at least attempt to restore the ostensible basics of their society: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". Same goes for all the rest of the "Young Global Leaders", the people who feel qualified & entitled to tell the rest of us how to live.
My 2nd piece in this issue is an 11 photograph essay documenting an addition I built on my house, an addition that expands my (M)Usic Rm. I made striped pants, a striped vest, & a striped sarangi case to match the paint job of the room. Us intellectuals don't only sit at our computers all day, even old guys like myself build things, in this case some fairly ambitious things.
I don't mean to ignore the work that precedes mine in the 1st 30pp of this issue. Michael Orr, e.g., presents "7 Spoems", visual poems made out of white plastic stir sticks, spoons, numbers & letters, & sporks. I enjoyed those.
Demosthenes Agrafiotis presents 4 photographs on 2pp entitled "NARRATIVE". These appear to be monochrome, tinted purple. Parts are soft focus, I think of the films of Man Ray.
Some fairly complex collages (presumably w/o glue) by Keith Walker follow. Each seems to feature text in the body of the work & what might be taken for a caption at the bottom. The 1st image, e.g., has "OBSOLETE ABSOLUTE" in somewhat large print in the image & "THIS IS WHY BIG SUBJECTS CAN COME OUT WHEN YOU'RE NOT MAKING EYE CONTACT" in much smaller print. Variously colored signatures adorn the following "APPROVAL SHEET" on the next page w/ once again small font "THE POWER OF DESIGN CAN MAKE IDEAS TANGIBLE AND MAKE YOU THINK".
The Joy of Color. Muted color from Jim Leftwich, bright colors from Ira Joel Haber. Bright colors, spring & summer brought to us in any season, is there anyone who doesn't enjoy them?
& then there're the titles, words that may or may not lead to our contextualizing the images. Christian ALLE's marked-over photos, the 1st of a woman in what might be old-fashioned clothing. It has the title/caption "Ainsi que des méduses hirsutes": "As well as shaggy jellyfish" is what Google Translate provides me w/ - but we all recognize "méduses", Medusa, the mythical woman whose hair was snakes, people who looked in her eyes wd turn to stone. That cd come in handy.
hiromi suzuki provides a series of 2 panel images: one side seemingly black but w/ faint gray images & white text, the other side somewhat high contrast black & white images. The series is called "Stills from Daily Specials", the idea of a menu's daily specials apparently inspiring such text as "Parrot Isle Jumbo Coconut Shrimp & "Two Delectable Lobster", otherwise seemingly unrelated to the adjacent images although the very faint image under "Wild-caught Lobster Tail" is of a knife & fork.
Susan diRende's titles seem, perhaps, what I expect from image makers, from artists, from painters; the titles seems to be attached to a painting depending on what feeling/circumstances are evoked for the painter after the painting's done - or, perhaps, while the painting's in progress. E.G.: "Sunrise" is dominated by reds, yellows, & whites & has a horizontality to it w/ a bit of circular motion in the top half.
Bill Wolak's titles might be more surrealistically evocative & less descriptively evocative. An image of a multi-tiered machine birthing what might be golf balls, or ping-pong balls has the title "The Ladder of Memories"; a mirrored image of hair is titled "Pale As the Ankles of Dawn".
& then Gregorz Wróblewski provides a somewhat monochromatic series w/ a title of "Waiting for Puffin". "Puffins are any of three species of small alcids (auks) in the bird genus Fratercula. These are pelagic seabirds that feed primarily by diving in the water. They breed in large colonies on coastal cliffs or offshore islands, nesting in crevices among rocks or in burrows in the soil." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffin ) When I think of puffins I think of a publishing subsidiary of Penguin Books. Since the title is singular rather than plural perhaps it alludes to a character known to many but not known to me. For all I know, these images are arial photographs, they seem somewhat topographical.
One delectable work follows another, I enjoy looking at them all - but move on from one to another fairly quickly. Then I come to Jon Kemsley's "self-non-self" wch I made a reviewer's note-to-myself about that reads "A little different" but, looking at it now, no, I don't really find that to be significantly true. I'm reminded of the CoAccident Letraset collages of the late 1970s. That doesn't mean I don't like the piece, it just means it doesn't surprise me.
Joe Balaz IS a little bit different, perhaps esp w/ his "Someone Needs Attention" wch spoofs author's bios & poetry zine names. Y'know how people often say a catchy phrase & then say 'That wd make a good band name!' Same goes w/ zine names. It doesn't mean that the band's music wd be of any interest or that the zine's contents wd be. Here're a few of Balaz's examples: "Luminous Shrine, Atomic Mouth, Glittering Presence, Magnificent Hue, Blazing Wheels, Cream of the Inner Temple, Huge".
Johannes S. H. Bjerg provides us w/ a neologism that may or may not've originated w/ him: "drawritings". That seems roughly synonymous w/ "asemic writing" but is enuf different that I can imagine the distinction proving useful.
Jeff Bagato displays 10 arrangements of variously colored objects. There's no overlapping of the objects so one side of each is displayed fully & neatly. I enjoyed looking at these, it's not a pattern recognition exercise, it's more of a theme & variations.
I found nick nelson's "the way you wear your hat" funny. One character is criticizing another's style:
"the way you wear your hat, always perfectly straight on your head, never the slightest deviation to the left or right, or backwards or forwards. there is something brutish and totalitarian about it, portending an authoritarian personality, i bet you voted for trump, didn't you?
"i beg your pardon, i did no such thing!" - p 275
Ha ha! In this new rage era of pompous condescending neoilliberals I've been hearing that "i bet you voted for trump" nonsense quite alot. (See my "Breaking News!" movie: https://archive.org/details/breaking-news_202202 , it's only 5.5 seconds long so if you have a short attn span you'll probably make it all the way thru anyway).
Isabel Gómez de Diego provides 3 photographs, apparently of things encountered in public squares, some sculpture, a table w/ flowers on it, & an outdoor installation that has some hay w/ prop versions of knightly fighting objects on it: shields, swords, cross-bows, helmets - & a death-like figure hitting a drum. The people walking in the background are wearing anti-COVID-19 masks (ie: not costume masks).
Being somewhat familiar w/ the work of some of the people in this issue I found most of the work to be similar to previous work I'd seen by them. An exception was the work by Guy R. Beining. It was refreshing for me to see this work as significantly different. I recall the older work as usually black & white (although I may be misremembering) & to have a different type of formal coherence. This work is colorful & has contrasting sections.
There're 52 contributors to this issue & I've only touched on rudimentary commentary & description of a few of them. If you can afford it, this wd be a great addition to your visual poetry &/or art bk library. It saddens me that I won't be contributing to Otoliths in the future but I won't abide being censored - & although a case cd be made that my exclusion from issue 64 is 'editing' or 'curating' it's still tantamount to censorship to my mind & today's censors are no more acceptable than those that tried to stop James Joyce's Ulysses & William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch. IMO what I have to say is important, people don't have to agree w/ it but they shd at least get a chance to read it. show less
review of
the Mark Young edited Otoliths issue forty-nine, parts one & two
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 25, 2018
My full review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1001592-otoliths
This whole issue is available online ( https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2018/03/issue-forty-nine-southern-autumn-2018.h... ) but b/c I have something it it ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2018.05Otoliths49.html ) I bought both volumes for my aRCHIVE. As I wrote for the latter webpage: "What show more isn't self-explanatory is what an extraordinary 2 volume book "Otoliths" 49 makes. If the other 48 issues are this stunning then I hope libraries all over the world are collecting them." See for yourself. The 1st volume's black & white, the 2nd's color.
Ostensibly, the online version is no different from the hard copy. However, that's not true, the hard-copy lacks the bios. My online bio says this:
"tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE self-describes as a:
Mad Scientist / d composer / Sound Thinker / Thought Collector / As Been /
PIN-UP (Postal Interaction Network Underground Participant) /
Headless Deadbeat of the Pup tENT Cult /
booed usician / Low Classicist / H.D.J. (Hard Disc Jockey) /
Psychopathfinder / Jack-Off-Of-All-Trades / criminally sane /
Homonymphonemiac / Practicing PromoTextual /
Air Dresser /
Sprocket Scientist / headitor & earchivist / Explicator /
Sexorcist /
Professional Resister of Character Defamation /
Proponent of Classification-Resistant What-Have-Yous /
tOGGLE nUT cASE /
Princess of Dorkness's Right Hand Man /
Human Attention-ExSpanDex Speculum /
Imp Activist /
SPLEENIUS / Cognitive Dissident
He's written 13 bks (all published in some form or another), made 504 movies, has 208 audio publications, is an early & very active member of the neoist movement & a SAINT in the Church of the SubGenius. More info than anyone is ever likely to read is available here:
http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl
but why stop there? He further recommends that you become completely obsessive & go here too:
http://www.youtube.com/user/onesownthoughts
&/or:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1054095.tENTATIVELY_a_cONVENIENCE"
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2018/02/tentatively-convenience.html
As such, the online version is more complete. The printed matter version is somewhat expensive but that's understandable b/c it's beautifully done.
I didn't take many review notes about this as I read it. Basically, it's contemporary poetry w/ a higher quantity of Visual Poetry than most compilations might offer. That's enough for me.
Starting on page 8 there's Lauren O'Connor's "THE HIGHWAY QUEEN: an interview with Louise Landes Levi". I found her interesting. She was part of a performance group about wch she had very interesting things to say:
"The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company — was the first fusion orchestra in America. It didn't become wildly famous, like the orchestras that followed, the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Theater of Eternal Music, in NYC — but there were some great musicians who were involved, Terry Riley, Agnus MaCleise," [I assume that this is meant to be Angus MacLise] "Suzi Archuletta & others. After I left, magnetized by my sarangi teacher & by the instrument, (for better or for worse) there was a write up about the opera in Rolling Stone. Within two weeks of that article, an apparently charismatic individual — Ian Dallas — arrived in Berkeley. Within the next two weeks, the director, the assistant director and his wife, who was my best friend, converted to Shiite Islam. The opera stood for communal, utopian values. It was dissolved and its major proponents were absorbed, at least I think, into a kind of mind control program for the next decade, or so. Linda and Richard Thompson, fr. England's The Fairport Convention were also sucked in. I didn't know the details & the consequences suffered by those involved until 30 years later. My friend fr. California had been a close friend of Linda's in all this. Nothing against the Muslims, some members of that group, friends of mine, did make, in London, a very beautiful & recently released recording (on vinyl) Habibiya but I don't think Ian Dallas was the real thing. I think he was working for the man. He destroyed our opera and he destroyed the spirit of my best friend, who was a really brilliant female musician." - pp 12-13, part 1
Fascinating. Levi's search for spiritual enlightenment is an extraordinary narrative but it seems to me that the lesson to be learned from the above is that most or all such quests are prey to authoritarian megalomaniac control freaks & that that's intrinsic to the way all religions operate.
If there are any recordings of "The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company" I'd definitely like to hear them. Terry Riley's having been involved is enuf to interest me right there. Angus MacLise is reputed to've been the 1st drummer w/ The Velvet Underground & was also in The Theatre of Eternal Music. He's described on Wikipedia as "A heavy drug user who was never particularly mindful of his physical health, MacLise died of hypoglycemia and pulmonary tuberculosis at the Shanta Bhawan Hospital in Kathmandu on June 21, 1979, aged 41. The cause of death has also been attributed to malnutrition. He was cremated to the traditions of Tibetan Buddhists in a funeral pyre." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_MacLise ) I quote the negative part of the bio b/c I think it ties in w/ the 'spiritual' aspect. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry re the opera:
"The opera company was based in North Berkeley, California, from around 1966 to sometime in 1969, and for three years presented two major musical ritual dramas, The Walls Are Running Blood, and Bliss Apocalypse. The cast, crew and orchestra members were primarily enthusiastic amateurs, many originally painters or artists in other mediums who were intrigued with the vision of The Floating Lotus and eager to participate in what was a celebration and expression of the tribal consciousness "in the air" in Berkeley, California at that very explosive and expressive time. Often, however, the orchestra in particular was graced with actual musicians of some stature, such as poet and musician Angus MacLise (formerly of the Velvet Underground), poet, musician and translator Louise Landes Levi, light-artist and musician Daniel Conrad, writer and musician Marc Allen and others. Internationally famous composer Terry Riley occasionally played his erhu with the orchestra and provided some musical direction, as did Ramon Sender, who spent some time coaching the players and dancers as well." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_Lotus_Magic_Opera_Company
I was surprised to learn from reading the above that a friend of mine was a member & that Riley played erhu rather than keyboards or saxes. It's also interesting to me that Levi describes the group as "the first fusion orchestra in America". When I think of what I thought was the most commonly used musical sense of "fusion" I think of music that combines jazz & rock. On Wikipedia the category of "Fusion music genres" is divided into 35 subcategories w/ 79 pages discussing them. The closest I find to the apparent sense of Levi's usage is "Shaman punk" & "World music". Levi's usage seems to mean a fusion of cultures, in this case, perhaps, a fusion of hippie & Buddhist culture — w/ World Music in there somewhere. I'd probably credit The Incredible String Band as important in this area but they weren't "in America" so they don't really apply to Levi's claim.
As for Ian Dallas? I'd never heard of him — but then I take it for granted that charismatic religious leaders are megalomaniac control freaks looking for weak-minded individuals to manipulate. As such, if the director & assistant director of the Opera converted to his religion w/in 2 wks then that doesn't say much for their resistance to mind-control does it? If you follow the torch of the charismatic leader you might just find him or her burning your life w/ it. I looked up Dallas online & found an article wch I quote briefly:
"Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi has founded mosques in England, Spain and South Africa but clearly his hatred is clear for all to see. Of course, he likes to use words like kafir but of course when he was born he was but a poor and lost kafir who then found Sunni versions of Islam along the Sufi path of hatred and he hates in abundance.
"Indeed, it amazes me why many Muslim converts try to rise even higher up the hatred ladder but maybe it is because of the need to belong? Sadly, it appears that age will not mellow Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi and instead he just espouses hatred and clearly much of this hatred is aimed at the Shia."
[..]
"In the article I mention the Sufi leader of hatred can’t hide his loathing and somehow the person born Ian Dallas is now entering the Sunni-Shia sectarian world. Of course, to this religious bigot called Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, then he, like Osama bin Laden, deems the Shia to be un-Muslim.
"Yes, Ian Dallas is clearly in the schizophrenia world of radical Sunni Islam where this non-Muslim convert to Islam is now telling people who are or who are not Muslim. Despite this, his deluded followers will either turn a blind eye or if they have been brainwashed enough, then they will probably follow the same path of hatred." - https://islamicpersecution.wordpress.com/tag/ian-dallas-the-convert-to-hate/
The above-quoted article's from June 3, 2011. Maybe Dallas is still at it. Don't be put off by the somewhat awkward English of the above. The article's from the "Modern Tokyo Times" & English might not've been its 1st language. Lest you think that the Modern Tokyo Times is a daily hard-copy newspaper:
"Modern Tokyo Times is a fully interactive e-journal that mainly publishes in-house articles. At the same time, Modern Tokyo Times is honored to have the right to publish major international think tanks in the area of terrorism and geopolitics.
"Modern Tokyo Times is always looking for positive partnerships, investment, independent writers that can fit neatly within our target area – and other areas related to finance, social media and members to support our independent work." - http://moderntokyotimes.com/about/
Maybe English is their 1st language. Dunno.
"Abdalqadir as-Sufi (born Ian Dallas in Ayr, Scotland in 1930) is a Shaykh of Instruction, leader of the Darqawi-Shadhili-Qadiri Tariqa, founder of the Murabitun World Movement and author of numerous books on Islam, Sufism and political theory. Born in Scotland, he was a playwright and actor before he converted to Islam in 1967 with the Imam of the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, Morocco."
[..]
"Abdalqadir as-Sufi advocates adherence to the original legal school of Islam, the tradition of the people of Medina as recorded by Malik ibn Anas, since he considers this the primal formulation of Islamic society and a necessity for the re-establishment of Islam in the current age.
"Abdalqadir has been responsible for the establishment of the Ihsan Mosque in Norwich, England, the Great Mosque of Granada, and the Jumu'a Mosque of Cape Town
"Abdalqadir as-Sufi teaches that suicide terrorism is forbidden under Islamic law, that its psychological pattern stems from nihilism, and that it "draws attention away from the fact that capitalism has failed." He has stated that Britain is on "the edge of terminal decline" and that only Britain's Muslim population can "revitalise this ancient realm". He has written extensively on the importance of monarchy and personal rule. He also regards the face-veil (or Niqab) of Muslim women as unislamic. describing it as an "evil hinduisation of women".
"In 2006, he issued a fatwa, following a visit and speech given by then Pope Benedict XVI in Germany. In his Fatwa Concerning the Deliberations of Pope Benedict XVI in Germany, he stated that "in my opinion, Pope Benedict XVI is guilty of insulting the Messenger of Allah". He was an early mentor of American Sufi scholar, Hamza Yusuf."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdalqadir_as-Sufi
Ok, I'm an anarchist, so it's no surprise that I get as fucking sick as I do of all this talk about Islamic law. Islamic law, like any law, serves the purpose of keeping some people, like Abdalqadir as-Sufi, in power while criminalizing &/or demonizing whoever gets in the way of that. To quote myself: "We are all UNEQUAL under the LAW & THAT is its PURPOSE". The fact that the world keeps producing sheep for Dallas to shear is a depressing one but it shows how intrinsic it is to most people to think they need to be subserviant. Der Untertan. Get a life!
At any rate, you can read the entire interview w/ Levi here: https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2018/02/lauren-oconnor.html . Otoliths is full of work by people I know & people I don't know — both, of course, of interest. Jim Leftwich is someone in between those 2 categories, we've brushed presences in passing for many yrs &'re social networking friends but we've never communicated much. My interest in his piece here was excited by his mention of Sun Ra's "Magic City" record, one of my personal favorites:
"Sun Ra is from Birmingham, Alabama, nicknamed The Magic City because of its rapid growth. Roanoke is called the magic city for the same reason.. Magic business financing the Pocahontas coalfields." - p 33, part 1
Interesting. Each section of Leftwih's piece has a boldface heading specifying what he's listening to as he's writing. Most of it is music I know & like. "Anthony Davis — Episteme" (p 40, part 1) Given my obsession w/ music this appeals to me. Sometimes when I write reviews I list what I'm listening to. Lately, I've mainly been iistening to a 16 volume tape retrospective that I assembled of Pierre Boulez's music or work that he conducted. In this rm, tho, the rm that I'm writing this review in, my personal library, I've been listening to "Two Halves Volume Three", a compilation of duets curated by & published on BandCamp by {AN} EeL ( https://panpanpanaviandistresscall.bandcamp.com/album/two-halves-volume-three ).
Clara B. Jones contributes a "Love Sonnet" wch doesn't surprise me by not being in traditional sonnet form but wch I enjoyed as something that might be looking at various notions of what constitutes 'love' in 14 numbered sentences:
"1. You planned a life together, but something went terribly wrong."
"11. What happend to Kathleen Cleaver?" - p 116, part 1
What did happen to Kathleen Cleaver, (married to Eldriidge Cleaver)?
"After leaving Eldridge, Kathleen Cleaver went back to university in 1981, receiving a full scholarship from Yale University. She graduated in 1984, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. In 1987, she divorced Eldridge Cleaver. She then continued her education by getting her law degree from Yale Law School in 1989. After graduating, she worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and followed this with numerous jobs including: law clerk in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia under Judge A. Higginbotham, the faculty of Emory University in Atlanta, visiting faculty member at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, the Graduate School of Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College.
"In 2005, Cleaver was selected an inaugural Fletcher Foundation Fellow. She then worked as a Senior Research Associate at the Yale Law School, and a Senior Lecturer in the African American Studies department at Yale University. She is currently serving as senior lecturer at Emory University School of Law. In addition to her career, she works on numerous campaigns, including freedom for death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and habeas corpus for Geronimo Pratt. Cleaver has also worked for many years on and published her book Memories of Love and War. She and other former members of the Black Panther Party continue to meet and discuss issues and heal from the movement."
Kathleen Cleaver is still alive & kicking, thank the holy ceiling light.
5 typewriter VisPos by fátima queiroz appear on the following 5 pages (117-123, part 1). I'm reminded a bit of work by Karl Kempton. 12 pages of one word concrete poems by Andrew Topol in wch the graphical presentation expresses the meaning appear on 143-154, part 1. I'm reminded of Richard Kostelanetz. Kostelanetz has 4 pages of 4 word sentences in large typeface (167-170, part 1). The 1st of these is "Alphabets are language's numerals."
There's Scott MacLeod & Texas Fontanella's "Stop Every Tragedy Except This One", a détournment of a comic (171-189, part 1) whose 1st panel shows an airman in uniform standing at attn in front of a superior officer. The airman is made to say: "I know I can find a more attractive way of life." to wch the officer replies "In this storm? Why Jackson you couldn't live a minute out on the balcony."
It's little details that help a reader relate when the bigger picture may not be so apparent: "We are like stink bugs together—no one smashes us in their homes because of our emissions, and then we die soon, in only a day or so, falling from the ceilings and are vacuumed up." (p 211, part 1, Joseph V. Milford) I never even knew what a stink bug was until they became very dominant here in Pittsburgh for a few yrs starting around 2008 - I don't kill them, I scoop them up if they're slow enuf & put them out a window.
Linc Madison presents a dysfunctional relationship, or skirts it, in alternating diary-like entries & text messages from the other party:
"Text from Dick
Sorry u know me when my life
is so fucked up. I am better than
this.
"Selling merchandise most of the day and into the night." - p 236, part 1
Txt msgs have gotten to be part & parcel of so many people's lives that their presence in a larger text makes it seem more personal — much as hand-held (or pseudo hand-held) camera in a Hollywood movie makes it seem believable that the scenario cd happen to you. Txt msgs & other electronically enabled means are so omnipresent that tech-speak might be more prevalent than ever as a result. Take Thom Sullivan's "'Diesel & Dust' homestead [a landscape]":
"Make —PENTAX
Software — Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Date and Time (Modified) — 2011:07:03 12:06:26" - p 279, part 1
The brands are, of course, domineering in their struggle for survivial, apps are 'everywhere', such specificity of date & time is enabled by the software. One doesn't have to check the date & time to note it, it's done automatically. That, combined w/ GPS, is useful for historians such as myself AND for Big Brother, a surveillance I cd do w/o.
I didn't take many review notes about either part 1 or 2. Read it all yourself online at the above provided URL &/or buy a copy & support the editor/publisher's efforts to present a selection of work that you might not see elsewhere.
********************************
My full review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1001592-otoliths show less
the Mark Young edited Otoliths issue forty-nine, parts one & two
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - June 25, 2018
My full review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1001592-otoliths
This whole issue is available online ( https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2018/03/issue-forty-nine-southern-autumn-2018.h... ) but b/c I have something it it ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book2018.05Otoliths49.html ) I bought both volumes for my aRCHIVE. As I wrote for the latter webpage: "What show more isn't self-explanatory is what an extraordinary 2 volume book "Otoliths" 49 makes. If the other 48 issues are this stunning then I hope libraries all over the world are collecting them." See for yourself. The 1st volume's black & white, the 2nd's color.
Ostensibly, the online version is no different from the hard copy. However, that's not true, the hard-copy lacks the bios. My online bio says this:
"tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE self-describes as a:
Mad Scientist / d composer / Sound Thinker / Thought Collector / As Been /
PIN-UP (Postal Interaction Network Underground Participant) /
Headless Deadbeat of the Pup tENT Cult /
booed usician / Low Classicist / H.D.J. (Hard Disc Jockey) /
Psychopathfinder / Jack-Off-Of-All-Trades / criminally sane /
Homonymphonemiac / Practicing PromoTextual /
Air Dresser /
Sprocket Scientist / headitor & earchivist / Explicator /
Sexorcist /
Professional Resister of Character Defamation /
Proponent of Classification-Resistant What-Have-Yous /
tOGGLE nUT cASE /
Princess of Dorkness's Right Hand Man /
Human Attention-ExSpanDex Speculum /
Imp Activist /
SPLEENIUS / Cognitive Dissident
He's written 13 bks (all published in some form or another), made 504 movies, has 208 audio publications, is an early & very active member of the neoist movement & a SAINT in the Church of the SubGenius. More info than anyone is ever likely to read is available here:
http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl
but why stop there? He further recommends that you become completely obsessive & go here too:
http://www.youtube.com/user/onesownthoughts
&/or:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1054095.tENTATIVELY_a_cONVENIENCE"
- https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2018/02/tentatively-convenience.html
As such, the online version is more complete. The printed matter version is somewhat expensive but that's understandable b/c it's beautifully done.
I didn't take many review notes about this as I read it. Basically, it's contemporary poetry w/ a higher quantity of Visual Poetry than most compilations might offer. That's enough for me.
Starting on page 8 there's Lauren O'Connor's "THE HIGHWAY QUEEN: an interview with Louise Landes Levi". I found her interesting. She was part of a performance group about wch she had very interesting things to say:
"The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company — was the first fusion orchestra in America. It didn't become wildly famous, like the orchestras that followed, the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Theater of Eternal Music, in NYC — but there were some great musicians who were involved, Terry Riley, Agnus MaCleise," [I assume that this is meant to be Angus MacLise] "Suzi Archuletta & others. After I left, magnetized by my sarangi teacher & by the instrument, (for better or for worse) there was a write up about the opera in Rolling Stone. Within two weeks of that article, an apparently charismatic individual — Ian Dallas — arrived in Berkeley. Within the next two weeks, the director, the assistant director and his wife, who was my best friend, converted to Shiite Islam. The opera stood for communal, utopian values. It was dissolved and its major proponents were absorbed, at least I think, into a kind of mind control program for the next decade, or so. Linda and Richard Thompson, fr. England's The Fairport Convention were also sucked in. I didn't know the details & the consequences suffered by those involved until 30 years later. My friend fr. California had been a close friend of Linda's in all this. Nothing against the Muslims, some members of that group, friends of mine, did make, in London, a very beautiful & recently released recording (on vinyl) Habibiya but I don't think Ian Dallas was the real thing. I think he was working for the man. He destroyed our opera and he destroyed the spirit of my best friend, who was a really brilliant female musician." - pp 12-13, part 1
Fascinating. Levi's search for spiritual enlightenment is an extraordinary narrative but it seems to me that the lesson to be learned from the above is that most or all such quests are prey to authoritarian megalomaniac control freaks & that that's intrinsic to the way all religions operate.
If there are any recordings of "The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company" I'd definitely like to hear them. Terry Riley's having been involved is enuf to interest me right there. Angus MacLise is reputed to've been the 1st drummer w/ The Velvet Underground & was also in The Theatre of Eternal Music. He's described on Wikipedia as "A heavy drug user who was never particularly mindful of his physical health, MacLise died of hypoglycemia and pulmonary tuberculosis at the Shanta Bhawan Hospital in Kathmandu on June 21, 1979, aged 41. The cause of death has also been attributed to malnutrition. He was cremated to the traditions of Tibetan Buddhists in a funeral pyre." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_MacLise ) I quote the negative part of the bio b/c I think it ties in w/ the 'spiritual' aspect. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry re the opera:
"The opera company was based in North Berkeley, California, from around 1966 to sometime in 1969, and for three years presented two major musical ritual dramas, The Walls Are Running Blood, and Bliss Apocalypse. The cast, crew and orchestra members were primarily enthusiastic amateurs, many originally painters or artists in other mediums who were intrigued with the vision of The Floating Lotus and eager to participate in what was a celebration and expression of the tribal consciousness "in the air" in Berkeley, California at that very explosive and expressive time. Often, however, the orchestra in particular was graced with actual musicians of some stature, such as poet and musician Angus MacLise (formerly of the Velvet Underground), poet, musician and translator Louise Landes Levi, light-artist and musician Daniel Conrad, writer and musician Marc Allen and others. Internationally famous composer Terry Riley occasionally played his erhu with the orchestra and provided some musical direction, as did Ramon Sender, who spent some time coaching the players and dancers as well." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_Lotus_Magic_Opera_Company
I was surprised to learn from reading the above that a friend of mine was a member & that Riley played erhu rather than keyboards or saxes. It's also interesting to me that Levi describes the group as "the first fusion orchestra in America". When I think of what I thought was the most commonly used musical sense of "fusion" I think of music that combines jazz & rock. On Wikipedia the category of "Fusion music genres" is divided into 35 subcategories w/ 79 pages discussing them. The closest I find to the apparent sense of Levi's usage is "Shaman punk" & "World music". Levi's usage seems to mean a fusion of cultures, in this case, perhaps, a fusion of hippie & Buddhist culture — w/ World Music in there somewhere. I'd probably credit The Incredible String Band as important in this area but they weren't "in America" so they don't really apply to Levi's claim.
As for Ian Dallas? I'd never heard of him — but then I take it for granted that charismatic religious leaders are megalomaniac control freaks looking for weak-minded individuals to manipulate. As such, if the director & assistant director of the Opera converted to his religion w/in 2 wks then that doesn't say much for their resistance to mind-control does it? If you follow the torch of the charismatic leader you might just find him or her burning your life w/ it. I looked up Dallas online & found an article wch I quote briefly:
"Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi has founded mosques in England, Spain and South Africa but clearly his hatred is clear for all to see. Of course, he likes to use words like kafir but of course when he was born he was but a poor and lost kafir who then found Sunni versions of Islam along the Sufi path of hatred and he hates in abundance.
"Indeed, it amazes me why many Muslim converts try to rise even higher up the hatred ladder but maybe it is because of the need to belong? Sadly, it appears that age will not mellow Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi and instead he just espouses hatred and clearly much of this hatred is aimed at the Shia."
[..]
"In the article I mention the Sufi leader of hatred can’t hide his loathing and somehow the person born Ian Dallas is now entering the Sunni-Shia sectarian world. Of course, to this religious bigot called Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi, then he, like Osama bin Laden, deems the Shia to be un-Muslim.
"Yes, Ian Dallas is clearly in the schizophrenia world of radical Sunni Islam where this non-Muslim convert to Islam is now telling people who are or who are not Muslim. Despite this, his deluded followers will either turn a blind eye or if they have been brainwashed enough, then they will probably follow the same path of hatred." - https://islamicpersecution.wordpress.com/tag/ian-dallas-the-convert-to-hate/
The above-quoted article's from June 3, 2011. Maybe Dallas is still at it. Don't be put off by the somewhat awkward English of the above. The article's from the "Modern Tokyo Times" & English might not've been its 1st language. Lest you think that the Modern Tokyo Times is a daily hard-copy newspaper:
"Modern Tokyo Times is a fully interactive e-journal that mainly publishes in-house articles. At the same time, Modern Tokyo Times is honored to have the right to publish major international think tanks in the area of terrorism and geopolitics.
"Modern Tokyo Times is always looking for positive partnerships, investment, independent writers that can fit neatly within our target area – and other areas related to finance, social media and members to support our independent work." - http://moderntokyotimes.com/about/
Maybe English is their 1st language. Dunno.
"Abdalqadir as-Sufi (born Ian Dallas in Ayr, Scotland in 1930) is a Shaykh of Instruction, leader of the Darqawi-Shadhili-Qadiri Tariqa, founder of the Murabitun World Movement and author of numerous books on Islam, Sufism and political theory. Born in Scotland, he was a playwright and actor before he converted to Islam in 1967 with the Imam of the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, Morocco."
[..]
"Abdalqadir as-Sufi advocates adherence to the original legal school of Islam, the tradition of the people of Medina as recorded by Malik ibn Anas, since he considers this the primal formulation of Islamic society and a necessity for the re-establishment of Islam in the current age.
"Abdalqadir has been responsible for the establishment of the Ihsan Mosque in Norwich, England, the Great Mosque of Granada, and the Jumu'a Mosque of Cape Town
"Abdalqadir as-Sufi teaches that suicide terrorism is forbidden under Islamic law, that its psychological pattern stems from nihilism, and that it "draws attention away from the fact that capitalism has failed." He has stated that Britain is on "the edge of terminal decline" and that only Britain's Muslim population can "revitalise this ancient realm". He has written extensively on the importance of monarchy and personal rule. He also regards the face-veil (or Niqab) of Muslim women as unislamic. describing it as an "evil hinduisation of women".
"In 2006, he issued a fatwa, following a visit and speech given by then Pope Benedict XVI in Germany. In his Fatwa Concerning the Deliberations of Pope Benedict XVI in Germany, he stated that "in my opinion, Pope Benedict XVI is guilty of insulting the Messenger of Allah". He was an early mentor of American Sufi scholar, Hamza Yusuf."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdalqadir_as-Sufi
Ok, I'm an anarchist, so it's no surprise that I get as fucking sick as I do of all this talk about Islamic law. Islamic law, like any law, serves the purpose of keeping some people, like Abdalqadir as-Sufi, in power while criminalizing &/or demonizing whoever gets in the way of that. To quote myself: "We are all UNEQUAL under the LAW & THAT is its PURPOSE". The fact that the world keeps producing sheep for Dallas to shear is a depressing one but it shows how intrinsic it is to most people to think they need to be subserviant. Der Untertan. Get a life!
At any rate, you can read the entire interview w/ Levi here: https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2018/02/lauren-oconnor.html . Otoliths is full of work by people I know & people I don't know — both, of course, of interest. Jim Leftwich is someone in between those 2 categories, we've brushed presences in passing for many yrs &'re social networking friends but we've never communicated much. My interest in his piece here was excited by his mention of Sun Ra's "Magic City" record, one of my personal favorites:
"Sun Ra is from Birmingham, Alabama, nicknamed The Magic City because of its rapid growth. Roanoke is called the magic city for the same reason.. Magic business financing the Pocahontas coalfields." - p 33, part 1
Interesting. Each section of Leftwih's piece has a boldface heading specifying what he's listening to as he's writing. Most of it is music I know & like. "Anthony Davis — Episteme" (p 40, part 1) Given my obsession w/ music this appeals to me. Sometimes when I write reviews I list what I'm listening to. Lately, I've mainly been iistening to a 16 volume tape retrospective that I assembled of Pierre Boulez's music or work that he conducted. In this rm, tho, the rm that I'm writing this review in, my personal library, I've been listening to "Two Halves Volume Three", a compilation of duets curated by & published on BandCamp by {AN} EeL ( https://panpanpanaviandistresscall.bandcamp.com/album/two-halves-volume-three ).
Clara B. Jones contributes a "Love Sonnet" wch doesn't surprise me by not being in traditional sonnet form but wch I enjoyed as something that might be looking at various notions of what constitutes 'love' in 14 numbered sentences:
"1. You planned a life together, but something went terribly wrong."
"11. What happend to Kathleen Cleaver?" - p 116, part 1
What did happen to Kathleen Cleaver, (married to Eldriidge Cleaver)?
"After leaving Eldridge, Kathleen Cleaver went back to university in 1981, receiving a full scholarship from Yale University. She graduated in 1984, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. In 1987, she divorced Eldridge Cleaver. She then continued her education by getting her law degree from Yale Law School in 1989. After graduating, she worked for the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and followed this with numerous jobs including: law clerk in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia under Judge A. Higginbotham, the faculty of Emory University in Atlanta, visiting faculty member at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City, the Graduate School of Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College.
"In 2005, Cleaver was selected an inaugural Fletcher Foundation Fellow. She then worked as a Senior Research Associate at the Yale Law School, and a Senior Lecturer in the African American Studies department at Yale University. She is currently serving as senior lecturer at Emory University School of Law. In addition to her career, she works on numerous campaigns, including freedom for death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and habeas corpus for Geronimo Pratt. Cleaver has also worked for many years on and published her book Memories of Love and War. She and other former members of the Black Panther Party continue to meet and discuss issues and heal from the movement."
Kathleen Cleaver is still alive & kicking, thank the holy ceiling light.
5 typewriter VisPos by fátima queiroz appear on the following 5 pages (117-123, part 1). I'm reminded a bit of work by Karl Kempton. 12 pages of one word concrete poems by Andrew Topol in wch the graphical presentation expresses the meaning appear on 143-154, part 1. I'm reminded of Richard Kostelanetz. Kostelanetz has 4 pages of 4 word sentences in large typeface (167-170, part 1). The 1st of these is "Alphabets are language's numerals."
There's Scott MacLeod & Texas Fontanella's "Stop Every Tragedy Except This One", a détournment of a comic (171-189, part 1) whose 1st panel shows an airman in uniform standing at attn in front of a superior officer. The airman is made to say: "I know I can find a more attractive way of life." to wch the officer replies "In this storm? Why Jackson you couldn't live a minute out on the balcony."
It's little details that help a reader relate when the bigger picture may not be so apparent: "We are like stink bugs together—no one smashes us in their homes because of our emissions, and then we die soon, in only a day or so, falling from the ceilings and are vacuumed up." (p 211, part 1, Joseph V. Milford) I never even knew what a stink bug was until they became very dominant here in Pittsburgh for a few yrs starting around 2008 - I don't kill them, I scoop them up if they're slow enuf & put them out a window.
Linc Madison presents a dysfunctional relationship, or skirts it, in alternating diary-like entries & text messages from the other party:
"Text from Dick
Sorry u know me when my life
is so fucked up. I am better than
this.
"Selling merchandise most of the day and into the night." - p 236, part 1
Txt msgs have gotten to be part & parcel of so many people's lives that their presence in a larger text makes it seem more personal — much as hand-held (or pseudo hand-held) camera in a Hollywood movie makes it seem believable that the scenario cd happen to you. Txt msgs & other electronically enabled means are so omnipresent that tech-speak might be more prevalent than ever as a result. Take Thom Sullivan's "'Diesel & Dust' homestead [a landscape]":
"Make —PENTAX
Software — Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Date and Time (Modified) — 2011:07:03 12:06:26" - p 279, part 1
The brands are, of course, domineering in their struggle for survivial, apps are 'everywhere', such specificity of date & time is enabled by the software. One doesn't have to check the date & time to note it, it's done automatically. That, combined w/ GPS, is useful for historians such as myself AND for Big Brother, a surveillance I cd do w/o.
I didn't take many review notes about either part 1 or 2. Read it all yourself online at the above provided URL &/or buy a copy & support the editor/publisher's efforts to present a selection of work that you might not see elsewhere.
********************************
My full review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1001592-otoliths show less
review of
Mark Young, editor OTOLITHS issue fifty-six, part one
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 28, 2020
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto
I don't really follow literary/poetry journals, online or hard-copy, so I have no idea how many there are these days, how many exist only online, how many exist only in hard-copy, how many in both forms. This is an example of the latter. It appears online 1st & then is available, somewhat expensively show more IMO, as POD hard-copy. B/c of this lack of knowledge on my part, I don't know how OTOLITHS compares to other such publications: is it more conservative? more adventurous? I tend to think more eclectic insofar as the types of work presented range from discursive to visual poetic. There doesn't seem to be much Flarf or Conceptual Poetry or Concrete Poetry but I'm sure the editor, Mark Young, wd be open to them. The cover, by Young, is static in printed form but is a simple animation in its online form.
At any rate, I'm a contributor & I like it enough to choose to be so b/c it does present variety & I like much of the work by fellow contributors, I'm very glad OTOLITHS exists & that it's made it to issue 56. That, in itself, strikes me as extraordinary, staying power in small periodicals is somewhat rare. The issues that I have are printed out in 2 volumes: a black & white volume that's cheaper for purchasers & then a color volume that's particularly stimulating to look at but definitely not cheap. I contributed to the color volume of this but bought copies of both so that my aRCHIVE wd be more complete. I draw the line at the expense of buying all issues.
Thinking about OTOLITHS stimulates me to revisit other such publications that I've contributed to. W/ this in mind I list them here w/ the yr(s) I published w/ them. Perhaps some other old hands will enjoy being reminded of the titles.
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (1978)
Hard Crabs (1979, 1980)
RAWZ (1979)
DOC(K)S (1981)
End Paper (1982)
A HUNDRED POSTERS (1983?)
Lost and Found Times (1985)
Phosphorusflourish (1987)
Shattered Wig Review (1988)
(S)CRAP (1988)
ottotole (1989)
Painted Bride Quarterly (1992)
Encylopaedia Destructica - Bumba (2007)
Zswound (2009)
Rampike (2010, 2012, 2014)
The OPEN SPACE magazine (2011, 2014)
Tip of the Knife (2012)
Sibila (2012)
And/Or (2014)
All in all, OTOLITHS compares quite nicely to the company it keeps here. Publications like RAWZ, End Paper, Phosphorusflourish, (S)CRAP, & Encylopaedia Destructica - Bumba had artist's bks touches that I particularly enjoy. DOC(K)S, ottotole, & The OPEN SPACE magazine came out in more of a bk form, as does OTOLITHS. I'm obsessed w/ bks so that's good too.
The black & white volume, the volume reviewed here, tends to have more typewritten poetry since the visual poetry is usually in color — but it's not completely w/o the VP. In fact, visually it's close to stunning.
I read thru the whole thing as I always do w/ everything I read & everything I, therefore, review. The only exception is when something's in a language other than English. The pieces I choose to quote from aren't presented as 'the best', they're just things that caught my attn for one reason or another. E.G.: Grace Coughlin's "The Problem is They Grow Up" has a reviewer note connected to it saying "stupid behavior".
"When he was twelve, he'd catch fireflies in a jar, tinfoil on top, and every time it would surprise him when they didn't glow for him the way they did in the open air. He'd Shake the jar. He'd Smack the glass. He'd Rattle the metal lid. His mom would say 'That's enough now, set them free,' but for him it wasn't enough. Before the bulbs blew out—suffocated, I would guess, from a lack of air and sky—they'd flicker just a little one last time. And, for him, that was enough. He hasn't been twelve for thirteen years." - p 12
This is one of many bks I've been reading concurrently over a long time. This yr, 2020, has been a difficult one for me & I haven't been enjoying things as much as I might have previously. As such, this was probably read over a period of 8 or more mnths. My reviewer note for this next poem excerpt suggests comparing E. E. Cummings. That wd've been connected to my having reviewed the Richard Kostelanetz edited E. E. Cummings' AnOther E. E. Cummings way back in March 10-17, 2020 ("E.E.: Cum": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1265916-e-e ) so I probably read this poem shortly after writing that review.
"Len g thy sir RRow too OOlls
Regr owth t OO OO lls sto-sto ny
For a theo logy of s worth tor ts
Ggg oner wort HY lllo ttos" - Hugh Tribbey, p 14
& what about Kristian Radford returning to Japan?
"returning to the country of my birth
for the first time in over a decade
was meant to be triumphant
I got sick within 48 hours
and spent most of the week
trying to stay in my room" - p 20
& then there's Steve Dalachinsky & Jim Leftwich: I run across their names fairly often, I think we're 'friends' on some social media or another — but such friendships are too ill-established for me to really know them. That's a shame.
"where power begets power & the powerful
are full of powder where prowess is prevalent
& acht(o)ung(e)ing is the norm where the
powerful wear egrets to war there is valet
parking west of the pro shop & the black widow
spiders are full of corn their wings hung
on the storm like facts" - p 27
I love pronunication vagaries:
"ough ough ough ough ough ough
bough love
cough love
dough love
enough love
furlough love
rough love
trough love
ough ough ough ough ough ough" - still Dalachinsky & Leftwich, p 37
Notice "trough love" instead of the more obvious follow-up to "rough love": tough love.
Then there's Leftwich on his own:
"Evaporating hair
fiSh FiVe EntrOpic
GeNeTic giViNg gAs
MaSHed uP potatoes
TreMbLing, toRNado" - p 38
I spot no 'rhyme or reason', no NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), no acrostics or mesostics, not even strictly tOGGLE cASE. Methinks he's playing — but maybe there's more going on here than meets my mind. It wdn't be the 1st time I've missed something.
All of this can be read online in more correctly laid-out & complete versions:
https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2020/01/issue-fifty-six-southern-summer-2020.ht...
Why not carefully read it all there? There's some sort of community at work, at play, might as well get to know us, maybe you'll join us.
Kirk Marshall:
"The Hermanos Luchador dedicated their days to the ardent defence of their inviolable mistress, a chemical grade of pure-strength crack cocaine which, when first pursued, renewed a person's faith in his calling and, when finally tasted, verified for him the compulsion to serve with unquestioning loyalty. The twins harboured no sluggardly confusion as to the rationale upon which their nation's war was founded; by retaining a monopoly on the manufacture and dissemination of their capital's most lucrative export, they ensured that Sonora's civic industry — nay, Mexico's supremacy as a bastion for trade — would continue to thrive." - pp 43-44
"To solicit her favour and capitalize on her affection meant demonstrating that with cocaine as your advocate and confidante, you could amass power, inspire fear and suffering, broker lucrative transactions, convert your familiarity with the pathology of addiction into expertise. Cocaine would not abide being exploited; it was she alone who administered the exploitation of others." - p 44
Well sd.
Sometimes, poetry bks can be a little too precious for me.
"William Allegrezza
Stone & Type, Cedar
Lavender Ink
ISBN: 978-1-944884-67-3
86 pages
$17.95"
The above bk is reviewed. No comment is made about the price & the mere 86 pp. I have a new bk coming out on Entity Press called But Not Limited Too (Smattering 1) that's full color, 152 pp, $15.00. Perhaps the printer of Stone & Type, Cedar does an exceptionally good job. Still, really?, 18 bucks? I wdn't buy it.
Then there's the work by people I've been observing for decades, in this case John M. Bennett (in collaboration w/ Stacey Allam), someone I consider a friend although we've never met.
"Shirt Lens
Speak the shirt
blinded by the wicks
in a thought bubble
and the buttons falling
from clouds
chips clinking
in your blurry glasses
fanning out the nosebuds
hear the passing air" - p 86
It doesn't make me cry the way Dickens's Bleak House does (& I wdn't want it to). It's more like Variations w/o a Theme, a Lens instead of a Theme.
Or what about Márton Koppány's
"my post-full-stop period
. ." - p 93
I thought that was funny, not LOL funny, but funny.
Then there's Jurgen O. Olbrich, another name I've seen around so much I feel like we're friends even tho I don't think we've ever corresponded & I'm sure we've never met. His 4 pp from 94-97 might be called concrete. The 1st page says:
"Here is
always
every-
where." w/ the 1st "Here" & the "here" of "where" in grey. Here here. The text is justified too. I like it, it's elegant.
Or what about Jim McCrary's fill-in-the-implied-blank piece entitled "Untitled"?:
"Covered by noun objects in st
She was he was the best at everything
And never forgot to endure them fr" - p 101
I think much poetry cd be called fill-in-the-implied-blank pieces but McCrary makes it more explicit. How much poetry invokes, evokes, refers to, implies, teases, etc?
Then there's Pat Nolan's "A HISTORY OF HAIKAI Three Dokugin Kasen in memory of Keith Kumasen Abbott" & my thinking: 'Was that the guy who taught at Naropa?" so I looked at the Keith Abbott Wikipedia entry for the Naropa guy & he's listed as still alive & still teaching at Naropa, so NO, it's the Keith Kumasen Abbott who I found things about on SPD: "Keith Kumasen Abbott teaches writing and art at Naropa University." who appears to be, uh, the same Keith Abbott after all & then I found this: "This is a note of appreciation for one of my mentors, Keith Kumasen Abbott, who passed away last week. I met Keith when I worked at Naropa University. He was a faculty member in the Jack Kerouac School of Writing and Poetics where he taught reading and writing." ( https://janineibbotson.com/blog/2019/9/3/appreciation ) & that's from Sept 4, 2019, so I went back to the Wikipedia entry & I cdn't find it so did I read something else & think it was a Wikipedia entry? I must have. I did find this: "Keith Abbott teaches at Naropa University, US" on the European Beat Studies Network website ( https://ebsn.eu/about-ebsn/members/keith-abbott/ ) so I reckon they must be serious about this Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics business.
& what about C. Mehrl Bennett? I particularly enjoyed her "Ask A Cow Poems":
"Oreo trees
Crumble when wet
They are fake
Ask A Cow
Fear
Floats on wood
Under the earth
Ask A Cow" - p 112
Mark DuCharme tells us:
"Don't go away
Develop laughing pneumonia" - p 126
You probably know that there's a type of pneumonia called "walking pneumonia", a pneumonia too mild to be debilitating. I was a research volunteer for a study of it once. As I'm sure you're also aware, all readers bring their own associations to what they read. That's my bring-to.
Jim Melrose:
"—into and onto the low pressure passenger seat not cooled a degree by the departure of Driver "Horse"'s hitchhacker Flaxman and the arrival of Driver "Horse"'s hitchhacker Kevin and again the cab became non-empty space and the universe became once more happy. All passenger seats abhor prolonged emptiness. Ah, truckworld do diddly indeedy abhor all empty passenger seats. So, Kevin, having seamlessly poured into the mold of nothing seeded by Flaxman—began and began and took over actually, the careful listening into the cold dashboard radio provided, which was wakening again from its last periodic cross-country station n out of range release and station n 1 in range acquisition blip-staticky-storm cycle." - pp 127-128
I find that an interesting description of one passenger replacing another in a hack, don't you?
Volodymyr Bilyk contributed a piece called "Melody Poems". Inspired by them I made a movie of me performing them. Here're the YouTube notes for that:
""A reading of Volodymyr Bilyk's "Melody Poems" with abundant mistakes & liberties on an out-of-tune spinet": In 2020 I had 5 of my "Butt Poems" published in "Otoliths" issue, 56 ( https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2019... ). That's available online but I like having a hardcopy of anything I'm published in so I bought a copy of both volumes of this issue. I'm in the process of reading it cover-to-cover with the intention of reviewing it. When I got to Volodymyr Bilyk's "Melody Poems" I thought it would be fun to play the pieces on the piano & to link to a movie of this as a part of the finished review. Since the "Melody Poems" basically just list note names without specifying octave or rhythm, etc, I decided that it would be fun to play them in ways that most people would find 'unmelodic'. This is the result. As you will no doubt notice, I also tweaked it a bit further. I made entirely too many mistakes & took some liberties so the result is probably a bit far off from Bilyk's imagining of the melodies but, hey!, I still went to the trouble of actually approaching the "Melody Poems" as a score." - https://youtu.be/QvG0YeUR7ls
Considering that that movie was uploaded May 11, 2020, that gives you an idea of how long it took for me to get thru this — & this is just the 1st volume!!
The same author provided something of even greater interest to me:
"from The Song of the Great Tits
1
fa', fall.
err.
v -/- | v -/- | v -/- | v -/-
dubitatione_.
nibble.
moan!
no craven,
vale!
too" - p 147
I found hiromi suzuki's work to be "closer to Cummings than to Concrete Poetry" although it has somewhat the appearance of the latter:
"sur)face(
of
silence;
) our (
) p
o (
) O
L (
shiver
y)our(
) face (" - p 162
& then I found Elmedin Kadric's Visual Poetry (not reproducible here) (wch I very much liked) closer to dominoes than, say the sweetener section in the supermarket.
Olchar Lindsann's "ORAcLe" begins w/ a truncated quote from Lautrémont. How can they go wrong?
"~^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"is mouth, stuffed with belladonna leaves, let it sli"
–Lautréamont, opening to Canto II of Maldoror
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto show less
Mark Young, editor OTOLITHS issue fifty-six, part one
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 28, 2020
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto
I don't really follow literary/poetry journals, online or hard-copy, so I have no idea how many there are these days, how many exist only online, how many exist only in hard-copy, how many in both forms. This is an example of the latter. It appears online 1st & then is available, somewhat expensively show more IMO, as POD hard-copy. B/c of this lack of knowledge on my part, I don't know how OTOLITHS compares to other such publications: is it more conservative? more adventurous? I tend to think more eclectic insofar as the types of work presented range from discursive to visual poetic. There doesn't seem to be much Flarf or Conceptual Poetry or Concrete Poetry but I'm sure the editor, Mark Young, wd be open to them. The cover, by Young, is static in printed form but is a simple animation in its online form.
At any rate, I'm a contributor & I like it enough to choose to be so b/c it does present variety & I like much of the work by fellow contributors, I'm very glad OTOLITHS exists & that it's made it to issue 56. That, in itself, strikes me as extraordinary, staying power in small periodicals is somewhat rare. The issues that I have are printed out in 2 volumes: a black & white volume that's cheaper for purchasers & then a color volume that's particularly stimulating to look at but definitely not cheap. I contributed to the color volume of this but bought copies of both so that my aRCHIVE wd be more complete. I draw the line at the expense of buying all issues.
Thinking about OTOLITHS stimulates me to revisit other such publications that I've contributed to. W/ this in mind I list them here w/ the yr(s) I published w/ them. Perhaps some other old hands will enjoy being reminded of the titles.
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (1978)
Hard Crabs (1979, 1980)
RAWZ (1979)
DOC(K)S (1981)
End Paper (1982)
A HUNDRED POSTERS (1983?)
Lost and Found Times (1985)
Phosphorusflourish (1987)
Shattered Wig Review (1988)
(S)CRAP (1988)
ottotole (1989)
Painted Bride Quarterly (1992)
Encylopaedia Destructica - Bumba (2007)
Zswound (2009)
Rampike (2010, 2012, 2014)
The OPEN SPACE magazine (2011, 2014)
Tip of the Knife (2012)
Sibila (2012)
And/Or (2014)
All in all, OTOLITHS compares quite nicely to the company it keeps here. Publications like RAWZ, End Paper, Phosphorusflourish, (S)CRAP, & Encylopaedia Destructica - Bumba had artist's bks touches that I particularly enjoy. DOC(K)S, ottotole, & The OPEN SPACE magazine came out in more of a bk form, as does OTOLITHS. I'm obsessed w/ bks so that's good too.
The black & white volume, the volume reviewed here, tends to have more typewritten poetry since the visual poetry is usually in color — but it's not completely w/o the VP. In fact, visually it's close to stunning.
I read thru the whole thing as I always do w/ everything I read & everything I, therefore, review. The only exception is when something's in a language other than English. The pieces I choose to quote from aren't presented as 'the best', they're just things that caught my attn for one reason or another. E.G.: Grace Coughlin's "The Problem is They Grow Up" has a reviewer note connected to it saying "stupid behavior".
"When he was twelve, he'd catch fireflies in a jar, tinfoil on top, and every time it would surprise him when they didn't glow for him the way they did in the open air. He'd Shake the jar. He'd Smack the glass. He'd Rattle the metal lid. His mom would say 'That's enough now, set them free,' but for him it wasn't enough. Before the bulbs blew out—suffocated, I would guess, from a lack of air and sky—they'd flicker just a little one last time. And, for him, that was enough. He hasn't been twelve for thirteen years." - p 12
This is one of many bks I've been reading concurrently over a long time. This yr, 2020, has been a difficult one for me & I haven't been enjoying things as much as I might have previously. As such, this was probably read over a period of 8 or more mnths. My reviewer note for this next poem excerpt suggests comparing E. E. Cummings. That wd've been connected to my having reviewed the Richard Kostelanetz edited E. E. Cummings' AnOther E. E. Cummings way back in March 10-17, 2020 ("E.E.: Cum": https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1265916-e-e ) so I probably read this poem shortly after writing that review.
"Len g thy sir RRow too OOlls
Regr owth t OO OO lls sto-sto ny
For a theo logy of s worth tor ts
Ggg oner wort HY lllo ttos" - Hugh Tribbey, p 14
& what about Kristian Radford returning to Japan?
"returning to the country of my birth
for the first time in over a decade
was meant to be triumphant
I got sick within 48 hours
and spent most of the week
trying to stay in my room" - p 20
& then there's Steve Dalachinsky & Jim Leftwich: I run across their names fairly often, I think we're 'friends' on some social media or another — but such friendships are too ill-established for me to really know them. That's a shame.
"where power begets power & the powerful
are full of powder where prowess is prevalent
& acht(o)ung(e)ing is the norm where the
powerful wear egrets to war there is valet
parking west of the pro shop & the black widow
spiders are full of corn their wings hung
on the storm like facts" - p 27
I love pronunication vagaries:
"ough ough ough ough ough ough
bough love
cough love
dough love
enough love
furlough love
rough love
trough love
ough ough ough ough ough ough" - still Dalachinsky & Leftwich, p 37
Notice "trough love" instead of the more obvious follow-up to "rough love": tough love.
Then there's Leftwich on his own:
"Evaporating hair
fiSh FiVe EntrOpic
GeNeTic giViNg gAs
MaSHed uP potatoes
TreMbLing, toRNado" - p 38
I spot no 'rhyme or reason', no NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), no acrostics or mesostics, not even strictly tOGGLE cASE. Methinks he's playing — but maybe there's more going on here than meets my mind. It wdn't be the 1st time I've missed something.
All of this can be read online in more correctly laid-out & complete versions:
https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2020/01/issue-fifty-six-southern-summer-2020.ht...
Why not carefully read it all there? There's some sort of community at work, at play, might as well get to know us, maybe you'll join us.
Kirk Marshall:
"The Hermanos Luchador dedicated their days to the ardent defence of their inviolable mistress, a chemical grade of pure-strength crack cocaine which, when first pursued, renewed a person's faith in his calling and, when finally tasted, verified for him the compulsion to serve with unquestioning loyalty. The twins harboured no sluggardly confusion as to the rationale upon which their nation's war was founded; by retaining a monopoly on the manufacture and dissemination of their capital's most lucrative export, they ensured that Sonora's civic industry — nay, Mexico's supremacy as a bastion for trade — would continue to thrive." - pp 43-44
"To solicit her favour and capitalize on her affection meant demonstrating that with cocaine as your advocate and confidante, you could amass power, inspire fear and suffering, broker lucrative transactions, convert your familiarity with the pathology of addiction into expertise. Cocaine would not abide being exploited; it was she alone who administered the exploitation of others." - p 44
Well sd.
Sometimes, poetry bks can be a little too precious for me.
"William Allegrezza
Stone & Type, Cedar
Lavender Ink
ISBN: 978-1-944884-67-3
86 pages
$17.95"
The above bk is reviewed. No comment is made about the price & the mere 86 pp. I have a new bk coming out on Entity Press called But Not Limited Too (Smattering 1) that's full color, 152 pp, $15.00. Perhaps the printer of Stone & Type, Cedar does an exceptionally good job. Still, really?, 18 bucks? I wdn't buy it.
Then there's the work by people I've been observing for decades, in this case John M. Bennett (in collaboration w/ Stacey Allam), someone I consider a friend although we've never met.
"Shirt Lens
Speak the shirt
blinded by the wicks
in a thought bubble
and the buttons falling
from clouds
chips clinking
in your blurry glasses
fanning out the nosebuds
hear the passing air" - p 86
It doesn't make me cry the way Dickens's Bleak House does (& I wdn't want it to). It's more like Variations w/o a Theme, a Lens instead of a Theme.
Or what about Márton Koppány's
"my post-full-stop period
. ." - p 93
I thought that was funny, not LOL funny, but funny.
Then there's Jurgen O. Olbrich, another name I've seen around so much I feel like we're friends even tho I don't think we've ever corresponded & I'm sure we've never met. His 4 pp from 94-97 might be called concrete. The 1st page says:
"Here is
always
every-
where." w/ the 1st "Here" & the "here" of "where" in grey. Here here. The text is justified too. I like it, it's elegant.
Or what about Jim McCrary's fill-in-the-implied-blank piece entitled "Untitled"?:
"Covered by noun objects in st
She was he was the best at everything
And never forgot to endure them fr" - p 101
I think much poetry cd be called fill-in-the-implied-blank pieces but McCrary makes it more explicit. How much poetry invokes, evokes, refers to, implies, teases, etc?
Then there's Pat Nolan's "A HISTORY OF HAIKAI Three Dokugin Kasen in memory of Keith Kumasen Abbott" & my thinking: 'Was that the guy who taught at Naropa?" so I looked at the Keith Abbott Wikipedia entry for the Naropa guy & he's listed as still alive & still teaching at Naropa, so NO, it's the Keith Kumasen Abbott who I found things about on SPD: "Keith Kumasen Abbott teaches writing and art at Naropa University." who appears to be, uh, the same Keith Abbott after all & then I found this: "This is a note of appreciation for one of my mentors, Keith Kumasen Abbott, who passed away last week. I met Keith when I worked at Naropa University. He was a faculty member in the Jack Kerouac School of Writing and Poetics where he taught reading and writing." ( https://janineibbotson.com/blog/2019/9/3/appreciation ) & that's from Sept 4, 2019, so I went back to the Wikipedia entry & I cdn't find it so did I read something else & think it was a Wikipedia entry? I must have. I did find this: "Keith Abbott teaches at Naropa University, US" on the European Beat Studies Network website ( https://ebsn.eu/about-ebsn/members/keith-abbott/ ) so I reckon they must be serious about this Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics business.
& what about C. Mehrl Bennett? I particularly enjoyed her "Ask A Cow Poems":
"Oreo trees
Crumble when wet
They are fake
Ask A Cow
Fear
Floats on wood
Under the earth
Ask A Cow" - p 112
Mark DuCharme tells us:
"Don't go away
Develop laughing pneumonia" - p 126
You probably know that there's a type of pneumonia called "walking pneumonia", a pneumonia too mild to be debilitating. I was a research volunteer for a study of it once. As I'm sure you're also aware, all readers bring their own associations to what they read. That's my bring-to.
Jim Melrose:
"—into and onto the low pressure passenger seat not cooled a degree by the departure of Driver "Horse"'s hitchhacker Flaxman and the arrival of Driver "Horse"'s hitchhacker Kevin and again the cab became non-empty space and the universe became once more happy. All passenger seats abhor prolonged emptiness. Ah, truckworld do diddly indeedy abhor all empty passenger seats. So, Kevin, having seamlessly poured into the mold of nothing seeded by Flaxman—began and began and took over actually, the careful listening into the cold dashboard radio provided, which was wakening again from its last periodic cross-country station n out of range release and station n 1 in range acquisition blip-staticky-storm cycle." - pp 127-128
I find that an interesting description of one passenger replacing another in a hack, don't you?
Volodymyr Bilyk contributed a piece called "Melody Poems". Inspired by them I made a movie of me performing them. Here're the YouTube notes for that:
""A reading of Volodymyr Bilyk's "Melody Poems" with abundant mistakes & liberties on an out-of-tune spinet": In 2020 I had 5 of my "Butt Poems" published in "Otoliths" issue, 56 ( https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2019... ). That's available online but I like having a hardcopy of anything I'm published in so I bought a copy of both volumes of this issue. I'm in the process of reading it cover-to-cover with the intention of reviewing it. When I got to Volodymyr Bilyk's "Melody Poems" I thought it would be fun to play the pieces on the piano & to link to a movie of this as a part of the finished review. Since the "Melody Poems" basically just list note names without specifying octave or rhythm, etc, I decided that it would be fun to play them in ways that most people would find 'unmelodic'. This is the result. As you will no doubt notice, I also tweaked it a bit further. I made entirely too many mistakes & took some liberties so the result is probably a bit far off from Bilyk's imagining of the melodies but, hey!, I still went to the trouble of actually approaching the "Melody Poems" as a score." - https://youtu.be/QvG0YeUR7ls
Considering that that movie was uploaded May 11, 2020, that gives you an idea of how long it took for me to get thru this — & this is just the 1st volume!!
The same author provided something of even greater interest to me:
"from The Song of the Great Tits
1
fa', fall.
err.
v -/- | v -/- | v -/- | v -/-
dubitatione_.
nibble.
moan!
no craven,
vale!
too" - p 147
I found hiromi suzuki's work to be "closer to Cummings than to Concrete Poetry" although it has somewhat the appearance of the latter:
"sur)face(
of
silence;
) our (
) p
o (
) O
L (
shiver
y)our(
) face (" - p 162
& then I found Elmedin Kadric's Visual Poetry (not reproducible here) (wch I very much liked) closer to dominoes than, say the sweetener section in the supermarket.
Olchar Lindsann's "ORAcLe" begins w/ a truncated quote from Lautrémont. How can they go wrong?
"~^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"is mouth, stuffed with belladonna leaves, let it sli"
–Lautréamont, opening to Canto II of Maldoror
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1319642-oto show less
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