Do you like to draw strange things? Do you like to photograph strange things? Would you like your art to appear in NOÖ [11] (due February 2010), hugged by amazing stories and poems? Then please send your art to editors at noojournal dot com>.
Also, in other news: we're all caught up on submissions (email us if you feel like we never responded and therefore probably lost your submission) and prose and poetry submissions will re-open January 1st. We'll tell you again when the time rolls close, but here's an advanced heads-up.
For his brevity and swirly weirdness, Nals Goring wins our contest to win Heather Christle's Difficult Farm:
BEST AND WORST EXPERIENCE WORKING IN A GROUP --Nals Goring
Worst:
I was invited to hang out with a group in a lobster shack I got all dressed up but they just wanted to work
Best:
I was friends with a group of medical students and we went in for a couple of kayaks we alternated then most nights we went to the pool hall but we spent one night in a hot air balloon
***
Congrats, Nals! Thanks to all who entered. Make sure to pick up a copy of Difficult Farm from Octopus Books.
Monday 14 December @ Outpost, 8 pm 186 1/2 Hampshire St. in Inman Square, Cambridge, MA Small Animal Project Reading Series presents Jack Christian, Cheryl Clark Vermeulen, Zach Savich
Jack Christian is the author of the chapbook Let’s Collaborate from Magic Helicopter Press. His poems are upcoming in Drunken Boat, Sixth Finch, and Thermos, and his work has appeared recently in Cimarron Review, notnostrums, Phoebe, and DIAGRAM. He is from Richmond, Virginia, and lives now in Northampton, Massachusetts.
"OUTPOST 186 is a new arts, media and performance space at 186 1/2 Hampshire St. in Inman Square, Cambridge. Continuing the best traditions of the Zeitgeist Gallery, OUTPOST hosts several ongoing series of experimental music and performance events Wednesday through Sunday, and special art exhibits. It also serves as a node for progressive and experimental media. Open 1-4pm Tuesday-Sunday or appointment. Contact: Rob Chalfen - robchalfen@hotmail.com"
What gets me so excited about Drunk poetry as written by Bailey and friends is that it breaks down the pervasive assumption that experimental form is incompatible with emotional content ... I am not proposing that a return to Byronic levels of sincerity is imminent or even advisable, but that as we feel our way back from posturing in silly haircuts to occasionally being able to say what we mean, we are going to encounter a lot of weird situations that look a lot like Bailey’s poems.
Meakin Armstrong Dennis Cooper Sasha Fletcher Dobby Gibson Craig Greenman Joe Hall Charles Hale Matt Hart Jeannnie Hoag A.D. Jameson Thomas Patrick Levy Davin Malasarn Jordaan Mason D.A. Powell Charles du Preez Erin Elizabeth Smith Danika Kay Stegenan K.M.A. Sullivan Steven Trull Donna D. Vitucci Stefi Weisburd Kate Wyer
Kendra Grant Malone was born in Minnesota. She is the author of several chapbooks and e-books of prose and poetry, including All The Ways I Have Failed You (Achilles, forthcoming), Chasing Pigeons Makes Me Feel More Powerful (Bearcreekfeed, forthcoming), and Conor Oberst Sex (Happy Cobra Books 2009). Kendra joins NOÖ as our new social editor. She will be splendidly and cleverly conducting interviews and negotiating the presentation of our splendid contributors on this here bloggy-blog. To introduce you to Kendra, we had a little conversation. Enjoy! And welcome to the family, KGM!
How did you get started writing? What's your earliest memory of realizing that language could affect people?
I got started writing when I went to film school. I really adored writing scripts. I still do. I could never understand why a director would want to tell someone else's story, considering the time, money and unbelievable effort it takes just to complete a 10 min short film. I sort of found my way into poetry and literature accidentally. When I moved to NYC I had no friends really and came for a job writing copy for reality television. The first friend I made here on my own was Tao and he was really encouraging to me about writing more and looking into submitting things. I think at first it was out of boredom and curiosity and then things have snowballed into whatever they are now, but I like it so, cool.
I think I first learned how language could affect people when I was little and learned to lie to get my sister in trouble. You have a background in film and visual art. Does your work in these mediums overlap at all with your writing?
I think my background in film has had a direct effect on how I write in a really silly way. When I was writing projects for film I constantly had to think "is this filmable? will i be able to afford the production value this requires?" and things like that, which made it very limiting. Inadvertently I fell in love with books and film that felt true to life, that were not about effects, fantasy, exclusive/flamboyantly educated language, or expensive cameras. My favorite director would be Lars Von Trier (go ahead everyone and roll your eyes) because of the Dogme95 movement, how the filmmaker was pushed to make a simple character narrative something attractive and exciting, by stripped means. It's funny though, I'm not a very visual person, for example, I dream in only touch and sounds like a blind person and always have. I'm also red green color blind, which I guess is rare for women. So I suppose it was a matter of time before I started to value story over image.
A lot of your writing seems both very honest and frank, and very aware of its own frankness, while still being urgent and unharangued by the self-indulgence of "confessionalism." What are your thoughts on frankness? How would you define honesty in writing?
Oh geesze, I feel like I have a conversation about what honesty is with various people every day. I find myself to be very dishonest personally. I lie a lot through omission, by keeping half truths to myself, by keeping secrets. Honesty is such a malleable idea to speak of. It seems so abstracted that what the word defines differs slightly for everyone. Personally my own exhibitionism is a bit compulsive. Sometimes I romanticize it to myself. Sharing one's own condition in life is seductive because of the desire to be seen and also the desire to alleviate confusion in the world. Every problem I see happen around me, I feel, can almost always be boiled down to people not being frank enough with each other. Speaking in stupid euphemisms because they are afraid to say what they want, to appear selfish. I get a lot of emails from women from all over about more humiliating things I've admitted to within my writing, and that makes me feel like, see this is good, you are doing good.
I really like your project We Will Always Live In These Houses. There is something really striking in seeing the manicured privacy of those lawns and driveways and then reading your accounts of who exits those houses and how they move around the world. Struggles with privacy seems to abound in your work: bucking privacy for exhibitionism, the tenderness that arises from the privacy of feelings between two people, wanting to protect a loved one's privacy, the anxious privacy of always living in one's own head. I know talking about privacy might be just the flip of talking about frankness, but what do you think of how privacy works in today's culture? Do you feel your writing interacting at all with our cultural attitudes toward privacy?
Personally I struggle with my lack of personal privacy in public situations all the time. It bothers a lot of people to talk about a morning shit or the consistency of menstrual blot clots in casual conversation, I know this. And it's not that I don't care or empathize with how people meet might feel pushed and cornered by this kind of conversational offering. Watching people become uncomfortable makes me feel squeamish and embarrassed too. Often I get accused of using "shock value" to turn heads, for attention. The issue for me, in both conversations like this and in writing, isn't shock for shock's sake, but to encourage other people towards breaking out of mundaneness and claustrophobic speaking patterns by sort of lying down at their feet as an example, even if I get hated or humiliated along the way. For instance, once I had a boyfriend who was often irrationally cranky and irritable. It was months and months of dating before one day he told me that every day his stomach hurt in this certain way. Later that night I talked to my sister about it and she had the same thing years before. The next day he went to the doctor with her encouragement and it turned out he had a systemic yeast infection for years. He fixed it within the week. He had years of pain because he was afraid to talk about his shit. That moved me so deeply that I think about it while writing a lot.
How did you feel about that Guardian article bashing internet writers?
I was a bit confused by that. I thought, this person really hasn't done much research. I mean, although Tao and I get along well and some of the other writers named as well, I don't think I write much like them. I don't think I have ever used sarcasm as a tool. I'm pretty sure the Muumuu House writers all see me as too melodramatic and flowery. As far as the rest of the article it seemed very presumptuous. How do they know I'm "spoilt"? This person knows nothing of my background, my financial struggles, and the things I've overcome in life. And I don't think any of us need to qualify that. Also, for an article accusing us of being boring, he could have made it a bit less boring itself.
Boring is bad. Yes. Recommend for us some recent favorites that aren't boring: books, stories, poems, movies, etc
Books: Woman on The Edge Of Time, Blasted, Voyage in The Dark, Ask The Dust, Story of The Eye, Skies by Eileen Myles, The Lover by Marguerite Duras
Movies: The Idiots, 13 Tzameti, The Piano Teacher, The Butcher Boy, Breaking the Waves, My Dinner With Andre, The Dreamlife of Angels, The Celebration, Masculine/Feminine
What are your current projects/plans?
I've been reading a lot a screen plays lately because a producer solicited me for one. Any suggestions?
Why are there so many contests? Because we want to give you free books! Here's another way to get a free book. The book in question is the dazzling The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle, which I can best describe by saying that between the time I began this sentence and now, some kind of meadowlark slammed into my kitchen window but recovered and flew away. I also wrote some things here. Anyhow, this is how the contest works. First, read this poem by Heather from issue [3] of NOÖ:
A New Career --Heather Christle
Be here at eight said the group leader. I was late but she said that was okay and handed me a kit just like hers a tin box full of nails and a hammer. I strapped my light to my head which was still in good shape and began reinforcing everything. When I reinforced you you seemed angry and attractive. When I reinforced the youth the group leader reinforced me and her outfit looked great. This job is not perfect but the pay is okay and I like working outdoors. The group leader respects us all and at home the kids love to shake my tin box and think of how close we once were to collapse.
Now, to win a free book, post in the comments your best experience working with a group and your worst. That's it! You don't have to post much, maybe just a sentence for one and a sentence for the other. The NOÖ Journal team will pick our favorite and you'll win a Difficult Farm quite easily. Ready set arugula. DEADLINE: November 15th
Daniel Bailey's DRUNK SONNETS are shining and slogging and capitalized and ready for you. Order today! Exciting news forthcoming about Bailey's Thanksgiving West Coast reading tour. In the meantime, if you'd like poems written not by fingers but by the quick of the nail, please check out THE DRUNK SONNETS ($10 plus shipping).
(if you pre-ordered, pre-orders begin shipping tomorrow)
"This book is the result of an emo kid writing a few words then leaving the room to do something else, then a drunk old man walks in and says "What is this goofy garbage," and he edits a few lines but agrees with others, then he leaves the room and a bored but insightful cat walks in with an electrical helmet on that transcribes its boredom onto the page, then it leaves and a man who has wronged many people and been wronged by many people walks in and tries to write what he feels but just sighs and some tears hit the page and the words blend and begin to like each other and finally a five-year-old version of Daniel Bailey walks in, the Midwest sadness embedded as deeply in him as his Kool-Aid moustache, and he puts his hands over the book and blesses it, right before running outside to see who is waiting to play with him and make up more awesome worlds than the one that currently holds his weight."
—Sam Pink, author of I AM GOING TO CLONE MYSELF THEN KILL THE CLONE AND EAT IT (Paper Hero Press, 2009), THE SELF ESTEEM HOLOCAUST COMES HOME (plays, Six Gallery Press), and FROWNS NEED FRIENDS TOO (Afterbirth Books)
Magic Helicopter's newest e-book, Trailer Park Fragments: A Place Called Whispering Lanes by David Ensminger is now online. These poems are not clean ice. They show you what happened to the last of your bubblegum patent money. They unspool the dream sequence of doo-wap and corkscrew walls, aerosol cheese and Eskimo kisses. They put pictures of the moon landing in plastic bags. You'll want to sit all day by the swamp cooler with these poems, you'll want to throw the water of your memory onto the aluminum siding and try to make the sizzle bigger each time.
And what's more, Missouri is pretty close to Indiana, the "setting" of our upcoming full length book of poems The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey. So that's why we're offering a free copy of The Drunk Sonnets to anyone who embarks on a little music video project.
2) Make a music video for it. What this means is up to you. Here are some ideas: trailer park pictures of your own, video of lawn chair revelries, Lucero, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, and a few of your favorite lines from the Fragments spliced throughout.
3) Post the video on YouTube/Vimeo/your favorite online video place.
4) Now, music videos are not a chump's undertaking, so anyone who makes one will get a free copy of The Drunk Sonnets. That's right, it's not even a contest. Your video doesn't have to be the "best." It just has to testify.
5) So roll out that iMovie and score yourself a free book.
WILL I GET A HINT WITH THE WHO (as read by Dorothy)
for Tim-Jones Yelvington
Life, friends, is a very large cabinet. And you, you must lift it by feeling from the knees! Life does not belong to life. Life is very much yours. Treat it as a cake given to you gently by a kangaroo with a pouch full of milk and Bisquik dropped in your lap over many nights, often the nights you do not want to wash your face but you do. There is, for this cake, no oven. Life is not an oven. Life is a cabinet! Quick! You must catch it! Even now, blue paint for hair, mouth crammed with lightbulbs and Coffeemate, life is asleep in my bed. I must know you. It is okay to be shy with your friend.
"In some future time and place I meet a milkman who knows about a tidal wave headed straight for all my villages; I smash a bottle of half fat over his head and run until I taste something metallic and wrong."
All the entries were delectable and a sweet romp through the NOÖ archives. The choice of winner was hard but fun, like water polo. Many thanks to all who entered! Sam's copy of BoTW is currently skating across the Atlantic Ocean.
Me, I am not skating across anything. I am sitting in a coffeeshop across from someone who just bought a truck cap from a guy named J.D. in Orange. He just said "Free's free. I'll give you some cash for it." Also, the answer to "What color is it?" is apparently "Okay." Then, when he hung up, he called J.D. Dan, except I think his name is Dan, the guy buying the truck cap, and J.D's name is still, even with his truck cap sold, J.D.
All of which is to say that I lost a bet with my co-editor, the suave and studious Ryan Call, during the editing of NOÖ [10]. See, in Kim Chinquee's story "One Below" is the line "Some big hit was playing" except Kim had written the line as "Some bit hit was playing." Ryan thought it was a typo. I thought it was a turn of phrase. We made a bet. He won. Now, as per the terms of the bet, I have to post a picture of myself from when I was ten years old:
Stay tuned tomorrow for the release of a new Magic Helicopter e-book and a new contest! And maybe even more news about who is sitting around me, like a person playing Banana Grams!
Daniel Bailey's thrump of a full length poetry debut, The Drunk Sonnets (Magic Helicopter Press, Oktoberfest 2009) is now available for pre-order. Only $10 for a boom boom pow of heart gobbling poetry. And what's more, in an exclusive blog deal, the first 10 people to pre-order get a free Drunk Sonnets beer koozie. That's right, your very own purple Daniel Bailey beer koozie. So when you're passed out in your lawn chair or down your chimney, you can totally reprezent with the nation's new favorite drunk poet.
But don't take my smarmy-carnival-barker word for it! Read the following blurbs from K. Silem Mohammad and Sam Pink, and then read the poem below those:
You hear a lot of people these days calling for more sincerity in poetry. Assholes, mostly. But you know what? I can dig sincerity, when it's really sincerely sincere. And nothing is more sincere than some poor drunk guy with a tortured soul sharing his deepest dysfunctions with you. Daniel Bailey's Drunk Sonnets should win a truth-in-advertising award: these poems contain the kind of full-throated, heartbroken, prosodic yodeling that can come only from a close encounter with a tall bottle, or several of them. You can tell they're straight from the booze-soaked heart, because they're IN ALL CAPS. Is this a viable formal device? Can a poet legitimately achieve new heights of eloquence by slow, self-administered alcohol poisoning? Does crapped-pants inarticulacy ever magically transform itself to unparalleled lyric song? Yes, yes, and hell yesh. It may set a bad example for the kids, but this is poetry that grabs you by the shirt collar, sprays rank 80-proof emotion in your face, and makes you like it. Bottoms up.
—K. Silem Mohammad, author of Breathalyzer (Edge Books 2009) and Best American Poetry alum
This book is the result of an emo kid writing a few words then leaving the room to do something else, then a drunk old man walks in and says "What is this goofy garbage," and he edits a few lines but agrees with others, then he leaves the room and a bored but insightful cat walks in with an electrical helmet on that transcribes its boredom onto the page, then it leaves and a man who has wronged many people and been wronged by many people walks in and tries to write what he feels but just sighs and some tears hit the page and the words blend and begin to like each other and finally a five-year-old version of Daniel Bailey walks in, the Midwest sadness embedded as deeply in him as his Kool-Aid moustache, and he puts his hands over the book and blesses it, right before running outside to see who is waiting to play with him and make up more awesome worlds than the one that currently holds his weight.
—Sam Pink, author of I AM GOING TO CLONE MYSELF THEN KILL THE CLONE AND EAT IT (Paper Hero Press, 2009), THE SELF ESTEEM HOLOCAUST COMES HOME (plays, Six Gallery Press), and FROWNS NEED FRIENDS TOO (Afterbirth Books)
DRUNK SONNET 28 —Daniel Bailey
LET’S HAVE A BABY PLEASE LET’S HAVE A BABY AND WATCH IT GROW LET’S VIDEOTAPE THE BABY GROWING LET’S TIMEWARP THE VIDEO
LET’S WATCH THE BABY GROW AT INTENSE SPEEDS LET’S WATCH IT GO FROM ZERO TO THREE YEARS IN 30 SECONDS LET’S TOUCH OUR FACES TOGETHER AND KISS LET’S UNDERSTAND THE WATER THAT KEEPS US ALIVE
LET’S TELL OURSELVES THAT WE ARE NO MISTAKE LET’S FALL DOWN INTO A PILE OF DUCK BLANKETS LET’S HAVE SOME FUN FINALLY AND LOVE SOMETHING
LET’S GET AWESOME TOGETHER AND MAKE LIFE GOOD LET’S HAVE THIS, ALL OF THIS LET’S NOT BE SAD OR ALONE ANYMORE PLEASE
After four years of independently producing and distributing a free literary and cultural magazine, online and in print, here's what we ended up with: a skirmish of unicorns, a couple of hairy hands, tomatoes with a little dish soap, foxes chasing your head, banjo clocks, nice asses, a lady with birds, rabbits, and fish coming out of her mouth, people voted simply "most likely," a diner that transforms into a tyrannosaurus rex, love on Ferris wheels, milk the mythical moth, smiling for candy, walking for patience, and a spittle bug.
Deep thanks to all our contributors and to our wonderful readers who have supported us and indulged our kooky ways through these first ten issues. Please have a read at [10] and see what you think. And stay tuned to this blog! There are Magic Helicopter and NOÖ releases, announcements, contests, and multimedia planned for the whole week! Boom for real.
Strapped for cash? Win a free BoTW 2009 by writing a 1 line sequel to any story or poem in the NOÖ archive. Post your entry in the comments section of this blog post. We'll pick our favorite and send that winner/wittier a free copy of BoTW 2009 and even some mystery swag. But act fast! Deadline: August 1st.
Again, here's the deal: 1 line sequel for 1 free copy! Pick any story or poem in the NOÖ archives and write a 1 line sequel. Post your entry in the comments section of this post. Deadline: August 1st. Our favorite will win a free BoTW 2009!
Ali Aschman Matt Bell Crispin Best Jason Bredle Ben Brooks Kim Chinquee Bryan Coffelt Irana Douer Phil Estes Ari Feld M. Thomas Gammarino Jennifer Gann Loren Goodman Karen Gentry Mary Hamilton Amy King Gregory Lamer Clay Matthews Rich Murphy Jonny Negron Ron Padgett Lucy Diamond Phillips Rebecah Pulsifer Lena Revenko Bradley Sands Pete Schwartz Paul Siegell Beth Thomas Bonnie ZoBell
Hey all you sweet things and cosmonauts, we're going lapdog for illustrations. That means we're a little low on the slick for NOÖ [10] and we'd like you or your friends to send us some drawings and photographs. What kind of art do we like? Check out a few of our past issues for clues; that's the best answer. Stuff that is or transfers well into B&W is key. I've decorated this blog post with a photo from NOÖ 9. Think of it as a clove into the orange of your inspiration. Send us some art! Thanks. Email us at submissions@noojournal.com with those badass ovals and drips.
We're happy to report that pieces from NOÖ appear in both: Carrie Spell's "It Was Only Two Months" is in the Wigleaf Top 50 and "Babyfat" from Claudia Smith will appear in Best of the Web 2009.
Not only that, but Nick Antosca's "Rachel Mia's Existence", Noah Cicero's "Two Hard Workers", and "Babyfat" all appear on the Wigleaf Top 200. Meanwhile, Magic Helicopter authors Jimmy Chen and Benjamin Buchholz both have pieces in Best of the Web 2009.
Many other wonderful past NOÖ contributors appear in both collections, but it's up to you to find them. Scavenger hunt!
Congratulations to everyone and many thanks to Wigleaf and DZANC for their terrific work in putting these anthologies together. Go net lit. Net the lit go.
How can a person have a problem When their body is a breath machine? I want to own a house, no I want to meet a tetherball queen.
There's a ladybug in my Cheerios But it doesn't even creep me out And though it rained all on my xylophone That silly thing was never even really very loud
I / need you / more than you / need you If you wait wait wait then you'll know that's true If you wait too long then I'll dream of you
You never bite my hair when I Really want to bite your hair I been to Nevada but I've Never overpowered a bear
There's a little lamb skull in my microwave But I'm saving it for my roommate There's a hitchiker in a Superman cape But I wanna drive alone and sing along with all the rain
Oh oh no: don't listen to me All I do is walk around confused and tickled pink Oh oh no: don't listen to me All I do is walk around confused and tickled pink Oh oh no: don't listen to me All I do is walk around confused and tickled pink Oh oh no: don't listen to me You oughta get some pizza with Motown Benny
No One Ever Works On Trying Anymore. There's Just Too Much Sun Or Something. by Bryan Coffelt
for T. Leaven Nympho
I.
The rise and fall of physical media -- an Xbox + Camus. A creed is dripping on my shoes a little. The doubling of the heart finally happens as the sun is directly above Old Navy. It's like you've chosen to ignore God's AK. Now we must bear all consequences of the lack of God's AK.
II.
Um, a priori, "finding out Hot Topic is not for you." So we learn to "conquer ourselves," conquer our whole Comic Sans bible study. You will become pregnant with two sharp blows to the head. Call them Husqvarna and Fox Racing. These will be burned to discs and stored in your safety deposit boxes.
III.
Choosing an attitude towards bearing children -- maybe a "switching off." Stashin' the nina when the cops are in my heart. Like watching a chat room happen and saying a/s/l all the time. Wondering (all the time) what Ellen Page would actually look like when she's preggers.
IV. Choose one of your children as the coward and one as the hero, and, um, well, they'll choose if you don't. "Camus will have none of this anthropomorphism." The jailhouse of Kantian eBaynomics. The friend-shaped keloid scarring disaster.
V.
Existential stumbles / in line at Wendy's. Your conception of condition and freedom, your Baconator. Your filthy obstacles, your backwards numbering. Your scientific truth is the washing instructions for your new Banana Republic jeans. We will name flowers after you when you die.
There's something wrong with a voice. How any word is just your air massaged, whether you compliment a new scarf or read a son's name off a telegram. How we borrowed the command for quiet from wind, so when people say shhhh, what they want is for you to feel cold. How, when caught by light, we shut up. What any voice is out to say is wait, over here. And once they can see you, who cares to make sure they heard right? Still, you turn up the jar boy's wail. You shout goddammit to the white out on the freeway. The phatic function of language changes like taste in rhythm, so the parents go If, gee, say, a zebra and my girlfriend says It's all like, like calumniation of original intent and shit. She's right. Praise is no more than a pinfeather and prayer has no color but a space for color. All enough to make you feel silly ordering people to feel better and too self-conscious for long distance sex. But you talk. Ta-talk. Hock up phlegm just for enough room to spit out no, that's not what I meant. And then you talk about headless girls naked and asleep in a fleece of pine sap, or the price of Milk Duds, how you made out with a cottonmouth bite, precious instructions to barbers and pepper wielders, all your opinions on all of the sky's insurmountable whims. You plead and cavort and joke and affirm and lecture and mewl and bray and slip in and warn and cheer and clarify and say good night which means I want to be alive more and I want part of that life to be with you. You look out over the crowd and say Thank you, it's really great to be here! which really means it's great to say what you've made to say, like to say The sentence is a house of language that wants to be such a good home no word ever leaves. But everything lives, if it can. You scream a name and creekbeds answer. You learn to go hum down the sidewalk just for you. Whatever you do, you don't interrupt the phonebooth band. In parkas and shoeless, the members hunch all over town with strings of digits, and they whisper come on now. They listen for someone to hear them. Most of what they do is tap on things.
My friend Bradley Sands and I wanted to do an e-anthology of real and unreal stories. We did it. It's out! Click the pic. Plus visit Magic Helicopter Press for lots of cool announcements: upcoming chapbooks, e-books, and our first full length.
is the name of a personal ark christened by a lava lamp and Calvinist by discretion, which means empty. We all drowned. Inside, there are ovens full of cushions and lightbulbs illustrated with Bible scenes. Thousands of jackets but no buttons. Instead of blinds, power strips. Everything is dark, except now and then a pink light strobes the floor like a cockroach. All the bedrooms smell like licorice. The shower spits wriggles of paper, each one offering a clever reason for the last. Everyone you love is represented by their thumbprints on silverware, none of which is ever washed but soaks eternally in buckets hidden around like Easter eggs even the parents forgot about. Open the fridge: it's just frozen latkes arranged to spell the time. Each room is through a room's fireplace, so maybe it's a good thing we're dead already, right? You're right: sometimes I think of my brain as a coked out deli manager, running around with pumpernickel and ham in a juggle, screaming BE MORE RADICAL! at the sandwich artists. Life is a lot of clarification and limited-time options, which is why it's good to listen to real people and turn everything they say into a family of origami frogs and hide under that person's bed, arranging frogs forever and letting worry do its heavy thing, like some kind of mega dumbfuck at the helm.
Sometimes it feels like being in a gigantic room and being only one person. by Chelsea Martin
for Colin Bassett
I’m on the toilet right now. Or I was when I thought of writing that. I’m on the phone waiting for Colin Bassett to say something.
I’m trying to make him yell at me about how it isn’t possible to write a French song if you only know two French words and have no background in music and one of the words is croissant.
I think I’m at a point in my life.
All day I thought about what my roommate said. About our cat purring loudly while watching her clean the litter box.
Someone came over and passed out in my bed after calling me depressed, after calling me lazy, after questioning my morals, after storing some frozen meals in my freezer, after arriving very late with what seemed to be absolutely no intention of having sex with me.
If this is what I’m supposed to be writing about, then good, I feel better.
If I have a yeast infection it’s probably because of a number of things.
What I look for in a relationship is feeling good all the time. But I’ll settle for feeling bad all the time.
But maybe I should only use the word relationship if I’m saying it sarcastically.
Your heart is five to eight pounds and fits inside of life, which will mostly be an evil pancake and a game of tattoos you don't want, but sometimes good things too: everybody on a bus laughing together at night, towels just warm, dumping rock salt into homemade ice cream, the scroll button on your mouse, drinking coffee in the shower, then drinking coffee together with your favorite naked person at the time, who will be a girl or a guy or a gluttony of sympathetic polymers. Any one of these is fine. Ask your dad, he's from California. Nik, be careful who you take a nickname from. It's like they'll always have a hand under your shirt. Names are secret fingers. Watch this: yellowjacket, artichoke, huckleberry, marzipan. Show up a minute late with a really awesome story of what happened on the way. Listen in your head before you say things out loud, try to know reactions before people drop them but don't try too hard, which is the same advice as "Don't use speakerphone, ever." When you take someone's picture, show them. When you kiss someone's neck, tell them a secret. If you do it right, God will show up when you're mid-blink, like a fire that is also a window, like a trial by snow, and you will want to close your eyes if whispered to by one, and take your eyes and heave them into the ocean for someone else, which will feel both melodramatic and perfect. Everything you feel will also be a way to hold on. Social groups will always have that one friend. There will be things you save to tell someone that you'll never get to tell at all. Fear is what happens when you sing too quietly. One night you will go unexpectedly swimming, then you won't need this poem anymore. That's when to title me and dunk your mouth and spit straight up so the water lands on your face. Tell who you're with "Look, a face!" and then give your face to that person as hard as you can.
There's nothing wrong with being quietly astonished. Feta baked right into the bread, the woman who steals chalk with her thumb, cute girls in wheelchairs and librarians at the disco. Barry, you're an emperor of cheese and a Mickey D's apologist, which is great, like my roommate bought these jeans off EBay, but they didn't fit her, so she gave them to me. Little cares whether you do, but it's hard to shrug authentically, the world moving in bengal tigers and hyperthyroids, like one person will demand you shave and someone else will break a shot glass in your sink. But weather is the opposite of history. And/or March is great for seeing people you met in a bar fight and thinking: Wait, I sort of punched that guy, they look nice, I wonder where they got that sweater, isn't it too hot for sweaters, what terrific wind, maybe I will say hello and we can reach in to graffiti exclamation marks and emoticons over our memories. Maybe this will be the day I finally like metal music because it's so nice out and I can't think of the reasons why it's so tricky to just like everything. There must be some. I think I ate them.
Bryan Coffelt is a mystery to me. This interview made him a little less mysterious, but not too much less mysterious. I know that Bryan Coffelt has had work appear in NOÖ, among other places, though that was before my time. Bryan Coffelt is part of a contingent of people from/in the Northwest making written word art; this is exciting to me because of manifest destiny. I associate Bryan Coffelt with Alex Burford, and sometimes I confuse them to be the other. Bryan Coffelt runs a blog called Lunchtime For Bears, and he also coedits Rain Fade, an online literary journal.
1) Can you talk about your history with poetry? How did you get started?
I guess I really started writing poetry about 5 years ago. I got lucky and ended up living in Ashland, OR with a shit load of other really good poets/friends. Some of these include: Mike Young, Alex Burford, K. Silem Mohammad, Willie Ziebell and Jess Rowan. There are a shit load more, too. Being around these gifted people and sharing theories and poetics has had a huge impact on my poetry and perception of language in general.
2) Your poem "But What Happened to We the Astronauts?" in NOÖ [one] struck me with its odd pairings of things: "clean socks, dirty pockets" and "pepper and iron filings" are two that stand out when I read it. Both of these twist something from the first of the pair: the 'ah' sound in socks gets another syllable, and the rather standard combination of salt and pepper is given a new flavor; both are effects that I really enjoyed. Can you talk a little bit about how some of those pairings came about?
Yeah, that was the first poem I ever published anywhere. I remember being really depressed or something and driving home from work one day feeling like I was looking out the visor of an astronaut's helmet, even though I didn't have an astronaut's helmet on. It was kind of scary. I was like 19 and experimenting with what I thought were "surreal images." I didn't have an inkling of a poetics at that point in my life (and now, maybe I have an "inkling"). As far as the pairings go, I guess they were just kind of a result of trying to pair things in a "surreal" way to create some kind of weird dissonance.
3) Recommend for us some recent faves: poems, books, literary magazines, poets, etc.
I'm pretty fond of all the people who come to our ad hoc poetry readings in Ashland. Willie Ziebell, Jess Rowan, Tara Crist, Lacey Hunter, Jennifer Garcia, Alex Burford, K. Silem Mohammad -- all great poets and friends. Alex and Jess have a new issue of Barnaby Jones that I'm dying to get my hands on. The cover is a dolphin with the head of a bear.
4) Give us some news on current projects or publications.
I'm currently co-editing an online journal of fiction, poetry, and visual art called Rain Fade with my friend and roommate Willie Ziebell. It's still in its infancy, though we've had a pretty good response so far. Anyone interested should send us good writing.
I've been writing pretty frequently but not submitting. I don't really know why.
5) Where do you see your writing in five years? It's okay if you don't think like this. Be as fantastical as you'd like.
Ideally I'd like to have a book published. Maybe a novella or book of poetry. I'd love to be approached by a small press to publish some stuff. I guess I need to submit more things in order to get famous enough for that to happen. Or "network" more. Whatever.
6) Mike Young taught twelve year olds last summer. How would you explain poetry to someone half that age, a six year old?
I would tell them to make a list of all the different ways they could say giraffe without saying giraffe and play homophonic word games with them -- I think that would be a great way to get a 6 year old excited about language. I think stuff like that really helps young people develop an "ear" for language.
7) What are your interests beyond poetry?
I love pretentious films and I'm a music snob. I also can't stop reading gadget/tech blogs. Programming languages fascinate me, though I'll probably never devote any real time to them. I also like making lots of feedback come out of my guitar amp. And lately, playing drums.
8) Word association game with words from the textbook that I'm currently using in my freshman composition class, Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings by Ramage, Bean, and Johnson. Say whatever comes to mind:
Rudimentary = Condom Issued = Meal Promise = Keepsies Subscription = Bathtub Lightbulb = Carry on Core = Motor
We at Magic Helicopter Press are excited about AWP. And we wanted to celebrate our excitement by raffling off a remote control mini-helicopter. That's right, come by our table, which we'll be sharing with No Colony and Publishing Genius Press, make a donation or buy one of our two chapbooks, Mary Miller's Less Shiny or Benjamin Buchholz's Thirteen Stares, and we'll enter your name in the Magic Helicopter drawing. If you're lucky, you may go home with not just a load of books, but also a brand new toy helicopter to land on people's heads.
Miller's characters spiral toward each other, only to too often find that the opposing person wasn't the accident they were destined to have, that they still have to go further, to find the next tragedy waiting beyond. So few of Miller's characters get the resolution they seek--these stories seem like mere blips along the path of their downward trajectories, or else polaroids taken only seconds before they hit bottom--but there is always a sense that the characters will, sooner or later, arrive, although they might also find that those destinations are stranger, sadder, angrier places than the places they'd just left.
Thanks, Matt Bell, for the coverage, and if you haven't already, order the book. There are only 75 copies.
