Very excited. Chad Redden of NAP contacted me last week. It turns out I have a new e-chapbook of poetry forthcoming from NAP in mid-2012:

foamghast

I have a new poem, “Of Lifted Chin,” in the seventh issue of The Monongahela Review.

Features new work from Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Mason Brown DeHoog, Marit Ericson, Ruth Foley, William Haas, Kevin Heaton, Rich Ives, C. Joseph Jordan, Peycho Kanev, David Linebarger, David McAleavey, Devon Miller-Duggan, Jessica Poli, Travis Schwab, Marc Vincenz, and Nathan E. White.

Open publication - Free publishing - More journal

These are 'rotten' comments I compiled from critics via Rotten Tomatoes. These were intended to be negative comments in response to various films. I would take any one of them as a glorious compliment:

"Disturbing and completely inappropriate for kids."

"This is an infuriating film."

"A mixed bag of realism and arch, dramatic exaggeration."

"A great big incomprehensible phantasmagoria."

"Avoid it like the plague."

"Maddening."

"A puzzle deliberately without a solution."

"They speak English, but the film doesn't feel American."

"The film is masturbation."

"A bitter confection chock-full of rusty barbs and a woeful, inexorable slide into doom and worse."

"An extended mood opera."

"It's a movie about luggage."

"A baffling but always intriguing failure, the movie gets more confusing, not less, as the story unfolds."

"As menacing to the artist as that of gravity is to the balloonist."

"He has a vision. No question about that. But in the end, he leaves us wondering why we should share it."

/rm issue five

Bri and I launched the latest issue of Radioactive Moat on September 1st.

/rm 5 features the work of Amber Ortolano, Carrie Lorig, André Braga Cabral, Lonely Christopher, Helen Vitoria, Michael (H.C.) Koh, J.P. Dancing Bear, Teresa Petro, Jamison Crabtree, Dawn Pendergast, Rachel McCarren, Simon Perchik, Suzanne Marie Hopcroft, Marit Ericson, Nate Pritts, Laura Carter, and A.T. Grant.

I have seven poems in the latest issue of red lightbulbs. Lots of great company as well: xTx, Adam J. Maynard, Heather Palmer, Steve McGouldrick, Lyra Hill, and others.

A Review of Diana Salier's echapbook, wikipedia says it will pass

Diana Salier deploys an intriguing, pop-cultured frustration—a humankind-gone-fad constructed via social insecurities and concepts of love, sex, and betrayal. wikipedia says it will pass (The Red Ceilings Press, 2011) provides readers with a polygonal voice that celebrates the imperfect, admires the costumed, and explores specious zones of ghost and person. This poet knows us and she knows us well. She asks us questions just to be sure: “what’s your general purpose / what’s your gist? / give it to me in a 140 characters or less”

And the beautiful part is … I think Diana Salier knows 140 characters will never be enough.

Read the echapbook [here]

IRL Poetry Tour (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

I have a tumblr now.

I'll be reading with Steve Roggenbuck and Poncho Peligroso in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 12th.

Venue: Cats and Dogs Coffee House (4059 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224)

Very pleased to announce that Zack Sternwalker's echapbook of writing and illustrations, Black Nail Morning, is now available from Radioactive Moat Press.

Read it here.

Radioactive Moat: Issue Five Preview

/rm five from Paul Cunningham on Vimeo.

Black Nail Morning from Paul Cunningham on Vimeo.

I have a poem called "Night-Blister" in the eleventh issue of Robot Melon.

A Review of Brett Gallagher's Vessel

Brett Gallagher’s Vessel lacerates with a numinous grace and a trembling abundance of gruesomely beautiful sentences, all while defeating notions of a ‘correct’ literary structure as well as other connected viewpoints typically grounded in absolutism. This rightfully sanguine avant-gardist has pieced together a complexity rich in symbol and humanity—and, to be honest, I have developed unease simply from the thought of review. I do not fear naming two of its focal points—Erland and Kjellfrid—just as I do not fear naming perhaps its key focal point: travel via vessels. (Difficulty in interpreting the latter may stem from complications dependent on how one chooses to define my use of the word, travel as well as the multiplicity behind a word like vessel.) My fear rests with my own interpretation, which I will share with courteous vagueness. I will also not ‘liken’ the text to anything—I feel it is not deserving of a ‘likening.’ Immediately different from Loop Loop Endogenous Nightscape (Gallagher’s echapbook publication), Vessel boasts an unlike narration—a narration that presents us with characters and dialogue. The inclusion of characters and dialogue may cause Vessel to appear less intimidating than Loop Loop—more familiar or comfortable. But by the time readers finish “incantation, the scintillant hex unobserved,” they will surely realize comfort’s most apparent absence. They will realize this and move onto portions like “The Magic Lantern” and that’s when they’ll suddenly realize Gallagher’s language is not frustrating or inaccessible, but deserving of much praise.

True, I found portions of Gallagher’s earliest run-ons to be frustrating, but such frustration, I feel, is necessary. The run-ons—the closeness of the lines of prose—all of it necessary: “his hand clasped with her hand, is guiding kjellfrid along the coast to his vessel.” I identified Kjellfrid as female and Erland as male upon reading, “kjellfrid closes her eyes and remains,” and though that early identification was confirmed via pronoun association, I still had/have doubts about Erland’s existence and gender. There is evidence throughout Vessel that alludes to Erland’s nonexistence—that he is illusory and nothing more than a projection existing within the mind of Kjellfrid. In “incantation, the scintillant hex unobserved,” Kjellfrid suffers from what I can only determine to be an illusion while she watches Erland stand beside a window. This illusion occurs before Kjellfrid and Erland head out to the fjord. For that reason, I did not attribute the cause of Kjellfrid’s illusions to the trappings of Kjellfrid’s vessel, but I cannot deny that the trappings of the vessel did not enhance what I’m referring to as illusions.

I have chosen to abstain from discussing the vessels themselves for now. I will most likely revisit the subject in the future. All I can say is that, for me, the vessel signified something simultaneously natural and mechanical and dark—something that is not worn, but possessed: “joints of her vessel which are braided hamstrings within finely selected gum tissues and from her vantage point a light that is gooey and foreign impregnates a darkness which creeps on its hands with pelvis turned upward and it is hard for kjellfrid to swallow with trachea attached underfoot . . . ”

I am unsure if my interpretations can be proven, but I believe if an answer exists, it may exist somewhere in the portion of Vessel titled, “an observation.”

In contrast, I also viewed the relationship between Kjellfrid and Erland as a possible radical dualism. Not binary, but unit. Perhaps both characters do exist, but perhaps in ways we remain ignorant to. There are moments within Vessel that read like a ghoulishly prophetic math equation. One passage in particular reads, “a time a period of timelessness a mountain the mountain sunken into abyssal depths a fjord a vessel a two a pair of three a tressel of four in three departed in two reduced to one,” which not only reinforces an idea of multiplicity (as well as subtraction), but also provides readers with perhaps the topography necessary for understanding the relationship between Kjellfrid and Erland.

Again, these are only my thoughts. I cannot deny that I will always welcome the unanswerable. For now, I am satisfied with Vessel’s existence alone, which is anything but mere.

Tongue Party: A Review

Sarah Rose Etter is a literary vigil. As the honest, fervid eye protruding from the unspoken moments of life, she watches us humans play our game. As eye, she reminds us that there is a loveliness in darkness—that there is so much more than sugar in a bite of cake. Her sentences foment a story we have not heard, yet she paints her readers colors of familiarity—like in a dream. Etter scoops us up into brilliant anomalies, and once inside, the reader adjusts without question—accepts and embraces Etter’s imagery as normalcy. It’s when we near the end of each story—those few pages that gradually fill mystery’s lacunae—that’s when we wake up and realize we’re inside Tongue Party. Each enigma entices and builds with tension. Its growth? Well-paced with convincing dialogue. We feel nervous. We feel as if we’re dissolving right along with her often distraught characters. We know we’re either watching or being watched:

“I watch and love the very small things: motions, flicking hair from their eyes, stretching, pressing fingers to the glass, looking in vain for weak spots, their Adam’s apples pulsing, the stubble on their cheeks growing into full beards, the shapes in which they sleep.”

It’s refreshingly haunting to be pulled in so closely to characters within a work of fiction. Etter’s stories are populated by men that often function as vacuum—by women that resist and combat vacuum. The book’s tragic moments are some of its most powerful. Works like “Womb Peck” and “Tongue Party” appear to criticize the objectification of women—the problematic relationship—the disturbing nature of patriarchy. Passages like, “When you get there, after you swallow, your womb will be clean, coated in white paper, endlessly flawless,” have not left my head. “Cake” was particularly unforgettable:

“The sugar creeps into my blood stream, soaks into my tissue.

‘Another,’ he says, nodding at the cake, his hand squeezing above my knee.

I dig the fork back into the cake and a sense of dread rises up inside of me. I cannot guess how many bites I have left.”

Tongue Party is not wholly optimistic, but wildly important and poetic fiction. Its paragraphs are rich with humor and shadows—she comforts us; she terrifies. Sarah Rose Etter is not here to watch passively—she is here to throw her guts at us and demand that we eat.

I recently interviewed Steve Roggenbuck over at Radioactive Moat Press.

Read his thoughts on internet literature, defining literature, font, digital publishing, knitting, and more!!--read it all [here]

Jessica Maybury of decomP magazinE reviews Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

You can read a new review of my echapbook, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Pangur Ban Party, 2010) via Jessica Maybury of decomP magazinE.

"The collection masses itself in the mind as a primeval collage-cloud, coiling in suspension, in myriad colors. Hopefully it won't leave anytime soon."

Many thanks to Jessica--I am very grateful and happy to know that the lion still roams.

Epilogue, 2009.
Silkscreen-on-paper diptych,
each panel 34 3/4 x 23 1/4 in.


The above, Epilogue, is a work of visual art from Jill Magid.

Magid's Wikipedia page simply states that, "her genre is difficult to categorize." Those six words (particularly the 'sixth' word) summarize all that is wrong in the world of art as we know it. We have traded artistic interpretation for a gruesome rubric--a wound--a string of 'post-post-post-fuck.'

It has all become category. Columns in books.

Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category. Category.

A fodder; a most horrific gore.

Art As Activisim: Iran

Come Caress Me - Amir Mobed from Kulturguiden.tv on Vimeo.

Iranian performance artist, Amir Mobed, invited museum guests to shoot him with a pellet gun in Azad--an execution that he says is symbolic of a silencing of the Iranian artists of his generation.



Above, one of Shirin Fakhim's Tehran prostitute sculptures currently featured at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea. Such sculptures were inspired by the Persian working-girl subculture of Terhan, Iran. The Saatchi Gallery notes that "Fakhim farcically combines westernized hooker fashion with the codes of Islamic demur, torsos and heads made from cooking implements, adorned with make-shift veils and chastity belts."


Above, No. 1 from artist Ala Dehghan's waterfall series.

"It is clear that the state repression in Iran is intensifying. Society there exists in what a reporter for the Economist calls 'a carefully managed sense of national emergency.' It is clear too that contemporary Iranian artists want their freedom. Outsiders, however, do not always understand their expression of displeasure." -Benjamin Genocchio, Modern Painter

Themes of violence, dark humor, gore, and frequent occurrences of the color red are just a few common features in Iranian art. Many works are political, often controversial, and the subject matter ranges from women's issues to economic migration. An Iranian artist's painting can just as easily function in the same way a street-wide protest does. Though, like a street-wide protest, the message of an artistic piece has the potential to be deemed offensive by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which may or may not result in prosecution.


Above, Untitled from artist, Maryam Amini

"Indeed photography has emerged as a particularly vital means of social and political engagement here. Iranian photographers tend toward documentary. Shirin Aliabadi and Shadi Ghadirian are well known for exploring women's issues in Iranian society. Both have exhibited abroad, and their work is in American and European museum collections. Ghadirian and some friends recently established an Internet registry of some 180 Iranian photographers, fanoosphoto.com, which presents online exhibitions of artists and contact details for photojournalists." -Benjamin Genocchio, Modern Painter


Above, Crtl + Alt + Delete #3 from artist, Shadi Ghadirian


Above, Qajar 2 from artist, Shadi Ghadirian

Ugly Fish Giveaway Results

Jamison Crabtree's "Gar" was selected as the 'ugliest fish.' You can read his piece [here]

Ugly Fish Giveaway

Interested in a free copy of Feng Sun Chen's chapbook of poems, Ugly Fish?

Well, all you need to do is writing something ugly.

Katy Perry, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kesha—why are these the units that young women and men choose to (most frequently) mimic and popularize? Whether it’s Lady Gaga’s exploitation of gay youth culture or Rihanna’s pink-tank-equals-feminism philosophy, the motive of women in pop music has become dangerously obscure. Why? The industry isn’t interested in selling us the intellectual woman. Or man (if you can call Justin Bieber that).

Below, an excerpt from an interview between Kanye West and Rihanna featured in the December/January issue of Interview:


RIHANNA: I love to combine femininity with a kind of extreme masculine edge, and I felt like the tank is just not a typical thing that you think of when you think of a girl--or in any kind of relation to a girl. Then we made it hot pink. We just added that touch.

WEST: I mean, people really need to see a photograph--the entire tank was pink. That was a great piece of commercial pop art. Was the idea of that to kind of portray an American Dream--like the fantasy of this hot black girl sitting on top of a pink tank?

RIHANNA: [laughs] I never actually thought of it like that.

WEST: How does it feel to know that you could have any man in the world? Or woman. How does it feel to know that you can turn straight women gay?


Now, if you could stomach that, just ask yourself this: why does Rihanna feel that the only way she can be considered 'edgy' is if she projects a look or vibe with masculine or even semi-masculine qualities? Why must the color pink be continuously attributed to a notion of femininity? And examine West's final notion as well. Why is the possession of power so important to West? Admittedly, I enjoy his music, but his disturbing fascination with power has not even slightly dwindled despite what critics claim.

And what is edgy, anyway?



Here's an excerpt from the recent article, "Going Gaga," in the May 2011 issue of Bazaar:

"The only tense part of our conversation occurs when I try to transition her fantasy into reality, asking about the new look--a series of sharp bones that protrude from Gaga's shoulders, cheekbones, and temples. How long does it take to apply the makeup and prosthetics to her face and arms?

'Well, first of all,' she says, 'they're not prosthetics. They're my bones.' Okay, so when did the bones appear? 'They've always been inside of me, but I have been waiting for the right time to reveal to the universe who I truly am.' Did she will them to come out for this album? 'They come out when I'm inspired.' Is she worried that this new look will inspire other people to 'grow' similar bones? 'We all have these bones!' she says tersely. 'They're the light from inside of us. Do you mean body modification?' Yes. 'No, I'm not concerned about that.'"


I feel as though Gaga is damaging or at least severely limiting her LGBTQ fans--specifically, her younger LGBTQ fans. Her fame allows her to project a singular version of LGBTQ culture that reaches a vast mainstream audience. In turn, whatever Gaga projects (typically theatrics that I believe wrongfully designates gays as something inhuman or alien) essentially becomes 'the' definition of LGBTQ culture. I believe, no matter how much money she has donated to whatever the 'pro-gay' cause, she is steering her fans toward that definition, which I believe is heavily grounded in consumerism.

And I've overheard the following exchange too many times:

"You don't like Lady Gaga?"
"No. I don't care for her."
"And you're gay?"
"Yes."
"What the fuck?"
"What?"
"You can't be gay and not like Lady Gaga."

Liking or disliking Lady Gaga has, at least among youths, become a modern-day signifier of one's alleged 'authenticity' as a gay person. Such thinking is highly detrimental. Not to mention absurd.

In passing the storefront of a Hot Topic the other day, I spotted items like the one below:

A young girl was begging her grandma to purchase this item for her.

"You don't understand. I need this."

Even something like a $20 tank-top has become more than an overpriced piece of apparel that showcases a fan's support for Lady Gaga as a musical artist. The $20 tank-top and its lyrics-based message, "Born this Way," has almost a stronger connection to personal identity and pride as a member of the LGBTQ community than it does a connection to the musical artist herself. Too many persons are submissive to Gaga - she is the sudden definition of what it means to be gay in 2011. In purchasing a tank-top like the one above, one has to wonder if he or she is wholly supporting the LGBTQ community or, rather, Gaga's own hijacking of the LGBTQ community.

One has to wonder: what is the purchasing of such goods going to truly perpetuate? Who is truly receiving benefits?


And I guess Beyonce's latest video is supposed to be empowering:

Meanwhile, some dumbass just watched the video and said:










The thing is, in terms of pop music, even if the artist's message is intelligent--or that the artist's intent is to educate--a music video is most likely not going to successfully educate. It has a reputation to adhere to. It must be fun and it must be catchy and it must be, above all else, sexy. It's just a money-generating medium that serves you a dish without explanation. It's not Wollstonecraft or Butler. Again, it must adhere to its 'sexy' and 'fun' MTV roots, which is why I believe it will forever fail as an artist's outlet of opportunity to convey a message with even the slightest amount of intelligent criticism. Pop music artists--they think they're making a difference. They don't know they're actually Tommy Wiseau at a Q&A event.

The joke is on them and it always has been.

Weekend reading suggestions?

"This is no fucking character! This is my show, and I created it--not Matt, and not Carsey-Werner, and not ABC. You watch me. I will win this battle if I have to kill every last white bitch in high heels around here." For a highly revealing (and sincere) examination of sexism in the television industry: read Roseanne Barr's article in New York Magazine, "And I Should Know."

A short story, "We Are Magnificent," by Roxane Gay. Published in Dark Sky Magazine.

Read David Fishkind's debut post, "Watching the Twilight Zone," over at HTML Giant.





Issue No. 27 of Salt Hill looks incredible--featuring work from some of my favorite writers like Raul Zurita, Amy King, Arlene Ang, and many more.

Visit Magic Helicopter Press to experience the very recently released electronic book by Richard Chiem and Ana Carrete, Oh No Everything is Wet Now.

Very pleased to announce that the first chapbook from Radioactive Moat Press is now available for purchase. Ugly Fish by Feng Sun Chen is now available online for $5 (includes shipping).

You can read an excerpt from Ugly Fish [here] and [here]

And, as always, thanks to Stephen Tully Dierks for featuring Ugly Fish in Pop Serial today.

Feng Sun Chen's Ugly Fish, the first poetry chapbook from Radioactive Moat Press, is nearly complete.

Copies will be available soon for $5

Stay tuned!