L.J. Moore's Blog, page 10

This Terrible Symmetry: a review of Helsinki, by Peter Richards

by Peter Richards

I rarely have a viscerally bad reaction to a book, but when it comes to connecting with a reader, I find it frustrating when surrealism is confused with, well, confusion. Other reviewers describe this book as containing an “exuberant grief,” but in my review this month in Gently Read Literature, I argue that there is a way to use surrealism in poetry to heighten and clarify awareness, particularly when writing out of grief -T.S. Eliot did it in The Wasteland- but Richards does not sustain it in Helsinki.

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J.A. Tyler reviews my book, F-Stein in PANK Magazine

Thanks to Amanda Weisel for spotting this!

My 2008 book, F-Stein, was reviewed today by J.A. Tyler in PANK Magazine. Check it out:

If you’d like a copy of F-Stein, click the book cover below:

digital gothic: a spellbook for the new sorcerer (new work 6)

How to read the pieces from this book:

1. Click on the embedded link to the [music] in the title of the poem.

2. Listen on repeat while reading.

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Fig. 23: Wrecked: [Playlist: Atha, Voices in the Stratosphere]

adrift

in deathsleep

      in skycavern

          a ship

unfolds from deepest black:

femur masts bear

ulna spars lashed crosswise by glistening coils

festooned in ragged dregs of cloth that

sleek and luff in silent draughts

she sails

illumined by a pale blue flame

that dyes the shrouds:

aurora borealis

a solar wind aglow in death collisions

of magnetic dust

or                     noctiluca scintillans

a host of tiny animals

whose lantern organs light a liquid night:

scouts, drawn to your

foundering  pings

in the crow’s nest the vampire squid

flash their photophores

ghost crabs go barber-poling deckwards

and all that was camouflaged as wreck                  inhales

a swim sac full of brine                                               a fleshy embrace

of cuttlefish and eels

disguised as slack tatters                                          fatten

into a living interlocked rigging

propelling this vessel on dissolved wind

         billows of squidink

boil to port and starboard                       swarms of ice-blue pinpoint animals

churn in a wake of unhinged stars:

a sorcerer stands behind the fiddlehead

on his shoulder

an anglerfish casts

her glowing yellow lure

into the blackness

hung to

reel you back from        wandering the

nowhere in your nothing

the sorcerer

         reaches with both hands to fold your wings against your chest

and gathers you into his coat

into a soft nest built amongst his empty ribs

 

            heed the yarn             he says

but mind the toothy maw

behind the watchlight                        

in answer

the mizzen topsail                      uncloaks:

a giant manta    kites in slow spirals downward through the forestays

to offer             a wide white ventral surface

onto which the anglerfish aims her lure:

5          4          3          2          1

projects                        and then

fade in through murk:

the sea floor      empty               featureless

a stirring in the foreground

clouds of sediment        rise into a bed of swollen pulp

mounding, shivering into                        deadfall backwarding

                    into half-digested hulk

right-angles drawn in pale, lifeless crusts

of brainworm and gooseneck                seafan skeletons

a graveyard of hard reminders adhering                         into ship shape

a scaffold on which now burgeons an undeathing:

decks unsplinter            cracked halves of hull

swing to like a closing clamshell             cohering into seamless ellipse

two horizontal lines appear in the debris

bulked degree by degree by aggregating matter

until masts abloom in algal furs

lever upward into perpendicular bonds

and spars condense from drifts of silt

javelining true                            to crosstrees and yards

decked out in a bunting of wilted jelly

that rallies into orange anemones, violet nudibranchs,

soft life hungered forth from bones

a palace of innocence

recomposed of her route reversing

filter-feeders vomiting gusts of gorge

great fish coughing chunks of fins and scales

which implode to live silvery streaks

and spasm off into the choke

of eel grasses full lush then battening down and reefing in

and       on        and on  and                                less and less

until a trapped whisper

a mayday cry

                  appears from above

a bubble descending toward the wreck

shrinking as it speeds

              to the empty throat of that

lost wax lodge of bones

the sorcerer emerging from his drowning

                               his barren hand casting

from the pocket of his seaworm-eaten coat

a sodden mess congealing into tightly creased papers

from which unknots a twine garland

that reeves itself through the cathead

and steeves the groaning timbers of the bowsprit

             and the wreck begins to lift

answering the pull of rumor

on an anchor line reeling upward

one trembling string

one spider silk

one sounding line

one thread of tale

the yarn that always dangles:

               (we are deep-shifted now

spun into the spiral of music

               gone gate crashing with ravens

                                          shuffled our coil

on a deathtrip

stripped to

a stray signal

picked up by ghost ship

rescued

by death itself

             who builds a nest

of an empty chest

and makes of us

a heart

 

together we mind the toothy maw

projected by the light of a lure

on a manta belly

the flick in which all present company

myself included

star)

says death, our sorcerer

just as the last frame sticks and rips

and the projection on the manta’s belly  flips     flips      flips

with a sound like something being wound up:

a pocket watch                        a music box

a windlass                                 weighing-in the bower

a bird’s heart                            racing in a ribbed locker

with each click and beat a glossy black feather is plucked

from your body and sucked straight up his windpipe

erupting from his mouth             and promptly swallowed

by the waiting anglerfish                        who smiles smiles

it’s all above board                  death says

watching the thing                  yet trapped in the watch

until you arrived                      my windfall

he unfolds one of those crisp papers clutched in his fist

holds it tight to his chest so you can read:

 

W hen lost or unsure of your position, ships shall release a caged crow.

The crow will fly straight towards the nearest land, thus giving the

vessel some sort of a navigational fix.          

 

come, lend me your wings death says

and lets go his charts

casting himself                  overboard

the waveson treasures of his hold

spill up toward the light:

pearls worn down to grains of sand

gemstones roughing back to rocks

glass bottles burst to living dust

a great shudder wracks the strake                     treenails squeal free of the ship’s planks

and the hull distintegrates in spinning trunnels

among the dreck           his cap             his coat

his skull          and two femurs              form, briefly

a waving jolly roger

lost from view as the ribcage sinks                     with you inside

every last feather tornadoed loose

that damned anglerfish following behind

and gulping down everything

until with a harsh shake and a push

she grasps the cage itself

and cracks you loose

bites off each of your plucked wings

and glutted, sinks slowly:

a shrinking yellow glow in the undernight

            what’s left of the ship                             pitchpoles                           and breaks apart

leaving a wake

of fractured ribs

a wrecked raven

and a choice:

the dangling yarn

the sinking lure

Sharks in the Rivers at Gently Read Literature

While reading Ada Limon’s Sharks in the Rivers, I shapeshifted into a bird, a fish, a river, a horse, a desert, and another woman.  I took on other forms but those are secrets. If you want to try on wings or fins yourself, you should check out the brand spanking new May issue of Gently Read Literature, and read my review.

digital gothic: a spellbook for the new sorcerer (new work 5)

How to read the pieces from this book:

1. Click on the embedded link to the [music] in the title of the poem.

2. Listen on repeat while reading.

_____________________________________________________

Fig 3: a candle: [Playlist: Virtual Boy: Mass]

you’ve seen where dreams end up:

in the foyer on a polished credenza               in a jar marked kosher

for everyone to admire at parties             the contents naked, shriveled,

obscenely meaty

late at night after the card games

you hear the adults sneak into the hall

the scrape of the lid unscrewing

the muffled sounds of hunched gorging

you barricade yourself behind your bedroom door

light several devotional candles from the dollar store

and conjure the real thing:

he steps out of the wall poster

and makes himself at home        taking the form of a rock angel or

that boy you met at the busstop or the school friend who can’t put two words together

tonight he’s nick cave

you discuss a way to address the problem:

he says             the cleaners are coming, one by one

you don’t even want to let them start

and you say      I believe in some kind of path

that we can walk down, me and you

so with tiny slits on the meat of the thumb

fleshed out with lyrics and candle flames

sugar water collected under the tongue

deals written in nail polish  folded in tight triangles

on college ruled paper

the same song on repeat                        11,       12,       2am

you call the live dreams down from the scrim

ghost riding it in                                                             you’re not sure it’s going to work

then

the walls shift,   the stairwell creaks

the roof shakes shingles free of its eaves

you grab for nick’s hand                        but you palm right through his wave

he shrugs back into the paneling                        just as the jambs vault the lintels

above your head in the crawlspace

you hear the mice panic

from the window you watch                 beams snap free of rafters       the house stretches                                first one long wing

and then the other

nails squeal                   mortar crumbles

pipes pop loose like tuning forks

the attic belches bats and owls

the floors groans          the house crouches

and launches

you’re airborne

your window screen blows out

followed by the window

you rise, rise                        clinging to the sill through the first awkward flaps

there’ll be bruises on your elbows from the g force

streetlights shrink

cold air flattens and whips your hair

your block                    your street        your town

shrink to toys    to blurs                             the house glides            soars

dipping to one side              and then the other

floorboards casting a hatched shadow through the moonpath

there are other houses                   here and there other conjurers

transfixed at their bedroom windows

faces transformed

your house flocks with the other houses

together they swing west

far below, the oil refinery         a black dragon with long nostrils capped by venting flames

is chewing its rear leg free of a retaining wall:

several freeway overpasses and a section of tunnel

kite past               the wind howling over their lips and mouths

out over the water now

you see the lighthouses dive and submerge

playing in the surf around the feet of the bridge

and that’s when you hear the music

feel it first, really, vibrating your lungs:

it is the houses sailing the length of the bridge

dragging their wingtips along the suspension cables

you catch the gaze of a girl in a basement window

dear friend                  her eyes say                                          welcome

read more from this work

eavesdrop…dream…subvert (at work!): evan karp’s podcast pilot

Wish you could read a book of fine local literature instead of working?  Now you can!

I know all you creative people wear headphones at work, so just tune in to evan karp’s podcast pilot and experience literary dissidence while only appearing to be running on the usual mental hamster wheel:

eavesdrop…dream…subvert (at work!): evan karp's podcast pilot

Wish you could read a book of fine local literature instead of working?  Now you can!

I know all you creative people wear headphones at work, so just tune in to evan karp's podcast pilot and experience literary dissidence while only appearing to be running on the usual mental hamster wheel:

A small press primer: introduction to a series on Bay Area small presses

**Over the next few weeks, I'll be featuring a series of interviews and articles highlighting bay area small presses.  Hit my Follow, Twitter, or Facebook buttons and you'll get an email each time a new article appears.

Unless you are a writer or the owner of an independent bookstore, chances are that your familiarity with book publishing extends only as far as the well known imprints of large houses like HarperCollins, Penguin (Viking), Random House (Knopf), Simon & Shuster, or St. Martin's Press. These big publishers are generally national conglomerates focused on the work of established authors or what will appeal to the widest market, and account for about 70% of the overall American publishing market. These are the books you find on the shelves of every Barnes & Noble and Borders in the nation: great work of course, but available anywhere and not particularly risky. Like the staple items one finds shopping in a large supermarket chain, books from the large publishing houses are dependable… but to find anything off the beaten track: the fresh, the unique, the risky, the ephemeral, the unconventional, the daring, the local… the small press is where to go.

The publishing industry itself defines a small press as one that publishes less than ten titles or generates sales of less than $50 million per year: those are still pretty large numbers when you're talking about small and local. By industry definitions, the type of small presses this series of articles will focus on would be defined by that industry as micro-presses, or hobby presses: those that don't generate enough profit to support, let alone pay their editors. It is important to think about the connotation of the word "hobby" here, which implies that the worthiness of a pursuit is measured by monetary profit, i.e. if it doesn't make you money, it's secondary, it's a hobby. But if you ask any bay-area small press editor, they will universally turn the money-driven motivation model on its head. For these independent publishers, usually artists or writers themselves, the fulfillment comes from getting the work of worthy writers out there to be read and enjoyed, and money is simply the limiting factor in accomplishing that goal.

If a big publishing house is the voice of a large cross-section of human culture, the "main stream," then a small press is the local oasis. In speaking with many founders and editors of small presses in the bay area, it has become clear that the common notion of writers as competitive, backstabbing sociopaths who all hope to step on one another's backs to become the next Tom Clancy or Dan Brown or Stephen King or Danielle Steele is a false one. Writers and artists thrive on participating in an interactive community that supports one another's efforts. At the end of the day, the act of writing necessarily requires isolation and solitude: yet the goal of the writing is to reach out, to communicate. How better to reconcile these two opposing forces than to form a press whose goal is not guided by the pressures of what is going to sell, but what can be shared. There are a lot more writers (and good ones) than can ever win the profit-making trophy, or dance naked on the head of a ballpoint pen. Contrary to the dog-eat-dog idea that there is only enough public attention span for a couple of literary darlings at a time, small publishers feel that there is enough love to go around, especially for the amazing writing that is being generated by unknowns everywhere.

So the next time you find yourself as a reader trolling the bookshelves, sighing in an Edward Gorey-ish sort of way and wondering… okay… yes, these are good but I hanker for something new, something different, something I haven't seen before, think of the editors of the small presses who are going over book layouts on someone's coffee table, holding meetings in noisy cafes, and hosting readings in local bars. These editors have no plans for quitting their "day" jobs, but are literally, literally-driven, working together to bring you what they love: the raw, unfurling edge of new writing.

digital gothic: a spellbook for the new sorcerer (new work 4)

How to read the pieces from this book:

1. Click on the embedded link to the [music] in the title of the poem.

2. Listen on repeat while reading.

_____________________________________________________

Fig. 11. Bone. [Playlist: Akira Kiteshi, Ulysses]

don't trip on dying in your dream:

first stop the grave, then                                    travel!

staved on tree roots marionetted through eye sockets

you're a prize carried on cypress knees             a  relay baton

handed from root system to root system

no eyelids now so no looking away!                              what you did               who you were

how you spent your time

slough into        a gloriously rotten skin sail

luffing with soil              until you unfurl

into beam reach

let the grubs get fat

let the beetles strip those bones

let rains lick with gravelly tongues

until      stubborn scab               loose tooth

(what you once called life)

            is scratched      shivered           yanked

loose        from the final stringy thread:

bump and grind with boulders

shake those processes and condyles

rub epiphyses with other posthumous tourists

sand yourself glassy

with shale and pumice and schist

unhinge your mandible and stuff that skull

with bone clatter and pebble storms

the stony language of former civilizations

each with their form of permanence

each with their unslakeable thirst

now that the head is not the headspace

now that the visions are not delimited on axes

nor navigable by cardinal directions

and you've self-effaced to a cloud-like probability

locked into standing wave

a danse macabre

a memento mori

it's time to flex your phantom limbs

your plum pudding probability

your atmosphere of decay

let the juice spray out of your nose holes

and spoke out along the continuum

of smaller and smaller and larger and larger

til the memory is clean and squeaky

the pieces primed for reassembly

you have worlds to end         worlds to mend

the now the then the soon to be

Read more from this work

A CONVERSATION WITH TUPELO HASSMAN: girlchild and the city with the most trailers in the world

Check out my interview with Tupelo Hassman about her new book, girlchild, being released today from Farrar, Straus and Giroux!