POESIS number four (2010)

POESIS number four, Sept. 2010, (Propaganda Press of Alternating Current, PO Box 183, Palo Alto, CA 94302, usa, USD$4, 4"x5" unpaginated; alt-current.com, http://alt-current.com/

I recently wrote a ‘think-piece’ (“On Paper- [vs] e- Viability") publishing it here on my blog & The S.F Bay Citizen http://www.baycitizen.org/ Citizen Blog section. In it, I said that for the last few years, I’ve concentrated almost exclusively on e-publication, but now that 2 of my principal CA-based e-outlets are closing down (The Well, now 25, owned by Salon.com, also failing, & Vox.com where, in its TypePad subformat, Ann Wainwright Maltby, a northern English 'Geordie' friend in Leven, Hull, Humberside maintains 2 blogs.) 2B safe, I’d better now only seek combined paper & e- poetry outlets. I now see I already had:

On The Well, a writers’-discussion topic asks adly: What else did you find in your mailbox today? Ans. POESIS number 4, 4"x5" poetry pocket-magazine that (serendipitously) also appears online.

Among its 51 poets (incl. me), there are (3): Hugh Fox, Doug Holder, Arthur Winfield Knight, Herschel Silverman, who’ve all published me, (1) Ed Galing, who I’ve reviewed,

(1) normal [schiffman] who I only knew briefly back in mid-‘60s Boston MA who then claimed to have written “Blowin’in the Wind” & sold it to the young Bob Dylan in The (Greenwich) Village; I still believe normal [his real birth-name, spontaneously given to him by his still-sedated mom on his 1st being shown to her in a NJ hospital],

esp.after seeing "A Great Wind" on PBS last nite for the 2nd-time, this time w/out steadily rising anger. Pretty much the score for my (approx.) small-press generation (b. 1942.) How about U? .

Tho I usually quote poets' poems in full/part (Herschel's is long), this time, I'll just quote my own, entirely. Think of it as a neoNast-y editorial cartoon (I can't draw), with a 2 handfuls of skinny floating quote-balloons:

Statutorily Speaking

A weary, stony Abe Lincoln
slumps as he reads a newspaper,
slowly speaking over his shoulder
towards the Statue of Liberty.

Abe: “Libby, will you please
wash those boys' mouths out
with some good American soap?”

Fatboys in shorts crowd around her,
spewing truly deranged slogans:

Fatboys: “Don’t listen to Father Abe!”
“Obama’s a Communist! Obama’s Hitler!”;
“Gov’mint wants to kill the soldiers”;
“Gov’mint wants to kill the old”;
“Abortion leads to euthanasia."

Liberty quickly fills up an enormous tin-tub
with boiling water & foaming pink liquid soap.
Raving Fatboys scatter fast.

[on this blog in play-format: 09 SEP 09]

Forget my egotism; here's Hugh Fox's Orpheus & Euridyce poem, meaning much more to me since Carolin Combs, my 2nd-wife, died (26 JAN 07):

Orfeo ed Eurydice

Starting (8:05) late, all the younger
opera students in the talk-laugh-
it-out audience, as Eurydice dies
and Orfeo descends into and brings
her back from Hell, completely
gauzing-out Gaza and all the other
contemporary hells for a couple of
sacred hours.