For those within striking distance Tuesday evening, July 17th, there will be a celebration of the life and work of Ray Bradbury at Awesome Books, Downtown, 929 Liberty Ave, at 6:30 pm. The reading is free, the bookstore is awesome, and Ray Bradbury touched us all often and deeply. See the above for a list of who is reading what.
On the day he died, there was a touching tribute to Ray by a fan on Harlan Ellison's webpage that said it all:
A couple of miscellaneous notes this morning and some samples from a featured back issue of Lilliput Review. First, a call for poems from one of my long-time favorite small press publications, Chiron Review:
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The editors of CHIRON REVIEW are reading submissions for an "All Punk Poetry" issue to be published Dec. 2009. Poetry, fiction, b/w line art, comics/cartoons, photos, nonfiction, whatever should be sent via snailmail with self-addressed, stamped envelope for reply/return to: Chiron Review, Attn: PUNK, 522 E. South Ave., St. John, KS 67576. Name and complete mailing address should appear on every poem, story, etc. Deadline: Sept. 1, 2009. Material is copyrighted in author's/artist's name. Payment: one contributor's copy with 50% discount on additional copies. If anyone wants to help spread the word, just copy & paste this in an e-mail. We will forward a flier for posting to anyone who asks:
chironreview@earthlink.net.
Chiron Review is open for submissions year-round. Postal submissions with name, complete mailing address (on every poem), and SASE are welcome at Chiron Review, 522 E. South Ave., St. John, KS 67576-2212. Writers are invited to send up to 5 poems, 1 long poem, or 1 short-story. We're also open to reviews, interviews, black and white art and photography, and essays of interest to writers and the small press literary community. We ask writers to limit submissions to four times a year or less. We do not consider simultaneous or previously published submissions; nor do we consider e-mail submissions though exception is made for book reviews and foreign/overseas submissions. CR copyrights in author's name, all rights revert to author upon publication. Pay is one contributor's copy. We would like to exchange subscriptions with other magazines and receive review copies of small press books and magazines for review and listing in my "News, Etc." column. They can be sent to the address above.
Subscriptions and donations are welcome. A one-year/four issue subscription is $17. The "Triple S" discount is offered Seniors, Students and Starving Artists. Don't be afraid to ask. And of course, those who are able and wish to provide more support than $17 a year are most welcome to do so. Subscribers may send cash, check or money order to the address below or we can accept payment via Paypal: poetry_man61@earthlink.net. The Personal Publishing Program under Kindred Spirit Press imprint is available to poets and writers interested in self- publishing. Through arrangements with a highly specialized printer, I can offer small press runs for reasonable prices. These prices include professional typesetting, printing and shipping. Click on the Kindred Spirit Press button below for more info.
Chiron Review presents the widest possible range of contemporary creative writing -- fiction and non-fiction, traditional and off-beat -- in an attractive, professional tabloid format, including artwork and photographs of featured writers. About a quarter of each issue is devoted to news, views and reviews of interest to writers and the literary community.
Past contributors include Charles Bukowski, William Stafford, Marge Piercy, Wilma McDaniel, Edward Field, Antler, Robert Peters, Leslea Newman, Erskine Caldwell, Janice Eidus, Felice Picano, Will Inman, Richard Kostelanetz, Lorri Jackson, James Broughton, Charles Webb, Quentin Crisp & a host of others, well-known and new.
Most recent Issue: $7.00. Sample copy/back issues: $7.00 ea. Send all correspondence to : Contact Info Email: chironreivew@earthlink.net
Location: Chiron Review, 522 E. South Ave., St. John, KS 67576
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Next, two more entire back issues are up online for free. Here's #159
And here is #157:
The purpose for putting up entire issues for free is to give poets a better idea of what the magazine is about and what types of poems are published there. Also, entire issues simply better represent the magazine as it is. Finally, it also helps those who'd prefer not going through the process of sending for (& possibly may not be able to afford) a sample copy. Issues #'s 160 and 161 may be found in this previous post.
Oh, and then there is the enjoyment for of reading poetry in its natural habitat for those who do that sort of thing. Failing that, there is usually some nifty art, by the likes of Wayne Hogan and Guy Beining, for the visually inclined.
I don't expect to be doing this as an ongoing project or archiving the entire run online (but it is an interesting thought, no) but I will now and again put up an issue when time and inclination allow. I'm also hedging against the eventual conversion of the back issue archive in the transition from google pages to google sites to something possibly untoward.
More about untoward in a bit.
This week's featured back issue is #28, from February 1992, and it seems to have a thing for butterflies.
Ars Poetica
Forging a poem is Like nothing so much as Building a butterfly Of bronze.
Patricia Higginbotham
Mother
Surgical teams Pinned her Monarch glands To a mythical cure And she steeped out Of her body With scissors and rose.
Patrick Sweeney
prayer flags
battle flags
no difference to the wind
Charlie Mehrhoff
Finally, the happy coincidence of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Harlan Ellison all being born on the same day is just too good to pass without noting. Here's a trailer from one of the films Lee and Price starred in together, a tad less garish than the Scream and Scream Again trailer, another of their joint efforts (and we arrive conveniently back at untoward - faint-hearted viewers beware).
on the flower pot does the butterfly, too hear Buddha's promise?
This past weekend , I fell in love with Jean Cocteau.
I've always been infatuated with him, frankly. His film Orpheus (1949) is one of my all-time favorites; Beauty and the Beast, too, is a wondrous achievement. I had the opportunity to go back and take a look see at the other two films in the Orphic Trilogy (The Blood of a Poet (1930)and The Testament of Orpheus (1959)) and they are truly amazing and should be of great interest to poets as well as film buffs. The dvd versions I took out of the library had some first-class extras; in the case of The Blood of a Poet, the biographical documentary Autobiography of an Unknown, directed by Edgardo Cozarinsky, accompanying the main feature was every bit as entertaining, putting Cocteau's life and career in perspective with heavy doses of the lyric surrealism that infuses all his work. I actually enjoyed it more, it has a polished feel as a documentary that somehow Blood does not have as a film. In many ways, The Blood of a Poetis an early rehearsal for Orpheus; I would actually recommend watching the later first, though it comes "second" in the trilogy. This is not to detract from Blood: it is excellent.
Similarly, The Testament of Orpheus is something of an anomaly as a film. It might stand alone without Orpheus yet it is greatly enhanced by it. It is Cocteau's farewell to film and he gathers together his previous motifs, characters and even actors who played various roles to make his final artistic statement in the medium. There is much humor here; Cocteau himself becomes the main character in the film, a sort of time traveling Orpheus, stuck in modern times. It is nearly as good as Orpheus and a beautiful chronicle of the poet's journey. Another interesting extra is Villa Santo Sospir, which is a 16mm color film shot by Cocteau at the summer home of a friend. It has the feel of a combination home movie and travelogue and focuses almost entirely on the house, which Cocteau painted inside and out with his unique artistic creations, making it a work of art in and of itself. It must be seen to be believed. Here's a brief glimpse to get the flavor:
Sticking with the theme of the artist, a clip of the always provocative, incredibly original Harlan Ellison is making the rounds about the need for a writer to be paid for her/his work. Check it out:
There is, of course, no small irony that the circulation of this clip, an excerpt of the film Dreams With Sharp Teeth, is, perhaps, violating the very principle he so passionately (& profanely, bless him) espouses. So, that being said, the above is being passed along in the interest of the greater good, if there be such a thing.
And, yes, Lilliput being the micropress mag that it is, can only pay in the bane of the poet's existence, contributor copies. Sigh. The layers are thick.
Let the beatings begin.
Before getting to the Lilliput samples, one final bit of news. Longhouse Publishers of Vermont has issued a number of Cid Corman related items, including a new selected poems, The Next One Thousand Years, which I can't wait to see. Bob Arnold of Longhouse has sent along two of his delightful slip card productions of works by Cid: a Rumi translation ("What can I do - friends?) and a work entitled New Proverbs. Here are two from the master, resonating as his work always does:
Any moment yields as much.
Don't ask more of yourself than the mirror does.
Cover by Wayne Hogan
Continuing with the theme of the artist's plight and segueing from Wayne Hogan's beautiful cover above, here is the man himself, this time wielding the written word to speak, as always, directly to the point. From #97:
How To Be An Artist
Save all your string. Save all your empty paper cups. Save all your missing socks. Save all your wasted words. Save all your Indianhead nickels. Yes, especially your Indianhead nickels.
Wayne Hogan
Regarding This Poem
The idea was to put together as one compelling composite all those parts you said you particularly liked from poems of mine you rejected over the years but on second thought would the conglomeration work as a whole and besides you have a ten line limit but don't think that I haven't noticed the exceptions.
Kenneth Leonhardt
Returning home
after long work two corbies and a dove cut a pale sky.
A second dove nowhere in sight, the world is still too dark. We must
begin again.
Jim Tolan
Obituary
cigar box (shaken like a rattle): shoehorn, stubby pencil, cuff-link.
James Magorian
Till next Thursday,
Don
PS Don't miss Alicia Ostriker's devastating poetic observation of the American psyche, Fix, on today's The Writer's Almanac.
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