BlazeVOX 2K5 an.online.journal.of.voice blazevox.org 1 2 Table of Contents Bald Spitting Elephants............................................................................................. 7 Paul A Green ........................................................................................................... 15 Michael S. Begnal ................................................................................................... 23 Justin Vicari............................................................................................................. 29 DAVIDE TRAME................................................................................................... 35 Ashok Niyogi .......................................................................................................... 39 Marie Kazalia .......................................................................................................... 43 Christopher Barnes.................................................................................................. 47 Jennifer Firestone .................................................................................................... 51 Joel Van Noord........................................................................................................ 53 Michelle Greenblatt................................................................................................. 55 Pat Lawrence ........................................................................................................... 61 Rosemarie Crisafi.................................................................................................... 63 Rich Murphy ........................................................................................................... 69 Geoffrey Gatza ........................................................................................................ 75 Rochelle Ratner....................................................................................................... 79 Buffalo Focus | Ted Pelton................................................................................ 85 Colin Searle........................................................................................................... 101 Ak-Uh.................................................................................................................... 105 Randy Prunty......................................................................................................... 123 3 4 BlazeVOX 2K5 an.online.journal.of.voice 5 6 BlazeVOX 2K5 an.online.journal.of.voice blazevox.org Bald Spitting Elephants A Letter From The Editor The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly. Charles Reznikoff Our mission, after five years is still very hard to pin down. We represent neither a group of writers nor one mode of writing. We enjoy innovative works of literature in what ever format that it chooses to find itself. We wish to promote new style, emerging voices and provide an outlet for these artists to express their artistic visions. This sounds good, and in turn we will try to live up to these standards and will do whatever is humanly possible. Please forgive us in advance for our flaws. Many of our authors say that they find it difficult to publish their kind of work. This is as true as it is not. We are not the only venue for such odd bits of text, there are several online and if you are looking for others please visit the links page and visit the extended family you may have never knew you were related to :-) We have chosen Ezra Pound as our Editor-in-Chief and it is by his methods we strive to keep things new. It is our century and we look to this, as Creeley once noted, what else is one to do, make it old? So we are here and after five years we have seen many journals come and go, blogs come up from groundbreaking listservs, good friends die and good friends experience births … war, injustice and seemingly limitless stupidity come into power. We have seen many things, good and bad, and I am sure things will get worse before they get better. Our poetic voices are irrelevant in today’s political arena. This is not surprising, as all voices of dissent are dismissed as soon as they gain any momentum. So with that, we shall practice our poetry in the time that we have. Even through the darkest of times, the best minds blaze forward! 7 We want more readers! We hope that you are enjoying this journal and please send us an email to let us know how we are doing and how we can better serve your needs. We can only be as good as you demand us to be. Please show us the way! We are aligned heart and soul with BlazeVOX [ books ] www.starcherone.com We are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and your generosity to BlazeVOX [books] will be run considered a tax-deductible charitable donation. However, your book purchases make all this happen. So please buy someone’s book and make a poet’s mom happy. New Format! Our past format had been a large issue of poetry coming out twice a year. As we grew so did our ability to provide larger and larger amounts of good poetry. However, to assemble such a thing is no longer feasible. There is never enough time, and such things require large amounts of uninterrupted time. So we are going to adapt to our new environments. We have purchased several new technologies that will make it easier to have several small issues appear through out the year. As of now, our goal is to have a new issue come out every three weeks with a close look at 3 to 5 poets’ works. There will be no themes, I believe. But if there is it will be a light hearted and appropriate. Print-On-Demand Books We are still publishing and have several books in the wings ready to come out. These titles are superb works and are sure to resound through-out our poetry community. Most of our new titles are still available for adoption so please find out what you can do to bring a good text into the world. We are going to be changing our methods for some of our books. We currently use Cafepress.com to produce our books. This is a wonderful method as it takes no money to have a professional looking book available in a true, when you purchase it they make it, POD book. However, this is very expensive and it has a hefty shipping and handling fees associated with it. So for now it will do. In the near future we will be doing short runs of our POD books and have them for sale from our website and have them shipped from our offices in Buffalo, NY. This will reduce a lot of waste and streamline our production. These in turn will further reduce costs. So if you see a paypal link, your purchase will be coming from us and not Cafepress.com. Please stay turned for new developments … 8 Blogoscope Yes, we finally broke down and got ourselves a blog. And I have to swallow my pride and say that I was wrong and the bloggers have it. My original concerns over blogs being insulated forms of narcissism have become true as they are not true. The format has evolved far beyond the wonderful listservs which I still consider myself a member. Even though I am guilty of being a simple lurker in the shadows, I am still there. Once blogs gained the technology to allow for comments and expanded to easy to use personal online spaces – how can anyone resist in loving them. I read Silliman’s blog religiously and find myself the better informed for it. I will not claim that our minor effort will emulate Mr. Silliman’s excellent effort, it will serve as a posting board for updated information in BlazeVOXland. We shall post announcements and upcoming readings, parties and post images of silliness and maybe even a one of Kent Johnson. But all in all, it will serve as an easy way for me to bridge the gaps of being a working man. Electronic books Yes of course we still have e-books! Check them out. Our list will increase in the coming year and we now offer text in two formats Adobe PDF and Microsoft Reader. If you haven’t updated your reader software in a while you may want to do this. Adobe PDF is now on version 7.0 and Microsoft reader is on 2.0. Both are great programs and can be taken with you on your mobile computer, palm pilot or blackberry. If you need to get a new reader please go to ⇒ Adobe PDF Reader : http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html ⇒ Microsoft Reader: http://www.microsoft.com/reader/default.asp Where the hell have you been? It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy. -George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937) 9 In general things have been a fine, although I have found it increasingly difficult to find a balance between poetry, work, family and failing old computers. I did take on more than I could really do and I did burn out. It was a hard thing to publish as many books as I did in one season but I think I know what my schedule now allows and how to best achieve a future goals. For an in-depth look please visit the blog http://blazevox.org/blog/index.php?title=delicate_libations_on_becoming_incom muni&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 If you have sent materials to us and have not heard back. We have them and are carefully going through the wonderful items in our box. If you wish, please send us a note to inquire about your work. However you will all receive a positive letter from us shortly. Buffalo Focus: Every issue we will try to explore a new Buffalo poet. There is a lot going on here in Buffalo and I think it is important to engage some of