There is a thing

some men will ache to do

and break themselves

against their lives and lovers, trying.

Women, too, have lost

their grip, having endeavored

or accomplished it.  The devil

threads his needle,

and the string’s a river

fat with fish

that wanted other words for it.

BOTTLENECK

He is the carpenter and the cook.

What is she?

She talks too much.

She points out individual clouds

on the river’s surface.  She walks

too slow.  All the trees

stuck under the old train bridge

since last May’s flood won’t budge.

That shit aint going nowhere

without dynamite, he says, and spits.  He knows

he talks like that.  Rough, it is a way

of seeming reckless and indifferent.

It endears him to her, and she thinks

the river will fix itself.

PUBLIC, SCENIC

There is about to be a blizzard.

A helicopter is flying over.

A man is taking a woman’s picture

inside the gazebo,

saying, less prostitute, more

girlfriend-against-the-moonlight,

and she’s saying, I’m not

against moonlight, I’m all for it,

and he’s laughing hysterically

taking close-ups of her hair

which looks like a cloud

because of the snowflakes

sticking to it and everything else,

including the sign that says

this park is up for adoption

in case you’re interested,

but I wouldn’t adopt this park—

no one picks up the dog poop

and everything’s weird here,

even the rabbit in the snow

beneath the basketball goal,

looking at it like he’s contemplating

a shot.



These poems originally appeared in MISTAKING THE SEA FOR GREEN FIELDS (U of Akron P, 2006).

your gods get drunk

and twist

the limbs off their toy humans

you load fish off a truck

like the heater in your basement

you are in your basement

designing a wolf suit

you make a list of things to leave ashore

you make a gun shape with your hand

to shoot down the birds

look at that girl in her moccasins

the balloon gaggle at the park

you turmeric

you yerba

you oats

sedge and rockweed

you dirt across your arms

you pulpy innards

you forest

near the edge of town

you at the stove with your stepmother

she is teaching you to make mole

Back In Tulsa

Once all my airplanes had blue stripes. Once I looked when told not to. Once I cut a

man’s hair and he shook my hand for an hour. Once I wore a dress and stood in the

moment forever. Once I held the American Revolution in my hand and it was shaped like

a can. Once my basement flooded. Once I washed a baby and that baby was singing

“Stranger in Moscow.” Once cast iron. Once hatchet. Once three flies and a spool of

wire.

Once I dug a pool where the boxing match had been. Once I sat inside and listened to my

neighbors. Once I threw a frozen wolf.  Once I broke it over my lap and walked home

with the residue on my slacks. Once a seal. Once the mud. Once I got Euphrates

Syndrome and they buried me in roasted ginger. Once I went in with my clothes on. Once

I paddled straight out. Once the rigging snapped. Once my sister fell in the ice and turned

pink, then blue. Her hand was so cold.



No salt is left in me.

My ash

Is wayward birds.

I have tapped

The well

Over and over with need.

Showers drought us

And the sweet feed

Makes the bulls gaunt.

I have the pill

We can all take

To slake the suffer

Into plastic,

Yet this makes us all

Corpses.

How about this:

I give you my seeds;

You give me your flowers,

And then

As comets fall,

We sit, calm

And try to trust each other.



Kristin Abraham is the author of two poetry chapbooks:  Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus (Subito Press, 2008), and Orange Reminds You of Listening (Elixir Press, 2006); her poem “Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus” was selected for Best New Poets 2005.  Additional poetry, lyric essays, and critical essays have been published in such places as Court Green, Columbia Poetry Review, LIT, Quarter After Eight, and The Journal. She currently teaches English at Ashford University in Iowa.

Brent Armendinger was born in Warsaw, NY, and educated at Bard College, the University of Michigan, and the city of San Francisco.  He is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Undetectable (New Michigan Press) and Archipelago (Noemi Press).  He won first prize in poetry in the 2009 Chroma International Queer Writing Competition.  He teaches creative writing at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.  He is currently working on the Poem-Booth Project; for more information, call 1-877-EAT-POEM from the nearest payphone. 

Michael Barber teaches creative writing, Buddhism, literature, and meditation at Front Range Community College in Boulder CO. He lives between semesters at Metta Forest Monastery in CA. His recent poetry can be viewed at pastsimple.com

David Bartone has some recent poems in or forthcoming at InDigest, Now Culture, Thermos, and Tammy. He lives in Amherst, Ma, where he likes to co-edit Microfilme Magazine.

Douglas Basford’s poetry, translations, and critical prose have appeared, or is forthcoming, in Poetry, Smartish Pace, Subtropics, American Poetry Journal, The National Poetry Review, Chain, The Diagram, 32 Poems, Anti-, Shampoo, and elsewhere.  He teaches at SUNY-Buffalo and co-edits the online journal Unsplendid.

Lindsay Bell received her MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Spinning Jenny, Barrelhouse, DIAGRAM, Black Clock, Columbia Poetry Review, Wicked Alice, and elsewhere. When she’s not writing, she can be found playing guitar or seeking out open spaces.

Aaron Belz is the founder and former curator of Observable Readings in St. Louis (observable.org) and has given readings of his poetry all over the country as well as in numerous stand-up comedy venues in the Los Angeles area. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Painted Bride Quarterly, Black Clock, and other places, and his first full-length book, The Bird Hoverer, was published by BlazeVOX in 2007. His second, Lovely, Raspberry, will be published by Persea Books in April, 2010.

Stephanie Berger received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and her BA in Philosophy from the University of Southern California.  Her poems have appeared most recently in Coconut, HoboEye and pax americana.  She is “The Madame” and Artistic Director of The Poetry Brothel (www.thepoetrybrothel.com) and has an e-chapbook, In The Madame’s Hat Box, forthcoming from Scantily Clad Press.  She lives on a small farm in Brooklyn, NY.

Stephanie Burns received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New School University.  She has been published in the tiny, LUNGFULL, The Sink Review and has five poems forthcoming on the Verse website.  She lives in Greensboro, NC.

Ashley Capps received her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  Her first book, Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields, was selected by Gerald Stern for publication in 2006.  She currently lives in Houston, TX, where she is at work on a second collection.

Jessie Carty is the author of two chapbooks At the A & P Meridiem (Pudding House, 2009) and The Wait of Atom (Folded Word, 2009). Her work can be found in a variety of other online and print formats but most often on her blog http://jessiecarty.wordpress.com and in her upcoming full length collection Paper House (Folded Word, 2010). She also edits a YouTube based online magazine called Shape of a Box http://shapeofabox.wordpress.com

Brittany Cavallaro’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Bat City Review, Tar River Poetry, Cream City Review, and Redactions, among other journals. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lindsay Coleman is a professor at Babson College in Massachusetts.  She received her B.A. from Harvard University and her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writer’s workshop. Some of her previous poems have appeared in Forklift: Ohio, Quarter after Eight, Bateau, and Seneca Review.

P. Edward Cunningham is the author of This Boy, This Broom (BatCat Press, 2009) and he co-edits Radioactive Moat. He is a contributing writer to Open Thread and his work will be seen / can be seen in places like Dogzplot, Read Some Words, Haha Clever, Pinstripe Fedora, decomp magazine, and wtf pwm.  He blogs at http://yellowlightbulbs.blogspot.com/

John Darnielle, sometimes alone & sometimes with other people, is The Mountain Goats.

J.D. Davis’ mother died on the delivery table while he was being born. His father filled out the birth certificate using his alias for the real name.  His twin aunts, who ran a whore house, tried to adopt him more than once.  His father did teach him some Latin,  how to write his name in cursive, and made him memorize some poetry.  He lives in Syracuse with his best friend and his dog Buster.

Gillian Devereux received her MFA in Poetry from Old Dominion University and is currently a PhD candidate in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University.  She teaches Media Culture at Bay State College in Boston, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in FOURSQUARE, Gargoyle, 32 Poems, Wicked Alice, and other journals.

Matthew Donne currently lives in Montreal, where he’s finishing up an economics degree at McGill University. He lives in an apartment that looks like a hunting lodge. It has a full-sized set of antlers, and a coffee table made of four empty six packs and a window pane.

Jenny Drai grew up near Chicago but has also lived in Munich and Oakland.  She enjoys drinking tap water as well as sparkling water (from glass bottles not plastic ones) and has most recently been published in RealPoetik, Monday Night, and Court Green.  Her novel, “John Clare and the Blue Spaceship,” awaits publication. She is currently in the process of moving to the Los Angeles area (but closer to the beach) and is looking forward to a new adventure.

Anna Elena Eyre is a Taoseña who grew up making mud pies and playing with magpies near Reality.  She received an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 2005 and is currently a PhD candidate at SUNY-Albany.   Her chapbook “Metaplasmic” was published by effing press in 2004.

Matthew Falk is an American writer of poetry and prose. He lives in Michigan and works for Mayapple Press.

Michael Flory Ogletree is an MFA candidate at University of Oregon, where he teaches creative writing. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, Fourteen Hills, InDigest, & elsewhere. He is the poetry editor for the online journal SUB-LIT (www.sub-lit.com).

Jess Grover lives in New York and edits the poetry section of InDigest Magazine with his buddy Brad Liening.  Reach him at jess@indigestmag.com.

Annie Guthrie is a jeweler with a fondness for rare stones and a writer with love for the oracular.  She has poems published in many journals, including Tarpaulin Sky, Fairy Tale Review and Ploughshares.  She works at the University of Arizona Poetry Center in graphic design and marketing.

Ian Harris lives with his wife and son in Portland, OR. His work is published in journals including Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review, AGNI, and jubilat, and is forthcoming in the University of Iowa Press anthology Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days.

Matt Hart is the author of two books of poetry Who’s Who Vivid (Slope Editions, 2006) and YOU ARE MIST (Moor Books, 2009).  A third book, WOLF FACE, is forthcoming this year from H_NGM_N Books.  A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Elizabeth Hildreth works as an instructional designer and is a regular contributor for Bookslut. She lives in Chicago.

Patrick Hipp runs The Eastern Cynic and The Constant Reader and is an editor for the literary journal 12th Street. He makes money editing a travel website, enjoys Oxford commas, and looks forward to one day resting on his laurels.

J. Clayton L. Jones is a professor of English and creative writing at Georgia Highlands College in Rome, Ga. He has an MFA in poetry from Georgia State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the following: The Albatross, Clockwise Cat, The Cortland Review, GSU Review (The New South), nibble, Word Catalyst Magazine, Shoots and Vines, and other publications. He is also songwriter and performing musician who plays most frequently with his bluegrass band, The Groundhawgs.

For most of her life, Wendy Kaplan-Emmons has been living in Syracuse and writing poetry, at least sporadically.  She is also trained as a social worker and currently works as a grief therapist for Hospice of Central New York.  This year she will begin work on her MFA in Creative Writing, with plans to integrate her developing skills as a poet and teacher with her counseling practice, encouraging clients to use writing as a therapeutic tool.

Genna Kohlhardt grew up in Colorado and is currently studying at Boise State, where she has yet to figure out what the big deal is with the potatoes.

Lily Ladewig’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Absent, SIR!, Word For/Word, and Invisible Ear, among other places. Her chapbook “You Are My Favorite Person of the Year” was recently published by Mondo Bummer Press. She lives in Northampton, MA, and is an associate editor at Black Lawrence Press.

Krystal Languell is the author of The Mean Particle (Tilt Press, 2010). She works as an editor for Noemi Press, Puerto del Sol, and Bone Bouquet. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, 32 Poems, No Tell Motel and elsewhere.

David Laskowski lives in Madison, WI and teaches at Edgewood College. 

Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from 2River View, Artifice, At-large Magazine, The Cortland Review, Drunken Boat, H_NGM_N, The Hollins Critic, La Petite Zine, Sonora Review, Thermos, Zoland Poetry, and many others. He has recently been nominated for a Pushcart and for Best of the Net. BlazeVOX published his first collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. Plus, he keeps a blog, where he publishes interviews and other poetic ephemera, here: http://ithoughtiwasnewhere.blogspot.com/.

Erin Lyndal Martin is a poet, fiction writer, and music journalist.  Her fiction has appeared recently in Night Train and Ocean, and her poetry is forthcoming in Slant.

Rob MacDonald lives in Boston and is the editor of the online journal Sixth Finch.  His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Octopus, Hanging Loose, Anti-, elimae, Free Verse, The Raleigh Quarterly, New CollAge and diode.  Last New Death, a chapbook, was recently published by Scantily Clad Press.

Tony Mancus lives in Rosslyn, VA with his fiancé and a chinchilla. He teaches at Emerson Preparatory School and runs creative writing workshops for Writopia DC. He is cofounder of Flying Guillotine Press and his poems have been published at No Tell Motel, Ekleksographia, CUE, BlazeVOX, keepgoing.org, and elsewhere. 

Megan Martin lives in Cincinnati where she teaches writing, plays with cats, and misses Chicago.  Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Caketrain, Tarpaulin Sky, and Action, Yes! among others.  Her first collection, Sparrow and Other Eulogies, will be released by Gold Wake Press in July 2011.

Gary L. McDowell’s first collection of poems, American Amen, won the 2009 Orphic Prize and will appear in late 2010 from Dream Horse Press. He is also the author of a chapbook, They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009) and co-editor, with F. Daniel Rzicznek, of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems have appeared in various literary journals, including Colorado Review, Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Poetry Daily, and Quarterly West.  He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife and their young son, Auden.

Rachel McKibbens recently moved to Rochester, NY from Brooklyn and is slowly getting used to the sight of trees. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Acentos Review, Frigg Magazine, Wicked Alice, World Literature Today, The New York Quarterly and Bowery Women: Poems. Her first collection of poems, “Pink Elephant” (Cypher Books) will be released on Halloween.

Joseph Victor Milford is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a full time professor at Georgia Military College. His poems have appeared in The Canary, The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, The Brooklyn Review, First Intensity, The Wisconsin Review, The Kennesaw Review, VOLT, Action,YES, The Suisun Valley Review, and other literary journals.  Joseph Milford is also a host of the the weekly blogtalk radio program The Joe Milford Poetry Show( http://joemilfordpoetryshow.com ). He currently resides in Moreland, Georgia near the Lewis Grizzard museum and regularly regards the local Freemasonry lodge with scrutiny and skepticism.

Marcus Myers lives in Kansas City, MO, where he teaches gifted & talented middle school students how to read, write and think for themselves. An MFA candidate at the University of Missouri – Kansas City, his poems and reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming from CutBank, Main Street Rag, Mid-American Review, New Zoo Poetry Review, Plain Spoke, Pleiades, Tar River Poetry and elsewhere.

Amber Nelson is co-founder and poetry editor of alice blue. Her chapbook THIS RIDE IS IN DOUBLE EXPOSURE is available online with H_NGM_N. Her second chapbook, YOUR TROUBLE IS BALLOONING, is forthcoming from Publishing Genius.

Geoffrey Nutter is the author of three books of poetry: A Summer Evening, Water’s Leaves & Other Poems, and Christopher Sunset. He lives in New York City with his family where he teaches poetry classes at NYU. He will be a visiting professor at the University of Iowa in Spring 2011.

Daniela Olszewska is the author of four chapbooks including The Twelve Husbands of Citizen Jane (Beard of Bees) and The Twelve Wives of Citizen Jane (Spooky Girlfriend).  She is an Assistant Editor at Switchback Books and the Poetry Editor of Black Warrior Review.

Nathan Parker lives in Alabama with his wife, Christie, and their two children, Noah and Clara.

Mike Puican was a member of the 1996 Chicago Slam Team. He has had his poetry published in the US and in Canada in journals such as: Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Bloomsbury Review, Third Coast Review, Parthenon West and Malahat Review. He won the 2004 Tia Chucha Press Chapbook Contest for his chapbook, 30 Seconds. He just completed an MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson College.

Daniel Reinhold is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. His poetry has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Samisdat, Axe Factory Review. He lives in Ithaca, NY with his dog Zelda where he paints and writes. His work can be seen at www.danielreinhold.com

Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s first chapbook, Weed Over Flower, was chosen for publication by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in: Wicked Alice, can we have our ball back?, FRiGG, Literary Mama, Poetry Midwest, Boxcar Poetry Review, slant, Caesura, Gargoyle, ouroboros review, and other fine journals. Sadre-Orafai’s prose has appeared in Rock Salt Plum, in the Seal Press anthology, Waking Up American, and in the All Things That Matter Press anthology Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages. She currently serves as poetry editor for JMWW and is Assistant Professor of English at Kennesaw State University.

Let’s face it: I [David Saffo] feel my hottest |intellectually| when I am thinking about, writing, revising, reading, or enacting poetry. Sure I love teaching (I just got ‘Associate Professor’ at Chipola College), but without poetry my being would be without release, Tallahappy would be without taste, & phenomenology would be just an ideology.

Jared Schickling’s recent work includes an essay in the Exquisite Corpse Annual #2, an essay forthcoming in Literary Imagination, an e-chap, Old Glory, forthcoming from Ahadada Books, and a long poem forthcoming from BlazeVOX, Zero’s Blooming Excursion.  His other books are Aurora, submissions, and O (BlazeVOX 2007, 8, 9).  He learns and teaches in Colorado and helps edit Delete Press, New American Press, Mayday Magazine and Reconfigurations. 

Fred Schmalz’s recent work has appeared in A Public Space, LUNGFULL!, Zoland Poetry, and Spinning Jenny. An interview I conducted with choreographer David Neumann will appear in issue 21 of Conduit. His first manuscript was a finalist for the Nightboat and Sawtooth poetry prizes in 2009. He lives in Kassel, Germany.

Mather Schneider is a 40-year old cab driver, no college degree, no cats, one Mexican girlfriend, two books of poetry scheduled to be published soon.  The first by Interior Noise Press should be out by January and the other by New York Quarterly Press sometime next summer.  His poetry has been seen in hundreds of magazines and websites since 1995.  He blogs at matherschneider.blogspot.com.

Cindy St. John is the author of two chapbooks, City Poems (Effing Press 2009) and People Who Are in Love Will Read This Book Differently (Dancing Girl Press 2009). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Southern Review, The Florida Review and Cimarron Review. She lives in Austin, TX.

Sampson Starkweather is a co-founder of Birds, LLC, an indpendent poetry press. He is the author of four chapbooks, most recently, The Heart is Green from So Much Waiting from Immaculate Disciples, and Self Help Poems from Greying Ghost Press. Recent or forthcoming work can be found in: Forklift, Ohio, La Petite Zine, Action Yes, SIR!, Free Verse, Anti-, NOö, Pax Americana, No Tell Motel and elsewhere.  

Leigh Stein is the author of the chapbooks How to Mend a Broken Heart with Vengeance (Dancing Girl Press) and Least Inhabited Island II (H_NGM_N Combatives). Other work has appeared in Absent, Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Low Rent Magazine, and No Tell Motel, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, where she teaches drama to children.

Maureen Thorson is the author of three chapbooks, Twenty Questions for the Drunken Sailor (flynpyntar/dusie 2009), Mayport (Poetry Society of America 2006) and Novelty Act (Ugly Duckling Presse 2004). She lives in Washington, DC where she co-curates the In Your Ear reading series and runs Big Game Books, an itty-bitty press.

Emily Toder is a poet, translator, and letterpress printer. Her work has appeared in jubilat, Sixth Finch, Bird Dog, Not Nostrums, Invisible Ear, and Skein, and her chapbook, Brushes With, is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky Press.

Gabriella Torres currently lives, writes and teaches in Seoul, South Korea.

Megan Volpert is a high school English teacher, and Co-Director of the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival.  She has published 3 books, reviewed many more books than she has written, been nominated for assorted prizes she has never won, and is currently working on a hybrid text about Andy Warhol.  Predictably, meganvolpert.com is her website.

Meagan Wilson is from Denver and currently lives in Iowa City.

Catherine Wing’s first book of poems, Enter Invisible, was published by Sarabande Books and was nominated for a 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Chicago Review, DIAGRAM, The New Republic, and Poetry. She lives in Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth Zuba lives in Brooklyn and is currently working on an erasable book. She co-edits swerve magazine.   

Brad Liening is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poetry has appeared in over a dozen online and print journals, including H_NGM_N, Swink, Forklift, and Fou. He’s a poetry editor at InDigest Magazine and he helps run Hell Yes, a DIY press that publishes poetry chapbooks and zines. He lives in Minneapolis.

Exploding Heads! Exploding Hearts!: An Interview with ‘scary man’ Brad Liening

…

Exploding heads!

Exploding hearts!

Dust: familiar signifier

of our collective futures.

Still, the nudity was nice,

that scene in which the man’s

face changes hideously

into a scary man’s face

and who then brings home

a really creepy poodle

for his daughter, played

by you, the only one who

suspects something is wrong. (“Poem”)

GL: Your poems frequently incorporate political and social themes into brash, surreal meditations on heartbreak and loss.  It seems like your poems often try to sort out the difference between public and private sources of aggravation, anxiety and sadness—though such investigations always lead to new conundrums rather than solutions to these predicaments.  For example, a poem titled “Wolf Blitzer” (link here) describes the cryptic and corrupt practices of our political leadership—as the though the speaker, Wolf Blitzer himself? is simply reporting what he sees on cable news or reports the news as he sees it—before submitting a more general and emotionally fraught query to both himself and his readers: “Who’s running / this asylum, anyhow?”  Is this question about America, I wonder, or the creative process itself?  Anyhow, I think this question illustrates a typical junction in your work, whereby you probe the relationship between personal and political discontent.  Could you tell me how and why you so often choose to explore the intersection between politics, society, and the suffering self?

I suppose the easy and most honest answer is because these are the things that interest me as a person and a writer of poetry. I follow politics as much as I can; sometimes I need to give myself a break because I so often find it to be a shrill, self-serving volley between two parties who are more interested in self-preservation than public good, who are more interested in volume than reason. I wish this weren’t the case, of course, but it seems like it’s so often about myopic thinking and policy-making. And since I devote some of my little free time and brainpower to witnessing and learning about such an infuriatingly futile enterprise, I can’t help but address it in poems, I think.

And because national and international politics are so far out of my own puny sphere of influence, writing about it is just the one way I can address the thing and so in some small way ameliorate my anxiety and aggravation. Besides, I can’t not pay attention to politics and current events; I feel that being informed is part of being a good citizen, even if I can’t really actively do anything with the information except write poems. So, in a weird and kind of wearingly familiar way, being informed makes the self suffer, kind of like the poor protagonist of Don DeLillo’s White Noise.

More generally, I also think that good poetry, vital poetry address the world in which it actually exists, its own time and place. I like poems about fields and mountains and making fires at dawn, but I don’t really do any of that stuff outside of camping once in a while. Everything goes through the blender of the imagination, of course, and I invent and confabulate and contort, but I’m not going to write about things that I don’t really do or feel strongly about. I’m not going to put primrose in any of my poems any time soon, you know? How can you not write about the stuff that’s right in front of you, stuff that you love, stuff that’s driving you bonkers?

GL: You are the keeper of a blog: Brad Liening’s Daily Poem Factory-Machine (link here), which, in addition to posting personal and artistic ephemera, serves up a heap of terrific poems in relatively short intervals—sometimes you’ll post as many as four poems in a week!  Writing in this format aligns you with other iconic daily-poem projects: W.C. Williams’ Kora in Hell, Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, Robert Bly’s Morning Poems, and David Lehman’s The Daily Mirror.  Although these writers produce radically different work in their respective daily books, they seem to have one thing in common: their daily poems frequently incorporate disparate, spontaneous, and even ad hoc material, while exploring the mechanics of poetic inspiration.  So, how has this daily project affected your take on the creative process?  Have you become a more spontaneous Brad Liening, or a faster more sophisticated version of your old self?  Have you changed your take on poem making (that is, the not-so-daily poems) in the wake of this project?

Oh, man! When I first started the blog, the idea was that I was going to write one poem every single day, no matter what, spending typically no more than fifteen minutes on any given poem. And for better or for worse, I’d post whatever I wrote. And that’s what I did for more than a year.

In truth, it was a way to get myself out of a real rut. At the time I started it, I was laboring really intensively over poems, which was totally taking all the fun and joy of discovery out of writing. The kicker, of course, was that it was not necessarily making the poems any better, either. I was like, why am I even doing this anymore? Why write at all? It really sucked. So the blog was me trying to get the stick out of my ass and have fun again. And it worked. It really did. I wrote some pretty good poems and I wrote way, way more mediocre ones, and certainly some pretty bad ones. But by making it a part of my daily life I was able to loosen up and just move poetry closer to the center of my life without it being a big deal. I write tons of awful poems. Who cares? I’ll try again tomorrow! Eventually I ran out of the steam required for everyday posting; it’s not something I was interested in doing forever.

So, to answer the question more directly, I think that it forced me to become more resourceful with regards to subject matter. I became more inclusive – disparate, spontaneous, and ad hoc material is absolutely spot-on right, which turned out to be a huge blessing. I couldn’t write the same old poems about the same old things anymore using the same old images. And of course some days you’re just not feeling it, and then what do you do? You still have to write a poem. So you write a poem about cheese and bananas. Done. It also forced me to be more varied and inventive formally, to think about the different ways I could use language, tone, syntax, lineation, all that stuff. And yeah, it has made me a faster (and hopefully a better and more sophisticated) writer. In addition, I rarely go back and revise poems until there’s nothing left but dust, so that’s a plus. I think that probably means I trust myself more now. I’m more willing to make a fool out of myself. These are the lasting effects, for which I’m very grateful.

GL:  I recently had the opportunity to read your wonderfully hypnotic and absurdist chapbook titled Are You There God? It’s Me, Whitney Houston, and I’ll never think about  either you or Whitney Houston the same way.  In this CB WH is the dreamy interlocutor/stalker of “Brad,” who first encounters his disturbing but seductive muse during a unannounced phone call while he’s enjoying a glass of iced tea.  After some eerie salutations, Whitney continues to call and frequently asks Brad to contemplate things like the generative properties of death and silence.  In addition to her philosophical musings, she also wonders about her own beguiling and God-like abilities to influence her listeners.  Clearly Whitney Houston must have been an attractive figure for this kind of project because she doesn’t seem to belong in poetry, although her lyrics, persona and personal setbacks make her, in effect, an ideal candidate for exploring the very biggest themes in art and writing: obsession, love, tragedy, loneliness, being misunderstood, “want[ing] to dance with somebody,” etc.  Could you tell me about how and why WH seemed like a good idea as the subject of a chapbook?  I’m personally guessing that she came to you in a dream.  Why was it important that you choose a celebrity as your creepy muse?  And what was it like to work with monodramatical elements, whereby aspects of “your” mind are made manifest in the figure of Whitney Houston?

I think you answered that question yourself! I enjoyed writing about her precisely for the reasons that you articulate so well above. While she might initially be a surprising subject, she’s really perfectly enables us to think about these great themes. Even her very name is perfect; it’s so quintessentially American. All we have to do is think a little harder and longer about her. She’s most definitely a real artist; she’s a flat-out amazing singer. How many people in the world can do what she does? But she’s also accrued the level of fame and stardom that can be so toxic to artistry, that makes it hard to recognize her talent, much less see her as a real person. Which she is, of course, and as such is deserving of dignity and a certain amount of respect, even if she seems to have forfeited some of those things herself through some very bad choices (cf., reality TV, disastrous public appearances, and the like).

This relates to your first question, too. A lot of the poems I’ve been writing (like “Wolf Blitzer” and the Whitney Houston chapbook) deal with fame and celebrity in some way. Stardom has grown into an industry in and of itself, which certainly can’t be good for a whole passel of reasons. For one, as stated above, it devalues real artistry and ability. It also pushes some loathsome people into the public eye. More importantly, there’s this idea my fiancée told me about, relative poverty. It essentially posits that when excess and opulence is shoved in your face all of the time, it makes us discontent and unhappy with what we have, and makes us feel that we need and deserve things that we truly don’t. It also has the unfortunate side effect of us feeling like what we do have isn’t of value. My Toyota isn’t good enough because my neighbor got a Lexus (the she probably can’t afford anyway), and I totally forget about all those people that don’t even have cars. Or food. Or a safe place to sleep at night. And with celebrities so often in the news, in our consciousness, what happens? Do we subconsciously gauge our own wealth (in all the various meanings of that word) against what we see and read and hear about? Are we no longer just keeping up with the Joneses but now also the wealthy and/or famous people on reality TV and magazines that are at every single gas station counter and grocery store checkout lane and airport kiosk? I don’t really know. In the end, though, it’s also just a subject I’m interested in. I truly enjoyed learning about Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown.

Learning about Whitney and Bobby (and also Martin Esslin, the scholar and academic who coined the term “theater of the absurd” and wrote extensively about that subject with regard to Beckett, Genet, Sartre, et. al, who makes an appearance in Whitney Houston) also helped me write those monodramatical elements. It gave me things to think about and things to write; sometimes it even introduced the topic of conversation within the poems. Ventriloquism, I guess? Ultimately, it was a mixture of attempting to address real artistic concerns and inquiries with information I culled from books and Wikipedia with my own attempts to have some good, non-mean spirited fun.

GL:  Brad Liening keeps busy.  He teaches, runs a small DIY press called Hell, Yes Press, runs, as mentioned above, a blog, and is also an editor for InDigest magazine, which seems to put out a new issue every time I reboot my computer.  How have these other poetic projects, many of them involving interwebs technology, affected your take on contemporary poetics and your own poetry as well?

These interwebs have been absolutely great for poetry! It’s allowed for so many poets to join the conversation; I’ve discovered a lot of people whose writing I really, really enjoy through online journals and publications.

I know some people disagree with me, people who seem to think the online democratization of poetry has done more damage than good, but, jeez, if all I knew about contemporary poetry were what some of the old, stalwart, highbrow print journals published? I’d give up; I’d think that contemporary poetry was moribund. A lot of what these heralded journals print just bores me to tears. It’s so fusty and dull. And the journals themselves are expensive. And poets are often broke. Poetry that’s online addresses all of these issues. It’s occasionally made it more difficult to sift through the work that doesn’t speak to you, or is also fusty and dull, or just plain mediocre, of course, but that’s a pretty small inconvenience when compared to all the great work that’s finding its way out into the world.

In terms of how it’s affected my own efforts, I’m not really sure. It’s an interesting question. Probably someone who’s not me could answer that question better. But I would guess that it’s allowed me to feel better and more confident about writing about those things that really interest me. I don’t have to rely on some boring-ass journal I secretly hate to validate whatever it is I’m doing. I can seek community elsewhere.

GL: Let’s talk influences.  Who are the poets who helped produce the Brad-Liening poem machine of today?  How have those influences changed or evolved since we met in grad school five years ago?

You know, I’m always a little surprised by the writers people see in the poems I write. They’re there, I’m sure, but sometimes it’s hard to tell where and in what capacity when it’s your own work. In graduate school, the writers who held a lot of sway for me: Russell Edson, Henri Michaux, James Tate, Charles Simic, Andre Breton, and James Wright. Dean Young, both then and now. I’d imagine that these people are all still there in my poems, if only in ghosts of temperament or sensibility. Since then, the list has just gotten longer and more inclusive with regards to aesthetics and schools as I continue to learn and get smarter about poetry.

Teaching literature means I develop a new appreciation every semester for Dickinson, Keats, Shakespeare, Yeats, Bishop, Coleridge, etc. They get better, more nuanced, deeper every time you sit down with them! Otherwise, books by Matthea Harvey, Cole Swensen, Kenneth Koch, Mary Ruefle, Dobby Gibson, Matt Hart, Nate Pritts, you, Greg, Troy Jollimore, Zachary Schomburg, John Berryman, Aase Berg, and Jennifer L. Knox. Some of these people I’m even lucky enough to call friends. I also read a lot of prose and watch a lot of movies, which I think is just as important to me. David Foster Wallace is one of the all-time greats, Jonathan Lethem, and books that straddle genres really interest me. So do David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, and Nicolas Cage. I think they all work their way in there somehow.

GL:  So what’s new for Brad Liening these days?  Is there a manuscript in the works?  Are you writing the follow up to your chapbook on Whitney Houston from the POV of Bobby Brown?  What’s the scoop?

Ghosts and Doppelgangers, the full-length manuscript I refer to above that explores fame and celebrity and whatnot (an EP of which is here in this issue), is trying to find a good home right now. That’s exciting and nerve-wracking. There’s also a chapbook coming out sometime this year called We Are Doomed: Dispatches from the City of the Future, as well as another chapbook called Oblivion, More, which will be a .pdf chap here on the M_N. I’m really, incredibly excited about these books and projects. For better or for worse, though, none of them have anything to do with Whitney Houston or Bobby Brown.



It’s good to be in company and accompany—

a line I transplanted and stole from myself.

Today I’m a pinball, but I use the word flamingo,

my one leg gleaming as I stand for something

resonant: beauty in the face as the sun cracks

up.  Truly, I have used the word flamingo

maybe ninety-five hundred times in an attempt

to achieve some kind of devastating balance,

a life upon the rocks and in the awful pink sky.

There’s always the sky, and the pink is always

awful, though somehow not unpleasant

in a too sweet sort of argument—an argument

that waves with declarative exclamation: I will

stand here forever!  I will never disappear!

Those rocks will be my warning and my anchor

on this planet.  My friends rally round on my one foot

hopping, bring their own plastic versions that we stand on

the lawn—triumphant on the lawn, and we’re not

even drowning, because effusion, you can breathe it,

and it never stops glowing.  Flamingo flamingo,

and my name is Matt. This is for the people who I love

and love me back: Melanie, Agnes, Evan Jane and

Brett, Nate and Gina, Russell and Merrill, Dobby and

Dean, Darcie, Eric and Tricia, Mary Anne and Mike,

Nick and Kirsten, Tony and Avril, Ken Kim and Gary,

Alexis and Morgan, Matthew Liz and Patti,

Samuel and John and John and now Clay,

now Paul, now stand up for Kiki, stand up

for Alex, for Michael and Marisha, for Jonathan

and Kate, Sarah and Sara, Mike Vallera Mike

Vallera and Will in Montana, Adam in Wisconsin, O

I’m standing on one leg, Jason California and Patrick,

who I’ve met only twice in my life and Micah

who I’ve never met, but love on the page, and Mary

and Todd, Terri and Steve, all the Blood Brothers

and Weird Sisters and the Daisy at my feet, Row

Row Row with free association to Gregory and

Guillaume, Neal and Margaret, Jasmine Dave and Drew,

Brooke Kelly Tabatha, Rian and Stuart, Addie and Mark,

Cesar and Roberto and the Everyman I forgot, the Every-

Woman, everybody stand up, everybody everybody,

I’m stupid with flamingoes, I’m stupid but lucky,

the awful pink sky and the rocks, notwithstanding.

I’m standing on one foot.  I’m naming names.

I’m call and response.  The list so endless

and amazing, it’s almost tragic.  The distances,

the effusiveness.  Don’t be embarrassed.  I refuse

to be hurt. When you have people you love, it’s enough.



Downriver from the manganese
smelting facility, where the shore grass
is smudged as with blackener
and the kingfisher’s eerie discolorations
are entries on the nettled page of an antiphonary
that testifies to the intrapenetrability
of all things, the columbine and jelofer,
the gradually unrolling leaves in midday sun,
the conical stockpile volumes for ashes,
wet and dry, for cinders, coke, and coal,
for concrete, rubble, earth, and gravel,
for rain on the green undergrowing tangle
and the miscellaneous quadrangle
green with saxifrage and mint—and oddly
there are people there, living off the land,
the egg-like land, which is oval, and wobbling
and speckled blue and brown.

Day In, Day Out

Day in, day out
the fountains spraying
high prisms skyward, day in
day out, the primrose, the coordinated
and patterned municipal
fountains, the sheet of water over
green veined marble, serpentine,
day in black letter, the deuterocanonical
streets, day out of sequence, burning
daylight, hanging fire,
the vegetable prebendary, fantastico
and ushered in with little fanfare
like the beginning of a spelling book,
always letter A for Announce and A priori—
the beginning before the beginning,
predawn, day in, day out
the office towers lighting up for commerce
in the shadow arrondissement.

Ithaca

In the pointed shadow
of the gable, the full
grown watercress, a stream
running along the path
where the May poles
have been erected
as if to commemorate
the indifference of the
planet, its militant
indifference, its gorges,
overgrown with tinfoil
leafage rusted power
trains chokeberry your
whole life overgrown
with the pink froth
produced in the manufacture
of soap flowing down
from the mechanized steeples
of the slumberingly
giant industrial park
its full grown gables
and acronyms harnessing
the power of sleep
and stigmatizing it
for its uselessness.
I went down into its
gorges to watch the
sturdy watercress
the antelope and badger
nuzzling the May poles
and studying numerology
and the other creatures
in their new felt robes
testing the borders
of the wilderness
unsure where it ended
and the city with its
bent gables and May poles
and windows hypnotized
by light began.

The Parable of the Bell

The Parable of the Bell—
was it really a parable?
The ebullient fellowship
of children in their natural
habitat, the endless wood
made golden by the eclogue,
sudden as a bright sash
of incandescence—unnatural

as creeds—the colorless elk
behind the green bay laurel
just as childish and unbelievable
as chimes, just as native
to the sky and what the children
put there. Was it a real bell?
Are there steeples in the oceanic
cliffsides, ringing out as glassily
as seaspray and cracking through
the pods of sleep? So let them
sleep, for now, dreaming
in the parable, of the parable,
waiting for the requiem.

Sculptures Along the Hudson River

A river, and a strange
city behind it. On this side
the big granite blocks
lapped at by the water
like blockheads overtaken
by new thoughts. In the middle
the brilliant water and the gabled
boats. Behind them the sharp spires,
the pinking shears jutting upward,
giant keys and skeleton keys
that standeth tall as fire-branded
flags; the factories and the hospital
with its hidden hospital
catacombs, a nightingale, silent,
the tips of quoits erect,
wingtips, a row of summoners,
man-made waterfalls of triumph.
Here beside the river
some sculptress hath taken up
a driftwood log and set it
in the granite, and strung it
with string and sticks and Styrofoam
projections. What do you know—
I’m sitting under a cherry tree,
reflecting.

Nearly Still Life

Beside an enormous ledger,
five pale-green eggs on a bed of cotton,
a string of glass beads; a chunk
of green obsidian; a Chinese coin;
an unidentifiable skull, small and precious
as an eggshell; a pair of wire spectacles;
a sheet of canvas hanging from a curtain rod;
a breeze smelling of sea salt. A wheel, a sword,
a rusted bell; a tea cup, porcelain,
and in the tea cup a blue and pink
sea anemone, its tentacles asway.

And blood bulbs in the wells

of an eating earth. As in dirt.

Dirty, we grow things here. See,

a daffodil yellow in the morning

light. See its song, bursting the bell.

Tra la la through the stonework. In the rafters.

Our honey could live in bells.

Our voice, our home. We could be

building monuments. We grow things here.

Your children singing to daffodils. My tra la la

in the aether. A way to find each other.

We build things here. The blue morning.

The geese honking on the roof tops.

The blinds I open. Give to the day

our naked bodies. We grow things here.

Like our hearts. To swell for thorns or light.

Our blood giving off light. Our blood also rooting

our hearts in the world.



nice weather outside

but I spent the day

flipping through

my Mercyful Fate record collection

I have about half the catalogue,

and hope to someday have

the other half

plus all the bootlegs

GAME OF DEATH II

Seattle, office building, rain -

someone looks at footage

from an abandoned film

stitching together

what will do & will have to:

this is the last of it

light wasted on shadowless plains,

the evident need to reconstruct

last hours; words also

heard through a metal grating

in the box

office window

UNTITLED LIVE ALBUM

as in the absence of anyone at hand

to frame the whole matter it rests with the volunteers,

let me then take this moment

to pay tribute

to the first twelve-year-old in Finland

to actively worship the devil

sir

I who gazing up

at the swaying canvasses of dreams

observed, overhead, your prayer

salute you



These pieces are from a collection called “let x be (rogue.)” 

I was thinking about how it sometimes hurts to agree upon things they all say.  How one must be careful in opening the door into the day of language, into idle niceties.  When phrases are repeated, reality is formed.  That is why advertising is successful.  But that is also why we must resist joining any chorus of platitudes. What does it really mean when we say we have to work for a living, for instance?  When we think about what we are saying and what we are listening to we are also protecting the body.  We can hurt ourselves by what we say; what we repeat can often wear us down.  When phrases are repeated reality is formed. We should probably not say that someone can die for his country, for instance.  Is “country” a tangible reality, or is it a changeling of concepts?  If “country” isn’t tangible, the equation fails.  What I mean is, I don’t think there can be a variable for death.  Because you don’t actually get back a country for a brother, do you? Or do I say that because I don’t have war in my hair?  Or is do you get back some perverted version of country when you trade life for it. I don’t know.  These kinds of speech acts must be interrogated.  Because it hurts to make decisions based on readily accepted verbiages that are equated with reality. I’d much rather ask language than use it.  Is there really such a thing as the poet, and does the writerly really exist? Those terms hurt the rest of me who cannot be reduced and does not want to identify nor be identified simply in order to calm the collective who love equivalence, who love it when you perform your expected task.   How much of what we say is idle recitation? When we plug in variables in order to recite truth, is that politics? If it is the city’s doing is to make language do math, what does that mean about how we govern?   If what we say is the city, is the body politic, then why is the government a phantom limb? Why is that we can feel it, but we can’t move it?  What dull helplessness repeated is rendering the reality lifeless?  Concepts take on a life of their own when used/steered without applied consciousness.  Take “the market.”   I wonder what shape does its shadow have?  I don’t get it and I need to scrutinize its form or else I am in danger of accepting the presence of an oppressive lexicon that is shaping my reality.  I was thinking when I wrote these writings about how I should remember that I am creating this government every day with words I am listening to, agreeing upon, or saying…this small government of my everyday, and this large one built of figureheads and concepts.  I like it when language demonstrates, when it enacts. It means there’s somebody home.  I’m trying to get back there.

*reversing the spell

Times on hard fall the country.

Dues their everyone must pay

and get ahead yourself kill, these days 

to work for a living you must

sure old age provide for

because compromises make everybody.

*

Expression cannot persist

in a passive body.

Am I afraid? Feel my pulse.

My wits ends are falling out.

Does my vote count?

Belief systems in the belfry

bat the eyes, as flattery:

doing in what I believe.

The market rises,

apparent heir to impotency

as numb this limb

*After Alexander Bain’s Mind & Body: Theories of their Relation

*

Revolution works a routine? Itself, its ends

it needs? The ends kept inside, a question

oh oval other

what emptiness means?

supple volatile, dingy –

am I weather’d? Am I guilty?

Numbers in a calendar, limbs

of nothing’s margin, the quantity halved,

the query thrown? To make a move,

I halve to process to move –

Can I go? Can I get? 

How long of a turn do I get?

What emptiness means is a question.

Am I ferocity? I am resolute?

A question means by its work. Oh,

think it over.

 *

Thrust up every revolutionary

ever made. 

No body can rise up and take a place

not already carved out good

with the thought of that body:

the ends in the grain.

Raise a platform made of good wood.

Would the kindling –

and piles of bindings and page ashe

to sift and to carry.

*

The judge thinks to govern sympathy

even brutes feel consideration

touched or turned by human hands

heads of wheat evenly spaced

ellipsis in the field

the jury lured by sequence

*

compromises

pile up

in history

like shavings

from an original figure

now indiscernible

if not forgotten

*spin

The evening is placed

in twinkling format.  

Listeners flank the plinth

inside the script.

The speechwriter’s planchette

columns up the papers. 

A scribe spikes the microphone

with a punch.

The figurehead takes the podium -

applause is written in… drop

shadows and coloring in… font

figures a popular villain :

the news is in

the frame.

*war

As if everything we owned was ours

we spread a blanket over the telling.

No one picnicked with grace,

but the picnickers reflected grace

to one another in agreement.

The feast was well-done, we said.

* 

remember in that underwater 3d flick

that eye-light at sea bottom

that dim kingdom, those sweaty eels

a dentaled…wrongness in skin

 teeth and eye the single light

creature the meaning

a depth subtracted from night

(not a word of this

will make it to the surface

from here)

(The certainty/ ends

are kept down here)

does this explain the calm

thirty minutes down

press out the sound

finned artifacts

their feat of bodies

make, their kind of song:

I am so big,

I can’t ever

Die