Imagined Hike with Companion

(for S.K.)

Looking at you

as into a tree

full of running water,

that steady,

that moving,

an attempt at description

of cognitive complexity

and integrity,

my friend

you exhibit fidelity,

similitude of redundancy,

my familiar

coupled with surprise

or invention,

the information

your embeddedness enacts

with this world

of flowing waters

and sturdy trees.

N Filbert 2012

 

“HENRY” is a new bi-yearly magazine in Le Zaporogue’s free press collection.

It is a magazine about literature, arts, music, philosophy and those who make it by those who make it, in other words, writers, artists, musicians and philosophers.

It will be a heartfelt magazine about passion and creation, far from the traditional academic literary mags.

It’s all about first-hand experience, thoughts and feelings.

Of course, loving amateurs are welcome, as “HENRY” hates snobbery and small mindedness.

It is a place of freedom and quality, where there is no sterile categorizations, nor themes – all genres are welcome, all  periods, all fields.

The editors are Seb Doubinsky and Lisa Thatcher, both enlightened amateurs in a variety of fields.

The magazine is named after Henry Miller, a writer we both have a great passion for.

Call for Submissions

The first publication of Henry will come out in January 2013.

Thanks to the Laughing Squid and Justin Page (September 10, 2012), I bring you street art by Banksy… ANIMATED!

At a time when publishers are concerned about ebook pricing, many believing that going below a certain dollar amount devalues both the book and the author (a theory I am sympathetic to), an intriguing project from a major publisher is taking place. Forty Stories, a labor of love spearheaded by Cal Morgan, publisher and editorial director at HarperCollins, is available today as a free ebook through all major retailers.

In January of 2009, Morgan started an online community for short story writers called Fifty-Two Stories. As the name suggests, each week a new story would be posted for free on the website. For all you trivia junkies, Simon Van Booy’s “The Missing Statues” was first. From 2009 until the first half of 2011 the output was consistent. Then, in August of last year, something happened and only one story was posted that month. Someone would have…

for Holly Suzanne to years of strange knowing

The Estrangement – Our Union

 

the moments

so suddenly

and you become such stranger

to me

(I have loved you a very long time)

 

stark absence

of what’s familiar

remaining so

and unknown

(I keep reaching you for)

 

this the home we live in

this our marriage bed

these the children we have raised

these our blending heads

(I have yet to know an after)

 

there exist entire stanzas

of this our musical life

in which an harmony obtains

within these vast cadenzas

(in which I’m caught and mesmerized)

 

 

me watching you watching

me watching you

in your soloing flight

estranged and in-different-

(-ly than I this union)

 

and I wonder

how might I know you ever,

knowing you so well, and being known

bi-you’d, bi-me’d, both by each other

(this joining of mouths, bodies…

II.

 

“Each syllable an instance

of ourselves bodied forth in the

dimness…

—

…the voice which occurs all the time

while everything else is happening”

-Ron Loewinsohn-

Here I am drawing on Zukofsky

on Wittgenstein, Blanchot

all the others too

because language

is that pre-fab tool

that we fabricate

for ourselves

as it manufactures us

.

            Help outside

no help

coming through, as it does

inside, after all,

helping to shape

and discover,

lending forms

and definition

to experiences

otherwise improbable

ineffable

unknown

.

            remaining still

outside words’ purview

but almost communicative

almost expressed

anyway, all ways

that come down to

into, as possibles.

.

            Rearrange.

.

            Bakhtin, semiotic Ecos,

Sebeok, Halliday, Firth and Peirce

not forgetting Uexkull

nor leaving him aside

in his thousands of worlds

circling our own

so Susan Howe and Lyn

Hejinian, Arakawa and Gins

add…

The following is the first section of an extensive poem-making that I’ve been working at for some time now.  I will release some of its sections over the following weeks.  I would love commentary, critique, this pseudo-confessional area is not one that I feel confident in, and is difficult work for me.  An attempt to be open to tunneled and tunneling desires and dreams, presuppositions and perspectives that I’ve formed and have been formed in me…in shaping this particular way of being in/toward/with the world.  Thank you for caring enough to read, and in advance to the generosity that would involve your commenting/responses.

The Engineer of Himself: A Poem

“Thinking is willing you are wild

to the weave not to material itself”

Susan Howe

“a new music of verse stretching out into the future…”

William Carlos Williams on Louis Zukofsky

 

I.

I have tried to tell this story time…