Jerome Berglund's Review of g emil reutter's DISTANCE TO INFINITY from Alien Buddha Press

 

So far, yet we can taste it...

g emil reutter plots the 'Distance to Infinity'

 

g emil reutter's stunning new collection from Alien Buddha Press, Distance to Infinity is a little red chapbook which will stir the imaginaion and start provoking thought and encouraging ameliorative change before you even open it. For the very subtitle on its cover visible on a table or shelf confronts the reader, citizen and scholar with a bold revelation: "Poets are the voice of the people in times of struggle, times of war, times of oppression", and isn't that the truth! Yet while a shill can be cheaply purchased, credible threats intercepted and turned into controlled opposition who confine their prescriptions to that narrow spectrum of acceptable opinion Chomsky contends debate in a lively manner is permitted exclusively within and relegated to not unlike a 'free speech zone', even so it is rare to locate in any medium or exhibition of creative expression which will be embraced or canonized by the masses or posterity content which does not endorse the causes of fellowship, justice, empathy and understanding, and exceptions to that rule, fluff which does not (looking at you CIA stage-managed abstract expressionism movement, Federal Writer's Project) further integral social and institutional correction should always be scrutinized as highly dubious and suspect.

There are two conflicting schools and viewpoints when it comes to the place of politics in poetry, and it's no great stretch or exaggeration to condemn one (in his principal poem g notes apropos 'the traitors are amongst us') as criminal collaboration, expressly supporting all manner of monstrosity and injustice encoded into our highly problematic status quo and the innumerable errors across history into our tremendously problematic and entrenched present it implicitly supports and condones. For, as national poet laureate Amanda Gorman reminds us, 'all art is political', and Kwame Dawes importantly explains, 'When a poet writes about trees, he is being political [too] both by what he chooses to write about and what he chooses not to write about'. Grace Paley further suggests quite plausibly that 'if a writer says 'this is not political,' it's probably the most political thing that they could be doing.'

Orwell additionally clarified that 'all art is propaganda', and I don't think we should take that necessarily as a criticism (unless it's Triumph of the Will), or in the pejorative sense. For to disrupt and agitate, education, organizing, and encouragement of grassroots, sweeping mobilization is first in order, and literature or its public, economical equivalents in public artworks, placards, trifold brochure (sagaciously Voltaire whispers an aside sotto voce: 'Twenty-volume folios will never make a revolution. It's the little pocket pamphlets that are to be feared'), whatever their available equivalents were they played crucial roles in every important social movement of reform and revolt, improvement and abolition throughout history from the dawn of recorded and remembered time.

Just as Pablo Picasso's Guernica tapped into a wellspring of public feelings and the zeitgeist of sentiments of shock and frustration with the horrors of fascism and imperial war, poets from Homer to Pablo Neruda have provided vivid lenses through which the laymen may understand and engage with the distinctive challenges of their day, and there find the seeds of a coarse charted for that long journey homeward towards a better, less fraught and combative future. And while the upper classes may offer more expensive tutelage, laurels and supposed formal accreditation (in the schools of bourgeois thought, philosophy, and praxis) one can always locate more honest, informed, insightful perspectives articulating the everyman and woman's difficulties and yearnings of their day from among their peers in the working classes.

Hence why it is always such a treasured treat and fortunate opportunity when someone from a less privileged background, representing the proletariat and public at large's interests at heart, emerges with great effort improbably to pass along their hard earned wisdom and knowledge. g emil reutter is just such a valuable font of credible subversive mana from below, unearthing troves of treasured constructive critique, and it is fortunate we have the opportunity to reflect upon his revelations thoughtfully as the long and arduous road to 'an endless end' is measured, navigated and by we poor wayfarers cautiously traversed.

I find it so interesting too how some of the keenest, most perceptive voices in the causes of peace and reform, compassion and institutional reimagining come from unexpected backgrounds which afford them unique glimpses into the evils which plague a society from the top trickling down, and the deeply troubling systemic flaws which are hindering their immediate, realistic and possible remedy. Tuskegee Airman put faces, dignity to the civil rights movement, just as Buffalo Soldiers and Navajo code talkers ennobled and vindicated the essential place of people of all colors and creeds within the patchwork of diverse and intersectional america. In the Vietnam war it was returning veterans who truly ratified and proved irrefutable the cries for disarmament, provided chilling testament and firsthand corroboration for the horrors of colonial oppression, and their practice of fragging effectually put an embarrassing end to the atrocity of involuntary conscription. More recently those who served in the middle eastern theater upon returning to ignominious treatment proved integral towards challenging assumptions and the narrative regarding issues of homelessness, addiction, mental health, (our 'flattened cousins' strewn in the gutter which g emil laments in his piece Sweep) and continue to be resounding figures looming large and contributing invaluably to the missions for peace, understanding, and harmony across borders of land and language, and on our own soil no less powerfully.

It's intriguing and highly productive to be gifted a glimpse into the minds and lives of those who spent careers serving and protecting the public as g emil did in his younger years, as that can truly challenge and cut through divisive rhetoric and promote the sort of rainbow coalition and bipartisan solidarity we desperately need as a species and civilization. Some of the best things I've read it recent years curiously originated from colleagues who were employed in law enforcement (Leon Tefft and Tim Roberts have phenomenal recent collections on the subject if you enjoy a haiku) and classical and contemporary poetry and literature both contain no shortage of compassionate progressive personages (from Byron to Archilochos, Camus to Hemingway to Edward Abbey) who draw from wealths of informative adventures to reach their weighty and meaningful conclusions. I have family who worked in uniform and/or served, and in reality you will find no group more frustrated with issues of corruption, desirous of completely reinventing (equitably in a form where they are viewed positively and have a friendly relationship, camaraderie with the public and can wear uniforms with pride, aren't perceived as representing private property alone, cannot be accused of overtly continuing traditions which sprung from practices of slave catching or lining pockets via asset forfeiture, filling informal plantations criminalizing and leasing to bidders marginalized populations) the entire concept, than they in our embattled day and age. Entering the era of increasing demands for divestment and abolition (it's heartening to see, in contrast, with wealthy european republics the state withering as it should, with less inequality and thus associated deviances not resulting prisons being closed and resources, personnel being redirected from chasing robbers to more fulfilling and pleasant activities), there is no demographic who we could better benefit from paying close attention to and including in the conversation (incidentally I highly recommend investigating "the People vs. Billie Holiday" and "Rustin") than they, and I can't recommend enough we take a page out of Fred Hampton's handbook and reject the biased mainstream media and politicians' push to both ostensible ideologic sides and realize we are all brothers and sisters and countrymen and neighbors, and the handful of plutocratic ne'er-do-well keeping us down are not we plebs or those struggling to keep civilization together with duct tape, and if like-minded activists and innovators could win a compassionate accord with the police and military nonviolent amicable inroads towards genuine revolutionary changes and reining in of nefarious abusers might become a legitimate possibility.

Particularly in our unprecedented nadir of the modern era, when free speech and dissent are labeled criminal formally, the news is delivered by thinly veiled state instigators and actors expressly to misinform and befuddle, pit against one another ('hate spew[ing] its volcanic power' as Reutter memorably describes it, which 'somebody is making money' from invariably) the conscientious, caring citizen, it is from the independent observer and advocate, the underground poet and gonzo provocateur or merry prankster whether via podcast (have you heard Super Awkward Funtime?) or self published online journal, you'll find no truth in commercially vetted copy (if you can't be bought and try to Gawker like heroic Hamilton Nolan they will shut you down, again and again and again, and bless the whack-a-moles of insurgency!), on the big screen scripts which were approved by billionaire investors (should you produce a program like Underground they will torpedo your entire network) and passed state and military censors' redacting pens. But from the mouths of plebs, and the pages direct printed via Kindle, a few sparse beacons of hope, sparks of possibility may be discerned.

"There comes a time when silence is not acceptable..." Reutter begins his compact treatise from the premise of. Let us salute him and tip our hats to the brave souls not cowed, subdued or muzzled by increasing pressures to desist and comply. You are the last line of defense against those innumerable wolves ('tricksters' and 'fraudsters' as the author describes them, who are no less prevalently to be found clothed in wool) at our gate, this generation and everyone are indebted to your commitments and sacrifices throughout history into the unfathomable future.

'Restoration will come' g ambitiously projects. Let us hope it does not dally!

Jerome Berglund has published book reviews in Fevers of the Mind, Fireflies Light, Frogpond, Haiku Canada, Setu Bilingual Journal, Valley Voices, also frequently exhibits poetry, short stories, plays, and fine art photography in print magazines, online journals, and anthologies.

A writer of poems and stories and on occasion literary criticism, g emil reutter was born in Bristol, Pa., raised in Levittown, Pa. and has lived most of his life in of Philadelphia, Pa. A highly decorated member of the Railroad Police, he retired from a 26 year career in the patrol, anti-crime and criminal investigation division. Prior he worked as a steelworker, tea blender and a number of other jobs. A graduate of Neshaminy High School, he graduated from the New England Institute of Law Enforcement Management, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. He attended Temple University and Penn State University among others. His poetry and fiction have been widely published in the small and electronic press as well as numerous newspapers and magazines. Twenty-one of his collections have been published. He published The Fox Chase Review (2008 – 2015). He is currently a contributing editor at North of Oxford .

GAS Featured Poet: Andrew Wilson

 

Andrew Wilson still works part-time as a factory manager in Bradford, West Yorkshire and when not working, writes for pleasure. He has been a signwriter, painter, architectural draughtsman as well as a restaurateur and other food management roles. Working in many roles is a source of inspiration and as an early adopter of reinvention every few years, his philosophy is use it or lose it…

Andrew is indebted to his AWA Writing Group and it’s facilitator – Deborah Bayer for their nurture and encouragement…

A Warning To the Witless

Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us

Supporters held in thrall, dismayed as truth hits home
Democracy is murdered as those fools stand by – witless
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss

We poets must respond and fight with sharp-edged poems
Not just to mourn our lost love, blazon our distress
But as a call to arms for all to rise and seek redress
Our love, equality’s blood now spills and foams
Stabbed by fantasists and dictators with loud fuss
We mourn the loss of freedom taken from us…

 

Blood from a Stone

Hani Mahmoud is starving
his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza
on Al Jazeerah throughout the conflict 
but now, shrinking like a prune
his face tells its own story

Today he covers the shortage of blood
blood is life and however much iron
Gazans fortified their souls with
there is not enough iron in their blood
for it to be usable and besides
they are too weak to be able
to give blood without fainting

Israel calls a special meeting
of the UN Security Council
to complain about the starvation 
- the starvation of hostages
and calls it an act of propaganda!
No doubt there was a time
when hostages were looked after
as the bargaining chips they are
but now there is not enough food
even for the captors…
whatever sympathy he may feel for
the family member who voices the complaint
and pleads for the return of his relative,
the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes
that Israel is starving a whole people

In other news today
it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima
by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it
as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies

So much for the "War to end all wars"
and we are come to live in the moral wasteland...

GAS Featured Poet: Justin Hollis

 

Justin Hollis has an MFA from Hofstra University and currently teaches language and literature at Palm Beach State College.  His work has appeared previously in the Querencia Press Quarterly Anthology, Action, Spectacle, and The Chiron Review.  

These poems are from a manuscript entitled “Dream Economy: Prose Poems,” a collection of sixty surrealistic fables in the tradition of Russell Edson, Charles Simic, and Carsten Rene Nielsen.

There’s a miniature sabretooth tiger thawing from an ice cube on the counter and a wheelchair with a warm drink.  There’s a rat gnawing at the wheelchair tire, its air-bloat belly.  Inside the ice the tiger flexes a muscle; the rat floats up towards the ceiling.  There’s something prehistoric about the apartment, the guests swaggering simian-like, swigging their beer bottles then swinging them like caveman clubs at the rat’s primeval piñata: and there’s a woman outside the window looking in, thinking just this.  Though this could just be the woman, who wasn’t invited to the party in the first place, sulking in her bitterness.  Because, honestly, aren’t you too even a little curious?  The drink left on the wheelchair, now on the verge of tipping.  The sabretooth tiger, it’s story….

 

 

My son is telling me about something that happened on the class trip or at the Little League game or about Tuesday’s math test that he completely forgot to study for and so would I please just sign above the D before mom finds out.  I’m tuned out, drowning my thoughts in a cool bowl of Frosted Flakes.  Because “They’re Great,” says the Tiger.  My psychiatrist says it’s perfectly normal for a man of my age and middling social standing to indulge in occasional delusions of fancy.  But my delusions take the shape of a blue goldfish swimming among the soggy flakes.   “And then,” my son says, “right there in front of the entire class, Miss Gumble slipped…”.  I’m slipping now, deeper into the blue goldfish, happy to be a blue goldfish, happily swimming among the sparkling clusters of malted corn.  Tiny islands on which one could pull up a lounge chair and bask in the gauzy blue light that lights all my best memories.  Goldfish, you know, only have a memory span of about 9 seconds.  So I guess I have only 8, 7, 6… to explain to my son about his father, how at just around his age he learned to grow fins and breathe underwater, swim in the looming presence of a cartoon Tiger who for all I know is about to pounce off the front of the box and chase him out the kitchen, and me happy, forgetting.    

 

GAS Featured Poet: Vernon Frazer

 

Vernon Frazer's thirty-plus books of poetry include Mantic Pandemic, Memo from Alamut, IMPROVISATIONS,  Nemo under the League and SIGHTING. He is a member of the C22 Experimental Writing Collective. His fiction includes three novels and a short story collection. His jazz poetry appeared on three recordings, then extended into multimedia presentations viewable on YouTube. Frazer lives in Central Connecticut. He is widowed.

Payback in Training

fury starter 

vibrato slim crawl cadet 

    derision outpost

trouble pastiche

sharpened calico rudeness

emerging

              easily acquired

     monetary reality

     a discursive grogginess

     forking green

looming exchanges

before the argument

shaded 

            a gray run

one bored pose unfolding 

     the stress footage

     sweat of gratuitous exchanges

     breaking rhetoric vesicles

           provoked would be

           sizzle to invoke disposal

           where brackets hide

                    truthful excess learning

                           its mat commando skill

On Cue

coming from the corner

carom bulge collision spray

a rolling spread toward 

shoes and motor shores

clenched like an island rotary

cuffed against the cushion 

bounced balls into pocket

pool back turned to get 

its quiet corner action

rafting back a new score

numbered oddly to even

foreign fats and slims 

back to brag and green

against all angles boast

as competition collects

numbered table covers

sliced to carry where home

returns to its own pocket

Impact Statement Missing

animus hurled a hammer

at a vagary charge in action 

clipping a contact deflector

in trademark disposal

vacant once rummaging 

friction cathodes vacate

pineal findings extend

with plumage stashed dark

courage past the attention

the coastal menace forgot 

crises the witnesses displaced

near the lizard photoplay

diners howl dull oratorios

while the glittering dinner

honors a turnpike caddy

The Last Tattoo by Su Zi

 

The Last Tattoo

It might be that some of us have scars—surgical or experiential—as souvenirs of where we have been. Certainly, as children, some of us might have been privy to those intimate histories of where the scar was born, how it came into existence, how we grow around it if we are lucky enough to become old trees.

It also might be that some of us have tattoos—one or many, faded or still fresh—and these too ride shotgun to every moment ever after. For those you have considered, but yet to have encountered the tattoo experience: it is intimate. For those with a few tattoos, we know of what sense of resonance we must have with the totem to choose it.

And also, it might be that there are a few tattoo collectors—people who have many tattoos. Sometimes we might see a sleeve—an entire arm—in a swirl of markings, some intricate, some boldly graphic, a personal totem of the body.

I have many tattoos. Some of them I can only see with multiple mirrors, or in photographs. There are some in places few people will see ever, although there are photographs. As a tattooed person, you will be photographed—first by the artist who takes a picture for their portfolio, which is only of your fresh tattoo prior to bandaging. It might be that you attend events specifically for tattooing, and these have a history unto themselves, as all ritual events do. At one point, there was a convention of women tattoo artists only: Marked for Life. At such conventions, there are photographers. Some of the photographers exhibit through galleries and publication. I am told that I, as a tattooed person—in addition to specific tattoos—have appeared, perpetual apparition, me—in Italy, a place I shall never see.

Eventually, it might be that some of us grow into health issues. It might be that a surgeon scars a tattoo, or that life scars a tattoo. When we wear a tattoo for years and years, it is no longer a totem on our skin, it is our skin. While archeologists have found tattooed bones, our eventual future, we are still in our skins.

But, it might be that the rigors of that intimate ritual are eventually beyond us—perhaps there is only skin on bone now.

No more new tattoos.

And so, what of what is now the last one—

For me, it is a shared tattoo with someone no longer in my life

For me, it is a mark made in grief for a life lost

It is a standard flash broken heart that can only be seen if I am warm enough to wear short sleeves. We were walk-ins right before closing, in pre-plague times when every shop had to smell of green soap. The tattoo is on my forearm, right between the elbow and the crook with visible blue veins. I cannot remember the name of the artist. The shop is now closed.

But the tattoo rides with me in everything I do—because the grief it totemized rides with me in everything I do. People might see it riding my arm between Kimo’s forearm rose and the upper sleeve done long ago by Patty Kelley; there’s rich history in all the arts, and this includes tattoos and their artists. 

And while there are many opportunities for remembrance in our ordinary days, some ritual holidays might echo deeper for our own personal ghosts. We all honor our own histories in our own ways; for some of us, we wear them as well.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.

GAS Featured Poet: Alan Britt

Alan Britt poems have appeared in Agni Review, American Poetry Review, The Bitter Oleander, Cottonwood, Kansas Quarterly, Midwest Review, Minnesota Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, Osiris, andStand (UK). His latest books are Garden of Earthly Delights and The Tavern of Lost Souls, from UnCollected Press and Červená Barva Press respectively. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

 

US & THEM

 

Thank god for mulligans;

some would say, heaven sent.

 

But the memes floating around

like spaceships

& sometimes like a heavenly ray

of dawn with quantum flecks

of our lives broadcast all

over the place—one could enter

these timeless atoms being transported

to another dimension

including the one where some of us

have a bad reputation.

 

Anyway, thought you might want

to hear that before you

make your next move.

THE STAIN

 

We are nothing more than a gray stain on a worn sidewalk.

 

Stain that began dark as thunder but over the years became Rorschach from a tropical storm.

 

The sidewalk also contains pink gum turned into tar, plus political jesters ground into dust.

 

If I had a ladle, I’d lift the shadows from that sidewalk like they were crawdads escaping 

a cast iron Nola pot.

 

But I wasn’t born with a ladle, & I wouldn’t boil another lifeform while it was still alive 

as long as I’m a member, such as that is, of the human race on this blue gyroscope called 

by its terrestrial name.

 

Oh yes, the stain. 

The Making of Red Mare 30 by Su Zi

 

Red Mare 30

I am making another Red Mare: This one will be number 30.

I have made Red Mare through the years—first just June, now both of the Solstice.

Making is a meditation; there is a process, and each part of the process is a meditation.

First, there’s the rude saw of investment—the manuscript has a hue, and choosing paper was once a meditation in the tenderness of touch: what will hold the ink, what will embrace the text. 

Also, the secret petticoat of the flyleaf—over the years, it had been mulberry inclusion, Tibetan handmade with seashells, bamboo paper and this edition is a Japanese Onuro Lace.

And always are the hours of sewing, a one knot stitch for the binding that a teacher said once was from Japan, too, as are the sheets folded raw edge to the seam—this edition, the text too has texture.

But of all the aspects of Red Mare, the first meditation is the block.

To blockprint, the image must be reversed, letters and numbers are backwards, and the block must be carved to reveal itself.   There are technical tricks, but habit has me drawing directly onto the block—seeing the reversals under my pen. For this edition, and for the first time, i took notes.

They are incomplete, because this edition is still under construction. There are thirteen sections: a log of this project...

1

it’s seeing in reverse

the direction of flow

the shadows change—the light changes color in autumn

spectrum. Spectral

it is I

(hybrid2)

the walking bones

speaking with my hands

2

carving each negative away

the blade

this knife, the direction, how much will be seen

and always stopping         making water 

3

(20 hours after medical treatment, unsmiling cheshire)

to see what will be read in reverse

to just look

sometimes too ill to pick up the knife

(chime)

And there’s a sudden memory of Red Mare at book fairs—she was out, seen; an edition is a crop, a litter of poetry. She was seen in cities, in Tampa, in New Orleans. Each edition a micro collection of ready to read fingers to fiber.

4

the lines of the light

ever steady in motion

steady

the knife

against the light

(hybrid3)

a look

a cut

a line

ever in reverse

reverse reveal

5

stillness

hands shaking

6

the small islands

the current of the cut

the flow of the knife.

7

sharpen the knives

spill water on stone

eyes blur

hands shake

(hybrid4)

8

cut the line backwards

and still see the flow

9

the paper

can catch fight, an organza in the hue of first light

10

the plate rests

awaits testing

the paper waits

her eventual runway

i await with myself

in hunger

11

suddenly pink

print the plate

press azul oscuro

and shifting colors

ever because

(hybrid5)

12

as the prints dry

air and paper

touch the night

13

folding

what it is to

this touching.

Note Below: Next come the cotton

         Next comes the needle

           Planned release is always to honor the Solstice.

Red Mare Origin Story

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.