GAS Featured Poet: Jim Murdoch

Jim Murdoch grew up in the heart of Burns Country in Scotland. Poetry, for him, was about irrelevance—daffodils, vagabonds and babbling brooks—until one day in 1973 he read Larkin's 'Mr Bleaney' and felt as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. How could something so... so seemingly unpoetic be poetry? He aimed to find out. 

Now Then 

We say things aren't as bad as 

we remember but mostly it's 

the other way round because 

no one recalls hurt or pain with 

any degree of accuracy and why 

would they want to? 

We're fighting a losing battle 

on two fronts from an 

untenable present. 

Wondering what we'll 

misremember tomorrow is the 

least of our problems. 

Expectation is the Mother of Disappointment 

"A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words." - William Carlos Williams

Williams was right, half-right at least, 

although a poem is less of a machine 

and more of a tool: 

closer to a backscratcher 

than a two-stroke engine. 

True, there are simpler machines— 

pulleys and screws, 

wedges, wheels and axles— 

but no one thinks of them. 

We expect too much from our poets. 

Poems, most poems, are a 

means to scratch an itch 

and little more 

and it's never even the reader's itch.

GAS Featured Poet/Artist: Vernon Frazer

 Vernon Frazer has written more than thirty books of poetry, three novels and a short story collection. His poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Aught, Big Bridge, First Intensity, GAS, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Moria, Miami SunPost, Muse Apprentice Guild, Sidereality, Xstream and many other literary magazines. He introduced IMPROVISATIONS at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in Manhattan.  

 Working in multi-media, Frazer has performed his poetry with the late saxophonist Thomas Chapin, the Vernon Frazer Poetry Band and as a solo poet-bassist. His jazz poetry recordings and multimedia work are available on Youtube.

 

Frazer's notes about his work:

I consider poems such as “One Experienced Consequence” a fusion of textual and visual poetry. The textual and and graphic elements are equally important. The work is abstract. The reader can assemble the textual and visual elements in multiple combinations and make multiple interpretations. Each completed poem carrries a thread of interpretation—to my mind—but the reader can find other Interpretations that suggest a “meaning” inherent in the poem’s “being.”

As long as I’ve written these pieces, poets have debated whether I’m a visual poet. About ten years ago, I published T(exto)-V(isual Poetry, a phrase I use without feeling fully comfortable. I’ve heard “verbovisual”used in relation to other poets, but it could apply to my work as well. I don’t seek to define the work I do; I seek to do it. If I’ve actually created a new subgenre, I’d feel good about making the contribution.

Its origins, like my life, aren’t simple. At 15, Charles Olson was the first poet to influence my style. Then, my poetry frequently used the page as a “field” before I knew Olson in greater depth. When I studied bass with Bertram Turetkzy in the mid-1960s, he introduced me to the experimental arts of the era; through Turetzky I learned John Cage was an innovative writer as well as composer. When some UConn students were assembling a college literary magazine that seemed to break every rule the English deparment could propose, I had a flash “sixties” vision that my writing would “look the way it does” today. But it didn’t start to happen until the late 1990s.

In 1998, I reached a creative crisis. To remain fresh, I had to use language differently. Henry Miller repeated his “rosy crucifixon” story a number of times in his long lfie. Retelling my life didn’t challenge me. Once was enough. Then, a confluence of sorts immersed me in language and visual poetry while the computer’s resources widely expanded my notion of Olson’s “field” of composition. After Free Fall, a 30-page improvisation of textual and visual fusion, IMPROVISATIONS opened what became a floodgate. Its progression grew increasingly visual. After I published it in 2005, several book-length poems I wrote led me into desktop publishing, which offered more ways to combine text and image on the page. 

The poems in Memo from Alamut stand by themselves.  When compiling them in book form, I arranged the titles of the poems in a sequence that suggested a narrative thread. Although the poems address different areas, some readers might perceive a narrative thread. It’s as valid a perception as any other.

GAS Featured Poet: Rp Verlaine

 

Rp Verlaine lives in New York City. 

He has an MFA in creative writing from City College. 

He taught in New York Public schools for many years. 

His first volume of poetry- Damaged by Dames

& Drinking was published in 2017 and another – Femme Fatales

Movie Starlets & Rockers in 2018. A set of three e-books

titled Lies From The Autobiography vol 1-3 were published from

2018 to 2020. His newest book, Imagined Indecencies,

was published in February of 2022.

Thanksgiving Prayer 

To charity

and the abandoned

in city streets.

To dogs that follow

taillights blinded

with hunger.

The winos who’re

pissing themselves in

the drunk tanks.

The abandoned

baby carriages

near the hospitals.

The preacher walking

last miles with

smiling murderers.

The harlot who has

used all her kindness

left only with hate

The cartoonist

alone with laughter

of others.

The window washer

no longer careful

after a divorce.

The actress who

died in a hundred

films afraid of death.

The wine that keeps

these thoughts at bay

or brings them fourth.

A concluding whisper that

eyes opening to another

day- is still a gift.

You're My Daisy

Yet tonight 

I think of churches with doors closed 

to me forever.

The getaway driver 

finally seeng holes in the plan 

as bullets whizz by.

The depth of dreams 

shallow as a mirror 

reflecting chaos.

Debauched youth and loss

dancing together drunk 

enough for laughter.

The missing electric hum 

of ghosts in circles 

of thought.

The door slightly

ajar to invite chance

to play another card.

Boredom like a virus 

gaunt with need 

and hunger I 

no longer know well.

A daisy in the garden 

facing the sun 

afraid of nothing

GAS Featured Poet: Paul Hostovsky

 Paul Hostovsky makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. His poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, The Comstock Review’s Muriel Craft Bailey Award, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. His newest book of poems, Pitching for the Apostates, is forthcoming in 2023 from Kelsay Books.  Website: paulhostovsky.com

Colander

Yesterday I couldn’t remember the word colander,

a word I love and have always thought of

as one of those words that’s lovelier than the thing 

itself. I was holding the thing itself in my hands,

the steaming angel hair pasta draining in the sink, 

when I looked at the colander and thought to myself, 

“What is the name of this thing?” And maybe it’s age,

and maybe it’s the beginning of something more

pernicious, but in the end we have to let go 

of everything. We have to let go of every single 

thing and its name. And because I have always loved 

the names of things more than the things themselves

I stood at the sink missing colander, loving it more

than the colander, more than the angel hair pasta 

that I chewed abstractedly over dinner, trying to locate 

colander in my mouth, where it used to live

until it disappeared–its three slippery syllables like

three spaghetti noodles in a pot of fungible spaghetti noodles. 

And today, when I finally remembered it–found it right

where I’d left it–I whispered it to myself over and over

like a lover whispering the name of a lost beloved

who returns, but is untrue, and will disappear again.

Landmark

My mother’s new house 

was the third house on the left, 

the one with the big rock in the front yard–

you couldn’t miss it. This was

on the third rock from the sun, the one 

with billions of people on it–you couldn’t

leave it, not even if you died

six months after retiring and moving to Boston 

to be closer to your grandchildren. It was 

a nondescript rock, a boulder really, 

that the builder probably decided on a lark

to leave there: a sort of lawn ornament,

a sort of landmark. Sandstone or limestone

or maybe shale. She’ll have a hard time 

selling it with that rock in front, said my wife. 

She won’t sell it, I said. She’s not leaving.

She died six months later, suddenly, unexpectedly, 

a bacterial infection that overwhelmed her overnight. 

We never found out how she got it. There are 

more bacteria living on your skin

than people living on the third rock from the sun. 

My son liked to climb it when we visited. 

He was only 4. His sister was 2. They don’t 

remember the rock and they don’t remember 

my mother. The buyer said he didn’t like the rock

but it wasn’t a dealbreaker. The two of us stood

in the front yard negotiating. I told him 

it was a great landmark–you couldn’t miss it. 

I told him my kids liked to climb it. I told him 

my mother lived here only six months–she hadn’t even

hung her pictures yet. Suddenly, unexpectedly, 

I started to weep. He put his hand on my shoulder

to console me, this stranger, this buyer, a tender

gesture that only made it worse, and I began to sob 

uncontrollably. I hid my face in my hands

and turned away from him, and faced the rock.

Featured Poet: Mark Saba

 Mark Saba has been writing fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction for 40 years. His most recent book publication is Flowers in the Dark (poetry). Other works include Calling the Names (poetry), Two Novellas: A Luke of All Ages / Fire and Ice, and Ghost Tracks: Stories of Pittsburgh Past. His work has appeared widely in literary magazines around the U.S. and abroad. He is also a painter, and recently retired from Yale University as a medical illustrator and graphic designer. Please see marksabawriter.com.

Louis Rakes The Hedges

 

Louis rakes the hedges clean,

leaving me with tangled thoughts

watching from the window.

 

He works with one bandaged arm,

stooping carefully, digging out debris

and carrying it off like a box

full of puppies.

 

Yesterday I cleaned the hearth

and scattered rose petals over the remnant

ash. Their red lips circle in the white

and ignite flames of memory

where once charred logs stood.

 

This spring we see flowers developing

in all stages; that common freak, weather,

has torn us again, leaving the magnolia

two weeks behind, and the hyacinths

double-stalked. I will wait

 

and let Louis comb the yard,

setting in the even parts

and picking up the pieces

of a winter of storms.

 

And I will wait for another cold day

when the rose petals have all dried

and their scent blazes the dusty air

in the crackling flames of chance.

 

Switching Glasses

 

Mine are new, triple-focus

lenses, requiring some getting used to.

 

Hers haven’t changed since her fourth-grade

eye examination, a lifetime

 

of fumbling in the dark, zeroing in

on my lips, cleaning contacts.

 

So now, after fifteen years, we switch

glasses. “You look cute in mine,” she says.

 

To me, all is equally blurry.

“Wo!” She pulls back. “These make me

 

dizzy.” We look around—profiles

of curious chickens—then give

 

each other back. Comfort

lies in our individual worlds

 

and the infinite getting-to-know

from our views of finite selves.

GAS Featured Poet and Musician: Suchoon Mo

 

Suchoon Mo, Korean Army veteran, lives in the semiarid part of Colorado.   He  came to the US under sponsorship of an US Army war veteran with Bronze Medal with Valor.   He pursued higher education and received his Ph.D. in psychology from University of Pennsylvania.  He is a professor emeritus of Colorado State University, Pueblo.    He is the author of a number of scholarly monographs and research articles dealing mostly with time perception and time perspective.    His poetry and music composition appear in Seattle Star, Fishfood Magazine, Kissing Dynamite,Jonah Magazine, Modern Literature, Ephemeral Elegy, North of Oxford, Scarlet Leaf Review, Literary Nest, Modern Literature, Modern Poets Magazine, Snake Skin, Dissident Editions, Aji Magazine.   And others.  Both in music and poetry, he tends go on opposite direction of modernism.    In fact, his first two poems in English were published along with a poem by William Carlos  Williams in "East and West" in India in 1959, a few years after he left Korea and arrived in the US as a war veteran.

 

Ballad Of War

 

an old requiem
is my serenade
I no longer sing

 

rusted machine guns
buried mines
they are mute

 

deep in the mountains
far in time since gone
beyond and beyond

 

memory does not age
it only fades away
to the place where I was once

In The Paradise

 

in the middle of the desert
there is a kingdom

 

in the middle of the kingdom
there is a casino

 

in the middle of the casino
there is a chapel

 

in the middle of the chapel
there is a casket

 

the casket is empty
you are in the paradise

 

Serenade

 

one gray autumn day
it was raining

 

there was a railroad station
long abandoned since

 

she stood there alone
wet and cold

 

the train left
I never saw her again

 

I am now old
and she was young

 

 

 

A Mantra

under a full moon
one solitary monk
recites a mantra
in a temple

under a full moon
one thousand frogs
recite a mantra
in a pond

 

 

 

Keep Going

leave the temple behind
leave the cemetery behind

keep going

a stranger in a strange land
you have come this far

keep going

find the place far away
where you died once

keep going

 

 

 

Two Shadows

two shadows
on the road
going somewhere
or elsewhere

side by side
close together

one is mine
the other one is yours
isn't it?

going somewhere
or elsewhere
or nowhere

 

 

Serenade No 3 - Suchoon Mo, 

Art: Mikahil Nesterov