GAS Featured Poet: Daniel P. Stokes

 

Daniel P. Stokes has published poetry widely in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, the U.S.A, Canada and Asia, and has won several poetry prizes.  He has written three stage plays which have been professionally produced in Dublin, London and at the Edinburgh Festival.

 San Juan

                                                          

Today the strand’s invaded. 

Groups commandeer a space

and set up camp.

They’re in their thousands.

Tomorrow’s the feast day of San Juan.

With tents being pitched 

and boundaries staked                         

and hails and hollers 

the noise is tactile. They’ve come -

I don’t know where they’ve come from –           

to spend the night and party on the beach.

They’ve brought their stove, their food, 

their drinks and their excitement.

 

Four bucks in pride erect a shack 

with poles and palms macheted from the cliff.

A woman on her knees nearby,                              

her youngest perched beside her,

boils a pot outside her tent

and hums in Spanish.

Work, routine and discretion                              

have been long-leashed. It’s Fiesta.                               

A call – no, a command, a summons -                            

to gather in communal expectation                                

and let the moment for the moment            

eclipse all other aims.

 

I pack my books and leave them to it.

Their revelry, like open prayer,

is done in public

to satisfy a private whim 

that isn’t mine. The bells

above the ruckus mark out midday                                     

and I have rites and rituals of my own.

  

 

Su Zi's Review of "Women in Independent Publishing" from New Mexico Press

 

We know that the destruction of a library is a crime against humanity. Even a simple Siri search describes such atrocities as “a way to erase a culture’s history and identity”, and, of course, mentions Alexandria. Those of us not suffering from cultural amnesia might recall news images of dumpsters full of books as libraries were required somehow to destroy entire collections. Memes of flames and swastikas were not an unusual accompaniment. In such a climate, the esteemed University of New Mexico Press published Women in Independent Publishing, a decade long firsthand research project executively produced by Stephanie Anderson. The area of greatest scholarship regards Zine History, an aspect of the literary community that ought to be rightfully revered.

The work is an inch-thick, trade-sized tome that is, frankly, a work of feminist scholarship that ought to be among the new acquisitions for any feminist collection that hasn’t yet been set on fire. Reading the book backwards, the Index alone spans seventeen pages, that includes a heading called “chapbooks[...]rebellious nature of publishing,347-48” (409). Also, most deliciously and impressively is a ten-page bibliography that ought to look lip-licking to any woman’s studies program not already disbanded.

The text itself is introduced with a thirty-page essay, followed by a series of interviews of women who were editing poetry publications during the second half of the twentieth century. This would seem to be an ordinary and interesting sidewalk tour of literary history, if every single premise in the work were not under recent legal human rights attacks. Within the text itself, Margarat Randall states “The cultural blockade, after all, was as important as its economic and military counterparts” (63).  A reader might think she speaks of somewhere in our moment, except she speaks of Cuba and 1963.

Anderson organizes the work by a lineage-- she begins with a refutation of the agreed upon text by Grove, as is standard scholarly procedure. She then proceeds with an onslaught of people and texts that would give glee to any poetry geek...again crucial information to rebuilding libraries. There’s a mention of a collaboration with Anais Nin (3) on a now rare title called “Two Cities” ; overt reference to the work of Alice Notley, and repeated reference to the exclusion and under representation of women, “women used publishing in various ways to push against the sexism and misogyny of literary scenes writ large”(5)-- a tactic also used a generation before so that women could merely vote.

Dismissal of women as critical artists is a reoccurring theme here, often motivating the subjects of the interviews to publish periodicals. In her interview, Susan Sherman makes an interesting remark about poets publishing poets, especially women writers or artists overall, “It’s really very dangerous to depend on someone else to make serious choices, both about your work, and about your life, for that matter” (117) , and makes much mention of collaboration with painters and musicians. 

The work repeatedly discusses technical duties in production and production details and predates the ubiquitousness of computers by decades. There are multiple mentions of group collation meetings, physical typing of manuscripts onto duplicatable sheets called mimeo that smelled and faded, before the ordinary use of copy machines. It was “physically building books” (C.D. Wright interview, 273).  The body of the text concludes with a prose poem by Lee Ann Brown that includes “and that liberation of putting writing into print and changing margins and typefaces probably greatly enabled the possibility of making books” (336).

The crucial nature of this text cannot be overstated, but also its pleasure: among those interviewed might be someone we know, or might have met, or whose edited publication we admire, or who we have read. The value of the work as a reference regarding poetry cannot be overstated, nor can its value as a reference regarding feminism of the second half of the twentieth century. Maybe that’s why it’s so dangerous. The work is a dense reference of information related to all that touched women’s lives during those decades, of publications now rare and valuable, of a compendium of research for rebuilding a history currently under culturicide. 

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: John Yamrus

 

John Yamrus is widely recognized as master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, he has had more than 3,500 poems published in books, magazines and anthologies around the world. His writing is often taught in college and university courses. Three of his more than 40 books have been published in translation.  His newest book of poems is DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER: JUST GIVE HIM A GOOD PLACE TO HIDE. 

for Tony it was

 

all 60s music...

Archie Bell And The Drells...

 

The Stones...

 

Smokey...

 

that 

was all he 

needed to get right. 

 

that, and 

his little dog Tail. 

 

Tail 

didn’t have any. 

He also didn’t have a back leg.   

 

Tony 

didn’t care.  

Neither did Tail. 

 

and they’d 

sit out back, and 

listen to music and drink beer.

 

Tail 

did, too.  

he’d get a 

splash in his bowl 

a couple times a day and 

loved it just as much as Tony did.  

 

for 

Tail and Tony 

it never got any better than that.  

 

it didn’t have to.

 

 

Gedda’s was

 

this little 

shot and beer joint 

our parents used to take us to 

 

when 

we were kids. 

me and my sister.

 

i was 

maybe 5 and 

we’d sit with them 

at the end of the bar and 

Mrs. G would give us nickels 

 

that we’d 

put in the machine 

to get those red pistachios 

 

and 

my father 

showed us how 

to tip the machine 

and turn the crank real slow 

 

to get the most out of it 

 

and 

they’d sit 

and talk and drink 

 

and 

i know 

it had to be 

the afternoon 

because i remember 

the light coming in from the street 

 

and 

it was red 

because of the glass 

 

and 

so were 

our hands 

from the nuts 

 

and 

they were 

probably drunk 

 

when 

we left, 

because it was 1956 

and that was what you did 

 

when 

you had a 

couple of bucks 

 

and 

a day off 

 

and 

no one there 

to watch the kids.

 

 

GAS Featured Poet: Stephen Philip Druce

Stephen Philip Druce is an eclectic poet

from Shrewsbury in the UK. He is published

in the UK, the USA, Hungary, South Africa,

Ireland, Canada and India. He has also 

written for London Theater plays and BBC

Radio 4 Extra. Contact Stephen on Instagram

@StephenPhilipDruce 

WHERE THE MUSIC DROWNED

The sunsets played their violins -

the alley cats on double bass,

the tree tops plucked on mandolins -

the night time trumpets knew their place,

the street lamps sang in baritone -

the lemon pipes - a crooning yellow,

hurricanes blew saxophones -

a distant thunder played piano,

the rescue sirens added flute -

the snowflakes danced to drum machines,

the clocks in key - they followed suit -

as beating suns shook tambourines,

the midnight chimneys harmonized -

the echo bridges whistled tunes,

the rain guitars electrified the dogs

to bark through cloud bassoons,

a scarecrow wind of castanets -

a rodent busked the underground,

the moon it dropped a clarinet -

in a river where the music drowned.

PLANET MORDAZIUM

On planet Mordazium,

circling flesh machines

grind their juggernaut

limbs like cathedral

castanets,

sea dragon sequels

stiffen fairy tale drunkards

in a meditation froth of

cross legged swamps,

railroad slingshots flame

bedlam vipers into

the sullen gut of

sun goose passageways,

in a reptilian symmetry,

iron messengers drift

through reservoir centuries -

under wishbone bridges

of surrendered skin,

in a timeless fruit wizardry,

carnival veins scuffle 

in a syrupy resurrection

of merry leaf intricacy,

below the cunning wheat,

overthinking clock hands

conceal slow-burning villains

in a trapdoor composure of

bladed tranquility,

as headless servants

buckle in a honeydew 

of squalid chance.