Showing posts with label Vernon Frazer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vernon Frazer. Show all posts

Thursday, June 8, 2023

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.


Wednesday, May 11, 2022

GAS Featured Poet: 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 resides in central Connecticut. He is widowed.



Fixing a Borrowed Habit

simulacrum addict
fixing with a borrowed paradigm

     amphitheater closing
     the latest string of artifacts 

                     hung
         
          a plaster closing
      attuned to past 
fortune no future

     in opposing 
     the brief that ripped the current
          from the pit          
                             of wet nostalgia 

repellent vector a slide
where fossils of the evening
gather postures
                          for similar dismay

    in veritas             a show of
      chaos                exposers
              dissembled 

                    for a lather gathering 
                    
                                foreclosed

              to join the programmed rhetoric

                                                  in its recovery





Insurrection Attacks

murder dart rebellion 
dungeon the reflective grandad 
     and 
           watchdog muzzle works 


letterhead calligraphy without rejoinder 

     the verity dollars arising 
     would slash vegetation substructures 

          each stroke sliding cold black
          contrapuntal reprint offenses
          strict emptiness attained skill 
          phrasing horseshoes playing 
         
                                sewer fossil leveraging

*

excursion culprit 
exalted enough bongo praxis

     from lotus tone 
     the intrinsic vegetations speak               lilacs 
gracefully             muster
                                                                 down-and-out

    muzzle dating stationer
                           fondles needle wrecker
                           chortle booms concerto
                          
               demonstrative morass
               attained lithe capability tactic 
               where appearing graffiti 

            upended novelty 

   spoken as the baton rises


Saturday, July 3, 2021

GAS Featured Poet: Vernon Frazer



Vernon Frazer has written more than thirty books of poetry, including Anchor What (Unlikely Books),IMPROVISATIONS and Avenue Noir, three novels and a short story collection. His poetry, fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous print and electronic publications. His latest poetry collection is Gravity Darkening.

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 resides in central Connecticut. He is widowed.
Poster published by Unlikely Books


Vernon states:  "As a jazz and William Burroughs aficionado, my recent poetry fuses improvisation with cut-ups. At times, I orchestrate the text to create a multiple voice on the page. When in doubt about how to read my page, read it in every possible way." 



Takeout Delivered


her room mother
condemned iteration muttering
                           whenever

     quivering lips
     parlayed discomfort again 

                           when cannibalization pickled 
                           the backyard respiration con
                           the six-speculum sport room
              
   communion pawned the windows

         for                             vegan
    woodpile                   peregrination             
  shake-ups                   caravanserai    
                    coachmen

                            in the sky

             disposable resourcefulness
             trading away with confusion

                          a stale wisp
                          foiled metal’s furnaces

she hugged the convert
to finer vermouths and scarves
          yet 
                burning divisions 
                                            over

                              drainpipe confidences
                     
             curtails admixture jangles

                             from the wrist
                             the telltale dripping
                             of standing lost

                                       shattered a sideswipe      




In Search Of


enzyme underling reaches
happiness annihilation mediators
              outspread
                              shavings cluster

                   its own tautology

                             cannot release 

                                      lurid rhetoric 

                                            where braking 

                             *

swollen adobe surprised 
trill palms past the cigar song
prolonging the darkening                 topic

                   once creaking mildly

         when transforming
         their autumn gate dance
         from the heavy went

                    to shadow
                                     beginnings

                        sealed in the materializing 

                             *

between craven reasoning 
the urban thrombosis choir 
waxed where their shifters

               furnished the tableau
               reverberating introduction
the thunderstruck slanted
      against sure parka longitude
              despite stagecoach instructions

                    emanating grifters
                    bouncing for a dead envelope

                                                 monetarily bulging




 Gone Psychic



subgum illusion tracer
no courier tilled the basin mix
nor 

     a stilled hypotenuse
     riding the retro crux in style

          the rains crane
          wet-necked cribagge sticks

     reek aplomb
     regaining its nether post
     new vision declared

          a sublminal envy curtain

               curtailed

                             happenstance remission

                   hinting at raincoat
                   exposure and rosary factory outlets
                   lovebeads canned
                                                 ova buttoned

          loose origin persuasion
          pineal from a vacant forehead

                           erasing    
                           past futures for one
                                              present