The new issue of Fence is wending its way toward you.

As we speak, it sits behind this website, ready for unveiling.

Click on the word FENCE in the upper left corner of this screen

to see the cover, the contents, and to read some of the work featured

in this, Fence’s 22nd issue.

In case you haven’t already become absolutely enchanted with the deep-crafting, ownership-liquidizing, soft-touch-photographic playground that is Etsy.com, here’s a sweet article on its developer, Rob Kalin.

Could Etsy be useful as a model for writing/books? Probably they often lack the prettiness.  I searched for “poetry books” and found my way to thelalatheory.com, and this book, and little books like this. There are some

beautiful artist’s books on Etsy, akin to what I’ve found at sites like Book by its Cover, and there are some necklaces with lines from Poe engraved in Bakelite . . .

and we po-people have things like PotLatch Poetry: even better, I think, because it eschews money. A little gift economy never hurt anybody.

Those not worthy are scattered wide 

The line

Coined lately 

Gone 

*

My head– 

And everyone

Changed 

*

And the Ancient of Days

Sweeping into me– 

Describe

This impossible field, this wave  

The morphine box

And flavored ice

*

Everything went on as usual, outside  

I craved a great earthquake   

(from Stranger, page 24)

Alessandro Guttenberg, 21, hobbies: music and art:

Does the meaning of words justify the waste of space? I suppose it does, though all this blankness seems to do little for the reader who’s used to prose (and poetry?). I get the feeling, when staring at pages such as those which have been handed to me by the higher authority, that more could be done. It may be my interest in Futurist poems where the meaning is expressed by many different techniques, and it may be my unusually strong need for order upon a printed page (I am a Guttenberg after all). In any case, I find myself torn between reaching towards the intangibles of short visual poetry and worrying about the trees.

Fang Lin, 19, hobbies: shopping and sleeping:

Every poem has lots of space in it, which leads me to think that I should read them slowly and in a relaxed place. I’m puzzled by some of the lines. For example, in “Those not worthy are scattered wide”: “I craved a great earthquake.” I’m wondering why the poet would crave an earthquake? Does she want to destroy everything?