TESTES

TESTES

I have two of them

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Charles, here, blogging for the week. I was looking for an image of Sammy doing his big balls dance in a Celts uni, but I guess he would have to make a big shot.

Funny seeing big-ears Farmar attack Bologna face

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Speaking of big balls, Silliman offers some silly reductions concerning Flarf and Conceptual Poetry. The comments are lively as usual. I like how Brent takes him to task, but he’s too nice as usual. Brent should give beat downs. Dude is huge. Funny, too, how Kasey gets to play Olson.

This is a perfect example of why I can’t talk about poetry to my non-poet friends. Trying to explain Flarf/Conceptual Poetry/School of Quietude/Post Avant/New Brutalism/New Sincerity/BlahBlahBlah/ and post bLAHbLAHbLAH to non-poets would be more embarrassing than trying to explain 17th level mages and low level wizards.

strength: suck

dexterity: 1/2

constitution: 6

Intelligence: 6

Wisdom: 6

Charisma: -3.14159265

Wow, how banal is it that I keep talking about how old I am? I’m 40. But I used to be 30, and before that I was 20. The other night I went to see Ariana Reines, beloved 20-something, in the completely post-feminist context of the Poetry Brothel, at which she was the “new girl.” This in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where I had never been before though I grew up on 21st Street, in Chelsea. And the next day found me in deepest Greenpoint, at the East Coast Aliens venue for all-day poetry. I was really struck, over my whole weekend in Brooklyn, at how different things are nowadays in NYC; it’s not just that “everyone lives in Brooklyn,” as back in the days when I was starting Fence (when I was 30) and everyone lived in Brooklyn but parties and events still took place in Manhattan, with everyone trundling back to the boroughs afterward. Now it’s really like people LIVE in Brooklyn, and eat and drink and read and go out in Brooklyn. Maybe this happened five years ago and everyone knows it already. Also striking was how, at the Poetry Brothel event, everyone looked like a recent arrival from the Soviet Bloc, and danced with great earnestness and unselfconsciousness and freedom to the Jazz Age music served up by the band whose name I can’t find the name of but who featured two female lead singers who were channeling Bessie Smith with great success. Kids were literally jitterbugging and doing the Charleston.

But come one, come all to our party in Manhattan to celebrate the release of Jibade-Khalil Huffman’s 19 Names For Our Band:

short readings
+
Free Booze
+
cheap books

plus old soul records played by Xaviera Simmons

Fence 19 is in our office, shining neatly in two cardboard boxes. 

The cover image has been declared “a plumber’s nightmare” by the heating/cooling man (who sweetly obliges to visit with thermometer when we’re freezing, and invariably tells us it’s 70 degrees and warm enough).

 Y’all have ONLY TONIGHT to sign on for Fence In Rainbows.  Our blessings on those who took advantage, at whatever sum. 

Today and tomorrow we’re handing out free copies of Issue 18 on the fountain-laden campus of the University at Albany.  It rains, a bit, and so our intern Diana has to work extra-hard for attention and to keep her body temperature up.  Abutting tables sponsor dance troups and fraternities, environmental clubs, the girl scouts (and their cookies)….  Who will pay attention to Fence, even with a mountain of dum-dums, and FREE signs practically scotch-taped to our chests?

In truth, a large proportion (more than 90%, I’d wager) of the student population here at the U of A have no idea that Fence exists.  Our offices comprise a corner of a sparsely-traveled floor in a lovely new library thankfully attached to the campus center, which grants a shorter distance to coffee and sbparro’s.  This Thursday we’ll launch the second issue compiled and edited here in Albany, and will host our third on-campus event.  If you’re nearby, and you’ve heard or over-heard of Fence, be reminded:

Issue 19 Launch Reading / / May 1, 8 pm / / Standish Room, 3rd floor, Science Library

Readers: Michael Comstock, Karen Garthe, Vivian Heller, and Douglas A. Martin

One of the strangest corollaries of being a literary journal editor is being made aware from time to time of how many contributors there are out there silently hating you for a multitude of perceived offenses, however real or unreal. The below correspondence is real, but identifying facts have been changed to preserve anonymity of contributor/correspondent. Note that I, Rebecca Wolff, was the first to get truly offensive, but also note that I have developed, over the years, a deficit of patience with contributors who act as though I am somehow out to get them. Also note that I have given myself the last word here; for all I know XXX will choose to ignore my final command and will speak to me again. I’ll keep you posted.

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February 14

Hi Rebecca Wolff,

Recently you were kind enough to accept two of my poems for the current issue of Fence. Do you send out contributors copies? Just wondering because I haven’t received anything yet.

Thanks
XXX XXXX
XX E. XXXXX Street Apt 16
New York, NY 1xxxx

PS Saw the website. Thanks for posting XXXXXXXX!

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February 14

XXX,

Did you used to live in XXXXXXXX, NJ?

R

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February 14

Yes. My parents live there, so if you sent it there I will get it eventually.

XXX

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April 6

Rebecca Wolff:

Well, I finally found the time to pick up a copy of Fence—not easy, since I work three grueling shit jobs, and don’t have time to track these things down—and it’s a good issue.

Regan Good’s poem The Atlantic House, in particular, is a knockout. I can’t say the same for the way you treat your contributors, though. I edit a XXX-page journal and even though it’s tough on me financially, I make sure every contributor gets a free copy.

The fact that you’re backed by a university and still can’t fork up a lousy contributor’s copy is unforgivable. The fact that you couldn’t even answer my simple question as to whether or not you provide complimentary copies is even worse. I guess my question wasn’t intellectually-ambitious or post-post-post-avant enough for you.

XXX XXXX

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April 6

See below; eat shit and die.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Wolff

“February 14

XXX,
Did you used to live in XXXXXXXX, NJ?
R

February 14
Yes. My parents live there, so if you sent it there I will get it eventually.
XXX”

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April 20

What is this supposed to mean? I was just at my parents last week and no Fence, and this months after it came out. Is “eat shit and die” your way of saying you sent it to me? [Editor’s note: What I should have said was: “No, eat shit and die is my way of saying check your facts, you corroded node, before getting on your high horse to send me an email accusing me of not doing my job.] If you DID send it to me, you could’ve just said so and all this could have been avoided. Like I said, it never got to me. I’ve supported you for years, buying your mag and sticking up for it when my writer-friends basically condemned it.

Let me share a brief anecdote:

One spring day when I was sixteen, my friend and I were posting flyers at XXXXX Academy (private school for rich kids) for a concert our metal band was playing. The board was in the dining hall and soon as we walked into the room–two skinny long-hairs–the place went dead. Then someone yelled “Throw them out!” and we were basically driven out on a rail. It wasn’t traumatic at all, but the memory has remained for its novelty, I think it’s kind of funny, actually. But more to the point, I’ve always thought of that dining hall as being the equivalent of Fence (read: snobbery). You’ve proven me right.

XXX

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April 20

XXX,

I just don’t take kindly to receiving accusatory mail. Read your email to me and you will see that you are attacking me for not responding to your initial query when, in fact, as I showed you in my response (and that’s why I said “E. S. & D,” because I was proving you wrong), I DID respond to your query. Yes, I sent the issue to the NJ address; I don’t know why it never reached there but all you had to do was write back politely and say that the issue never reached there and I would gladly send another. Instead you wrote me a snotty note–I am not responsible for your or anyone’s neurotic complex about high school–implying that I had not responded to your query, when in fact I had.

If you would like to give me your correct address I will send the issue there.

RW

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April 21

Becky Coyote,

God you are a vile human being. Saw your photo at Norton Poets Online and in Poets and Writers–your looks match up with your personality perfectly. No wonder you have issues. And I feel sorry for your kid–I’m sure he’ll grow up to be mean and ugly, just like his mommy.
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April 21

You’re a total loser. Never speak to me again.

On April 24, from 2:30-3:00 pm on KRCW in Los Angeles, FENCE poet Ariana Reines will discuss the importance of recovering the “I” of the poet with Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt. 

Hear her live, if you’re in LA, or in perpetuity thereafter on the KRCW Bookworm website: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/bw  (downloads and podcast available)

And see her in Berkeley that night, 6:30 pm, as part of the Holloway Series in Poetry. 

Details at: http://holloway.english.berkeley.edu/Upcoming/page36.html

Two great events on the Fence horizon:

1. Spring Books Preview Reading

at the New School in NYC, Tuesday April 22 (that’s next Tuesday!) at 6:30 pm

Like a big horseshoe magnet, this reading will pull Fence authors from California, Colorado, Carolina, and New York. And not unlike a big horseshoe magnet, it could concentrate the field. (Note: the magnetic field from a horseshoe magnet continues in whatever it touches, and that could be you.)

Readers include:

Kaisa Ulsvik Miller, author of the Motherwell-winning Unspoiled Air

Jibade-Khalil Huffman, author of 19 Names for Our Band

Carl Martin, author of Rogue Hemlocks

and Aaron Kunin, with his novel The Mandarin

2. Issue 19 Launch Reading

at the University at Albany, Thursday May 1st, 6:30 pm

Come hear the latest of the latest of Fence Magazine. With readings from Michael Comstock, Karen Garthe, Vivian Heller and Douglas A. Martin.

See the Events page for more information about both of these happenings.

And don’t forget - the end of the month is also the END of Fence in Rainbows. Issue 19 hits the world on May 1st, so donate whatever you can and get a year of FENCE! After April 30, it’s back to normalcy.

Hurrah for 2008, the year we hop on board the social network train! Mayhaps we’re the caboose, but we’re whooping it up in back.

Come be Fence’s “friend” (and really, we don’t think of the quotation marks when we think of you)

on MySpace and Facebook: our group is called “Fence / Fence Books”

This will keep you even MORE up-to-date on events, announcements, releases, and our “current mood”. (Because maybe, maybe you want to know!)

Some of you may have received an email last Thursday introducing this our latest brainstorm: we have embarked on a month-long mission toward intricacy. You see, we realize that each reader has a different capacity for monetary devotion to Fence, and we want to make our pages available to anyone who sets their devotion at one dollar or more. Just like Radiohead.

So, if you follow this link www.fenceportal.org/support and click on the word “donate”, you can become a subscriber to Fence for one year, for whatever your increment may be. Payments are processed by PayPal (it’s free and easy to set up an account if you don’t already have one: www.paypal.com). Any gracious and lucky soul who chooses to pay $300 or more will become a lifetime subscriber, and will receive a receipt for your tax-deductible donation.

Fine print: This offer only good until the end of April, 2008. The new issue of Fence will hit your mailbox in early May, so jump on it!

by Colie Collen

The air in Boulder is thin; the town, you see, is a mile in the air. This can (and does) lead to: feelings of lightheaded ease,spontaneous over-caffeination, and the gathering of fabulous poet-communities. So many writers and otherwise far-out persons live and teach and study in the area that it seems they drive the clouds away — 300 days of sun a year!? Friday night (March 14) was a veritable smorgasbord of Fence, and as Fence is itself a smorgasbord, you can only imagine our delight. The readers: Tina Celona, whose new prose poems are a testament toher line, “when my writing goes well I attribute it to God”; Kaisa (rhymes with Rice-a) Ulsvik Miller, winner of the 2007 Motherwell Prize for the new release Unspoiled Air, who voiced her scrambled syntax in melodic tones, echoing the room’s general sentiment, “we is doing what we love”; Chelsey Minnis, her work always spot-on enough forthe cringe/giggle/emphatic nod reaction, read a series of untitled poems, a list of titles, and from the prefaces to Bad Bad; Elizabeth Robinson, at the halfway-in mark, read her Ars Poetica, “grant[ing] the interchangeable quality of beginning and ending”; Sasha Steensen, reading from The Method(forthcoming from Fence this spring) and A Magic Book,taunted all nay-sayers with perfectly (in)complete sentences;Catherine Wagner, singing and kissing and blasting her way through a “series about fucking” (which means it’s really about everything). This from her new chapbook, Hole in the Ground (Slack Buddha Press); and Rebecca Wolff, who closed the night with a series about recognizing knowledge in its simplest forms. “I guess I never thought much about baking cookies / Well think about it”. The read-to left the room with contented smiles or lingered with the same. The night was balmy, to us Albanians. We ate chocolate and overslept. What more can a girl ask for?