I read like I’m overhearing a conversation between four people, one who I might know, one who I once saw somewhere. For the other two, strangers. I get by on the one third rule—how one third of everything is incomprehensible to me, or a bird I can hear but can’t see. I think of it as companionable incomprehension. It isn’t that I’m not curious, but to know more than two thirds of anything feels like pulling small leaves off a Brusells sprout to make a miniature salad.
A small flock of geese can bring down a jet. This amazes me. I keep looking up there, hoping to see it. The mathematics of it. The drumming. The movie trailer voice…She was only trying to go home to Canada…81 people flying to Cleveland had a contrary opinion. Cue the bang bang music.
We’ve given promise rings to each other, me and what i don’t know. I’m…Yeah, like ekphrasis. Where everything is juxtaposed and irrelevant. Being wrong is OK if there’s a spark and dry powder. There was an interview last month in Poetry London and one was saying “Where the poem is limited by the transition, or transaction, between the painting and the self. Even if it’s a simple image, the restriction unlocks more than if someone says: write what you want.” (Dawn Watson) And someone else was saying “It’s like you put limits on yourself that make you fight to get free of them. Then the fight becomes the poem.” (Tara Bergin).
And ekphrasis is like voice. What’s noise to you is voice to a cricket. Like singing by rubbing your hands together. How they make that music. Want to find a voice? Try rubbing your hands. The problem is that once you find a voice you stop looking for it and when you stop looking the only thing left is self parody. Ask the crickets. They know why people still cry at weddings, like how they sing “ha fucking ha.”
From an old journal: When the stops I’m the one still dancing. And from an even older journal: “My current interest is for ‘disproportionate’ figures in close proximity — in a related or ‘proportional’ distance from each other — and for darker colors ‘lustered’ by sunlight and other verbs that aren’t words.” Well, we were all young once. We were all old once. Even Hendrix got his start playing guitar as a soldier. I always forget he was in the Army.
Would anyone else care for some of this delicious Brussels sprout salad?
Our new Free State Review cover art is by Jenn Hollmeyer, who published her story “How Far Gone” way back in our fourth issue. Jenn won the 2019 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction for her story collection, Orders of Protection. Jenn is also a painter. I love how her paintings look at me without staring and without blinking. They notice me without drilling down on me. Like you can be conscious without being conscious.
AWP in Baltimore. Our booth is 961. There will be books and authors signing books and almond snacks. Look it: anyone who writes a hundred pages will have ten pages we can publish. Just send the right ten pages and let me help you find those. I want to meet you. I want to publish you. I want you to yell at me. We will be doing an offsite at the red room lounge at Normals Bookstore, March 4th, 7:30, Resurrection Beer, LaCroix water, comestibles, and a mess of short reads—Michael Klein, David Daniel, Jenny Keith, Barbara De Cesare, Ruport Wondoloski—and various seances for the poets we’ve had to throw dirt on.
Of course, me trying to be an editor is like Daniel Boone staying at the Soho Grand. You just know there will be raccoons and blue martinis. Some mayhem. Some nectar. Do enjoy.
