Jesse Glass

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—Jesse Glass—

Jesse Glass lives in Japan with his family.  He can be heard at Penn Sound and heard and read at Ubuweb, Jacket, Golden Handcuffs and other places on and off the net.  Glass is the author of the novel Black Out In My Left Eye, available from The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, an excerpt from which you may read online, Lost Poet, Four Plays (BlazeVox), the play “Yin and Yang Eat At Me” from the Argonist On-Line, Selections from The Life and Death of Peter Stubbe  and The Passion of Phineas Gage & Selected Poems.  Man’s Wows, his series of erasure poems from the 1980’s, is featured in the recent collection of essays Wiederauf Gelect Zur Appropriation von Texten und Buchern in Buchern, edited by Annette Gilbert.  Man’s Wows can be read online.  He is currently at work on the complete Gaha Noas Zorge (Babes of the Abyss are Friendly), a long poem based on the Enochian Spiritual Diaries of John Dee. His literary manuscripts are archived at Special Collections, the University of Maryland, College Park .

This piece is from a recent painted book and is a copper print monotype with gouache, markers, colored chalk, and pen and ink additions.  The text is from his poem “The New Motor.”

Evelyn Posamentier

"The Correspondent"

the complacency of a room
being aired at a convalescent hospital
after a passing.  on the balcony
a maid hangs a comforter.
whitewash on plaster walls.
places where placards were
painted over winter white.
then a chain link fence
where rust remembers.
in december, in the low late
light, i will write you.
i will sit beside the reservoir
& explain my urgency.

—Evelyn Posamentier—

Evelyn Posamentier's recent books are Poland At The Door, brainiography, and Royal Blue Car. Her poems have appeared in such journals as the Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine, the New York Quarterly, Drunken Boat, 3 a.m. Magazine, the Mississippi Review,  Parthenon West Review, Free Verse, The Quarterly Journal of Ideology, and the American Poetry Review, among others -- last spring she performed "Poets In Red Dress" at the annual conference of the Popular Culture Association.

Brad Vogler

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—Brad Vogler—

Brad writes: these pieces are from a manuscript, i know that this ritual,  made up of words/lines that I Photoshopped from letters that my mother had written to me from the early 90's through 2009 or so.

Brad Vogler's poems have appeared in places which include: Volt, CutBank, Versal, Jacket2, and Free Verse. He builds and maintain the website for Delete Press, and am the editor/web designer of Opon. His first chapbook, Fascicle 30, was published by Little Red Leaves Textile Series, and a second, Amid the Waves Which, is forthcoming from Beard of Bees.

Connie Tettenborn

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—Connie Tettenborn—

Connie Tettenborn lives near San Francisco.  She grew up in the Midwest and earned her PhD in Oncology from UW-Madison.  She has combined her interests in poetry and painting to produce visual poetry. “For Richter” is a 14”X11” watercolor painting.  Other visual poems have appeared online at Tip of the Knife, and her digital/visual mathematical poetry can be seen at various places online.  Her traditional poetry has appeared in The Deronda Review. 

John M. Bennett

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—John M. Bennett—

Bill DiMichele

"The Wire"

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—Bill DiMichele—

Bill writes of "The Wire": we move along a four-dimensional line that is our long body, linga sharira, our consciousness, like electricity, speeding along our personal timeline.  we cannot see the before or the after, but we have experienced, or will experience everything along that wire.  these pieces show cross-sections of four dimensional space; our consciousness moves like writing across a page, describing a hyperstate passage. 

Gary D. Grossman

"Rolodex"


Mossy dust covers
the black plastic case.
Time buries some things
faster than others

A dying solar system,
cards rotating round
the central axis
of my Rolodex.

Now tilted in the trash
—born before recycling.
Where are my colleagues
now, floating somewhere
in the digital vapor?

Held in electric cirrus or altostratus,
new guardians of data.
Or is it cumulonimbus,
with gigabyte drops,
waiting to be clicked.

Engulfed by the cloud.


—Gary D. Grossman

J. I. Kleinberg

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—J. I. Kleinberg—

A freelance writer, artist and poet, J.I. Kleinberg works and plays with words and blogs most days at chocolate is a verb and the Boynton Blog. Her found poems, from a growing collection of over 750, explore the accidental syntax of unintentional phrases: each text fragment is discovered on the magazine page, where the words on one line are related to the words on the next line only by physical proximity, not by their intended sense or syntax.

Peter Ciccariello

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"Textual Artifacts XIII"

—Peter Ciccariello—

Sheila Murphy

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"Rumination 1"

"Rumination 2"

—Sheila Murphy—

Bruce Harris Bentzman

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—Bruce Harris Bentzman—

Bruce writes: Born in the Bronx, I have been orbiting the Sun since 1951. I grew up, but very slowly, mostly in the suburbs of Philadelphia. An average student whose academic education petered out about midway through college, I am inclined to regard myself an autodidact. Having succeeded in a second marriage, it was a package deal that included two kids who are now grown. They have since made me a grandfather. (I just taught my oldest grandson how to drive a stick shift.) Presently, I support this writing habit by a grant from AT&T, which they are calling a retirement pension. I was a Communications Technician. I still am, metaphorically. I am also a practicing Peripatetic Minister of Secular Humanism. My poems and stories have appeared in many online journals, many of them, but not all, are now defunct. They include: The Alsop Review, The Free Cuisenart, Gruene Street, In Vivo Magazine, The Morpo Review, Southern Ocean Review, Zuzu's Petals Quarterly, and The Blue Moon/Blue Moon Review. I presently write a monthly column called "From the Night Factory" for the poetry journal Snakeskin which I have been doing in one form or another for over fifteen years.

Peter Ciccariello

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"Word Being Born"

—Peter Ciccariello—

Diana Magallon

"gemas"

"el tesoro" [click for expanded view]

—Diana Magallon—

Diana Magallón is an experimental artist. Her art has been published in Word for Word, eratio, Shampoo, On Barcelona, The New Postliterate, That Planet, Pittura senza frontiere, Fenamizah, etc.

She is the author of: Del oiseau et del ogre, Phellipa in Wolf, Bravísima Reseña, Fábulas furtivas.

About these works: these are free typograms made with light painting.

Guy Beining

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—Guy Beining—

Jessy Randall

"I'm Trying to Tell You Something"

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—Jessy Randall—

John M. Bennett

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—John M. Bennett—

Sheila Murphy

"Staff"

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—Sheila Murphy—

Bill DiMichele

Through the Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass #2

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Through the Looking Glass #4

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Through the Looking Glass #5

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Through the Looking Glass #8

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—Bill DiMichele—

i was drinking tea while my son and i were building a model car.  i put my glass down on a stack of papers.  when i reached for it, i was amazed to see alice come alive in my tea; i saw her go through the mirror; i saw seriously mad twisted poems; i saw the red king's dream and how it would annihilate us all. these things reminded me of how the gravity of a massive star bends letters, lines, words...and wonderland. 

Peter Ciccariello

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—Peter Ciccariello—

Bob Grumman

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—Bob Grumman—

Michael Basinski

"SUMMOON THE MOUTH OF THE 5TH SEASON"

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—Michael Basinski—

Michael Basinski is the Curator of the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo. He performs his work as a solo poet and in ensemble with BuffFluxus and the Don Metz Experience. Among his recent books of poetry are Piglittuce (Propolis Press - 2013), Learning Poem About Learning About Being A Poet (Press Board Press - 2012) and Trailers (BlazeVox - 2011). His poems and other works have appeared in many magazines including Dandelion, BoxKite, Antennae, Open Letter, Deluxe Rubber Chicken, First Offense, Terrible Work, Kenning, Lungfull, Tinfish, Score, Unarmed, Rampike, House Organ, Ferrum Wheel, End Note, Ur Vox, Damn the Caesars, Pilot, 1913, Filling Station, fhole, Public Illumination, Eccolinguistics, Western Humanities Review, Big Bridge, Mimeo Mimeo, Nerve Lantern, Vanitas, Talisman, Yellow Field, Steel Bellows, Staging Ground, and Poetry. Recent visual opems (yes, opems) located in: www.wordforword.info

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

—Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino—

Gregory writes: This piece is called "Go for Mr. Grumman" and was composed on my manual Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter circa 1993. The text reads: "Look! Coast Guard Search! Someone's Lost!" My idea was to somehow depict motion, this to be seen in the air bubbles rising from "someone's" corpse at the bottom of the ocean.

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino’s most recent volume of poetry is The Valise (Dead Academics Press, 2012).  In his spare time he writes at his blog, The Postmodern Romantic, and edits the online poetry journal, Eratio.

Elena Berriolo

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— Elena Berriolo —

8x11x.25 inches unbound. Signed and dated Summer 2009. 

Includes artist-designed sewn linen envelope. 

Original available for sale.

Anny Ballardini

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—Anny Ballardini—

Nick Humez

— Nick Humez —

Jessy Randall

—Jessy Randall—

James Finnegan

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"The Bell Curve"

—James Finnegan—

John M. Bennett

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—John M. Bennett—

Skip Fox

— Skip Fox —

Marilyn R. Rosenberg

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"78=5 + 24 +6 &"

Collage with tape, various papers added, are put into a ready to fill book
with lines. Then with tears and cuts, water color, inks, china markers,
gouache, other misc. media, and pages folded, and edited, used and fused
visual and asemic poems happened.  Original bookwork 78 available.

— Marilyn R. Rosenberg —

Mark Weiss

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"Harvest"

In my last New England autumn I played the odds
the night first frost was called for and left
the rest of the tomatoes
unharvested. They survived
somehow, bright summery red
against the firs and grass
in the waning light of my garden clearing,
swamp-maples in the streambed
maples beside it
and the vivid undergrowth in the pine-duff
flaming their various golds and purples.
When I finally plucked them
at the last moment before hard frost, they made a sauce
to last the winter. Now,
in this season of death, my first such,
my father dead, and Bill, and Richard,
I make the yearly sauce across the continent, where nothing
as dangerous as autumn
seems to happen. I think to make
an emblem of that last
harvest before winter,
as if my father and Richard
had not strangled on their own fluids
and lovely, curious and fastidious Bill,
whose presence itself could heal the wounds of childhood,
had not turned hideous in the act of dying.

— Mark Weiss —

Márton Koppány

sans titre No. 2. /2007/

Endgame No. 2 /2007/

—  Márton Koppány —

Ars Thematica

Why “Words: In/By Hand?”

I’m fascinated by the physically written word, the glimpses of a connection to work “by hand,” the physicality that the tangible artifact embodies and inhabits as one similarly embodies and inhabits work when learning them “by heart.”

The physical evidence of the work of words becomes more valuable as the creation of such becomes a luxury. Chaucer comes to us as illuminated manuscripts out of necessity. More and more I wonder if words I can hold in my hand won’t someday become an artisanal luxury indulged in by a small, enthusiastic cadre akin to today’s vinylistas.

I’m simultaneously intrigued and annoyed by poetry (and “poetry”) I don’t get. I wonder if the poetic emperors are wearing any clothes and if they aren’t, are they in on their own joke? Or am I just that slow and conventional as are most during each successive wave of new poetries and conventions as they go through their cycle from mystifying to commonplace and, sometimes, forgotten?

I loved E. E. Cummings when I was young and I still do. I won’t apologize for it. In this realm, and this realm only, I am mystical. I feel something of the same deep force that Cummings tapped into when I read (?) Bob Grumman’s Mathemaku. And because of that I didn’t dismiss Bob when he argued, passionately, for lighght, an argument (mostly in my head) that ultimately became a turning point in my thinking about all kinds poetry that I don’t have a good term for, not just the clearly related work of Márton Koppány, who I’m excited to have in Truck this month, but also those whose connecting dots are much further apart, such as Bill DiMichele, Alan Sondheim and John M. Bennett.

I’m still learning. I won’t claim to “get” even all of the work you’ll see here in December. The basest and most self-indulgent reason for my theme is simply that I’ve learned it’s OK not to get it. Or not to get it all at once. It’s OK to see where the often mysterious, sometimes opaque, work takes me. It’s OK to leave explication to others and just enjoy the tangled weave of words and visuals without undoing the meaningful knots.

And sometimes I just want to experience, from deep in a digital Plato’s cave, a rippled reflection of the tangible world on the infinite digital canvas.

Call for Work: "Words: By/In Hand"

This month, I'd like to explore work that connects the physical and the digital in a couple of possible ways:

I. Work of any form and on any topic that is presented in your own hand, typewritten, or that in some other manner shares of the physical production: drawn in sand, folded in origami alphabets, whatever.

AND/OR

II. Work that fuses words and visuals with some element done by hand: visual poems, blackout poems, erasures, vizpo that isn’t wholly digitally created.

AND/OR

III. Work that says “forget your stupid rules” and surprises me with something inventive in format or layout.

AND/OR

IV. Something of any form that addresses or invokes the theme itself: handwriting, correspondence, the physical making of word works. Here's your chance for poems about writing poetry, letters about letters, and other meta-works that break all those ridiculous workshop rules.

Questions and submissions (image files; I can handle just about any format) to: chris+truck@chrislott.org by DECEMBER 29.

If you want to send PHYSICAL WORK that I can scan/photo, let me know and I’ll tell you where to send it (I’ll need to receive the piece in Seattle by DECEMBER 21 at the latest).

Truck's new driver/editor for December 2014 -- Chris Lott

Many thanks go out to Anny Ballardini for our travels during November.

Please welcome Chris Lott, who will see us through the end of the year.

Truck's editors/drivers past, present and future as of Dec. 1, 2014

Present

Chris Lott

Future


Jan. 2015 -- Marc Vincenz
Feb. 2015 -- mIEKAL aND
Mar. 2015 -- Eileen Tabios
Apr. 2015 -- Crag Hill
May 2015 -- Rudolfo Carillo
June 2015 -- Gwyn McVay
July 2015 -- Matt Margo
Aug. 2015 -- Volodymyr Bilyk
Sept. 2015 -- Stephen Vincent
Oct. 2015 -- Maxianne Berger
Nov. 2015 -- Philip Garrison 
Dec. 2015 -- Jane Joritz-Nakagawa



Past

Apr. 2011 -- Kate Schapira
May 2011 -- Wendy Battin
June 2011 -- Frank Parker
July 2011 --  Skip Fox
Aug. 2011 -- Ken Wolman
Sept. 2011 -- Michael Tod Edgerton
Oct. 2011 -- Kelly Cherry
Nov. 2011 -- Andrew Burke
Dec. 2011 -- Lewis LaCook

Jan. 2012 --  Larissa Shmailo
Feb. 2012 -- Gerald Schwartz
Mar. 2012 -- Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
Apr. 2012 -- Lynda Schor
May 2012 -- David Graham
June 2012 -- Lars Palm
July 2012 --  Elizabeth Switaj
Aug. 2012 --  rob mclennan
Sept. 2012 -- Georgios Tsangaris
Oct. 2012 -- Douglas Barbour
Nov. 2012 -- Dirk Vekemans 
Dec. 2012 -- Erik Rzepka

Jan. 2013 -- Alan Britt
Feb. 2013 -- Mark Weiss
Mar. 2013-- Mary Kasimor
Apr. 2013-- John M. Bennett

May 2013-- Orchid Tierney
June 2013--Victoria Marinelli
July 2013 -- Volodymyr Bilyk
Aug. 2013 -- David Howard
Sept. 2013 -- Philip Meersman
Oct. 2013 -- Chris Lott
Nov. 2013 -- Alexander Cigale
Dec. 2013 -- Catherine Daly

Jan. 2014 -- Maria Damon
Feb. 2014 -- John Oughton
Mar. 2014 -- Colin Morton and MaryLee Bragg
Apr. 2014 -- Alan Sondheim
May 2014 -- Glenn Bach
June 2014 -- Bill Pearlman
July 2014 -- Edgar Gabriel Silex
Aug. 2014 -- Jerry McGuire
Sept. 2014 -- Karri Kokko
Oct. 2014 -- Márton Koppány
Nov. 2014 -- Anny Ballardini