Gamut Kickstarter: An Interview with Richard Thomas

I met Richard Thomas when we selected him as a participant in the 2012 Flying House show – a writing and art collaboration project my husband and I host in Chicago each year. In his application, Thomas submitted two short stories he described as surreal – or was it magical realism? – or maybe neo-noir? He was still, I think, finding the space he would fill in the literary world. He was already a great writer, and a fantastic participant in our show, and also one of the hardest working writers I had ever met – but that was also seven award-winning books ago, 100+ published stories ago, before he became an editor of four anthologies, a columnist, an Editor-in-Chief at Dark House Press – you get the idea. He works hard. And, now, he knows exactly what his literary pursuits entail.

As of February 1, Thomas has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Gamut, an online magazine of neo-noir, speculative and literary fiction he hopes to unveil in January of 2017. He wishes to support voices that aren’t getting enough recognition, especially edgy fiction that straddles the fence between genre and literary fiction. If you’ve followed any of his columns, you know Thomas doesn’t write for free, and doesn’t think you should either, so he plans to pay a great rate to his authors – both solicited and not – and he also wants to include columns, non-fiction, art, flash fiction, poetry, and maybe even a serial memoir or novella. This excites me. But let’s hear a little more from Thomas himself…

*

Hey there, Richard. I know you’ve probably been talking up your new lit mag nonstop lately, so let’s start somewhere different. When I first read your work, like I said above, it was as part of an application, which meant I was reading blind and it wasn’t until later that I heard your take on your writing. At the time, I thought it was interesting how you described your work as speculative, when I would have called it literary. Maybe I don’t know enough about speculative fiction – so what is it? 

Hey, Megan! Thanks for the kind words. I know speculative fiction covers a number of genres (such as fantasy, science fiction, and horror) and that it typically isn’t grounded in reality, but based on characters, settings, and elements that are created out of human imagination and speculation. For me, that also includes magical realism, and possibly other genres, such as transgressive, and neo-noir. And then of course you have literary horror and classic horror, and everything in-between, the same with fantasy and science fiction. I mean, what exactly do you call Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or The Road? This can’t be just straight literary fiction. You could call them westerns or post-apocalyptic, or even thrillers. What about Joyce Carol Oates and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” There are some supernatural elements in there as well, hints of a demon or devil, ESP, cloven feet maybe? And really, that’s what I’m most excited about as an author, editor, teacher and publisher. I love authors that straddle the fence between genre and literary fiction, taking the best from both. I want compelling narratives, that keep me turning the pages, a sense of wonder, as well as the thoughtful, insightful, more philosophical elements. An author like Benjamin Percy, for example, can publish in both The Paris Review and Cemetery Dance. Or people like George Saunders, Haruki Murakami, even Toni Morrison. 

Fantastic. For me, your description elevates my idea of genre fiction into the literary, and I had probably been a bit biased against genre fiction in the past, thinking of them as “fast reads” or formulaic (even if I love me some genre every now and again). I think speculative writing is becoming more popular, just as fan fiction and vampire fiction and Pride and Prejudice with Zombies fiction is growing in popularity. Do you agree? Have you encountered any of this snobbery along the way while writing crime/horror?

Oh there are snobs for sure. And there are genre fans that hate literary fiction, too. I mean there is innovative work being done in all genres, and really back writing in every genre as well. I see a lot of nose wrinkling in academia, but then again, there are programs that embrace it, such as UC-Riverside, which I just visited as a guest author—a fantastic MFA program there. Seton Hill has a Popular and Genre Fiction program, as well. I mean, I think it’s important to study the classics, to read Cheever, Carter, JCO and Nabokov. But there’s a lot to learn from reading King, Grisham, and Rowling, too. I see more and more speculative fiction easing its way into the Best American Short Storiesanthologies, into The New Yorker, and other places. With certain genres, there are definitely expectations—with horror you want to be scared, with mystery you want to solve something—and that’s fine. I understand wanting an “easy read” for sure. But the novels and stories that move me the most, they find that sweet spot between dense and fast-paced, between emotional and gritty, between lyrical and entertaining. For MFA programs to ignore genre fiction is—I think it’s irresponsible. Look at The New York Times best seller lists—you know what’s on there? Mystery, romance, horror, fantasy, science fiction, YA, and literary. 

I agree with you. That sweet spot between “dense and fast-paced, between emotional and gritty, between lyrical and entertaining” is what I call being immersed in a good story. And the easier a writer can make their world seem to the reader, the better writer he or she is. What is it about this kind of writing that made you want to write in this genre?

Well, I grew up reading Stephen King, and he’ll tell you he’s a great storyteller, but not exactly a lyrical author. I think I sought out a range of voices, such as early Ray Bradbury leading me to William Burroughs and on to Chuck Palahniuk. I like to be surprised, I like to be moved, and I want to be hypnotized by the characters, the story, and the voice. When I first discovered Palahniuk, he got me to some neo-noir authors—Will Christopher Baer, Craig Clevenger, and Stephen Graham Jones. I loved how dense they were, how lyrical, but they weren’t boring or expected. They weren’t formulaic. When I write, I want to pull you into the story, to be the protagonist, experiencing what he (or she) is going through. I want to scare you, make you laugh, turn you on, enlighten you, and leave you spent. I want you to go hug your kids, lock the doors, and then stare out into the darkness wondering what might be possible, both the tragic and hopeful, the vengeful and mystical. I used to read a lot of mysteries, but over time, in a series, it’s all the same thing. If you pick up Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, I guarantee you’ve never read anything like it. The perfect blend of the horrific and the fantastic, the mix of light and dark, lyrical and visceral—it’s just amazing. 

I haven’t read Perdido Street Station, and now I will. What you say about pulling your reader into the story is right-on though. In your book, Disintegration, especially, I felt your protagonist pull – demand, force, coerce – me into his world in such a great and powerful way. A visceral way. A visual way.

Thanks. When I finished that book I broke down and started crying. I thought I might throw up. I’d BEEN him for so long, this unnamed protagonist. I guess you’d call it “method writing,” having sat in that place for so long, taking the advice of Jack Ketchum, and writing what scared me the most—seeing my wife and kids killed in a car accident. It was pretty intense. It also helped that it was set in Wicker Park, where I lived for ten years, in my old apartment, and old haunts. I could picture the rooms, the aqua stove, the people on the street—I could hear the Blue Line “L” train go by.

That takes some guts. Also – I’m pretty sure we were neighbors once upon a time. Small world.

I’ve noticed when your books are in the final stages of editing – or your anthologies – there’s quite a bit of hype around the artwork that will be included. More so, I think, than I’ve seen outside of the horror/crime/mystery category. Do you agree? Do you think that this is because this particular genre is so closely tied to the physical, visual world?

I do think the fantastic, the horrific, the magical, begs to be seen, and to be drawn. Whether it’s Neil Gaiman or Lovecraft. I think my personal attraction to art in the anthologies I’ve edited and published comes from two places—my desire to give my readers something more, the illustrations adding to the experience, and my background in advertising for twenty years as an art director and graphic designer. I want the books to look nice, to be fun, to be well designed—you should pick them up and hold them, turn them over, enjoy the imagery, all of the elements. I’m a very tactile person. I’ve also seen so many horrible covers, especially in horror, that I knew I wanted to use original photography and illustrations on all of my books. It’s important to me.

Does this have anything to do with your interest in including artwork in Gamut?

Definitely. It’s the same way at Gamut—there will be original drawings with every story. Luke Spooner will be doing that—he’s done most of the interior work I’ve published at Dark House Press. I can say, “Draw me a crib,” and it’ll be the coolest, creepiest crib you’ve ever see. And we have other perspectives, too, from George C. Cotronis, Daniele Serra, Bob Crum, and Jennifer Moore. They’ve all done cover art or other projects for me at Dark House Press. 

So…we’ve uttered the word, Gamut. Tell us what you are most excited about – the first thing you want to tackle – once your Kickstarter is funded (because I hope it will be!).

The stories! I have a list of reprints that I’m dying to get to, work I couldn’t publish in other places. These are my favorite authors, so I want to go get those dark tales and share them with the world. And the new work, man, I really have no idea what they’ll turn in, which is really exciting! I know a story from Livia Llewellyn or Laird Barron or Damien Angelica Walters will be something special. It’ll be new, just for our readers, and I can’t wait to share these with them. I’m being a bit of a patron (or maybe I should say fanboy) here, too, supporting the voices that matter to me, that inspire me, that push me to be a better author. 

Nothing wrong with that! It’s so important to support and encourage the writers we love.  

For sure. If people didn’t support me, encourage me when I was just getting started, I’d never have written anything. Craig Clevenger really pushed me to send out a story I wrote in a class of his, entitled, “Stillness.” I didn’t have any faith in it, but I sent it out. Of course, I sent it to all the wrong places at first, but eventually it landed in Shivers VIalongside Stephen King and Peter Straub. But I needed that initial push, that support. 

You’re a writer. You’ve edited a bunch of books. You’re more than qualified to start a lit mag, and you’ve told me you’ve been working toward this for years – so what’s standing in the way? I’m thinking you’re going to say money. Is it money?

Money, yes. That’s the big one. But really, I wanted to start this project WITH people. I didn’t want to do it alone. This isn’t about me, it’s about being a part of the landscape of excellent publishing that’s already going on—at Tor, Nightmare, Cemetery Dance, Apex, F&SF, Clarkesworld, Shimmer, etc. I’ve been inspired by editors like Ellen Datlow, Ann VanderMeer, Paula Guran, John Joseph Adams, Michael Kelly, and many others. Not only did I want to surround myself with talented authors, but I wanted the original patrons and supporters to be a part of this as well. I want them to suggest people to me, to have an open discussion, and I want them to send in their work. With a vehicle like Kickstarter people are invested—literally. And whether it’s $30 or $130 or $1,030 this is where we all come together to create something new, and exciting, and interesting. A few places have closed, recently, and others are no longer taking submissions, so it seemed like the right time to step up and take this chance. We’re going to pay ten cents a word, which is more than most, and we’re going to embrace dark, weird, literary stories, which sometimes have a hard time finding a home.

Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahnuik, Marcus Sakey – they’ve all backed you. A mile-long list of authors have given verbal agreements to write for your magazine. A host of editors and artists have signed on to help once the magazine is up and running. It has to feel great knowing this dream of yours is about to come to fruition – or are you too worried to enjoy the love?!  

You know, Megan, if I wasn’t bipolar when I started, I probably am now. As we speak it’s day two, and we’ve raised almost $8,000. I’m both thrilled with that and also disappointed. I go back and forth. One minute I think we can’t do this, the next I think this is definitely going to work out. So, yes, I am pretty worried, but if everyone who says they want to change the industry, everyone who says there aren’t enough paying markets, actually steps up and contributes, we should be able to make this happen. I don’t want people to do this for me, I want them to do it for the authors who are going to write the stories, for the artists who will draw new work, for the writers who will now have a new place to submit and get paid—and for themselves, to create a new magazine for entertainment, enlightenment, and fulfillment.

I can’t wait to see how your Kickstarter project works out – and even more so how the launch of Gamut goes. Thank you for the interview, Richard, and best of luck!

Thanks, Megan, I really appreciate the continued interest and support. Means a lot.

Being More Alarming Feels Good: A Review of theNewerYork

theNewerYork is more than just a literary magazine, it’s an aesthetic. Chuck Young, Joshua S. Raab, and the other editors are focused on exploring “new and forgotten literary forms”, and from Raab’s erasure-style letter from the editor onward, this aim is truly the focus of the magazine in full. The theme of Book III is time, which Raab elaborates upon in his afterword: “This book shows you that quick can also be deep, for it is the quality of time, not the length, that brings meaning to life.” Most of these pieces fit on one spread-open page of the book or less. Most are, yes, a quick read, but some are funny, some dark, some nonsensical, some profound.

I read Book III in one sitting, turning each page in sequence until I reached the back cover. I like reading literary magazines this way. Some other magazines I have recently enjoyed reading from cover to cover are Illuminati Girl Gang, Plain Wrap Press’s new online journal, Quarter, and a New Zealand-based journal called Potroast. I don’t like to skip around in a lit mag. Being an editor myself, I know a good deal of effort can go into selecting the order of the pieces included in the issue, and for me, to only pick and choose pieces that look pleasing to me or happen to be written by names I am familiar with would be incautious. I think Joshua S. Raab might agree with my style of reading. At the start, Raab’s letter from the editor instructs, “Read slowly to avoid complications, read entirely. You won’t like some of this work. This is intended; enjoy the various ghosts that can inhabit your thoughts.”

While I didn’t really dislike any of the pieces in Book III, several made me feel all tingly inside (which, for me, is a mark of greatness). Gideon Nachman’s “Unheralded Monsters” (made all the much more exciting by Nils Davey’s Monster illustrations) provides descriptions, hobbies, and fears of five lesser-known monsters, all created by the attendants of a make-your-own-monster themed eighth birthday party. These monsters are beautiful and strange, and they each reveal a lot about the character who created them in a very small space.

Charles Holdefer’s “The Amazing Sticking Quarter” outlines a gruesome magic trick that involves championing the insertion of a screw directly into the magician/reader’s forehead. Divided into subsections and including a figure, Holdefer’s story is essentially made up of a set of instructions, and the beauty of this piece is that you feel you are simultaneously reading about how to put together a desk from Ikea and also peering directly into the very dark soul of one single human.

One of the most exciting aspects of Book III is its inclusion of artwork, some of which is in full color, some of which are printed on different paper qualities. Some of the art is used to illustrate stories, while others stand alone. The list of artists included in the back is as long as the list of writers. A higher percentage of the artwork than the written stories gave me the tingly feeling, “Proverbs 10:22” by Stephen Lipman in particular, which used conté crayon and ink to create new meaning from a biblical passage.

While a few of the stories in theNewerYork’s Book III look like traditional stories, most are more like “Unheralded Monsters” and “The Amazing Sticking Quarter,” in that they play, physically, with the constraints of the page and work to radically manipulate them to achieve new things within the traditional format of a literary magazine (two covers, paper pages each with equal dimensions). But what is contained within Book III cannot be guessed at by its packaging. Though these writers’ formatting decisions might appear out of place in a more traditional journal, Raab and Young’s selection process sets traditionally formatted prose as the outlier, while giving the majority of the space to unexpected forms.

If for no other reason, pick up a copy of Book III because it feels good. Matte covers feel good on your fingers. Full color illustrations feel good in your eyes. Physically turning a book upside-down in order to read a story feels good. Being more alarming feels good.

An Interview with The Fog Horn's Quinn Emmett

LaTanya McQueen: What was the impetus for starting The Fog Horn? Who else makes up The Fog Horn and what do each of you do for the magazine?

Quinn Emmett: I was lucky to be raised in a family where reading was a fundamental part of everyday life. My parents, brothers and sister were the original Goodreads community, if Goodreads was like Fight Club and you were willing to bleed to get your hands on a novel before anyone else. Flash forward twenty-plus years, and I found myself doing digital product development, and then becoming a working screenwriter. I wanted to find a way to merge the two worlds. I worked at ESPN for a number of years and they do a great job of hiring folks within their demographic. We were the first to use a new product, and were tougher than anyone else on it. In tech, it’s called dog-fooding. So last year I considered the growing pile of New Yorker mags in my home and decided to build a reading experience I would use: curated, consumable, no murdering of the rain forest.

Next thing was finding great help on the tech and creative side. So we have Conor Britain, a young, smart, SUPER attractive developer who built our app on top of the TypeEngine platform, and Bryan Flynn, our art director. Bryan drew our masthead, creates all of our covers and handles our images. He and I worked together previously on other, more inappropriate (but charitable!) projects, and though we’ve never met or even talked on the phone, I trust his eye and instincts completely. Lastly, Chris Starr (one of our original writers) contributes with a careful and thorough copy edit that gets things up to snuff and preserves the author’s intention.

LM: How are you distinguishing yourself from not just other literary magazines, but also from similar digital platforms like Kindle Singles, for example, or Narrative that use a subscription model?

QE: It’s not easy. There’s a boat load of websites, magazines, journals and other writing outlets out there. Which is awesome for new writers. The issue is, very few of those places pay writers, or pay writers well. Maybe readers don’t care about that as much, but it does affect quality, and we wanted to both pay writers really well, and find a way to stand out. So we offer $1000 a story, and we accept submissions from both Hollywood screenwriters and the general public, and then we publish them together like some sort of crazy literary pro-am.

We can never offer the volume that an Amazon best-seller does, but it’s also getting incredibly difficult to make a dent in those ranks. Look at the top ten right now: David Baldacci, Sarah Dalton, Lee Child, Lee Child, Nelson DeMille, etc. I’m positive that a well-reviewed Kindle Single could fetch more than our $1000, but we guarantee that dough, a small but growing audience and a fun publishing experience. We’d love to become a beacon for quality short fiction — for writers and readers, the same. That said, anything that gets writers paid and readers interested is a positive for us, and the new world order. Traditional publishing (like TV and movies) is broken. You’re a blockbuster, or you’re nothing. Viva la Revolution!

LM: Can you explain a little bit more about how The Fog Horn works (someone downloads the app then purchases the subscription? If someone subscribes can they get back issues as well? Do all four stories each month come at once or once a week over the course of a month?)?

QE: Absolutely. We’re actually very similar to Netflix (name dropper). You download our app for free, and then after a 7-day free trial, you pay $3.99 a month for access to both new and back issues. We publish four original stories a month, and twelve issues year. Sometimes there’s a theme (like our Valentine’s Day issue), sometimes less so. But we spend a lot of time curating a quality reading experience — always our number one goal. Everything we do — the app, the website and the content — serve that objective.

You didn’t ask, but the business is very transparent and tied into the model above. We treat The Fog Horn more like a bootstrapped tech start-up than a literary journal, because that’s what it is. None of the three of us gets paid until we get into the black. More subscribers equals more revenue, and with more revenue we can keep paying for original stories. We keep our costs streamlined and predictable and say no more than we say yes. Hopefully that gets us to sustainability.

LM: Your submissions system is a little different than from literary magazines. Along with a few questions, you ask for a pitch of a person’s story. Why the decision to have writers submit pitches and not submit the story itself?

QE: You can usually tell if someone can write pretty quickly. But yes, it’s a bit strange. More than anything, it lets us really get to know the writer and see if they’re a good fit for The Fog Horn. We’ve received very few complaints, if anything just a little confusion because it’s not standard practice. But we don’t want to be a story factory or just a mysterious email address on the world wide web. It’s impersonal. Nobody actually expects Santa Claus to respond to their letter. But if you knew he was checking out your cooking blog and getting to know you from afar, you’d feel like maybe he was gonna bring you that lizard for Christmas. . . . What was the question?

LM: Based on the pitches how do you decide if you’re interested in the story or not?

QE: More than anything we look for voice. It could be a well-developed voice, or a kernel of something special, but short stories leave very little room for heavy plot. I want YOU to tell me a story, and I want it to burn a hole in the page. Which isn’t to say it needs to be horror or action; those are, in fact, two of the hardest to pull off. It can’t just be about scaring people or writing gore — that doesn’t work quite the same as it does on the screen. You need compelling characters, and what’s what we want. Otherwise, there needs to be an unpublished, existing draft, and it’s gotta be good writing. We typically do one or two passes of my notes, and then it’s off to copy edit. If it doesn’t seem like two passes will get it done, we’ll pass. We don’t have a full time editing staff or the resources to develop stories for months on end.

LM: What kinds of stories are you hoping to publish in The Fog Horn? For writers looking to submit what do you suggest they do to get a sense of what The Fog Horn is looking for?

QE: Again — we’re looking for a voice. Be your own voice. If nothing else in the story works, make sure it has an opinion. Whether you’re established (you wrote a movie or write for a TV show) or not doesn’t matter. Sure, big names help sell subscriptions, but those people are extremely busy making actual money (haha), so they’re much more difficult to wrangle. That said, writing screenplays is a fairly miserable existence and the format blows, so we provide a nice alternative to endless studio notes. I’m a huge sci-fi nerd, so the classics do it for me — they say something about present day, the future and society. But when you read George Saunders, you realize the devastating potential in a very personal short story. The potential to live in the life of a person (or animal, or vegetable — anything goes!) for a very brief moment and experience their love, or pain, or terror, or even a downward spiral. It’s incredible. For examples, I’d read what we’ve put out so far. Read the greats. And then say something.

LM: How do you curate each issue? Do you imagine each story working together thematically or are they meant to play against each other?

QE: We generally work 1-2 issues ahead. It’s none of our primary jobs, and we don’t have a crack team of editors, so we work with the bigger writers that are interested and the public submissions we receive and try to think about what fits together, or what makes for a compelling contrast. If a theme emerges or makes sense on the calendar, great. Otherwise we look for a variety of lengths and try to keep making sure it’s a magazine you’ll look forward to every month.

LM: You’re one of the few literary journals that pay for work accepted. How do you imagine keeping that model sustainable in the future?

QE: We definitely make it harder on ourselves by paying so much for content. But we wouldn’t have such great writing if we didn’t. And nobody wants to pay for subpar writing. We also don’t have much of a marketing or advertising budget, so quality and word-of-mouth are going to be our biggest helpers. We’ve done some selective advertising on Facebook and with a few podcasts (totally different audiences, and totally different measurability), but it’s hard to make a real impact with the equivalent of your lunch money.That said, we’re converting downloaders-to-subscribers at over 40%. The digital mag standard is about 3.3%. So people are loving what they’re reading. They’re choosing to stick around. We’re super proud of that. We just need a push for downloads. More downloads = more subscribers = money to pay the bills. There’s nothing better than publishing someone’s hard work, except sending them a check.

LM: Do you foresee opening up The Fog Horn to other genres in the future?

QE: Not right now. There’s other great mediums for non-fiction (Epic, Longform, etc) and we love this format. If people know the structure of what they’re getting every month, they can better imagine themselves spending time and money to fit it into a busy lifestyle (and busy home screen).

LM: Are there any other features for The Fog Horn that you’re working on?

QE: We say no more than we say yes, but I’d say our next goals are web subscriptions and audio versions of our stories. Web subscriptions enable us to be a little more device agnostic, and allow people to read more discreetly at work. I’ve got a lot of friends that haven’t read a page since kindergarten, but they listen to a book a week on tape. Commuters, our bread and butter, are part of that group. Audio reads are easier to implement technically, but the actual recording requires a little more effort and money. Nobody wants to listen to me hack and cough my way through a robot love story. It’ll ruin it.

LM: So are you the only reader that goes through all the submissions?

QE: We have some volunteer slush readers, but it’s fairly manageable at this point. We considered hiring an editor early on, but to keep the business streamlined and efficient, I retained most content curation and editing duties. Once the stories are in our development queue, we all read them and talk about how they fit the overall scope and design of what we want.

LM: Once someone subscribes to The Fog Horn which of the stories do you suggest they check out first?

QE: I just want to preface this answer by saying it’s like picking among my children. So the blood’s on your hands. We love every one of the twelve stories we’ve published to date, and the four we have coming up soon. I think any reader will love NOISE (Issue #1), THE RED WHEELBARROW (Issue #2), or DREAM ME (Issue #3). They’re not similar, but all feature killer new voices. That said: because the stories and issues are so consumable, we feel like new readers can start with either Issue #1 or the newest issue and enjoy the same awesome experience.

LM: What is the average response time for those thinking about submitting a story?

QE: We say on our submission page, and in a message after you submit that if you haven’t heard from us in 30 days, consider it a pass. We feel like that’s fair. We’d love to process submissions quicker, but extra staff is expensive. And I’d rather keep paying for great stories, instead.

LM: Do you think you’ll ever in the future do a print version (like a print anthology or a special print issue) of any of your content?

QE: Great question. We’ve got the ability through the app to produce single issues that are Best Of, or themed, and we definitely have plans for that, once the content builds up and it becomes appropriate. I have a very special place in my heart for print and would love to put something out there, but it’s not cheap. Our first goal is keep the business alive and profitable by providing a killer core reading experience. Once we’ve done that and hit our subscriptions goal, the world’s our oyster.

An Ongoingness too Reliable to Conclude

Crass. Delicate. Geometric. Spare. Ammons’ work ties up our ways of knowing the world in a textile, one that reaches beyond the view of the eye when held up at arm’s reach. It is crass because it understands the world is profane in its abundance. It is delicate because it intimately knows the bluejays, pebbly sluices, orange juice, broken bones, and the after-effects of spring rains on earth worms’ chances of survival.

The Chicago Review keeps this substance in its rawest form, displaying copies of unpublished, typewritten, hand-edited drafts. (It even has the scroll of Ammons’ long poem Tape copied on its spine.) And the volume also provides sufficient analytical footwork, via four well-crafted essays, to catch the reader up to speed on the major readings of Ammons’ premier poems.

Early on we’re introduced to Ammons’s philosophical drive – “the plenitude of nothingness,” – and given two competing perspectives on how his work fulfills, or does not, Kantian notions of self-contained works of art. These are integral discussions, which Ammons’ invites in his notes, lectures, and the discursive moments of his verse, and they pay-off when the reader arrives at the heart of this volume, the unpublished drafts.

Of course, these unpublished poems lack the completeness one might desire in a thoroughly revised, mature group of poems, but even in his published volumes, Ammons mode was to resist or exclude revision, as he does in Tape for the Turn of the Year, which catalogs a year’s worth of quotidian on a two-inch-wide adding machine tape. That whole 300-plus-day effort is drafted under the pretenses of a whim:

today I
decided to write
a long
thin
poem…

 …it was natural for
me…
… to contemplate
this roll of
adding-machine tape.

Ammons’ is clearly comfortable in the bathos-laced, short-line free verse that has many different manifestations in contemporary poetics, but what I enjoy in this volume (Tapeis only quoted) is the quatrain-constructed “Scarcities,” whose narrative and artistic reach has shades of Bishop, suggesting the preeminence of “a long, / long poem… // an ongoingness too reliable to /conclude;” the serial evasiveness from “How to Find Wisdom in Writing and Painting” – whose most direct advice is, “don’t force ice / it can burst shingles / crack rocks:…;” and the oddity of Canto 57 – whose most parse-able lines are surrounded by phalanxes of capital X’s and constellations of question marks offsetting the tautology,

the meaning of life consists in
not being dead

In sum, this is a compilation of impressive scope: the essays illuminate a body of poems, photos, and correspondences that bring this major poet to life, and at 272 pages, this volume contains only a few moments of over-reaching and just enough room for some well-framed verse that make the life and art of Ammons’ seem aptly described as “an ongoingness too reliable to conclude.” This is a fitting review for Ammons – in that it is expansive, intelligent, and empathetic, but also aware of its finite existence, its “untidy edges,” that happen to be where the person of the poet can be most fully seen.

Stay Horny for Art: A Review of theNewerYork

theNewerYork wants me to “Stay horny for art.” It’s right there on the back cover. Right there on the front cover, a pink-skinned mop-topped nude with rosy cheeks sits open-legged, the subject’s mouth obscured by a stark, black exclamation point which stretches down between the ample breasts and settles betwixt said open legs, barely obscuring whatever genitalia the androgynous figure might possess.

Yes, I am horny for art.

This is “Book 0” of the magazine, and it’s a great way to kick things off. It’s ballsy. Its contents are as androgynous as its cover image. They may be poems, and they may be short stories. They may be accurate quotations from Richard Simmons, or they may be outright lies. Who the hell cares?  theNewerYork is less concerned with category, and more concerned with touching its readers inappropriately.

I don’t think that there is a radical idea circulating around the literary community to galvanize a definable and legitimately new avant-garde. The cynic in me might extrapolate from this observation to conclude that there is nothing “new” to be done in the making of literature. With the turn of every page of this Book 0, I am excited by the new stuff I get on every page.

Between these horny bindings, there is a Craigslist “free items” thread about the meaning of life. There are very many upside-down pages. There are instructions on stargazing, diagrams of atoms, God, boogers, badly-defined jellyfish, and bluesy loving no one wants. The remarkable thing is that each page, whether it is Annabel’s letter from Danny or a full-color glossy of a man in an uncomfortable chair, compels this reader forward.

A disclaimer on page one cautions readers to temper their expectations: “You won’t like some of this work.” I disagree; you’ll like all of it, but it’s likely to make you feel just a little dirty.  In an afterward, editor JSR admits the work is “all over the place,” which is true to an extent. The magazine is disjointed by design, but all of these weird little literary gems share a common impulse. They’re all exciting, they’re all challenging, and some of them are even beautiful.

theNewerYork is a hell of a project. Issue #2 is out, and I’m pumped for #3. Book 0 was new, and I have every confidence that Issue #3 will be even newer.

Eclectic Poetry from New Voices

When it comes to the already fringe element of literary magazines, a strictly poetry review is a bit of an outsider, hidden in the tall grasses, mixed in with the thorns and thistles of the terrestrial realm. One such lone wolf is the Hiram Poetry Review. In the exercise of gauging the territory of poetry and evaluating the submission pile, however, this Review is no greenhorn. In fact, some might argue that concerning those magazines that stick strictly to the modes of poetry and poetry review, HPR is the finest citizen working. Though perhaps little-known, HPR thrives on a high standard and discovers some of America’s finest poets.

The annual offering of the Review, Issue Seventy-Three, released in April, offers a nod to the tenure one of its prior editors, shares “eclectic poetry from new voices,” and provides four interesting reviews on poets who, at least for me, would go unnoticed without the attention of HPR.

David Fratus, Professor Emeritus, of the Hiram College English Department, graces the cover of the issue in the form of archival photo from, as it appears, his teaching days. Dr. Fratus would take over primary editorship from the Review’s founder in the fall of 1974, and hold that position (later sharing the job with another Hiram professor, Carol Donley), until the Spring of 1984. For those interested in the history of the Review, seeing a new poem (he contributed several over the years) by Dr. Fratus is satisfying. That it is a good poem makes it all the more so.

HPR’s current editor, Dr. Willard Greenwood, has put out many satisfying issues since he took over in 2002, making number seventy-three a bit of milestone for him. He seems to truly be committed to both publishing interesting work, a kind of “know it when I see it” attitude, and finding good writers for the poetry reviews at the end of each issue. The background of poets in this newest publication range from a Lithuanian high school senior, to the founding member of a surfing club, to an unauthorized biographer of Sylvia Plath, while not limiting itself wholly to the rare and exotic by featuring several more widely published writers.

Under Greenwood’s tenure, one never knows exactly what she or he might get from a poem in HPR.

Most impressive is the rooted commitment to the “review” part of the Review. At a recent poetry reading at the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University, a winner of a poetry contest expressed a poignant line concerning the contemporary world of poetry authorship, “Poets talk about audience like they actually expect there to be one.” Authors, Bruce Dethlefsen, Kristina Marie Darling, David Hernandez, and Jack Gilbert can rest assured that anyone who reads the aptly written reviews in HPR will be interested in getting a copy of their books.

The Hiram Poetry Review has sharpened my senses with regard to poetry in the present day — its appearance in times contemporary. Once a year, it is a chance to observe the fashion and manners of today’s emerging writers. Without reservation, I suggest contacting Dr. Greenwood to purchase the most recent HPR, Issue Seventy-Three. You’ll also be happy to find that nearly all past issues are archived at HPR’s website.

Life doesn’t treat you. People do.

I am a baby Brooklynite, twenty-four years old and brand new to this strange and beautiful borough. A native New Yorker by birth, I long resisted the desire to actually live and work and perform the acts of adulthood here; of course, I was born fifty miles from the limits of Kings County, in a town that still feels worlds away from my humble apartment on Bedford Avenue.

To assuage the overwhelm of suddenly residing in such an intensely frenetic place (after spending my collegiate years in rural oblivion), I spend plenty of time in bookstores. Even more than the local public libraries, bookstores tend to command a calmness that is nearly impossible to find elsewhere. Brooklyn booksellers usually won’t even bother asking if you need help — they know a dreamy, congenital browser when they see one. (If you do happen to require assistance, however, these well-positioned bibliophiles will provide ample support.)

On an inhospitably warm afternoon last spring, I took refuge in Fort Greene’s Greenlight Books, and after lingering for an obscenely long time, I found the book that would send me directly to the register, currency in hand, and back out into the thick brace of too-soon summer all the way home, where I could be alone and engrossed. The book was not a novel, or memoir, a collection of poems or a cookbook. It was a handsome little literary magazine called A Public Space, Issue 12. This volume alone unites scores of extraordinary voices: John Haskell, Dorthe Nors, Sarah Manguso, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Adrienne Rich, Tomaz Salamun, Karen Volkman, Kiki Delancey, Yiyun Li, Peter Orner — honestly, the list goes on. The text on each page was clean and bold, the photo essay by Noemie Goudal utterly haunting.

As fortune would have it, Issue 12 was just giving way to Issue 13, which I obtained from BookCourt in Cobble Hill, another point on Brooklyn’s literary axis. On the backside of the jacket, a sentence from newcomer Miroslav Penkov’s story “The Letter” was quoted:

“How’s life treating you? she says in exactly those words. Life treating you. . . . A stupider question was never asked. Life doesn’t treat you. People do.”

This was the story I read first, only after returning to devour the “If You See Something, Say Something” section, which included a short essay by Amy Leach and a musing by Leslie Jamison, two authors I have grown to adore and champion over the past year. And after “IYSS,SS,” it was on to more brilliant fiction, essays, poetry, and a very powerful “Illustrated Guide” by Nora Krug.

But it was Miroslav’s story, his first ever to appear in print, that caused me to feel some irrevocable connection to the publication, some mad hunger for an intimate understanding of its mission.

A Public Space met me at the very moment I was quite literally trying to escape the chaos of the street: the bustle, the jostling, the crosswalks, the horns, the sirens, the subway grates, the warm trash, the incessant onslaught of objects and images. And yet by engaging with the work A Public Space had chosen to put into the world, I found myself making more room for the possibilities of the everyday. What might happen, I began wondering, if I paid more attention? If I eavesdropped more closely? If I peered into shop windows I had always bustled by? If I allowed those extra five minutes en route from A to B to chat with a street vendor, a bodega cashier, a transit worker, a fellow walker?

It’s a profound and unexpected effect for a magazine to have, and whenever I recommend the publication to friends, family, and perfect strangers, I even have trouble calling it a magazine, and that’s with all due respect to magazines; it’s simply that A Public Space is actually a mighty river that coaxes many tributaries, and trusts that together these streams will help create a more complete, more complicated, more lustrous representation of human experience.

A month or so after my first encounter, after mercilessly inquiring all over town regarding back issues of A Public Space, I happened to walk right past the magazine’s offices in Boerum Hill:

1. A Public Space

So read the placard on the stately carriage house just off 3rd Avenue. Such is the beauty of living in a place where possibility is as plentiful as pigeons.

In the frenzy of delight that carried me through the rest of that day, I sent an email to the magazine’s general inquiries account and inquired after an internship, which I was granted for the autumn of 2011. After four months of happily, passionately performing my intern duties, I was invited to join the magazine’s staff as the Events & Outreach Coordinator. I know I was officially hired on January 11, 2012, because I have it marked on my calendar: APS: best day of my life. And although I am prone to exaggeration, to a great extent that is the whole truth: it was the day I recognized myself as a little tugboat that had found a worthy river, a path through the wild of an uncertain and young life, which I had chosen to spend (at least for as long as I can manage) in an unforgiving yet magnetic and invigorating place. And yes, I am biased, but you will be, too, once you read it.

This is not a case of mistaken identity. It really is as good as it looks. It is as weighty and textured as it feels. It is as vast and as intimate as it sounds. And it is courageous and elemental, as are the people who sustain it, and the people who put their words and pictures in it, and the people who subscribe and buy and pore over it in the aisles of independent bookstores. Go now, with purpose, and find it.