Livid: The Kanzler Saga: Apparition Poem #1181

Just as you couldn’t paint but to vandalize, I had
the instinct to vandalize you, my love. To rough
you up. Because for you there could be no love,
I would assist you in understanding repercussions
could follow from games you thought were fun.
How your green eyes had a problem— you stared
at things too long. That wide-eyed stare, made it
so that (for example) no one could take you seriously
as swish at a first night. Or on First Fridays, as you
tried to swish towards a homing sense you were going
where you wanted to, your simian male friend at your
side. As I said, I wanted to rough you up. You could
never paint to be crisp, only smudged, so that Abby laughed
at how hard you worked to convey retardation (and succeeded).

I could never decide if, behind the wide-eyed stare,
what was there had any genuine innocence. It seemed
to me, to be honest, there was none. Your sense
of complete calculatedness in every respect is why,
how I now kneel before you, my round browns mingling
with your round greens, brown & green smudging each
other to determine advantages, now that the first nights,
First Fridays are all part of a distant past, the time’s come
to choose whether to live or die. I’ve decided to salvage
us. That’s crisp in me. You were crisp about the bed
part of it, for a while, so that I force red into your mix—

The Posit Trilogy

 The Posit Trilogy: Wayback Machine (1)

.................................................................................

The Posit Trilogy: Wayback Machine (2)

Forthcoming and/or works-in-progress

Poetry: 

Something Solid

Curiosities

New Apparition Poems 2013-2014

Deep Wood's Woven Shade

Livid: The Kanzler Saga

Cheltenham (2nd ed)

Dance Monkey

Fiction:

Equations (print ed)

Chimes (2nd ed)

Letters to Dead Masters

A Poet in Center City

Also relevant:

Catalog page: Something Solid

Catalog page: Equations

Something Solid, Equations on PennSound

Adam Fieled: E-Books: Catalog

Posit (chapbook pdf): Dusie Press: 2007

Beams: Blazevox Books: 2007

Rubber Soul: Ungovernable Press: 2008

The White Album: Ungovernable Press: 2009

Apparition Poems (print book pdf): Blazevox Books: 2010-2024

Disturb the Universe: The Collected Essays of Adam Fieled (2nd edition): Argotist E-Books: 2010-2024

Mother Earth (2nd edition): Argotist E-Books: 2011-2024

Cheltenham (print book pdf): Blazevox Books: 2012-2024

The Posit Trilogy (including Posit, 2nd ed.) (2nd edition): Argotist E-Books: 2017-2024

The White Album (2nd edition): Eratio Editions: 2018

The Great Recession (2nd edition): Argotist E-Books: 2019-2024

Also relevant:

Jeffrey Side: Collected Poetry Reviews (2nd edition): 2013-2024

Various: Critical Writing on Adam Fieled: 2014

Books on mp3:

Equations (1), Equations (2): PennSound: 2023

Connective Tissue

 How part of The Posit Trilogy connects to Jacket Magazine.

Addendum: Brand New Key

Buckle up for the ride; Jeffrey Side's Collected Poetry Reviews (2004-2013) re-published on AO.

Apparition Poem #1574 in Fixator Press

 Apparition Poem #1574 in Fixator Press. Many thanks to Jonathan Butcher. 

Apparition Poems in Eratio

 Two Apparition Poems up in Eratio. Many thanks to Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino. 

White Out

 Check out the new white template for the original Argotist Online site.

Another Jenny Kanzler Two-fer

 Into the Kanzler maelstrom again on P.F.S. Post, in stereo.  

Deep Wood's Woven Shade: Apparition Poem #1347

Because women who paint have two bodies,
the fragile blood/flesh vessel common, normed,
to all, & an aggregate of coalesced colors & forms,
extending residue useful to raise brains past models,
the winter day arose I plumbed the depths (for a random
reason) of my files, found a miracle, ten paintings,
all master class, by her, without understanding how
I’d mislaid them a decade before. But there, in that now,
I found her body again, the first stroked into
the second, & it was a revelation past anything but

the most violently revelatory intercourse possible
between two human beings. Honestly, not hostile
but real, our more literal expression had wobbled
on skittish rails towards the noncommittal or gossamer.
But as she left it for real, her physical body, in coalesced
colors & forms, the retrieval was all intercourse elevated
into matrimony usually thought too good for the human
race. It is, actually. Especially given the work’s twists
& turns towards revealing again all this dullness
we live in. Four bodies must suffice, to turn dullness to fullness.

Apparition Poem #1180 in Scud

 Apparition Poem #1180 in Scud. 

Genius Loci (Slight Return)

The term genius loci is one I heard first used by Steve Halle twenty years ago in Henniker. I found it intriguing. What it designates- the guiding spirit or principle of places (rather than people or things)- is something that has animated a big chunk of my life, from Logan Square to Chicago to Plymouth Meeting. There is then, of course, West Philadelphia, and the poem Genius Loci from the Aughts Philly section of Something Solid has been rewritten as it now stands on P.F.S. Post. Jenny Kanzler now stands in the foreground, where she has always more or less belonged. Have I been, previously, coy? Slightly. Aughts Philly could make anyone coy. Babes. 

Mojo Thing #2: William Butler Yeats

 

The title Deep Wood’s Woven Shade is lifted from the brief, early lyric poem Who Goes with Fergus? by William Butler Yeats. There’s a sense of parallelism between Mondrian and Yeats in relation to this collection— as with Mondrian, there is a limpid clarity to Yeats’ early lyric poems which could be said to work as an antidote to the convoluted semi-obscurity of this group of Apparition Poems. With Yeats, raw sonority also becomes an issue— the sense of pronounced pleasure, in Yeats’ early lyrics, in the incantatory magic of strongly employed, strongly supported lyricism. Refrains and repetitions, in early Yeats, take and transcendentalize that the poems are meant to induce pleasure— in language, imagery, and the symbolistic system around natural surroundings (Glen-Car, Innisfree) which animate the early Yeats’ group. This, before a sense of social responsibility led Yeats to adopt a relatively more representative bardic posture, and thus attempt his own bid at being what I have called “consummate.”

Something Solid: Aughts Philly: Dresser in Lothlorien Poetry Journal

 Dresser,  from Aughts Philly, Something Solid, in Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 

Mojo Thing #1: Mondrian and Me

 

Twenty long years (almost), with the length of twenty long years, and I’ve continued to use images from the oeuvre of Dutch twentieth-century painter Piet Mondrian, on covers and in many key situations. The way I write, both formally and thematically, has little in common with Mondrian’s paintings— I employ abstraction, to make points and for other reasons, but much of my work is realistic, or at least grounded in realism. Mondrian, of course, is most famous for abstract work, which also sets him adrift from Abby, Jenny, and Mary. What gives? I gave some thought to this, as I picked yet another Mondrian for Deep Wood’s Woven Shade, and came to the conclusion that, led by my own subconscious, I use Mondrian’s abstract imagery to create a sense of balance or counterbalance, with or for the texts in question. The writing is dark, twisted, tangled, and often only achieves limpidity when focused on painful realities; the smooth, limpid clarity of the Mondrian abstractions allow some air, some sensory data against claustrophobia into the books as a gestalt whole. It’s a mojo thing, and a positing in place of another dialectic; my thesis to Mondrian’s antithesis. The readers of the text are left to synthesize the material, presented together. I would like to make the argument, furthermore, that the covers of Deep Wood’s Woven Shade and the rest, are meant to be active agents in reader’s assimilation of the books. They are not meant to be perceived as incidental in any way. In an important gambit, I have spent twenty years choosing Mondrian to oppose me, and to understand that dark, tangled writing could often use something, any destabilizing element, to offer an impression of textual well-roundedness, or to approach the consummate. That’s the synthesis I would most covet— a sense of being consummate. Over a long and short expanse of time, however, it will not be for me to evaluate whether that sense, of the consummate, subsists in these efforts or not.

P.F.S. Post catalog page

Grilikhes: Torment

Pogorelov: At the Train Station

Blair: Vielle...

Duncan: The Metallic Autumn

McCabe: Existential Clubbing

Graham: On the Banks...

McCabe: from True History...

Stefans: White Sestina

Wallack: The Stranger

Lundwall: Mangina

Halle: Waukegan