Racing ahead to '06

 Waxing Hot with Steve Halle on P.F.S. Post as of April 2006. 

2005: P.F.S. Post

P.F.S. Post (Philly Free School Post) debuted online as itself on October 10, 2005. These two December 2005 sonnets, from Chris McCabe, exemplify some of the best of what the site has to offer. 

Started in '05

Begun in 2005, completed in 2011, The Ballad of Robert Johnson came out in The Seattle Star in 2018. 

Beams: Maggie Mangual

On Maggie, as later appeared in Beams.

And Beams, as it rides again on Blazevox.

And pushing back to 2000...

 ...for something interesting I had going then. 

Philosophizing 2005-style

 On the theoretical underpinnings of what the Philly Free School did in 2005.

Dream-time 2005

 In 2005, bed-time was filled with sirens and more sirens. 

Released in '05

 Released in '05. Elegy for a Philly poet who had died in '04. 

And more again....

                              MOLLY'S BOOKS (SOUTH PHILADELPHIA) 

More 20 years ago today stuff...

HIGHWIRE GALLERY

HIGHWIRE GALLERY 2

20 years ago this week...

 

Ekleksographia #2: Extra Apps

 In the tradition of the Beams Apps, a lost 2009 page resurrected.

Beams: Beams: Infinite Regress

Modigiliani-marvelous
you collapsed perspectives

"vessel" in torso-line, reflected
back, over your shoulder

you leapt from the frame
colors in you remained canvas

foregrounded dimensions

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

Beams rides again on Blazevox

Twisted Limbs: 2025

Apocalypse out there. Here, endless wheels,

sparks; pockets of restrained & segmented
light. Lovely ways you defy me. Best moments,
always, you on top, when the world ends a little
bit. Warmth between lovers can never be
unnatural. Nor can hostage-taking, or a healthy
regard for oblivion. It's all that's left in common
between us & them: twisted limbs. Our mouths
move like theirs: flips, bites. Our movements
prefigure the same ends: consummated peace,
mediated silence, "deliberate hebetude." We're
w/ them as a necessary antithesis. They can't
see us. They never could. It's left to us to make
a balance, if we can. We'll need nothing less than luck.

© Adam Fieled 2006-2025

Earlier versions of this piece appeared in Big Bridge and Melancholia's Tremulous Dreadlocks

Equations: Thesis: Heather Mullen

 On the voodoo set loose from Santa Cruz. 

Adjunct Extension 2

 A perma-space for Otoliths 19 to do its quantitative dance. 

Equations: Thesis: Wendy Smith

 Borrowing some glamor from Hollywood to develop them: Henniker Hot Nights. 

Beams: Beams: Ex

 

mimesis of no-détente

(m)oral play of difference
I follow breath to be

as a blue painted vase
El Greco-sepia room

crossed corrugated lips

regrets of rinsed locusts
you “just knew” this

would happen, as you

“just knew” it’d happen
when you painted me

Beams catalog page

Blazevox pdf

The & Now Awards: The Best Innovative Writing

Jacket 31

Nth Position

Dusie 5

Otoliths 3

Eratio 7

Funtime Press pdf

Jacket 31 (U. Penn archive)

Blazevox 2nd edition pdf

Cricket Online Review 3

Galatea Resurrects 9 (Jeffrey Side review)

Collected Poetry Reviews 2004-2013 (e-book)(Jeffrey Side review)

Mipoesias

Blazevox 6

Words Dance 10

The Argotist Online

ekleksographia #2

P.F.S. Post

Equations: Thesis: Julie Hayes

Julie Hayes, in all her Temple-undergrad, South Moon Under glory, on P.F.S. Post. 

From Equations: Antithesis in Scud

 Three pieces from the Antithesis section of the dialectic Equations in Scud. 

Beams rides again

 Beams rides again, on Blazevox. Many thanks to Geoffrey Gatza.

Rosie and Jeremy

I met Rosanna Lee ("Rosie") through Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum. Mr. Tenenbaum had his own New York operations going, and met Rosie on one of his NYC sojourns. They became very tight very fast. The night I met Rosie for the first time, in the fall of '06, was at a First Friday gallery opening in Olde City Philly, where Jeremy happened to be showing. He also did a photo montage slide show that night set to music: lots of Beautiful South. Included in the slide show were several tasteful nude shots of Rosie. Interesting way, and place, to meet someone. She was considerably closer to Jeremy, but I stayed in touch with Rosie, too. Besides having her twice on P.F.S. Post,  I read with her in '08 at the Fall Cafe in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. She was an elusive character, but another key player in the Aughts Philly-NYC dynamic. 

Rosanna Lee on P.F.S. Post

 Rosanna ("Rosie") Lee's apocalyptic masterpiece Shoot the Freak on P.F.S. Post.

Listenlight Equation

 Another salvaged one, about the kind of actress Trish Webber could be. 

Equations does Manhattan

 The big blow-up moment in Equations for Manhattan, in Otoliths 70. 

Adjunct Extension

 Another perma-space for the Jeff Side Beams review, miscellaneously placed. 

From P.F.S. Post (2005-2023)

CATCH

The wind turns the water into an animal
& the boat rides the back of swells,
bucking wetly.
My legs absorb the push & pull,
thinking only of the fish,
sleek & dripping on the line,
neon green parachute ballooning
from its mouth.

I arch my back
& the rod dives.
The fish lifts, slimy as an egg,
spinning like a ballerina
on a silver thread,
its marble eye mute,
fixed on white.

How many times have you watched this world,
blinded, terrified?
There are hands on you
& pliers in your mouth,
metallic, blood-washed.
How many times have you waited
for the water
while everything lurches around you,
brilliant white, like the inside
of a hospital, like the underbelly
of a dream, gasping
to break the surface
toward that cold & sudden light?

© Becky Hilliker 2005

From Poetry (2005)

PARTS OF A STORY

Or, it could go like this, since
you want to know names,
places, people, particulars:

it was the particular paradise
of ninety acres of orchard grass
and a few scattered woods;
barbed wire, Holsteins,
and the plush of spring
as you feel it, wet beneath you,
when you sit down in a field in May—

or in the pasture’s folds where the creek ran:
there were ores of a grey clay
she could sit and mine all morning;
rotting trees, whose meat flaked off
like the flesh of fish;
or in the barn where the straw-dust
harried and swirled.

It was in an inheritance,
since it was given as all earth is given,
as ready to receive the pledge
of a young girl as the cow-flops
and the dull thud of horses’ hooves.

We may start here in this field,
with her kneeling, with the colors wet and black
suddenly pouring up—
but eventually we will have to confront the father,
then the ravishment by air,
then, still later—
the ravishment by imagination.

© Mary Walker Graham 2005

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

Answered Prayers and Willard Preachers

Trish: A Romance

Early Poems 1996-2006

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: 2007-2025

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

from Early Poems: "Technician of Tough Love"

for Alexandra Grilikhes 1932-2003

Puzzling your way back from nothingness
you must be; if the Void is an abyss,
to conquer it in life is impossible.
There is a blessing in ritual,
but it is all from one pull.

Your private treasures I never knew;
beyond the Indian drums (of which you had
a collection), was there something,
some book, some record, you prized
above all others?

You were a technician of tough love,
collected hearts; had a passion
for Chinese herbs boiled down
to the root, to retrieve essential,
healing strength;

ministered weary angels
needing succor, familiar w/ your tongue,
your breath, the beating of your heart.
Saintly, to feed some soul's need
for flesh, nectar, sanctuary,
oblivion;

now it’s death's mystery
from which you can't escape—
maybe. I profess & confess
utter bewilderment.

Remember lunches
at Essene, 4th Street, the crutch
of good caffeinated coffee, conversation,
a few hours rest; was eternity
there, watching you, your Muse,
waiting silently to bear Her naked flanks
to your disciplined pleasure?
Who would know but Her
how you, a restless spirit, learned?

© Adam Fieled 2003-2025

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

Graham: Parts of a Story

Pogorelov: No. 32

Hilliker: Catch

Lee: Shoot the Freak

Armstrong: Affair with...

Allegrezza and Muench: Villanelle

Campbell: Girl in a Box

Armstrong: Reparations