Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pa): "Apparition Poem #1342 (for Jenny Kanzler)"

What’s in what eyes?
What I see in hers is
mixed greenish silence,
somewhat garish, it’s
past girlish (not much),
but I can’t touch her
flesh (set to self-destruct),
anymore than she can
understand the book
her cunt is, that no one
reads directly, or speaks
of, there’s no love other
than “could be,” but I
think of her throat cut—
that’s her slice of smut.

© Adam Fieled 2010

Jenny Kanzler:Things Beneath the Surface 2

 Jenny Kanzler: Things Beneath the Surface 2.

Barry Schwabsky's song of himself

You know, you can’t necessarily decide what you should do and then execute that decision. Some people can, but not me. For me, it’s not a question of what I should write or even what I could write—but of what I can write. I recognize that my capacities and aptitudes are fairly limited. There are all kinds of things I like to read but are part of an endeavor that I know it’s not in me in contribute anything substantial to. To some extent these limitations are almost physiological: I’ve got a nervous disposition, I’m easily bored, so it doesn’t work for me to try and do anything in too systematic a way—it’s got to be something more mercurial. And then there are questions of what you might call self-image that reinforce this. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to be professional poets. I don’t think they really are that entirely—in most cases it would be more accurate to say that they are professional poetry teachers. But in any case, they need to have a certain track record, they need to publish a certain amount and so on. And I think it makes more sense for those people to do project-oriented works than it does for me, so I kind of steer clear of their territory. I believe in a division of labor! It’s all worth doing, but that doesn’t mean that I have to do all of it. I cultivate an idea of myself as an amateur, so I like pushing the idea that I will write poetry without a plan or schedule, that it will be something I dip into periodically—like a dilettante! Why not? (Anyway, it’s hard enough for me to do that with the writing I have to work at systematically, my art criticism.) I admit that this is really a sort of vanity, not very different from my notion that since I don’t work in an office, I will never dress in any clothes that anybody would ever be likely to wear to the office—that way no one will ever mistake me for an office worker. Likewise, no one should ever mistake my poetry for that of a creative writing professor. Ridiculous, I know, but there you go.

Robert Archambeau: Rhizomes and more

...You’re probably right about the trend toward book-length works in post-avant writing. I have nothing like actual data to work with, but that’s never stood in my way before, so let’s roll with the assumption that there is a trend toward book-length poems. I suspect you’re right for two reasons: an institutional one and another that has to do with the large-scale history of poetics. You really can’t underestimate the influence of that massive institutional edifice, the MFA program, on poetry nowadays. One of the things many people are encouraged to do in such programs is to write series of linked poems. I understand why: it’s a way to get students to stretch out beyond the short lyric, to explore a form or a topic, and to understand the architecture of a book. So that’s the institutional reason. The other reason is that our poetics have evolved to a point where we aren’t really asking for a very rigorous coordination of parts into a whole. That is, you no longer have to write with the kind of OCD level of attention to how your book-length project adds up to a whole in order to think of it as a single project. Milton would have died a little to think that a part of Paradise Lost had only an oblique connection to the unified whole, for example. But in our time, there is a strong sense that the truly sophisticated work eschews classical decorum, or even the kind of hidden unity behind a façade of fragments that we find in a poem like Eliot’s Waste Land. Some of this comes from the triumph of deconstruction and post-structuralism: after Derrida and company showed us all the fissures and disunities in the texts we’d thought of as whole, the goals of the Big Unified Work seemed less viable. And when Deleuze and Guattari described the rhizome as the form of our time, they authorized a lot of works in which various parts connected with each other somewhat haphazardly. So we see a lot of book-length poems where the bar for textual unity has been set fairly low. You can call it a book-length work if a lot of the parts only sort of connect. In a way, you could say what’s changed hasn’t been a matter of substance so much as it has been a matter of labeling. Wallace Stevens presented his first book, Harmonium, as a collection of individual poems. But those poems have enough by way of thematic and stylistic overlap that, had he been able to anachronistically appropriate Deleuze and Guattari’s language and called it a single, rhizomatic whole, no one now would bat an eye. Anyway, this movement toward big works that are really collections of linked fragments isn’t as new as we’d like to think. The roots of it go back at least as far as Poe’s essay “The Poetic Principle,” in which he argues that the unified long poem isn’t really possible....

A long letter from JET (Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum)

C: To be honest, I canNOT remember the last time I heard a poem THAT LONG (20 minutes read aloud?) with that much exuberance and vigilance to the detail-oriented care of what seemed every single word written/spoken. You reinvent for us (for me at least) the road to self discovery with the poem. There were threads of separate image/subject/style, these individual threads which you kept braiding from your mouth to our ears. And of course there are countless forms from poetry's history which repeat or rephrase. But these threads were very much your own, and each seemed to have total worlds of their own, almost separate voices of awareness (not to say that at times there won't be unconscious experiences which propel a thread into a certain conscious experience, but maybe no, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe maybe maybe, whatever...) but at the same time were each born from the same conscious being. Sometimes different ages of one woman lived in a single moment of a single word, so it seemed. How would you explain how you came to construct each thread's own voice?

CC: you are an incredibly generous listener and reader. Your choice of wording in terms of "threads" is entirely apropos as this is exactly how I refer to the different voices / sections / styles. (I have been obsessed with the "weave" since my Temple days and the notion of weaving together disparate threads which maintain their individuality continues to fascinate me).

AND MY natural enough REACTION IS: Well, what the hell was I thinking when I called poetry masturbatory?? ------- when it's abundant clear that THIS sort of exchange does masturbation one better!: "I'll help YOU masturbate YOURSELF if you help ME masturbate MYSELF!" It's not even proper whoredom; at least whores have market rates, and some sort of ambiguous relative worth, and there's a genuine exchange, and at least the john gets OFF!

No no no, this is something far creepier, far less human: this is the mutual agreement to suspend intelligence (and joy) for the sake of not having one's obvious inadequacies pointed out. "I know I'm ugly, but if I promise not to mention you're ugly, we can both say we're attractive, all right?"

Witness C’s nonsensical, over-the-top drooling (which reminds me exactly of Shitlock's panegyrics before each of his readers): "You reinvent for us...the road to self-discovery" !!! "these individual threads which you kept braiding from your mouth to our ears" !!! "Sometimes different ages of one woman lived in a single moment of a single word" !!!!!!!!! MY GOD, how could he keep lifting that heavy shit-shovel? (especially with his little t. rex arms?)

And GLORY BE, how GENEROUS of Babs to acknowledge! and celebrate! how clever little C is! in his critical blowjob question! "My god, how wonderful you are, C, for understanding how magnificent I am!" Grotesque, absofuckinlutely grotesque little lice. AND I refrained, only with great difficulty, from c-ing-and-p-ing (pasting and lambasting!) the viscous blob of Barbara's pseudo-self-hagiographic criticism which is easy enough to mock: "The 'aging' of the threads / personas has become an increasingly complicated question.... to explore the 'little girl consciousness' as it grows and evolves into an 'adult (woman) writer' with an ever-increasing anxiety in relation to language." -- Oh indeed! Indeed! Girls become women indeed! Thank GOD I have a POET handy to explain these ELUSIVE MYSTERIES OF LIFE! Or rather (my god what they would think of my slovenly approach to criticism!) -- to employ a more decently high-fallutin' tone appropriate to the occasion: "The poet (the writer) elucidates (or "makes known") a realm of gendered dispositions, inflections, connotations, and un-languaged (or rather, pre-languaged) communications which take as their subject language itself -- that is, the "word" in relation the "wor(l)d" with transgressive yet gendered "l" understood -- in the service of making known ("elucidating") the dialectic of female maturation, both as she experiences in relation to herself (made known through language) and as her language itself experiences its own maturation in relation to herself (and make known through her own maturation)."

Now that's a lotta mutual maturation.

Once again, as I've too often ranted, poor Adam, whom I desperately need on my side: THESE are the ENEMIES: obfuscation and pretension, hucksterism, those who want us to buy without having anything to sell us, those who want us to love without having any way to love us back, those who want to become saints by martyring US.

AND IT'S A WAR.

Chris McCabe (London, UK): fragment from The Nuptials

the smell of the sea
on your skin—

as today your breasts
(can I say this) poured out

to the beach at
San Sebastian

eyes saw more than they
could hold

like Aphrodite was back
against the tide of fashion

a shell in your hand
innocently to show me

with more inside
than today can hold

© Chris McCabe 2009

Alexandra Grilikhes (Philadelphia, USA): "Vacation"

death came to me drunk
wearing a new white island outfit
she’d bought that day. The men
on the road called us cunts.
“This is my dream place,” she breathed,
“I feel so alive here. Fuck me on this
bench.” On the half-lit porch,
the watchman taking a midnight nap
around the bend, I did as I was
told for a long time thinking I’d
please death this time at last. Later
she rolled away and in the morning
rose early and left. I bought
death many presents. She bought me rags.

© Alexandra Grilikhes 1994

republished from the Insight to Riot chapbook The Reveries

Abby Heller-Burnham: from Art Odyssey: Artist's Statement

I use a combination of naturalism and spontaneity to represent certain aspects of what I have seen and experienced during semi-conscious dream states. My work portrays an ethereal luminosity that creates life-like spaces which the viewer can visually enter. My goal is to create increasingly complex compositions by combining multiple images from a vast collection of visual references. With a highly disciplined background in traditional methods and techniques as a base, I nevertheless strive to expand its boundaries to find new artistic approaches through continual experimentation.

I find nineteenth century naturalism to be particularly inspiring. Its simplicity of design, complex esthetic content, and distinct atmospheric quality all resonate with my artistic sensibilities. Klimt and Mucha, for example, have been important influences, particularly their unique blend of graphic patterns and textures with natural realism. I am always in the process of finding my own delicate balance between naturalism and other contradictory interests that also inspire me. I believe that a versatile and experimental approach leads to the resolution of this conflict, and allows me to reach beyond realism to more fully express my ideas. 

© Abby Heller-Burnham 2011

Interview with Jenny Kanzler: Orange Alert, 2007

Orange Alert (OA): How would you describe your work?

Jenny Kanzler (JK): Symbols for anxiety, fear, loneliness and loss or metaphors for invasion, like illness, infection, and infestation -- generally, preoccupations of nightmares. Many of my paintings focus on the struggle between empathy and disgust and the relationship of the viewer to the object or conflict. They present things that did happen, altered through a faulty memory, simplified to isolate some specific occurrence, embellished, rewritten and presented as some new story connected to the original only in essence. They are narratives, employing realism and storytelling to represent an idea.

OA: You seem to have a very interesting and at times dark subject matter, where do you draw your inspiration from?

JK: The Velveteen Rabbit (William Nicholson illustrations), the Twilight Zone, David Lynch (especially the Elephant Man and Eraserhead), Bluebeard, the Brother’s Quay, Francisco Goya, Francis Bacon, Hans Holbein the Younger, Diego Velazquez, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, A Nightmare on Elm street, the Changeling, Rosemary’s Baby, the Little Girl who Lived Down the Lane, Saturday matinee movies, the playground – the girl who pretended to be a horse, the day Brian Flaherty and I threw up in the lunchroom, Aldus Huxley’s Heaven and Hell, Freud’s essay on the uncanny, my German grandmother, my beau Abe, my family and friends and the many strange and interesting things that they say, people I don’t know who sleep on the subway, the naked man at the end of the alley and all kinds of other surprising occurrences that a person might witness walking around Philadelphia at any time of day or night.

OA: I've noticed a lot of reoccurring colors in your work, do you have a set color palette? What is your intention in using these specific colors?

JK: The colors I use are burnt umber, raw sienna, raw umber, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and titanium white. Generally, I underpaint in earth tones, and then as the image develops incorporate more color. Since the development of the image interests me, I try not to hide everything that’s happened. Lately, I’ve been inserting jewel tones and placing them in contrast to muddy colors, presenting a clean/dirty conflict that relates to the empathy/disgust conflict.

OA: Earlier this year you participated in a solo show entitled "Creepy Sweet". In my opinion that really describes your work, a little creepy, but sweet and nostalgic. It's familiar, but uncomfortable at the same time. What is the intended purpose of presenting these images and what are some of the reactions that you have received?

JK: When others describe the work as familiar, as you just did, or say that it reminds them of something that happened to them, and then they tell me some personal story, or if they laugh, those are the best reactions. Occasionally I completely horrify people, and then we’re all upset and disturbed. The goal of connecting with others through an investigation of the human condition is lost. I worry that I have misjudged my audience and that my insertion has a negative impact on others. There’s also an embarrassment component. It’s as if I’ve said you know how sauerkraut smells awful but it tastes so good and it’s almost as if the reason that it’s so good is that it smells so bad, it’s like it’s the contrast or something...and the other person replies no - sauerkraut is disgusting.

OA: I have noticed a lot of great work coming out of Philly lately. How would describe the current scene in Philly?

JK: To me it seems small enough to be manageable but large enough to be interesting. My recent favorites are Hiro Sakaguchi at Seraphin Gallery, and Mark Shetabi at the Tower Gallery. Longtime favorites are local heroes Edna Andrade, Thomas Chimes and Sydney Goodman. Second Thursday at the Crane building is never disappointing. The building was formerly a bathroom fixture factory, which is now converted into artists’ studios and galleries including Inliquid, Nexus, the Icebox, and Kelly Webber Fine Art (formerly 201 gallery where I had the “Creepy Sweet” show). There’s a refreshing enthusiasm in the gallery owners. They present what interests them and take chances with younger, lesser-known artists. Plus, second Thursday visitors are greeted by a generous offering of food and alcohol.

OA: What's next for Jenny Kanzler?

JK: Other than making a Halloween costume? From October 8th – November 6th, I’ll have several paintings on view in the “Window on Broad” adjacent to the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, near the northeast intersection of Broad and Pine, Center City Philadelphia. October 19th – November 9th, i cannot remember, a four-person show of sculpture, video, and drawings with fellow artists and friends: Alison Nastasi (who curated the show), Theresa Rose and Mariya Dimov at little berlin gallery, 1801 N. Howard Street, near the intersection of 2nd and Montgomery in Fishtown, Philadelphia. Opening reception: October 19th from 6:00 – 10:00 PM with a performance by MFM. February 1st – 28th. Solo show of painting, drawing and sculpture at the Elliott Center Gallery at The University of North Carolina in Greensboro. Opening reception: February 4th, 5:30 – 7:30 PM.

© Jenny Kanzler, Orange Alert 2007

Alexandra Grilikhes (Philadelphia, USA): "Torment"

you know how certain people torment you as you
walk home in the rain on a day in february
feeling desolate,
saying to yourself, she torments me and I don’t
know why. She torments me. She is one of those
people who torments me

and you walk in the darkness, it’s raining,
you’re cold and feeling not unhappy
but not happy either and
she is always under your skin,
something you can’t describe

and you know if you say one word about it
you will lose it completely, that she torments you
and you want the thing about her that torments you
to keep on hurting

© Alexandra Grilikhes 1994

republished from the Insight to Riot chapbook The Reveries