Buried Letter Press December 2012
BURIED LETTER PRESS December 2012 Š Buried Letter Press 2011-2012 Cover Photo by Jessica Meleg
Buried Letter Press Akron, Ohio
“The Tooth” Photo by Jessica Meleg Canton, Ohio 2012
Buried Letter Press Spectacles! See the world through the eyes of the magazine, look into the future, & spy on your neighbors with Buried Letter Press vision
1. the particular magazine dedicated to innovative and quality criticism of art in all of its various forms, such as
literature, music, film and theater, visual art, etc. 2. a provision of encouragement to artists and patrons worldwide.
DECEMBER 2012 ISSUE Out of Alsace by Robert Miltner Half-Empty or Half-Full? Horror Vacui and Consumer Capitalism by Heather Haden The Big Show by Robert Balla Becoming the Catalyst: A Rendezvous by Matthew C. Mackey
Out of Alsace by Robert Miltner I Monsieur Mesmer stood, vaguely mesmerized, his visage regarding the transformation of an empty sky into a cumulus cloud as he sang his soon-to-be immigrant song. The hunger used to come over him nightly, dreams arriving like visitors to his sleep, places where fruit trees filled with green birds. The taste for movement called to Madame, his wife, among rows of cabbage and tarragon, along lines of d’Anjou and Comice pears, regaling her with its spun-golden stories. She canned the future in tin-lidded jars to survive on when hope would become the new troubadour. Hunger’s sweet mouth slipped seeds into her ear-bud, pasting leaves on fingertips and tongues, spoke daily to the empty pod of her body. Monsieur was one of the one in ten in Alsace who was French. The German occupiers gave them leave to leave. His native Strasbourg rode the border like a saddle, a horse balanced athwart a tightrope. He held the reins loosely, ready, reading the situation. Did Paris await his return? Was Pau possible? Would Breton be Nice? Can cities be caught as easily as coaches? The national narrative told tales of ex-patriots, but not episodes of those who emigrated. Men who go briefly will always be prodigal sons welcomed into open arms upon returning. Men who leave for life look back at arms folded over chests, at hard faces and fists. Monsieur unsaddled the piebald mare and changed nations like he’d change trains. II How I miss you, my Alsatian ancestors I never knew. Nancy, Strasbourg. You who maintained ponds and developed pisciculture in Kolmar. Stuffed pike, frogs’ leg soup, crayfish flan, blue trout au vin. I would dine with you if I could, listen to your stories over pâté and plums, kugelhopf and Kirsch. III With brothers, babies, baggage, and bottles of vin blanc they left Ste. Marie aux Mines, took the train across Spain and caught the British ferry from Gibraltar, arriving in Algiers, the mouth of Algeria, seeking the French enclave’s sweet tongue and enfolding arms of common welcome. What did they miss? Vineyards and dairies, orchards and wineries? Onion quiche, snails in sauerkraut, pate de foie gras, civet of hare with noodles? But the heat there was a buttoned wool coat. But the poppies withered in the bright garden. Monsieur Mesmer stood disruptively mesmerized, his eyes scanning a terrain of hourglass sand that
made an ocean that surrounded them, isolated as a French island in an Arabian sea. So the brothers entered the earth’s cool belly, miners putting bauxite into carts on tracks they pushed toward the bitter mouth of the mine, delivered by men pale as potatoes. The sky blinded them like a lightning flash. It’s hard to sing of relocation when a parched throat arrives. It’s debauched to a citizen in exile, a stranger in the street, an ex-patriot at the turnstile. IV The Atlantic cradled the steamer across, swelling by whitecap by Azores by gull by birthing-woman by breech by stillborn. The ocean was handed the swaddled baby. Madame was heart cut and heart wet in the ocean spray, heart dry in the night when the prow with its steerage rose like a swing then fell like a stone, the clash of steel and wave reverberating in them. They were all of one belly, all of one loss. The baby’s name was lost at sea. V Monsieur Mesmer arrived visibly mesmerized at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, disembarked on a riverbank cluttered with industry and shanty Irish suffering from typhoid. It was the west side of the River, by Moses’ ferry where the River cleaved the land. But the family esprit took them south to farm lands above it, arriving in lush fields of daisies and sassafras, maple and ash. Then orchards and vineyards. Gardens and coops. Cellar and barn and springhouse. The dandelion taste of poverty was gone as spring came bearing gifts on storm clouds. They felt the dream lean against their foreheads, its soft residual image wiping their faces. The next baby came to Madame in a dream of seed as her liminal waist became an opening door. Monsieur and Madame turned into Mr. and Mrs. as her visage experienced the transformation of an empty cask into a filled barrel as she sang of a first-born-in-new-land child. VI The old uncles sat in the kitchen playing cards and cursing in French. They laid down aces and eights like slate for sidewalks. Sauturne poured into juice glasses and sipped. The cigarettes came to them from their English-speaking grandniece Genevieve who rolled them for a pennyeach. They cut the face cards for luck. Their grandniece, who is my old mother, put the pennies in a glass vase that she set on the window sill where the sunlight came to it like a worldly lover telling her stories of her bright future. Rooted in Ohio, I am ensnared in the present moment. History, if I summon you with incantations, will you liberate me, feed me? You Mesmers who hypnotize my lost past, though you are strangers to me, three faces in an old photograph, none of which I match to the name Alois, more wanderer than famous warrior, ancestors lost among the displaced and disappearing members of the grand narrative of my family on my mother’s side. My Alsatian strangers, I raise my drink, toast you with Traminer, Riesling, Muscat, Sylvaner, Framboise.
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Half-Empty or Half-Full? Horror Vacui and Consumer Capitalism by Heather Haden
Figure 1. Like the allegorical glass of water, considering the space of your shopping bag as half-full or half-empty signifies the impact of marketing upon shoppers’ conception of space. Right: “X-Ray of Empty Shopping Bag” by Manuela Höfer.
Symptoms of cabin fever are approaching as quickly as the temperature is dropping. As the snow begins to blanket the walls, the spoils of shopping trips pile throughout the house, transforming the floor into the largest shelf space of the holiday season. On the night of November 22nd, 2012, millions across the globe turned in early to bed so they could be early to rise. Alarms were set for 1 AM so millions could power up at the many restaurants that would open at 2 AM the next morning. Each Black Friday, with more assault than an ice cold shower first thing in the morning, consumers are thrust into a shopping atmosphere more violent (figuratively and literally) than any other day of the year. Marketing also overwhelms the senses during the holiday season. Visually, advertisements assault the retina and flood the periphery. Audially, seasonal music on repeat ad nauseum thickens the air with a sound approaching white noise but just far enough away on the auditory spectrum to turn it from ingratiating to utterly aggravating. The olfactory organs are attacked at the molecular level by unsolicited sprays of eau de parfum (when you have to sniff the jar of coffee beans at any scent shop, you know your nose is begging for an olfactory release for scentless space, a reprieve from sensory arrangement of top, middle, and base notes). The sense of touch is overwhelmed by the endless opulence of cashmere, velvet, and leather. As for taste, the famous New Year’s Resolution (to shed pounds) is evidence of how overwhelmed partiers were by food in the last month or two of the year.
Like the training regimen of a champion level hot-dog eater, the market stretches the consumer capacity of the national stomach for months before this “national holiday” by not-sogradually increasing the amount and force of advertisements over time. And if you have ever watched an episode of Hoarders, you know that our appetite for “stuff” has the potential to get out of hand. But oh, how the marketplace loves this! If you have ever felt overstimulated by these experiences, you have been on the receiving end of the horror vacui of the retail planner. Horror vacui is the fear of empty space. In Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated, William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler define Horror Vacui as “a tendency to favor filling blank spaces with objects and elements over leaving spaces blank or empty.” The authors suggest that the use of horror vacui within commerce has an inverse relationship to the perception of value: Figure 3. Black Friday shoppers and stacks of merchandise
It may be that the inverse extend as far as the eye can see. relationship is actually between the affluence of a society and the perceived value associated with horror vacui – that is, for those accustomed to having more, less is more, and for those accustomed to having less, more is more. Others have speculated that the relationship is more a function of education that affluence. This area of research is immature and much follow-up is required to tease out the causal factors, but the preliminary findings Figure 2. Screen capture from the television show, Hoarders. are compelling. The more cluttered a store is, the less expensive the merchandise; the more minimalistic a store, the more expensive the store. As the authors aptly deduce, this was not the norm at the turn of the twentieth century when commerce and culture were immersed in the Victorian and Art Nouveau movements, drenched in decadence and ornamentation that was associated with conspicuous consumption. Now with the internet, consumers can be inconspicuous about consumption and perhaps that is how many of the subjects on Hoarders have shocked their friends and family who had no idea what was accumulating behind closed doors. With the isolation that the internet fosters, consumers are able to shop in their underwear, but they are also privileged to amass an extensive nest of “stuff” without being judged. A fear of space depends on how we define space, and that is certainly no longer isolated to flatness of the visual image. Barrages of hyperlinks flood cyber space. Just last week, while I was researching for class, an advertisement for a pair of pants I had recently researched for potential purchase pops up to say hello.
Although technology has advanced marketing strategies, the phenomena of horror vacui is far from new. As far back as the late 7th century/early 8th century, one of many illuminated manuscript pages from the Lindisfarne Gospel Book, folio 26 verso, was filled with pure color delineated into writhing zoomorphic latticework. Used for devotional purposes, the optical effect of the color and form was believed by the Celtic and Insular people to induce hallucinations that allowed them to come into Figure 4. James McNeil Whistler, Peacock Room, 1908. closer communion with their faith. Horror vacui here had religious function. More recently, in the 1970s, psychedelic art also used horror vacui to represent the enlightened experience that was often enhanced by music and drug use. Writings on horror vacui art focus primary concern on the visual, but this is too na誰ve an approach for the 21st century marketplace. Since the advent of the television, the internet, and sales tactics such as scent diffusers in grocery stores, horror vacui now transcends the visual and bleeds into the invisible. No sensory space is left empty, and no experiential realm is left unexplored during the holiday season. Do stores ever embrace empty space? Big box department stores lust for empty space only if to fill it with more merchandise to move. Their empty spaces are turned into shelves, tables, and racks filled with moving clutter, writhing like the animal forms in the Lindisfarne carpet page. However in the boutique, empty space abounds, emphasizing minimalism. This is the very dichotomy which the authors of Universal Principles of Design explore, yet I suggest the more technologically advanced, aforementioned realms, be considered more heavily as we march steadily, if economically warily, into the twenty-first century.
Figure 5. Lindisfarne Gospel Carpet Page, folio 26 verso, late 7th or early 8th century.
Figure 6. Supernatural Fairytales Album, Germany 1970s. London club psych classic.
If finding the emptiness on the previous page made you uncomfortable, consider the inverse relationship between store displays and horror vacui this season. Space is no longer restrained to the visual , but modernity has imposed spatial concepts upon the ideology of the sonic space, the olfactory space at the molecular level; every conceivable sensory experience can be thought of as a space, and as with any space, its void can be filled. This holiday season, do not avoid the marketplace, for by golly, does this country need an economic boost. However, be aware of the effect of the marketplace on your senses, and do not be afraid to balance the busy with the sparse and the loud with the quiet.
Figure 5. The rare view of an empty shopping mall, space for which shoppers will yearn for this season.
The Big Show In October, our own Buried Letter Press hosted Mystery & Macabre: Masque and Costume Party at Uncorked Wine Bar. It was an amazing evening of poetry, prose, music, and art. Each and every artist engaged the audience before, during, and after their sets. I watched these artists and audience members interact, discuss, and muse. It was a thing of beauty. I learned so much about the artists there and their motivations and passions. For instance, I gained a newfound admiration for Andrew Rihn. I’ve been a fan of his poetry for quite some time, but in talking to him about his work, I’ve come to understand his motivations and aspirations, not just for himself, but for his poetry and his audience as well. Decades ago I was fortunate enough to spend a full day with Alan Ginsburg, and Rihn reminded me of Ginsburg’s revolutionary spirit and zeal. Both are revolutionaries not of despair, but of hope. I’m not sure that simply reading the poetry of either of them would enable someone to make this distinction, but after spending some time with the poets, this became exceedingly clear. Over the following days and weeks, I started to think about why I had enjoyed the evening of readings, music, and art so much. I had read the work of the poets before, I had listened to the musicians’ music before, and I had seen the artists’ paintings before. So what was different? Then it started to slowly sink in. It was live. No. It was ALIVE. Think about it. We have the same reaction to live music. We listen to our favorite musicians or singers repeatedly. Our favorite songs are continually at the top of our MP3 playlists. And if you’re my age, you’ve had to buy several copies of your favorite cassette tape because you wore through it after listening it so many times. For me it was R.E.M.’s Murmur. However, no matter how many times we’ve heard it, when the artist comes to a local live venue, we happily shell out sometimes rather large sums of cash to experience the artist live. Understand that I say the Artist live, not the art. This is a key distinction. This is because there are two ways to experience art: isolative and interactive. In the isolative mode, the audience exists in the absence of the artist. This is not to say that the audience is passive or inactive in any way, but simply that the artist is not present to interact with the audience. In music, this is listening to a recording. This can be in private with headphones or ear buds at a moderate volume or in a club with the bass so loud that it shakes the ground. In visual art, this is found in a museum or gallery exhibit. In poetry, or prose we have libraries and print and book clubs. This isolative phenomenon of art allows us to experience art on our own terms. We can decide the pacing or the direction of the experience. We can walk through galleries in any order we choose, read from back to front, and put our iPods on shuffle. We can stop, go back, rewind, leave, come back, and so much more. We can, in short, analyze. As a student and critic of various forms of art, I find this essential to my understanding a piece of art. It affords the time needed to be contemplative. The audience can and should explore the connections the art makes to the
Andrew Rihn at the Buried Letter Press show, October 20th, 2012
by Rob Balla
experiencer. Meaning can be found, and so can inspiration. When we do this in groups, we can compare interpretations by engaging in lively discussions of the work. Isolative experiences make up the vast majority of our interactions with art. In college I took literature classes where we debated the meanings of poems and novels alike. I remember vividly a particular older female student in my modern American Poetry class who was professing a specific interpretation of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The class had discussed Frost’s life, experiences, and religious views. This student insisted that none of this mattered when assigning meaning to the poet’s work, and all that really mattered was how she interpreted the work based on her own life, experiences, and religious views. She insisted that anyone could and should find whatever meaning in the art they wish and that each interpretation is equally valid. To her, Frost was insisting that his readers reaffirm their covenants with God and follow the path laid out for them by Him. I dissented. I argued not only that there had to be a correct reading of the poem (possibly a few correct ones), but also that by extension, alternate readings, like hers, were just plain wrong. She asked me then for the correct reading. I responded that I could only posit an informed, deductive hypothesis by studying the context and body of the poet’s life and work. This was the best I could do in the absence of the poet himself. To go beyond this informed but limited view, I would need to be able to interact with the actual creator. This is where the interactive mode of experiencing art comes to the fore. This aspect of art can be found at live musical concerts, at visual art gallery openings, and at open readings of the written word. In these situations, when done right, the audience and the artist come together in physical and mental space to jointly (re)create the art in a new and more meaningful form. During a great interactive event, there is the art itself, but the audience is also often made privy to the stories behind the art, what inspired the artists, and why they felt compelled to create the works. Particularly at smaller shows, the artists are able to not just talk to the audience, but to talk with the audience. Artists (musical, visual, physical, and oral) can come down off the stage, out from behind the canvas, or up through the page to interact directly with the audience. In these instances, the audience can learn exactly what the artist means and intended with a particular piece. As an audience member, this is where I have learned the most and where I have most deeply understood a particular piece or artist. In the performance of the art, I can evaluate things like the artist’s emphasis and emotional connection with specific portions or sections of a work. Again, we’ve all experienced this at a live concert. We understand that there is something special about the experience of watching the artist perform, being there in the presence of the performance. It is immediate and visceral. This is why we go. Not to hear the music; we can do that home or in our cars or while walking the dog; but to be one with the music and the artist. Just as this is true of concerts, it is also true of visual art and the written word. This is what happened at Uncorked on that delightfully mild October evening. I was also fortunate enough to experience this several years ago when a good friend of mine started a performing painting group here in Akron, Ohio. We went monthly to watch the painters of Apollo Nova paint in person. It was an event. It was a spectacle. Currently, northeast Ohio is lucky enough to have several high quality poetry/prose reading series. In addition to Buried Letter Press’s live shows, there is The Big Big Mess reading series, now lead by Mike Krutel and Alexis Pope. They host monthly poetry readings at Annabelle’s in Akron, and occasionally take their show on the road. Heavy Feather Review, an online journal of creative
writing, also hosts popular events across northeast Ohio. Take the time to interact with art and artist alike whenever possible. Go to live shows, readings, opening, whatever, whenever. I promise you gain a whole new appreciation for it all. *The Big Big Mess’s next messy show will be this Friday, December 7, again in the basement of Annabelle’s, featuring Feng Sun Chen, Russ Woods, Carrie Lorig, Curt Brown. I can’t urge you strongly enough to go. But be warned, because as Big Big Mess puts it, “CAUTION: it gets hot. Wear your sexiest poems.”
Becoming the Catalyst: A Rendezvous by Matthew C. Mackey “Hey, I’m sorry. I hate asking, but can I get a smoke off ya?” “Yeah, sure,” I said. “This is why I love Akron, Ohio. Every time I come back, people are so nice.” “Where are you from,” I asked. “New York, but I’ve got roots in the area. I’m just back visiting family and friends.” “What do you do in New York?” I asked. I met Hayden Gilbert outside a crowded bar in the Highland Square area of Akron. I was talking to my artist friend Josh. We had been drinking, celebrating a friend’s birthday. Hayden walked up in a bright blue, leather biker jacket, and between hits of a Marlboro 27, proceeded to tell us about his artistic vision for developing artists. I was hooked. I wanted to know more, but I fairly drunk, so we exchanged information. I later caught up with him and asked him to say a few words about his project. This is what he had to say: WE ARE THE CATALYST is a portfolio website for emerging filmmakers, performers, musicians, writers and visual artists. Used as a tool for artist collaboration, CATALYST gives creators the opportunity to show samples of their work to an audience of their peers. Through collaboration we can realize our true potential. Today, quality of work seems less important than quantity. Our project hopes to reverse this trend. By giving the user five pages to show their art, WE ARE THE CATALYST makes finding collaborators and discovering the newest projects quick and efficient, so talented artists can begin a dialogue and partnership that encourages serious artistic development. Paintings, films, and songs specifically selected by their creators or past collaborators makes WE ARE THE CATALYST a tool of discovery. I also think that it is both rewarding and challenging to try and present yourself online with something other than a Facebook profile. We launch the website on December 5th even though we are in beta testing mode. The website came about because I needed a more efficient way to find artists for the show I produce in NYC called Catalyst Project. Catalyst Project is a short film and theater event I curate once every few months at Dixon Place, a theater that has a reputation for experimental dance and theater. Two years ago, while interning at Dixon Place, I was given the responsibility of working with the founder of the theater to pick scripts for shows that may be a good fit for the theater. One script in particular was written by a 17 year old with outstanding potential. I showed the script to my employer, who really did like the script until she saw the age of the artist. “People under 30 don’t know how to write,” was what she said before I went on a tangent about how completely false and close-minded that was. I had been working at the theater for about two weeks and had absolutory no authority in this setting. However, she heard me out and gave me a curating job. That was when the first Catalyst Project was produced. On December 6th of 2012 I will be producing the second Catalyst Project with a group of playwrights and filmmakers all under the age of thirty. This demographic is completely overlooked by many people with power in the entertainment industry, so I’m
glad there is a venue and an event that can help counter some of the negative feelings towards young emerging artists. I hope for Catalyst Project to feed into the WE ARE THE CATALYST and vice versa. In addition to being a portfolio site, I hope to make it a platform in which young artists can share ideas and get legal advice from various Intellectual Property and Entertainment lawyers so their work can be protected. The website is www.wearethecatalyst.com. I don’t know if it was the blue jacket that caught my attention or the empathy one smoker has for another that made me give up one of my last cigarettes, but I’m glad I did. Hayden’s energy and vision for artists are admirable. Projects like Hayden’s are important because they strive to put artists and audiences in touch with each other while showcasing innovative and genuine artwork. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough encounters with such passionate people, but from now one, I’ll keep a spare cigarette for just an occasion.
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Buried Letter Press proudly accepts the following submissions: Critical and Creative Essays about • Poetry • Fiction • Creative Nonfiction • Screen/Film/Play/Theater • Areas of artistic interest or theory* • Music • Visual art • Artistic lifestyle*
Buried Letter Press is looking to publish thoughtful essays and articles that address ideas concerning art in any one of its many odd/brilliant extensions. Please keep submissions concise—approximately 3-5 pages. *Areas of artistic interest or theory can mean a wide range of topics. Basically, we want to know what is happening in the art world today. For example, we might publish an article on art and education or the dangers of anthologies. Artistic lifestyle refers to the habits, obsessions, vices, virtues of the artist or means of creative expression. For example, we might publish on Picasso’s use of sexual escapades to inspire his work or the hallucinogenic means of creative freedom and vision.
WE ALSO PUBLSIH • Reviews • Interviews • Multimedia/modal articles Buried Letter Press will also publish creative journalism. Articles may be accompanied with photography or audio (mp3). While we encourage multimedia/modal endeavors, articles and essays may be accompanied by media at the editor’s discretion. No more than three media file uploads.
Feel free to peruse our archives and wet your whistle on the fine vintages bottle throughout the years.
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Single space all written work. All text should be in a standard font. A professional cover letter is encouraged, but not required. There is no reading fee (excluding contests). Buried Letter Press publishes on a monthly basis and has a rolling submission policy. Multiple submissions welcome: The editors will get to your work as fast as they can. Allow 30-90 days for a response; inquire after 120 although we pride ourselves in responding sooner. Send all inquiries to Managing Editor Rob Balla at rob.buriedletterpress@gmail.com Simultaneous submissions are allowed. Please notify us immediately if your submitted work has been accepted elsewhere for publication. Buried Letter Press does not take previously published work, which means anywhere, blog, tumblr, website, Facebook, etc. Upon acceptance, Buried Letter Press takes first-time North American Serial Rights. Upon publication, all rights revert back to the author. Buried Letter Press may use any published material on its site or affiliations for promotional purposes. Should the accepted work appear elsewhere after its initial publication in Buried Letter Press, be sure to list us as the original publisher. Buried Letter Press does not pay upon acceptance or publication, but we will promote you and your talents.
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