mgv2_78 | Ubu | 10_14 by Datura

mgversion2>datura mgv2_78 | 10_14 Ubu ÂŠ mgversion2>datura & contributors, October 2014

Cover art Totem 10 Gates of Desire by James Mahan Inside illustrations Alexandra Bouge & James Mahan

Olivia Arieti

Ubu Emperor

one-act play

Glen Armstrong

Requiem for Alfred Jarry

poem

Christophe Bregaint Howie Good

poems The Decline of the West

poem

The Shores of Tripoli

poem

Mathias Jansson

The Poetics of King Ubu

poem

Steve F. Klepetar

Ubu Returns From the Dead

poem

Saint Ubu Reads from the Book of Light

poem

Alain Lasverne

La part du pauvre

fiction

Arthur Levine

The Grocer

short-fiction

LWO + Lafleur

Stylo Jam Sessions

visual

Peter O'Neill

Place Dauphine

fiction

J.J. Steinfeld

For Reasons Surreal and Absurd

poem

Furtive Yet Fascinating

poem

An interview with Klaus J. Gerken Paintings by Klaus J. Gerken and an excerpt from Poem without a Title, section 4 La peau by Alexandra Bouge, published by mgv2>publishing. Foreword and excerpts. Book reviews: Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy by David Herrle, True North by Amber Decker, and The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre by Marie Lecrivain

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Ubu Emperor by Olivia Arieti CHARACTERS: PA UBU MA UBU BOGGERLAS ALFRED JARRY ***** Setting: Alfred's garret. An armchair, a table, chairs. Props: A bottle, glasses, an umbrella, a sword. ***

Divine 15 by James Mahan

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 (PA UBU is sitting in an old armchair. ALFRED enters. Coughs. Sees him.) ALFRED Oh, my goodness, Pa Ubu? (Rubs his eyes.) I must be seeing double. PA UBU (Jumps up.) Merdre, shitre, merdre! ALFRED No, no, it's you, I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be mistaken. What the hell are you doing here? PA UBU Merdre, shitre, shall I have to go on repeating it over and over again and get all the boos, insults and rotten eggs for your own sake, Alfred? ALFRED Why so angry? That dirty stupid word made you famous all around the world and the mob so foolishly curious. (Proud.) The intellectuals, too. PA UBU By my green candlestick, you've got everything wrong, man. AFFRED (Shrugs his shoulders.) I did my best, Pa Ubu, I did. (Serves himself some wine.) 4

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 PA UBU Hey, what about me? Do you think I'm going to watch you drain that bottle? Fill up my glass or I'll chop you up at once! (Hands him a glass.) ALFRED Keep cool, man, I'm the one who made you king, so I'm the one who's giving orders. PA UBU Want to get sloshed all by yourself, huh? ALFRED Alright, alright, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll let you have some too. (Fills his glass.) PA UBU (Looks around.) Say, it's quite depressing here. Much better at my palace in Poland. At least it has a hatch where I can dump all my stupid subjects and Ma Ubu as well. ALFRED Now tell me what you want so that you can get out of here as fast as you got in. PA UBU Nay, nay, too easy, friend, too, too easy. (Sits down.) Besides, I'm in no hurry,

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 (Sips his wine.) Say, this wine is superb… Must have cost you lots of francs, Monsieur Jarry. ALFRED By my green candlestick, down to the facts, Pa Ubu. PA UBU (Cross.) I'm the one who says "by my green candlestick"! I own the copyright. ALFRED The facts, I said. PA UBU It's true, I've become well known, famous among my fellowmen, something more than a literary case… but that's not enough. I'm neither powerful nor original, Alfred. ALFRED What the heck do you mean? PA UBU First of all you modelled me on your lousy fat physics teacher, Messier Hébert. ALFRED That's true… but what’s wrong with that? PA UBU Then you made me do the same things that bastard did, a certain filthy guy called-

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 ALFRED (Shouts.) Wait, don't say itPA UBU That lousy Scottish fellow… ALFRED No, Pa Ubu, no… PA UBU (Shouts.) Mac-beth! Macbeth! ALFRED (Covers his ears.) Mercy, Pa Ubu, mercy of a penniless writer… They'll never produce me now, never! (Spits.) PA UBU (Loud laughter.) What the hell are you doing? ALFRED Forget it. That guy, however, was just like you, man, bloodthirsty, ambitious… the perfect embodiment of greed. PA UBU (Frowns.) Nonsense. Besides, you made me funny, a stupid funny monster. That’s incongruent.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 ALFRED I simply added a touch of fantasy. Not bad, huh? PA UBU You've been pitiless. Everyone is laughing at me. ALFRED Fame has its price, man. PA UBU (Sobs.) You turned me into a pathetic marionette, that's what you did. ALFRED I made you provocative, Pa Ubu. PA UBU You also made me poor! You knew that Poland wasn't rich. I even had to throw all my nobles down the hatch and confiscate their properties to get more money. That, of course, hasn't made me too popular up there. ALFRED What about all the gold? PA UBU None of your business. ALFRED You’re being too difficult now. PA UBU I’ll throw you in the stew pot with Ma Ubu if you don’t write something else… something grandeur… I 8

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 might even forget about originality but definitely not about power and money. (Takes his hands.) Shitre, Alfie, you owe it to me. ALFRED (Shakes his head.) I’m sorry, Pa Ubu, but there's nothing I can do. Besides, (Coughs.) I don't feel well and am too busy with pataphysics. PA UBU Pataphysics? Hum, sounds juicy… How much do you get from that? ALFRED It's a science, Pa Ubu, a science of imaginary solutions. PA UBU No good for me then. I want real stuff, no imaginary merdre, (Fills up his glass.) just like this wine, Alfred, a true and bloody pleasure. ALFRED You have to go on being what you are whether you like it or not. PA UBU (Annoyed.) By my green candlestick, I'm going to be a fat clownish king no longer! Besides, there's something else…

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 ALFRED What else now? PA UBU I want a new wife. ALFRED A new wife? (Laughs.) Oh, my goodness, he wants a new wife! PA UBU Yeah, a much prettier and younger chick than that old hag of Ma Ubu. Also sexier, a tasty meaty hot sausage toALFRED Come on now, Ma Ubu is good enough for you. PA UBU No, I want a divorce. ALFRED You're a king, Pa Ubu. PA UBU So what? Most of my predecessors got it, (Chuckles.) not to mention my contemporaries… Of course, I could chop Ma Ubu up and get rid of her, but as you said I am a king… want to do things properly, in a more civilised way… Well, what do you think of it? ALFRED (Shakes his head.) Impossible.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 PA UBU (Shouts.) I'll throw Ma Ubu down the hatch then. (Loud knocks.) MA UBU (Voiceover.) Open that damned door, Pa Ubu! (Knocks louder.) Open, I said. I know you're in there. ALFRED Ma Ubu, too? Oh, my goodness. PA UBU See what I mean? A lousy old strumpet! (ALFRED opens. MA UBU rushes in. Furious.) MA UBU (Menacing.) Who are you going to throw down the hatch? I heard what you just said, fat idiot! ALFRED Too much wine, definitely. PA UBU By my green candlestick, canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you ever leave me alone, Ma Ubu?

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 MA UBU You’ve got to delete him completely, Alfred. I'm fed up with him. He's nothing more than a crappy buffoon and I am too… too intelligent to be sacrificed to this filthy swine. Have to straighten things out at once. ALFRED Cancel Pa Ubu? What on earth are you blathering about? PA UBU See, that’s the gratitude for my making her a queen and live in a palace with servants and soldiers at her feet. Not to mention all those stuffed sausages she stuffed her big mouth with. ALFRED Hey, cool down, folks. (Coughs.) I really feel horrible. PA UBU I'll throw you into the lobster pot, Ma Ubu! And as for you, (Lifts ALFRED. Shakes him.) you better figure something out, friend, or you'll go straight down with her. ALFRED (Gasps.) Let me down, Pa Ubu, let me down, by my green candlestick. PA UBU (Drops him.) I told you I'm the only one who says that. ALFRED Oh my, I've definitely exaggerated with the absinthe, I have. I'm feeling dizzy. 12

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 PA UBU (Shouts.) Hurry up or I'll twist your nose, tooth and tongue all together! ALFRED Alright, alright, (Coughs.) I'll see what I can do for you. (Stumbles. Takes pen and paper. Sits at the table.) PA UBU Do we need a lawyer? Ours have been all thrown down the hatch, (Shrugs his shoulders.) too fussy. MA UBU We have no more money, Pa Ubu spent everything on that lousy war with the Russians. ALFRED No, we don't need a lawyer, only inspiration. Hum… let me see… What about King Lear? With a few touches I can change you into the old king… PA UBU You must be kidding! I’d be totally impotent if he were that old. MA UBU (Crass laughter.) No need to turn into King Lear for that. PA UBU Will you keep your big mouth shut, old bitch? MA UBU If you go on calling me that, I'll tell Boggerlas what you did, who was the real murderer of his father.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 PA UBU Who cares? He knows, everyone has read "Macbeth". ALFRED No, no, don't mention that name, for goodness sake! (Spits.) MA UBU I want a new husband, Alfred. I also want to change look and become irresistibly attractive. ALFRED (Gasps.) Got to talk with your fairy Godmother then, Ma Ubu. I don't do wonders. MA UBU How dare you insult me? This little worm has insulted me, Pa Ubu. PA UBU Insulted you? What a villain! (Shouts.) War, war at once! Guards, soldiers, horsemen! My precious stuffed sausage, do not fear, vengeance shall take place at once! ALFRED And war it is! (Laughs.) Rather die as a hero than surrender to a stupid clown. (PA UBU grabs ALFRED's umbrella.) Hey, hey, wait a minute, that's my umbrella.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 PA UBU This green sword will split you in two, bastard! (Strikes him.) You asked for it. MA UBU That’s it, Pa Ubu. ALFRED (Stumbles.) Ouch, you got me. (Falls.) PA UBU (Puts his foot on ALFRED.) Now I'll squeeze your intestines out, you stupid idiot. ALFRED No, no, wait, if you do, I won't be able to help you. MA UBU He's right, better let him go. ALFRED Come on, take off your bloody foot, Pa Ubu… (Coughs.) I'll figure something out… Yes, yes, I've got it! MA UBU He’s got it, he said. PA UBU 15

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 (Removes his foot.) You do? No fooling around, friend. ALFRED (Jumps up.) Napoleon! Yes, yes, Napoleon! PA UBU Napoleon? MA UBU Napoleon? ALFRED Why not? You’ll recall Napoleon Bonaparte, our glorious emperor, king and warrior all together. PA UBU Wow! Napoleon… (Looks at MA UBU) And if you don’t behave there’s still the guillotine! (Claps his hands. Clownish movements.) Oh yes, the guillotine, merdre, shitre, the guillotine! MA UBU Shut up, you stupid clown. (To ALFRED.) I shall be empress then. ALFRED Indeed. PA UBU 16

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Not for long, old strumpet, the emperor got a divorce and I believe I'll have to do exactly what he did. MA UBU Oh no, you won't. (Excited.) Versailles! Paris! Versailles! Our sweet France. PA UBU (Walks back and forth like NAPOLEON) First of all we'll snatch the Mona Lisa and hang it in front of our royal bed, much better than this old hag's toothless smile, then we'll chop up all the Russians, the British too, and make mincemeat to serve at our royal table and thenALFRED This project will take some time, however. (Low.) Merdre, what a nightmare. PA UBU Pa Ubu is not patient but we shall wait. We'll have the time to kill all the remaining Poles, (Chuckles.) -no Poland, no Poles-, so there will be no memory of our old self and we’ll keep all the money. MA UBU Yes, we'll be rich, powerful… Versailles, Paris, can't believe it! PA UBU The court of France is surely more expensive and from now on, no wrong impressions, my dear little sausage. MA UBU Oh, Pa Ubu, you look so refined now, no more like a fat old pig but rather like a sacré bœuf.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 PA UBU Flattering won't do, Ma Ubu, we are still going to get Mona Lisa. ALFRED Now you must remove yourselves from my presence, folks, so that I may get down to work. (Loud Knocks.) BOGGERLAS (Voiceover.) Open this damned door at once! I know you're all there. ALFRED Oh no, Boggerlas too! (Opens.) PA UBU Boggerlas? BOGGERLAS (Enters, furious.) I have come to revenge my family and my beloved Poland as well. (Draws his sword.) PA UBU I don't know what you're talking about, garรงson. You are beholding your emperor, Ubu Bonaparte. BOGGERLAS (Startled.) Ubu Bonaparte? Hey, what's this all about? 18

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 ALFRED Oh my goodness. PA UBU Come, Ma Ubu, let's take leave from these miserable subjects and retire to our new palace. Nothing’s so merdrely good as French cuisine, my dear empress. MA UBU (Majestically.) Aurevoir, Messieurs! (They exit triumphantly.) BOGGERLAS (Angry.) Pa Ubu Napoleon? ALFRED (Coughs.) Let me explain… BOGGERLAS That’s not fair at all, Alfred. ALFRED Couldn't do otherwise. BOGGERLAS So you couldn't? (Points his sword at his neck.)

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Well, now you're going to appoint me Duke of Wellington at once or I shall cut your throat! ALFRED Merdre, Boggerlas, let me get my last toothpick at least. Blackout

Biomountain by James Mahan

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Requiem for Alfred Jarry by Glen Armstrong

In absentia / in absinthe I hear the tight stomach I hear the synthetic I hear the schoolboysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; words crash Against their grotesque teacher They are salty children And a force of nature Splish splash Beyond happenstance returns With the traveling circus In dirt / in silt / in waves That fail to be We only see the century In its midway Those who practice the breathing By their dwarves.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Poems by Christophe Bregaint Te voilà donc A vouloir tout Pour ne donner Rien Il ne te manque aucun Des vices Pour abreuver ton ambition Jusqu’au pouvoir Par la cruauté et la cupidité Tu règnes Tu seras trahi comme tu as trahi

Si tu as soif A qui prendras-tu l’eau Du haut de ton trône Une sécheresse Irrigue ton coeur Avide de noyer ton peuple Dans ton océan d’insatiable Tu demandes toujours plus De larmes de désolation.

The Decline of the West by Howie Good Just then it starts raining. Silently I compare the sound to a torso cut with razors and scalpel. The news this week has been full of stories from the famine zone. Next week, who knows? Screaming seahorses? Meat confetti? Bitter sky? If no one in class tries to answer the question, no one can be wrong. Sometimes I can see the spot where the golden horde of bees died off. In the background are five men, seventeen days, one wall, fifteen boulders. And just as suddenly, it stops raining. Photograph by Alexandra Bouge

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 The Shores of Tripoli by Howie Good 1 Never sell the bones of your father and mother. Every damn fool thing you do in this life you pay for. The bastards tried to come over me last night. I guess they didn't know I was a Marine. 2 Is it not meningitis? All right then, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick. Damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth? Useless . . . useless . . . My vocabulary did this to me. 3 Don't ask me how I am! I've got the bows up. . . I'm going! I understand nothing more. The bastards got me, but they won't get everybody. This is the fish of my dreams.

NB: Based on â&#x20AC;&#x153;Last Wordsâ&#x20AC;? at Wikiquotes, available at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last_words 24

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 The Poetics of King Ubu by Mathias Jansson Nothing is so good for your writing As a substantially enema Wipe your fresh ass with your poems Smell the sweat odor of fame Follow King Ubu’s advice and you will have instant success Create new words that describes the world As brööövl, swootch and merdre Insult your public, they deserve the best If they protest, off with their heads If they can’t stand the smell of a good enema Off with their heads says King Ubu Let me now demonstrate King Ubu’s poetic A poem I wrote for my dear mama: You are a pig, a fat smelly bacon I will slaughter your to dinner Off with your head Nothing taste as good a near relative Cannibalism is the only truly love See how easy it was; now it’s your turn Take your enema Off with your head and start to write.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Ubu Returns From the Dead by Steve F. Klepetar Ubu was dead, dead as rocks breaking waves along a beach, dead as a fish dead as a murdered king with an ear full of poison and lies. He was dead as princes bleeding with their tender throats cut, dead as a mad girl floating in a shallow pool of flowers and reeds. Oh, Ubu was gray dead, going ghastly white dead, doornail dead, snailmail dead. “He’s dead alright,” the medic said, “no pulse dead in the dead of night. But when the rains came to wash the dead away, then Ubu rose. He rose in late winter rain with Finnegan holding the water of life, his warming lips on Inanna’s neck. He rose dancing with Dionysus and all his dripping grapes 26

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 he rose with salamanders and worms. He rose with a green grin, his teeth filed and ready, his basket of onions lending the cool air a subtle fog. He rose like a Titan from a lake of flame rose in his teeth, rose with a backbeat you could hear in the bloody thorns all the way to summer in the houses of glass.

Divine 11 by James Mahan

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Saint Ubu Reads from the Book of Light by Steve F. Klepetar Returning from autumn hills, Saint Ubu carries in his hands a flame. He carries a diamond and a coal, a sweating glass, a piece of almond bark, a toolbox and a gyroscope. Because of the breeze from snow-capped peaks nothing melts, nothing burns, only swallows overhead keep circling in the sky. On his head a bucket sways, spilling droplets down his back. Again, Saint Ubu is acting strange. His eyes are full of ghosts, his hands up the skirt of an invisible queen. Saint Ubu questions the rock: “Why will you stand?” He witnesses a white peacock, not an albino but a genetic mutation known as leucism, whose tail feathers harbor no eyes. For his part, Ubu has known the White Goddess in the flesh, he has faced the schoolroom and the giggling boys. The sleeping girl roused herself, cheekbones knifing the air, snarled the answer and faded back into her weary contempt. In the end it was enough. Tonight at the theatre he will read from The Book of Light. How the crowd will stomp and howl. The great poet will rise and declare the fourth wall shattered as Ubu retreats into rainy streets. “I am the bear and the bear is me” he will say to the lady with the ermine stole, whose husband is drunk again on sloe gin, whose body has begun its liquid descent. When she rises to kiss his greasy hands, he will name her Esmerelda, goddess of wire, and stroke the mountain of her golden hair.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 La part du pauvre by Alain Lasverne Be Christian and God will set you free. But being poor is worse than having AIDS Brave new world - Motorhead AFP - Un homme s'est introduit à l’Élysée et s'est invité au repas, en compagnie des ministres, secrétaires d’État et de divers conseillers ministériels, pour un déjeuner de travail aussi ordinaire qu'informel. Selon des sources autorisées, la porte-parole de l’Élysée devrait donner une conférence de presse dans les minutes qui viennent. Moi, je n'y soui pour rien, mais pour rien du tout, santa Madona ! Je ne savais même pas qu'il était là. Moi, je viens pour mettre les couverts et les assiettes, et la nappe avant, comme dit la signora Durit. C'est l'agence Operture qui me signe. Oui, intérim, y a que ça. Signora Durit, c'est la chef du personnel d'ici. Mme Durit dit et je fais, c'est tout. Je l'ai même pas vu, je suis plus là quand ils arrivent. Comment il s'appelle, vous dites ? Ah, vous savez pas. Mais ce qui m'étonne, c'est que j'ai mis 80 assiettes, deux par place et pas oune de plous ! Signora Durit, elle aurait hurlé. Il n'y avait pas de place pour lui. Bon, si on résume, toi et ton profil reporter d'investigation, vous avez pas été foutu de savoir qui c'est ce pique-assiette. On a même pas une photo. Ça fait une heure que ce barnum a commencé et on a pas un seul cliché. Bon, Diane, tu vas tout de suite appeler Torandini, si y en a un qui sait quelque chose sur ce foutu fantôme, c'est bien lui. Un type incognito à l’Élysée...Vraiment des amateurs, cette équipe. Bon, Lionel, ton papier sera en Une. On change le titre, c'est pas le Monde, ici. Tu mettras « Bouffe tragique à l’Élysée ». Chéri, non mais c'est qui ce type ?! Je suis ta femme, tout de même, tu pourrais avoir la décence...Non, je me tairai pas. Un inconnu rentre chez nous. Mais oui, mais oui c'est chez nous, alors ! Je veux dire chez nous, et pas chez ta maîtresse du jour, me suis-je bien fait comprendre ? Non, tu ne t'en vas pas, je veux savoir. Qui est ce personnage que personne n'ose faire partir. Il est à table depuis une heure et demie. Il parle à et on dirait que Radius va vomir, mais au garde-à-vous. 29

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 C'est quand même...Personne n'a rien remarqué. Enfin, tu ne vas pas me dire qu'il s'habille grand couturier ! Fais-le dégager, non mais c'est insensé, c'est pas une auberge de jeunesse, ici ! Tu as vu comme il ingurgite les verres de vin, le sommelier va nous faire un infarctus. Et ses chaussures ? Chéri, tu as vu ces chaussures ?! Je crois qu'on appelle ça des chaussures de sécurité. Incroyable. Pas un de tes conseillers n'a senti venir le problème sociétal, mais pour les primes ils sont toujours en avance. En plus, un crétin de la télé-réalité a appelé ça « La Scène », pour faire penser à la Cène. Oui, je sais, mon chéri, je sais que tu sais...Évidemment tout le monde a repris. Et Jésus, ça serait ce demiclodo ? Je te rappelle que tu es le Président, et...Mais quoi, pourquoi tu t'énerves comme ça ?? Non, Monsieur le Président. Affirmatif. On tente de découvrir son identité mais la reco faciale ne donne rien. C'est monsieur tout-le-monde. Il dit s'appeler Cardioso et prétend habiter à Montreuil, mais personne à ce nom à Montreuil, ni dans le reste de la région parisienne. L'idéal serait de s'emparer d'un objet à fort potentiel identificatoire. Pardon, je...Un objet qu'il aurait touché, Monsieur le Président. C'est-à-dire qu'il lâche pas son verre, ni son assiette d'ailleurs. Il a un sacré appétit, le...Ok, reçu cinq-cinq, Monsieur le Président. AFP - Une caméra serait présente sur les lieux du repas gouvernemental où s'est invité un individu mystérieux qui a mis en échec le dispositif sécuritaire. L’Élysée n'a pas démenti. L'information de source non-identifiée précise qu'il s'agit d'une caméra automatique, fixée vers le haut de la pièce. Ceci expliquerait la poursuite du repas sans réaction notable des ministres ou des conseillers. On murmure du côté des services du Président que les Anonymous ne seraient pas étrangers à l'affaire. TF1 et BFMTV, informées par une source également anonyme, ont pu se brancher sur cette caméra et offrent un direct en temps réel sur leurs écrans. Je prends à une heure et demi, c'est Paulo qui fait le midi-deux. Passe-moi le rôti, Mimi. Non, mais regarde-moi ce mec. Il aurait quand même pu s'habiller pour aller se goinfrer chez les ministres. Bravo pour la chemise, il a fait une tache ce con ! Mais qui c'est ce type ?? Il pose pas beaucoup de questions mais qu'est-ce qu'il s'enfile. Moi, je m’appellerais Radius, j'y mettrais une droite. Non mais, on va pas faire chier un gouvernement comme ça. Qu'est-ce que que ce bordel, c'est quand même...Nan, arrête avec la mayonnaise !...Il débarque de sa zone. Tu vois le genre. On sait pas trop s'il est white, ils auraient pu foutre une caméra couleur, ces cons. T'as vu sa coiffure, on dirait qu'y 30

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 sort du lit, vraiment le paysan moyen...Ah, il parle, mais Radius a pas l'air de comprendre grandchose, ni Durmel. Non, mais pour qui y se prend ?! Moi, si j'étais Radius... Ah, la pub, ça manquait. Remarque, faut quand même avoir des couilles pour faire ça, hein ? Mais non, elle s'en fout Marlène, elle entend que ça à l'école. Bon, faut que je m'arrache, Mimi. Tu m'appelles si jamais y sort de table, le type. Oui. Au boulot, y vont pas me faire chier pour un coup de fil, non ?!... Nous sommes toujours en direct de l’Élysée, où vient de débuter la troisième heure du repas de tous les dangers. Pour nous éclairer Jean-Michel Apatrid, expert auprès de l'OFCE et de l'OTAN. Vous avez une certaine compétence dans la communication de crise. Quels conseils donneriez-vous à nos ministres et conseillers, face à cette comment dire, intrusion d'origine indéterminée et potentiellement menaçante ?... Messieurs-dames, s'il vous plaît, s'il vous plaît, un peu de retenue ! Un peu de...Monsieur Barbé, je vous prie de reculer votre micro, merci !...Non, je vais monter là, sur ce bureau, puisqu'il n'y a pas d'estrade. Reculez, vous reculez ou je ne dirai rien, putains de vamp... ! Je viens de passer deux heures avec un individu dont nous ne savons pas grand-chose et qui, manifestement, ne fait pas partie de l'équipe présidentielle. D'après ce que j'ai capté – je suis à quatre chaises de distance - il parle français avec un accent. Peut-être alsacien, je ne suis pas expert. Il n'a de papiers sur lui. Il dit s'appeler Cardioso...Oui, nous avons essayé, mais il ne veut pas en parler. Je ne sens pas en lui de fondamentaliste, mais l'analyse de ses propos nous en dira plus. Il serait plutôt de confession...Non, qu'est-ce que je dis moi, de...De la campagne, voyez, il est...Un peu...Quelque part, de province. Et moi qui suis député de la Creuse, à l'origine, je sais reconnaître un provincial. Bon, excusez-moi, le Président a été très clair, nous sommes sur le pont jusqu'à la fin de la prise d'ot...de hauteur, de la hauteur nécessaire..J'y retourne. AFP – La situation s'est éclaircie dans l'affaire de l'intrusion. L'individu ne porte sur lui ni bombe ni arme. Les scanners à distance du RAID ont permis d'analyser le contenu de son blouson et de conclure que l'individu est issu d'un quartier effectivement hors de Paris, sans doute d'une ville dans un rayon de trois cent kilomètres autour de la capitale. La police invite toute personne en possession d'informations à bien vouloir la contacter. A ce stade de la prise d'otages, la police a peu communiqué sur pour ne pas impacter l'enquête toujours en cours. Mais ce que nous savons avec certitude aujourd'hui c'est qu'un pauvre a réussi à s'introduire au cœur de la République. 31

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Chers téléspectateurs, c'est un direct de tous les dangers que nous tentons. Il semblerait que le Président souhaite une sortie négociée de cette situation, alors que la France regarde ce repas qui a mal tourné. Nous avons proposé d'interviewer l'homme sur ses motivations, puisqu'il semble ne pas s'exprimer dans un français très aisé à comprendre, du moins pour les députés et conseillers au plus près de l'action. L'entourage présidentiel a refusé toute médiation, toute approche plus directe de l'individu, sans conteste un véritable pauvre. Il s'agit de continuer ce repas tant que le suspect n'aura pas décidé de lui-même, sans violences, de se retirer de table pour mise à jour de ses réelles motivations avant son jugement. Marie-Yvonne, ce pays n'est plus gouverné. Après les gauchistes, on a droit à ça. Mais devant qui ce Président va-t-il encore s'agenouiller ?...Cet individu à table avec tout de même des intelligences, même si elles n'ont que peu de respect pour les valeurs fondamentales de la Nation, c'est juste grotesque et répugnant. Regarde, sa chemise est souillée...Quelle horreur !...Tu n'oublies pas que nous dînons chez les Moretti, ce soir. La cadette rentre à Sciences-Po. Oh, chéri, c'est homme est sale ! Mais comment a-t-on pu laisser entrer... Non, un angle je te dis, pas cinq cent mots convenus ! On a les photos, on a les meilleures photos du gars. Mais regarde-moi cette tête ! Une véritable affiche du FN, version crottin. Un angle, bon dieu, c'est pas compliqué ! Pourquoi t'as fait Normale Sup alors, si t'es pas foutu de torcher deux pages un peu moins moutons que les autres. Je sais pas, moi. Est-ce qu'il a parlé de sous-vêtements ? Est-ce qu'il a dragué la conseillère Torignal ? Est-ce qu'il a dit quelque chose sur les juifs ou le calendrier maya ? Est-ce qu'il fait des arts martiaux ?... Je veux ça sur le desk dans une heure. Alexandre Cousé, chacun de nous a pu constater la façon particulière qu'à le suspect de bouger sa main droite et de passer l'index de sa main gauche dans le col de son t-shirt de marque Boy'z et de taille XL de manière lente, presque affectée. Que pouvez nous dire au sujet de cette gestuelle ? Le côté répétitif et régulier de la chose fait penser à une sorte de code. On le sait, les sociétés secrètes on toujours utilisé des modes d'échange cryptés. Mais on en n'en connaît que peu allant jusqu'à recruter des pauvres...Alexandre, vous qui avez observé et analysé sur le terrain les plus grands psychopathes du nord-est du Kurdistan... il est vraiment pauvre ?...J'y crois pas. Ils ont dû pêcho un type, c'est un lascar de chez eux, ça. 32

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Moi, je le crois pas que c'est un pauvre. Attends, c'est pas un vrai pauvre. Un vrai pauvre, c'est...On en voit pas à la télé, non mais attend !... AFP – Les consignes présidentielles ont du mal à être suivies. Les ministres se lèvent de la Scène – puisque c'est ainsi que cet étrange repas est dénommé un peu partout – et renâclent à revenir s'asseoir. Sous couvert d'anonymat, l'un d'eux nous a déclaré ne pas avoir a « supporter ça » et qu' « il y a des lieux et des traitements spécifiques pour ce genre d'individus ». Le personnage a fait un signe à la télé, ou peut-être au maître d’hôtel. Chers téléspectateurs, n'oubliez pas. Envoyez 1219, si vous voulez la sortie du pauvre. 1220 si vous le voulez à la table présidentielle. On me signale qu'il a roté, un rot long et sonore qui a fait manifestement sursauter le Ministre des Cultes. On recale les images en régie, vous ne manquerez rien. Je te parie qu'il va finir le rôti de caille aux...Attend, comment c'est marqué ?..Le rôti de caille aux petits nuages mélancoliques. Gilbert, tu rhabilles ? Deux whisky secs, pronto, et deux noirs. Faut qu'on y aille...Y a M6, maintenant, sur le coup, y paraît. On aura pas fini l'inspection des serveurs avant ce soir. Le repas sera bouclé, on aura tout raté. T'as voté, toi ? Oui, moi aussi je veux qu'il reste. Un pauvre, c'est trop top. Hideux, le mec. Le pauvre total, quoi ! Y nous plombe, avec cette Scène, toute la journée. Non mais, c'est un vrai repas ou quoi ? Ils bouffent pendant des heures alors, là-haut, comme les rois feignants ?...Oui, trois poireaux et une belle laitue, merci. Si vous voulez mon avis, le gars avec sa chemise et sa dent qui manque, il est trop vrai pour être faux. Je veux dire il est trop vrai pour pas être vrai. Je ne sais pas s'il se croit quelque chose ou quelqu'un. Nous, on a jamais eu ça dans la famille, ou alors un petit moment, le temps qu'il trouve du boulot. On étale pas sa dégaine de pauvre comme ça, c'est répugnant. On devrait...De toute façon, il est pas net, ça se voit. AFP – Le Premier Ministre, Lionel Dalls, a déclaré « En plein accord avec le Président, nous allons faire en sorte que cette situation s'arrête. Il est déjà difficile de montrer aux français le spectacle de la pauvreté, mais s'y on ajoute l'alcool et l'odeur, cela devient insupportable pour le français moyen ».

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Ok. Je ne t'ai rien dit, tu ne m'as pas vu et tu ne sais pas d'où viennent les clichés. Je te les fais à six mille parce que c'est toi. Regarde, les ministres commencent à bouger. Regarde celle-là. Le conseiller Doulino. Plutôt tendu, hein ?...On voit une ombre derrière Radius, qui bouge très vite. Le paparazzi, il a des réflexes en acier. Regarde, mon ami. Il shoote juste la caméra, ça c'est l'instinct. Bingo, elle est couverte d'une serviette ! Ils avaient coupé le direct, mais on sait jamais avec les hackers et les américains, ils ont plaqué une serviette dessus pour être sûr. C'est pas de la preuve, ça ?...Dans les deux secondes – regarde le time-code – le paparazzi se retourne et shoote le pauvre. Putain, l'horreur ! Y a même pas de sang ; arme létale de basse intensité. Il a peine eu le temps de voir tout le monde plonger par terre autour de lui. Évidemment, avec un flash on aurait eu plus de détails. Quoique. D'ailleurs, le type s'écroule pas tout de suite. Je sais pas, je sais pas comment Norbert a eu ça, et je veux pas le savoir. J'ai raqué cinq, je te les fais à six, parce que c'est toi. Tu les sortiras dans un an, sous forme d'émission spéciale, de bouquin, comme tu le sentiras. Tu feras un carton, mon frère. Regarde, le type s'écroule encore surpris. La photo qui tue, je te jure. Regarde. « La France ne peut rester avec cette menace pauvre, suspendue au-dessus de sa tête comme une épée de Damoclès. Le plan sécuritaire Élyséen va être revu. En attendant, la traque s'organise partout pour retrouver le ou les complices du fanatique qui a frappé au cœur notre pays. On sait que des individus faibles et sans valeurs se laissent facilement entraîner dans des groupuscules pauvres. Nous ne laisserons pas croître cette menace. Nous prenons pour argent comptant ce prologue à l'insupportable. Français, françaises, nous répondrons présent, devant la menace pauvre. Vive la République, vive la France ! ». Ainsi s'achève l'allocution du Président de la République. FranceTVisions va vous donner dans quelques instants les numéros auxquels vous pourrez appeler si, autour de vous, vous avez aperçu des individus suspects ou entendu des propos qui pourraient mettre en péril vos élus, vos patrons, vos proches, peut-être.

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 The Grocer by Arthur Levine Before supermarkets, there was a grocer named Martin Buber, who owned a small grocery store next to a barbershop. Large flightless birds came in and pecked at his patronsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; genitals and soon no one came to his store but the barber, who would purchase a newspaper for his customers to read while they waited for a haircut, but no groceries. So Martin Buber went into the barbershop, grabbed the razor and slit the barberâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s throat.

Divine 12 by James Mahan

Stylo Jam Sessions by LWO + Lafleur

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Place Dauphine by Peter O'Neill Vertiginous sensation which the physical act brings with it, but particularly that day in a hotel room when we were alone together for the very first time… O yes, I remember her body. French is more suited to talking about things which are extraordinary in their banality, perhaps I am really speaking about my own relationship with the language, who knows! But, it definitely has a tactile quality or resonance which English simply does not have and because of this fact it seems to lend itself much better when one is describing certain physical things. Let us be clear, I am speaking about poetry, god forbid, and the metaphysical qualities, both temporal and spatial, which occur between a subject and a particular object. That is why we had that little French window, just now, so that those who are adept at this language can uniquely explore the meaning which has its own very particular sound. The image which is in my head is one of us which has become a party to time, this image of us is a kind of vision which is made up out of moments from out of our distant past. Before anything, I must speak about her, she who has finally gone out of my life and for the very last time. So, it is about a rupture then, in the very exact sense of the word. Sometimes, we are obliged to do things, for our own good, which are absolutely horrible to do. Things which can cause us extreme pain. The head thinks one thing, the heart another and of course with the sex it is always one and the same. I remember, she was in me like a fever. She ran through my veins, becoming a part of my blood which burned inside of me like some hellish stream. It was really awful, that feeling. Finally, I understood that year the expression, to get under someone’s skin! Every time I looked out at the sea it was one and the same, all liquid burned. I gave up drinking any wine from Bordeaux. But the fact that not even nature could console me, I who was normally so sensitive to such things… Pain, pain. It was all about pain that year. Before, I had been so happy. But, one never fully 39

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 appreciates when one is, which is why life is a tragicomedy. She was sublime. In all three departments, I mean; body, heart and mind. One leads to the other. I love when there is harmony among these three elements, in a woman. It’s not worth it, otherwise. I think like this, really. Most people don’t. Most people are fucking idiots. She is still there, after all these years. She wanders like a demon, apparently set down on this earth with the sole purpose of tormenting me, my nemesis. Set down to punish me for all of my indiscretions. For this reason, I call her Antiope, named after the queen of the amazons, who were set down on earth to destroy all men. To be vanquished, beaten and by a woman! O what a pleasure. If I am truly honest, It was the one solitary thing of any real significance which happened in all of my life. It contains the key to my story. I have an image now of a body sculpted out of stone and which adorns some wall in a museum in Berlin. It is an image of Artemis, the vision of a woman who is exactly at the same depths of depravity as any man, just as stupid, base, but also, just as intelligent, if not even more so! Where did they come from those ideas of equality? I have seen more women than men who were more men than women, in my time. The truth is is that life is a dominatrix, as beautiful and just as dangerous. Without some trace of a violent streak, you are never going to survive. Equality, now there is a typical French stupidity. Take a good look around you, do you see any? But justice, now that is an altogether more interesting notion. Remember, she is represented by a blind woman. There on Quai des Orfvères, I have often imagined what the condemned must think, upon hearing their sentence, as they pass below her, looking up at her, skyward with the scales? She was incredibly beautiful, the body of an athlete, very feminine. For me, women have always represented strength, nothing less. So, when I hear stupidities being uttered, especially by men, concerning the ‘weaker’ sex, I just want to bend over my head and puke. Does this make me a feminist? No dear, perhaps a lesbian! There’s a thought. I am thinking now about the statue of Nike on the great stairwell in the Louvre. Headless, with those great wings sticking out of her back. Justice, I talk about justice. I remember her assassin’s smile. Anthony and Cleopatra, Dido and Aneas; all the great couples have 40

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 that natural dynamic, that conflict between the man and the woman and it is in its resolution that the couple will be eventually determined. Who will win? It is such a deadly game. What is the soul but the perfect alignment of the head, heart and the sex, that is some juggling game. Drop an orange and your dead, or worse; without a soul. Soulless! There you are then, nothing but an empty shell responding to physical and mental stimuli. Headless, with those great wings sticking out of her back. I remember the day when she telephoned to tell me, the annunciation. I see a kind of biblical angel of wrath coming down from a cloud in the form of her voice through the receiver which I had fixed to my ear, you see how complicit I was. Like a lamb to the slaughter. She did not wish to announce the birth of a child but the contrary, the abortion of one. It was a kind of genocide, or ethnic cleansing, on her part. Justice, finally! She is depicted as a woman blindfolded, we can only imagine all the horrors she has never seen. I remember the last time I ever saw her, she was magnificent, even then. A lioness on all fours, or Artemis whom I will always follow, into the night of time.

Totem House by James Mahan 41

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 For Reasons Surreal and Absurd by J. J. Steinfeld on the third Thursday of the second cruellest month your morning ruminations of surreal love without any thought of absurd love of absurd truth without any thought of surreal truth devour the surreal and the absurd when everything is going well in your strange-getting-stranger life but not in the strange-getting-stranger life of your doppelg채nger who parts his hair differently than you and rarely replaces the toothpaste cap otherwise you two are almost indistinguishable like two characters from a short but frightening play by a playwright who changed his name to Alfred Jarry for reasons surreal and absurd and believes in love and truth unequivocally on the third Thursday of every second month

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Furtive Yet Fascinating by J. J. Steinfeld There are days when one should not speak at least not to those in physical form days when words should be shared with only the formless and featureless those whose identities slide off them like the rain off the smoothness of million-year-old rocks near or at the top of imaginary mountains. Speak up, speak up, the silence declares on one of those furtive days, furtive yet fascinating, you think, and you believe you have nothing to say to save your life or the lives of those worshipping imaginary mountainsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the silence not deafening, merely mystifying, yet the silent conversations begin words overtaking your thoughts and disquiet despite you, in spite of you, and end without the world ending or your lips moving.

Photograph by Alexandra Bouge

mg_78 | interview series | 10_14 Those who have something to say, mgversion2>datura's interview series An interview with Klaus J. Gerken â&#x20AC;&#x201C; editor of Ygdrasil A Journal of the Poetic Arts http://users.synapse.net/kgerken/ Walter Ruhlmann: In over 20 years of editing Ygdrasil, how do you feel about your commitment to poets, writers, and artists? Klaus J. Gerken: I should explain something: Ygdrasil is not about poets, writers and artists, it is about the work. If it were possible I would publish only the poems and not even mention the names of the authors like the old Elizabethan anthologies. That would be ideal to focus on the work itself. One of the reasons I refuse to publish blurbs on the authors. It's all about the poetry, the work, the art. I myself have no real commitment to the authors other than the work. I don't care who creates it. I only judge whether it can stand by itself. On the other hand, on a personal note, I have had, for the most part, a very good rapport with all the poets, writers, and artists I have known. It all comes together to form a matrix of understanding. We continue to learn from each other and grow as a community. Walter Ruhlmann: I understand your point of view Klaus, but isn't a work full of what their author had in mind? Klaus J. Gerken: Of course it is. But who was Homer? Who was the person who wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh? Would Milton's Paradise Lost be any less relevant if we didn't know the author's name? It's not really relevant to the work, it is? However, it is relevant to the critics and professors who make a living from analysing the psychology of the work. Not sure that's relevant either. Since we don't know who Homer was we analyse the composition of the work, we can't concentrate on the person. It makes money and reputation for some; as to the work itself, I don't think it ultimately matters. I sometimes think, in today's society, it's not your work, but how often your name gets published. It's a culture of fame, not content. I've had people calling themselves poets send me submissions mentioning how many followers they have on Twitter! I've rejected work by offspring just because they were related to famous authors ("My father was so and so, so you have to publish me") or even inferior work by famous authors. As I have many times stated, "Ygdrasil publishes poems, not poets". 45

mg_78 | interview series | 10_14 With Facebook it is incredible how many poems get shared, but the author's name left out. I used to worry about that, but don't really any longer. Once I release a poem it has its own life. It can get by without me. Besides, the original is protected by copyright when archived by the Library and Archives Canada. Ultimately a work should stand by itself. There should be no need to analyse it in the sense of how the author lived his or her life, or a need for the author to explain the work; a work of art should be its own explanation. Walter Ruhlmann: You write poems yourself, and I had the honour to publish one of your poems in Beakful. Is there a place where Klaus Gerken's poems or work can be read/viewed? Klaus

Gerken:

It's

all

the

Ygdrasil

site

under

the

Ygdrasil

Book

Rack

(http://users.synapse.net/kgerken) or better yet, The Library and Archives Canada Ygdrasil collection (http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/300/ygdrasil/index.html). Ygdrasil was the first on-line Literary Journal to be archived by the LAC in 2000. The site contains approximately 132 of my books. It also contains a few examples of my paintings in the Ygdrasil Art Gallery. Walter Ruhlmann: Coming to the digital side of publishing, I already knew you were part of the pioneers of online publishing, was this related to your former occupation? Klaus J. Gerken: No. My occupation was always separate from my literary activities. Many called my work with DND a profession; I called it a job. I used to go home and write through the night, then go to work with very little sleep. As to Ygdrasil: The real pioneer was Inez Harrison with her BBS 1 magazine Poetry In Motion, which I believe was founded in 1988. Inez was also the moderator of two BBS poetry conferences. That's really how it all began. In 1990 Inez offered me the position of comoderator of the two BBS poetry conference she hosted out of New York and things went from there. I attracted poets like Pedro Sena, Evan Light, Igal Koshevoy, Ernest Schlieman, Bob Ezergailis, and Greg Shilling among many others – a list too long to mention. Soon we received complaints that the content of the conference became too "adult" and in April 1993 things came to a head and we were shut down by management. That's when I created Ygdrasil to continue publishing the poets prominent on the conferences. Paul Lauda offered to create a BBS network – Centipede – devoted to Ygdrasil and 1

Bulletin Board System système de bulletins électroniques, couramment abrégé sous le sigle BBS, consiste en un serveur équipé d'un logiciel offrant les services d'échange de messages, de stockage et d'échange de fichiers, de jeux via un ou plusieurs modems reliés à des lignes téléphoniques. From Wikipedia

mg_78 | interview series | 10_14 soon we were carried in 26 countries. It was an incredible time. I should mention that in those days we had to phone in long distance each night. My phone bill was enormous to say the least. Then in 1994 Igal Koshevoy put us on the Internet. Up to 1996 I had no Internet access and continued the magazine on the BBS circuit out of Ottawa while Igal did the Internet work out of Oregon. When Igal left in November 1996 Pedro Sena and I rebuilt all the Ygdrasil pages and created our own Internet site. Unfortunately, except for one issue, all the 1994 to 1995 Ygdrasil original Internet pages were lost. But that remaining issue proves our claim to being the first On-line Literary Journal on the Internet. As to the genesis of Ygdrasil itself, it came from Clayton Eshleman's 1960/70's Caterpillar. I briefly started proto Issues in 1970, then 1976 and 1986. The Internet made everything viable. Now of course there are thousand of internet publications. I sometimes wonder why I keep doing it. But then, over 43 thousand readers in 2569 cities in 131 countries around the world is not something to snicker at. Our original purpose was to distribute literature to as many places as possible, and I really do believe that we have achieved that goal. Walter Ruhlmann: Are your German roots important in your life/writing/editing? Klaus J. Gerken: My roots provide me with a global, rather than local perspective. I've talked to too many "poets" who have read nothing but local poetry (by that include the country) and never having branched out into world literature. Ygdrasil has been criticised for not publishing enough "local" poetry. I don't see it that way, if I chose authors from other countries it should be taken as an education, not as an affront. We're all part of this world; all if it. To have people call themselves poets who have never read Schiller, Heim, Bruechner, Holan, or even the Romans and Greeks or ancient Egyptian literature makes me very uneasy about the future of poetry and literature in general. Just as new cities are founded on the foundation of previous cities so is literature. You don't just dismiss other cultures, or the past as being (as one poet declared to me) restricting his "creativity". Standing on the shoulders of giants seems to have little meaning to many of today's writers. They want to be rock stars on the stage of their "slams: or "open miks". It's a far different world where I came from. I always tell people who tell me I not longer have any relevance that they have to excuse me since I belong to a previous century and they never seem to get it. To tear down and try to rebuild with without a clear vision except to be different will only lead to chaos. Michael Annis called Ygdrasil one of the most "progressive literary journals out there" and Heather Ferguson called it one of the "most consistent publications". Be that as it may, roots are very important to me. 47

mg_78 | interview series | 10_14 The name Ygdrasil was not chosen to be a catchy name, it means what it means. I hope the publication reflects that. I may have been the catalyst, but without people like Inez Harrison, Paul Lauda, Igal Koshevoy and Pedro Sena it would have never happened. It's an international community out there and Ygdrasil reflects that by showing people literature is one voice. That's why I do not post bio blurbs. But then some issues like the May 2012 Issue, Contemporary Iraqi Poetry, Edited and Translated by Khaloud Al-Muttalibi, is important. But usually in the anthology issue I avoid mentioning where the work and author originates. If someone is interested they can usually find them on the Internet. So it's really not necessary. Walter Ruhlmann: I perfectly know Ontario is part of the English-speaking part of Canada, yet, haven't you ever thought of publishing poetry in French? What is you relation to Quebec and the French-speaking world generally speaking? (I know these are two questions into one) Klaus

Gerken:

We've

published

issues

Italian

(the

Rita

Stilli

issues),

Spanish

(http://users.synapse.net/kgerken/spanishhtm.htm) and French (http://users.synapse.net/kgerken/Y-1211FrenchMB.pdf). I had a German issue planned but that fell through. My relationship with the French-speaking world is no different than with any other linguistic region in the world: everyone is welcome. I can only publish what is submitted. Walter Ruhlmann: We've already talked about the genesis of Ygdrasil, why did you choose the name of this Norse mythology tree? Klaus J. Gerken: Yggdrasil was the tree that joined Earth to Heaven. It was a meeting place under which the gods assembled to conduct their business. It was also the tree where Odin hung himself for six days and nights to gain wisdom, therefore becoming both the god of war and poetry. The name appealed to me since childhood. It was always in the back of my mind. In the beginning I used several variations like Yggdrasail or Ygdrasail and then saw the alternate Ygdrasil in the 1958 Funk and Wagnals dictionary that used Ygdrasil as a primary spelling. I immediately knew that was it. It was the same but different. I immediately appended "a Journal of the Poetic Arts" to it because I wanted it to be not just a journal of poetry but, as Clayton Eshleman said about his Caterpillar, "a journal of the whole art". Unfortunately, as I would find out later, Ygdrasil would always come last in the 48

mg_78 | interview series | 10_14 alphabetical listings of literary journals and unless you search for "Ygdrasil, a Journal of the Poetic Arts" in quotes Google isn't that kind either, changing the search to Yggdrasil. But beyond that the name has served the journal quite well – it is original and quite memorable. Clayton Eshleman when he submitted some work for two special issues in 2005 told me that he wished he would have thought of it, then perhaps Caterpillar, or his later publication Sulfur would have been called Ygdrasil. I found that high praise from an editor I consider my mentor. Walter Ruhlmann: Talking about mentors, or inspiring people, who do you most admire in the past and the present world of literature, the arts, and music? Klaus J. Gerken: That's a wide ranging question for someone who attempted to read, see, hear everything available. Coming from a European background English literature was just part of it. And since for the past 20 years I have only really read what is submitted to Ygdrasil. I can only assume what is in Ygdrasil is some of the best out there. I guess the best way to answer the question is to comment on some of the writers that I still read often and admire. To start at the beginning, The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Sumerian texts – the earliest poetry in civilization available to us; the Greeks, especially the Greek Anthology; Homer; Sappho; the Chinese – I have a beautiful edition of T'Ang Dynasty poetry in English translation, published before 1954 without copyright or translator names by a Yan Luk Book Store in Hong Kong which I cherish; the Japanese, Basho; The Romans, especially Martial has been a great influence and Horace. I have a soft spot for Ausonius. Love reading the letters of Cicero. Skipping to Medieval Europe, German Minnesanc – the whole of which I translated in 1979, French Troubadours, Chaucer; the Romance of the Rose; it goes on and on...there's a rare edition of Slavic medieval religious poetry which is wonderful; Sir Walter Raleigh; the Elizabethans; Chapman's Homer is a favourite. I love reading 17 th century poetry, Pope, Swift, Butler, Wilmot is a riot; then of course the Romantics, Shelley's Faust is still the best translation. Then we get into Browning and the Rafaelets. In German Goethe, Hoelderlin, Heine, Schiller. I could just rattle them all off. It would just be a dull list for your readers... Pushkin in Russia, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine... Mallarme. 20th century: Apollinaire, Jarry and the Theatre of the Absurd. There's an interesting poem by Picasso called “Hunk of Skin” translated by Paul Blackburn. I'm forgetting so many. Eliot, Pound. The greatest influence I suppose was, and still is Vladimir Holan, perhaps the greatest poet of the 20th century. I love Czechoslovakian poetry. The east Europeans. There's some great poetry coming out of Africa. The Chilean poets. Post modern American poetry. The Beats. I've 49

mg_78 | interview series | 10_14 read about everything there is up to the 90's. Painting is too vast... Modigliani, Turner, Picasso. Music: Beethoven most of all. Mahler. 60's, I prefer the Stones over the Beatles because they tackled issues in their lyrics; Dylan of course. I'm getting boring, so best leave it. Walter Ruhlmann: OK so let me narrow my previous question. In the flow of the "independent" literature and arts work published today, ie. on Facebook, other online social media, small-press... Can you spot any authors that could make it to posterity? Or is something new still to be created? Klaus J. Gerken: That's easy. Jack R. Wesdorp is the finest poet writing in the USA today and Mois Benarroch is deserving of the Nobel in literature for his Cool and Collected English poems alone. Michael Annis is one of the stalwarts of American poetry. Patrick White who just passed away this year belongs on the podium among the finest Canadian poets. Jorge Etcheverry is a major poet from Chile residing in exile here in Ottawa. Maria Jacketti is perhaps the finest translator of Neruda's poetry today. Clayton Eshleman we all know about from being the editor of Caterpillar and Sulfur and the major translator of Valleho's poems. Oswald LeWinter T.S. Eliot praised as the finest poet of the 20 th century. I have always considered Ottawa poet Susan McMaster a fine poet and supported her in the quest to become Poet Laureate of Ottawa succeeding Patrick White. Ron Whitehead is of course one of the last "gonzo" poets forming a triad with Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. All available in past and present Ygdrasil issues. Among the ones that aren't well know, Rita Stilli, in my opinion the finest poet since Anna Akhmatova; Rebecca Lu Kiernans from Australia; Michael R. Collings; Martin Zurla who founded the Rand Theatre off Broadway; Michael Rothenberg; Henry Avignon; Bruno Starrs, fine playwright; and of course against his will, Igal Koshevoy whom I always called the Rimbaud of American poetry and without whom Ygdrasil would probably not have existed, since above all he is the one who got us banned from the poetry conference I was hosting and who I wanted to keep publishing. As to new, there is always something new. Always something different. The quest for expression will forever continue. If any of us make it to the next generation the future will have to decide. Hopefully some of us will. Walter Ruhlmann: The theme of the forthcoming issue of mgversion2>datura is Ubu after Alfred Jarry's play. What thoughts does this theme make you think of? Klaus J. Gerken: Ubu Roi, Theatre of the Absurd, it caused quite a sensation. Jarry in his hovel where 50

mg_78 | interview series | 10_14 you couldn't stand and a giant phallus at the door. He even once shot at Picasso with a revolver in a restaurant trying to make an artistic statement. His riding around Paris on his bicycle. And of course his copious amounts of absinthe. There's a great section in Robert Suttock's The Banquet Years about him. Was a fan of the movement in my youth and still am. Wrote many plays in that style. Waiting, (1974) where I came on stage, sat down at a table with a bottle of wine and waited for the audience to do something. Incredible that they took the almost 20 minutes to catch on! A few months later No Play Tonight advertised and when the audience showed up, obviously, there was no play. In fact my Yoric Novels/Plays and Poems (Rites, One New Flash of Light and The Dream, Gone Now, Is There) were highly influence by the Theatre of the Absurd. Love the absurd in literature and poetry. Unfortunately DADA and the Surrealists tried to intellectualize it. That of course lead to Artaud and The Theatre of Cruelty. I think Dali was the only one who tried to keep it going, not in his art, but in his antics. Luckily we ended up with the Marx Brothers who played it to the hilt. The Punch and Judy puppet shows were the great precursor. My father bought me one of those shows when I was a kid in Germany and I entertained the whole neighbourhood! I always had a place in my heart for the absurd. Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant carried it to new heights in the 60's. Now, of course, the whole world seems absurd to me! heights in the 60's. Now, of course, the whole worlds seem

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 Poem Without A Title by Klaus J. Gerken PART III Canto XIIII poet wrapped in a blanket shivering work desk scattered with random papers books and bills cats on the chairs and sofa tv on some inconsequential standard useless entertainment sometimes even funny more times just crassly muddled he doesn't even notice too absorbed in work and the glass of wine always the glass of wine scattered DVD's and video's on the floor mostly science fiction 56

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 4 litre empty wine boxes antacids tylenol one lamp illuminating shadow places A/C and fan on cold but better than crippling humidity feet swollen sitting too much hunched over transfixed by computer screen words words words and more words that sometimes make no sense at all and at other times even less thus a poet's reclusive life continues day by day unnoticed passing by life that others lead only four walls here little else FB friends anonymous opponents 57

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 for computer games backgammon chess win some lose some old paintings from the 70's in the corner not even hanging on the wall unpublished manuscripts in binders boxes and drawers forgotten journals spanning decades piled up in a closet no one reads or even wants to read wasted life not worth a damn to anyone but the poet continues on because that's all there is nothing else to do but keep going like he's always done from childhood to the golden age of arthritis alcoholism 58

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 and empty spaces between the solid hologram of vast illusions frozen dreams and grand collusion with whatever demon fits your scale of desperate religion the poet will have none of it he goes on living as he drinks himself to death doctor says beyond fixing worse would be i guess beyond saving it's late at night almost midnight the wine calms nerves otherwise inflamed with trepidation no one should live this way but the poet does has done all his life everything else is quite peripheral to what he does gathers absorbs and sneezes out what some call art some a fart 59

mgv2_78 |ubu| 10_14 others just shrug the poet shrugs i do what i do why be different now there was only one objective to explore creation why we live how we love then decay and die along the way some compassion a lot of screw-ups and there you have it and lots of 3 AM anxiety attacks that goes with the territory of tearing one's psyche apart "have heart have heart" the captain yells to panick stricken passengers "have heart" he screams in desperation as the ship is slowly sinking kjg 3 - 4 september 2014

mg_78 | mgv2>publishing | 10_14 La peau par Alexandra Bouge Couverture souple, 70 Pages Prix : 6,00€ Sur lulu.com et Amazon, bientôt en Kindle http://www.lulu.com/shop/alexandra-bouge/lapeau/paperback/product-21846377.html Préface – Walter Ruhlmann En ce dimanche après-midi, je l'imagine parcourant les rues de la ville: Belleville, Montreuil ou peut-être Paris elle-même. A la découverte de quelque street-art dont elle est si friande et qu'elle photographie pour remettre à sa place la beauté cruelle du paysage urbain, pour les immortaliser aussi, avant qu'ils ne soient repassés à la peinture, au Kärcher ou à la bombe d'un autre graffeur moins sensible ou moins attentif. Le mobilier urbain récemment repensé pour éviter aux clochards d'embouteiller les halls ou les entrées d'immeubles, les quais du métro, les jardins publics, sert aussi de source d'inspiration à Alexandra comme le montrent, elles aussi, certaines de ces photos, ou les mots qu'elle met en forme page après page pour en décrire l'horreur absolue, autant que les noires espérances de ceux qui peuplent les recoins de la cité.

Dans cette œuvre atypique, comme dans tout ce qu'elle écrit ou tout ce qu'elle créé, Alexandra Bouge, une auteure prolifique, socialement impliquée, d'autres diraient indignée, elle-même à la merci d'une société toujours plus exigeante, pour ne pas dire maltraitante, avec ceux pour qui l'art, l'humain, l'être ont toujours eu plus d'importance que ce que nos contemporains mettent en avant. Il y a de la cruauté, des mots crus, des images fortes, des échanges dérangeants, des situations désespérées, il y a beaucoup d'ombre et peu de lumière, peu d'espoir en d'autres termes, mais toujours celui de voir Alve, le personnage féminin principal de La peau, atteindre le but qu'elle s'est fixée. Vivre bien, plutôt que survivre face à de nombreux dangers insidieux. Je parlais d'une œuvre atypique car il faut bien reconnaître que le mélange de deux langues : le texte est incrusté de mots ou expressions roumains pour lesquels Alexandra Bouge donne une traduction et 61

mg_78 | mgv2>publishing | 10_14 une adaptation phonétique. Ces aspérités sont là pour nous rappeler que de la part d'une personne perdue au milieu d'un territoire étranger, hostile à sa présence, à son existence même, il est parfois des lacunes lexicales, culturelles qui ne sauraient être comblées par autre chose que des mots issus de la langue maternelle, un sein vers lequel la bouche se tend pour y retrouver le réconfort souhaité, les repères d'un héritage, certes lourd à porter, mais essentiel à la personne. Alexandra a d'ailleurs dédié ce livre à Flora Michèle Marin, artiste, biologiste de métier, dont les œuvres sont encore publiées aujourd'hui. Lors de sa première publication au format numérique en 2010, ce texte n'était pas complet ; Alexandra y a ajouté d'autres textes inédits qui viennent compléter ce tableau d'une société moderne déshumanisée, incapable d'accepter l'autre tel qu'il est. Alexandra Bouge a le don du traumatisme. Nul n'a encore su mettre en scène ici dans un décor de visages spectraux et inquiétants, comme des impressions de Rorschach des personnages que l'on pourrait définir comme fracassés de la vie, simplement en quête d'un meilleur qui n'existe que dans l'imaginaire. Brutal, cru, le récit d'Alve vous mène le long de chemins tortueux qu'il est nécessaire d’emprunter pour voir le monde au grand jour. Walter Ruhlmann – 15/06/2014 Extrait LE CHATEAU Elle avançait, au petit matin, vagabonde en quête d'un abri. Un château se profila à l'horizon. Elle tapa trois coups dans la porte. Il n'y eut aucun bruit. Elle essaya de nouveau car c'était sa seule chance de survie dans les prochaines heures. Un gardien vint lui ouvrir. Il était speed : -Qu’est-ce que vous voulez ? -Auriez-vous s'il vous plaît, un endroit où je peux dormir cette nuit ? -Oui. Entrez. Un autre gardien passa devant elle. -Elle vient pour dormir. -Ouais, fit-il, lui jeta à peine un coup d’œil et continua son chemin, précipitamment (à la hâte), comme s'il avait quelque chose d'important à faire tout de suite. Il l'amena vers un abri de fortune près du château. Un lac dont l'eau semblait épaisse, s'étendait devant sa piaule. -Je reviens tout à l'heure, lui dit-il. Ils dormaient à plusieurs ici. Un type passa son nez à travers la porte pour vérifier que tout allait bien (était en ordre). Les draps étaient aussi sales qu'elle, des gens venaient prendre des affaires, revenaient à nouveau, fouillaient partout puis repartaient les mains vides. Elle avait l'impression qu'ils 62

mg_78 | mgv2>publishing | 10_14 cherchaient tous quelque chose qu'ils ne trouvaient pas. Personne n'avait l'air de remarquer sa présence. Elle regarda dehors par la porte, restée ouverte. Il faisait nuit, le lac semblait être plutôt une immense mare (marais) était de l'autre côté du bâtiment. Un quart de lune éclairait des herbes et un bâtiment en face du sien. -Comment tu t'appelles ? dit une voix derrière elle. -Alve. -Quel nom. Jamais entendu. Qu'est-ce que tu fais ici ? -Je reste une nuit. Il se mit à rire. Sa bouche édentée était un trou noir. -Viens. Je vais te présenter aux autres. Une fois le rituel des présentations accompli, Alve se sentit tomber de sommeil. Ses compagnons de chambre vaquaient à leurs affaires. Certains marchaient d'un endroit à l'autre de la pièce en gesticulant, d'autres regardaient le plafond (devant eux) pris dans une contemplation sans fin. « Les histoires d'amour finissent toujours mal », pensa Alve. La nuit, elle regardait le pendule de sa chambre, dont le mouvement se fixait dans un substrat du cerveau, derrière sa tête. Elle se mirait dans un bout de miroir accroché au mur. Derrière elle, un homme la regardait, il avait le regard fixe, le visage sombre, tendu, comme si une idée l'obsédait. -Cet été nous allons camper ensemble près de la rivière, dit-il. -Oui, répondit Alve. Elle se mit à attendre l'heure du coucher. Il semble qu'autour d'elle les gens attendaient aussi comme un signal pour aller dormir. Au bout d'un temps, quelqu'un sonna une alarme et tout le monde se faufila vite au lit. Elle trouva le sommeil immédiatement, comme si quelqu'un lui avait assené un coup sur la tête. Le lendemain matin, sur les coups de six heures, le bruit des voix la réveilla. Elle regarda de loin et prit le temps d'observer les mouvements de chacun qui émergeaient de la mollesse du repos. Des séquences d'attitude se répétaient de l'un à l'autre, et enfermaient Alve dans un rythme continu et saccadé. Les objets qui emplissaient la pièce représentaient le strict minimum dans une vie. Alve rassembla ses affaires et prit le chemin de la sortie. Un garde l'arrêta près de la porte. -Où vous allez ? -Je pars. -Personne ne s'en va. Le ton qui marqua une pause était ferme et convaincant. Elle mesura le poids des mots puis chancela. 63

mg_78 | mgv2>publishing | 10_14 Elle se dirigea, effrayée vers son lit. -Maintenant elle veut dormir, dit-il. Elle aurait voulu s'enfermer, avoir sa propre pièce. Ses guides, qu'elle s'était posés, se sont évanouis, une fois qu'elle avait franchi la porte de cet endroit. Elle était nue sur le lit et tout le monde la regardait. Une lumière diffuse alimentait son regard. Elle se mit à vomir des bouts de chair flasque. Des seringues emplies de sang traînaient sur le sol. Le gardien grognait quelque chose entre les crocs. Le ciel était un préservatif bleu aux nuages lourds. Elle se sentit comme un poisson dans la pénombre des profondeurs de la mer. Elle frémissait OK, ses nageoires courtes et immobiles, guettant la danse des bouts de ficelle, de plastique, des pierres sculptées par l'érosion, des plantes volantes amenées par le courant. « Finalement elle était plutôt bien ici, se dit-elle, à l'abri du mauvais temps, des voleurs et des psychopathes qui traînaient sur les routes. » Elle le revit derrière elle dans le miroir. Grand, couvert des pieds à la tête comme un fantôme ou un membre du Ku Klux Klan. « Il était son ombre », lui dit-il, multiplié des centaines de fois sur les murs de la pièce. Elle prit peur, appela le gardien, qu'elle trouva mort sur le pas de la porte. Un air de soulagement marqua son visage. Elle essaya de fuir mais un autre se dirigea vers elle pour faire disparaître le corps et le remplacer. Alve nota que l'opération avait lieu dans la plus grande discrétion, aucun frottement entre le corps et le sol n'indiquait un accident, ils prirent le corps sans la moindre difficulté et l'emmenèrent en un instant, comme s'ils marchaient dans un espace sans gravitation, quelque part. Les autres faisaient comme s'ils n'avaient rien vu. Le courant des vagues était contagieux. Rien ne lui avait donné le goût des fêtes paradisiaques qu'ils semblaient lui faire entrevoir par la mince ouverture de la porte due aux courants d'air. Les échantillons de moisissure présents sur les peaux des détenus lui indiquaient la présence de morsures de reptiles. Alve se retourna sur son lit et se demanda si ça n'allait pas bientôt être son tour.

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 Book Reviews by Walter Ruhlmann Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy by Davis Herrle, Time Being Books, 2013 Over a year ago, the cover of this poetry book appeared on social networking sites, and the mouth-gaping skull with its red, eye-emptied orbits and jaws, ready to swallow the lone virgin reading in the corridor, a cover art named “The Valley” and signed by David van Gough, appealed to me right away. I had had to order this book and read thoroughly so as to write what you are about to read. That is one of the reasons why it took me so long to get on with it. I only know David Herrle through our collaboration to our respective journals, and the Canadian magazine Magnapoets. Then of course, we share and like and comment on our posts on Facebook and the likes, but as many other writers, poets, artists, editors, publishers from across the Atlantic I know, online media are our only forum and vital link. Yet, those are also a way to start knowing the friends we make and keep contact with a little more each day that passes. I have the feeling that every time we share and comment on something, it is another part of the jigsaw puzzle that is placed in the landscape, another section of the colour by the number sketch that is filled in. Reading Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy was gaining even more clues to who David Herrle is, or thinks as a matter of fact, or just confirmed things I already knew or supposed to be true. Though she looks like a late-19 th-century-early-20th-century maid, this young lady reading in this corridor, is the personification of all these ladies of Shallot, these sleeping beauties condemned only seconds old, these queens Marie whose destinies once met the absolute horrific fate society has scheduled for them through centuries. “The Sounds of Names and Dooms” – the opening poem of this mythical mass – aren't we there in a Pink Cathedral where a holy celebration is performed? – invites us to update our catechism: “Recite!” 65

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 orders the poet, “say and hear their names!” Not only shall we know who these Maries are but all our senses have to be aware of their existence and presence, and why or how these idealized beauty queens were once laid on the altar of barbarism and slain by the hands of many different people, all sharing the same gene of cruelty. “Sisters in both sounds and names” indeed, David Herrle resuscitates them in this 191-page poetry book. It was that necessary to praise all those types of women “every bombshell/every debutante/every MILF.” Beauty is everywhere: in films, on glossy magazine covers, in music videos, in TV commercials, even on soft-porn websites. Beauty has evolved and since Pygmalion sculpted his Galatea, the eye has been drawn towards the close-to-perfection beauty. Even when Baudelaire wrote that ivory-vignettes could not be what turned him on, his eye was the place where sin stood: “Yes, we sin from the eye. (…) The optic nerve made me do it!” Scopophiles or voyeurs, all men have been aroused at least once in their life at the sight of beauty; sin gives guilt and “We the guilty, feel the fire/ And we resent those who seem/washed clean by blind waters.” From this first part The Reverse Galatea, we also learn how ageing sucks in the eye of the aesthete. Ageing brings “These wrinkles, that paunch, those sags and freckles.” Can't these add up to Beauty? Certainly not because “soon the show's over, and the curtain falls./ Age.” yet, if age was the limit, things would certainly go more smoothly in a way, but David Herrle reminds us all that :”the secret/of mass violence is/(...) beauty.” So let's take a look at “Antoinette, Marie Jeannette, and Sharon Tate”. France. Late 18th century. From a naive French school boy's perspective, a boy whose intellect was formatted to believe the French Revolution was the beginning of a new era, that our version of “We, the people...” would make things better, more egalitarian, the severing of a queen was nothing more than a necessary step, another martyr or victim to access freedom. One victim too many – freedom was a lure, and the Terror was eluded from history school books. “Saint Guillotine”, the new icon of the French Revolution, fed with all these people Robespierre and the likes could not stand, and were getting in their way. Queen Marie-Antoinette had to be slain too for the good of the people as a revenge from “the Common Men” – “Elle, you are the soap despised by the muck people” just in the name of “flowing red justice”.

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 No freedom here, just the sequel of and the link within a whole series of bloody slaughters from Cain's jealousy to the latest jihadi's barbarism. One of which, sorry to say, was also the American Revolution, except the massacres came from above and not from below. No revolt, no rebellion or revolution is speckless, unstained; there is no exception. Like these ladies connected by beauty and doomed fate, humanity in its search for power is killing itself slowly at the best, deleting itself in a millisecond ate the worst. By the way, humanity in French is female gendered. Beauty – represented in Art – can even be rendered by the most insane people killing in the name of hypertrophied egos, so-called social welfare, or just for the sake of the criminal act. David Herrle reminds us how women's names were used to baptise atrocious weapons, or how women's figures helped promoting humanity's thirst for its self-destruction. The poem “Gilda” is here for that purpose. Leaders have always been driven by women's beauty, and I wonder if David knew that one of the mass destruction weapons used during WWI was also named Bertha. Nihilism, annihilation: the mouth-gaping skull, or “Ever Grinning Skull” laughs at our wrong deeds. A leitmotiv: the antonymous Prada/Pravda. The first a glossy popular magazine promoting fashion and beauty, putting them on a pedestal, giving them all power, shall it be with the help of Photoshop to make all the cover girls look even more beautiful, or even more Ronsard's rose-like. The second the people's newspaper, the iconic publication of the Communist party in what was once the USSR for over seventy years. Yes, death is everywhere and no beauty can resist the call for the end. Decaying is our fate whether we are eaten by worms in the grave or already bearing our corpse like “Painter Schiele shows (us) skeletons under lying woman skin.” A bunch of black dahlias is in every man's eyes, especially in those of the scopophiles. Staring at beauty is always having in mind that all beauty must die. Worse! That since we were born, we started to decay. Yet the Pink Cathedral welcomes us. Women's genitalia: the pink cathedral, the rosey vagina. Before stepping in – penetrating – the place, David Herrle gives us a “Sermon”. Indeed, the “Beautylicious” poem is a long, in-depth insight and reflection on how Art renders Beauty, what many aesthetes said, wrote, produced about Beauty. From Nietzsche to Picasso: the first could have misunderstood the latter – from Blake to Baudelaire: one saw beauty as a divine presence, the latter as nature's 67

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 perfection rather than its crudeness? The Art disguises the Real to make it “Beautylicious”: beautiful and delicious. I am not ashamed to say that this part of the book – The Pink Cathedral – is my favourite. As a poet and reader of poetry, I have always been drawn towards the spontaneous and the trivial. Sex and body generally speaking have always been a centre of interest, a field of research, empirical as well as intellectual. No surprises then that this section draws all my attention. In “Is the Spiri a Bone?” David Herrle makes us wonder whether the spirit exists. Or, rather, if it does, is it possible to use it more than our organs situated below the belt. I like Hegel's quote “Nature... combines the organ of the highest fulfilment (…) with the organ of urination...” Let's talk about hormones too. Think about it, our brain is the place where instinct and conscience cohabit. The Pink cathedral is probably not that holy. Holiness knows nothing of terrestrial vileness. Yet, we, as humans, are also deep into realism, and the mornings-after: we are flesh, bones, blood, skin, “teeth lacquered by bacteria”, “mouths (that) are sweetmeats/ after all-night bacterial orgies.”, nostrils' repellent “subpar odors”, as the “snobbish nose/ being the organ of the organ of the strongest attraction or revulsion.” There is humanity in beauty, and because of that, beauty cannot hide the crudeness of our body: morning breath, sweat, smelly feet maybe: “The body is an undousable wildfire.” This leading the poet to “want to suck her legs”. “The Roaring Woman” shows us how we are sexually dependent, sex addicted, eroticism has taken over us all, for so many years now. This poem rings a bell in me and makes it one of my favourite really. Les cahiers de nuit once published by Serge Féray from my hometown (Caen, Normandy), to which Philippe Pissier an erotomaniac used to contribute, someone I still admire despite his stoning me over a decade ago; such subversion, such submissiveness, such debasing of the man can only satisfy my appetite for trauma. Then again, death, our end, our common fate, grins at us as these lines reflect: “These knees are shrunken skulls, those ankles are candide cyanide those toes are fatal berries, those foot bones are belladona roots.”

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 “The devil is an Ass” is a must-read. Herrle is a genius. David Herrle I envy you for thinking, coining, giving birth to so many crafty word and thought associations. Enjoy these lines! “Venus is a cannibal fly trap.” “Sodom's real estate is priceless for a reason.” “Genital dilation and hole-gapes, the rampant scrub of public hair, the glutton grunts, the gasping gasps, the rule of dumb limbs.” David Herrle your poetry gives me goose-bumps The mix of sex and death when both unite and feast on violence: “There's horror in savage pleasure and glee in distressed flesh: the Shoah, 1994 Rwanda, Ed Glein, Black Dahlia, grunting porn-star Sasha Grey.” David Herrle your words give me goose-bumps. It'll end in another type of sucking than that of legs, you know. Doesn't “Lawful Carnal Knowledge” – blyme! This title is amazing! – clearly states: “there is a pure nymphomaniac stowed away (…) deep inside you. All it does is want and crave, worship flesh for flesh's sake.” Tormented spirit. Tormented mind. Lustful and vain. “The Nose of the World” in an inventory of famous proboscis. A man's nose is said to reflect the size of his erect penis. That's an urban legend of course – the size and shape of his fingers won't lie though – you can trust me, I've compared plenty. The thing is David Herrle does not really answer the question he asks at the beginning of this poem “What's in a nose?” I expected “Bogeys” as an answer, stupid me. I am a down-to-earth person and could not expect one to knit beauty out of such a despicable organ. Some hate toes, or feet; noses to me are inane pricks. When I reached part five: “Yours Truly, Mathematicus” I was first put off because of its mentioning mathematics which I loathe, and because I am a dysarithmetic person. I did not know that Mathematicus was the nickname used by Jack the Ripper. Indeed, this section of the book gives room 69

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 to one of the second victims used as an emblem by David: Marie Jane Kelly, the last victim of the ripper. The outcry here is built on subtractions. How can someone kill beauty physically, or lacking the basis of an education. “If Looks Could Be Killed” is a long hauling-poem about this: “cancel her desirability (…) (as savage tribes deface artwork and piss on shrines) (…) tar and feather Bouguereau and Rubens beauties, decrown all queens.” We may question ourselves, we have to wonder and make our best to find elements of answers, but the question lingers, and will never get an appropriate answer: “What does a knife do best but disassemble what seems fearfully and wonderfully made?” Today I confessed to David Herrle that Part six “Charlie Manson and the Scorpion Children” gave me the impression to be in a horror movie. Except that this was not fiction put on film, but a horrid sectarian butchery. People taking power with knives or guillotines, fire arms, genocides are outrageous and terrifying of course, they make the mass-media work, they make the world's history, the headlines, the school books. Meeting the Ripper at a dark street corner is yet certainly scarier but the story of the Manson family – perhaps because it is still in everyone's mind, perhaps because we are more or less contemporary to it, because they still live behind bars – is part of popular culture and it leaves me sick and pale. The “Susan Atkins” poem is already driving the readers on the slope of a helter skelter. Leading them on the threshold of fear, like the score in a thriller. I know how important music, cinema, and soundtracks are to David Herrle, and I can only suggest that he did it on purpose, that he cannot have left it to chance, this poem was not written at random, placed here purposelessly. Moreover, keeping that section for the end of the book, making it the climax as well as a part of the title, it was of course chronologically important, but also in building his work to an apotheosis in the scaffolding of horror. In the previous section, David Herrle wrote to Mary Jane Kelly: “Why do I mourn you most?” as he 70

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 compared her to the fate of Sharon Tate. Yet, “The Scorpion Children” section is the part of the book in which horror is rendered the best, no irony here, just poetic techniques to insist on the abomination. We deeply plunge into an insane world, a lunatic asylum, a cuckoo's nest, where we meet “creepy crawlers (…) walking like penguins”,“scorpions”, “prophets” or so-called reincarnation of Christ, “horrormakers”, ad nauseam. “Charlie: “I Have X'd Myself from Your World” shows how incredibly mad one can be. In their actions, the whole world's nausea, the entire history's atrocities emerge in the killing of a film star and her friends. “X marks the damned spot”. “Creepy Crawls”, another of my favourite poems, really makes the readers feel they are invaded by insects: bugs or centipedes, ready to gnaw at their bones or “slit your throats. Stab your guts. Eat your leftovers. Pee in your milk.” This is a penguin dance: unrealistic, fantastical, nightmarish. Yet, “California Dreaming”, a poem named after the famous song by The Mamas and Papas somehow creepy in itself when I come to think about it, should soothe the reader, but it only reminds them how wreck the people were at this time: drug abuse, so-called hippie tribes, this peace-and-love crap where women were only preys, offered on the altar of men's sexual assaults, in the name of the sexual liberation. It has nothing to do with love, peace and happiness. “Leslie van Houten: “Every Day Was like Halloween”. The stanza before last is a slap in the face both technically and semantically. You'll have to read it. You dare not enter the haunted castle, will you have the guts to read through this section then. I really had a hard time with this one. I am not surprised then that the poet cracks down and invents himself a persona: Davidus who as a doubter “keeps it real”, “prepares for Thermidor”, “visits 10050 Cielo Drive”. Like the exorcism of a soul who has dwelt in horror reality shows for too long.

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 The “Benediction”, the end of the mass, should bring us relief. It does not. The poem is titled “Buried Alive – Alive!” When death and beauty mingles, what could be more atrocious than the burial of a living person. Breathing in dust and soil, suffocating slowly, in full possession of her means to realize what is taking place. A metaphor of how Beauty is considered in a vile, cupid, jealous, educationlacking point of view. So many poems in this last section are worth commenting: “People, We Choose our Poisons”, “The Baby Lived Twenty Minutes After Sharon's Last Breath”, just to name two of them. An abyssal descent to hell, or rather to what humankind has been calling hell for centuries, millennia, when hell is nothing but the atrocities, the mass brutality, the common cruelty in the name of the people, or in the name of what-the-f..k-can-one-invent-to-appease-one's-thirst-for-abomination. Two of the poet's laments will resonate in my head for a long time: “Exist again!” and “Re-sight!”

Purchase Sharon Tate and the Daughters of Joy http://www.timebeing.com/poetry/browse-by-title/all-titles/140-sharon-tate-and-the-daughters-ofjoy ***** True North by Amber Decker, Maverick Duck Press, 2013 What is a mean girl? I reckon from my academic dictionary that Amber Decker is not one. Yet, if you look closely, a mean girl could as well be a girl who won't let anyone step on her, who won't show her other cheek if you slapped her in the face once. Mean Girls “take joy in leaning apart” creatures, and if these creatures are unfaithful husbands, schizophrenic misogynists, or chauvinist pigs, I am certain Amber Decker would be that ex-little girl who “grow up to be cruel”. True North is a series of snap shots of a few years, not even a decade I would say, in which hurricanes 72

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 and dragons blew their gales violently. In True North, there is a moment when a girl decides the mass is not for her any more but experiences her “first wild moment stretched/ hours past midnight”, a time to “become a very different animal”. Drunkenness, Foreigner's songs say it all, and yet, to mention another of these 80s' songs: “Love don't come easy”, especially when a first encounter with the opposite sex ends up “against the warm cloth of a car's/ front bucket seat”. These girls whose existence in its early period is like being lost in the middle of a corn field. These girls whose destiny seems planned from the moment they were born. These girls – boys aren't that different mind you when they are from the same background – find solace in the first person who will give them a little affection, some attention, and a wedding ring. Their life goes on, and distance – physical or sentimental – takes over: “I crossed three time zones to see you/ after six months apart”. When love is real, what are six months in one's life? Foreigner is still present, either to remind how stupid love song are, this we-are-one crap, or maybe just an omen warning us that love is a total foreign country, if not an alien planet, from where the heart eclipses sometimes. Despite accident which come as the breaking line in this series of photographs, there is still love, a little, and sex, a lot. “we'd made love on an old mattress on the floor of your best friend's apartment, (…) I do not love you. Or, rather, I love you as I would love a deck of cards while waiting for a train or a bus.” Music is omnipresent: “In the car, the radio played songs to name/every sort of love that does not bloom/ in my heart for you.” Love is a guessing game. Even while love making, “Low Rent” says it: “Oh the strange music we made.” 73

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 Loneliness comes next. “Two hundred days since my hands have touched/another living thing.” Or “The names/remind you of men you have loved/or almost loved.” Whether it is rural desert, affective no-man's land, a marriage which turns sour, the wandering of a young wife who considers adultery with even more tunes in her head “I cannot say what songs I have sung to myself/to chase away the wolves”, music soothes appeases, and is an internal best friend when an existence is filled with absence. “Harbor” starts in Newport Beach “as still as my father's heartbeat.” Were these Pacific waters an exit? Was there any will to give this existence an end when the poet knew her husband cheated on her: “my husband lies in bed/with another woman's lips pressed to his shoulder.” Then of course, “the night without stars” might be the only safe place to go. Amber Decker writes about mean girls and says herself that meanness felt is “just the bitch in [her].” There are crucial questions too, when asked: “What the hell was I doing in California if I didn't love you.” The use of free indirect speech makes it so real, I am here with her. “Fault Lines”, the longest poem of this short collection, tells a story by itself, and the images as strong as Amber Decker knows how to create them, give this poem all its power: “The first time I saw you, you were a lighthouse signaling to me through curtains of smoke in a South Florida bar.” “You slid into me like a sharp knife” “I kissed the raised patch of skin where your tattoo had once curled like a sleeping cat,” “Ashes Now” is another of my favourite poem for its intense telling of loneliness, no bitterness here, but the felling of abandonment, and a will to be troubled again by the one once loved: “you are the ghost and I am the medium/drawing you out and through”. Intense in burning too: Pompeii, Vesuvius, heat in the shower cubicle when giving herself pleasure with the showerhead has become “easier/ 74

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 than meeting your eyes in a public place.” Until the snapshots have to be burned to close this “museum/of broken dreams.” I sometimes wonder if Amber Decker has finally found her way out of this, if the compass gave her the way to her true North. I just hope for the poet this collection helped her out a little. Purchase True North here http://www.maverickduckpress.com/truenorth.html ***** The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre by Marie Lecrivain, Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House, 2014. I invited Marie Lecrivain to the first interview published since 2011 (mg_68 | Indian ocean Voices). The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre is a title that had to be deciphered. It is a book of the spiritual world, a book where alchemy, spirits, thoughts are transferred into or mixed with words to make the invisible world seen by everyone. Alchemy is what the poet experienced in her own fulfilment, being transformed or positively altered by her own maturing – we could say experimentations. Through the twenty-five poems – one for each letter of the Latin alphabet, X and Y being combined in the same poem: the male-side of the poet? The male next to her? – the combination of illness and recovery rather – Marie Lecrivain explores and shows us how she evolves from A to Z. as she states it “To deny that alchemy is evolution would be to deny my whole existence.” A real survival guide ten? Publisher Apryl Skies who signed the foreword insists that “this tome is by no means a self-help 75

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 manual”. This is what Marie Lecrivain answered to one the questions I asked her for the interview published in the previous issue: “I need to be the best “me” I can be. To that end, I employ whatever means I can use, whether it be a series of rituals, devotionals, exercises, what-have-you, to achieve that goal. The key is to stay focused, but also, at the same time, to be open to the possibility the end result may not be what I originally intended/desired/imagined.” So from “Antinomy” to “Zodiac”, the titles of the first and last poems of this collection, we follow the poet's progression, ascendency, transcendence towards her betterment. She describes the her as “a wolf-woman”, who howls at the sky and gives it a “middle-fingered salute”. Awakening is drawing near though. Should it be with firewater of “aqua vitae” the coming to life – coming of age – is on its way. Healing, heating up in the “Bain-Marie” – a pun after the poet's name? – is certainly a way to cook oneself. Only a few poems later do we notice that already the future is expected “This is the time to focus on what, where, and who you will become on your next turn of the wheel, the centrifuge of incarnation that separates the karmic detritus of your past and future self”. The Promethean theme, as the creation of a being, through the combination of several elements appears in “Geber”, named after the famous Arab alchemist. Like Hermes Trismegistus, he is a turning point and great inspiring figure of sciences, and philosophy. Psychoanalysis is also at the core of this collection, skipping a few letters, comes “Jung”, a tribute to one of the leading figure of psyche-alchemy. Who “discovered the key/ to subconscious alchemy/beneath his emotional marl” “Liquor Hepatis” is probably one of my favourite poems for its straightforwardness, you know hosw trauma suits me well. The opening lines of the poem reminds us: “Your shit stinks.” Yet the poet is not that gross writer who would go on about faeces, but rather about the wrongs in everyone of us, our dirtiest sides. After all, gorgeous wine is produced through the fermentation of grapes, in other words its rotting in sweet juice. The repetition of this idea occurs in the poem “Wine”: “The deepest and most profound thoughts/ferment inside us like a cask of wine.” 76

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 Compost helps plants to grow, compost is made of putrefying remains returning to soil. The worst into us can be turned into the best once we manage tame it. “Retort” – a very strong poem technically. As regard prosody, sounds and rhythms are at their best. Though these elements in contemporary poetry seem to have fallen into oblivion, if not scorn by most of the people who write and think they deserve attention from the readers, it is still important to mark the stress pattern and sounding of a poem when writing poetry, isn't it. Classic literature education went through me and I am always charmed by the use of figures of speech, and speech techniques. Consonances and alliterations are here sustained by remarkable metaphores and comparisons. “Soon, you are Vesuvius, belching a constant stream of smoke and ash that the denizens you hold near and dear will ignore. It'll be after the upward current of vomitous rage, as your eyes glow with righteous anger, that the words will come, the rational explanation of why, but then, it will be too late.” Haven't volcanoes given birth to some of the best spring waters? Aren't plants able to resuscitate after the devastation? “Stone” states clearly that the foundation to a building is an essential base? The starting point of all new construction, whether we talk about towers or self. “There is no beginning/without proper building material,/no foundation/from which we can evolve.” Whatever bliss make come from it, birth is violent, and living it a second time, though spiritually only, can be considered a masochistic act, something that won't leave anyone harmless anyway. That's what we learn from the poem “Trituration”: “Remember: All of this has happened before, and will again. It won't lessen the pain, but it will put a smile on your face.”

mg_78 | book reviews | 10_14 â&#x20AC;&#x153;Zodiacâ&#x20AC;? or the course of the sun through the twelve constellations is the final stop to this transformation of the self. Twelve constellations, twelve apostles, as many myths about spirituality, as many symbols of the human psyche. I also like this poem for its turn towards the apocryphal story of Jesus when in its last stanza the poet writes about the hieros gamos that is to say the sacred union, the sexual ritual of the god and the goddess, enacted by humans. Namely Maria-Magdalena and Jesus. Of course, alchemy is not far as it is the principle theme of the collection, and The Symbols of Transformation by Carl Jung also uses the ritual as a basis of thinking. This book by Marie Lecrivain encouraged me to turn toward several topics I would not have taken into account if it had not been to understand her work. I explored worlds thanks to her rendering of her exploration of her self and the transformation of it. These poems are also beautifully ant wittily illustrated by photographs by this Promethean poet. Purchase The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre here http://www.amazon.com/The-Virtual-Tablet-Irma-Tre/dp/0985471549