Volt volume 14 2008

VOLT

VOLT

ART ON ART Spring 2008

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VOLUME 14

VOLT

Gerald Stern Mary Ann Samyn Eva Hesse Timothy Liu Thaisa Frank Michelle Taransky Richard Taransky Gail Wronsky Gronk Reginald Shepherd Julie Carr Bruce Beasley Mei Mei Berssenbrugge Gillian Conoley Bin Ramke Carol Snow Bruce Bond Lorand Gaspar Grace Marie Grafton Julie Hanson Alice Jones Joseph Lease Nadia Nurhuseein Lance Phillips Tomaz Salamun Stephanie Strickland Chad Sweeney Susan Terris Tony Trigilio Arthur Vogelsang G.C. Waldrep

ART ON ART

VOLT

ART ON ART

VOLT A Magazine of the Arts PO Box 657, Corte Madera, CA 94976-0657 www.voltpoetry.com Founder and Editor: Gillian Conoley Production Editor & Layout Design: Steve Galbreath Interns: Nanette Meltzer, Suzie Short, Veronica Woods, James Friebe, Corinna Oates, Fawn McCully, Chris Keilman, Will Sellers, Linda Zajack, Caitlin Madrigal, Mallory Hayes, Christa Jenny Cano, Bonnie Robertson, David Rick, Candice Hilbert, Leslie Farbman, Adam Muth, Suzanne Daly, Jennifer Nance, Lizzie Spier, Charlotte Gutto, Sarai Judge, Sarah Cranke, and Kaitlan Farham VOLT is published by Sonoma State University. www.voltpoetry.com Distributors: Small Press Distribution (Berkeley, CA: 510.524.1668), Bernhard DeBoer (Nutley, New Jersey: 973.667.9300).

Libraries may order from: EBSCO Subscription Services, PO Box 1943, Birmingham, AL 35210-1943 This is VOLUME FOURTEEN, copyright 2008 by VOLT. “Andy” is reprinted from WHAT I CAN’T BEAR LOSING: Notes from a Life by Gerald Stern. Copyright (c) 2004 by Gerald Stern. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Cover watercolor by Gillian Conoley.

Subscriptions: One annual issue, $13. Two issues, $26. Three issues, $36. Individuals may subscribe by downloading subscription order form at www.voltpoetry.com VOLT is listed in the Library of Congress.

CONTENTS Gerald Stern Mary Ann Samyn Timothy Liu Thaisa Frank Michelle Taransky Gail Wronsky Reginald Shepherd Julie Carr Bruce Beasley Mei Mei Berssenbrugge Gillian Conoley Bin Ramke Carol Snow Bruce Bond Lorand Gaspar Grace Marie Grafton Julie Hanson Alice Jones Joseph Lease Nadia Nurhussein Lance Phillips Tomaz Salamun Page Hill Starzinger Stephanie Strickland Chad Sweeney

Andy “So you saw and now you know what you want”: In the Presence and Prescience of Eva Hesse A Crash Course: A Conversation with Conversations with Antoni Tàpies Toba Sojo: Father of Japanese Manga Artist of Human Consciuosness A Proposal For A Clearing Gwronsky on Gronkie: The Art of Self-Othering

9 14

A Few Thoughts on Lyric Postmodernisms Introductory Remarks Toward a Poetics of Monstrosity New Form Lyric The New Page A Poetics, of Sorts My Lyric and Time

50 54 56 58

Underworld Untitled Medicines to revive No tiredness, no reason Swissed Darkling I Listen Tongue America Sampler We Koper’s Gym On Via Boscovich They’re confiscated somewhere, I try to live Lyms of from Huracan’s Harp Aura of the Spectacle Another Novel

71 72 73

20 23 31 37

61 64 66

75 76 82 90 91 93 96 98 103

Susan Terris Tony Trigilio Arthur Vogelsang

G.C. Waldrep

Another Blue House In Razored Light He Needed a Learner’s Permit Gerald Stern, Charles Bukowski, D.H. Lawrence, and the Snake Rock Hall The Two Artists, I Mean the Three Artists The Cell Phone and The Sun As Allies Win and We Lose Extensions of the Ghost Killing Jar Not Within the Framework of Our National Parks

105 107 110

116

Michelle Taransky A Proposal For A Clearing A clearing wherein they would Share a ransom note With the front line’s sorrow Song in its moment. The first To cross the measured Strut without eyes Without saying another model— That alleged pair We fear will Take out A loan like the blind are A sinking war Ship. It knows the planner’s Birds are weaponry, are is His devotion To the flag. The bride Of assembly lines. A wolf Playing a solder at a border town Saw ballads as armed Forces— The division from said To lost perspective, its Accusing lines

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Richard Taransky

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A Proposal For A Clearing They are both in the same sentence here It is a war see no one Keeps writing Here what figures are are Steel and they Are in need of Stories they are Proposing they Name a copy After a copy That went yellow As was Indicated by its caption It’s built nothing Like they are Hunting for the shape you Counted on me to look into Trading plans for places as Undoing had Happened, happened on The banished ones— I trapped Their breath and hoped It would turn Into your handout

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Richard Taransky

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A Proposal For a Clearing Because hiding the casket does not do Enough we will say this they said that We can’t talk about it because it Uses a figure You said you saw Places I saw no place For their dying Bird stories He told he had To cross a number of Doors like a storm Door and the door he lets go Goes you will know what to call it by the shape you Will know nothing like them Disaster them houses passing through a house That can Not capture a wolf where We were promised In a note of glass they were there Waiting for an opposite To what injured drawingRoom to house the current News where nothing has been Planned— To think fallout, The choice, the limits shared and then The question of which pronoun Until you Read the work, don’t find it A reflection

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Richard Taransky

Richard Taransky

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