BlazeVOX an.online.journal.of.voice
Presenting fine works of poetry, fiction, text art, visual poetry and arresting works of creative non-fiction written by authors from around world
BlazeVOX Fall 2020
20th Anniversary Special
Table of Contents
Poetry
Fiction & Prose
The Dutch Girl by Eleanor Levine
an excerpt from her new book Kissing a Tree Surgeon,
(Guernica Editions, 2020)
Two stories by Judith Goode, Gay Life & Last Love
The Bucket List by Nakia Tinsley
The Elective Übermensch of Zarathustra by Jacob Jirák
In Love and War by Don Donato
Touching the Void by Peter Quinn
There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch by Mark Hannon
Club 12-21 by S.W. Campbell
Jilin by Stuart Cooke
Your own personal Jesus by Dan A. Cardoza
Key Blanco #1 by Michael Paul Hogan
THE EX-CONSUL by Robert Wexelblatt
THE FRESHET, 1911 by Dorin Schumacher
Interview
10 Questions For Roger Craik
Text Art & Vispo
Acta Biographia — Author Biographies
Hello and welcome to the 20th anniversary issue of BlazeVOX! Presenting fine works of poetry, fiction, text art, visual poetry and arresting works of creative non-fiction written by authors from around world. Do have a look through the links below or browse through the whole issue in our Scribd embedded PDF, which you can download for free and take it with you anywhere on any device. Hurray!
Hip Hip Hurray!
BlazeVOX is celebrating its 20th anniversary!
It is incredible to think BlazeVOX has been online for twenty years. We started off as a tiny startup project at a small college outside of Buffalo, and over the past two decades, we have created a vibrant, versatile channel for literary and cultural conversations across the world.
To all the members of the literary community for whom this journal speaks, I am honored by the support of such a remarkable group of people. I look forward to continuing these relationships for many years to come. To the writers who have submitted to us over the years, thank you for always looking for a way to make literature new, bold, and exciting.
It is been our honor and pleasure to read your writing, publish your work, and be a part of your reading life. And in case you are worried that this will be the last issue, never fear! I am pleased to let you know that the spirit and drive of the previous twenty years will continue to live on and thrive for another twenty, at least.
Rockets! Geoffrey Gatza, editor
IntroductionIntroduction
In this issue we seek to avoid answers but rather to ask questions. With a subtle minimalistic approach, this issue of BlazeVOX focuses on the idea of ‘public space’ and more specifically on spaces where anyone can do anything at any given moment: the non-private space, the non-privately owned space, space that is economically uninteresting. The works collected feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections, which make it possible to revise literary history and, even, better, to complement it.
Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies these piece appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. In a search for new methods to ‘read the city’, the texts reference post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.
Many of the works are about contact with architecture and basic living elements. Energy (heat, light, water), space and landscape are examined in less obvious ways and sometimes develop in absurd ways. By creating situations and breaking the passivity of the spectator, he tries to develop forms that do not follow logical criteria, but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal associations. These pieces demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. Enjoy!
Rockets! Geoffrey Gatza, editor