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
BlazeVOX12 Spring 2012
Table of Contents
Poetry
Fiction
Material Support Hose
Brent Holt
The Sucsas
Bruno Casanova
Spring Snow
Celia Laskey
Me My Motorcycle and a Brick of Coke
C. Davis Fogg
Myra’s Last Dumpster Dive
Riya Aarini
What You Want
Penelope L Mace
Thank Heaven
Juliana Grace
Creative Nonfiction
Ivan de Monbrison (art)
Acta Biographia
Hello and welcome to the Springish issue of BlazeVOX 12. I do want to apologize for the lateness in putting together this issue of the journal, we had a bit of a thing with the National Endowment for the Arts, that is now, thankfully, favorably resolved. So hurray! To find out more about this here is a link to a recent Huffington Post interview: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/blazevox-nea-ban_b_1374042.html
It is my great pleasure to be able to continue on, get back to work and publish fine works such as is represented in this sunny issue, hurray!
Presented here is a world-class issue of BlazeVOX12 featuring poetry, art, fiction, and an arresting work of creative non-fiction, written by authors from around globe. We are introducing a new section in the journal, Book Previews, which as the name describes it is a brief look at some of our new book titles. You will find work from Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Clayton Eshleman, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Ted Greenwald, Tom Clark and many others. This is truly a special issue of BlazeVOX. And if you are so moved, please take a tour of our online bookshop. We have 300 titles of weird little books available for sale. So hurray, now get reading!
Best, Geoffrey
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