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
BlazeVOX15 Spring 2015
Table of Contents
Poetry
Ronald Shiner
Fiction
A Perfect Mind (1272 BCE) by Janet Mason
Than Since When I Left by Jordana Meade
Rabbit Suit by Julia Lynn Rubin
Lake Luzern by Philip Bowne
Nothing Touches by Vincent Craig Wright
Sebastian's Suit by Nat Buchbinder
Through Cornfields and the Backroads Along the Cornfields by Michael Martrich
Crushin’ by Kyle A. Valenta
The Wrangler by Alex Neely
Selection from the novel Throw Away the Lights by Christopher Brownsword
Disraeli Gears by Christopher Lyke
Colonial State of Mind by Madiha Kahn
Text Art
hiromi suzuki
three-piece text art series entitled 'un-brushed'
bruno neiva
Creative Non-Fiction & Reviews
Odd Ball by Adreyo Sen
The Entanglements of Ropes
By poet W. Scott Howard and artist Ginger Knowlton
Reviewed by Rich Murphy
A Year Before 9/11
By Geoffrey Gatza
15 Questions | Interviews
Deborah Meadows interviewed on her new book Three Plays
Seth Abramson interviewed on his new book Metamericana
Luke McMullan interviewed on his new book Dolphin Aria/Limited Hours: A Love Song.
Laura Madeline Wiseman interviewed on her new book Drink
I Goldfarb interviewed on his new book K- a 21st Century Canzoniere
Acta Biographia — Author Biographies
Hello and welcome to the Spring issue of BlazeVOX 15. Presenting fine works of poetry, fiction, text art, visual poetry and arresting works of creative non-fiction written by authors from around world. Also presented are previews of our newly released books of poetry and fiction. 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!
Happy Fifteenth Anniversary
Hip Hip Hurray!
I have been sitting at my desk typing away on my large screened apple computer dreading what I am about to write. BlazeVOX is now in its 15th year of operation. We have great moments to look back upon in our history, as well as some moments that bear careful consideration. It seems incredible to me that we are not merely still in operation we are vividly alive!
The BlazeVOX journal developed out of a Daemen College arts journal that was published exclusively online; in 1999 that was a radical thing to do. But today happily, an online journal is the norm.
In 2000 BlazeVOX was born as an online journal from a computer that I used in the college computer lab. I did not have a PC in my home. After a summer of hard work, our first issue was released in the fall. We have had a continual run ever since. We have a full archive of all our back-issues on our webpage; so do spend some time flipping though the 15 years of BlazeVOX an.journal.of.voice.
As I look back at the time that has passed I am enthusiastic, even though an irksome form of nostalgia bothers me. In an effort to alleviate these feelings I decided to create a mundane list poem to parse out what occurred during this time. I appropriated news headlines from the past fifteen years in order to make a small, easy-going poem to chuckle over. However, when the piece was complete, that poem turned into 70 pages of compelling half-memories, or I should say memories that provoked memories of things that I did experienced while news was happening around journalism. As we wrote poetry a lot of life happened. Have a look for yourself:
A Year Before 9/11: Fifteen years of BlazeVOX
To commemorate who we are at 15 we plan to celebrate. We are planning to have some special events throughout the year. We plan to have readings, videos and even a party sometime in the fall. Keep an eye out for your invitation it will be a year to revel!
And before I go, I would like to thank you all for your wonderful support over the years. You are an important part this press and your help makes a real difference in getting innovative works by undervalued writers read worldwide. Your act of reading our work is incredibly helpful means so much to me but even more to BlazeVOX authors whose work might not see the light of day without your giving us a part of your time, a part of your day! We thank you a thousand times.
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