Monday, October 22, 2018

ISSUE 12


Issue 12 
Ernest Hemingway's "Blank Verse" Elaboration

Brave New Word Issue #12 was a long time coming. Real long time. I first thought about making "Blank Verse"-related something-something in the summer of 2016 when Brave New Word was just an idea in the back of my head. I knew I needed to do something with it but I just couldn't get my grasp on it for some reason. It was just slipping away and showing its gnarly tongue every time I attempted to do something with it. That was until mid-2017 when I decided to make it an Issue of Brave New Word as a proof of concept for further developments. 

But even after that it was a rough ride. Almost immediately after I started to work on this issue - the troubles started. I was out of one job and then jumped straight into another one and that didn't worked out well despite all the effort. In addition to being burned out i was focused on finding another job. And after i've found it - it didn't worked out either and I was out of action yet again even more burned out and exhausted. It was really time-consuming and demotivating time for me. In addition to that I needed to finish my own book which took an eternity already. While i've tried to maintain BNW at that time - i wouldn't say these were the strongest issues. Because of that Hemingway Special was put on indefinite hold for a while. 

Then Matt Margo asked me to take over editorial duties on Ex-Ex-Lit blog. It was a refreshing experience with a completely different pace. And it turned out to be the key to understanding how to pull Hemingway issue off the right way. 

Instead of fully focusing on it and trying hard - i left it to slowly grow in the background. With the hurry and pressure out of equation I've found that the whole process of putting an issue together to be smoother and much more focused.

And now it is finally done.

***


But why "Blank Verse"? The reason is really simple. It is one of those poems that provide big and nasty sandbox with multiple possibilities to be explored. 

Ernest Hemingway needs no introduction. The king of the less is more school of expression, the man who an attitude and so on and so forth. However, there is one element of his early artistic output that is often overlooked - his poetry. 

Long story short - there is a reason why he focused on prose. While his poetry isn't really bad - there's not much to talk about. It is your standard modernist-infused stuff that was all over the place back in late 1910s and throughout 1920s. Funny thing is that back in the day Ernest declared the novel form dead. Then he read "The Great Gatsby" and changed his mind. The other funny thing is that his prose got more poetry that his actual poetry (by a long shot, to the point you can go fishing for it).

Despite that, Mr. Hemingway had managed to compose one piece of poetry with a lasting impression - "Blank Verse". It is a short poem written in 1916 as as a school assignment that published in November 1917 in a humor column Air Line of a school newspaper Trapeze. 

"Blank Verse" is a five line poem that consists solely of punctuation marks divided by extensive spaces to resemble a legitimate text object. The poem consists of: 

  • a pair of quotation marks; an exclamation mark, colon, coma, dot; coma, coma, coma, dot; coma, semicolon, exclamation mark and another coma.
As you can see - it is obviously a throwaway joke. But in the same time it manages to go far beyond its original intent. 

Conceptually - it is a dig at overzealous readers who don't really care about the poems and just hang around in a self-satisfaction bout for sake of warped joyous overthinking and nothing else. And I guess we can all agree that these folks are somewhat annoying.

But this introduction is running too long already. If you want to read more about "Blank Verse" and my understanding of it - check out my essay about it.
https://medium.com/@volodymyrbilyk/ernest-hemingways-blank-verse-f955f9cf3aff


Without further ado - Brave New Word Issue 12 Ernest Hemingway's "Blank Verse" elaboration. This brings us to this issue.

***
Issue Line-up:










Zoria April - DISTILLED EMOTION: NEUROMANCER'S TOKYO



Zoria April (Zorica Petkoska Kalajdjieva) has been writing and being published since she was 7 years old. She is a master public reading evader, she writes in short forms, currently lacking the discipline for a novel. She is writing in 3 languages, reading in 10. She translates between some of those, sometimes professionally, sometimes just to break beauty down to its smallest parts and recreate it. She has published 2 poetry collections of her own, Stars and Sparks of a Dream 2000 and Wordigami 2015, and has been published in various group collections and magazines in several countries and languages, most recently in Japan and Hong Kong.
She holds an MA in English literature and is just completed a research fellowship in Japanese culture and concrete/visual poetry. She is currently a travel writer for several magazines and websites.


Andriy Antonovskiy - One piece to rule them all



Andriy Antonovskiy is a poet from Ukraine who currently lives in Barcelona. He is a strong proponent for Catalan Independence and he considers his primary mission to be building a cultural bridge between Ukraine and Catalonia.

Photo by Zhenia Perutska.

Kim Vodicka - Blank Shakes



Kim Vodicka grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana and received her B.A. in English from UL Lafayette in 2010. She is currently working on her M.F.A. in Poetry at LSU, where she is also a Graduate Teaching Assistant and was Co-Coordinator of Delta Mouth Literary Festival 2012. Her artwork has been published in Tenderloin, and her poems have been published in Shampoo, Ekleksographia, and Dig. Her first book, Aesthesia Balderdash, is forthcoming in June 2012 from Trembling Pillow Press

****

Daria Zengerstein - Slightly Perplexed


Daria Zengerstein is a high-plains drifter who has no idea why she exists on this cursed earth of this sensual world. But she enjoys having fun and stumbling upon the great something-something causing utter bouts of severe perplexion.

Just like this time.

Fernando Futuro - An OOK interpretation



Fernando Futuro was born and raised in Barcelona. As a Catalan freedom fighter - he is forced to reside in the shadows. But he likes it there very much.
He enjoys doing stuff the other way around because he sees no point in doing the way it was already done before.
You can't find him anywhere and you will never know what he is up to.


Jeff Bagato - Grawlix Grid


A multi-media artist living near Washington, DC, Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music and glitch video. His text and visual poetry has appeared in many journals including Otoliths, Ex Ex Lit, The New Post Literate, Angry Old Man, and Zoomoozophone Review. Short fiction has recently appeared in Horror Sleaze Trash and Gobbet. His published books include Savage Magic (poetry), and The Toothpick Fairy (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.wordpress.com.


George Sabov - Weak Passwords


George Sabov is a pseudonym for the writer-translator who wished to remain anonymous because of ironic paranoia and respect for the sense of mystery.
He is the man whose artistic persona had spawned out of reasonable and totally not obsessive fascination with Gerogerigegege, Hanatarash and Einstuerzende Neubauten.
You already know who he is.

Gregory Betts - Poetics what I like purity


Gregory Betts is the author of seven books of poetry, including If Language (a collection of 56 perfect paragraph-length anagrams) and The Others Raisd in Me (150 erasure poems of Shakespeare’s sonnet 150). He is also the author of Avant-garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations, the first holistic study of avant-garde writing in Canada. He lives in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Michael O’Brien - The shot that killed Kennedy


Michael O’Brien lives in Glasgow Scotland. His work has most recently appeared in the journals - Akitsu Quaterly, Cattails, Bones, Moonchild, The Other Bunny. He is the author of, As Adam (UP Literature) and Big Nothing (Bones). He was a runner-up in the Mainichi Daily News Haiku Contest in 2009. You can follow him on twitter @michaelobrien22

Marton Koppany - One piece from 2004


Márton Koppány (b. 1953) lives in Budapest, Hungary. His books include: Immortality and Freedom, Coracle Press, 1991; The Other Side, Kalligram 1999; To Be Or     To Be, Runaway Spoon Press,1996; Investigations and Other Sequences, Ahadada Books, 2003; EndgamesModulationsAddenda, all by Otoliths, 2008, 2010, 2012; this is visual poetry, 2010; Fall Leaves, Woodland Pattern Book Center, 2011; The Reader, Runaway Spoon Press, 2012. E-books include: WavesHungarianLangArtTheAhaMoment , all by Eratio, 2008, 2014, 2016.
 Collaborative books include : From The Annual Records of The Cloud Appreciation Society, with Nico Vassilakis, Otoliths, 2008; Short Movies, with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, cPress, 2008; Book of Numbers, with Jim Leftwich, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2011. An ongoing collaborative project with Anatol Knotek is online at Márton and Anatol.

In anthologies: Anthology SpidertangleThe Last VispoA Global VisuageThe Dark Would and The New Concrete. First exhibitions: Barbican Library, 1989, Woodland Pattern, 1991. Recent shows: Text Festival, Manchester, 2011 and 2014; The Dark Would, Edinburgh, 2013. Recent readings (2011-2013): The Green Lantern, Chicago; Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee; UNF, Jacksonville; Birkbeck, Rich Mix and X Marks the Bökship, London.

Heath Brougher - Attempts at Hemingway





Heath Brougher is the poetry editor of Five 2 One Magazine and the co-poetry editor of Into the Void Magazine. He has published 3 chapbooks, A Curmudgeon Is Born (Yellow Chair Press, 2016), Digging for Fire, and Your Noisy Eyes (both by Stay Weird and Keep Writing Press, 2016 and 2017). He is a Best of the Net Nominee and has had work translated into anthologies and journals in Albania and Kosovo. He edited the anthology Luminous Echoes, the proceeds of which are donated to an organization which helps prevent suicide/self harm. He was the judge for Into the Void Magazine's 2016 Inaugural Poetry Contest and has had his own work appear in The Helios Mss, Chiron Review, Zoomoozophone Review, Word For/Word, Expound, MiPOesias, Gloom Cupboard, Full of Crow, Cruel Garters, Lakeview Journal, Otoliths, East Jasmine Review, X-Peri, Carnival, Red Ceilings Review, Clockwise Cat, Moss Trill, Gold Dust Magazine, Squawk Back, BlazeVOX, Diverse Voices Quarterly, *Star 82 Review, eFiction India, and elsewhere.

Carlo Parcelli + Rosalie Gancie - Two Punctuation Pieces


Carlo Parcelli is currently Beat Poet Laureate of Maryland, USA. He is widely considered one of the greatest poets of his generation, or any generation.



Rosalie Gancie is mail artist. She was features on a numerous exhibitions and been published in numerous online and print publications.


Andrew Taylor - an early summer's day


Andrew Taylor is a Nottingham based, Liverpool born poet, editor, critic and lecturer. His second collection of poetry, March, was published in September 2017 by Shearsman Books. He is editor of M58, a blogzine of alternative poetries. www.andrewtaylorpoetry.com

Michael Kostiuk - Self-refential Essay on Ernest Hemingway's Blank Verse that ended with a Blank Page



Michael Kostiuk is a multimedia artist. He was born in Paris, Texas, USA. Currently lives in Yamaguchi City, Japan. His works were exhibited all around the around.

John M. Bennett - )))garga...ojos(((




John M. Bennett has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues. He was editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES (1975-2005), and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. Richard Kostelanetz has called him “the seminal American poet of my generation”. His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries. His PhD (UCLA 1970) is in Latin American Literature.


Sacha Archer - Gathering from The Sun Also Rises




Sacha Archer is a Canadian writer, visual artist and ESL Instructor currently residing in Ontario. He was the recipient of the 2008 P.K. Page Irwin Prize for his poetry and visual art, and in 2010 he was chosen to participate in the Elise Partridge Mentor Program. His work has appeared in journals such as filling Station, ACTA Victoriana, h&, illiterature, NōD, and Experiment-O. His most recent chapbooks are Detour (Spacecraft Press, 2017), The Insistence of Momentum (The Blasted Tree, 2017), and Acceleration of the Arbitrary (Grey Borders, 2017). One of his online manifestations is his blog at https://sachaarcher.wordpress.com/

Mark Young - Meanwhile, in Ketchum, Idaho

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry for almost sixty years. He is the author of over forty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. His most recent books are Ley Lines & bricolage, both from gradient books of Finland, The Chorus of the Sphinxes, from Moria Books in Chicago, & some more strange meteorites, from Meritage & i.e. Press, California / New York.

He is the editor of Otoliths.

***

Meanwhile, in Ketchum, Idaho



"I get a shotgun & load it"

intent! now present: no way for blanks, or failed loads.

Need much more, want extras, want action, an end to cares.

Become, try to become; not a failure but a spectacle!

One farewell to arms, obverse


*****


"        shotgun          "

      !     present: no         blanks,                .

          more,      extras,            , an end         .

Become,              ;                     spectacle!

    farewell        , obverse


*****


"                         "

      !            :            blank ,                .

              ,            ,            ,                .

      ,              ;                              !

                    ,   verse


*****


"                        "

      !            :                  ,                .

              ,            ,            ,                .

      ,              ;                              !

                    ,




Erica Baum - Modern Series



Erica Baum, New York. Recent museum exhibitions include Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, Kunsthalle Berlin and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York; Recent
 solo exhibitions include The Following Information, Bureau, New York, 2016, Stanzas, Galerie Crevecoeur, Paris, 2015;


Selected biennials include; AGORA 4th Athens Biennale, Athens, 2013 and the 30th Bienal de São Paulo: The Imminence of Poetics, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012. Publications include  Erica Baum, The Naked Eye, 2015 Crèvecœur/œ Paris & Bureau New York and second edition hard cover Dog Ear, 2016 Ugly Duckling Presse

Mithrandir Mithrahnuruodo - Just another piece


Mithrandir Mithrahnuruodo is the man 
who is vain enough 
to hide behind the stupid name 
that combines two minuscule details 
of his favorite series 
from the childhood 
into one nonsensical combination 
that is imposing enough 
to be intimidating as an artistic name 
and also insist on having line breaks in the bio-note 
with no particular reason.

***

Mark Blickley - RAGE in a CAGE leads to a TWELVE GAUGE


Mark Blickley is author of the story collection Sacred Misfits (Red Hen Press) and his most recent play,The Milkman's Sister, was produced last Fall at NYC's 13th Street Repertory Theater Blickley is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. He recently published the text based art book, 'Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes From the Underground.' (Moria Books, Chicago)

Jenne Kaivo - A Poem With Character


Jenne Kaivo never makes a mistaek.

Nathaniel D. Horowitz - waveswavy

Nathan D. Horowitz was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, in 1968. Creative Writing major at Interlochen Arts Academy. Bachelor's in English, Oberlin College, 1990. Master's in Applied Linguistics, University of Massachusetts - Boston, 2006. Four years in Mexico and Ecuador, fifteen in Austria. Currently teaching English at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, USA. Author, translator, and proofreader of literary and commercial texts. 

Gregory K. H. Bryant - Twelve Punctuation Pieces



Gregory K. H. Bryant is a registrar with the National Air and Space Museum, where he has been on staff since 1978. His poetry, essays and short stories have appeared widely in the underground press, notably Bouillabaisse, Wormfeast, Homemade Ice Cream Press, Musea, and Shockbox, as well as Gaslight Magazine and Black Lotus Magazine.


Volodymyr Bilyk - Oak Trapeze


Volodymyr Bilyk is a poet from Ukraine who writes in English. So he's basically from another dimension or Parts Unknown.
Long story short: he follows Ezra Pound's "Make It New" and considers Pink Fairies song "Do It" to be a quite adequate description of his artistic intentions.  

His latest book "Roadrage" was published by Zimzalla in 2018. His other works include "To When Tea Ties Hence to Wank It Too" / "Eminent Means of Basil Dado Hem-Welt" (2015), "Heartbeat, Footclick, Machine Gun Vocalizes" (2016), "Eellogofusciohipoppokunurious" (2017) and "The Songs of The Great Tits" (2018).
He edits Ex-Ex-Lit aka THE BEST EXPERIMENTAL WRITING BLOG ON THE WEB.


Luc Fierens - One Punctuation Piece



Luc Fierens (born in Mechelen, Belgium, 1961) is a networked collagist and visual poet provocateur. His work emerged out of Poesia Visiva, Mail Art and Fluxist circles. Fierens’ diverse practice focuses on language/image as a raw material and the exploration of alternative forms of distribution and communication.
As such, he promoted a transnational dialogue prior to the inception of the Internet with his mail art projects (“Social-Art”, “Cornucopiae…”) and publications (Postfluxpostbooklets) from 1984.
Now, he continues his research with artists (since 2013 he has worked closely with performance artist Elish Falanga) from his “social architecture” with whom he exchanges, forwards, and directs art, and collaborative projects through the (e-)mail, and with whom he organizes performances, publications (artists’ books) and exhibitions.
His publications and works can be found in major archives (R&M Sackner Archive, Miami and Artpool, Budapest), libraries (MoMa Library, Rare Books Collection of the University of Buffalo), museums (MaRT (Trento e Rovereto, Italy)) and several private collections (Fondazione Berardelli (Italy), Verbeke Foundation (Belgium)).

Russell Jaffe - Blank Verse Variation



Russell Jaffe teaches at Loyola University in Chicago and Fusion Academy in Oak Brook, and stars in literary study guides for Course Hero.
He is the author of the poetry collections This Super Doom I Aver (Poets Democracy, '12), INTROVERT//EXTROVERT (Punk Hostage Press, '14), LA CROIX WATER (Damask, '16), and Civil Coping Mechanisms (Civil Coping Mechanisms, '17).
Russell Jaffe, shoopa shoopa, Russell Jaffe.



Bri Esposito - Blanked Verse




Bri Esposito has never been published in McSweeney's

***


Announcing Issue 12


BRAVE NEW WORD ISSUE 12 IS GOING LIVE RIGHT NOW!
Issue Line-up:
  • Volodymyr Bilyk 
  • Andriy Antonovskiy 
  • Bri Esposito
  • Russell Jaffe 
  • Luc Fierens 
  • Gregory K. H. Bryant 
  • Nathaniel D. Horowitz 
  • Jenne Kaivo 
  • Sacha Archer 
  • Erica Baum 
  • Mark Young
  • Mithrandir Mithrahnuruodo 
  • Mark Blickley
  • Andrew Taylor
  • Michael Kostiuk 
  • John M. Bennett
  • Carlo Parcelli 
  • Rosalie Gancie 
  • Heath Brougher 
  • Marton Koppany 
  • Michael O’Brien 
  • Gregory Betts 
  • George Sabov 
  • Jeff Bagato 
  • Fernando Futuro 
  • Daria Zengerstein
  • Kim Vodicka 
  • Zoria April

Saturday, August 11, 2018

ISSUE 11

Issue 11

Editor's Note:

Of all BNW issues i've been working on - this one was the hardest to make. Not only because i'm experiencing extreme oversaturation with all things literary, but also because i don't want to spin the wheels and make just another issue of just another mag. This is not what Brave New Word is about. 

I needed focus and i needed dedication. That's why it took so long to make this issue work. 

To be honest, it's been a while since i really worked on Brave New Word in earnest. The thing is - there is no shortage of submissions coming in and i had an opportunity to make a couple of issues out of loads of submissions that were not fitting for some other issues. 

While somewhat lazy it was ultimately beneficial for the magazine - it helped to make some really diverse line-ups with many different styles mashed together in a dazzling kaleidoscope. However, there is nothing to be proud of for me as an editor.
  
Here's a couple of things i've learned since the last issue:
  • Issue announcements don't really work. You get a traffic spike and everyone forgets about it until you start the bombardment.
  • Double issues are bad for business. The last one had experienced a traffic nosedive the week after going live. Overexposure is a thing even for a small-time niche online mags. I guess it means i need to come with the other model. Those two issues will be retroactively rearranged into one special somewhere down the line.
  • This issue is slightly bigger than the previous. It struck me that pretending that there is no space beyond 12 or 13 authors is plain stupid.
  • BNW is moving to its own domain,
And here are some funny stats:  
  • Some writers seriously think that it is my obligation to publish their work no matter what, just because it can't be the other way. Nine authors who thought this way were sacked.
  • Some writers disregard the submission guidelines and think that this disregard will get them a spot in the issue because their stuff is so dope. Over the course of last three months there were six such authors.
  • Some writers think that adding insults and threats to the follow-ups in cases of declines is a good idea. Trio of bright minds tested this out. Gotta tell you - send more. I like it. Sometimes i feel lonely when i look at my inbox. You make my day a little brighter. Especially those who fight for justice. Keep on keeping on! I will start another blog and add every single bit of your spite for all to see. Names included. 
And about an issue itself. Unlike a couple of previous issues which tended either to textual or visual - this one is pretty balanced. There is something for everybody. BNW is at its best when it goes for maximum diversity of material. 

Also - I'm really proud that this is the first issue to include my fellow compatriots - Andriy Antonovskiy, Michael Zarichnyi and Roman Pyrih. 

Without further ado - enjoy


ISSUE LINE-UP:



Michael O’Brien - Ten Pieces


Michael O’Brien lives in Glasgow Scotland. His work has most recently appeared in the journals - Akitsu Quaterly, Cattails, Bones, Moonchild, The Other Bunny. He is the author of, As Adam (UP Literature) and Big Nothing (Bones). He was a runner-up in the Mainichi Daily News Haiku Contest in 2009. You can follow him on twitter @michaelobrien22

Darren C. Demaree - with an empathy so fatal #115-117




Darren C. Demaree is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently ''Two Towns Over' (March 2018), which was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press. He is also the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. 

His poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. 

Darren currently lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. 

Laura Ortiz - Four Asemic Pieces


Laura Ortiz was born in Argentina (the daugther of a typographer) were she worked as an Educational Psychologist. In 2007 she moved to Montreal, Canada and began exploring drawing and painting and pursued her passion for visual communication by embarking on a degree in graphic design. In 2016 she discovered asemic writing and art online and began to create her own. She was immediately fascinated by the combination of typography and design with literature and abstract art. Her asemic works has been featured in art exhibitions, contemporary art museums and magazines in Italy, USA, Argentina and India. She hopes to continue her work and contribute to the development and expansion of asemic art.