Monday, March 2, 2020

ISSUE 17


Brave New Word ISSUE 17 
AKA Taking Care of Business

Editor's note:
If there is an appropriate time to say "Things have changed" - that's it. The last time I was doing a Brave New Word issue - it was at one of the lowest points of my life. My employment for the previous two years, more or less, went down with a whimper due to politics, professional jealousy, greed, and backstabbing. The emotional toll of November and December left me creatively spent and without many career prospects. Ain't going to lie - I felt screwed, but in the end - it is over. That's not my problem anymore. I'm over it - going towards new frontiers. I don't have time to fight the specters of the past.

The downside is that since last September and up until the very end of December, I more or less put aside much of my creative output to focus on the job. As a result - I did a whole lot of what ultimately amassed to nil and not much else of worth.

I snapped out of it in early December because the bullshit got too ridiculous, but the damage was done. Brave New Word Issue 16 was the first step of my rehabilitation, but it wasn't enough to reinvigorate my creative senses. I've spent much of December and January picking up the pieces and slowly getting back to form.

The work on Issue 17 began in earnest around early February. In fact, I've spent a month working on it - the project started on February 5th and is over by March 2nd. The fastest turnaround since 2017.

One thing that I've noticed while analyzing the performance of Issue 16 is that 20 pieces sequence results in some posts getting significantly less attention when the issue is viewed as a whole. The numbers don't lie. Because of that, Issue 17 features only 14 spots - similar to the early issues.

Without further ado - Brave New Word Issue 17.

***

Issue Line-up:


  1. Jeremy Stewart - bugs groucho 1-5
  2. J.I. Kleinberg - Five collage poems
  3. Eddie Watkins - from Leap Frogs
  4. Janis Butler Holm - queen dregs hand yam
  5. James Sanders - Chyrons and Plants
  6. Kristine Snodgrass - Six asemic pieces
  7. Nils Geylen - Stress Bot Crash Test Subroutine
  8. Heller Levinson - excerpts from from here goes 
  9. Olchar Lindsann - Five poems 
  10. Luc Fierens - Baby Doc / Fatale / Fotomodella / Gold
  11. Mary Kasimor - Three Poems
  12. hiromi suzuki - au bord de la mer
  13. Jeremy Hight - Donnie Darko retold as self-help book section
  14. Tom Prime / Gary Barwin - collaborative mayhem