Fringe, the Noun that Verbs Your World

This week we are proud to introduce a talented new voice in fiction, Allison Dziuba, and her debut short story, “Liminality: A Life Study.”

[suggesting an alternate reading]

What might it feel like to have your life written by someone else?

Liminality: the state of being at the threshold, of existing on multiple planes simultaneously. For me, liminality is a literary character’s dilemma. She exists in the world of narrative, a world constructed solely by language; she also exists in the world of imagination, in the space between writer and reader where inferences and personal associations are made. She puts pieces together with the expectation of forming a complete picture, but instead finds that what she has is a collection of remnants.

One aim of my story is to sketch out that liminal state, to explore Barthesian edges of character (of life?).

Narrative seams sometimes occur through iteration. For instance, I am interested in how routine may come to define the substance of one’s days and how one may nevertheless feel dissociated from that repetition. I am interested in how mishearings and misrememberings may become woven into one’s reality.

Language itself provides a site of fracture, too. Poet Ed Roberson conveys this linguistic-experiential multiplicity brilliantly.... more »

Today, Fringe managing editor David Duhr interviewed editor-in-chief Lizzie Stark about her new book, Leaving Mundania, which explores the world of live action roleplay or larp — essentially make believe for adults on steroids.

Curious about larp? In April, Lizzie gave a talk in Helsinki about how September 11 affected larp communities in New York City as part of the Nordic Larp Talks:

Of course, David, like the entire Fringe staff, is completely impartial about Lizzie’s book. You should probably consider buying it.

Christina Cook is our featured poet this week. Poetry editor Anna Lena Phillips asked for her thoughts about remnants, the poems, and (a perennial favorite question) how she makes time to write. At the end you’ll find a writing prompt courtesy of Christina. Happy NaPoWriMo!

When you think of remnants, what’s the first poem or poet that comes to mind?

Definitely Sappho. All we have of her poems are remnants of the full poems she wrote. She is a poet whose work we will never fully know.

How did “21st Century Sappho” begin?

The poem began when I was reading a new translation of Sappho’s poetry, Sweetbitter Love, by the extraordinary translator Willis Barnstone. As I was reading, it occurred to me that there are two ways to read these poems, one being to read them as the remnants they are, in which case we are conscious of reading incomplete, excerpted poems. The other way was much more interesting to me: to read the fragments as complete poems, which is not really a stretch since this approach simply transformed them into elliptical poems. Most all poems are elliptical to some degree: Part of the essence of poetry is to engage the reader in completing the... more »

Some folks consider this notion bleak, that it reduces time to meaninglessness, but taking a long view, that it took two generations of stars to create conditions suitable for life—creatures able to look back to the beginning and peer into the future—is something awesome and humbling. At least, Italo Calvino thought so, and spent the last half of his life playfully fusing science to... more »

Today Fringe reprinted selections from Jehanne Dubrow’s wonderful series “Fragments from a Nonexistent Yiddish Poet”(included in her book, From the Fever-World)Editor Lizzie Stark took the opportunity to grill her about everything from her childhood in communist Poland to her new book of poems, Red Army Red.

Looking at these poems nearly five years after publication, what strikes you about them? Is there anything you’d change?

When I read the nonexistent Yiddish poems—these, and any of the other fragments that appear in my second book From the Fever-World—I’m struck by how invested they are in their own fictional universe of AlwaysWinter, Poland. These poems gave me permission to speak another voice, to be someone else on the page. I can also see the ways in which these pieces reveal a desire to use my training as a formalist while moving beyond the constraints of received and fixed forms. The ear of these poems still seems deeply metrical, very much informed by tradition.

Today, I would probably trust the power of fragmentation more than I did five years ago. I would probably allow the poems more white space, more breaks in syntax. I think these fragments could be more fragmented than they are, without sacrificing... more »

I reluctantly agreed to share my author with the art editor this month so we could feature Laura Young’s delicate prose in Relics alongside her photographs of the more fragile moments in nature. The essay and the art are beautiful on their own, but together they become even more powerful. I fear, though, that if I try to describe them, I’ll mar them: sticky fingerprint on the window pane. So hold out your hands like someone’s handing you a baby bird, and read on.

Three of Susan de Sola’s poems appear in Fringe’s REMNANTS issue this week. Poetry editor Anna Lena Phillips asked her by email about her work. Read on for her replies—and don’t miss the binary round at the end, where all is revealed (in the either-or sense).

When you think of remnants, what’s the first poem or poet that comes to mind?

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” The 20th-century moderns had an intense, often desperate relationship to the remnant. A modern master of the remnant is James Joyce. It is a theme that often attracts me. My most recent poem, “Cedar Closet,” is a blank-verse poem about the leavings of a 1940s wardrobe and its secrets.

“Old Newsreel (Dallas, 1963)” has lines of varying length, but a metrical current runs through the poem. How do you approach writing poems that engage with meter (not to mention have a rich and quirky sense of rhyme) but do not hew to set line length or exacting rhyme scheme?

I write both metrical and nonmetrical poems. I think rhyme can be used expressively in looser verse forms. The ghost of a tetrameter beat and the rhyme are meant to emphasize... more »

How “Patagonia” author Zoe Gilbert came up with a story based on the remnants of an eccentric life.

The Last Tuesday Society in Hackney, East London invites experts to lecture on such esoteric subjects as charnel houses of Europe and introductions to taxidermy, so I knew there’d be some eccentric content the first time I went along. Sharon-Michi Kusunoki did not disappoint. I had never heard of Edward James – a rather unprepossessing name compared with that of the presenter – while Sharon had dedicated years of her life to researching this patron of surrealist art. Yes, James had been a dedicated champion of Salvador Dalí, and adored the art of Leonora Carrington, a favourite of my own. But it was what he did with his own belongings before he died, and the project that this created for Sharon, that fascinated me most.

What she described was so bizarre, so devious, and so funny that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, which was why I wrote the story. Charged with building a picture of a now obscure man’s life from the belongings he had left, Sharon began trawling through the storage rooms at West Dean, where she works as an art historian. They... more »

Remnants artist Laura Young has this to say about her photography:

“Now, do you take nice pictures of people or just flowers like your father?”

This question came from my Grandmother when I found myself bitten by the photo bug in my early 30’s. To her chagrin, I was forced to confess that I was guilty of the same passions that led my father to spend hours in the early morning examining dew-laden blossoms from every angle, sometimes shooting an entire roll on a single flower. I knew better than to tell her that glistening spider webs could produce fits of ecstasy in me and that an unusual mushroom would have me laying belly down in the mud for closer inspection before I had time to consider my clothing.

Twenty years later, I’m no better. In fact, I may be a good deal worse.

My camera has led me on paths into the natural world that I never expected to love so deeply. Of course, I have taken my fair share of butterfly photos and have celebrated the photogenic qualities of lotus and fern. I’ve captured sunsets and rainbows and awe-inspiring storms on Lake Michigan. Who could resist falling in love surrounded by those wonders?

I’ve... more »

Egregious Fact Number One: Our tax dollars were used to bail out Wall Street.

In case you need a reminder: Wall Street banks and companies are private corporations, not public institutions. In a democracy, taxes are supposed to go toward funding roads, parks, health clinics, schools, social security–anything that benefits the common good. Despite the lame claims of some vociferous Tea Party morons, the government is not actually “taking” our money–we collectively maintain infrastructure and social services through consensually paying taxes. The consensus is implicit in being alive.

If we did not pay taxes, society would collapse. You cannot maintain society through anarchic private entities–that’s antithetical to democracy. So the fact that our public dollars were used to bail out banks that do not have societal interests as their primary or even secondary or even tertiary concern means that our money was stolen from us. The banks use those public dollars to fatten their coffers. Meanwhile, cuts to social services–mental health, education, social security, and on and on and on and on and on–pervade. House foreclosures abound, while Wall Street executives acquire three and four homes. It’s the very embodiment of kleptocracy: enrich the elite while bleeding the effete.

Egregious Fact Number Two:... more »

I recently had the pleasure of hosting author Jon Chopan at a reading in my little Ohio bookstore. Jon is the author of the first story I accepted for Fringe, “The Oldest Guilt I Know,” and a more recent one, “Index for R: An Examination of the Text as it Pertains to the Divorce and Subsequent Romance between Characters XX and XY.” The big news, though, is his recently published novel, Pulled from the River. Based on Jon’s discussions with the audience at the reading, I pulled together a few questions to ask him about such light subjects as writing and relationships and truth.

Q. Whenever someone tries to compliment a piece of nonfiction by saying it reads just like fiction, I get somewhat indignant. Why can’t it stand on its own? I bluster! But Jon, your nonfiction does read like short stories and, perhaps more importantly, your fiction reads like truth. Is there a cut-and-dried line between the two or is there some flexibility? Do your thoughts on Truth mesh with those of the publishing world?

A. I think, for me, there is some flexibility.  Mostly this is because I’m not wholly convinced we need these labels.  I say as much because I... more »

“Zombie Thanksgiving,” a poem by Lesley Wheeler, is up this week in Fringe. It, along with poems from Wheeler’s previous Fringe appearance, is part of her new collection, The Receptionist and Other Tales, forthcoming from Aqueduct Press. Poetry editor Anna Lena Phillips asked her about the book, the poem, and strategies for packing to go to conferences. Find her responses below, and please share your own thoughts in the comments section.

You’ve got a series of zombie poems going, including some charming short poems. How did the zombies invade your work?

As usual, it’s a combination of things: pleasure in supernatural or fantastic stories; The Walking Dead TV and graphic novel series; teaching T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and starting to think of it as a zombie tale; and writing some other poems with elements from genre fiction. I also gave two readings including “Zombie” from my book Heathen and received intense responses from the audiences. After the first event, a student shot her hand in the air and demanded urgently, “What’s scarier, fast zombies or slow zombies?” That isn’t one of the usual post-poetry-reading questions. The second took place in Pittsburgh, George Romero-land, where zombies are always serious business.

“Zombie Thanksgiving” seems partly to do with how... more »

The authors of this month’s fiction explain how passing notes in class turned into a literary collaboration.

We were sitting miserably in a summer class during our graduate program, wildly uninterested in the course content and frustrated that we had to attend. So, one of us started writing a story and passed it to the other, prompting the collaborative process. Neither of us had any idea of the story or where it would lead, but we each wrote some and passed it. The other read and added. There were no rules, except that we only wrote during that class.

Early this week, hundreds of citizens gathered in New York’s Zuccotti Park. Loud, unruly people chanted strange slogans while standing in the streets wearing strange costumes. The city’s police resources were pushed to the limit trying to contain the spontaneous gathering. The demonstration was similar in tone to similar gatherings in recent years in places like Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco and even Green Bay. In fact, demonstrations like this are common in cities with football teams after a Super Bowl or other major sports championship win.

I look forward to the city denouncing these Giants fans and press releases about how much this occupation of the New York streets cost the taxpayers.

Personally, I’m more afraid of football fans than I am anarchists, but all the Occupy water cooler chat this week was about this Chris Hedges piece, warning Occupiers that Black Bloc Anarchists are rotting the movement from the inside. A “cancer,” he calls them, and warns us that the Black Bloc will ultimately bring down Occupy itself with the same shortsighted narcissism that compels them to reject and denounce all movements and institutions. In their dogmatic refusal to work with political allies or authorities, the Anarchists have to be... more »

Did Rachel Dacus’ interview with Palestinian poet Deema Shehabi this week pique your interest?

Check out some of her poetry in Drunken Boat and Perihelion. And feel free to discuss below.

(Jeff Questad is taking a well-deserved week off, but he did send me the lion’s share of the following links. And never fear, Q-Heads–he’ll be back at the Occupy Roundup helm next week.)

Saturday in Oakland turned into a clusterfuck (although doesn’t it always?) as OPD arrested over 400 protestors–and, by accounts which are beginning to trickle in/out, members of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department proceeded to humiliate and possibly torture the detainees. Keep your eye on this one, folks.

And keep your other eye on Miami, where police have raided the #OM encampment. I don’t have anything to link to yet (as usual, a big Thank You to the mainstream media), but here’s a piece from the Miami Herald which details the situation just after sundown, the time at which the protestors were ordered to be gone.

Boy, for a movement that’s supposed to be on its last gasp …

I can in no way come up with anything new to say about last week’s release of Mitt Romney’s tax returns, but here’s a calculator to tell you how long it took Mitt to make what you made in all of 2010. FYI (TMI?), Mitt took in my entire 2010’s-worth of income in less than half a... more »

The “unmuzzled throatful” of words soar from these pages. Elyse Fenton’s Clamor aligns itself with the contemporary witnessing of poets like Brian Turner, Matthew Doherty, Sinan Antoon, and Kent Johnson. In keeping with the tradition and pageantry of the human condition, Fenton’s debut collection breathes life into the smoldering heart of war.

The reader is presented with a speaker who resides on the home front waiting to be reunited with her beloved. Fenton’s portrayal of love, loss, and war are dynamically conveyed through lyrical and prose poems. A belief in the resiliency of words as more than symbols, Fenton’s love of language and life, resounds in “Love in Wartime (I).” Here, words represent sensations and emotions directly:

When I say you and I have to mean

not some signified presence, not

the striking of the same spent tinder

but your mouth & its live wetness, your tongue

& its intimate knowledge of flesh.

Words embody living moments of the mind; they must. It is a longing for the intimacy and for the physical presence of another half a world away that allow these words to be comforting. The poems in this collection reach out for those who escape our grasp, for those beyond the “rifle’s reach.” Deftly, the... more »

– I am a writer and a photographer, and sometimes I like to combine the two art forms, which in fact are my favorite vices. Such is the case with “Ask Not,” which is what I hope is the first in a series of visual texts is support of the Occupy Movement. For “Ask Not,” I wanted to re-invent the statement made by John Kennedy in his inaugural address. I understood that the young president wanted us to look beyond our personal lives to see the greater good. Ironically, as a little kid I saw John Kennedy in Houston on November 21, 1963, the night before he was assassinated.

You never forget your first victim of police brutality. Way back in October, Scott Olsen took one for the team in in Oakland, the victim of an apparent tear gas canister fired at close range by an Oakland cop. In a movement that has no leaders and no big names, that knock on the head made Scott a rock star, and now he’s profiled in Rolling Stone. This piece also has some good stuff about life on the Occupied streets of Oakland and a picture of Scott rockin’ the neck brace.

Don’t call it a comeback. Occupy San Fran has been feeding people and shutting down banks, licking its wounds after having its encampments forcibly taken down. But the movement is being reborn for Spring 2012 as Occupy Wall Street West. Friday’s march through the financial district included more than 50 groups that have aligned with Occupy. It rained, but Occupy says it was the biggest turn out they’ve had yet and the banks suffered more than the Occupiers. Of course, if Mark Wahlberg had been there, it wouldn’t have gone down like it did.

Your Occupation Calendar:

• February 3rd – National day of action against the NDAA (Facebook)
• March 30th – National Occupation of... more »

Fringe has extended the deadline for submissions to the REMNANTS theme issue. Check out the original call, and send us something wonderful.

The new deadline for Visual Art is February 15, 2012. The new deadline for all literary genres is March 15, 2012.