Bianca Stone

Reading Goat In The Snow Emily Pettit’s lush lines unfold and unfold and unfold. She’s a master of the short line, gorgeously complex in her use of dark themes (strongest being a version of intense human anxiety) and poignantly reveals these themes in an unselfconscious, direct voice. The distinctive “leaping” I find in so much great poetry of our generation (the feeling of non-sequitur logic and negative space between lines), is conquered by Pettit. But what’s so powerful about her poems is that she never loses the initial thread which allows each poem to remain entirely distinctive and unique, rather then forgoing sense. Each individual poem, like a planet in a solar system, orbits; sometimes harkening back to others nearby. Her poems are introverted planets, with extroverted survival skills, in a chaotic universe. * No one, I think, is quite as masterful at titles as Emily Pettit. In her book [...]

Things Warren loves: ______________________________________________ Warren Craghead III lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA with his wife and two daughters. See more at .

____________________________________________ Alina Gregorian‘s poems have been published in Sink Review, Boston Review, GlitterPony, and other journals. She curates a video poetry reading series at the Huffington Post, co-curates Triptych Readings, and co-edits the collaboration journal Bridge. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers University, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is here.

Related Linkage _____________________________________________________________ Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton, 2012), winner the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), winner of the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award. A former Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, she’s currently a doctoral candidate and King/Chávez/Parks Fellow at Western Michigan University. Eryn Cruft lives in Bloomington, IN but will soon be leaving for London to study for a Master’s degree in Language and Cognition at King’s College. Previous collaborations with Traci Brimhall have appeared in Guernica and Nashville Review. Eryn has also contributed work to the Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science.

(an excerpt from ‘Comics Poetry: Beyond Sequential Boundaries’) Can one see, indeed, that a painter or a poet never starts a painting or a poem before they have been carried to see it more or less by their spirit, in its simultaneity of principle elements…? ~ Rodolphe Töpffer, Réflexions et menus propos d’un peintre genevois Finding connections between comics and poetry has been my focus for a few years now. It’s an interest shared with a field of talented creators including Matt Madden, Warren Craghead, Bianca Stone, Paul K. Tunis, Alexander Rothman, Derik Badman, Summer Browning, Michael Farrell, Eryon Franklin, Franklin Einspruch and Julie Delporte, to name too few. Given this growing commitment to comics and poetry, (evident in recent , , and ), this article discusses comics theory, its relevance to experimental forms and possibilities for the future of comics poetry. Existing comics research often borrows concepts from narrative [...]

Resources?: 1.: THE SEXIEST CREATIVE GENIUS IN HUMAN HISTORY 2. : an academically rigourous archive of curated .gifs&such from the 90s. 3. : Julia Panek’s TV-poetry-for-an-internet-age. 4. : a technically limitless archive of free, rare, university-press-and-such .pdfs. 5. : an amazing resource for strange high-res scans of “found” images–with a hub in Southern Brooklyn, run by Andrew Beccone+. 6. entire run. 7. ___________________________________________________________________ Paul Legault is the co-founder of the translation press Telephone Books and the author of three books of poetry: The Madeleine Poems (Omnidawn, 2010), The Other Poems (Fence, 2011), and The Emily Dickinson Reader (McSweeney’s, 2012). He’s .

*** *** *** Michael Rae’s suggested links 1. 2. The . Michael has served as his tattoo guinea pig for a decade. 3. . 4. Contemporary American folk art: . 5. . 6. . 7. . 8. 9. _______________________________________________________________ “People Thoughts” is an ongoing drawing/writing series by Michael Rae that began in 2009 and now features over four hundred pieces. In addition to illustration and writing, Michael produces pop music under the moniker “Freak Week.” He is from New Mexico and lives in Brooklyn. He loves sports. You can find many more of his creations .

_____________________________________________________________________ Jono Tosch is a poet, artist, non-fiction writer and fermentation enthusiast who lives in Northampton, MA. Last summer he took his blog, Oilchanges: the anti food blog food blog, to New Mexico on a reader-supported X-Country road trip. You can find his poems and whatnot by googling his name.

The House Wakes no big subjects today the house settles brunch two phone calls the story of an auction outbid, alas then grief, still over the lines which are no longer lines but pulses that go halfway to the moon and back again bouncing off tiny plates the world won’t let go of the dishes appear here unwashed the air could not decide to warm or chill no big subjects today the house wakes lights turn on inside and down the street to the edge of the park but not in the park the darkness there _____________________________________________________________ Elizabeth Clark Wessel’s poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, A Public Space, No, Dear, Sixth Finch, Asymptote, Lana Turner Journal, and Fawlt Magazine, among others. She lives in Brooklyn and is an editor at .

Utah Did you fathom the distractions it takes to wash down grass when rain becomes solid and wasteful? Here you are the insistence of an object when that object takes me to your ocean. I want to know the 1912 about the way you dress your socks on winter nights when pigeons dare to roam the streets. I want to recite the loveboat sermon with you, wielding through corridors, finding objects to place in picture frames. You said, “Let’s defy gravity over there.” I sailed to Utah that day. Throwing cups at the circumference of your name. ______________________________________________ Alina Gregorian’s poems have been published in Boston Review, GlitterPony, H_NGM_N, and other journals. She co-edits the collaboration journal Bridge.

from Get Your Slip On ”’ get your slip on maybe for purpose maybe for delegation tonight is my time to swim softly out at sea like inside someone’s camera lens you see yourself swimming while the action is archived you are sheltered from the sun with one of those wide-brimmed papyrus umbrellas it is a mellow image like a sterling-silver formation of boats I gave you the party I was meaning to throw myself a house full of roses a bath of celebrity photos for once there’s no impulse to censor I have an epistemological relationship with a certain kind of kismet flare guns at my ice sculptures belly-dancers at my funeral everything is Freddie Mac ruined this country that is a go zone this is not it is the reality of the scenario ”’ invisible ballet played out in your chest fit for it for romantic tropical light [...]

Words to Oneself What I have heard here among endless shifting sights the air invisibly bright blinds recognition words carried silently by the will of it caught in colorful petals. Their scent is a thousand years, appearing and disappearing without a present. I have never really seen anything. Eyes bathed within a massive song, overtaken, submerged, deepening away, less than a dream’s weight. The body without horizon, and exhaustion pouring out into space deflated of purpose. You hold the watcher in your arms speak the tongue of patient endings. Singing, in a way, to your separated dreaming brother here listening in the dark. Holding his net into the air. _________________________________________________ Walter Stone is a poet and musician. He lives in Portland, OR.

Poetry and images are no strangers. From ancient illuminated texts, to William Blake, to Lewis Carroll (to name a mere few) illustration is a powerful ally beside poetry. I’m excited by the writer who feels compelled to expand his rapport with the poem by creating art. I think it’s the excitement of language that can bring forth the illustrative in such an electrifying way. So for our third installment on Poetry Comics, we have the stunning images of Mahendra Singh alongside his translations of Jean de La Fontaine. ~Bianca Stone The Stag Upon the Vine (V; 15) A hunted Stag concealed in vines, in this verdant tropic havoc grown riotous thick by fecund luck till hounds and men lose heart, resigns the chase and he’s free again to devour the vine, all decency defy till they hear him, hounds and men they return and set on him to die a [...]