_____________________________________________________________________ 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.

I don’t make any claims to be an authority on Jazz. This is my personal take from what I’ve been listening to and hearing for my entire life. My definition of Jazz is pretty wide. Any syncopated or swung music that likes brass and uses blue notes as well as sampling from many sources fits this category for me. Jazz is another word for stew–cool or hot. In all cultures that are oppressed, forced to go underground, made to wear two faces, there is a mythology of night and day–the day world and the night world divided. This division exists as a projection of the divided soul, that which is enslaved, and that which is free. It was true of the early Christians. This was true in Ireland after the British occupation. It is true in all Creole and African diaspora cultures–the soul divided which can find genuine release and [...]

Forgive me if these writings on Eliot sound a bit English in their method and tone but I’ve been reduced to reading an American for the past few weeks, so my folly is at once forgivable. Eliot is, indeed, the most American of poets, if and perhaps especially because he abandoned America. There are other reasons through which we will reach this conclusion. But, to be persistent, ask yourself, or better yet, when I, or anyone, asks you of your heritage, do respond that you that you are, in fact, American? I should guess not. Everyone knows that there is no such thing as an American, except during an election year or a country song. Come now, be plain with me—if I were to inquire as to your nationality would you point at the ground under your feet or walk me to the nearest genealogy section of a library? Better [...]

Cycle ______In a past life, I was my teacher Jan, ___________who was Amelia Earhart in hers, and also Lizzie Borden. In this life, I miss my petticoats. Jan misses her leather jacket. _________Jan has no children. When she was Amelia Earhart, she passed from matter into spirit into matter and when you can do that, you can choose whether or not to come back. She chose not. _____________In order to become me, _______Amelia had to walk all the way back from the Bermuda Triangle, _______sick with disappointment _______that she hadn’t quite escaped. I was the trail of blood in her. . . . Then the rage became Lizzie, poor Lizzie—hot all the time. That word ‘spinster’ _______wove a net over her that laced her up tight as her corset and made her eyes bulge and dart. _______she bled and bled, this moon curse that made her even hotter, the spongy [...]

IMAGE: It is hard to have fun in graduate school or in workshops, but if you were sitting on a dock in Arkansas and watching bass boats speed by and the sun was setting in the west (since it does not usually set anywhere else) and you had a decent knowledge of iambic pentameter–or a few hundred poems memorized–you could have fun. I once spent a whole day speaking in blank verse. It was fun for me. It was not fun for those poor souls around me, but what the hell? On another occasion, I had a conversation with someone else who spoke in blank verse and we drove others crazy. We were in the liquor store: This rum is coconut, not to my taste but being broke and vulgar you might try? Fie thee, mere peasant in the guise of Lord let’s make the most of what we can [...]

A few weeks ago, the miraculous Metta Sama(~), master of , hosted a discussion under the Twitter hashtag #thethepoetics with editors from , , , , and , as well as a host of other poets. The discussion covered the life (and writing) of editors, the world of publishing, ebooks, and self-publishing. Download #thethepoetics small press conversation here (PDF). The conversation begins around page 34 and moves backwards. Stay tuned for future #thethepoetics discussions! In the meantime, follow Metta and keep up with the latest . Related Posts Small Anchor Press: The Dory Reader The Cartographer Electric is Dead Why E-books are not Books (and will probably change publishing) To Beginner Poets More about McLuhan and the Poetic Line

in our bodies now orange blossoms _____over her childhood yard __________a grasshopper’s long arc __________grasshopper’s long arc _____over her childhood yard a shimmering shimmering _____on the motel window __________trickles of sweat __________trickles of sweat _____on the motel window a sickly flicker sickly flicker _____the tv’s radiant breath __________on her naked arm __________on her naked arm _____the tv’s radiant breath goosebumps goosebumps _____her sunburst tattoo __________rayed with wrinkles __________rayed with wrinkles _____her sunburst tattoo still aglow still aglow _____the iris’s purple yearning __________in our bodies now __________in our bodies now _____the iris’s purple yearning the dead fire’s heat NOTES: This poem was originally published in South x Southeast v.13 no.3. “In our bodies now” is in a form I call a ‘floating-leaf’ haiku sequence, due to the drifting, swaying repetition of the lines. Each three-line grouping is written to stand alone as a haiku, but each new line also contributes to [...]

My first and last love are songs. I was all over the place. Late at night, my dad would listen either to country music or the BBC (guess he was all over the place, too). He and my mom would go to sleep with the radio on. I remember lying in bed and hearing the young Dolly Parton sing “Jolene,” and thinking I had never heard a voice or song like that except when someone would sing a snippet of an Irish ballad (not the tin pan alley Irish songs). Even then, to hear Parton without all the hair and make up was to hear a great singer/song writer. I thought she had raven hair down to her butt, and looked like the actress Barbara Hershey, so I was shocked when I first saw her. I heard her long before I saw her, and I would put faces to all [...]

This entry is part of a series, Poetry Scenes» When I’m asked about poetry in Chicago, I’m inclined to reply with the old Quaker response: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But, all I really mean is that Chicago is distinct in its poetics because there is no system, no unifying center that explains its existence. Chaos is the key to understanding how Chicago’s poets function. We don’t have a school here, nor a consistent, essential aesthetic. As a geographical center of the country, Chicago inevitably absorbs everything outside and assimilates the characteristics of visitors and the new locals. Some are produced by MFA programs and the academy. Others still listen for Spicer-ian Martians are trying to communicate through us. And still, there are those who radiate in between. Either way, poetry is occurring here. Whether at Danny’s Pub, Myopic Books, an obscure performance space in Humboldt Park, or [...]

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.

One of the first readings I ever did was in 1982 at the Baron Art center in Woodbridge. This was a good seven years before I became a host there, and Edie Eustace, one of the best friends poets ever had, booked me as “Poetic whimsy at the piano.” I did my own small version of a vaudeville show–what I had been doing all my life when my family was still alive: some funny songs, some straight free verse poems, a couple of raunchy rhymed poems, and a couple of neo-classical bits on the piano, instrumentals that I’d composed–everything but ballet and a dog show. In between numbers I spoke some anecdotes, talked to the crowd. It was my natural way of performing. This approach considered the presence of the audience and myself as an entertainer as sacred–not the individual poems, not the piano pieces that ranged from classical to [...]

There is a considerable amount of contention over the true source of the word “chapbook.” Scholars of Anglo-Saxon history and language contend that the prefix “chap-” is derived from the ancient word “ceap,” while others maintain it is merely a corruption of “cheap;” however, most attribute the word’s popularity to the chapman—European peddler, reporter, and rogue-of-all-trades from the 16th to at least the 18th century. During the intervening years, the chapbook morphed in size and intention to its modern form: a slim, inexpensive poetry volume of interest to casual readers and avid collectors alike. Since the Middle Ages, the chapman had been a vital link between the rural towns and hamlets of the European countryside and the rest of the “civilized” world. Criminals though some may have been (some chapmen were reported to have been moonlighting as pickpockets and highwaymen), they nevertheless brought every manner of household necessity in their [...]

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 [...]

So what is possibility? It is certainly no whore of failure or success. It is a feeling that you may be on to something–in the midst of something whose worth you cannot exactly measure and whose results you cannot predict. This was poetry for me, and music, and ballet, and art. I never cared that El Greco was a success. I cared about how he used blue and how it excited me, and how I wanted to join that blue. This is what I find missing from my life to the point of wanting my life to end. Failure means not eating, and success means feeling empty even when you eat well, but that blue–Oh my fucking God! That means failure or success do not matter, and trusting you can live on the couch of a friend, and wake up with the blue still inside you. Without that, I would [...]