Starched is the fifth book by Raymond Farr. It furthers his assay of postmodern ouevres via the etched-in facts of each... More > poem. The poems stem from utterance which recreates the act of utterance and deconstructs the act of writing which, on the surface, appears as the assemblage of lines and stanzas but on a deeper level (as in his long poem Writing of a Sky So Distant, the books final work) we hear utterance as it is written: "...therefore, a crow/not philosophy//or hammer." and "The mind is twice inhabited, a trapeze act." < Less

Language poems. An excerise in patterns of variance. Influences: the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, the Black Mountain School, among others.

Highly influenced by the Language School of the postmodern era, these poems delve syntax first into their own... More > deconstruction. The work of poets such as Clark Coolidge and Bruce Andrews, P. Inman and Tan Lin (to name just a few) has found its reutterance in the pages of Variably Distorted Lad. < Less

The terse yet potent verse paragraphs contained in Keith Moul's chap book, The Grammar of Mind, hold our most trusted &... More > reasoned postmodern insight's feet to the fire, testing knowledge, wit, favor, an entire body of ecclectic bursts explode in the collective mind, shedding light. Somehow energizing the reader, each word is layed down like a concrete slab. If life is a book to be lived then "7/each day of life/taken straight/ administers shock treatment/to the mind" If this is hyperbole then it is also a no nonsense mirror held up with a sure and steady hand. A mirror in which points of order are clearly stated & numbered, as in "8/dust specks crowd into/the 60 watts of the mind." < Less

Rien Ici answers the question: what are these poems about? with the experience of reading these poems. There are no insights... More > but the ones deconstructed by the text itself. The reader pursues each line for the sheer joy and energy expressed by the entropy of each line. Something is happening and you don't quite know what it is...or where it leads, you just want the experience to continue. These poems are all eye and all mind. What a river is to a landscape these poems are to indefinite space. < Less

A variety of styles of poems comprise this book, including an improvisation on a line by Marrianne Moore, as well as a... More > series of poems centered around everyday voices (mimicing the "conversational" tone we hear as we maneuver thru our day); a group of poems taking aim at reproducing the tone of the speech patterns of the American West, followed by a longer poem dealing with the Western question. The Western question being: what influences are brought to bear on "voice" in American poetry? < Less

Postmodern pseudo prose poems. There is also a touch of Pop culture holding the reins.

This book forays into the maze of linguistic and imagistic structures which hinge on formalist projections. Beginning with... More > what is possible thru language, Raymond Farr experiments with the viable and non viable surfaces of reality. < Less

In Billy Cancel's The Autobiography of Shrewd Phil something is going on. There is an edge along which the poet walks with... More > purpose. The narrator states: "I fought a bear i liked/it//i rejoiced/with scissors." The poems are diminutive canvases on which color supplants meaning--"clay works heard dumb/shapes screeching." There is no loci or voice just the tattered remnants of a voice. Someone says "shutters i saw purple light hold/an empty fountain square" and "the northern hemisphere/was covered/in portrait." < Less

Crag Hill, Matthew Johnstone, Vernon Fraser, Sheila Murphy, Adam Fieled, Richard Kostelanetz, John C. Goodman, Felino A.... More > Soriano, Keith Moul, Ricky Garni, Dorothee Lang, Glenn R. Frantz, Philip Byron Oakes, George J. Farrah, Richard Mason, Dylan Harris, Ben Nucum, Nate Pritts, Thomas Fink, Wayne Mason, David Tomaloff, Alan Britt, Marco Giovenale, Howie Good, Mark Prejsnar, Orchid Tierney, Russell Jaffe, Debrah Morkun, Edward Wells II, RC Miller, Constance Stadler, Keith Higginbotham, Linda Thea & Greg Bem, Billy Cancel, Sean Burn, Valery Oisteanu. < Less