Satellite of love

Posted by Chris at 10:48 AM


Satellite Telephone #2 has arrived, with a great pink cover and featuring work by Rodney Koeneke, Dan Raphael, Kimberly Lyons, Sam Lohmann, Fanny Howe, Kevin Killian, Lynn Behrendt, and many more. Including me.

It's been a few years since I've had poetry published in a journal. I only write (or submit) poetry when asked. There's more than enough of it out there. But Robert Dewhurst, proprietor and editor of Satellite Telephone, did ask, so I found something for him. Issue #1 was typed on a typewriter (I can't tell whether #2 was, but it might as well have been). I gave him a very old piece that requires a monospaced font. (And one that, I realized upon rereading the published version, I totally cribbed a line from and reused it in Exercises In Penmanship -- ah well!)

But (more than) enough about me. Two other thoughts before you scamper off to get your own copy (Robbie will do trades, so you have no excuse).

1. Rodney's fun poem on Urdu is included. I heard him read this at a recent reading in Portland, and now I have it in print, in a journal. This seems like how poetry journals are supposed to work, for those of us "in the life". But I'm not sure I remember it happening before! I feel like it must have happened in FO_A_RM at some point. Maybe I'm crazy. Anyway it was a nice experience, seeing a poem I had heard appear in a journal. If you weren't at that reading, though, you might not get that experience.

2. There are several pieces of criticism. And they are interesting and well written, but I couldn't help feeling that because they're not online, they are somehow impotent. That is, they aren't part of the conversation. People wanting to think about, oh, Jeni Olin's The Pill Book won't know that they will find a few pages of thought about it here. It's not googleable. (Well, it is now, because I mentioned it!)

That's crazy, of course. It's good to have some discussion outside of the internet, and it's good to have these little pockets of modest obscurity. Not all thought needs to go into the database, though it pains me to say it.

Lynn Behrendt's contributions, some critical writings through of Ron Silliman's blog entries, erasures and poemifications (Lynn has been the one updating Ron's blogroll), feel somehow more real for being on paper (though maybe it's just because I still can't read poetry on the web), just as the criticism felt somehow misplaced for not being online; but this was criticism as well as poetry. It underlined my anxieties nicely.

Anyway, go get it!

 

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3 comments:

  1. troylloyd said... 7:52 AM

    thanx for posting this.

    i think it's cool as hell Robert so openly advocates trade, the poetic trade economy is a beautiful thing.

    interesting points you raise about onlineness vs. offlineness (perhaps the seed for a larger post on the subject?) -- i love paper journals, perhaps it's the zine thing from growing up in the 80's, the physicality of print is appealing to me.

    oddly, the whole reason why i created an "online presence" was to meet people & get to mailings & trades -- & the cost-free aspect of self-publishing via blogger is an obvious reason -- ironically, my reading habits changed, i became more aware of the poetic blogs, i dropped off from reading so much theory/criticism that i'd been obsessed with, i began having alotta fun online, the "live" aspect is appealing, how time is altered, how blogging prompts one to work/write/whatever, the excitement of instant self-publishing, the feelgoodness that a few people are actually look/reading one's stuff, the writer/reader interchange,

    gosh, what am i talking about?

    from the fishbowl & into the lake, upstream or down, feeding an ocean.

    maybe i'm a luddite,
    typewriters
    xerox machines
    vinyl records
    French-press
    handroll'd cigarettes
    warm tubes
    9.5" skate decks
    pen nibs
    etc.  

  2. Chris said... 8:56 AM

    the poetic trade economy is a beautiful thing.

    Yes, or at least, I like it. I should write a little something about a nice micropress trading get-together I went to last weekend. But I still need to digest more of my massive haul!

    I'm really curious about any connections you see between being online and not (needing/wanting?) to read so much theory/criticism!  

  3. troylloyd said... 3:50 PM

    i o.d.'d on reading theory/criticism, it's all i was reading for awhile -- it's been very helpful to me inna large way, but often it was all about stuff that happened many years ago, while intensely interesting, it's still a bit like butterflies inna jar.

    the thing about keeping up w/ all the online poetic goings-on is that it's as it's happening -- opinions being stated, being challenged, being modified, being retracted etc. & this aspect is exciting, up to the minute & i think it's the actual engagement which appeals most -- itsa constant learning curve & new shit is happening every frikkin' minnit!

    i still read the print stuff tho, at the moment i'm trying to get thru Paul Ricoeur "oneself as another", it all merges together but the real living information is simply much more fun.  

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