SPECIAL EDITORIAL / AWESOME CREATORS EDITION:: "RENDERING THE OLD MODEL OBSOLETE" : 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE
"history is a living weapon in yr hand & you have imagined it, it is thus that you "find out for yourself" history is the dream of what can be, it is the relation between things in a continuum of imagination what you find out for
CoCo ONLINE :: 3rd ANNUAL HAIKU MONTH :: 17 syllables, 30 days, and YOU
Let the syllabic somersaults commence! october returns and so too, haiku: seek out syllabic restraint In the fall of of 2010, before I had ever heard of any official NaWriMo of the No(vel) or Po(etry) variety, I found myself somewhat estranged from the muse
ART :: GEORGIA ELROD : HERE AND HERE :: Now at John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY
The paintings and drawings of Georgia Elrod invite poetry -- or perhaps they are poetry? -- in so far as in transmuting experience into visual form, they perform the inverse maneuver: asking more questions even as they answer the ancient riddle,
Editorial: LEVEL UP! Gratitude, Growth and Other Goings On in the Exit Strata-sphere
There is a poem I wrote in the early spring that describes the moment of meeting, and attraction, as... cellular intelligence, as when
my electrons got all jumpy-like
from first you walked in the room
recognized yours like an overdue reunion
refugees from the counties of each other
and I bring that up now because, metaphorically, our Exit Strata electrons have been getting all jumpy-like a hell of a lot recently.
Far beyond a one-to-one connection, this piece posits a theory of interpersonal co-evolution that I've been tossing around lately -- one that suggests that we instinctively recognize our creationary comrades: those who will make our world and life a better place, who will inspire us, challenge us, and help us evolve.
This electromagnetic impulse, lets say - the biological inclination to draw this person or these people into your self or your environment - becomes/grows into "love" with WORK: because even chemical reactions require catalysts, and require the appropriate conditions for full realization.
We come to love those people who bring this original impulse into being -- through the ultimately selfless act of commitment to another person or group of people. We appreciate and feel in our very bodies how awesome it is that these people stay with us, and give of themselves and their energy again and again.
So we're going to start out with a big hearty THANK YOU. Oh man.
We love you people.
We love our contributors, the people who come to our events, the people who write us email, the people who chat with us at our tables -- and we get all jumpy for you.
You know why? Because you make us believe in what we're doing, and you show us that YOU believe in what we're doing. You let us know that it supports and inspires you. That it is encouraging and enabling and growing your work and your connections and your community. And because altogether, we're feeling like we've, well, LEVELLED UP. To a new Strata.
Let's hear it for 2012! Did you know it's the United Nations' Year of Cooperatives? I think that "country of eachother" those lines channel an understanding of is, in fact, the collaborative, cooperative future we are building here together.
Community CoCo / U-Topian Rhizome PARTICIPATORY PROMPT: on the co-evolution of language/music
In which we reach out to our community to engage in the making of Collaborative Content beyond our Topic (place-bound) limitations, to invite you to participate Rhizomatically in the conversation/dialogue that happens here on site. Responses will be catalogued and posted in a follow up feature, and potentially (if you are speedy) read from at the event itself.
Please email all responses to editors@exitstrata.com or respond in the comment section below. Thanks for playing!
What makes human communication different from that of animals? Where does music fit in? How can our poetic or other verbal creation be representative of a more essential form of human communication, reminding us of our linguistic origins?
Announcing: CO-CO IN CONCERT:: Exit Strata and Home Audio present : Infinite Combinatoriality vs. Animal Language:: July 26th, 2012, Brooklyn NY
Exit Strata is VERY excited to invite you along on a new (ad)venture, as we team up with the Avant-Classical/Experimental concert series Home Audio to co-curate these monthly evenings of sound and music collaboration.
For our first evening together, we tackle
Infinite Combinatoriality vs. Animal Language, or simply, HUMANS VS ANIMALS
which will take place on July 26th, at 141 Spencer Street, #203, Brooklyn NY.
(Doors at 7)
Your hosts for the evening will be Mara Mayer, founder of Home Audio, and Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, Exit Strata Editor.
What can I expect?
Well: A concert-contest between words and music, in which the lines between instrument, voice, word, sound, animal, and human are blurred. A collaborative, experimental space in which the lines between performer and audience may blur, as well.
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30 : Community, Inspiration, Tradition :: Day 8: Frank Ortega on Andrew Acciaro
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It's Easter. I don't have any chemically-colored eggs or chocolate that I can offer you here, no old zombie stories, just unnatural spring weather on a planet that has officially had 324 consecutive months of global temperatures exceeding their long-term average for any given month. You can convert that to years, if you're feeling brave. You can pray, if it helps. And you can read poetry.
It's Easter, and before you go searching for new eggs or reborn gods or just plain hope, let me share this living soul, a human deity, whose intelligence and compassion fill me with that hope we are constantly seeking. His name is Andrew Acciaro, and he lives and works near me in Peekskill, next to the Hudson River. Andrew lives and breathes the poetic life, and it is impossible for me to chose even one poem of his to share, as each goes in such different directions, as if Andrew is dipping into the consciousness of all styles, past, present and future to offer vital messages of the now.
POETRY MONTH : Inspiration, Community, Tradition :: Week 2 :: Editorial Recap
HO! TRIBE!
April 1st brought us poetry month, and on that day of inauguration and celebration many members of this community came together for POTLATCH 2012 to share and co-create. (Photos, updates, and CoCo content to come -- follow link above for gallery). We read, we shared, we sang, we broke bread, we laughed, and we felt -- well, I'll speak for myself -- I felt in my very cells a shift towards what can be possible when a community commits to themselves and each other, and the work we make individually and together.
The elation, the purity of relaxation into common purpose, the love and mutual respect has carried on not only from this event but from this week's posts, kicking off Exit Strata's wholehearted effort to serve as a platform for this love-in and value creation via virtual space.
POETRY MONTH 30/30/30: Day 6 :: Matthew Nelson and Jacob Perkins on Paul Legault
Interview with the Self by Jacob Perkins & Matt Nelson Q: In what way has Paul Legault improved your sex life? A: It’s a tough question. We’d like to point out that we didn’t get into sir Legault on our own. Like any good relationship it takes, at the very least, two. Our friend read from his book in the subway and all she had to say was, “This guy will turn you inside out,” which he of course didn’t. No one can do that to you and if they try, you should call the proper MTA authorities. But he did turn us outside in, as in what the ufkc? His poems trick you into thinking you’re reading multiple voices shouting in a space where shouts can echo, colliding with each other and creating new sounds. But the intellectual gift is that all the voices are thrown. There is only one Wizard in this Oz. Legault takes control of your equilibrium and maintains a kind of trustless navigation that is impossible to follow on first read. Q: What method of Paul Legault’s language turns you on and why? A: Well, if you are one of those who can pick out patterns, Mr. Legault, at least in The Other Poems, which, by the way is titled on the sub-title tacked to most collections of poetry, sticks pretty close to what we would describe as a format. In our own work the format relies on a series of folds (literal) which we attack as a unit, one space at a time, passing our work back and forth without verbal cooperation. This results in a timing based on mutual challenge and uncomfortability. It is unpredictable but refreshing, the rhythm. Paul (can we call him Paul?) discomforts the supposition that what you read before was what was you read before. Every line, every word is a question game. When did the adjective turn into a noun? How can time be turned into space with just the tiniest turn of a preposition? These are the types of strange knife twists Paul manipulates causing a poetry hemorrhage, showing you the insides of words.
Poetry Month 30/30/30: Inspiration, Community, Tradition: DAY 3 :: Bill Considine on Elinor Nauen
Elinor Nauen: An Appreciation