PostDateIconThursday, 01 July 2010 22:49 |

 

Good Day & Morrow:

The editors of Con/Crescent would like to begin this communique with a bit of an old fashioned apology. There has been much to do and not much done about it. This is put up on the ledger as the 'DeBoer Problem' as this DeBoer fella, has moved from Chicago and now resides in Philadelphia. Thus, the entirety of Con/Crescent Press is now localized and rollicking all centralized. In this here message, we'd like to talk about a couple of things that are passing our fancies.

Con/Crescent 2

Since October 2009, we have been collecting materials for the second appearance of the journal and are closing in on our selection of essays and essay type things. Being that we wanted to see if anyone else had a few things to add, we are extending out submissions deadline until the 16th of July. So, if you wanted to get your ass in gear, its time and time again to do it. As you may or may not know, the issue is to focus on music and forge ahead as an ongoing dialogue about the different approaches to how music engulfs, processes, changes and/or intersplices your acts of living in the environments & such. The work should be focused on the art of critical response, treatise, discourse or whatever the fuck you think might fit the bill of talking about 'tis music of.

Con/Crescent 3

Knowing now that you do, our editor and chiefs live in the same city, we'd like to begin the next issue early, earlier than prior issues (wink, wink DeBoer Problem) and this issue will focus primarily on Philadelphia and we are going to be looking for submissions and any evidence/information on the historical digs of this city of ours. We'll be accepting submissions for this issue up through the 31st of December.

Other Updates

There is also a special issue in the works, either at the end of 2010 or early 2011 that will deal with The Next Objectivists from Chicago. More information will be forthcoming, but if you know the group, have thought about the group or just wanted to ask about the group feel free to contact us or check out there official threads at: http://nextobjectivists.blogspot.com/

It's also with great pleasure that we will be trying to release two chapbooks a year from here on out. I hope you are looking forward as we are to books from Denise Dooley, Richard Schwass, Patrick Lucy, Kelly Sexton and many more.

Oh, please do check the website out www.concrescentpress.org as we will now be updating the blog more regularly, as in at least twice a month. Oh, and we now have Ryan Clark's chapbook up, And Bring My Developing Hands which was originally published through Polter Press in Boulder, Colorado. We've also included two small chapbooks by the editors to showcase some examples of our writing styles, being The Dirges by J Townsend and Ushered White Waiting by Nicholas A. DeBoer.

 

Thank you for your readership and your patience.

 

The Editors.

 

 
PostDateIconMonday, 01 February 2010 00:00 |
J.:Starting a new year with thoughts of the poetic forward. What’s really been occupying my attention lately is Brenda Iijima’s new book If Not Metamorphic, particularly the expansive space it creates for plotting a/series of biological structure(s) on the page. And not just biology in a limited sense, a sort of revisionary approach to the "biosphere" blend of cellular and non-cellular based structures in collective movement (Iijima's previously released book-length project, appropriately titled Animiate, Inanimate Aims, suggests this space as well). Where language can become soft and malleable, or rock hard, abutting, but sensous and generative (from the poem "Tertium Organum"... "When she / began a sexual relationship with the earth"). "Metamorphic" : "of a rock" in the process of life, of which the inanimate is a part, cycled through a process of birth, shaping, and decay. Brenda's work has always startled me in its intensity and integrity; it is a poetry that snowballs, expands in cystalline blocks of atoms, grows antennae, and consumes itself; all the while the author is there but never directing, forcing, or packaging the language. Witnessing the process is delightful (for me, and, I'm thinking, for Brenda as well).

I am eagerly awaiting the release of the Iijima-curated eco language reader, a book of essays dealing with the intersection of global ecological disaster and contemporary forms of poetic thought and practice. What is, in part, suggested by these two new works marked shift in focus for contemporary poets concerning themselves with the natural world (that albatross the "nature poem"), both perceived by and shaped by humans; less observational/meditational & more enactive; language mirroring and marking whats beneath, a shimmering laketop and beneath the surface, a roiling organic soup. Anyways, sounds like a real treat to read and contemplate in this cold slow boil of a Phila winter.

If Not Metamorphic: out now from Ahsahta Press

eco language reader: out now from Nightboat/Portable Press at Yo Yo Labs

also: Brenda's book of poetry Revv. You'll--ution came out in November of last year from the excellent "Displaced Press; a beautiful combination of photography and writing that seeks to revisit sites of waste, violence, obscured history and the wild (stuffed) animals living among us.

pps: Check out Brenda's amazing art/textual pieces featured in con/crescent 1

- jamie townsend.