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  #1  
Unread 02-25-2012, 12:56 PM
R. Nemo Hill's Avatar
R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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Default John Marcus Powell on The Hypertexts

Four poems by the incomparable John Marcus Powell are up on the Hypertexts.

No other voice quite like his!

Nemo

Last edited by R. Nemo Hill; 02-25-2012 at 01:01 PM.
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Unread 02-25-2012, 01:18 PM
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Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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Good on Mike Burch!
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Unread 02-25-2012, 05:00 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Unreadable crap. Are you guys crazy?
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Unread 02-25-2012, 05:04 PM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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Tim, once and for all, there is far more in the universe than is encompassed by your provincial philosophy. Yours is a very, very small world. You like it that way, fine. But do not impose it upon others. And do not dare try to shrink mine. Go out and shoot something in your little backyard.

Nemo
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Unread 02-25-2012, 06:00 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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My little world encompasses a fondness for Nemo Hill and Quincy Lehr, not this imposter. I think Mike Burch has done his many worthy contributors a disservice by including this guy in our number.
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Unread 02-25-2012, 06:08 PM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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I do think you are a hopeless case, Tim.
It is very hard to respect your opinion when it is so invariably couched in such hilariously and predictably self-serving terms. Ah, the sullied purity of the Hypertexts--what rot! And as for "including this guy in our number", I make it clear here that I am not and have never been a member of whatever club this is you are the self-appointed spokesman of. Count me out, thank-you very much.

Nemo

Last edited by R. Nemo Hill; 02-25-2012 at 06:12 PM.
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Unread 02-25-2012, 06:09 PM
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This could be a fascinating aesthetic exercise. Absent issues of personality and geography, could those who like this work take a few moments to explain why they regard it as more than "unreadable crap" or, if they prefer, interesting prose?

-o-
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Unread 02-25-2012, 06:26 PM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Colin, I'll grant it's stimulating prose. Poetry, no. Nemo, I am spokesman for no club, only Tim Murphy.
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Unread 02-25-2012, 06:29 PM
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It certainly strikes one as prose-like in structure and in the thoroughness with which it tries to encompass digressions of thought. And yet is is so dense that its lineation (eccentric as that may be) is almost necessary. But then if you isolate the images themselves they seems far more like poetry, and the logic is far from linear, making inspired and fiendishly frequent and unexpected leaps. On another level it reads like a dramatic script for monologue (and indeed Powell is a consummate live performer with a crooked classical flair).

Another thing that recommends it is its outsider status: a voice we do not usually hear in the academy, and yet one that is not harnessing the beatnik or slam traditions that such outsider voices usually adopt, but one that is entirely confident in creating its own queer tones and queer terms.

It is also raises dry wit to the nth degree.

Hey, I'm not saying it's for everyone, but there is no need to get all ex-communicative about, to take any voice not tuned to your own musical scale as a personal affront to the entire art, as an 'imposture'.

But let me quote another more mythical critic:

"The narrative is rife with languid detour, the subject often scandalous, and the language inflected with the sort of eccentrically personal rigor that can never be counterfeited.

The style is one-of-a-kind, they-broke-the-mould, genre-less, self-tailored, one-size-fits-no-one-but—, one-line-barely-fits-in-the-margins-of-the-goddamned-page. Perhaps those who have heard the tone and timber of the voice will be less surprised by the switchbacks and U-turns, by the comet trails and off-the-map collisions of these lines of print—but even they will never entirely escape from delicious bewilderments when confronted with the irrefutable evidence of these unruly texts jostling for paper parking space. The tempo is allegro attenuato.

Crimes are committed affably, forgiven fervently, exploited shamelessly. And those who commit them are liberally rewarded—though, most often, with nothing more tangible than the family jewels.

The jewels are somewhat tarnished, but still scintillating in proper light. That the proper lighting is not always available is a fact faced without petulance or regret. The cookies crumble, the milk spills, the planes crash and burn, the lies drift and settle, but Helen more-often-than-not returns with at least a horse-and-half-full of hot men.

The cry is one part cock-a-doodle-doo, to two parts coo-coo-a-choo. The flavour is somewhere between absinthe and strong black tea. The music is Mahler’s lost symphony for solo accordion. Occasionally there are jalapeños in the dark, merciful mineral waters in the white wine, bothersome gravels in the kidney, and a mushroom cloud on the horizon. The voice is more audible the more intimately it whispers. There is, at times, a bit of spittle—yet the saliva itself is a rare blend, a deep rich brew of sea foam on distant shores, of Bardic dews and daring oral vaudevilles.

Sacred cows and lambs are led to slaughter, stuffed, spiced, braised, sometimes even pickled—then served with loaves & fishes & chips & anti-retro-virals in the lobbies and restrooms of hospitals and community centers of ill repute. One is convinced that no real animals were harmed in the making of these poems.

The man in these poems, the poet in residence, is irresponsibly irrepressible, his wit barbed with warmth, his bait compulsively edible, his verve seemingly infinite. The Coat of Arms is Torch Argent, on Field Azul, within Cracked Heart Oro: silver torch, blue field, heart of gold. The motto, in Letters Négro on Banner Lavender, translated from the original Latin reads as follows: “Stitched with honor, oft besmirched—” followed, in pencil, by a phone number and an obscene suggestion scribbled in an almost illegible script. Scholars contend that this was added at a later date, perhaps as recently as yesterday.

Like any well or reservoir, the water at the top can be brackishly intoxicating, sweet and sour with season upon season of ferment. Yeasty and lusty on the surface, various objects can be found floating in the pool from time to time—empty beers cans and tequila bottles, dead leaves and insects, an old jockstrap, the cellophane wrappers of candy accepted from strangers, the usual scums and jisms of a life led to the fullest. But for those not averse to the occasional dive into murky waters, the realms below are cool and clear with the welcome sting of sobriety after an equally welcome debauch. To all your potential readers, John, and they should be legion, I say: “Drink up, boys and girls! This is how it is done!” "

(E. Brille Beaumont: author, Welsh Pirate On The High Seas)
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  #10  
Unread 02-25-2012, 06:49 PM
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Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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I've seen John Marcus perform many times, and while the cadences aren't metrical, neither are they prose. Smoke a joint, read it out loud, and you'll see what I mean.
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