| Your octopus is growing
larger, more dangerous. These proportions are our mightiest—we even
have two winters. There are a latta reasons to be scared.
Don't be. We'll swim you through this. As this is the third
issue, here are three important things you should know:
- We scratched a deep itch for Ronald Johnson. If you're
unfamiliar with Ronald Johnson, we hope this issue will now be your
friendly primer. If you're already a Johnson fan, perhaps then
we'll be gravy. Either way, we're thrilled to present you with
"Blocks to be Arranged in a Pyramid," a major poem from the
latter stage of Johnson's amazing career. Wanting to learn more,
we asked Peter O'Leary, Johnson's literary executor, some questions,
and he's gone beyond generosity in his response. In addition,
Joshua Corey and Aaron McCollough also pay their respects to the man.
And we've improvised a Ronald Johnson alphabet to help guide you towards
a further understanding and a deeper embrace.
- We've juiced up our critical pages (what we on the inside
are calling our "critical squids") and hope to continually
do so for future issues (feel free to query us any time with ideas or
proposals in this regard). Here, Jeff Encke tells us why Frank O'Hara
is in no way a manifestor and Anastasios Kozaitis tells us how John
Koethe's yawp echoes eternally. Your friendly editors take close
looks at the latest offerings from Gordon, Gizzi, Rohrer, and Mattawa;
we also try to recover, from dark watery graves, books from Wong May
and Edward Dahlberg.
- There is a lot of poetry and prose here (as much
as four normal-sized octopuses!) so take it in slowly—we recommend
quarter portions. We're proud to feature a lengthy section from
Jaime Saenz's The Night, translated by Forrest Gander and Kent
Johnson. In addition, here is a rundown of some of the work featured:
an excerpt from Eleni Sikelianos' much anticipated The California
Poem; a bizarre, moving and unsettling longer poem from Matt Henriksen;
exceptionally strong new work by Ben Lerner, Joyelle McSweeney, Peter
Jay Shippy, Julie Larios, Peter O'Leary and other younger poets; excellent
translations of Zafer Senocak and Yang Lian; exciting work from Octopus
literary hero Jerome Rothenberg; Kent Johnson's profoundly unsettling
war poem . . .
So please go patiently, go cautiously with the map you found
in issue #2, into these pyramids and beyond. We assure you these
treasures are not cursed.
--Z & T
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