Edited By Nick Piombino - Goodreads

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Introduction “Long stone streets inanimate, repetitive machine Crash cookie cutting dynamo rows of soulless replica Similitudes brooding tank-like in Army Depots Exactly the same exactly the same exactly the same with no purpose but grimness & overwhelming force of robot obsession, our slaves are not alive & we become their sameness as they surround us—the long stone streets inanimate...” —Allen Ginsberg/ The Fall of America As the pressures of contemporary existence grow ever more complex, demanding and inexorable, artistic responses to oppressive social and internal experience have struggled to display and disassemble the links that artificially control and bind us. Kafka's beetle, Orwell's Big Brother, PK Dick's androids, TS Eliot's “patient etherized upon a table”, Ashbery's “Leaving the Atocha Station...steel infected bumps the screws everywhere...Time, progress and good sense”, Gertrude Stein's; “I am I because my little dog knows me but, creatively speaking the little dog knowing that you are you and your recognizing that he knows, that is what destroys creation”, all evoke representations of the mechanized, robotic and mindless conformism of much contemporary life. While journalists, politicians, psychologists, psychoanalysts and sociologists uncover, analyze and suggest ways to remediate the symptoms and causes of such reduced efficacy of human will, it is left to poets, writers, film makers, playwrights and artists to reveal and to dramatically portray, in its many dimensions, the way individuals cope, react, get wounded and occasionally transcend such encroaching, mechanized deadening of the human spirit. Evocations of such numbing and paralyzing social forces abound in this issue of OCHO. Laynie Browne's “metallic chatter”, Abigail Child's “Too many machines/head pieces attached”, Joe Elliot’s “When I fell into the air/ your telephone was in slow motion/and the city said 'I am machine!'”, Laura Elrick's “pile of tulip-covered 7
abies”, Elizabeth Fodaski's “Special deliveries hand/picked on the assembly/line”, Joanna Fuhrman's "be aware that robot leaders are always blind", Anthony Hawley's “the radio/doesn't work”, Drew Gardner's “Silence as a gesture is not pornographic/with all the wires and parts that are inside”, Jessica Grim's “Science ungrounds and/washes against us in the horrible/tide”, Michael Lally's “white girls hopelessly in bondage”, Bill Marsh's “trapdoor/of metaphor”, Douglas Messerli's “Which isn't to say/pleasure exactly screws the head tight to memory", Christina Strong's “Special machine-code. Had to/offer/it”, and finally, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino's “clothespin soldiers/marching in place” all attest to the contemporary poet's abiding concern with depicting and transcending the injurious effects of today's steel hardened, impersonal culture. As machines replace traditionally human functions, many people unconsciously, and others quite consciously, strive to become more like them, a process I once termed “machine envy.” While cultural distancing, social derealization, corporate confabulation and synthetic substitution drive and lure so many towards an ever more mechanized and soulless existence, outspoken, inventive poets like those in this issue of OCHO are working energetically to redirect themselves and us towards the pleasures and pains of thinking for ourselves, and the spontaneous and generative living that is the gift of insight. <strong>Nick</strong> <strong>Piombino</strong> December, 2008 8
Page 1: Edited By Nick Piombino
Page 6 and 7: Featuring Introduction by Nick Piom
Page 10 and 11: from The Ivory Hour Laynie Browne A
Page 12 and 13: Reincarnation. The cost of these dr
Page 14 and 15: Containing nothing. Am I to walk? W
Page 16 and 17: about him through a correspondence
Page 18 and 19: was find the man with a decent hair
Page 20 and 21: Starla Smiles, somewhat visciously.
Page 22 and 23: out of a bottle Wall round Margarit
Page 24 and 25: Gyno Colonoscopy Which is a certain
Page 26 and 27: R and B solos Yodeling Leisure Ouij
Page 28 and 29: lay out devastation Armed men jolly
Page 30 and 31: Happen with good conscience Meaning
Page 32 and 33: cup to light or Moving Falling apar
Page 34 and 35: Test Still Peculiar and obvious ung
Page 36 and 37: World Subsuming conscience Sense Co
Page 38 and 39: Homework #15 Suggestion is a robot.
Page 40 and 41: #19 If thoughts are energy and ener
Page 42 and 43: that was terrifically ripped, that
Page 44 and 45: for glee, for having been not. To b
Page 46 and 47: #24 The present could not have come
Page 48 and 49: (from) An Instruction Manual for Ki
Page 50 and 51: Some Serious Frags Department store
Page 52 and 53: On the hood On the hood of an old b
Page 54 and 55: A big fat ugly A big fat ugly ungra
Page 56 and 57: Document 1. document suggests the o
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a speckled vintage splattered with
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spread-eagled in pillow rim breath
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the gerund is a constant process: s
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If stillness as in a “quartz cont
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Bar none—this land- locked kaleid
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What say you, comrades? If none oth
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My all-too-contemptuous gaze dynami
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hard to describe this creep- ing fe
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No swoon soundtrack for this farewe
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liquid within. If you dream of a ci
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Plain Sight I hid the 20 th century
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The Joke A standup comedian tells a
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Too bad. Too much carry-on luggage,
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Mirrors are failed entrances. Just
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from THE FIRE ESCAPE 3 Drew Gardner
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from the chart to describe why thei
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do not miss Cythera before sunrise
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FURL ACCESS my spirits were all bou
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SAFTY LINE I need to find out how I
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THE POINT OF POETRY IS TO ENTRENCH
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YOU BASICALLY HAVE TO CATCH THE LIT
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BY WHATEVER MISGIVINGS most of the
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prey to some hypochondriac encourag
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Winter.1.06 The divides soften here
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microbial crinolines enclose iota e
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the acidity of tonal remorse met la
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dear inspirational speaker: we feel
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even more immaculate length of voic
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dissolving into tameness in respons
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SAMMY’S BOWERY FOLLIES Michael La
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My sister and the Marys know I’ve
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Joan asks ma to make me go to bed.
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I appreciate what the Marys are try
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He approaches us all cocky, declari
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ecause he told my father I was too
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than you were before the black out.
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which sounds more likely, but for d
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cousins grew up, but their neighbor
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Douglas Messerli THE COMPOSITION OF
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SOONER BEGIN TO THE ALMOST LASTS
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STARS OFFER THE TREES THEIR CONFIDE
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AS IF THE MUSIC WERE THE ONLY TAUNT
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A DOVE Here, hold it! Go ahead, in
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thankful to ride in the back, i swe
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my work will record very different
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work, why such confusion? I have bi
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Contrapuntal Christina Strong Bit r
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mr super stupid head verify voyages
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and vector fodder look forward to s
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with these extensions examples excu
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Royal typewriter Litton defense con
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That’s the sad thing about you Pe
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familiar. Passing fast, in jolly ta
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in a wheel a father, and a son, a w
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a life, by other means can rest, or
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the Helen and Georgina the lips tha
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CONTRIBUTORS Laynie Browne is the a
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Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino is th
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