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Not So Fast Robespierre
In
Not so Fast Robespierre , Buffalo's Johnny Appleseed of publishing lays
out a public and private map of Buffalo's (and his personal) community.
With his selected Western New York School and personal support system
in place, he moves onto "The Book of Life", which, as always, proceeds
disaster as Gatza battles through—rightly or wrongly—the "Cataclysm
535". Kevin Thurston
By
placing equal stress on the pleasures and duties of friendship and the
threat of natural catastrophe, Not So Fast, Robespierre rescues
intimacy from self-involvement and affection from affectation,
reinvigorating the confessional poem. Frank O'Hara once created
convivial letters out of a collaged New York City life; today, in his
labyrinth of lyric, email exchanges, notes, memoir, conspiracy and
history, Geoffrey Gatza has achieved the poetry of the search engine
and I.M. Evan Willner
How can
Geoffrey Gatza fit so much love between two cardboard covers?
Not So Fast Robespierre snakes us through a world of poets, neighbors,
teachers and muses, all with a raw devotion we would do well to wear on
our own coat sleeves. This series of remembrances does not
discriminate in spreading out for us equal measures of admiration and
lessons learned because, in the end, "Everyone gets a gold star and
cake in the friendly garden.” Amy King |
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I wear a figleaf over my penis
An
altogether wonderful wedding of wit and wry invention, this book brings
together all the insistent tokens of our times. Geoffrey Gatza is
genially perceptive witness and he writes with charming good humor, His
"show and tell" is what it's always all about. — Robert Creeley
Not
many have reviewed this item, but recently I found myself taking it off
the shelf and diving into it with a full heart. Maybe the title puts
people off, but if you can overlook its, what would you say, purposeful
gaucherie, I think you might find a lot of substance in what Geoffrey
Gatza has to say, and just as importantly, you will be moved and
impressed by the ways he's come up with for saying it all. — Kevin Killian
Soft G, hard G. Geoffrey Gatza is a part of speech. (Pass it on.) The
act of wearing anything these days is revolutionary. GG enlightens with
delight: he can paint, can say, can trill. He can remind while singing
| stinging. He lettercrafts; he hovercrafts. I remember hearing
Geoffrey in Ohio for Avant 2 in '02. Embodiment of spring in which the
line between strong brain was of indelible dimensioned ink. GG started
a rumor on Here Comes Everybody that he writes in the nude. You think?
I hope so.
—Sheila E. Murphy |
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Thanksgiving 2006: a feast to honor John Ashbery, by Geoffrey Gatza is
part of an annual thanksgiving poem series. This is five installments
in that series which include menu poems for:
Thanksgiving 2002 Charles Bernstein
Thanksgiving 2003 Forrest Gander
Thanksgiving 2004 Kent Johnson
Thanksgiving 2005 Robert Creeley
Thanksgiving 2006 John Ashbery
See
the full web project at: http://www.blazevox.org/thanks.htm
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Black Diamond Golden Boy Takes Bull By Horns
To
hold any one of Geoffrey Gatza’s books is to hold an object which
invites and delights, which brings us pleasure through an
intellectually driven but slapstick brand of humor. Like that of the
New York School, Gatza’s humor does not negate the seriousness of his
project. Rather, his humor underscores the gravity of the work,
deceptively drawing the reader into textual matrices that willfully
confuse myth and the real, forcing us to rethink the peculiar way in
which myth and representation act in concert to shape the real.
n his latest work, Black Diamond Golden Boy Takes Bull By Horns, we are
introduced to a similarly complex cast of characters both real and
imagined: Ezra Pound, Merlin and his mentor Bleys, Percival, the Lady
of the Lake, Andy Dick, the Fisher King, Edward Hicks and Sir Thomas
Malory, among possibly dozens of others. Again we find the
juxtaposition of myth and the real — perhaps even an eventual synthesis
of the two. But the two are not confused as they are in Dreadful
Quietude. Here myth and the real compliment one another in a
dialectical, contrapuntal play of verses residing within the
architecture of the seasonal cycle — that is, the book is comprised of
five sections, each section corresponding to a season. Since there are
five sections and not four, the season which begins the cycle is the
same one that ends it. —Richard Owens
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Dreadful Quietude: A confused saturation of Pre 9/11 America & Supermen
Geoffrey
Gatza's poem, set in 70 cantos, relating to the years of Superman's
life and death in print, 1938 through 1993, details the 20th century
American poetic style and motive. This is a post-9/11 reading of
America and it's un-erring depiction of what is right and just. Pick up
your copy today! What's the matter? Have you nothing to say about
America? Do you not dare be grandiose? This work is grandiose if
nothing else. Here, Gatza masterfully concocts an intelligent and lucid
saturation job as his contribution to the American avant garde in a
time when this tends to be passé. Dreadful Quietude marries the gusto
of a comic book with a collection of fascinating esoterica culled from
100 years of western history. Gatza's poetry is unassuming and engaged,
this work marks him out as a poet to keep an eye on. [Aloysius Werner; Contemporary Poetry]
From
Canto 70: "As it opens, the cityscape turns black." It: the poem
itself; the American sky as varied lights of dawn encroach. Cityscape:
the literal city of the poem; the "city on a hill," as it were, our
nation microcosmically seen as a series of highs and lows, peaks and
valleys, spires and skyscrapers. Turns black: the buildings shadowed by
cirrus and cumulus; the decay of this, our 21st American Century,
already a failure thanks to the most venal presidency we will ever
know. Geoffrey Gatza's got a solution: the re-birth of the greatest
"good guy" to save us all. Gatza just so happens to birth a new kind of
poetic narrative, while he's at it. Meet the challenge to dare, dream a
functional American future rooted in past ideals seemingly long dead,
and read Dreadful Quietude.
[ Ethan Paquin ]
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Kenmore : Poem Unlimited
Poetic look at Kenmore, NY; Gatza's hometown and current residence. Four volumes of very different poetic looks at the village. Mythocpoetic, Photopoem, Found poetry and memories and a final ghost book. Check it out now — its free!
http://www.geoffreygatza.com/kenmore.htm |
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Geoffery
Gatza, the chief editor at BlazeVOX, has clearly made the press and its
online magazine a “refuge” as its subtitle claims. The press exerts an
incredible energy about its writers and what it calls “post-avant
poetries and fiction.” Gatza and his crew make creative work free and
conveniently accessed because they want the work to be read widely and
taken seriously. What distinguishes BlazeVOX is not only the ease of
procuring a book—whether by purchasing it or downloading it—but that
BlazeVOX proudly advertises itself as part of a literary vanguard in
both the books it publishes and through the modes of their production.
Most small presses use print-on-demand (POD) practices; BlazeVOX
suggests that such practices are commensurate with the
post-avant-garde. This review might begin to speak of the kind of
attention BlazeVOX hopes to construct and the attentions it challenges
by looking at three recent poetry titles from the press: Joseph S.
Cooper’s Autobiography of a Stutterer, Amy King’s I’m the Man Who Loves
You, and Jared Schickling’s Aurora.
While it’s
not clear how BlazeVOX defines “post-avant,” we might assume something
about the experimental nature of the work, that it challenges the
dominance of bourgeois art through both the practice of making art and
the production of it. The BlazeVOX website works as a hub for several
different poetic routes, routes that offer different modes of
engagement. There is the BlazeVOX “blogoscope,” which produces more
immediate conversation, links, and notes from Gatza; the free PDF
issues of the BlazeVOX literary magazine; and a link to the Podcast,
which features one of the press’s authors reading his or her work. The
press is only one facet of BlazeVOX. While BlazeVOX offers some free
titles, downloaded directly from its website as PDF files in the
“Mobilis in Mobili Series,” most titles are purchased, including the
ones under review, through Amazon (with the exception of Schickling’s
book, which can be downloaded for free or purchased as a book). Whether
by going to the Amazon website or by purchasing the book directly from
BlazeVOX, the book is printed and sent to the customer.
POD,
used by small presses and some university and academic presses,
publishes books digitally when they are ordered rather than in bulk. It
is important to note that POD assumes digitization, but print-on-demand
might also include books made the old-fashioned way—hand bound or
letter-pressed. The value of such books lies in what amounts to their
inconvenience, in their object-ness; thus, the mode of their production
determines in part how the book is cared for as well as how the work
within it is read. (This fetishism in the so-called age of mechanical
reproduction is very much at stake in a discussion of POD and, if not
for space limitations, would be taken up here). While POD is a common
practice among small presses, it also seems to be a point of debate.
The aspersion realizes itself in two understandable contentions: that
POD books are of poorer quality; and that POD potentially gluts the
small-press, experimental-poetry world and that this glut is made
possible by the ease of publishing that comes with POD.
In
a recent post on the DIY Poetry Publishing Cooperative blog (Sunday,
July 1), Shanna Compton offers a series of rebuttals to those attitudes
that view POD as a lesser form of publishing. The blog post
serendipitously intersects with this review of BlazeVOX by addressing
the very assumptions and values that BlazeVOX uniquely forefronts and
demonstrates—that POD is a practice worth reckoning with if not only as
a mode of production but also as a discourse through which to discuss
art.
The method coincides with the other kinds of POD
publishing—like the New York Public Library’s “Espresso Book Machine.”
Beginning on July 2, 2007, library patrons have access through the
internet to physical, bound and cut reproductions of the 200,000 titles
in the public domain, within 6 to 10 minutes. The machine looks a
little like a prototypical computer from the 50s. Couple this
(soon-to-be obsolete) bulk with the book machine’s name, and it is no
wonder why one angle of reproach comes from the fear that convenient
publishing and the impending obsolescence of other kinds of printing
produces off-handed work and consequently off-handed reading.
Compton
addresses such a fear in her DIY post: not only do some mainstream
presses use POD strategies, but also POD maintains a responsibility to
the book and the work that mass production cannot. Compton’s reasoning
is compelling. POD produces less waste, saves warehouse and shipping
costs, and enables a single person or a small group of persons to make
books they care about because it is cheaper from the start. Given these
attributes, it makes sense that BlazeVOX would tout itself as a refuge
for writers whose work demands careful attention (partly because its
experimental nature garners little attention from traditional
publishers) and for those who already value the ethics of small
presses—such ethics being a commitment to innovative writing, to
involving the writer with the production of his or her work, and to
encouraging risky behavior/ideas that might otherwise have poor
economic repercussions.
All three of the BlazeVOX
books under consideration in this essay enact these values. These are
Cooper’s and Schickling’s first books, both of which demand open
spaces—generically and formally—through which to read. King’s is one of
four of her titles available on BlazeVOX, suggesting that the writer
and her work have found a harbor—not only a place of refuge but a space
in which to cast off.
J’Lyn Chapman
University of Denver
BlazeVOX and the Publishing Practices of the Post-Avant
http://reconfigurations.blogspot.com/2007/11/jlyn-chapman-blazevox-and-publishing.html
The Dog Ate My Homework
Or, what the artist does with the award
I was outside the Indian casino smoking a cigar waiting for my coke dealer to show. I pulled out my new iPhone to check the time, when a game of craps started up with the valets. I had some extra cash and since I might be waiting a while I put odds on the shooter. I had four to one he'd crap out but tonight wasn't my night at all.
I was trading bills with this guy when we make small talk about him in concrete and me in poetry. I told him about the award, the limelight, the drugs and women. I told him about the publishing and the work itself. He was surprised to see what small stakes there were and how come I don't stop in and get me a real job with him. He was all right and had plenty of luck. So why not.
Why not indeed, I had so much work in front of me that setting rebar was not on my plate. Concrete contractors have skyscraper souls but poetry is kin to magic. And magicks not performed are mental fantasias. And fantasy is not work, and work is all that we have in front of us.
We all have those funny little projects that sit in the back of the brain nudging at you. And gratefully I have got the chance to make good use of the time granted to me and work out those old knots of work to have an untangled mind for the future! So here is a presentation of the completed works and the accompanying PDF. The Thanksgiving one you'll have to wait until dinner is served! These works are here for fun and please know that they are under consideration of editors and publishers. This is to show some of my new work without littering BlazeVOX with it and to show what it is that I am doing with this magical time for creations! And it is also to show that I am not fucking off in hotels with hookers. Please feel free to email and suggestions, complaints or eager willingness to consider any for publication. Be well and thank you for taking a look!
Be careful! Some of these are data heavy. Please check to see the file size before downloading :-)
Love, Geoffrey
2008-04-23
Geoffrey
Gatza is a young poet of the era of the so-called post-avant. Future
historians of poetry will no doubt note how the post-avant is primarily
characterized by the prolific number of literary Tupperware© parties
its members hold in various locales around the country. At these
parties, as is well known, transparent Tupperware© containers of
various sizes and shapes are excitedly passed around, their slightly
varied forms and sizes avidly appraised, their snap-on covers lovingly
fondled, the names of the different owners of said containers uttered
with breathless, “you-are-one-of-us” approbation. Historians will no
doubt note, as well, that Geoffrey Gatza was never invited to these
parties, and that his lack of popularity was, in the main, his own
doing. For when he wasn't in the kitchen cooking (he is a chef by trade
and a master one), he chose to spend his time alone someplace,
designing, crafting, and forging a kind of strange (for lack of better
description) rocket backpack, which in a field of poppies he one day
strapped himself into and fired up with a click of his Zippo.
Historians will note what a few on the ground amazingly observed
(though not, of course, those “insiders” at the parties, blocked as
they were by the soundproofed walls and roofs around them): A flaming
dark form shooting up at tremendous speed, lifting higher and higher,
getting smaller and smaller, and then, of a sudden, at a tremendous
height, exploding in a giant, blinding flash, sending thousands of
pieces of contrailed debris slowly spinning down out of the sky around
a central, slowly falling ball of light… Oh, but no, don't be sad. For
the historians will not mourn his fate. They will observe, rather, and
quite matter-of-factly, that in the era under discussion, nearly all
poets, whether of the School of Quietude or the post-avant, chose a
safe, flat, and authorized path, while a tiny few, like Geoffrey Gatza,
elected to gloriously immolate themselves far above the Gravity of
Literature, and way beyond the slow, demeaning death of those who are
satisfied, in their fleeting existences, to remain there.
—Kent Johnson |
