Hoboeye internship!

Having met today with its literary editor, Mitchell McInnis, I have just been offered an internship at the literary and arts magazine Hoboeye! (www.hoboeye.com). The position exactly matches my interest in and passion for both the editorial and community-building aspects of poetry and art, the formal mechanics and fostering relationships, the written and conversational communications. The organic sense of community Hoboeye fosters and I will be a part of nurturing is very much what I sought in moving west: to retain substance while linking poetry to other artistics forms, of taking the page and allowing it to be heard, witnessed, and experienced as a form of shared communication. It feels like one of potentially many doors that are opening in Portland, each allowing access to larger parts of the "the house we live in" (to quote Hafiz), each somehow connected to each other. I've finally been redeeming my own literary passions from the solitude of actual writing and submitting, which should only be a part of the life of a fully-functioning, socially-aware artist...

A Sign on the Road

I'm pleased to announce Amarillo Bay has accepted my poem A Sign on the Road for publication in an upcoming issue. This will be the third poem I have published with them over the last year, making me feel a bit like a regular contributor. Please check them out at www.amarillobay.org!

A Molotkov's reading at Three Friends

Here is a video of Tola's reading from the same mic on Mon. 10/19/09. His readings, like his poetry, are a great inspiration to me, and I am thrilled to be working with him on birthing our own literarly movement....

Video of Reading from this Monday

Here is a video of my reading of a few new poems at Three Friends Coffeehouse in Portland on 10/19/09. Please enjoy, comment, and/or critique!

Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg

Yesterday I picked up a copy of this new book of poetry, the author's second, from Powell's. This sophmore journey from the founder of Octopus magazine (www.octopusmagazine.com), resonated with me immediately in a way few contemporary American poetry books are able. Within nearly every poem Schomburg speaks beauty, both natural and human, with a devilish tongue. In fact, he draws no distinction between the natural and human worlds, nor the holy and unholy, as they intertwine in every line. A woman loses her arms, from which grow tree limbs. A grotesque image straight from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, to be sure, but this is not the masochistic work of man. It is nature within man. Eventually she transforms into a tree and it is beatiful. Elsewhere two people give themselves to the bones of a coyote, another mysterious concept described in such natural, holistic terms, which thenceforth transform the dead coyote in a god of the forest. There is something of Nick Cave's lyrical genius in this. Something of Native American recognition that there are not two, or more, worlds but one, without dividing lines, without a black or a white element.

I would very much suggest it to any reader, even those without a firm grasp nor love of poetry.

Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg
Black Ocean Press- www.blackocean.org
2009

Word Temple

Upon researching Copper Canyon Press for a paper, I realized something quite beautiful about their chosen symbol, which all have seen countless times, as Copper Cayon is a bastion for poetry in America, a symbol itself of how we cannot give up on poetry audiences, that such a venture can succeed both critically and popularly.



The Chinese character for poetry includes two parts. 'Word' and 'Temple'. The accuracy and, in its own way, poetry of this Chinese conception of poetry is something I feel often lacks in our contemporary Western culture. Is this not what each of us seeks in our own writing? To take human words and allow them by our own hands to transcend, not unlike a pagoda, to encompass a basic human experience, to speak directly to both the nature of us and the nature of something greater? Yet have I found a more fitting description for what poetry should have always been and must still be considered today, despite our mass media culture. Words can still ascend, transcend, transform. To say something all can understand intuitively, across our many divides, something all can feel, may be the closest thing we have to Godliness, even for we agnostics....

Upcoming Reading- Mon. 10/19

This Monday, 10/19, at Three Friends Coffeehouse (201 SE 12th Ave, Portland, OR), Tola, Shawn, and I will triple-header their open mic. I think I'll attempt poems written earlier today, which I'm excited about and believe are rather strong...but we'll see. I look forward to the three of us reading together and hope others are able to come for the mic or support!

New Poet's Ink out now!!

The Sept. 2009 issue of Poet's Ink is now available online at www.poetsink.com/poetsinkreview/poetsinkreviewsep09.htm. Please check it out. My poem Hypotheticals headlines this issue....

Here's a glimpse...


Hypotheticals

The sturdy iron pipes supporting our city
will rust. The immutable blast of lilacs
now pummeling our senses
will evaporate into Autumn.
The blood on Achilles’ sword
has long since crusted brown,
cracked, flaked into nonexistence.
Even the sword itself
has regressed to written word.
We are left to imagine its luster.

Day’s sonorous whine, already night.
At night, we mortar the bricks
of impermanence. What if history
gorged more on truth than myth
and our glass-framed bodies
would never crush beneath pestle
to a gentle whiff of bone?
What if our eyes and hearts
spoke the language of shared morning
and for one morning we agreed on an answer?
I’m left to savor him here, amongst inane hypotheticals-
my child left unborn.

Fall 2009 Other Rooms issue out!

As of today, the Fall 2009 issue of Other Rooms is available online at http://otherroomspress.blogspot.com. Please check it out. I'm pleased to see my poem Gregor Samsa upon its pages...

A. Molotkov Reading!

Please check out my friend Tola's wonderful reading from Three Friends Coffeehouse this Monday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIVXkXuzm1E&feature=autofb