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POESY Magazine
Category:
Poetry
Copyright: Jun 1 2003
Dear Poets, Writers and Readers,
July 1st is the new release of POESY #20!!! This issue of Poesy is dedicated to Lawrence J. Holder who at 86, passed away April 19, 2003. Lawrence was a well-respected Public Relations executive in New York City, and a veteran of World War II. He was also the father of our Boston editor, Douglas Holder.
The web site http://www.poesy.org is ready to be posted on July 1st!! Check out the intro!
This issue is Guest Edited by famed small press poet, William Taylor, Jr. and features an interview with poet, John Sweet. John notes, “I live with my wife and our young son here in the wastelands of upstate New York. I've been writing for 19 years now, publishing in the small press for 13. I hate all schools of poetry, and try to keep my distance from any that seem to be trying to get too cozy with me.”
Doug Holder immerses in the 96 Inc. Artists’ Collective. It is an attractive magazine with a mix of poets and writers that span the age and cultural spectrum. There is a definite urban sensibility to the work presented!
Poetry this issue by: robert underwood, john sweet, jo ann amlin, michael kriesel, lyn lifshin, r.e. brock, nate graziano, lindsay wilson, n.l.a. brock, taylor graham, todd moore, john dorsey, b.z. niditch, alan catlin, brian morrisey, chuck nevsimal, christopher robin, gunther c. fogle, a.d. winans, doug holder...
We are blessed with the stunning photography of john bower, t. kilgore splake, annie alonzi, a.d. winans
Sincerly,
Brian Morrisey
editor/publisher
Excerpt
Interview with John Sweet:
Your poetry has a very strong and distinct voice. What has helped to shape it? Is it still evolving? Do you experiment with different approaches fromtime to time?
I'd been writing for 3 or 4 years before I decided to start getting serious and see if I couldn't make some kind of lasting impression I spent hours in all of the local bookstores, reading everything in the Poetry sections to see what was there. In the end, I really didn't like any of it. None of it spoke to me in terms of being someone who came of age in the shit hole of Reagan's America. I wanted to write something more concerned with immediacy and gut feeling than with polish and poise. Even writers who 20 were described as "gritty" and "stark" on the blurbs on the back jackets of their books seemed pretty tame. My influences were (and still are) mostly musical and visual. I wanted to try and transform the ideas of early punk and post-punk music into something written. I love the early Abstract Expressionists, the Surrealists, those art movements that wanted nothing to do with the "tradition" of art and wanted, instead, to create something entirely new. When I hit a brick wall and am totally out of things to say, I like to start playing around with new approaches to writing. Most of my experiments don’t seem to amount to much, and will probably never see the printed page, but they serve as a means of getting me back on track. I think evolution is an important idea for any writer. My earliest work was very traditional in approach. It had punctuation, capitalization, etc. etc. I kept wanting to simplify, to get a much more stream-of-consciousness approach. Where my writing goes from here is anyone's guess..
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