Here's a three-minute condensattion of "My Left Thumb" using Slammin' John's poem "Quadriplegic I Am" and some of his musical improvisations. I put this together for a couple of contests. Please go to filmaka.com, register and vote for us in the "What On Earth" contest. There are two $10,000 cash prizes at stake, and the drinks are on me if we win.....
The Riverbank Poetry Project will treat the community to some industrial-strength poetry at its next meeting.
Matt Hart, editor of “Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking and Light Industrial Safety,” will be the featured poet 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Fairfield Lane Library, 411 Wessel Drive, Fairfield.
Hart began “Forklift” in 1995 with co-editor Eric Appleby, who takes care of the design and publishing while Hart focuses on the content. It grew out of a poetry journal called they started while undergraduate students at Ball State University.
“We both moved to Cincinnati (after graduation) and decided to start a journal again — mainly to publish the work of our friends,” Hart said. “But now, we regularly publish National Book Award winners and poets of national and international reputation.”
They called it “Forklift” because they were obsessed with the idea of big machines doing hard labor, and added the “Ohio” because they wanted it to be place-based.
“So it began to take on this mythic quality of an actual place in Ohio,” he said. “We added cooking to it because the language of recipes and the language of poetry is related in ways. Both are very specialized — not a language you would normally come across, a collection of interesting words put in an interesting order — and recipes always start with a list of ingredients, and a lot of the poems I like are lists or have lists in them.
“Plus, you lift a fork when you eat.”
In keeping with those ideas, Hart said that they look for “poems that do work” when reviewing submissions.
“I want to be astounded by something,” he said. “I want to feel like I’m reading something I’ve never read before, or it makes me pay attention to something I’ve never paid attention to before, or it takes a non-poetic form and makes a poem out of it.”
While “Forklift” started out as a tabloid, each issue takes on its own form and character. One issue had a sand-paper cover. Another had a bolt inserted in the middle of the page that needed to be unscrewed before
it could be opened, and it obliterated the middle of the poems published that issue. Then there was the issued that included a packet of chili mix.
The turning point to attracting national poets, he said, was taking copies of “Forklift” with him to graduate school at Warren Wilson College and showed it to his teacher, Dean Young.
“He loved the subversive content of it, the playful juxtaposition of poetry, cooking and safety,” Hart said. “He started submitting poems and got other poets to submit, too.”
Hart will read work from his newest book, “Who’s Who Vivid” and some new poems that he’s written.
Following Hart’s reading, the regular open mic portion of the program will begin. Poets can sign up beginning 6:30 p.m.
A version of this story originally appeared in the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio.
CLASSICS
From "Adam's Curse"
By William Butler Yeats
We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'
Read the rest of "Adam's Curse" and sign up to have a Classic Poem Daily sent to your e-mail.
