V I R G O G R A Y * P R E S S

An Evening of Poetry with Bill Shute & Michael Aaron Casares

virgograypress — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:23:38 +0000

3rd Annual January Poetry Reading

Ruta Maya open mic hosts featured poets, Bill Shute and Michael Aaron Casares for a night of verse and open mic. Bill Shute, a poet and publisher from San Antonio, returns for his third annual Austin reading w/ Michael, this time featuring his collection “Junk Sculpture From The New Gilded Age”. Austin poet Michael Aaron Casares (formerly of San Antonio) shares poetry from his new book “This Reality of Man” and more! Open Mic precedes and follows! Free and open to the public!

“By the Banks of the Ajoy…” Reviewed by Federica Nightingale

virgograypress — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:24:21 +0000

The last poetry collection by Subhankar Das, “By the Banks of the Ajoy, Jaideb Vanishes into
the Blue”, is a true jump into a world of images and stunning views of ordinary life. Edited by
Virgogray Press, the book is printed bilingual, in English and Bangla. The title poem of the book
alludes to authors Henry Miller and Henry Denanant while mingling with echoes of Bangla lore of
the mythical poet Jaideb who lived by the river Ajoy. The poet’s poetic language and voice — a mix
of traditions — with the peculiar match of bilinguism, give the reader an enlightened view on the
puzzle of existence, as well as the surreal effect of transforming every verse into a necessary path
which leads to the Truth. Natural elements are the stones on which the poet inscribes his visions, by
drawing a straight line that separates appearances from substance. Voices from the past, memories,
and the blues often populate the lengthy free verse, telling us short stories of love and melancholy,
while a disenchanted eye of resignation keeps looking forward toward success. Subhankar Das’
poetic world is strictly cynical, apparently hopeless; beauty is a mere misunderstanding, a conflict
turned into slapstick comedy. Pervading the whole book is a pessimistic vein in which life and
death alternate between despair and nothingness, causing a loss of trust in love, which could be
the only anchor. The long prose poem that is the collection’s title piece can be considered to be the
manifestation of the author’s exploration of life’s mysteries, black holes, and unsolved responses,
his search for a way to human nature and nature’s signs. A powerful visionary grasps at a gleam of
hope. Without doubt, this is a worthwhile and inspiring read.

“That pretty fish in my aquarium who loved me so dearly is gone

today. Why do they all go? Where do they go? There is a staying

in every going away. All the rocks are but mad. They have lost

their stoniness in these magical lights, unknowingly, that’s why

instead of the heart there plays a light. She’s not here but I see

her sitting on a chair every day with her tresses flowing,

thinking unmindful.”

(from the poem By the Banks of Ajoy, Jaideb Vanishes into the Blue)

Federica Nightingale is a poet, writer and translator. She is Editor in Chief of Project Collage (Errant Editions Small Digital Publisher).

New from Subhankar Das: By the Banks of the Ajoy, Jaideb Vanishes into the Blue

virgograypress — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 02:10:32 +0000

Subhankar Das’ new offering of poetry, his collection, By the Banks of the Ajoy, Jaideb Vanishes into the Blue, is a first for Virgogray Press in that it is printed bilingual—in English and Bangla. When Subhankar’s manuscript came across our proverbial desk, we were delighted at the idea of sharing this well-known author’s words and poetry. By the Banks of the Ajoy… did not disappoint. There is a feeling we quite value in poetry, some have described as “the Ah-ha!” moment, it is a moment where you “see through” or your mind begins the penetration of the veil before your eyes. Poetry that does that is important. There were several instances as such found in the pages of this book.

To begin, the poetry collection draws attention to his long prose poem of the same name, a poem inspired by many factors even as writers like Henry Miller and Henry Denander echo through the allusion of Jaideb, the ancient, mythical Bangla poet still celebrated in areas of India today. Like many of the poems in the collection, “By the Banks of the Ajoy, Jaideb Vanishes into the Blue” the poet follows a trail of stream of thought, cut-up, a beatish ripple in the flow of words, subtle and overt wisdoms, and colorful use of imagery that at times touches the reader to pure psychosomaticism (read ”Erosion,” a fettered account of a doctor visit). Longer poems like “Ma” or “A Little More than the River Korkai,” exhibit the poets mastery of poetic language and voice; in fact, the voice of the poet, or the essence of such an entity, is apparent in both pieces, as “Ma” is a semi-sentimental piece, that while taking a backseat from the opening “Focault’s Pendulum,” is still resilient with poetic imagery and cadence:

“ I have preserved the pale ribbon, a tip of which she
held in her teeth to tie her hair and the memories of those
evenings in a box, so that ants do not eat it up.

Be careful, son
Take care, my son
Stay at peace, my son

I take care and I stay wrong. In outmost care whom would I give
those fountain—cherished days, to take care of? Who will try
and understand the smell of the colorless withered ribbon?

Forget about me; just ponder over the closeness of the two
bodies. Consider those poses and reflexes – the falsity too.
Feel the touch of the soft feet. Just feel the touch of the
fingertips on the burning forehead. Without applied color you
and empty and a zero.”

The poem, “A Little More than the River Korkai” begins with fervor of Romantic Passion, and falls into a facet of poetry most desirable, one which speaks to and of the soul, a touch of the supposed metaphysical regarding predetermined lives and the hidden knowledge, the mystic truth about our existence:

“All our deeds were pre-determined
We knew every note about our life, read them before
Since everything was pre-written we completed our task en-route
Now we’ll go to the other room to finish it up, jail the dialogues in blank cassettes
But still the stories of water were never in the notes
Those swirling waters that move with a suppleness of pine trees
Still love was there some parts loved
The rest remained like a blazing rose that I kept touching
The way the winter touches a city, a cigarette and remains like smoke
A borrowed blanket hovers on my shoulder, the same way.”

As Jaideb was a mythical poet of Bangla lore, I believe this collection does justice in recalling traditions and bodes well for the continuity of heraldic verse, with a literary beatitude all its own. This collection is also an outstanding introduction to American readers to the work of Subhankar Das, a poet already carving a niche for himself in his homeland of Kolkata, Bengal, India as a purveyor and advocate of underground Bangla poetry and literature.

The VGP Literate No. 8

virgograypress — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:29:00 +0000

Neural Piano
(for my grandmother, Grace Paynter)

You see,

her mind was never
confined to that room

sea foam soothing green
gall bladder attacks
and projectile vomit

no,

it moved with music
scales sliding sideways

was scented
all things vernal

she sent it beyond
that jonquil window

where the sunlight
was weaker than
the pale blue
flame of her eyes

entire bouquets
used to bloom there

out into the garden
where the beauty
was so exquisite
it was maddening

the wires, drips,
patches, and i.v.
simply ceased to be

enforced reality no longer
her sterile misericorde
the aim always a blank point

bored in the way
of the boring
she suffered graciously

after they cracked
her treasured chest

the doctors
disinterred songs
classic harmonies
conducted by
dusk’s steely hand

“show me the way
from sin to mercy

I’m your sister’s sister,”

she said to me

then she pointed
at a pint of blood
cooling on a hook

screamed,

“it’s not a cardinal,
you fool!

it’s a coppery-tailed trogon”

the breast inflamed,
the breast infected,

redder than hers

she convinced me
it was perched
on a hibiscus

her tongue swollen,
her breath infernal,
Wesleyan,

yet almost sweet
real and regal
to me

her bare legs
still long, aristocratic,

translucent carriages,

she said,

“these birds
are attached
with sensitive wires
to my nerves”

as her unplugged eyes
rained down cadenzas

as her tears
turned to jewelry

brightly flooding
the room she never knew

with a light, her light,
which seemed to say,

“what’s so damn lucky
about that sun

if it can’t touch me,
walk beside me anymore?”

it was there
in that present

that her wounds
feminine as Christ’s

bled truth

drip drop dripped

off of ivory towers
into the ebony void

where my eyes
worked with insect agony

to reconcile a locked scene
that ached for a piano,

a minor key
for a kingdom
of rain.

Hardly a Butterfly
(for K.)

the dark times
bring the most songs

too soft
these voices
for this
solid air

breath’s promise
arrives dead
hangs insincere smile

cynical finger
pokes at nothing

the lightning exceeds
its own grasp

you never asked
to be its rod

judging shape
of subject
judging shade
inside object

here’s a wish,

end all stories
like dreams

i.e. no more conclusions

the faceless keep
their empty distance

ignorant to mother’s
trembling hand

reaching out from the stable
forming natural bridge,

she says…

Gravel Road

she brings a bowl
of ripe apricots
to this lonely room
where my body rots from within

for a while the walls fall away
I breathe without the burn, the choke

she removes the flesh
with just her bare hands
until left with only the hard pit
which she smashes with a hammer
extracts and feeds me the seeds
with some small chunks of ice

she wears a yellow dress
redolent of southern summers
returning from my youth
over nothing but her skin

she is what the sunlight
through the pale blue curtain
strains and fails to be

I search her eyes,
find a reason to believe
when she says,
“the tumors are dying not you”

then her smile breaks soft and clean
touches everything at once
just enough to get inside

now I can sleep.

William Crawford is the author of Fire in the Marrow. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize

The VGP Literate No. 7

virgograypress — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:40:25 +0000

Dimensions

greed is a mobile brain parasite
bigger than any worm or tumor, but

the chapbook factor, magazines—
medicine, or futility in paper flesh,

the radiant physics not fully x-rayed,
expressionless, we tie shoes, and die

David Scott Pointer is a friendly neighborhood political poet. He has been publishing around the horn for 21 years.

Virgogray Press Pushcart Prize Nominees

virgograypress — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 02:54:04 +0000

It is again that time of year when independent publishers all around submit their nominees for next year’s Puschart Prize Best of the Small Presses anthology. This year we had a plethora to choose from, including Carcinogenic Poetry, Nothing. No One. Nowhere., the individual collections, The VGP Literate, and the Occupy Poetry Project. There were many factors we looked at, and to be fair, we would nominate so much more were we able to.

This year’s Virgogray Press: Pushcart Prize nominees:
(in no particular order)

Benazir Bhutto by Peter Magliocco
published in Nothing. No One. Nowhere. No. 2 – Aug. 21, 2011

Jenette Bras by Suzi Kaplan Olmsted
published in Carcinogenic Poetry – Sept. 14, 2011

Cycles by Jeffery Parker
published in Carcinogenic Poetry – Jan. 29, 2011

Standing at the Intersection of Critical Mass and Event Horizon with Tom Wayne and John Deuser, 5:47 AM
(or, “Hey Man, Is that an Accordion I’m Hearing?”) by Jason Ryberg
published in Carcinogenic Poetry – Jun. 29, 2011

Hong Kong Bardo by Marc Olmsted
published in The VGP Literate No.1 – Sept. 1, 2011

Il Connoissuer Sanguinante by Matt Dennisson
published in Carcinogenic Poetry – Apr. 6, 2011

Do congratulate these writers for this special recognition. If you are interested in reading the work we’ve selected as Pushcart Prize nominees, all nominations should be available online at their respective journals; feel free to visit by clicking their links on the left hand sidebar of the main page. In the meantime, should our nominees become winners, we’ll let you know!

The VGP Literate No. 6

virgograypress — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 05:24:40 +0000

American Machine

Visionary highways under construction;
one nation, indivisible…
liberty syncopation bursts forth as a breath
guided by gilded ideology;
flags rippling in the wind,
stubbornly stoic

Emergent sunrise – golden – collapses as
webbed corridors form
a kind of no-zone reflection,
the strangely beautiful
gestation of art, cradled, then
kindled; brought forth by a country of
contradictions – 50 bright stars
assembled in a pre-washed fabric:
color-coded fractions, capsized and failing,
a computational warehouse
tumbling through cycles

Pulp altars, paper soldiers,
patriotism and World War II,
(jazz in the ‘40s)
exploratory complex sounds
of improvisation digested
and reconstituted by the American Machine

The American Machine:
tough, worn, and in need of repair,
churns out an assortment
straight from the boiler pot:
joy, pain, discovery – innovation

Static conversations
over coffee house jazz,
comic book artists crammed
in corners, making sequential
art that moves as breezily as
a ride cymbal skirting atop
inverted chord progressions,
yielding to the democratic process

Walking bass line, descending,
then dividing into a graphic
depiction, stalled and transfixed,
leaping off the page and into
imaginations, spreading
a pop culture virus, while
history accumulates and
regurgitates shadows
mimicking a drum cadence,
faded and enveloped, awakening
time signatures, and ghostly
arrangements; harmonic
dissonance from voices
left silent by many wars

The American Machine:
stuffed, smoky, guttural,
it archives, records,
rearranges and consolidates
plans…choked by its own
regenerative qualities,
Sousa marches, freedom marches
and Constitutional remixes,
the pattern re-emerges,
unaltered

Two pages of a four-panel grid
depict a star-spangled comic book hero
fighting for the common man,
the downtrodden, the helpless
(and by extension, the American dream)

Charlie Parker…George Gershwin…
Jack Kirby…Stan Lee…
could only have happened in
America

America
– beautiful, complex,
ugly at times,
rich in culture,

The American Machine,
an unwritten graphic novel
whose last pages have yet to be
rendered in any form

Cornelius Fortune is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The Advocate, Metro Times, Chess Life, Yahoo News, Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, Tales of the Unanticipated, Illumen, The Writers Block and others. Fortune has written extensively on popular culture, comic books and 21st century trends. He is also a Rhysling nominated poet and the author of Stories from Arlington. In addition to journalism, he mostly writes poetry and less-than-interesting grocery lists, devoid of imagery or clever alliteration. Visit his website at corneliusfortune.com.

The VGP Literate No. 5

virgograypress — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:43:51 +0000

Final Goodbyes 1212

Existence is only relative
In a far off galaxy, in an ocean beneath a sheath
of ice, on a planet that circles twin suns,
Vanity Fair’s latest Gaga has no relation
to whatever life may be thriving and teeming.
An example hounded by the crossing light
that shrouds in the darkness as the eyes watch
and the lips instigate. Sitting still in the darkness,
casting light while stepping out of the garden
into the quagmire of opulent life investigated
in front of plasma-screens on warm seated Lay Z Boys,
watching the latest in reality, so we may know what
reality is, a beer, a pill, some sort of distortion–
whether recognized or not. Connect or disconnect,
written in the future, conversely written in the past-
this poem loops onto itself, a self-discretion,
a distant memory perhaps not to be remembered,
the world wind blowing fast passed the shining
feet of clay.

Michael Aaron Casares is a poet and publisher from Austin, TX

The VGP Literate No. 4

virgograypress — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:19:25 +0000

Prayer to La Madre Tierra
(Spanish & English)

‘…Madre de gracia
Madre de misericordia
en la vida
y en la muerte
amparanos gran señora…‘

Protect us, dear Mother,
protect us from our own fears!

How could we have manifested
these needless tears
throughout generations,
centuries?

Yet we’ve not reached past
our ignorance,
vast confusion.

We are in constant fear
of your wrath…
that you,
Grandious Earth
will swallow us alive!

We’re brain-washed
assuming we’ve damaged you
immensely!

When to you,
the cuts and bruises
are mere pimples.

We humans are mere
microorganisms
traveling around
your magnificent,
bodacious body!

Dear Mother…
your core is unreachable,
untouchable,
Sacred!

Your skin is rich and fertile
in tan and red tones.

Your hair grows
and grows…
freshly lush,
green and sweet…

I love to taste your hair,
its nutrients I enjoy!

Your blood
ebbs… it flows
through the elements:

Water
Wind
Fire

! Te adoro
Oh, Madre Tierra!

Tercer planeta
en el Milky Way.

Silky it looks
in the Universe;

sweet it must taste
to demi gods.

You wear
slight cleavage,
voluptuous curves
in your deep valleys
and high mountain ranges.

Whether you ever
feel ill
or really great

your body quivers,
it quakes!

How could we, so microbial
for so long
still assume that
we hurt you?

You can shake us off
like chain-linked ants.
We could cease to exist
and you
not only can,
not only will…

You just have
and will Be!

I write this to you
Mother, dear
because I know

that no chemicals,
no plastics,
no electronics
could ever harm you.

You gave mankind
the materials,
the minerals

to use…
experiment with.

To us in 500 years,
to you in a few days,
everything we manufacture
will return to what it was.

The Hopi know
what you’re all about.
So they just don’t worry.

Can the rest of us
do the same?

You sneezed…
scratched an itch

and it flooded houses,
swiped out
entire cities.

You say… ‘oops!’
God gives us strength.

And still, we do
cherish
and worship you
So

‘… Por la señal
de la Santa Cruz
de nuestros enemigos
libranos señor nuestro…‘

Free us
from assuming
so much
about this Earth
we live in.

When we follow
your path

we know what we’re capable of
and can just be.

4/5/11

Chevalterre Nabil, the poetic half of KLRabstracts, was born in El Paso, TX and is a U. S. Navy Veteran. http://KLRabstracts.blogspot.com

Video: Marc Olmsted @ Quiet Lightning

virgograypress — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 00:52:30 +0000

The following is Marc Olmsted reading his poem “Hong Kong Bardo” as part of Quiet Lightning, a summer reading series at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers on September 5, 2011. The video is by Evan Karp. More information can be found at http://www.litseen.com/