Author: newpoplit

The Importance of Poetry

Poetry

Study the roots and context of Shakespeare’s poems and plays and you realize the extent to which people of his time and class loved language. They were first-generation literate but from an oral culture background, with all that entailed. They were extremely verbal people– more than we at great remove can appreciate. Ben Jonson and Stratford Will arguing at the Mermaid Tavern.

Poets and poetry have existed for millennia in all cultures. Poets practicing today are our connection to our past and to what it means to be human beings. To Homer the blind poet himself– and others before him.

Poetry isn’t logical. It expresses feelings beyond logic. Our sensitivity to this magical analog world we inhabit. Today we present Four More Poems from Tom Preisler, a young poet and a musician whose words capture that sensitivity and magic.

We hope you enjoy them.

nylon string guitars, denim jackets, the sound
of crinkled leaves under my boots, with a book
of longing in my pocket and ghost stories read. . . .

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1850 painting by John Faed

All About Poets

Pop Lit Fiction

SAN FRANCISCO!

–a long-time center of America’s poetry scene, filled with memories of legendary poets Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and so many others– and legendary poetry readings such as the one at Six Gallery.

TODAY we have a feature story set in San Francisco, about poets: “My Poet Friend” by San Francisco writer-poet William Taylor Jr. A story of atmosphere and humor centered around one poet in particular, who is– like so many practitioners of the poetic art– a character.

More, it’s a story about the lives of struggling writers. Many of us struggle for years and never “make it”– but writing is not about making it. Being an artist of any kind is about the mad pursuit and the lifestyle and the experience. Creating and sharing those creations, and in turn, experiencing the works– the sounds, images, words– of others. Always learning, opening brain pathways, developing spiritually, hopefully, while experiencing more vitally and viscerally than many the echoes of life. Falling short in our artistry, maybe, but leaving behind some legacy or trace we were here, or at least leaving our carcass on the slopes of the artistic mountain we were trying to climb.

Anyone having met writers both high and low knows the more authentic version is the poet friend found in William Taylor’s entertaining story.

My poet friend returned to the bar and we drank in silence, looking at the girls and wrestling with our existential dread. The Revolutionary Poets got louder and drunker as the night went on, their table crowded with half-empty pitchers of beer as they argued about poetry and politics. Linda was standing now, swaying a bit as she drove her points home, wine sloshing out of her glass.

New Fiction 2023

Pop Lit Fiction

ALREADY one month into the New Year and we finally put our first fiction feature up at our site. (A sign of our selectivity? The benefits of waiting?)

The story is “Glow Worm Farm” by Kathy Lanzarotti. One of the rare stories where both NPL editors not only agreed on the selection, but 100% agreed, in that we’d both give it scores of 10 out of 10. The question: Why?

Perhaps because it’s a template for an ideal short story circa 2023, when the task is to make the art form relevant and compelling. The story has it all– acknowledgment of the madness of today’s world, including the future of that world (robots)– with swipes at media and consumerism– with no shying away from politics, in highlighting violent aspects of the current extremist political landscape. Ostensibly set three years into the future, the tale makes the reader realize that future is here. The story contains also, amid the madness, an embrace of the natural, the living. That which gives life meaning. We’ve run a series of topical stories of late– as well as stories with great sensibility and emotion. “Glow Worm Farm” scores on both counts.

Topicality and emotion: a powerful combination. Must reading for anyone interested in where short fiction is now, and where it’s going. Where it should be going.

When the National Guard arrived, most of the neighbors were outside. Sarah watched them trade rumors from the nutshell of her porch swing. Mayberry on her lap. A cup of cinnamon coffee in her green mug that read, I’m a Ray Of Fucking Sunshine. Rumors and speculation was all anyone had at that point. The WiFi and cell service, TV and radio, stopped with the blast. Sarah was no scientist but she’d watched enough movies to know this wasn’t a good sign. And then there was the sky, cast a hazy pink orange that was both light and dark at the same time.

New Poetry 2023

Poetry

OUR FIRST FEATURE of the new year is a good one– Four Prose Poems by talented Toronto musician and poet Tom Preisler. The poems are set in Toronto, at nighttime. They’re first of a two-part set of writing from Tom for New Pop Lit, the second set to appear in a few weeks.

What distinguishes Tom Preisler’s work from the crowd is its ability to convey atmosphere and mood. With a phrase or a word, the reader is put into the world, the moment. Simple yet evocative. “Do more with less!” we’re often told. Here’s a writer who does it. His edge is that he creates in more than one art form– which enhances the quality of both.

If today’s literary scene is to be transformed– we believe it will be– it will be through new writers like Tom Preisler.

No Robots!

Announcement

NEW GUIDELINES CONCERNING A.I. (ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE) WRITERS

This is to affirm we will be accepting no literary work– fiction, nonfiction, or poetry– created with the use of an A.I. program. As the task for human writers today is difficult enough as it is, and as we enjoy the human element in art, we seek to delay the march toward artificial everything as long as possible.

YES, WE KNOW the dream of the hyper-plutocrats– billionaires like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk– is to control everything themselves from the top down and eliminate all human employees, so they can run their massive businesses strictly via robots and phone apps. To this we say: Do what you will, world, but WE at New Pop Lit Headquarters will be cooperating with this insane plan as little as possible. -K.W. and K.M.C for NPL.

p.s. New feature works by human writers ARE upcoming.

Happiness?

Opinion

ARE WE SERIOUS about our Happiness campaign?

Absolutely. It’s a needed reaction to the depressing state of the culture now– and the state of the world. Celebrations of depravity quickly become tiresome. Nothing is more boring than gazing upon a garbage dump. We’re out to brighten things up.

BESIDES, when we later publish edgy new work– we enjoy edginess when it’s done well– it will stand out vividly against a Happiness backdrop.

At the forefront of course of our new Happiness campaign is our Special Edition of Fun Pop Poetry, the Happiness Journal. A modified version of the standard model: FPP SE. Order yours today.

Fiction Finale 2022

Pop Lit Fiction

THIS HAS BEEN an excellent year for us in terms of fiction, maybe our best. The goal for 2023 will be to top it.

This year we close with an amazing story from Nick Gallup, who consistently has given us amazing work, in part from a clear writing style and in part from a knowledge of people, combined with a sense of structure– setting up on the front end what will happen on the back end. As he does with “The Stenographer,” which is about history but also about today. Very much about today. Presented in an understated yet dramatic way.

For anyone who loves the short story and enjoys reading.

Mom told me that one of the things she regretted about her college years was she hadn’t taken stenography and typing before enrolling. Stenography, she explained, would’ve been an asset for taking notes during lectures. Typing, in turn, would have been a boon for preparing term-papers, as it was her experience that typed term papers received higher grades than those written even in the best cursive. Made sense to me, so I let her talk me into taking a secretarial course at night while I worked during the day.

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ALSO: Watch for our FUN POP POETRY Special Edition, soon available at our POP SHOP.

Art and the Actual World

Pop Lit Fiction

INSTITUTIONS MOVE SLOWLY, including those of the established literary world, while super-plutocrats like Elon Musk are able to move at lightning speed. Coming technological changes are upon us designed to make the human animal, including writers and artists, obsolete.

HOW do we oppose this?

For starters, with better art– art which emphasizes humans and the human and our interactions with the natural world around us.

WE HAVE such example in our new feature story, “The Slow Pace of Pardon” by Christopher Laurence, set in a cabin in the woods, concerning possible wolves, a dog, a family, a mysterious reappearance, and unwanted interlopers. Atmospheric and well-written– making for terrific reading.

“So, looks like this’s what’s been making those tracks.” he thought. He felt a kind of relief knowing he could remove from his deposit of worries the vision of a rabid, snarling wolf bounding up his path. It was just a poor dog some sad bastard must have let free at the start of winter, when he decided he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be feeding it anymore. He could tell it was thin, and hunger must have finally forced it to put fear aside and come out into the open, where its energy failed it finally, and dropped it on their doorstep.

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IN THE NEW YEAR we intend to do more to forestall our replacement by artificial devices concocted by diabolical billionaires bent on constructing an artificial cyber world of robots, brain implants, fake realities and other nightmares.


ALSO: Speaking of real-world reality, we’ll be releasing within days an alternate version of our latest “zeen” print publication. We’re calling it Fun Pop Poetry Special Edition. The zeen is a mere sample of what we’re gearing up to achieve: actual custom-made publications with countless combinations of colors and styles, to fit the reader’s personality. Is any other publisher large or small offering this? (Are any even imagining such a thing?) We’re determined to lead the world in literary innovation.