new literature

Literary Fan Is Here!

Announcement

DEBUT OF AN EXCITING NEW LITERARY PUBLICATION

We are hewing a path, with our new print publications– “zeens”– toward the future of literature and publishing. Which means, making everything about literature and its presentation way more exciting.

OUR LATEST demonstration model toward that end is Literary Fan Magazine, now on sale at our POP SHOP.

Everything about this offering is fun and unique. For example: For most literary publications, visuals are an afterthought. For us they’re an essential part of the whole. In designing this modest magazine we worked to achieve synergy between words and images. To have each page complement the one next to it, when the journal is opened and you’re reading it.

WHY POP LIT?
a story

In 2012, after the television show “Mad Men” made reference to the movie “Bye Bye Birdie,” a Philadelphia theater on Broad Street showed the 1963 film on a giant screen. In attendance were many students from the nearby University of the Arts. Also in one of the seats was the future editor of New Pop Lit.

The film– hardly a classic; much of it is ridiculous– is a profusion of well-designed images. Presented in wide-screen Panavision, the movie’s day-glo colors and ceaseless energy popped off the screen. The experience was one of pure fun.

This is the kind of well-designed effect we want to give with our new print publication, Literary Fan Magazine.

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More New Poetry

Poetry

OUR MARCH focus on poetry continues with a selection of striking verse, “Poetry by Warmoth” from rising literary star Kai Warmoth.

NOTE what Warmoth does with images and ideas in these four poems. You won’t see anything quite like it– Kai Warmoth is one of a number of young poets who’ve rejected mere unstructured narcissistic meanderings of a kind seen from scores or hundreds or thousands of follow-the-crowd literary journals and sites, for something deeper, more meaningful. Something unique. Poetry a tad more complex and deep than Instagram scribblings. All four of Warmoth’s poems bear re-reading. In fact, they demand it.

Try as I do to attend to Spring Snow
It doesn’t arrest like her eyes
Carved with rouge and streaked with coal.
And elbows crook’t atop the melanoid throw
Push your face to the skyward glow.

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THE 3–D STORY

electric prism sonia delaunay

MEANWHILE, headway on the three-dimensional short story continues. This will be the biggest leap in the art since Hemingway. The concept’s been developed. The work now comes down to perfecting it via prototypes. Which means much trial and error. Which means throwing out standard writer selfishness to focus instead on what works, from the standpoint of readers.

Stay informed on our progress at our New Pop Lit News blog.
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(Art: “Composition with Figures” by Lyubov Popova; “Electric Prism” by Sonia Delaunay.)

Experiments in Pop

Pop Lit Fiction

THE FUTURE is in fiction and poetry written with clarity and conciseness. Short and to the point. Read quickly but meaningfully on an app.

Toward that end, we present a short short by our own Kathleen M. Crane, “Aloha from Detroit Revisited.” Set in Detroit’s punk rock scene near the end of the millennium, it’s a replay of an earlier tale by K.M.C., “Aloha from Detroit”– the title work in her e-book short story collection. “Revisited” presents a different perspective on the same events. Providing a different angle. A more rounded look.
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We’re based in Detroit, where we hear and read much about how the auto companies– not known for being cutting edge– have to adapt to the technologies of the 21st Century. How moreso literature!– whose Manhattan mandarins operate with the mindset of the 19th.

As lit moves onto new platforms like smart phones and e-books, the style of writing itself has to adapt and change. Slow-paced thoughts won’t work. Word-clotted writing is dead– whether from James Joyce or Joyce C. Oates; Jon Franzen or the acolytes of David Foster Wallace. In ten years the heavily-lauded writers of the present will be obsolete.

They already are. Writing is changing, via flash fiction and pop poetry. We’re at the forefront of that change.

He wondered who was dealing Rick, after his warnings. He shrugged. Rick was an adult. He glanced at Rick, pale and slumped under his black mohawk at the end of the bar. Sure, an adult.

Storytellers

Feature

NEW LITERARY TALENTS PART I

Today we start an ambitious series examining a new wave of talented writers. Our plan is to combine literary criticism, reviews, and new fiction for a multi-faceted look at American literature NOW; utilizing as many aspects of the New Pop Lit website as possible.

First up: The opening installment of a far-reaching overview, “Hyper-Talents of the New Literary Age.”

AT THE SAME TIME we present for readers a new short story, “Yacht Party,” from Scott Cannon, one of two narrative writers profiled in our essay, along with Tom Ray.

yacht-1

Does Scott’s story support the words expressed in the essay? You decide!

The scene froze at its climax; a spotlight haloed the head of the actor playing Lucas on the screen, then swept to the back of the room to light up the incandescent entrance of The Man himself, flanked by two beautiful women and followed by a small cadre of security. The thunder of the ovation in the packed ballroom as he ascended to the podium still rang in Lucas’ ears.