Poetry Explosion!

Poetry

POETRY POETRY POETRY POETRY

At the moment we’re focused on all things poetry, as we await the release of our new poetry zeen– due within the next two weeks– which we believe will set a new standard for the production and presentation of the poetic art.

A literary journal? A book? A chapbook?

NO! None of the above. Instead, something entirely new and unique– a fusion of fun poems with art and design, words and colors that POP! off the pages.

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BEFORE THIS we indulge in a brief attack on Brutalist design and architecture, care of three poems by our own Kathleen M Crane, “Grand Mackerel Spa and Resort”— with the understanding that modernist design is difficult to do well, and works only if a lot of warm colors are involved. Ideally, Pop, day-glo colors!

Pre-fab flab floating flotsam hotel pool
Blank faced guests spoon their morning gruel

Cranky Poetry by Mather

Poetry

Yes, it’s cranky poetry, with a few shots at millennials– they can take it– but it’s also great poetry containing energy and rhythm, a delight in using words spouting them shouting them no matter who it enlightens or infuriates, which is what poetry has always been about. Not polite, you say? Impoliteness a small price to pay for passionate language. Read these words– Two Poems by Mather Schneider— and hear them echoing in your head.

For a shadow-being,
it’s bizarre how you know
everything about everything

to social media’s lower orders
smirking behind that sweet ironic
Draconian curtain

(By the way, Mather has an Op Ed– opinion column– about poetry in Literary Fan Magazine. Have you read it? Don’t miss out!)

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(Art: “Ancient of Days” by William Blake.)

Tornadoes and Other Fronts

Feature, Poetry

A POP LIT POTPOURRI

We’re out to create literary tornadoes. Toward that end we point the reader to three new-or-recent posts at this project.

FIRST we have a new feature, “Tornado Country” by poet John Grey. Two very good poems for your reading pleasure.

and cars, long and proud and American made

explode like firecrackers in the heat of day,

and some small town like Millville is razed like it’s Babylon,

SECOND, we did a short “Pop Quiz” Q & A with the author of our previous feature, Transhumanist Presidential candidate Rachel Haywire.

THIRD, a return of our NPL News blog with a quick look at Lana DelRey and a possible? connection to future literary stars, “Reverse Jekyll and Hyde.”

Must reading to stay current with the Pop Lit literary scene.
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(Art: “Tornado Over Kansas” by John Steuart Curry.)

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

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.)

Unclassifiable Poetry

Poetry

BEWARE THE NICHE PEOPLE!

WE’VE NOTICED that some literary people like to put other writers into a niche. Such as, “Exactly what kind of poet are you? Are you a flarf poet or an Instapoet or a beat poet, or a trad, or a lake poet, or Elizabethan or Edwardian, or maybe Victorian, modernist or hip-hop, or really, what kind of poet after all do you claim to be what box can we put you in how do we classify you, where can we put you to shorthand you, dismiss you, or otherwise find some way to short circuit our brains so we don’t have to THINK?”

(It’s a variation on labeling everyone according to party or politics: Wear the proper name tag and don’t ever switch sides or change beliefs.)

Which is a roundabout way of saying we have more poetry today, “‘That’ll do, Pig’ and Two Other Poems” by James D. Casey IV, who claims to write every kind of poem, and based on the evidence he’s provided, we believe him. Three poems. Hope you like them.

I’ve dreamt of hunting
vampires with Bukowski
and getting in barfights
with Hemingway and dodging
bats with Thompson and being
lost in the desert with Jim

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ON OTHER FRONTS, we have a book review of a short (four stories) short story collection by talented story writer Elizabeth Sims— and:

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THE 3-D STORY

WE CONTINUE to ask questions at our NPL News blog about whether or not the short story form needs to change– we strongly believe it does– as we lay the groundwork for the coming release of our solution: the Three-Dimensional Story. A lot going on.
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(Art: “”Simultaneous Windows” by Robert Delaunay; “The Architect” by Roger de la Fresnaye; “The Bargeman” by Fernand Leger.)

Gourmet Poetry

Poetry

CONNOISSEUR’S POEMS?

WE’VE BEEN DISCUSSING in another forum the idea of creating aesthetic effects. Memorable tweaks which make the literary meal, be it prose or poetry, a tastier experience.

Exemplifying this are Two Poems by Joyce Wheatley, which caught our attention because of the vividness of their images. One poem is about– or appears to be at the outset– a dinner. The other, about a turtle!

Experience them yourself, and see what you think.

Mud, slime and mold
patched over its dome,
Full-covered its back,
A pagoda shell home;

Traveling tools
Below jutted out,
Dull-pointed talons,
Weapons no doubt,

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(First painting “Glass on Table” by Georges Braque; second painting “Pot, Wineglass, and Book” by Pablo Picasso.)

New Poetry: A. J. Huffman

Poetry

ART presents perspectives.

New literary art at its best offers fresh perspectives– unique ways of viewing everyday reality. What poet A. J. Huffman does in “Fast Food Religion and Other Poems.” From dinosaurs to drive-thru windows, Huffman’s four poems display a range of insight, visuality, and commentary– each of them a puzzle or a painting waiting to be deciphered.

Imagination triggers transportation
to prehistoric jungle. A distant air-born
monster screams welcome!

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(Art: “The Conversion of St. Augustine” by Fra Angelico; “Agathaumas” by Charles R. Knight.)

Poetry: The Vanishing Church?

Poetry

WE’RE not political but we try to be topical.

Tradition is under assault as never before. Will the foundations of our civilization be wiped from our computers, our minds, our memory banks? Our traditions and history, our institutions, are flawed, sure, as mankind is irrational and flawed. Many want us to start over with a blank slate. To wipe away all tradition, roots, past.

A lobotomy is a blank slate.

THESE musings prodded by our new featured poetry, In a Darkened Cathedral and Other Poems by Benjamin Welton. Thought-provoking poems for a contentious and thought-provoking time.

The priest, an old man, is in bed.
I am the only one left in a rotten pew.
The gray stone walls leak with black moisture.

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ALSO, almost on topic is our latest New Pop Lit News post– an editorial on the emptiness of our post-truth age.

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(Painting of St. Peter’s by Giovanni Paolo Panini.)

Poetry: Strange Creatures

Poetry

Poems about strange creatures? Summer is a time for the appearance of strange creatures– but are they creatures of our imaginations or the world? Shadows of night, of nature– or the otherworldly?

KEEPING an occasional fun aspect to this project, today we present three poems by Richard Stevenson, something of an eccentric but entertaining and subtly meaningful poet. (He’s a former professor, what do you expect?) Take a look.

Unrecorded species of orangutan,
survivor from the Pleistocene perhaps,
a small man-size hominid in any case.

But not prone to violence or aggression —
at least not so much as homo sapiens,

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ALSO, we have a ton of literary world investigations, revelations, and gossip at our NPL NEWS blog– with much more coming. Can’t-miss information for writers and readers alike.

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(Art: “St. George and the Dragon” by Paolo Uccello.)

New Poetry: “The Dancer”

Poetry

WHAT do you want to read in the summer? What would anyone want to read right now? No one is snowbound, locked in a cabin with harsh wind whistling. More like lazy sunshine, seagulls and daydreams.

This ISN’T the time for heavy texts of French postmodern meanderings. (Nothing against the French!) It’s a time for escape, romance, and mood.

We present a taste of that mood with “The Dancer,” a poem by C.A. Shoultz.

The shadows and the glow upon her fell
In fitful swells and motions as she moved
In regular and tidy leaps and bounds
And pirouettes and arabesques of grace.

We aim to be THE best literary site. The quickest route there is by presenting the best poets and story writers. We invite you to join along.

(Art: “Woman Before the Rising Sun” by Caspar David Friedrich; “Streetlamp” by Giacomo Balla.)