Welcome to the abbreviated, electronic version of SYNAESTHETIC, a Journal of Poetry, Prose and Media Arts. Issue One, "Found Forms, Found Texts", is 80 pages, 8 1/2 x 11, on 60lb. book natural, with 10 pt. glossy cover and award-winning B&W photography. The division of literature into distinct types has not served poetry well; the common assumption that poetry is difficult stems directly from the conclusion that it is different. The materials in SYNAESTHETIC are based on such unlikely sources as travel, fashion, sports and other news writing, science texts, cookbooks, diaries, dictionaries, encyclopedia, radio broadcasts, or are in media forms: letters, postcads, instructions, flyers, reports, and so on. This is poetry that represents our shared knowledge, that documents and informs. We also publish artwork that illustrates the cutting edge between media and academic fields. Our mission is to extend the audience for poetry, to serve the community of artists as a forum for the discussion of process and form. Subscriptions are $13 for two issues; $7 for single issue. Make checks payable to Alex Cigale. Address submissions, inquiries, subscription requests, and donations to: SYNAESTHETIC, 178-10 Wexford Terrace, Apt. 3D, Jamaica, NY 11432. SYNAESTHETIC is currently accepting poetry, prose, translations, essays, interviews, and art submissions for Issue Three, "True Stories". "Is there anything whereof it may be said, See this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us." - Ecclesiastes. EDITOR'S NOTE All poetry is found poetry; some poems are more found than others. The enigmatic title of "India Widow's Death at...", for example, consists simply of the first seven syllables of a New York Times headline from an article on the Hindu custom of sati, about the ritual self-immolation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. Found art has been with us since Marcel Duchamp scandalized aesthetisticians by attempting to exhibit in New York a porcelain urinal titled Fountain (1917). Duchamp's Readymade objects, whether framed or not, made the act of selection itself an artistic virtue. His recourse to mechanical reproduction of his own works also brought into question the privileged position of "uniqueness" and "originality" as essential attributes of western art. The poet Jerome Rothenberg, in his anthology of experimental poetry, Revolution of the Word, described Duchamp's method as a "withdrawal from art." One may point to an earlier influence and argue that our arrival at found art proceeds logically from Aristotle's proposition in Poetics, that the object of art is an imitation of life. In Eastern thought, art and life were more intimately linked; the distinction between subject and object was recognized not at all. Daily rituals like the tea ceremony, flower arranging, the cultivation of bonsai trees and rock gardens, as well as the practice of the martial arts (karate, archery, etc.), were all forms of artistic expression. Similarly, African and "primitive" art was but an extension of ritual and function. In part as a product of the 20th century synthesis of Eastern, Western and "primitive" thought, a concern with the thing itself has become preeminent in contemporary visual and literary efforts. If no less an authority than T.S. Eliot avered, a full half-century ago, "immature poets imitate, mature poets steal," why is it that we poets are the last to feel the unremitting obligation to be "original" that Harold Bloom, in his book of the same title, calls "the anxiety of influence"? To answer this question is to resolve a key creative conflict, the issue of "authority," literally the sense of being in full possession of one's material that is the mark of a mature artist. And yet a nagging doubt persists: "But you didn't write this! And, i anyone could have written it, there is nothing 'artistic' about the method." I can only conclude with the following set of observations. The selection of material is of itself a valid, and creative, expression of personal aesthetics. In our technological, informational age an author is neither creator nor proprietor of the information contained (no more so than in the earliest literatures arising from the oral tradition.) Who "owns" or has a right to exploit, a story or event, a sequence of words, or the words themselves? There is, for all practical purposes, an infinite number of poems or fictions that can result from a reconstituted text or a tale retold. Identical material used in an entirely different context constitutes a new identity. Finally, found poems are essentially voice poems; it is narrative that serves to unify the disjointed syntax, images, and voices of the original text. The narrative voice is, of course, the empathic voice of the writer. Found poetry as a format for a literary journal interested me for a number of reasons. First, the incorporation of source material represents a body of shared knowledge and carries with it a potential to inform. My instinct tells me that this may offer an opportunity to extend poetry to an audience it would not otherwise reach. Conversely, the found represents an essential part of the creative process, the struggle to make personal the public and the received. The possibility that Synaesthetic may serve the community of artists as a forum for an ongoing discussion of process and form is truly exhilarating. Contemporary art owes so much to the aesthetics of synthesis that perhaps the most apt manifesto for a modern aesthetic, to restate Marx's paraphrase of the Hegelian dialectic, "All art is found art! Artists of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our conceptual chains." Editor: Alex Cigale Art Director: Hugh Gilmore Cover: "Show Us" by Hugh Gilmore Back cover: "House" by Nadya Nilin GEORGIA O'KEEFE by Lyn Lifshin So I said to myself I'll paint what I see what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big they will be surprised into taking time to look at its enormous petals it will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see It was as if my mind made up shapes sometimes I know where they come from but often, I donUt The bones let me dream bones but it never occurs to me they have anything to do with death WOLF by John Gilgun for Barry Lopez The ghost of the wolf moves among odors through the interior of the supermarket. He scent-marks a can of Folger's coffee, then trots to the frozen foods. Suddenly he stops in mid-stride. His ears are rammed forward, and he pounces like a cat, bringing down a package of Stouffer's Swedish Meatballs in gravy with parsley noodles. The ghost of the wolf has evolved for this task. He moves on through my neighborhood where dozens of his kind where murdered a century ago. His complex brain absorbs lawn mowers, charcoal briquettes, Toyotas and small yapping dogs he holds beneath contempt. He howls for his brothers and sisters. His reply is Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto played by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra with Vladimir Ashkenazy on piano. I turn down the volume and raise my window. He leaps in at me, his eyes jade-cold, his body jeweled with dew. DRAWN BUT NOT SKINNED; A Cento by Jeff McMillian Tonight the mean winds of November have begun to blow Indian Summer away, pointing you north and north against your will. North is easy. North is never love. Without a shield of hills, a barricade of elms, one resorts to magic. It is called breaking out of the ground and it is done by force. On the wind like something out of Leviticus, a bat quivers across the porcelain of evening, deep horror of eyes and of wings; more come in watery flocks, each one woven to the other like bubbles in a frozen pond. The dance winds through the windless woods. Fires started by lightning make up the telling of men: we were the fine shavings of sheepskin mercy and love were not. We for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth, whose veins Death the gardener twists into a different pattern, wonder, "Out of such numbers how will I be noticed?" Whether caring accomplishes anything is irrelevant. Every angel is terrifying. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life, and this is the key to it all. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. It is all you have and all your father had and all your brothers. We live in an old chaos of the sun, one sun, one journey here and everywhere, of that wide water, inescapable. At evening the diminishing of the dance, no, not night but death, makes constant cry: Disturb even a seed sleeping and you harvest stones. It is called breaking out of the ground and it is done by force. PASTICHE; CLUB QUAKE by Edward A. Dougherty There's no guarantee the predictions are right, but there was an opportunity to turn a dead night into a big one. Yeah, I'm profiting from impending doom. "Club Quake." From the Ural Mountains to the Atlantic shores: sixteen hundred armored troop carriers, offensive military equipment - "smash," she said, "blow up, or otherwise destroy these weapons." As she walked around Japan, all my mother could think of was her sisterUs miscarriages. She's got babies all over there, in the ground all over Japan, and the State Department said, "The suffering is massive." Another official: "Unless the war is stopped, the famine averted, the country will be displaced or die." I hope it doesn't happen, but what am I going to do? The first time she flew home; my mother was pregnant. A celebration between two sisters. In Bethlehem, soldiers gathered around outside just before the second bomb went off. Her first child came out - breach - dead. I'm a business man. Refugees streamed across the border and relief workers were awed by the open-armed generosity of the villagers. INDIA WIDOWUS DEATH AT ... by Alex Cigale Just as we bathe in water she bathed in fire. Sati is not possible for all women, only those who are very blessed. The flames kept alive twelve days were doused with milk, her favorite scarlet shawl draped over the ashes. Your husband a sort of god sati is the ultimate achievement for a woman. The marriage ceremony last January: he wore a gray suit; her face was draped with gold, a lot of flowers. Now there may be miracles, many good big things will come to us. Tribal Zambia custom of cleansing the brother of the dead man must sleep with the widow to free her to remarry. "It is like someone bringing an open coffin and saying get in this coffin. HOMEOPATHIC POEM I by Gary Aspenberg Do you have any peculiar sensation in or on your head? e.g. as if you were wearing a hat; as if air was passing through your head; as if there was a current of air above your eyes; as if there was something alive in your head; as if your brain was an anthill; as if there was a worm crawling in your forehead; as if everything in the head was alive; as if the head was asleep; as if water was boiling inside the head; as if there was a band or a hoop tied around the head; as if the head had contracted or enlarged; as if the head was heavy and falling forward/backwards/sideways; as if you were intoxicated; etc., etc. If you have any peculiar sensation in the head, please tell me. HOMEOPATHIC POEM II by Gary Aspenberg What type of stool do you have? Does it have air bubbles, is it like balls, is it bloody, chalky, like clay, like coffeegrounds, crumbling, curdled, dry, difficult to expel, fatty, fermented, fetid, foul, flaky, flat, fluid, foamy, forcibly expelled, frothy, glassy, like glue, granular, greasy, like green scum, gritty, gushing out, hard, full of holes, hot, burning the parts, insufficient, involuntary, irregular, jelly-like, too large in size, with undigested food, liquid, long (like the stool of a dog), loose, lumpy, membranous, mixed, with mucus, mushy, thin in form, noisy (passed along with loud passage of wind), odorless, oily, painful, pappy, pasty, like pea soup, pouring out, receding (tends to come out but slip back), retarded, like rice water, rough, like small globules (sago), like sheep dung, comes out very slowly, passes better when leaning back, starchy, square in shape, sticky, stringy, like a sudden explosion, tar-like, triangular in shape, watery, white, full of worms, etc. Please describe what type of stools you have? WHAT I DO by John Bradley We risk our lives. We could be vegetables. Sometimes I'm so sore I can't touch my wife; Sometimes My wife can't touch me. I'm not saying people Shouldn't play football. We're like stunt People; we do crazy things. It excites us. This Excites me. I'm out here doing it Because I like it. I risk my life Every day. That's What I do. (New York Jet player Mario Johnson, a teammate, on Dennis Byrd's neck injury.) FROM THE SWOPPER'S COLUMN by David Elliott Will swop hand-crocheted baby afghan for live Maine lobsters. Will swop hundreds of 1940's and 50's poultry and farm magazines for Ingrid Bergman memorabilia. Will swop one ounce pure silver bars for stuffed and mounted members of the weasel family. Will swop colorful, humorous folk/primitive painting of your life story for lake or seaside property in Maine. Will swop hardbound National Geographics, 1916 and 1917, for 10 pounds of moose meat. Will swop WWI bayonets for large Hav-a-Hart trap. Will swop and old wooden coffin box for a large bell, Mercury statue, or library-size globe. Will swop registered Morgan stud colt for Jacuzzi. Will swop Texas pecans for chromo-illustrated Lord's Prayer. Will swop anything within reason that is mailable from Europe for your hatpins from Yankee magazine WANTED by Linda Nemec Foster A lyric poem in any form, 20 lines limit, on the subject of Springtime. Originality and depth of emotion essential. An ode (a lengthy, dignified poem of exaltation or praise about someone or something worthy of esteem.) Not more than 16 lines. A poem on "The Winter of '77." Only stipulation - the word "snow" must not appear anywhere in the poem. A terse, metaphorical, introspective poem using the tangible to allegorize the substance of being beyond what is materially manifested. Use of dynamic language, multi-level implication, and climax. Max. 40 lines. A poem comparing a mythical god to Senator Hubert Humphrey. No free verse, not less than 12 lines. AUTHOR'S NOTES Gary Aspenberg's first collection, Bus Poems, is available from Broken Moon Press in Seattle. " 'Homeopathic Poems' are presented with minor alterations from a questionnaire prepared by a homeopathic physician and designed to elicit symptoms from patients." John Bradley's work has appeared in The Bellingham Review, Bloomsbury Review, High Plains Literary Review, Ironwood, Mid-American Review, The Prose Poem, Puerto Del Sol, Rolling Stone, and Yellow Silk. He has received a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and won the 1989 Washington Prize. He teaches composition and creative writing at Northern Illinois University. " 'What I do' struck me as a poem as soon as I read it. There are many pieces in the newspaper that canUt be written about; they must be presented just as they are, as the poems they are." Alex Cigale is the editor of Synaesthetic. He has an MFA from the University of Michigan. His found poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Gypsy: Earth Tones, Kiosk: Interstates, Poetry in Performance (CUNY), and Poetry New York. He was born in Chernovtsy, the Ukraine, and grew up in Leningrad, Tel Aviv, and Rome, before coming to the U.S. in 1975. " 'India Widow's Death at ...' is pastiched from two New York Times articles." Edward A. Dougherty, a former editor at the Mid-American Review, and his spouse are now volunteer directors of the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima. R 'Pastiche: Club Quake' is from news reports and an associated (though I don't know how) memory." David Elliott teaches English at Keystone Junior College in LaPlume, PA. His work has appeared in Passages North, Creeping Bent, Northeast, and Modern Haiku. "I must admit that 'From the Swopper's Column' is not a purely found poem but a pastiche from many issues of the magazine [Yankee.] My sense of the poetic leads me in several directions .... Haiku too are found poems of a sort - records of encounters with bits of non-verbal data the world presents passed on through words with as little interference of the ego as possible." Linda Nemec Foster has an MFA from Goddard College. Her poetry has appeared in Georgia Review, Indiana Review, Nimrod, Puerto Del Sol, and Passages North. Her translations from the Polish have been published in Artful Dodge and International Poetry Review. She has received two Creative Artists grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts, and has been nominated for nine Pushcart Prizes. John Gilgun teaches writing at Missouri Western College and uses found poetry in his classes. Of Gilgun's first novel, Music I Never Dreamed Of, Richard Hall wrote in The James White Review, "We have a quietly brilliant, flawlessly executed account of growing up gay in South Boston in the 1950Us. We are back in the golden age of gay literature, where the basic truth about each adolescent's outcast status is expounded once again - in this case by a master spirit whose words devastate us with laughter, hurt and recognition.S "Wolf" takes its start from a short story by Barry Lopez. Lyn Lifshin has given more than 700 readings across the country. She has been a Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award, she is the subject of the documentary film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. The poems printed here were abstracted from the diaries of Georgia O'Keefe. "Poetry makes one so much more aware of, increases, sensual appreciation, helps one discover the magical in the ordinary, gives one power, a way to shape, transform, rediscover, catch and hold and, as with dance, a way to feel alive, connected" Jeff McMillian is working on a Doctorate and teaching at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He has an MFA from Bowling Green. His work has appeared in The Sucarnochee Review, Poets On: Arrivals, ONTHEBUS and other publications. "I learned about found poetry from John Gilgun (a writer whom you are also publishing!) who learned the same from Mark Strand. We used to pull cards which we composed from words and phrases we found in books. The poem "Drawn But Not Skinned" is composed entirely of others' words (a cento,) and the sources vary from Rilke's elegies to Rombauer's cookbook. I am attracted to this style of writing (although it usually amounts to little more than a "way in") because whenever I find those words or lines which leap out of the poem and off the page, I want to grab them and shape them to my own world. It gives me pleasure to pay tribute to writers I love by enshrining pieces of their work in my own. I live for those moments when a line or phrase blows open my consciousness so that in a moment I am reborn and the phrase is reborn in the context of my life."