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CURRENT ISSUE 02/2010
InDigest no.15
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Dear Readers,
Thank you for reading.
Dustin & David, InDigest Editors
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| POETICS |
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POEMS BY:
James Cihlar
Gregory Lawless
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TWIN CITIES
by James Cihlar
This city park sign tells me
Land that once was the highest point
Is now the lowest,
Just as where there once were trees
There now are lakes.
Curtainless windows at night
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| NARRATIVES |
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| In the abandoned building, deep in the industrial park, we make our way through the dusty office, climb onto a duct, and up to the highest point. Sitting there in the concrete courtyard, our legs dangling above the plants beneath, plants pushing up through desks, filing cabinets and scattered gears, we can see the Manhattan skyline. And there is a house just floating there, high above the streets. Fighter jets whiz by overhead in formation, hundreds of helicopters dotting the blue sky.
“This is a strange kind of terrorism,” she says.
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| ERRATICA |
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Columns about Art, Books, Theater, Music, Film, and more…
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Play by Play: Plays and The Myopia
by Rachel Cole
Of course, as Last Life is essentially a vehicle for epic displays of stage combat, the fight scenes, directed by Rod Kinter, are truly at the heart of this spectacle. His choreography is elegantly brutal, a dance like cutting open a rib cage and eating the still pulsing heart inside. Set to a techno soundtrack in the tradition of Kill Bill, each fight is filled with humor and story, a crude language that speaks of an elevated attention to the animal-like ferocity inside us all.
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Artburn: No Room For a Revolution
by Charles Greene
One of life’s chief pleasures is the possibility that at any given moment something could come along and completely sweep us off of our feet, that some new creation, idea, or event can have such impact that it reshapes the world around us, and changes the way in which we understand our world. Such happenings are called revolutions, and they are the fuel that drives the engine of life. Revolutionary new products, revolutionary ideas, revolutionary discoveries, the Revolutionary War – these are the things that make the world go round. Movement is inherent in the very name: Revolution, an instance of revolving, that turning and churning, which makes things go. Love is a revolution. Revolutions are that which engender sudden and pervasive change, they shift paradigms, topple regimes – political, cultural, and personal – they are what we nowadays refer to as game changers.
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Peculiar Travel Suggestions Are Like Dance Lessons From God OR: Oprah Schmoprah: Installment One
J. Albin Larson On The Princess Bride by William Goldman.
Goldman’s book is, on its most basic level, about what each great piece of fiction, no matter its scope or approach, attempts to be whether it wants to admit it or not: LIFE. Capital letters completely intended. The fact that Goldman is able to pull it off in a story that includes “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truth. Passion. Miracles” only makes that lofty ideal easier to swallow.
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A Visit to Planet Lemtron: These Colors Give Me the Runs
by Alex Lemon
Drug-mule Green. Mopar Blue.
To-The-Max Black. Who Am I
To Disagree Magenta.
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Literature in Translation: Chad W. Post of Open Letter Books
by Jay D. Peterson
The buzzwords in publishing these days are “literature in translation.” And, unlike most buzzwords in, say, politics or pop-culture, these three are welcomed, refreshing, and busy reviving a struggling industry. Leading the charge is the University of Rochester’s Open Letter Press. In just two seasons, it’s published an array of delightfully weird books, by overlooked but incredibly talented writers from Iceland, Spain, Poland, Norway and elsewhere.
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The Cinefiles: Charles Chaplin’s ‘Easy Street’ and ‘One A.M.’ at New York Guitar Festival
by Dustin Luke Nelson
What’s fascinating about Easy Street is not the signature style of physical comedy but the dark political message that pervades the film. Chaos reigns on Easy Street, the cops are scared to enforce the law, it depicts marital abuse, theft, and street violence in a fashion that is largely atypical for comedies of this era – or American films at large during this period. Chaplin portrays how the approach to the problems in the streets is just the wrong method from top to bottom. The cops are looking for temporary enforcement and to jail the “criminals” in the streets, whereas Chaplin, ultimately, brings a sort of complete political reform to the neighborhood (mostly by accident in comedic sequences, but it is done nonetheless).
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| GALLERY |
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Andrea Carlson
I work primarily on paper, utilizing many two-dimensional mediums on a single surface including oil, acrylic, gouache, color pencil, graphite, watercolor and ink. Although the work sometimes has the appearance of collage, because the styles and mediums vary so dramatically, the heavy-weight paper is entirely worked by hand. This process helps define my artistic role as a filter or translator, fully digesting my sources as a complication to the craft of appropriation.
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by Laura Sims. All that need be said about how much I liked is that we invited her to read at 
by William Scott Wilson. I happen to like the story of Musashi’s life quite a bit, so I’m a little biased. But this is one of my favorite biographies. Mostly because it’s one of the few times that a little bit drier of a biography actually works for me. Musashi’s life was so interesting and weird that the really factual style Wilson goes with in this book winds up working really well for him. If you’re not familiar with Miyamoto Musashi, he was a samurai (more-or-less, not in the strictest sense) who became a Japanese national hero. He never lost a match, was a big part of the Toyotomi side of the battle between the Toyotomi’s and Tokugawa’s just before the Tokugawa Ieysu unified Japan. Anyway, his stories are pretty crazy. First duel at 14, and he killed a well regarded (adult) samurai with a wooden stick. He killed everyone in an entire school in a series of duels, and then an ambush when they tried to regain their honor. If you don’t want to spend a week or two learning about his life I recommend watching Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, which is all about the life of Miyamoto Musashi. You’ll at least get the idea after the first one, 
, Cervena Barva Press, 2009, by permission of Lucille Lang Day and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
by DC Pierson [
by Don DeLillo [
by William Goldman [
