Mark Young’s – un saut de chat – now out on Otoliths

un saut de chat – Mark Young

on Otoliths

I’m a couple of years into my ninth decade, & have decided it’s time to tidy a few things up, specifically creating some trope-based collections, rather than collections of recent work.Retrospectively, my Ley Lines II that came out in November 2023 from Sandy Press should probably be considered the first collation: a single trope (‘A line from . . .’), a significant number of poems (just under 100), & written over a number of years (2014-2021). un saut de chat is composed primarily of prose poems, with some found poems & a few ficciones included. There are around 140 pieces in the book, from the past twenty years. I feel, displayed this way, that it gives greater insight into thematic aspects of my work that are not so easy to discern otherwise. The next book in this loose grouping will be my entire Magritte poems, all twenty years of them. It will probably come in at around 600 pages, & be ready for printing around the end of the year. – Mark Young

New Book by George Myers Jr. – Fast Talk With Writers – on Amazon

Fast Talk With Writers is a collection of conversations with 20th century writers working at the height of their powers in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. They talk about their intentions, influences and mentors, politics, myths, annoyances, best sellers, and their craft. Interview with Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, Robert Bly, David Citino, Evan S. Connell, Annie Dillard, Carlos Fuentes, Donald Hall, Charles Johnson, Gordon Lish, Reginald McKnight, Joyce Carol Oates, Edouard Roditi, Ronald Sukenick, Eudora Welty, and Paul West. George Myers Jr.’s books include Atmopheric Landscapes of North America, Worlds Without End and Mixers: On Hybrid Writing.

New book by Mark Young – Ley Lines II now on Amazon

 

As far as I can tell, my first “A line from…” poem used as its prompt words found in a Ron Silliman piece. Jackson Mac Low, Charles Mingus, Paracelsus, Gunter Grass, Friedrich Durrenmatt, & Calvin Coolidge weren’t far behind. But three years before them came “A poem beginning with a line from Foucault” & “A poem ending with a line from Pablo Neruda.” & before them all — in my multiverse, at least — was Robert Duncan’s “A Poem Beginning with a Line from Pindar.”

There is a history which is there to be taken advantage of. Chance meetings, long associations, stochastic processes. Google as partner on the dance floor. Out of it, along one — dare I say it? — line, have come more than 500 of these “A line from…” poems, encompassing poets, musicians, politicians of many persuasions, scientists, painters, actors, philosophers, as well as all of the American Presidents & some of the sycophantic staff of one of the more recent.

So who’ll have the next fangoogle with me?

Mark Young

Ley Lines II A small sampler

Getting To One – Flash Fictions by Eileen R. Tabios and Art by harry k stammer

Now out on Amazon

 

 

Blurbs

Blurbs Getting to One

 

 

Sample Flash Fiction

Planet M

Turn left and you’re on your knees. You’re raising your right hand to a long-haired lady, a platinum ring topped by a 3-karat diamond pinched by your trembling fingers. She’s widening her eyes to drink in your marriage proposal. You both will live happily ever after. Turn right and you’re tripping over the hem of your monk’s robe. You catch yourself and continue striding into the dim entrance of a stone building. You exit into the monastery’s interior courtyard where the light is blinding as its walls bask under a noonday sun. These situations—and many others—are offered by the glass walls bordering the paths through which you navigate this planet. Your own body is not involved, just the avatars presented by mirrors. Your race has depended on video screens and selfies for so long that none of this is unusual. What is unusual is when you trip non-virtually and smash your face against a mirrored wall. You are shocked when you feel your brow sunder and the escaping blood paints the walls around you. You raise a hand to feel the warmth of ichor though your veins are not a god’s. You look at your bloodied hand and notice how it’s become the same color as the smears on the cracked mirror facing you. For the first time, you notice Planet M, the world of mirrors that’s evolved around you. You notice how this planet lacks aroma. Perfume has become extinct—once upon a time, you’d favored a lover’s scent of refined citrus accord and geranium as exalted sensually by smooth woods, bourbon, dark patchouli, black amber and cashmere musk while emitting subtle notes of orange, ruby red grapefruit, Mandarin, geranium, bourbon, and dark patchouli—but you don’t know how to weep at the disappearance of fragrance. You don’t know how to mourn evaporation. You only know you created Planet M from sitting too long at the counter of “One,” a bar where each patron must drink alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

XXXX CENTONES from the Cantos of EZRA POUND – Mark Young

A FREE DOWNLOAD…

I find the Cantos of Ezra Pound wide-ranging in subject & style, & note that they borrow heavily from the work of others, from Homer & Chinese sources through to contemporary historical records. Pound has the ability to blend & merge these — often quite extensive — quotes with his own rhetoric; which has a great deal of depth & beauty, & so becomes great feedstock for basing a series of centos on. The poems in this collection, written over the last six years, have the Cantos as their source — not just the words of Pound but those of those others who are embedded. Two bites of the cherry, as it were; & I hope my CENTONES reflect favorably on us all. — Mark Young

XXXX CENTONES-1