Index5

     We also have pages 1490 thru 1504 of Joe Brennan’s 1600-page tripartite,
antiphonal masterpiece, A Work in Progress. All the new (and old)
millennium hypocrites, liars, murderers, and fools now have their Hell.
The excerpt in FlashPøint is identified by its first line, “…Moonlight
white with envy… .”

     David Hickman’s essay, “The Measure of Measure: Ego, Positivism and The
Smiling Pig of Language Poetry” traces the intellectual, aesthetic and
ethical roots of the Language project’s utter collapse into disrepute
and obscurity.

     Jazz legend and John Coltrane authority, Andrew White, has provided us
with a wry story from 1963 excerpted from his iconoclastic
autobiography, “Chicken Alto.” With good natured humor he lucidly
communicates in this short piece several archetypal dimensions of
the struggle of the modern jazz musician.

     We have translations from the Greek of three C.P. Cavafy poems from New
York poet, Anastasios Kozaitis, as well as an original poem, “Variations:
Toward the Fluid Addresses,” which chronicles the co-evolutionary
constriction of our material/scientific culture.

     Brad Haas has posted two variants of the Oppen poems, “Alpine” and
“Stoneybrook,” from his personal archive as prelude to his review of the
New Collected Poems edited by Michael Davidson and issued by New
Directions. Brad not only includes his own provocative essay on the
metamorphosis of Oppen’s canon, “The Textual Dilemma of Oppen’s `Alpine’,” he has also obtained for us a recent talk on Oppen by … John Taggart!

     Brad Haas also reviews The Shrubberies by Ronald Johnson, edited by Peter O’Leary, and published by Flood Editions, and A Menora for Athena:
Charles Reznikoff and the Jewish Dilemmas of Objectivist Poetry by
Stephen Fredman, published by the University of Chicago Press.

     This issue of FlashPøint is graced with the powerful and profound images
of ex-patriot, African American cartoonist Ollie Harrington. Mr.
Harrington’s work has had a profound influence on illustrators Sue Coe
and Michael Allen who have appeared in previous issues of FlashPøint. The three images in this issue come from the Walter O. Evans Collection of African-American Art. Together with Mr. Harrington’s art in this issue’s Galerie we are happy to showcase a very different approach to graphics in the work of Tom Wagner.

     In response to some critics’ current contention that Ezra Pound’s Cantos
are the “anthem of fascism,” Carlo Parcelli asked the fascists
themselves what role the Cantos play in their ideology in his piece “Ezra
Skinhead: The Cantos as the Anthem of Fascism.” Then Parcelli turns his
attention to the official press’s horror at James Joyce’s Ulysses‘ being
named the “greatest novel of the twentieth century” by Modern Library.
He then ties the press’s resistance to Joyce, Ulysses, and High Modernism
to their longstanding fear and loathing of the ‘other’ as represented by
third world nationalist movements in a piece he calls “The Washington
Post vs. the Ineluctable Modality of the Visible.”

      Finally, the unabridged text of Carlo Parcelli’s poem “Deconstructing the
Demiurge: Tale of the Tribe”, that has so much annoyed readers, especially
members of the scientific and political communities, is presented here
in its full glory in hopes of providing further annoyance.

      FlashPøint fiction is always a startling mix of styles and subjects. In
issue #5 the latter range from war (“night patrol”
and John Potts’ “The Throatcutters”) to other human business.
Cris Mazza, an excerpt of whose novel, Girl Beside
Him, appears in FlashPøint #1, now contributes two enticing
contrapuntal short-shorts grouped as “She Does, He
Doesn’t”. (An edgy discussion of Mazza’s novel, Your Name Here: _______, orchestrated by Cam Tatham, accompanies an introduction to Girl
Beside Him.) Anthony Wright’s two tales, “Ghosts of Krakatoa” and “Popocatepetl”, take FlashPoint more than literally into
new territory — travel-writing — which we have not featured before. We
have published speculative fantasy, on the other hand, but never anything
like David Alexander’s Machinebreakers,
which projects a dystopian alternative history of the U.S. always
shattering into and out of chaos. A window into a very different 21st
century dystopia can be found in a review of Lance
Olsen’s Freaknest. And for a wry window upon the events of September-October 2001, check out Matt Samet’s “Attack on Bloggs”.

     Welcome to the new FlashPøint … and be sure to tell us what you think!