some author activity: Zhang, Braun, Inniss, Berlatsky, Robinson + Koss,

Elena Zhang has a new piece up at Flash Flood and a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; Jacob Braun has new work up at Another Chicago Magazine; Scott Inniss is interviewed via the Found You Magazine podcast; Noah Berlatsky has new poems in the latest issue of Heavy Crown; and Ben Robinson interviews Zane Koss for The Temz Review.

Jon Cone : Omnibus review : above/ground press 2025 : Sandhu, Greene, Berlatsky, Ladouceur, Kelly, Reid, Ross, Sikkema + Browne,

Canadian expat poet [and above/ground press author] Jon Cone was good enough to provide a series of first reviews, short and sketched on an array of above/ground press titles from 2025: THE TEMPORARY SPACE OF A PLACENTA, by Mandy Sandhu (2025); EL REY MURCIÉLAGO // THE BAT KING, by Yaxkin Melchy Ramos, translated by Ryan Greene (2025); Spamtoum, by Noah Berlatsky (2025); The Last Man, by Ben Ladouceur (2025); More of How to Read the Bible, by J-T Kelly (2025); cuba A book: twentieth anniversary edition, by Monty Reid (2025); AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES: Seven Stories, by Stuart Ross (2025); Just a Minute, Moon's Too Loud, by Michael Sikkema (2025); and Daily Self-Portrait Valentine, by Laynie Browne (2025). Thanks so much! You can see the original post here. Or read, below:

Here are some brief reviews of my favorite titles issued by Above/Ground Press during the year 2025. While I was not asked to write any of these reviews, I will state for the purpose of full disclosure that I was published by this press in 2025 and will appear as a co-author of another title in 2026. 

THE TEMPORARY SPACE OF A PLACENTA by Mandy Sandhu

This is a wonderful collection. Sandhu’s poems are characterized by their concision, allusiveness, a leaping of imagery and wit. The voice behind the poetry suggests great intelligence and familiarity with various poetic traditions. Reading Sandhu’s poems, I thought of Ted Berrigan’s Sonnets. Then reading her bio at the back of the chapbook I was pleased to note Sandhu listed Berrigan as influence. A superb collection.

EL REY MURCIÉLAGO THE BAT KING by 
Yaxkin Melchy Ramos [tr. Ryan Greene]

This work appears to combine various forms and traditions – Surrealism, Concrete (Visual) Poetry, Mythology, Science Fiction – and doubtless others – into a contemporary hybrid that veers between poetry and prose. If you ask your poetry to break down barriers, then this is a chapbook you’ll find rewarding. An added felicity: it is bilingual so you can compare English translation to Spanish original.  Experimental in the best sense.

SPAMTOUM by Noah Berlatsky

This title contains one long poem of 95 stanzas of four-lines each, the titular “Spamtoum”, and a final poem “Hi Noah”. ‘Spamtoum’ with its repeating lines expands the pantoum form. Because I enjoy form, I set out to trace the pattern, then gave up at a certain point because it dawned on me the pattern itself was incidental to the feverish language play taking place before me. Much like John Ashbery’s sestina “Farm Implements and Rutagagas in a Landscape”, Berlatsky’s unfurling of the pantoum is intended to be gloriously screwball. Spam is where language goes to die. Here it is rescued, given oxygen, and a second chance. If you enjoy poetry that delights in language, then “Spamtoum” is ideal reading. 

THE LAST MAN by Ben Ladouceur

Ben Ladouceur writes elegant, well-crafted poems. His poetic imagination is considerable; his evident care with line and stanza enviable. Thus it is impossible for me to read a poem by Ladouceur and not be impressed by both form and content, as if those aspects can ever be fully separated, because his writing achieves its results with apparent effortlessness. He is a poet in full control of his gifts for the poetic art. (Color me envious.)  A brilliant collection.

MORE OF HOW TO READ THE BIBLE by J-T Kelly

Kelly writes poems that deal with his religious life, much like Franz Wright did. And like Wright, Kelly often deals with the struggle to maintain it in today’s world. Like the best love poetry, religious poetry appeals to us because it yearns to go beyond the material world toward a transcendent one. A highlight for me is Kelly’s catalog of sacred names that ends on a culminating moment; another favorite is the prose poem “Morning Exercise”, which has the profound bearing of a meditation one might encounter, say, in the journals of Thomas Merton. A serious and fine example of the art. 

cuba A book by Monty Reid (twentieth anniversary edition)

This reissue contains a brief essay by Monty Reid that describers the circumstances that prompted the writing of the original poem. Reid wrote cuba A book after a period of not-writing, and it impresses by how assured it feels.  None of that hesitancy or searching around for line or voice: from the start it is all there. I suppose that really shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.  For those familiar with Reid’s work and those who would like a good place to start: recommended.

AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES by Stuart Ross

Stuart Ross is a poet who also writes a great deal of fiction. He’s a wonderful fiction writer. This small collection reminds me at times of Brautigan, at times of early Raymond Carver. (The Carver under the influence of Lish.) In his economy of language, Ross calls to mind another great Canadian short story writer: Norman Levine. The title story is a fine one; however, my personal favorite is “Meredith and Craig Sit in Their Kitchen and Play Stringed Instruments.” In that story you get an ending with a palpable sense of what music critic Greil Marcus called ‘that old weird America’ – a voice haunted, distant, haunting. An excellent collection.  

JUST A MINUTE, MOON’S TOO LOUD by Michael Sikkema

A concise poetry that pays homage to the natural world, the world encountered at the edge of a hike or in a moment of jeweled awareness. Sikkema surely enjoys the ancient Chinese masters, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t enjoy writers such as Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. There’s humor here too, light, whimsical, lovely high seeming, as this complete poem demonstrates:

fav crow
ate my
rear view

When brevity is desired, let these poems answer the need. 

DAILY SELF-PORTRAIT VALENTINE by Laynie Browne

This chapbook, at first glance, is composed of lyrics that resemble those of Emily Dickinson. That is a misleading impression to have. As Browne tells us in an author’s note these poems grew out of “a year-long durational project” in which she “made a self-portrait every day for one year.” The resulting collection enacts a quest, one where memory accompanies Browne, as the outside world of obligation seems to call to the poet in the midst of her purposeful concentrations. These self-portraits are by necessity impressionistic. It is a collection that usefully demonstrates how poetry can come out of a daily practice.  

These are other fine titles can be found here  https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

some author activity: Berlatsky, Archer, Solomon, Ladouceur, Robinson + Smith,

Noah Berlatsky has a new poem up at smols; Sacha Archer and Misha Solomon have work up at long con magazine; Ben Ladouceur is interviewed by Jasper Fleming for EVENT magazine; Elizabeth Robinson has new work up at autocorrect; and Steven Ross Smith has posted a new word-music collaboration with renowned double bass jazz musician Neil Swainson over at bandcamp.

Noah Berlatsky includes Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvag's A Further Introduction to Bingo (2024) as part of his "Best Books of 2025" list,

American poet, critic and above/ground press author Noah Berlatsky was good enough to include Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvag's collaborative chapbook A Further Introduction to Bingo (2024) as part of his "Best Books of 2025" list. Thanks so much! You can catch his full list here. As he writes:

Jason Heroux & Dag T. Straumsvag
A Further Introduction to Bingo

Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvag’s above/ground chapbook is a collection of apparently randomly numbered, semi-surreal, semi-elegaic prose poems/vignettes about a bingo parlor, a mathematician, and some numbers seeking meaning, or maybe just sequence. As in Lewis Caroll, it’s not just reality but logic itself that breaks down as our sort of heroes, sort of abstractions wander from elevator to parking lot to funeral parlor asking questions like, “Did numbers have parents?” and “Why can’t your letter be delivered?” Russel Edson and James Tate are maybe touchstones, but Heroux and Straumsvag attain a loopy, giggling sense of missed prizes that is all their own. Heroux’s 2nd above/ground chapbook of the year, My Life As a Notebook, is almost as wonderful.

some author activity: Walker, Berlatsky, Niespodziany, Markotić, Archer, Ebbitt + the Indie Lit Market!

Laura Walker has new work up at Astrolabe; Noah Berlatsky has three poems in the new issue of Ranger; Benjamin Niespodziany has two new poems up at HAD; Nicole Markotić is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Sacha Archer has four pieces up at A-Minor; Katie Ebbitt has new work at talking about strawberries all of the time; and don't forget the Indie Lit Market in Toronto on November 2nd!

some author activity: Notley, Berlatsky, Betts, Ross + Chang-Richardson,

Joyelle McSweeney writes on the late Alice Notley, as does Nick Sturm; Noah Berlatsky writes his engagements with the New York School of Poets over at Splice Today; Gregory Betts is interviewed "on literary community and collaboration, and AI's influences on writing" over at Creative Writing; Eva H.D. reads a poem by Stuart Ross; and Ellen Chang-Richardson is in podcast conversation with Rachel Thompson at Lit Mag Love.

some author activity: Banks, Campanello, Bell, Notley, Berlatsky + Olsen,

Chris Banks has new work and an interview up at Only Poems; Kimberly Campanello has an article up at The Guardian, on being diagnosed with Parkinson's; Wade Bell has some poems up at The Typescript; Anselm Berrigan reflects on his mother Alice Notley's life and legacy over at Interview magazine; Noah Berlatsky has a poem up at New Feathers Anthology; and Geoffrey Olsen is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" series.

new from above/ground press: Spamtoum, by Noah Berlatsky

Spamtoum
Noah Berlatsky
$6

Hi, Noah

Thank you for giving us 
the opportunity to consider
ultimately we appreciate
all the best
we promise to do our best
please do not reply
the message has been received
please do not reply
even if you gave permission
after careful consideration, please
there’s a lot to like here
thank you for trusting us
unfortunately, dear
please take this for what it is
it’s pretty amazing
we work hard
year-round, we work
your work, we wish and work
a venue for your creative work
even very high-quality
please do consider the future
has been received and look forward
to the future and organization directly
platforming your interest
in the decision-making process of the platform
receipt for your payment
that has shuttered operations
as you may have seen in the New York Times
you weren’t quite right for us
please do not reply
on our workloads, on our welcoming alternative
communities your patreon
your payments are precious
your interest looks forward
this email consideration forward
please remember your manuscript
your Instagram and your interest
we are interested and look forward
please do not reply.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Noah Berlatsky (he/him) is a freelance writer in Chicago. His full-length collections are Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024), Gnarly Thumbs (Anxiety Press, 2025), Meaning Is Embarrassing (Ranger, 2025) and Brevity (Nun Prophet, 2025). 

This is Berlatsky’s second above/ground press title, after Send $19.99 for Supplements and Freedom (2023).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Stebner, Martin, Berlatsky, Banks, Mohammadi, Moure + Solomon,

Kevin Stebner answers the '12 or 20 questions' interview; Camille Martin has a series of photographs newly posted online; Noah Berlatsky has new work up at dadakuku; Chris Banks has an essay forthcoming in Best Canadian Essays 2026, and Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi, Erín Moure and Misha Solomon have poems forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2026.

some author activity: Rogal, mclennan, Burdick, Jirgens, Browne, Berlatsky + Boyle,

Stan Rogal is interviewed for National Poetry Month at All Lit Up, and a poem by rob mclennan is posted as part of such; rob mclennan has a new poem up at Oatleaf; Alice Burdick is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Karl Jirgens is included in a feature dedicated to the life and work of Lyn Hejinian at Jacket2, as co-edited by forthcoming author Laynie Browne; Noah Berlatsky has a poem up at Oatleaf; and Frances Boyle has a new poem up at Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

some author activity: Ballard, Berlatsky, mclennan, Boughn, Clayton + Barwin,

Micah Ballard has a new piece in The Brooklyn Rail, as part of "In Memoriam: A Tribute to Neeli Cherkovski"; Noah Berlatsky has a poem up at Memoir Mixtapes, and is interviewed in the '12 or 20 questions' series; rob mclennan is interviewed by Cara Waterfall for Archipel; Michael Boughn has new work in the Spotlight series; Conyer Clayton has a poem in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; and Gary Barwin is interviewed by Rina Barone over at Stories from the Pink House.

some author activity: Olsen, Young, Saklikar, Berlatsky, mclennan + O'Reilly,

Geoffrey Olsen has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month, as does Geoffrey Young and Renée Sarojini Saklikar; Noah Berlatsky has some poems up at Five Fleas, as well as a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; rob mclennan has a poem + a writing prompt up at Moist Poetry Journal; and Nathanael O'Reilly has new work in The Hooghly Review.

some author activity: Solomon, Berlatsky, Rogal, carisse, Baus + Dreiblatt,

Misha Solomon wrote on the late Ian Stephens for The Fiddlehead; Noah Berlatsky is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time, where Stan Rogal and russell carisse also have poems; and the video from Eric Baus and Ian Dreiblatt's zoom-reading in Jack Krick's Hugely Popular series is now online.

some author activity: Kemp-Gee, Mody, Beaulieu, O'Reilly, Scroggins, van Vliet + Berlatsky,

Meghan Kemp-Gee has a new poem in Southeast Review; Monica Mody has new work in the Spotlight series; Derek Beaulieu has new work at petrichor; Nathanael O'Reilly is interviewed over at The Wild Umbrella; Mark Scroggins is interviewed at talking about strawberries all of the time, where Robert van Vliet also has poems; and Noah Berlatsky has a new poem at dadakuku.

some author activity: Sikkema, Eleftherion, Oniță, Boyle + Berlatsky,

Michael Sikkema has some new writing up at Cream Scene Carnival; Melissa Elefttherion has new work up at The Mantle; Adriana Oniță has new work up at the ex-puritan; Frances Boyle is interviewed over at Amanda Earl's The Small Machine Talks podcast; and Noah Berlatsky has a new poem up at Synchronized Chaos.

some author activity: Mody, Berlatsky, Johnson, Rogal, Morton, Boyle + Kronovet,

Monica Mody has a substack now, and has work featured at Scroll India; five fleas has published a short poem by Noah Berlatsky; Chris Johnson is interviewed by Andrew French for the Page Fright Podcast; Stan Rogal, Colin Morton and Frances Boyle each have new work in the latest issue of Pinhole Poetry; and Jennifer Kronovet has new work up at Zocalo: Public Square.

some author activity: Cantrell, McNair, Berlatsky + Witek

Walking the Wrack Line? by videographer-photographer Matt Roberts and poet Terri Witek. Photo by Rick de Yampert

Andrew Cantrell has new work up at Annulet; Christine McNair is interviewed alongside Elee Kraljii Gardiner for Amanda Earl's The Small Machine Talks podcast; Noah Berlatsky is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and forthcoming author Terri Witek is part of "Cuerpo-territorio: Reverberations of Belonging," an exhibit at Stetson University's Hand Art Center.

new from above/ground press: Send $19.99 for Supplements and Freedom, by Noah Berlatsky

Send $19.99 for Supplements and Freedom
Collages and Uncreative Writing
Noah Berlatsky
$5

Variation on Select British Eloquence

“The oratory of Charles Darwin,” noted Mr. Karl Marx, “was uniquely suited to the theme of the origin of specie; not only did it open, like a luminous shower of golden boxes to reveal perfumed lumpen proles in whose sullen mental tergiversations the wild wealth of pensions struggled till sufficiently fit to be invested with the gay habits of usorious semites, but it also closed within its tinkling xanthic cataracts those prostrate securities which must be eliminated through probity and private rectitude if teleological apocalypse is to come. When, mounted upon his bloody posterity, he rode out over the Western force of historical materialism with jingling padlocks on his virile imperatives and Mao Tse Tung by his side, even Lord Vader—no friend to Natty Bumppo’s raw, Rousseauian marketing Jüngness—was moved to the following eulogium:  ‘His defense of Rockefeller and Gates from the overly fastidious savagery of weak-minded poor rates defiled evil and degraded apathy; it showed every discerning malefactor that only mercantilism’s unremitting actuality could be justly considered truly brutal.  One listened to it with a mixture of voluptuous impiety and copious vacancy, until suddenly, before one could say “never tell a lie,” one found oneself up to one’s wooden teeth in happy Negroes.’” Clearly the bloom-on-the-rose appeal of self-assertion by scientific statesmen had reblossomed—leavened, perhaps, with the fertilizing yeast of honor—and anthropological authority was once again perceived as the thorn with which rich and powerful pricks might procure necessitous, supple virtues from innumerable vice-ridden climes.  Armed only with a tape measure and sprightly sallies of obsequious condescension, compulsive phrenologists began to classify with impunity every man-servant by the magnitude of his erect countenance and, subsequently, to organize for each a tour of the corrupt capitals of Europe during which, they sincerely hoped, prodigious indigenous flab would stimulate the exquisitely tentative penetralia of unpolluted Frenchwomen to write novels of social protest.  Such strenuous employment—requiring the analysis and digestion of vast, shapeless ethnics—is the angelic equipage that, if supported by parental liberality, will carry a reforming aesthete out of the temperate gated estates of his aery navel, through open champaigns bubbling with the thermal rhythmus of racy literature, and into charity bazaars where, at one brightly draped cathexis, graceful maidens with pitchers on their heads and republican enthusiasm in their dark machines alchemically concentrate the wandering glances of colonial ravishers while, at another, orphans resting sweetly in specimen jars soften the austere and turgid wearisomeness of £10,000,000—I mean, they are chained to siphoning apparatuses which distill their biographies into rational policies or coffee-house apotheoses. Similarly, the essence of the simple man of the earth may be woven into dusky breeches for his betters, thereby ensuring that the albino bottoms of incontinent worthies are never the butt of shameful ramifications and that, when an inevitable besmirchment regretfully occurs, it does so but obscurely. These, then, were the valuable carbuncles wrested from wretched refuse’s ruined flesh by the abstruser inquiries of vivisection! Detached body parts of extraordinary force and beauty are undoubtedly useful in peddling spirits, nostrums, and undergarments; if dwelt upon exclusively, however, they are sure to vitiate the taste, and thus place between the man of leisure and the full enjoyment of degenerate strumpets a concave speculum of morose function which, instead of refracting light, bends ardor, focusing concupiscence solely upon distaff forms of unimpeachable pulchritude, rather than allowing coruscations of amatory interest to scatter and twinkle upon the variegated subtleties of delight suggested by, for instance, overly adipose hindquarters, feminist viragos, or a dirty-faced urchin.  Of course, if avarice had been unnaturally constrained by the deadening prophylactic sheath of taste and discrimination, or if the acquisitive talent had not been given boundless scope in which to discharge its manly romanticism, the parturient labor of Adam Smith could never have brought forth such an ample imaum as Henry Kissinger. As it was, his pickled intellect was spread wide to commercial intercourse from the remotest part of the globe, and the stream of surplus revenue—once it had penetrated his ductile syllogism found in him a fecund New Haven where the healthy seed of sinecure might grow into the mighty oak of a Yale undergraduate, and the acorn of substantial liberal humanist ancestry sprout into the squirrel of shameless oppression. He knew that the most potent engine of chaste Irish pathos for the professional class was that vocem exiguam, the shrill and stumbling brogue of the Amerindian, which, in its extemporaneous Attic eloquence, so memorably inspired the Marquis de Lafayette to strip off all his garments, don a Malcolm X cap, and quip “Ich bin ein Berliner.” It is hardly necessary to add that this boyish hilarity soon led organically to a didactic enumeration of Russian armament. In a speech of five hours long delivered at the society for Speculative Microcosm Management, Benjamin Franklin—who was, at that time, although young, already an authentic philosopher-ninja, in full possession of his gigantic Eternal Wisdom powers, able to mutate sombre abolitionism’s sterile upright moralism into practical compromise’s cheerfully crippled dissipation by launching from his noble-browed bosom burning bolts of electric gout—explained that the irresistible seductions of Turkish perversions would indeed, if not enervated, relax the solids of the national body, resulting in despotic Oriental dropsy, but that there was no real cause for alarm, as he was prepared to develop an entirely new science of Unitarian ferocity: a science which could forge the withering interrogatories associated with universal philanthropy into an assemblage of levers and pulleys by the secret use of which the common tongue could be extracted and placed, gently but firmly, on the elegantly mangled teat of self-reliance, inducing the abandoned imperial sow to carry her healthy system to an early grave in a foreign constitution. The aforementioned truths, being of imperishable value, could not help but make the structure of his mind a household institution, like the microwave ovens which wait in the forest of Africa to fall, without a moment’s warning, upon the Groom of the Bedchamber, wrap him in a palliative maze of metaphorical confusion, and throw him down, by analogy, upon Mr. Isaac Newton, prompting that impetuous entrepreneurial treasure to invent John Wayne and then, against all the tenets of gravity, to drop him upwards—past pine tops waving with ancient relevancies—past winds breathing with the deliquesced corpses of indigent men of genius—past splendid puppets dreaming of sociology flowing through the polished interior ministries of space—in short, past all gross sublimity and encumbrance, and into the silent sidereal well where the drowned Gospels’ maxims are whelmed by the Britannica’s wider views, there to rest, massively indolent, until the prophesied time when his merciless generalizations and robust know-how will be needed to strategically defend us from the short-sighted imbecilities of grog-quaffing journeymen. Amidst the ferocious mobs of humble seekers methodically snubbing the supposedly befuddled constables whose salaries they subsidize, who but he understood that pedantry is not a means, but rather a blank and glorious end, fulfilling in every particular the hopes expressed by the first mute and hairy Australopithecine when, drawing about him his primitive flint nanomachines, he inscribed the shadow of a wooly shibboleth on the wall of his cave under the assiduous misconception that, as George Will states, "striking the chthonic umbra would slay the Platonic pundit lurking beyond the circle of the Internet’s wet, red glow; he could then dismember me, fashion an imitation firmament from my foreskin and a counterfeit fundament from my diaphragm, and reside thereafter in a mammoth bag of nugatory echoes, ever sipping sagacity from my engorged logos (an act of false deiphage which, if prolonged indefinitely, promised to make man a vestigial appendage of his own evolving jaw)”?  Who other than he possessed a drain in his forehead down which recipients of Poor Relief—flushed from the strain of having their ethically defective super-egos replaced with magnetized subcutaneous case-workers—swirled with such majestic abjection that hooligans expelled from Public Skulls, long thoughtlessly de facto, were recalled, like René Descartes, to the cortex, and embalmed in beautiful Panopticons? His later life was saddened when he realized that the Industrial Revolution, or, more specifically, the invention of the pneumatic Bastille, had elevated sissified diction to a position of mastery formerly reserved for the epistles of our Founding Fathers, and that his decision to accept undisciplined kisses from the libertine lips of militant militiamen had transformed him into a prince of purity at the precise historical instant that amphibious miscegenists—who, we now know, achieved photogenic, desultory diversity by moistening their thin skins with the secretions of leprous domestics—seized control of the United Nations, and began to suppress with tolerant “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacks” not only Islamic dissent, but also his own personal, patented brand of Milton’s Peppery Anti-Popery, long used, in accordance with the hopes of his friends and the demands of his wife, to season a potpourri of after-school pogroms cooked up for young, troubled Princesses in danger of becoming Whores of Babylon. Yet, even in adversity, he never lost his Elgin Marbles, which continued, until his death, to blare from his famous and scrupulous blunderbuss whenever perfidious philistine microcephalouses, forgetful alike of verbal chastisement and brutal bludgeoning, dared to blaspheme the radar screen of Zeus by creeping from their proper station in the woodpile. To inflict peremptory punishments, without in any way adverting to the Euclidean theorems of bilious jurisprudence constructed by compass, protractor, and inverse geometric peristalsis from Everyman’s inalienable intestine, at the least calls for an advertorial-cum-apologia, if it does not, indeed, merit severe animadversion and obloquy. We must remember, however, that, at that period, the heroic champions of natural law—Captain Leviathan, Prerogative Lad, the Iron Advocate and his pal Magna Cartridge, Miss Manners, Apriorion, King James Bivalve (a.k.a. the Submarine Sahib), and even the Hooded Utilitarian—were animated by an antinomian afflatus; it is fair to say that the wits of the wiliest warden then could not have secured what now the merest traffic cop apprehends, viz.—that, at the Hall of Justice, super-powered stenographers have, in the interest of putting the “auteur” back into “authoritarian,” grown countless Shakespeare-clones from the Bard’s vile, sycophantic jelly—that these clones, when the monarch’s pet monkey defecates upon their silly, genuflecting goatees, moan forth, in stochastic rapture, “O! O! O!” “Sa, sa, sa, sa!” “Et tu,” &c.—and that, before the Last Judgement, the transcription of these susurrant vocables is certain to spell out, in the supine scripture of the avant-garde, a perfect municipal code.

*

A Note on Process

The poems here are almost all created by taking words, phrases, and texts from a range of other books or sources. In some cases fairly long phrases are reproduced fairly unaltered; in others things are scrambled more freely; in some I use the structure of a text while substituting my own words.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer and the author of Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941/48 (Rutgers UP 2014). Poetry chapbooks include It’s Fab (Origami Poetry Project 2023), No Devotions (LJMcD Communications 2023) and a forthcoming full length, Not Akhmatova (Ben Yehuda Press).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Berlatsky, Downs, Henning, Kemp-Gee, Miller + Barwin,

forthcoming author Noah Berlatsky has some nice things to say about above/ground press; Buck Downs has a poem in The New York Times Magazine, as selected by Anne Boyer; Barbara Henning has new poems up at Mom Egg Review; Meghan Kemp-Gee's ONE MORE YEAR: The Ultimate Graphic Novel kickstarter is now live; David Miller is interviewed at ArtWay; and Gary Barwin won an award!

some author activity: Boyle, Berlatsky, Beaulieu, Flemmer + Mellis,

Frances Boyle is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time; where forthcoming author Noah Berlatsky also has poems; both Derek Beaulieu and Kyle Flemmer, among lots others, have work included in Laura Kerr's online pdf INTERZONE: a visual anthology; and forthcoming author Miranda Mellis is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.