Big Picture, Little Eyes

Who knows
what this all means
As I stand
with my nose
pressed against
the texterized
display
of humanity
at it’s most vibrant
Among the swirls of paint
both cold and warm
I try relentlessly
and hopelessly
to appreciate the beauty
from such a close range
And I see the sun
as a pin-point dot
in the collage
of information
rapidly becoming
more intricate
as the various
subplots in the heart
of my mind
thicken
Oh, how i wish
I was the artist
painting this design

You may reach Sam Burks at srburks@gmail.com.

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[Reviewed by Christopher Bernard]

The Very Rich Hours of Jack Foley

This massive, two-volume (the cover of each volume reproducing a Blakean fantasy painting by Mark Roland) magnum opus of modern literary history puts the California literary community of the last 70 years deeply in the debt of its remarkable author.

Jack Foley, one of our most innovative poets, a superlative critic and illuminating literary theorist, now appears as a brilliant (and astoundingly patient) historian as well in a work that demonstrates his gifts of intellectual dynamism, wide literary empathy, and a seemingly endless capacity for grace. Foley’s deep intelligence and epic sympathies now have an objective correlative fully suited to them in this sweeping (for once the epithet is entirely justified) narrative.

Once one begins to gourmandize on the delights of these rich volumes, one doesn’t want to stop: rarely has such a smorgasbord of intellect and language so succeeded in whetting the appetite with each renewed taste.

[Reviewed by Sarah Melton]

In the summer of 2008, the oldest Zen Buddhist monastery in the U.S. sat nestled among the woods near Big Sur, alongside the tranquil hot springs of Tassajara…and surrounded by the 3rd largest wildfire in California’s history.

Fire Monks tells the story, from the first igniting strikes of lightning to the aftermath and recovery, of the Tassajara monks as they struggled to defend their home from the surrounding flames of the Indian and Basin Complex fires. It’s no wonder that the author, a regular visitor to the Tassajara center, chose to tell the exciting story behind the five (yes, only five) monks that stayed behind.

Firefighting fans would delight in hearing the detailed descriptions of the inner workings of wildfire crews, without an over-abundance of technical jargon to confuse the reader. For those interested in learning more about Zen Buddhism and how it applies to everyday life, there’s a great deal of information on the subject there as well.

Sarah Melton can be reached at SarahM@aptosfire.com. You can find a number of Melton’s short stories in the Flash Fiction collections at www.absolute-x-press.com.

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[Reviewed by Nicole Arocho]

‘My father reassured me that it was all right not to know, to remain in a state of awe and mystery. He gave what could’ve been a nightmare “the glory and freshness of a dream.”’

Priscilla Gilman wrote The Anti-Romatic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy with a thousand sentences just like these two.  Because of the personal level of her writing, her emotions flourish throughout the whole book. She delights the reader’s eyes with beautiful sentences decorated with quotes from her favorite poet, William Wordsworth, and her use of imagery aids her to describe so passionately each one of her crossroads. The reader cannot help but feel her tumult of sentiments as if their own. The story of a girl who grew up with divorced parents and dreamt of having a perfect family that turned out to be anything but that, but turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her may sound like a cliché plotline, but Gilman takes the reader into a world full of unmet expectations, disappointments and difficulties with love and hope bursting through each of her words.

Gilman bluntly states at the beginning of the book that “[it] is a love story”, and a tragic one indeed. As her hyperlexic child, Benjamin, is diagnosed and his treatments became the center of her life, her emotions become so real, so bluntly told on the page, that sometimes it made me uncomfortable to keep reading, because her heart and soul were in the page. I felt I was invading her privacy somehow; no smokescreen, no façade to hide her deepest fears, tribulations and quests for answers that she never seemed to grasp fully. Her dedication to her child goes above and beyond anything else, including her career and her marriage. When the rest of her life plummeted, she still had her “Benj”, and thus could find the strength to keep going for him. She intertwines her marriage and family life with her academic life and her own thoughts splendidly with smooth transitions and wonderful insights the reader expects in a memoir, but that she takes to a new level that brings the reader so close to her, it feels as if we actually have met her and shared this stage of her life with her personally.

You can contact the reviewer, Nicole Arocho, at narocho3@gmail.com.

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[Reviewed by David A. L. Brown]

In my relatively short lifetime, I have seen first-hand the worst of man’s inhumanity towards man.  I have witnessed the sexual slave trade in Bangkok—women trotted out in glass cages like merchandise, sold by barmen to indiscriminating foreigners.  I have heard the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, mercifully drowning out the shrieks of women and children, and trying desperately to fill the voids created and punctuated by gunfire.  I have seen young men murdered and dying, smelled the iron of their blood, and have heard the screams of the fearful falter and give way to silence.  Yet, as I stood on the precipice of all of this darkness, I felt secure in the comfort of knowing that there was a place untouched by so much hatred, mistrust, and inhumanity.  A place I was fortunate enough to call home.  However, Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice takes the same righteous focus the Voice of Witness series is quickly becoming known for, and casts it against the United States’ own government actions, state policies, and the pervasive culture of fear borne in the wake of national tragedy.  Whereas the events I described above affected my perception of the world in which I live, author Alia Malek has constructed a work that shook my very identity as an American.

The book is presented well, in a professional hardback cover with a stylish accompanying graphic half-wrap that I’m beginning to recognize as the visual trademark of the brand.  As a non-profit literary series, Voice of Witness produces a high-quality product worth much more than its monetary cost.  That’s not to say the book is perfect; it could stand to benefit from one more pass across the copy-editor’s desk, but the general structure and integrity of the work is fully intact.  As in other Voice of Witness works, Ms. Malek allows the voices of those who have suffered to take center stage, limiting her input to only a brief introductory paragraph relating each narrator’s background.

David A. L. Brown is a staff writer and reviewer for Synchronized Chaos Magazine. Brown may be reached at brown.davidal@gmail.com.

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[Reviewed by Suzanne Birrell]

I went to see the Oakland version of the show Encyclopedia.
The topic was “The Future”: The spoken word, the media.

An entertaining evening, profound and wisdom filled
Of rhyming words and meter, the Oakland genius spilled.

To a full house of erudite patrons, who hung on clever words,
Though some did miss a reference picked up by only nerds.

Josh Merchant gave us “Negrodamus”; Political wit and absurd predictions,
Superimposing fact with fiction in humorous futuristic depictions.

In her Alternative History of the Furure, Liz Green entertained with a narrative
A True revolutionary gay guide- a counter relationship comparative,
Where “love is a capitalist construct,”
And where it is “best not to hope, just adjust.”

Colonization of Mars was the topic presented by Toaster
Who gave us insight through eyes of a janitor, a sociological coaster.
Who describes masturbation in the gravity chamber and its many calming effects.
It used to be that everyone used this chamber, our janitor recollects
And in further pondering the present future, the janitor did extol,
“We’re all Fish. It’s easy to be selfish when everyone lives in their own bowl.”

Fearless leader, Jen Jen, extolled the virtue of tourism in space
Where the moon was set aside for theme parks and Disney led the race!
You too can experience every war ever fought on earth in the attraction know as Combat land.
Too young to remember? Revisit California in the moon base place of Fantasyland.
A meaty topic, a tasty narrative, profound insight to whom we are today.
Where meat feels no pain when it’s killed, and we eat it anyway.

All presented facts and all presented fictions.
Dahled checked the facts and presented contradictions.
“God is not a musketeer.” he announced. We were not surprised.
“God is just Goofy,” he then thoughtfully surmised.

Caitlin Girl addressed the nerds but translated first for a stoner.
I laugh so hard, I almost cried, and I was not the loner.
The Big Crunch parallels the Big Bang resulting in dimensionless singularity.
Though I’m not exactly sure for through the stream flowed such hilarity .

Reanimating the Cryogenically Frozen is somewhere between science and fiction
Abdul Kenyatta described facts, figures, anti freeze in the veins, and ice crystal restriction.
Reanimating the cryogenically frozen would create a living dead, Abdul deduced
A new race of men that we can all hate would be to the new world introduced!

Patrick Oshlund presented his prescient predictions of global pandemic
Back to 2112 where boredom bores and other thoughts polemic
What to do in the futuristic dome?
Get back to basics–sexology! and focus on testosterone.

On stage again, Liz Green spoke more of Doctor Who
Whose life is complicated by hearts which number two.

Then Chris Chandler summed up the night with Future verses Past.
Where Hope says what you want hear without even being asked,
Where History always shows up with Regret, Recrimination, and Denial
Where the party always breaks up when Truth walks down the aisle.

I so I spent a lovely evening absorbing East Bay wit.
Entertained and enlightened by poetry and skit.
I highly recommend it to those who sometimes think
that there is more to life than the Television link.