WRITE ME!
With a verse from the USS PASTORAL, screen printed on Combat Paper by Frontline Arts, this card celebrates conquest and human ambition. It arrives as a letter, with a personalized writing prompt.
Inside you will find the card insert and a stamped envelope to expedite our correspondence. Take ten minutes to to sit down and thoughtfully respond to the prompt with your own poem or piece of prose.
When I receive your response, I will transcribe it, and email it to you with edits and comments. The goal is to inspire your writing.
Remember, brevity is a sign of respect.
With a verse from the USS PASTORAL, screen printed on Combat Paper by Frontline Arts, this card celebrates conquest and human ambition. It arrives as a letter, with a personalized writing prompt.
Inside you will find the card insert and a stamped envelope to expedite our correspondence. Take ten minutes to to sit down and thoughtfully respond to the prompt with your own poem or piece of prose.
When I receive your response, I will transcribe it, and email it to you with edits and comments. The goal is to inspire your writing.
Remember, brevity is a sign of respect.
With a verse from the USS PASTORAL, screen printed on Combat Paper by Frontline Arts, this card celebrates conquest and human ambition. It arrives as a letter, with a personalized writing prompt.
Inside you will find the card insert and a stamped envelope to expedite our correspondence. Take ten minutes to to sit down and thoughtfully respond to the prompt with your own poem or piece of prose.
When I receive your response, I will transcribe it, and email it to you with edits and comments. The goal is to inspire your writing.
Remember, brevity is a sign of respect.
USS PASTORAL: spangles wave on brave bombs under blasphemous jets while the sun also sets
This concrete poem uses apophenia and pareidolia (our tendency to see patterns in objectively unrelated things) as a form. In three verses, images of ordnance overshadow a narrative of “one war everywhere” motivating theistic monomaniacs into suicidal conflict.
Frontline Arts printed broadsides of this poem on Combat Paper, pulped from old military uniforms. The broadsides can be framed for display, or used for correspondence. Inspired by Gregory Corso's "BOMB", the poem began taking shape after a Warrior Writers workshop on writing a letter to an enemy, led by Brian Turner.
This text is set in transit toward the Persian Gulf during Operation Iraqi Freedom. With lines lifted from the journals of a young Aviation Electrician’s Mate in the U.S. Navy, deployed on an aircraft carrier, the poem emphasizes image over substance. It honors nostalgia for naval expeditions, explores the aesthetics of nationalism and nature, and salutes those working to rebuild The House of Wisdom.
1.
Spangles Wave On begins with lines by three foreign poets. The rest is composed of lines from a poetry journal, circa 2007. Written by a young aviation electrician on cruise aboard an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, heading toward the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, the text explores nationalism, nature, and the mighty emotions involved in a sea passage.
2.
Brave Bombs Under Blasphemous Jets assumes the form of an F/A-18 fighter jet. The text explores the times, places, and causes of war. It questions the purpose of international conquest, and contrasts ancient stories of adventure with our modern conflicts.
3.
While The Sun Also Sets forms a sunset (or sunrise). Inspired in part by Derek Mahon, this collection of lines touches on the aesthetic of a cruise. The text adds some discordant textures to the sounds, the sights, the smells of an aircraft carrier afloat in the Persian Gulf.