Cover Art by Marshall Hryciuk : : "Syntaxi Strand 94: Interview With An Ampyre"

Featured in this issue:

DARIA RODINA :: three poems
translated from the Russian by MOLLY THOMASY BLASING

MICHAEL BASINSKI :: A Sweet For and After Daria Rodina

ANATOLII UST’IANTSEV :: three poems
translated from the Russian by MOLLY THOMASY BLASING

NORMA KASSIRER :: Astonishment

JAY MILLAR :: To a Reluctant Essence

LUKE DALY :: from Slide Fragments

KAREN MACCORMACK :: Brocatelle

GERALD MEAD :: from the 30 Square Inches and Travellage Series

BRITTANY LUONGO :: Astral

MARSHALL HRYCIUK :: from Tatiana Sequence

Credits:

Edric Mesmer—Collator
Jude Vasseur—Production
David Cloyd—Web Contenter

Cover Art © Marshall Hryciuk :: “Syntaxi Strand 94: Interview with an Ampyre”

This issue made possible by the generosity of donors :: Vicki Fung & Aman Bhandari, Norma Kassirer, Judith Mesmer, John & Dana Rigney, and by Bill & Jean Sylvester.

Many thanks to Molly Thomasy Blasing and to Alexander Sorochan for the coordinating of translations from the poets in Tver’, Russia. Further thanks, as always, to Brian Klemp and Jude Vasseur, without whom this journal would cease to exist.

The Buffalo Small Press Book Fair is a regional one day event that brings booksellers, authors, bookmakers, zinesters, small presses, artists, poets, and other cultural workers (and enthusiasts) together in a venue where they can share ideas, showcase their art, and peddle their wares.

For more information, visit their website:

http://www.buffalosmallpress.org

Buffalo Ochre Papers and Yellow Edenwald Field will be in attendance, so come and visit our table!

Remember to ask off from work! And bring your cash, even though this event is FREE and open to the public!

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Calling her work the examination of “an ambiguous and often fragmented world,” JACKIE FELIX (1929–2009) often explored the nebulous zone of those “popular sources (comic books, film noir, the daily papers)” so often reflective of our immediate cultural amnesia toward those everyday horrors we witness or inhabit. Continues Jackie: “I catch my figures (sometimes alone, sometimes attracted, repelled) in the stop action of a single frame of film . . . a coherency of thought and imagery, a realm in which to examine human sexuality and power,” perhaps nowhere more evident than in her series of six paintings We’re Really Happy. Not oblivious to the humor necessary to excavate such societal ills as the abuse of power—both in spheres domestic and militarized—Jackie lent a generosity of wit to her friends and colleagues, and to those younger artists she befriended. Jackie, who held an MFA and BFA from the University at Buffalo, was also the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including those awarded by the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Millay Colony for the Arts Residency.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BEN LYLE BEDARD is a writer living in Buffalo. His work can be read in BlazeVox, fhole, Jacket, Ninth Letter, P-Queue, Damn the Caesars, Artvoice, and our own Yellow Edenwald Field. His first chapbook, Implicit Lyrics, was published in 2007 by Punch Press. We’re Really Happy was written in 2008 in collaboration with Jackie Felix and performed at Soundlab on February 26, 2009 as part of the show “Planned Obsolescence.”

CREDITS

Copyright © 2009 The Buffalo Ochre Papers, with all visual rights and textual rights reverting to Alvin Felix and to Ben Bedard respectively upon publication.
Design and production by Edric Mesmer and Jude Vasseur.

We’re Really Happy was printed in a limited edition of 150.

Cover Art by Katie Sehr

Featured in this issue:

WILLIAM SYLVESTER is the author of War & Lechery: The Poem (Ashland) and the forthcoming Nightmares – They Are Zeros (Buffalo Ochre Papers).

JAYE BARTELL lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he plays music in a band called Oak Orchard Swamp. He thinks Buffalo is a terrific place.

JENNIFER TODARO attends D’Youville College to pursue a degree toward educating the little minds of tomorrow. She currently lives in Kenmore, New York, with her boyfriend where the apartment, at times, doubles as a great coffee shop and hair salon!

SHERRY ROBBINS, poet-in-the-schools, is the author of Or, the Whale (Shuffaloff), and many more manuscripts; a member of the Weird Sisters Collective; and pseudo-legendary cornerstone of Buffalo small press printing, poetry workshops, and at-large local literary production.

KATIE SEHR is a graduate of The Art Institute of Chicago. Her work can be viewed through the Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo; Dwight Hackett Projects, Santa Fe; or www.katiesehr.com.

LISA JARNOT is the author of four collections of poetry including Night Scenes (Flood Editions, 2008). She currently lives in New York City where she works as a landscape gardener.

DAVID TIRRELL is the author of the chap books The Lion and the Rose and Far From the Towers, as well as the full-length collection The Half-House Poems (Shuffaloff). He is a longtime poet and resident of Buffalo.

NAVA FADER is the author of all the jawing jackdaw (BlazeVox). She is a school librarian.

TED PELTON’s Woodchuck Series now runs to ten stories. He is the author of Malcolm & Jack, among other books, and the director of the small press, Starcherone Books.

CREDITS

Edric Mesmer—Collator
Judith Vasseur—Production
David Cloyd—Web Contenter
Katie Sehr—Cover Image

This issue is underwritten by the generosity of Norma Kassirer. It is also made possible through the kindness of its contributors, the diligence of J. Vasseur, the support of Brian Klemp, and the attentiveness to our every technical whim by Jeff at Rapid Ray’s.

Nightmares—They Are Zeros is a collection of poem cycles, including:

• “Dream Swept King”
• “Nightmares”
• “They Are Zeros”
• “When Vikings Went South To Britain For The Winter”
• “Epigrams from Ignoto”
• “Proud of Their Beautiful Hair”
• “Held Shadowed”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Sylvester, the author of War & Lechery: The Poem (Ashland), has navigated airplanes, edited technical reports, recited poems, and has been an actor in Buffalo since 1965. His favorite role was as a professor in the English Department at UB. His most important lectures have been poetry readings in Buffalo.

CREDITS

Copyright © 2009 William Sylvester
Published at the sign of the Buffalo Ochre Papers
Cover illustration of helmeted rider borrowed from the bookplate of Mildred Dewey, found in her copy of Matthew Arnold’s Essays in Criticism (Third Series). Boston: Ball Publishing Co., 1906, and seemingly signed MMD; also attributed to Ellen Terry’s son, Gordon Craig.
Cover Concept by Edric Mesmer
Cover Realization by Judith Vasseur

Nightmares—They Are Zeros was printed in a limited edition of 150.

Cover Art by Bud Jacobs

Featured in this issue:

DONNA WYSZOMIERSKI‘s stories have been published in Top Stories, Hallwalls’ Angle of Repose and Blatant Artifice, and Buffalo Press Anthology I.

GEOFFREY GATZA is the editor and publisher of BlazeVOX [books] and the author of five books of poetry. Not So Fast Robespierre is now available from Menendez Publishing. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY (1993) and Daemen College, Amherst, NY (2002), and served as a U.S. Marine in the first gulf war. He lives in Kenmore, NY with his girlfriend and two cats.

LISA FORREST is a Senior Assistant Librarian for SUNY College at Buffalo and the founding member of the school’s Rooftop Poetry Club. Lisa’s first collection of poems, To The Eaves, is available now from BlazeVOX [books].

AARON LOWINGER is a Buffalo House Press poet making a living as a social worker. Hobbies include poetry, sports, and the misidentification of mushrooms, birds, and trees. His most recent chapbook, Open Night, was published by Transmission Press.

BUD JACOBS is a retired Professor of Art whose background in graphic design informs his current work. At present, his interests center around drawing, calligraphy, and painting. He is also coming up in the world of tennis.

MARTEN CLIBBENS is a British poet living in Buffalo. His most recent collection, Sequence, was published in 2006 by Lost Pages Press.

KRISTIANNE MEAL is a girl in a dirt-scuffed dress with messy hair named Kaliss who runs wildly through empty neighborhood lots. You can find her in trees or triangles while Kristi pages the membrane of Buffalo’s Rust Belt Books.

STEVE MCCAFFERY has said that “Hurley Hackeys” is an ongoing oulipean-inspired group of list poems (most of the early ones are are all taken from the Buffalo Telephone Directory). “A Concept of Gomer” is an ongoing philological excavation of Rowland Jones’ crazy book The Circles of Gomer. His numerous books include the recently released Slightly Left of Thinking from Chax Press.

CREDITS

Edric Mesmer—Collator
Judy Vasseur—Production
John Carocci—Image Consultant
Bud Jacobs—Cover Design & Drawings

This issue is made possible through the generosity of Michael Morgulis, Judith Mesmer, and John & Dana Rigney.

As always, many thanks to the YEF team, and especially Brian Klemp.

Cover Art by Karen Kassirer

Featured in this issue:

MARINA BATASOVA is a poet, director of a publishing house, and Chairman of the Tver Union of Writers. She is the author of five books of poetry, including Travel to the Sea (2004), and publishes in the periodicals of Tver and Moscow.

MICHAEL BOUGHN is a writer and teacher whose published works include poetry, literary essays, short stories, and young adult non-fiction. He has also taught part-time at the University of Toronto since 1993, and founded the poetry press Shuffaloff.

ANN GOLDSMITH‘s collection No One Is the Same Again appeared in the Quarterly Review of Literature in 1999. Ann has taught writing classes in Buffalo for the past twenty-five years, as well as acting as poet-in-residence for two years at the Chautauqua Institute.

ZACK FINCH is currently a presidential fellow in the English department at SUNY Buffalo, having also served as poetry fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and as a creative writing instructor at Dartmouth.

NORMA KASSIRER‘s books for children include Magic Elizabeth (1966) and The Doll Snatchers (1969). The Hidden Wife (1991), a collection of her stories with artwork by Willyum Rowe, was published by Shuffaloff. Her short-cycle Milly was recently published by Buffalo Ochre Papers.

SVYATOSLAV MIKHNYA, a poet and journalist, was born in 1975 and has served on the faculty of the Tver State University. The author of five collections of poetry, including The Guidebook (2005, Tver), Mikhnya was also awarded honors by the Tver Union of Writers.

LUKE DALY is a poet and artist at work in Chicago, and a member of the collective House Press. His most recent publication is The Vandalism Questions.

MOLLY THOMASY is a PhD candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include 19th- and 20th-century Russian poetry, classical mythology in Russian and Polish literature, theories of intertextuality, and the visual arts in literature.

KAREN KASSIRER, a Buffalo native, lived and worked in New York City, where she continued to paint, taking much of her inspiration from her work in editing, down to the typeface.

CREDITS

Edric Mesmer—Collator
Judy Vasseur—Production
John Carocci—Image Consultant
Karen Kassimer—Cover Art

This issue of Yellow Edenwald Field would not be possible without the generous support of Vicki Fung, Norma Kassirer,  Melinda & Jim Kempf, Dana & John Rigney, Bill & Jean Sylvester, and Cheryl Wolf. The collator would also like to thank Brian Klemp, John Carocci, and Judy Vasseur for their continued diligence.

Many thanks also to Molly Thomasy for her finely nuanced translations of the two poets from Tver, as well as to Henryk Baran and Alexander Sorochan for making this connection possible.

Cover images from the paintings by Karen Kassirer are used with the kind permission of Norma and Susan Kassirer.

Milly is a short-cycle collection of stories by Norma Kassirer, including:

• “Student Butterfly”
• “Hark the Hollow Woods Resounding”
• “The Balked Stepmother”
• “She Never Blam’d Him. Never.”
• “Nobody Coming to Marry Me”
• “Cincinnati”
• “How Merrily We Live”
• “Oh Do They Miss Me At Home?”
• “The Last Time I Came o’er the Muir”
• “Milly in the Tinting Game”
• “Milly Saved from Tinting Plus Blue Lace”
• “Add-a-Pearl”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Norma Kassirer’s writing is informed as much by nature as by nurture.

Her father wrote articles about his experience in World War I; her brother was a prize-winning poet; a great great aunt wrote poetry for Harper’s Magazine in the 1800s; and a great great great uncle founded a literary journal in New York City and, under the pseudonym Harry Franco, produced a number of sea-faring novels. Both of her daughters have long been engaged with writing and publishing.

Kassirer at one time helped run a children’s musical theatre, both as writer and director. Her poems tend toward the narrative, the poetics of which are further evident in her paintings and handmade books,  and her work has appeared in a variety of publications. Significantly telling is her remark about her recent work—that the poem and story have come to seem less differentiable.

Her books for children include Magic Elizabeth (1966) and The Doll Snatchers (1969). The Hidden Wife (1991), a collection of her stories with artwork by Willyum Rowe, was published by Shuffaloff. Her short fiction has appeared in various magazines, including Blatant Artifice.

CREDITS

Copyright © 2008 Norma Kassirer
Published under the auspices of The Buffalo Ochre Papers
Cover Concept by Edric Mesmer
Cover Realization by Judith Vasseur
Milly was printed in a limited edition of 200, 10 of which are numbered and signed.
This publication would not be possible without the generosity of Peggy & Jay Elliott and Ann Phillppone.

"Milly as Daphne," Illustration by Norma Kassirer