"FICTION, ESSAYS, POETRY, POLITICS, ART from FLASHPOINT"

From Syllogism Part II:
32.1 The whole business of consciousness is ‘projection’.

From Syllogism Part III
69.1 Taking into account that the input mechanism is constituted of the very limited species and its reliance on finite variables that has brought the planet to the brink of ruin furthered by the established fact that the particular epistemology most responsible has no coherent response to the problem and in most cases cannot even hear it, I think it's fair for this correspondent to claim that the entire western mathematical scientific enterprise can best be described as “Garbage in. Garbage out.”

– Carlo Parcelli
selections from:
Syllogism, Parts II and III

All essays, poetry, fiction, and artwork are copyrighted in the
names of the authors and artists,
to whom all rights revert.

Issue Index

David Jones Conference
March 29 & 30, 2012

J.R. Foley

Country Valley Press

   Carlo Parcelli:
Book / Author page

   Wayne Pounds
Book / Author page

   Eric Rosenbloom

Unicorn by David Hickman

intro
____________________

Robert Coover
an excerpt from
his new novel
The Brunist Day of Wrath
Sitting in the Great Myth
of the Rapture
plus: a review by JR Foley

JR Foley
GUNS IN THE FIELD

Prologue to

Victory Garden Boys:
Growing Up in a
Suburb of the Cold War

John Matthias

Sixth Story

from:
Different Kinds of Music
(A Few things about
Timothy Westmont)

Wayne Pounds

I, Joe:

Confessions of
a Confidence Man

from:
a ms. unearthed
in New Zion Missouri in 2012
after the Republican Convention.

Magus Magnus

The Free

Spirit Proposition

John Armstrong

The View and the Point

Cris Mazza

Something Wrong With Her

an excerpt

Jose Luis Moctezuma

"Negotiations with the Infinite":

David Gascoyne's Surrealist Mode

David Gascoyne & British Surrealism
A Few Images & Resources

Notes on

Bettina Shaw-Lawrence

Jon Woodson

Maxwell Perkins and
the Oragean Modernist
Literary "Network":

Esoteric communication
in the modernist
comic-satiric novel

Norma Procopiow

The Poetics of Riddle

in W.S.Merwin’s Poetry

LANCE OLSEN

[[ there. ]]

a memoir

Robert Hampson

High-Energy Construct:

Olson, Fisher, Olsen

Melvin B. Tolson

Rare 1965 Audio
Reading & Lecture

October 18, 1965

Coolidge Auditorium
Library of Congress
Washington D.C.

Alan Tucker

Thirty Flowers

David Hickman

Eight Poems
and
Collages:

Mark Scroggins

Stanzas from

a Work in Progress

and:

Susan Howe's

Hauntologies

Carlo Parcelli

two stories
Stormin' Norman

and

Urban Development

*plus:*
			Syllogism 2 : or the Mathematical Sciences and Quantophrenia: Is the internal combustion engine an example of ‘bad science’? and Syllogism 3 : Quantophrenia

Joan McCracken
SQUARE the CIRCLE
Continuing
the tale begun in
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
and SENT

In this issue...

17 — FlashPøint: A Multidisciplinary Journal of the Arts and Politics has been on-line for 17 years. There might be older literary e-zines (itself now a very dated e-word); but 17 years (18 years counting our original — one & only — print publication) is a lot longer than the lives of many of the early 20th Century “little magazines” (BLAST, Broom, et al.) that introduced and promoted the Modernism FlashPøint seeks — modestly or otherwise — to advance.

Many poets, novelists, essayists, and artists have made FlashPøint what it has become — and many of them join this celebration of FlashPøint.

The writer featured in the most recent FlashPøint #15, Robert Coover, leads the celebration with an excerpt from his just-published magnum opus, The Brunist Day of Wrath. A sequel after nearly 50 years to his prize-winning first novel, The Origin of the Brunists, The Brunist Day of Wrath sweeps dozens of characters to the apocalyptic climax of this once-and-future tale of religion in America.

We are extremely pleased to be able to present a rare 1965 audio recording of the American Modernist Poet Melvin B. Tolson reading at the Library of Congress.

Over the years FlashPøint has featured Cris Mazza and Lance Olsen. This time they share pieces of memoir (Mazza from Something Wrong With Her and Olsen from [[ there ]]) from most unusual angles.

In "Negotiations with the Infinite: David Gascoyne’s Surrealist Mode," new contributor José-Luis Moctezuma introduces us to the surprising if short-lived British surrealist movement. We supplement his essay with a page of images and resources, David Gascoyne & British Surrealism. Some of the images are iconic souvenirs of the London Surrealist Exhibition of 1936, others are more specifically related to Gascoyne's contributions to Surrealist writing and his own work.

In our attempt to expand the presence of women artists on the net, we decided to assemble what we could of internet sources on the artist Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, a close friend of David Gascoyne's and whose pen & ink drawing sits at the top of the essay on Gascoyne's "Surrealist Mode". The sources were few, but we attempted to centralize them as well as we could, and to supply a few new notes & items that were not previously easily available.

Not surrealist but spectral and musical is the poetry Mark Scroggins — poet, scholar, and FlashPøint Contributing Editor — discusses in "Susan Howe’s Hauntologies". The latest of his own poetry can be found in "Stanzas from a Work in Progress."

Alan Tucker gives us "Thirty Flowers", a "hortus conclusus where words create a place in the mind, and language becomes a refuge for the intellect to delight in".

In "High-Energy Construct: Olson, Fisher, Olsen" Robert Hampson takes Charles Olson's manifesto and follows it through Allen Fisher's Place and its current manifestations in the work of the contemporary poet Redell Olsen.

The late scholar Norma Procopiow focuses on W.S. Merwin's use of the riddle as prosodic and philosophical trope in "The Poetics of Riddle in W.S.Merwin’s Poetry" and urges reconsideration of him as "more than a descendant of the Transcendentalists or model for the 'Beats' ".

Prof. Jon Woodson, who made two explorations of Melvin B. Tolson’s poetry in FlashPøint #14, returns with fresh evidence of the esoteric networkings of certain best-selling authors of the 1920’s-1930’s in "Maxwell Perkins and the Oragean Modernist Literary ‘Network’: esoteric communications in the modernist comic-satiric novel."

In "Sixth Story", John Matthias offers the conclusion of a book called "Different Kinds of Music": A Few Things About Timothy Westmont. This short story pulls together themes from the first five stories in the book, all of which are about the title character, and the sequence of interchapters, which are about the "different kinds of music" that Westmont listens to at different times in his life.

In "I, Joe: Confessions of a Confidence Man", Wayne Pounds reveals a recently unearthed manuscript which tells the "true" tale of Joseph Smith and the founding of the Mormon Church.

Magus Magnus, in his piece "The Free Spirit Proposition" considers in its recurrent historical manifestation the possibility of radical liberation from societal constraint.

John Armstrong, in "The View and The Point", attempts the Herculean task of rectifying "the currently parlous state of poetry", which he bemoans as having "too much view and too little point".

Besides David Hickman's brilliant Collages that appear throughout the issue, he has given us eight new Poems.

A used bookseller is little more than a beast of burden for other people's words. Carlo Parcelli gives us two stories about his experiences as such a beast: Stormin' Norman' and Urban Development

Also, he provides the Second and Third part of his book length work Syllogism/Quantophrenia which clearly delineates the western epistemology of mathematical reason as the reason we live in the end times.

Joan McCracken, with "Square the Circle," adds a short, sharp chapter to her unfolding novel, earlier parts of which have appeared in several FlashPøints.

JR Foley takes us down something more than memory lane with "Guns in the Field", the prologue to Victory Garden Boys: Growing Up in a Suburb of the Cold War."

We are eager to hear from you, especially about this issue, so please tell us what you think: flashpnt@hotmail.com!