The Weekly Atticus (01/20/2018)

Maybe This Is When Everything Changes | The Weekly Atticus

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

Dear ,This one's about our Mixed Media section. Atticus Review is one of the only online literary magazines regularly posting video poems. I'm Matt Mullins, Mixed Media Editor, and I wanted to talk a little bit about this emerging art form and how I got into it.  In 2010, during my second year as a professor in the Creative Writing Department at Ball State University, I was approached by a faculty colleague Mike Pounds, a composer who specializes in computer music composition and collaborative intermedia projects, about collaborating with me on a project that would fuse together words and sound.I was a Ball State Emerging Media Fellow at the time, working on the pieces of digital literature that would eventually become lit-digital.com.  I was also finishing a book of short stories (Three Ways of the Saw) and writing screenplays and poems and otherwise trying to figure out how to wrangle tenure in the highly competitive and paradoxically self-doubting landscape of academe. Being that I’m also a musician who’s spent much of his adult life touring the Midwest in a number of minor bands, and considering the fact that this was both a writing and music opportunity, I gave Mike “Highway Coda,” a loosely autobiographical piece of flash fiction from my story collection, one that focuses on a group of musicians who have a synchronous and improvisational encounter with a very deft crow as they drive home hung over from the previous night’s gig. At Mike's suggestion, I not only supplied him with the piece, I also recorded some instrument tracks: guitar, electric bass, and drums. These would serve as raw materials for a composition Mike would create using my words as his guide.A month or so passed, then Mike gave me a disc of what he’d done.  Simply put, it blew my mind.  He had taken the music I’d played and turned it completely inside out.  It was ethereal, cerebral, elegant. I’d played chords and riffs and notes and beats. Mike had turned it into something sublime.I knew from the outset that the endgame was for me to get up in front of an audience and read my piece over his composition, but when I fully grasped that I would have to do so in front of an auditorium full of people at a major composers conference, I just didn’t feel like my words lived up to the power of his music. It occurred to me that I could make it into a movie, doing the reading as voice over, and I wouldn't need to get up and do it live. And so that's exactly what I did. My first thought upon completion of this project was, “How can I work this piece we’ve made into some kind of publication so I can get my academic pat on the back?”  So I got on the internet, did some searching, and stumbled across this festival called Visible Verse out of Vancouver and saw the phrase "video poetry" for the first time in my entire life.  That was the day everything changed for me. I submitted to the festival, the piece was accepted, and I was hooked. Here was a genre that brought together all the things I had already been working with (separately) for years.I began to study the form and learned the genre had actually been around since the beginnings of film itself, but in the last ten years had really begun to explode due to the rise of inexpensive digital cameras and editing software. I learned there was a small (compared to the various other “literary” communities) but vibrant and growing cadre of videopoets, filmpoets, poetry filmmakers, cine’ poets, etc. out there—mad scientists of image and collage, animators, cinematic geniuses, devoted curators, sirens of sound, scholars and collaborators and truly talented makers of this art form that I believe will forge a new identity for poetry and short prose in the 21st Century. In the process I also found my way to Atticus Review where I am fortunate to be able to curate this emerging art form for a wider audience. And so, to the people of the Atticus community, I’d like to say sincerely: Thank you for watching and listening.  I’m going to keep sharing what’s been inspiring me in the hope that it also inspires you.Enjoy the pieces below from the past week at Atticus Review. Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

Matt MullinsMixed Media Editor

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

SUPERUNKNOWN: THE TUNNEL OF LOVE – AND LIFEBy Bridget LyonsLatest essay in our Superunknown: Stories About Songs series"For me, the eeriness of this song is exacerbated by the fact that 'Tunnel of Love' has always reminded me of my friend Mark. In addition to being housemates once upon a time in 1990’s Marin County, we were musical soul siblings – genetically unrelated family members connected by catchy hooks and moody bridges. Mark chose to leave this world a little earlier than I would have liked him to, in a manner which emotionally eviscerates me every time I think about it. As a result, remnants of banter-laden conversations and a couple of old photographs are all I still have of him."READ ON

FICTION: LIBERATIONby Tetman Callis"He was pulling as hard as he could. I think it was as hard as he could. It looked like it. There were these guttural screaming noises he was making and he was trying to break the chain and get to Johnny. He was pulling at the straps and at the chain. Beside him there was an open doorway and a couple of the guys stood there and watched him. They were wearing suits, too, and so were the guys who were taking care of Johnny."READ ON

POETRY: WHERE A SHOTGUN HOUSE IS JUST TRYING TO MAKE ITBy Joshua Michael Stewart "A bird crashes against a window. The children scream, the mother screams. There’s a mother screaming and a bird flapping on the ground with a broken wing, and the children run through the house flapping their arms like wings, and they slam"READ ON

CNF: SOUVENIRS: AN ABECEDARIAN ESSAYby Tammy Delatorre"Every time I put my feet in those stirrups, it seemed to be for some sex-related emergency, so I ran the ABCs in my head to distract myself from the fallout."READ ON

BOOK REVIEW: Feasting on the UnknownA Review of PATAGONIAN ROAD by Kate McCahillReview by Emily Walz"PATAGONIAN ROAD sinks the reader into a detailed depiction of author Kate McCahill’s year in Latin America, a scattering of days and nights tracing from Guatemala to Argentina. McCahill’s mission is to immerse herself, learning Spanish, teaching English, volunteering, and backpacking her way across 10 countries."READ ON

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