Tamara Johnson
on Cults

M.I.Blue
on Patriotism

Ray Cappo
on Spirituality

Shawna Kenney
2 poems

Barry Graham
on 911

Douglas A. Martin
3 poems

Ellyn Maybe
1  poem

Jimmy Jazz
on 911
on Lumumba
on Lenny Bruce
Poetry the Klown
Free Art
Poetry of Diversion
Painting by the Numbers
Open Mic Night, What Good Is It?


Craig Foltz is in this Sentence.
 
by Jimmy Jazz

Review of The States: poems by Craig Foltz and photo editor/designer Elie Ga
Ugly Duckling Presse 2006

51 perforated postcards w/ photographs of the sky in each of the United States and DC by 51 photographers $20


American expatriate Craig Foltz currently resides in New Zealand. This makes his appearance in San Diego exotic, rare, hence to be cherished. He said that he wouldn’t have been able to do the series of readings to support The States, if his wife hadn’t worked for an airline. He may or may not have been joking.

He read at PS1 in New York and the R3 Gallery in San Diego. An art gallery is the perfect setting to present this book, which Ugly Duckling Presse has defined as an “art book” and was designed by Elie Ga as a series of accordion-connected, perforated postcards. One for each state. By state I don’t mean “confusion” or “restless agitation” though the text carries us through many such states. One side of the postcard features a photograph of the sky from each of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia, which Mr. Foltz admitted at the reading “would be easy to fake.” I wanted to call them black and white pictures, but my daughter duly noted the green tone, of mostly cloud formations, some with objects in the foreground.
   
The back of the postcard presents writing by Foltz about Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota... et. all. Foltz confessed in his introduction that he’s only traveled 35 of the states physically. Of course this didn’t stop Kafka from writing Amerika or Celine’s journey to Detroit. I’d have to say that Foltz’s writing reminds me more of Kafka’s parables than Celine’s narrative.
   
Oklahoma

Still –

when you say poetics i think aarp. freitag makes announcements. langenscheidt’s pocket. i wonder where the word rosewood comes from. rosewater. rosebud. night soil man. mud women. bundled and not bundled. the same night, an user guide...”


   I had heard Mr. Foltz’s work several times before as he attended grad school here in San Diego. I’d always felt that Craig was smarter than me, though he being humble and polite, would never rub it in. I tend to like poetry that I can understand and his non-sequitur dada sometimes throws me off. But now in the age of Google there is no such thing as an obscure reference. I can look up “langenscheidt’s pocket” and voila: it’s a German pocket dictionary.  When he says “rosewood” I might have thought he was talking about the 1923 massacre in Florida, but the title of that card was Oklahoma. And to me “night soil man” was one of the greatest rock n roll bands ever to hail from San Diego. And I know they got the name from a movie, which, for all I know may have been set in Oklahoma.
   
   A literature professor at SDSU once professed that a poem was not a puzzle, not something that needed to be figured out; another professor at the same institution uncovered lines of a poem by Sylvia Plath, urging the students to guess the title by the images that were evoked. “Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air.”
   
   Mr. Foltz showed slides of the clouds at the reading and after dividing the audience into teams had us try to guess which state the poem alluded to. I have to congratulate Mr. Foltz here for his gamble. What if they couldn’t guess? But they did. They guessed the same way any mob can always guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. As he read the work aloud something caught the minds of his listeners and moved them to shout out “Arizona!  “Vermont!” Sometimes the name of a town or a river made it easier. I suspect others were able to guess by the tone or mood of the piece. Something in it reminded them of home.
   
Can you guess this one?**

an event recorded in archeology. the pentecostal jetset every friday night. cribbage champions all. one cup of shortening and hoppy. jefferson high.
hugh. fitz. four clover stained knees. knocking dust off the wipers. cardoor and carhart...

     Or this one?***

slow-growth trees pause for high speed film. double backed and podocarp. GE free and dull anther-pink. cooking to impress. waving the skillet. the pants come off for inedible grapefruit. good things to oranges that roll over the fence...

   
   Sometimes you can figure out how something was constructed by taking it apart. This used to be true of American cars. Mr. Foltz might have applied the cut-up method of Gysin and Burroughs. The cut-up method is one of selection; it enables ideas you could not imagine. Yet, I wonder if many of these elegantly constructed sentences come from Foltz’s staccato memory. Perhaps cutting together local history, indie rock zines, the sports page, trivial pursuit cards, AAA travel pamphlets and bits from American Fisherman. They are certainly not as random as they seem. Just as Plath’s poem was probably about something more than Mushrooms, these poems are about more than the US of A. I’ve known Mr. Foltz to be a sport’s fan and a meticulous constructor of the sentence, so lines like “manet is to bear bryant what cézanne is to chutes and ladders” from Alabama and “kobe bryant seems out of place in yosemite valley” from California are to be anticipated. I found his sentences a pleasure to read. I especially like “aurora borealis bingo with familiar constellations” though it pains me to confess I’ve never experienced the phenomenon. Mr. Foltz suggested that those who purchase the book tear the perforations and mail the postcards, and if you can spare $40 I say buy two, one to keep and one to post.

*The title comprises the entirety of Foltz biographical statement from Incommunicado Press’ 1995 CD Exploded Views.
**Texas
***Alaska

note to editor: it would be cool to put the answers to the two questions upside down as occurs in such games found in newspapers.

The Cadiallac Tramps was originally published as a 175 page chapbook in 1993. It appears here as a FREE eBook.

Click on the cover to read the story of 3 friends who crossed a desert to see their favorite band.

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