Ranger is a new literary magazine focusing on experimental text, visual and hybrid work from the editor of the defunct Angry Old Man journal. Ranger #2 was released on August 3, filled with experiments of all kinds. Witness the contents here. I’m pleased to be represented by a portfolio of new work including video, video stills/vispo, and text pieces.
My video “Phantom Broadcast” features asemic visual elements and an electronic soundtrack that includes asemic vocalizations. I pulled 20 stills from the video to demonstrate the asemic text. You can view this stuff here.
There are also seven text pieces, including “can’t go back,” “Good Times,” “It’s down to this,” “collect afraid,” “A Resource,” “There goes another angel,” and “Click the topic to access a collection of images.” You can read them here.
The last issue of Otoliths, Issue 70 for Southern Winter, was published July 30, and it bows out in classic encyclopedic style, covering an even wider gathering of experimental poets, writers and artists from around the world than ever before. As editor Mark Young noted in his announcement email, “This last issue is immense & ranges from the dunes of Oceano across to the battlefields of Ukraine, from Scandinavia down to the unceded lands of South Australia. It contains reviews, memoirs, collages, photographs, paintings, vispo, text poems, short stories, videos, combinations of the preceding plus a few other things.” The contents is too huge to paste on this post, but can be marveled at here.
I can’t say enough good things about Otoliths, as it has always seemed like the literary journal of record for the “international avant garde” ever since I discovered it in 2016, and I’ve been grateful for all the times my work has appeared on its pages. This last blast is no exception. You can find new video, vispo and text from me in these pages.
My video “New Brain Imprint” incorporates asemic textual elements in the imagery as well as what I’m calling “asemic vocalizations” in the electronic soundtrack (credited to my music project Hearasay in Paradox Lust). You can view the video here. There are ten stills pulled from the video, demonstrating the asemic text, which can be viewed here. There are also ten text pieces here, including “some functions of lingual,” “say out noise,” “tailing action float,” “talker view,” “day lag,” “palest pensive,” “nettle pack lock swell,” “laugh track to everything,” “gurgle, fetter, blessed,” and “This Immersion.”
Otoliths will be missed. It’s passing leaves a huge void in the literary journal world. But we will (hopefully) have the online archives in perpetuity, and there are print versions to be acquired on Lulu. Long live Otoliths!
The penultimate issue of Otoliths was released over the weekend; this one is number 69 for Southern Autumn 2023. As usual, it ranges widely across a variety of literary and artistic genres and hybrids from a huge cast of international contributors. One can but go to the contents page and begin selecting works to view for an encyclopedic snapshot of the artistic “avant garde.”
I’m pleased to be represented in this issue with text, vispo and video works. The five text pieces include: “Is It Ever This,” “untitled [better the day of/tomorrow],” “In case of,” “issue tote,” and “Past Ratchet.” The vispo are still images pulled from a video I made a few weeks ago, called “Hieroglyphic Avalanche,” because that’s pretty much what you get: a moving script of asemic ideograms or hieroglyphs rushing by in relentlessly kaleidoscopic neon metamorphosis. There are 20 stills pulled to demonstrate some of the individual characters.
My goal with recent video work has been to create works with asemic images and soundtracks that use “asemic vocalizations.” I had wanted to do a long form piece, and at just over 17 minutes, “Hieroglyphic Avalanche” gets the job done on all counts. (I must apologize if YouTube includes advertisements before and during playback; that’s not by my choice, I don’t know why they are there, and I’m receiving no remuneration for these intrusions.)
You can check out my text pieces here. The vispo and video link can be found here.
Otoliths #68, the Southern Summer 2023 issue, was released today. As always, crammed with text, vispo, mixed media and unclassifiable works from across the international literary avant garde. Follow the linked text to the contents for full details. Hours of great reading/viewing.
I’m pleased to be represented in this issue by an array of work, including five text pieces from my most recent explorations, plus the short asemic video “Codex Null” and five still images taken from the video. You can check out the poems here, and the vispo here. The poems are “Bird Lessons,” “Magnified Channels,” “leak allusion,” “more so,” and “Later Mages.”
Yesterday my poem “Milkshake Flumes” appeared in the online poetry journal Mad Swirl. You can read the poem here. If you click on my name, it goes to a archive of all my pieces published by the journal. It’s great to be part of the journal again!
Otoliths #67, the Southern Spring 2022 issue, dropped on October 31 just in time for Halloween. Puns about the issue being filled with both tricks and treats aside, it’s another encyclopedic view of the international literary avant garde with visual poetry, art work, text pieces, essays and hybrid forms from around the world. Check out the contents here.
I’m pleased to be represented by a selection of visual and text pieces, including an asemic video called “Silent Letters,” which includes some of my original experimental electronic music, and ten stills from the video. These are asemic vispo in themselves. Five text pieces of recent vintage round off my contributions: “Glass Ladder,” “Game On,” “What We Did,” “din dings,” and “those who repeat it.” You can check out the vispo here and the text works here.
The Southern Winter 2022 issue of Otoliths was released today, being #66 and including the usually encyclopedic assortment of avant gardists and work in a variety of modes including text, visual, and hybrid. I’m pleased to be represented once again with a selection of ten works of asemic vispo composed of junk I accumulated over decades of collecting from the street and other random places. Also five poems from the most recent batch of pieces, which have been fermenting for a while. You can check out the vispo here and the text work here.
Otoliths issue #65, dated Southern Autumn 2022, was recently released. This issue marks the beginning of the seventeenth year of the journal’s existence! As usual, it contains a mix of — sometimes mixed — photographs, paintings, short stories, poetry, interviews, magazine columns, & manifestos from an international contributor list, reading like a who’s who of the literary avant garde. Check the contents link above to scan the full range of writers and artists in this issue.
I’m pleased to be represented in this issue with text and visual works. First, a poem entitled “Going Golden,” which continues a radical strain of my experiments with anticipating the dialog innovations of Artificial Intelligence transaction units. Second, a set of asemic vispo made with pieces of junk found on sidewalks and streets over many years. Check out the poem here, and the vispo here.
Var(2x) is an online literary magazine for “extreme experimentalism” that always lives up to its stated intent. Editors Daniel Harris and Irene Koronas seek to publish the “elite of the elite” in experimental writing; this journal doesn’t just define the cutting edge, the texts usually go way over that edge for a good close look at the abyss of text and visual poetry and other language related hybrids.
I’m very pleased to make a second appearance in the journal with a text poem (?) called “Maker Taker Quaker.” This piece came out of my explorations of speculative languages that could potentially be developed by AI units. The text proceeds by triads of imaginary and real words with similar rhyming constructions and sometimes alliterative qualities. Is it a love song, a transaction, a spell, a negotiation? Only the AIs of the future will know.
The video still illustrating the piece is also my work.
Online lit journal Mad Swirl has published a “best of” issue for the past five years; the volume for 2021 was just released and is now available in print on Amazon. I’m very pleased to be included with my poem “The Joys of Serf Culture,” which appeared in the journal last April.
Here’s the book hype direct from Mad Swirl editor Johnny Olson:
“2021 has been yet another extraordinarily challenging year. Thru it all, Mad Swirl was there, every one of the 365 days of this twisted year. We didn’t miss a beat. Those beats are what you’ll get when you dig into this year’s collection. Get your firsthand view of one helluva of a f*cking year. The Best of Mad Swirl : v2021 is a 107-page anthology featuring 52 poets, 12 short fiction writers, and four artists hailing from 5 continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, & North America); 15 countries (Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, England, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Montenegro, Nigeria, Romania, Singapore, Syria, & USA [20 States]). We editors reviewed the entire year’s output to ensure this collection is truly “the best” of MadSwirl.com! The works represent diverse voices and vantages which speak to all aspects of this crazy swirl we call ‘life on earth.’
“Mad Swirl is an arts and literature creative outlet. It is a platform, a showcase, and a stage for artistic expression in this mad, mad world of ours; a diverse collection of as many poets, artists, and writers we can gather from around the world; from Nepal to Ireland, from England to China, from California to New York City and all the places in between. Our Poetry Forum features works from over 170 contributing poets, our Short Story Library has over 40 participating writers and our Mad Gallery has over 50 resident artists.”
Contributors include: Artists: J Gregory Cisneros, Alan Murphy, Thomas Riesner, Bleak Teeth
Poets: Jeff Bagato, Tohm Bakelas, Jon Bennett, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Jean Biegun, Jean Bohuslav, Casey Bush, Laurie Byro, PW Covington, John Dorroh, J.K. Durick, Michael Estabrook Joseph Farley, Robert Fleming, Susie Gharib, Iulia Gherghei, KJ Hannah Greenberg, John Grey, Paul Hostovsky, Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo, Mike James, Ivan Jenson, Sally Jo, Ferris Jones, Carl Kavadlo, Vyarka Kozareva, Padmini Krishnan, Tyler Malone, Robert L. Martin, Tom Montag, Ian Mullins, Madelyn Olson, Johnny Olson, Brittany M. Ortega, Irena Pasvinter, Patty Dickson Pieczka, Timothy Pilgrim,, Randall Rogers, Madu Chibueze Romanus, Sreemani Sengupta, Beate Sigriddaughter, Susandale, David Susswein, Rp Verlaine, Isaiah Vianese, Agnes Vojta, Trier Ward, Richard Weaver, Stefan White, Stephen Jarrell Williams, Catherine Zickgraf, Milenko Županović
Fiction: Jim Bates, Glenn Bresciani, Mike Fiorito, Susie Gharib, Jeff Grimshaw, Prapti Gupta, Flora Jardine, James Lawless, Edward N. McConnell, Vivek Nath Mishra, Randall Rogers, Chuck Taylor
jeff bagato 