More Wall Format pdfs

More wall format pdfs on Internet Archive: Irises and Scissors, from Poetics List 2.0, Portrait of Adam Fieled 1, 2, fourw twenty-five (book cover).

Death...the PFS Dossier

Attempting to assimilate the all-in-all of what PFS has accomplished, artistically and socially, on the surface and in the depths of the American psyche (and, without support from mainstream media outlets, our accomplishments must function largely in the depths at the current time), I will attempt to explain, to those who might be receptive, what I feel is most salient in its individuality about us, against what has passed, in previous eras, for American haute culture and street life. In this way, we may move towards a realization of what PFS has the capacity to change in America, over long and short periods of time. The way in which the most high-maintenance art produced by PFS functions is against a backdrop of many centuries, rather than in the eternal, ephemeral present largely prized by American art before us. We, in our work and in our lives, accepted history, and historical thinking came naturally to us. We worked as artists to establish continuity with past eras, rather than to obliterate them, as was the tendency of Modern and post-modern art— Abby had French Neo-Classicism, I had English Romanticism, but we both copped to the instinct that, for high art, the twentieth century had largely been a shuck and jive routine. Yet we were working from America, in which the normative pressure put on individual artists is enormous to op against any dominating influences from overseas, especially from past centuries. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are relatively liberal on this level, as I found U of Penn to be— and so having at least a moderate wind in our sails was not entirely unexpected.

Yet there are deeper issues facing both Abby and I, our work, and the forces which are bound to oppose us in this country. The United States, as a whole, has a horrible time admitting this simple, profound human truth: some human beings are just more gifted than others. Some human beings have gifts which most other human beings do not; have, in fact, extraordinary gifts. What we want to introduce to America (the “Death” in our dossier, so to speak) is the idea that those with extraordinary gifts should be given extraordinary opportunities, which (again) not all people will receive or deserve. America, in its naivete, has attempted to forge a society, both surface-level and subterranean, around a denial of extraordinary gifts, or giftedness— that everyone must receive roughly the same treatment, and become involved in the same games, often destructive, and pointlessly destructive ones. The harbinger PFS holds for America is that this now has to change. We may see, in this century and through our influence, the extraordinarily gifted— scientists, philosophers, higher artists, and others involved in the humanities— given pride of place over the American rank-and-file. The argument of PFS (take it or leave it) is that this is the way it should be, and that those sufficiently gifted should be granted time to develop their gifts in peace. It is in this way that Abby and I are initiating an American tradition of excellence, of making permanent marks in the world against the inhibiting agents of the ephemeral and of destructive games. For those American factions hell-bent on the homogenization of American society, we will always appear to be blackguards, but this cannot be helped.

With the canon of PFS work in tow, America may now move towards absolute parity with the countries of Western Europe. We also now have claims to a substantial national heritage, akin to their own. The fake idols, shallow goals, and adolescent mentalities of our past must also be a part of our present too— no one incision into any relevant sector can change humanity that much— but a start has been made towards redeeming the terrible blarneying excesses of the twentieth century. We also have the capacity to establish, if allowed enough influence in relevant sectors, a wholesome attitude towards gender equality, gay rights, and all kinds of sexual freedom, both in practice and in thought, for individuals. My essay from 2014, “Enlightened Elitism/Enlightened Classicism,” makes a point that all the peccadilloes associated in America with history-conscious artists— stodginess, unwillingness to participate in larger society, rigidity, blind hypocrisy against innovation— are not ones Abby or I suffered from. If we were enlightened, in Aughts Philadelphia, it is because we were active agents in the world we inhabited, rather than passive ones. We always chose participation over non-participation. And, as space had clearly been made for us in Philly by a father-figure wise-enough to understand what our gifts were worth (and who could’ve sponsored someone else), we made constructive use of our time to make our gifts active agents also. What others of our ilk deserve in the coming American century is what we received— a time and a place to take raw giftedness and hone it into something extraordinary. If this makes the ethos of PFS, and our canon, a bête noir for those who would like to extend the reign of thoughtless destructiveness, lies, and stultifying homogeneity, then so be it.

Wall Format on IA

Another interesting format for IA pdfs: what I call the wall format: and in this format: Frozen Warnings, Meeting Halfway, Kelly Drive, "Candid Abs," "Adamary," Mary @ 4325, Bath-time, Two Girls, Upstairs at Duroc 15 (book cover), 13, Tygerburning.

Jacket Magazine 40: Apparition Poem 1345 (Flickr)

Book Cover: Upstairs at Duroc 15 (Flickr)

Paris-based English language print journal Upstairs at Duroc (ed. Barbara Beck) released its issue 15 in 2014, featuring work by Susana Gardner, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Adam Fieled, Simon Perchik, and more. Cover by Susan Cantrick.

fourW twenty-five on Open Library

More info on fourW 25, which contains "Manayunk Sky," including a link to the Booranga Writers Centre page on the C. Sturt University site, on Open Library.

Apparition Poem #1238

#1238

Is it still called sunrise when
cloudy? Majesty of stacks,
purple-grey, all in flux, like
Milton’s pageantry, angels
swirled in churning vortexes,
not quite lit, not quite ready to
start a day unconsecrated to
God’s great plans, His iron
rods, fates seeded at last midnight.

The Band: Chest Fever

The Ravishing Amer-Indie Mid-West

My Aughts experience of the Amer-Indie Mid-West was huge. Now, Open Library pages are up for two products of that milieu, Ectoplasmic Necropolis and Spider Vein Impasto from Blood Pudding Press.