Editorial Blather: The Blunderturd Tour by this guy:
Stay with me, now.
The summer of '93 was a great time to be a lanky, long-haired, red-blooded, 26 year old American male, especially if you were in a hot rock band with a tour of the northeast, including a gig at CBGB's, looming large on the horizon. The tour became known, belatedly, as the Blunderturd Tour for reasons I won't go into here. Suffice it to say the Blunderturd was a cobbled metaphor for the Ford Thunderbird we were using to pull our trailer full of gear.
I had begun a relationship with a girl named Kelley in Memphis, about a month before the Blunderturd Tour started. As fate would have it, she was an aspiring model and she was going to attend an “aspiring model” showcase in Manhattan the same week the Blunderturd Tour hit town. Naturally, I was anxious to hook up with her, and after breakfast on the morning of our arrival in Princeton, NJ, I called the hotel where she was staying with two of her friends. She invited us over.
That was quite a day. Tee and Greg and I lounged around some hotel on 32nd and 5th all day with an unrelenting stream of beautiful women flowing past us. We attended the swimsuit competition, naturally. We even arranged for my girlfriend to let us bed down in her room so we could skip the cat-piss stained mattresses at Joe's Princeton apartment for the remainder of the trip. Needless to say, we were adequately entertained until it was time to head to CBGB’s for that night's gig.
While we were at the hotel surrounded by women who wanted desperately to impress anyone who looked like an agent, John and Paul were trying to broaden their horizons in a more culturally enriching way - at the Met, the MOMA, and the like. Joe was left in Princeton to relax and it was his duty to arrive at the club with all our gear. At the club that evening, as we began to assemble for the show, John produced his set of Blunderturd keys from his pocket. Paul then produced the other set and they realized that Joe was sitting in Princeton with no way to get our stuff up to the edge of the Bowery. The only thing to be done was for one of them to catch a train back to Princeton, hop in the Turd with Joe, and speed back up the Turnpike to the club. Paul had the duty thrust upon him after he and John squabbled about it like fishwives over a loaf of bread, so off he went.
CBGB’s was founded in December of '73 by Hilly Kristal as a country, bluegrass, and blues club - hence the acronym. Shortly after it opened, three grubby dudes named Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell, and Richard Lloyd showed up and asked if their band, Television, could play a gig there. After that the club became a punk legend - immortalized in the Talking Head’s classic, “Life During Wartime,” and remains the oldest continually-operating punk club on the face of the earth. CBGB’s mystique has lived on but the mystique is pretty much all that remains of the early spirit of the place. In 1993, unless David Byrne wanted to flaunt his latest endeavor by slumming in public, the club was the nightly host of the dreaded “showcase.” This meant that on any given night the club would book several bands (mostly out-of-towners who didn’t know any better - like us) who would play before a modest crowd of seemingly disinterested patrons for no other payment than the “honor” of appearing at CBGB’s. Each band was given a time-slot with ten minutes or so allowed for setting up at the start and for breaking down at the end. The management was very strict about the time-slots. If your band wasn't ready to perform when your time rolled around, “Fuck you. Next!”
Our dilemma was thus: even without factoring in train schedules, traffic on the turnpike and in Manhattan, or Joe’s state or readiness in Princeton, there was simply not enough time for Paul to get back with Joe and the equipment before the soundman pulled the plug on our set. We explained our situation to the manager of the club - that’s how we became aware of their strict slot policy. He had no sympathy. We appealed to the altruistic nature of the band who had the slot after ours but they refused to switch. Our last option was the Powerstall Maneuver - try to drag out the sets of the two bands precededing you by cheering wildly and hollering for encore after encore. I estimate we bought ourselves an extra twenty minutes by doing this and the band right before us, Crabdaddy (from Boston, I think), was quite good so I didn’t feel like too much of a shmuck by encouraging them to continue. At last we could do no more than wait and as our time-slot began to expire, Joe and Paul rushed into the club.
Seven minutes later we had the equipment unloaded and set up, the car parked, and we were in the midst of an unnerving and vicious rendition of “McThorazine,” a song about a mental patient who goes postal in a fastfood restaurant after the pimply cashier tries a suggestive-selling tactic on him. Our time was dwindling rapidly so we figured, in order to maximize our impact, we should launch our most rocking songs at the audience in quick succession. “Mental Obsession” was next.
The stage in the club is a two-level affair. I was standing on the edge of the first level, stage right, digging into my bass, lost in what I was doing. Near the end of the song I opened my eyes and saw that our garbage-can player, Greg, had dipped into his satchel of fireworks and whistling-sparkers and screaming-whizbangers were going off all around me. I looked behind me and Tee was simultaneously trying to keep his rhythm guitar going and stamp out his shirt, which was ablaze on the floor. One of Greg's musical instruments, in addition to the garbage cans, hubcaps, and fireworks, was a wheel-rim from some kind of Pontiac. He would suspend it from a rafter and wail on it with an axe handle - it made glorious PUNNNNGGG sound. In this instance Greg had slung it up with a section of firehose he "found." As the fireworks exploded, Greg hopped up on the wheel-rim and began to swing out over the lower section of the stage. “Can this get any more wild?” I thought to myself, and as I did, the firehose snapped and Greg went sailing by, horizontally, at eye-level, landing with a smash among his texture barrels that had been sent rolling off the riser by his swinging feet.
The soundman was trying desperately to pull the plug on us but the smoke and mayhem were thick. He finally succeeded in striking the vocal mikes but we had already started playing “Bikers,” which was more raucous than the last song, and were paying no heed to his attempts to get us to stop. Someone else was at the back of the stage trying to extinguish the fire that was creeping up the wall and he was yelling, "Where's the goddamned firehose?!! Where's the goddamned firehose?!!"
The manager was livid. He rushed the stage all purple-faced and spouting a stream of obscenity that, blended together, made him sound like a Martian auctioneer. The soundman produced a baseball bat and brandished it menacingly. The sparse crowd, all twenty of them, were cheering madly. The bartender said we were the best thing she’d seen in years and supplied us with free drinks for about an hour, our ears still ringing from the riot-act the manager read to us. And he banned us for life.
Hands down, best gig ever!
The moral of the story is simple. As Talk Talk sang,
Baby, life's what you make it. If you don't like the situation you are in, quit looking for someone to do something about it. Either get busy or pack up and go home. The Management wouldn't bend over backward for us, the soundman wouldn't, the other bands wouldn't. So we took what we could get and made the most of it. Remember to do the same.
Apply this advice as needed.
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Announcements
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Suture has always accepted recommendations, but now we are going to do that process one better. We now accept submissions which means, gasp, send us your best work. While it's nice to have someone think highly enough of a piece of your writing to nominate you for a feature, there are some of you, perhaps thousands, who are unknown and wondering how you can change your situation. Here's how:
• At this time, Suture only accepts submissions by email. Please send your pieces to editor(at)suturemag(dot)com, with the text pasted into the body of the email. Do not send attachments – they will be automatically deleted without notification.
• Submit 4-6 poems or 2-4 prose pieces, along with your name and email address. Do NOT include a cover letter, as we wish to judge you based on the quality of your writing rather than your past accomplishments.
• Please include “Poetry Submission” or “Prose Submission” in the subject line of your email. Our filter will block emails with any other subject, and your submission will be left unread.
• Send only one batch of pieces per issue, unless an editor specifically requests otherwise. (Sometimes we may reply with suggested edits on pieces, or request another writing sample from those whom we feel are on the cusp of making it into the magazine. In this case, we will make it clear that you can bypass this requirement and submit again immediately.)
• Simultaneous submissions are fine, as long as you specify this in your email. If your pieces are accepted elsewhere, please notify us immediately so we can remove them from consideration.
• Please allow us 2-3 months to consider your pieces. If after 3 months you have received no reply from us, feel free to send a polite inquiry about the status of your submission.
Before you get all moist in the loins, please read the following statement:
We want your best work. We do not want you to throw handfuls of shit at us hoping something will stick. You can write about anything you like, in whatever tone suits you. Our primary concern isn't subject matter, it is technical merit. Have fun, write well, and we'll look forward seeing what you can do.
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Features
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Although introduced as a poem about the woman of this author's dreams, drag is no shmaltzy love song. Surreal, subconscious images mold this dream into a tale of bodiless love, barely awake, but vivid and disquieting nonetheless. drag is truly an exquisitely-crafted piece. So good, you just might need a cigarette. Selected by *
carissima82If the title Sixty too on HI seems a little besotted, wait until you read the poem. Far more engaging than your roommate's rehashed drunken escapades, this piece encapsulates the humorous, erratic, ironic, and even violent components of a night of drinking with style and flavor to spare. Selected by *
carissima82This piece reminds me of my mornings as they gallop toward winter, in all connotations, be they seasonal or social or a "where the hell has my life gone" kind of way. One of the masteries a poet must make is to turn the mundane into something else, something sentimental, something nostalgic, something poignant. ~
kinglyaxeman is well on his way. Selected by ^
ndifference With excellent creativity and subtely,
home, vandalized by way of egg brings us a very common occurence among women everywhere. With such word choice as 'bagworms' and 'utero expulsion', and such clever use of a cliche as the ending provides, ~
lengleng has told us of this occurence with ingenuity and artful calculation. Read the title, then the poem, and try for yourself first, to construct what this poem involves, and then continue to browse the comments to find out exactly what IS being said. This is a good example of writing about a commonality with finesse and care for the message presented. Selected by *
somedrunkblackspoon In
The Doctor Will See You...Now there is brought to the reader a very creepy reality of one patient's visit to the doctor's office. *
purecoldbath not only provides us with a dash of twisted humor here, if you allow yourself that much, but attempts with a very alert frustration, to pounce upon the doctor with the same force as that doctor is supposed to pounce upon him - with questioning that makes one uneasy and restless, a situation we are all familiar with. A very clever tale indeed. Selected by *
somedrunkblackspoon Prose
Bob Walter is quite a character.
"[. . .] the only means to liberation."
Go for it.
Conceptual? Yes. Intense? Definitely. Interesting? More than anything.
Strong writing permeates this. Diction, structure, variety, everything is there along with a top notch plot that teeters on the balance of being overwhelming without ever falling off.
Bob Walter is quite a character. Selected by *
kaujot This is a surreal portrait of a family separated from each other by their origins and lives. Do not let the fact that there is no true plot deter you. Here, all that matters are the little snippets of idiosyncratic days that people go through pieced together from memory.
It flows along with a dreamy rhetoric, seeming to twist its sentences around. We don't all speak the same language; and if this wasn't the case, to asphyxiate might be the best course of action. Selected by *
kaujot This is the finest piece of prose that I have ever come across on DeviantART.
Sgt. Divine by *
balinlesavage is full of painstaking detail that fills a story that few of us will ever experience first hand, but yet we can all somehow find an immense part of us that empathizes and sympathizes with the characters in this visceral—and not in the sense of gore or gratutious violence—tale of a war long gone.
Robert S. McNamara was once quoted as saying, "One cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action," and this is indeed an incredible action. Read it once for the story, twice for the detail, and any number of times after that for sheer enjoyment. Someone should hang this on a wall in a museum. Selected by *
kaujot wake-up call by ~
Iwon1 is a playful experiment in style that bypasses typical storytelling conventions and draws us directly into the narrator's mental state. The inventive approach in this short piece puts a quirky twist on an otherwise mundane subject. Selected by *
saintartaud *
MinorKey's
Rosewood and Dust rev1.2 is as brief and beautiful as a dark, three minute ballad. Using rich details and a hint of mystery, the narrator gives us his impression of a space and the man who lived in it, drawing atmosphere from every word and line as he moves towards the inevitable conclusion. Selected by *
saintartaud Get past the lack of spacing and *
feyerabend's
A Stand - One Night is a jaunting, journalistic romp through the empty results of the standard "beer + cigarettes + marijuana + wine" equation. The "finer points of romance" are absent here, only wistfull recollection and regret bothered to show up. Selected by ~
vivus Fuck Food is a sardonically twisted little bastard of a story. Two wickedly juxtaposed plot threads bob and weave throughout, connecting only in the final paragraph. This has been one of my favorite pieces of prose since I joined DA, and deserves its inclusion in the issue rightly. Selected by ~
vivus
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Resources
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We continue with the next two articles in the 8-part series, "How Contemporary American Poets Are Denaturing the Poem," by Joan Houlihan.
Part 5,
"If Only We Couldn't Understand Them," addresses one of the most urgent paradoxes of poetry: how can we create work that walks the tightwire line between "understandable" and "entertaining?" Joan argues that this line may not be a tightwire at all, but rather, a canyon dividing two cliffs; that the two qualities of poetry do not overlap, and that the boundaries of contemporary poetry declare that work can be either understandable or interesting, but not both. The ultimate challenge for a poet is to create work that is accessible, without killing "the other pleasures" of the poem - "imagery, metaphor, music, structure and so on." To produce a work that is original, yet unambiguous, is to reach the ultimate light at the end of poetry's tunnel.
The next article,
"The Sound of One Wing Flapping: The Art Of The Poetry Blurb," addresses those obscure and often overgeneralized blurbs on the back of any book cover - one-liners which, with clever phrasing and sparkling comparisons, attempt to pinpoint why any particular book of poetry is worthwhile to the reader. These blurbs have become a craft in and of themselves. The trouble is, these pint-sized ravings attempt to standardize and pin down an artform which is, by default, diverse and ever-changing. It raises an intriguing issue: if we, the readers, disagree with the blurb on the back, or the Pulitzer Prize stamp on the front, are our opinions wrong? Should we hang our heads in shame because we "don't get" the brilliance contained within the book? It must be genius because the blurbs say so! No, it's time to don our "I'm with Joan" shirts: these critics are severely misguided, and have no authority to decapitate the body of the poetry inside by declaring why the work has merit. Readers are intelligent enough to figure that out for themselves.
Compiled with complete disregard for his neighbors by *
wildoats
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Publishing Link
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Here's a link that will come in handy to all those people who have had the desire to send manuscripts off to publishers, but have never had the patience or means to go about it:
Poetry Publishers Who Accept Submissions by E-mail. Note that, while the title of the webpage declares that these are Poetry Publishers, 99 percent of them publish prose as well. If you've been toying with the idea of trying to land yourself in a publication, but you've been put off by reading fees or the typical snail-mail approach, this may be the way to go. Submitting by email is often quick, painless, and perhaps most importantly - free.
A note of caution, though: Heed the red, bold, capitalized warning at the top of the page and
do not submit to publishers without carefully reading their guidelines and getting a feel for their publication first. It will save both you and the publishers a lot of wasted time.
Other than that, enjoy, and go get yourself published!
Wrought upon you by *
wildoats
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10 Short Ones
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10 Short Ones brought to you by
Plagiarist. These poems are short, selected out of consideration for those with limited attention spans (I am among your ranks), but packed with intriguing craftsmanship and inventiveness. When you are finished, do yourself another favor and poke around the rest of the site - the articles and reviews are well worth the trip.
Tracked, bagged and skinned by ^
ndifference
August 1968, W.H. Auden
Kaspar Is Dead, Hans Arp
A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty, Ogden Nash
Not Waving But Drowning, Stevie Smith
Watching The Mayan Women, Luisa Villani
Don Quixote, Nazim Hikmet
Hap, Thomas Hardy
Here, Grace Paley
Feeling Fucked Up, Etheridge Knight
Considering The Snail, Thom Gunn
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Volunteer opportunities from #Scribblers-Anonymous and ~unknown-poet-project.
#LyricsRus is a new club that centers around lyric writers. If great songwriting is your thing, or you write poetry with an emphasis on musicality, then this place could be your new home. They're starting things off with a contest, so don't hesitate! Join Now!
#Movie-Reviews, from the makers of #Book-Reviews, is designed to also encourage nonfiction writing in the form of, you guessed it, movie reviews! If you're a movie lover or a movie hater, they'd like to receive your well-written and thorough reviews. Join Now!
#PlumeWorks is a brand new group devoted to featuring poetry and prose submissions by its members. Every week there is a special "Feature of the Week," an honour which happened to fall to ~deviantkupo for his humourous work Baking Through Suicide. If you're looking to promote your writing, please consider #PlumeWorks! Join Now!
~
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Devious Comments
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A picture, like a human, will speak a thousand words, and never say a goddamn thing.
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"Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die."
Going to lock this one, don't want to insight any turf wars..
&c
the amount of pieces amongst this issue I already knew tells me I'm well on my way in getting to know the better writers on dA. Two of the prose pieces I had already read, one *balinlesavage has been on my "to check out list" for the last couple of days.
I will check out the poetry too, eventually, when I find the time.
Thanks for the issue!
(oh and btw, dear editor: it really, absolutely is spelt "definitely". This is the most misspelt world in the KNOWN UNIVERSE. "definately" should really ring your alarms)
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SINAI BENDS
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SINAI BENDS
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"Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die."
Going to lock this one, don't want to insight any turf wars..
&c
The rest of the volume is pretty damn good.
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Critic for *WeCritique
Critic for ~LPSworkshop
*Coffeehouse
Excellent release once again, this is a true favour for the community.
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but, mainly, Stay Classy
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When you keep getting pelted with shitballs, you gotta get youself a shit-bat.
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