Introduction to Issue 40
I remember when the first 100 Days spawned books recounting policy achievements, legislative goals, and spirited efforts to accomplish major initiatives during the “honeymoon” phase of a new presidential administration.
I remember when those 100 days didn’t feel like a dystopian novel, a realization of the #45th president’s vision of American Carnage made into incarnate Word, Deed, and Action.
I remember has been a theme for me these first 100 days. I worked on a “memoir” project using Joe Brainard’s I remember device. I wrote an “essay” about not being able to write the essay on the theme, One Hit Wonders, (mostly because of all the 100 Days distractions) using the I remember device.
And I remember the pandemic years, the ultimate #45 legacy achievement of the term, by contracting Covid. Luckily, I had a relatively mild case, had completed most of the drafts for my reviews so the resulting extreme fatigue I felt, and still feel to some degree, didn’t cripple the forward progress of this issue; slowed it down, yes, but did not totally thwart it.
#40 features several poets, all excellent ones, some newer ones, some with several books, I hadn’t previously know about. Generally speaking, each issue seemed to have developed a kind of unintentional thematic continuity, until this one. Maybe it was the 100 Days of Distraction and Department of Government Evisceration effect( DOGE where all rules, decorum, law and order and state craft go to die.) Whatever it was, this is a particularly eclectic issue featuring several of the Misfit Regulars along with many new voices. I thank everyone who submitted, who sent their books to be reviewed and those whose work might not have been taken who took the time to send their work for consideration. Most of all I thank Gene for his Art work and Jennifer for taking the master files I send her and making gold from the electronic dross I amass. Without Jennifer there is no Misfit.
Read your small press and independent magazines online and in print while you can as the government is making a concerted effort to suppress free thinking creative writers. The NEA Grants are gone; the government is coercing universities and institutions to follow strict new repressive guidelines that further serve to restrict public discourse. I have been saying for years that the potential exists that the powers that be will seek to end magazines like this one. Believe it and keep reading and writing because tomorrow, who knows?
Two books of particular, timely interest. arrived recently. One is reprint by Charlotte Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams: the nightmares of a nation. The author, after experiencing serial bad dreams in 1930’s Germany, began writing them down and disguising them as diary entries she managed to save when she escaped from the country. She amassed hundreds of these dreams, from herself and interviewees, from the war years and eventually published them with incisive commentary. This is not an academic exercise though her learning and expertise is obvious.
And you thought you could escape the horrors of everyday life in your dreams. Think again.
Lily Tuck, The Rest is Memory is a novel but also as pertinent as the Third Reich of Dreams. The premise is the author sees an ID photo of a young, ordinary Polish, Catholic girl in 1942, who was abducted, taken to Auschwitz, given a number, and murdered within three months after the photo is taken. How could this happen? Read this brief, stunning novel and find out without thinking this could happen to anyone.
I’d also like to share news of several poets who died since the last issue, some of whom I knew personally.
R.I. P.
Sad news in the poetry world. Pierre Joris internationally known poet, translator, teacher passed away unexpectedly this past Winter. While he was a professor at State University of New York at Albany , Perre was a staple at open mics and the epitome of the statement, “a gentleman and a scholar.” I heard him read many times and often spoke to him at informal get togethers after. His seminal translation f the poetic works of Paul Celan is a must for lovers of world poetry in the 20 the century. Remarkable, Pierre published and wrote in English which was his fourth language after Flemish, French and German! Pierre had the gift, when you had his attention while speaking with him, that you were the only person in the world, that special someone who was worthy of his total attention.
Robert Head long time publisher of NOLA Express along with his partner Darlene Fife recently passed away after a long illness. He was a noted activist for left wing causes in addition to being a poet, publisher, world traveler and bookseller.
Brian Fugett a small press staple, editor of the always wild Zygote in My Coffee journal died unexpectedly in his 40’s. he was well-known to be a hard-working poet, editor, and friend to small press poets here, there, and everywhere.
Debbie Kirk passed after a long series of debilitating illnesses. She was lively, energetic, loud voice in the small press scene as a publisher and as a poet much beloved by friends and fellow poets.
New Books by your Misfit Editors
Landscapes of the Exiled by Alan Catlin
$21.00
Landscapes of the Exiled is a journey into the interior. In the beginning we are rooted in a specific, yet unnamed place, an island where birds die against picture window glass and we try to resurrect them. Stationery ocean rocks appear to move and, on closer inspection become giant seals that move inland in a threatening manner. The further we go into the interior, the darker and more surreal the journey becomes until we arrive at a place where the exiles themselves are.
These people, places, objects were written over a period of forty years and are heavily inflected by European unnaturalists Ritsos and Transtromer. Neighbors becomes Eumenides who spy on our houses, neighbors beat their dogs to death, and ceaselessly drag garbage to the curb, creating sparks where their metal containers strike the concrete. Girlfriends throw their partner’s possessions from second floor windows; a wife makes her end of season turning of the garden into a physical assault of the earth. These neighbors may be rooted to a place but they are exiled from the contemporary world as we know it and become more so as the sequence unfolds. The final section is a literal voyage in the dark, a journey to the end of a night of the soul. Is it a dream or a real journey? The spirit guide is a kind of disembodied voice that has an improbable name, Gladys, and is the product of an actual dream where Gladys offers the poet a corkscrew saying, “You never know when you might need one.” The ensuing journey, with corkscrew securely in hand, the poet travels a darkling plain that becomes a steep climb with caves in it, to where? Interior monologues are impressions, expressions of this trek without purpose, other than the trek itself; we keep moving because moving is what we do.
At times the thinking and the speaking are indistinguishable like a Beckett play on a dark stage with a drawn blackout curtain between the poet and the exterior voices, places where only the hint of shadow moving is visible. In the end there is a kind of dawning, a place in a valley below where there maybe be a guest house with a picture window that fatally impacts bird’s flight patterns.
Available from www.dosmadres.com or on amazon
Unattended Paperback – May 4, 2025
by Alan Catlin (Author) available on Amazon and from www.cyberwit.net
All the poems in the collection are marked by a plain, matter-of-fact style, free from any trace of artifice. The poet has deliberately discarded conventional and artificial phraseology, opting instead for direct and unembellished expression. Despite this simplicity of style, the poems traverse a wide range of emotions and experiences with remarkable depth. Passion and powerful imagination are evident throughout the collection, enriching the work with intensity and insight
Coming soon a book of stories about the bartender with no name and a terrible attitude, from Anxiety Press, called The Naked City. Details pending. This collection is often laugh out loud funny, always off the wall, and the question becomes, how much of this did the author make up and how much of this actually happened? He claims to have the scars that prove everything but he is a writer, who was a bartender, and you know what liars those guys are.
Reelin' in the Years by Jennifer Lagier
A collection of flash memoirs. Cover by Gene McCormick. Available from Amazon.com and Cyberwit.net.