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Compressed Wordages

by J.I. Kleinberg

 

[Editor’s Note: Click on the each image below to view it at full size.]

 

 

In the unrelenting battle against doggerel and sloth, J.I. Kleinberg wields recycle-bin magazines, x-acto knife, and glue. Her series (1900+) of found poems, which populate a small landscape between Dada and Twitter, between ransom note and haiku, explore the accidental syntax of unintentional phrases. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, blogs most days at chocolateisaverb.wordpress.com and thepoetrydepartment.wordpress.com, and still doesn’t own a television.

 

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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Compressed Wordages”?

In these collages, each contiguous fragment of text (roughly the equivalent of a poetic line) is entirely removed from its original sense and syntax. That means the process of finding first the words and then the poems is one of surprise. I look for the inadvertent juxtapositions of words, and even as I tear them out, I may not know what they mean. But as they sniff around each other on my work table, they find resonance with other chunks of text, then others, until they have piled up to make a new sense and syntax – a poem-like compressed wordage.

News

Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.

Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.

Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.

Submissions

Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again March 15, 2023. Submit here.

Upcoming

03/25 • Benjamin Davis