Made In The Shade Volume Two, Number 1 — May 1, 2022

Made In The Shade Volume Two, Number 2 — June 1, 2022

Made In The Shade Volume Two, Number 3 —July1, 2022

There seems to be an almost universally irresistible attraction to taking a peek behind the scenes. The need to be let in on the secret, to strip away the mystery and see through the illusion has a particular fascination, perhaps because it provides a hint of intimacy that might not be so obvious in the final product. The scraps of notes, out-takes, the artifice, sheer mundane detail, and the false starts and stops that go into creation are combined here in an effort to pique this curiosity. Made In The Shade attempts to synthesize some of the random elements that go into make a poem, illuminate the fly tracks of the unconscious, and expose the virus-like opportunism of language.

There is also a certain not unpleasant anxiety in constructing (or deconstructing) such a house of cards, one that attends all works in art. It’s the tightrope act incipient in all making. That I can present another installment is a real pleasure as well as a vindication of the beliefs that accompany the concept of this work. The way a spill slowly spreads, Made In The Shade is defining itself as a meandering, fractal composition whose making, in large part, follows the rules of chance.

The anecdotal material is merely that of gossipy happenstance much like Joe Brainard’s wonderful witty remembrances. It always struck me that Brainard’s sly journals were the soul of the movement that became known as “The New York School of Poets.” The interviews with the self, as I call them, are something most writers experience in the consolidation of their craft. Sometimes marvelously profound ideas emerge from the self-dialogues. Unfortunately, they often evaporate as soon as the conversation has ended. For this reason, much of what is spoken in reply in these interviews belongs to others who were recorded or had the wisdom to write down their reflections. I have modified them to suit my own purposes, of course, much as Walter Savage Landor modified the Socratic dialogues to suit his own uses. I am certain that I have had similar conversations, at times as acute or more so, with myself.

The poems are reflected in the journal where the work is in a more nascent state. The interviews are sometimes poetic as the poems are sometimes self-dialogues. The narratives contain some poetry as some of the poems can be prosaic. And the letters add to the thread of the story, such as it is. The footnotes, the subtext, the “Orphic” invocations represent the intellectual tripe, the bitter neurosis, the mythic fantasy that are a part of the poet’s subconscious. The maze of cross-references, the lattice of coincidences provide a confusion of shadows and light among which creation can occur, much like the dappling effect under a canopy of overhanging branches and shimmering leaves in a park where the intrinsic is at play.