Review: Marymark Give-Out Sheet Series: February 2013

Various Authors
Mark Sonnenfeld, ed.
Experimental poetry, artwork, photography, interviews
5 pages
8 ½” x 11” loose sheets
Marymark Press
45–08 Old Millstone Drive
East Windsor, New Jersey 08520 USA
Free
Review originally published on 3/29/13

These give-out sheets come to me roughly monthly, and have for years. The man behind the press, author and publisher Mark Sonnenfeld, is one of the hardest workers in experimental poetry. I have to warn you, though, this is experimental poetry in every facet of the definition. That’s what Marymark Press promotes: an independent, free-flowing style that mixes coherency with the absurd with the near non-sensical.

This is a lot of people’s thing, and if it’s yours, then this is the best of the best for finding experimental poetry that reads more like mail art or word art. This particular set of give-out sheets contains an interview with poet and mail artist, Teresinka Pereira (although no actual poetry or mail art by her, so out of context, it doesn’t mean as much to read the interview); poetry by Mark Sonnenfeld and Arnold Skemer; artwork by Austria’s Erich Sündermann; and photography by Germany’s Andrew Maximilian Niss. I love how globally spread Sonnenfeld’s projects are; there always seems to be at least one piece by an artist from a different country, so this is a great representation of experimental work the world over.

Some snippets, so you can see just how experimental this stuff goes (I picked the most coherent ones for samples, too.):

[ … ]
to visit the haphazard roundness,
the merger of disparate plans
blending into each other
with odd cartographical logic
that evolves to acceptance
of the seeming ordinariness
of the mundane.
(from “The Complexity of the Grid” by Arnold Skemer)

[ … ]
Rewriting in a studio
(funeral) procession trades
the electric guitar rails real
together or
before
something very
vernacular
“big space” prototype. “It
would
not be me
though.”
(by Mark Sonnenfeld)