Books Are Magic Boxes
Ex. Mole Fizz
Not to be too flip in apparent contradiction to what I said in my recent Catalogue entry on how the objecthood of the book destines it for nullity sooner or later (and rather still in keeping with my affirmation of publishing’s task as advocacy and framing towards creating an opening for the work itself, operating as a force to allow the work’s forces to operate), I’m thrilled to attest to how suddenly a work has been activated from dormancy with the book publication of Mole Fizz (2007-2012) by poet Michael Ball (1959-2015).
It is about the tangiblity of the book in this instance - along with the special, tribute, circumstances and caretaking of its publishing. Michael Ball, posthumously, is now made present, the poetry re-embodied. Ball’s tragic last years would’ve given him no hint of this at all.
What’s gathered in Mole Fizz isn’t a collected works (I know he shared, though rarely, other works, and who knows what more might show up squirrelled away in friends’ or fellow poets’ stowed letters or email archives), but a specific project of poetic thought pursued over the time period indicated, preserved at https://molefizz.wordpress.com still - which makes it a case study of how, in all senses, the purposeful binding of a work for its intended community compresses for release (thanks to the reader) its full powers. Along with those “Mole Fizz” musings and amusements humbly left online to be at last brought forth on paper in their sequential and cumulative persistence, others’ remembrances contextualize Balls’ work, poetics, and milieu. The book carries the poet’s life in it, beyond his life, and beyond what he likely imagined. As a proud contributor to the tribute supplements in the book, my own thesis regarding Michael’s ultimate desolation (it’s more natural for me to think of him by his first name in drawing closer to memories of what nourished him, what starved him), was that really he lived and gave it all for poetry in his life, all and only for poetry, out there and echoing in him - or at least for what poetry promises. & life left him wanting.
Nevertheless, if life doesn’t live up to poetry, poetry outlives life…
that’s why we drowned
Michael Ball
For a long time driving 95 then up Charles to an i.e. series reading, well, we took it for granted. But we didn’t take Michael for granted. We worried about him. But then there he was in the poetry. He lived in poetry for quite some time, that’s not a tragedy. —Rod Smith
It’s rare to be in a time and know that you’re in it. —Ric Royer
We were in it, that I know for sure. A time and a thriving artistic scene. During a period roughly from 2004-2012, groups of poets from Washington D.C. and Baltimore made the trip between the two cities nearly two or three times a month in vibrant community-fostering and exchange. Along with three reading series in D.C. (In Your Ear + Ruthless Grip + Bridge Street Books), a consistent draw in Baltimore was the i.e. reading series (2005-2012, at several different venues throughout the years), with Michael Ball as curator and host. Readings, friendships, and influences continue to this day, but it’s difficult to look back to that period without nostalgic pangs: something was happening then and it isn’t happening anymore. The poets local to Baltimore and D.C. interfaced with national and international poets traveling for those readings in shared focus on difficult, experimental, slant practices and - since indeed we were in a time - what was happening then shivers now with retrospective import. Michael cajoled many inspiring humans to come to Baltimore, too many to name, but I will mention those specifically associated with the i.e. reading series in one way or another who, like him, are no longer with us, in brunt of devastation of a decade+ gone by: Blaster Al Ackerman, Bill Berkson, kari edwards, David Franks, Doug Lang, Tom Raworth, Leslie Scalapino, Chris Toll, Les Wade, Keith Waldrop.
Mole Fizz Supplementary Contents
Terence Winch introduces the work with Pedestrian Ate My Shoe: Michael Ball’s Mole Fizz
After the poems:
Thank You for Smoking by Heather Fuller. She goes again and further on Michael in her blog, StartleResponse.com, with Mole Fizz & GHOSTS
"That Time When Michael Ball” by Ric Royer
Michael by Rod Smith
Inserted in there (between Heather and Ric) is my take, The Rites of What’s Left
To close the book, Chris Mason documents Michael’s abovementioned generous role in keeping poetic energies astir during this notable time: Michael Ball and the i.e. Reading Series in Baltimore.
Mole Fizz (2007-2012) is lack mountain #4, coming to you from zerodegree writing program, “an informal nexus for poetic exchange. lack mountain is an irregular series devoted to missing and fugitive poetries.”
This project is just another instance of abundance from the rollicking, indefatigable poet Buck Downs. You can order here:
yes an afterthought what is after thought
momentomb
A book in your hands, to voice the hand that held the pencil, the fingers that typed subterranean effervescence, fuzzy mulch, flush to meet the quiver, the rough hands of a day-laboring poet. Knuckling a cigarette. Both Ric and Heather mention Michael’s smoking, that gesture itself is a wisp, curling, for Ric remembers his single ring finger stained yellow, how Michael hooked one finger around the cigarette, “as opposed to pinching it between two fingers or finger and thumb,” and Heather sees him always “fiddling with matches,” it’s a special thing to buy a friend a Zippo.
sign language to sort an absence of what, I sorta understand later. that gesture itself, curling
hoax reality has discovered me I have yet to do the same January 15, 2011 mole 291 fizz