Open Loop Press » poetry

From Fragments to Fiction

editor — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:39:00 +0000

Magician-like, the poet tunes language fragments from an out-of-print book to the pitch of a piece of political rhetoric, ordering the words to soothe, evoking rain. “What makes the poet the potent figure that he is, or was, or ought to be, is that he creates the world to which we turn incessantly and without knowing it and that he gives to life the supreme fictions without which we are unable to conceive of it.” So Wallace Stevens reminds us it is the poet’s responsibility to interpret the world. But what happens when the physical, emotional, and historical extend through ...

Listen Aid

editor — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 05:33:43 +0000

Guest Contributor: Dena Ratner Plugged into Clinic, your thirty-minute journey to work is colored by the band’s coke-induced fast tracks. What started out as a bleary-eyed trudge is transformed into matutinal elation as you’re gliding down the street past person after person, cars cars cars and building after building, everything is rocking with your aural jubilation As you climb up the stairs and come back forever / Summer’s in the house, untamed it was / Walking with thee / Walking with thee / Walking with thee / Walking with thee until you arrive at work and barely remember how you ...

Jericho Brown Writes What’s On His Mind

editor — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:05:38 +0000

"I think we've been telling our students so long, 'Write what you know. Write your lived experience,' and I think our students have this idea that that means write about the time A, B, and C happened to me, but that's not really it. It's more, write what you can't stop thinking about. Write what’s on your mind."

Documenting Discovery: Lisa Olstein on the Art of Observation

editor — Sun, 09 May 2010 03:51:50 +0000

"We all love to receive something either really beautiful or really intelligent, but what’s most exciting or engaging is when a work of art stimulates in you a new kind of thinking, or a new set of questions, or a new set of ideas that are happening in your own brain but that were instigated by the art."

Ahsahta Press’s Janet Holmes

editor — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:26:40 +0000

"There aren't very many presses that will take chances on experimental writing because there isn't an enormous readership out there (yet) and they're worried that the books won't sell."

— Janet Holmes

The Architecture of Persona: Steven Price Writes Houdini

editor — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:52:44 +0000

"I didn't want to just hit the peaks of his life, I wanted to hit a number of the troughs too, small moments that aren't necessarily talked about or discussed or described in the biographies but that he, of course, experienced. They tend to be incredibly important to us as individuals. Just that flicker of sunlight on the grass that you remember from your childhood, which means nothing to you except it's such an extraordinarily warm, protective moment. Houdini would have had these too."

Brick Books’ Kitty Lewis

editor — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:28:55 +0000

"Our mandate is to foster interesting and ambitious work by Canadian poets, both new and established; to produce beautifully designed, attractive books worthy of the excellence of their contents; and to distribute and promote these books and their authors."

— Kitty Lewis

Sculpture of Meaning: Karla Kelsey’s Language Arts

editor — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:41:23 +0000

"I think I'm very infatuated with perception, where language and perception meet, and how language creates our perception while perception creates our language."

Crafting Connection: Christina Davis Reaches Out

editor — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 08:19:38 +0000

"I think I've always been fascinated by freedom and the fear of freedom — and, among poets, the quest for some containment or some instruction, the quest for some criterion, for some way to know whether what we're speaking is correct, or appropriate, or arriving somewhere."

Creating the Chorus: Joshua Kryah and the Question of Faith

editor — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:07:00 +0000

"…the poem that is crafted as well as it can be crafted sometimes winds up just 'saying' something; it's saying this about language, or it's saying this about faith, or it's saying this about the Beloved, or the condition of love. Whereas right now what I want to do is speak. I want, not to pronounce, but to let the poems go further than they usually have, or that I've allowed them to go."