RRRRRRRRRR IIIIIIIII FFFFFFFFFFF // TTTTTTTTTTT RR RR III FF // TT RR RR III FF // TT RR RR III FF // TT RRRRRRRRRR III FFFFF // TT RR RR III FF // TT RR RR III FF // TT RRRR RRR IIIIIIIII FFFF // TTTT AN ELECTRONIC SPACE FOR NEW POETRY, PROSE, AND POETICS ___________________________________________________________________________ EDITORS: Kenneth Sherwood and Loss Pequen~o Glazier Version 2.1 ISSN#: 1070-0072 Winter 1994 ___________________________________________________________________________ RIFT02.01 is copyright (c) 1994. All rights revert to author(s) upon publication. Texts distributed by RIF/T or e-poetry@ubvm may not be republished for profit in any form without express consent of author(s) and notification of the editors, but may be freely circulated among individuals for personal use provided that this copyright statement is included. Public archiving of complete issues only, in electronic or print forms, is permissible provided that no access fee is charged. Responses, submissions, and queries to: E-POETRY@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU ___________________________________________________________________________ R I F / T 2 . 1 ________ SEARCH_TERMS _________ Katie Yates these float on white bordered William Howe pagednesse Matthew Huddleston BECKONing pulpit Lisa Jarnot 16 DEFINITIONS CONSTRUCTED Gary Gach G O L D Susan Schultz LIMITED STOCK OPTIONS Loss Pequen~o Glazier T H E B U R I A L G O U R D Hank Lazer NEGATION Kenneth Sherwood waves that SIMPLY Louie Crew RECALCULATING WORDS' WORTH Frank Stevenson re flec/frac tion on space Eric Peterson DISJUNCTION RX@ASSTCD.OZ.AU tunes of errors DERRIVATIONS/DEVIATIONS: "texts written in a responsive mode" William Howe Editorial Notes A Highly Empirical Analysis CHAPBOOK EXTENSIONS Robert Kelly The Invaders [KELL02.01] Jorge Guitart Morphbabarchant & The "Noit Air" Av Variation [GUIT02.01] Benjamin Frielander Perpendicular and Paralell Theses for Reading Alongside Riffs 1-10 [FRIE02.01] Patricia Wahl It's The Fault Of The Tlaxcaltecas (trans. of Elena Garro) [WAHL02.01] REVIEWS [REVI02.01] Hank Lazer on _Errata 5uite_ by Joan Retallack. Chris Funkhouser on Nathanial Mackey's recent work. ___________________________________________________________________________ < K A T I E Y A T E S > these float on white bordered in pale flames (note) verdi, the fall faces. hers agains pane the horse of rome and the feather flocks are out blue from cobalt shutt pressed insid lie curled aroun I trusted even spending a y or locked inside a te but knots, pictures [ the gauze strips care wrenching later, licki "your head above me the kingfisher is heavy [RIFT01.01] ___________________________________________________________________________ < W I L L I A M H O W E > pagednesse page politics the politics of the page turn the page handle the page turn your hand over turn your mind continue your read the page becomes transpearant becomes illusion ignore the fact of the page ignore the unity that it represents and you quickly come to the end of the book pool ticks of body/mind/page become anti-sublimed into non-exhistance through ignorence ov the enterrelationboat uf tha three an act of page turning links the three beyond the level of the read the move-ing of the page by the hand or fingers or tongue or toes or elbows interrrupts the flow of the words in such a way that we must be trained out of the habit of notice-posterchildness of the event "good" writing does not draw attention to this pro-cesspool in fact it denies it any signification whatsoever but still the act of turning the page in itself functions to devide meanings (sous rature) sounds images into dis-stinck-t group kings that limit certain readiing practices we are discouraged from flipping back and fourth threw a book looking for links that ruptures the illusion of commun(forn)ication (being that the illusion implies a linear one to one coorespondance as well as a one two three [w]order) thus we are institutionally mired in a molasses of unintellaged line ness that forks us into a small corner of the possible reading floorspace we must learn to unread the page in order to see it again and we must aware ourselves of the motion of our bodies and the role that they halve to play in the production of the read i e the roll that turning the page plaies in learning of a text how do we read the act of the turn-yearning ___________________________________________________________________________ < M A T T H E W H U D D L E S T O N > BECKONing pulpit (dust angels from a RED earth rumor, tradition) like cedar ASH like words beckoning STAR pulpit boxed park they pin us. where I red earth but LIKE (burning shape shift as ash, the cedar ash WIND shaven doubt final dissolution of earth) the ROOTS, even, a six shooter tuned to stand to CHURN another box, unioned. SIX SHOOTER ungrasped blow, stand postion, UNgrasp (gunning down options shooting POTENT my fear duds from a limited repertoire- by six lane MISery night's cut holing the question combusting pulPIT tactless but straight) (breaking cups, oh the HIGHWAY my cup's platter combusting PULPIT splatter) (without right authority) shapes chew to KNOW a shape TO know entirely, swallow, entirely, TO SWALLOW DIVE and thicken. the twelve stars, DIVE and thicken. the misPLACEd stone, the fire (what is imbibed latches on, now forgotten but pinned, neatly. dives, entails doubt, as fire can, as we do) twelve stars, a stone and a DOUBT can FIRE us. beckoning pulpit BOX BECKON a star pulpIT, bOX, parK, (delineate, jagged edge (syllable gusting) soiling a boundary but) where I like REd earth am cedar ash in a park and roots, even, shave DOubt. where I would be BUT wind (redefining, shaken, shaven, THE roots, even sinewed on pedestal pulpit) red EARTH churning ash as body words union, to stand position BECKONS words to union, pinned to ungrASp the six shooter POtEnt the us in ANOTHER box, blown as duds, six lane Misery (always bend, my tear NIGHTS cut another all ways bend) combusting PULPIT. shapes yes, there to stand POSITION know entire to swalLOW, dive potently to shoot DUDS, tear and thicken: the twelve stars, tossed MEMORY, the six lane the misPLACED stone. ACHING through my night's combusting pulpit, chewing SHAPES ENTIRELY to swallow dive and THICKEN, twelve stars, (who gists the ache?) a stone, now forgotten. [HUDD01.01] ___________________________________________________________________________ < L I S A J A R N O T > 16 DEFINITIONS CONSTRUCTED FROM MEMORY for Lee Ann, Bernadette, and Brian As a small south american squirrel inhabiting mostly mountainous regions would feed on lizards half-way between poles of the tropics, I too would fall heartbreaked in the settlement of feuds or the fields of kentucky. When the moss grows high between the perennials and disordered mimmocks weep, these dainty fastidious gestating mammals break for leavened bread and sup between the rows of trees, lifting like friars some heavy books in sunlight's morning windows where the mollusks row in scion's quadragesimal phyla. ___________________________________________________________________________ < G A R Y G A C H > G O L D Panama, February 25 Translation from Stephane Mallarme Very vain but universal divinity, it won't display its own exterior. This refusal to betray any glim- mering ought to stop, as light becomes more and more outside. Desperate ex- travagances, matching the penetrating vessel, no surrender, celebrating water and sky in its blaze. But, no! The instant came flashing ... That a bank could crash, with the wave, the mediocre, the gray. Cash -- engine of terrible pre- cision, plain to consciousness -- in a certain sense, loses. Fantastical sunsets, as lone clouds totter in the forsaking we make of dreams, treasure's liquidation, slinks, smoldering on the horizon. I've had an inkling there of what's possible with ciphers of hundreds and more -- equally those whose account in an indictment or a financial lawsuit leaves me existentially cold. The incapacity of grandiloquent figures to translate calls attention to an instance sought out through this index: if a number grows and shrinks, approach- ing the improbable, it signs more or less zeros after its name, signifying its sum spiritually equivalent to next to nothing. A billion is smoke, except for the moment for going in for the kill. Or, the lack of dazzlement, even with interest, cites that a god isn't elected to be confined to the shadows of coffers and pockets. Without any complaints about my sillinesses' being duped by the obliteration of gold in the theatrical circumstances of seeming blinding, clear, cynical: I dream on that, doubtless by default of money to shine abstractly, it is given to the writer to shore up the radiant glimpse with words he or she proffers forth as those of Beauty, and of Truth. - 1898 [RIFT01.01] ___________________________________________________________________________ < S U S A N S C H U L T Z > LIMITED STOCK OPTIONS I should have known the past wouldn't give up so easily, jangling like a dog's collar, the creak of a truck at a local intersection, distant tide of tires and beyond that--of course!--the sea's snarl and bend, its backwash almost language (though at best, bad Wordsworth). Take dictation, but don't subsume self in another's syntax; break it first (you who are so oppositional) and though others surround you with love, don't let it interrupt your nervous ordinary search for meaning--oh hackneyed two-syllable counter-weight to wind or engine's backfire, eternal summer's descent into the sound, if not the self of autumn, raking through palms that once were scattered on ungraded streets of a middle eastern city, then reproduced in my golden book, at which I wondered, always a skeptic admiring belief. Child of dualities, blessed with a genetic calm to lean against an equally inherited panic, I've invented more points of view than Henry James to enforce my security zone, and burnt toast reminds me of an hour to which I'm not accustomed, light scattering purple eastern clouds before blue monotone. Birds, cars: we are all commuters, fooled by a word to think our sentences overturned-- clemency an act of justice, as of weather. Teased by prospects, the painter must attend to colors, shifting attention like a boxer to the particular glint of sweat in his opponent's worry lines. The smallest detail obsesses, cures a larger wound, though TV gives us too many: surely the pain of a dying man is not eased by any number of NFL injuries, though they are real and supplant ours--if we're lucky--even for those whose souls outpace them, with jokes Freud would want to note: denotation's the rage, say students accustomed to meaning's brief flirtation, the depths of its hiddenness, taunting them like a green dwarf at the end of a football field, whose function is as mysterious as this process of learning things so as to make our lives more difficult. My imagined jay chases fantasmal squirrels in this mental protectorate of old time, where friends proleptically retire to houses in dull fields, peopled by cows and muttering creeks, and the cost of living is as friendly as the hypothetical natives. Indigenous we ain't, though we are envious of those our forbears foreclosed: hence the guilt that seeps through halls whose thick concrete has no capacity to shield us from what mirrors we suspect. Paranoia's the sanest form of inattention: adds certainty to suspicions, is more constant than the muse, whose spots of time wash out with the red clay of pine fields and blood that seeped around sugar stalks before my advent, latest claimant of the land and minds, perplexed guide to a literature of snow and birches, unseen birds and inconceivable snakes. This can't be Eden: there never was a serpent that wasn't impounded at the airport (where the temp is always 85), and guavas resemble apples only in their being fruits. Cast outside the central myths, castaways of accustomed sense, our vocabularies ambiguous as rope bridges slung across crevasses where stunt men ride bicycles off cliffs, dangling like obsolescent dandelions from parachutes. How green my valley of Makiki, paved with asphalt and good intents and purposes! Swim with dolphins, they're so much freer than we are, even in their hotel pools, from which they can see presidents and rock stars, doubtless awed by the experience. You tourists know so much more than we about yourselves and your momentary exile in what approximates paradise (with exceptions duly listed above)-- deference is haste, but wastrels wear their frowns, nameless as vagabonds, houseless and somehow still free. I thank my friends for this party, the indices of which I wasted, though by my nature I am not unsuspicious. Another codicil has been reached, and the plateau comes into sharper focus, its playing field leveled: Still, the future exists as concept. I may yet settle there. [SCHU01.01] ___________________________________________________________________________ < L O S S P E Q U E N~ O G L A Z I E R > T H E B U R I A L G O U R D \\ \\ \\=====____ _______\ }}-__________ ++++++++ \__}}-+++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++++++++ _____________________________________________ fluidrachm a carpet sotto unsheathd feet _simian or sort for pre-existent cond._ como va or flageolets oated - past Ncrement an under-chambre is parsing under metric feet. _____________________________________________ gothics penetrate one -- any one of in as much, il y a i n t e r f o l i a or of pages dis interred %en plages ou% only tracks slip zeal- ously into jeal- ous bur- rows. _____________________________________________ asi, the only way ward or poste to keep one require a pilgrimmage to ls -hautes terre rusted yen utero en__terrain__son sec__in___uTahen dig up ancestral remains from ancient grid et point them i/o pposing direction. _____________________________________________ always slippint mget *.* words down - but it's the others that ride just on th edge - those ar --------------- the ones that h are the ones th have the etesta --------------- pin through the flesh or a nail piercing aslivr off shunted lip. _____________________________________________ chipdword wrongly disinterred - off acing now awrong mode d[emploi ou should have been left in rawhide amber burnt in boilary of corruptionist. [RIFT01.01] __________________________________________________________________________ < H A N K L A Z E R > NEGATION 3 in that it must however end(ure) nothing like it despite unreasonableness from all parties concerned regardless of stated intention euthanasian invitation sedimental mood declaration of (from) elbow room alleviate terminal degree heuristic (yoursister) anabaptist nor way deadly sons in no death extracts promises that allotropism is all over turn a hora the hora moan moan and iteration can be lived with next to tabernacle knock on wood and iteration can be lived with next to situated illustration title to (of) send a because elective surgery might in spite of previous night after night g NEGATION 5 won through instances of notoriety selves (sands) rearranged tending or illustrations cast a pall threads threnodies sincerely or not at trunk haitian relapse ultimatum old tomato tintinabulation hocum hicupps hocus well intentioned held out until elements of nincompoopism isaac means laughter turds droppings funnel instances of instantiation nowadays demeaning opportunity knocking since that incorrect (anything) terminal displays soon to be eclectic bottlecap collection liberty or fucking unless of course after tablets tables endtables end up beside sofas rhythm with respect to loping along yesterday proceeds as tell exactly the whole outlay reinscribed not as had been (new stanza) assault with a so that intent remains debateable uppermost in nuthatch disguised as a entry level rubble NEGATION 6 talk has advantages initiation proceeds until slippery duck under but not duck over nor duck beside w expresses concern about possible inauthenticity early but not so early as lapidary quality to repetition lilt as opposed to stiletto ink which not what groan up belgian waffles ermine silver ill gotten domino european handling institute for tin ears if the subject sister (of) temptations hysteria growing like wysteria exerts (or thinks about) many a alternate route garlic capital of insider trading common as (new stanza) power over weather endings require tributary harboring a autonomy vs. metonymy tribunal covert suppurations obtuse noninstrumental piano virginity ellipsis rhombus (pigmy hippopotamus) taxonomy subverts the suburbs heartening observation elevation unknown neutral party elder statement great(er)est apparently without any turbulence unattributable to instinct verve exhume in turn not as many as had been trotlines observation deck by entirely imperceptibly neutrino enriched fictions godly dimensions The core text for the Negation cycle of ten poems is Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. For each poem, read the first letter of the line vertically downward, and the Hegel passage emerges. For example for "Negation 6" read "this dwelling beside it is the magic power that converts the negative into being." Various negations are at work in the poems. [REVI02.01] ___________________________________________________________________________ < K E N N E T H S H E R W O O D > waves that SIMPLY "an ocean of dreams within a sound"--Shelley continual air, fuel wind, shaped by capable INDUCING AKIN to nuclear BANISH a BEACH build one the next Yet, in the ineluctable aspect of present some point poet weary upon the wideness of endless varied in form blown scatter pattern dubbed technically "sea" to the immense , the unquestioned wavedom. by undersides slides capable of vast entire virtually later, spawned waved Yet destroy so much denizens waves are an multifaceted portions of rich for filter-feeding KNOCK A LOOS- ENED LIMPET into center unearth for a vig- ilant SURF PERCH. Waves mathematics of com- plex, soon plunging rigorous volumes of The language simple a poetic; seems mimic the sibi- lance of itself: surf, swell, spume, spray, spill, SPINDRIFT whisperings: is version of acou- stic dub "white noise," allegoric mix predict waves, base complex readings of line structure high-class wave-work strat- egy assaults. heavy could create amateur specific madden gain sequence--no "seventh always denote invariably unaware amid apparent derive Almost any wave strik- combination of numerous , process crests and TROUGHS back onsea : sleeper waves These leviathan coincidence of various Given their random isolate contemplate ,soothe mull the swell. [RIFT01.01] _________________________________________________________________________ < L O U I E C R E W > RECALCULATING WORDS' WORTH Up! up! my Friend, and quit your screen; Or surely you'll grow double Up! up! my Friend, and safely wean. Why all this toil and trouble. These CRTs bring endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet. How sweet its music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it. I hope you've saved and backed up too, your grid with pixels glowing. I've parked. The rest is up to you. "PARITY CHECK ....." SISSY BE NIMBLE, SISSY BE QUICK -- or -- Words I deleted before I shared my PERSONAL.DCT with a hiring committee. A.I.D.S. heterosexually ain't homoerotic campy homophobes crap homophobia crotch homophobia's cruisiest Homophobic Cum homophobically dick homosex dyke Jesus's Episcopalian's loveya faggots luti fart lutibelle fellating Lutibelle's fuck nellie fucked nelly Fucking Pissing genitally queandom goddamnit queanly gump queans hemorrhoid shit Hetero sodomized heteros sodomizing heterosexism underwhelms heterosexist VD heterosexists ___________________________________________________________________________ < F R A N K S T E V E N S O N > ----------------- Message requiring your approval (55 lines) ----------- ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- re flec/frac tion on space ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- lines composed on the tropic of cancer (& curiously in southern taiwan, 12 juillet 1993 marginalized) whacked 1 windowpane = brand name of by the sun's LSD ("acid") popular in late rays/razed 60's 2 lack = lacan's to a higher power just like unconscious (= language = drops signifier/signified gap) as 1 a LACK ("man is a desiring of windowpane 2 licked up (lapped, lacked ) machine"--deleuze) red by dazed speechless tongues C = sea/tones, notes of wind or stone, falling on a convertible/re- VERSible/invisible on moses, white-bearded on a peak piano ("earth in- in sinai/darien (whitebread/braid) glassy eyed, long dead visibly resurrected on the red C bed within you"--rilke) ___________________________________________________________________________ < E R I C P E T E R S O N > DISJUNCTION unnumbered level that no keys fit the doors or at least the original locks just stuck some went back to bed is all that is left A mind-mucking experience drug ged and becoming no less than dust rising through cracks their initialed backs obliterated to reach around. All possibilities were manifest when any two met only the unspoken some never heard when there was nothing to hear come for some time fortunes were reversed slide under the sill everything is or never begun the squiggles leak off the paper faster A tortuous tripping not off the tongue, but down the mind follows A slashed time for filling more than a belly without his help. They miss the first light those faithful hordes who sing in the shower the sky on an elevator to now smile when they stand still the mattress receives a double when sleep Mirrored glass also joined to let the tears fall but they were backed up Continuity lapses into the abyss. The first breech comes just at the market all nameless things could not be only a few there was no tongue at all some sat down and tried a binding within the bounds all undone A street squeezed full of suprised faces people swolen badly rended away, dancing down the street the scribbling which was used to pin down all meaning in more than twice a day but nobody knew since they no longer counted but it didn't seem to mean much anymore no new forging of an uncommon language particular isn't locked up in the same hourly pattern could transpire no more fixed dates will ink its way into the page ramble on the carnival continues in what was once water bones shone through some flesh before breaking a bond was broken sometime exploded in the pull No bellows worked remember who had been met The razor hardly weighed flickering eyes an old piano rag unimaginable no better will come due, really ___________________________________________________________________________ < R X @ A S S T C D . O Z . A U > " tunes of errors. and hums a melody of madness" To: All Msg #145, 23-Jul-93 14:59:02 Subject: transconsequentials.. god was a gawd damn bad sub editor. i was rushing to meet my deadline with one of the angels at the end of Intensity City, when i happened to get rung up, by the big cheif.. "now look here, you;ll have to re-write that lead by 4 o;clock.." "no-one wants to hear about the passivity of the colour purple, and one love anymore, its just not hip" --- but boss, i got a fucking migraine from all the talk they handed me out about being sad, but beautiful --- "just do it golem, we have loads to cull for this issue, its not like the old days, you know, sure we could give 'em some emotional scarring and carpet burns, but you have to face it, write about the organic orgy in Erogenous Town this week".. --- big deal --- "it is to some".. ..LAYOUT 2 r c r o s s s i e Confine in virtual corral Well I'm here at a virtual hippy camp;feeling like my presence might dis and franchise the tribe. Documentation of an individual threatening the group. There's a small white pony enclosed in a lovely little corral.And the English sheep dog 'minstrel' sleeps close to the flowered healing centre. I play Aries tonight-quite a challenge! I mentioned to Carol,I thought Aries were mamby___maybe--- pamby and she said "no,assertive", in a loud voice. I must look like a spy in the teepee of torment. I've put away my camera and writing madly. Its not my intent to betray this day. There that's better, Thats how all new tribespeople should orientate themselves , make an avacado,tomato and cucumber whole wheat sandwich. Clan caution__do not__open the !cheese until invited and only take a tomato, if one remains. So who can get angry? There's one left, and you didn't take it. Now there's a stereotype, and a mystical act of pacts,,hmmmm there's more than one person in this dream^ __you don't hear much about jewish hippies., do you? The pony is yelling for attention, so three rather jolly good sporting type hippies, leap over for a chat. "I say how's the fox running at York this year?", says the pony. pony, "make a damn good 3 dayer". more funk and pony,"something about vixen that really gets my Aries up" Alles guten mein schon Fraulien RosenKreutz... continues the pony, " that's what happens when nobody pays you attention" the pony thinks loudly. The ra ra yippie i say, hippies have levitated to the inner circle long ago... Feast on this... There's a rather pudgie budgie looking like a stone totem giving me the eye. And depending which angle you look there are several. eyes..4 well quantized astronomers engage in a jangle , house rising in uranus., and descending in montana. A joke around here would go down like a phallic shaped McDonalds hamburger. Which could be bad or should be good. Look I told you schmuk, "Internationalist means well travelled". I am an event to conceal my desire, and what I'm shuvelling is worse than the smell oozing from "you mean its a bucket and you chuck (it) close" I wonder how Carol's rehearsal as Neptune for tonight's pageant is working out? I thought the wand and the hippy skirt repurchased after letting it go for 15 years or so, at Portobello Markets was a nice touch. Carol said, she had one just like it but I could see by the look in her eye it was the very same one she had given away in 1974. It would be nice if it was haunted like an unexpected and woven love letter. I didn't want to be a six foot tall invisible rabbit. I hate that role!! "Now, don't sit on your hare and graces to me". Came an aside from O-O. Breeze coming in, and the quickening commences ready to launch the kite, "just run, it will take off" like a lingering midi-day lunch. written Minehead, 1990. ____________________________________________________________________________ D E V I D E R I V A T I O N S T I O N S [This section of RIF/T emphasizes texts written in a responsive mode.] __________________________ < W I L L I A M H O W E > may not be republished for post tumultuous expectation before the current. the presidio of mikhail blacks beach bathos bare insert an pillow cases i am willow left nipple ripple bleed kafkascape kalidascope of tissue structure mercy representation dia-gil bite lipped shores a moris minor alto unlike my stories without full stops alienatio ratio nless both yellow 3M which preclude the possibilities under triste toursit membranes shear antithesis lock habit heart market typhoons boom the gentle waves when authorship is proofread refuse it zucchini guide to dissection rules are always object to a small urine freezing behind took every effort in the spectered field [RIFT01.01] ____________________________________________________________________________ EDITORIAL NOTE HOW DO YOU "READ" RIF/T? We have given this question considerable thought over the past two issues and would like to suggest that this question is one for which there are many answers. That is, the electronic format delivers uncountable forms of maleability and reproducibility -- along with blazing speed of transmission. One fact remains unarguable, however, and that is the format's present insistence on deferral from "fixing" a presentation. The number of means you may employ to gain access to RIF/T -- gopher servers, our FTP site, or whether you pick it up in your corner readerlist have countlessly divergent effects on what may appear on your screen. Your local hardware and printer configurations also can vary its presentation immeasurably. There are certain definable approaches, however. First, you can read RIF/T on your screen. (Though in some systems you may not be able to "scroll up.") You can send RIF/T to your mainframe printer then read it in line at the supermarket. Or you can download it from your mainframe to a file that will be "readable" on your PC. Our goal has been to design a species of versatility in RIF/T's presentation that allows this text to "adapt" to these varied circumstances. In addition, you will find new features in this issue to add oil to the readability gears (though slippage is also encouraged): In the RIF/T file: (1) Initial title words following each author's name to allow you to use the "search" feature of your system to immediately "find" pieces that grab your attention, and; (2) our Derrivations/ Deviations section, appearing for the first time in this issue, presenting an interpretation of, or riff upon, our first issue. The FREI02.01 file, also presenting responses to, or riffs on the file RIFF01.01 (presented in our first issue) is also highly noteworthy as a very active "reading" of Issue 1. These "responses" are part and parcel of the "other" quality of the electronic text: its receptiveness to reformating, reconfiguration, retaliation. We encourage you to consider the text as AT YOUR FINGERS and look forward to receiving whatever impulses thereby may be fashioned. ---eds. ___________________________________________________________________________ HIGHLY EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF RIFT02.01; or, The State of Poetry Today; Does It Matter? Data Tested Frequency ___________ _________ "man" 3 instances "word" 12 instances "space" 4 instances in 2 poems and masthead "later" 2 instances in 2 poems "I" 31 instances as personal pronoun in 9 poems (mean 3.44 among those poems with an "I") derrogatory references to British Romantic Poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 2 instances in 2 poems "entire" 6 instances in some form "page" 16 instances in 3 poems "wave" 12 instances in 3 poems "always" 6 instances in 5 poems non-derrogatory references to British Romantic Poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 0 instances in 17 poems "read" 11 instances in some form "text" 5 instances (most in editorial passages) "act" 5 instances in 3 poems ---eds. [*Our thanks to the MALA, LAA, NEA, NRA, NEH, NYCFA, CCLM and the Werner Genn Fund for Public Service Research; all of which were generous in contributing moral if not financial support.] ____________________________________________________________________________ < C O N T R I B U T O R S > Katie Yates was featured poet in a recent _Slack_ (Boulder, CO) interview; and she knows how much pressure, to the pound, a lithograph inking requires. William Howe investigates the page while compelling his students to read "subversive" books. Matthew Huddleston walked "to the grocery store for milk, the adobes low and rimmed with grey snow, wet streets, people walking dogs. A man in the store comments on my jacket. I buy broccoli." Lisa Jarnot published her first book, _Sonnets For Orpheus_, with Shuffaloff in 1993. Gary Gach has been involved in various translations which can be located in the virtual and print universes; his own work is in _Preparing the Ground_. Susan Schultz teaches at the University of Hawaii and has most recently crossed this editor's desk in the pages of the current _O.ble-k_. Loss Pequen~o Glazier writes from El Rancho. Hank Lazer's _Three of Ten_, a large collection of his poems, is due out in 1994 from Chax Press. Kenneth Sherwood is pursuing the Ph.D. at SUNY Buffalo. "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." Louie Crew has published several books including _Midnight Lessons_ (Samisdat, 1987) and _Lutibelle's Pew_ (Dragon Disks, 1990). Frank Stevenson lives with Chinese wife and daughter in Taipei, Taiwan where he teaches literature and literary theory at National Taiwan NORMAL Univ. Eric Petersen is a graduate student at the University of Toronto and has had poems accepted by _Gist_, _xib_, _Poetry Motel_ and _Bluff City_. RX@asstdc.oz.au remains a mystery. Robert Kelly has many publications, an American Book Award, and teaches at Bard. Jorge Guitart has most recently published with _Exquisite Corpse_; his _Foreigner's Notebook_ was published last year. Patricia Wahl is a translator of Spanish and a doctoral student in English at SUNY Buffalo. Benjamin Friedlander's most recent book is _Anterior Future_ with Meow Press. Chris Funkhouser broadcasts his show from Albany and is an editor of _We Press_, from coast to coast.