Minds on Fire

Conduit, at first glance, looks like an oversized airline ticket that Salvador Dali threw up on.  I mean this in the nicest possible way. 

Literary magazines come and go, but how many have for its cover a female flamenco dancer dangling from a parachute?  OK, maybe six.  But so much is going on here that the flamenco dancer is in danger of not being noticed.  We have “CONDUIT” (a mix of upper- and lower-case letters, but all the same size) running along the left edge of the cover from bottom to top in some kind of computerese, almost as if you could turn the magazine over to find hanging chads sticking out of the back cover.  For those fussbudgets who prefer to read from left to right, the title also appears “normally” in the upper right hand corner.  Above it are the words:

WORDS & VISIONS

FOR MINDS ON FIRE

The issue number, 21, appears centered on the red parachute.  In a semi-circle around the dancer at the bottom of the cover are the words

BODIES IN MOTION

DANCE, SPORT, MOMENTUM

Undulating earth tones provide the backdrop to most of this.  In other words, there’s an awful lot going on, and we haven’t even opened the magazine yet.  The back cover features the flamenco dancer filling the scene, but facing the other way and faded out, while both the undulating waves and an undulating cast of contributors run over her.  At the top of the back cover is the first contributor’s name—Dante Alighieri (yes, that Dante Alighieri)—and at the bottom is the price.  For the math-impaired, “$10” is followed by “TEN BUCKS.”

Why have I spent so much time and space on the cover of this magazine?  Because I dreaded actually opening it and confronting the inside.  But confront we must. . . .

It’s important that I mention the masthead first.  Six of the names appear on a baseball diamond.  The editor is on the pitcher’s mound, as he should be.  But alone in the outfield, above all the others so that it is the first name you’re drawn to, is Randall Heath.  He of course is the Art Director.

It’s also important that I mention the next page, which is the Contents.  The left column lists the names of the works.  So far, so good.  The next column lists the contributors.  But the right column, where you would expect to find, oh, I don’t know—page numbers—we are confronted with words in keeping with BODIES IN MOTION, so that “A Brief History of Mexican Wrestling” appears on page backhand and “Four Poems” appears on page hole in one.  Dante himself appears on page serve.  At the bottom of the Contents page is this “note on pagination”:

“The pages of Conduit have been assigned words that are arranged alphabetically.  Any resemblance, actual or metaphorical, between the word and the author is purely coincidental, unless, of course, it isn’t.”

I have to turn the page and report that this literary magazine has letters to the editor.  Here is an excerpt:  “Thank you for putting a little handwritten note at the bottom of my last rejection.  That was sweet of you.”  The letters have a preface, of which this is a part:  “If the people want more disturbing poetry, we’ll give it to them.  If they don’t want more disturbing poetry, we’ll give it to them.” 

Now flip through the magazine, and your eyes might chance upon a few stray words here and there.  These are mostly poems, and, for the most part, experimental.  Four entries of microfiction by John Edgar Wideman.  Three interviews – one on basketball (Wideman), one on boxing (Jonathan Ames), and one on dance (David Neumann). 

But primarily this seems to be a vehicle for the artists, who are very good.  Their names are Andrew Auten, Kurt Kauper, Kate Nichols, Bianca Stone, Scott Vincent, and Scott Dolan.  Nichols has a particularly alluring oil on linen called “Plunge 2, 2007.” 

You can find it to the left of page flutter.

Conduit is a triumph, if not an assault, of style over substance.  To actually review a poem (sorry, Dante) seems irrelevant.  However, to do justice to hardworking poets, I want to focus on one poem that did stick in my memory and which I believe represents the whole.  It’s Noah Gershman’s “Forget about Bananas.”  Here is an excerpt:

There are no more bananas

and forget about lambs.

Forget about animals and vegetables