Zen Over Zero, 2008 – foto Smith

Zen over Zero

Dog week later in mourning kitchen pouring
Coffee into my veins with a dull cup
A daze of morals and Moses
Whines and Rosicrucians
It’s raining cats and gods
And I am a fine unman

– Smith, 1974

My first book of poetry that Lady published in 2008 was titled after this poem.

Zen Over Zero, Steven B. Smith, Selected Poems 1964 – 2008
69 poems & 22 collages spanning 44 years, $12 + shipping, 6″ x 9″, 84 pages

To order: lulu.com/shop/steven-smith/zen-over-zero/paperback/product-3765106.html

“Smith, in poetry’s whorehouse of many rooms, you belong in the philosophical-scientific wing with us.” – Jim Lang

“Let’s face it Smith, if the song ‘My Way’ were written about your life, it would be lyrics by William S. Burroughs & music by Laurie Anderson, as performed by The Velvet Underground. The 45-RPM vinyl would have been a blue corrosion color rather than black, with Voodoo Lounge as the cover and ‘Voodoo Child’ as side B. And THAT my friend would be one highly collectible single.” – Steve Reynolds

Here’s the first poem in the book, so you’ve only 67 poems and 21 collages to go.

Grasshopper’s Tale

My life’s dog food for do gooders
Hot dodgers dogging God’s zone
Fur sure of itself
Per path and position
Point portion pursued

We who rise in heat from dream
Lick recollection loose
From cold fire’s template
Futility’s fog
We bleed in abandon
Dance dawn’s dapple light

— Smith, 1989

Zen Over Zero, pp 6-7 – foto Smith

Street Maps For Lost Souls by John Dorsey
Smith foto on cover

This makes 12 (of 29) Crisis Chronicles Press publications that use my fotos for their cover art.

And below is one of my two 1985 covers for the WSCB radio program guide. Can’t find the other one yet.

And now a commercial break:

Coming Soonest! The proof copy of my memoir of the first 60 years of my surreal life arrives in the mail tomorrow. We’ll quickly correct the typos and be in business, which means probably within a month “Stations of the Lost & Found – a true story of armed robbery, stolen cars, outsider art, mutant poetry, underground publishing, robbing the cradle and leaving the county” by Smith & Lady will be available.

As editor Tisha Nemeth said on CoolCleveland.com back in 2003, I am “everything your mother warned you about.”

You may not like me very much for much of the book, but you will remember the story.

Smith collage on cover of 1985 WCSB radio program guide

The Whiskey Rebellion (2011)
by Pittsburgh poets Jason Baldinger & Jerome Crooks

TONIGHT Tuesday July 3, 2012 I’ll be one of six poets in the Cleveland / Pittsburgh poetry read off at Visible Voice Book Store in Tremont (Cleveland Ohio).

Visible Voice Books
1023 Kenilworth
Cleveland, Ohio 44113
visiblevoicebooks.com.

Sorry for the late notice but I forgot I was reading . . . my ego must be fading.

Here’s the Crisis Chronicles Press announcement.

~ ~ ~

POETRY READING: LINE & WINE POETRY EXTRAVAGANZA WITH THE WHISKEY REBELLION & CRISIS CHRONICLES PRESS

TUESDAY JULY 3, 2012 | 6-8pm

Three premier Pennsylvania poets collide with several of northeast Ohio’s finest at one of the best bookstores in the nation for a heap or several of anything goes poetry and revelry. The evening will begin with readings by poets with recently published chapbooks from Ohio’s Crisis Chronicles Press:

RA Washington, J.E. Stanley, Shelley Chernin, Steven B. Smith, and (all the way from Erie, PA) Cee Williams.

…followed by readings by Pittsburgh poets Jason Baldinger and Jerome Crooks, co-authors of The Whiskey Rebellion (2011, Six Gallery Press). Open mic to follow if time permits. John Burroughs will emcee if he gets back from a family emergency in Columbus; if not, Shelley Chernin will.

RA WASHINGTON is the author of close to 20 books, most recently the novella The Further Adventures of Gentleman Richards and the Crisis Chronicles Press chapbook Primer for the Vanguard Youth. He is a member of the soul punk duo, Crave, and has released ten albums under various monikers. For more, see http://clevelandtapes.com/

J.E. STANLEY is an accountant and on again/off again guitarist from the grayscale suburban wilderness of Northeastern Ohio where he is lucky enough to hang out with the Deep Cleveland Poets and the Cleveland Speculators. He is the author of Dark Intervals (vanZeno Press), Dissonance (Deep Cleveland Press), Rapid Eye Movement (Crisis Chronicles) and co-author, with Joshua Gage, of Intrinsic Night (Sam’s Dot Publishing). He continues to assert that, winged or not, Man was always meant to fly; the moon and stars were just put there as incentives.

SHELLEY CHERNIN is a 57-year-old freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books. She lives in Russell, Ohio (aka Novelty, proving that the US Postal Service once had a sense of irony). Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon-Cleveland, the Heights Observer, the 2010 through 2012 Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies and the Cuyahoga Burning edition of Big Bridge. Her chapbook, The Vigil, was just published by Crisis Chronicles. Yes, of course, she plays the ukulele. Who doesn’t?

STEVEN B. SMITH is a poet, memoirist, photographer, blogger and collage/assemblage artist who makes his home in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. He’s been writing poetry for nearly five decades, and for more than twenty years published the famed Artcrimes art/poetry journal. He created a massive online art/poetry archive at agentofchaos.com, and a wide array of his poetry and collages have been published in the critically acclaimed book Zen Over Zero: Selected Poems 1964-2008 (The City Poetry Press) and Unruly published by Crisis Chronicles. Check out walkingthinice.com for his daily blogs, reverbnation.com/mutantsmith for his bi-monthly songs.

CEE WILLIAMS is a poet and spoken word artist residing in Erie, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in the poetry and visual art journal Bathtub Gin (Pathwise Press), in the Dwelling in Possibilities anthology edited by Berwyn Moore and in the Crisis Chronicles chapbook 12 Poems. In 2010 Williams was named as a finalist for the Erie County Poet Laureate award. He is the founder and director of Poets’ Hall: the International Fellowship of Poets and Spoken Word Artists, for which he was the recipient of the EMBYP 2011 award for Business Innovation.

JOHN BURROUGHS is the founding editor of Crisis Chronicles Press. His most recent chapbooks are Water Works (Recycled Karma Press) and Electric Company (Writing Knights Press). Find him at www.crisischronicles.com

JASON BALDINGER has been published in The New Yinzer and Shattered Wig Press. He is author of two books of poetry, The Whiskey Rebellion (with Jerome Crooks) published in 2011 by Six Gallery Press, and the forthcoming The Lady Pittsburgh, out in this spring on Speed and Briscoe Press.

JEROME CROOKS is the author of i’ve been a mess and i feel fine (Speed and Briscoe, 2001) as well as the forthcoming The Moment I Feared (Low Ghost Press). Jerome has served as the active head of the Speed and Briscoe writer’s collective since its inception in 1998. His work has appeared in the Pittsburgh City Paper, Natural Language, The New Yinzer, and Open Thread’s regional review. His journalism has appeared in Magazino and Islas. He is the son of Mary Anne and Jerry Crooks, brother to Theresa, brother in law to John Leonard, and proud uncle of young Aeden.

Pittsburgh Magazine said, “As Pittsburgh was once a gateway to the west, the entrance into the American wilderness, [Baldinger & Crooks’] The Whiskey Rebellion is a gateway into a mythopoetic American landscape.” Outlaws & revolutionaries, crooked cops & patsies, ghost towns & superheroes come out to play in this collection inspired by the Whiskey Rebellion, Wordsworth & Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Byron’s Don Juan.

The Vigil by Shelley Chernin

Primer for the Vanguard Youth by RA Washington (cover foto Smith) – foto Smith

Rapid Eye Movement by J.E. Stanley (cover foto Smith)

12 Poems by Cee Williams

Unruly by Smith (cover foto Smith)

Contradance broadside cover – sculpture & foto Smith

Contradance – A Collaborative Poem by Shelly Chernin, Joshua Gage, T.M. Gottl, Geoffrey Landis and J.E. Stanley is a recent Night Ballet Press broadside which uses one of my fotos for its cover.

Quite enjoyed the poem. My sculpture in the foto is Tinkerbell, 1997, 77″ x 28″ x 30″.

This and other broadsides and a fine slew of chapbooks are available at Night Ballet Press, edited and published by poet Dianne Borsenik.

I also have three more cover fotos on poet John Burroughs’ Crisis Chronicles Press. June releases.

The Anarchist’s Blac Book of Poetry by Frankie Metro – foto Smith

Foto is a detail from a Mother Dwarf Smith box sculpture titled Gotcha (1999).

Dinosaur Ditch by Tim Murray – foto Smith

Foto is a detail from a Mother Dwarf Smith box sculpture titled Die-a-rama aka My Favorite Monster (2004).

White Vases by John Swain – foto Smith