Joel Chace has new poems in publications such as Lost and Found Times, Tomorrow, Big Bridge, pith, Coracle, Three Candles, paper tiger '01, 6ix, xstream, sidereality, and shampoo. He has published ten collections of poetry, including, most recently, Uncertain Relations--Birch Brook Press, Greatest Hits--Pudding House Publications, and o-d-e--Runaway Spoon Press. He is currently Poet In Residence at Mercersburg Academy and is Poetry Editor of 5_Trope Magazine at Webdelsol.

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Ric Carfagna is a poet preferring an 'alternative' utterance. He lives in rural central Massachusetts with his wife, cellist Mary Carfagna. Ric is currently at work on his extended chapbook project Notes On NonExistence as well as other poetic endeavors. He also works as an environmental CAD designer.

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Vernon Frazer's poetry and fiction have appeared in Café Review, First Intensity, Lost and Found Times, Massacre, Moria, Shampoo, Sidereality and many other literary magazines. He has written six books of poetry. He introduced IMPROVISATIONS (I-XXIV), his most recent book of poetry, at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in Manhattan in 2001. Frazer has produced five recordings of poetry with free jazz accompaniment and appeared as guest poet on several recordings with the late jazz saxophonist Thomas Chapin. Stay Tuned to This Channel, Frazer's collection of short fiction, finished as a finalist in the 1996 Black Ice/FC2 Fiction Contest. His most recent novel is Relic's Reunions. He recently finished editing an anthology of Post-Beat poetry for publication in the People's Republic of China. IMPROVISATIONS (XXV-XLIX), the next sequence of the Improvisations series, and Commercial Fiction, Frazer's new novel, will be published in the fall.

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Karen Garthe's poetry has been published in New American Writing, American Letters & Commentary, CHAIN (in a collaboration with Natasha Saje), No Roses Review, Global City Review, Gargoyle, Exquisite Corpse, VOLT, yefief, Torque, Jacket Australia (online NAW #13), the Brooklyn Review, the Colorado Review, and is forthcoming in Fence and the Chicago Review. Her manuscript "Frayed escort," has been a finalist in the National Poetry Series (1994), the Colorado Prize (1999), the Alberta Prize (2001), and a semi-finalist in the Verse Prize (2001). She is the author of new lyric variations for seven of Joseph Cantaloube's "Cants D'Auvernha" as newly arranged and performed by the musical group HourGlass" on their debut CD of the same name (www.hourglassmusic.com).

NOTES:

"I have no clearly developed 'process' for writing, or consciously hewn theories or methods. My writing comes from terrific archival instincts, occasionally even worshipful ones. And of course it's also prompted by the social milieu, by what I perceive as just or beautiful, unjust, unfair, or stupid - and by my engagement with the world, and with personal predicaments of feeling overwhelmed - in sometimes lovely, nearly sublime suspensions of self and in sometimes wretched vanquished states. Beyond such motivations and conditions, I love words as objects, words as their own clay, even though such love may, itself, be archival. Maybe language as manifest thought is a throwback, maybe not. Clearly the world is more and more pictorial and both the description of a problem and the solution to it are framed in a technological response and not a language, at least not our language of words. In his book Rehearsal In Black, Paul Hoover tags his poem "American Gestures" with a quote from Jacques Roubaud, saying 'Poetry is the memory of language.' I couldn't agree more. I have awful formal tendencies for which I'm obliged to forgive myself. 'First thought, best thought' is, I believe, a facile and ridiculous statement (made out of exuberance sometime in the puerile '50s) and that it applies only in cases of FIRE! Far thoughts, thinking in general goes, I believe it's more effective to take one's time. . .sort it out."

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Noah E. Gordon's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from Hambone, jubilat, American Letters & Commentary, Parnassus, Verse, 580 Split, 3rd bed, LIT, and elsewhere. His criticism appears or is forthcoming from Boston Review, Jacket, Raintaxi, Slope, Chase Park, and elsewhere. His manuscript, the area of sound called the subtone, is currently a finalist for the National Poetry Series. He lives in Northampton, MA, where he's one of seven editors for the new literary journal Baffling Combustions.

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Tom Hibbard would like to thank editors of Shampoo, Moria, canwehaveourballback, Cotworld, Milk, Aught, Oht, Jacket, Washington Review and M. Sonnenfeld's Give Out Sheet for recent use of work. Strengthen the wilderness.

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Andrew Jecklin is a licensed massage therapist in private practice
in Eugene, Oregon. He has a poem in the forthcoming issue of
Aught.

NOTES:

"We are all descendants of Charlemagne, of Nefertiti, of Confucius.
In about 600 years, every woman and man will be your descendant.
You are a Mother and Father of the World.
(http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/05/olson.htm)

Someone will plant a garden, build a shelter, fight with a loved one,
scheme a sort of political intrigue; or maybe the area will be waist
deep in water. Something like this will occur where you are now.

I see poems with origins without the witness of specific histories.
Origins are of the past and of now, too, inside of us and the trees
and economies, revealing.

I don't remember who...it was in an essay where the author describes
that the original meaning of original is from the word origins...

and that 'new' stuff is very hard to find without it not having
some deeper roots...."

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Jim Leftwich co-edits xtant, and is the author of Doubt (Potes & Poets), Dirt (Luna Bisonte), Virgule (Lingua Blanca) and Staceal 1 (Avantacular). From 1994 to 2000 he co-edited Juxta and Juxta Electronic. He lives in Charlottesville, VA.

NOTES:

"The Watercolor Zaum series is my first attempt at working with watercolors. The letters are applied by using children's alphabet sets and bottle caps as stamps. Direct inspirations, promptings and/or permissions from my year-and-a-half old stepgrandson, who makes some great looking stuff using watercolors and seems to be having some serious fun while he's at it; and from Pete Spence, who recently sent a postcard of a colorful zaum sculpture he made."

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Gwyn McVay is the author of two chapbooks of poems: Brother Ikon (Inkstone Press) and This Natural History (Pecan Grove Press). Recent work appears in That Takes Ovaries! Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts (Three Rivers Press, 2002). She is not sure how her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University led her to work as a computer Buddha for a very large online service in Dulles, Virginia.

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Aaron McCollough has recently published poems in The Colorado Review, American Letters & Commentary, Lit, and Bird Dog. He lives and teaches in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His book Welkin is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press.

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Sheila E. Murphy recently performed her poetry for Lit City in New Orleans. In 2000, she presented a series of readings and workshops at the Arvon Foundation at Totleigh-Barton, Devon, in the UK, in addition to performing at the third annual Boston Poetry Conference. In 1999, she was a featured performer at the annual Brisbane Writers Festival in Queensland, Australia. Murphy has authored numerous books of poetry, most recently The Stuttering of Wings (Stride Press, UK, 2002), and The Indelible Occasion (Potes & Poets Press, 2000). Books scheduled for publication include Recent Flute Silences from SUN/gemini Press and Green Tea with Ginger (Potes & Poets Press). She and Beverly Carver co-founded the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series and served as coordinators for 12 years. The series continues under the direction of Carolyn Robbins, Curator of Education, at the Scottsdale (Arizona) Museum of Contemporary Arts. In 1996, Murphy's Letters to Unfinished J. won the New American Poetry Series Open Competition. The book is scheduled to appear from Sun & Moon Press.

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Lance Phillips lives in Charlotte, NC with his wife and son. He attended UNC-Charlotte and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first book, Corpus Socius, is just out from Ahsahta press. He has poems in Fence, Colorado Review, Interim and forthcoming from The Gig.

NOTES:

"This is the text which follows 'Seeing as,' which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2002 issue of Fence. Both are from the manuscript which follows my first book, Corpus Socius. I think of my work as continuous, which is to say not as individual poems but as process. So the texts from Corpus Socius feed directly into this manuscript, which is called Cur aliquid vidi, and the text from that manuscript feed directly into the subsequent manuscripts. The texts evolve, so themes, ideas, words and etc come up and are played out in their own time, which is to say without the imposition of narrative. I'm not interested in staving off death, as narrative nearly always is, but simply in being Honestly attentive to each moment."

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Summer Rogers's goal has been to transfer her imagination and energy into activities, events, and discussions with generations X, Y, Z. Besides passing along wisdom from the beat and beat up generations, she is a community organizer, youth mentor, and substitute teacher in Chicago. Summer is a Loyola University New Orleans graduate and former intern of the New Orleans Review and New Orleans's OffBeat Magazine. Summer has been published in Bad Girl Magazine, Wrapped Around My Neck, Hunger, The Maroon: Women Seen as Weaker Sex by Society, WREC Magazine, Iris May Tango Near You, OffBeat Magazine, and The Revealers: More Than Reggae.

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Ken Rumble was born and raised in Washington, DC, but now lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He likes riding bicycles, parking in the shade, and listening to old Nick Cave albums. He teaches literature and writing at the University of North Carolina - Greensboro. In May of 2000 he received his MFA in poetry from Penn State University and in 1996 he earned his BA in creative writing from Beloit College. His poems and book reviews have appeared in 5AM, Patagonian Winds, Pennsylvania English, Gumball Poetry, the Electronic Poetry Review, and Rain Taxi Review of Books.

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Larry Sawyer is editor of the online literary publication milk magazine (http://www.milkmag.org). He has published work by Wanda Coleman, Vincent Katz, Gerard Malanga, Bill Berkson, and Clayton Eshleman, among others. His poetry and critical reviews appear in Jacket, Exquisite Corpse, Big Bridge, Nexus, Cokefish, aught, Shampoo, Skanky Possum, Hunger, Paper Tiger, Tabacaria, The East Village and Rain Taxi.

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Brian Seabolt lives and writes in Ann Arbor, MI. "An Argument" is part of a longer work entitled Otto.

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Cole Swensen directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver. Her books include Such Rich Hour (University of Iowa Press, 2001), Oh (2000), Try (1999), Noon (1997), Numen (1995), Park (1991), and New Math (1988). Her translations of contemporary French poetry include Art Poetic (1999, by Olivier Cadiot), Natural Gaits (1995, by Pierre Alferi), Past Travels (1994, by Olivier Cadiot), and Interrmittances II (1994, by Jean Tortel).

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