The Ninth fhole

In its ninth incarnation, fhole is clearly the same as it has been for a while and slightly different. Within its photocopied and side-stapled pages, there are handsful of weird little poems and generally averbal visual poetry--all of it interesting, and demanding (in the sense that they, by their nature, demand attention from us). Apparently intentionally, the first half of the magazine is devoted to lineated poetry (usually two per page) and the second half is set aside for visual poetry. It is as if the zine is a bicameral brain incapable of mixing its different modes of thought. I would have supposed that mixing the types of work throughout a magazine is preferred, but I found I enjoyed this split, which allowed me to change my mode of reading after I crossed the boundary between the opposing parts of the zine.

Karl Bakker, "&B" (2006)
These pages hold quite a bit of interesting visual poetry (Gustave Morin and David Baptiste Chirot in particular), but the piece I was more strongly drawn to was a poem by Karl Bakker. "&B" begins with that title: an ampersand beside a capital B, which makes it impossible for us to avoid seeing the similarities between these two characters. We almost believe that the & is the B, even though an ampersand is nothing but a swirling together of e & t (which makes "et," which is "and"). These opening characters are the only clear ones on the page. The rest are nothing but heavily distorted lines of text, sliced in pieces that leave much of their bodies on the floor. All of this rests upon a sea of denimish grey. We cannot read anything. The code we see merely shimmers in and out of view, as we wonder if we are falling too fast asleep.

_____

fhole is available for $3 Canadian from the Daniel f. Bradley, 8 Park Road, # 3302, Toronto, ON M4W 3S5 Canada, but he distributes all issues of the zine quickly, so issue # 9 is probably long gone. You can find more about DfB's activities at the zine’s twin blog.

ecr. l'inf.