Hi,
Today is Tuesday but on Sunday when this is published I will have played my first solo show the night before in Seattle. I don’t imagine I would have seen you there. I don’t currently know anyone living in the Emerald City, up the I-5.
I will have stayed at a Value Inn near the Sea-Tac airport. Let’s hope it wasn’t to nasty.
Submit To Skullcrushing Hummingbird - The Zine Issue 7
Skullcrushing Hummingbird - The International Arts and Lit Zine is opening up submissions for Issue 7.
The theme for this issue is “Self Portrait.” As always, this is open to your interpretation.
Send me your Self Portraits in poetry, prose, photographs, paintings, drawings etc.
Details : The zine is black and white with standard 5.5” x 8.5” pages.
Send submissions to larstonovich at gmail.com
Submissions are due on September 22, 2025.
Space is limited and I try to balance text and visual art.
The issue will be published before the end of Fall, 2025.
Contributors will get a deluxe copy on heavy paper.
Spread the good word!
Long live the Hummingbird!
Poem
Lutes
The prime minister of food grade apologies weeps
In earnest.
Should we practice the absolutes
Of tenderness?
Better the ego loss in the liminal maze of online retailers,
Made manifest in warehouse districts displacing wetlands,
Then the practice of resolute meanness.
The burning calendar page.
Right angles not visible in the summer frost.
I’ve torn it out again.
Interview with Aaron Fagan
I became aware of Aaron Fagan when we were both published by Greying Ghost Press in 2023. My chapbook “Criterion” and his, “Failure Atlas” were released as books 3 and 4 of “Volume 15.”
It turned out we’re the same age and share many similar tastes in music, lit etc. I’m glad to have met him. I was also totally wrong about him being a professor!
Aaron’s got a new collection of poetry coming out in October via Princeton University Press called Atom and Void .
Hey Aaron, I’ve just recently started doing these little interviews for my Substack so apologies if the questions are still a little rote. Here goes…
What is the earliest moment you can recall when you thought, “wow, I really like writing?”
I have never liked writing, and I still don’t. I write more out of a hatred of language than any great love for it. I think Burroughs was on to something with language being “a virus from outer space.” My experience of language is that most people—however consciously or unconsciously—don’t say what they mean or mean what they say, which is not to fault them per se—even the most articulate among us are often left with its terrible imprecision, no matter how sophisticated or unsophisticated their literal or figurative terms are dispatched. Anyone who has stared long enough into the abyss has been confronted with the overwhelming inadequacy of words. There is nothing original in this. I am merely confirming this is my experience, too. And that is not even getting into those who deliberately use language as a system of control. I had a professor say: all poetry is argument. What a horrible thing to say. Or so I thought at the time. I likely misunderstand what that is supposed to mean, but I hear something like that, and I immediately think all communication is a con and the reader is the mark. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world? No.
What were you reading (or listening to) in grade school, high school and college that ended up influencing your poetry?
Early on, it was music; I was very slow to come to reading. I was a typical 80s–90s skateboarder who loved Headbanger’s Ball, Yo! MTV Raps and 120 Minutes equally. In high school, I went through the obligatory Beat phase—I was always more interested in Burroughs than Kerouac or Ginsberg. At Hampshire College (1994–1997), my first professor, Andrew Salkey, appeared very upset when I showed him my poems. He asked me who I was reading. I said the Beats, and that made him even more furious. He hammered his fist on his desk and yelled, “You’ve got to read Pound and Eliot!” I had gone to public school where we only read a handful of things in a textbook; I had no idea who the poets were that he was talking about, but I went to the library immediately following that meeting and got everything I could find. Another professor said John Ashbery was “the greatest living poet in the English language.” Soon after, I went to see Ashbery read at Smith College, and I had a serious thought of suicide that night. I thought, “I have not understood a single word of what I just heard. And why was everyone belly laughing like this was a stand-up show? If this is what great poetry is, I will never be a poet.” But these poets and more have all become lifelong companions and “equipment for living,” as it were.
Do you currently work on writing other than poetry? Do you have any ambitions in fiction or creative nonfiction prose?
My only prose is about motion power and mechanical gear engineering—for work. No creative writing outside of poetry. I once wrote: Prose is a prison; poetry, a prism. And I stand by that.
From what I know you are a college professor? Did you go the academic route straight out of school or were there detours?
I’ve never taught. After college, I was a machinist and a carpenter. Then I sold everything and moved to Chicago with a duffel bag. I found Poetry magazine in the Yellow Pages. This was 1998. That’s how I began working in publishing. I stayed there until the Lillions were announced in 2002. My career has mostly been in publishing: Scientific American, Nature, Fine Homebuilding, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Power Transmission Engineering, and Gear Technology. I restored vintage industrial furnishings for a while, whatever it takes.
How did you discover Greying Ghost Press, the imprint that we share chapbooks on.
Jeff Alessandrelli sent me a copy of Biggie Smalls Skateboarding Superstar after he asked me to write a short piece for The Kenyon Review about my third book, A Better Place Is Hard to Find. I loved the design and quality. Not long after, Douglas Piccinnini sent me his chapbook, A Western Sky. A few years later, I saw Greying Ghost was open for submissions on Instagram. The rest is history.
Can you tell me a little about the process of getting your latest poetry collection published via Princeton University Press?
There isn’t much to say. I submitted during the open reading period The Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets has every year in May.
Is there anything else you’d like to say about your new book? Any other projects you’ve got happening you’d like to share with the discerning readers of Skullcrushing Hummingbird - The Newsletter?
Nothing to say, other than pointing out Atom and Void is also the title of a book by J. Robert Oppenheimer, also published by Princeton University Press. I like to think the two books rhyme—perfect in title and slant in spirit—but that would hardly be fair to Mr. Oppenheimer.
Aaron’s website.
Sealey Challenge / Fundraiser For Gaza
August 1-6
Inspirative by David Lawton
Candidate For A Fat Lip by Zenaida Smith
Black Zodiac by Charles Wright
Nearly Early Artly Never by Kelly Clare
It Still Squirms by Candace Holmes
Pictures of the Gone World by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I’m reading a poetry collection everyday this month.
I’m also making a commitment to raising funds for The Sameer Project to provide urgently needed support for Palestinians in Gaza. If you are unfamiliar with The Sameer Project, they are a donations-based initiative led by Palestinians in the diaspora working to supply aid to displaced families in Gaza. They have lost multiple team members and many more extended family members to the genocide, and are now facing great difficulty purchasing food, medicine, infant formula, and tents due to the ongoing blockade. I’m hoping to raise as much funds as I can and to encourage everyone I know to do the same so The Sameer Project can continue to carry out their urgent efforts. Here’s how to support me in this reading challenge + fundraising endeavor:
● Fill out this form. At the end of the month, you’ll receive an email letting you know I’ve completed the challenge and inviting you to complete your contribution. OR ● Make your contribution in advance through this page. Be sure to include a note at check-out to say who you’re sponsoring. And please let me know if you pledge on my behalf! Thanks so much for your encouragement and for your support! The Sameer Project
Kafka Blackout - Redacted 5
To elucidate the wind persistently I needed trickster tavernkeepers Playing hide-and-seek. I owed My first hardness When they refused us Their bosoms. Same old wipe As before.
Visual Noise
Gray Raisins from Gray Raisins ep by Jawn Chirch. Film by Dan Currin.
Live
Turn! Turn! Turn! 8/3/25
Floating Clouds
Love In Hell
Neutral Shirt
Kissing Book
Dystopia
This is how you do it. Hell yeah Sen. Ortiz.
See you next week!