RIFT02.01 is copyright (c) 1994. All rights revert to author(s) upon publication. Texts distributed by RIF/T, e-poetry@ubvm, or the Electronic Poetry Center (Buffalo) may not be republished for profit in any form without express consent of author(s) and notification of the editors, but may be freely circulated among individuals for personal use provided that this copyright statement is included. Public archiving of complete issues only, in electronic or print forms, is permissible provided that no access fee is charged.

Responses, submissions, and queries to: E-POETRY@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU

RIF/T Version 2.1

• Katie Yates "these float on white"
• William Howe pagednesse
• Matthew Huddleston "BECKONing pulpit"
• Lisa Jarnot 16 Definitions Constructed from Memory
• Gary Gach Gold (translation from Mallarme)
• Susan Schultz Limited Stock Options
• Loss Pequeño Glazier The Burial Gourd
• Hank Lazer Selections from _Three of Ten_
• Kenneth Sherwood "waves that SIMPLY"
• Louie Crew Two Poems
• Frank Stevenson re flec/frac tion on space
• Eric Peterson Disjunction
• rx@asstdc.oz.au tunes of errors

Derivations/Deviations: texts written in a responsive mode

• A Derivation from Rif/t 1 by William Howe
• Note from the editors.
• A Highly Empirical Analysis of Rif/t 02.01; or, The State of Poetry Today: Does it Matter?

Notes on Contributors

Chapbook Extenstions of RIF/T 02.01

• Perpendicular and Parallel Theses For Reading Alongside Riffs 1-10 by Benjamin Friedlander
• Morphbabarchant & The "Noit Air" Av Variation, a group of poems by Jorge Guitart
• The Invaders by Robert Kelly
• It's The Fault Of The Tlaxcaltecas, by Elena Garro and translated by Patricia Wahl

RIFT REVIEWS

• Review of Joan Retallack's Errata 5uite by Hank Lazer
• Review of Nathaniel Mackey's recent work by Chris Funkhouser.

<KATIE YATES>

     
these float on white bordered in pale flames (note)


        verdi, the fall faces.  hers agains pane
        the horse of rome and the feather flocks are out blue from cobalt


                                                     shutt

                                                     pressed insid
                                                     lie curled aroun

                                                     I trusted
                                                     even spending a y
                                                     or locked inside a te
                                                     but knots, pictures [
                                                     the gauze strips care
                                                     wrenching later, licki
                                                     "your head above me



                                                     the kingfisher is
heavy

RIFF

<WILLIAM HOWE>

                                 pagednesse



page politics the politics of the page turn the page handle the page turn

your hand over turn your mind continue your read the page becomes

transpearant becomes illusion ignore the fact of the page ignore the unity

that it represents and you quickly come to the end of the book pool ticks

of body/mind/page become anti-sublimed into non-exhistance through

ignorence ov the enterrelationboat uf tha three an act of page turning

links the three beyond the level of the read the move-ing of the page by

the hand or fingers or tongue or toes or elbows interrrupts         the

flow of the words in such a way that we must be trained out of the habit

of notice-posterchildness of the event "good" writing does not draw

attention to this pro-cesspool in fact it denies it any signification

whatsoever but still the act of turning the page in itself functions to

devide meanings (sous rature) sounds images into dis-stinck-t group kings

that limit certain readiing practices we are discouraged from flipping back

and fourth threw a book looking for links that ruptures the illusion of

commun(forn)ication (being that the illusion implies a linear one to one

coorespondance as well as a one two three [w]order) thus we are

institutionally mired in a molasses of unintellaged line ness that forks us

into a small corner of the possible reading floorspace we must learn to

unread the page in order to see it again and we must aware ourselves of

the motion of our bodies and the role that they halve to play in the

production of the read i e   the roll that turning the page plaies in

learning of a text how do we read the act of the turn-yearning

<MATTHEW HUDDLESTON>

BECKONing
 pulpit                          (dust angels
from a RED earth                           rumor, tradition)
like cedar ASH like words             beckoning STAR pulpit boxed park
they pin us.                          where I red earth but LIKE
    (burning shape shift as ash, the  cedar ash WIND shaven doubt
     final dissolution of earth)      the ROOTS, even, a six shooter tuned
     to stand                         to CHURN another box, unioned.
SIX SHOOTER ungrasped                 blow, stand postion, UNgrasp
    (gunning down options             shooting POTENT my fear duds
     from a limited repertoire-       by six lane MISery night's cut
     holing the question              combusting pulPIT
     tactless but straight)               (breaking cups,
oh the HIGHWAY                             my cup's platter
combusting PULPIT                              splatter)
    (without right authority)                  shapes chew
to KNOW a shape                       TO know entirely, swallow,
entirely, TO SWALLOW                  DIVE and thicken.  the twelve stars,
DIVE and thicken.                     the misPLACEd stone, the fire
    (what is imbibed latches on,      now forgotten but pinned, neatly.
     dives, entails doubt,
     as fire can, as we do)
twelve stars, a stone
and a DOUBT can
FIRE us.




beckoning pulpit BOX                  BECKON a star pulpIT, bOX, parK,
    (delineate, jagged edge               (syllable gusting)
     soiling a boundary but)          where I like REd earth am cedar ash
         in a park                    and roots, even, shave DOubt.
where I would be BUT wind                 (redefining, shaken,
shaven, THE roots, even                    sinewed on pedestal pulpit)
red EARTH churning ash as body        words union, to stand position
BECKONS words to union, pinned        to ungrASp the six shooter POtEnt
the us in ANOTHER box, blown          as duds, six lane Misery
    (always bend,                     my tear NIGHTS cut another
     all ways bend)                   combusting PULPIT.  shapes
yes, there to stand POSITION          know entire to swalLOW, dive
potently to shoot DUDS, tear          and thicken: the twelve stars,
tossed MEMORY, the six lane           the misPLACED stone.
ACHING through my night's
combusting pulpit, chewing SHAPES
ENTIRELY to swallow dive
and THICKEN, twelve stars,
    (who gists the ache?)
a stone, now forgotten.

<LISA JARNOT>

16 Definitions Constructed From Memory

for Lee Ann, Bernadette, and Brian

As a small south american squirrel
inhabiting mostly mountainous regions
would feed on lizards half-way between
poles of the tropics, I too would fall
heartbreaked in the settlement of feuds
or the fields of kentucky.

When the moss grows high between the
perennials and disordered mimmocks weep,
these dainty fastidious gestating mammals
break for leavened bread and sup between
the rows of trees, lifting like friars
some heavy books in sunlight's morning
windows where the mollusks row in scion's
quadragesimal phyla.

<GARY GACH>

Gold

Panama, February 25

Translation from Stephane Mallarme

    
     Very vain but universal divinity, it
     won't display its own exterior.
          This refusal to betray any glim-
     mering ought to stop, as light becomes
     more and more outside.  Desperate ex-
     travagances, matching the penetrating
     vessel, no surrender, celebrating water
     and sky in its blaze.
          But, no!  The instant came
     flashing ...
          That a bank could crash, with
     the wave, the mediocre, the gray.
          Cash -- engine of terrible pre-
     cision, plain to consciousness -- in a
     certain sense, loses.
          Fantastical sunsets, as lone 
     clouds totter in the forsaking we make
     of dreams, treasure's liquidation, slinks,
     smoldering on the horizon.  I've had an
     inkling there of what's possible with
     ciphers of hundreds and more -- equally
     those whose account in an indictment or
     a financial lawsuit leaves me existentially
     cold.  The incapacity of grandiloquent
     figures to translate calls attention to an 
     instance sought out through this index:
     if a number grows and shrinks, approach-
     ing the improbable, it signs more or less
     zeros after its name, signifying its sum
     spiritually equivalent to next to nothing.
          A billion is smoke, except for the
     moment for going in for the kill.  Or, the
     lack of dazzlement, even with interest, 
     cites that a god isn't elected to be confined
     to the shadows of coffers and pockets.
          Without any complaints about my
     sillinesses' being duped by the obliteration
     of gold in the theatrical circumstances of
     seeming blinding, clear, cynical:  I dream on
     that, doubtless by default of money to shine
     abstractly, it is given to the writer to shore
     up the radiant glimpse with words he or she
     proffers forth as those of Beauty, and of Truth.
     
                         - 1898

RIFF

<SUSAN SCHULTZ>

Limited Stock Options

I should have known the past
wouldn't give up so easily, jangling
like a dog's collar, the creak
of a truck at a local intersection,
distant tide of tires and beyond
that--of course!--the sea's snarl
and bend, its backwash almost
language (though at best, bad Wordsworth).
Take dictation, but don't subsume
self in another's syntax; break it
first (you who are so oppositional)
and though others surround you
with love, don't let it interrupt
your nervous ordinary search for
meaning--oh hackneyed two-syllable
counter-weight to wind or engine's
backfire, eternal summer's descent
into the sound, if not the self
of autumn, raking through palms
that once were scattered on ungraded
streets of a middle eastern city,
then reproduced in my golden book,
at which I wondered, always a skeptic
admiring belief. Child of dualities,
blessed with a genetic calm to lean
against an equally inherited panic,
I've invented more points of view
than Henry James to enforce my security
zone, and burnt toast reminds me
of an hour to which I'm not accustomed,
light scattering purple eastern
clouds before blue monotone. Birds, cars:
we are all commuters, fooled by a word
to think our sentences overturned--
clemency an act of justice, as of weather.

Teased by prospects, the painter must
attend to colors, shifting attention
like a boxer to the particular glint
of sweat in his opponent's worry lines.
The smallest detail obsesses, cures
a larger wound, though TV gives us
too many: surely the pain of a dying
man is not eased by any number of NFL
injuries, though they are real and supplant
ours--if we're lucky--even for those
whose souls outpace them, with jokes Freud
would want to note: denotation's the rage,
say students accustomed to meaning's brief
flirtation, the depths of its hiddenness,
taunting them like a green dwarf at the end
of a football field, whose function is as
mysterious as this process of learning things
so as to make our lives more difficult.

My imagined jay chases fantasmal squirrels
in this mental protectorate of old time,
where friends proleptically retire
to houses in dull fields, peopled by cows
and muttering creeks, and the cost
of living is as friendly as the hypothetical
natives. Indigenous we ain't, though we are
envious of those our forbears foreclosed:
hence the guilt that seeps through halls
whose thick concrete has no capacity
to shield us from what mirrors we suspect.
Paranoia's the sanest form of inattention:
adds certainty to suspicions, is more constant
than the muse, whose spots of time wash out
with the red clay of pine fields and blood
that seeped around sugar stalks before
my advent, latest claimant of the land
and minds, perplexed guide to a literature
of snow and birches, unseen birds and
inconceivable snakes. This can't be Eden:
there never was a serpent that wasn't
impounded at the airport (where the temp
is always 85), and guavas resemble apples
only in their being fruits. Cast outside
the central myths, castaways of accustomed
sense, our vocabularies ambiguous as
rope bridges slung across crevasses
where stunt men ride bicycles off cliffs,
dangling like obsolescent dandelions
from parachutes. How green my valley
of Makiki, paved with asphalt and good
intents and purposes! Swim with dolphins,
they're so much freer than we are, even
in their hotel pools, from which they can
see presidents and rock stars, doubtless
awed by the experience. You tourists know
so much more than we about yourselves
and your momentary exile in what approximates
paradise (with exceptions duly listed above)--
deference is haste, but wastrels wear
their frowns, nameless as vagabonds, houseless
and somehow still free. I thank my friends
for this party, the indices of which I wasted,
though by my nature I am not unsuspicious.
Another codicil has been reached, and the plateau
comes into sharper focus, its playing field leveled:
Still, the future exists as concept.
I may yet settle there.

RIFF

<LOSS PEQUEÑO GLAZIER>

The Burial Gourd

 
      \\
       \\
        \\=====____
      ___\     }}-__________
     ++++ \__}}-+++++++++++
     +++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
_____________________________________________
 
 
 
fluidrachm  a carpet
sotto unsheathd feet
 
_simian  or sort for
pre-existent  cond._
 
como va or flageolets
oated - past Ncrement
 
an under-chambre
is parsing under
 
metric feet.
 
 
_____________________________________________
 
 
 
gothics penetrate
one -- any one of
 
in as much,  il y a
i n t e r f o l i a
 
or of pages dis
interred    %en 
 
plages ou%  only
tracks slip zeal-
 
ously into jeal-
ous bur-
 
rows.
 
 
_____________________________________________
 
 
 
asi, the only way
ward or poste to
keep one require
 
 
a pilgrimmage to
ls -hautes terre
rusted yen utero
 
 
  en__terrain__son
  sec__in___uTahen
 
 
dig up ancestral
remains
 
from ancient grid
 
et point them i/o
pposing direction.
 
 
_____________________________________________
 
 
 
always slippint
mget *.*  words
down - but it's
 
the others that
ride just on th
edge - those ar
 
---------------
 
the ones that h
 
 
are the ones th
 
 
have the etesta
 
---------------
 
pin through the
flesh or a nail
 
piercing aslivr
 
off shunted lip.
 
 
_____________________________________________
 
 
 
chipdword wrongly
disinterred - off
 
acing now awrong
mode d[emploi ou
 
should have been
left
 
in rawhide amber
 
burnt in boilary
 
of corruptionist.

RIFF

<HANK LAZER>

NEGATION 3

in
that it must however

end(ure)
nothing like it
despite
unreasonableness from all parties concerned
regardless of stated intention
euthanasian invitation
sedimental mood

declaration of (from)
elbow room
alleviate
terminal degree
heuristic (yoursister)

anabaptist
nor way
deadly sons
in
no

death
extracts promises that
allotropism is all over
turn a
hora the hora

moan moan
and
iteration can be lived with
next to
tabernacle knock on wood
and
iteration can be lived with
next to
situated

illustration
title to (of)
send a

because
elective surgery might
in spite of previous
night after night
g

NEGATION 5

NEGATION 6

<KENNETH SHERWOOD>

      waves that    SIMPLY

               
                     "an ocean of dreams within a sound"--Shelley





                  continual     
           air, fuel
     wind, shaped by            capable
     

         INDUCING
           AKIN to            
     nuclear
     

            BANISH a BEACH     build
     one the next        Yet, in the 
     
           ineluctable aspect of
     present                    

     
           some point

     
        poet

     weary upon the wideness of

           endless
     



     varied in form

           blown scatter
     pattern           dubbed    technically     

               "sea" to the
     
     immense      
             , the unquestioned 
     wavedom.
     
     


     by   undersides            slides

       capable of vast
           entire 
           virtually
     
           later,  


     
     spawned waved

           Yet    destroy
     so much      denizens
     
     waves are an multifaceted
           portions of rich
        for filter-feeding

     
           KNOCK A LOOS-
     ENED LIMPET into
     
           center
           unearth      for a vig-
     ilant 
           SURF PERCH.  Waves

     
           mathematics of       com-
     plex, soon plunging        rigorous

           volumes of
     

           The language
           simple a
     poetic;      seems


           mimic the sibi-
     lance of     

           itself: surf,
           swell, spume, spray, spill, SPINDRIFT
     
     whisperings: is
     
           version of       acou-

     stic  dub "white noise,"   
     


               allegoric

                 mix
     predict waves, base
                  complex

     readings of  
                 line structure
     
          high-class wave-work  strat-
     egy
           assaults.     heavy could
     create
           
     

         amateur     specific
     madden
           gain
     
               sequence--no
           "seventh
                always
     denote


                       invariably
     
     unaware           
           amid apparent
     derive
 


          Almost any wave strik-
     
           combination of
     numerous              , process
     
           crests and TROUGHS   
     
      
           back onsea
     
           :
           sleeper waves
     
     

         These   leviathan
     
     coincidence of      various
     
     Given their random      isolate
     
     
           contemplate 

              ,soothe
     


     mull the swell. 

RIFF

<LOUIE CREW>

Recalculating Words' Worth

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your screen;
Or surely you'll grow double
Up! up! my Friend, and safely wean.
Why all this toil and trouble.

These CRTs bring endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet.
How sweet its music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

I hope you've saved and backed up too,
your grid with pixels glowing.
I've parked. The rest is up to you.
"PARITY CHECK ....."

SISSY BE NIMBLE, SISSY BE QUICK

              --  or  --     
 
 
    Words I deleted before I shared 
 
my PERSONAL.DCT with a hiring committee.
 
  
      
           
     A.I.D.S.                     heterosexually 
     ain't                        homoerotic     
     campy                        homophobes     
     crap                         homophobia     
     crotch                       homophobia's   
     cruisiest                    Homophobic     
     Cum                          homophobically 
     dick                         homosex        
     dyke                         Jesus's        
     Episcopalian's               loveya         
     faggots                      luti           
     fart                         lutibelle      
     fellating                    Lutibelle's    
     fuck                         nellie         
     fucked                       nelly          
     Fucking                      Pissing        
     genitally                    queandom       
     goddamnit                    queanly        
     gump                         queans         
     hemorrhoid                   shit           
     Hetero                       sodomized      
     heteros                      sodomizing     
     heterosexism                 underwhelms    
     heterosexist                 VD             
     heterosexists

<FRANK STEVENSON>

 
----------------- Message requiring your approval (55 lines) -----------


----------------------------Original message----------------------------


----------------------------Original message----------------------------
              re flec/frac tion   on     space

----------------------------Original message----------------------------










  lines composed on the tropic of cancer         (& curiously
  in southern taiwan, 12 juillet 1993             marginalized)


     whacked                           1 windowpane = brand name of
     by the sun's                      LSD ("acid") popular in late
     rays/razed                           60's    2 lack = lacan's
         to a higher power
     just like                         unconscious (= language =
     drops                             signifier/signified gap) as
                  1                      a LACK ("man is a desiring
     of windowpane            2
     licked up (lapped, lacked )           machine"--deleuze)   red
     by dazed speechless tongues              C = sea/tones, notes
     of wind or stone, falling                on a convertible/re-
                                               VERSible/invisible
     on moses, white-bearded on a peak            piano ("earth in-
     in sinai/darien  (whitebread/braid)
         glassy eyed, long dead                visibly resurrected
           on the red C bed                    within you"--rilke)
 

<ERIC PETERSON>

Disjunction

unnumbered level that no keys fit the doors
or at least the original locks
just stuck some went back to bed
is all that is left A mind-mucking experience
drug ged and becoming
no less than dust rising through cracks
their initialed backs obliterated to reach around.
All possibilities were manifest
when any two met only the unspoken some never heard
when there was nothing to hear come for some time
fortunes were reversed
slide under the sill
everything is or never begun
the squiggles leak off the paper faster
A tortuous tripping not off
the tongue, but down the mind
follows A slashed time for filling
more than a belly without his help.
They miss the first light
those faithful hordes
who sing in the shower the sky
on an elevator to now smile
when they stand still
the mattress receives a double
when sleep Mirrored glass
also joined to let the tears fall
but they were backed up
Continuity lapses into the abyss.
The first breech comes just at the market
all nameless things could not be only a few
there was no tongue at all
some sat down and tried a binding
within the bounds all undone
A street squeezed full of suprised
faces people swolen badly rended
away, dancing down the street
the scribbling which was used to pin down
all meaning in more than twice a day
but nobody knew since they no longer counted
but it didn't seem to mean much anymore
no new forging of an uncommon language
particular isn't locked up
in the same hourly pattern could transpire
no more fixed dates will ink its way into the page
ramble on the carnival continues
in what was once water
bones shone through some flesh before breaking
a bond was broken sometime exploded
in the pull No bellows worked
remember who had been met
The razor hardly weighed
flickering eyes an old piano rag
unimaginable
no better will come due, really

<RX@ASSTCD.OZ.AU>

"tunes of errors
and hums a melody of madness"

To:      All                        Msg #145, 23-Jul-93
14:59:02
Subject: transconsequentials..


 god was a gawd damn bad sub editor.
 i was rushing to meet my deadline
 with one of the angels at the end
 of Intensity City, when i happened
 to get rung up, by the big cheif..
 "now look here, you;ll have to re-write
 that lead by 4 o;clock.."
 "no-one wants to hear about the
 passivity of the colour purple, and
 one love anymore, its just not hip"
 --- but boss, i got a fucking migraine
 from all the talk they handed me out
 about being sad, but beautiful ---
 "just do it golem, we have loads to
 cull for this issue, its not like the
 old days, you know, sure we could give
 'em some emotional scarring and carpet
 burns, but you have to face it, write
 about the organic orgy in Erogenous
 Town this week"..
 --- big deal ---
 "it is to some"..


      
..LAYOUT 2

      r
  c r o s s
      s
      i
      e
      

Thats how all new tribespeople should
orientate themselves ,
make an avacado,tomato and cucumber
whole wheat sandwich.
Clan caution__do not__open the !cheese
until
invited and only take a tomato,
if one remains.
So who can get angry?
There's one left,
and you didn't take it.
Now there's a stereotype, and a mystical
act of pacts,,hmmmm
there's more than one person in this dream^
__you don't hear much about jewish
hippies., do you?
The pony is yelling for attention,
so three rather jolly good
sporting type hippies,
leap over for a chat.
"I say how's the fox running at York this year?",
says the pony.
pony, "make a damn good 3 dayer".
more funk and pony,"something about
vixen that really gets my Aries up"
Alles guten mein schon Fraulien RosenKreutz...


continues the pony,
" that's what happens when nobody
pays you attention" the pony
thinks loudly.
The ra ra yippie i say,
hippies have levitated to
the inner circle long
ago...
Feast on this...
There's a rather pudgie budgie looking like
a stone totem giving me the eye.
And depending which angle you
look there are several.
eyes..4 well quantized astronomers
engage in a jangle , house rising in
uranus., and descending in montana.
A joke around here would go down
like a phallic shaped
McDonalds hamburger.
Which could be bad or should be good.
Look I told you schmuk,
"Internationalist means well travelled".


I am an event to conceal my desire,
and what I'm shuvelling is
worse than the smell oozing from
"you mean its a bucket and
you chuck (it) close"
I wonder how Carol's rehearsal as Neptune
for tonight's pageant is working out?
I thought the wand and the hippy skirt
repurchased after letting it go for 15 years or so,
at Portobello Markets was a nice touch.
Carol said, she had one just like
it but I could see by the look in her eye
it was the very same
one she had given away in 1974.
It would be nice if it was haunted like
an unexpected and woven love letter.
I didn't want to be a six foot tall
invisible rabbit. I hate that role!!
"Now, don't sit on your hare and graces to me".
Came an aside from O-O.
Breeze coming in, and the quickening commences
ready to launch the kite,
"just run, it will take off"
like a lingering midi-day lunch.

<sigh >written Minehead, 1990.

[This section of RIF/T emphasizes
texts written in a responsive mode.]

---

<WILLIAM HOWE>

may not be republished for post tumultuous expectation before the 
current. the presidio of mikhail blacks beach bathos bare insert 
an pillow cases i am willow left nipple ripple bleed kafkascape 
kalidascope of tissue structure
 
             mercy
                 representation
                     dia-gil
           bite lipped shores a moris
minor alto unlike my stories without full stops alienatio ratio nless both
yellow 3M which preclude the possibilities under triste toursit membranes 
shear antithesis lock habit heart market typhoons boom the gentle waves when
authorship is proofread refuse it zucchini guide to dissection rules are 
always object to a small urine freezing behind took every effort in the 
spectered field 

RIFF RIFF

---

EDITORIAL NOTE

HOW DO YOU "READ" RIF/T? We have given this question considerable thought over the past two issues and would like to suggest that this question is one for which there are many answers. That is, the electronic format delivers uncountable forms of maleability and reproducibility -- along with blazing speed of transmission. One fact remains unarguable, however, and that is the format's present insistence on deferral from "fixing" a presentation. The number of means you may employ to gain access to RIF/T -- http servers, our FTP site, or whether you pick it up in your corner readerlist have countlessly divergent effects on what may appear on your screen. Your local hardware and printer configurations also can vary its presentation immeasurably.

There are certain definable approaches, however. First, you can read RIF/T on your screen. (Though in some systems you may not be able to "scroll up.") You can send RIF/T to your mainframe printer then read it in line at the supermarket. Or you can download it from your mainframe to a file that will be "readable" on your PC.

Our goal has been to design a species of versatility in RIF/T's presentation that allows this text to "adapt" to these varied circumstances.

In addition, you will find new features in this issue to add oil to the readability gears (though slippage is also encouraged):

In the RIF/T file: (1) Initial title words following each author's name to allow you to use the "search" feature of your system to immediately "find" pieces that grab your attention, and; (2) our Derrivations/Deviations section, appearing for the first time in this issue, presenting an interpretation of, or riff upon, our first issue.

The FREI02.01 file, also presenting responses to, or riffs on the file RIFF01.01 (presented in our first issue) is also highly noteworthy as a very active "reading" of Issue 1.

These "responses" are part and parcel of the "other" quality of the electronic text: its receptiveness to reformating, reconfiguration, retaliation. We encourage you to consider the text as AT YOUR FINGERS and look forward to receiving whatever impulses thereby may be fashioned.

---eds.

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HIGHLY EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF RIFT02.01; or, The State of Poetry Today; Does It Matter?

      Data Tested   Frequency
      ___________   _________
      
      "man"         3 instances
      
      "word"        12 instances
      
      "space"       4 instances in 2 poems and masthead
      
      "later"       2 instances in 2 poems
      
      "I"           31 instances as personal pronoun in 9 poems 
      (mean 3.44 among those poems with an "I")
      
      derrogatory references 
      to British Romantic Poet
      William Wordsworth (1770-1850)   
                    2 instances in 2 poems    
    
      "entire"      6 instances in some form
      
      "page"        16 instances in 3 poems
      
      "wave"        12 instances in 3 poems
      
      "always"      6 instances in 5 poems
      
      non-derrogatory references
      to British Romantic Poet
      William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
                    0 instances in 17 poems
      
      "read"        11 instances in some form
      
      "text"        5 instances (most in editorial passages)
      
      "act"         5 instances in 3 poems
      

      ---eds.

[Our thanks to the MALA, LAA, NEA, NRA, NEH, NYCFA, CCLM and the Werner Genn Fund for Public Service Research; all of which were generous in contributing moral if not financial support.]

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<CONTRIBUTORS

Katie Yates was featured poet in a recent _Slack_ (Boulder, CO) interview; and she knows how much pressure, to the pound, a lithograph inking requires.

William Howe investigates the page while compelling his students to read "subversive" books.

Matthew Huddleston walked "to the grocery store for milk, the adobes low and rimmed with grey snow, wet streets, people walking dogs. A man in the store comments on my jacket. I buy broccoli."

Lisa Jarnot published her first book, _Sonnets For Orpheus_, with Shuffaloff in 1993.

Gary Gach has been involved in various translations which can be located in the virtual and print universes; his own work is in _Preparing the Ground_.

Susan Schultz teaches at the University of Hawaii and has most recently crossed this editor's desk in the pages of the current _O.ble-k_.

Loss Pequeño Glazier writes from El Rancho.

Hank Lazer's _Three of Ten_, a large collection of his poems, is due out in 1994 from Chax Press.

Kenneth Sherwood is pursuing the Ph.D. at SUNY Buffalo. "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee."

Louie Crew has published several books including _Midnight Lessons_ (Samisdat, 1987) and _Lutibelle's Pew_ (Dragon Disks, 1990).

Frank Stevenson lives with Chinese wife and daughter in Taipei, Taiwan where he teaches literature and literary theory at National Taiwan NORMAL Univ.

Eric Petersen is a graduate student at the University of Toronto and has had poems accepted by _Gist_, _xib_, _Poetry Motel_ and _Bluff City_.

RX@asstdc.oz.au remains a mystery.

Robert Kelly has many publications, an American Book Award, and teaches at Bard.

Jorge Guitart has most recently published with _Exquisite Corpse_; his _Foreigner's Notebook_ was published last year.

Patricia Wahl is a translator of Spanish and a doctoral student in English at SUNY Buffalo.

Benjamin Friedlander's most recent book is _Anterior Future_ with Meow Press.

Chris Funkhouser broadcasts his show from Albany and is an editor of _We Press_, from coast to coast.