Click through for a review of SLEEPINGFISH [0], the fifth in my full-press review series of Calamari books.

SLEEPINGFISH [0] Contributors:

Crag Hill, Brandon Hobson, W.B. Keckler, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Amy King, Marc Kipniss, Gyorgy Kostritskii, Jim Leftwich, Carlos M. Luis, Peter Markus, & Gordon Moyer

Unlike 3^rd BED [1], SLEEPINGFISH [0] has a distinct literary mission evident on every page; from first to last SLEEPINGFISH [0] shoulders a clear & aggressive vision, one that deftly seeks to staple art & text into the same seams.

SLEEPINGFISH [0] makes every page a visual orchestration, either through the presentation of a transformative, schematically vibrant text or an equally diagrammatic, circuit-laden images. The art is often complementary, rarely concrete or literal-minded, & always works in tandem with the literary fragmentations and scatter of the selected texts.

 Amy King ‘Yellow Taxi In’

 ‘Sleepy gravel road

of old pours forth

from an aerial trachea,

aches the evening breeze

across factory-thrown stones,

an iron board island

and its translucent pupil

we inhabit that’s just

(“God sees everything”)

an advertisement’

& though I couldn’t always find my way into the hearts, the narrative or textual centers of each work here, all the included pieces are sharp & critical representations of a larger even more complex structure, that of SLEEPINGFISH & its aesthetic endeavors: its need to mark territory in collaborative & collage-minded material, where neither text nor art are relegated to the background, a treatment of art on all fronts, equally, and in cooperation to create something more, something bigger, something grand.

Christophe Casamassima

 ‘becomes a relic once

the tongue         exposed

 what are frames            then figment

is safety in grammars

 a mouth can appear in the distance

window without interest

 embraceries of reticence escape

the babel embossed      sonic stitch

what scrapes the teeth

as Braille’

Derek White, editor of this monstrously complex but physically thin first volume of collected fish, clearly knows what he wants readers to see and makes that the focus of SLEEPINGFISH [0].

Next up, BEAR STORIES. Stay tuned.