saltearth airstone waterbody
Martin Nakell
ISBN 978-1-949966-61-9 192 pages $16.00
“Outside of human consciousness is there an issue?" Making "a poetics of spaces," Nakell in a middle space empties identity of one into "we" (or "you" who is part of "we"). As rumination, subjects we/you and volcanic eruptions, sunsets, or rain have the same relation to that space as would notes of music. Rather than negation, lines-thought is substitution, as if mathematically substituting sunset for human consciousness on which the sunset is predicated: "To conceive of the fact that no issue may exist outside of human consciousness/is a concept within the framework of human consciousness." For the impalpable or impossible, he substitutes our language: "There is no such thing as a tangent to still air."
Leslie Scalapino
Nakell has achieved something that is nearly impossible and would likely be disastrous if undertaken by a less skilled writer…to create a unique and ground-breaking work of literature…celebrating…every Human’s primal urge to create something from nothing.
Angela Genusa
Martin Nakell is the author of 18 books—fiction & poetry; the winner of numerous grants & awards (NEA, Gertrude Stein, Fine Arts Work Center, et alia.); he has read from his work and presented his multi-media productions nationally and internationally; he is on the National Board of &NOW. Nakell earned a Doctor of Arts degree at SUNY Albany, and now teaches at Chapman University in Orange, California and is Affiliate Professor at Haifa University, Haifa, Israel. He has developed and written about two theories of literary (& art) composition: Chaos Theory and Radical Communion, both of which envision the creative act as a special form of communication of the whole. He lives in the village of Orange [the Democratic 46th Congressional District of the finally liberalizing and growingly aware Orange County] with his wife, the novelist Rebecca Goodman.