Since my first post, I’ve been too busy finishing unfinished business to post what would be gratuitous updates. Finally, I have something to post, even though it lacks the purity of posting for the sake of posting.

WEB SITE

My website, in need of updating since 2005, has finally received it. With the creative and technical assistance of my stepson, Jonathan Duboff, I’ve added visual poetry, fiction, multimedia pieces, several books of poetry that almost qualify as “lost works,” samples of my jazz poetry that probably do qualify, a PDF of IMPROVISATIONS, all 697 pages of it, and a number of other features.

Go to www.vernonfrazer.net and see what’s new.

RANDOM AXIS

I’ve also released RANDOM AXIS, a 66 page longpoem that fuses textual and visual elements. I hand-published a limited edition of 66 copies and collated each copy so that no two books have the same page sequence. Its fastener binding allows readers to rearrange the text if they choose to do so. Originally, Vugg Books was going to publish it as an ebook with an algorithm that would rearrange the page sequence each time a reader opened the site. The size of the file prevented uploading the poem in its aleatoric online arrangement, making the “samizdat” approach necessary to bring out the work in a way that destabilizes the text. For those who’d like to sample the first ten pages of the work as originally planned, go to http://randomflux.info/axis/randomaxis.cgi or to the web site’s Visual Poetry page.

GLYPH PARTY

Some readers may have seen GLYPH PARTY on Youtube. The project has been on hold for some time because I needed to learn how to use the software necessary to complete it. Multimedia work has interested me for many years. The web site has several pieces that combine text, image and music. GLYPH PARTY is the first work I’ve done that combines animation with music. You can view it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhVjchq6d-Q

Enjoy the work!

October 28, 2009

Welcome to BELLICOSE WARBLING, my latest attempt to keep the 21st century from running away from me.

I seem to find myself either way ahead of the proverbial curve or way behind it. In this case, the latter applies. While many writers I know have built their own blogs and moved into more current areas, I've been too busy juggling new projects and hopelessly backlogged ones, such as the revamped web site that this blog will link to . . . eventually. I admit to fumbling through Facebook, although email seems a lot simpler. Other similar groups carry my name or face, but I've forgotten how to access them. I've avoided Twitter because, rightly or wrongly, living in the moments of too many other people keeps me from living in my own. Do I really need to know what you're doing at 11:31 A.M? If you want to know, without a Twitter, Vernon Frazer is trying to start his blog. Texting will come later, if ever. And "sexing?" At my age, you don't want to know what you have to look forward to.

As best I can determine, this will be a work in process, a mixed bag of updates on publications and occasional commentary. Keeping a journal has never interested me and, however emphatic my tone, my commentaries, like everyone else's, are one person's opinion on a given day, subject to change on the next. To spin Walt Whitman's classic phrase : If I contradict myself, I contradict myself. I am large and need to lose ten pounds.

A few weeks ago VENEREAL KITTENS published a few of my poems. Here's the link:

http://venerealkittens.blogspot.com/2009/08/vernon-frazer.html