By Andy Riverbed
The third issue of the Agriculture Reader, an annual art journal, is a sandwich of content. There’s the prose that has the fine flavor of a provolone cheese aged 26 years. Then there’s the poetry, a section of fresh vegetables — unblemished red onions, ripe red tomatoes, and glowing avocado. And the there’s its seven-grain, whole wheat bread, which is Jimmy Parlett’s art encasing this installment of culture. The journal is edible, made without artificial ingredients and easy on the insides.
The Agriculture Reader was founded in 2006 by Jeremy Schmall and is edited with UF alumnus Justin Taylor.
Throughout the journal are Parlett’s line drawings, mixed in with the pages of prose and poetry. Sometimes a small drawing stands alongside one of the poems. One drawing, “Jonah camping out in the right whale”, depicts a beached whale and Jonah using its open belly as a tent with a fire lit to stay warm through the night. Other drawings include strange sandwiches with weird names like “save the coral reef sandwich” and “Jamacha shake”.
My favorite drawing is of a man standing in front of a mirror, whose reflection depicts his naked figure with a bear’s head instead of a human head.
Another portion of the journal is a section devoted to Tony Towle, who wrote poetry in the ’60s and was connected with the New York School of Poetry. Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara taught him, and his work is highly regarded like Mike McDonough. “It’s almost a truism of contemporary physics that the world as we understand it is a participatory universe whose elements we share by observing it,” McDonough writes of Towle.
In his poems, Towle does with the world what he wants. With his sharp voice, one believes what he’s saying is actually happening.
In the poem “Poem”, an engineer presses a button, and a mountain lifts itself and falls into a lake, exposing minerals to be mined. Normally this idea would seem unrealistic, impossible even. But Towle pulls it off.
“An engineer pushes a button in the mountains
and another mountain lifts itself
and slides into the lake,
revealing a patchwork of interesting minerals.
The air follows us as we walk along.”
Towle has us walking ahead of the air as we watch this surreal moment unfold. His poems are interesting, but I tend to be attracted to sad poems. There are about 10 of Towle’s poems in the Agriculture Reader.
Noelle Kocot is another contributor to the book. Her poem “Protecting the Innocent” reminds me of a lab survey I’ve been conducting recently. I call people whose children are under a special Medicaid service. At one point, I have to ask the parents about their child’s emotional state. I ask them how often their child feels sad, and many parents say their child is afraid of the future or that their child has trouble making friends. Kocot embodies this feeling in her poem about a mother who lost her child to Social Services, though she had never harmed her.
I’ve tried singing to her
At night but she cries—
She says it makes her sad.
How can a four-year-old be sad?
Heather Christie’s prose poem “Christmas” is an awkward poem with strange metaphors, which I enjoy.
“if I had a real choice
I would be an analog phone
when you were with me I would keep ringing
and when you kissed me I would hang up.”
I think this verse is funny and sad at the same time: when two people are constantly present in each other’s lives and then one disappears when a move is made.
Along with the poetry in the journal, there is prose, of which a flash-fiction by Dennis Cooper had the most impact on me. It’s about a man who got a disease so serious and rare “it hasn’t earned one of those nicknames like the flu.” The narrator is being eaten alive by this disease, and his skin is flaking off. He had a boyfriend, but his boyfriend left the narrator after their porn collection got boring. In the end, the narrator calls the boy prostitutes he pays to sleep with him saints. He wants to tell them they are saints, but he feels they already know it. The flash is called “Ugly Man.”
This third issue of the Agriculture Reader has styles and forms for all tastes and is beautifully designed. For anyone into literature and culture, this is a journal worth looking into and a good way to find out what a lot of different contemporary writers are up to.
