Linked Verse Issue 001

Editor’s Note
Welcome to the first issue of Linked Verse. This is a new Laughing Ronin Press quarterly journal project, replacing Seppuku. Issue one is not unlike beginning a conversation, or presenting a container for dialogues, from scratch. At Laughing Ronin Press, we go for the pulse and let the blood flow. Our motto is that poetry is a lot like the truth and can be challenging, constructive, and messy. We are all about intensity.

Linked Verse quarterly journal aims to take this value system into new realms, calling for experimentation, inquiring after an avant-garde perspective that bridges the universal and extremely specific. Issue one of Linked Verse is coming in hot, representing voices from all over the world. Woe! The world, the world; our very, very hot planet. At the heart of the Earth is a molten heartbeat. Trust us. Poetry is a massive prayer (void space) written into by the writers featured in issue one.

We at Laughing Ronin Press are proud to present you with this gesture, Linked Verse. We called and the writers printed herein have answered. It is 2023 but the Linked Verse story begins with Imperial Japan’s first recorded examples of “linked verses” a collaborative approach to haiku. Multiple sensibilities were so critical to the development of traditional linked verse Renga, composition of the text generally occurred in sessions of eight or more poets. Not unlike Renju sessions, Linked Verse is a gathering “place.” This is a collaborative effort and has been edited/arranged to emphasize themes of content, patterns, and energetic shifts. The structure does not emerge by mistake. Linked Verse, issue one, shifts in focus from a dream state consciousness to hard edged, tongue in cheek indictments of poets themselves. Entropy presents itself even in narratives, as language naturally shatters, fractures, disappears, and resurfaces. However distant or near, we are all grappling with the persistent influence of history.

From Imperial Japan, this Linked Verse pauses next in 1897, Paris, with Stéphane Mallarmé crafting his epic poem Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (A throw of the dice will never abolish chance). For students of the Modernist poetic tradition, Un coup de dés challenges the relationship between typographic layout/form and the semantics/content of the poetic verse. The printed verse of Un coup de dés is scattered as though tossed, landing across the 20 pages of the poem. Further experimentation is evident in the range of typefaces Mallarmé selected for printing. The non-linear arrangement, or shape, of the poetic verse and the shifting styles of type exemplify the modernist preoccupation with graphic design and form, versus linguistic or verbal significance. Another read of Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard suggests the structure is the context of the work. The formal properties of Un coup de dés on the page are expressed through the dynamic performance of linguistic signs marking instances of space and time. Figure (the text) and ground (the page) collaborate with the reader. Significance is not arrived at simply.

If, as they say, poetry is a sign of something
among people, then let this be prearranged now,
between us, while we are still peoples…”

Mary Ruefle, Kiss of the Sun

We are prearranged on Earth and in time-space. Of all things, language is perhaps our greatest collaboration and of this thing between us all, we call poetry, it must as all things sacred come from the same place as play, the same place as prayer, and is the improvisation to end all improvisations. We do so ever hope that you enjoy Linked Verse, Issue One: At the Heart of the Earth is a Molten Heartbeat.

Chelsea Rector