DESCRIPTION
#5 in the Jazz Police Speculative Poetry series.
PRAISE FOR MOLECULAR JAM
There is a new way to write and a new way to read the world in all its stupefying beauty and Dan Raphael is leading the way in.
-- Charles Potts, Editor/Publisher of The Temple
Dan Raphael's poetic saxaphone often sounds like two horns, bass, and drums jamming together improvisationally at the interwoven, gyred-up currents and cusps of this millenium becoming the next...These poems are incredibly unique and evocative. They are highly intelligent Earth poems that face problems by exploring and by changing the nature of the questions. They are often humorous and at once intensely serious. They are folksy almost in their voice and simultaneously a new branch of high surrealism--grounded in knowing and the creative energy of what is.
--James Grabill, author of The Poem Rising Out of the Earth and Standing Up in Someone, winner of 1995 Oregon Book Award
Dan Raphael is one of the progenitors of what I refer to as the "real underground" of the contemporary poetry scene...Like the best of h is contemporaries, Jake Berry or Will Alexander, Raphael takes his language into the swiftly developing chasms of new sci-tech terminology, while still maintaining his balance of humor. Clearly, in reading his text, we are past the end of the 20th century. We are glimpsing through a shattered kaleidoscope the socio-economic wreck of the Jeffersonian idea. "...dont admit the damage, control the chaos..."
--Ivan Arguelles, author of Enigma & Variations
-- Charles Potts, Editor/Publisher of The Temple
Dan Raphael's poetic saxaphone often sounds like two horns, bass, and drums jamming together improvisationally at the interwoven, gyred-up currents and cusps of this millenium becoming the next...These poems are incredibly unique and evocative. They are highly intelligent Earth poems that face problems by exploring and by changing the nature of the questions. They are often humorous and at once intensely serious. They are folksy almost in their voice and simultaneously a new branch of high surrealism--grounded in knowing and the creative energy of what is.
--James Grabill, author of The Poem Rising Out of the Earth and Standing Up in Someone, winner of 1995 Oregon Book Award
Dan Raphael is one of the progenitors of what I refer to as the "real underground" of the contemporary poetry scene...Like the best of h is contemporaries, Jake Berry or Will Alexander, Raphael takes his language into the swiftly developing chasms of new sci-tech terminology, while still maintaining his balance of humor. Clearly, in reading his text, we are past the end of the 20th century. We are glimpsing through a shattered kaleidoscope the socio-economic wreck of the Jeffersonian idea. "...dont admit the damage, control the chaos..."
--Ivan Arguelles, author of Enigma & Variations
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dan Raphael's poems have appeared in around 300 publications including Caliban, Central Park, Heaven Bone, Lost and Found Times, Nebula Awards 31, Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry, Tinfish, Otoliths, Portland Review, Unlikely Stories, Short Fuse, Raven Chronicles and x-stream. Among his books of the 21st Century are Showing Light a Good Time (Wordcraft of Oregon/Jazz Police, 2001), Among My Eyes (x-stream, 2002) and Breath Test (nine muses books, 2007). An energetic and intense performer, Dan has given over 200 readings, including places like Bumershoot, Portland Poetry Festival, Powell's Books, Cornell University, Red Sky Poetry Theatre, Reed College, Artquake, Southern Oregon University, Moe's Books, Portland Jazz Festival, and the Astrochimp Impact Crater. He edited NRG Magazinefor 18 years, then published 26 Books (26 chapbooks of 26 pages by 26 authors). Starting at college, he had organized readings and poetry events for over 30 years, including one monthly series that lasted 13 years, and Poetland, where 80 poets read in 8 venues over an 8 hour span. Despite degrees from Cornell, Bowling Green State and Western Washington, Dan has stayed out of teaching, working first for the post office and later for the Oregon DMV. He lives in Portland, OR, with his wife Melba and son Orion. SEE ALSO WORDCRAFT TITLES: SHOWING LIGHT A GOOD TIME AND IMPULSE & WARP: