Alcoholics Anonymous and the Recovered Movement: When the 12 Steps Turn Toxic

My article, "Alcoholics Anonymous and the Recovered Movement: When the 12 Steps Turn Toxic," is the prose feature at the April 2019  poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles.

"Alcoholics Anonymous and the Recovered Movement: When the 12 Steps Turn Toxic"

Phase Change

She rose from the floor like a stalagmite, an icicle staring crystals at me. I remembered every snowflake was unique, and that this coldness was only similar to the others that separated us, monoid fractals of intricate perimeter.

every happy family is warm.
every unhappy family is
cold in its own way.

Cold. That this frigidity was natural, not freon, made it hurt still more. I numbed and sank within myself. Alone, I fancied myself whole and warm. Heat rose from me like a Hawaiian island. I had become a geothermal vent, heating an artist’s garret, sparrows, and a topography of ferns. I soon became hydrogen, fusing to helium in the sun; I evaporated the infinite snow and the ice of her gaze. I was the water cycle, rising, condensing, immense as a hurricane, gentle as dew. I was salt, the origin of tears, the panacea of fear, and she was still cold.

From #specialcharacters, now available from Amazon and Unlikely Books.

Kimberly Rae Lorenz-Copeland interviews me about #specialcharacters

Unlikely micro-interview #2.

KR: In my world, Language Arts and Mathematics are on opposite ends of the cognitive spectrum. In fact, numbers have never really registered on my poetry radar at all. Yet, in your book, #specialcharacters, you gel the two together so well, it’s like milk and Pepsi all over again. What gives?

LS: Language is an indispensable part of mathematics, be it the word problem (which is what I call some of my poems) or the narrative behind the Big Bang. Also, math and language centers are quite close in the brain, and math, according to neurologists, requires cross-talk.

Jung loved numbers, and so do I. Like him, I romanticize them and give them mythic numerological symbolism. The opening poem of #specialcharacters, "Aging," is based on the Fibonacci sequence, which creates the whorls of sunflowers, spiral galaxies, and many other beloved objects. The final piece, "Mirror, or a Flash in the Pan," is about that dominant number in many lives, symbolized by the $. Everyone gets that number.

KR: Aside from Jung, what other non-poet(s) most greatly influenced this particularly compelling poetry compilation?

LS: The late, great, and underrated David Markson, for his poetical prose in single sentences, which I tried to emulate in "Mirror" (I could not approach his encyclopedic and wickedly detailed knowledge of literature and the arts). Joyce and Joyce and Joyce and Joyce; although he is also a poet, it was Ulysses to which I responded multiply-orgasmically when I first read it two years ago.

Others: The Canonical Gospels, Tolstoy, Old Church Slavonic, The Paris Review, the PBS program Nature, and Blade Runner. But the people who most informed this collection are all poets, in one way or another. As was Jung, for that matter. I especially thank the Otherstream Poetry group (see the great new Madhat anthology, Shadows of the Future) for inspiring some of the experimental poems in this book.

KR: Ah, the experimental poems; those for which #specialcharacters is named, those challenges of the form, those teeming with special characters, and those, I feel, to be the most captivating. Tell me, if you had to define yourself, as a person, a poet, a lover, a friend, using only one such symbol, which would it be and why?

LS: &: The ampersand, meaning "and"- I am an and person, inclusive. I invite Peter and Paul to the party, I like vanilla and chocolate, I work on six projects at a time. And the character looks female, hippy, a plus size like me. The symbol is a ligature of the Latin et, and I am an etcetera person; I sometimes have the quality of too-muchness, but l contain multitudes (Whitman and I share the same birthday).

Reactions to Larissa Shmailo's new poetry collection, "#specialcharacters"

This is a thrilling book of femininity and magic. When it comes to capturing the intimacy of pain, This Larissa Shmailo is among the most daring poets of her generation. When speaking of human rights, she is a human flame. She is subtle and provocative, fresh and out of bounds. You will fall in love here, and you will be loved right back.
—Philip Nikolayev

At one point in #specialcharacters, Larissa Shmailo declares: “Mother Kali, you have made me what I am: feminine, brilliant, entirely without fear” -- and the rest of the poems in this collection prove this true. They run the gamut from being outspoken to outrageous, irreverent to downright heretical, taking gleeful pride in knowing exactly how far is too far – and then going even further. I see this work as a continuum in a long tradition of radical writing practices from Futurism, to Dada, to Oulipo, to Pussy Riot. Read it when you wish to be empowered. Read it when you wish to be entertained. Read it to rid yourself of the precious and polite.
—Elaine Equi

With #specialcharacters where even the title is special Shmailo has managed to split language into its common & least common denominators/principles: sound, meaning, symbol, feeling (text/ure) as well as providing us with a range of voices from child to adult & male to female within a range of styles & mannerisms from the ultra-experimental to quirky “innocent” rhymes like her sexy riff on “the 12 days of Christmas” in her classic “The Other Woman’s Cunt.” Her knowledge of the “WORD” & how to use it extends from darkly humorous to warm, lyrical, tender & painful. She explores every facet of lives lived, be it endangered turtles, abused women or battered men. Her passion & compassion know no bounds. “Between cause & effect…choose this” BOOK, at times a “woeful bedtime tale” & “a light in the bedroom” or any room, any space anywhere in the world. It is a book of verse one should return to “again & again.” A book about “creation,” “alive as snow,” these poems “glisten like apples in the dying sun.” When Shmailo refers to “Steven’s old bones” this “unorthodox jew” can only think of the pleasure his old bones derive from reading these rejuvenating pages. This is a major work by a major poet.
—Steve Dalachinsky

Now available from Amazon and Unlikely Books.

#specialcharacters to Be Published by Unlikely Books

I'm pleased that my second full-length poetry collection, #specialcharacters will be published by Unlikely Books!

http://www.unlikelystories.org/unlikely_books/

Thanks to publisher Jonathan Penton and my new Unlikely peeps for this opportunity.