Method Mad magazine
Method Mad is a collection of work from the East Coast Writers’ Collective,
students form New York City, Newport, Rhode Island, and mid-coast Maine. The
writers range in age from twenty-four to seventy, are from different backgrounds,
and are employed in various professions. Yet they share a commonality as writers:
each has developed an original voice.
Last week, the NYC Winter Class held a reading at Manhattan Plaza, a complex of apartments and workspaces built for practitioners of the arts. Ten students read and one student sang, accompanied by the composer. An audience member, a prominent New York poet and writer, came up to me after the reading and said, “This is impressive work for a class reading. The quality is very high.” I nodded in agreement. “And,” she added, “each student has his or her own distinctive voice. That’s kind of amazing.” Amazing, but not surprising, I think to myself. After all, Jack Grape’s Method Writing, the course I teach, is all about voice.
We have decided to offer Method Mad on CaféPress, and we are proud to have entered the Cyberspace landscape, although it’s a bit like the Wild West. Anything goes—there is no marshal in Dodge. Never before have so many writers been able to communicate ideas so quickly. Some claim this is ruining language, others see it as a great creative leap. What's a writer or a teacher to do in this messy, creative, unfocused world?
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes,” says Marcel Proust. In the midst of the new, we return to the old, with new eyes. We return to the core concerns, the soul work of exploring the depths of being human. The writers in this issue have had the courage to plunge beneath the surfaces, to go down, as Tennessee Williams says, to where the iguanas live. By employing the principles of voice as outlined by Jack Grape's Method Writing, the students have produced work that has a pulse and a vitality that speaks for itself. All art that has real power shares these qualities. It touches us and moves us because it has come from that deep place.
We invite you to dive into this work, to savor it. Let the words roll around on your tongue. Enjoy the emotion that emerges in you. It may change your life.
GRATITUDE: Assembling this magazine has been a collective journey. We have put it together in various ports around the world. E-mails have flown back and forth from NYC to Maine and to Newport, and from Maine and Newport to Berlin, Barcelona, Cambridge, and Truro.
Alex Koch, who is responsible for the layout & design of Method Mad, has worked in five different cities in five different countries during the production period, and he has been available at all hours of the day and night for feedback. He has done a brilliant job with layout and design. Like the work in it, Method Mad, the magazine, has an original voice and is of the highest quality. The images we collected and which Alex placed in the magazine, add to its value and original look. Alex is responsible for the jacket photo – of which I am particularly fond. His piece is the first in the magazine. Here’s to Alex: Muchas Gracias, Merci, Danke.
David Peloquin has acted, along with Karen Anderson, as Editor of the magazine, helping order the pieces and contribute ideas for the publisher’s letter. David, who is not only a published poet but also an artist and musician, has contributed two poems and numerous pieces of art to the magazine. My deepest appreciation, David.
Karen Anderson has used her remarkable skill as an editor, to edit, copyedit and proof the magazine, toiling away by herself in Newport, Rhode Island. She is an accomplished writer and teacher, and has contributed a fine story to the magazine. Karen, brava! And many thanks.
Manifesto for the East Coast Collective of Writers and Poets
A Partner of the L.A. Collective
We are a collective of word sculptors.
We are an aggregate of word hoarders.
We are a coalition of word spenders.
We are a commonwealth of passionate prose praisers.
We are an assembled amalgam of verbal rum runners.
We are errand girls for rhythm.
We are errand boys of beat.
We are a pony express of expression.
We are fish mongers for the mellifluous monosyllable.
We are a castanet chorus line for consonants.
We are an inquisition for the tired metaphor.
We are undertakers for petrified poetry.
We find wisdom in the spit of street talk.
We string fish hooks together in clusters and cast our lines out into conversations.
We fish for fistfuls of fresh dialog.
We carry shovels to dig graves for expired catch phrases.
We are literary desperados, and will stop at nothing to rob the white page of its innocence.
We sleep with pencils that dream at night.
We carry kangaroo pens by day.
We have naked reams of paper, empty journals and restaurant napkins waiting for our jumping pens and dreaming pencils.
We live in the places between, before and after.
We wander in circles, spirals, and along straight and crooked lines.
We share the light and dark equally.
We fall into darkness and return with kaleidoscopes.
We are unpredictable, intractable, curious and expectant.
We are unrepentant slackers and reprobates.
We are dream walkers and wake dreamers.
We dream alone, together in pairs, or in clans.
We are a chorus of sleep singers.
We are an orchestra of body speakers.
We are a circled harmony of soul sifters.
We are the deer in the forest very near the edge of the water on the moonlit path.
We are the hunter who will enter the forest before dawn.
If you want to find us, fall up the stairs backwards.
If you want to dismiss us, stop breathing.
All who have gone before us whisper in our ear.
All those yet to come whisper in our ear.
We write in this moment
We write with both ears open