- Artist: Various Artists
- Title: February 2003
- Format: BOOK
- Label: Slow Toe (USA)
- Catalog ID: CarbonDist_slowtoe_feb2003
Features poems by Todd Colby (Riot in the Charm Factory, Soft Skull Books, 2000 and former lead singer of Drunken Boat), Alex Gildzen (Swimming, Submarine Enterprises, 1976), Thurston Moore (Fuck a HippieÖ but be a Punk, Glass Eye Books, 2001, guitarist with Sonic Youth), Matthew Wascovich (Boxes of Shattered Dishes, Slow Toe Publications, 2003, guitarist with A Real Knife Head).
First Edition, 1,500 copies
122 pages | perfect bound, color cover
"It was a beautiful concept. Get four writers, from different pockets of the U.S. to commit to composing a poem a day during the yearís shortest month. Then shuffle those poems together like a deck of well-handled cards and see what epiphanies develop.
The four poets involved ñ Todd Colby, Alex Gildzen, Thurston Moore, Matthew Wascovich ñ would seem to have little in common, besides deep humanist resonances, and certain tendencies towards emotional telegraphy. But they all threw themselves into the project. And while the country watched itself being sucked inexorably into Bush War 2, they wrote what they saw and said what they felt.
Each of the writers has personal themes that emerge over the course of the month: movies, recipes, cultural riff-raff, levyís Cleveland, email, music. These and other topics are rolled by gentle fingers, prodded by moist tongues, tamped into cigarette-sized abstracts that rub against each other in a variety of ways. Sometimes it seems as though the poets are reading each otherís minds, each otherís moods; that they are connected by synaptic veins scrolling across the cold vastness of American February. Their thoughts and words sync up, forced into strange cohesion by the unstoppable forces of grave reality. But thatís only sometimes. Mostly, they blow free, letting format and rhythm and content and mood erupt in reaction only to what each of them has written previously.
As though in the thrall of Heraclitusí declaration that it is impossible to step in the same river twice, everyone here seems to be making an effort to repeat neither form nor function. All four appear to be highly attuned to the flow of their monthís work, extremely interested in seeing that their words are headed forward in all ways, dedicated to the idea of a personal, interactive narrative. And it works. It really works.
Everyone whoís likely to read this book in the next twenty years lived through this month. And as you read these poems, little bits of the feel of February 2003, the tremors generated by the collapse of common reason, the general grasping-at-straws of the month, will flood your mind. This total commonality of experience between writer and reader has an unexpected effect. It sucks me/you/us into the give-and-take of the narrative flow to a much higher degree than usual. Like assholes talking back to their televisions, we will find ourselves drawn into the communicative subtext of this collection, penciling some of our own thoughts on the period into the margins. Hey, why not? If you bought the book, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it! Live it up.
But I must admit. What is perhaps most noteworthy to me about this volume is that its most arcane bit of underground rock trivia was written not by Thurston Moore (noted archeologist of lame duck rock facts), but by Alex Gildzen. Indeed, Gildzenís reference to the early line-up of the Numbers Band may rate as the single best bit of pure information in February 03. But the rest of it still fucking great. To wander in these words, to amble through these minds, to have the opportunity to recast this savage month in new, more fully graspable termsÖwell itís just a goddamn treat.
So live it up. Again. And do it right this time."
--Byron Coley, Deerfield MA 5/03
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