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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: "I Am The Darkness" -- Dan Barfield
Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2024 12:50:52 +0000
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Faraway Star wrote:

> Will Dockery wrote:
>> On Thursday, September 7, 2023 at 7:43:27 PM UTC-4, Faraway Star wrote:
>>>
>>> More Dan Barfield poetry from Mar 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM
>>> :
>>> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.zines/c/5h6FlXRC1Lw/m/l4hS6v36fUoJ
>>>
>>> > I was quite impressed by this issue. The poems were quite
>>> > well-written, in my opinion. Here's a sampling:
>>>
>>> > From Dan Barfield:
>>> >
>>> > "The earth runs
>>> > through my veins
>>> > Deep and black
>>> > ancient memories
>>> > ancient magic
>>> > ...I am the reason
>>> > you fear the darkness
>>> > I am
>>> > the darkness"
>>>
>>> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.zines/c/5h6FlXRC1Lw/m/l4hS6v36fUoJ
>> I remember this one well. 1997 was a great year for local art and
>> poetry.
>
> Here is a review of that poetry chapbook from the 1997 days of yore:
>
> https://alt.zines.narkive.com/z8pOq2CQ/shadowville-1996-zine-review-found-in-archives
>
> ***************************** ZINE REVIEWS
> by holy joe
>
> Dreamgirls with Shaman, No. 54, $1.00. Minicomic, 32 pages. Will
> Dockery, [P.O.Box 7394, Columbus GA 31908].
>
> Review: First, the truth. My review copy of Dreamgirls with
> Shaman is only eight pages in length. However, Dockery has prepared
> "for sale" copies that are 32 pages long. I misplaced the letter in
> which he details exactly what these issues consist of, but they are the
> issue reviewed (below) plus extra issues, all bundled into a generous
> package of poems and comics.
> Back in the early 1980's minicomic-maker Matt Feazell pioneered
> the ‘minicomic for a quarter' concept. A stamp cost 22 cents (never
> mind the envelope), but somehow the whole thing could arrive in the
> reader's hands for a quarter. Many of us, including myself, were
> inspired to labor in this genre.
> Then the price of a stamp rose to 25 cents. It became rather
> difficult for a publisher like myself to sell an eight-page minicomic
> for a quarter. Some minicomic publishers raised the price of their
> minicomics to 50 cents. In doing so, they raised the page count of
> their minicomics to 16 pages.
> The tradition continues. Charging $1.00, Dockery is offering
> his poetry and comics for the same price he would have charged you in
> 1983! 32 pages for $1.00, which works out to 25 cents for every eight
> pages.
> Dreamgirls with Shaman is a long-running title dating back to
> the previous decade. Originally it was titled Shaman. There was a
> separate title (by me) called Naughty Naked Dreamgirls. Eventually the
> two merged. Now the two have parted company. For the moment the
> hybrid-title remains, perhaps to adorn future issues, perhaps not.
> Dreamgirls with Shaman is currently on an annual publication
> schedule. This is the new issue. It is for the year 1997 but, since
> Dockery never made an issue in 1996, it could be considered the 1996
> issue, although the art and poems in it didn't actually exist in 1996.
> Perhaps later Dockery will put out an official 1996 issue containing art
> and poems that couldn't exist in 1996, because they were created in
> 1997.
> Such is the way of small press publishing. The cover of this
> issue of Shaman (with Dreamgirls) features Dockery's bizarre art on the
> cover. Worrisomely close to Florida, home of Mike Diana, there resides
> a whole school of ‘bizarro' artists. Will Dockery, Dan Barfield, P.D.
> Wilson, Carol Horn, and others. This loosely-knit community of artists
> is as odd in geography as it is in its artistic visions. It spans the
> state line that divides Georgia from Alabama, populating both states
> and, often, both states at once in the same day. It produces such
> oddball gems as the current cover of Shaman.
> Here, on the cover, we see a beak-faced man. He wears a hat
> but no pants. He has a visible pair of testicles and he appears to be
> directing a host of girls with a baton-sized penis. The girls, as they
> dance, with cunts and breasts on display, sprinkle dollar bills, hearts,
> and peace signs across the cover. Above this weird male/female
> assemblage loom two heads. Each head contains only one eye but two
> pairs of lips. Certainly this is a cover worth the notice of a Florida
> district attorney. Perhaps this $1.00 comic can spawn a $100,000 trial.
> Meantime, Dockery will eagerly accept your dollar. Currently
> he's down on his luck. He'd be homeless, but an absent in-law has
> (perhaps unwittingly) permitted him to live in a vacant mansion in a
> yuppified section of town. Despite the wealth of Dockery's
> surroundings, the mansion he's living in has no electricity. The water
> has also been cut off. Hence, the grounds of the mansion have become
> Dockery's toilet. I asked him recently in a (self-funded) telephone
> call how he managed to relieve himself.
>
> me: I suppose you don't just hold it?
> dockery: No. I let it out just like everybody else does.
> me: How?
> dockery: Well, to pee, you just go out back and pee.
> me: How about to poop?
> dockery: For that, you dig a hole. Then you poop into the
> hole and cover it up.
>
> Dockery has learned to cook food over a fire, in the fireplace
> of the mansion. This, I admit, sounded pretty great, living by
> firelight and candlelight in a mansion, eating food cooked over a fire.
> Wouldn't you know, of course, Dockery even has a girlfriend to keep him
> company in such circumstances. And, together, they make art.
> I was quite impressed by this issue. The poems were quite
> well-written, in my opinion. Here's a sampling:
>
> From Dan Barfield:
>
> "The earth runs
> through my veins
> Deep and black
> ancient memories
> ancient magic
> ....I am the reason
> you fear the darkness
> I am
> the darkness"
>
> From Lisa Scarboro:
>
> "Words shared
> among friends
> ....voice after
> voice echoes
> like feelings"
>
> From Rick Duffey:
>
> "There's a spider in our warehouse somewhere
> who keeps making webs
> in all the worst places & she does this
> overnight
> webs of immense size
> bigger than pillow cases
> big enough to capture chess pieces
> they only appear after five in the evening
> & eight the next morning, punched in,
> when we've got sleep under our lids
> & sip at the cooled edges of
> styrofoam coffee we always discover them.
> We've never seen this spider in person
> but opinions abound
> it's a big one says Mike...
> & she's red with yellow stripes--her name is
> probably Amanda
> (I say)
> she tells fortunes to the other spiders
> her name means ‘worthy of being loved'
> her bite is poisonous with no puncture marks
> she seeks out the crevasses of skin
> attracted by the warmth
> of your body
> scratch an itch there
> only if you must"
>
> On the back page of this minicomic I was delighted to see new
> comix by John Jones. He's been drawing his Retros comix for years. At
> first I was fairly dismissive of them (back in the 80's). But like fine
> wine they have grown on me. I have a deep appreciation for them now,
> perhaps born of their intrinsic merit, perhaps born of nostalgia. Can
> one ever be sure about such things? I feel nostalgia for Gilligan's
> Island too.
> Will Dockery produces a similar line of comix (not present in
> this issue), titled Demon House Theatre. Suddenly I find myself
> wondering, with regard to Dockery's comics, and Jones', and even
> Wilson's and Horn's, "Has all their work been saved?" "Is there some
> way it could be collected and displayed?"
> Once you develop an appreciation for what they are creating it
> becomes quite addictive. It's strange art, visual poetry, really, for
> it ‘makes no sense' to the DC and Marvel-trained eye. But once you let
> go of your preconceptions of what art ‘should' and, indeed, ‘must' be,
> you find yourself in a new realm. Their art is unique; a strange blend
> of human, mystical, and even superheroic creatures. And, like I said,
> there is a whole school of them, all cross-pollinating each other, all
> living in the same locale.
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