October 2016 Vol. I No. IV
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!

Translations
Free for All has been temporarily displaced to share the following translations by S. Ye Laird, born in Shanghai, district of Family Xu's gathering place, survived a quarter century of cultural clashes in America since 1992 Thanksgiving, dreamed of returning to family Xu's burial ground one day, in spirit of the word, if not in bodily form.
Dai, Wangshu ( 1905 - 1950) Chinese poet and proponent of all things old or for the Chinese alone in light of new universal ideas during 1930s.
《诗论零札》(一)
by Dai Wangshu
(originally published in 1932, in a magazine "Modernity")
Emptied thoughts on Poetics (I)
1.
Poetry should not borrow heavily from music, it ought to rid itself from its influence.
2.
Poetry should not borrow heavily from the vantage points of painting.
3.
Merely piling up witty and pretty words is pointless in poetry.
4.
Impressionists say " Mother nature is like a courtesan, having been penetrated a thousand times." Yet new comers don't know for sure she can't be penetrated ten thousdand times more. Number of penetrations is of no concern to us, we must discover new loving subjects and new paths to Elysium.
5.
Poetry's tempo and melody isn't about words' tonal rising and falling, withholding or outpouring, but the emotional fugue carrying within words, or the variations of their intensity.
6.
The most importance of free-form poetry is the nuance of poetic feelings, not at all about nuance in words and sentences.
7.
Harmoniously uniformed words and sentences can block the flow of poetic emotion, or turn the emotion into monstrous formations. By forcing poetic emotion to suit rigid, superficial and old formality, is like binding one's feet to fit in other's shoes. Foolish or deviant folks chop up their feet to fit in shoes, smarter ones chose suitable shoes for their feet, but the wise creates a pair of shoes that is most natural to his feet.
8.
Poetics is not to please one sense but in all sensible beings or transcend all sensibilities.
