Banango Lit
Also, email us if you feel like you would like to be a contributor for Banango. We would like that also.
Banango Writers
Justin Carter
Rachel Hyman
Diana Salier
Matt Margo
Katey Metcalf
Thom James
Jackson Nieuwland
Guest Posts
Stephen Tully Dierks is the editor of Pop Serial, whose third issue is currently being serialized online. The issue will be completed soon & then a print edition will be available. I talked to Stephen about Pop Serial & his own writing & other things.
Justin Carter: What is Pop Serial and why did you start it?
Stephen Tully Dierks: Pop Serial is a magazine. From its start there has been a tumblr for the magazine, promoting its contributors, spreading news about their activities. I started it because I didn’t like the lineups at other magazines. I wanted to see a different, to-me more appealing combination of names when I looked at a magazine’s table of contents. I wanted to recognize the names and be excited about them. And I had recently defended Tao Lin and Brandon Scott Gorrell in Shitstorm Alberto at HTMLGIANT. I had the idea to reach out to them to be in a magazine, and once Tao was onboard, I felt confident contacting various other writers I liked.
JC: Sweet. That’s kind of the reason we started Banango Street, because we wanted a contributor list that would feel like something we personally liked. Anyway, I recently got in a Facebook argument with the editor of a genre fiction press that was telling me that the job of an editor was to put together a journal that was good and not to care about the people submitting, which I disagreed with, since I felt a journal should be a place that nurtures writing and writers, not just publishes things while only caring about profit. It seems like Pop Serial is even farther toward the opposite of that journal editor’s view: you seem to want to put together a journal that focuses on the contributor and eschews a lot of traditional ideas of a journal. For instance, Pop Serial does not accept submissions. Because of this, I think I’m very interested in knowing a little bit about your ideas about the ‘job’ or ‘role’ of an editor, and what you feel like you, as an editor, are most concerned about when putting together an issue of Pop Serial.
STD: To me the editor’s role and task is not much different than that of the artist: to do whatever he or she damn well pleases so as to be more satisfied and excited—in the editor’s case, w/r/t who and what is in one’s magazine.
I want there to be to-me good work in Pop Serial, but I also want to know the contributors and like them as artists and ideally also as people. I want an exciting magazine with exciting writers in it, like Evergreen Review, which had Beckett and Burroughs and Juan Rulfo and Henry Miller.
To clarify, I do receive and sometimes accept unsolicited submissions, however I mostly solicit. I don’t do calls for submissions. I am commonly interested in a writer and his/her work in general as opposed to a particular piece. And I don’t want to play judge for a writing contest—I want to avoid rejecting a bunch of people. I’d rather choose the people I like and skip that part, which most literary magazines have.
I identify more with other kinds of magazines besides the literary, like the culture magazine, for example, one of my favorites, Interview magazine. With that kind of magazine, the editor is largely following his or her idiosyncratic subjective vision of an exciting, sweet magazine, making the decisions and choosing the writers, as opposed to posing as judge over the selection of the “best” writing submitted.
That is not to say I am ceding “good” writing to other magazines. I think each issue has been closer to what I’d like in a literary magazine, both people-wise and writing-wise.
JC: Yeah, one of the things I really like about Pop Serial is that it seems less ‘literary journal’ and more of some kind of, I don’t know, ‘curated art exhibit’, if that makes sense. Each piece seems to fit together, sometimes aesthetically, sometimes thematically, sometimes in ways that are hard to really pinpoint.
I think Pop Serial feels like a journal that not only features very solid work, but features lots of writers whose work compliments the other writers in many ways. It feels like some type of diverse literary movement, whereas other journals, while highly enjoyable, feel like disparate collections of ‘alt lit’ writings. When I was putting Banango Street together, Rachel and I wanted to create something that seemed to ‘flow’ together in the same way as Pop Serial, by initially soliciting a lot of writers that were close to each other, but we ended up with an initial batch of submissions that, while very good, did not have nearly the amount of aesthetic and thematic diversity as Pop Serial.
Anyways, a question (probably a shitty one) bouncing off of this: why do you think Pop Serial seems to create a ‘community’ with the writers it features, while other journals don’t have the same type of feel. Other journals that, oftentimes, feature work that is much more similar than the work in Pop Serial?
STD: Thanks for the kind words, I’m glad you think there are interrelations between the pieces in the magazine. I do want to create the feeling of a collective or movement, if you like. But I also want stylistic diversity and excitement, so I’m glad you don’t think the work is too same-y from one writer to the next.
There is some hard-to-define combination of personality, dedication, and style that most of the contributors seem to have, that I like a lot and look for in new contributors. It’s hard for me to explain why I like certain writers.
As far as creating a sense of community, the aforementioned tumblr I think helps to create that, and the socializing contributors do. A lot of us are friends. That happens through gchat and Facebook and having things in common I guess. Another way there is a collective feel is via carrying over some contributors from one issue to the next.
JC: Where did the idea to release the pieces individually, once a day, initially come from? I feel like it is a really good way of releasing a journal, because it ensures that each piece gets the individual attention that they might miss if it was all released at once.
STD: Cool, glad you like that. It occurred to me one day as an idea. I have liked this way of releasing an issue online a lot better than putting it all up at once. I wanted to increase the chance of each piece being read and appreciated and to attract attention to the issue over a prolonged period of time. And I think it’s more fun this way.
JC: We discussed the origins of Pop Serial, but I was wondering if you could discuss how you got into the indie/alt/whatever lit scene in the first place. It seems that a lot of people are being introduced to it through Pop Serial now, so I think it’d be interesting to know how you arrived in it pre-PS.
STD: I found the online lit scene via a HTMLGIANT post by Blake Butler about how there are no Joyces today, like that the current publishing climate wouldn’t be friendly to “another Joyce.” I was very into Joyce in college (and still admire him a lot) and so I must have been searching his name and found the post or something. Through HTMLGIANT I realized there were writers out there who socialized online and that there were online journals and a way to get published and participate in a scene of some kind as a writer. Through HTMLGIANT I found Tao Lin and that led to the magazine as I said.
JC: Broad question here: it seems like ‘alt-lit’ has exploded over the past year or so. I entered the scene about a year ago, and it feels so much bigger now. With Pop Serial acting as a type of ‘gateway’ into ‘alt-lit’, I feel like you would maybe have some insight into this: why do you think that ‘alt-lit’ has been growing so much?
STD: I don’t know. I agree there has been an influx of new people in the scene in the last year or so. I think some people come to the scene through Steve Roggenbuck now, instead of through Tao Lin or some other way, and Steve works hard at spreading his work and building a community. That could be a factor, although Steve seeks and likes non-writers as readers, so he is not attracting only fellow writers to the scene. I don’t know.
JC: Playing off the “another Joyce” thing, I’ve noticed that literature in general, regardless of whether it is ‘alt’ or ‘mainstream’ or ‘genre’ seems to like to define new writers in a formulaic, “x is the y” kind of way. What do you think about this kind of generalization, where a writer is judged relative to past writers that worked in similar ways and not judged completely on their own works?
STD: I’d probably be flattered if someone whose opinion I respected compared me favorably to a writer I admire. Otherwise I don’t really care. The potential upside of “x is the new y” for a writer is that a reader may check out said writer’s work because of such a comparison.
JC: If someone did compare you and your writing (or even you and your work with Pop Serial) to one or a few writers from the past, which would you feel most flattered about being compared to?
STD: Salinger, Joyce, Beckett, Barney Rosset.
JC: I really enjoyed reading the story you posted on your blog, “Sad Cave.” I’ve noticed, however, that your own personal writing seems to not be as present online as many other people associated with Pop Serial and ‘alt-lit’. Was wondering if, playing off this observation, you could compare/contrast your role as an editor with your role as a writer.
STD: Thank you, glad you liked it. I’m not a very prolific writer, I agree.
I don’t kid myself that all my writing (or any of my writing (?)) is “good,” “great,” whatever, but I’m not attracted to pumping out an ebook every other week or pooping a poem a day onto my tumblr or whatever.
I’m also lazy and undisciplined, though, and haven’t gotten into a habit of writing every day. I’d like that to change so I have a book or books out before I’m 30.
I view the editor thing as something I can do like a job almost, except it’s mostly enjoyable and I don’t get paid. My writing has happened mostly through inspiration so far—I’ll have a concept or a person will inspire me. I generally do whatever the hell I want as an editor, purposely, but I do feel a small obligation to my contributors to do a good job.
As a writer I am obliged only to feelings.
JC: Last question. We like to end with this question a lot: why write?
STD: As a kid I picked the trumpet, instead of drums, and I never learned to write music. Because I loved to read. Because I want to gesture at some thing before I croak.
BY: JUSTIN CARTER
When Pop Serial 2 came out I tried to review every piece in it but there were too many.
Pop Serial 3 is being released in a serialized format though so I am going to try again. I will probably not be able to keep it up.
Pop Serial was the first alt lit journal that I became interested in, I think. I remember downloading the .pdf of the first issue and reading it and liking it.
The first piece in the new issue is by Luna Miguel. It is in Spanish. It is translated in the issue by Jeremy Spencer.
I do not speak Spanish very well anymore so I am only going to review the translations. Which is a damn shame, because as wonderful as the translations are, I’m sure they are missing something from the originals. Translation is too imperfect sometimes. Sometimes translators produce work as good or better than the work they translate though. So, I don’t know.
The first piece here is “Symptoms.”
This poem is in sections. The first section is my favorite:
I really like this. The poem makes a lot of “I” statement and normally I dislike “I” poems a lot, but I really like this one. The speaker seems to subtly negate other things that the speaker had said sometimes.
The second poem is “Red Bull Without Sugar.”
This poem is more narrative. It is about porn. It ends with: “because I cannot say no/ to Another damned me”. This part seems very deep.
Luna Miguel wrote two good poems. Jeremy Spencer did some cool translation.
I am looking forward to more of Pop Serialsoon.
The first two parts can be found HERE. Pop Serial 2 is HERE.
Tao Lin is the author of some books that a lot of people have read. Tao Lin’s story here is titled “We Will Drink our Coffee and Complete our Novels and Lay in Sunlight and Sit in Darkness.”
This story reminds me a lot of Richard Yates in that it involves two characters that seem to be very “alt” and disconnected with the wider contemporary world. Although the female character is not Dakota Fanning in this. I feel like I am unsure if this fiction or not. I wonder if these things have actually happened to Tao Lin. They feel very real.
Amid all the criticism of Tao Lin, people seem to forget that he crafts a very “real” “emotional” landscape in his fiction. The characters seem real. The actions seem real. The characters connect in very realistic ways. Richard Yates made me feel very connected to the characters and this short story has the same effect. I feel like Tao Lin is at his best when he talks about relationships like this.
I think my first encounter with Heather Christle’s work was a poem that appeared in Gulf Coast a few issues ago. I remember enjoying it a lot. She has three poems here.
“The Horizon is Inside Me”- I’m not really sure what it is that makes me love Christle’s poetry, but I do. I think her excellent use of questioning is one big reason. This poem is always asking the reader something. I am engaged in this poem. I am not sure how to answer what it is asking, but I am trying at least. The images in this are great. I was reading Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion a few minutes ago and I think Christle’s poems have the same type of mystical but completely logical/ possible feel.
“Their Have Their Own Company”- I love how this poem seems to be circling around itself the whole time. I love the commentary on money. I love love.
“Everyone Looks Beautiful in Orange”-
The secret everyone is keeping is how they move
They act like sailboats They shrug They are buffeted
they say and nothing’s the matter and I am
damnably happy to be with them I can
barely stand it and I slap the water
This poem is really lovely. I am not sure I entirely “get” it but it is really good.
BSG is an editor at Thought Catalog and wrote a book, during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present, that I have heard lots of good things about but have not read.
This is an excerpt from a different book, “My Hair Will Defeat You.”
The first part of this, about hair, is very enlightening. The story itself feels like a combination of things I think at a show and things I know other people are thinking. BSG did a good job capturing that.
Cassandra lives in Chicago. Her poem is called “How To Get Closer To Yrself From The Outside.”
This feels very “American,” not in a patriotic way but in a “this is the underbelly of America” way. The end of it:
There was an uncomfortable silence.
She smokes a Pall Mall.
She drinks a tall blended iced coffee with extra whipped cream.There is an uncomfortable silence.
is really great.
I read two of Leif’s poems in Columbia Poetry Review and liked them. This piece is called “Short Lyrics.”
I WILL JUGGLE FOR YOU
ANY TIME
ANY PLACE
CALL ME
is my favorite part of this. All these short pieces have are full of emotion, but show it in very different ways. These are enjoyable.
More reviews coming. <3
-Justin
Part 1 is HERE.
Pop Serial is HERE.
Frank Hinton is the editor of Metazen. She has a book out called I Don’t Respect Female Expression. Her piece in Pop Serial is called “Transcript of a Bachelor Party.” I really enjoyed the format of this. The dialogue felt very natural and the narration felt very strong. I felt like I was with these characters. I enjoyed the part about the stepdad a lot. Also, by setting this as some sort of horribly failed bachelor party, the reader feels the despair that the characters feel. This was enjoyable.
Erik Stinson lives in Brooklyn. Everyone lives in Brooklyn. He wrote some poems. “coffee bar”- The first thing I noticed when looking at this poem, before I read it, is the shape of it. There have been multiple times in workshops where I have seen something going on where the poem seems to build to a long middle point and then gradually slow down, but no one seems to go all the way with the concept. Before reading this poem, I feel like Stinson will make this concept work. I feel like this poem captures the internet age very well. The language is very plain, which I find to work well here. The image of the screen looking like ice cubes is great. My only issue with this poem is that I am not sure if the title is doing the right amount of work. The poem itself is very good though. “mega crush”- This poem feels very “real.” Very emotional. I feel like this is something everyone experiences. I feel like Erik Stinson is a poet that writes about how everyone feels. “no telling”- I have been working on an essay for this site recently about some thoughts I had in the Spring of 2010 re: Robert Pinsky and the “spiritual” in poetry. This poem fits my thoughts on that very well. It is a very strong poem, but the spiritual reference at the end pushes it over the edge and makes it better. Poems that can balance the “social” world and “spiritual” world in a way that makes both worlds shine are very good poems. This does that.
I previously discussed Steve HERE. He does a lot of cool stuff. I like Steve a lot. I want to hang out with Steve sometime in the future. I was a little disappointed because some of these poems appeared in Steve’s book so they weren’t new. I am not really sure how to analyze Steve’s poems individually, but as a whole I think this set captures the very “Americana” feel I get from Steve’s Helvetica poems. I feel like I traveled back in time and am seeing his life unfurl. I love these. Steve is great. Part 3 coming soon. It will feature Tao Lin. It may feature other writers from Pop Serial also. -Justin
Pop Serial is a literary/ arts journal run by Stephen Tully Dierks. The new issue was designed by Steve Roggenbuck. It features a lot of good writers. I am going to read their stuff and write brief reviews/ thoughts on each piece. I am very excited for Pop Serial 2.
Read these pieces before reading these reviews so you don’t get spoilers maybe.
I will review the visual stuff at a later time.
I have never heard of Eliza Weber. Her bio says she lives in New York. The poem included here is called “Flickering candelabra.”
This poem starts with an image that is slightly beautiful/ slightly sad but then it moves into a very violent image, of being held “gently” by the throat but as a reader I don’t see that as gentle, I see it as a violent image. Then the poem brings back language that fits in with the first couplet. There are two “types” of images at play here, the more “romantic” and the more “realist” and Weber is doing a very good job weaving these types of images in and out of each other. The end of this poem is very sad and very alone and makes me feel sad and alone.
Again, I am not familiar with this person. He also lives in New York. “Cuba Light” is a short story.
This is one of those short stories that seem to come out of a very contemporary movement where is not much plot and not much character development and it becomes very easy to write something unimportant that no one wants to read. But there is something about this piece that makes it important. I think it is how “real” this story feels. It has a lot of “hipster” “buzz” things in it, but the way Alfonso acts feels very authentic. The rain in the story makes me feel a little bit sad and I think this is important to it too. This is a good story. Although story might not be the best word to describe it. It is a good look into the life of the characters. It is solid. I like this.
Ana C is the editor of NewWaveVomit which has published a lot of cool stuff. She is the first contributor whose work I am familiar with. She has multiple pieces in this issue.
“no text” is interesting.
“and i feel cheesy” is at once a brave poem and a very scared poem. Ana C’s poetry seems to dabble in two worlds: she is a fearless poet that speaks frankly, and she also is a poet that focuses on human insecurity. This poem is an excellent example of that.
“nose job” is another visual piece. It is also interesting.
“grandma’s house is falling apart” is a sad poem. The grandmother in the poem is very alone and in the end Ana C says she understands some but not really because being 90something and alone is a different kind of loneliness. She also does not sugarcoat the grandma figure. She shows old people life as it really is. I like this poem.
“two babies holding hands in a third world country” is my favorite Ana C piece in here. The repetition of “two (x) holding hands” makes the poem feel intimate. The things happening spawn some pretty damn giant topics: human sexuality, immigration, suicide. The poem makes the reader feel guilty for something but I don’t know what. For everything maybe. The ending is very strong too because it makes it feel like these are all snapshots or something. I love this poem a lot.
More reviews of Pop Serial 2 coming soon!
-Justin
