The Fall of Convention #1

The Fall of Convention #1/ $1 / 5.25 by 7 / 12 Pages / [email protected] / 2020 Nicollet Ave. So. #227, Minneapolis, MN 55404 / 

This was the other piece of material that I received from Gerald at AMC 2003, and this is even less substantive than Afunctional #1. This does not mean it is bad, just really short on content. With this issue, which seems to point to being a compilation of works from a few different other collections, Gerald gives us some poetry alongside some of eir’s works. The five works are all very geometric, and remind me of Kandinsky more than anything. The only problem that I can really notice with the reproduction of these pieces is that they seem to be a little grainy, possibly an issue of a slightly older printer. Beside the pieces of art, there are also some short poetry, sometimes with a rhyme scheme, sometimes really free-form. The only thing connecting the “Five Unstable Poems” are the numbers that Gerald assigns to them , and the stream-of-consciousness bent to them. “The Fall of Convention”, the poem that leads off the collection, is much more of a traditional poem, with Gerald giving each stanza a specific rhyme, and running with it for four lines. Gerald likens convention to a tree, and the tree converting its roots into leaves – convention turned inside-out, or upside-down in this case. We are left with a very confused narrator at the end of the poem, who asks “Now what the fuck are we supposed to do.” There is very little in the way of substance in this magazine, but there are some heavy philosophical ideas in the minor amount of content that is provided the reader.