Another year happily sacked, another issue launched into the great wide 'net!

Get your sticky fingers a'dancing over to Issue No. 3, featuring work by J.A. Tyler, John Bradley, Feng Sun Chen, J. A. Gaye, Caroline Klocksiem, Sophia Kraemer-Dahlin, Dolly Lemke, Ben Nardolilli, Nick Ripatrazone, Sean Thibodeau, Bill Nace and Amelia Colette Jones.

Don't forget to put your arms around the assignment portfolio (TOGETHER NOW), full of rustling, hustling collaborative action by Tamiko Beyer and Soham Patel, Jeremy Allan Hawkins and Brian Oliu, Lauren Bender, Theresa Columbus and Megan McShea, Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney, Teseleanu George and Hector Pineda, Seth McKelvey and Chelsea Rice, along with Issue No. 2 contributors Chris Dennis, Phil Estes, MC Hyland and Becca Klaver conversing about same.

It's a whole lot of awesome, is all we're saying.

AND SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME AT SUBMISHMASH.

AND WE'VE GOT A NEW ASST. EDITOR! HIS NAME IS JOE COLLINS.

AND WE'VE GOT NEW E-MAIL ADDRESSES.

AND A NEW ASSIGNMENT (IT'S A DOOZIE!).

Basically what I'm saying is that we've gone legit. Look out world, we're collecting magic and then dispersing it like nobody's business. (Except it's our business.)

Oh, AND HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVERYONE!

Yours,

Super Arrow

Dear(est) Readers,

Our debut issue, Numero Uno, has gone through some urban renewal.

Fall in love all over again www.superarrow.org/IssueOne.html.

Also, the new issue is well on its way, though it's currently taking advantage of the public transportation system, so it might take a little longer than we all thought.

What? Love.
Super Arrow

We're not dead! In fact, we're very much alive. Wait until you see you the next issue. It is doing nothing as much as it is bursting. Although it will also be doing others things, grandly, and capably.

Hold tight, steady, and happy. Don't forget to bundle!

Love,
Super Arrow

P.S. If you have not received a submissions response from us from this last cycle, please don't be shy. Drop us an inquiry. According to our careful spread-sheeting, all work has been addressed, but we do stay up at night worrying someone has been overlooked.

Our reading period for Issue 3 is now so closed. Thanks, everyone, for sending in. We'll be with you shortly.

The submissions digi-pile is glittering and tall as a far mountain peak.

Huzzah,

Super Arrow

Countdown - Daylight Non-Savings Edition

EST: Just over 11...

CST: Just over 12...

MST: Just over 13...

PST: Just over 14...

...hours until submissions shutdown!

There is a time for submitting and a time to stop submitting (to us, this time around). This latter time is midnight tonight.

We are the mutt on the other side of the front door, listening to your key turn the lock.

Gladly!
Super Arrow

Hello Sharp Sharps,

What riches in our mailbox! A golden and gleaming thanks to everyone who has already submitted. For those of you still waiting for responses: hold tight, we'll be with you as soon as we can.

For those who haven't yet submitted, why -- as the saying goes -- not? We're looking for crystalline prose of both the truthing (nonfiction) and lying (fiction) sorts, particularly, and also visual art. You poets are really on top of things. Proseurs, are you really going to let those lineated muffins best you?

A note on the side

We're gender-blind types when it comes to the ol' pile, but we have noticed that there's been vastly more fiction submitted by men than women this time around. Just something we wonder about. Anyone know how come?

Okay now, kidlets. Let's do this thing. You have seven days or thereabouts to send us your magic (superarrowfliestrue@gmail.com). Get. On. It.

Fondly (with Pixels Burnt into Our Retinas Already),
Super Arrow

Better than Jack-O-Lanterns*

Check it: our deadline for Issue 3 will pitter-patter up more quickly than you think. Send us your words, your art, your w/arts, and all, lickety-split. We want this more than anything.

You have until Halloween! Chuck that subtly wry costume sewing project for a sec and send us your files! Everyone else was gonna show up as __________ anyway! Costumes are overrated. Online journals are not.

Mosey on over to www.superarrow.org/Submissions.html for more hot hot data.

Please & With Feeling,
Super Arrow

* Maybe.

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

...get it? Like, the point of an arrow?

Dear Archers,

POINT: This fall has been a breathless tumble of travel and words. We took part in the Slash Pine Writer's Hike and, in teaching, tripped right over the beginning of the semester and into the thick of things. As a result of a schedule that looks more like stream of consciousness by a celebrity alien than an organized system of dates, times and activities, things have slowed a bit down here at the target. Now we're back, at attention, and ready to fire Issue 3 at the world just shy of NYE.

SO, COUNTERPOINT: Please consider submitting before our Issue 3 deadline of Halloween 2010. Big things are in store. And don't forget the collaborations assignment, which can be found HERE. We want your fine, fine work. There is so much admirable labor-art in the world. Send it to us.

And to jog y'all's memories, submission guidelines are here.

PS: We will be attending the NonfictionNOW conference in Iowa City in November. That reminds us, nonfiction writers, please send us your words. We are particularly interested in experimental forms, lyric essays, new modes of documentary writing....If you're at the conference, please say hello!

A Future Temporary Grounding

Oh what a humid mess August is. By the end of October, we'll have forgotten our discomfort. We'll wear cardigans and closed-toe shoes, and feel okay about hot coffee once again.

Also, we'll have stopped accepting new submissions. That's right, makers all stripes! The deadline for submissions is Halloween, October 31, 2010. Mark your calendars, and place your bets. Collaborate (ASSIGNMENT 3) while there's still time!

Just to recap: Submissions Deadline for Issue 3 = 10/31/10.

Wishing You A Sweet, Brain-Frozen Weekend,
Super Arrow

SOAR

Oh so many riches! Thanks so much for the great submissions we've been getting, folks. Remember to tell your awesome art-/word-making friends. We haven't set a deadline for submissions yet, but know that Issue No. 3 will be out before the New Year. So: you have a little time to gather up your glitter, but not a ton, so do it when you can!

Also: Issue One contributor Joseph Goosey has a new chapbook called Mostly Spinach from Virgogray Press. Make sure to check it out; we definitely will.

Another Issue One contributor, and participant in Two's Conversation, Kyle Winkler, has a really gorgeously haunting piece at Web Conjunctions. Disassemble your great summer proclivity toward sunshine and let Winkler's beautiful, fleshy winter into your heart.

There are lots of other contribu-successes, too. Readers, get to Google, and writers, remember to let us know!

Fondly From This Patio-Hovel of Umbrella-Shade,

Super Arrow

ASSIGNMENT 3: TOGETHER NOW

Assignment No. 3: Together, Now!

Collaborate. Just, do it. With one other person, or many. Discover a construct. Will you deploy technology? The USPS? Tin cans and some string? Will one of you be blindfolded? Will the other be mute? Write in the same genre, or straddling the great muddy waters of the genre/discipline river.

Produce ONE piece together. It should be unified, intentional, and a greater sum than its parts. It could be words, or art or words n’ art. It could be a video, or a soundscape, or an animated gif (if you do it right). Check out our general submissions guidelines for file particularities, etc.

In your submission e-mail, include a note about your process, and brief bios for all participants.

You have plenty of time to do this, months even.

Together, now!

Super Arrow

Conversation///CTD - Vol. 1

Below, find SA-reader F. Matthew Fredrick's ideas about community re: Issue 2's Convo.

If you'd like to guest spit right here, e-mail us your thoughts - superarrowfliestrue@gmail.com.

Keep readin' now.

All Y'all's,
Super Arrow

*

Dear Super Arrow,

Joe Collins' issues with and "purposeful avoidance" of social networking sites are similar to my own reasons for cutting-back on online social networking. Joe's link to the Cate Kennedy article is pitch-perfect as it realtes to my experience. It's not so much that social networking sites distract me from creative projects (though that is certainly true), but more how social networking sites have this way of keeping me from better developing an inner self. Ratcheting-back my online presence on Facebook for me is less about work per se, and more about providing for myself the kind of solitary and contemplative space I need for creative pursuits. At the same time, I recognize the value of Facebook as a communication and organizational tool. As a musician, I want people to know the what, when and where of my next gig. I want to know the what, when and where of other musicians' next gigs. I still want to share with and learn from my friends, both online and ITRW. It's a subtle and often precarious balancing act.

In Super Arrow #2's CONVERSATION////COMMUNITY piece, Maggie Ginestra said "Let's be brave together." I love this call to collective being ... and to collective action. Ever since I read it a couple of days ago I've been mulling it over in my mind (contemplating it?). Moreover, Maggie's call to "be brave together" fits nicely with her question as to "how, in a social-and-creative community, neutrality should figure into honesty when you talk about each other’s art." In other words, how do we be brave together? How do we commit this brave act of making and sharing ourselves with each other? How do we talk about each other's art honestly as well as supportively?

I am remarkably lucky to be a member of a music ensemble called the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra (yes, I know ... a Facebook link ...). Most of what we do is compose and perform musical scores to silent films of yore. There are six of us. They are my best friends. Really, they are more like family than friends. Most days, I see and/or talk with at least one of them. We trust and care for each other not unlike how a family trusts and cares for itself.

My ensemble-mates Brien and Matt do most of the composing for R&P MPO. The rest of us pitch-in here and there when we can make it to the composing sessions. The sessions are free-flowing exchanges. Ideas and melodies are conceived, shared, amended, tweaked and often discarded. The goal is to make something that works - that complements and supports the visual narrative of the film without overwhelming it. If an idea doesn't achieve that goal, and after attempting to tweak and amend that idea it still doesn't achieve that goal, then it needs to be discarded. Our goal - our ethic - comes from a certain collective like-mindedness. Our aesthetic sensibilities often are different. The differences in aesthetic sensibility are a very good thing, for what comes from combining and amalgamating these different aesthetic sensibilities is something often fresh and new. It's long and careful work, and intense and thrilling work. One must be brave in order to participate ... not only in presenting that which one conceived, but also (and in some ways more importantly) honestly critiquing those ideas which others have conceived and presented. During these composing sessions, during rehearsals (when things are further tweaked and amended), and finally during performances, we are brave together.

We would not be able do that which we do if our relationships to each other were arms-length. It is through the caring and respect for each other as a kind of family that we trust each other to individually and collectively "be brave." When Maggie asks about "neutrality and honesty" in talking about each other's art and ideas, I think that we as an ensemble often achieve it. I think there are two reasons for this. First, I think that our ensemble's explicit compositional ethic intertwines neutrality with honesty. Our ethic of composing music that "complements and supports" means that all of our ideas must be evaluated with this "neutral first principle" of sorts. Second (and I think more importantly), we all truly care about each other and therefore trust each other in our presentation of our ideas and in our critiques.

Okay, perhaps this sense of caring and trust is easier to pull off in a band where everyone shares a collective goal. A group of artists or writers working individually - perhaps not so easy. For me, having a close-knit and caring group of people to help me develop (be brave) creatively is vital. I have the impression that it's vital to a lot of artists and writers. I don't think that people necessarily have to share some kind of explicit "ethic" to develop this kind of relationship. It seems to me that a lot of close-knit groups of artists (or often artist couples) share a kind of intuitive ethic. This is what I think of when I think of Jaffa Aharonov's idea of a "tiny, cohesive community where everyone feels like they’re on the same page."

A "tiny, cohesive community" is vital to me because it expands contemplative space beyond the limits of myself. I can share creative thoughts and ideas I've been contemplating, and in collective sharing and feedback these thoughts and ideas are further contemplated and shaped into something. I don't think that this space of trust and contemplation can be made through Jaffa's (in the alternative) idea of a "large, loose ... network of creative, productive people." It seems to me that having such a network means that your relationship to everyone is more arms-length. I am not brilliant or creative enough on my own. There comes a time when I need to share my creative ideas with someone or a small group of someones whom I trust. In addition to my inner contemplative self, I need a contemplative space outside of myself. A large group of arms-length relationships won't work for me. I suspect that most people are like me in this way.

I think that there is one further possible problem with a "large, loose network." What one may think of as a group of working collaborators too easily becomes, in Kenneth Koch's words, merely a "social life with friends." That large, loose network is really just a big party.

Ben Spivey asks "why do you write?" I write and perform music because I like to think about it. Probably just as much of a reason is that I have a big ego. I love the attention I receive when I perform. I hunger for praise and accolades. Music satiates this hunger. I don't think that these reasons are necessarily bad. However, going back to Joe's issues and concerns with social networking sites, I think that Facebook poses for me a serious obstacle to making worthwhile art.

I have a big ego. I love attention. I am hungry for praise and accolades, and Facebook to me is junk food. It's very telling to me that, when somebody posts a link or status update on Facebook, that somebody "publishes" it. When somebody performs a musical piece, or exhibits a painting or sculpture, or gets a short story or poem in a journal, that somebody is "publishing" too. But think off all of the steps and thoughtfulness and contemplation that went into that musical piece, painting or piece of literature. Think of the contemplation beyond the self when that somebody shared and sought advice from others. That piece of published art has substance. There is some kind of sharing of a bit of self to it. It's a sharing of real labor and of real time. It is brave because of it. Whether the reasons for "publishing" were at their base egotistical doesn't really matter. The person who reads or hears or views the work has a new experience ... and maybe even thinks or feels something new. Pablo Picasso was an asshole, but we're a richer world for his work, right?

Facebook allows me to "publish" without contemplation, thoughtfulness, labor and discipline. It circumvents the steps and connects my hunger for praise and accolades directly to "publish." The link to the video of the hip band ... the clever turn of phrase in the status update ... the clever comment on someone's link. With each I seek the "thumbs up" and the movement of my link or status into "news." Instant praise and accolades. Nothing, however, really is shared. The praise and accolades are fleeting. My links and comments travel down the ticker. Constantly, then, to come up with new pithiness, new hip band links and new clever turns of phrase. I get competitive, trying to out-clever my friends or out-clever and out-cool the men whom I perceive to fancy the same woman that I do. Like when I eat junk food, I am instantly satiated but thirty minutes later I am hungry again. Like junk food, Facebook for me is addictive.

Facebook brings out my tendency toward performative narcissism, that great enemy of the big-egoed. Facebook is the "social life with friends" and the big party on steroids. In Koch's poem, if one is to have a social life with friends then one must choose between romantic love or creative work. One cannot have all three. Facebook to me goes even further than that. Facebook's social life with friends actually compromises my ability to engage in creative work, and actually compromises my ability to truly love. Facebook compromises my ability, in Erich Fromm's words, to truly care, be truly responsible, be truly respectful, and truly know others. Facebook stokes every narcissistic tendency I have (and I have a lot of them). I don't think that I am the only person who attempts to engage in creative work who experiences Facebook this way.

I still have my Facebook profile. I still post links to my blog, and use it as a kind of email program. I'll post things occasionally of substantive interest to me. I'll even "like" a thing or two. But no more constant performative narcissism. It's not good for me. It's not good for anybody. Better to attempt the often quiet work of contemplation, the often scary prospect of being alone with one's thoughts, the often scary prospect of sharing oneself with another. Better to brave, and to be brave together.

All of that said, please "friend" me and "like" my band. I do have a big ego.

Sincerely,

-matt

Conversation///CTD

First, dear readers, scope Conversation///Community in Issue Two.

Then, read below...

Joe Collins admits: I don't participate much in online communities. The correspondence I participate in online (emails, exchanging poems) are not much more than a type of proxy for me--these folks are all people with whom I would much rather see every day "IRL." I think I would like to hear from Super Arrow readers who have purposefully avoided virtual communities. How does an artist stay offline, and make, and stay relevant in an increasingly online world? Can this strain one's (sense of) community? I feel that this article [by Cate Kennedy] is relevant, perhaps even influential, to my thoughts this day.

Roxane Gay asks, How do you sustain yourself as a writer when you can't find a community either locally or virtually?

Maggie Ginestra wants to know how, in a social-and-creative community, neutrality should figure into honesty when you talk about each other’s art. Also, when we punctuate our process of "figuring out reality" by sharing our work with others, what is useful to discover?

Jaffa Aharonov wonders whether you think it’s better to have a tiny, cohesive community where everyone feels like they’re on the same page, or a large, loose [online or physical] network of creative, productive people. Does one seem more useful to you?

And finally, Ben Spivey just demands an answer: why do you write?

Answer any or all of these questions and send the results to superarrowfliestrue@gmail.com, We'll post the best of the responses on the blog.

Like Langston Hughes, We Wonder as We Wander...

Super Arrow

Issue No. Two

Issue Two is freshly launched into the troposphere of the blue sky internet. To track its flight, simply direct your browser to www.superarrow.org.

Check out fiction by Colin Bassett, Barron Byrnes, Chris Dennis, and Scott Ogilvie, poetry by Micah Bateman, Amy David, Phil Estes, Eileen G’Sell, MC Hyland, Becca Klaver, and Colby Somerville, and art by Angela Zammarelli and Francis Raven.

Also, don’t miss a conversation with Issue One contributors Jaffa Aharonov, Joe Collins, Roxane Gay, Maggie Ginestra, Ben Spivey and Kyle Winkler about creative community in the internet age.

Please tell us what you think, or submit work for Issue Three, at superarrowfliestrue@gmail.com.

Forward the link freely (and with gusto) to interested parties, post it on your blog, or whisper it into your favorite holler.

Fondly & with the Sweet Force of Rest after Many Days of Labor,

Super Arrow

Guest List for Our Current Hearts

Several new developments, dear readers, which will be observable when Issue 2 goes live:

A favicon.

ALSO:

New submissions guidelines.*

LET'S NOT FORGET:

Writing & art by a small herd of stone cold pixel killers.

& FOR OUR BRAINS' FIFTH POCKETS:

A conversation about community (featuring high-flying analogies! multi-modal network discovery! sweetness!) by a handful or two of Issue One makers.


Keep those bright eyes bright. New issue will be up next week.

Until next time, remember that you are the green leaves against our blue sky, (or vice versa),
Super Arrow



* These are already peep'able!

Coming Attractions: Issue 2

Country goes rom-com; mailmen are vocational idols...
Lifeguards are useless...
The dead guy always shows up at the rave...
Have the funeral before you die...

Welcome to stories by Colin Bassett, Barron T. Byrnes, Chris Dennis and Scott Ogilvie.

Can you not wait, or can you not wait?

From under the patio umbrella of coding...lens flares and freckled shoulders for all!
Super Arrow

Sharpening Our Points

Issue 2 is in the ove-ove-oven! Look for an upgraded website and art-pages of vibrating excellence by 'makers disorienting in their sharp sharp skills, coming soon.

Submissions will open once more in July, for the [Fall/Winter] Issue 3.

With Heavily Sighing & Bashful Work-Love,

Super Arrow

Spivey, Ben/Gossamer Fold, Flowing in the

The work of Ben Spivey, SA inaugural issue contributor, is both killer and a killer...of any kind of lazy emotional orientation we laypersons may clutch with shaking hands. You can read an excerpt of HIS NOVEL, Flowing in the Gossamer Fold in Issue 1, AND THEN YOU CAN PRE-ORDER THE WHOLE THING, from Blue Square Press.

We advise you to do all of this, as soon as possible.

Thank you,

The Management

Our Plastron Has Several New Features

Dear Pixels,

First of all, Issue No. 2 is shaping up nicely. It'll be out at the end of May. Check back soon for Assignment 2 revamp.

*

Second of all, peep this:




We like what Dzanc* does, and want to support it. For those of you who don't know, Dzanc is a non-profit publisher who also creates and supports various writer-and-writing-and-small-press/pub bear-hugging initiatives and programs. They're also really nice.

Their Best of the Web 2010 is now available for purchase, and looks like the ripest berry in the bramble.

Click on the banner above for more information.

*

Third, the last of all, we're thinking through a print project. Top secret! More this summer, when we're older and wiser.



In the rain everything shines...and other would-be pop ballad lyrics, fondly,

Super Arrow

Exploded Swan 041410

Last evening the Exploding Swan reading series, curated by Heather Overby, killed it. We're breathless from the Zachary Schomburg/The Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra collaboration. Images of blood spatter fold in on themselves on the violin-plucked mobius strip in our heads this morning. Anton Disclafani read of southeastern twins and snakes and oranges, while Jenny Mueller's poems were wry and by turns glossy and spiny (sometimes both!). Jaffa Aharonov (SA 1!) provided intermission tunes of such siren proportions that everyone forgot to intermission. The next ES is May 21st-ish. Stay tuned for updates on that.

Dreamily,

Super Arrow

About that CROWDMAP...

We are unsurprised, in our heart of hearts, that Assignment 2: CROWDMAP yielded so few responses as not to be viable in the current prompt form. So: We're taking a step back, we're re-imagining, re-conceptualizing, re-scrambling our tiny thoughts. Stay tuned for a phoenix-new incarnation of dear old CROWDMAP. We'll be wanting your participation, of course.

Thanks, too, to the few who did submit. We appreciate your game entities in the face of general bewilderment.

Fitting in Some Dank Cranny of Your Crowd-Sourced Atrium,

Super Arrow


P.S. Have fun at AWP, if you're elevating in Denver (5,280 ft. above sea level) this fine week. Wave hello to the sky for us! We'll be in St. Louis (466 ft. above sea level), in that cranny, dreaming of panels and paneling, like usual.

Closure 2

The reading period for Issue 2 has come to an ecstatic end. Thank you to all who submitted -- look for a response soon, if you haven't yet received one.

Please embrace this spring day forcefully, wherever you are.

With Sincerity So Enveloping You Might Not Be Able to Breathe for a Second,

Super Arrow

THREE DAYS LEFT

Hello Dear Adventurers, Sweet & Bonny Smiths...

The deadline is almost upon us. Wednesday March 31 2010 is so few days away. Submit before it's too late. Tell your friends.

A Trip in Our Heartbeat Each Time We Receive...,

Super Arrow

Breaking the Surface of Silence (An Almost-Final Call for Submissions)

Lately we've been wonderstruck by all the good (read: exciting) art in the world. Possibly we've been stretching ourselves too thin, (outsider pop one night, comedy-dance-improv the next). Certainly we've been stretching to hug armloads of books and student manuscripts and chapbooks and brochures about the performances of country legends in the God-Fearing Vegas and our census forms and our subscription renewal slips and and and...Definitely we're exhausted, but in an end-of-a-day-at-the-shore sort of way. For just two more weeks, we'll be reading your submissions. Then we will set about making the thing.

But there's still time! We want, (one more time but not the last), to invite you to submit your work to our small sharp corner of the internet. Tell your friends; tell those people you always avoid talking to while at large social events not because you're not interested in talking to them but because you're SO interested in talking to them. Let this be the end to your awkwardness, and the beginning of your lifelong friendship to someone to whom which you've never mumbled a syllable. Let us help you, by helping us.

Check the submissions guidelines to the right for more information, and then fire your words or art to superarrowfliestrue@gmail.com.

Sincerely, with Love & Exhaustion,

Super Arrow

The Third & Last Chapter of The Second Installment of the Moment You Bestow Upon Us Your Genius

Spread the word: Super Arrow wants you(r genre-bent characters, your portmanteaux, your process-oriented products, your graphite splashes in the deep end of the pool of theory, your Literature of Exhaustion, your head-stand lyricism, your clean lines, your bowed syllables, your sestinas that fizzle like Pop Rocks, your pantoums that have dance routines of their own, your sentences bound like a twig broom and sitting in the corner of a witch's cottage in suburban somewhere California...)!

Consider this a formal exhortation to gather the tattered hems of your art skirts and jump out into the great ocean of S.A. Submissionsland.

By which we mean to say: send us your work. The packets of specialized pixels we've received so far have spun us dizzy. Keep at it, citizens!

ASSIGNMENT TWO: CROWDMAP HERE!

Submissions cycle closes March 31!

Yours until the Earth Breathes a Deep, Yogic Breath &
Sends Us All Into A Fatal Cyclorama of Black Holes,

Super Arrow

The Last Page of the First of Three Chapters

We're now one month into our three-month long submissions cycle, and receiving really glamorously good work in psychic textures both berber and slate.

When choosing something to submit to us, think about process and product...Can we see the seams? Are they beautiful or homely? Nubby and true?

And hey, think about working on Assignment #2: CROWDMAP. We think you might make something really cool.

As always, tell your visual artist friends, and your writer friends and your friend friends, to check us out and to submit if they have the notion for such a motion.

We'd stop spinning like little kids if anyone ever reminded us how nauseous we got afterward, except we're just so excited to check our in-box that such rotations seem the only physical analog to the way our hearts do swell...
Super Arrow

Hotted Night

Dear Darling Everyone,

Our ears are going to miss last night for quite some time. Not to be hyperbolic or anything. What happened last night, you ask? Oh, just a slam-your-hands-together-hard-as-you-can reading ("One Hot Night" - Burning Chair Series) by Cannibal writers at Stirrup Pants Chapbooks. We met lots of sweet, open, talented, driven people and it made us want to push our little S.A. that much harder. We want to meet more of you. Submit to us, or even just let us know you're out there behind your machine, carbon-based and maybe a little sweaty every time you make the transition from outdoors to in (just like us). It's all about cool people doing cool things everywhere. Share and share.

If you haven't already, check out Slash Pine and Double Cross Press, for a seize-and-sparkle start.

Don't forget to layer.

From one words-made sigh to another,

Super Arrow

ASSIGNMENT 2: CROWDMAP

Welcome to Assignment 2: CROWDMAP. Assignment 2 comes from a crowd collaboration enacted at the Super Arrow Launch Happening way back in ’09. The crowd was asked to build a thought map based on the word FIRST. Armed with markers, the revelers marked up several sheets of poster board with bubbles and words and lines, and the result is funny and chaotic and absurd and eerily true. (For instance: Decay, in fact, is a deal breaker. For most.)

So we have here this crowd-generated work, which is not really cohesive but which (we think) contains some wisdom and some greatness and some creative truth just as any semi-random collection of connections might.

It’s your job to find/make this meaning, takers-on of Assignment 2. We want you to show us how the connections make sense, to let us know what the lines/arrows mean from one thought to another. We want you to be provoked by the weirdness of it – the frustrating careen-and-veer from total-cliché sense to inscrutable nonsense – and to make a writing or an art piece (any form web-post-able) in response. There are no formal constraints here, but we do want you to take the reference material seriously.

So here’s what you should do:

1) Take a look-see at the original thought map, which can be found here.

2) Direct your peepers to the itemized list of every thought map path which starts with “First --> Kiss --> first --> FIST --> Am I gay? --> ALL THESE FEELINGS! --> ? --> DO THEY KNOW? --> POETRY EVENING”*

3) Download the PDF list HERE of these connections for your convenience.

4) Pick one of the 285 thought paths and GO GO GO.

It’s your job to connect the dots. You can go all microcosmic if you’d like and pick one or two connections in a given path, or you can embrace fierce/foolish ambition and go whole hog. We’d like it if you’d do the latter, but we certainly would not sneeze at the former.

And no, we don’t really know what “popcorn-fux” means, either. If the person who wrote it would be good enough to let us know, we’d be much obliged. Although the mystery is strangely beguiling and pleasurably so.

Make stuff. Send it to us. Include what number path you’ve chosen. E-mail us (as always) at superarrowfliestrue@gmail if you have questions.

Let’s expand this collaboration exponentially.

Our Fingertips Pulse With Type-Tired Excitement!

Super Arrow

* We charted these 285 paths, plus more, before realizing that if we were to chart every single path that it would take us about a month, if we didn’t sleep, and more if we did. Paths were ended once they doubled-back on themselves or hit a terminal point. Pick one of these paths. There’s 285 of them. There’s bound to be one that seems attractive.