[Interview with Matt Hart & Eric Appleby of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety]
This interview was conducted via email during October/November 2007.
Travis Diehl: What can you say about the beginnings of Forklift, Ohio? Where did it come from?
Matt Hart: Eric Appleby and I started Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety in 1995, and the two of us still publish and edit it today. We had done a journal together before when we were in college at Ball State University in the early 90's called Nausea is the Square Root of Muncie, and when we both ended up in Cincinnati a few years later we decide to continue the experiment/adventure in small press publishing.
Of course, it couldn't be just that. Eric and I have always been interested in the early 20th Century avant-garde-Dada, Futurism, Oulipo (the latter, which I suppose, is really mid-20th Century avant-garde...anyway), etc., so juxtaposition, puns, in-jokes, coherence/incoherence and sabotage-really, deliberate strangenesses of all sorts-have been the things our friendship developed around, and thus, too, the journal (how's that for a ridiculous sentence?).
Also, FOOD! We love to eat, and that's a big part of the journal as well. The activities of reading, cooking, and care/ful(l)ness (Safety first!) are not all that different, though one might say they each have a different sort of focus, i.e. they involve paying attention in similar ways to different things. A poem is always a sort of recipe for experiencing the world extraordinarily/intensely, and a recipe is always a poem-one reads, follows it-it changes one's life, literally/literarily. Finally, the sort of language and graphics that get used in safety and technical manuals-especially the old ones-seem to us poetic as well, recontextualized as they are in Forklift.
Anyway (back to the beginning), Eric and I were brainstorming one night at the kitchen table about names for the journal and I blurted out "Forklift," and it just hung there in the air-weirdly, of course-as forklifts don't hang in the air anywhere. After a minute, Eric said, "Yeah, that's pretty good-it has gravity-but not enough life-let's make it a place-Forklift, Ohio!" Suddenly it was teeming. We said, "That's it. Let's Eat."
The first nine issues appeared in tabloid format on newsprint, but around 1999 we got the idea to bind each issue differently, using whatever weird materials we could lay our hands on. We wanted to make the journal a sort of aesthetic object that people would want to lay their hands on as much as they'd want to read it. Since then we've done all kinds of crazy stuff. One issue was bound with sandpaper with a bolt through the center. One was a bag of chili mix with all the beans and spices; the recipe for the chili was a jigsaw puzzle printed on the back sides of the poems. Recently we bound an issue with Schluter Ditra (an industrial flooring material) and these weird metal brackets that we found in an old warehouse where a painter friend of ours had a studio. The new issue, 17, is bound in this blue, anemone-like material that actually hurts your hands a little when you hold it.
Operations-wise, the journal now is pretty much exactly the same as it was in the beginning. We do not take grants, subscriptions, or flack. Each new issue of the journal comes together on no budget, except whatever we can get from selling back issues and raiding our couches for change after dinner parties. It's very DIY and flighty. We sell the journal through our website (www.forkliftohio.com), and people seem to really dig it, which we're thrilled by. All is well in Forklift, Ohio.
TD: Are you familiar with Emily Dickinson's recipes? They don't differ much from her poetry.
MH: Actually, I'm not familiar with Dickinson's recipes, but I can imagine they'd be beautifully dire. "Ruin is formal," you know? And what could be more formal than a recipe? Anyway, I'll look them up... computing... oh yeah, that Black Forest Cake sounds delicious...
Do you know F.T. Marinetti's The Futurist Cookbook? It's pretty amazing-chicken stuffed with ball bearings-skyscraper/Babel-like meat products standing up in a plate of coffee and whipped cream... Obviously, he wasn't worried about making things that tasted good-or that could even be eaten. Rather, his approach to food was sculptural and...well... futuristic, to state the obvious. Reading those recipes one gets the idea that he imagined a time when our tastes/tastebuds would have developed/evolved in rather alarming ways. Sitting down to eat would be like visiting a museum, and visiting a museum would be like going into battle, and going into battle would be like a job in a factory or sticking your finger in an electrical socket or punching a clown in the face... In many ways (and sadly), he was right on the money descriptively-about our world and our tastes (though fortunately as yet-not in food).
Forklift blends everything together, too, but we try and keep a sense of humor and excitement-even whimsy-about it, rather than of violence and spectacle as Marinetti would've had it. Certainly, we want to produce something that becomes more than the simple (or not so simple) sum of its parts-a soup, a stew, a duck-duck-goose-but we also want people to be thrilled and inspired and delighted. In other words, as weird as Forklift's recipe for madness is, we hope it's a madness that's very embodied and human-more felt than intellectual, more expressive than analyzed, more interested in an atmosphere of spark-fueled possibilities and meaning-filled radioactivity than one of caramelized order and formulaic linearity.
TD: You mention the early 20th century avant-garde and its juxtapositions. One recent issue included, as a bookmark, an original paper time card from a factory, pencil marks and all. Can you speak more about the impulse to collect and include scraps of outdated industrial manuals, instructions, diagrams, etc.?
Eric Appleby: If you ask what influenced many of the early 20th-century avant-garde movements, you get bullet points like this:
- the horrors of early mechanized and (notably) chemical warfare
- the alienation caused of mass-urbanization and the tedium of industrialized labor
- the crisis in aesthetic value systems caused by mass production and new technologies of representation
So we get Nonsense, Fragmentation, Absurdism, Abstraction, Assemblage, Collage, Constructivism, Futurism. Though their avant techniques were rendered passé in less than a century, their legacy is subsumed neatly by post-modernism. Now: Juxtaposition is simply the Order of the Day.
In the early designs, I have to admit I was mostly riffing on "light industrial safety." The juxtaposition of poetry with random industrial imagery (never mind recipes) seemed novel enough at the time. We wanted the journal to have a rough, gritty feel so we had it printed as a tabloid on cheap newsprint. My Dad, a research chemist, had stacks of safety supply catalogs that I would dig through for clip art. I think that after a couple issues, I realized that it was going to wear thin if I didn't show a better understanding of what I was doing. With very little formal training in visual arts and graphic design, it took me a while to connect the dots between the imagery I was using and its cultural origins. I'd been drawn to movements like Cubism and Dadaism in my humanities classes, and I started to see how they translated into my visual tastes.
Thirteen years later, I've amassed an entire wall's-worth of old (read: out-of-copyright) texts, pamphlets, manuals, catalogs and cookbooks from which I draw inspiration and appropriate (the verb) ready-made bits of weirdness, wisdom and comedy. On the pages of Forklift these found pieces serve as palate cleansers or amuses-bouche between poems, which (according to Wikipedia) "...often accompanied by a proper complementing wine, are served as an excitement of taste buds to both prepare the guest for the meal and to offer a glimpse into the chef's approach to cooking."
In our mission statement, we're pretty up-front about our impulse to "Fetishize the aesthetics of early industrialized society in a distinctly post-industrial fashion." In other words: it's a post-modern gimmick, but one with legs. And possibly shoulders. Big shoulders like Chicago. Except in Ohio.
TD: Do you see Forklift, Ohio as reveling in the destruction of civilization by its own technology, as did Marinetti? Your mission is obviously more benevolent-you bind the magazines by hand, your recipes are edible. Is the DIY approach the antidote to society's mechanical ills?
MH: No, I wouldn't say we're reveling in the destruction of anything, but rather that we're rummaging around in whatever we can find-looking for that poem or recipe, material or graphic, that, metaphorically speaking, keeps the world from falling apart for one more issue. In other words, in Forklift, Ohio, things cohere-associatively, ambiguously, figuratively. Its grounds are grounds in/under construction, never destruction, never never the grave. Certainly, we're sort of nostalgic for a time that never was, but nostalgia too is a fullness-not an absence or a breakdown.
As for the DIY aspect/adventure of the journal, that part of things began as a result of having limited resources and a punk rock driven sense of energy and enthusiasm to make things happen NOW. It's endured, because we still have limited resources, and we still like doing the work. We still like the trans/formative/cendental fireworks display, i.e. in putting out an issue of Forklift, we’ve never wanted to make things easier for ourselves, only more exciting/surprising. The hope is that in setting our own heads on fire, we'll do the same for our contributors and readers.
TD: Which Forklift recipe do you feel is most likely to save mankind?
Well, our own recipe for Forklift, Ohio's award winning October Revolution Chili feeds 6-8 people comfortably or uncomfortably depending on how many habaneros you include. I know it's saved me from eating my own hand on numerous occasions-not to mention that it also cures the common cold, contributes to the common good, and provides one with a whole new appreciation of vodka. Of course, while it's true that feeding ourselves and/or other people may not (in and of itself) save mankind, it's as good a place as any (and better than most) to start. I mean, who wants to read poems or consider the Noumenon when s/he's hungry or devastated, asleep without dreams? Not me.
TD: So the magazine amalgamates various media. Aside from publishing and cooking, how else do you create a kind of unity? I'm thinking of rumors of your participation in local punk bands.
EA: Amalgamate is a great word for what we do. Depending on the discipline, it means either "consolidating" (as in business mergers), or "separating out" (as in mining). And, for good measure, it can also mean "inter-breeding amongst different populations of a species" and "blending with mercury" (I looked it up). It's one of those great words you find in the names of big old companies, like "Amalgamated Iron & Steel" or "Amalgamated Sugar." For all these various meanings, an amalgamate is not a hodge-podge, nor a potluck. It is the result of careful chemistry, painstaking negotiation, bold breeding (!).
This is to say that there is a precise internal logic to the design and the sequencing of the work in each Forklift. However, it is not intended to provide a comfortable sense of unity for the reader. The section titles, found images, recipes and such are at once a strategy for the assembly process and an indeterminate space for the reader to fill. As stated earlier, juxtaposition is only the tip of the iceberg. If we're doing our jobs right, our readers can never be sure if they are *getting* connections/themes/visual gags or if they are *making* them (and, of course, they're doing both).
When we are not Forklifting, Matt and I fill roles like "Professor-Punk Rocker-Poet-Dad" and "Businessman-Tap Dancer-Webmaster-Armchair Philosopher." Lots of people have lives like this--and I'm not complaining--but the uniquely post-modern continuous-fragmentation-of-self isn't conducive to developing a deep sense of personal "unity." Our time is an age of exceptional freedom and opportunity--but it comes at the expense of coherent identities and linear life stories. One doesn't need fancy theory to intuit this experience, and our media and culture is littered with the evidence: people are more amalgamated than ever. We're just trying to give them a good read.
Oktober Revolution Chili: appropriated, adapted and translated from the Russian by Eric Appleby and Tricia Suit
3 Tbl extra virgin olive oil
6-8 cloves of garlic
2 yellow onions
1 bunch fresh cilantro
Dash salt & black pepper
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp crushed red pepper
2 Tbl dried oregano (or use fresh to taste)
1 Tbl white sugar
1 tsp unsweetened cocoa
½ tsp cinnamon
½ cup VODKA!
2 limes, quartered
3 red bell peppers
1-2 habanero peppers
2 Anaheim peppers
1-2 jalapeno peppers
1 lg. & 1 reg. can whole or diced tomatoes (with the juice)
2 cans pinto beans, rinsed
1 can black beans, rinsed
1. Play some cooking music. Lately, I've been re-listening to Superchunk's Here's to Shutting Up , Wilco's Sky Blue Sky, Thurston Moore's new one Trees Outside the Academy, and Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra's Boulevard de L'Independance. You can also download all of Travel’s music for free (Travel is the poetry/noise band that Eric and I play in) from our website: http://www.myfriendnoise.com/. Of course, if none of these possibilities appeal to you, pick your own damn music. You know what you like.
Now for the main event:
2. Cut in half, remove seeds, and roast in a broiler the red bell peppers, habanero(s – if you want the chili really friggin' hot), Anaheim peppers, and jalapenos (again, watch the heat). When the skins of the peppers turn black (about 10-15 minutes), remove the peppers from the broiler. Place them in a brown paper bag. Shake them gently. Then refrigerate the peppers for 15 minutes. Peel and chop. Set aside.
3. In your chili pot, heat the extra virgin olive oil. Chop the garlic and the onions and sauté them in the oil (DO NOT BURN YOUR GARLIC!). Add the salt and a pepper and half of the vodka. When the onions are translucent, add the chopped roasted peppers, the cumin, the crushed red pepper, ¾ cup of chopped cilantro, and 2-3 quarter wedges of lime. Sauté for another 2-3 minutes.
4. Over the next 10 minutes or so, have some drinks (I prefer beer, but again, you know what you like). Then add, at your leisure, in the following order: the tomatoes with juice (if using whole tomatoes, tear them into smallish chunks with your hands), the beans, oregano, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon and the rest of the vodka. Simmer 45-60 minutes. If the chili becomes too thick, just add water.
5. Serve with shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, chopped cilantro, lime wedges and your favorite cornbread and cold beer.
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