It had been a few months since our initial interview when I received a surprise holo-vid from Jeffrey Spahr-Summers. Excitedly, I unlocked the message on my tablet, and there above the slab floated a fully-rendered hologram of Jeff himself in crisp 3-d shades of yellow and red. Then the hologram spoke, inviting me to come by and pick up a copy of his brand new poetry journal. Jasper’s Folly was finally here.

I hit the flashing green check mark in the lower right corner, and immediately the world around me dissolved into a whirlpool of pixelated light and flashing color. When I opened my eyes, my avatar had once again materialized back inside Jeff’s mysterious digital realm, the same world where we had met for our now famous interview back in August 2022. I found myself standing before an impressive, photo-realistic representation of his real house in Boulder. This must have been what it felt like to stand inside the Oasis in Ready Player 1. His own avatar met mine at the door, and he led me inside.

There I found one of the densest, most thorough private libraries I’d ever seen. There were books on every discipline from every age of humanity. Glowing scrolls older than history squeezed between 1970’s experimental psychology texts and proto-pulp novels from the 1800’s. There were books that hadn’t been written yet by authors still to be born lounging beside volumes by ancient writers thought lost to the vortices of time. One shelf was dedicated exclusively to translations of the notoriously untranslatable Voynich Manuscript, repeated in 32 languages, 9 of which were currently believed to be extinct.

Below this, protected from pixel-dust by a glass shield and coated with a crackling blue force field, was a shelf dedicated exclusively to books, chapbooks, journals, and anthologies by local writers and small press organizations, many of which I immediately recognized, including Le Petit Press, Stain’d Arts, and Boulder Poetry Scene. Then, he reached his hand into the one empty shelf on the bookcase, and out of it’s shadowed void pulled a freshly minted copy of Jasper’s Folly #1.

“everything painted
cars    buildings    people
feathers of the bird
fitted together
soaring against the moon
that hangs over the Hudson
like a street lamp
swirling with fish and smiles”

(the house of man, J. B. Mulligan)

The book is a wonderful achievement. In his editor’s note after the title page, Jeffrey states that the pages to follow contain “49 talented poets from a dozen countries, including a dozen poets from my home state of Colorado. Friends, an ex-roommate, acquaintances, strangers, all present here.” But the eagle-eyed reader will find other poets and artists present as well. Among these are allusions to William Shakespeare, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Merwin, Federico García Lorca, Gertrude Stein, John Keats, Jim Henson, M. C. Escher, Pablo Picasso, Robert Zemeckis, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Chuck Jones, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Britney Spears, Andrea Bocelli, and more, and more, and more.

Despite the caveat that this journal would carry free-verse poetry only, the 49 poets included represent a dizzying array of styles, from direct-speech/short-line poems a la William Carlos Williams to surrealist imagery reminiscent of the paintings of René Magritte and Salvador Dali, and even the occasional sneaky, well-hidden rhyme. There are prose poems, stoned poems, naturalist poems, rantifesto poems, recipes, memories, fantasies, lists, poems of the alleyways and poems of the heart. 

“Today is low-fi jazz
along with coffee
the staccato sounds
of drills into sheet metal
while the mockingbird
fucks its mate
in the pomegranate tree”

(The Mockingbird and the Minotaur, Marie C. Lecrivain)

Some of these honor highly personal family anecdotes, while others take note of that which we most often overlook, civilization’s detritus, down to the lost buttons and pocket lint. There are accessible poems, powerful poems, political poems, and puzzle poems. There are poems I wish I had written, like Bruce McRae’s “Omen,” Brice Maiurro’s “Unbirthday,” and Julie K. Shavin’s “All in Order and True.” And then there are the poems I did write, including “Mistranslation of the Cascajal Block,” and “Love Letter from a City Street.” That’s right, I’m in here too!

And throughout, interspersed between and occasionally fused into the poems, are Jeff’s own stunning, digitally manipulated photographs. The fusions are my favorites, like J. D. Nelson’s “unit f-f-f” and Dennis J. Bernstein’s “Fear of Sleep.” In fact, if I had one criticism of the journal, it would be how much I wished there were even more of these beautiful visual collaborations. The book is wider than it is tall, creating a feeling of spaciousness on every page which allows the poems to breathe and the imagination to bloom, giving every word, every thought, its proper due.

           “The buttery feast.  I can’t predict the bloom,
or the setting on of fruit.  There may be
           aphids and cutworms, whiteflies, wilt, and rot.
There may be days so hot, the body will feel

           like fire, skin ripening in the afternoon sun.”

(Journal Entry: After Considering Not Planting a Garden, Dave Prather)

And this is no fold-it-in-half-jam-it-in-your-back-pocket chapbook either. At 8.5 inches tall, 11 inches wide, and roughly 260 pages, Jasper’s Folly is much closer to a high quality coffee table book than an average off-the-rack literary mag, a beautiful objet d’art. Though it’s also available as an eBook and in a spiral-bound edition, the hardcover is especially awe-inspiring. It was this that Jeff gave me now, and though I knew it was only a digital copy I now held in my digital hands here in Jeff’s impossible imaginary library, I could feel its heft, the weight of hundreds of bytes of spiritual and emotional data, downloaded from the minds of 49 working poets from all around the world.

After chatting for a bit about the behind-the-scenes logistics of producing such an incredible tome, I thanked Jeff for his time and for my eCopy and headed out the door. As I passed over the threshold, my body evaporated into millions of microscopic rainbow-colored cubes, and I awoke to find myself back in my own bedroom, the glowing tablet still in my hands.

To my surprise, there was another object in my hands too: a physical copy of the hardcover edition of Jasper’s Folly #1! How was this possible? How could a purely digital object have transcended the laws of time and space to pass via wireless connection into the material world and manifest here, in my humble Longmont apartment?! No matter. As the old saying went, “Never look a gift book in the spine.” I read the journal slowly, savoring each poem and image and digesting their artistry. My heart was a wide, space-filled page, and I had all the time in the world.

“& that the future & the past
could never be as ripe or as sweet as the present
& it hurts so bad as the crushed cherry glaze
& the milk chocolate chips melt on your tongue
and you can taste the sweetness”

(on hunger pains & kitchen mines vines, Jennifer Schneider)

Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal #1 is available now at jaspersfollypoetryjournal.com. And keep an eye peeled for issue #2, due to be out very soon!

---

Eric Raanan Fischman, MFA graduate from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, and author of “Mordy Gets Enlightened,” has been a longtime contributor to Boulder Poetry Scene.