February 2011

One of the challenges in editing a journal as diverse as Fogged Clarity is maintaining a unified aesthetic throughout each issue. In truth, we don’t always accomplish this, and there have been cases where we’ve attempted to create cohesion between pieces where none could or should exist. Other times, however, a natural synthesis emerges almost subconsciously throughout the content in an issue as it is being assembled. Our February offering came together this way, and while I believe all of these pieces are unique and compliment each other well, I also find them to bear similar ideas of identity and control. Whether it is Kathryn Harrison discussing the forbidden, Joseph Scott singing about war in his backyard, Harold Ross attempting to possess the night, Amanda Hempel revealing a father’s ritual, or Saramanda Swigart exploring a near broken sisterhood; all of the art and thought in this issue seems to concern reclamation. I do hope you enjoy it.

Benjamin Evans
Executive Editor, Fogged Clarity

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• Lissa FranzLissa Franz is an author living in Massachusetts. Her fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review and Crescent Review. She is a previous recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists’ Grant and is currently placing a novel about a female pilot during World War II. Willing
• Saramanda SwigartSaramanda Swigart recently received her B.A. in English from Columbia University after a 15-year hiatus, during which she worked in a kitchen in Italy, for a New York fashion designer, as a copywriter for a San Francisco advertising agency, and for a consulting firm in Dubai. She has published in Thin Air magazine. Sell Out

• Amanda HempelAmanda Hempel was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she currently lives and works for a closed-captioning company. Her poetry is forthcoming in, amongst other places, The Literary Review, Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal, Red River Review, The Mochila Review, RE:AL, and Stepping Stones Magazine. She received her MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University.The Putting Up
• Between
• James HughesJames Hughes is a teacher, musician and songwriter living in the San Francisco Bay area, where he completed graduate degrees in English and Education at Stanford University. Listening to Li Po’s Garden
• Las Grietas, Galapagos
• Mark DecarteretMark DeCarteret is currently the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His poems have been published in AGNI, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Salt Hill, and Third Coast, along with many other journals and anthologies. Flap, his fifth book, will be released by Finishing Line Press in May.Abduction
• Pseudo-Hymn (After Rebirth)
• Michael T. YoungMichael T. Young has published two collections of poetry: Because the Wind Has Questions and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a 2008 William Stafford Award. His poetry has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Barn Owl Review, Barrow Street, Iodine Poetry Journal, and The Same, among others.Credo

• Laura Bell & Ian GanassiLaura Bell‘s work has been exhibited in New York City, Chicago, Berlin, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of an Artists Space Grant and has been an artist-in-residence at the Millay Colony for the Arts. Selected pieces from the Corpse series were shown in “Disciplined Spontaneity,” at Zone Contemporary Art, in NYC, which included works by John Cage and Joseph Beuys.
  Ian Ganassi‘s poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Sawbuck, Octopus, The Journal, Caesura, Languageandculture.net, and Trickhouse. His poem “Blunt Trauma” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he is currently working on a verse translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, which is being published in parts by New England Review. Corpses
• Harold RossHarold Ross is a photographer living in West Chester, Pennsylvania where he runs his photography studio. He is represented by Gallery 50 Contemporary Art. Forged
• Night
• Ross AnderssonRoss Andersson is a photographer living and working in New York City. He received two APA Awards in 2009. His fashion submission titled, The Berlin Project, earned 1st Place recognition in the fashion category and he was also chosen as the 2009 APA Grand Prize Winner for his urban landscape series The Mezzanine Project. Mezzanine
• Kennedy JamesKennedy James is a French born artist living and working in New York City. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections including the MoMA of Shanghai. She is represented by Galerie Vanessa Quang in Paris. Serial Bondage

• White PinesWhite Pines began as the solo project of Joseph Scott, a native of Ohio, by way of Brooklyn, by way of Michigan. Currently, White Pines consists of Joseph Scott, Stephen Clements, & Gabe Schray. The band is based in Akron, OH.The Fogged Clarity Session
• The Falls

• Kathryn HarrisonKathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water. She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture. Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Vogue, O Magazine, Salon, and other publications. She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.the author discusses her work and process

• Scott HightowerScott Hightower is a poet living with one foot in New York City, one in Texas, and one in Madrid. His third collection, Part of the Bargain, received the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award. His translations from Spanish have garnered him a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. He teaches at NYU, and has taught poetry, non-fiction, and translation at Drew, F.I.T., Fordham, and Poets House.Patricia Spears Jones’ “Painkiller”