Doug Paul Case holds his copy of Artifice #2

Since Artifice #2 has finally made its way into the world, I thought now would be a good time to direct a bit of attention to their much acclaimed first issue (acclaim here, here & here)—which everyone probably remembers as that 2010 lit mag with the all-black, debossed cover.

The first issue was loaded with experimental, form = content (and vice versa) writing that refrained from any verbal masturbation too often (wrongly) associated with experiment in literature, but was instead a production site for emotionally charged machines of language (“language and language” -David Silverstein). Artifice published interesting things—menus, erasure poetry, definitions, computer programming—and wants interesting things. No doubt, Artifice #1 persuaded many readers to pay attention to what this magazine does in the future.

Here’s an excerpt from “Police Procedural” by Andrew Farkas, from Artifice #1:

PROTOCOL

If you were a detective and I was your captain, and I found you were getting a little too emotional about a case, too personally involved, that your mental faculties were not operating as well as they could because of your frustration and rage, that you were certainly about to snap, I’ll be frank, I wouldn’t pull you off the case, I wouldn’t give you leave, I wouldn’t suspend your sorry butt (though the brass’ll tell me I should), I wouldn’t have you slap your badge and your gun on my desk and send you home, mumbling, quipping to whoever can hear you, probably your partner, some other detectives saying they’ll talk to me, smooth things out, no, even though it’s protocol, even though it’d be expected, I wouldn’t do that at all; instead…