riverrun Quark

riverrun Quark · Title No. 1

Telosand OtherPsychographs

a long poem by Euphrates Moss

Psychographs. Maps of the soul.

Fifty divisions of mostly unrhymed decasyllabic blank verse, interrupted by prose — a noir pastiche, a short story, four fragments of a novel that never arrives. Roman times, Shakespearean times, and the general hardships and oddities of life.

Order the hardback — $29.95 What it is
Format
Cloth hardback
Extent
c. 250 pp.
First edition
2017
Front cover of Telos and Other Psychographs: the title drawn as white technical linework on blueprint blue, annotated Fig. A, Fig. B, Fig. C, above a woodgrain band branded “BY EUPHRATES MOSS”.
The jacket — Perfectoid Edition. Artwork by Colleen Venter.
Detail from the reverse of the jacket: a flayed anatomical figure whose head is a ring nebula, standing in violet deep space with a spiral galaxy across the chest.

Produce like Shakespeare. Focus like James Joyce.
Spend leisure like Mark Twain. And edit like Ezra Pound.

A Year In Proverbs

Jacket reverse — detail

01 — The Book

Not a collection.
A single long poem.

Telos and Other Psychographs is a mixed-genre modernist long poem rather than a gathering of separate lyrics. Its fifty divisions move in mostly unrhymed decasyllabic blank verse, and where the verse breaks, prose takes over: a noir pastiche, a self-contained short story, and four fragments of a novel.

The jacket states the method before the poem does. The front board is a working drawing — the title set as technical linework, annotated Fig. A, Fig. B, Fig. C, ruled like a drafting sheet. The reverse is what the drawing is of: a figure opened up, its head a nebula, a galaxy turning through the chest. A psychograph is a map of the soul, and the book treats the soul as something with a plan view and an elevation.

It is by turns argumentative and elegiac, and it borrows freely — philosophy, natural science, aphorism, overheard speech — setting the borrowings against the measure of the line. Formal rhyme appears, but it is the minority report inside a larger modernist structure. Spliced in, as the publisher’s description has it, are “philosophies, sciences, various observations, aphorisms, and references from just about any book Euphrates could get his hands on — except the bad ones.”

“This is a book of poems for people who read a lot of books (and poems). It’s a number of paradoxes. It’s challenging yet rewarding, dense yet readable, archaic yet poetic, and innovative yet traditional. A great many books influenced but none came before. It is Telos and Other Psychographs.” — from the front flap

Fig. D

Schedule of parts

The divisions carry opus numbers and are titled by mode. Archaic and invented spellings run throughout, and they are deliberate — correction is left to the reader. A preface makes the case for what the author calls inconsistentism: an artist who never contradicts himself has stopped moving.

  • Cantos
  • Fragments
  • Soliloquy
  • Interlude
  • Translation
  • Overture
  • Underture
  • Envoy
Telos
The long poem itself. Fifty divisions of mostly unrhymed decasyllabics, interrupted by a hard-boiled detective pastiche, a self-contained short story, and four fragments of a novel that never arrives.
Grace
A rhymed sequence in terza rima, in pentameter. Rhyme is the minority report in this book; this is where it holds the floor longest.
The Mirandiad
Mock epic built on Homeric formula, following a warrior named Miranda.
Caesar’s Embarrassment
A double dactyl on the library at Alexandria.
Annex
Earlier work gathered at the back — among it a Whitmanic portrait of Ketchikan and a two-line answer to the Imagists.

Fig. E

Two specimens

The book opens in one register and is capable, later on, of another entirely. Both passages are printed here exactly as they stand in the text.

Verse — the opening

Overture

Op. 48 · first published in The Issaquah Press

Andante ma non troppo!

O, thou explorer perpetual The antipodes, nature’s torch, heaven’s eye Motive agreed for wine-cooling jars Thymbraeus, true father of poetry O sun, thee I invoke, thee I implore Enlighten the obscurity of mine: The genius of my inkborne pen for this The project of the mapping of my soul

An invocation of the sun under one of Apollo’s cult names, in the decasyllabic measure the poem holds across all fifty divisions. The tempo marking is the poem’s own: the divisions carry opus numbers, and the reader is expected to hear them.

Prose — the interruption

Spoilers: Pre-19th Century

Op. 52 · a staged scene, 1600

Scene: The Boar’s Head. Lord Henry and Sir Albert are having a discussion whilst crushing pints. Enter Philip, who sits close by.

Philip Of course! I’ve never seen it. I’ve been abroad studying with the Muslims.

Henry I tell you, the ending in which they both die was most deftly orchestrated.

Albert Oh, top marks indeed. Tops all around!

Philip Augh, I haven’t seen it! You’re ruining the middle for me!

Henry Sorry, chap! Spoilers!

Exit Philip running.

Henry Happy new millennium!

Two Elizabethan gentlemen spoil the endings of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet for a man just back from abroad. Henry’s toast dates the scene to 1600, the year Hamlet reached the Globe; the tavern is Falstaff’s, from Henry IV. Albert steals Philip’s beer the moment he flees.

Title
Telos and Other Psychographs
Author
Euphrates Arnaut Moss
Artwork
Colleen Venter
Imprint
riverrun Quark
Binding
Cloth hardback
Pages
c. 250
First edition
August 2017
This edition
2022 — Perfectoid
Retail
$29.95 USD
Print ISBN
978-0-9976822-0-5
eBook ISBN
978-0-9976822-2-9
The complete dust jacket laid flat: back flap with author biography, cosmographic back board, blue spine lettered TELOS & OTHER PSYCHOGRAPHS, blueprint front board, and front flap of jacket copy.
The complete jacket, laid flat — flaps, spine, and boards. Perfectoid Edition

02 — The List

What comes next

Three manuscripts in preparation. Each one takes a fixed form and pushes until it gives.

  1. Fig. A

    In second draft

    Sonnets

    A sequence of 181 sonnets · November 2014 – April 2018

    My anger cooks genius’s elementsThe top of the burner Bunsen direct

    Sonnet 5

    Three and a half years of sustained work in a single form: rhymed, largely decasyllabic, and argued rather than sung. The sequence runs from first infatuation through craft, envy, reputation, and Freud, and closes on the big bang.

    Sonnets
    181
    Composed
    2014–18
    Draft
    Second

  2. Fig. B

    Manuscript complete

    A Year In Proverbs

    From the Euphrates · twelve months of aphorism

    Artistry is in how you apply the tool; genius is knowing when to lift it.

    Memory is an unreliable narrator even in the most reliable people.

    February; December

    A calendar of proverbs — roughly one a day, gathered month by month, on work, craft, silence, expertise, and the general management of a life. Sharp, secular, and openly indebted to the wisdom books it imitates. Holidays and occasions to be ignored.

    Months
    12
    Entries
    c. 365
    Status
    Complete

  3. Fig. C

    Stage script

    Political Perversity In Seattle

    A satire in three acts and eleven scenes

    Cunnaway: That shouldn’t work but it does.

    Grosvenor: If the people believe the insult beforehand they won’t be offended, even if it’s about themselves.

    Act 1, Scene 2

    A Shakespearean-comedy machine — mistaken identity, a disguise, a casket test, a wedding — dropped into contemporary Seattle municipal politics. Six characters, a governor with no plans, a mayor with only feelings, and a janitor who ends up ahead of both.

    Acts
    3
    Scenes
    11
    Cast
    6

Reading copies and full manuscripts are available to editors, publishers, theatre companies, and program directors. Write to the imprint.

03 — Lineage

For readers of the American long poem

If these are on your shelf, Telos belongs beside them.

  • I

    The Cantos

    Ezra Pound

    Collage, quotation, and the epic assembled out of fragments.

  • II

    Paterson

    William Carlos Williams

    Verse opened up by documentary prose and local speech.

  • III

    “A”

    Louis Zukofsky

    Objectivist measure held across a lifetime of divisions.

Poems from this work first appeared in

  • The Issaquah Press
  • The Neglected Ratio
  • Corvus Magazine
  • Ink Monkey Mag
  • Section 8 Magazine
  • Clutching at Straws
  • Love’s Chance

“Telos: Overture” and part of “Midnight Lullaby” were first published in The Issaquah Press.

The back board of the jacket: an anatomical figure with a ring nebula for a head and a spiral galaxy across the chest, set against violet deep space.
A psychograph — the back board of the jacket, drawn by Colleen Venter.

04 — The Author

Euphrates Moss

Phrate has been writing since age 3. Euphrates has written poems — he has been awoken — since age twenty-one. He would boast here about his many achievements only he has none. What scares him is looking back upon his life at age 99 and having done nothing. This book is helping to prevent that.

He holds a B.A. in English / Creative Writing from Seattle University. He lives at home and owns way too much music because early in life he had wanted to pursue music. He played guitar well and could sing in baritone, but he couldn’t sing well in the tenor range, which put the kaibosh on that.

From the back flap

05 — The Imprint

riverrun Quark logo: two roman r’s set inside a Q whose tail flows away as a river.

riverrun Quark

An independent poetry imprint in Washington State. The name takes both of its halves from Joyce — riverrun, the first word of Finnegans Wake, and quark, borrowed back out of it by physics. A river and a smallest particle: the long form and the single exact word.

riverrun Quark takes measure seriously and genre lightly. Titles are produced under our own Bowker ISBN prefix and printed and distributed through IngramSpark, so booksellers and libraries can order through their usual channels.

  • Trade ordersAvailable to bookstores and libraries through IngramSpark.
  • EventsThe author reads and sells directly at literary events around Puget Sound.
  • Review copiesAvailable to critics, journals, and program directors on request.
Cobalt ink unfurling through water in a slow river-like ribbon, gathering into one dense point at the bottom.

06 — Order

Three ways to get the book

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Standard terms

Order through IngramSpark, or write for hardback trade terms, event stock, review copies, and manuscripts from the list.

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There is a time and a ________ for everything.A Year In Proverbs, December