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Write Bloody Presents:
WHAT IT IS: WHAT IT IS
"Maziar goes on with his incurably sweet prose expression. It's somewhat infectious, maybe an eye-opener or even scary. But one thing is certain: You won't want to stop reading. Maziar revels in a buzzing, heightened state of self-awareness, and it's something that glides so seamless in his playful language." - Long Beach Daily 49er
"Revolt against mechanized living is one of the themes explored in Maziar’s new book of experimental prose and poetry, What It Is: What It Is, that features visuals by the artist Maust." - TIME OUT NEW YORK
"It's not poetry, it's not prose…what is it: what is it? With What It Is: What It Is, Cold War Kids bassist and visual artist Maust and wordsmith Maziar have succeeded in making a book that's less of a book and more of a guided tour through places they've been, both actual and abstract. With prose poems about taking deep breaths from our collective unconscious and making exhalations of cold smoke into thin air, and photo-collage images of cities, faces, skies and subways, the work suggests a fractured postmodern world viewed through nostalgic eyes and voiced by a warm, familiar tongue that still sounds unique." - FILTER MAG
"a new urban-centric tome that also includes photo collages." - MTV News
“What It Is reads like a travel journal … about the myriad ways the modern world affects the human condition.†- The District Weekly
"embodies a distinct cool/rebellious/independent-thinking factor" - Las Vegas Weekly
"The unorthodox endeavor fuses photography from around the world and beat-like prose" - CMJ
A collaboration by Paul G. Maziar and Matt Maust
[words: maziar, images: maust.
edited by shea M. gauer, and the lovely julia simon]
Experimental, sincere and “mercurial†prose and poetry—married with equally sincere, gorgeous, deconstructed yet meticulous, typography and photo-driven design. Each facet drawing inspiration from the absurd as much as the divine, with a radical and keenly self-conscious sense of itself—aiming to surpass and uphold the mid-twentieth century and modern luminaries which inspired it, with concerted disregard for the conventions that structure perceptions about design and writing. Unable to recognize the differences between poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, the refined and the coarse, in both creation and living. Continually seeking to shift the pathways between unaffectedness and vivacious existence.
Images and Metrical nods to unassailable romantic life. The beauty and oddities, which
we cannot ignore—what we must somehow capture, or go mad completely.
Themes including, leisure and the revolt against mechanized living (or non-living), love, derangement of the senses, homelessness, metaphysical mysteries: life, death and transcendence. Inspired by Coffee, The Letterists, Thelonious Monk, Bill Cosby, Jackson Pollock, Bob Dylan, Abraham Lincoln, Tom Waits, Rancid, Dennis Hopper, The Old Testament, The Beats, Warhol and (equally) The Velvets, Doc Brown, Sylvia Plath, Derrick Brown, The Clash, Fozzie Bear, Billy Bragg, Dracula, Bugs Bunny, Kurt Vonnegut, Leadbelly, and all our friends and lovers.
