July | 2010 | HTMLGIANT | Page 20

July 2010

Ken Baumann—

“In the world there is this betweenness / and then there is all people”

What’s nifty about earworms is that they’re lodged inside of you because they found something to feed on. I’m pushing the metaphor biological, sure. Thinking more of an “ear parasite.” But what if things burrow into us because we’re somehow fertile for them? In ways we aren’t really aware of? What if we’re drawn when we’re drawn not because of what we want, but because beauty is looking for a brain to eat? I was going to get even more ridiculous and talk about dentistry, but I should probably just shut up and tell you the point: Jordan Stempleman’s poetry gets stuck in my head. READ MORE >

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July 1st, 2010 / 3:54 pm

Adam Robinson

Don’t Do It for the Lagniappe

Artifice Magazine is just too good to give things away. Like, okay if you’re mediocre it’s not a bad idea to offer an incentive. But when you’re Artifice, one of the best on the block, people come knocking on your door with wads of cash and apologetic looks. You beat them off with a stick, or deign to serve them.

Not blowing smoke. This is a great magazine design-wise and editorially — the first issue has an embossed matte cover, black on black. The writing — by people like Butler, Rooney, Schneiderman, Walsh, Yelvington — is as writing in journals ought to be: on the forefront, compelling, and with a range of mystery. And wait. WAIT. It’s cheap! Already it’s cheap: only $7.

Get out of town with your seven dollar embossed covers and Jessica Bozek poems.

So, but, cool, y’know. Good for Artifice. What else is going on here at this stupid htmlgiant website, any good fights? WAIT! Before you scroll down to Lovelace’s erupting hangnail or weigh in on Lily’s consideration of wtf is next with paper, just wait a sec. Let me catch my breath.

Because what the editors there, Adcox and Silverman, are proposing to do in July is sign up 50 new subscribers. I’m all like, only 50?!

No sweat. HTMLGIANT gets like 90,000 unique hits every second, so this post ought to bring them to their goal by 2:15est. And if it isn’t my appreciative bombast that sells you — yes, you, reader — on the subscription, let it be this: READ MORE >

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July 1st, 2010 / 2:13 pm

Lily Hoang

Ideal literary mediums

Most contributors, it would seem via FB—because that’s how I get a lot of my non-news news—of the Best of the Web 2010 anthology have gotten their contributor copies. I have not yet, so I can’t make any testaments to how great or not great it is. I’m pretty sure, given that Kathy Fish and Matt Bell are the editors, that it’s a stunning collection of writing originally published on the web.

This past week, Time Out Chicago reviewed BoTW 2010. Though quite brief, Jonathan Messinger gave it a positive review, noting how difficult anthologies are and the unimaginable task of combing through the seemingly self-exponentiating number of things published on the web. He ended with this:

Of course, we all know the Internet is home to just about anything our brains can Google. But what Best of the Web does—aside from doing the work of finding great writing so we don’t have to—is make a case for it as an ideal literary medium.

And this is where I question things. I have a story in BoTW. I publish on the web. I like publishing on the web, I really do. But I also like paper. Yummm, wasteful unsustainable paper: I can’t get enough of it. I love to print out manuscripts. I love to mark up manuscripts. I even love how heavy it is in my bag, how much space it takes up, and on and on. I love books published on paper, bound in paper, I probably don’t need to go on. Needless to say, I’m not as “with the times” as Nick.