Adam Robinson
http://www.publishinggenius.com
Adam Robinson lives in Baltimore, where he operates Publishing Genius Press. His book of poems, Adam Robison and other poems, will be published by Narrow House Books this year.
Adam Robinson—
“Guns, am / I right? Guns! I love them!” writes Jason Bredle in “Gun Range Talk” at the new La Petite Zine. LPZ gone weird this time, including this tercet from Stephanie Barber: “starve to death / starve to death / starve to death” and from Aaron Belz, “We channel horseradish / On the daily vacation tab” — all to the good of those who love it.
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Adam Robinson—
New Sink Review to read. Looks sweet — great writing, great design — it’s been a while since I’ve seen an online journal as right on as this one.
Barrelhouse Online Workshops
Can writing be taught? Can writing be taught online? Is the Internet a valid place to workshop poetry?
After hours and hours of editorial GChats with Melissa Broder, I’ve come to think that it’s not just possible, but that the Internet is a great place for this kind of work. There is something about the detachment of not being present, combined with the fluidity of the format. It makes people more concise, more practical, and more willing to hear differing perspectives.
So I’m really interested to hear how Barrelhouse’s online workshops go. Our own beloved Mike Young is facilitating one now. Don’t nobody know no poetry like Mike, neither — so if you want more than THIS AMAZING LIST of “moves in contemporary poetry”, you should consider giving his online class a look. The 8-week sessions starts on October 24.
Has anyone done an online class before and was it good?
Adam Robinson—
The Literature Party site is up for the 2012 AWP blowout. Check it out to see who’s reading and sponsoring and whatever and where.
The Powerlessness of Bad Writing
At The Indypendent, in a fairly comprehensive overview of the very amazing and exciting protests happening on Wall Street and the issues behind the protests, there is this crucial paragraph:
Our system is broken at every level. More than 25 million Americans are unemployed. More than 50 million live without health insurance. And perhaps 100 million Americans are mired in poverty, using realistic measures. Yet the fat cats continue to get tax breaks and reap billions while politicians compete to turn the austerity screws on all of us.
This is the beef, right? I agree with it with all my heart and pump my fist a little, even though it is striving to say nothing. I’m disappointed that it is ruined by ghetto-ized rhetoric like “fat cats” and meaningless statements like “Our system is broken at every level.” Even the statistics shared are paltry (and made more so by “perhaps”). Granted, this is The Indypendent, so the preaching here is directed to the choir — I grant that, but actually it’s my point. Why? Why does every group have their own vernacular that they use to deafen their opponents?
The comment box is open for non-shitty articles about #WallStreet?
And it’s worth 15 minutes to watch this timeless discussion. Foucault is a tool. I’m in love with Chomsky, who at around 5:00, does a much better job characterizing our demise.
Picture Woodland Pattern
I’ve been interested in Woodland Pattern for years. The bookstore, located in Milwaukee, WI, is so massive, and has been around for so long, that it’s become a vital resource just by virtue of its existence. It’s not too much to call it an anchor of the poetry economy in the USA. Maybe it isn’t selling millions of books, but its role as a stalwart icon can’t be underestimated. Recently Robert Baumann, a WP employee, Milwaukee native, and literature master (and the proprietor of the amazing Mitzvah Chaps), Dropbox’d me a pile of photos from the store and I asked him some questions about them.
Thanks for doing this, Robert. I’ve actually wanted to interview someone at Woodland Pattern since I started writing at HTMLGiant. So, first, can you give us some vitals on the store? When was it started? How many employees?
Woodland Pattern–or Woodie P as we lovingly call it–just celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2010; it moved to the location on E. Locust Street in the Riverwest neighborhood in 1979, when founders Karl Gartung and Anne Kingsbury purchased the building. Immediately, they started hosting events: Anne & Karl did a lot to get the “biggies” of “avant garde poetry” here from the get-go. Right now there are six full-time employees, not to mention our amazing board (all volunteers); also, the help of great friends makes a lot of our events possible.
How many books are there? What do you carry?
In terms of the bookstore, we’ve got an inventory of ~15,000 books, and the vast majority of those–I’d say over 10,000–are small press and DIY. READ MORE >
In terms of the bookstore, we’ve got an inventory of ~15,000 books, and the vast majority of those–I’d say over 10,000–are small press and DIY. READ MORE >
!!!
Holy shit, this package of hot dogs can be resealed! Using an exclamation point here seems like overdoing it. But on the other hand, including the word “Resealable” itself is redundant because the red line on the back of the packaging, that plastic zipper, says it all. That plastic zipper is a word that says, “Resealable.” But maybe it says that for people looking at the package online. Because OMFG, BallPark has an awesome website.
What do exclamation points do for you? I love them. Take Mairéad Byrne’s poem “How to Say Thanks When You Mean It But Don’t Really Have Time Right Now,” which goes, simply, “Thnaks!” — using an exclamation point means never having to spell things right. I use exclamation points because I think they tell the recipient of my email how excited I am to be emailing them, and how excited I am that they are alive.
Applies to Oranges Giveaway Results
There were some fantastic responses to the Applies to Oranges giveaway contest. The comments to that post are like their own wonderful literary journal. And why can’t we host an online journal in a comment stream at HTMLGiant? I’m calling it the second issue of the Crystal Gavel, the “Trouble in Paradise” theme. I think I’m going to nominate the winners here for Pushcarts, too. I’m applying for the ISSN tomorrow.
Maureen Thorson has selected the winners: Josh Thompson, for “Clerical Work” and Heather Sommer, for “Ex-Pats” and Nick Francis, with “Vacationing.” (Josh, Heather, Nick, please email your address to me at adam at publishinggenius.com and we’ll get you your prizes.) Their entries can be read below the fold, or in Crystal Gavel 2, naturally.
Thanks to Maureen for putting this together! Check out her very truly wonderful book over at Ugly Duckling’s wonderful website. READ MORE >
Stephanie Barber works at a museum
Photo by Cara Ober
Poet and artist Stephanie Barber has installed herself in the Baltimore Museum of Art. She’s been there since June 25, and she’ll be there until August 7. And she brought along her studio.
This isn’t an endurance piece, like what Marina Abramović did so beautifully at MoMA. Stephanie, who is doing the performance/installation/video work in conjunction with the Sondheim Prize, is making videos as she normally would, but at a faster clip. She’s producing one a day. Her setup in the gallery is a sight to behold for the way it deconstructs the museum. When is the last time you’ve seen pictures from a magazine haphazardly tacked to a museum’s wall? Or the last time you watched a video with a soundtrack performed by museum patrons as they pass through? READ MORE >
Printers
McNaughton & Gunn
Even though my experience is very basic, people often ask me to recommend printers. Here is a list of printers I have used, and some thoughts. READ MORE >
Great Moments in Literature
Perhaps as a neighbor for Christopher Higgs’s “What Is Experimental Literature” series, we should compile a list of neat, uh, experiments. I’m thinking: What are your favorite tricks in literature? Let’s make a list. Here, I’ll scratch the meta surface. The comment box is “there” as a repository for your additions and complaints, as usual. READ MORE >
J. A. Tyler, ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Author J. A. Tyler has put together a neat thing, a story across five stories, across five publishers. He calls it “wreckage” and describes the story with his uniquely destructive voice:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ is wreckage. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ takes place as five distinct works, all built around the same core story. Each narrative is that of a girl who holds the last water in the world, a herd of chaos that takes it from her, and the boy who comes to resuscitate it all. But each story takes this kernel and shreds it in a new direction, incorporates other elements, reshapes the narrative in its own image. And each press that came aboard this project, releasing this wreckage into readers’ hands, worked on the same principle of core unity with distinct press-specific alterations. All that is left is the beautiful static hum: zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The publishers, linked here, are:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [a well]: Greying Ghost
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [the stars]: Warm Milk Printing Press
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [this town]: The Collagist
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [an island]: NewLights Press
This week I received the installment from Aaron Cohick’s NewLights Press (home of the $400 Brian Evenson book), and it is an amazing artifact. It’s completely letterpressed inside and out, and sturdily constructed. It’s hefty. It’s probably about 30 pages, depending on how you count them.
You can see images of the NewLights book here.
Book Giveaway: Applies to Thorson
Here’s a chance to win a copy of Maureen Thorson’s Applies to Oranges, which is one of the top five most beautiful books of 2011. No doy, it comes from Ugly Duckling Presse so that means it’s impeccably designed and intentionally detailed: good paper, letterpress cover, set in a typeface I hadn’t heard of (Bembo). But I don’t let that overshadow the poetry, which I first read and thought, “Damn, these are consistent.” They are the melt-in-your-mouth variety. You read one in a comfy chair after work and let it mellow. There’s an orange in every poem, and every poem is about 15 lines long and just one stanza. Earlier I thought the poems were quiet, but reading the book again now I realize no not quiet, tense. For instance, this sartorial sorrow:
If we had lived a hundred years, I’d say
give me washed leather, milliners’ pins,
Battenburg lace looped in orange silk.
Let me learn the politics of exclusion–
six hundred threads to the inch. In place
of island chic, a native’s pretend servility,
I’d dress to show that sorrow can harden
into a surface more starched than any collar,
more formal than the pleats of a skirt
as its hem dusts a dim corridor. It sets.
It makes creases I’ll never press out. READ MORE >
The Klondike by Zach Worton
The Klondike is Zach Worton’s comic book (320pp, b&w, on sale now at Drawn & Quarterly’s website) about the Yukon gold rush. It’s historical fiction about a fascinating period of expansion, and it’s well researched. In an afterword, Worton talks about finding the right way to tell the story, which he figures to be about 80% accurate, and then lists a detailed bibliography for further reading. I’m interested in the way comics deliver narrative differently from prose, so I found the author’s note to be particularly interesting. The challenges are not disimilar.
The first third of the book sets up all the characters and their objectives. These are in relatively short chapters. Because there are so many distinct people, I immediately thought that the book was going to be an encyclopedic look at separate historical figures, but before long Worton started to intertwine their stories. It was smart to establish things this way, because there are so many actors in the book. It’s like a Shakespearean history, in that it’s very easy to get lost with all the who’s-who. READ MORE >
3 Comments
June 21st, 2011 / 2:07 pm
June 21st, 2011 / 2:07 pm
Well that’s interesting: Poets Athletic Club
I will send Chris Toll's book to the first commenter to name this player.
What’s in a name? From the outside, the Poet’s Athletic Club on North Avenue in Baltimore looks like it might be a bar. I’ve never been inside it. One time me and Steph called to see what the deal was. Apparently it’s a philanthropy club for people who went to Poets High School. There isn’t poetry happening, but I’m thinking there might be shuffleboard. There is a positive but racist review of it at Yelp.
After a lot of social searching, the softball team I’m playing on this year decided to co-opt the name for our team. We feature writer bodies, so Poets Athletic Club works well. We also considered “Ballers,” “Aristotle’s Poetics,” “Phat Pitches,” and “Nuts and Berries.”
Other teams in the league are, “We’d Hit That,” “Butt Sweat and Tears,” “Multiple Scoregasms” and “Smack that Pitch Up.” Names that are funny but aren’t vile include “Jean-Claude Grand Slam” and — no, that’s the only one. There are two teams named “Saved by the Balls” and two named “Don’t Come on Our Bases” and three named “Master Batters.” There is only one “Top of the 6th Bottom of the 9th.” There are over 200 teams in the league. I’ll let you know how we do.
Go! Team. Bring on the Major Leagues. Boring Triple Play (for Sasha Fletcher). Best baseball catches of the world. Braves go 13-0 in 82. The Brothers K. She’s 9. Ambidextrous pitcher has 6-fingered glove. Mike Schmidt retires crying. Cap’n Jazz. This stupid thing. This amazing thing. Spaceman Bill Lee. Tinker to Evers to Chance. Merkle’s Boner. OK, the bird one. Prince and Cecil. All the Stars Came Out That Night. The poop one. Steve Bartman (fuckn Cubs fans). Mays. Jones. Softball.
Chris Toll, The Disinformation Phase
Video by Stephanie Barber
Book by Chris Toll
Pre-orders close this weekend. Order now for advance discount and a chance to win books by CAConrad, Heather Christle and M. Magnus. Chances of winning are high right now.
“I do believe Hell could be driven from the heart with Chris Toll’s amazing new book.”
CAConrad, author of The Book of Frank
“…these poems are tenderly repossessing the ineffable and the commonplace.”
Heather Christle, author of The Trees The Trees
“The Disinformation Phase is conspiracy theory in poetic practice.”
M. Magnus, author of Verb Sap
