HTMLGIANT » Blake Butler

RIP Mike Kelley (1954–2012)

Blake Butler — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:03:03 +0000

Melissa Broder’s Meat Heart

Blake Butler — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:54:28 +0000

Available for preorder today! Melissa! Melissa!

Don’t believe Melissa Broder when she writes, “I’m afraid / to say anything with heart.” This book is not afraid, as she proves right away and on every page, and that’s why we needed her to make it. A little dark, a little damaged, a little deranged, but definitely not afraid—and never short on the titular organ, which also acts as mouth and mind. The whole book pumps, and I swear some of what’s coming in and out are flashes of light that you can read it by.
Mark Bibbins, author of The Dance of No Hard Feelings

The speaker in Meat Heart is either an old-world witch or a contemporary warlock. That is to say, this speaker-being gallops through time making thrilling observations. There is a focus on meat, blood and food. The poems tear through the reader with a reassuring giggle, yet remain ominous. Broder writes, “I find a thighbone in his mattress / and think of friends gone missing.” She also writers “G-d loves my hair,” so we are reminded not to be overly frightened. To read Meat Heart is to consume, perish, murder, glitter, and prophesize. To say that Broder is fearless is not saying enough.
Natalie Lyalin, author of Pink and Hot Pink Habitat

With her hallmark wit and brilliance, Melissa Broder has followed up her heralded When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother with Meat Heart, a book of poems that is at once apocalyptic, full of sorrow, and packed with images crystalline in their beauty and truth. In these poems, Broder takes us through a world that is both alien and familiar to the world that we already know, a wild landscape where there is “ash fish / and elemental octopi,” where “cornhusk filaments / Still jacket tongues,” and where in a place with “200 flavors of panic/the worst is seeing with no eyes.” All of these freakish things to help us confront the bald fact that we are all just a series of meat hearts ourselves. It is here that Broder shows her generosity as a poet, because she makes us a new world in these poems where we go beyond meat—a world where Broder tells us, “Somewhere I stopped looking for magic.” I guess she found all she needed; this book is full of magic.
Dorothea Lasky, author of Thunderbird

RIP

Blake Butler — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:20:34 +0000

[via Vanessa Place's facebook]

Gertrude Stein Bro Reaction Triptych

Blake Butler — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:11:51 +0000

see more bros: I Talked Books to Bros on Chatroulette

Tao Lin & Giancarlo DiTrapano read “Andrew”

Blake Butler — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:26:25 +0000

Read “Andrew”: A Dialogue of Texts in the Year of Drugs and Kindness

Think Musics

Blake Butler — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:50:17 +0000

Most compelling and/or fucked up sounding contemporary classical compositions, anyone? I need some space.

Shitty emails trying to solicit posts on a blog

Blake Butler — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:26:36 +0000

I keep getting these emails from people run by bots or corporate whoevers trying to “place” an article here, I have no idea how these things get shat into the world, why there is a world at all for it to be shitted into, can you look at this email and think about it for me and think about it for me, who writes this, why they write this and sends it out hoping for what, why people are alive, what could come of this in any fashion anywhere and online, how this is different from any other kind of writing:

	from	Ginny Grimsley newsandexperts2@newsandexperts.com
reply-to		ginny@newsandexperts.com
to		blake@htmlgiant.com
date		Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 7:27 PM
subject		Article: Romance of Traveling Gone

Hi -

If you would like to run the below article, please feel free to do so. I am able to provide images if you would like some to accompany it.

If you’re interested in interviewing Henry Biernacki for a feature/Q&A or having him write an exclusive article for you, let me know and I’ll gladly work out details.

Thanks,
Ginny

Ginny Grimsley
National Print Campaign Manager
News and Experts
3748 Turman Loop #101
Wesley Chapel, FL 33544
Tel: 727-443-7115, Extension 207
www.newsandexperts.com

Is the Romance of Traveling Gone?
Not to World Explorer and Author Henry Biernacki

Expensive air fares for cramped planes, irritating baggage fees and exhaustingly long security lines – traveling isn’t what it used to be in that bygone era when boarding a plane for exotic destinations held the imagination. But world traveler and writer Henry Biernacki says travel doesn’t have to be a trauma – it just depends on how you approach the journey.

For Biernacki, a luxury airline captain who has explored the world on meager means and reaped a lifetime of experience, it truly is about the journey as much as the destination. Biernacki is the author of the recently released novel No More Heroes (www.theglobalhenry.com), which explores the inner journey of a young man who finds deeper joy in life, spiritual growth and love as he crosses borders.

“Travel allows people to live with intensity, follow their interests and enjoy the fleeting moments of each passing day spent with people they care about,” says Biernacki. “People are genuinely attracted to unknown parts and far off countries. Who cares about being lost? That is where you find the best experiences.”

Biernacki has been traveling with his rucksack since he was 17 and boarded a Greyhound bus for a journey from Colorado to Mexico. In 1997, he traveled around the world, sleeping in the streets and living amongst the humblest people, spending a scant $3,700 to circle the globe. On that journey, though, he experienced one of the most significant moments of his life: meeting Mother Teresa just three days before her death.

He has traveled to 120 countries, including such difficult locales as North Korea, never staying in anything more luxurious than a guest house and carrying only a small rucksack and a few plastic zipper bags as luggage.

Surprisingly, it is Biernacki’s profession that gives him such an unusual perspective on travel: He’s an airline captain for Virgin America Airlines, an airline most travelers associate with the height of luxury.

His novel explores the inner journey of Niklas, a man searching for deeper meaning in his life when a series of unexpected friendships sends him to an exotic and difficult destination. The novel has been praised for its rich detail and sensitive exploration of the innately human need to connect with others, no matter where they happen to be.

“Traveling makes people adapt to new situations and open their minds to new cultures and people in a way that can’t be achieved by staying with what is familiar,” Biernacki said. “It is because it’s uncomfortable, unusual and there are strange sights and new foods you’ve never seen before that it opens up your mind and your soul to others.”

So with holiday travel, vacation or business, Biernacki advises travelers to enjoy the unexpected. Doing that allows them to enjoy the journey and the destination equally.

About Henry Biernacki

Henry Biernacki has traveled to more than 120 countries and continues to travel as a pilot for Virgin American Airlines. A four-sport letterman in high school and a two-sport letterman in college, Biernacki holds a Bachelor of Arts in romance languages and international affairs. He lived in France, Germany, Taiwan, the West Indies and Mexico before settling in his current home in San Jose, California.

If you would no longer like to receive story ideas from me simply send an email to unsubscribe@emsincorporated.com and I will have you removed from my address book. Please allow 48 hours for your request to process through the system.

Sean Kilpatrick’s fuckscapes

Blake Butler — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:56:57 +0000

This is a book you need. Language reset. Guidebook.

“The violent, sexual zone of television and entertainment is made to saturate that safe-haven, the American Family. The result is a zone of violent ambience, a ‘fuckscape’: where every object or word can be made to do horrific acts. As when torturers use banal objects on its victims, it is the most banal objects that become the most horrific (and hilarious) in Sean Kilpatrick’s brilliant first book.” – Johannes Goransson, author of A New Quarantine Will Take My Place

“Pregnancy dream of poetry has this Sean Kilpatrick book by the fist. You learn to signal to others from the woken state, here, line-by-line. Do you have any extra money? Buy this book! If you have to skip lunch, buy THIS BOOK! “I held my breath so hard I ended up in the country.” Some poetry you read is forgotten, and never remembered. Some poetry, this poetry, Sean Kilpatrick’s poetry, is a manual for exciting the engine to throw you out of the vanquished pleasures. Here is your I.V. drip of sphinx’s blood.” – CAConrad, author of The Book of Frank

TAKE EAT

Writing

Blake Butler — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:56:38 +0000

What’s your favorite thing you’ve ever written, hmmm?

Steve Roggenbuck on Misspellings

Blake Butler — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:30:21 +0000