Blake Butler

http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/
Blake Butler lives in Atlanta. His third book, There Is No Year, is forthcoming April 2011 from Harper Perennial.
http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/
Blake Butler lives in Atlanta. His third book, There Is No Year, is forthcoming April 2011 from Harper Perennial.
Scare myself, change the terms, rearrange the rules, let recklessness overtake me, see if I can outrun habit, make a friend of chaos.
My Romance, pg 25
Extra bonus righteousness for your Captain-buck quote:
Yes, yes, yes, yes, writers, fucking writers, fucking rewriters, fucking usurpers, fucking assassins. Skip it, names. I am sick of it, names. Me, I will see you in the lobby.
My Romance, pg 141
I am glad I am not out being a jerk off.
I am glad I stayed inside to read this lecture on sentences, originally delivered by Gary Lutz at Columbia, and now reprinted in the new issue of the Believer (which also has an interview with Gordon Lish, & from the preview on the site, it looks really funny and righteous). Lish is also on the cover. Believe that.
This lecture by Gary Lutz is probably the most apt deconstruction of language in sentences and how a certain breed of languaged sentences are made. I would show this lecture to people who asked why their story about the Russian expatriate looking for his father wasn’t quite enough just on story alone even though everyone in the boardroom was crying.
As I read the lecture I kept highlighting pieces when I thought ‘this would be a good part to quote when I blog about this lecture,’ though every time I read a new graph, I kept deciding to highlight that one, because every line in the lecture is right on the $$$. But we already knew that.
Jimmy Chen contains Asian multitudes
I think in future litmus tests of potential significant others, one could do well by presenting to them a bibliography of Jimmy Chen, inclusive not only of his fiction, but his blogging, his persona, his internet collage. Then watch their face. If they aren’t with it, they are worthless. Send them crying to their moms.
Knowing Jimmy Chen exists in the world has on more than one occasion made me feel better about my life, and about writing. This is strange, likely, as I have never met Jimmy, never even Gmail chatted with him, or had much direct correspondence with him outside of brief emails and blog comment banter. And yet in most every instance of him I can remember, I have come to believe that if more writers were like Jimmy Chen, this whole game would be so much better off.
There are lots of ways I could define this sweeping statement, but rather than explain why he is a good person (which I believe he is), or positive for the mind, or just plain goddamn funny, I’d rather look at what he does more concretely, and in the mind of how what Jimmy does can be used as a model or a mindset worth trying to strive for.
New NOÖ for 09, ladies n gentz. Get at it:
Welcome to 2009. To celebrate, NOÖ [9] is now out: noojournal.com. New features: Ryan Call as Associate Editor, handkerchiefs, reviews, a blog (noojournal.blogspot.com), and sleep sounds.
The new issue features prose, poems, art, and otherwise from: Nick Antosca, Deborah Blakely, Vic Cavalli, John Casey, Jimmy Chen, Christopher Cheney, Tanya Chernov, Jack Christian, Bryan Coffelt, Brooklyn Copeland, Michael DeForge, Gabe Durham, Rachel B. Glaser, Evelyn Hampton, Kyle Hemmings, Michael Hsiung Grace Jamison, Mike Jauchen, Greg Lytle, Erika Mikkalo,, Patricia Parkinson, Adam Peterson, Ashley Reaks, Bradley Sands, Peter Jay Shippy, Randy Thurman, Jono Tosch, and Rebecca Volinsky.
Thanks for reading. Print copies coming in ~3 weeks. Let us know if there’s any good spot near you to distribute free literature.
Also be sure to check out Magic Helicopter Press (http://www.magichelicopterpress.com). There are chapbooks from Mary Miller and Benjamin Buchholz available.
We’re going to be sharing a table at AWP Chicago in February with Publishing Genius and Lamination Colony. We’ll have an RC helicopter. Literature of shenanigans. Maybe we’ll see you there.
Memorious 11 is now out and packed with words:
This special fifth anniversary issue of Memorious features cover art by Dorothea Van Camp, poetry and prose from Kevin Prufer, G. C. Waldrep, Kelle Groom, Mary Biddinger, Allan Reeder, and B. J. Hollars, as well as a conversation between Alexander Chee and Sigrid Nunez, an interview with Larissa Szporluck, and a rich collection of gifted emerging poets: Brett Defries, Robin Ekiss, Leslie Harrison, Todd Hearon, Gregory Lawless, Matt W. Miller, Darren Morris, Melissa Range, Rita Mae Reese, and Rachel Richardson. Many of these poets have books on the way, and the rest of them are poets whose books we are sure to see in the near future.
Whatchu know about dat?
Doseone is a true original among the rap shits. Pretty much any record he touches (from cLOUDDEAD to his solo discography to 6-piece band Subtle), dude is going to be doing new things not only with the music he is rapping (or singing) over, but with the words he puts on top of it. Where a lot of rap is made of repetitions and nonsense, Doseone invents science and languageisms that are often just as new as the words coming out on Diagram or Fence or wherever you wanna talk about.
I tried to do this interview for the Believer but couldn’t get a hold of my man. Anyway, you can read the interview now fully online, and it is a fun weird one, as would be expected of a man who wears suits made out of plastic spoons and writes huge poetry manuals to accompany his most recent project’s trilogy of albums (all of which are really good and worth checking out, if you like experimental but still catchy music):
Earlier this week there was a giveaway for Diana George’s DISCIPLINES offered to readers and commenters on the new issue of Lamination Colony.
From among them (though there were quite a few that were really smart and interesting), Chris Higgs’s response to Peter Davis’s 4 Poems, as it caught something I think very subtle in the work and drew it out in a way that to me seemed right on:
I would like to coin a neologism for what Peter Davis is doing in his contribution, 4 Poems. The neologism is: NextGen MetaPoetry.
It’s sorta like metafiction, except that it’s poetry. And it’s next generation because instead of the old generation of metatextual self-referencing, he uses the meta device as the entire content of the piece.
This is a brilliant example of what Gertrude Stein meant when she noted, “There is no There there.” You see, there is no poem in Peter Davis’s poems. There is only the metatextual self-referencing. They are “poems” about writing poems, but they aren’t poems themselves. That’s what makes it NexGen (and in my opinion badass): the act of noticing the act of writing is old hat if that act is in service of something greater – but in Davis’s “poems” the act is the end, not the means to anything.
It is the ultimate form of communication because it cuts through all fakeness, all language trickery, all costuming, all putting on makeup and trying to impress everybody at the party with witty metaphors and unlikely similes. These “poems” are like the most pure phone conversation you’ve ever had with anyone. You know what I’m talking about, when you cut the crap and say what’s really on your mind without hiding behind anything.
That’s how Peter Davis’s NextGen MetaPoetry strikes me. & to be honest, I find it delightful and refreshing. There, I said it.
Chris will get a copy of the aforementioned DISCIPLINES from Noemi Press. (Chris please drop me a line with your address so I can mail it out.)
Thanks to all who commented and took time to read, and those who continue to do so. :)
Dang. SPD is having a 75% off sale. I am about to call the bank and ask for a loan. ‘For what?’ ‘For more books’ ‘I thought you had books.’ ‘I have books.’ ‘Let’s do it up!’
from The Cupboard:
The Cupboard is pleased to announce its next volume:
A New Map of America
by
Louis Streitmatter
Edited by James Brubaker
“Perhaps soon, you will begin to hate the cartographer who overexplains his maps…”
The Cupboard
Volume Two
We’ve had to deal with some production issues on this volume, but it should be back from the printer in January and will be immediately shipped. In the interim, you can find out more here and pre-order the volume on our subscription page.
We publish 4 volumes a year, and they can be yours for $15. Subscribe here.
You can also choose to order volumes individually for $5.
*STILL AVAILABLE*
We still have copies of Jesse Ball’s Parables & Lies available and could certainly get them shipped by your holiday of choice if you’d like. Subscriptions to The Cupboard make great gifts (we presume).
Thank you again for your support and your patience.
Happy holidays,
THE CUPBOARD
I have an extra copy of Diana George’s DISCIPLINES, an amazing fiction chapbook from Noemi Press, who continues to do more and more amazing things.
I read this chapbook and couldn’t shake the verbiage from my head, still haven’t really. It is in the Lish-mind (the chapbook has a Gary Lutz blurb), and is about rooms and weird ritualistic behavior, and modes of study. The stories are kind of hard to describe, but they are amazing, have appeared in 3rd Bed and Denver Quarterly etc. A really amazing little book that reminds me in certain ways of Evenson’s ‘The Wavering Knife’ and maybe some Ben Marcus thrown in there, but really of a whole new mode all its own.
To win the chapbook all you have to do is read the new issue of Lamination Colony, pick one piece on the site, and say something about it in the comments here. A response, a review, a comment (though more than ‘I liked this.’ please, show yr work), something that shows you thought about the piece in some way. A response can be a few words or a longer thought or words it jarred from you in another mode, whatever you want. Don’t forget to include which you are responding to.
I will choose a winner Friday. The winner will get the Diana George chapbook. The author whose piece is reviewed by the winner will receive a gift too, also from Noemi Press: Joanna Howard’s In the Colorless Round, which is an insanely cool large-format chapbook of connected prose and drawings by Rikki Ducornet.
While you are thinking, go check out the rest of the work from Noemi Press. They are putting out important texts worthy of vast attention.