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.

NYers: this Thursday, 7 PM at Littlefield NYC, the Post Apocalypse Survival Party feat Survival Panelists: Andrew W.K., Tony O’Neill, Matt McCarthy, and a bunch of other craze. The panel is free with electronic RVSP (see website), and afterwards is a party open to the public. Makes me wish I had the NY blood.

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Ruth Lilly Fellows

11_2009_CoverThis month’s issue of Poetry features a buncha dudes/dudettes who won the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, which if you are like me and had no fuckclue what that means it means they got paid $15 grand for being writers. Awesome, right? People should get money for making words (truly). Let’s look at some of these fifteen-thousand dollar words, no?

Sifting in the Afternoon
by Malachi Black

Some people might describe this room as spare:
a bedside table and an ashtray and an antique

chair; a mattress and a coffee mug;
an unwashed cotton blanket and a rug

my mother used to own. I used to have
a phone. I used to have another

room, a bigger broom, a wetter sponge.
I used to water my bouquet

of paper clips and empty pens, of things
I thought I’d want to say if given chance;

but now, to live, to sit somehow, to watch
a particle of thought dote on the dust

and dwindle in a little grid of shadow
on the sunset’s patchy rust seems like enough.

Oh, whoops. Seriously?

How did that blank piece of regurgitated dog anal win the moneys? Surely there are kids in 8th grade writing more interesting pap than that, yeah?

Hold on, let’s take a little look at old Malachi (pen name?)’s bio:

Malachi Black is literary editor of the New York Quarterly and a James A. Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. His work appears widely.

Oh, gotcha.

Excuse me, I was going to write a bunch more about these people, but now I have to take a blood dump, and there are plenty of sitcoms already on TV.

Thanks for killing America a little bit harder, Poetry Magazine.

Sometimes I kinda miss Foetry.

(P.S. If anybody wants to write up a close reading of this poem, or any of the other Ruth Lilly pieces in Poetry, please send it over and we’ll probably run it.)

Behind the Scenes / 65 Comments
November 16th, 2009 / 12:32 pm

New Love Stories Magazine is tight

lovestoriesI would like to begin a bounty pool available to the first person who publishes a story in New Love Stories Magazine, the only stipulation being the story also include baby destruction. I’m throwing in a hundred, any others who are interested in joining the prize pool, please announce. First to publication wins the promised pool, in addition to my amazement and the beauty of the light.

I have to say, I love the submission guidelines here:

For women over the age of twenty. It is designed to invoke in the reader a wide range of emotions relating to love and romance. Each issue will contain a well rounded mix of stories of loving female/male relationships that will stimulate the readers� imagination. Adult women of all ages will relate to and live vicariously through the escapades of the female lead in each story. Also included in each issue will be a topical selection of cartoons and poetry.

Is it a weird testament to the freakshow that is writing submissions that, according to Duotrope, people who submitted to New Love Stories also submitted to: StoryQuarterly, The Battered Suitcase, Bartleby-Snopes, The McCroskey Memorial Internet Playhouse, 42 Magazine, First Edition, Stone’s Throw Magazine, Futurismic, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review

Duotrope should start featuring spreads of writers’ mailing desks and mailboxes, I would look at that.

Damn people be crazy as fuck.

Uncategorized / 26 Comments
November 15th, 2009 / 5:28 pm

Nice interviews with Laura van den Berg on the event of her debut What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us live now @lunapark and @thefastertimes.

Antichrist is by far the best and most well made film I’ve seen in at least a couple years.

antichrist1

If you’ve got the balls to be shitting on everything, you should likely have the balls to be doing something magical.

Bonus Reines: from The Holloway Series in Poetry

[Ariana begins around minute 16, if you want to skip the intro.]

Author Spotlight / 11 Comments
November 13th, 2009 / 4:10 pm

I almost bought China Miéville’s The City in the City last night, but then I put it back and bought Foucault’s History of Madness (5x the book for the same price). It seems hard to know what sci-fi books are actually heavyhitters, and not just things to maybe replace a movie. The Miéville seems a good fit (I’ll wait for the paperback), but I’m wondering what sci-fi labeled books transcend the trappings and are just great books, in both language and idea? I’ve dabbled a good bit but never really found that much and know I’m missing a lot. I tried Dhalgren years ago and wasn’t that killed. Steve Erickson seems to be a transcender, if so much that he’s hardly even in the genre anymore. What you got? Don’t say Dick.

Soft Focus: Will Oldham

Ian Svenonius is a bonkersbaby. So is Mr. Prince. Here they go. (Full archives of Soft Focus here.)

Web Hype / 8 Comments
November 12th, 2009 / 5:30 pm

What is the most played song in your iTunes, how many plays.