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.
New from Fence Books
Exciting news from Fence:
1. Fence Books has four new titles either out or imminently out. Please visit our new titles page to see them, read a little of them, buy them. If you want to buy all of them at once, you will get a great deal on that ($13 off plus free shipping in the US).
2. HOLIDAY DEALS. Really great options for pleasing your friends with gifts. Giant discounts on: Brandon Downing’s imminent Lake Antiquity; the accurately titled anthology Not for Mothers Only: Contemporary Poems on Child-Getting and Child-Rearing; the shrinkwrapped A Best of Fence: The First Nine Years, Vols 1 & 2; and the aforementioned ALL FOUR NEW FENCE BOOKS BOOKS.
3. Fence Books is delighted to announce the winner of the 2010 Fence Modern Poets Series, selected by Joyelle McSweeney from an excellent bunch of finalists: a self-titled manuscript by Nick Demske, to be published in the fall of 2010.
Nick Demske lives in Racine, Wisconsin, and works there at the Racine Public Library. He curates the BONK! performance series in Racine and is the editor of the online forum boo: a journal of terrific things. Visit Nick at nickipoo.wordpress.com.
The finalists were:
Aquarium, Jon Woodward of Brighton, MA
Blutopic, Shane Book of San Francisco, CA
Cryptography for R. Lansberry, Robin Clarke of Pitttsburgh, PA
From Old Notebooks, Evan Lavender-Smith of Las Cruces, NM
I Saw A Theft Occur, Will Smiley of Cedar Rapids, IA
I Shall Love Death As Well, Brandon Shimoda of Seattle, WA
Negro League Baseball, Harmony Holiday of New York, NY
Palm Trees, Nick Twemlow of Iowa City, IA
Puberty, Michael Thomas Taren of Hanover, PA
Symphony No. 2, Emily Gropp of Pittsburgh, PA
The Accordion Repertoire, Franklin Bruno of New York, NY
The getting rid of that which cannot be done without, Anthony Madrid of Chicago, IL
Whale in the Woods, Blueberry Elizabeth Morningsnow of Iowa City, IA
Blake Butler—
Can I discern the whole premise of your story in the first sentence? Good, then I won’t have to read it.
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Heather Christle Week (1): The Fledgling Crocus
This week to help clean up the blood of last week’s mean, we offer you in tidings the wonderful and radical brain of Heather Christle, whose first full length book of poems, The Difficult Farm, has just been released from Octopus Books. Those familiar with Heather’s hallucination-within-hallucination language, where life is a constantly updating gift box, if one where objects are suddenly not the things they’ve always been and bullets can learn to seek your head, will know that this new book is one to wear, one to sneak into local churches and stick into the pew backs with the hymnals. Beyond all that, it’s actually fun! Fun poetry, smart poetry, language in tricky tongues: Heather brings it all. So, for your pleasure, here is a poem in offering, and below that, some extra info on the book’s release. Each day this week we’ll have another.
THE FLEDGLING CROCUS
Soon when I look out the window
there will be light, nothing but.
In Hanover they’ve detected a weakness.
Thanks a lot, Hanover. This house
is 55 degrees Fahrenheit and frankly
growing colder. Maybe you have
noticed how the saucers of milk
are considering icicles, I think
for the very first time. Who can
resist the call of the inchworm?
Do not even try. Get down
on the floor and get as lucky
as you’d like. Today is the
Holiday of Ill-Begotten Goods.
I stole my pen I stole my land tract.
I am living on someone else’s principles.
Hanover, we have greatness
in abundance, we have shivers,
we have fleas. Nest after nest
is abandoned and months from now
when bombed-out children decide
to talk they will each start by reciting
My mother’s gorgeous hair…
It is all there. In the short books
of the future. What is here, in this
room, is a small lamp and a vase
that needs changing. Is cubic
space interfered with by hi,
my human form. And there are
other rooms with other forms,
there is a future not prone
to contain me. I am the hundred
and third last telegram. I am sent
with a small degree of urgency stop
please retrieve me from the historic
Empress Hotel. Hanover, let’s say
that reading is like grave-rubbing
and the charcoal is your eyes.
Let’s say all the things to each other
as if we were two friends chatting
while waiting for the bus. And night
arrives but the bus does not, and a frost
comes on with a mind to disrupt
the fledgling crocus. What can
we spooks do but say thank you—
for our coins and for our progress,
for the kind genetic mutation
that dressed us all those years ago
in warm yet lightweight fur.
Rad no? The book in full is just as magic page by page. During Heather Christle Week, Heather is offering some kind bonus offers at her blog for those who buy the book, including Nor By Press letterpressed broadsides of “Barnstormer,” a poem from The Difficult Farm.
Blake Butler—
Reup: an excellent 2002 interview with Ben Marcus at Powell’s.
Dave: Language is central to the novel, the lack of it or the forms it can take. And there’s such a blur between food and language, so much confusion between those two.
Marcus: It’s one of those deep concepts that drives me as a writer. It’s constantly coming out of me. I’m always stuffing cloth in a character’s mouth. I’m always trying to mythologize the mouth, to make language animated so you can see it coming out of people’s heads, destroying objects. It’s provocative to me to look at the body and what the body does as a force of nature. Take the attributes and turn the volume up on them just a tiny bit, or maybe spray them with some revealing jelly so you see a little more than what might be there. In the lie you’re telling there might be some little parable, some revelation of what is real.
I feel so drawn to those notions and metaphors that I feel I can’t write about them any more. It takes three sentences for me before I start writing about cloth. It’s like a fingerprint. So I’ve set a rule for myself that the next book can have no wind, no references to weather, no cloth.
Adam Robison & Other Poems
Adam Robinson’s debut tome of poems, Adam Robison and Other Poems, is not only my favorite title of the year, but is also a book I have been waiting to hold in my hands with great anticipation for quite some time, as a friend, yes, but more so in language glee. Adam can truly speak it in a way I have never heard anyone else speak. This is going to be one to drink milk in bed with, I assure you. Or beer, if you do that sort of thing.
The above photo is not the actual cover, which I assure you will be a thing to hornily behold.
You can preorder the book here from Narrow House.
You can read a poem from the book that I published at Lamination Colony, I’m going to have SEX with these people.
And as a final bonus teaser, here’s Adam reading a poem that may or may not be in the book, but that at least could hold its own head to head against a plant and my fist, unblinking:
Blake Butler—
Gigantic has posted a Halloween web special which, among other things, includes a conversation with Brian Evenson regarding horror films and his work.
Bye Mean Week
That’s that. I had fun a little. People are crazy. Sometimes there are ideas. Thanks for playing.
This weekend is Halloween. Eat some candy? Get drunk if you have to. Wear a costume? I’m thinking of going as William Burroughs, if I go. Might need a fedora and some glasses and come stains and cat hair on a suit, that’s all. What will you be?
This weekend I am reading Thomas Bernhard’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew, which just came out in a new version from Vintage. It feels nice in another, Bernhardian kind of way.
I am also reading Heather Christle’s The Difficult Farm, which also just came out, and which we will run excerpts from and love for all next week. After Mean Week, comes Heather Christle Week. I think it will serve as a fine rainbow.
Another announcement is forthcoming. In the meantime, take your blood around, install a doorstop, and enjoy.
Blake Butler—
2009/10/29 at 12:28pm i feel offended by this, this seems wrong and counter-productive
2009/10/29 at 12:38pm man this post is so dumb, i am so done with this site
2009/10/29 at 12:41pm i hate all of you i am never coming back here again
2009/10/29 at 12:43pm what does this mean? you are such a douchebag i can’t even believe it
2009/10/29 at 12:55pm i saw her read one time, it was OK, i was kind of bored, i like her book it’s OK
2009/10/30 at 2:38pm lol
2009/10/30 at 2:38pm this is stupid, boring
2009/10/31 at 8:38am i am never coming back here again
2009/10/31 at 9:38am this is dumb, why are all of you so dumb
Varieties of Contempt (a guest response from Christian Lorentzen to JC)
Christian Lorentzen sends word post-occasion of Jimmy’s hipster post; via “Varieties of Contempt”:
Would I accept several thousand dollars in exchange for shooting
myself in the kneecap? Yes, and when the bald man asks for my head on
a stake, hand it to him. He didn’t earn his vulgarity, so we had to
mark him a B+. You can blame the 70s, but it was really the 60s. Much
besides your life depends on exhibiting your best behavior in that
brothel. I myself prefer polite mediocrity to rude talent, but there
are plenty of nice restaurants in this city. He’s not a great chef,
he’s a good chef who shined a great chef’s shoes for years. What’s
funny is when they release those studies that show they are reading
less. Wasn’t the first thing we learned in school the fact that
they’re mostly a silly bunch of guys? He must be stopped before I get
slapped with a health-code violation. Mother, may I have a second can
of soda today? No, it will rot your syntax. I feel lonely when I look
in the mirror but not as lonely as I feel when you are here, so just
stretch your toes into the sea. If it demonstrates form, some people
will take an axe to it. Style is the ultimate weapon, and if you can
combine it with authenticity, you’ve got a great scam going. Welcome
to my femininity, and let me tell you about the dental plan. Two
Californians walk into a bar, and a Mississippian tells them their
problem is that they didn’t first love apple pie. I construct
narrative arks, that’s what I do. The crucial hour begins at three in
the morning. He failed to turn his neck as they were coming out of the
shade, so now they’re stuck with each other. I’m sorry about your
baby. The scandal will be good for your health. Look forward to a
cleansing effect. I feel unable to connect with it, so let’s just play
it up really big and make it sell. Hold the center or it will hold
you. Summer’s surprise was a feeling of generalized hatred, like a man
standing over you and threatening your life, or someone who thanks you
for your attention and cites it as a valuable service to the
community. I called it nihilism, and he called it several forms of
negation. You like to say it’s complicated, but actually it’s simple
to the point of crudity. It’s all right, but I wish it was as big as
my ego, which will now take off his shirt. That winter, the worst ever,
all the snowflakes were identical. I gave myself to you but never got
a receipt. Now for the worst moment of your career. Go away, go away.