Mike Young is the author of Sprezzatura (poems), Look! Look! Feathers (stories), and We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (poems). He designs and publishes NOÖ Journal and runs Magic Helicopter Press. Visit his blog at http://mikeayoung.tumblr.com. He lives in Santa Fe, NM.
“… poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action …” — (from Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” an essay Carolyn Zaikowski showed me during discussion of Sandra Simonds’s “Poor Poetry Mothers” which Roxane posted earlier).
Do yourself a favor and add the unassuming goldmine of Writers No One Reads to your RSS feeds. An ongoing catalog compiled by the archivist genius behind A Journey Round My Skull, this blog showcases some real gems, such as A Life is Full of Holes, a book of tales by Moroccan storyteller Larbi Layachihe, transcribed and translated by Paul Bowles. The image to your left is Roland Topor’s out-of-print-and-crazy-expensive-on-Abebooks Stories and Drawings. Topor, if he’s known at all, is probably known for writing The Tenant, adapted into the Roman Polanski film-of-the-same-name. Look alive, y’all: these are the lists we’re all going to be on in 2124, and then someone is going to do a post on ħ吨米升克我的n吨 about us, and then the deadgods-of-2124 will comment being like “yeah i already know about them, here is a list of people _____ slept with and here are the brands of tissues she liked.”
At Luna Park, Nicholas Ripatrazone asks: What is the best single issue of any literary magazine? (via Travis Kurowski)
MacGyver, that sexy-bellied genie show, and the show about California highway cops with the weirdly lowercase i—all of these television shows ran 139 episodes. In 2010, I read 139 books. I mean, I think I did. Most chapbooks I didn’t include in this list, even really good ones, so there’s that. Also there’s always an also, so who knows? Here are 139 books I probably read this year and what I spontaneously remember of them. As a bonus, I am sometimes unexpectedly or tangentially “mean-ish” in my notes, so if you have an idea of me as being “unable to be mean,” maybe this will change your mind (probably not): READ MORE >
Frank Hinton has put together Metazen’s second ever Metazen Christmas E-Book. Full of weird Christmas stories from the weirdest and cuddliest, you can read this e-book on Christmas Day by making a small donation of your choice. Last year, Metazen’s Christmas e-book raised a few hundred dollars for an orphanage in Cambodia, and this year all donations will go to help micro-finance a small business through Kiva.
I’ve had the chance to read an advance version of the e-book, and it’s full of lovely, surprising work, everything from hydraulic orgasms to squirrel pie to crossbows to the real headaches of having your true love gift you a bunch of crazy shit. Definitely not your typical Christmas cheese, and definitely a worthy cause. Check it out.
What is the most exciting non-human creature in your novel? Mine is a capybara. If you say “dog” or “adorable dog” or “talking dog” then you are everything that’s wrong with contemporary literature.
“People always say, ‘Hang in there.’ And I went, ‘I never was out there, wherever there is. I’ve always been in there, I’ll always be in there.’ Wherever that is, I never have left.”
