Last day to submit your book to WONDER
Via Wonder:
Wonder is accepting manuscripts March 15 – May 15 for our first annual Wonder Book Prize, judged by Macgregor Card. We are accepting full-length manuscripts of any genre. The author of the selected manuscript will receive a $300 prize and publication.
Please send a cover letter, your manuscript and a $10 submission fee ($15 if you would like a final copy of the selected book). Please do not include your name in the manuscript. Each submission will be read blindly by the judge.
UDP x 25 = SPD -35
For the next three days (i.e. through Wednesday, December 17), 
Ugly Duckling Presse is offering five books for five dollars each
+ 6×6 #27 + FREE shipping:
Corina Copp, Pro Magenta / Be Met
The Debate Society, 15 Second Plays
Jeffrey Joe Nelson, Road of a Thousand Wonders
Jacqueline Waters, One Sleeps the Other Doesn’t
Sara Wintz, Walking Across a Field We Are Focused on at This Time Now
If you want to know how much I love these books, call me: (740) 501-3147 (if you forget it’s printed in Mall Witch)
Hint: they are somehow even as good as the books on Corina Copp’s (& Dana Ward’s & Tyrone Williams’ & Stacy Szymaszek’s & Blake Butler’s) SPD mixtape which are 35% off at SPD through January 15
Also you can subscribe and get everything (>25 titles) UDP publishes in 2013 for $150, or a membership for $50. And submit to EMERGENCY Index before the end of the year.
I can’t post this yet because no amount of books can displace Jenny Zhang’s “The Last Five Centuries Were Uneventful”
Noah Saterstrom is selling wastrels and other works, daily
I mean I think Blank Friday is a cute name butt I didn’t buy anything but did get a pretend trial of Amajohn Prine so my family could meet Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and I really wanted to use the free to-day shipping to buy Cruel Optimism so I could read it on the subway on the way to the reading in New York on Monday you should all impossibly come if you can’t but I will probably never buy a book from Amazon.com but I would buy a painting or/and drawing from Noah Saterstrom, who’s selling them for 10% off thru Sunday and for cheap til Emily Dickinson’s birthday. Email with details below.
One of a series of drawings for Kate Bernheimer’s next book
Lewis Freedman wrote a book called Catfish Po’ Boys and his mom told him not wolf (as told by Corina Copp) the same way Noah Saterstrom dreamed of not horse whose neighbor was “There is a Cleaved Trailer Inside a Large Catfish”: READ MORE >
Siglio: Sophie Calle, cancelled
Now it snows. Just got word from the best publisher, Siglio Press, that a book signing with Sophie Calle at 192 Books has been rescheduled for this Saturday (11-10) at 6 pm. RSVPs still recommended. If you haven’t gotten Calle’s The Address Book (or the Jess book, Siglio’s other new title; each disappeared swiftly at Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair) this is a chance. If you find yourself at the wonderful 192 Books, be sure to patronize the newly reopened Printed Matter across the street. More on all of this in the next version of this post.
$1000 off! UDP Full Moon Sale
Starting tomorrow, there are three days to get 70 Ugly Duckling Presse titles for $300. They are August 1, August 2, and August 3.
The books are (most to least recent): 1. Apart (Catherine Taylor) 2. Transfer Fat (Aase Berg) 3. On the Tracks of Wild Game (Tomaz Salamun) 4. Road of a Thousand Wonders (Jeffrey Joe Nelson) 5. Afterimage (Damon Krukowski) 6. Uselysses (Noel Black) 7. Slot (Jill Magi) 8. One Sleeps the Other Doesn’t (Jacqueline Waters) 9. The Hermit (Laura Solomon) 10. Cursivism (Will Hubbard) 11. neither wit nor gold (Ammiel Alcalay) 12. Applies to Oranges (Maureen Thorson) 13. And if You Don’t Go Crazy I’ll Meet You Here Tomorrow (Filip Marinovich) 14. The Return of the Native (Kate Colby) 15. Fire Wind (Yvan Yauri) 16. Gowanus Atropolis (Julian T. Brolaski) 17. 60 Textos (Sarah Riggs) 18. El Golpe Chileno (Julien Poirier) 19. This Time We Are Both (Clark Coolidge) 20. The History of Violets (Marosa di Giorgio) 21. Greensward (Cole Swensen) 22. Chinese Notebook (Demosthenes Agrafiotis) 23. Look Back, Look Ahead (Srecko Kosovel) 24. Geometries (Guillevic) 25. To Light Out (Karen Weiser) 26. Moving Blanket (Kostas Anagnopoulos) 27. Ten Walks / Two Talks (Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch) 28. G-Point Almanac: Passyunk Lost (Kevin Varrone) 29. Made-up Interviews With Imaginary Authors (Alex Stein) 30. What Do You Want (Marina Temkina) 31. Hello Failure (Kristen Kosmas) 32. Concertos (No Collective) 33. Malilenas (Garrett Kalleberg) 34. Escape From Combray (Rick Snyder) 35. Neighbor (Rachel Levitsky) 36. The Russian Version (Elena Fanailova) 37. A Plate of Chicken (Matthew Rohrer) 38. Notes on Conceptualisms (Vanessa Place & Robert Fitterman) 39. As it Turned Out (Dmitry Golynko) 40. The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza (Eugene Ostashevsky) 41. Poker (Tomaz Salamun) 42. Zero Readership (Filip Marinovich) 43. Dreaming Escape (Valentina Saracini) 44. Vertical Elegies (Sam Truitt) 45. Unbecoming Behavior (Kate Colby) 46. One of a Kind (Jack Micheline) 47. Sleep’s Powers (Jacqueline Risset) 48. Red Shifting (Aleksandr Skidan) 49. Complete Minimal Poems (Aram Saroyan) 50. A Different Practice (Fredrik Nyberg) 51. Blue and Red Things (Laura Solomon) 52. Ideals Clearance (Henry Parland) 53. Dear Body (Dan Machlin) 54. The Hot Garment of Love (Elizabeth Reddin) 55. The Drug of Art (Ivan Blatny) 56. Paper Children (Mariana Marin) 57. Carbon (Michael Ford) 58. The Final Nite (Steve Dalachinsky) 59. Best of My Love (Aaron Kiely) 60. After you, dearest language (Marisol Limon Martinez) 61. Iterature (Eugene Ostashevsky) 62. Chinese Sun (Arkadii Dragomoshchenko) 63. Selected Writings (Cedar Sigo) 64. Nets (Jen Bervin) 65. Bending Spoons (Charlie Foos)
That’s 65 trade titles (each of these is at least $10, most are more, at least one is $20…so that’s already a ~ 66.666% discount)
+ “the following five artist books and oversize editions” :
Dog Ear (Erica Baum) $25
Emergency Index 2011 (various) $40
0 to 9: The Complete Magazine (Acconci/Mayer) $40
Classifications of a Spit Stain (Ellie Ga) $25
The Theory of Everything, Abridged (Ben Luzzato) $40
Basically you’re saving ~ $1000
Here you go. (They take checks.)
EXPERIMENTS I SHOULD LIKE TRIED AT MY OWN DEATH
For 15 more minutes it is still the first day you could order Caryl Pagel’s first book, EXPERIMENTS I SHOULD LIKE TRIED AT MY OWN DEATH, from Factory Hollow Press, which brought you Caryl Pagel’s first chapbook, Visions, Crisis Apparitions, and Other Exceptional Experiences.
Ugly Duckling Presse + 1s
It’s 12 o’clock, I wish it were 11:59. (Who knows who wrote ~ that?) The sale is over but some of the books aren’t sold out. But so many are. So still go.
Until midnight, the discount code LEVITATE gets you *50% off* the *already reduced* price you always get for ordering any book directly from UDP.
So, for example, Corina Copp’s PRO MAGENTA / BE MET and Jacqueline Waters’ ONE SLEEPS THE OTHER DOESN’T will run you $10 $8 $4 and $15 $13 $6.50, respectively. Your total for both books, even with shipping, will be less than the list price of Waters’ book alone. Read from / about Copp’s chapbook there there, and hear to Waters read here.
Until midnight I’ll add 12 13 more eleventh hour pairs. Suggest things in the comments, on Facebook, at my window, to your neighbors. Of course you don’t need to buy two books, but you probably do.
Uljana Wolf’s FALSE FRIENDS (tr. Susan Bernofsky) + Lev Rubinstein’s THIRTY-FIVE NEW PAGES (tr. Philip Metres / Tatiana Tulchinsky) [Megan Burns, via Fakebook, suggests some Michael Ford with one's Rubinstein]
Aase Berg’s TRANSFER FAT (translated by Johannes Göransson) + Johannes Göransson / Joyelle McSweeney, DEFORMATION ZONE
Tomaž Šalamun’s ON THE TRACKS OF WILD GAME (tr. Sonja Kravanja)+ Laura Solomon’s THE HERMIT
Julian T. Brolaski’s GOWANUS ATROPOLIS + Karen Weiser’s TO LIGHT OUT
Filip Marinovich’s AND IF YOU DON’T GO CRAZY I’LL MEET YOU HERE TOMORROW + Julien Poirier’s EL GOLPE CHILEÑO
Kristen Kosmas’ HELLO FAILURE + Ellie Ga’s THREE ARCTIC BOOKLETS (save $37.50!)
David Cameron’s FLOWERS OF BAD* Rachel Levitsky’s NEIGHBOR + Christian Hawkey’s VENTRAKL [*distributed by SPD not UDP, so not eligible; Cameron's book is deserving of its own post; it will get it; you should get it, too]
M. Kasper’s OPEN-BOOK + Nancy Kuhl’s LITTLE WINTER THEATER
Trey Seger’s DEAR FAILURES + Noah Black’s USELYSSES
Gregg Biglieri’s LITTLE RICHARD THE SECOND + Clark Coolidge’s THIS TIME WE ARE BOTH
Vito Acconci / Bernadette Mayer, 0 TO 9: THE COMPLETE MAGAZINE + Robert Fitterman / Vanessa Place, NOTES ON CONCEPTUALISMS
Ammiel Alcalay’s NEITHER WIT NOR GOLD (FROM THEN) + Yván Yauri’s FIRE WIND (tr. Nicholas Rattner / Marta del Pozo)
+ PS, a thirteenth, UDP HOFers Jen Bervin & Eugene Ostashevsky
http://www.uglyducklingpresse.org/
LEVITATE
You can still float. UDP titles are carried by Flying Object and all the best bookstores, which are carried by you.
Two Serious Ladies
Lauren Spohrer, associate editor of NOON, has just launched Two Serious Ladies which has Diana Hamilton and Catherine Lacey (or Roxane Gay and Heidi Julavits), for example.
Rachel B. Glaser was the first to tell me about Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies; the first thing I read in Lauren Spohrer’s Two Serious Ladies was by Lesley Yalen. Today’s Lesley’s birthday and tonight Rachel and Lauren Spohrer and Lawrence Giffin and Diane Williams are going to read at Flying Object. You should arrive sharply at 8.
Lauren Spohrer wrote Happy Birthday and Natalie Lyalin published it. That’s serious. I’ve never met Lauren Spohrer but she’ll be here any minute I just met Lauren Spohrer and Lawrence Giffin who wrote “It is now 01:23:34 AM on October 28, 2011.” in Ex Tempore (Troll Thread)
Lauren Spohrer and Lawrence Giffin wrote a dos-a-dos chapbook from Agnes Fox Press, Just Kids. It’s just out but it just won the National Book Award. Here are two serious pictures of Lesley Yalen holding Just Kids, and one just kids one:
WHOASHIPPING
is the code you can use until midnight today to get free shipping on Tyoyeu. What is Tyoyeu? “Tyoyeu by Seths in Poetry.” is the Book of 2007-2011. You can get it today, truly at cost, because shipping its 466 pages will cost you nothing. Keep in mind: ”Our manufacturing process precedes shipping.” (Know too: 2012 not included.) Two copies of Tyoyeu came in the mail today having been shipped expediently, with extra not free shipping. When you have Tyoyeu you will see who needs WHOASHIPPING. Also today: two copies of What Is Amazing arrived, delivered on foot by the author. The author is a fan of Tyoyeu. Fans of the author are fans of what is amazing. Now I’m going to play basketball with Rachel B. Glaser and John Maradik and then I’m going to eat the rest of this pizza
and watch basketball with Emily Pettit while typing words from the six books pictured (Berlin Stories by Robert Walser translated by Susan Bernofsky, TYOYEU by Seths, What Is Amazing by Heather Christle, TYOYEU by Seths, What Is Amazing by Heather Christle, and Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch with a cover by Maira Kalman) in the comments. Whoever is the first to BOTH take a picture of themselves reading both Tyoyeu and What Is Amazing AND correctly match all the words with the correct book (in the comments), that person will receive (either via expedited shipping or delivered on foot by the author of this post) six machines:
- the only copy of a book written just for that person (either OUR THE ROBERT WALSER or NANCY KÖF’S BÖK MADE OUT OF WORDS™ or RODNEY GRAHAM’S MACHINE FOR READING LENZ)
- Matvei Yankelevich’s Bending at the Elbow (trade edition, pictured below)
- Taryn Andrews’ Clouds Can Trees
- Lesley Yalen‘s The Beginning In (watch Lesley read on a Seth’s Divine Magnet)
- Just Kids by Lawrence Giffin and Lauren Spohrer
- This Is What We Are Up Against by Ben Hersey, who is what what is and will be touring with Heather Christle in March and April.
The Co-ntinental Review
"The divine magnet is in you, and my magnet responds. Which is the biggest? A foolish question--they are One." - Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne, November, 1851, Pittsfield. (via Seth Landman's Divine Magnet)
Co-rrection (“so Roithamer”) via the kindly Jordan Stempleman: he co-edits The Continental Review (see post below) with Nicholas Manning, who founded it. Since I can’t correct the post below (because of the video, who knows) and I can’t comment I’m gonna risk redundancy and offer another overview with direct links below a list of some other places that followed in the footsteps of the original video poetry magazine of the future, as it were. (I’m not actually sure TCR was technically the first, if I remember it seems Rabbit Light Movies started about the same time, but it’s the longest running video poetry journal that I know.) Anyway, here are some others:
- Seth Landman’s Divine Magnet
- CAConrad’s Jupiter 88
- new Jubilat: CAConrad, Seth Landman, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Nancy Kuhl, Christopher DeWeese, etc
- notnostrums’ When We Think Of It
- ok that’s actually all I can think of um email walserandco At gmail with more now I’ll do a quick scan of the internet
- http://guerrillareads.com/ (not poetry per se and new to me but appears to occupy a space worth occupying)
- Travis Nichols’ Weird Deer (not video so what)
- while we’re at it Andrew Leland, Everyday Genius nee Paparazzo, interviewed my brother about a video of his comedy act not to laugh at first performed opposite Mark Leidner, Shannon Burns, and Ben Hersey oh yeah Jubilat has videos now added above
- I like that Steve Rogenbuch video that Blake posted thanks Ben Roylance also Heather’s video answers hi Hastings
OK here are some of my favorite videos from TCR: Ryan MacDonald, Ish Klein, Michelle Taransky, Brandon Downing, Susana Gardner, Dana Ward, Jennifer L. Knox, Cara Benson, Linh Dinh, K. Silem Mohammad, Kiki Petrosino, Jordan Stempleman, & Nicholas Manning’s inaugural video
OK thanks
The Continental Review
For years now Jordan Stempleman’s The Continental Review has been quietly turning out the farthest seeing television on the prophetube (witness past videos by Ryan MacDonald, Michelle Taransky, Dana Ward, Cara Benson, K. Silem Mohammad, Linh Dinh, Tom Beckett, Susana Gardner, Chris Tysh, Nico Vasilakis, Kiki Petrosino, Eileen Tabios, Alyssa Wolf, Joshua Clover, Noah Eli Gordon, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Ben Mirov, Daniel Borzutsky…) In the past few weeks, Stempleman’s turned it up to 11. First Amanda Nadelberg’s “Alternatives Considered” and then Paul Legault’s English to English translation of Ashbery’s Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Today new videos by Peter Davis and Dara Wier (above) dropped. The latter, a stop motion setting of Wier’s cant miss “Not That Lake,” is a collaboration between Heather Christle, Ben Pease, Emily Pettit, Guy Pettit, and Bianca Stone. They made it in more or less one day, planning a birthday party the whole way. You can watch it in 3 minutes. Or twice in 6 or 3x in 9 or eleven times in 33. You will see.
Wall Street Journal
BLACK FRIDAY* EDITION
Filip Marinovich’s Wolfman Librarian and the Trembling Pair of Actor Hands (online chapbook from EOAGH), appended last week, is wow:
I walked down Wall Street tonight and it felt As if someone was walking inside me Another person taking steps for me Fuck you who told me I couldn't write September Eleventh Poetry I'm moving To Eleventh Street I'm breathing again The world will become a new City People will hug in the street Elizabethanly We will invent a new language together Queen Elizabeth will return from her coven Covent Garden and will sing opera LA Boheme on the steps of the Federal Building joining hands Why are there trains rumbling beneath this grass The Love Interest Woman will not die of T.B. at the end of La Boheme the snow will go away and we will find it again in our pencilcases when we awake firstgraders sweating the first day of first grade and Happy Birthday William Carlos Williams September Seventeenth Two Thousand and Ten How old would you be today what would you say about the towers would you believe me if I told you the unburied dead of Wall Street one of them walked in me took my steps is this my flesh peripheral vision greenery wolverines gnawing at me and vomiting me up a new man with powers to heal Wolfman Librarian Wolfman Wolfman Librarian Wolfman
http://occupywriters.com/ contains multitudes:
- Ana Božičević: And is the world
your world, peace and war yours, and are
you leaving some building arc as
an up-combed lady into a fated date night,
like it was the time for keening,
magic string, like the divide
between word and thing just up
and flew, and you just knew to live? - Joshua Cohen on Bloomberg’s visit to Zuccotti Park: “This fall, every day Downtown has felt like the first day at a strange new school—where “We” have to solve for plural pronoun before attacking the darker math.” (cf. Cathy Wagner’s new math in last week’s WSJ) (Marinovich: “when we awake firstgraders sweating the first day of / first grade”
- Eileen Myles on the mic
- Matthew Zapruder, “Poem for Plutocrats”
- Jonathan Lethem, “Tickling the Dead or Six Jokes About Cognitive Dissonance”
- Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance
- Francine Prose: “As far as I can understand it myself, here’s why I burst into tears at the Occupy Wall Street camp.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin
- D.A. Powell, “The Great Unrest
- Alice Walker, Anne Waldman, et al
William Scott, an English professor from the University of Pittsburgh spending his sabbatical working at the OWS Library, in The Nation: “The People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On”
The People’s Library holds a press conference documenting the destruction of 3,000 books (including a book which Philip Levine, Poet Laureate of the United States, donated to the Library when he visited the day before the raid and Ariana Reines’ one-day-old Mercury) and demanding that the Bloomberg Administration replace them.
Luc Sante writes a Letter to the Public Editor of the New York Times (not published)
Robert Hass in the NYT: “Poet Bashing Police”
HTMLGIANT on UC-Davis:
- Roxane Gay, We Can’t Sit This One Out
- Jimmy Chen, Angles
Thanks to Gracie who commented on the last post: “Whiskey & Fox’s “Parks & Occupation” series can be found here: http://www.whiskeyandfox.org/” (I confess that I thought this was a Parks & Recreation parody, a response to Eric Tegethoff’s call, also in the comments, for OWS comedy)
Also in last week’s comments: Donald Breckenridge points us toward an excerpt from a new translation (by Donald Nicholson-Smith) of Raoul Vaneigen’s The Revolution Of Everyday Life in The Brooklyn Rail.
*since it now starts on Thursday
Wall Street Journal
(via Damn the Caesars)
This will be a newspaper. Please leave leads for future editions in the comments.
- Frank Sherlock’s “Love Letter November 15″ (via Thom Donovan)
- Melissa Broder’s “I Don’t See No Riots Here”
- Susan Bernofsky’s “Who Has Rights?” & “PEN Deplores Occupy Wall Street Press Freedom Violations”
- Ian Dreiblatt’s “A Counterviction”
- Debbie Hu’s “To Heartbreak Hotel” (via Anne Boyer)
- Stephen Boyer and the OWS Librarians (Betsy Fagin, Filip Marinovich–see also his chapbook, added below–et al): OWS Poetry Anthology, Boyer on the (first) raid of the OWS Library, at Harriet, Corina Copp catalogs reactions to OWS Library seizure, this should be its own post, shout out to Adam Tobin’s Unnameable Books for helping OWS library re-up
- Feliz L. Molina’s “We Are Unstoppable, Another World is Possible” (via CA Conrad)
- Cami G’s “Why I got arrested at Oscar Grant Plaza” (via Sara Larsen)
- October at the Poetic Labor Project (w/ Lindsey Boldt, Jackqueline Frost, Bill Luoma, Melissa Mack, Sean Labrador y Manzano, Michael Nicoloff, Jill Richards, Wendy Trevino, Brian Whitener, Ida Yoshinaga, and Stephanie Young)
- Montevidayo: Dan Hoy’s “Crash the Heavens” (Part 1) (Part 2) (via Ariana Reines) + links to Steve Evans’ “Free (Market) Verse” (read the whole thing at Evans’ Third Factory) and Salon.com on the Croatoan Poetic Cell’s occupation of The Poetry Foundation (with a promise of a letter from Prynne by Kent Johnson in the comments)
- Aviezer Coppe’s A Fiery Flying Roule: to all the inhabitants of the earth; specially to the rich ones. 10. Lauren Berlant on the genre of the situation, Geoffrey G. O’Brien’s words spoken at Sproul Plaza 9. William Fuller, Jennifer Moxley, Emma Goldman 8. Keston Sutherland on The Clearance of Trafalgar Square, 26 March 2011 7. Walter Benn Michaels on unemployment (reprinted from The Brooklyn Rail) 6. Avital Ronnell, Rosa Luxemburg, Adam Phillips, Jasper Bernes, Joshua Clover, Annie McClanahan 5. Alice Notley, Steven Zultanski, Letters from a student 4. Lauren Berlant’s 4 paragraphs on the popular and populism, new math from Catherine Wagner, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I’m probably at work.”–Brandon Brown 3. A Love Letter from Rosa Luxemburg, Susan Howe, Adam Weg’s On the People’s Microphone: A Letter from Chicago 2. Sean Bonney’s Letter on Riots and Doubt, Jackson Mac Low, David Graeber, Hannah Arendt 1. Gertrude Stein, Robert Duncan, Stanley Cavell, Eric White, oikos, kairos, megaphone, stethoscope (via Lewis)
- This just in: Catherine Lacey’s “On Place Memory, The Other Side and Yelp as a Forum for Political Debate”
- Breaking news from Ana Božičević: You can read Filip Marinovich’s EOAGH chapbook Wolfman Librarian and the Trembling Pair of Actor Hands online
TODAY AREA
I don’t get the HTMLGIANT internal memos but I feel like Mike Young told me that people (you people?) don’t like when people (what people?) write about events, especially events in New York, so I won’t say anything about the launch of Nothing tonight at BookCourt at 7. Also I forget to read HTMLGIANT but it looks like no one’s said anything about how one can already get Nothing in the mail? Nothing is not a nail?
Anyway, if you are ANYWHERE near Gertrude Stein’s Oakland, you should be THERE THERE, at Book Zoo, where Amanda Nadelberg and Mark Leidner are reading TONIGHT at 7 pm.
The first time I saw Amanda Nadelberg read it was in a movie theatre and was one of the best readings I have ever seen / heard. The first time I heard Mark Leidner read he read with Shannon Burns of Lousville and it was one of the best readings I have ever heard / seen.
The second time I heard Amanda Nadelberg read was the first time I saw my brother perform a Comedy Act Not To Laugh At and again Amanda Nadelberg brought the house down. The second time I heard Mark Leidner, my brother did another Comedy Act Not To Laugh At and Mark Leidner did standup and everyone laughed.
My brother first performed his third Comedy Act Not To Laugh At opening for Mark Leidner (and Shannon Burns and Ben Hersey) at the launch for Leidner’s Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me at Flying Object. Tonight he’s performing said Comedy Act in Louisville opening for Bonnie Prince Billy.
Point is, if you don’t go see Amanda Nadelberg & Mark Leidner tonight, you’re missing out. I’m missing out. So: if, in the comments, you leave the best scoop on any of today’s events, I’ll send you a copy of Shannon Burns’ Preserving the Old Way of Life (Factory Hollow Press) and Ben Hersey’s This Is What We’re Up Against (The Chuckwagon), a book beloved by Blake Butler, author of nothing. (What’s a scoop? Read Shannon Burns’ “What’s the Scoop?” after the jump.)
Amanda Nadelberg is the author of Isa the Truck Named Isadore (Slope Editions), Building Castles in Spain, Getting Married (The Song Cave), and, forthcoming from Coffee House Press this April, Bright Brave Phenomena.
Mark Leidner is the author of three chapbook cities, The Night of 1000 Murders (Factory Hollow Press), Willie (minutes BOOKS), Romantic Comedies (The Chuckwagon), and the book of aphorisms, The Angel in the Dream of Our Hangover (Sator Press). His first book of poetry, Beauty Was The Case That They Gave Me is just out from Factory Hollow Press. READ MORE >
Mark Leidner’s
BEAUTY WAS THE CASE THAT THEY GAVE ME
is now available from FACTORY HOLLOW PRESS!
If you live within 1,000 murders miles of Flying Object
you can see the book get launched with readings / things
by Leidner, Shannon Burns, Jacob Otting, & Ben Hersey!
THE Book Of
BOOK OF RUTH by Robert Seydel is THE BOOK OF and THE BOOK. Look:
Book of Year
Although it’s only officially out today (from the sublime Siglio Press), and it’s only May, it’s already the Walser & Co Book of the Year for 2011. Also, June will be Robert Seydel Month, by dint of. Look for a review, and much more, soon. In the meantime, some early returns:
Peter Gizzi: The magical qualities of Robert Seydel’s work never cease to astonish me. He conjures something visionary at the edges of language and the fragile material world. Who knew such light could come from torn paper? What joy to finally have this long-awaited book in hand!
Maggie Nelson: Behold Seydel’s “Ruth”—banker by day, scriber of daily wonders by night, whose art of “damaged things made” pours forth from a “healing imagination [with] animals in it.” Rich with “white magic,” as Joseph Cornell put it, Book of Ruth is an enchanting, mischievous, often deeply moving act of invention and homage.
John Yau: Book of Ruth is a modern fairy tale unlike any other, arriving from a corner of the world where fiction and fact are interchangeable. . . . Open this book and lose yourself. Out of bits of ephemera held together by cloud and glue an entire universe will rise up to greet you.
Read and see more at BOMB Magazine and at Siglio Press, which got a S P R A W L i n g shout-out yesterday from Andrew Leland, ex-Believer, but still doing the best job.
(35 @ POWELL’S)
(worth twice that)
(in San Francisco)
(in New York City)
(21.15 @ Walmart)
(25.55 @ Amazon)
Peter Seaton (1942-2010)
The poet Peter Seaton died on May 18, 2010.
A month later, the POETICS listserv (in a moving email from Michael Gottlieb) and Silliman’s Blog passed the word. Who heard? [UPDATE: Some great poets. See new appendix at bottom with news from Miles Champion and others.] I didn’t. Until ten days ago, I’d never heard of Seaton, tho Lewis Freedman is a fan of his third book, THE SON MASTER (which I presumably passed over many times at the great Troubadour Books.) It’s still available (for $4!) from SPD, where you can also get (94!) copies of his third book, CRISIS INTERVENTION (Tuumba 45, 1983). You can read both at (Craig Dworkin‘s / what would we do without) Eclipse, where you can also read (and buy) Seaton’s first book, AGREEMENT. There’s a substantial PennSound page with a memorable picture of Seaton and his bride, Judy, on their wedding day in Summer 1977:
That Spring a poem had appeared in THIS 8. Four pages of unbroken prose, his hallmark: tho this first* publication (like his first book) is not yet justified as later poems (and books) would be. The poem, “Men on the Roof,” seems to start in the middle of some endings:
He will feel planes they set to calm the second ending. The pit is latest. Under him they might have voices necessary enough that’s smoke, strange solitude, threats, if not the passion sight or order that noise gets moist. Some watch conception. A voice there has him restored. Pronouns turned masturbation into living without steps. Fingers regret travel and arm resources. Nothing would close or lift a field reminding the means something, everything, is without the pleasant tip’s level. Even space lost halls and that faithful darkness everlasting, seeing no expression there is that approaching place that didn’t have me long. I, I, I, I should matter if one needed the noise here. Shadow that’s light. It’s others seeing the quick installment, no desert that suffering you’ll keep, which noise makes gently, would direction back him, they know but no case might do instead first flies. Unchanging form is afterwards anything not without matter. And that remedy without flight softening comes while either one never received business that business many know doesn’t with perhaps that here some putting me backs the order where it turns long crossed speculation to knowing the ratified count. Words are words, and one trembling tradesman would help creatures compelled without words obscure story of a hot spot.
The page goes on, but this line ending in spot makes a good stop. This sentence. For Seaton is a poet of the sentence. Whether the new sentence or the sentence is a lonely place. As far as I can see, Silliman doesn’t mention Seaton in The New Sentence, and I can’t say for sure that Lish would like him, but I think Lutz would. In Seaton, not only “Words are words” but “without words obscure story” but also: “hot spot.” Seaton’s sentences: see Stein, steeled surrealism, Stan Brakhage (an avowed influence). See later Stephen Rodefer, especially FOUR LECTURES (“My unlessening lust for my own copy of Stephen Rodefer’s Four Lectures is uninterrupted.”–Clay Banes) and the “Preface” to EMERGENCY MEASURES, subtitled “In the American Tree and Out the Other,” READ MORE >
Phlarf4President
Rod Smith lives in Washington for President. Anne Boyer for First…President. K. Silem Mohammad for 16th President. Snow got you not going to D.C? Visit
http://abrahamlincolnmagazine.blogspot.com/
where Smith’s You Bête is just out from Mohammad’sº Abraham Lincoln–
[Update: Just got You Bête in the mail. Presidential material. It's snowed in, but look for excerpts later. In the meantime, Smith can run far with his Futurepoem campaign of pro-stupid / Your Country Is Great.]
–which, Issue 6 is also just out. Both, like Mohammad’s CRUSH (“My Money”: if you want to view any of these things let me know/PayPal will keep my money) are $5(!) Issues 1-5 (see below) of Abraham Lincoln are as SOLD OUT as Smith’s just out SOLD OUT Song Cave What’s the Deal.
[Update: Just got the new Song Cave, Peter Gizzi's Pinnochio's Gnosis, in the mail. Perfect. Get it--and You Bête--at the Song Cave reading in D.C. at the capital's best bookstore, Bridge Street Books. So you are snowing going to D.C then? See Bridge Street's other AWP events here.]
“You Bête: twenty-six pages of mind-wrenching, gut-expanding poems from the man many consider the Rod Smith of contemporary poetry.” or/and “Later, awkwarder, stickier, and number-sixier than ever before, the new issue of Abraham Lincoln wants desperately to be held tight to your heaving thoraxes (thoraces?) as you get so excited by the poems it contains that you gnaw the staples out WITH YOUR TEETH and commence slobbering at the moon. Can you afford NOT to throw away your hard-earned shekels on this splendid rag?”
Sandra Simonds for President (Re-elect). Catherine Wagner for President. Marie Buck for President. Ish Klein for President. Lacey Hunter for President. Estee Schwartz for President. David Brazil for President. Sam or Samantha Yams for President. Ton Van ‘t Hof for President. Uyen Hua for President. Lindsey Boldt for President. Brian Ang for President. Micah Freeman for President. Anna Vitale for President. Thomas Lovell Beddoes for President. Adam Katz for President. Nicole Taylor for President.
Mike Young was/has asked What is the best single issue of any literary magazine?
One answer would be/one would answer Abraham Lincoln #1. Issue the first. Spring/Summer 2007. Edited by K. Silem Mohammad and Anne Boyer. A taste of each poem: READ MORE >
