Oil Changes to Garlic
Jono Tosch is a poet and artist who blogs at Oil Changes, a rolling document that knocks you over the head with its absurdist, agricultural, and poetic thought. Jono bangs a drum similar to what I imagine Thoreau would kick and scream like today were he to be wormholed from the past and into our era. And like Thoreau, Jono is a self reliant, rare to ask a hand for help unless it was of a total necessity.
But now, Jono is asking for help, help to fund a month of “agricultural research” on the famed garlic farm of Stanley Crawford, author of Log of the S.S. Unguentine. By helping him make his way from Massachusetts to New Mexico, Jono promises to trade ” top-notch road and farm content if you pony up some gas $$$.”
Big Ray by Michael Kimball
Congratulations to Michael Kimball, author of Us, Dear Everybody and The Way The Family Got Away, because this: “I’m having a pretty great year so far and I feel really grateful for it. I don’t even know how to explain how grateful I feel. I’m so happy to announce that I just sold the world rights to a new novel, BIG RAY. It’s the story of a son coming to terms with the sudden death of his obese father. It’s told through 500 brief entries, moving back and forth between past and present, the father’s death and his life, between an abusive childhood and adult understanding. BIG RAY went to Kathy Belden at Bloomsbury USA, which will publish in Fall 2012, and Michael Fishwick at Bloomsbury UK, which will publish in Winter 2013.”
Call Heather Christle at (413) 570-3077
On the occasion of the release of her second book of poems, The Trees The Trees, which just came out from Octopus, and is indeed mazelike, Heather Christle has secured a phone number that you can call her at, through which she will read to you a poem. This begins today and will continue through July 14th.
The number is (413) 570-3077
Calls answered during Eastern Standard Times:
M: 10am-6pm
T: 10am-1pm
W: 10am-6pm
Th: 10am-1pm
F: 10am-6pm
S: 12pm-6pm
Su: 12pm-6pm
Get the book while you’re at it; it’s unprecedented, and gorgeous.
J. A. Tyler, ZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Author J. A. Tyler has put together a neat thing, a story across five stories, across five publishers. He calls it “wreckage” and describes the story with his uniquely destructive voice:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ is wreckage. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ takes place as five distinct works, all built around the same core story. Each narrative is that of a girl who holds the last water in the world, a herd of chaos that takes it from her, and the boy who comes to resuscitate it all. But each story takes this kernel and shreds it in a new direction, incorporates other elements, reshapes the narrative in its own image. And each press that came aboard this project, releasing this wreckage into readers’ hands, worked on the same principle of core unity with distinct press-specific alterations. All that is left is the beautiful static hum: zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The publishers, linked here, are:
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [a well]: Greying Ghost
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [the stars]: Warm Milk Printing Press
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [this town]: The Collagist
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [an island]: NewLights Press
This week I received the installment from Aaron Cohick’s NewLights Press (home of the $400 Brian Evenson book), and it is an amazing artifact. It’s completely letterpressed inside and out, and sturdily constructed. It’s hefty. It’s probably about 30 pages, depending on how you count them.
You can see images of the NewLights book here.
Leonard Stern 1922-2011
I’m sad to hear that Leonard Stern, co-creator of Mad Libs, has died (via Flavorwire).
Chris Toll, The Disinformation Phase
Video by Stephanie Barber
Book by Chris Toll
Pre-orders close this weekend. Order now for advance discount and a chance to win books by CAConrad, Heather Christle and M. Magnus. Chances of winning are high right now.
“I do believe Hell could be driven from the heart with Chris Toll’s amazing new book.”
CAConrad, author of The Book of Frank
“…these poems are tenderly repossessing the ineffable and the commonplace.”
Heather Christle, author of The Trees The Trees
“The Disinformation Phase is conspiracy theory in poetic practice.”
M. Magnus, author of Verb Sap
Twitter MFA
In which we do a close-reading of a Tweeter’s Tweet draft and assess its tone, theme, synecdoche and narrative arc, among other things. Today’s Tweet draft was written by Drew Kalbach. This is the final installment of Twitter MFA. Thank you for reading.
The Tweet draft:
my face is continually jealous of my face
Drew Kalbach’s Tweet draft utilizes a heavily deconstructed sonnet sequence to describe the dissolution of a romantic relationship between his face and his face. With its ABBA rhyme scheme–the pairing of ‘face’ and ‘face’ and the softly assonant ‘continually’ and ‘jealous’–Kalbach alludes to a Miltonic sonnet in 140 characters or less.
Take two for wanting
1. Beecher’s Magazine is now available. Look at the list of contributors. I like how they show what’s poetry and what’s fiction.
2. Feast your eyes on the cover of Heather Christle’s new book, which will be available July 1:
Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch on Food Network!
Not really, but close. In this new episode of Emily Gould’s “Cooking the Books,” Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch make green juice and read from their collaboration Ten Walks/Two Talks. Along the way we learn that Cotner and Fitch met as 19-year-olds in Boston. They were both crashing on someone’s roof, and started talking. They’ve kept talking. We also hear some thoughts about Basho and zits.
Timothy Donnelly, who selected Ten Walks/Two Talks as a Best Book of 2010 for The Week, included an excerpt from Cotner and Fitch’s new project Conversations over Stolen Food in Boston Review‘s National Poetry Month celebration. The short piece is called “Spiritual Laws.” It takes place in a grocery store they call “W.F.” This excerpt moves from Emerson, to a kid who soils his shorts, back to Emerson, then ends with a discussion of anxiety and bicycles.
Mailer’s Apartment
Norman Mailer’s apartment is for sale and I will confess that I just drooled a little while looking at these photos. Anyone have 2.5 Million?
Lotsa Action
HEY, there’s a new jubilat website! Heather Christle tricked it out with all kinds of good, including stuff from the archives, an A/V closet, and a wack index.
Excellent Dark Sky Magazine is doing a give for the excellent Brian Allen Carr’s excellent Short Bus. Yarta goget tha buk. On the now.
At Full Stop, David Backer points to Buzz Mauro’s Everyday Genius story and says that “dressed up with a few offhand observations, whimsical musings and flourishes of free association, ‘Delicious Noodles’ asserts itself as a convincing self-contained whole.” Then Backer points to a story by Matt Bell, from Conjunctions, that I overheard Matt talking about in a bar in DC on Saturday. “You’re supposed to do whatever you want with it,” he said (paraphrase).
Gabe Durham’s Fun Camp book will be out from Mud Luscious in 2013. If you’re an online literature reader, you’ve probably seen a piece from this here or there cuz they been everywhere man.
Also in new books: Publishers Weekly announces Melissa Broder’s Meat Heart, forthcoming from PGP in February. Also in PGP: Chris Toll’s The Disinformation Phase is now available for pre-order.
Also also: congratulations to Stephanie Barber, announced yesterday as a finalist for the Sondheim Prize.
At Tyrant Books, pre-orders are open for Michael Kimball’s renewed novel, Us, too.
And Dzanc just nabbed three by Stephen Graham Jones.
I feel like these roundups are of limited value. Is anyone still with me? There’s more goodness.
Like life. Ariana Reines remembers Paul Violi in a personal post that really blew me away.
If you’re not reading Bill Knott’s cranky blog, you don’t know what the Internet is.
What is the poetic equivalent of this throw from SS (Alexi Casilla, 4/18/11)? In what journal would it appear?
Paul Violi, 1944-2011
The poet and beloved teacher Paul Violi died early this month, and I’ve just found out that the Best American Poetry blog has a section devoted to thoughts and memories shared by friends and associates; anyone who has something to share may contribute. It is here.
Coldfront did a nice tribute w/ poem here.
I hadn’t the pleasure of studying with Mr. Violi at the New School, but I was lucky enough to have a conversation or two with him and to hear him read a few times, which was always a great treat. For someone like me, who didn’t really know him, he was nevertheless a fixture at my school in the best possible way, and it’s hard to imagine the place without him. It is surely a keen loss to those who knew him. If you didn’t know him, it will be your gain to discover or rediscover his work now. Here is a list of what you can find online.
TODAY THERE IS NO YEAR
So happy for Blake and this book, as its presences will be felt. I love this book and I love Blake, so get your hands on this now.
Fools Gold
The best collection of poetry I’ve read this year to date is Becoming Weather by Chris Martin. Its confident, bold, excavating and it all feels natural. This Friday in NYC is the release party for that book. There’ll be original music from Oneida & I Feel Tractor, an original film from Stephanie Gray, and a sermon on becoming weather by Evangelist J.B. Best (Anticon’s Pedestrian). Its a serious event. Happening 8:00 P.M. at Secret Project Robot in Brooklyn.
See the Facebook invite for detailed info.
Califono
Califone is a band to get bent with – a stethoscope to the picked over cloud country, a mason jar of one eyed mermaids drink from. Good beauty, if you can get it.
For a time now, poet Joshua Marie Wilkinson and Solan Jensen have been making a long anticipated film about the ramshackle blues crew. They’ve just now come back from the darkroom with their own 68 minute dream, Made A Machine By Describing A Landscape. Shot between 2004 and 2008, the film follows the acclaimed indie-rock icons on the road and in the studio with “an exploratory, intimate, and at times experimental take on both creative process and performance.”
Out now from Indiepix Films.
Al Burian US reading tour
I recently caught up with Al Burian in Berlin to record a podcast and I realized that I should let all of you know that you should not pass up the chance to see Al Burian read if he is rolling through your city on his upcoming reading tour. Seriously. I’ve seen him read several times and he’s always delivered. Tell him Jackie sent you.
NEW PUBLICATIONS BY AL BURIAN
BURN COLLECTOR #15 will be out in March, published by Microcosm.
http://microcosmpublishing.com
March will also see the release of OK, OK, You Smote Me, a short story in zine format, available exclusively from Quimby’s bookstore of Chicago.
READINGS
March 12 Bookthugnation, Brooklyn NY
March 13 Molly’s Book Store, Philadelphia PA
March 15 Towson University, (near Baltimore) MD
March 17 Sugar City, Buffalo NY
March 22 Quimbys, Chicago IL
March 25 Chicago Zine Fest
Lydia Millet Interview at Willow Springs
Sam Ligon interviewed Lydia Millet in Willow Springs. You can read the full interview here (pdf).
Millet: I was asked recently whether I considered my taste to be minimalist in prose, and I never thought of myself that way, but I do like a lot of space on the page. That is to say, not actual physical white space, but I like there to be space, as with, say, some Nabokov, where there’s a lot of metaphysical space that’s somehow created by the language. I don’t like to be overwhelmed with words. I don’t want someone to try to do some “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” with their verbiage. I want there to be room for the silence of the mind in the reading.
Chris Mason in HUM WHO HICCUP
Oh sweet, the new book from Narrow House is out and shipping — Hum Who Hiccup by Chris Mason. He’s one of my favorite people poets in the people universe, so smart and nice and a relaxed scholar of what’s happening. And what’s happening is so much because of what he’s doing and what he’s done, like playing music in one of my top favorite bands, Old Songs, which performs their own translations of ancient Greek poetry. An Old Songs show is worth a trip to Baltimore.
The first mention of the book by Michael Lally is up. I think there will be a lot more buzzing soon. I got a sneak peak and can attest that it’s a beautiful book, outside and in. The poems are funnier than they ought to be (there’s a tribute to a fart, I think), but they work because Mason has perfect pitch. And Justin nailed a challenging design — challenging because some of Mason’s poems are circular because who said words have to sit on a line?
Or do anything else ordinary? Evidence of such postulatin’ below the fold, with Chris Mason reading at In Your Ear (introduced by the ambulant Buck Downs): READ MORE >
Beefin’
I wrote an article about editing and some of my past favorite submissions (favorite as in “was this handwritten paper submission composed with human blood? ha ha. wait…no seriously look…this submission REALLY IS written in dried human blood, wash your hands!” or “poem about a snowflake written in the shape of a snowflake just in time for Christmas,” or “story from guy in prison who in his cover letter asks us to mail the money he’ll get if his story is published to the address of a given drug dealer below, explaining that the funds will be an installment payment towards the crack cocaine tab he’d accrued at the time of his incarceration” or even “travel back in time to kill Hitler only to end up falling in love/sexing him, so much sex that he becomes docile and happy, except you then get pregnant with his hitlerspawn who grows up to do exactly what his father would’ve done even though his name is Wilhelm, sometimes the best intentions don’t get the best results” favorite). But also about the pure, kitsch-less favorites as in “this story makes me see Pushcarts rain from the sky.”
Also, I will be reading this Saturday at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle at 7pm
Also, I keep trying to quit Taco Bell beef but it’s like that Taylor Dane song “Love Will Lead You Back.” Ain’t that the meximelt truth.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6A0xivfIMo
Larson, Darby. The Iguana Complex (2011)
They are to each other after and on the flower near the crackling fire next to each other but when she looks she’s no longer looks at him. Looks at him. She’s not there looks at him. No longer on, she’s not there, the lone floor of Freeman’s living room and/or the opera stage where the deafening noise, rather, from our crowd’s spoke-woken her. She must have passed, missed, slipped out, slipped, must have hurled herself in the path of a hurled pointy hat. The crowd’s on their endingly feet singing neverendingly songs over and over, the song Cassandra beguttoned a day or so ago.
Oh Reuben, oh Reuben, offstage jumping: keep it going, yes yes, keep singing, keep it going. But she’s jumped and banged and heaven’s sake and sang enough for heaven’s sake, was just pointed-hat-hurled on stage for heaven’s sake, hurled in the pointed hurled hat with a head.
The crowd sobers when the loss of their leader is lost from the strange of the onstage. They file, the crowd, out of our theater seats whistling like a bird-caller army in their cars, near their dinners, at their desserts, within dreams, out from deserts, under oceans, sleepwalking-whistling to kitchens preparing two egg in the morning salad sandwiches.
Freeman prepares himself and his components, the components of the egg salad sandwich at two in the morning with his kitchen around him, tea kettle whistling. Whistling.
No longer whistling. Can you barely? You’ll need to look closer: Cassandra fashioning at Freeman’s kitchen table, the square one, eyes open, a mug of tea, ghost roses parading and the donkey playing a cello.
