3rd Grade Book Report
I like this book.
This book is called Bluets. Maggie Nelson wrote it. I read Bluets. I liked Bluets. It is about a woman who loves the color blue. The woman who loves the color blue is Maggie Nelson. She also loves a man but not really. She is also sad but not really. The word fucking is in this book a few time. Also the word fuck is in this book. One time Maggie Nelson said this in an interview: “The words feel like irritants in the soft lap of an oyster, as Henry James had it. Then the pearl — if one could call it that with a straight face — starts to congeal around the irritant. A snowball in the muck.
This is Maggie Nelson
Maggie Nelson writes memoirs and poems. She has published six books since 2001. That seems crazy. The End.
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January 11th, 2010 / 12:07 pm
January 11th, 2010 / 12:07 pm
Happy New York (Part II)
Whether you are in NY or not, tomorrow is the last chance to see Herbert Pfostl‘s ALL SORTS OF REMEDIES. (Sad NY update: I was too late–for too long–with this post. More on Pfostl in the future. One week left to see Jerk.)
Justin’s book-buying success story made me happy for so many reasons that only some will surface in this roundabout (not to say failure) fable. Here’s to making Book-Buying: A _____ Story, a regular column. Until that category’s been added, I’ll continue with two of the many poets from my last post (on the Poetry Project New Year’s Reading, featuring a cast so deep I could draw on it all year and not touch bottom): namely, John Coletti and Arlo Quint.
I’ve only read one of Coletti’s three(?) chapbooks and haven’t read a word by Quint, but I’m as excited about the former’s new book as CAConrad is (“Few things make me as happy as a new John Coletti book!” via Rust Buckle’s facebook page) and about the latter’s new chapbook(s?) as I am by just having discovered that CAConrad was born on January 1. It’s final: Poet of the Year. I say this, aware of all the reasons not to say such a thing, let alone in caps, partly in homage to New Directions’ Poet of the Month (1941-1943; the envelope pictured came with the 1942 boxed set I found at Grey Matter Books), READ MORE >
Happy Birthday, Dennis Cooper!
Today we celebrate the birth of the inimitable, incomparable, and indispensable Dennis Cooper–one of our absolute favorite writers and a true brother-in-arms. How will you celebrate Dennis’s big day? You could:
– Order yourself a copy of his most recent book, the story collection Ugly Man.
– Pre-order yourself a copy of Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback & Obituaries, his forthcoming nonfiction collection, which according to Amazon will be published on 6/29, which happens to be my birthday. Neat, right?
– See if there are tickets left for any of the remaining performances of JERK, Dennis’s latest collaboration with Gisele Vienne, starring Jonathan Capdeville. JERK is running through January 17th as part of the Under the Radar Festival. I saw the show last night, and it was just stunning–unlike any other theater-going experience I’ve ever had. (See above photograph.)
– Visit Dennis’s blog, which this weekend has an incredible feature on the Winchester Mystery House.
– Blast some Guided by Voices. Here’s a fan-made video for “Smothered in Hugs” the nonfic collection’s namesake song. Happy Birthday!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlvn9LfRETM
PS- Here’s a live version that has the embedding disabled for some reason, so you have to watch it on the Youtube site.
Lucy Corin Glow
This is my day in the sun and I’ve got my arms in the air, my head tipped back like the hinged lid of a lighter. Contrary to popular belief, I am not alone. Everyone’s listening. All I see is the bulging gas above me and I’m shooting my mind at it. I’m as close to God as I’ll ever be. The people are tiny. They’re buckshot around my ankles. I could kneel and run my fingers through them.
Lucy Corin, from The Entire Predicament.
Everyone says Lucy Corin creates worlds, so I am going to pass on that one. Lucy Corin creates Cornish hens, light yet succulent on the gray tongue of my brain. That’s better than worlds. It might be metaphor, magic realism, or everyday life, I will let you decide. Corin has this light touch, this light touch with her prose. It is mysterious like Japanese dolls. I like it.
Back Flash: Daniil Kharms
(Cartier-Bresson)
People sometimes scoff flash fiction by noting its recent flabelliform of popularity. I occasionally refute by bringing past authors of flash to the now. I hope you may one day gather this feature and create a joiner’s mallet.
Enter Daniil Kharms.
He felt cause and effect were funny, buy not ha-ha funny. I once thought serious silliness the only real answer to life (but I digress), so was/am happy the day I stumbled upon Kharms. Automatic and lifeless makes us into a thing. This is good or bad?
Excellent site here of his work.
Here is a flash for you, titled, “How a Man Crumbled.”
– They say all the best tarts are fat-arsed. Gee-ee, I really like busty tarts, I love the way they smell.
Having said this, he started to increase in height and, upon reaching the ceiling, he crumbled into a thousand little pellets. The yard-keeper Panteley came, swept all these pellets up into his scoops in which he usually picked up the horse muck, and he carried these pellets away somewhere to the back yard.
And the sun continued to shine as ever and splendiferous ladies continued to smell just as ravishingly as ever.
Two From Letter Machine Editions
Two handsome looking new full-lengths from Letter Machine Editions: Iowa, a crow-dark novel by Travis Nichols, and Texture Notes, a sort of glassblower’s cartographic adventure by Sawako Nakayasu. These are available together and right away at a discount. With these books and other books available or forthcoming from Anselm Berrigan, Renne Gladman, Farid Matuk, Sara Veglahn, John Yau, Julianna Leslie, Aaron Kunin and Peter Gizzi, Letter Machine Editions definitely looks like a smelter to watch. Here’s a random bit from Iowa to give you a zing:
The memories true or not against him seem to be turning to steam, as I turned, all the while thinking of chewing out alone eventually through the ghostly meats … Multiple murders of crows in the budding trees waiting to send the lilac sky to black, or every once in a while to bend remembrance gone on at the waist into coughing too long into the night.
Mexican Getaway with Julia Cohen & Mathias Svalina
All poetry power-couples should be required to have dueling(/dualing) blogs. As JC has mentioned on her blog before, her parents are retired to sunny Mexico, and so she and MS went down from Denver to spend the holidays in the not-snow. His slideshow is here. Hers are here, here, and here. Also, his new (debut full-length!) collection, Destruction Myth, and her chapbook, For the H in Ghost.
Here are photos they took of each other.
Oh, and here’s Mexico-
Good deal.
Book-Buying: A Success Story, by Justin Taylor, Megan Casella Roth, Michael Kimball, and Dylan Landis
(1) I came across this review of Dylan Landis’s Normal People Don’t Live Like This, by Megan Casella Roth and published in The Rumpus. It sounded interesting so I linked it on this site in a round-up post.
(2) I came across this interview with Landis by Michael Kimball. It was fascinating. I (or somebody here) linked that piece too.
(3) I decided to buy the book, but then I had to go to Florida before I could make it to the store.
(4) Thought: I could order this from Amazon and it will be at my house when I get back. Didn’t do it.
(5) Thought: [in FL] I should get my mom to drive me from Grandma’s to the B&N. Maybe they’ll have it there, or at least checking for it will kill an hour. But then I thought “I’d really rather buy this from an indie store that I like,”and they don’t have those in that part of Florida, so I went back to reading my galley of Witz by Joshua Cohen.
(6) Got back to NYC. Went to St. Mark’s Book Shop on East 9th street and 3rd Avenue. The store had exactly one copy, which happened to be the exact number of copies that I needed. After taxes, it cost $16.33, which in round numbers is about what it cost to see Avatar with the 3D-glasses sur-charge and my half of the bag of popcorn I split with my mom at the Boynton Beach Cinemark Whatever, with the main difference being that the Landis book is not covered in “butter-flavored” floor polish–and unlike the 3D glasses, I don’t have to give the book back when the show is over.
CONCLUSION: It feels like this is how the system is supposed to function. I got interested in something, decided to buy it, and was able to do so in relatively short order. Not immediately, mind you, but that slight delay seems like it was a valuable part of the process. It helped me establish that my interest in the book was genuine, plus it gave me the chance to yearn a little. I didn’t buy the book used. I didn’t bug the publisher for a review copy. I wanted to read the book, and so I bought the book–new, from a store I respect, whose balance sheet I feel good about appearing on.$16.33 isn’t exactly piss in the snow, but it’s not a fortune either. It’s almost $2 less than the price of two Maker’s Mark on the rockses at a bar I like on West 13th street (before tip). It’s almost half of what a weekly subway pass costs.
And I’m writing all of this in advance of having so much as opened the book itself. I guess if I hate it I’ll wish that I’d had those 2 drinks instead, but I purposely chose to post this anecdote before forming an opinion of the book, because I think even if I don’t end up liking it, the acquisition process still counts as a success story, complete in and of itself. (Of course I expect that I will like it, and in any case will report back once it’s read.) Here is a proposal: Every person who cares about literature should start to do exactly what I did, and we should all do it more often. Once a month, go to a local bookstore, and take a chance on a brand-new full-price book that you are interested in. If we all did this, 2010 would probably be the best year for publishing in a decade.
Conversation with the fabulous Kathleen Rooney
Kathleen Rooney is a rock star, and don’t you doubt that! Rooney has written & published a gizzillion books, most recently FOR YOU FOR YOU. She’s also co-editor/publisher of Rose Metal Press.
Here’s the thing about Rooney: You see her and she’s got this inky hair, long, and she’s usually wearing black. She’s a bit intimidating from afar. (People in black are usually intimidating to me. You’ll notice I’ve mentioned attire for both Rooney & Jeremy Davies, yeah?) Then, you start talking to her & she’s chipper as anything. Then, you read her poetry & damn, if you’re not completely knocked far far away!
What I mean is: If this interview/conversation isn’t enough to make you fall in love, read any of her ten thousand books & you’ll be convinced. You can try them out here or here or here or here.