Brian Evenson reads ‘Younger’ for Apostrophe Cast
This week on Apostrophe Cast is no other than Brian Evenson, reading from the leadoff story in his collection Fugue State, due out July 1 from Coffee House.
If you haven’t spent some time with the AC archives, they’ve got a backlog just waiting for you, recently including William Walsh, Shane Jones, Matthew Kirkpatrick, Sam Lipsyte, Michael Kimball, myself, and scads others. Check it.
After hearing ‘Younger,’ you can check out my review response to the story here, if you haven’t yet, in my story by story reviewing of all of Fugue State.
Dennis Cooper = !!!
In honor of his brand new collection ‘Ugly Man‘ (which I am all kinds of excited for), a couple of video interviews with Dennis Cooper about the book and his career, publishing, and punk, from Harper Perennial’s Olive TV videos.
How could you not love this man?
Getting Back Into Getting Back Into Anarcho-Mysticism
This man wants to tell you something. Are you going to listen?
Was anyone else on this blog ever really into Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson), author of such classics as Pirate Utopias, The Temporary Autonomous Zone: Ontological Anarchy and Poetic Terrorism, and myriad other political/philosophical/religious tracts and edicts? As I mentioned the other day, I recently re-bought and am now re-reading DeLillo’s Cosmopolis, and one of the most powerful scenes in that novel–which I’d pretty much forgotten about, until I re-encountered it–is of billionaire Eric Packer’s white stretch limo getting caught up in the middle of an anti-globalization demonstration that suddenly breaks out into a Seattle ’99-style riot.
INTERVIEW WITH DREW KALBACH, AUTHOR OF THINGS
hello everyone. i hope this post finds you well. it is with near tumultuous joy and ecstatic anticipation that i post this dialogue, and uncover the delicate chrysalis which blooms forth young drew kalbach. Mr. Kalbach, scribe of rhythmically sublime texts THEATER and THE ZEN OF CHAINSAWS AND ENORMOUS CLIPPERS, proved gracious, and trenchant beyond his authorship. following the break, for your edification, is the transcript of our mutually scintillating discussion of all things literary, including those marginal to the field (patricide, the loss of virginity and blue slurpees). please do indulge and find fancy.
Cover to Cover: NOON, Part 4 – Bill Hayward Day
Those of you who have been following “Cover to Cover” probably remember that I ended Part 3 with the announcement that Part 4, about Bill Hayward and his Collaborative Self-Portraits project, would come in the form of a guest-post on Dennis Cooper’s The Weaklings, in an unprecedented Giant/Coop crossover. Well, today is the day you learn all about those amazing photos that appear in every issue of NOON, as well as about the man behind the camera and his many other projects. My multi-media Q&A with Bill will be on the top of DC’s blog until Monday, but the permanent link for it is here. You can leave any comments on this thread or over at the post on DC’s blog. And now, I’m off to get ready to go to You’re Not Alone, the Rumpus/McSweeney’s/6word event that we gave away tickets to earlier this week. Catch ya’ll on the flipside.
SAFE TOILET SYNDROME by Prathna Lor
[SAFE TOILET SYNDROME has been published by bearcreekfeed.]
If there is such a thing as ‘deadpan surrealism’ or ‘ironic sci-fi,’ then the elusive Prathna Lor may be their frontman. His poems summon strange kinds of unexpected prosaic epiphany — where the known world is plainly spoke, yet told from an entirely foreign, somewhat extraterrestrial angle; case in point, from “Vulcan”:
A fried spider rubs its body against the inside of my mouth.
It makes me want to crack open the shell of a dehydrated crustacean
and whisper into a ligament that is still sensitive to light.
Laird Hunt’s influences
Laird Hunt, author of the incredible Indiana, Indiana, has been posting short synopses of the five books that influenced his upcoming novel Ray of the Star.
Book three has me curious about both Hunt’s book and this influence.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Some of the book is available here.
Anyone read this? Recommendations?
A Poem is a Counterpunching Radio: Jack Spicer Better Late than Never
There should be no rules for this but it should be
simultaneous if at all.
Homosexuality is essentially being alone. Which is
a fight against the capitalist bosses who do not want
us to be alone. Alone we are dangerous.
Our dissatisfaction could ruin America. Our love
could ruin the universe if we let it.
If we let our love flower into the true revolution
we will be swamped with offers for beds.
– “Homosexuality and Marxism” (from Three Marxist Essays)
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Several months ago Wesleyan University Press sent me My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer (Peter Gizzi & Kevin Killian, eds). I got side-tracked and hadn’t really looked at it, until the other day when I read Language, a collection from later in Spicer’s life (he died at age 40, in 1965). It right about knocked me on my ass, and you’ll be hearing more about Vocabulary in the weeks to come, but for right now, here’s some of Spicer’s work that’s available online courtesy of the Electronic Poetry Center. Also: audio at PennSound. Also, if you’re feeling like you need a proper introduction to JS, here again is Jared White’s fine long essay on Vocabulary, which I linked to in passing several months back.
INTERVIEW WITH DJ BERNDT, EDITOR OF “PANGUR BAN PARTY”
I sent dj berndt some questions. He was really nice and cool and his answers saved the interview. He is the editor of the website PANGUR BAN PARTY. Please submit to the journal.
(interview after break)
Amy King: I’m The Man Who Loves You
I’ve been meaning to write about Amy King’s poetry for some time now and plan on a longer post at a later date. (Click here to go to her blog.) As a non-poet, I find writing about poetry intimidating and as a reader of poetry, I use very loose guidelines in my judgement of poetry. Here are my reasonings, and an Amy King poem: