Press Press Press
If you’ve decided to abandon our [fucked] economy of slightly practical needs (plastics, soup, etc.) and concentrate entirely on the purchase of independent poetry, you should visit Press Press Press. This blog is a kind of small press mall, with links to a legion of small poetry presses and continual announcements of new titles. Recent entries include links to Rebecca Loundon’s new book Cadaver Dogs from No Tell Books and Kristi Maxwell’s Elsewhere and Wise from Dancing Girl Press. It’s a great idea and a great add to your RSS feed.
for godot: Issue 1 Release, mhmm
This issue features new poems by Nada Gordon, Evelyn Reilly, Julianna Mundim, Emmy Catedral, Enid Bagnold, Richard Siken, Stephen Ratcliffe, Michael Gottlieb, Jodie Childers, Norman J. Olson, Brent Hendricks, Sean Kilpatrick, Tom McCarthy, Stacy Doris, Michael Rerick, Corrinne Clegg Hales, Mark Decarteret, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Darren Wershler-Henry, Letitia Trent, Debra Di Blasi, Laura Elrick, Bruna Mori, Popahna Brandes, Robert Sheppard, Diana Magallan, Kristine Danielson, Ed Higgins, Drew Gardner, Kyle Kaufman, Matthew Thorburn, Tiel Aisha Ansari, Christopher Wells, Vanessa Place, Simon Pettet, Grace Vajda, John Bennett, Ian Patterson, Joseph Hutchison, John Cotter, Cheryl Lawson Walker, Scott Esposito, Jason Nelson, Daniel Kane, Kimo Armitage, Alan May, J.D. Nelson, Bob Hershon, Jennifer Karmin, Kim Rosenfield, Nathan Austin, Pearl Pirie, Rosmarie Waldrop, Tara Betts, Donald Revell, Jim Ryals, Danuta Kean, Jeff VanderMeer, Alfredo Bonanno, Irene Latham, Michael Hennesy, Dick Higgins, John Hanson, Billy Merrell, Sam Ladkin, Jeff Ward, Debra Jenks, K. Lorraine Graham, Kenji Okuhira, Sean MacInnes, Adam Seelig, Steve Halle, David Mus, Monique Wittig, Joyelle McSweeney, Daniel E. Levenson, Luke Daly, Henry Thoreau, John Palattella, Abby Trenaman, Kristen Taylor, Vassily Kamensky, David Jhave Johnston, Gene Tanta, Cate Marvin, Alison Roth, Shad Marsh, Asher Ghaffar, Henry Gould, Justin Theroux, Susan Grimm…
Lame House Press new release
Last week, Lame House Press officially released Kate Greenstreet’s chapbook This is Why I Hurt You. I got my copy last week and it’s a good looking piece. The writing is killer. Lame House mastermind Gina Myers, a fellow Saginaw native who earned her MFA from The New School, consistently publishes interesting and intelligent chapbooks (each copy of which she handcrafts, of course). Lame House is grouped in my mind with other independent presses like Greying Ghost and Publishing Genius, each publishing high quality chapbooks at ridiculously reasonable prices.
Chapbooks have been around forever (apparently Neanderthal Man’s hunched back is due to carrying around so many stone chapbooks ), but the chapbook has become a sort of art object in itself. Yes, the writing is excellent, of course, but the chaps themselves feel like something more than string, paper, and staples, thanks to the ambitious work of the many indie presses like Lame House, Greying Ghost, Publishing Genius, et al. Nice work, everyone.
AWP Reader’s List
AWP Chicago edition has posted on their website a list of featured readers for the event which will be held in early February.
It’s a solid list. I wish there were more young up-and-coming type writers but still I hope to engage in a wild party with Nick Flynn and Valzhyna Mort (pictured) while Marilynne Robinson makes disgusted faces.
AWP will be a big scene for online writers who will no doubt stare at each other awkwardly after meeting in person. Then realize we are all best friends. Get tickets soon. Last year in NYC it sold out.
i randomly selected a journal off of blake butler’s sidebar because he is cooler than me and then i edited the journal’s “about” page
well, as i explained in the title of this post, i selected a journal at random from blake butler’s sidebar. it was “caketrain”. i went to their website and edited some of the text on their “about” page.
here it is:
Caketrain is edited by A CHRISTMAS TREE and A HAMMER, who cofounded the project in 2003. In short, we (A CHRISTMAS TREE and A HAMMER) found ourselves realizing that this “crazy” passion-for-the-arts thing, which had long been fostered in all of us, was not going to be muffled by EVIL WHITE PEOPLE, or logic, or PRAYERLESS ASSASSINS SLEEPING IN TREES. Yes, the drive was here to stay, and we had HERPES; fortunately, we shared these HERPES with one another, and together, turned them into a journal and press (AND ITCHY GAPING SORES ON OUR LIPS AND GENITALS). Many have taken this route before, and we are proud to be accepted into their number. All of us—readers, writers, editors, and PEOPLE WITH HERPES alike—are engaged together in the struggle to stand our ground in a larger landscape in which literary daring is marginalized, ghettoized on small, out-of-the-way shelves where it sits unnoticed, unread, and ultimately forgotten (BECAUSE IT HAD WICKED HERPES AND STUFF).
will 2009 be the year of the post-confessional prose-poem? … ask again later
On Saturday 9/27 at Tao Lin & Nicole Spector’s reading at Solas (part of LitCrawl NYC) I sat next to Soffi Stiassni and tried to get her to write a poem with me. Soffi’s work appears in regular typeface; my contributions are in italics)
“Poem”
I hate all the noises in here… And most of the people making the noises into their fancy hats.
+
See? You see how it’s a prose-poem?
No Faces Are Safe
This morning an anonymous tip sent me to the website redesign of new and insane journal No Colony, which recently began ‘eating face’ all around the literary world.
I discovered that editors Ken Bauman and Blake Butler have moved away from the movie stills this time around and instead have settled upon the color black for their new background. The standard text blocks are still there: submissions information, ordering information, buy-in information, and Pushcart nomination purchasing information. PayPal links seem scattered throughout the page in a helpful manner.
New to the site: a neat cover shot and three online fictions by Sean Kilpatrick, Corey Zeller, and Patrick Leonard. Sean Kilpatrick’s piece is a selection from the print issue. The other two are a surprise for you to read on your own.
Some sort of facial covering is recommended.
Everyone Love
NOÖ Journal’s blog is launching a new project called NOÖ Loves Everyone. They* intend to interview everyone who has ever contributed to NOÖ Journal ever and post these interviews on the blog. The order is alphabetical by first name. First up is Alex Burford, co-editor of Pinch Pinch Press. Next up will be acclaimed poet Arlene Ang.
*Full disclosure: when I say they, I mean Ryan and me; both of us write for this site too.
scrape my arm and give me AIDS
i like this blog. it is by chris killen and socrates adams florou. here is a description of my first encounter with the blog:
(said ‘huh’ while noticing a link on chris killen’s blog)
(clicked the link and looked at the ground, waiting for the page to upload)
(waited and kept checking but my computer was slow)
(got really upset, like menopause upset, and just sat there)
(saw the page had uploaded)
(read the entire blog)
(lol-ed like a motherfucker)
(had nothing to do)
(pushed sexual organs back into body)
(checked email)