The Coffin Factory is a magazine. I mean: you will read it and say “that was a MAGAZINE” and also you can fold it in half and not damage it. They are having a contest. I read most of the third issue on a bus, the rest on a porch. I read the whole thing then carried it around in my book bag or backpack, wanting to write about the issue but not doing so and instead opening the issue to take notes and simply enjoying the contents again and then sometimes researching the authors therein. I have read every issue (all 3) of The Coffin Factory to date. READ MORE >
Cover to Cover: The Coffin Factory
Janice Lee—
The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 is coming soon from Fantagraphics Books. Preorder & read an excerpt here.
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15 Books
a.k.a. “Playing catch up with the stacks [3]”. I did a version of this in March and also back in May of 2011.
Basically, there comes a point where I’m swamped by newly received reading materials.
Stacks on stacks on stacks, if you will. (Sorry, I live in the dirty south, the home of T-Pain, and so I hear that Young Chris song incessantly and always think “stacks” instead of “racks”.)
Since I love lists and since I’m always curious about what others are reading, I assume others might be interested in what I’m reading. So here, then, are fifteen things I’m currently in the midst of:
Ken Baumann—
from da generous Shane Jones: I have a lot of author copies for Daniel Fights a Hurricane and I want to give a few away. I was thinking a contest at HTMLGIANT where people can win a copy by creating a new kind of weather in the comments section and say what its effects are. I’ll pick three “winners” and send the copies out this weekend.
Commuting: Have gone to Ithaca – Frank Quitely
Commuting: Have gone to Ithaca – Frank Quitely
by Jared Joseph
TRNSFR / Varmint Armature Press, 2012
40 pages / $6 Buy from TRNSFR
This is a review of Commuting: Have gone to Ithaca – Frank Quitely by Jared Joseph, which is the third Chapbook from Alban Fischer and TRNSFR’s newish book arm Varmint Armature Press.
[Watch the Book Trailer here: Commuting: Have Gone to Ithaca. -Frank Quitely]
The title introduces the collection as a persona poem. Frank Quitely is the narrator. Frank Quitely is the clever inversion of “Quite Frankly”. The Frank of this work emerges in the title as a person making the journey to work. Frank is commuting to Mythical Ithaca. Everyone needs a commute, and Frank is no different. Frank Quitely is or wants to be the author of print catalogues for auction houses dealing in art like Sotheby’s and Christie’s. In the cover letter that opens the collection Frank asks Christie’s for some recognition as the one “who has wroughted”. This author character Frank is conflated and conflicted with the identity of the Jared Joseph, whose name intrudes upon the world of Frank in moments of Frankness or weakness. In Frank’s despair the world of the print catalogue collapses, and he wonders whether or not there are catalogues or prints inside them or if these are “just” poems or epigraphs to imagined pictures.
2 Comments
August 3rd, 2012 / 12:00 pm
August 3rd, 2012 / 12:00 pm
Ben Mirov—
Brooklyn based, small press Augury Books has extended its Editor’s Prize deadline until August 15th. DetailsHEEREREREREREREREREREeeeee
Comments Off on Augury Books Editor’s Prize
is on sale for only $6.38!!!
A D Jameson—
In honor of William H. Gass’s 80th birthday on 30 July, Big Other ran a whole mess of “50 literary pillars” lists (an idea borrowed from Gass).
Participants included Matt Bell, Samuel R. Delaney, Rikki Ducornet, Johannes Göransson, Christopher Higgs, Christine Schutt, and many others.
I also assembled a compiled list.
Lots of reading suggestions, in other words.
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF TWEETS – vol 1
Another “journal” dedicated to the criticism (not really) and recognition of excellence in tweeting.
TWEETUS ILLUMINATIO MEA, TWEETAMS EST LITTERAE
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@WarmCigarette by Chimney
Genre: prosopopeian mise en phlegm
Since the late 90s and early 00s, following the demise of smoking in bars, cigarettes have become demodé. The waning of smokers has left four estranged islands in its wake: losers in their 20s who will never try a cigarette, exiles huddled together outside in the cold, those of us who have been addicted to nicorette for ten years (i.e. the editor of this journal) and the iron lung. Chimney’s feed reconnects with more philosophical concerns, embodying both substantialist and metonymous voices of the Marlborbo at various points in the feed. What’s more, Chimney applies solipsism to the act of smoking—to exist is to only know one’s own smoking— and then projects it onto the identities of its followers. Editorial favorites include: “7 steps to happiness: 7) cigarettes” “Aquarius: You know-it-all piece of shit. Your busy cigarette smoking schedule will make you late for everything this week, as per usual.” “Virgo: If everything needs to be perfect how come your life is always in complete disarray? Fuck off and smoke cigarettes.” “Registration plate ideas: BL4CK LUN6”. This is an awesome feed.
@retsoor by Jason Sebastian Russo
Genre: subtweeting at god
Russo’s feed thrives on tension and surreality, all set against a bloody backdrop of either the great mystery of life and/or a hot girl with tattoos and probably bangs. Through mixed metaphors, Russo transports us deeper and deeper into longing with each turn of the tweet. Smell the acidity of a box of white wine or the love lurking deep within the ball pit of a McDonald’s on rt 9, Poughkeepsie. “the typo in my genetic code compelled me to try to email your shih tzu w a microwave” he tweets. “just sat back & let karma ravage your face “ he tweets again. “bathed you in healing enzymes under a kaopectate sky” “made love to you under a giant warm crepe” “the two of us in an inverted arms race of low self esteem” he tweets again and again and a-fucking-gain.
23 Comments
August 1st, 2012 / 1:44 pm
August 1st, 2012 / 1:44 pm
my body ain’t your battleground: Lidia Yuknavitch’s DORA
To promote her new book DORA, Lidia Yuknavitch has this campaign going on her FB page.
You can buy the book here.
