The new La Petite Zine is live & alive with fireworks from Matthea Harvey, Molly Brodak, Cathy Linh Che, Anne Cecelia Holmes, Taryn Schwilling, Colleen McCarthy, Jean Valentine, Lyall F. Harris, Montana Ray, Robyn Art, Jane Lewty, Carol Muske-Dukes, Stacey Tran, Stephanie Ford, Leanna Petronella, & Joanna Novak. Boom.


I love Jonathan Baumbach. Who doesn’t? Dzanc is rEprinting all his books.

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.

Author News / 28 Comments
July 1st, 2011 / 9:20 am

Prayer for What They Said and What They Were Not Told by Paul Maliszewski

This week marks the release of Paul Maliszewski’s new chapbook, Prayer for What They Said and What They Were Not Told, published by Varmint Armature, Trnsfr’s new publishing racket. Do pick one up. You shan’t regret it. The cost? A mere $8. And if you subscribe to Trnsfr, you’ll receive P.F.W.T.S.A.W.T.W.N.T.  entirely free of charge. Be one the first 25 and Maliszewski will sign and number your copy, and almost certainly entertain fond and benevolent thoughts about you all the while. Now what could be better than that? Just go to here.

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Presses / 3 Comments
July 1st, 2011 / 3:27 am

Reviews

Ben Mirov is Unemployed, Reads Books, Lives in Oakland

I just moved to Oakland, CA from Brooklyn, NY. I’m unemployed, so I’m reading more books than usual. And growing a beard.  Here are some of the books surrounding me and some thoughts about them and a pic of my beard.

 

 

 

Moving Day by Ish Klein (Canarium Books, 2011)

Usually when someone says a book of poems is “weird” it means the poems are ephemerally weird. Like the weirdness is a novelty to grab attention. Real weirdness permeates content and form, like it does in Ish’s book. The sentences and lines are like little adjustments to the readers attention. It feels like your being nudged into an ultimately more complex and valenced sensitivity of your self and the world.

sample lines: Yes, yes larval. / Larvelous was the eye—the stars, / they were wondering, “When is X coming out?” /  Considering the material, X will be something!”

 

Nick Demske by Nick Demske (FENCE Books, 2010)

Sometimes when I read sonnets all I can think is “fuck sonnets”. I’m pretty sure Nick Demske thinks this too, which is why he wrote a book of sonnets. Feels like this book was written by your drug dealer friend in high school who was smarter and better read than everyone in your class, but was destined to burn out and spend the rest of his life as a low-level bureaucrat in the same town you grew up in. Poems feel like they are “in your face”. Some lines break in the middle of words in a way that is perturbing/engaging. Funny letter of congratulations on the back from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), better than any blurb.

sample lines: Unsanitized hypodermia. Full dorsal poetry. Homos say / What. Say what? Say when.                  I’m going to buttfuck / You in the mouth. I know where you live.

 

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31 Comments
July 1st, 2011 / 2:12 am

i’m a bullhole cliche / assshit: An Interview with Victoria Trott

When I started reading online literature, sometime in mid-2008, I discovered a short list of bloggers/writers (Tao Lin, Ellen Kennedy, Zachary German) with similar attitudes and approaches to literature. Later, when Muumuu House was established, I found, among them, a new name: Victoria Trott. I read her poems, her blog, and it was all very strange, funny, and poignant. On Halloween 2009, I met her at a late night get together in (where else) Williamsburg. She seemed quiet, estranged, grinning aimlessly. By then she’d sort of disappeared from the online scene, leaving behind only a few publications (not to mention an unreleased forthcoming issue of German’s now-discontinued litmag), an altered moniker, and a lot of questions. In late 2009, she created a hilarious, ingenious Twitter account, and in summer 2010, a wonderful new blog. Finally there was some clarity, openness, continuity, but still, I was curious. Last fall, I compiled a list of questions I had for (and regarding) Victoria in a Gmail draft. Then I emailed her some of those questions, commencing a slow correspondence,  spanning three months. Here are the results:

David Fishkind: Hi Victoria, How are you?

Victoria Trott: Hey David, someone bought me breakfast today and I took half of a Ritalin, I feel pretty good. How are you?

How did you get involved with online literature? Or maybe, what is your time line of involvement?

Here’s a timeline of my involvement with online literature, which has the stuff about blog switching, I think

2007 – high school sophomore, read Hikikomori on Bear Parade. showed Tao Lin’s blog to my friend, she said “amoeba ass?” and laughed with a puzzled face.

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Author Spotlight / 48 Comments
June 30th, 2011 / 7:21 pm

If Wishes Were Fishes I Would Be Allergic

And now for a book trailer for Myriam Gurba’s Wish You Were Me from Riley Michael Parker, a trailer notable for its revolutionary use of pillow suicide, lampshade helmets, and slapstick vulgarity:

Web Hype / 4 Comments
June 30th, 2011 / 2:38 pm

Reviews

“Get Well Seymour!” by Joe Meno, Or: Let’s Talk

When I was charged with the task of contributing to this superneat project hyping Akashic Books’ redux of Joe Meno’s short fiction collection, Demons In the Spring, I felt entitled. For years I’d been a pestering cheerleader for Meno’s novels, The Great Perhaps and The Boy Detective Fails. Although the former got a fat, excellent review in the Times, I still felt Meno was somehow criminally under-heralded, a vital voice in need of a louder advocate. So when I got the chance to be that advocate, to ruminate on one of the collection’s stories, “Get Well, Seymour!”—a sad, excellent tale about cruise ships, inevitability, and psychosomatic parrots—here’s what I did:

I sat on the assignment for five months.

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4 Comments
June 30th, 2011 / 2:20 pm

Great Moments in Literature

Perhaps as a neighbor for Christopher Higgs’s “What Is Experimental Literature” series, we should compile a list of neat, uh, experiments. I’m thinking: What are your favorite tricks in literature? Let’s make a list. Here, I’ll scratch the meta surface. The comment box is “there” as a repository for your additions and complaints, as usual. READ MORE >

Craft Notes / 74 Comments
June 29th, 2011 / 7:04 pm

What is Experimental Literature? {Five Questions: Dennis Cooper}

According to his official bio, Dennis Cooper was born, he grew up, he wrote, he attended, he transferred, he was expelled, he met, he attended, he then attended, he studied, he founded, he lived, he moved, he began. And now he currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris. Harper Perennial will release his newest novel The Marbled Swarm in November 2011, and next month they will be republishing Horror Hospital Unplugged: his 1997 graphic novel collaboration with artist Keith Mayerson. He blogs at denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com.

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Random / 16 Comments
June 29th, 2011 / 12:20 pm