Some of us like HTML Giant contributor Mike Young. So we wrote birthday sestinas for Mike Young. Happy (now belated) birthday, Mike Young!
In celebration of Mr. Kimball’s & Mr. Devine’s appearance tonight, I’m giving two copies of WORDS away. Make a sentence out of these words: a, and, it, dog, runs, mother, blood, diamond, tired, heavy, wall, takes, glimpses, eats, burnt, opaque, crams, the, him, her, dead, fall, yes, their. Add your email. I’ll pick two favorites by the 9pm PST.
Thanks to a tip from brilliant anthropologist Laura Jones, I found out about this thing called the Sorted Books Project, wherein the artist Nina Karchadourian has, since 1993, made these lovely little collage poems out of book spines from libraries and private collections. You read the titles in order to get the full text. Below, some of my favorites. On the site itself, you can click through any picture to get more images of collages made from the same collection.
[Long-time readers might recall that I started a game show right here at HTMLGIANT in which I post a link to a great piece of new writing and demand of the author: EXPLAIN YOURSELF! (applause) Well, so, sorry, it’s been a while. What are you going to do, tax me?]
Anyway, this time I challenge Paul Killebrew, whose new book from Canarium, Flowers, is whoa holy, to comment before this post scrolls off the page. Is this poem, from Gulf Coast, a story? (Readers, it begins:
“I think he’s basically a person,”
said the young waiter to the older one.
Are you clipping from Hemingway or Orwell here? What was the poem’s starting point? Paul Killebrew, EXPLAIN YOURSELF! (applause)
My buddy Travis (who has a new novel called Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder out now, and a fancy new piece on Book Notes at the Largehearted Boy blog) made a silly, offhand statement on Twitter. It read: “I think we should all also boycott Arizona Iced Tea because it is the drink of fascists.” He was kidding. What happened next is not entirely easy to follow, timeline-wise. Travis—as you will read in the following interview—believes the quote was grabbed by someone on a forum. Most of the links I’ve found by looking up “Travis Nichols” and “Drink of fascists” seem to lead back to an article on the NY Daily News site written by a Helen Kennedy. Hard to say where she first saw it. (I was considering trying to get ahold of Ms. Kennedy, but on Thursdays I pretend to be a cowboy, not a journalist.)
Then Rush Limbaugh found it. And then so did some other people. Hilarity ensued.
A reporter from the New York Times actually contacted Travis, and wrote about the little dust up here.
I interviewed Travis. It’s after the jump.
READ MORE >
In thought of the upcoming Chapbook Festival, I want to tell you about a few great little books that have come to be.
DoubleCross Press, run by MC Hyland, makes her own damn paper and has a bunch of new releases you should eyeball, including this one –
Museum Armor by Lily Brown.
Letterpress printed pamphlet on khadi and frankfurt white papers. $7
Get it here
“The hallucinatory twilights, the nightmarish birds, the exquisite putrefactions of the mangrove swamps seemed the cherished memories of a past he had not lived.” –Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons.
Write the cherished memories of a past you have not lived in 13 words or less.
1. Please welcome the newest Giant contributor, the radical Kristen Iskandrian, who rules.
2. Don’t forget tonight at 9 PM Eastern (again, 6 PM for you west coast freaks) Michael Kimball will read live here on HTMLGIANT, with a guest opening reading by Andy Devine. See you there!
Been following Hint Fiction?
If you read HTML, yes. (Thanks, Roxane)
I glow flash, write/teach/advocate for flash. But I’m wondering. When do we do this big, when do we go all the way, I mean fucking Double Down KFC big?
I want a contest where every submission is a blank page. Everything off the page.
Who will write the next silent symphony, the 4:33? The Godot of flash?
Who is up for a blank page flash contest?
Oh that’s just silly (or smart?). Let’s go 3, 3–a holy number, words. Give me 3 words. I’ll begin.
Dolphin Nachos, Bono?
(The award is a good book [my choice–it will rock ass], hot sauce [It will kill your spleen and brain. It will be hot like donuts or making out in the bathroom at that Halloween party] and a brand new deck of kick-ass cards [literary theme])