A very smart woman I know started this site called Books That Saved My Life and it’s pretty self explanatory. She pusblishes people’s essays about particular books of books that have saved or have the capacity to save someone’s life. It’s still new, but there are already some good essays up, one of my favorites being Fan Letters to Judy Blum by CJ Evans.
I think she’s looking for more essays, so open that word document titled “LoveSongtoWhiteNoise?” and polish that sucker up.
That’s right. 100 of you have signed up for our Secret Santa Gift Exchange for Independent Literature. Things are happening.
Hooray!
One of you has even signed up twice!
Okay, what should the next goal be? 125?
If you’ve signed up and you’re wondering what to do next, don’t worry. I’ll have an email/post out to you with details about the exchange as soon as we get every last name on the list.
Remember, December 5th is the deadline.
A friend of mine, the talented Mike Scalise, is working on this new project in DC to open a creative writing center for high school students. The project is called Capitol Letters; here is the program’s mission statement:
Capitol Letters Writing Center believes that within every student lives a brilliant writer. We support and challenge those writers through workshops, tutoring, and student publications that complement the classroom goals of educators in a safe and creative environment.
Based on what he has told me, Capitol Letters is working towards establishing for DC school children an extracurricular community similar to what is going on in 826. I think in DC especially, given the state of the school system there (according to what I’ve read, anyhow), such a community can make a big difference.
This post is to say, hey, these people are asking for donations. I dropped $5 off to them. If you’re interested in donating, head on over to Mike’s page and do a quick paypal transfer.
Just another way to get involved.
SIR! is badass. And now reading again for issue 2. If issue 1 is any indicator, myself notwithstanding, SIR! is going to be decapitating bitches for some time to come, and doing it and doing it and doing it well. Sorry, I’ve had too much coffee, but send some words:
SIR! will be taking submissions from December to January for an upcoming February issue. There is no outright emphasis on content or form, but we remain enthusiastic about poetry of all sorts. Flash fiction is accepted, but again, we are mostly looking for poetry. Send 3-6 of your latest and best inventions. You may send them in the body of an email, or as a WORD or RTF attachment. Translations very welcome. Simultaneous submissions are accepted. Please include a short cover letter and a bio. Submissions without any sort of bio will be deleted.
Send all work to – sir.editor@gmail.com
not Joshua Cohen. Or Kafka.
Check back at Nextbook.org every day this week for a new installment of Joshua Cohen’s writing about Kafka’s Office Writings. Also, there may be periodic updates here, highlighting our favorite pieces from the series and/or reminding you to go read it.
Who could say no to this mug?
Or this bug?
Cut your fucking ears off and put them in my mouth, chud fucke*s. All y’all ever talk about up in this bitch is your fucking Morning Nutritious blend Vitamin A cattle finch pomegranate quicksilver soggy sonnet dick bullshit literature.
Your indie this / Adbusters that / dead white guys with white beards and ski caps.
Fuck ski caps.
What you need is the feeling of car keys against your throat. What you need is a little yellow smiley gone bloodsoaked, with some mutton showing, with its face jiggling off.
What you need is some STRONG POETRY.
And bless your shoe licking hearts, I’m here to deliver, courtesy of the only man I’ve ever seen eat six anvils with a cock ring on: K “THE SILEM” MOHAMMAD. Witness this, his analysis of what makes a STRONG POEM, and by analysis I mean free steak:
George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama are strong poems. Al Gore, John Kerry, George H. W. Bush, and Geraldine Ferraro are weak poems.
The relationality of the strong poem should not lead one to believe that its strength is not tangible.
The strong poem fully expects to be hated by many. This increases its strength.
The weak poem is reducible to a rectangle or rhombus whereas the strong poem resembles a parallelogram, or more exactly a trapezoid or irregular quadrilateral.
Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin” is a weak poem. Charles Olson’s “The Lordly and Isolate Satyrs” is a strong poem. The verdict is out on Allen Tate’s “Ode to the Confederate Dead.”
Not every instance of the term “strong poem” is relevant to the definition at hand. Sometimes it is merely a convenient, informal, and largely meaningless designation, as in “Good, Susan, that’s a strong poem compared to your earlier work.”
The strong poem carries with it the undercurrent of a threat in the guise of robust confidence. It is always on the verge of violating something.
“Strong,” but not yet stale, sweat.
And, yes, there’s more. You thought that was it? It? You don’t even know half of it! That’s because it is a half of shit, and half of shit is your shit (oh! what!) and half of your shit is the shit I just shit on your shit. Bitch. That’s because you’re a–wait, no, you’re not a pussy, not even that, no, you’re a bunny cunt, you’re a blowjob in pajamas. Go eat a fucking Mounds bar, girl. That’s what girls do. They just sit around eating Mounds bars and–
Adbusters’ Buy Nothing Day, the symbolic commercial day after thanksgiving, passed again in futility. There’s something sadly ironic about a bunch of socialist Canadian intellectuals trying to brand anti-ads to people immune to marketing, and wondering why no one listens. One day, when people study this civilization, the Wal-Mart clerk being trampled to death by shoppers will be read as an allegory of our deep social pathologies.
Not trying to get too existential on your ass, but we are somewhat fucked, so I am hereby launching HTMLGIANT’s Buy Nothingness Day, everyday for the next year. What better way to blend free-market ‘choice’ with the thick vacuum of ontological negation?
Come on people, jump in the Seine.
On Thanksgiving, poet Dave Church passed away.
The reason I know Dave Church is that when I first started sending poems out to small magazines, about ten years ago, he was in every journal. We wrote letters back and forth and his letters were always on thin sheets of paper and written in this crazy longhand. Some were typed on a typewriter. Tough, compassionate, and funny, I always liked corresponding with Dave Church.
Prolific in publishing, Dave Church was also this kind of larger than life character that I always heard about through other writers.
From PoetryMagazine.org.uk: in an articled title “Dave Church: a well kept American Secret:”
“From the tomato plantations of Florida, where he spent time on a ‘chain gang’ for being drunk and disorderly, the eighteen year old youth had set out on a Beat odyssey that was to occupy much of his life from then on in. He has worked as a roofer, bouncer, street barker (for Big Al’s, a strip joint seen behind the opening credits on the old ‘Streets of San Francisco’ TV series), and even cut the lawn for a doctor who paid him in drugs.”
Dave Church was old school indie lit, publishing hundreds of poems in small venues and numerous chapbooks and broadsides.
Sorry to be so dark on a Monday morning, but I thought this was important.
Here is a piece of our latest gchat about lit blogs:
me: heywe need to dolike a talking shit thingfor tomorrowwhat do you ant to talk shit about?9:41 PM heytalk shit about something!HEYChris: WHAT9:42 PM me: we need to have you talk shit about somethingChris: oh rightmust talk shitabout somethinggive me a topicme: okyour topic islit blogsChris: uh ohi first read little blogsthat was weird9:43 PM so like now i know though you want lit blogsme: yeswe are not communicating very well tonightChris: nowe are communicating brilliantlyme: there is nothing brilliantabout this gchatChris: this conversation is a microcosm for lit blogsme: microcosm?9:44 PM Chris: microorganismme: microgasmthis is dumbwe need to start overChris: microwave itme: stopChris: HAHAHAHAHAYESme: oklit blogstalk shitgoChris: WE NEED TO START OVERAGAINme: we already started over goddamn itChris: like whose lit blogme: i dont know
I want to start over again. I want to go to sleep.
Yawn.
Poet Julia Cohen has been asking people for advice over at her blog, On the Messier Side of Neat:
>>I’m reading Everybody’s Autonomy by Juliana Spahr. I’m on page 14 so I have a ways to go. What I would really appreciate is if you, in the comment box, let me know which theory or philosophy book was the most transformative for you. What has most deeply impacted your way of thinking/writing? I will then read it.
Whoever recommends the book that then impacts me the most will receive a prize greater than or equal to one pound of elk meat. Ok, greater.<<
Here’s some of what’s come in so far:
Our own Mike Young got first comment, with >>The work of Emmanuel Levinas, specifically Totality and Infinity.<<
A guy named Gary McDowell suggested Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, along with an apology that it was such a cliche choice. No shame in a crowd, Gary! I’ve read that book too.
I went on this long-winded spiel about the nature of the question, then finally got around to naming Zizek’s Puppet and the Dwarf.
Mathias Svalina of Octopus Books (and of going steady with Julia Cohen) fame, picked The Giving Tree, but then Julia said her mom thinks that book is sexist, and pointedly thanked “everyone else.” (Hmm. Did I just start an “internet rumor?” Can I classify this post under “web hype” now?)
Kitchen Press (aka Justin Marks) weighed in with this: >> Why Did I Ever, by Mary Robison. It’s marketed as a novel, i guess because she calls herself a novelist, but one could certainly argue for it as a prose poem. or lyric novel. or some mixed genre something or other.<<
And other people wrote other things too. Maybe YOU will win the elk meat?
This could be your new life.