Checking In On Jason Bredle

Pain Fantasy by Jason Bredle is one of the most enjoyable books of poetry I’ve read this year.  Strange, funny, dark, heartbreaking, mixing in sports and wordplay (yes, sports), there was a lot to like about this collection.  Bredle has also been hitting the online journals – most recently three solid pieces in the latest issue of No Posit.

Some writers you just want to know what they are working on.  At least I have a list in my head like this.  I emailed Jason Bredle and asked him to talk a little about what he’s working on.  What follows is the response I got:

Basically I decided to divide up all my poems from the past two years and make two chapbooks out of them, but I haven’t even made the chapbooks, and I don’t know how to get them published even if I do make them. I’m thinking maybe instead I’ll let them fall in love with each other and make a baby. I don’t think this is really newsworthy, though. I thought I was going to finish a manuscript in June and I put all this time into revising and reordering poems and then I went to LA and decided while I was there that I was going to scrap the whole thing, so I came home and rewrote a lot of things all over again. Did you ever see Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story? It’s very much like the part where John C. Reilly is doing all this acid and working on the same song for six months. I didn’t love that movie as much as I’d hoped I would, but it was worth seeing just for that scene. I’ve only written two poems in the past three months. One I wrote a week before I was hospitalized, and then I was sick for a little while, and then I wrote another, and then I started working a lot of extra hours and haven’t had time to sit down and write, or when I do I go back to this poem called Caspian Sea, which is essentially a blank page I spend hours looking at with Caspian Sea written at the top.

I also asked who he was reading, what writers he likes:

Mark Halliday has a new book out, which I’m reading. He’s my favorite poet. I was going to try to find this one particular poem of his on the internet and send it to a friend of mine so if I can find it I’ll also send it to you. Okay, I just looked around and I couldn’t find it, but it doesn’t help that I don’t really remember the title.

For those who haven’t read Jason Bredle, I suggest doing a google search and picking up his books.

Author Spotlight / 7 Comments
October 6th, 2008 / 9:17 am

Improbable Object

From Matthew Kirkpatrick, that guy who works for FC2 and, last I checked, coedits Barrelhouse, comes a new online journal: Improbable Object. In the first issue there is work by Blake Butler, Justin Taylor, Davis Schneiderman, and art by Bill Dunlap: Blake Butler wants to sell his face on Ebay, Justin Taylor writes “the truth about cemeteries is they only / exist because we all keep clapping,” and Davis Schneiderman takes us to the Island of Lost Souls and the Island of Blessed Sheep.

Good things happen.

I enjoyed the contents of this issue. I read each piece several times after drinking two glasses of scotch and three glasses of wine. It was a good experience overall. Matthew Kirkpatrick is doing something very interesting, and I want to watch him keep doing it. As I read Improbable Object, I thought of other online journals. DIAGRAM came to mind. So did Lamination Colony.

Improbable Object is a very clean-looking online journal, and one, I suspect, that needs more submissions. So if you’ve got awesome stuff lying around, send away; the submission guidelines suggest that you “submit something short” if you’d like your work to be considered.

I recommend this journal to everyone, sober and drunk.

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October 6th, 2008 / 3:24 am

Starcherone Books Open Subs

For the next 10 days (until Oct 15), Starcherone Books has opened their gates for open submission of queries regarding book length works. With fantastic releases in the past year from Johannes Goransson, Joshua Cohen, Zachary Mason, and more, this is a great opportunity for those who are looking to send out their innovative fiction manuscripts.

In addition to the open subs, they’ve also announced their yearly book competition, which should answer the question in many mouths, that being: What’s up with Ben Marcus? as he’s been announced the final judge for the competition. Booyah.

Here’s specific words:

Effective immediately, Starcherone Books will be accepting manuscripts under the following guidelines:

1. Writers may query until October 15, 2008, at starcherone@gmail.com. Please tell us about your book project and about your writing accomplishments to date. DO NOT SEND YOUR MANUSCRIPT; UNLESS WE HAVE ASKED FOR IT, IT WILL BE RETURNED.

2. We will be resuming our manuscript contest this winter, with Ben Marcus as our 2009 Final Judge. See our CONTEST PAGE. Our contest will serve as the preferred method for writers who have not established a track record through prior awards and/or publications to have their manuscripts considered by Starcherone Books. This contest is designed to discover new writing talent, and has been the method by which we have discovered six writers (five winners and a published runner-up) since 2004.

Presses / 2 Comments
October 5th, 2008 / 10:53 pm

Brandi Wells is a dream person

There’s a new issue of THE DREAM PEOPLE now live, I like the Dream People, it is a surrealist/absurdist journal that’s been kicking for quite some time now, run by the good man D. Harlan Wilson. It seems there aren’t enough surreal-related venues out there by far and often when places claim surrealism they mean ‘goofy,’ but The Dream People seems to be on point with the view, and at the very least is a great read, all -isms aside.

I particularly enjoyed in this issue, Brandi Wells’s BABY. Brandi Wells has been doing a lot of interesting work lately, publishing weird, tight and image-ripping short things all around, I really like what she’s got her hands in. She also seems to be able to write about ridiculous things in a way that makes them seem sensible, which is harder than making sensible things ridiculous.

Lines like this: “She followed me to the bathroom and watched me piss, told me I wasn’t pissing right and I ought to piss better if I was going to be a mother.”

I want a Brandi Wells novel.

Author Spotlight / 10 Comments
October 5th, 2008 / 6:08 pm

Farewell RIVET

Yes, it’s over. RIVET, one of the super slick Seattle indie magazines, is publishing its last issue. The good news is that they’re not folding, but editor Leah Baltus and company feel that it’s time to move on.

I’m sad to see RIVET’s run ending, as it was the first real print magazine to publish my fiction, but I also know that it’s for the best when it’s time to move on with other projects. With the financial support of The Shunpike, the staff at RIVET was able to fully use their talent to produce a fine magazine. Here’s what Leah had to say on RIVET’s blog:

Yes, friends, it’s true. After seven amazing years and 21 issues of RIVET, the RIVET gang is moving on to new adventures. We cannot begin to express the full magnitude of this experience nor the gratitude we feel toward the many hundreds people who have contributed work, time, energy and money to this project over the years. Together, we have defied the odds of publishing and connected thousands of readers with new work and new ideas from writers, artists and designers of all kinds.

It has been a tremendous privilege to make this magazine and we are proud of the work we’re leaving behind on your bookshelves.

Thank you, Leah. Best wishes.

Uncategorized / 4 Comments
October 5th, 2008 / 1:39 pm

open letter to the troll on tao lin’s blog

Dear when.parents.flee.the.country,

I don’t usually get involved in blog-related confrontations, for what I assume are obvious (though, perhaps, not to you) reasons. You are hardly the first troll/weirdo that Tao Lin has had to deal with, and I am sure you won’t be the last. That fact of Tao’s life has little–if anything–to do with me, other than that it makes me sad for him sometimes (also exhausted and pissed off on his behalf) but this isn’t why I’m writing today.

Agriculture Reader #2 was edited by my good friend–the magazine’s founder–Jeremy Schmall. I have some poems in it, and soon after that issue came out I moved to my present position as its co-editor. (Our next issue will come out in February 2009.) You probably noticed that the AGR is a handmade journal with a prominent design element. Its entire print run is somewhere in the low to mid three figures. We hope, therefore, that every copy we sell or give away will be cherished.

Your utter lack of civility, displayed repeatedly over the past few days in the comments section of Tao’s blog–including but not limited to stalkerish language and intimations of violence, compounded by the cowardice of your refusing to reveal your identity–makes me doubt your capacity to appreciate art in general, and the AGR in particular.

It grieves me that Agriculture Reader #2 may not be bringing you the joy you had hoped it would, but my greater concern is that you are not the sort of reader we are looking for.  The AGR is a finite resource, every copy of it is precious, and I hate to think of even one copy being wasted. I hope you will consider returning your copy of the magazine, so I can give it to someone who can appreciate it. (Note that I do not say “will.” We do not require our readers to provide a guarantee of validation or an echo chamber of praise; but we confess to a bias for those with the capacity for comprehension and, if need be, civil discussion.)

Please contact me in the comments section of this post regarding my offer. We can exchange mailing addresses, or perhaps agree to meet at some neutral location. In exchange for your remittance of the magazine (undamaged, and with the included audio CD), I will bring you several paperbacks from the thrift store near my house. In a best case scenario these will be Tom Clancy’s Op-Center(TM) novels written by someone other than Tom Clancy, or perhaps some entries in the R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series.

Yours,

Justin

Author Spotlight & Web Hype / 18 Comments
October 5th, 2008 / 1:09 pm

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.

Presses & Web Hype / 6 Comments
October 4th, 2008 / 5:51 pm

Free for Magic For Beginners for all

Kelly Link, in celebration of her new collection just released, PRETTY MONSTERS (of which I am stoked), has released to the reading public and online freakshow free digital copies of her incredible collection MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS.

MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS is one of my favorite story collections ever, so if you haven’t read it yet, maybe this will give you the push. ‘Stone Animals’ is easily in my top 5 stories ever, for its weird magical listmaking and supreme creeps, but all of the stories in MFB are pretty damn fantastic.

The newer PRETTY MONSTERS book also has a website which makes me excited for the book. Here is what it is said to contain:

# A phone booth in Las Vegas
# Aliens
# Unhelpful wizards
# Possibly carnivorous sofas
# A handbag with a village inside it
# Tennessee Fainting Goats
# Dueling librarians
# A statue of George Washington
# A boy named Onion
# Pirates
# An undead babysitter
# A nationally-ranked soccer player
# Shapeshifters
# An unexpected campfire guest

Kelly Link can eat you. Read free then buy.

Author News / 2 Comments
October 4th, 2008 / 1:30 pm

Daniel Bailey’s exploding face

Earlier this year a new secret head emerged from the face of the internet, it was a new journal that instead of words on screens that you can look at and read decided to feature video feature work only, though to this point work that contains poetry and semi-corresponding videos made by lonely young male authors.

The site is called HERE EXPLODES MY GIANT FACE and is run by a fine man by the name of Daniel Bailey.

The videos run thus far have been mostly all really well put together and fun to watch, a nice shift in public poetics. I particularly like the most recent video on the site by Sam Pink, which features a video of a man walking through the woods with a flashlight until he comes upon a rather cryptic and somehow very creepy scene in a house, all while Sam reads his one-liner-ish words from his recent Jaguar Uprising Press release YUM YUM I CAN’T WAIT TO DIE. The whole experience of the video caused weird rashes and giggle marrs on my knee.

I think I’ve said before that Sam Pink should become a stand up comedian, I would go see him.

The rest of the stuff on the site, including work by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Ken Baumann and Matthew Savoca and several others, is all very nice viewing. Check it, and submit!

Uncategorized / 2 Comments
October 4th, 2008 / 12:43 pm

LIKE FEST

Barrelhouse is a thing we like and their blog has reviewed new chapbooks by people we like so you should read the review and like the books and the people too. 

 

A Tale of Two Chaps discusses They All Seemed Asleep, by Matthew Rohrer from Octopus Books, and Hit Wave by Jon Leon from Kitchen Press. 

 

Here are two unhelpful excerpts from the review: 

On Rohrer- >>You’ve never heard of anything like that, right? <<

On Leon- >>I should say that the chapbook begins with two quick odes…<<

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October 4th, 2008 / 12:20 pm