Spork’s Six New Books
The handmade books of Spork Press are spreading across the literary universe, leaving the Spork collective ‘more psyched than ever.’
On any given evening, in the middle of any given week, just off of Fourth Avenue, you might stumble across the editors of Spork Press as they dutifully work on their next set of printings.
They might have music blaring out of the carport in which they work while they press ink onto boards using a half-century-old machine. They might be sipping beers, mixing and transferring music mixes onto cassette tapes. They could be listening to audiobooks, evening out the edges of their work—literally, with a belt sander.
(…..from The Tucson Weekly, “An Analog Experience”)
Yes, Spork makes beautiful books and recently debuted their 6 newest creations (“artifacts”) at AWP here in my backyard (Seattle, which is just across the lake from Kirkland, home of Costco, etc). The Tucson Weekly reports that AWP was a “huge success” for Spork, selling “more than 400 books.”
So, anyways, here is a bit of a roundup of Spork’s 6 new books with a bit of verbiage about each book and/or the author. (and, yes, I’m one of these 6 authors so if you think this is uncool, well, go ahead and sue me).
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“Church and State” (guest posted by Rauan Klassnik)
or “Michael Schiavo’s Negative Review of Matthew Dickman’s All-American Poem” (“The Anti-Whitman or Out of Many, Me, Me, Me: Matthew Dickman’s All American Poem.”)
[A guest post (hopefully the first of many) by Rauan Klassnik -ed.]
Michael Schiavo has written a very passionate and very negative review of Matthew Dickman and his poetry.
In the aftermath of his review Michael Schiavo has stated that he doesn’t “plan on doing negative reviews, especially of this intensity, often. But (he) will do so when necessary. And this was necessary. Big picture.”
Michael has also since written that Dickman’s poetry is not even worthy of being called “shit.”
“To even describe these poems as shit is to assign value to them. Shit is the root of things, rids the body of toxins while building up the natural world that surrounds us. It’s part of nature, part of a process that has meaning and power behind it. It’s disconcerting to hold in your hand something that rightly shouldn’t exist.”
March 17th, 2009 / 12:13 pm