Batter my heart, third-person omniscient god
Unicorn Mask print by Matty8080
What is your preferred point of view? Your go-to voice when you write, if you write, or the one you’re happiest to see when you open a new book? Can you use second-person without feeling like a wanker? Do you love “I” for its accessibility, its steadfastness, its immediacy–the narrative fuzzy bedroom slippers ever at the foot of your crafty little bed? Because I can be “me” but “not-me,” whereas you is always only you, and third-person, well, forget it. That actually starts to feel like work.
Live Giants with Michael Kimball
You missed the 4th Live Giants reading with Michael Kimball, and Andy Devine.
Through tomorrow you can get Devine’s Words for $8 from PG here.
Matthew Simmons—
Some of us like HTML Giant contributor Mike Young. So we wrote birthday sestinas for Mike Young. Happy (now belated) birthday, Mike Young!
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Ken Baumann—
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.
Found-ish Poetry: The Sorted Books Project
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.
Paul Killebrew: Explain Yourself!
[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)
Way to check those facts, Helen.
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 >
The Best Chapbooks I bought in Denver
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
Alexis Orgera—
“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.