Blake Butler
http://www.gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com/
Blake Butler lives in Atlanta. His third book, There Is No Year, is forthcoming April 2011 from Harper Perennial.
Blake Butler—
@ The New York Observer, Matthew Hunte weighs in on the newly printed 20 Under 40: Stories from the New Yorker anthology: “Instead of highlighting new talent, they inadvertently end up championing precocity and nurturing a culture where early recognition and promise are conflated with achievement.”
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Poor Claudia 4 ++
The fourth issue of Portlandian magazine and press Poor Claudia is alive:
More specs and info and purchase points are available here.
Or, if you are smart and thrifty, you can involve yourself in the PC Subscription Package, which includes for $30 everything PC will release in 2011, including two issues of the journal, chapbooks, nonbooks, broadsides, and more.
While you’re at it, the back catalog is teeming, and all beautiful crafted objects: James Gendron’s Money Poems and Emily Kendal Frey’s Frances are both in particular fantastic.
Iambik Audiobooks: Lish, Tillman, Hunt, etc.
Iambik Audiobooks is a new publisher of audio editions of curated literary fiction. Their current roster includes Gordon Lish, Lynne Tillman, J. Robert Lennon, Laird Hunt, Lydia Millet, and several others, all priced at a very reasonable $4.99 for the majority of their titles.
I picked up the 18 hour compendium of Lish reading selections from his recent Collected Fictions. The recording is pristine, and includes often introductions or lead ins by Lish. It’s the first time he’s ever read his own work aloud for the public. Because the hefty length, this one is the most expensive at the site, but still only $9.99 for the whole set, and also available in smaller editions for a lower price. Hearing him read the work himself adds a whole other layer to the fold. You can preview it here [EDIT: the preview is not of Lish himself; some of the works are read by Gregg Margarite]. I feel like I’ll be listening to this again and again over the years. Maybe I’ll drive somewhere, and now I don’t have to buy like Clive Barker.
Really excited to see such an excellently executed version of a great idea. Check them out.
Blake Butler—
Vice’s 2010 Fiction Issue is out now, with new by Patrick deWitt, Terry Southern, Deb Olin Unferth, and interviews with Amy Hempel, Sam Lipsyte, Edward Albee, more.
Prompt Poem: introductory statements by people in my MFA workshop
In my workshop this semester we were encouraged to write a poem a day and post the results on this shared website/forum/message-board thing called “Blackboard.” This was 100% optional and of course no one actually posted a poem everyday or even seriously tried to, I think. We were given numerous prompts and exercises throughout the semester to keep us going if we got stuck. What follows is a poem I made out of everyone’s explanatory/introductory/preface statements to their poems.
Prompt Poem
Hello! Here’s an opposite poem.
Here is a poem that is opposite of Laura Riding.
I started a poem inspired by Campbell McGrath.
See Ezra Pound’s “Alba.”
From today’s notebook entry.
After “Heart” by Gregory Orr.
Continuing what I started yesterday… READ MORE >
Les Figues’s 2011 TrenchArt Series: Recon
New & forthcoming from the always provocative Les Figues:
The 2011 TrenchArt series—Recon—is now available for new memberships and renewals.
For as little as $60, you can receive all five books in the series, individually mailed to you as they are published throughout the new year. This means you’ll receive:
- TrenchArt: Recon (aesthetics) Available now!
- Negro Marfil | Ivory Black, by Myriam Moscona, translated by Jen Hofer
- Tall, Slim and Erect: Portraits of the Presidents by Alex Forman
- By Kelman Out of Pessoa by Doug Nufer
- The Phonemes by Frances Richard
Each book is also the site of an unfolding articulation by visual artist Renee Petropoulos.Give more than $60, and receive a tax-deduction! See all member levels.Plus there’s more: the TrenchArt Recon series is designed by writer/artist Janice Lee. The covers for the aesthetic collection were letterpressed by the amazing Brian Teare. Each book is hand-stamped with an image designed by Renee Petropoulos. The stamping will continue throughout the year, which means, members only will receive specially stamped books!
The TrenchArt series also makes a wonderful holiday gift. Simply indicate “gift” in the comments box, and we’ll include a note in the package.
Wind Call Swill Stein 2xQs Again
French rap is weird
1. Super thrilled to hear via twitter that Coffee House Press will be putting out a new collection by Brian Evenson, Windeye. Hopefully by 2011? No date word yet, but Evenson is the kind that I go stand in line for. If you haven’t read the titular story yet, it is gorgeous, and available via PEN America.
2. At Electric Literature, Melissa Broder interviews Ryan Call about, what else, litblogging.
3. James Yeh has a new chapbook out, 9/16/10, from a rad small press making beautiful objects, Swill Children.
4. The Complete Recordings of Gertrude Stein Reading Her Own Works @ PennSound
5. Interview with Dorothea Lasky by Nafiza Islam at Thoughts Interjected & interview with Patrick Somerville by Tobias Carroll at Vol 1. Brooklyn.
6. At Ubu, Doug Nufer’s Never Again, a 163 pg. novel with no word appearing more than once, which I discovered after an awesome conversation wondering if such a thing existed with Heather Christle and Christopher DeWeese, both of whom have books coming from Octopus in 2011 that I am also mega excited for.
Blake Butler—
I think if I had to say one book I read this year that killed me the hardest, it would be Pierre Guyotat’s Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers [1967]. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. What were your favorite reads of 2010, published in 2010 or otherwise?
Dean Young’s Heart Transplant Fund
From a letter by Tony Hoagland at the National Foundation for Transplants
Dear Friends,
If you are reading this, you are probably a friend of Dean Young and/or a friend of poetry. And you may have heard that our friend is in a precarious position. Dean needs a heart transplant now. He also needs your assistance now.
Over the past 10 or 15 years, Dean has lived with a degenerative heart condition–congestive heart failure due to idiopathic hypotropic cardiomyopathy. After periods of more-or-less remission, in which his heart was stabilized and improved with the help of medications, the function of his heart has worsened. Now, radically.
Donations can be made here (be sure to make the gift in honor of Dean Young), or via an address at the bottom of the link above.