Good Advice
The new issue of Gulf Coast features a roundtable between Matthew Rohrer, Heather Christle, Matthew Zapruder, & Zachary Schomburg on what “surrealism” means today in American poetry.
Most interesting is what Matthew Rohrer says about surrealism and optimism.
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
boston’s best dad
As many writers alter ego as editors, all too often their own work is overshadowed by their press efforts. I know the feeling and its a little bittersweet. But today is a different day because Janaka Stucky has been voted Best Poet by the city of Boston.
Styles
Do you fear style in poetry?
Do you skeptic it?
Once the style is figured out, does it become less impactful?
My favorite writers are styled.
Their words have good hair.
Lack of style seems to be what keeps good words from becoming distinguished words.
I still look for things that I think are “cool”
“Cool” I think appeals to the mind more than the heart.
It doesn’t need to be overt.
“Cool” is the neon sign that comes to mind when reading Cows by Frederic Boyer just published in the new Puerto Del Sol
V.
The cows are useful and sure. Their existence is an infinite number of successive
presents.
It is thus understandable with what pleasure we exterminated them.
The cows are only themselves when gathering into their own finitude the infinite
totality in which they found themselves. Beneath a tree. In a meadow. On the earth
lost in the universe.
The human being is quickly jealous of the cows. Oh, if only the gods would arm
me with such power—comes the muffled voice of tiny Telemachus that is held in The
Odyssey.
The cows don’t read what’s in our hearts. They don’t understand us any better
than we understand ourselves. They ask neither for our recognition nor our gratitude
nor our hate as we ask it of ourselves. And never have we contemplated them in their
truth.
Thought, the cows immediately knew in our presence, betrays general indifference.
It’s only when dangers become evident that indifference ends. In our presence
the cows learned this at their own expense.
Over 1,000 pages of Georg Trakl coming. In 3 years, but coming…
Forthcoming in 2013 is The Collected Works of Georg Trakl, translated by Daniele Pantano and published by Black Lawrence Press. The book will include all of his poems, plays, fragments, drafts and letters and will be well over 1,000 pages. The timing of publication will dovetail with the centenary of Trak’s death (November 3, 1914).
Trash
What makes a work unpublishable? Ubu Web invites 50 authors to answer this question.
Read a conversation over stolen food by John Cotner and Andy Fitch, a handwritten letter to her father by a young Mary Jo Bang, Christian Bok’s proposal for nanoscopic poems,some language dissolutons that end in a review of Lou Reed by Alan Licht, and lots lots more.
The web is a perfect place to test the limits of unpublishability. With no printing, design or distribution costs, we are free to explore that which would never have been feasible, economically and aesthetically. While this exercise began as an exploration and provocation, the resultant texts are unusually rich; what we once considered to be our trash may, after all, turn out to be our greatest treasure.
Flesh Eating Poems
Cannibal books is offering a chance to subscribe for 2010. If you were a subscriber this past year, you would’ve received chapbooks by Claire Donato, Shane Jones, Keith Newton, Carolyn Guinzio, Amish Trivedi, Patrick Morissey, Thomas Hummel, as well as the the mighty NARWAL ( A collection of 7 chapbooks by Kazim Ali, Maureen Alsop, Sommer Browning, Karla Kelsey, Laura Goode, Kate Schapira, and Jared White).
This year, for the low blow of $75, you will get
- Allyssa Wolf’s second full-length collection, Sister.
- Chapbooks by Kevin Holden, Ben Mazer, Tim Van Dyke, Dot Devota, Adam Roberts, and Tom Andes.
- Mini-chapbooks from our Boundless Books Series.
- Cannibal: Issue Five, featuring poems by Carrie Olivia Adams, Samuel Amadon, Susan Briante, Lily Brown, Adam Clay, CAConrad, Kate Dougherty, Farrah Field, Laura Goode, Kate Greenstreet, Jane Gregory, Whit Griffin, Melanie Hubbard, Andrew Hughes, M.C. Hyland, Grant Jenkins, Jeff T. Johnson, Jon Leon, Sam Lohmann, Sara Mumulo, Hoa Nguyen, Danielle Pafunda, Alison Palmer, Kyle Schlesinger, Cedar Sigo, Sandra Simonds, Nate Slawson, Tony Tost, Steven Toussaint, Amish Trivedi, G.C. Waldrep, & Joseph Wood.
- Anything other books and broadsides we make before the New Year.
- The unparalleled sense of supporting one of the most aggressively productive and self-sufficient book arts poetry presses around.
We can handle only a limited number of subscribers and will take this post down once we have enough money to help finance our busiest time of year (the next two months). Immense thanks to everyone who subscribed last year and in advance to our subscribers this year. We could not keep the press running without you.
Birds LLC
Check out Birds LLC, a new publishing collective run by poets Dan Boehl, Justin Marks, Matt Rasmussen, Sampson Starkweather, & Chris Tonelli.
Their first two titles are now available for pre-order,The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert & The Trees Around by Chris Tonelli which you can now get both or a steal at $20.
Birds looks to be a strong new press, and with the arrival of Tonelli’s collection, without fear of the stigma that comes with self publishing.
Which makes me ask – how do you feel about self publishing? As a reader does it change your perception at all?