Justin Taylor is the author of the story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever, and the novel The Gospel of Anarchy. He is the editor of The Apocalypse Reader, Come Back Donald Barthelme, and co-editor (with Eva Talmadge) of The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide. With Jeremy Schmall he makes The Agriculture Reader, a limited-edition arts annual. He lives in Brooklyn.
Hey friends, I’m just home from two days at the CUNY chapbook fair, and I’ve got some great stuff to tell you about–but it’s 430PM on Friday and Brooklyn is sunny in the high 60s. Put another way: you couldn’t pay me enough to sit here and blog about books on a day like this, and anyway, you’re NOT paying me. So standby for the post-game analysis, but meanwhile here’s one tidbit to be glad about. NewLights Press is putting together a new experimental journal to be called Et Al.
Et Al. is an experimental journal focused on the possible intersections of the literary and visual arts. It starts from the idea of an “arts journal” as a (non)site of the collective production and reception of meaning; one object, in multiple, built from multiple inputs and transmitting to multiple outputs. While traditional journals operate by reproducing text and images as discreet entities centered around a common theme, aesthetic direction, or author-function, Et Al. will be built on the principle of active production and the legible intersection(s) of text, image, typography, material, printing processes, and the temporal structure of the book form. Each issue of Et Al.will be, in essence, an artists’ book of rhizomatic (non)authorship, textually, visually, and structurally. Brought to you by your friends at the NewLights Press.
NewLights had some of the most innovative and beautiful books I saw at the whole festival, plus Aaron Cohick was a pleasure to sit next to for two days, and was totally into trading some of my product for his. Check him out.
Later, kids-
Green Toothbrush
the train leaves in 50 minutes
two people having sex to a lonely and frustrated person singing “I’ll probably never see your face again”
two people taking turns standing under the water in a shower
the hair is black and smells like lemons
two people using one green toothbrush
the train leaves in 20 minutes
one person standing, ironing a red dress
the train is leaving in 15 minutes
the slip is too long and sticking out of the red dress
the boots are loud and slow
two people on a train taking turns laying down on one person’s lap
the hair looks more brown than red when short
yelling “soccer” in secaucus station
waiting for the new york train
the new york train arrives in 3 minutes
two people buying two large organic coffees
caffeine making four eyes bigger and two brains faster
one person feeding a lemon to one pigeon
one pigeon walking away uninterested
two people sitting on a subway train with two coffees floating above
two people lying very close on a one-person mattress
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
If you’re not a New Yorker this post doesn’t have a lot for you–sorry–but if you’re in the city and have some free time today or tomorrow, think about coming by the CUNY Celebration of the Chapbook. There’ll be panels, and a bookfair, and whatall. Some of the presses who will be there- Belladonna, BookThug, Dancing Girl, Diagram, Sarabande, Pilot, Octopus, Small Fires, X-ing Books (I’ll be working their table, so please drop by) and many more.
The bookfair will take place from 10 am – 6 pm on Thu, April 23 and from 10 am – 4 pm on Fri, April 24. Please arrive to the Elebash Recital Hall lobby, where the bookfair is taking place on Thu, at 9:30 AM to set up. The CUNY Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue and 34th St, diagonally from the Empire State Building, and you’ll see the Elebash Recital Hall on the left side of the Grad Center lobby when you walk in – can’t miss it.
I Like Every Time We Have Sex
“I want to have sex with you.”
“Thank you. I want to have sex with you also.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“When I say I want to have sex with you I mean really.”
“So do I.”
“I mean really, I don’t just say that as a feeling. Do you understand? Did you really mean that you wanted to have sex with me when we were waiting on line at the movie theater before or did you just mean that as a feeling?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry”
Orange
I wish my life consisted only of
riding my bike with you
down a giant hill that never stopped
while listening to music
with no one else around
in the middle of nothing,
except a few shiny and relaxing lights above in the sky
like stars but a little brighter
and more orange
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
(1) The Rumpus is having a book review competition open to all undergraduate and graduate students. There is no fee to enter. Book reviews must be at least 600 words (no longer than 1,500 words) and concern literary fiction, creative non-fiction, or memoir. The publication date of the book is irrelevant. The deadline to submit your review is June 1, 2009. (I know for a fact that editor Stephen Elliott is really psyched about this contest. If there’s a college student in your life (or if YOU are the college student in your life) who is interested in this sort of thing, you’d be doing him or her a big favor by passing the word along. Click anywhere here to see the details at the Rumpus.
(2) THE LONELY VOICE: A New Column About The Short Story by Peter Orner What else could you possibly need to be told about this? There’s basically no level at which it’s not exciting.
Brighter and Clearer
After I have an orgasm my body feels like a sombrero-shaped galaxy slowly expanding in the eyepiece of a 4th grader’s telescope
After I watch a family of lions tear apart the body of a large deer on the Discovery Channel I feel a calming sense of inferiority
After I watch a horror movie I can’t go to the bathroom without you holding my hand while I pee
After I take my vegan dietary supplement my piss is brighter and clearer
After I kiss your eyelids my lungs squeeze out through my ribs, then through my belly button and slowly fly to your face and push very lightly on your cheeks
After I forget something I said I would remember my brain becomes a roll of vegetable futomaki that an obese chinchilla is trying to eat all in one bite
After I make you cry one of my organs melts into a runny paste that trickles down the inside of my body and collects at the bottom of my feet
After I make you feel indifferent towards me my heart turns into a small desert hamster running very quickly on an exercise wheel and then tripping and then spinning around in distress until the wheel stops and the hamster can get up and try running again, but in a more conscious and concerned way
Buy Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs from Muumuu House.
Ellen Kennedy’s blog.
Florida
i had a dream last night about your parents and you
in your house in florida
your parents were dancing in the garage
and your mom was singing
and then the radio stopped for no reason
and she screamed ‘no’
and then walked away
your dad was pissed
then you went into your room and your computer had this program that you could make animations with
and you made like 5 videos of your dad
changing from a happy dad
to a pissed dad
then i woke up
your parents were dancing so hard
I have been invited to the 2009 Triangle Awards, which will be held May 7 at The New School in New York City. I’m not sure exactly how I got on their send-this-guy-a-card-inviting-him-to-this-thing list, but maybe it’s because I’m a New School alum? (Also, I’m pretty sure it’s a public event, but I did get an actual card in the actual mail, so it’s still a little extra special.) Well whatever the reason, it’s always nice to be thought of, so I’m going to go ahead and put this one on the calendar. You can learn more about the Triangle Awards and view the complete list of this year’s awards categorees and nominees for same by clicking anywhere in this part of this sentence, but I’d like to take a moment here and quickly shout out a hearty CONGRATS to the folks on here whose names I recognize- Alistair McCartney’s The End of the World Book (University of Wisconsin) is nominated for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction; Blair Mastbaum’s Us Ones In Between (Running Press) is nominated for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction. Cheers, gents!
The Ballard stories I always think of whenever I hear his name are “The Enormous Space,” “Report on an Unidentified Space Station,” and “War Fever,” all of which are included in the collection pictured above. The first two stories I studied as an undergraduate, not in a creative writing class but in a literature course called “Eccentric Spaces and Spacialities.” Not “space” as in “outer space,” but as in “the distance between here and there, or “the place I call home,” etc. We read Ballard alongside Gaston Bachelard (Poetics of Space), Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping), excerpts from Dante and Homer (descents into Hades), Jules Verne (Journey to the Center of the Earth) and plenty more that I’m forgetting just now. The third story, “War Fever,” was on my radar when I was editing The Apocalypse Reader, but my query about reprint rights wasn’t returned by FSG until well after the book had been finalized, and sent to press. But it’s a magnificent story–they all are.