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.
Poetry by Stephanie Anderson, Jessica Baron, Julia Cohen, Claire Donato, Elizabeth Sanger, Peter Jay Shippy, and G.C. Waldrep; prose by Joshua Cohen, Evelyn Hampton, Lily Hoang, Peter Markus, and Bryson Newhart; Patrick Morrissey on John Taggart and Matthew Henriksen on Anywhere; Michael Newton’s gallery reviews; and artwork by A.L. Steiner + robbinschilds.
“There are apologies I am too” by Claire Donato (complete poem)
The night you leave, I write tourist across my stomach with regard
to everything I’ve ever done. Later, I read cities could conserve by
shutting off their lights. There are apologies I am too
close to understand. How I pass my days? Try to go to sleep. No
room can numb someone with blue across her back.
Or, replace everything that’s lost. You have to pass the time.
This isn’t strictly literary, but I thought people would be interested to hear that the New School occupation is now into its 20-somethingth hour and as near as I can tell, going strong. After reading some snarks about the protesters on Gawker this afternoon, I decided to stop what I was doing, head into Manhattan and check things out for myself. I did my MFA at New School (see? not totally irrelevant to literature!) and so was able to get into the building. They have a list of demands, which you can read on their frequently-updated website, but the top item on the list is the removal of president Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic governor of and senator from Nebraska.
Everyone at New School–teachers and students alike–has basically known Bob Kerrey is a joke, at least as far back as my starting the MFA program (Fall 2005). After he brought both John McCain and Newt Gingrich to speak at the school, it became clear what his real agenda was: collect a big fat fucking paycheck while using the school to set the stage for his next political campaign. Thanks but no thanks you center-right impostor. Good riddance to neo-liberal rubbish. The sooner the better.
I sat and listened to the direct democracy at work for about an hour and snapped some pictures from the center of the occupation, which you’ll find after the jump.
Thus the sixpence worth of sky changed again, from the poem that he alone of all the living could write to the poem that he alone of all the born could have written.
– Murphy, p. 83
Here is what I wanted. You know what I wanted? I wanted for me not to have to make believe I wanted something.
– Arcade, p. 156
If you’ve ever seen a copy of Mike Young’s uber-rare chapbook Peter Pan Mocha French Toast, there’s a picture on the back cover of a dude humping a couch–well that’s our own Blake Butler. And that’s MY couch. Here are some photographs from that same evening.
Lin - Malone - Butler
AWP 2008 4EVR.
Ryan tries his luck.
4EVR EVR?
Tao Lin videotapes Mike Young's attempt to negotiate some hummus.
*************BONUS******************
This is the famous picture. Those might be my feet/legs.
It’s like listening to something nobody else is. Which is what it is when you’re supposed to be the author of it.
– Arcade, p. 136
frontman Blake Butler might be too modest and decent to say something, but luckily for all of you I’m not obliged to follow suit. The new issue of Blake Butler’s exciting, excited, and excitable internet magazine LAMINATION COLONY is now up, and it’s loaded with dreams of a brighter never. It also features several HTMLGiant contributors, friends, frenemies, and people whose very existence is as of this writing still a mystery to me. See if you can guess which are which!
Mathias Svalina
Carol Novack
Ryan Manning
Didi Menendez
A SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: The Colonist Reading List, which features recommended reading lists from the likes of Robert Lopez, Peter Markus, Matt Kirkpatrick, uh me, Tao Lin, Lee Klein, etc etc etc
Elizabeth Ellen
Rauan Klassnik
David Peak
Gena Mohwish
and a whole lot more besides. So go check it out.
let the good times...
...roll!!!
by Julia Cohen & Mathias Svalina. This issue has home video reviews of:
Kim Hyesoon’s Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers
Lisa Jarnot’s Night Scenes
Dan Machlin’s Dear Body
Brett Price’s Trouble with Mapping
John Taggart’s There are Birds
Ara Shirinyan’s Your Country Is Great
Brandon Shimoda’s The Alps
Joel Chace’s Matter No Matter
Jon Godfrey’s City of Corners
Jen Tynes’s Heron / Girlfriend
Anne Heide’s Wiving
Anne Boyer’s Art is War
Darcie Dennigan’s Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse
Allison Carter’s Shadows are Weather
Mark Cunningham’s Body Language
Today is “DC’s obscure porn search and rescue mission #8: Suck Cock America! (1972)
Every picture in this post except for this one came from this funny-creepy instructional website about activities for kids that I found while looking for "newspaper hat" pictures for the Pound post earlier. Instead of using MS Paint, why didn't they just give the kids emo haircuts?
In the main I don’t see that teaching can do much more than expose counterfeit work, thus gradually leading the student to the valid. The hoax, the sham, the falsification become so habitual that they pass unnoticed; all this is fit matter for education. The student can in this field profit by his instructor’s experience. The natural destructivity of the young can function to advantage: excitement of the chase, the fun of detection could under favorable circumstances enliven the study.
Whereas it is only maturer patience that can sweep aside a writer’s honest error, and overlook unaccomplished clumsiness or outlandishness or old-fashionedness, for the sake of the solid centre.
-ABC of Reading, p. 193
****SPECIAL EZRA POUND COMPARATIVE LIT BONUS FEATURE*****
When was the last time you read “Visits to St. Elizabeth’s” by Elizabeth Bishop, about going to see Pound when he was institutionalized? Probably a long time, right? Let’s refresh our memories:
And poets.org has the actual poem here. Try reading it out loud.
