web version POP SERIAL 4 is launching today
first up, Ben Brooks “future president.” more to follow. who looks at htmlgiant every day still? it was called a professional looking blog in the la review of book recently. idk, is it profesh? i recently described myself to someone with one word: unprofessional. idk what thats about. it is 2013. if anyone is reading this but not commenting and lives in brooklyn hmu, i am looking to drink and have a good time. hi
Elizabeth Ellen, Mary Miller, Amy Butcher, and Chloe Caldwell Live at The Drake Hotel @ 12:30am ET
The reading is over. You missed it. :( #YOLO
Finches and NOÖs
If it’s real sprang sprung where you are—I mean like pensive warm midnight donut strolls with cicadas under your Keds—then you are feeling all refreshed and full of light, which means your brain is in good shape to read some new online magazine releases.
Sixth Finch is bubbling. RIYL science, river walks, cake under bridges, kids doing science on public television, bodies saying something when they’ve had enough of fighting, paper animals, the counterculture of silence, singing into bottles, oxen who think they are cotton, aliens with crew cuts, poison mandrake roots, qualities, the dress you woke up in, car insurance company slogans, felon hearts, intergalactic surfboards, holy slobs, the way every surface can be a cradle, or water in the open knees.
NOÖ Journal is into [14] after a year’s hiatus. There are book vouchings and a list of every book some chucklehead read in 2012. Read NOÖ [14] if your back feels like a shipwreck, if you ever coated Omega 3 capsules with peanut butter, if your body used to like swings and probably still does, if you’ve ever eaten Doritos at breakfast, if it cheers you up to think of Benjamin Franklin inventing electricity even though he lived alone until he was dead, if you like staring up at things that can’t see you below them, looking for a man who tells three lies a day, cooking when you get nervous, gazing spiritually toward the Macho Man, taking turns letting and being let down, afraid to fall asleep on buses, your car on fire in the snow, the screen a scroll, kissing like confusion at the supermarket, Treat Yo Self, (feeling you get in a ball pit), talking in a flashlight lit pool, talking later about creepshots, talking about keeping each other when storms come, tracing dead mouths, selling that brain painting, parabolas the shape of manic depressives, your Soul a scrap of lightning, crappy knowledge, searching the floor for a diamond four, stepping into the rain like a film, dying in a fortlike structure, or the infinite pi of sun.
The Small Press Book Review
The beautiful lumberjack Mel Bosworth—with Christy “Peach Cinnamon” Crutchfield—has started a terrific archive of small press reviews from over the years, with new ones to come, elegantly called The Small Press Book Review. The blog is retro and easy to navigate, and the reviews are clear and concise. A great new resource if you’re curious about some of those books you’ve heard about but haven’t yet plucked.
My Last-Ever AWP Apology
Unlike some other stuffed animals, I had a very good time in Boston. Admittedly, that’s probably because I didn’t get there until Friday. I also tried to avoid any and all conversations that had to do with books. The only time I talked about writing was when my buddy Mike and I drunkenly explained “epistemology ” to our non-MFA friends. Gross.
The two coolest stuffed animals I met there were Tyler Gobble and Layne Ransom. We probably hung out for a total of 25 minutes, but it was a real dope 25 minutes: we played dice and Tweeted from each other’s phones and hopped around on a dance floor that was pulsating. I always leave AWP with a swollen, stupid heart because of all those instances where internet user names morph into actual people. Meeting these two actual people was definitely one of my most swollen moments (ew).
But all that said, I have to apologize to Layne. Because I did something stupid.
The week before AWP, I had bookmarked about ten new online lit journals and chapbooks, because AWP was coming up and OMGWTF I had so many travel-sized tubes of toothpaste to buy. The last thing I wanted to do was virtually thumb through lit shit, but then someone posted a link to You Are The Meat (Layne’s new jumpoff from H_NG_MAN Books) right when I was about to eat some Chinese food. The Chinese food was disgusting; You Are The Meat was anything but. I was completely captivated by each of the fourteen poems in this digital chapbook (which you can download for free, BTW). Layne’s writing is like the dude you always want to invite to your dance party—these poems are going to hug you for twenty seconds too long, drink all the empties in your recycling bin, and pick a drunken fight with the choad who accidentally says something sexist. Then, in the morning—when you’re really hung over and want to do nothing but eat some eggs—they’re going to say something silly and beautiful that will remind you of how nice it is to be around good, good people. READ MORE >
Heiko Julién’s New Ebook is Out Today
Hey gang, just wanted to spread the word that Heiko Julién‘s 3rd ebook, There Is No Reason for Tigers to Be Beautiful, They Just Are is now online. It’s the first thing from Pop Serial 4 (which is available in print) to be put online. The rest is coming soon, thanks to Chad Redden. Heiko is one of the rare contemporary writers I’m consistently excited about. I vibe with him real hard and maybe you’ll dig him too. An excerpt:
The secret to my Decent Quality of Life?
I spend every moment I’m not eating thinking about the next time I will eat. Creates and maintains tension. This is how I have cultivated bliss within, and yet my greatest strengths are alternately my biggest weaknesses. For instance, I died in a house fire in 2004. Tried to make four toasts in a two-toast toaster.
You need to know: You are in the fight of your life. If you don’t Grow, this fucked up hellscape of a reality we inhabit will ravage your mind/body/soul.
No pressure.
It is no wonder I’ve been a Bad Person and so have you. We’d like to think that’s all in the past now. We are getting older and wiser and less terrified but the stimulus that scares us is getting stronger.
So let’s talk about Bad People: Bad People betray their friends and themselves for no good reason because they have too much fear they’ve chosen to ignore rather than confront. On a seemingly related but unrelated note, this world has betrayed me, so I am commenting on youtube vids, lamenting the death of Good Music. Forsaken by a world that has abandoned me, I wander into my bathtub and drown. It was already filled from a previous bath. (Cold and gross.)
The fact remains that the majority of my youth is gone and I spent a lot of it being upset. Considering suicide as a means of avoiding future work and general discomfort, yet I look at you in your cargo shorts and think, “you are not going to make it, probably.” I think this because I am a survivor and am also into men’s fashion.
Animals are doing all kinds of crazy things to survive and so are you. You bought your daughter a Justin Biebre CD and listened to it to try to feel Good. Incidentally, I still cannot get over the fact that there are animals that live underwater.
You aren’t allowed to commit suicide until your mom has died. These are the rules. I don’t make them. Living is better than not living, even though it’s painful a lot of the time. Just make plans for the future. You don’t even have to do them.
When you are having a serious problem and there’s no one you can talk to about it because they wouldn’t understand, that’s when you’re You.
That’s Cool: Whole Beast Rag
Nowadays, I feel like half the turdburgers calling themselves editors are convinced that having a couple hundred Facebook likes equates to having a “successful” lit journal (whatever the fuck “success” means is beyond me, because really, who gives a shit about lit journals nowadays). I wonder if those lames realize how easy it is for me to hide their notifications so I can see the important things, like which one of my hoodrat friends is listening to 2 Chainz on Spotify.
Well, anyway, props to Grace Littlefield and Katharine Hargreaves of Whole Beast Rag, which is not a lame lit journal. I met these DABs in Chicago last year, where Katharine gave me her business card (boss alert!) so I could stalk her on Facebook. Back then, they were two doughy-eyed kids from Minneapolis with some big ideas; now they’re on the West Coast, making moves like Suge Knight. They’ve integrated themselves into the LA art scene, and have put together two incredible, beautifully-designed issues for both web and print.
My Last Blog
This is Janet Frame. This post is a permutation of her story, My Last Story, which was, in fact, not her last story. Click the image to read the story on Electric Literature.
I’m never going to write another blog.
I don’t like writing blogs.
I don’t like typing I read I saw or saying my endless opinion of the weird book I read, the thing it was like, a metaphor a simile and I have almost grown to hate the internet after 15 years, how I know all the office workers have 35 tabs open and are watching a video and reading an article at the same time and mentally composing a tweet about it or wondering about how Roxane Gay is going to say it better and Blake Butler is going to say it weirder or if we’re supposed to like or hate Tao Lin right now or whether or not the novel is living or dead or who cares or which author we should interview or if that galley of that novel is worth reading or reviewing and how is it that those publishers still send out all those galleys to all those people who ignore all those galleys, and that’s called work and earning a living, well I’m not going to write any more blogs like that. I’m not going to blog about author news or how publishing houses are hemorrhaging money or how eBooks are stabbing people in dark alleys or about how eBooks are Jesus or how eBooks are just Books with a little ‘e’ hanging on. I’m not going to write another blog after this one. This is my last blog.
I’m not going to write about that piece I read on another blog, another online magazine, that article that essay that story that tweet that video that everyone is talking and how can anyone figure out anything if they still have those 35 tabs open and I suppose that’s called an experience of Life. READ MORE >
Spencer Madsen on “Indie” and “Small Press”
Monkeybicycle: What does “indie” or “small press” mean to you? What do you think of such classifications and distinctions?
Spencer Madsen: I immediately think of Roxane Gay. I think of complaints about not enough people reading or not enough people buying books or too many books being published. I think about the word ‘writerly’ and the distinction of being ‘serious’ literature. I think these classifications serve to make reading books more insular and less exciting for people. The word ‘indie’ always evokes for me a kind of club that you have to join to engage with. I’d like to bypass that by avoiding adjectives or the temptation to define the press in a verbal way. I don’t want Sorry House to be At The Forefront of Independent Literature or The Home Of Avant-Garde Poetry. I want it to be a thing like any other thing. A glass of water doesn’t need an about page. It holds water.
– Spencer Madsen, from Monkeybicycle interview re his new press, Sorry House
Jimmy Chen released an ebook based on his hilarious Formspring
Hey guys, I’m a big fan of Jimmy Chen in general and his Formspring in particular, and it’s recently been turned into an ebook. It compiles the best of his circuitous, you could say Nabokovian responses to questions like “Should I go to grad school?” and “Who should I lose my virginity to?” It’s available here.