Alumni Night at the Roundup
My old New School buddy, Melissa Petro, has an op-ed up at the Huffington Post about the closing of the Craigslist adult services section- Thoughts from a Former Craigslist Sex Worker. Also, you might remember Melissa’s previous piece about sex work, “Not Safe For Work,” which appeared on The Rumpus.
One of the classes Melissa and I took together at New School was a seminar on the 20th century novel, taught by Dale Peck. Dale is 1/5 of a new publishing collective called Mischief & Mayhem, whose site went live just today. From their hot, fresh statement of purpose:
The collective came together in response to the increasingly homogenized books that corporate publishers and chain retailers have determined will sell the most copies. We recognize that there are readers who want to be challenged instead of placated.
The other four M&M-ers, by the way, are Lisa Dierbeck, Joshua Furst, DW Gibson and Choire Sicha. The collective seems to have a raft of events and projects planned, and will bring books into the world as an imprint of O/R Books, publisher of the Collected Fictions of Gordon Lish (see our sidebar ad) and Eileen Myles’s Inferno: A Poet’s Novel.
Another school-friend of mine, our own Amy McDaniel, has a fantastic essay in the new issue of Tin House. The theme of the issue is “Class in America” and it’s a doozy from start to finish–there are stories by Benjamin Percy and Charles Baxter, an excerpt from Lydia Davis’s new translation of Madame Bovary, poems by Major Jackson and Sarah Gambito, an interview with Luc Sante, A.N. Devers visits Poe’s house(s), and a whole lot more. I am enjoying this thoroughly & recommend it heartily.
And finally, there’s a new installment of Poets off Poetry, a series edited by Jackie Clark and published on Coldfront, which is run by Graeme Bezansen, John Deming & Melinda Wilson–New Schoolers all. In this POP-isode, Mathias Svalina (who did not go to NS, but looooves someone who did) writes about the time he listened to Side A of David Bowie’s Hunky Dory for a week straight.
Here are three things to go like
Ben Greenman’s fragments from Tiger! The Musical .
Dan Nester on The Outfield at Poets Off Poetry.
Here’s an analysis of The Economics of Pinball.
That image, btw, is borrowed from today’s post at The Weaklings: Pictures of 14 Scandinavian Theme Parks.
New Poets Off Poetry up at Coldfront
Maybe some of you remember Poets Off Poetry, Jackie Clark‘s continuing mission to get poets to talk about something else for a change–namely music–which used to run on This Recording but then stopped. Well it didn’t die, it only moved to Coldfront, where it has been thriving. The latest installment features my–and Jackie’s–former teacher and much-esteemed buddy, the inimitable Mark Bibbins (whose website seems to be MIA at present, and whose forthcoming collection from Copper Canyon, The Dance of No Hard Feelings, doesn’t seem to have an Amazon page yet, so, uh, sit tight I guess). In his P.O.P., Bibbins talks about My Bloody Valentine, Goldfrapp, Portishead, The Verve (who are back, apparently), Stereolab, Deerhunter, and many more musicians you either have or haven’t heard of. Ample YouTube embeds for illustration make this a must-read and potentially a slow load, so why don’t you click on it now, go pour a coffee, then come back and settle in for a real good time. [JUSTIN: that last sentence begins as a question but ends with a period. What gives? -ED. / BLAKE: By the end of the sentence I realized it was an imperative, not an interrogative, and I want the readers to experience that transformation with me. -JT]
Read “Tatooine Sunset: An Assembly of Last Year’s Fantastic Things” by Mark Bibbins.