*Waiting* to blog is an absurd approach to blogging. I've known this a long time. Has it stopped me from waiting to blog? No.
Whatever. Here's some news, starting with a reading announcement:
DECEMBER 2, 2009: NEW YORK, NYBook Release Party:
Alan Semerdjian's In the Architecture of Bone& an Evening of Hyphenated American Poetry
with
Elena Georgiou and
Mario Susko6:00 PM @
The Bowery Poetry Club308 Bowery (Between Houston and Bleecker)
F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker
212-614-0505
$6
NEW REVIEW OF BIG AMERICAN TRIP AT VERSE MAGAZINETimed perfectly for Thanksgiving, too. I don't know the reviewer, Brittany Taylor, but she just rocketed to the top of the list of folks for whom I'm grateful during this T-Day season. Thank you, Ms. Taylor, for taking the time, and for being spot-on. I needed this review: as I work on my next projects, no small part of the pressure I feel, just to complete them
quickly, is the pressure I've put on myself to write things that might be appreciated by people outside the "experimental / exploratory / innovative / hybrid / post-genre / post-labels (bwah ha ha)" community; I've grown increasingly sad, thinking how limited is the audience for
BAT, when the book's intentions were quite the opposite. Anyway, that's a longer conversation, much longer than I ever blog, and the important part of this paragraph is the part where I say
thanks.An excerpt from Taylor's review:
As we follow the lone wanderer from Blaine, WA, to Brooklyn, we are given an increasingly intimate view of his private frustration with a society that wipes out all that has come before and simultaneously acknowledges its ravaged past with cheerful sound bites. The captions that crown many of the postcards are not-quite-prosaic bits of encyclopedic arcana that offer insight into the matter-of-fact manner in which Americans have treated their predecessors. With these tidbits, Big American Trip seeks to recall America’s erased history, deridable and otherwise. . . .
Please click here to read the whole review.
RED HEART THE TICKERhas created a "
minimum wage exchange"--selling their most recent CD for an hour's pay at minimum wage, should you be one of the lucky folks making minimum wage. Just one more reason to love my favorite Vermont singing duo. The other reasons being as many as the tracks on their two CDS,
For the Wicked and
Oh My! Mountains Below.And "oh," too: their song "Depression" (a personal fave) is featured in the
short film produced by Students for Project Renew, helping to neutralize the environmental effects (read, landmines, among things) of the Vietnam War.
NOAH SATERSTROMpulled a little
Bunny Magick on Brooklyn, just the other day, in conjunction with Ugly Duckling Presse's
6 x 6 event at the Shelton Walsmith Studio. There may or may not be some $25 art goodies
still available here.
Saterstrom, in case you don't know, is also the entity behind
Trickhouse.org, whose latest incarnation features new writing by Dan Beachy-Quick, Tomaz Salamun, and Eleni Sikelianos, among other treats (such as Laura Davenport's "experiment" "coupled" with "romance" "novel" images "making" "love" to themselves.)
FENCEis up to its usual jaw-dropping amounts of goodness, not the least of which is a book that must be seen to be believed: Brandon Downing's text-image opus
Lake Antiquity, wherein kitsch acquires gravity, becomes pathos, becomes a reckoning with the fairly unbelievable images and text that we'd sooner forget that we "own" in more ways than one. If you've seen [
WARNING: seizure-alert at following link:]
Dark Brandon, then this book might explain it to you. If you haven't seen
Dark Brandon, then you should buy that as well. Says the promo for
Lake Antiquity: "Brandon Downing has been scouring refuse piles and skimming the creme/scum off the top of two centuries of cultural production for these chiming elements. His paste-ups are cut-ups; his cut-ups are pasted with a discrimination that shares a border with insurgency." Yes. That, and a butt-nekked gnome.
Do yourself a favor and check out FB's
holiday deals on
Lake Antiquity, as well as Catherine Wagner's
My New Job, Douglas Kearney's
The Black Automaton, Macgregor Card's
Duties of an English Foreign Secretary.
Think how great you'll feel when you already own those books, and then show up at the
4-author book release party on Dec. 12th.
RECENTLY RECEIVED AT TSKY PRESSMost of the titles below are available for review, though we include the friend copies and the purchased copies as well, thinking we can probably scare up another copy if you're interested in
reviewing one for TSky. Titles marked with asterisks are hand-bound books or are otherwise special editions and are limited, if still available at all.
Oana Avasilichioaei, Erín Moure,
Expeditions of a Chimæra (BookThug, 2009)
* Jack Boettcher,
The Deviants (Airforce Joyride, 2009)
Rob Budde,
Declining America (BookThug, 2009)
Angela Carr,
The Rose Concordance (BookThug, 2009)
Barbara Claire Freeman,
Incivilities (Counterpath Press, 2009)
* Emily Kendal Frey, Mark Leidner, and Zachary Schomburg,
Coincide Series #5 (Brave Men Press, 209)
Katrine Marie Guldager,
Copenhagen (P.K. Brask, translator, BookThug, 2009)
* David Highsmith,
congregations (Plan B Press, 2009)
* David Highsmith,
Petroglyph (Painted Bison Press, 2009)
David Highsmith,
your wilderness & mine (BlazeVox Books, 2009)
Christine Hume,
Shot (Counterpath Press, 2009)
Matt Jasper,
Moth Moon (BlazeVox Books, 2009)
* Scott Alexander Jones,
One Day There Will Be Nothing to Show That We Were Ever Here (Bedouin Books, 2009)
Garrett Kalleberg,
Malilenas (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)
Diane Klammer,
Shooting the Moon (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2009)
Karyna McGlynn,
I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande Books, 2009)
* Christina Pacosz,
Notes from the Red Zone (Seven Kitchens Press [Rebound Series], 2009)
Stephen Ratcliffe,
Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet (Counterpath Press, 2009)
Joanna Ruocco,
The Mothering Coven (Ellipsis Press, 2009)
* 6 x 6 #19 (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)
* Claudia Smith,
Put Your Head in My Lap (Future Tense Books, 2009)
Jane Sprague,
The Port of Los Angeles (Chax Press, 2009)
Nancy Stohlman,
Searching for Suzi (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2009)
* Michael Stewart,
A Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic (The Cupboard, 2009)
* Michael Stewart,
Almost Perfect Forms (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)
* Janaka Stucky,
Your Name Is the Only Freedom (Brave Men Press, 2009)
Spring Ulmer,
The Age of Virtual Reproduction (Essay Press, 2009)
