Forthcoming Books, (late) spring 2009

There is a Matthew Simmons story called A Jello Horse.

[cover design: Barber/Robinson]

There are stories by Justin Sirois called MLKNG SCKLS.

[cover design: Justin Sirois]

More information, and preorderability coming soon.

This PDF Chapbook: James Iredell

Boil water! Lots of it! Just born is the third installment of Jamie Iredell's brilliant (yes! brilliant!) novel-in-chapbooks that you've already read from oh-so-holy-wow presses GREYING GHOST (the one called "When I Moved to Nevada") (is this one out officially? I have it, but can everyone else get it? I don't know) and ACHILLES (the one called "Atlanta").

SHORT POST
OPTION 1:
Read on screen here.

OPTION 2:
Print yourself a copy here.

OPTION 3:
Order a copy for $4 here.

LONG POST
"Before I Moved to Nevada" is a 40-page chapbook, which is a lot, so take some of the water you just boiled, pour a cup of tea, and sit down at your computer and enjoy it slowly. Or even better: build yourself a copy using the print-formatted PDF version. Read it on screen or print it: here at the Publishing Genius home of This PDF Chapbook.

"Before I Moved to Nevada" is a story about travel, about family, football, friendship, friendship, kissing, sports recreation vehicles, bears, about cabins and rivers. It's a story that ends with this sentence: "Nothing happened, except for the fish" which is a really good sentence.

Christy Call, who I think is the universal favorite of everyone who went to AWP, drew the deer on the front. There were over 30 emails exchanged proclaiming the superiority of that deer over all other deer. I mean, look at it!

A word about printing these chapbooks at home: if you have an awesome printer then you probably know what you are doing and you're all set. If you have a cheap printer that you got for free or really cheap when you bought your computer, this is the perfect machine to print from. Now, if you have a dot matrix printer, you are awesome but you can't print this PDF. But everyone else! Hey everyone else! Print this book, your printer will show you how to flip the pages for double-sided printing. It's easy and rewarding. Then you just fold the book in half and staple in the middle.

However, stapling in the middle is tricky unless you have a long-arm stapler, like me. But you can figure it out! And if you can't figure it out, I'll tell you what to do. Here's what to do: Lightly bend the back half of the book -- crap, I'll just draw it:

OK, but if all else fails, we at PGP are happy to build you a copy and mail it to you. We at PGP are prepared for this sort of thing. We will do it for you on the cheap, too. Go here.

Open publication More TPC

New Book Trailer

Michael Kimball has posted the third trailer for my book. This should be the last one from my night of ecstasy with Blake, Shane, Molly and Michael. This is also the brashest one.

I feel like I need to apologize for what you are about to see. It is not pretty.

A Real Poem

Do you like the poem I published at Keyhole? It's okay if you don't. I consider it "a real poem," as opposed to other poems that I write which are "fake poems." It should be read very fast.

It's true, and it's called "Some Men in My Family." I think it is very sad.

Light Boxes Interview

Did everyone read this interview in elimae that Michael Kimball executed upon Shane Jones? It's great.

Sense and Sensibility

Last night I watched Sense and Sensibility and liked it. The only Jane Austen book I ever read is Northanger Abbey. I liked it, too. But I don't think I'll ever read her books again. I'm only going to watch her stories on video. I can save a lot of time this way, and the adaptations seem pretty reliable.

When I was watching Sense and Sensibility last night, I kept thinking, "Oh man, this is good." (I also thought, "I should 'tweet' something about this.")

I think the movie The Wedding Planner, with Jennifer Lopez, is also very good. Seriously, things that handle love issues with even a little bit of depth always seem good to me, and worthwhile.

There are only a few things worth writing about: love, death and Heidegger's thrown-ness. Anything that isn't oriented toward one of these three issues is bad and largely responsible for the high rate of illiteracy in the US.

This PDF Chapbook: Chris Higgs

Publishing Genius Press is pleased,really really pleased, to announce the release of Christopher Higgs's chapbook, "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously." Linguists will recognize the title from Noam Chomsky's seminal book, Syntactic Structures (1957), in which Chomsky presents that sentence as something grammatically correct but meaningless, or at least nonsensical, and something that had never been uttered until he wrote it.

Now Chris Higgs, curator of the art blog Bright Stupid Confetti, gives us a story that, within its inverted syntax and in spite of its grammatical dissonance, creates a sort of meaningfulness that is at once subtle and pervasive. It's not the sort of piece that culminates in meaning, such as the way Andy Devine's "As Day Same That the the Was Year"; it's more the case that meaning and sense is a constant undercurrent behind the language of Higgs's story.

But who cares about meaning? "All words mean infinity, says Derrida," says Higgs's story in a savvy nod to his forebear. And another thing that "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously" pulls off is a rejection of interpretation's hegemony. This is managed through the sonic beauty of the piece, the rhythms and tones that wash through it like waves. Higgs writes liquid sentences. Read them on the screen or print yourself a copy here.

**SPECIAL BIRTHDAY OFFER** Today is Chris's birthday, so to mark the occasion PGP is offering FREE PRINTED CHAPBOOKS of "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously." Just email me your address by midnight tonight (03/19/2009) and I will put one in the mail. All PGP printed versions have highlighter on the cover. Limit: one per household, US readers only (sorry foreigners, you should have thought of that before not living in America). My email address is adam at publishinggenius dot com.

***
And NEXT WEEK don't miss the release of the third installment of James Iredell's brilliant and sensitive series about moving to Nevada. The first two sections are "Atlanta" (DOGZPLOT's Achilles) and "When I Moved to Nevada" (Greying Ghost) -- you'll want to study up. PGP is proud to be a part of this monumental experiment in publishing when we release Iredell's "Before I Moved to Nevada" next week. This PDF Chapbook features a drawing by Christy Call on the cover.

**COLORLESS GREEN IDEAS SLEEP FURIOUSLY**

Open publication

Rejected book covers

Here's a nice blog of book cover designs that got shelved.

My mom told me this joke yesterday

before going to sit with her mom:

A man dies and goes to heaven. Peter at the Gate says, "Hi, to get in you have to spell a word." The man says, "Nuts, I was never good at spelling." St. Peter says, no problem, you just have to spell "LOVE." The man spells it, presto bingo, he's on the golden streets.

A few year's later the man's wife dies and shows up at the Pearly Gates. The guy goes to meet her there and reunite. It's tearful. "How was everything after I died," the guy says.

"Oh, it was great," she says. "I met the nicest man. We travelled a lot and talked late into the nights and the sex was amazing."

Then the man's all, "Hey, great, did you know you have to spell a word to get in here? Yep. Spell Czechoslovakia."

You Must Be 18 To Read This Post

Last Saturday, after an exceptional IE Reading that featured Lauren Bender, Tom Raworth and Rob Halpern

I sat having drinks with friends

C, Ju, Jo, and P -- P being the only woman in our company, and she was in discussion with Ju and Jo while

I was explaining to C that in the 50s pharmacists made a conscious decision

To use placebos

In birth control pill cycles so that women

Would not freak out

On account of not bleeding

P (resident woman) overheard our talk

Thought it was funny

Even though C and I were saying intelligent things seriously

Such as "some birth control plans make it so you only have to bleed four times a year"

Things like that struck P as hilarious

At least to hear C and I conjecturing about it

Funny and IMPORTANT though

Bros

Bros

We need to tell women about their uteruses.




Publishing Genius Press announces a call for submissions for the first ever This PDF Anthology called "Let Me Tell You About Your Uterus." Send short essays explaining biological phenomena that is specifically related to femininity. Women need answers; we (bros) can help.

Submissions should be 200 words or less. They should deal exhaustively with answering questions like these:

1) What should I expect during menopause. 2) Why do my breasts change size and shape during the menstrual cycle? 3) What is the best erogenous zone, the clitoris or the g-spot? 4) How do you spell falopian? 5) Do you have any tips for dealing with cramps? 6) Who is the best OB/GYN in my area? 7) What's the truth about female ejaculation? 8) Other.

Speak from your hearts and your current smarts, fellas. The ladies want answers to these questions based on what you know now, not what you can learn on Wikipedia.

Bros only. Sorry ladies, it just wouldn't make sense to hear your voice on this. Take a break and let the dudes fill you in. I think there is a "Let Me Tell You About Your Vas Deferens" on the horizon, and that one is chicks only.

Simultaneous submissions are okay, but really hard to achieve.

Pseudonymous submissions are okay too.

No payment though. Except probably lots of fawning, appreciative women.

IsReads #5 is being posted around Baltimore

It's warming up, which means people want to stop and read poetry. Here are a few Baltimore Is Reads poems from the 5th issue. Look for a write up about the project in the May/June Poets and Writers, and contact me if you want to hang up poems in your wickedbad city.

 

 

 

Get Music From Me Now Okay Huh

Thank you for reading my blog. Today is reader appreciation day.

I've been an eMusic subscriber for over 2 years. I get 50 downloads a month. That's over 1200 songs I should have from them. I don't know if that's how many I actually got though, because I always forget and lose a bunch every month. They don't roll over, see, and that burns me up.

I meant to cancel after downloading all the songs I had left, but the month just renewed. So I was suddenly left with 50 more songs. I downloaded Vietnam's most recent album. They are this amazing rock band from Brooklyn.



Now I have 40 songs left. Who wants something? I want to clear all those songs and cancel this account before I forget again.

Tell me an album to download and I will get it and burn it for you and mail it to you. It has to be in eMusic's catalog.

I'm pretty sure I’m not allowed to do this. I'm pretty sure it's illegal for me to pay for music and then let someone else listen to it. Like, isn't music just plain against the law?

This offer good for the first 40 songs.

Email me your requests at my email address, or you could even leave a comment.

No purchase necessary. All rights reserved.

Adam Robison trailer #2

Thank you, Michael Kimball, for creating this second trailer for my book. Thank you Shane, Molly, and (my co-star) Blake for appearing or vocalizing in it.

This was a night like any other: ripe for the picking.

In the video I sort of read a version of a new poem called "Short Biographies For Quick Trips." What you don't see is the slow, sweet water fight that took place afterward. I have heard about this waterfight, but it isn't an occurrence that I remember.

So:

Week 3 Review Roundup **UPDATED**

It's been a busy week for writing about Light Boxes. It's really great to read the parts of the novel people choose to excerpt. Reading the book this way reminds me of all the great things about it, all the strange surprises.

decomP called it "an intriguing page turner." Thanks Jason Jordan.

And Steve Himmer approaches the review from an interesting perspective at Tawny Grammar, which is a beautiful blog. There is a bear smoking a pipe on it. He (Steve Timmer, not the bear) says,

What I like best about Light Boxes is that its absurd touches (like a town going to war against February) are always organic to the story, grown from expressions of genuine emotion; the father in me thinks that’s especially true of the dad/daughter relationship at the heart of the novel. It doesn’t overwork metaphors, nor does it retreat behind the bulwark of irony to disown the intuitive sincerity in those surreal images.

At his blog, DJ Berndt called the book, "A perfect recipe with each ingredient constantly complementing the others, resulting in an evolving piece of art that belongs on the bookshelf of every person who has ever experienced sadness."

Brandi Wells mentioned it on her blog, too, saying, "There was not a part of that book where I got bored or wanted to skim." In fact, she's reading it a second time.

Most gratifying as a publisher and fulfillment specialist was Julie Dill's nice comment that "sometimes businesses do that little bit that makes customer loyalty inevitable. Adam Robinson, today is your day." (This is because I said thank you and treated her like a human, which she really seems to be.) She also said that the book has a stark, yet serene cover.

PH Madore said, "The imagery is rich, the story is gorgeous." Also, the story puts him in mind of elimae, which is nice.

Speaking of elimae, next week they're running a nice interview with Shane by Michael Kimball.

But for interviews this week, check out this great Q&A at The Scowl. Tobias Carroll notes that "much of the novel, for me, draws on the primal concept of the importance of naming" and then Shane goes, "I just tried to keep it interesting at all times."

Finally, I really love this review at the Hipster Book Club. The reviewer, Jen Penkethman, says a lot of interesting things and compares Light Boxes to Salvador Plascencia's work. I haven't heard of that person before, but the next time I type his name it will be in order to buy his book online. Ms. Penkethman also writes that, "The story of one town's triumph over February, which is both a season and a person in this novel, is played out in highly creative, luminously visual, and often emotionally touching ways."

I put Shane's number into my phone as "The Hipster Author" and it is going to stay that way.

Hey, thanks a lot.