Publishing Genius Blog

A Document of Possible Book Titles That I Just Found on My HD from Feb 25, 2009

2011-11-15T11:23:00.001-05:00

All of These Things

Adam Robison

The World’s Top Latex Tycoon

Some Heft

Major Tom’s Debacle

A Rush of Bees

Thrush Poems

Biograph

Some Biographies

Some Lives

These Lives

This Could Be Your Life

Could Haves

Could Have Beens

The Beens

The Were

What Is Not Could Have Been

What Is Not Could Be

Now Poems

No Poems

Some Toems

Waiting for Poetry

I Could Not Stop For Death

More Frost

Soren Kierkegaard and other poems

Adam Robison and other poems

Me and Edward

2011-11-15T11:10:00.001-05:00

Here's me (looking goofy) and Edward Mullany (looking like a superhero) in Washington DC, during Edward's mini tour. His reading at the Three Tents series was better than cherry pie a la mode I ate just after this leafy picture was taken.

Life is beautiful even for depressed God lovers at the park

2011-10-16T13:56:00.000-04:00

For the last several days I've been doing it with leather pants on, and a dress shirt, and wrestling shoes, and a Brewers jersey, Paul Molitor #4.

I hadn't grocery shopped for round about 2 months then last night I grocery shopped.

Walking in the park Stephanie and I came upon a bench and in a thing in the bench a book (for writing in). Lots of the people had in it wrote about how beautiful was the park and its babbling brook and yet how depressed they were all, how people don't do them right or they can't remember what kissing feels like, but ultimately God was in control they just have to keep walking the path. One person was there to mark Mike's birthday but Mike had suicided already. It was a heavy book of nonsense that I loved all of and wanted to do.

Did you see that commercial for the truck where the plane is going to crash on account of its landing gear being snookered when now comes the truck into which lands the front of the plane? It's the most heroic commercial. When seeing it up I want to stand and pledge allegiance to something.

Welp I'm going to eat one of these pears then do some more edits.

Free stamped postcards

2011-07-18T10:06:00.000-04:00

Want some free postcards that are already stamped? We're giving away Chris Toll postcards. Email postcards@publishinggenius.com with your address and how many you want (up to 5), and I'll stick them in the mail. And they come with postage so you can just write on them and send away. While supplies last.

Stephanie Barber at the BMA

2011-07-05T13:44:00.001-04:00

Stephanie Barber has installed herself at the Baltimore Museum of Art. There is a large plaque with her name and bio on it. Here is the best photo I could get of that before a guard cut me off:

"No pictures in this gallery," he said. I glanced around. Stephanie Barber had cameras all over the place.

Everyday she sits in a large white room, at a massive wooden desk balanced on a pair of sawhorses, in front of two iMacs. Across from her is a huge green screen, where she films museum patrons who say, "I love you."

Off to her side, behind a short wall, there is a projection of two videos she made previously, my favorites (of many favorites), "Dwarfs the Sea" and "Bust Chance." "Dwarfs the Sea" is available to see in her book/DVD, these here separated to see how they standing alone, from PGP. It's an amazing and well-loved piece.

All around her are things you'd find in her regular studio: not just editing equipment, but keyboards, a vintage toy piano, scissors (safety scissors, per museum guidelines), a yoga ball, and plenty of external harddrives.

Colorful pictures torn from books are affixed with tacks to the museum's walls. There is a long collage of forest scenes, and a group of interior home shots. Barber shot these pictures and uses them as source material for some of the videos she's making. She's making a video every day for 31 days.

The show is called "Jhana and the Rats of James Olds, or 31 Days/31 Videos." The words "Jhana and the Rats of James Olds" are printed across a large-screen TV stand. The television shows the work she's made so far.

In a fascinating article at Urbanite, Cara Ober explains the show better than I can:

Lots of contemporary artists say they value the process over product, but in Stephanie Barber's case, this puts it mildly. Barber's work, in the center of the exhibit, is a makeshift studio and production house. For each of the 31 days of the exhibit, Barber will create an original video utilizing a variety of props, digital editing techniques, and random passersby. The videos will be screened on a monitor adjacent to the production area. Although her section of the exhibit will confuse and confound some of the visitors to the museum, her warm persona and willingness to interact with strangers is the strength of the piece. “I want visitors to be able to see the successes and the failures,” she says of the new body of work she will create here. Part performance, part intervention, and part studio, Barber's work is the most risky of the group, as well as the most contemporary.

She's been there for seven days now, so there are seven videos showing on a loop.

One thing I wonder about, though, is whether Stephanie values process over product. While she has thrown back the curtain on process, there's no indication that she's any less concerned with the outcome of her work. I found that the videos are still excellent, and more than that, they follow the same line of thought that I'm accustomed to in the Barber repertory; they are visual (and literal) poems constructed of found footage and highly intentional soundtracks.

That said, I imagine that if she had more than the museum's seven hours of operation to work on each one, it would be different. And in that way, the concept of "Jhana and the Rats of James Olds" becomes about more than just the 31 individual videos.

I kind of see it as an underdog story; art is competing against time.

So it makes sense that so much of the work is built from images that are several decades old, as if to question the effect of time on their relevance. One video, which is very vivid, takes as its source half-century-old 16mm footage from what seems to be a vacation across Europe. Headings that identify locations interstice the imagery filmed on the vacation, so that the headings become a poem and the real, meaningful content of the video. The repurposed film, by contrast, is ancillary to the text. That's an inversion Barber is keen to make.

She has also used passersby to record voiceovers for the videos. I'm amazed at how good some of the acting is.

Another video features a shot of a sailboat moving across the water, with a rosebush in the foreground and an island rock in the background. Then the image freezes and gets animated out of the picture as if by Photoshop. After it's been completely obliterated by painting over it (digitally, so I'm reminded of Corey Arcangel maybe), random letters begin to fly across the screen. Some of them rotate around and finally spell "SUCK IT," an unsympathetic gesture that seems new to Barber's work, in some ways, but not one that's ill-considered. I've watched the video several times and chuckled at each pass. A docent watched it and said, "Ha, that's pretty good." It contrasts the quietness of the piece sharply.

There are 24 days to go for Barber, and 24 more videos to make. It's an incredible show, and I am impressed with the BMA for facilitating it. I was just thinking that I wish I could see documentation of the project the way MoMA set it up for Marina Abramović, and then I realized that Barber is making this documentation herself in the form of the "I Love You" piece, which will show the participating museum patrons. I can't wait to see that, not just because it furthers the questions raised in Abramović's show, but because I expect it's going to be as heart-rending and great-to-look-at as everything else Barber has created.

Just barely with the times

2011-06-24T10:00:00.002-04:00

I started a Tumblr for Publishing Genius.

PublishingGenius.info

Which should be fun.

I'm Teaching a Class You Can Take It

2011-06-01T16:29:00.002-04:00

It costs $100ish and there are four sessions.
I'm going to give away Publishing Genius books at it.
It's at the Creative Alliance, in Baltimore.
Joe Young, co-teacher.
It's about finding the story on a grocery store receipt, and telling it there, too.
I will be providing extensive feedback on assignments and Joe too and Joe and I will probably argue several times.
I think I will think of myself less as teacher and more as facilitator.
Though I am fairly certain I will suggest some new things.
"Experimental writing" is not a good term, because all writing is experimental. It should be called "fun writing."
The class will also focus on getting your work published.
Register here, at the Creative Alliance website.
Email me with your questions here: adam at publishinggenius dot com.

Here's the straight dope from the Creative Alliance.

EXPERIMENTAL WRITING: The Craft and the Market - 4 Thursdays: June 9-30

Adam Robinson and Joe Young Instructors: Isn't all writing experimental? Explore recent literary breakthroughs and consider how these techniques can be adapted to your own writing.

We start with the belief that what is of primary importance to the craft of writing is an honest voice. Then, with readings and exercises, you’ll be exposed to new dimensions and directions for your work. Short readings include: Kathy Acker, Samuel Beckett, Rachel B. Glaser, Ernest Hemingway, and Vanessa Place. By the end you’ll have completed a manuscript and learned about places to submit it. Instructors Joe Young and Adam Robinson are both published innovators as well as publishers working in the field of genre-breaking literature. 7-9:30pm. Adv reg $100, $90 mbrs. Walk-in $110, $100 mbrs.

Jesse Tangen-Mills in Chapbook Genius

2011-05-23T16:53:00.000-04:00

Promotional Consideration

2011-05-19T09:06:00.000-04:00

provided by this bird

Fog Gorgeous Stag by Sean Lovelace

2011-05-17T01:16:00.001-04:00

If you must read it, I recommend real thick gloves like the furries wear, a mouthwash month, some antiviral gum with Freshening Riblet Crystals, a hundred-year moratorium, or kevlar hot pants. This is not a blurb. This is a warning label.

Quoth Ander Monson

it's nigh upon us
and getting clearer

Sean Lovelace

FOG GORGEOUS STAG

June 2011

sneak up on it

John Barth Reading at JHU 5/6/11

2011-05-09T21:43:00.002-04:00

I don't want to be mean but John Barth's reading at Johns Hopkins on Friday was bad. Stephanie thought it was so bad that she was forced to breathe loudly. She was incensed. I just thought it was an average badness that lasted too long. Barth read for an hour, and by the end people were leaving in a steady, slow stream. Three times he said, "One more page," but he probably read 10 more pages from the first time he said that. It wasn't that he was old. He wasn't too old. He seemed to be a very healthy octogenarian. His prose was adept. But the new novel he read from was about a 77-yr-old academician writer so, uh, who cares? The protagonist was awfully proud of himself, of course. Anyway, enough editorializing. That doesn't help anyone. Here are my notes.

Brad Lighthouse (?) of the Writing Seminars does the introduction, corny reference to Wikipedia being unreliable
Barth got his BA and MA at Hopkins in 51 and 52
Writes about sailing in his nearly 20 books
Brad is from Michigan but doesn't feel comfortable around water unless it's frozen into a parking lot
Experimental fiction is a term that's gone away. Are the experiments over?
"Every literary classic becomes something of a castaway," says Brad
Barth takes over the podium
Barth says that in his job at JHU he had to introduce plenty of people. He learned that the three main purposes of introductions are: Test the PA, Give latecomers a chance to settle, Allow others to look around and adjust their programs of necessary
"Three new perpetrations of mine are" [coming out soon]
Reads "Preamble" from one of these
Starts with a reference to Huck Finn, then notes the story is about a tornado on Maryland's eastern shore
George Irving Nuitt is the hero's name
GIN
Gee I knew it
He's a prof in Maryland, married to a poet
Barth's reading started fast, and it seemed like he had written out his introduction to the piece on the same manuscript paper. He didn't make eye contact. There was very little lead-in
Strange omniscient narrator, very informal
First section of the novel: "First Fall"
About traveling on a cruise line to the Balkans, then to Stratford Upon Avon
Had "a brace of spits" of champagne
"Reckon y'all don't have the minority problems we have" (laughter in the audience) says Handly (?) a Pennsylvanian who sounds more like a Southerner -- this is good bit featuring one of their fellow American travelers
"failing to fetch his fictive folk" re Chaucer

I have 76 seconds of audio but I didn't bother to upload it. I will if anyone cares but it's not really that good. These notes are not that good either, but after reading for so long, Barth decided not to take questions since no one seemed interested.

Small wonder.

Billy Collins at McDaniel College (Westminster, MD) 05/04/2011

2011-05-05T09:25:00.003-04:00

Prelude by Eric Burd, int'l jazz ambassador, really nice
25th annual Christopher Bothe Lecture
Chris was an English major in the 70s
Host of reading, Kathy Mangan, thought the president of McDaniel delusional when he suggested Collins for the series, but he said Collins owed him a favor
Introduction by Roger Casey, references Marianne Moore's poem, "Poetry"
Acknowledging the (modestly large audience), Collins tells anecdote about being at a Texas college last month when the host said he was amazed at the great turnout, "and he was the chair of the English department!" Collins though is not amazed when people show up for poetry readings. He's amazed that 25M people watch American Idol
How do you know when a poem is done? "I'm the first reader of the poem, I read it like a reader would"
Someone said a writer's favorite word is "forthcoming" -- before the book release is "the calm before the calm"
Makes fun of Fulbright and mainstream poetry (Fulbright poems need to have a fountain in them)
Where the title "Horoscopes for the Dead" came from: reading friend's horoscope a couple months after his death (2nd person address poem with lines like "you're not actually going to increase your fortune today")
"pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac" (applause)
References Howard Nemerov w/r/t a poem about being 6 months behind a natural phenomenon (like fall leaves) -- Nemerov came up with the word "azaleate," which means to commiserate with someone who missed the phenomenon
Then reads his version of Li Po's "Drinking Alone" (kinda, actually poem is about prepositional ambiguity of "after")
Discouraging teachers who told him to stop writing did a lot for him because he has a stronger drive for revenge than approval
"Put a dog in your poem, it will get you past your self absorption for a couple of lines"
"Monday" is a nice poem
Valery said a poem is never completed, only abandoned
"I spend a lot of time finishing my poems"
Poem indicative of things I don't like about Collins: "The Lanyard"
"Many of these poems have a wandering capacity. I don't really know where I'm going when I start out."
His ability is to write about poetry while referencing the quadratic equation or a famous battle, so he's making poetry about poetry about something else
False immodesty disguises actual arrogance
Doesn't cry when writing his poems. "I get a little moist when I read them"
Writes funny poems because you can't fake funny. You can fake serious, but if you fail at funny people will say well that's not funny.
"People who don't read poetry don't read poetry because they don't read poetry. ... I'm a non hockey watcher." It's not like if hockey stopped being violent, he would start watching it. He just doesn't like to watch it.
"What's your favorite thing about being a Guggenheim?" "27 thousand dollars." "Awesome."
"I got into poetry because I associated with solitude."
"How much of your success is due to your public persona?" "That's such an embarrassing question to answer. I dunno, 40%" Then goes on to attribute success to NPR and being on Fresh Air
Here is audio of Collins's "I was like" poem, so sardonic

Making non-writer friends as a writer -- Guest post by Caleb Ross

2011-05-02T00:02:00.010-04:00

This is a guest post by Caleb J Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. He will be guest-posting beginning with the release of his novel Stranger Will in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn't Mean to Be Kevin, in November 2011. If you have connections to a lit blog of any type, professional journal or personal site, please contact him. To be a groupie and follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow him on Twitter: @calebjross.com. Friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb

Don't talk about your writing unless you are asked about your writing. Even then, don't talk about your writing.

The general public will always think Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Stephenie Meyer are better writers than you. Just agree with them (or at least, just stay quiet).

To continue point 2 above, read Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Stephenie Meyer. You may not like it, but sometimes you have to close your eyes and give in if you want to fit in. If it helps, tell yourself that doing it is good for your complexion, and that if you don't all the other girls will make fun of you.

If you have to cancel plans with friends because of writing-related engagements, lie. It is true that you may have a dirty bathrobe and a brand new Moleskine notebook to attend to, but no self-respecting civilian is going to appreciate being stood up because of an inanimate object. Say that your grandmother died. If your friends get suspicious because you've had fourteen grandmothers die in a six month period, then your friends are probably just your “friends.” (Quotation humor, you like that?)

No matter how rock-solid you think your argument may be, writing will never be analogous to sports. And no matter how boring you think the “big game” may be, commercial breaks are not windows of opportunity to enlighten living-room spectators.

For anyone reading this blog who thinks negatively of me for these tips, let me say, writing is a dumb hobby, James Patterson rules (he cleared up my acne), I don't even own any paper, and GO CHIEFS! See, we're friends now, aren't we?

Birthday, Transmodern, Sweatpants tonight, New song

2011-05-01T11:01:00.000-04:00

My birthday on Wednesday was cool. So many people sent Facebook wishes and who would have thought that feels nice? I spent the day with Xav, a filmmaker from Milwaukee, driving around to get supplies for his video performance piece. Then Chris Toll and I went to Frasiers and watched the O's beat the Red Sox 5-4 and I ate meatloaf. Chris gave me Palo Alto by James Franco. Then back at home Joe made me a chocolate cake, which was an unexpected surprise. I ate it standing up because I had a bad headache by that point. Then I went to bed and read the first story by James Franco and was amazed by how many mistakes there were in the book. Not mistakes really, but bad sentences. For instance, "We were all sitting in the backyard on a little picnic table that you might find at the park." Actually, to be honest, that sentence doesn't seem too bad to me and when I just reread the story trying to find some good bad ones they all seemed okay. So, sorry Franco, all is forgiven.
The 8th annual Transmodern Festival started on Thursday and ends today. Thursday night is always my favorite; it's the night that is focused on art more than hanging out and being youthful and creative and drunk. This year's Thursday show was called "Mediations." Stephanie Barber curated it. There were five performance installations. Kirsten Stoltmann's video "Post-Nothing" was first, and it was a room delineated by crappy folding chairs and a coffee machine with cookies, so that it looked like an AA meeting in a church basement. The video was three minutes long. It was Kirsten out for a jog, and then she gets shot four times and hit by two arrows. The special effects were funny. Then in the video Kirsten's neighbor says, "Hey Kirsten, what are you doing?" and Kirsten looks up and says, "Um, making an art video?" She looks dejected. Then the neighbor walks away. The neighbor was in the gallery, too (though it was a different actor) telling everyone how proud she was of Kirsten for being in the art show. That was funny. Next was Smelling Salts Amusements, who are Peter Redgrave and Heather Romney. They built a train cabin, complete with a video monitor installed in the wall which showed footage recorded from a moving train. That was a neat effect. Their performance, which lasted over two hours, just featured them riding in their cabin, interacting and being bored by the journey. They didn't speak, just sat across from each other on their benches and looked at each other lovingly, or staring into the middle distance, or doodling, or playing that game where you draw lines and close off boxes, or stretching, or taking something down from the overhead compartment. They wore European-looking clothes and wigs and looked really good in them. The piece was simple but compelling, and I think they had the most people watching them. Then there was a tent constructed by Jesse Stiles and Olivia Robinson. It was a really amazing thing, probably 10' in diameter, built from several quilts which had words sewn into it and cut out of it. The words weren't readable until a light would shine from the inside of the tent and light it up. Then you could walk around it and try to pick up a story as the lights went on and off in random patterns set by a chord organ. I'm not sure how it worked, but it was an impressive thing. Michael Kimball pointed out that the words were written in part by Jesse Ball. The artists were sitting with fabric masks on their heads right outside the door to the tent. Michael asked them questions but I felt queasy talking to people in masks. KimSu Theiler's installation was next, and featured an actor playing KimSu in a very small room with a fireplace. The girl was waiting for a pot to boil so she could cook her ramen. She wore a black dress and a towel on her head. On the mantle to the fireplace was a video monitor showing KimSu doing the same thing. Sometimes in the video she would be eating the ramen, I think. On the wall facing the actor was a projection that switched from a camera recording the audience standing outside the room to a camera placed directly over the cooking pot, to a camera facing the actor. At one point I stood outside the room and asked questions to a guy named Mick who was standing there too. Once I started asking questions -- like whether or not the fireplace was supposed to be real, and what the timer was for, and whether all the wires ought to have been hidden -- I couldn't stop thinking about the mechanisms of the piece. I found it very compelling that way. Finally, in the last spot of the room, Xav Leplae showed his 3D video Rasmalai Dreams. He didn't just turn on the projector, though. He constructed a frame which held the projector, so as he moved, so did the video. Sometimes he would turn completely and the entire projection would move to a different wall. The frame that he constructed basically made it impossible for him to stand still, so there was constant wobble. He said he was interested in this because when holding a camera there is always some of that motion, and he wanted to reverse it a little and introduce that sort of personality to the showing of video, rather than just the making of it. Xav also mounted a microphone onto his frame, and he used it to create another narrative onto the documentary he was showing. Rasmalai Dreams is footage of Indian actors in Bombay showing off their chops, sometimes with dramatic monologues (really, really dramatic one, over the top), sometimes dancing and sometimes just mugging for the camera. They were sensitive, beautiful shots at times, and funny. The soundtrack was incredible local music. So while the movie was playing Xav would point out things in the video and pretend he was trying to sell them to you on the stock market. He also had a fog machine that he would spray sometimes, and he hung two boxes of flower petals that he could shake with a string and they would pour down. It was immersive.
On Friday Joe and I went to see Xav and Kirsten talk at Johns Hopkins. Xav showed Rasmalai Dreams again from his frame, but this time he didn't talk. It was a completely different experience. I had to run out to pick up John Dermot Woods at the bus stop so I missed Kirsten's talk. But then John and a his old friends, Ben and Dan, and some people from my team played softball. I was good but I got sore really fast. Then John and Ben and Dan and I went to Swallow at the Hollow to eat and watch the O's beat the White Sox 10-4. Then we went to Transmodern and saw Mucca Pazza, who are a very exciting marching band from Chicago and I really recommend them. Then John, Ben and I got really drunk, which meant that --
-- I was no good all day yesterday. I didn't go to bed until 5:30am and then had a hangover so I spent much of Saturday moaning through it. I rallied in time for Transmodern last night, where I watched an incredible play by the Missoula Oblongata. The play was called The Daughter of the Father of Time Motion Study and featured three women playing several different roles, including Lillian (the daughter), her mother, her boyfriend Beebee (sp?), a robot, a walrus, a bridge and a hole in the ice. I might be forgetting some. The performers operated their set with numerous ropes. The set was a large wooden box that included several doors, silhouettes, puppets, lights and music. Each performer played a song on the guitar. Scene changes were delineated effectively by romantic keyboard music played by one of the actors who had the keyboard attached to her costume. Interestingly, the play was about efficiency and every single action that took place was a perfect example of efficiency in practice, like when someone moved a light it wasn't just to shine it on a portion of the play, but also to make room for a door that was about to swing open. These quick changes moved the story, too, like when a long strip of fabric with a series of paintings on it was pulled slowly over the set like a film projection. You had to be there, I guess. It was a miracle. Then I went to Rooms Play, which should have been more miraculous but there were too many freakish characters crossing my boundaries and exposing ones I didn't know I had. Rooms Play is a series of rooms (22 in total, I think), exquisitely designed (one favorite was the sideways room, where the floor was the wall and the wall was the floor) with a couple actors in each room. They usher your small group of 4 people through and then send you on to the next room. In Theresa Columbus's room she had us wait in front of a curtain and told us to start talking about each of our first kiss. Then she opened the curtain and revealed that we were on a stage in front of an audience of her drawings. In another room we were rafter through a waterscape that was projected on the wall. In a brothel-themed room five or six girls in their underwear surrounded me, led me into a private area which was actually back into the same room, where they literally spun the floor and spat us out into a radioactive room that was humming. The rooms were amazing, but I didn't like how much I had to participate and how little the actors had scripted and how one guy took my M&Ms.
Sweatpants! Tonight! At Golden West. I'm excited for this show because it's our last time, I think, as a loud rock band. After tonight I have goals to make us more performance-oriented and more adventurous musically.
That said, I just wrote a new verse-chorus-verse type song that has the chorus "Life, it's my favorite thing, it's all I have, I need it -- that's what Camus said but he was dead when the book he said it in saw the light." Which is a reference to The First Man.

From the Poetry Project Files, Scrilla, Chris Toll, Blake Butler, Submissions,, Lyn Hejinian

2011-04-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

NEW RELEASE AUDIO

Here is audio of me reading "From What I Understand About Liberation Theology." This poem was published not too long ago in The Shattered Wig Review #28. I sound like a white preacher. I mean to, always, no doubt. I'm very happy with this audio, except for when I messed up. How could I have messed up, I read so slow.

FINANCIAL NEWS

In other news, I rolled my 401k into an IRA today, so you know, I'm not exactly sweatin' it (is what Bill Murray says in Caddy Shack).

IN BOOKS

Chris Toll's book, The Disinformation Phase (original video trailer here), went to the printer today. Next week I get the proof. You know what that means? Pre-orders will open next week. We'll have a special deal this time, no doubt. Heather Christle (recently New Yorkered) said this: Chris Toll has looked within words and entities to discover almost everything is weeping. Emily Dickinson’s breaking code in the Pentagon, Toll’s heart is aching and full, and meanwhile these poems are tenderly repossessing the ineffable and the commonplace. It is a grand and lovely thing to read this book.

SLEEPING NEWS

I've been doing that thing where I wake up at 4am to watch DVDs of The Wire. Most recently I did that early rising so I could cruise through Veronica Mars. Anyway, it's Omar who makes me say "no doubt," doubtless.

WHAT AM I READING?

Justin Sirois's novel, Falcons on the Floor. I bet you wish you were reading this book instead of me. I've also been dabbling in my lit crit book from when I took a great class in theory in 1997. The book is Critical Theory Since Plato, Hazard Adams, editor. I read Valéry two nights ago. Matthew Arnold then Northrop Frye last night. I'm also reading Kitchen Confidential.

ITEM! BLAKE BUTLER'S NOVEL

And There Is No Year by Blake Butler. It is really good. It is better even than I expected. Note 1) it's often said "I can't wait to touch that book" or "hold that book" -- in this case, it really is something to look forward to. The cover stock is akin to the papery soft Black Sparrow covers, but the book's dimensions are bigger, so not only is there a softness but also a floppiness. When Blake said about ARAOP, "This is one to drink milk in bed with," I think he should have been talking more about his own book; it's a cuddly bear. Note 2) When I bought the book at the Johns Hopkins B&N, the clerk said, "Oh, this book." It was on display at the register. The other clerk said, "I was looking at that. It reminded me of House of Leaves, I guess with the ." I said "I think Danielewski said something about it somewhere," but she seemed to think I was wrong. I could have been -- I just know I saw official press material about the book mentioning Danielewski and I was surprised by that. Anyway, so, I bought the book and they seemed surprised by that. I showed it to Stephanie and she seemed surprised too. Note 3) It is even better than I expected. I read a bit of it at the NYC release week thing and what I read didn't make sense to me at the time (which of course is okay by me), and I thought it was perhaps more abstract than it actually is (which of course isn't what makes it better). I read it like it was abstract, but that was because I started at the third section without having looked at the beginning. When I started reading the book on p1, duh, I found that the characters -- the family and their copies -- were introduced in a more straightforward way than I thought at first, and that the story that surrounds them ties together and rolls around like a knot. I freaking love untying knots. The things that happen are sensible. Note 4) The prose, I have found, is closer to Virginia Woolf than to Danielewski. As in this sentence, "The grain in the glass in the windows in the halls in the rooms in the houses on the yards along the streets aligned for miles." Though I guess that's hallmark Butler to bury the predicate. I don't know why she swallowed the fly. Note 5) I expect I'll make more notes after I get past page 25.

PGP BUSINESS NEWS

Submissions for books opens May 1. Octopus is reading now, though: http://www.octopusbooks.net/submit.html -- get on that. I'm thinking of a reading fee this year, or maybe to have people show proof of purchase of a PGP book. If you have ever bought a PGP book, you can submit for free. Otherwise, it's $5. Something like that, is what I'm thinking. Is that crazy?

TECH NEWS

I got to see Lyn Hejinian read on Tuesday. I took notes, a picture, and recorded sound all on my phone with an app called Evernote. The app then syncs up with my computer at home and my iPad.

IN EVENTS

I got to see Lyn Hejinian read on Tuesday. Here are my notes:

Adverbial, how, in Hejinian poetics
Chris Nealon's intro is great
Lyn's two thousand volume work
Poetry can make better rulers, at least she wishes
Sets watch
"exceptionally languid snail"
"forever incomplete, as a holiday"
Drinks water, says "air travel is a killer...on voices"
"obsidian"
"now that was an excellent astronomer"
Straightforward poem of "tales" with 3 morals
Poem including a phone number
Chris Mason-type click poem
Longish poem about clowns
"I'm writing this, pretending to be a filmmaker"
Laughter at mention of a Nigerian spam email
Two rhyming quatrains, Chicago w/ virago
Saga Circus, a book that started with the question, Why is literature not supposed to be strictly entertaining (which explains why clowns keep coming up)
Introduces a poem saying, "Last time I tried to read this I laughed so hard I had to stop" then reads a not terribly funny poem about naming things like motels, bands and streets
"now I'm glad to withdraw from sound/now is that withdrawal"

"Sweet Potatoes" and some stuff

2011-04-08T10:31:00.000-04:00

(Cross-posted from HTMLGiant)

My desk is really messy but on Wednesday Joe and I did a lot of work around HQ. We took down the old artish and put up some new pictures and my favorite thing was finally figuring out a way to display my chapbooks. I kept putting in chapbooks that I had in boxes and getting excited and showing them to Joe. Like, JOE! LOOK AT THIS TITLE "FALLING STARS TO SMASH MOTHERFUCKERS IN THEIR FACE"! AH HAHA AND LOOK AT THIS ONE! "CONGRATULATIONS! THERE'S NO LAST PLACE IF EVERYONE IS DEAD" - okay so maybe those titles are kind of pessimistic but there are a lot of other ones that I liked. I kept also being like JOE! THERE'S A LOT OF CHAPBOOKS IN HERE A PERSON WOULD ACTUALLY WANT TO READ!

Life is moving too fast. I can't keep up with things like the Internet. HTMLGiant is moving beyond me. I don't know what's going on anywhere. I don't like the feeling. I feel like I'm withdrawing into my own small world of rush. I can't talk crap about people anymore because I don't know what anyone is doing.

How's everybody doing? I thought about taking a picture of my new chapbook library but I decided that is like trying to take a picture of a hill -- you can never really show how steep it is and you will always be sad then poof.

This morning I reread "Sweet Potatoes" in Timothy Willis Sanders's book ORANGE JUICE which EVERYONE LOVES. I mean for real. If you were wondering if TW is well loved, then go to Houston and they will be like yeah he is awesome.

I reread "Sweet Potatoes" maybe for the fourth time and something clicked in me a lot extra. Not just about that story -- though a couple things I wondered about w/r/t the story specifically is why does the narrator choose white wine at the grandparent's house and then insist on it. He says "White" after being insecure about the grandparents being racists, and I also wondered about the relationship btw the speaker's mother and her bf (?) Bill -- so are they the same ppl as in the first story, "Orange Juice," but perhaps in a different stage of their relationship, as in not so turmoiled out?

And how is that story "Orange Juice" so effed up. I've read that story probably a dozen times and just reread it and I only think I really know what's happening. Dang, when I was in Houston with him I should have talked about this with Tim he would have explained it to me. In the order of great writers who excel at ambiguity Sanders and Hemingway are abut.

The other night Joe and I went to a bar and at one point I think I thought okay instead of a round of beer this time I'll buy a game for my phone so I got one called Wave Runner -- it's boat racing -- it's gyroscopic or whatever -- you turn your hands and the boat turns. The thing is I am still terrible at video games. When I was a kid I walloped my whole body to make Sonic try to do a loop and I kept pulling the Genesis off the TV till I didn't even want to play anymore. I admit I use to sneak into my neighbor's basement to play Mario on their NES cuz we were Christians and didn't have one yet. (Later when we got the Genesis these Christian rappers came to stay at my house and they played football with my brothers and said things like "that's madd _____." I think at the time the word mad had two "D"s to signify "extra." The Christian rappers explained that to my mom.) Anyway I was just playing Wave Runner and crashing into things and jamming my whole body and I guess video games are just not my thing, I should have had the beer.

So how about them Orioles am I right? John Dermot Woods invented this thing called Fantasy Baseball 2011 and I am pretty into that. I probably check my stats pretty often. I'm going up against like the toughest guy in the league who has three starting pitchers going today. When I was in sixth grade I started to stop being cool/having friends and I didn't know it yet but thankfully we got into a discussion about it one day at the lunch table. Dan said "I'm cooler than you," and I was like all "What" and Brian R goes, "He is you know." That was pretty much when I stopped following sports.

But I've never read a book by Barry Hannah or that lady whose name I can't remember but I really want to read a book by her, I think it's kind of French sounding. I'm working on a novel though, about a white guy and a black guy who come up hard but strike it big with a website but then the white guy goes missing (is he dead?) and people think it's the black guy did it because no one really liked him since he was a jerk. Anyway it's pretty good there's no narrative it's all told in like receipts and emails and invoices and travel vouchers and spreadsheets. It comes in a box. It will be out in 2013. It's called "Baby Takes a Nap."

Last night I told Patrick King about this when he was here at the HQ, King is aces, he just finished his own book, and he was like, "Oh like Dracula," and I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT ABOUT DRACULA!!!! I know that Frankenstein is epistolary but I never read DRACULA! I never read DRACULA and yet I don't know anything about SPORTS. I feel like this is a major problem. If you're going to be a botard that doesn't even know Adam Wainwright is on the DL ALL YEAH then you better have at least read a book by Barry Hannah or whatever -- DRACULA.

To Adam Robinson Regarding Adam Robison

2011-04-05T15:36:00.001-04:00

For National Poetry Month, Meagan Nyland wrote a poem imitating me. It's about teaching my poems to college students. It can be read here, and here is an excerpt:

He said you got it
you got it cause you got the world
got it
ugly and beautiful
got it?
I liked that

April 21 Reading in Pittsburgh Flyer

2011-04-05T15:19:00.000-04:00

Chris Toll reading from his book, a photograph

2011-04-04T19:37:00.001-04:00

Chris reads from The Disinformation Phase

Buffalo Small Press Fest weekend

2011-03-21T13:19:00.000-04:00

I have been in bed now for 24 hours straight. If you watch The A-Team all the way to the end of the credits there is some bonus footage featuring the original Face and Murdock actors. I actually thought The A-Team was a pretty fun movie to watch. Never Let Me Go never held me in the first place. I kept waiting for it to start. By the time I got to watching Veronica Guerin I was too distracted by trying to get my Google Reader feed down below 1000+ unread posts. Sorry Matt, I didn't view all 412 of your new shared items. I just marked them all as read.

The Buffalo Small Press Fest was fun. Here is a write up from the newspaper. I met a lot of great people there, like my host Aaron Lowinger who introduced me to all his bros from way back. I never felt so easygoing around an old gang that was not my old gang. And they were all savvy about poetry in unexpected ways, and all doing things like running presses and playing music. After the bookfair and after this utterly amazing dinner party held in the back of Rust Belt Books there was a music show and lots of people came out and it was warm and friendly and good. Buffalo stays open late and I'm grateful to Aaron for showing it to me.

Thanks too to Mike Kelleher for bringing me out. Check out Mike's blog, Pearlblossom Highway, where he is annotatively listing all the books on his shelf. Thanks to Chris Fritton for putting on such an amazing program. It was also really great to see all those people and spend a little time with Matvei from UDP and Rebecca from Fence and Geoffrey from Blazevox and Ted from Starcherone and David from Sunnyoutside.

Tomorrow: Providence. I'm excited to see my friend and Buffalonian Ric Royer. And Irisher Mairead Byrne.

Adam Robinson reading at the Poetry Project 2011

2011-03-15T19:12:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Andrew James Weatherhead for posting the video.

1/2 Adam Robinson @ The Poetry Project 2/28/11 from Andrew Weatherhead on Vimeo.

A Couple Places I'm Going to Be Reading etc

2011-03-14T11:51:00.001-04:00

This Friday and Saturday:

Buffalo Small Press Book Fair

Friday March 18, 2011

I'm reading with Rebecca Wolff and Matvei Yankelevich

8pm-11pm at WNYBAC –

468 Washington St.

Buffalo, NY

Saturday March 19, 2011

1:00pm – Roundtable Discussion on Editorial Models and the Future of the Small Press

with Fence and Ugly Duckling

Tuesday March 22

Providence, RI

at Couscous

Two Saturdays from now

So what's this Chatroulette thing all about?

2011-03-08T23:09:00.000-05:00

Oh. Uh, geez.

Events through April

2011-02-25T11:44:00.002-05:00

On Monday I'm driving up with Stephanie Barber to read at the Poetry Project, 8pm. I'm a good reader but a little too canned. My friend Russ said I was really good in Chicago until my pausing schtick wore off about two minutes in (I pause a lot). Stephanie though is the best. She seems so comfortable in front of an audience that the poems kind of blossom as she reads them. These poems find their entelechy in their utterance.

Then the next week from March 2-5 I will be in NYC again for the Chapbook Festival. With Mary Gannon from Poets & Writers, Cara Benson from Dusie Kollektiv and Nate Pritts from H_NGM_N, I'll be presenting on pushing the boundaries of chapbooks. And I'm thrilled to have a new chapbook from Emily Kendall Frey and Sarah Bartlett to present, called Baby on the Safe Side. A sample poem from that:

You know what -- actually this book doesn't bear excerpting. It lives in its context. Like babies. (To be clear, this is NOT an excerpt from the book.)

Moving along, I'm heading back to NYC to participate in Blake Butler's release extravaganza, which goes for several days-within-days in March. Like, I believe that HarperCollins set up a week of Thursdays to take place all in one Thursday. Like Russian dolls or a Mairéad Byrne poem. Basically the readings only use one minute IRL but they seem like a crossing the Mt. Moria. Anyway, I'll be there on March 10 at the Center for Fiction at weird o'clock (7pm).

On March 18, if you're still taking notes, I'm reading and presenting at the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. More info on that is here.

I'm driving to Providence, RI on March 22 to read at Couscous at Tazza. With films by Stephanie Barber and readings by Murphy Chang, Samantha Gorman and Ric Royer.

Then I'm going to Phoenix for Spring Training and to hang out with my folks.

Then on April 2 I will be at the Houston Indie Book Festival.

Then on April 16 I will be presenting "The M Squad" (Mike Young, Mel Nichols, Maureen Thorson and M. Magnus) in a panel on "The Sentence of Poetry." That's in DC at The Conversation and Connections thing.

Then on April 21 I am going to read at The New Yinzer series in Pittsburgh.

ADVERTISEMENT PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL BUY BOOKS 2011

2011-02-09T13:11:00.000-05:00

Chris Toll's collection of poems, The Disinformation Phase, will be available from Publishing Genius in June. This is the first trailer.

The book has a lot of scifi in it. It's pretty much genre poetry.

Old Foxy song

2011-02-03T09:10:00.004-05:00

From my 2002 band.

Craig Griffin's comic Wow

2011-02-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

On January 2, 2011, Adam Robinson, John Dermot Woods and Joseph Young set out on a midwestern book tour from Chicago to Minneapolis, stopping in Milwaukee and Madison on the way. Since these cities are notoriously inclement in the winter, it struck everyone as a Bad Freaking Idea, but it turned out great. Along the way, the writers picked up Craig Griffin, a graphic artist and playwright, who came along to document the readings. Which he did, with keen attention to the quirks of the readers. Later today at Everyday Genius, that comic eBook will be made available for the first time.

Reynard Seifert on Sasquatch Stories

2011-01-25T11:38:00.000-05:00

Reynard Seifert on Sasquatch Stories at HTMLGIANT:

Mike Topp
Sasquatch Stories
Publishing Genius
Baltimore, MD — 2010

I read most of this while waiting a while for an Italian sausage calzone. I thought it was cheesy that I felt like I had déjà vu because that was the name of the place I was waiting. I realized oh it’s just that I’ve read some of this before. A lot actually. Oh well. I think I’m going to give it to someone I don’t know on the bus or maybe on the train. I took the calzone home and ate it on my roof. I watched the sun set. I went downstairs to my living room. I turned on a lamp and read the rest of the book. I felt pretty weird for a while, a little giggly. I felt like I had a bubble bath in my mouth and I was in my mouth being bubbly. Like I had been smoking salvia. The sun was not in my eyes. I went for a walk. I’m just kidding, it’s pretty funny though.

Get you one.
http://www.publishinggenius.com/2010/11/sasquatch-stories-by-mike-topp.html

Update #4,296

2011-01-24T08:11:00.000-05:00

There are over 1,000 unread items in my Google Reader account.

Last night I watched Winter's Bone. I was riveted. I wanted to call all my friends and invite them to watch it with me. I was gripped. Don't read the rest of this paragraph if you don't want a spoiler. If you saw the movie, though, is it your opinion that Merab and Alice take Ree to the body as a result of Teardrop smashing Ray's windshield? Clearly Teardrop is fearsome, as shown so effectively when in the garage one of the henchmen says, "I'm not going to stand around naked when he comes in." Teardrop answers to Thump, though perhaps only out of respect or tradition. So when Ray threatens that they're all coming for Teardrop, and that they're bringing hell with them, is that forsworn by Merab "putting an end to all the talk"?

Anyway, amazing movie. Stars a woman, directed by a woman -- scariest, grittiest and best movie of 2010. Unrivaled.

Here's a NYTimes article about independent booksellers doing a niche. I should hear about my Operation: Storefront application this week.

On Thursday last week I went to the DC zoo to research the upcoming reading PG is hosting with Beecher's Magazine. It was a fruitful trip because I learned about these things called Red Pandas. They were basically invented by Japanese people to be cuter than anything else they had going.

So if you want to see Michael Kimball, Deb Olin Unferth, Matt Bell, Stephanie Barber, Blake Butler, Tim Sanders and so on do a reading, come to this event. But the highlight is going to be the Red Pandas. They are SO GROSS.

On Friday we played poker. It was fun. Justin won.

On Saturday we went to the BSO for Shostakovich's fifth. The deal with that is that he was running into some trouble with the Bolsheviks and all the Russians were like what's he gonna do, is he gonna kowtow to the Stalinists and so he included a lot of marches but they were sarcastic marches and in that way he pulled one over on the man. Anyway -- it was amazing. Marin Alsop is my hero -- she makes Baltimore seem better than it is. I've now been to the BSO just four times, but this performance was my favorite.

OK, signing off now to spend the last hours on BotW reading. Not my last hours, just the last hours due on the job.

At the ZOO

2011-01-21T17:33:00.002-05:00

Each reader has chosen an animal to write about, and we will visit the animal as they read their piece. Which I think is a fun way to go to a reading and a fun way to go to the zoo, at the same time.

At the ZOO

2011-01-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

Each reader has chosen an animal to write about, and we will visit the animal as they read their piece. Which I think is a fun way to go to a reading and a fun way to go to the zoo at the same time.

"Playwrights" by The Flying Party

2011-01-13T10:28:00.001-05:00

This is the song "Playwrights," performed by my 2005 band The Flying Party, live on WMSE.

Topics covered: Beckett's life from birth to death (referencing his age incorrectly), Sahkespeare's questionable existence, and Ionesco's messed up play, "Rhinoscerous."

Yesterday was the Last Day of the Rest

2011-01-12T10:22:00.000-05:00

Here is me and Joe going into Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee. Photo by JDWoods.

Today is the first day that I woke up and did teeth things then coffee then sat down to start working on my new job, as publisher of PG. Yesterday I spent about 4 hours doing mail. Today my office is a wreck, strewn with books. I pulled them out as inspiration.

I have 747 unread items in Google Reader. What have I missed?

Winter Walks

2011-01-11T18:03:00.001-05:00

Being my diary of the Bad Freaking ~~Idea~~ Book Tour

Joe and I left Baltimore on Sunday morning and arrived in the late afternoon at Benji and Sarah's house. We ate tortilla chips with homemade salsa and stood around in the kitchen while Benji and Sarah prepared a roasted chicken that they knew. I think Benji had plucked the chicken earlier that day (perhaps not that particular chicken, though he had plucked other chickens and even a duck that afternoon. He had a bag of them). After dinner and cleaning the dishes, Benji and Joe and I went for a short walk in their small town of Bluffton, OH. Sarah stayed home with their amazing young children, Ellie and Josiah. Then the kids were asleep and we all played a couple rounds of Bid Tricks together and drank some of the apple cider Benji had messed with.

The next morning Sarah made us sausage that had been in a pig that they used to hang out with and eggs from a chicken that gives them in particular eggs. In my coffee I put cream from a jug of milk that was in their fridge. Benji scooted out for work and Joe and I hit the road for Chicago, IL, a five hour drive. We tooled up a state road for much of the trip and I thought, "Yes, this is the REAL AMERICA." I ate a double decker taco in Indiana. When we arrived in Chicago we picked up Craig right there on Michigan Avenue and we went to the Billy Goat Tavern under the bridge downtown to wait for John Dermot Woods, who was coming in by air.

John having arrived shortly afterward, we drove up Lake Shore Drive to snatch up Bill and our Chicago gang was complete. We visited with Sarah (different Sarah) there in Sarah's Rogers Park apartment and drank a beer and petted Bill's very large dog, Hamlet. I think the dog is named Hamlet because it is the size of a small town -- or because it's a Great Dane. Then we went to the reading at The Whistler but it was closed so we went to the bar across the street and had a couple pitchers. Zach Dodson showed up looking nice. It was about 6 so we went to the reading.

The Whistler is a very handsome bar in Chicago's Wicker Park. Already several shining literary luminaries were there; it was like a mini-AWP. I wonder if that is what it's always like in Chicago? I don't know if I would be able to handle it. The reading went well in spite of all the bars and beers -- I opened up with a few poems then introduced Zach Dodson. Man, I love Zach Dodson on a stage. He knows what an audience wants and has a keen sense of what an audience is going to do; before I got on stage he said, "Don't worry, people pay attention," and then he owned the room. Kathryn Regina read delicate poems, one by herself and one by Chelsea Minnis. In many rooms, I think, it might have been difficult to hear a poem read as quietly as she does, but I think Kathryn could still a biker bar. I want to attend the Kathryn Regina School of Poetry Reading. Then Joe and John read and Bill heckled them. Then there was something called Movie-okey and that was amazareehing. Zach pretended he was the dog from The Neverending Story, dig?

A stranger who was just a friend we hadn't met yet let us crash at her apartment. Sarah had arrived and Bill had taken my car back up to her place so we spent the morning (and money) trying to find it. Then we scooped up John in a nearby suburb (he had bailed early, with a friend) and spent a couple hours trying to find the way to another suburb to hang out with some more dogs and get Craig's stuff so he could come with us on the rest of the trip. At one point Craig, who was driving, pulled into a parking lot to turn around and I leapt from the car and upchucked four times. That was the low point of the trip and it was out of the way early and Craig drove us on to Milwaukee where we went to Beans & Barley, an old fave where I met up with Jon Burks who made me a smoothie with Source of Life and I was healed. John had Source of Life too -- he said he couldn't turn that down.

Then we went to Fuel for coffee and then we went to a new hip restaurant called Honey Pie and I ordered mac n cheese but I could not eat it. So basically for the past 36 hours I had eaten a double decker taco and lots of beer and a smoothie with Source of Life. I was feeling about 60%. After dinner we went back to Sasa and Dimitri's house, which was a house I had lived in from 2000 till 2001. The phone number has my name in it; I forgot about that. At Sasa's house we played a couple rounds of Bid Tricks and looked at pictures with Sasa and it was just a great and calm place to be. It was so comfortable after the strange day trying to get out of Chicago. We went to sleep and I woke up refreshed.

We went to Comet and I ordered two eggs but could only eat a little bit. Then we went to Woodland Pattern and looked at the amazing books. They had fronted a copy of my book, and Mike Young's and Stephanie Barber's. It really made me happy to see that. I sold them some more and met Carl Saffron and Chuck Stebelton and felt happy. Then Craig and Joe and John and I went for a walk on Brady Street, in Milwaukee's east side, then we went to the Uptowner for $5 pitchers. Then it started to snow lightly and we walked to some place that used to be Onopa and had microbrews. Then my old bandmate Joe Riepenhoff called and we went and checked out his art gallery studio that was down the street. I was impressed and motivated by their work; the show at the gallery was lovely and Joe's little recording setup was an inspiring use of space.

Then I dropped Joe and John and Craig off at Riverhorse and went to pick up Toby, my old good Milwaukee friend that was meeting up with us for dinner and to go to our reading at Salacious Banter. Toby and I went back to Riverhorse and Scott, the owner, was standing rounds for us. That was a real treat and an honor. He bought all of our books. I remembered instantly why I loved Riverhorse. Also at the bar there was Bad Leave Steve, whom we met earlier at Uptowner. He was running for Alderman and kept telling anti-Catholic jokes. I challenged Bad Leave Steve to a game of pool and had a hard time letting him win and I am a bad pool player. Finally we picked up Sasa and went to a crappy diner in Bayview for gyros. The reading was nice; I was happy to see John Riepenhoff and Paul Druecke and Robert Baumann (and his girlfriend). The room was the opposite of Chicago. Well, no, not the opposite. It's just that it was always quiet, not just when people were reading. At this reading, John and Joe and I had to carry the full weight of the show because no locals were with us. We read for a longer amount of time. No one laughed at my jokes. I am not sure they knew I was making jokes. But this was Joe's favorite reading, and we are indebted to Mike Hauser for coordinating it for us. After hanging out at the bar there for a while, we moved to Nessun Dorma where they had $2 16oz cans of Bitburger and then at bar time we retired to our hotel, which Toby had arranged for us. That was the nicest night of sleep, the only one during which all four of us had a bed. However, I dreamt that John said the pillows smelled bad and the night was restless for me because of that.

The next morning was Thursday, January 6. We left immediately for Minneapolis and arrived at Bryan's house in the late afternoon. He showed us around the new place, a small place, and when his wife Kim came home with a six pack of beer we each had one except Bryan, who doesn't drink. Back in the day he also didn't drink, but he was still invaluable at parties. He always had good ideas for things to do and his laughter can get pretty loud. After we drank a beer we all went for a walk to the Mississippi River which was right there in their town. We walked Henry, their hound dog, to it. People in Minneapolis put ice rinks in their yards. It gets pretty cold and snowy there, you see.

After the walk we hurried off to meet up with the other reading people for dinner. We ended up going to 331, a very comfortable, black-painted room that did some interesting things with lamps. It was nice to meet Anne Shaw of Providence (formerly of Milwaukee) and Lightsey Darst of Minneapolis (formerly of Tallahassee, FL, if I'm not mistaken). I ate a bratwurst, some chips and two pickles; I was back on the eating thing. Then we hurried a few doors down to Rogue Buddha Gallery. MC Hyland was there already and had set up a wonderful reading in a handsome gallery space. There was a cooler of PBR's which is the best kind of cooler. Laura Brandenberg read first and had a really fetching style. She seemed punky and was funny and danced a little when she read. Then Lightsey Darst read the heavy poems from her Coffee House Press book. She kept saying they were heavy poems, and they were, but they were not unenjoyable. She gave the audience sidelong glances. Then I read and I opened up with a bit of standup comedy. There was some laughing. I sat down and Craig made me feel like it had been my best reading, as if he was surprised with how good it was. He only drew one picture of me. All along he had been drawing pictures of me in his black book. Anne Shaw read and John read some more and so did Joe. Then we all went back to 331 and Kim brought us several beers for the table because there were no pitchers. That was great.

When we got home I fell on the floor and tried to make Henry the hound dog cuddle but he was too skittish. Then I was asleep. In the morning when I woke up I realized Craig and John and I had done that 3 Stooges thing where we slept head to toe. Bryan was awake making coffee and we talked about apps then everyone else woke up and we all talked about apps. Then we went to the Seneca Cafe and I ate half of the Green Earth and after that we left for Madison. Snow had fallen during the night and there were cars all over off the road. Some were flipped over all the way. One was on its side and you could see the driver in it and I thought of the movie Weekend by Godard. It was like that for a while then it cleared up an we arrived in Madison to cows and the best homemade pizza I've ever eaten. That was at Fred and Bethany's beautiful farm house, which is heated by woodstove. The pizza was so good it bears repeating: it was the Best Homemade Pizza I've ever even heard of. It was also incredibly filling and I could only eat half of it but I struggled through to the crust and then ate that except I gave a little bit to Georgia the white dog and a little bit to Harper, the yellow lab I used to hang out with back in the day when Bethany and I were roommates in her palatial Kankakee home. Then we drove into Madison proper for our reading at Avol's Bookstore. Ron, the owner, was a gracious host and conversationalist, and I picked his brain a little about operating a bookstore. Our reading there was, again, just the three of us and we all were practiced hands at it. We all read different material that night, too, and I dedicated my first three poems to Craig.

We went back to Fred and Bethany's and played -- wait for it -- Cranium, which I don't think anyone in the world has played since 2007. It was fun; Craig and Joe and I beat John and Fred and Bethany in a come-from-behind battle. At about 12:15am I asked John what time it is and he said 12:15am about and I said, That's good right, and he shook his head so I went to sleep. A few hours later Craig and Bethany, drunker now after having played darts for a while, came and put whipped cream all over my head. They tried to put my hand in warm water so I would pee but I resisted. The water was nearly scalding. The three of us climbed into Craig's guest bed and Craig kept trying to cuddle with Bethany so she left then he and I talked about going on a cruise and he finally fell asleep. Then I fell asleep but he was snoring loudly so I woke up and took a bath. Then Fred woke up and made the most amazing pancakes known to man. They had onions and wild rice in them, and nuts. No one man or woman born has eaten better pancakes. We all drank a lot of coffee, too.

At about noon it was time to take John back to the airport in Chicago, so we did that. Then we met up with Kathryn Regina one last time on our way out of town. When we got just passed Merrilville, Indiana it was snowing terribly hard out and we couldn't see anything so we got a motel room and watched the end of the Jets game. Then we woke up and drove back to Benji's house and watched the Ravens kill Kansas City and Joe and I left and got home at just after midnight yesterday morning, Monday, January 10, and that is how everything went on our The Bad Freaking ~~Idea~~ Book Tour.

Small Doggies Interview

2011-01-10T15:45:00.000-05:00

One thing that I haven't mentioned here yet is this interview I did with the excellent and hard-working Matty Byloos at Small Doggies. We talked about making it work with promotion and submissions and influence and stuff. At one point I said, "So while it’s more fun to do a reading where all your friends show up, it’s probably better to do an in-store at Barnes & Noble with only three retired Navy guys or something."

Here's the interview.

(I'm just back from tour, by the way [The Bad Freaking Idea Book Tour] and I'm hoping to post from my tour diary soon.)

Hey Minneapolis

2010-12-30T11:27:00.000-05:00

COME TO MY WINDOW

ARAOP on Barrelhouse's Best Of

2010-12-30T09:45:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting all year to be on a Best Of list, and voila, Barrelhouse has given Robison the honor on its list of Best Poetry Debuts 2010. And what an honor to be listed with Paul Killebrew, whose poem "Upon Us" was one of my top five favorite poems this year, and Elisa Gabbert, who is on 93.65% of Best Of lists.

Also, don't forget to vote for ARAOP in the Goodreads contest for which it was nominated.

SWEATPANTS

2010-12-29T13:01:00.000-05:00

December 17, 2010, live at the Hexagon

Photo by Chris Henry.

Mark Wallace on ARob & Other Poems

2010-12-28T23:02:00.000-05:00

Mark Wallace, at Facebook:

With its not-at-all-as-dumb-as-I-sound slang, all elbows humor, and pseudo-historical research, Adam Robinson's Adam Robinson and Other Poems is as fun a book of poetry as I’ve read in awhile. A big plus: it has the first poem I’ve ever seen about Judas Priest.

check out more at the book's website.

Book Bundle: Easter Rabbit and Sasquatch Stories: $15.

2010-12-28T15:35:00.000-05:00

Easter Rabbit and Sasquatch Stories: buy them together for $15 (shipping included).

Read more about the offer here.

Easter Rabbit versus Sasquatch Stories Get Both for $15

2010-12-28T15:31:00.003-05:00

**This post ends with an offer to get both these books for $15. You should read the post though so you know what crazy books you're getting.**

I received the reprint of Easter Rabbit and the new version of Sasquatch Stories over the Christmas weekend. Here they are:

I love all PG books equally, but in different ways. Like children, each book develops with its own experiences, so it takes on a personality (to me) that is separate from the book's personality as literature. So, for instance, while Mairéad Byrne's book, The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven is very funny, I think of it as serious and challenging because of how difficult it was to design. And while Words by Andy Devine is a severe and complicated book, I view it as a breeze because of how easy it was to work with Michael Kimball and Justin Sirois (who did the design).

Another book that makes my heart swell is Joseph Young's Easter Rabbit. One astounding and gratifying milestone for this book is that it received Baltimore's City Paper award for best book by a local author. Another neat thing is that we sold through its first print run of 300 copies in less than six months. But what really makes me proudest of ER is what the book is and what it means for literature. I believe it is the ground that all microfiction walks on. It is the beginning and the ending of flash. Or, to put it in tamer words, it is the best book of very short stories that exists today. Hint fiction is cool. Twitter fiction is whatever. Flash fiction is constantly seeking definition. But I am convinced that ER is great because it is so confident about what it is. It answers questions about itself even though it is a book of ambiguous plots. It stands up to scrutiny but defies systematization. I have always been proud of this book as a foundation for a genre. Now that the second edition has finally been printed, I sure hope to sell a couple.

I also hope to sell a bunch more copies of Sasquatch Stories by Mike Topp. This book resides at the other end of ER's teeter-tauter. Where ER is elegant and restrained (?), giving (?), patient (?), delicate (?), Sasquatch Stories is tricky and goofy (?), inane (?), frantic (?), disturbing (?) -- but both are significantly more enriching then their word count suggests. When ER was first released, I issued a challenge that anyone who could read the whole book (of only 3000 words) in one sitting, could have their money back. Two people did it. One live-blogged his attempt and concluded that by the end, he didn't know the words he was processing.

I won't offer this contest for Sasquatch Stories, though, because I think if people can't read the entire thing in one sitting, probably in less than 15 minutes, they're making something out of it that isn't there. BUT! I defy anyone to put the book down after that first read and not think about the book very soon (and for a long time) afterward. It invokes a definite and lasting wonderment about its stories and jokes and poems -- or whatever these things are that Mike Topp writes. In fact, they work in a very similar way to Joe's stories in that they often end before you begin to wonder about them. As Gary Lutz blurbed, Topp is "a miniaturist of nervous precisions, our supreme abridger of metropolitan startlement and inner fidgetry." These apt characterizations are borne out in the short book.

Another "bet-you-can't-eat-just-one" effect of reading Sasquatch Stories, I think, is that after you finish it, you won't be able to resist showing it to friends. You're going to need their help, like, "Carl, what the heck, help, let me show you this book, is this poetry?" That's something you'll say indignantly while jabbing the open pages with your index finger. "How do you explain this, Carl?"

One fear I have with this book is that people will think it's an indictment of literature. With ER, I think befuddled people can write the stories off as poetry they don't get, but something about Sasquatch Stories points a finger at regular literature and says, "What's your problem?" Take the story "Survey," from page 11:

SURVEY
Do you ever eat other people's food from the office refrigerator?

Can this story be taken seriously? Do you like it? Why or why not? Does it ask a question about "what is literature?" Is it really a survey question? Where do you fill in your answer? In what way is this titled interrogatory sentence amusing? Other things in this book are funny, so is this also meant to be funny? Is literature meant to be amusing? What percentage of people do steal food from the office fridge? There's another survey question in Section Four:

SURVEY
In a milk drinking contest, is it okay if one of the contestants drinks chocolate milk?

Is this one funny? Is Mike Topp trying to be difficult? Was he mad about something when he wrote this story? There I go calling it a story again; what is a better word for it? Topp doesn't even call blog posts "Blog Posts," he calls it a "Plog Bost":

Oh yes, this is a funny book. When Joe saw it, he called it a "hefty piece of art" or something like that. He used the word "hefty," I'm pretty sure. It meant a lot, coming from him, you know? And I'm pretty sure he wasn't just referring to the Tao Lin cover art.

Yes, they are strange brothers. As different as night and day, but they play together so nicely. Now, for a limited time, get both books for $15, with free shipping.

She does write like a muthatrucker

2010-12-27T14:23:00.000-05:00

Tim Howard praised Rachel B. Glaser's Pee On Water saying,

I read a fair bit of American "indie" fiction this year. There's a lot of good stuff, a lot more bad stuff (to be expected, cf. Sturgeon's Law), and the occasional slice of greatness. Rachel Glaser's stories are "odd' and "offbeat" in the accepted manner, but they feel more thought out and necessary than most. Apart from anything else, Glaser can write like a muthatrucker.

And at another year-end faves list, Dennis Cooper loved the books of Youngs, Joseph and Mike, as well as Everyday Genius.

Find all of this at www.publishinggenius.com.

Status Report

2010-12-21T12:02:00.001-05:00

For a good time here's a video by Mike Topp

2010-12-20T09:20:00.000-05:00

More info about Mike Topp and his new book from Publishing Genius.

Announcing the re-release of Easter Rabbit

2010-12-17T12:21:00.000-05:00

Publishing Genius is happy to announce the re-release of Joseph Young's Easter Rabbit, a collection of microfiction. The re-release features a new painting by Christine Sajecki, the book's original cover artist, plus an additional section called "Stories Around People."

More info.

Back Up Plan

2010-12-13T11:33:00.001-05:00

I made an epic video in my Michael Keaton sequence:

The first one I made, for the indie lit roadshow, is below the fold.

This Sunday, Dec 12: Booksale and Reading

2010-12-08T09:42:00.000-05:00

As part of the National Indie Lit Roadshow, come to 24 East Mount Vernon Place between 11 and 8 for great book shopping, drinks, poker, and a couple reading samplers (at 2pm and 7pm).

Email, Goodreads 2010

2010-12-08T09:19:00.000-05:00

(I just posted this in Google Reader in response to this comic)

I used to marvel at how bad managerial emails were, in terms of brevity and incompleteness (you know, where I would ask two questions and they would write back saying, "Yes," or "Sound good" [sic]), but I think in 2011 I am going to fully embrace that technique. I haven't yet because I expect 98% of people in the world won't understand that I'm doing it on purpose. But if they don't like me because I'm a bad emailer, then they probably weren't my friends in the first place.

This reminds me of a great poem by Mairéad Byrne in BOWLOH, called "How to Say Thanks When You Really Mean it But Don't Have Time Right Now" -- it reads, in its entirety:

THNAKS!

I like this "probably weren't my friends in the first place" reasoning and will probably use it a lot going forward.

My book, Adam Robison and Other Poems, has been nominated for a Goodreads 2010 Best Book Award somehow. I'll take that. Will you vote for me, PLEASE? Click here to vote. If you don't vote for me, no problem, you probably weren't really my friend in the first place. If you do, THNAKS!

Ron Diorio on Stephanie Barber's "bust chance"

2010-12-06T16:44:00.000-05:00

Ron Diorio's review of Stephanie Barber's "bust chance," shown at the 2010 NY Film Festival:

The third consecutive Barber piece in the program and clocking only seven minutes bust chance didn’t have me checking my watch. This was a smart use of someone else’s footage and added manipulated audience reaction soundtrack. If I put aside “razor’s edge” Ms. Barber is one of favorite artists to discover here and one that I will seek out seeing more of.

Read about razor's edge here.

Check out Stephanie's book and DVD of her films here.

Stephanie Barber and Xav Leplae's razor's edge

2010-12-06T15:08:00.000-05:00

From Reverse Shot, a review of the New York Film Festival's screening:

. . . afflicted by the traumas of war, though at a far remove, was Stephanie Barber and Xav LePlae’s razor’s edge (2010), a dramatization of the Somerset Maugham novel The Razor’s Edge. Maugham’s story of postwar dissolution is only vaguely remembered in Barber and LePlae’s escapade, more an occasion of the friends’ reconnection after long years of absence than any kind of adaptation, and the film could be understood as the wild, unpredictable flowering that grows from the settling of things past. As the pair dances in an extreme wide shot on a downtown Baltimore rooftop, or passes an invisible mass of energy back and forth in the background of a Korean restaurant, their melodramatic theatrics are met with quizzical looks from bystanders. They are misunderstood by the world around them, and probably a fair number of people in the audience, yet however removed or inscrutable the creative logic underpinning their collaboration, it’s impossible to miss the film’s effervescent sense of joy. Stuffed in a too-tight leisure suit, LePlae fumbles with the objects in a barbershop, while Barber, dressed in a mustard yellow evening gown, stumbles drunk across the front of an abandoned grocery store. Like a pair of silent film comedians, they move gleefully against the rhythms of the city, and in the process they create their own intrepid and improbable itinerary through Baltimore’s empty lots and the pages of Maugham’s book. . . .

Bjork Diddy

2010-12-02T15:47:00.002-05:00

via JGP

Awkwardness by Adam Kotsko

2010-12-02T12:15:00.000-05:00

Is THIS the most important book since On Bullshit? I'm reading it now and I'll let you know, okay guys? (Lately I think "guys" is one of the most awkward referents, at least when written.)

Mark Twain

2010-12-02T09:15:00.002-05:00

I don't know if I want to read his autobiography in hardcopy or eBook.

Also, oops, Overlook overlooked the eBook of True Grit.

Everyday Genius Since October 1

2010-12-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

Chloé Cooper Jones is the editor of Everyday Genius for this month. I am excited about that. I first met Chloé when she came to visit Baltimore this summer and we all got stoop-ed on Alec Niedenthal's porch. Sometimes you meet a writer and things just click; it's easy talking about the business of literature and the crafting of it and how we deal with submitting and critiques and so on -- that's how it was, plus with Natty Boh. Chloé said she doesn't submit a piece anywhere till she knows it's good, and I thought: yep. I knew she would manage the month well, and from the way things look, I was right.

And it's been a couple months since I did a roundup of Everyday Genius. November was the 4 Year Commemorative Edition of the daily journal, and I marked the occasion all month by publishing work from its archives as well as from IsReads, Chapbook Genius and with excerpts from some of PGP's books. Like, remember "Pocketfinger," that awesome story by Ryan Call which his sister illustrated? Now you can read it all at EG. And here's an excerpt from Kathryn Regina's awesome chapbook As I Said. I liked using the month to highlight other Everyday Genius posts, too, like this hilarious head scratcher from Theresa Columbus and Aaron Burch's Best of the Web-winning instruction. Then, more than just re-"printing" old work, it was nice to check in on Jen Michalski in a sort of "where are they now" interview (A: alive and well), to hear a new musical, uh, thing from Ric Royer, and to see a portion of Stephanie Barber's audience-favored laugh-riot. It was cool.

Back in October things were pretty cool, too. I took editorial duties for the first time in a while, and Matt Walker was kind enough to match each post with one of his amazing photos. It was great to take the reins again, to get into reading submissions and to work at crafting the month. Sometimes I feel like my role with Everyday Genius is really big-picture, to step back and by choosing good editors and interesting projects (like May's Weekly Genius thing), to try to shape the journal's identity as a whole. Obviously, this is a lot different than editing the writing for one month. It's also different than editing Publishing Genius as a whole, from providing feedback on accepted manuscripts to (still) reading manuscripts submitted during April's open submissions to working with designers on layout, and so on. Editing EG is like surgery. Running the press is like building a skyscraper. Both are awesome.

What else is awesome? The work from October, with Sommer Browning, A D Jameson and Brandon Shimoda just to highlight three great pieces among many more. Stay tuned for December and beyond.

Lee Child Novels

2010-11-26T13:35:00.003-05:00

I like them.

"Reacher had seen plenty of dead people, and Seth Duncan was more dead than most of them."
Worth Dying For

Last week I read 61 Hours by Lee Child and this week it was Worth Dying For. I think Lee Child is great, he understands economical writing. Joe asked do I mean he writes hard-boiled and I think it's different than that. Or perhaps updated. Or perhaps the thing to understand about hard-boiled writing is that it isn't just in what the detective says, but it's in the setup, like a straight man. Because Jack Reacher is a lone hero in situations where no one is as good as he is, everyone is a straight man.

I feel a touch of guilt reading these books, because they are genre fiction unrelated to my culture, and because they won't ever find their way onto the NY Times Best Books of 2010. But this isn't just a palate-cleansing (poetry is hard); I'm learning a lot.

Because Lee Child is a great writer. In the car I'm listening to a Clive Cussler novel, The Wrecker, and there's no comparison. Compared to Lee Child, Cussler (or his "with" writer, Justin Scott) is clunky and all his moves are transparent. I think The Wrecker is a much more difficult novel to write, filled with big, nation-wide events and dozens of characters. Comparing the two is an education in economical writing. Worth Dying For works, for one reason among many, because Child keeps tight rein on his story and characters. He doesn't crowd things unnecessarily with bit parts, and while there are probably some inconsistencies and unlikelihoods, I go along because the prose and the authorial distance is trustworthy. Child zooms in and out on the action effectively, even if that means sometimes he does away with villains without the satisfaction of an explanation, which is something to think about, and perhaps the most interesting hallmark of Jack Reacher's tactics.

Rachel Glaser answers some writer-type questions at The L Magazine

2010-11-24T09:45:00.002-05:00

AWESOME.

RBG: I have never been starving before. But I think I write best late at night during a span where I can’t decide if I should eat or sleep.

POW Review

2010-11-16T13:50:00.001-05:00

There's a new review of Rachel B. Glaser's Pee On Water book at The Next Best Book Blog, which is a neat site of book reviews and interviews and other nice stuff compiled by the fast reading Lori Hettler. She gave the book 3 stars, which means she recommends it to people familiar with the genre.

My New Book

2010-11-16T10:06:00.001-05:00

Joe Young designed (and titled) an explosive new book for me. I am sending queries out now, via this blog post.

Oh yeah it is going to be a memoir.

Mike Topp SASQUATCH STORIES pre-sales start tomorrow.

2010-11-11T15:57:00.005-05:00

68 pages
4.5 x 7"
Cover art by Tao Lin
"Sea Nerd" by David Berman
Official release date 12/14/10
$10 US
Go here to preorder starting 11/12/10

Advance praise from Gary Lutz
Mike Topp is a disablingly funny writer--a miniaturist of nervous precisions, our supreme abridger of metropolitan startlement and inner fidgetry. He dazes and graces us."

Advance praise from Paul Maliszewski
Mike Topp asked me to write a blurb for his book. I thought about it, but then decided Mike Topp should be writing his own blurbs. Nobody writes better in fewer words than Mike Topp. Nobody. Mike Topp creates worlds in seven words, sometimes six.

Other praise for Mike Topp from Eileen Myles
Just when I think Mike Topp’s poems are funny, they’re wise. Just when I think they’re wise, they’re bad. Just when I think they’re bad, they’re great. Mike Topp’s poems are exactly like the world.

About the book and Mike Topp, its author
Sasquatch Stories is a collection of poetry joke stories, each one better than the one before and after it. Mike Topp was born in Washington, D.C. He is currently living in New York City unless he has died or moved.

Blake Butler interviews Mike Topp at HTMLGIANT
A cheaper book by Mike Topp
A more expensive one, with user reviews!

Remember: Wash your keys!

Tom DeBeauchamp and the Lit Mag Club on Andy Devine

2010-11-11T14:13:00.001-05:00

I like Tom DeBeauchamp's LMC perspective on Andy Devine's novel excerpt in the NY Tyrant. He suggests reading through the whole thing is ridiculous ("who would?" he says, but people have/do, though I admit I am not one of these A-to-B'ers so I can't argue this point personally). Then he explores some of the ways the novel works, and offers a couple of interesting ways in to the story. He ends:

More likely, the most pleasure you can take from this sort of exercise is in the fact that it even exists. It’s a mind toy, like the best fiction and poetry, a concept with only the thinnest material clothing, alien and humdrum. It reminds you narrative is only one way to stimulate memory, but it gives no other advice.

Business Model Updated 10 minutes after posting

2010-11-11T10:55:00.002-05:00

I've been writing a business model for Publishing Genius as part of an application for a program in Baltimore called "Operation: Storefront." The end result of this application is, if I am accepted, a storefront provided by the city in downtown Baltimore, which I will use as an office and a small press reading room (which I define [informally here] as a couple of bookshelves with books I like on it, kind of like a permanent spot for the Vouched thing, but the purpose of the reading room is more for fun and an active office than for sales) and a space for people to have events at if they want.

**UPDATE**
I want to say that the reason I am applying for Operation: Storefront is because my life has changed in that come Jan 1 I will no longer have a job at the financial company where I've been working for the past 4+ years, which has been a great company to work for and I've learned a lot from it and they've given me money and an education, but now I don't know what's next, and I'm kind of dragging my feet on every decision. I know I don't want to do the same kind of work I've been doing, though I think I love corporate America and cube farms and regular schedules and $$ and corporate ethics and oversight. But when I die I would be sad that that it is what I did. So I would like to give being a professor a chance but everyone is always like IMPOSSIBLE and I suspect that universities are these evil places with college students running around talking all the time and more importantly, I don't have any teaching experience. So I am thinking it's either the Navy or publishing, and I KNOW I like publishing but there's a chance I won't like being in the Navy. So if I can get this Operation: Storefront grant thing I will have that decision all made for me. Otherwise I will be in the uncomfortable position of making a decision for myself. Faced with making a decision and making a 12-page business model, I've chosen the business model.
**End self-reflective update**

My storefront just be a little thing. But my Business Model is fairly extensive, with Goals and Objectives and Forecasts, and a summary of the market and competition ("Nearly 200,000 books are published every year in the United States, but no single genre is competing against them all. Because sales figures in literary publishing are relatively modest in the first place (Bookscan has reported only 25,000 books selling more than 5,000 copies), Publishing Genius’s competitors—companies like Featherproof, Sator, Wave, Black Ocean—are also one of its resources; in the small press market there is active cross-promotion, so by pricing books within a similar scope, the competition serves to reinforce Publishing Genius as it reinforces the small press culture."). I have an awkward mission statement ("Publishing Genius exists to publish and promote exceptionally well designed and edited books by talented authors with the objective of being a vibrant contributor to public discourse, promoting values of diversity and integrity with a passion for innovation. Selling books is only the beginning of the mission; with interactive projects, we seek to establish a genuine community around literature that entertains, inspires and explores life's profound questions") and a budget (Through Q4 FY 2010: Loss: $23K, Gain: $16K, Current assets: $21K). It's a lot, but it's still a small percentage of what I need to know and it reinforces what I do not know or do.

I might start hiring soon.

In other news, I just ordered the 725th copy of A Jello Horse by author Matthew Simmons. Roar.

2010-11-10T11:43:00.003-05:00

with mediterannean food or mediterranean food. Some sort of food from the Mediterrannean area. Mediteranean. Somebody help me out.

In other news, Bush's belt buckle on the cover of his book deserves to be mentioned, right? I mean, it's clearly a sartorial exception for a president and for a book cover.

2010-11-09T13:53:00.003-05:00

It takes a long time to make a book, it takes a train to cry.
Do I want to like new ideas? Not really.

I'm A Maniac For Readings and that Sort of Thing I Guess

2010-11-08T12:55:00.003-05:00

On Thursday last week I went to see Tao Lin at Atomic Books. He read for less time than it took for him to start reading, but he gave out nice pictures and was nice and his book seems interesting. It's always nice to go to readings at Atomic Books because they offer free beer and the people who work there are smart and smiley.

On Friday I did a thing at Lauren Bender's show called "Show & Tell." I thought what I was showing -- my bloody shirt -- was a little conceptually light so I tried to call Matthew Savoca, who won my bloody shirt in a drawing but I forgot to send it to him. Of course such a prank doesn't exactly make for full-on heady stuff, so I changed it to "Gameshow & Tell" and asked questions to a divided audience (had Savoca answered, it would have been him against them). That was a perfect amount of intellectual vigor, though not quite like Aparna Jonnal, who argued for the nonexistence of free will.

Here's a photo of me from the Show & Tell:

On Saturday I saw some poets from Philadelphia read, including the great Debrah Morkun, Jamie Townsend and Kim Gek Lin Short. They were each different and each of them were masterful at the thing they do. It was nice to talk to Jamie about what he does and how and why and how it fits into the context of what I know of what other people do; we spoke in vagaries. I was glad to hear Kim Gek Lin Short read from her book Run before I started reading it, because now I know how fun/interesting the reading of it ought to be.

On Sunday I did not go to any readings. I scoured the Internet, though, for footage of the poem that Tony Curtis recites in Spartacus -- with no luck. I want it because I want to learn to fight.

Spartacus: I was wrong about you, poet. You won't learn to kill. You'll teach us songs.
Antoninus: I came here to fight.
Spartacus: Anyone can learn to fight. There's a time for fighting, and there's a time for singing. Now you teach us to sing. Sing, Antoninus.

Here is a link to Antoninus's poem. I did that while watching the Ravens game. Then later I read Lee Child's thrilling novel, 61 Hours

On tonight I'm going to see Tan Lin. I hope that seeing him read will help me get through what I think is his amazing book, Seven Controlled Vocabularies and so on. I hope that seeing him read will make me feel like I'm in grad school.

Or tonight I'm going to see Amy Hempel, assuming she doesn't cancel. One of my guilty shame things is I've never read one thing by Amy Hempel. If she has books for sale, maybe I'll buy one.

Joe Young's NAME

2010-11-08T11:16:00.001-05:00

I just reviewed Joe's book at Goodreads:

Name by Joseph Young

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I did a blurb for the book that said I don't know much about vampires but I know a lot about fiction and I like this book. That was cool, pithy, good job me. Now that I have seen the actual thing I will review it again:

John Dermot Woods's cover art is somehow fitting, even though there aren't actually any bats in the story. The lone figure on the cover looks down with both an angry look and a sad look. One thing about Robert, the "hero," is that he is very clearly lonely. Another thing about him is that he seethes with that inept sort of anger that comes from feeling alienated. Both of these things are captured in his downward gaze, so good job John.

Robert is a difficult character to like. I don't think I like him. I was frustrated by him--and I think one success of the story is that it provokes a visceral response. I kept wanting to tell him to look up, get on with it. The last time I responded like that was watching Fargo for this first time. Robert is the William H Macy of vampires.

The book is an awesome size, about the same as one of those Short Flight/Long Drive books from the Hobart people. The paper is bright white, which works better in these smaller dimensions, and the margins are adequate. Justin Sirois did a great job of taking John's cover art and making it wrap all the way around. The back jacket copy is a microfiction that does a lot not just to encapsulate the book, but in that encapsulation it suggests something about how Joe writes those little gems; it's not reduction or distillation, more like a hearkening.

Also the book is probably more of a love story than a vampire novel.

View all my reviews

Andrew Borgstrom at Chapbook Genius

2010-11-03T11:17:00.000-04:00

JA Tyler on Borgstrom's new chapbook, just out and about:

Andrew Borgstrom's Reflected Off the Occasional Bone is stellar & thick & lovely & decisive. Like reading as surgery, or writing as a fist pounding, or a book in digitally brutal knuckles.

Read it here.

I'll Be Your Martin Luther

2010-11-01T17:05:00.001-04:00

The Mid-Continent Public Library asked Martin Luther some questions but Martin Luther is dead so since I have a poem called "Martin Luther" in my book I thought maybe I can help out by answering the questions they put to Martin Luther and that is how you can now read an interview with me Martin Luther here. Thanks to Dylan Little for running this neat series of famous interviews.

I Rule

2010-10-29T13:02:00.000-04:00

"I'm awesome." That's what I just thought when I saw five of my new poems up at Small Doggies.

I follow Carrie Seitzinger, Melissa Broder, Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney and fellow fella Michael Roberts, whom I'd not read before but whom I read and then bought his book.

There's just enough time for you to read my poems and then lambast me at Mean Week.

Interview with Stephanie Barber

2010-10-23T13:56:00.001-04:00

Here at Human Pyramids is an interview with Stephanie Barber in which she says lovely and challenging things about her work, in lower case, like:

. . . i am working within myself right now in a very particular way. i mean that i am pushing against my own ideas and my previous work in a way that was maybe not as possible to do when i didn't have such a large body of work. it is a very subtle feeling. like artistic proprioception. an interoceptive awareness of where i am in my art. this is a simultaneously abstract and specific feeling.

i'm unsure of how i feel about this morally. there is something about the hardcore individualist motivation in working like this--responding to previous work i have made--avoiding the tropes of previous stories--etc.--something about strident individualism which feels tawdry and propagandistic. the alternative seems either like being tossed around in the giantest ocean slammed by rocks and unnamed sea creatures or being in harmony and eternal dialog with all art ever made and about to be made.

One of the things I admire most about Stephanie's approach to art is her seriousness (her "interoceptive awareness" and her ability to frame her work morally). Another thing is her knack for simile (like being in the giantest ocean slammed by rocks and unnamed sea creatures).

Her book and a DVD of her films is called these here separated to see how they standing alone.

She will be performing at the Literary Death Match in Baltimore on Oct 30.

Here is a review of her book and DVD at PANK, written by JA Tyler.

ORANGE JUICE by Timothy Willis Sanders

2010-10-22T16:49:00.004-04:00

This is not the animal on the cover of Timothy Willis Sanders's new book, Orange Juice, coming soon from PG imprint Awesome Machine Press:

Animals with art on them are ridiculous. However, books with animals on them are great. And the cover of Sanders's short collection (56pp, $8), was made this morning by Justin Sirois and features Comic Sans and a kitten:

"Timothy Willis Sanders has style and nowhere is that more apparent than in the nine stories found in Orange Juice. Reading them is like watching secret footage of unremarkable people in unremarkable moments—you watch and at first you don't know why you cannot look away, but then, as one moment folds into another, you start to feel like you know the people you're watching. You start to care. When you read this fantastic, almost obsessive collection, you will keep wanting to know what happens next. You will care."
-Roxane Gay

Run, hide.

The Amazon Review that Started it All

2010-10-22T16:34:00.000-04:00

There's a fun, fascinating article in Poets & Writers about the history of Dzanc Books. It starts with a review that Dan Wickett wrote at Amazon, which started the Emerging Writers Network. Well, since the Internet is an easy archive, I thought it would be neat to see if the review is still up. It is.

read that

2010-10-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

The Last Few Days Were Awesome

2010-10-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

Lots of readings and stuff.

THIS SUNDAY OH COOL

2010-10-13T17:26:00.003-04:00

eBooks Offer

2010-10-11T17:17:00.001-04:00

Justin Sirois's short book, MLKNG SCKLS, is now available for the Kindle and Nook, for just $4.99.

So is Rachel Glaser's Pee On Water (for $8.99). Go here for the Nook and here for the Kindle editions.

I would love to hear user experiences with these. If you have a Kindle or a Nook and buy one of these books, let me know. I'll send you another book as thanks.

Limited time offer -- good until Nov 1, 2010.

A BOWHLOH Review I Missed

2010-10-11T16:44:00.001-04:00

Andy Linkner, a diligent and adventurous reader, liked Mairéad Byrne's earlier book, Talk Poetry, more than The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven, but still liked BOWLOH. Read his brief review (and other reading notes) here.

Michael Filippone's video review of The Best of (What's Left of) Heaven

2010-10-10T10:43:00.000-04:00

This is so great. I had my copy of the book while watching and was able to read along. Way to do a Sunday morning. Thanks to Michael Filippone for defying expectations.

Readings

2010-10-08T12:34:00.000-04:00

I like Mark Leidner's Apostrophe Cast reading so much that I want to organize an event where people come and listen to it. Can I charge money for that?

Speaking of readings, Andy Devine has some events coming up across the country, which you can read about here.

About Last Night

2010-10-04T15:30:00.001-04:00

The Sweatpants show was cool. I played ukulele and stood on the drums. Dave played keyboards and drums at the same time. Jamie screamed as is his wont.

Looks like Andy Devine's reading was a success. Electric Literature wrote it up with one of those neat posts with pictures of good looking people holding drinks. Here's Andy on stage, about to reveal his chest:

Thanks to Luke Goebel for putting the show together.

Tonight

2010-10-03T08:56:00.000-04:00

BALTIMORE
Sweatpants is playing the pre-release party for Chris Mason's book, coming soon from Narrow House. The show is tonight at the Wind Up at 6pm. My favorite Baltimore band, Old Songs, is on the bill too.

NEW YORK CITY
The Tyramperius Rex reading -- a celebration of Ampersand, NY Tyrant, and Publishing Genius authors -- will feature Andy Devine at Bar 9 (807 9th Ave). Also reading will be Elliott David and Benjamin Lowenkron. You should go just because Lowenkron is such a great last name, but for more incentive: comedian Dave Hill will host and, according to rumor, there will be strippers there (?).

READING TOMORROW WITH ANDY DEVINE

2010-10-02T12:05:00.000-04:00

I'm not entirely sure of the details, but I know that ANDY DEVINE will be at this reading which also features awesome people from NY TYRANT and AMPERSAND BOOKS. It is AWESOME that they included Publishing Genius and ANDY DEVINE on this bill as well as DAVE HILL, a comedian, who will be the host. I am not sure if there will actually be strippers but I have heard there will be. I think that's weird either way. Both no strippers and strippers is weird, once the topic comes up.

The reading is TOMORROW NIGHT at 8PM in NYC.

I have been moving all week. It's been terrible. More like for two weeks, if you consider all the advance work that had to be done. So because I've been moving, I have barely had time to check email, let alone try to advertise this reading. I also missed the opportunity to advertise the Indie Press Night hosted at Word Books that featured Publishing Genius with Ugly Duckling Presse and Featherproom -- Rachel Glaser read with Blake Butler and Jon Cotner. I hear it went really well. From a few different people I heard this.

ANYWAY, if you get a chance to be in MANHATTAN tomorrow at 8PM, go see ANDY DEVINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New Chapbook by Buck Downs

2010-09-30T16:28:00.002-04:00

PG's chapbook series has a new website. Check it out at www.chapbook-genius.com. And to celebrate the new face, we'll be releasing "Another Helping" by Buck Downs first thing tomorrow morning. To harvest your anticipation, here's three questions for Buck about his collection.

1. How do the poems in "Another Helping" interact with your other books and projects?

"Another Helping" is the first third of the second part of a three book sequence. I call the whole thing Pontiac Fever and it comprises the three books black peppermint, You Can't Get Enough of What You Really Don't Need, and always materialized. Each book has three sections of 23 poems each. So "Another Helping" is one of nine 23-page subsections of the whole work.

The 23-page section has been a useful building block I decided to use on this project. It seems like a congenial interval; a good place to pause, check out what's happened, and reset. It seemed like it would be just as useful an ordering principle for the size of a book as it is for the writing of the poems, but I don't think that's absolutely the case, and I'm tinkering with it in the book I'm writing now.

2. "Proximo Exito" is written in Spanish. How's that work?

I keep a long, multi-volume open file of source material for the poems, collectively called the Hopper. You can find out more about that on buckdowns.com. A couple weeks after writing the poem "little sucker one hit", I was reading through a volume of the Hopper and I found the phrase "proximo exito", and it led me to a thought experiment that went something like, if "little sucker one hit" had been written in Spanish instead of English, it would have been called "proximo exito". Not entirely to translate it but to use the function of translation to reconvert the finished poem into the kind of emergent hubbub of thought that it was before it got finished, and then to refinish it in an alternate language.

"proximo exito" then is the product of working through the experiment, via my two years of high school/college Spanish and phrase-testing through an online translator. I thought that there was just enough actual overlap in the two poems, like the word 'memphis', that reading them on consecutive pages would cause a double-take kind of reread, which would be cool: to get you linger.

3. Your poems are funny in the way they warp familiar expressions, or if not expressions, expectations of language (like, "lost to thought-/killing time," and "you shave it,/I'll suck it" to name the first examples I see as I pick a poem at random). What comes first for you, the language, the idea, the sounds?

I want to say it all three comes in a clump, but I suspect that being serious about that could itself be a departure. It seems like everybody eventually has to come down on one side or another; how shall ye be counted?

In the jargon I got schooled in, it's the triad of logopoeia, phanopoeia, melopoeia, or what it means, how it looks, and how it sounds [my translation]. I visualize these three priorities as a largish, triangle-shaped tablecloth. It has three corners, and I have two hands, so one corner is always not going to be in my hand. By habit I tend to keep the how it looks and how it sounds corners in my grasp and let the what it means corner flap in the wind. I think maybe once every ten or twelve poems, I'll start with an idea, a line, or an image that I want to get in or get to, and get my hand on the idea part.

Who Cares Though Right

2010-09-28T13:39:00.001-04:00

It's all just like I mean is it any good.

Local Boy Makes Good

2010-09-22T10:55:00.001-04:00

Best New Book by a Local Author

Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young

Microfictionist Joseph Young has whittled the short story down to a few sentences—and often fewer than 50 words. What’s disarming is how effective these stories are in Easter Rabbit. You expect something so terse to feel incomplete, a mere piece of some greater whole, but the stories, moments, relationships, and feelings in these 100 pages end up saying all they need to in an artfully precise use of language.

Thanks to the City Paper! Get your copy of Easter Rabbit here.

We Are All Good Giveaway

2010-09-20T13:41:00.001-04:00

I'm really enjoying the entries for what I've decided to call the "Misunderstanding Campaign," which is the htmlgiant contest to win a copy of Mike Young's book of poetry. To enter this week's giveaway, you just have to leave a comment there about a miscommunication.

Many of the entries are funny and some are like, whoa, sad. Give it a shot, and spread the word.

Free Mike Young.

* * *

Went to a ballgame with Steph on Friday:

It was a great game, though the O's lost on the last strike when Alex Rodriguez hit a 3-run homer.

On Saturday I went to a ballgame with my friend NYC Joe.

This game was sold out with Yankees fans so we had to buy standing room only tickets and find a seat up front. Terrible game, O's lose 11-3, but Sabathia got his 20th win this season.

* * *

I think there was a carnival on Saturday night. I wrote this song:

I never wanna live without you
I'm never gonna live without your face
It's 1999 and I'll never change
And I can't live without you.

Best of the Web Announcement: It's me y'all!

2010-09-16T14:10:00.002-04:00

Dzanc just announced their call for nominations for next year's Best of the Web, and also that I will be the guest editor. Whoa. I am excited like crazy and honored like sane. The yearly anthology is important as a roundup of what's happening in literature, and since I think that the most consistently innovative stuff is happening online, then naturally the Best of the Web is a leading point in these trends. I think BotW also used to be a key player in making online literature "legitimate," but that battle is over and won, as Matt Bell made clear in his introduction to the 2010 edition. There is cheering in the cloud. Here is the announcement in full:

Dzanc Books' Best of the Web series is a yearly anthology compiling the best fiction, poetry, and non-fiction published in online literary journals. Previous editions have been guest-edited by Steve Almond, Lee K. Abbott, and Kathy Fish, and have published award-winning writers such as Chris Bachelder, Robert Olen Butler, Dan Chaon, Kim Chinquee, Elizabeth Crane, Brian Evenson, Amelia Gray, Stephen Graham Jones, Ander Monson, Christine Schutt, Terese Svoboda, and Kevin Wilson, as well as many of today's most exciting emerging fiction writers, poets, and essayists.

I'm happy to announce that this year's guest editor will be Adam Robinson, the founding editor of Publishing Genius, a small press based in Baltimore, and the author of two books of poetry, including Adam Robison and Other Poems.

There are many reasons we asked Adam to be a part of Best of the Web this year, but among them is the powerful and unique way he's leveraged the internet in the service of literature. I first became aware of Publishing Genius through its This PDF Chapbook series (now called Chapbook Genius), which published chapbooks in both online formats (Issuu and PDF) as well as printable, DIY print versions. Since then, Publishing Genius has not only expanded its print operations to include full-length books, but it has also added a daily online magazine called Everyday Genius—which last year had several pieces selected for Best of the Web 2010—as well as IsReads, an innovative outdoor magazine. Publishing Genius is a true force in the online literary world, and one of the finest examples of how the internet might be used to reach readers, writers, and other members of our community.

Of course, that's just his work as an editor and publisher, and doesn't even begin to cover his own writing, or his blogging, or his passionate and heartfelt promotion of the work of others through book reviews, interviews, and live events. We couldn't be happier about having such a champion of independent literature working on this year's Best of the Web, and I trust his unique eye for quality and innovation will help provide the core of another excellent volume.

As in past years, Best of the Web 2011 will include interviews with contributors, a list of the year's other Notable Stories, and a comprehensive index of over 900 online journals considered for inclusion in the anthology, including information on how to submit to each journal. This additional content will offer an added value by providing new opportunities for readers and writers alike.

All editors of online literary journals are also invited to submit their nominations for this year's edition. Please see the guidelines below for further information, as well as the Best of the Web section of our website.

Feel free to pass this call for nominations along to other editors or to post it online at your journal's blog, as our e-mail list—while extensive—is certainly not complete, and there may be journals we have not yet reached who would be interested in submitting nominations and in being a part of our index.

Thank you so much for your time and for all the hard work you do with your own publication and as part of the online literary community. We're very excited to once again read for this yearly celebration of your own efforts and those of your fellow editors and writers. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at mdbell79 at gmail dot com (but note that you might want to send a separate email, rather than reply to this--This thread inevitably gets very, very long, and I'd hate lose your question.)

Sincerely,
Matt Bell
Adam Robinson
Steven Gillis
Dan Wickett
Dzanc Books

HOW TO NOMINATE WORK FOR BEST OF THE WEB 2011

Writing in Best of the Web 2011 will be selected by guest editor Adam Robinson alongside series editor Matt Bell and other in-house Dzanc editors.

Nominations for will be accepted from September 15, 2011 until October 31st, 2011. Each online literary journal is allowed to nominate up to three works they've published, in any combination of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

To be eligible, works must have been published exclusively online between November 1st, 2010 and October 31st, 2011.

To nominate your three choices, please use the form on our website, making a separate entry for each nomination and being sure to fill out the required fields completely. Not only will this ensure that we receive your nomination, it will also help us include your journal in our index of online literary magazines that will appear in the 2011 book and here on the website.

Our judging process will be complete by early January, after which we will send e-mail notifications to those editors whose works have been selected for inclusion in this year's anthology, as well as requests for reprint rights from the writers selected.

Thank you very much for your interest in Best of the Web, and for the impressive work you do at your individual journal. It's our deep belief that the internet publishing scene produces much of the most innovative and interesting work being printed anywhere, and it is our great honor to read your nominations in the hopes of spreading the very best of that work to new audiences.

Please click here for for full nomination guidelines and to submit work from your magazine for consideration in Best of the Web 2011.

PRAISE FOR THE BEST OF THE WEB SERIES

"The offerings run the gamut from biographical essays on literary greats to short stories of magical realism and are nearly universally superb. The book lends itself to browsing or reading in short spurts, with its succinct pieces quickly gripping the reader and ending within a few pages... Highly recommended for short story enthusiasts as well as those interested in contemporary literature." —Library Journal

"The book is heartily significant, featuring work that is sometimes surprising... and sometimes exhilarating—not unlike the Web itself." —Los Angeles Times

"Such a development could not have come at a better time for online literary publishing." —NewPages

"The book, which canvasses both fiction and poetry, really cooks... in the melding of the two genres... The Internet is built for this work: short and weird, just what one’s attention span wants when clicking through. And Almond and Leslie wisely pick up on that, making the book worth paging through, as well." —Time Out Chicago

"Though publishing online provides us the opportunity to present fiction free from economic imperative, permitting us, our authors, and our readers to relish in the experiment of expression, one of our great regrets is forgoing the sensation of binding it, printing it, holding the work we proudly select in our hands. Then along comes Dzanc Books, and this gift of a book, Best of the Web, that feels, to us, like the presentation of an award." —Aaron Petrovich and Alex Rose, editors, Hotel St. George Press

"Reading, poetry and prose written for the Web calls for a different kind of writing than one might find on the printed page and this annual volume is a terrific reminder of great possibilities and experiments in style and form... These pieces offer ground for optimism that those hours at the keyboard, mining for gold in the form of artful language and interesting ideas, are worth hours of search." —Elizabeth Taylor, The Chicago Tribune

What I try to do with my poetry is make it look like the soccer team wrote it

2010-09-14T00:12:00.001-04:00

As so:

Saturday Giveaway: Toll and Downs

2010-09-11T00:53:00.025-04:00

Because I'm excited about the front-back-front book coming out from A. Minetta Gould and Amber Nelson, I'm going to give away an extra copy of another back-front book from Chris Toll and Buck Downs. Chris Toll is one of my favorite poets. His side is called Be Light and features great poems like "Edward Hopper at the OK Corral." The poems in Recreational Vehicle, by Buck Downs, are shorter than other poems by Buck Downs that I read, but as funny and smart as the ones he sends out on postcards to people who ask him for them. Here's one of them:

myself contains multitudes
and some
of these fuckers
have got to go

Just like with the Nelson/Gould book from PG, both sides of the Toll/Downs book are the front. When you flip it over, you flip it to the front cover.

So, if you want to be considered for this book, put your favorite backfront word or phrase in the comments. Interpret as you wish between palindromes or whatever. I like "Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog," but "dog" would also be acceptable and so would "dickbutt" I guess. I'll decide on my favorite on Monday, Sept 13.

Amber Nelson book half book A Minetta Gould

2010-09-08T17:19:00.000-04:00

I am working hard, nose down, reading a manuscript of poems by Amber Nelson called "Your Trouble is Ballooning." It is so good, so rewarding, to wrap myself in the blanket of these whatsits. What initially grabbed me, and still mainly grabs me about the poems, is the sounds. Sounds are only part of poetry, and usually not enough to hold my attention, but in this case they are more than enough to get me to the next thing that is in poetry.

The next thing there isn't meaning, but a basic sense of humor about what comes out of the sounds and a format.that prioritizes sound. I am a meaning-centric poet lately (starting in about 2006, I guess), so I'm surprised that Publishing Genius has taken on this manuscript (ie. that I accepted it). Surprised, but grateful because every time I start digging into the poems, I feel like I'm getting an education. This might be the addition to the house of me that I was looking for.

Here's a random line:

It costs bigger to smile on streets of the
city of outrage than without any garbage at all.

There are bigger samples from the collection at H_NGM_N, and a note from Amber about their form and composition.

These poems will be 1/2 of a split-side book, shared with A. Minetta Gould. The way the book came about was that I met Gould at a Hobart reading last may and she sent me some of her poems which I think it turns out I had already read in Caketrain. It was a chapbook and I was looking to do a split side chapbook like one I'd seen done by Chris Toll and Buck Downs, where both sides were the front cover. So Ashley sent me some other chapbook length manuscripts from her pals and I read them and went camping with my family last summer and while camping read Amber's and decided that was the one (because of all the sounds, like I said above).

So yeah. I just saw the cover art for this project, too -- it's by Kelly Packer. Things is coming together and I hope that when this book comes out, it will make a new sort of sense to readers like me.

Lumberball

2010-09-04T10:31:00.000-04:00

Matt Jasper on ARAOP

2010-09-03T09:06:00.002-04:00

A review of my book! It's over at Gently Read Literature, a great and thorough review site helmed by Daniel Casey, one of my favorite review sites actually because of its thoughtful and well-pointed reviews and its approach to small presses. Big thanks to Matt Jasper, who obviously put a lot lot lot of thought into Adam Robison, and even did some research about how many hands Brahms had.

Here's an excerpt from the review, which I don't mind admitting pretty much exactly outlines my intentions:

Throughout the mix of poems about philosophers and artists and relatively marginal figures and Robinson’s own family and friends, a trace of Robinson himself emerges, and the poems become almost a memoir of the things half-learned by a fallible, regular but interested dude.

It’s hard to say how good of a book ARAOP is, because there are so many mistakes in it. And maybe that’s what’s fun about the book—the reader is granted more authority than the author.

Woo-hoo!!! Really. I mean, this review made me remember my book matters.

Everyday Genius from August to September

2010-09-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

Luke Goebel has finished up a great month of Everyday Genius and handed the baton to Phuong Pham, who has a multimedia jamboree planned, including posts that feature art, literature, music, video, oddities, evensies, and more.

The whole thing seems so fun that I decided to take the reins again for October. I'm currently accepting submissions, with happy excitement. I think what I am looking for lately is surprise endings.

2010-09-01T13:33:00.000-04:00

Good thinking.

Firework Winner: Jonah

2010-08-30T09:16:00.000-04:00

The winner of the drawing for Firework by Eugene Marten is JONAH. Congratulations! Firework is an enthralling read, just like Marten's other novel that I read, Waste.

The winner was selected by a drawing (not involving a cat, though). It was completed using a random number generator several times until all numbers were eliminated but one, the number 5, which correlated to Jonah's comment number (subtracting my own comment, which I did before ascribing comment's numbers in an Excel spreadsheet).

I think I know who Jonah is, but it would be good if Jonah emailed me his contact info just to confirm where to mail to. The book is wrapped up and ready to go.

I also included a copy of WORDS, by Andy Devine, in the package.

Saturday Morning Book Giveaway by Eugene Marten

2010-08-28T15:24:00.001-04:00

Leave a comment on this post if you would like to win a copy of Firework, by Eugene Marten, recently released by Tyrant Books. The winning comment will be selected by a random drawing probably involving a cat.

The deadline to leave a comment to enter is tomorrow, Sunday, Aug 29 at 11:59pm. Make sure that I can contact you somehow to let you know if you won.

Here is an excerpt from the book. Thanks to the Tyrant for sending me an extra copy.

Blog Post About Everyday Genius and a book giveaway

2010-08-27T09:31:00.000-04:00

Today at Everyday Genius, editor Luke Goebel is presenting a selection from Firework by Eugene Marten. It's a cool book, and I have an extra copy, so tomorrow I'm going to start a giveaway contest for it at this blog. Check back for details on how to win.

A big hearty Everyday Genius thank you to Luke Goebel for putting together another excellent month of the magazine. His tenure won some great praise from PANK's blog. Everyday something new to look forward to. He's going to wrap things up on Monday and Tuesday, but who knows how? What's next?

Next after August is September, and Phu Pham is planning to change things up a bit by presenting not just writing, but fascinating, overlooked web curios. Phu Pham is a book artist and also other kinds of artist who lives in Baltimore.

Everyone was working it out

2010-08-20T12:13:00.002-04:00

I just invented Podcasting for myself. I mean, I just found out what it is. So I guess I discovered it. But anyway, in case you are the way I was and don't know what Podcasting is, I'll tell you.

So basically Podcasting is where you can get radio shows automatically set up to get into your computer or, in my case, phone. People record these shows with their friends and put them somewhere so when you "subscribe" you can hear them. What I do is I plug the tape adapter thing into my phone and the other end into my car's cassette player and listen to: Car Talk, This American Life, and The Orange Alert Podcast.

So now that I've told the people who don't know what one is, can the people who do know please tell me what are some good podcasts to listen to/subscribe at?

In return, I'll tell you that this video, which I saw at Montevidayo, is pert huh:

I read through a bunch of my old blog posts. It's different how I did it before and how I do it now. I used to write about Bruce Springsteen a lot more.

Most likely you'll go your way and I'll go to an open mic tonight. I am excited about that out of all proportion. I used to talk about the Boss but now it's always about the books and now I want to say that for a little while there including now I am against creativity.

==BREAK==

OK, it's tomorrow and I went to the open mic last night. It was awesome. There were people who played songs on guitar and were working it all out and there were people who read poems they wrote earlier in the day. There were a lot of rhyming poems that rhymed words like "way" with "say."

It felt really good to get in the mix a bit, see people working it out for themselves. Everyone was working it out. Like, liking poetry maybe or just talking.

I went with Joe and Justin and I might start a blog called EveryOpenMic. My holy grail is to go to a reading and hear three poets make the same rhyme. When that happens, I will stand up, arms raised over my head, and yell, "Done!"

The thing I like about bad poetry is that no one is wrong about what it is. Most people, though fewer, know what good poetry is, too. But then there is the other majority of poetry, which is difficult to agree on. Some people like it and some don't.

In the presence of a mediocre poem, everyone gets nervous. Do I like it? What is it about?

Then maybe there is a line in the poem that is funny, and the sighs of relief come out sounding like laughter.

Or perhaps the mediocre poem is written by a friend, and thereby becomes a good poem. Perhaps the mediocre poem is written by a mediocre poet! who has sweater-wearing friends.

I am afraid that many books are not so good but are books because of friendliness.

But I am not afraid that this means anything! It doesn't!

My book is mediocre-at-best, fuck. Why worry? I still want many people to read it and I think many people will enjoy it. Some of the poems, like "It's Down to MOM or CLAUDIIIIIINE" are great.

The Seinfeld rerun last night was merely okay.

Nicholson Baker, or more accurately Paul Chowder in Baker's novel The Anthologist, maintains that great poets only have a couple great poems. The rest of their work is supporting material. It shows that the great poems weren't flukes.

That's making too much of it, I think.

I want to make less of poetry. It's good to enjoy it when an enjoyable poem comes around. Poets though some of them make it their lifework to nail it down, lock it in.

I guess we have to go out searching for poems we like. Somehow this seems drearier than looking for TV shows we like.

The thing to do

I mean the thing for me to do is to let poetry happen naturally. I've read only a handful of poems in the last year or whatever that I really, really, like wow Mom check this out, liked.

I mean a handful of poems that I didn't have to work however hard at liking.

Which I don't think is a bad thing. I mean, that's awesome. That's a lot. My mom anyway will tell me sometimes that not only does she love me, she likes me too.

I want to understand everything and own it, but that happens In Due Course.

Here's a poem by Paul Celan from Guernica. We'll work it out.

IN LIZARD
skins, Epi-
leptic,
I bed you, on the sills,
the gable
holes
infill us, with lightsoil.

WAAG Review

2010-08-17T17:23:00.000-04:00

Casey Mensing wrote a nice review of Mike Young's We Are All Good. Check it out here.Thanks, Casey!

Good Stuff

2010-08-17T10:28:00.013-04:00

The Moschops by Jim Trainor

I'm Finna Start All Conversations Like This From Now Until Forever by Sasha Fletcher and Daniel Bailey

Mike Young is on a blorgic frenzy.

Matt Cozart takes really great pictures surreptitiously.

At PANK, there is this great story by Beth Thomas which begins: "Is that your head? It’s missing things. The lighting in here is for shit, this bar, but still."

Via Carrie Murphy in Google Reader, check out these Baby Dad Shoes:

Also, what is Tumblr? Is that like a blog for short blog posts?

PG Roundup

2010-08-16T11:24:00.001-04:00

News, Reviews, Readings, Free stuff:

Mairéad Byrne phones it in at BOMB Magazine.

Publishing Genius has a mailing list.

Stephanie Barber in Artforum.

Ed Halter on Stephanie Barber.

Rachel B. Glaser's book is now available for pre-order.

So's Mike Young's, with a special deal with Word Riot for his other book.

PANK asks: "Is Everyday Genius the most consistently excellent magazine out there?"

Today in Everyday Genius, Lincoln Michel let's the dogs take the kids.

There are still free copies of Orange Juice available. Just email and ask for your vitamin C.

Publishing Genius Blog

A Document of Possible Book Titles That I Just Found on My HD from Feb 25, 2009

Me and Edward

Life is beautiful even for depressed God lovers at the park

Free stamped postcards

Stephanie Barber at the BMA

Just barely with the times

I'm Teaching a Class You Can Take It

Jesse Tangen-Mills in Chapbook Genius

Promotional Consideration

Fog Gorgeous Stag by Sean Lovelace

John Barth Reading at JHU 5/6/11

Billy Collins at McDaniel College (Westminster, MD) 05/04/2011

Making non-writer friends as a writer -- Guest post by Caleb Ross

Birthday, Transmodern, Sweatpants tonight, New song

From the Poetry Project Files, Scrilla, Chris Toll, Blake Butler, Submissions,, Lyn Hejinian

"Sweet Potatoes" and some stuff

To Adam Robinson Regarding Adam Robison

April 21 Reading in Pittsburgh Flyer

Chris Toll reading from his book, a photograph

Buffalo Small Press Fest weekend

Adam Robinson reading at the Poetry Project 2011

A Couple Places I'm Going to Be Reading etc

So what's this Chatroulette thing all about?

Events through April

ADVERTISEMENT PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL BUY BOOKS 2011

Old Foxy song

Craig Griffin's comic Wow

Reynard Seifert on Sasquatch Stories

Update #4,296

At the ZOO

At the ZOO

"Playwrights" by The Flying Party

Yesterday was the Last Day of the Rest

Winter Walks

Small Doggies Interview

Hey Minneapolis

ARAOP on Barrelhouse's Best Of

SWEATPANTS

Mark Wallace on ARob & Other Poems

Book Bundle: Easter Rabbit and Sasquatch Stories: $15.

**Easter Rabbit versus Sasquatch Stories Get Both for $15**

She does write like a muthatrucker

Status Report

For a good time here's a video by Mike Topp

Announcing the re-release of Easter Rabbit

Back Up Plan

This Sunday, Dec 12: Booksale and Reading

Email, Goodreads 2010

Ron Diorio on Stephanie Barber's "bust chance"

Stephanie Barber and Xav Leplae's razor's edge

Bjork Diddy

Awkwardness by Adam Kotsko

Mark Twain

Everyday Genius Since October 1

Lee Child Novels

Rachel Glaser answers some writer-type questions at The L Magazine

POW Review

My New Book

Mike Topp SASQUATCH STORIES pre-sales start tomorrow.

Tom DeBeauchamp and the Lit Mag Club on Andy Devine

Business Model **Updated 10 minutes after posting**

I'm A Maniac For Readings and that Sort of Thing I Guess

Joe Young's NAME

Andrew Borgstrom at Chapbook Genius

I'll Be Your Martin Luther

I Rule

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