Books Received

Books recently received:

Making Marks (a+bend press), Robin-Tremblay-McGaw 

Try Magazine (August Issue), featuring work by Rob Halpern

Eeel on Reef (Black Goat), Uche Nduka

Our Insalvagable (Vigilance Society), Thom Donovan

Adorno's Noise (Essay Press), Carla Harryman

When You Bit... (Otoliths), Adam Fieled

Rumor has it that waiting for me at home (Olympia, WA) are new works from Jules Boykoff, Kaia Sand, Mark Wallace, and K. Lorraine Graham.

Needless to say I'll be busy.  While catching up on some rather urgent work, my breaks will be devoted to digging deeply into these works.  The works listed above I've given a cursory read. All are excellent in their own way.  Each represents the myriad possibilities and motifs essayed by independent presses.  Nduka's work, though I'm unfamiliar with some of the cultural narratives he seems to be working with, is sonically and otherwise amazing, and in need of review.  Same needs be said of Donovan's small, beautifully made cycle letterpressed by Vigilance Society - one of the more extraordinary collectives (they use all recycled materials in the printing of their chapbooks).  And for Adorno's Noise, which, as usual, I'm coming late to. Essay Press and Carla Harryman, as many reviewers have already noted, have collaborated to again reinvent the essay, the poetical investigation into, out of, and through all the static.  My PhD thesis was very much engaged with Adorno and Schoenberg, and so interest piqued, I managed to read through the book once during my time at Bard.  I taught "Orgasm," one of the incredible essays in this incredible book (pdf link in a separate post below).  Here Adorno, Schoenberg, and the noise of this now, a noise that both occults and is occulted by what David Buuck (The Shunt) calls "war dash time," is neither represented nor dialectically wrestled with. No, something beyond dialectic is occurring in the essays, the fractured language fallout.  This music needs further space.  So, another blog post, once I settle into bad habits at home.  For now, find this work and let it read you.  Kudos to Catherine Taylor, Stephen Cope, and Essay Press for releasing this work.

Lastly, very much intrigued by Try Magazine.  This, the first issue I've read, is so far rather mind blowing.  No bullshit design opens up to Rob Halpern's hand-written draft introduction to his forthcoming work, Music for Porn.  The intro draft is immediately followed by a devastating poem from same.  Laura Elrick and Rodrigo Toscano's pieces are fantastic - one is a reprint, first appearing in our (Wheelhouse's) PRESS anthology, Toscano's "Strikes & Orgies."  More on Try soon.  The mag and Adorno's Noise go oddly well together.  

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