Friday, January 22, 2010

Sacrificial Trees

                                             full book cover proof, Prefab Eulogies Vol 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox, forth. 2010)

Several projects are coming to a close, and as I now settle into teaching after a semester off, some trees are going to be sacrificed.  I'm not sorry given the tiny number of poetry / poetics books that are sold.  For instance, I expect to sell only about a million copies of Occultations, an artist book (designed by Jill Stengel & Mark Lamoureux) from Black Radish Books (Collective) that I've now got a release date for: April 1, & available thru SPD a couple weeks later, mid-April.  And given what Neo-Liberals have done to save the economy, I suspect I'll only manage to sell six hundred thousand copies of Prefab Eulogies Volume 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox).

I'm happy to find out from Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVox that the final proof is now off to the printers, which should make the book available for purchase very soon; early Spring I'd imagine, at latest.  I'm really happy with what Geoffrey did in helping design the cover--taking my crap collages and making them legible.  So, my sincerest gratitude to Geoffrey.  

And my sincerest gratitude to Linh Dinh, Amy King, Jules Boykoff, and Catherine Taylor for writing too kind blurbs for the back of the book & website.

I just found out as well that Lourdes Vazquez found a home for an essay I wrote on her work a couple years ago, now part of a book I'm slowly working on--Necrophiliology: Aesthetic Practice During the Bush Regime.  She submitted it to and got it placed in the Brazilian journal of literature Sibila, edited by Charles Bernstein and poet Regis Bonvicino (English/Portuguese/Spanish).  That's cool: I've never had to do so little (nothing) to share my work with you.

Here is the English version.

Finally, a sincere thanks to Carlos Soto-Roman (post below), for formatting and re-formatting--basically spending too much time--my poems for Elective Affinities.  I've been working my way thru the pieces.  Really digging on Frank Sherlock's long poem at moment.

Finally finally, it's been a long haul, waiting on various pieces to arrive, making sure our chapbooks are able to come out with and soon after, but the new issue of Wheelhouse is nearly ready to be uploaded by designer-editor, Eden Schulz.  Excited for this issue and for the chapbooks, work from Uche Nduka, Stan Apps, & contributions to the journal from an amazing group of folks.  

Last, finally.  The new ON: A Journal of Contemporary Practice is coming out!  I'll post on this again when it is published.  Editors Michael Cross, Thom Donovan, and Kyle Schelsinger put out an amazing constellation of critical writings on contemporary poetries in the first issue. I've read some of the work from the new issue, and I'm certainly going to be ordering a couple copies asap.  Of course, they're beautiful art objects as well, with Cross (Atticus/Finch) and Schlesinger (Cuneiform) some of the finest book artist around.

1 comment: