New-Old Chapbook from Occultations

Now that there are 33 copies left of the review print run of Occultations--which is to say, now that I'm getting close to a larger print run with corrections to the book--I figured for any interested I'd direct your attention to an old (well, 2008-9) version of one section, which became a chapbook Kate Robinson designed and Wheelhouse Press published, "Modular Arterial Cacophony." Available here as pdf.

Of interest for me, anyway, is the drastic editing process this section, like the others, has gone through (and continues to go through). Here the work is much more flashy-as-vispo (or bad vispo, as it were), where despite Kate Robinson's beautiful work in executing what I initially wanted--a sort of Talmudic design--we ended up, later for the full-length book, doing what at this point I figured undoable, to watermark each page with the leaked Bybee memorandum on Gitmo torture, among other documents, form a palimpsest with text behind text, that enacts the question of the use value of this poetry in relation to these disasters, and perhaps any aesthetic move likewise. So while we were thinking of that design, this "Talmudic" alternative--as rather obviously related--we decided to follow through on. Further, nearly each page of this book was re-written, save for the bracketed text, found writing "placed" on the page according to my position within a rectangular room, speakers emitting the main prose poetry back to me while I was armed with...books. That is, these prose poems are starkly different from what shows up in Occultations, for better or worse (or worst), so as I begin to ask you, in these difficult times, dear reader, to purchase the last few copies of Occultations @ SPD so that the larger print run can occur, to feel free to have this chapbook, and, as per the directions/copyright at end of it, to use it in any way you wish--public domain gone wild. This includes as paper weight, toilet tissue, composting lesson, etc. Blah.

                                     inside of letterpressed chapbook, designed by Kate Robinson, 2009

More importantly, this is to celebrate Kate Robinson's artist book work (since with this chapbook, "modular," she was working under the constraints of my design, it's not her best work, mind you). Kate has produced other beautiful letterpress work for a few years now, now doing same in the book arts program at Mills College, where she is thriving. If you are looking for an artist book designer, look her up--her contract work I think is still on offer.