Prefab Eulogies Available Now

My book of improvisational poems/inter-poetic conversations, Prefab Eulogies Volume 1: Nothings Houses, is now available for purchase. These are some of my earliest poems, some written as early as between 2003-4, with yet several others written as late as this winter. 

You can go here, to the BlazeVox website and order directly, or you can order the book thru Amazon or SPD, both of which are linked on the BlazeVox Prefab Eulogies web page.  

Also on that page you can listen to a live recording of some of "Nothings Houses," a polyvocal work for multiple media (live voice, tape, typewriter, yellow stickies, and large film screen). A short excerpt of this multimedia work is in the new book as transliterated material.  Check out the recording here. 

Other more dubious poems, telephone calls, ritualistic behaviors transcribed, songs sent to senators/congress-people, drawings of the inside of various body parts, and some essay, follows.

This is a transitional book in many ways--though coming out now, much of it is earlier than the poetry I've published in more recent chapbooks.  Hence, the book reflects (if anything) a transition from installation and performing arts into the questions of contemporary poetry, with which I'd been engaged for those years, but which I'd only written about--until falling ill, which really meant, for me, being unable to move in ways that I'd been used to in performance and in daily life.  Of course I'm still undergoing that transformation, so this is no huge proclamation on my part, but something I've been reflecting on since last week when I got the proof in the mail.

Anyway, enjoy.

A huge thank you to poet & editor of BlazeVox [books] Goeffrey Gatza, as well as to Linh Dinh, Amy King, Jules Boykoff, Catherine Taylor, and everyone else who either edited, commented on, or otherwise helped get Prefab Eulogies out the door.  

And please help spread the word that Prefab Eulogies is now out!

Thanks,

Solidaridad,

David

Books Forthcoming

I'm oddly thrilled to announce the imminent publication of two books, each of which represents a constellation of preoccupations: the written as dross, eulogy, or shaped data of poetry (an anarchist poetics of sorts that starts with Whitman's "I am the multitudes" and goes from there); and the medical industrial complex irrupting as and interrupted by body, confession - the doctor-patient discourse as confessional.  

I've written on the latter set of preoccupations in another post.  That Scantily Clad Press is willing to pick up the chapbook Hospitalogy (a full-length collection of the same name is a project I promised myself I'd finish this autumn) is a testament to their willingness to take on experiments (confession, lyric) that could, at first blush, seem very tired.  So, thanks to Andrew Lundwall et al. for their patience (pun intended?).

The former preoccupation is related to, in a sense a meta-poetics of, the book I am finishing right now for Black Radish Books, Occultations. 

Goeffrey Gatza & BlazeVox [books] has picked up my Prefab Eulogies for a release of sometime late fall to mid winter of 2009.  Prefab Eulogies, I dare say takes on conceptual poetry while in some ways recapitulates it.  It's a project that I've been working on for almost 4 years, and is deeply multi-media, work that is performative and collaborative, employing (beyond the book), polyvocal recording, video, and live gesture.  

Geoffrey Gatza is truly outstanding.  He's been wonderful to work with - I thank him for his incredible editorial support in shaping the book such that the damn thing looks a lot better than when it first landed in his lap.  Which is to say that, aside from helping me with what is often mediocre upon first draft, he's somehow helped me put into book form what started out, and for 2 years remained, a live performance.  So, the translational aspect of this process has been fun, generative, challenging.  

Now begins the process of setting up readings/performances at venues throughout the year (something I very much enjoy) and figuring out how or why to plug my own work (something I dislike in a sort of mundane way).  I'll be reading, thanks to Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand, at The Tangent's Econovergence Conference offsite reading (post coming in a few days on the Econovergence Conference itself).   Meantime, for more info on Prefab Eulogies, the book & the larger project, here are the websites: 1) Prefab Eulogies 2) Post-Avant Power Point Inc.

I'll write a post in the near future concerning two other book projects.  One of these is Black Radish Books, the new poetry-artist book collective that will begin releasing its first in a series of full-length, beautifully designed books of innovative poetry, this December. 

Meantime: if you have a reading series and are looking to fill a space, contact me.  I might even bring my music box collection.  And meantime meantime, here's a poem from Prefab Eulogies.

{eulogy for scrape}

after linh dinh

missing c voweling to play cf side

board air bag you can bet your $$ you

don’t have or export letters sending

post-haste, and if outsource then aleatory

emoticon, and if air left, bag of prepackaged

economic parlance your macros on, desk you

bashful top then pillow me zoned for backpage pleasure hunt