Little Red Leaves 4 & LRL E-Chapbooks

Little Red Leaves, issue 4, is now online, with a crowd of difficult, often sonorous, varied, and socially engaged poetries.  From CJ Martin & Ash Smith:

Featured in this issue is a festschrift for John Taggart, edited by Thom Donovan and C.J. Martin, with poems from Theodore Enslin, Pam Rehm, Eléna Rivera, Joel Chace, Kevin Holden, Frank Sherlock, C.J. Martin, and Thom Donovan. Also in this section is a new long poem from John Taggart, "Kitaj Angels," as well as a selected bibliography of works by and about John Taggart, compiled by Robert J. Bertholf.

This issue also includes new video from Jesse Seldess, a pamphlet by David Brazil, and extended selections of new work from Tyrone Williams, Maryrose Larkin, and erica lewis, as well as poetry from Nathan Austin, Tamiko Beyer, Sarah Mangold, Elizabeth Zuba, Carter Smith, Carol Guess, Britta Kallevang, Rob Halpern, Kate Schapira, Lauren Ireland, Margaret Konkol, David Wolach, Anna Elena Eyre, Kate Colby, Alexander Dickow, dawn lonsinger, Richard Owens, Laura Goldstein, JenMarie Davis, and Felicia Shenker.

LRL4 sees the complete redesign of the LRL website, as well as the launch of three new books in our LRL e-editions series:

Tina Darragh's & Marcella Durand's collaboration, Deep eco pré

Divya Victor's first long player, SUTURES

Norma Cole's Do the Monkey

I've barely gotten halfway thru this large, yet intimate issue, and so far I've encountered the sublime at least three times.  If you think I'm lying, prove it!  

Of note for me thus far is a long selection of new work from Tyrone Williams, poems by Rob Halpern, Sarah Mangold, Nathan Austin, Kate Schapira, & the John Taggart festchrift edited by Martin & Thom Donovan.   I'm especially taken (so far) with Donovan's "A Devotion," a dis- and ir-rupting lyricism that decodes and recodes word and image--certainly a well-chosen piece for a Taggart festchrift.  Halpern continues to roll out bits of Music for Porn, a manuscript he's now completing after a few years of working on it.  Lyric and prose rub each other here in an almost dystopian heave; here, hope for a future where bodies are not weaponized, but loved in multitudes, where "to use" is reimagined, is the sloughing, tiring "voice" that gives and gives out, seems only needing to exist here to stutter out a reimagined present from the future's eye, a tense I very much associate with Tyrone William's prose poems--what will have been.

Speaking of Tyrone Williams, I think I have little to say right now, so filled with things I want to say.  Punning and the jagged line, the double entendre, and other language games, are put to use as log or manifest, and the litany of late capitalist, neo-liberal commercialisms, phrases and words so commodified as to be, quite literally, owned (copyrighted), become points of examinations as they are brought on board.  More on this long poem as I read it over and again.  And more soon regarding Martin and Smith's new issue--including the new e-chaps, which I'm excited to delve into.  New work from Darragh always makes my heart jump.  

For now, thanks much to the editors, and enjoy the issue. 

New PRESS Anthology - Small Press News

I've been meaning to do this for awhile, though with travel to New York and a syllabus to finish, not to mention putting the final touches on and publishing the new Wheelhouse Magazine and PRESS Anthology, I've had no time.  So, apologies to the wonderful Susana Gardner in being late mentioning that the New Dusie Press anthology of wee chapbooks is now online, a downloadable pdf, a veritable tapas of incredible work.  As I wrote a few days ago elsewhere: 

Susana Gardner & Dusie Press have collected a truly extraordinary cross-section of work from contemporary poets &... As a celebration (?) of its own demise in favor of new text-arts projects, this "last of its kind" Dusie, #8 develops narratives & counter-narratives within its pages, performing that delightfully playful implosion via diversity of language-archeology befitting of its "what's next-ness." 

A huge thank you to Susana & Dusie Press. As always, the work excites, the project enormous, & the design work gorgeous - viz. book arts, as usual for Dusie, exploring on its own terms the possibilities & limitations of the electronic artist book.

Do check out the book here.  Amazing work from Andrew Zawacki, Brenda Coultas, among many, many others.

Also, many thanks to Daby Larson of Abjective.  He's published a poem of mine, "Stanley Fish Poked Me On Facebook," as this week's installment.  If you haven't checked out Abjective yet, I suggest you do so.  The work there is diverse and often very good.  I also love the format.  Not completely dissimilar from Reb Livingston's No Tell Motel, Abjective features one author per issue, in this case one author per Saturday. 

Finally, I've fallen in love with another journal and press (new this year or last they've been publishing wonderful e-chapbooks), Little Red Leaves, edited by fantastic poet and essayist CJ Martin.  I plan to write more about this journal when I have time.  In my estimation LRL is one of the finest journals in contemporary poetry.  Where Thom Donovan & Co.'s ON is a go-to publication for essay - poets on their contemporaries, LRL s is a go-to publication that has an overlapping poetics and so serves overlapping poetic communities.  By the by, the new ON is due to come out soon, so look out for that.  Martin has an amazing essay on Rob Halpern's Disaster Suites (see older posts) in the issue, indeed one of the most incredible dialectical interchanges with a contemporary poetic text I've read.