New Titles/Works

Simone White, House Envy of All the World (Factory School)

ON: A Journal of Contemporary Practice, a truly outstanding collaboration between Michael Cross, Thom Donovan, and Kyle Schlesinger, has just released ON 2.  I'm just tonight ordering a couple copies, so I have yet to see the whole thing.  But ON, for me, is one of the most exciting critical journals.  It features contemporary artists writing on/with/for their contemporaries, involves what Thom Donovan has referred to elsewhere as "loving" criticism, and I can say this at least: what I've read is indeed loving--not lathering--and very, very good.  I'm especially taken by C.J. Martin's critical look at the work of Rob Halpern, an essay that pivots around Rob's new Disaster Suites (Palm Press).  So, from just the small sample I've read, I'm extremely glad to have an opportunity to purchase--for such small dough--a handmade/letterpress journal (beautifully designed by two world class book artists) that's so thick with ideas, playfulness, and studied tho loving critique.  Get it here.

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Wonderful poet and damn important left political economist Jules Boykoff has an article in The Guardian.  Why Protest the Olympics?  Read here.

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Allison Cobb and Simone White have respectively released books this week, both from the (overall) awesome Factory School Heretical Text series (Boykoff, e.g., is in this year's catalogue).  Order both from SPD here.  White's book, House Envy of All the World, is her first. For those of you not in New York or on the East Coast, get to know White's work.  It's some of my new favorite poetry, and so I'm off to get this work asap.  Plus White makes a mean espresso.  Very happy for White, but more for us, as rarely have we had the chance to read White's work unless hearing it live, and yet despite the purposeful go-at-my-own paceness, there's been a great deal of buzz around White's work for some time.  

Here's a blurb on Cobb's new book, Green-Wood:

In Green-Wood, Allison Cobb wanders Brooklyn’s famous nineteenth century Green-Wood Cemetery and discovers that its 500 acres--hills and ponds, trees and graves--mirror the American landscape: a place marked by death but still pulsing with life. Through the lens of Green-Wood, the book explores the history of the American landscape, changing attitudes toward the land, and the impacts of private property, industrial poisons, and war. This is history and poetry, a testament to what survives and an elegy for what is lost--the long dead, the landscape itself, but especially those who died in the twin towers and in the United States’ ongoing wars.

Cobb is a transplant like me, having moved out here from NYC before I did, now in Portland. Been great learning the land from her, figuring out what's where. Quickly she's become a central figure in organizing and curating out here.  Congrats to both lovely human beings.  

Books, Books, Books, ON

Just got the proof book of Prefab Eulogies from Geoffrey at BlazeVox. So, it should be out in the next couple weeks. He did a great job cleaning up my designs inside and outside the book, and leaving alone the images I wanted to look amateurish, as if goofed up by a corporation that sells poetry advice.  It's nice to hold a book in your hands after reading it over and over in pdf form, INDD, etc.  This is true for me regardless of whether it's by "me" or by the authors for whom I've done editorial work.  Each time I hold the book-object I do re-assess my notion that the book can be dispensed with a great deal of the time, that I don't mind the physical book becoming less of a commercially viable commodity and more of a niche market art object.  Yet I still dislike it when someone says: "there's just something about holding a book...." There is also nothing quite like the feel of making your own cheese.  One can go on like this, make a nostalgia list, and it really means very little outside the given fetish.  The difference is in who owns what: the book is part of a dying corporate empire, and so gaining control of its construction is a reclamation of one's work, hence one's work becomes one's passion, as in Geoffrey's case.  Holding a book has nothing to do with regaining control of a dying corporate empire.  Usually it's an act of complicity with keeping it on life support.  Not so in poetry almost always, of course, and so as per my sacrificial trees post, I do not feel anything but pleasure holding the thing and staving off macular degeneration.  

Speaking of editing.  I did some copy for an essay by Amy King awhile back, not knowing what King was going to do with this essay she read at the AMAZING Belladonna Conference on Feminism, Activism, & Poetry (thinking, that is, it was going to end up used for teaching purposes, etc, very mysterious to me at the time as I think I was very busy doing a lot of nothing).  And then, er, bam: it's published in Free Verse and everyone can read it.  Which I would suggest, as I think it's a clear, hopeful essay, or, perhaps more precisely, a poetics of King's What Else in a larger (more encompassing) Queer Poetics. 

Other books received, which I will get to asap, as I'm excited to dig in and dig out of:

--Robert Mittenthal & Nico Vassilakis, Irrational Dude (I read part of this as they were working on it and it was/is gorgeous) (Tir Aux Pigeons, 2009)

--Nico Vassilakis, Text Loses Time (ManyPenny Press, 2007)

The latter work by Nico (who came down with Robert to hear Chris Mann perform for our PRESS series) I'd wanted to pick up for awhile now, as there's been quite a lot of buzz about this big multi-genre book.

Also of note, next week ON: A journal of Contemporary Practice (ON2) will be officially launched at a release party Feb 10.  Please go if in the area.  From Michael Cross:

Dear Friends: Please join us this Wednesday, Feb. 10th for the release party for ON: Contemporary Practice 2 at Moe's Books. My co-editor, Kyle Schlesinger, will be in town to help introduce our stellar cast of guests (reading poetry and critical statements), including Brandon Brown, David Brazil, Dan-Thomas Glass, Alli Warren, Suzanne Stein, Laura Moriarty, Taylor Brady, Jocelyn Saidenberg, and Robin Tremblay-McGaw. Festivities begin at 7:30 pm, and we are sure to hit the bars for family time afterwards. Hope to see you there! Michael