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. 

PRESS 2009-2010

PRESS, a series devoted to the intersection of engaged experiments in text arts and left political movements, is rolling on. Wheelhouse Magazine & Press, in conjunction with The Evergreen State College its literary journal editors, is happy to announce three upcoming guests for this year's series:

David Buuck (Oct, 2009)

CA Conrad (March, 2010)

Kaia Sand & Jules Boykoff (Feb, 2010)

Eleni Stecopolous (TBA)

Sarah Mangold (TBA)

PRESS Poets Theater Week (June 2010)

Lydia Davis is also coming to read, tho Wheelhouse is only donating some of its services, and not co-sponsoring the event.

These amazing people above have agreed to visit, make a ruckus, create some beautiful things on the heels of a visit by David Buuck last month (see post below).  I announce this now, with dates yet to be firmed up, as I want to cross-reference PRESS with another important post by CA Conrad at PhillySound.

Here, Conrad writes about finding the HUMAN BEING in himself amidst the continued oppresive violence that those of us in the queer "community" are enduring.  And I say "enduring" here as epithet; so much of our middle-class, latent neo-liberal calls to action pivot around gay marriage and equal rights to join the military and kill people, occupy them, who, as Conrad points out, include gay Iraqi men, who are being slaughtered without hardly a word about it in the news, among activist groups, etc.  Yet, what to do with this anger?  How "to find peace," not in a quietist sense, but in the way that kari edwards, remarks Conrad, as well as Thom Donovan, did in xer last book, Bharat Jiva.  To find the human in oneself, to ground oneself in a sense of love for, if not those who oppress, than the possibility within them, to realize their humanity.  Which is a call to action, to alliance--alliance between the labor movement, the anti-war movement, the LGBT rights movement, etc.  A really amazing post that takes a hard look at edwards' work, at its own frustrations and desires to live or feel otherwise.  The paradox does not resolve here, opening the floor for us to ask more questions, to ask in the form of acting, through collective reimagining of who we want to be, and how we want to be, or: a radically renewed activism.