Microreview...ahem...Tuesday

Measuring Tape For The Midwest
Noah Falck
Pavement Saw, 2008
$7.00

The conversational tongue that resides inside Measuring Tape of the Midwest is the one that brings these poems together. Imbued with trenchant humor, incongruous ideas are released from the poet’s endless register of imaginative images that indulge in the very best of American miscellany. Reading these poems one gets the sense he is rewriting history (“today is a new version of yesterday“), employing his paraphernalia as tools for building upon the melancholic everyday, a process that overall proves to be most profound. [Brian Foley]






Spring
Oni Buchanan
University of Illinois Press, 2008
$17.95

In Spring, Oni Buchanan does not shy from taking on larger metaphysical themes or delving into the didactic. Her verse comes in uncommon variety— often built with a strong sense of form, other times as experiments in visual and grammatical breaks calling to mind the playfulness of Cummings, or going even further to rely on the pure mathematics of language to do the heavy lifting. If none of these things puts you off, you will likely enjoy this book. [R. Clark Morrow]

Microreview Monday

Undersleep
Julie Doxsee
Octopus Books, 2008
$12

Doxsee’s work in Undersleep shows preference for a style of brevity rooted in the American tradition of imagism. But unlike many contemporary examples of this tradition, however, her verse is not bounded by stark realism but instead ventures into landscapes where images flow together with the disturbing pace of a fever-dream and the logic of tones mixed from the material and the chimerical. The strangeness and layers of emotion alone makes this book worth reading. [R. Clark Morrow]






Poker
Tomaž Šalamun (trans. Joshua Beckman)
Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008
$15

This beautiful little book, a new edition of Tomaž Šalamun’s first translated by Joshua Beckman and the author, Poker is obsessed with lexicology and ontology—the names of things and their being—culminating in a dictionary of nonsense terms. Šalamun, as Matthew Rohrer says in the introduction, has a “gravitas,” but it’s paired with a playful sense of comedy: “I love this kind of seriousness.” [Elisa Gabbert]

More Wicked Deals Witch Are Wicked Awesome

Beginning at 12:00 AM on Monday (5/18), through 11:59 PM on Sunday (5/24), any purchase of one of Scape by Joshua Harmon will get a FREE COPY of A Useless Window by Carrie Olivia Adams. These two books will have you writhing in agony...NOT. Harmon and Adams both have a facility with syntax and grammar that I find entirely enviable and amazing. They are poets I often find myself i awe of. Check out both books this week for only $12.95--as always, all our orders automatically come with free shipping!

New Wiki for Readings and Independent Bookstores

As you know, we at Black Ocean believe in the power of the public reading—the pleasure of hearing words put to voice, the sense of literary community that can develop, and of course, the hand-to-hand, face-to-face promotional opportunity. All of us—readers, writers, publishers—are often looking for readings to support in our own cities and looking for places to promote our work and read with far away friends old and new.

Thus, I am excited to announce a new updatable, searchable Wiki for curated reading series and independent bookstores eager to host events throughout the country (and hopefully abroad). Myself, as both poet and poetry editor, I’ve been frustrated with the lack of an electronic resource or directory for finding such series and bookstores, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I invite and encourage you to add to and update this Wiki so that it can be the most current and comprehensive possible. It’s still a bit rough, and I hope to further develop it with your help. I hope this information can be of great use to all of us in our travels, tours, and plot to take over the world with our words.

Go here to add and update information: http://carrieo80.wiki.zoho.com/

Many thanks and cheers!

—Carrie

Microreview Monday

Dear Ra
Johannes Goransson
Starcherone, 2008
$16.00

The flinches of Dear Ra consist of confessions, cautions, and insincere apologies. "If the ship is sinking don't make love to the rats." Like Burroughs without the slamming boys, it's a constantly-changing party line. It's "a Haiku about Bang-Bang-Ugh." Too many poems these days are really surrealist novels in hiding; it's nice to see one that comes into the clear. [John Cotter]

My W/hole Aesthetic
Matthew Henriksen
Cannibal Books, 2008
$5.00

In this 7-page lyric manifesto, Henriksen oscillates, with equal parts wisdom and contempt, between negative capability—poet as receptacle—and positive capability—poet as God. He writes: “This cavity of forgiveness (a lie) / and love (a lie we make into birds): Sparrow! Irony makes the / stilled wings flutter with my heartbeat!” With his signature rawness and beauty, Henriksen reminds us of the most primitive struggles and pleasures of poetry. [Chris Tonelli]

Something Wicked This Way Comes...

We here at Black Ocean are firm believers in the old Bible saying that goes: “make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.” So in keeping with our inward ravening and wicked ways we’re having a Spring Cleaning Sale!

Beginning at 12:00 AM on Monday (5/11), through 11:59 PM on Sunday (5/17), any purchase of one of With Deer by Aase Berg (trans. by Johannes Göransson) will get a FREE COPY of Upon Arrival by Paula Cisewski. Paula’s second book, Ghost Fargo, was just chosen by Franz Wright for the 2008 Nightboat Poetry Prize and we thought this would be a good opportunity for those of you unfamiliar with her work to get better acquainted. Also, if you haven't checked out With Deer yet, then you're simply missing out on the best nightmare you never had. Think of this sale as a way for us to pair the grotesque with the unusual, and stick them both in your beach bag for summer reading. It's worth mentioning that, as always,all our orders automatically come with free shipping!

Beginning the week of 5/18 we’ll be pairing Joshua Harmon’s fantastic debut collection, Scape, with Carrie Olivia Adams’ A Useless Window. Stay atuned to the sublime blogosphere for those details next weekend.

Microreview Monday

Hit Wave
Jon Leon
Kitchen Press, 2008
$7.00

Leon’s Hit Wave is a racy tour de force, a fake memoir written in an absurd world where a poet can live the decadent life of the rich & famous. The depraved, egomaniacal narrator is better at “making real life seem like movies” than directors are at “making movies seem real.” Not “academic cool” but “world cool,” Hit Wave is a mockumentary for the chapbook set. [Elisa Gabbert]

They All Seemed Asleep
Matthew Rohrer
Octopus Books, 2008
$10.00

“Don all I did / was see some shit / happen I wish I hadn’t / and then got on a night bus / which didn’t even charge me / and let me off way up here / and now I’m drunk and walking / to a cave.” Like the narrator, a reader familiar with Rohrer’s previous work is apt to feel blindsided by this mini-epic. But it is actually sort of a mini-miracle. Conjuring the likes of Hemingway and Pynchon in forty-three pages of short-lined poetry is no small task, and Rohrer does just that with They All Seemed Asleep. [Chris Tonelli]

Poetry & Community

I was reading the editorial by Dorothea Lasky over at The Millions and although it starts off about the idea of “projects” in poetry, toward the end she talks about community, and it got me thinking about my own definitions of “community” and alternately: “scene.” As a child I spent many years in an ashram, and as a teenager I was very involved in various hardcore, activist and anarcho-punk scenes/communities. As an adult, I have valued the notion of community in poetry and I strive to cultivate that with Black Ocean. Given my personal history and passion for community, it’s probably high-time I defined it for myself. By that same token: as a figurehead in the Black Ocean community and as someone who hopes to contribute to the poetry community at large, I thought it incumbent on me to share these thoughts with the authors, editors and readers I work with and depend upon on a daily basis.

While I don’t intend this to be a response to Lasky, I think it’s important to mention that the real prompt for this meditation began with her query about the difference between community and scene. This struck a chord with me instantly, and as I’ve sat with it I realized it’s because I have existed in both scenes and communities that have used those exact words to define themselves, and my experiences within those respective social systems has been very different. At the same time, I don’t think these systems are mutually exclusive and there is undoubtedly overlap between scene and community, as communities exist within a larger scene. But here I’m getting ahead of myself...

I see a scene as a subculture of people connected to each other through a mutual interest, which may or may not involve a proscribed set of actions and code of conduct. This interest could be aesthetic (as in a poetry scene or a punk scene), and it could also be ideological (as in a religious or political scene)—and no doubt ideology and aesthetics also often mirror each other. Although they may share certain interests or beliefs, the people within a scene do not necessarily share common goals. We like the aspects of the scene we’re in, and within it we work towards our own individual ends. Because of this, a scene contains both negative and positive potential. Individuals within a scene are not working together; they are working for themselves. While this is not inherently bad, it entails a certain attitude of self-absorption—whether explicit or implied. Being in a scene is “cool,” and that coolness is granted by an aloof manner towards one’s peers and society as whole.

A community on the other hand, is a group of people sharing a common goal which is not necessarily aesthetic or even ideological (though, perhaps tangentially so). A community of people can come from a diversity of aesthetic and ideological positions, but their unified goal is to uplift the community itself, along with all its members. This can be achieved through communication, mutual support and even cooperative living. The idea of the community is that together we are moving toward some unnamed improvement, sometimes qualified only by a simple sense of fulfillment. Whatever form this communal fulfillment takes obviates (or at least mitigates) the desire for individual achievement; at the very least it supersedes it to some degree. In a word: sacrifice.

Now, I don’t intend to paint a stark picture of “scene” while making “community” seem all rosy and dew-eyed. Just as there are positive trends within a scene there are also necessary moments of ugliness in a community. It is not necessarily the means which differentiates the two, but the desired end results.

To bring this back to poetry...

At the end of her editorial, Lasky took issue with the cavalier use of the word “community” in regards to poetry. While I agree with her that the term is overused to the point of virtual impotency (to borrow from her example: a listserve is not a de facto community), I do believe it is possible for a group of people within a scene to act as a community without the proximal opportunities that cooperative (or even regional) living provides. In fact, working within the loose definitions I outlined above, I have experienced it firsthand, and on multiple levels. I have a tight-knit group of poets and writers who I turn to, almost daily, for moral and emotional support. These are friends. On a national level, I have met numerous community-minded individuals who I believe are working towards a greater, collective betterment of the poetry scene (Matthew Zapruder and Brandon Shimoda of Wave Books; Clayton Banes of Small Press Distribution; Shanna Compton of Soft Skull and the DIY Poetry Publishing Cooperative, Matthew & Katie Henriksen of Cannibal / Typo; Matvei Yankelvich of Ugly Duckling Presse; the list goes on and on...). In fact, I was probably initially exposed to the work of two Black Ocean authors, Zachary Schomburg and Johannes Goransson, in-part through the respective work they’ve done with Octopus Magazine and Action, Yes for the greater discussion of poetry.

In short: I see many people working in community-minded ways, of varying scale. In retrospect, this is probably what sparked the drama with Michael Dickman on this blog a few weeks ago. My issue with him and his brother, Matthew Dickman, was that by all reports (from others but more importantly in their own words in interviews), they come across as scenesters—two guys who are operating within a scene for themselves, totally absorbed in their individual ascent; pulling themselves upwards with both hands. For this reason I know more than a few people who found it ironic that they were asked to be on a panel about "poetry & community" at Sarah Lawrence this past weekend. At the same time I am not pretending they are villains (I like villains). No doubt we are all guilty of acting out of a strict self-interest at one time or another (even as I type this I’ve neglected what I consider my communal duties this month in order to focus on my own NaPoMo poem-a-day agenda). However, I believe we are most successful when we are striking a balance between our personal goals and the encouragement of our peers. While we cannot become martyrs for our communities, we must also ‘be the change we want to see.’ We must operate on a level of respect and wisdom that allows us to act on behalf of our communities, regardless of inevitable doubts and fears, while being able to admit when we make mistakes.

Although I recognize the altruistic tones in what I’m saying, I’d like to stress I’m not advocating an inherently wholesome approach. Sacrifice does not mean passivity; rather it requires an active ability to let go of something we value in order to achieve something else of even greater importance. Additionally this may (and often does) require us to act aggressively and without guilt or remorse. This is what is required of members in a community; whether we give up our comfort, our financial security, our personal time or even our personal safety for the common advancement of the group we hold with regard outside of ourselves. I’m not so disillusioned to think that everyone within my community acts with this in mind—nor am I saying that it is even possible to feel fulfilled by acting this way without a kind of existential narcissism. What I am saying is that communities are real, regardless of spatial distance, and that when we discover ways to help others while helping ourselves we are discovering new ways to create and maintain the communities we live in.

MICRO-REVIEW MONDAYS: A New Black Ocean Feature

Case of the Monday's? We've got just the thing. Two micro-reviews EVERY Monday to get your week started off right. High in fiber, low in sugar (and words, for that matter), these micro-reviews are clinically proven to help lower bad cholesterol. Mom's love them because they're healthy; kids love them because they're friggin' delicious.

Check out today's first installment:

Coeur de Lion
Ariana Reines
mal-o-mar, 2008
$15.00

Ariana Reines’ Coeur de Lion is many things—hip, pretentious, a bit self-conscious, maybe even a little affected; and, with its references to gmail, MP3s, jpgs and YouTube, contemporary with a capital C. At the same time, it’s vulnerable, sincere, tender, ironic, angry, sexual and sad. In a word, it’s great. Utterly human in its emotional and intellectual complexity. [Justin Marks]



Irresponsibility
Chris Vitiello
Ahsahta Press, 2008
$17.50

Chris Vitiello’s Irresponsibility is an Ammons-esque snowball of ethos. Propelled by one of the most trustable voices I’ve come across, Irresponsibility incorporates philosophy, grammar, domesticity, nature, mathematics—whatever’s in its path—often into the same poem: “Interruption is interaction // Iris says ‘All I can see is this’ / and points / As close as things need to be to be / seen as consecutive.” This book is both intelligent and down to earth, self-aware and sensibly happy. A rarity. [Chris Tonelli]

 If you'd like to write a micro-review, send  a less-than-100-word review to: chris@blackocean.org

If you're not With Deer then you're not.

Love for With Deer is spreading like a virus. Two new reviews have appeared online. Go and check them out!

“With Deer works like a first-hand witness to the collective unconscious of mute life. It is a visit to the creepiest forest ever, referenced in the poems by a first-person speaker that is mysteriously oriented to the sucking and shedding and sludging lorbs.” More at JMWW.

“Operating thematically social taboos such as witchcraft, cannibalism, and necrophilia, Berg’s poems comprise six sections of nightmarish fugues narrated by characters with distorted consciousnesses and reflected in settings that celebrate the brutality of nature.” More at Coldfront.

Sextant Launches

Sextant is the new roaming reading series from Black Ocean that can take place anywhere, at any time, in its own temporary autonomous zone. You are invited to participate not only as an audience member, but as a reveler; not as a bystander, but as a participant in the moment. The Sextant Series seeks to create uprisings at intersections of the marvelous with the routine. Expect music; expect sustenance and libations; expect language to arbitrarily create meaning but also expect language to overcome language and create freedom from semantic tyranny, confusion and decay. Open your ears, kill the precedent and come celebrate.

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Saturday, April 4th
7:00pm at The Distillery
516 East Second Street
South Boston, MA 02127
www.distilleryboston.com

FREE with Free Food & Drink
BYOB Encouraged

Featuring readings by:
Carrie O. Adams
Joshua Harmon
Peter Richards
Janaka Stucky

With musical guests:
Black Fortress of Opium

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Carrie Olivia Adams is a publicist at the University of Chicago Press; she is also the poetry editor for Black Ocean. She has published one chapbook, A Useless Window, and her first full-length collection, Intervening Absence, is available from Ahsahta Press. Her poems and criticism have appeared in such journals as Backwards City Review, Cranky, DIAGRAM, Verse, and Lilies and Cannonballs. Her poem-films, "Pandora's Star Box," and "Winter Came" can be seen on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/carrieolivia

Joshua Harmon is the author of Quinnehtukqut, a novel. His fiction, poems, and essays have appeared in many journals, including Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, New England Review, Southern Review, and Verse. A graduate of Marlboro College and Cornell University, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Dutchess County Arts Council. He likes rainy days, vinyl records, bicycles, pit bulls, tube amplification, and single malt whisky.

Peter Richards is the author of Oubliette and Nude Siren, both from Wave Books. His honors include an Iowa Arts Fellowship, The John Logan Award, Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Massachusetts Center for the Book Honors Award. Currently he is a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard University.

Janaka Stucky is the founder and managing editor of Black Ocean, and publishes the magazine Handsome. Since receiving his BFA from Emerson and an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College in 2003, he remains rooted in Boston, developing the perfection of effort and ever-ready to serve you by word. Some of his poems appear or are forthcoming in: Cannibal, Denver Quarterly, Fence, North American Review, Redivider, and VOLT.

The Band: Inspired by the lore surrounding a little town in Turkey - Afyonkarahisar, where an ancient fortress is perched atop a hill – Black Fortress of Opium's songs are about life, love, misery, and the human condition. Uniting their aesthetic is a darkly mesmerizing, ambient sensibility with wraithlike female vocals that tensely build layers of passion, longing and rage. http://www.myspace.com/blackfortressofopium

Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain

I've decided that I'm just not that interested in how a poem is written or where the material for a poem comes from. I've grown increasingly annoyed with lengthy, pre-reading spiels or excessive notes in the front matter of books describing the mechanisms and sources of the subsequent poetry. I mean, as a poet, I'm interested. In fact, I'm endlessly interested in exactly this kind of thing. But this is fodder for poetry buddy talk; save it for your poetry buddies. As a reader/listener, not only do I not care, it actively ruins the poetry for me. The magic is gone. We should take a cue from actual magicians and refrain from answering the age-old question, "How'd you do that?"

The Beatles, Led Zepplin, Elvis etc. didn't doff their cap to the blues artists they borrowed/stole from before every song on an album. Rappers don't say, "This hook is brought to you by Funkadelic." The director of a movie doesn't explain how the special effects were done before the movie begins, etc. Of course they discuss this in interviews and outtakes and DVD extras and all that, but not so that it interferes with the audience's actual experience of the art. Or maybe they do and they either do it better, or it doesn't annoy me as much because I'm not a rapper or director. And I'm not talking about a brief contextualizing statement about a work before it is performed. I'm talking about an extensive explanation that is often longer than poem.

Some poets seem to wear this as a badge of honor...this disclosure. And in an era of transparency-chic, I understand the impulse. Perhaps poetry is the most puritanical of the arts and we still haven't quite  gotten comfortable in our collagist role, borrowing and appropriating (Warhol, Johns, etc.). Or maybe we haven't come to terms with new-ish techniques that render the lone wolf genius a myth (Koons). But I think it is high time that we all turn to one another, acknowledge that we all steal lines from the greats and our friends, that we all have access to Google and other means of contemporary invention, that we all have access to research, etc. and just relax, read the poem, and get to the booze portion of the evening, the part of the evening where I actually enjoy the poetry buddy talk.

Is it Better to Burn Out or to Fade Away?

Was Def Leppard right? Well, that all depends on how you fade away I guess. Last night while at the Modest Mouse show here in Raleigh, I couldn't stop thinking about how most everyone I know thinks they've lost it and have been fading away ever since The Moon & Antarctica. But I really love the last two albums. This seems to be my m.o.--I stay on board for what seems like an uncool amount of time, long after my hipper friends have abandon ship (or is it abandoned ship?). I liked post-Green REM and post-Achtung Baby U2 and post-TEN Pearl Jam. Granted, all three bands have finally lost me. I was on board for Wilco's A Ghost is Born, but Sky Blue Sky has forced an ultimatum on their 2009 release: If it's no better, I'm out. But, people seem to be less patient, even with newer bands. For example, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's second album seemed to thud, and most people I talk to already think Arcade Fire has sold out. I love both sophmore albums.

So how do we deal when poets we admire change? Or stay the same for that matter? Is it them? Or is it us? We seem to complain when poets keep pumping out the same poem/book over and over. They're mailing it in, we say. They're work has become formulaic. They are bad imitations of themselves. And in many cases, this is totally true. There are countless examples of poets who write the same type of poem ad infinitum, minus the genius they perhaps once had. It's like they have a bad marriage with their own writing. It's still going on, but the spark is gone. But the opposite seems to be as true...when poets shift styles from book to book (or even from section to section within a book) and we feel betrayed. And rightly so if it is a shift towards something lighter or less rigrorous/intense/interesting...less good.

But certainly we as readers (or as listeners in the above scenario) are sometimes at fault, bailing or tuning out too early. Doesn't a poet at some point earn the right to evolve/shift radically? Or to make a career out of writing the same great poem over and over? Or even earn the right to write a flat book? Isn't it our job to be a little more loyal? To keep myself from being too antsy, I give myself a two-book rule. If a poet I love writes a bad book, so what. If she redeems herself with the next book, we're cool. If she puts out two duds in a row though, I reserve the right to move on.

Barring poets who offed themselves early on--I'm thinking about poets who had long-ish careers--what poets lost it and what poets kept evolving and reinventing themselves right up until the end, in a good way? Or at least kept writing the same thing at the same level and didn't take a nose dive when they got older? What poets did people bail too early on, either for writing the same thing over and over again (albeit really well) or for shifting style mid-career and pissing off the fan base?

We Didn't Start The Fire

Michael Schiavo has posted a very long and scathing critique of Matthew Dickman’s prize-winning first book, All-American Poem. Although some of the actual deconstructions are a little thin, he quotes extensively from the poems, which reveal their own weaknesses pretty evidently. I’ve had some personal/political issues with the meteoric rise of the Dickmans, only because of the blatant and obvious cronyism at play. Both twins get published in the New Yorker multiple times in one year and no one cries foul on Paul Muldoon? Seems a bit odd. The New Yorker fiasco was the most noticeable to me, but as I looked deeper there were numerous suspect instances in the success and narrative of the two. We all know bullshit happens, but that doesn’t mean we can’t shine a prefigurative light on it when it does...

I think Schiavo goes overboard, but it’s understandable; when so much praise has been heaped on such a mediocre poet it’s hard not to boil over, and Schiavo does so with entertaining swagger. Here are some gems from Schiavo’s blog entry:

“The collection is so very bad and the method by which the Dickmans have foisted themselves upon the American poetry establishment—and, in turn, by which the poetry establishment has foisted them upon the American public—should be looked at closely.”

“Everything about All-American Poem is insulting and self-centered, from the content of the work to its (lack of) style or perspective to the very manner by which it was brought into the world.”

“His imitation patriotism is what allowed George W. Bush his eight years in the White House, is the shadow that lurks behind “Freedom Fries” and the “War on Terror,” is the thing that labels any attempt to help our neighbor as Socialism. Empty phrases meant to sound like something fierce but in fact are more ephemeral than steam from a sewer grate.”

“It’s Emo-lite: twee poems for broken-hearted navel-gazers that say, ‘You too can write ‘poetry’ (and get laid).’ No wonder people are excited about this book. If you saw that someone got paid $3,000 to defecate on a piece of paper, you’d be a sucker if you didn’t stock up on Benefiber.”

All that aside, I’m actually a fan of Matthew’s brother: Michael Dickman. His first book (which ALSO came out this year ALSO with Copper Canyon), The End of the West, is really solid. I highly recommend it.

My New 10% AWP Theory

I agree with Janaka...that No Thousands reading was magic. I mean, once I got off the stage of course. I totally forgot all my poems (and some of Sam Starkweather's and Justin Marks' brand new Rope-A-Dope Press chapbooks) in the cab. And of course, I read first. Luckily the nice folks at The Empty Bottle let me print out my poems behind the bar. Anyway, I was a mess. But the rest of it was like, religious. Some poets I hadn't read before (thanks to Octopus and Cannibal) and some I already loved dearly and now love even more. I thought a couple of the readers were going to cry (including Dean Young), and at least one of my friends in the audience was so moved that she had to leave and go reevaluate things. Literally. And she's a fiction writer who doesn't normally read poetry.

But, while this happened near AWP, it wasn't part of AWP, thus proving my 10% AWP theory, which basically states that about 10% (and I think that is pretty generous) of AWP is even the slightest bit interesting. Picture yourself walking through the gargantuan book fair. Count the tables you see...1, 2, 3, 4, oh...sweet. a cool one, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. see. one in ten. Now picture yourself flipping through the AWP schedule thingy. At ther very most you dog-ear or highlight one panel/reading in ten. Max.

So, why do we go? To check out those one in ten things, sure. To see a couple of panels, to visit small presses and journals at their tables. But mostly to see our friends who have moved away and to go to off-site events after the bookfair closes. Do we get a 90% discount? I certainly didn't. Therefore, here's what I propose:

1. We somehow get AWP to have a higher percentage of good shit. They have to notice that the off-site schedule is getting bigger and bigger each year--that has to tell them that the on-site things are getting less and less relevant, no?

2. Since that is highly unlikely and prolly not worth the energy, maybe we could get AWP to offer different levels of registration. Like all-inclusive (panels and bookfair), panels only, and most importantly, bookfair only. That way you could pay for what you are actually there to do.

3. Since that is also highly unlikely and also prolly not worth the energy, I say we start a new conference. I think we could easily get 500-1000 people to attend an alternative conference in which all the on-site stuff would be as interesting as the off-site stuff. And it would be free. Yes, free. I don't know how he did it, but Matt Henriksen, this past fall, put on the Frank Stanford Poetry Festival down in Fayetteville, AK. I'm not sure how many ended up coming, but there was no registration. As long as you showed up, you were able to attend the panels and readings, 100% of which were interesting. It was a revelation.

Why then, wouldn't a bunch of us be able to put on a more general AWP-type conference in the same way, featuring craft and po-biz panels, readings, after-hour stuff, etc. And of course, a bookfair.

Here's where my theory is imperfect. Janaka says that as a book seller, it helps to have 5000 people milling about. And I can understand that. Maybe this is why option #2 might be the most feasible solution. Anyway, just some post-AWP angst.

AWP, Sustenance and the Righteous & Harmonious Fists of Dean Young

Dear Black Oceanographers,

Thank you for making this year the most “successful” AWP Conference to date. We managed to sell enough books to cover all our expenses, with some extra cash left over to buy a few rounds at the bar. It was great seeing old faces and shaking new hands. We literally sold out of With Deer—without a single copy to ship back—and Scape received an enthusiastic reception as well. Demand for our older titles was almost as high, exceeding our expectations on books that are now two or more years old.

Dean Young gave a great little speech before his closing reading at our event on Friday night (which packed the bar with roughly 200 people, causing the Fire Marshall to come and make them stop serving drinks) and talked about the declining publishing “industry” and the growing “tribe” of poets. In a nutshell: it’s not publishing that’s on the decline, but the big industry built around it—which was never designed for poets, who should revel in their growing numbers despite the doom-and-gloom predictions for the business around them. It was moving to see him step into the role of that night’s poet laureate unabashedly, but with humility. Bravo Dean. Other highlights of the night for me were of course seeing our own authors, Joshua Harmon and Johannes Göransson, read from their new books with us—as well as Claire Donato (who totally wrecked the house), and Shane McCrae. I highly recommend you check them out. Everyone was great, but these readers were new to me and thus an especially pleasant discovery.

Coming back from Chicago, I’ve realized how affirming going to AWP every year is—both as a poet and as a publisher. Attending to the table almost all day every day at the book fair is a tiresome job, but it’s not one without reward. Hour after hour people kept coming by to talk about one of our books they already had, or seek out books they wanted to get, and through it all appeared a common thread of admiration and gratitude for the quality of our production and the novelty of our content. That’s the type of encouragement that sustains a small operation like ours, and one you don’t get from just looking at sales numbers. We’ve all put in a serious amount of time and energy into this press in an act of faith and passion for what the end result would be. Thank you to everyone who stopped by the table, whether you bought a book or not, to tell us how much you enjoy our titles. It’s indescribably meaningful to hear first-hand about the impact our books have on people’s lives. We’ll see you again next year!

ENTRA UN PIRATA

More poems from Zachary Schomburg's The Man Suit have been translated into Italian by Francesca Matteoni and Marco Simonelli and are featured in GAMMM. This only proves what we already knew: Zach is huge in Italy.

But not to be outdone, the folks in Zach's home state of Oregon wanted to remind everyone that he's huge there too. The Sunday Oregonian interviewed him for their 10,000+ readers.

Keepin' it real. That's what I'm talkin' about. <cue Bruce's My Hometown>

No Thousands: A Small Press Reading

No Thousands:
A Small Press Reading
Friday, February 13 @ 6pm
The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL

Join us for a singular night of wonderment, whether you’re in town for AWP, a regular Chicago resident or just passing through for the party. Beverages and beautiful people will abound with the occasional poem and popular tune. Our hands are already shaking.


Black Ocean:
From early silent films to early punk rock, Black Ocean brings together a spectrum of influences and combines them with a radical social perspective on the nature of art and humanity. We manifest our aesthetic in the books we print, the shows we produce, and the work we promote. Based out of Boston, New York and Chicago, our intent is to saturate the public with skillful and passionate forms of expression through a wide variety of mediums. In conjunction with our book releases, we stage parties, concerts, exhibitions and other celebrations around the country. We are committed to promoting artists we firmly believe in, and sharing our enthusiasm for their work with a global audience.

Johannes Göransson was born in Sweden, but has lived around the US for several years. He is the author of: Dear Ra (Starcherone, 2008), Pilot (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008) and A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (Apostrophe Books, 2007)—and the chapbook Majakovskij en tragedy (Dos Press, 2008). He is also the translator of: Collobert Orbital by Johan Jonsson, Gingerbread Monuments by Victor Johansson & Klara Kallstrom, Remainland: Selected Poemsby Aase Berg and Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland. He is the co-editor of Action Books and the online journal Action, Yes.

Joshua Harmon is the author of Quinnehtukqut, a novel. His fiction, poems, and essays have appeared in many journals, including Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, New England Review, Southern Review, and Verse. A graduate of Marlboro College and Cornell University, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Dutchess County Arts Council. He likes rainy days, vinyl records, bicycles, pit bulls, tube amplification, and single malt whisky.


Cannibal Books:
Cannibal Books publishes hand-sewn literary journals and chapbooks which focus on divergent and emerging poetics. While our products fit into the category of book arts, the focus is entirely on presenting daring work from a broad range of styles. An aesthetic definition cannot define the hunger. Founded in Brooklyn, NY in 2004, Cannibal Books currently nests in Fayetteville, AR.

Claire Donato is an MFA Literary Arts candidate at Brown University in Providence, RI. Recent poems have been published in Caketrain, Coconut, Harp & Altar, and Cannibal. A first chapbook, Someone Else's Body, is forthcoming from Cannibal Books in 2009. Her hometown is Pittsburgh, PA.

Kevin Holden is from Rhode Island and lives and teaches in Iowa. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Colorado Review, Ecopoetics, The Harvard Advocate, The Liberal, Parcel and Typo.


Forklift, Ohio:
Eric Appleby and Matt Hart founded Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking and Light Industrial Safety in 1995 (that's 14 years without a lost time accident!), and since then have published 19 issues of the journal, several chapbooks, numerous recipes, and all manner of light industrial effects. Operations-wise, the journal now is pretty much exactly the same as it was in the beginning, except now Hart and Appleby have some help: Brett Price is the Assistant Poetry Editor. Merrill Feitell is the Assistant Fiction Editor. And Tricia Suit is the Test Kitchen Supervisor. Issue 20 of Forklift, Ohio will appear at this year's AWP Conference in Chicago, along with chapbooks by Russell Dillon and Alexis Orgera, and a book-book called 31 Poems by Dean Young. Learn more about Forklift, Ohio at: www.forkliftohio.com .

Russell Dillon was born in New York during the mid 70s and hasn't been able to get over it. However, in an effort to put the past behind him, he's attended a number of schools in various places, learned things at each one of them, and received degrees from Emerson College and the Bennington Writing Seminars. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alligator Juniper, Big Bell, Forklift, Ohio, and Tight, among others. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he does almost everything life asks of him.

Alexis Orgera is freelance writer/editor based in Florida and the Assistant Director of the Writing Resource Center at the New College of Florida. Her work has appeared in Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Folio, Forklift, Ohio, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, storySouth, and The Rialto, among others. Her website is www.alexisorgera.com.

Dean Young has published ten books of poetry, recently Elegy on Toy Piano, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Primitive Mentor. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, two from the National endowment for the Arts as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College and was on the permanent faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop until becoming the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. A book on poetics, The Art of Recklessness will be published in 2010.


Octopus Books:
Octopus Magazine was founded in 2003 & through its 11 issues has showcased the best of emerging poets. Additionally the magazine has published the work of such established writers as Paul Muldoon, Barbara Guest & CD Wright. Octopus Books is a small press founded in
2006, which has published hand-made, limited edition chapbooks & full-length books. Their first two full length book releases are Eric Baus' Tuned Droves and Julie Doxsee's Undersleep.

Eric Baus is the author of The To Sound (Verse Press/Wave Books), Tuned Droves (Octopus Books) and several chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Hambone, Web Conjunctions, The Poets On Painters
Anthology, and elsewhere. He edits Minus House chapbooks and lives in Denver.

Shane McCrae went to school at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and Harvard Law. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The American Poetry Review, American Letters & Commentary, African American Review, Colorado Review, New Orleans Review and others. His chapbook, One Neither One, is forthcoming from Octopus Books. He lives in Iowa City.


Rope-A-Dope Press:
Founded in the spring of 2007 by painter Robert daVies and poet Mary Walker Graham, Rope-a-Dope Press fosters collaborations between artists, writers, and their communities through the publication of handmade, letterpress printed chapbooks, broadsides, and artists' books.

Sampson Starkweather is the author of City of Moths from Rope-A-Dope Press and The Photograph from horse less press. He lives in the woods alone.

Chris Tonelli is the author of three chapbooks: For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule-Shaped Cloud (w/ Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006). He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.

Gigantic. Gigantic. A big, big love.

I've been reading these guys all morning. HTMLGIANT is like the Daily Show for poetry, hilariously calling out pretentious poetry bullshit of all kinds. Interviews. Submission Guidelines. Is there a Colbert Report equivalent out there? Someone playing the role of poetry asshole while satirizing poetry assholes? Dear god I hope so.

Simultaneously, I've been fantasizing about what they would say (I wish I were wearing a bathrobe) about the Creative Writing PhD...trend / explosion / whatever. Not so much the programs themselves...reading and writing for another 4 years on a secluded poetry island with dope professors and fellow poets sounds dreamy, assuming more crippling debt isn't involved (inevitably an MA and an MFA are already in hand at this stage). But last night a friend of mine was stressing out about her personal statement for one of these things. This friend of mine has a gazillion terrific chapbooks out and a forthcoming full-length book. Does this not seem fucking crazy to anyone else? In most every other discipline, you go get a PhD to learn how to write the books, no? But now you have people with books teaching people with books how to write books? Come again?!?! And I have friends (also with chapbooks and books and who run journals and presses) getting REJECTED from Creative Writing PhD programs. Seriously?!?! What must that letter say, "Yeah...sorry. You make our professors too self-conscious about the size of their poetry junk?" Unbelievable. But the kicker is, I now have friends (with chapbooks and at this point multiple books...who run presses and journals) who have completed said programs and are getting like one friggin' interview!!! This is criminal.

Mid-post caviat: The word "friends" makes me sound like a name-dropping asshole. Well, minus the actual names. The word "friends" is being used loosely for the sake of this post. You frickin' know what I mean. Shut up.

Anydoogiehowser, point being that why the fuck are we doing this to ourselves (I say "our," 1. because I am such an empathetic friend and have so many friends who are such awesome poets, thus making me a more valuable human than most...clearly, and 2. because I imagine that somewhere down the road, I'll run myself through the same wringer). I'd like to think it is for the purest of reasons...simply a time and place to immerse ourselves in Poetry Spa...ie to get smarter, read and write more and better. But I can't stop thinking that it is all about the j-o-b market. Someone help me out here.

Post-post caviat: suck my itallics!

Best Poetry Books/Chapbooks of 2008

We asked small press editors what their three favorite books of the year were, and the results are really interesting. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I guess I was picturing some sort of consensus. Instead, of the 25 books/chapbooks nominated, only two were mentioned even twice. The “clear-cut” favorite--garnering two first place votes--was Kate Greenstreet’s This is Why I Hurt You, from Lame House Press. End Notebook by Geoffrey Olsen (Petrichord Books) was the other, receiving a second and third place vote. So what this ended up being is a comprehensive “25 Books/Chapbooks You Should Read” list, as opposed to another tired “Best of” list. Shame on us.

Anyway, here are the books that received one first place vote each:

David Gitin’s Rites (Anchorite Press), Brandon Shimoda’s The Alps (Flim Forum Press), Nathalie Stephens’ At Alberta (Book Thug), Karen Volkman’s nomina (BOA Editions), Micah Ballard’s Parish Krewes (Bootstrap Press), CJ Martin’s Lo, Bittern (Atticus/Finch), and Claire Hero’s afterpastures (Caketrain).

Second place vote getters:

Landis Everson’s When You Have a Rabbit (Cy Gist Press), Andrew Joron’s The Sound Mirror (Flood Editions), Chris Vitiello’s Irresponsibility (Ahsahta Press), Daniela Olszewska’s Jane Doe (Dancing Girl Press), Barrett Gordon’s evening (House Press), Kate Colby’s Unbecoming Behavior (Ugly Duckling Presse), Sandra Simonds’ Warsaw Bikini (Bloof Books), and GC Waldrep’s One Way No Exit (Tarpaulin Sky).

Third place vote getters:

Brett Price’s Trouble With Mapping (Flying Guillotine Press), Carolyn Guinzio’s Quarry (Free Verse Editions), Renee Gladman’s To After That (Toaf) (Atelos), Sampson Starkweather’s City of Moths (Rope-A-Dope Press), Kim Chinquee’s Oh Baby: Flash Fictions and Prose Poetry (Ravenna Press), Devin Johnston’s Sources (Turtle Point Press), Danielle Prafunda’s My Zorba (Bloof Books), and Rebecca Loudon’s Cadaver Dogs (No Tell Books).

A rebellious fourth place vote went to:

Mark Lamoureux’s Astronomy Orgonon (BlazeVox Books).

It also ended up being quite a collection of presses; only one (Bloof Books) had even two nominees. And I was glad to see two of my favorite books of the year get their props--Chris Vitiello’s Irresponsibility (Ahsahta Press) and Sampson Starkweather’s City of Moths (afterall, I chose it for Rope-A-Dope Press’ Golden Gloves Chapbook Series).

Thanks to all the editors who responded and of course to all of the poets and publishers who made these books possible.