Clayton Banes Recommends

This showed up in my spam folder, next to the porn and emails from people who don't realize that I am no longer a practicing alcoholic.

And I just want you to know--it's made you all considerably less charming.

SPAM THE PAIN AWAY!!!!

No offense.

Not you. You. Not you. No, move. Yeah. The one behind you. That person. With the literary teeth.

Anyway, Clay seems to have done a good job of winnowing the thick S.P.D. catalogue down and throws out a sop for some books that sound as though they might be fun reads.

I'd probably buy a few of these if I could morally swallow putting the cat on an "every other day" diet. (Isn't that what the Mommas and the Poppas sang...every other day of the week is fine....yea-uh.) They were probably singing about heroin.

I will indicate which books I would probably buy, to show you how an impulse purchase goes.

I'll rate the likelihood of my buying the book (if I had the mazumah) on a scale of 1 to 10.

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Questions? Contact Mr. Banes at clay@spdbooks.org
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MAGAZINES: New issues of Zone 3 and On: Contemporary Practice!

New Poetry from Krupskaya
THE REDCOATS
Ryan Murphy
$15 | paper | 88 pp.
Krupskaya
ISBN: 9781928650300

Poetry. THE REDCOATS is a book of doubts. An elegy and celebration of those fragments of a specific American history always at risk of reduction to kitsch and irony. These poems attempt to manufacture a sense of identity from the contradictions of a self-consciously contemporary perception of these historical tropes, and the overwhelming sense of being ill-equipped to abide in those perceptions. Rather than applying a historical context to the contemporary, THE REDCOATS provides a contemporary context to the historic (in the manner, for example, of the painter Larry Rivers).This makes it perhaps a sad book, or a book with more dislocation than comfort, but with the ambition to find and occupy a space between, to at least temporarily balance the blind acceptance of a moral and nationalistic absolutism (which may also stand in here for a kind of New England spirituality) and a comic and ironic rejection of those mores in the face of contemporary life. THE REDCOATS recognizes a pressure to enjoy the spoils of our national mythology and the absurdity of anxiety in an age of easy antidote, modern medicine, and quotidian comfort. A history, however, not regarded with either pure rapture or dismissive disinterest but with an unsettling combination of both. LINK→

THIS IS TERRIBLE COPY. THIS SOUNDS AS THOUGH IT WERE WRITTEN BY A 22 YEAR OLD. HOWEVER, I'M CURIOUS TO SEE WHAT IS IN THE BOOK. BUT NOT THAT CURIOUS. A FIVE.





New Poetry from Cypher Books
UP JUMP THE BOOGIE
John Murillo
$12.95 | paper | 112 pp.
Cypher Books
ISBN: 9780981913148

Poetry. African American Studies. Latino/Latina Studies. "Up jumps the boogie. That's almost all one needs to say. Murillo is headbreakingly brilliant. I didn't have a favorite poet for this year: Now I do. But with this kind of verve and intelligence and ferocity Murillo just might be a favorite for many years to come"—Junot Díaz. "The feel of now lives in John Murillo's UP JUMP THE BOOGIE, but it's tempered by bows to the tradition of soulful music and oral poetry. The lived dimensions embodied in this collection say that here's an earned street knowledge and a measured intellectual inquiry that dare to live side by side, in one unique voice. The pages of UP JUMP THE BOOGIE breathe and sing; the tributes and cultural nods are heartfelt, and in these honest poems no one gets off the hook"—Yusef Komunyakaa. LINK→

ANY MAGAZINE COPY THAT TRIES TO SELL ME ON STREET CRED FROM AN INTELLECTUAL IS DOOMED TO GO DOWN IN FLAMES. THIS SOUNDS TOO MUCH LIKE IDENTITY POLITICS. MAYBE THE COPY DOES THE WORK A GREAT DISSERVICE BY TRYING TO PACKAGE IT THAT WAY. BUT MY POTENTIAL INTEREST EVAPORATES AS A RESULT OF THIS CLASSIC BORING PITCH REPEATED AD INFINITAM, AD NAUSEAM TO MOVE STUFF. THIS IS A TWO.



New Poetry from Factory School
TOWN
Kate Schapira
$15 | paper | 70 pp.
Factory School
ISBN: 9781600010651

Poetry. Kate Schapira asked about a hundred people to describe an imaginary town. Sixty-three of them did. She built their contributions into poems that explore how we live differently in the same world, who we mean when we say we, what we mean when we say here. LINK→

THIS SOUNDS REALLY GAY. THE SORT OF ANTHOLOGY A YOUNG WRITER CONCEIVES TO SUDDENLY "KNOW" MORE ESTABLISHED WRITERS (SHE WILL FIND OUT QUICKLY ENOUGH THIS ISN'T REALLY AN INITIATION INTO ARCANE CIRCLES BUT RATHER AN INVITATION TO HEAR A LOT OF WRITERS' REALLY DEPRESSING PROBLEMS). BUT I AM VAGUELY OH SO VAGUELY CURIOUS...I'D HAVE TO GO FOUR WITH THIS.


New Ecology & Environmental Studies from Nightboat Books
ECO LANGUAGE READER
Brenda Iijima, Ed.
$19.95 | paper | 320 pp.
Nightboat Books
ISBN: 9780982264546

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Environmental Studies. In this riveting and timely collection of essays, interviews, and photographs, 17 contemporary innovative poets weigh in on pressing environmental concerns. How can poetry engage with a global ecosystem under duress? How do poetic languages, forms, structures, syntaxes, and grammars contend or comply with the forces of environmental disaster? Can innovating languages forward the cause of living sustainably in a world of radical interconnectedness? In what ways do vectors of geography, race, gender, class, and culture intersect with the development of individual or collective ecopoetic projects? Contributors include: Karen Leona Anderson, Jack Collom, Tina Darragh, Marcella Durand, Laura Elrick, Brenda Iijima, Peter Larkin, Jill Magi, Tracie Morris, Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Julie Patton, Jed Rasula, Evelyn Reilly, Leslie Scalapino, James Sherry, Jonathan Skinner, and Tyrone Williams. Co-published with Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs. LINK→

LANGUAGE DOESN'T CHANGE ECO-TRAGIC CORPORATE DECISIONS. FINES DO. THIS IS LORD OF THE RINGS FAIRY WARFARE. STILL I BET IT HAS A GOOD DANCE BEAT. I'LL GIVE IT A 3.


New Cross-Genre from Edge Books
NON/FICTION
Daniel Gutstein
$16 | paper | 140 pp.
Edge Books
ISBN: 9781890311254

Literary Nonfiction. Fiction. Cross-Genre. "Having conjured up that particular mix of will, heartwreck, and sheer wonder that makes for a large part of the human condition, Gutstein presents it to us through the nuance-rippled glass of his unique vision—a vision at once powerful, canny, restless, and sweeping—in sentences that make of muscularity a haunting new music. Deadpan poignancy and a fable-like resonance to these 'non-fictions'—a striking debut"—Carl Phillips. "Dan Gutstein is one of the most dangerous writers operating in America today. He bends form, bends language, and bends your ear, making NON/FICTION a book that poets and prosers, alike, can celebrate. May it become the Gold Standard for multi-genre writing"—Kevin Moffett. LINK→

"...in sentences that make of muscularity a haunting new music." I NEVER REALIZED HOW GAY THE COPY SPD USES REALLY IS. I SUPPOSE THEY DON'T WRITE IT. BUT....EDGE BOOKS DOESN'T PUBLISH CRAP, SO THIS BOOK IS PROBABLY MUCH BETTER THAN THIS TERRIBLE COPY. I'D GIVE IT AN INTEREST RATING OF 8 OR 9. BUT ONLY BECAUSE IT'S EDGE BOOKS.


New Cross-Genre from Ugly Duckling Presse
MADE-UP INTERVIEWS WITH IMAGINARY ARTISTS
Alex Stein
$17 | paper | 154 pp.
Ugly Duckling Presse
ISBN: 9781933254500

Miscellaneous. Cross-Genre. "Alex Stein's marvelous MADE-UP INTERVIEWS WITH IMAGINARY ARTISTS moves powerfully against the grain of standard received notions of what constitutes a book of interviews. Combining philosophical rumination and elegant digression with fascinating interviews that have been subtly but significantly reworked, Stein has brought a new variety of convive to the cross-genre table. The result, while offering the rewards of traditional interview compilations—access to the minds of first-rate thinkers such as Lorna Dee Cervantes and Cecilia Vicuña—also offers the reader a growing sense of just who or what the mysterious, deceptively self-effacing facilitator of these proceedings might be. For Alex Stein too is gradually, carefully revealed to us too as the book proceeds. This Alex Stein may or may not correspond perfectly with the Alex Stein who has signed his name to the manuscript, and it is in this touch of fictionality, which always illuminates rather than obscures, and speaks volumes about the knowability/unknowability of the self and what the self seeks to apprehend—that a handsome portion of the pleasure of this fine project resides"—Laird Hunt. LINK→

I LOVE THE IDEA ABOUT THE IMAGINARY INTERVIEW. I LIKE ANYTHING WITH IMAGINARY LIVES IN IT. AND LAIRD HUNT LIKES IT AND HE'S COOL. BUT I HATE THAT THEY PUT 'BRING YOU DOWN' REAL INTERVIEWS NEXT TO ONES WHICH MIGHT BE FUNNY AND CONTAIN NECESSARY TAKE DOWNS. I'D HAVE TO SAY A 9 THOUGH ON THIS ONE.


New Poetry Anthology from Narrow House
THE I.E. READER
Michael Ball, Ed.
$22 | paper | 152 pp.
Narrow House
ISBN: 9780979390128

Poetry. A collection of contemporary poetry selected from authors who've read at the Baltimore-based i.e. reading series since 2005. Spanning generations, schools, and regions, additional contributors include Elena Alexander, Bruce Andrews, Sandra Beasley, Lauren Bender, Bill Berkson, Miles Champion, Norma Cole, Bruce Covey, Tina Darragh, Ben Doller, Sandra Doller, Buck Downs, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Cathy Eisenhower, Heather Fuller, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, Peter Gizzi, Adam Good, K. Lorraine Graham, Jessica Grim, P. Inman, Bonnie Jones, Beth Joselow, Michael Kelleher, Amy King, Doug Lang, Katy Lederer, Reb Livingston, M. Magnus, Tom Mandel, Chris Mason, Kristi Mexwell, Megan McShea, Anna Moschovakis, Gina Myers, Chris Nealon, Mel Nichols, Aldon Nielsen, Tom Orange, Bob Perelman, Simon Pettet, Tom Raworth, Adam Robinson, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Ric Royer, Ken Rumble, Justin Sirois, Maureen Thorson, Chris Toll, Edwin Torres, Les Wade, Ryan Walker, Mark Wallace, Terence Winch, Rupert Wondolowski, and Geoffrey Young. LINK→

LOTS OF POETS I ADORE NAMED HERE AND I LOVE VARIETY SO THIS WOULD BE A SOLID TEN.


New Poetry from Elixir Press
LET ME OPEN YOU A SWAN
Deborah Bogen
$17 | paper | 88 pp.
Elixir Press
ISBN: 9781932418361

Poetry. LET ME OPEN YOU A SWAN is the winner of the 2009 Elixir Press Antivenom Poetry Award. Judge Michele Mitchell-Foust had this to say about the winning manuscript: "Deborah Bogen is the real thing, and she knows the power of beautiful language to stir and hypnotize, to get to the heart of the matter, but also to confuse the issue, to send the reader dreaming, so she slows her beauty down, roughs it up, breaths air into it, so the reader never dreams through the good parts.... What we have in Deborah Bogen's LET ME OPEN YOU A SWAN is sublime poetry, the rare gift of a terrifying look into the shaping of a warrior poet and her work." LINK→

I DON'T KNOW. IS SHE REALLY A WARRIOR POET? LIKE XENA...OR LIKE EILEEN MYLES? IF THE FORMER NO, THE LATTER YES. I DON'T WANT HER TO SEND ME DREAMING. I CAN DO THAT WITH THE DRUGS I TAKE ON MY OWN. THIS IS A FIVE.


New Poetry from Libellum Books
THE NEW WORLD
Tom Clark
$10 | paper | 60 pp.
Libellum Books
ISBN: 9780975299371

Poetry. In this book of new poems, we find veteran master Tom Clark at the top of his form. In a new twist on lyric possibility, Clark trains his limpid style and eye on current street life in Berkeley, California. Clark's observational skill is informed by acute social critique and most significantly a heightened sense of time's rapid passage. There is personal history here, too, in poems to Philip Whalen and Robert Duncan. Youth, seen in retrospect, works up to present tense; ultimate doubts as it ends, or seems to. "Time's arrow, Orfeo, never turns around, / So don't look back..." LINK→

WHAT DID I HEAR LATELY NASTY ABOUT TOM CLARK. THAT HE WAS HOMOPHOBIC ONCE MANY YEARS AGO OR SOMETHING. SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT THAT, WHETHER IT WAS TRUE. IT'S SORT OF LIKE WORRYING WHETHER HE ATE TOAST WITHOUT CINNAMON MANY YEARS AGO, INNIT? IT HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THAT ASSHOLE DORN. I CAN'T STAND HIM OR HIS STUPID POETRY. EVEN DEAD HE'S AN ASSHOLE. I USED TO LIKE TOM'S CLARK POETRY. BUT I HAVEN'T READ IT IN YEARS. EVEN THE STUFF I HAVE. LIMPID STYLE IMPLIES TO ME HE'S STILL WRITING THE SAME STUFF I LIKED ONCE YEARS AGO. AND "TIME'S RAPID PASSAGE." HE DID THAT ALREADY. ESPECIALLY WITH THE WRITING ABOUT KEATS. MEDITATIONS ON MORTALITY HAVE SORT OF BEEN DONE. I KNOW---"BUT NOT MINE!!"BUT I HAVE TREPIDATION THAT THAT WRITING MIGHT HAVE CHANGED FOR ME. I STILL LIKE THAT'S HE IN THE ANTHOLOGY OF NEW YORK POETS. THAT WAS A GOOD MOMENT FOR HIM. OH, I'M CURIOUS SO I'D SAY 8.


New Visual Poetry from Fence Books
LAKE ANTIQUITY: WORKS 1996-2008
Brandon Downing
$40 | paper | 184 pp.
Fence Books
ISBN: 9781934200278

Poetry. Art. Poetry X eleven = LAKE ANTIQUITY. LAKE ANTIQUITY = a rectangular swimming pool in the E.U.R. district in Rome, built by Benito Mussolini to be heralded at the 1942 World Expo as the epicenter of Fascism. Brandon Downing's LAKE ANTIQUITY meets the challenge of this absurdity and countless ineradicable others. The culmination of more than a decade of visionary irreverence, this fulminating iteration of text-collages makes a perfect holiday gift for the poetry lover. Brandon Downing has scoured refuse piles and skimmed the creme/scum off the top of two centuries of cultural production for these chiming elements. His paste-ups are cut-ups; his cut-ups are pasted with a discrimination that shares a border with insurgency. LINK→

THIS SOUNDS FABU. I'D GIVE THIS A TEN. I DON'T KNOW BRANDON DOWNING'S WORK AT ALL. BUT I'M DOWN FOR VIZPO JUST ABOUT ANYTIME.


New Poetry/Nonfiction from Ugly Duckling Presse
TEN WALKS/TWO TALKS
Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch
$14 | paper | 88 pp.
Ugly Duckling Presse
ISBN: 9781933254678

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. TEN WALKS/TWO TALKS updates the meandering and meditative form of Basho's travel diaries. Mapping 21st-century New York, Cotner and Fitch tap their predecessor's collaborative tendencies in order to construct a descriptive/dialogic fugue. The book combines a series of sixty-minute, sixty-sentence walks around Manhattan and a pair of dialogues about walking—one of which takes place during a late-night "philosophical" ramble through Central Park. LINK→

THIS SOUNDS REALLY LUVERLY. MY INTEREST IS A TEN HERE. I LIKE UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE. THEY GIVE ME THINGS. I WAS IN AN ISSUE OF THE MAG ONCE AND THE OFFICES BURNED DOWN WITH MOST OF THE MAGAZINES. SORRY THE CURSE RUBBED OFF ON YE, UGLING DUCKLING.


New Art from Pressed Wafer
THE BOOK OF PENIS
Jo Ann Rothschild
$17.50 | paper | 56 pp.
Pressed Wafer
ISBN: 9780982410035

Miscellaneous. Art. "I had thought that the quality of my work would exempt me from the prejudice and constriction suffered by earlier generations of women. It did not. In 1982 I gathered statistics comparing teaching positions, reviews and exhibitions of women and men in Boston. They were unequal. Naming the situation made it easier for me to work. I thought about that until it seemed funny. We live in a penis world." LINK→

OH GOD THIS LOOKS DEPRESSING AND THE UNFUNNY STALE SNL HUMOR OF THE TITLE IS RATHER CONDESCENDING. THIS SOUNDS LIKE ABOUT AS MUCH FUN AS A DRY CONDOM FUCK. PRESSED WAFER WAS ONE OF THOSE MAGAZINES THAT MUST HAVE THROWN AWAY POEMS SUBMITTED BY POETS. BECAUSE BACK IN THE DAY WHEN I SENT OUT THEY WERE ONE OF THE WORST OFFENDERS FOR NOT RETURNING WORK. DON'T TELL US TO PUT FUCKING STAMPS ON S.A.S.Es IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO RETURN THE GODDAMN WORK. YOU WERE ON THE LIST OF MAGS SEEKING WORK, SO DON'T PRETEND YOU ONLY READ SOLICITED OR SOMETHING. EVEN IF YOU DID ONLY PUBLISH A COTERIE. I'M STILL MAD AT YOU AND THAT WAS FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. YES, A FEW STAMPS. BUT YOU ARE "IGNERIT." WHO'S BEHIND THAT, WILLIAM CORBETT? IT'S NICE THE PRESS GREW OUT OF WIENERS AND FEELINGS OF LOVE FOR HIS BOOK AND ALL THAT, BUT GEEZ. GROW SOME CLASS. YES, I REALIZE THE IRONY HERE. WHOSE MAG WAS IT THAT WROTE "NO!!!" GIANT LETTERS. GIANT N. GIANT O. DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD HAVE WRITTEN THAT TO SOMEBODY WORTH SUCKING UP TO? PUHLEEZE. OH YEAH, IT WAS SOME MAGAZINE EDITED BY NOAH ELI GORDON BACK IN THE DAY. JUST LIKE A FIVE YEAR OLD. IT WASN'T IN CRAYON, BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN. EVER HEAR OF A FORM LETTER, GUYS? YOU DIDN'T LIKE IT WHEN FOETRY.COM WAS NASTY TO YOU, DID YOU? YOU THREATENED TO BEAT THAT GUY UP, MASH HIS FACE TO A PULP. CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?

I GIVE THIS A NEGATIVE FOUR.

DO YOU NOTICE A THEME HERE? DON'T SEND POETRY TO EDITORS IN MASSACHUSETTS.

I HAVE TO SAY THE MOST EGREGIOUS OFFENDERS FOR EDITORIAL MALFEASANCE..I COULD COUNT THEM ON THE FINGERS OF NOT ONE HAND, BUT MAYBE TWO...ALWAYS THE SAME DOZEN OR SO MAGS. THE REST WERE PROFESSIONAL.

YES, I HAVE A DOZEN FINGERS. DON'T ASK.



New Criticism & Theory from Olga Ast Books
FLEEING FROM ABSENCE
Olga Ast
$25 | paper | 100 pp.
Olga Ast Books
ISBN: 9781933254579

Literary Nonfiction. Criticism and Theory. Edited by Julia Druk. Limited edition of 500, signed by the author. In FLEEING FROM ABSENCE, Olga Ast explores the nature and interpretations of time in four essays: "The Visualization of Time," "In Search of Absent Time," "The Origin of Forms'" and "A Copy Machine." Eschewing narrow distinctions between disciplines traditionally employed to discuss the concept of time, Ast blends evidence and opinions from art, science, philosophy and literature into a cohesive whole. While the cross-disciplinary approach of combining the arts with science is increasingly popular, Ast believes that we have yet to see a true collaboration between them. Her book and other interdisciplinary projects attempt to establish a new medium that not confined to art or science but drawn from both. LINK→

THIS SOUNDS INTERESTING. IT'S PROBABLY ART CRITIC ART, BUT STILL PROBABLY GOOD STUFF. A NINE.

New Poetry from Inanna Publications
LETTER OUT: LETTER IN
Salimah Valiani
$18.95 | paper | 155 pp.
Inanna Publications
ISBN: 9781926708010

Poetry. Using post-Apartheid South Africa as a point from which to reflect on Canada and beyond, LETTER OUT: LETTER IN is a poetry collection of social commentary, political-economic analysis, and philosophical meditation. Historic and persisting structures of racism, sexism and economic inequality are explored, but also the nature of gender and ethnic divisions within and among oppressed groups. Moving from critique, LETTER OUT: LETTER IN further proposes love as an alternative to the binary of competition/solidarity so prevalent in Western thought. The Sufi notion of love is defined and redefined at recurring moments in the collection, making use of poetic subtlety to offer a new vision in a fractured world. LINK→


"Using post-Apartheid South Africa as a point from which to reflect on Canada and beyond," HAS TO BE ONE OF THE FUNNIEST BITS OF COPY IN THE CURRENT SPD CATALOGUE..OR I'M HOPING THAT'S THE CASE ANYWAY...

SOUNDS LIKE A DRY HUMP IN THE CARNAGE TREES.

-1.



New Poetry from Anhinga Press
YOUNGER THAN NEIL
Earl S. Braggs
$20 | paper | 166 pp.
Anhinga Press
ISBN: 9781934695128

Poetry. African American Studies. "Nothing changes until it's changed in everyone's memories. Earl S. Braggs remembers and records his experience, protesting America's attempt to make him smaller than these large, vivid, Kerouacian, music-saturated poems. The reader is returned, through repetition's felicities—the epic extension of the moment of composition—inward to our national soul"—Alice Notley. LINK→

ALICE NOTLEY GAVE IT A THUMBS UP. SO AN 8. ANYTHING WITH STUDIES IN THE DESCRIPTION IS PROBABLY GOOD FOR YOU BUT TASTES HORRIBLE.


New Poetry from BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City
TONGUE OF WAR: FROM PEARL HARBOR TO NAGASAKI
Tony Barnstone
$14.95 | paper | 126 pp.
BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City
ISBN: 9781886157712

Poetry. This book won the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by B. H. Fairchild, who writes in his foreword, "TONGUE OF WAR is one of the most distinctive manuscripts I have ever judged for a book prize (And it is a book rather than simply a collection)." Barnstone writes that he intends TONGUE OF WAR as "a love letter to the World War II generation." But he explains, "I see the sequence as a history in verse in which I allow the readers to inhabit multiple and warring perspectives on the War in the Pacific, including the Pearl Harbor attack, Hiroshima, and the conflict in between." Pulitzer-prize-winning writer Robert Olen Butler writes that "Barnstone has revealed humankind's capacity both for evil and for redemption with a power that few writers have ever achieved." LINK→

SOUNDS A LITTLE OUT OF TIME AND A LITTLE ATAVISTIC. "HISTORY IN VERSE" DOES NOT PORTEND WELL. A TWO.

New Poetry from Bilingual Press
BOOMERANG
Brenda Cárdenas
$12 | paper | 112 pp.
Bilingual Press
ISBN: 9781931010535

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. In BOOMERANG, Brenda Cárdenas creates a vibrant, syncretic space open to many voices, perspectives, and tongues. Here, whatever is made is in motion. Cárdenas casts a line of English, and it returns to her in Spanish. She spins lyrically taut free verse; sculpts prose poems, sapphics, and sonnets; and punches the rhythms of spoken word in what Juan Felipe Herrera has called "a sonic calligraphy, hand-thrown spirals of spirit." Whether telling stories of displaced peoples and places, responding to Chicano art, or meditating on language itself, Cárdenas strikes a deliberately tenuous balance between self-assurance and loss, all the while on a journey toward the interconnectedness that she calls home. LINK→


SAPPHICS AND SONNETS WORK FOR ME. I'D SAY AN 8 DESPITE THE WORD "STUDIES."

New Art from Barrytown/Station Hill
OSVALDO ROMBERG +/-70, EVEN
Damien Bright and Cameron Hu, Eds.
$24.95 | paper | 208 pp.
Barrytown/Station Hill
ISBN: 9781581771084

Art. Latino/Latina Studies. Osvaldo Romberg is an Argentine artist living in the United States who has, over the past five decades, produced a consistently goading body of work that tackles questions of analysis, interpretation, and representation of art and art history. His own history of translocation—between Argentina, Israel, Europe, and the United States—and his firm commitment to family and teaching are mirrored by an art practice that persistently plays with questions of life, sex, death, and the complexities of language and mythology. OSVALDO ROMBERG +/-70, EVEN assembles classic texts by Marcelin Pleynet, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Marjorie Welish, and others (including Romberg himself), and positions them alongside new interviews with the artist and fragmentary fictions written in conversation with his work. This volume also includes rare biographical materials, and provides a photographic survey of Romberg's work from the 1950s to the present. LINK→

HE EVEN GOT MARJORIE WELISH IN THERE. THIS GUY MOVES AROUND A LOT. HIS MIND AND PERSPECTIVE ARE PROBABLY BOTH VERY INTERESTING. A NINE.


New Poetry in Translation from Chelsea Editions
SHAVINGS: SELECTED PROSE POEMS, 1914-1940
Camillo Sbarbaro
$20 | paper | 184 pp.
Chelsea Editions
ISBN: 9780972527118

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Italian by by Gayle Ridinger. Introduction by Simone Giusti. Camillo Sbarbaro (1888-1967) experimented for fifty years with a form of prose poetry that he called trucioli—"shavings." Some of the first were written in the trenches during World War I. Simone Giusti writes in the Introduction that Sbarbaro's quest was to capture the ephemeral joys and sorrows of life with the right word or phrase so as to "free human beings from the hell that comes of depression, deadened senses and dulling routine." LINK→

SOUNDS SORT OF FASCINATING. I'M TRYING TO GROW MY ITALIAN LEXICON SO THIS WOULD BE GREAT IF IT'S BILINGUAL. A TEN.


New Literary Nonfiction from Turtle Point Press
MARBLES
James Guida
$14.95 | paper | 104 pp.
Turtle Point Press
ISBN: 9781933527246

Literary Nonfiction. "It takes a rare gift to write in the aphoristic form, which must be witty and modest at once, and must state in a fresh, arresting way observations which the reader will recognize at once as true. It goes without saying that the aphorist must work out of an unusual perceptiveness and self-knowledge, and I am grateful to James Guida for this book which I have read from start to finish and shall read again"—Richard Wilbur. LINK→

I THOUGH TURTLE POINT WENT UNDER YEARS AGO. THEY PUBLISHED SOME GREAT RONALD JOHNSON WORK. AND I REMEMBER MERWIN. WHO ELSE? PROBABLY A LOT. BUT A BLURB FROM RICHARD WILBUR. IS THIS A REISSUE? SOUNDS VAGUELY INTERESTING. APHORISMS ARE FUN. BUT ONLY WHEN IT'S SOMEBODY LIKE WILLIAM BLAKE OR JENNY HOLZER, ETC. A FIVE

New Poetry from Brick Books
HYMN
John Barton
$19 | paper | 144 pp.
Brick Books
ISBN: 9781894078764

Poetry. LGBT Studies. Improvising on a variety of poetic forms and traversing disparate landscapes—from Belfast to the clear-cuts of Vancouver Island, from the subterranean heat of Jules Verne's Iceland to the ventriloquism of the Alberta Rockies' echoing eastern slopes—John Barton documents the path of the male body in an increasingly unstable, supposedly tolerant contemporary world. HYMN stokes the fires of homoerotic romantic love with its polar extremes of intimacy and solitude. LINK→

SOUNDS GAY. BUT POSSIBLY THE WRONG KIND OF GAY. I DON'T KNOW. IS IT DAINTILY TOOLED AND WISTFUL? MIDDLE CLASS GAY LOVE IS VERY BORING WHEN IT'S IN POETRY. IT'S LIKE THE WILLIAMS SONOMA CATALOGUE USUALLY, EXCEPT WITH FIERY ADJECTIVES.


New Fiction from Greenhouse Review Press
THE MENTAL TRAVELER
Stephen Kessler
$18 | paper | 250 pp.
Greenhouse Review Press
ISBN: 9780965523974

Fiction. At the dark end of the 1960s, a young poet is launched on a bizarre odyssey that leads him from the ill-fated gathering of rock-and-roll tribes at Altamont through San Francisco City Prison to various psychiatric hospitals up and down California in search of his role in the Revolution. An anti-nostalgic, at times terrifying, often comical exploration of a period largely misremembered in the collective imagination, this picaresque narrative is a vivid evocation of a tumultuous moment in American cultural history, an intimate account of acute psychosis, and an archetypal tale of artistic initiation. LINK→

HEHE THEY SAID PICARESQUE. KATHY ACKER IS PICARESQUE. THIS PROBABLY ISN'T REALLY PICARESQUE. BUT I SUPPORT MY BROTHER IN ARMS IN MENTAL ILLNESS. WRITE THE CARNAGE AWAY. I'D READ IT. A NINE.


New Fiction in Translation from Talisman House
THE CONQUEROR
Nedim Gürsel
$18.95 | paper | 222 pp.
Talisman House
ISBN: 9781584980711

Fiction. Translated from the Turkish by Yavuz Demir and John Ottenhoff. The author of over thirty books, including novels, essays, short stories, literary criticism, and travel writing, Gürsel received Turkey's highest literature prize, the Prize of the Turkish Language Academy, in 1976 for his volume of stories A Summer Without End. In 1986, he received the Ipekci Prize promoting Turkish-Greek cultural understanding for The First Woman. In the same year he received the Prix de la Liberté of the French PEN club. He also received the Radio France Internationale Prize for the best novel of 1990, and in 2003 he won the France-Turkey Prize for his lifetime achievements. In 2004 he received the Fernand Rouillon Literary Prize from the Franco-Turkish Committee at the Turkish Tourism Office in Paris. In the same year he was named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. He received his doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne in 1979. His most recent novel is llah'in Kizlari (The Daughters of Allah), published in 2008. THE CONQUEROR was first published in Turkish as Boğazkesen: Fatih'in Romani in 1996. LINK→

NOTHING BUT LOVE FOR TALISMAN PRESS AND ED FOSTER. HE PUTS OUT THE BEST SHIT FOR DECADES DOWN THERE. A TEN.


New Poetry from Marick Press
LEAVE ME HIDDEN
Franz Wright
$10 | paper | 48 pp.
Marick Press
ISBN: 9781934851104

Poetry. Poets speak metaphorically of poets of previous generations as their spiritual and artistic parents or grandparents. For Franz Wright, this is literally true: his father, James Wright, was one of the most influential American poets of the latter half of the twentieth century. In this book Franz Wright is more intimate than ever before. His collection is a description of the struggle with the demons associated with following in the lineage of a great poet. We can find more of Wright himself in this collection, more of his identity, a grown up man who finally conquers the stigma of living in the shadow of his father. The memories of James Wright are clear and vivid but not a torment. In poems like "Recurring Dream," "Admonitions To Self," "The Future," "Untitled Poem in Three Parts," Franz Wright steps into a new phase of his own writing, he is more accessible to the reader and lets us pick and choose among his hopes and reflections. He alternates between memories of his family and present experiences in a rental apartment. He reveals the splendor and grandiosity of a friendship in the short poem "The Future" where we find a generous man taking care of a fallen friend. LINK→

WONDERFUL POET. I'D READ ANYTHING BY HIM. BEEN THROUGH HELL AND WRITTEN THE TRAVELOGUE. AND NO, I DON'T LIKE HIM BECAUSE OF THE MENTAL ISSUES. HE WRITES ACCESSIBLE POEMS THAT FUCK WITH YOUR HEAD BUT OPEN UP THEIR LITTLE FLOWERS OF COMPASSION. HE'S PRESENT IN THE WORK. UNLIKE YOUR TYPICAL ASSHOLE ASPERGER'S INTELLECTUAL TRYING TO MAKE YOU BEG FOR SOMETHING THAT HE CAN'T EVEN GIVE YOU IN HIS BOOKS. A TEN.


New Poetry from Dos Madres Press
MY MINOTAUR
Keith Holyoak
$17 | paper | 161 pp.
Dos Madres Press
ISBN: 9781933675480

Poetry. Illustrations by Jim Holyoak. In this debut volume of selected poems, Keith Holyoak explores the borderlands where dualities run together—life and death, despair and hope, man and woman, reason and passion, human and animal, reality and dream. His poetic voice is juxtaposed with the surrealistic artistic visions of Jim Holyoak, Keith's son. MY MINOTAUR creates an extra imagination space between the dualities of father and son, word and image. LINK→

I LOVE MINOTAURS. TAUROMACHY RULES. A TEN.

New Poetry from United Artists Books
THE IMPERFECT
George Tysh
$14 | paper | 96 pp.
United Artists Books
ISBN: 9780935992335

Poetry. "Somewhere between taking stock and stocking up these words impinge. Caught up once more in the eternal return of What can be said? What not? The scalar groove of all that? Restless, this troubling beauty of the still unfinished"—Clark Coolidge. "The nine-line poems, the four-line poems, the three-line poems—though all of them sparkle, it is not for his mastery of form that we value George Tysh's poetry. Rather we do so in response to his empathy, almost the simple pulse of a muscle, the 'dictum to rectum' effect he writes of in a lovely poem. He knows as much about the way things look as he does about the needs that went into their making and abeyance. The poems of THE IMPERFECT are written in Detroit, a 'motor city' outside of which 'methyl walls perspire' and 'black men and white men/ walk the streets'—yet they insinuate themselves into the brains of the feeling everywhere around the earth. I'm a sucker for this sort of thing. It's like Grace Jones used to say, George Tysh isn't perfect, but he's perfect for me"—Kevin Killian. LINK→

GEORGE AND CHRIS TYSH HAVE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTING WRITERS AND SEVERELY UNDERREAD. A TEN.


New Poetry from Three Candles Press
RUTHLESS
Jeff Mock
$13.95 | paper | 92 pp.
Three Candles Press
ISBN: 9780977089277

Poetry. RUTHLESS, Jeff Mock's first collection, was chosen by Deborah Keenan as the winner of the Three Candles Press Open Book Award, and for good reason: it is a tour de force of style and substance. Through Mock's darkly comic "what if" verse, we are given escapades of a risen Lazarus, adventures of The Brothers Grimm in Hollywood, and self-portraits ranging from a noxious weed to Miss America. His poems are unsparing and brutal, yet deftly written, humorous, and in the end, they offer slices of life from the full range of human experience. Mock's is a book of dreams and vignettes, danger and passion, self-aggrandizement and -deprecation. "Life is good," Mock writes in "Self Portrait Running With Scissors." Yes, it is good; we know it is. As Alan Michael Parker writes, it is "A book of splendid insurrections—of rebellion and revivification—Jeff Mock's Ruthless haunts us gleefully, with poems that read on even when the lights are off." It is a book of satisfying rewards. LINK→

THIS SOUNDS DISHY AND THE ONLY BOOK HERE THAT SOUNDS LIKE IT MIGHT BE ACCESSIBLE ENOUGH TO BE REVIEWED IN PLACES LIKE VANITY FAIR AND PEOPLE MAGAZINE. I MEAN IF THE AUTHOR LIKES MONEY. IF HE PREFERS VERSE CRED, HE WILL PROBABLY NOT CARE. MAYBE IT'S GOOFY. BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE A CUTE, FUN BOOK. TEN.


New Anthology from WriteGirl Publications
SILHOUETTE: BOLD LINES & VOICES FROM WRITEGIRL
Keren Taylor, Ed.
$19.95 | paper | 274 pp.
WriteGirl Publications
ISBN: 9780974125183

Literary Anthology. Young Adult. Fiction. Nonfiction. Poetry. Edited by Karen Taylor. SILHOUETTE: BOLD LINES & VOICES FROM WRITEGIRL, the eighth anthology from WriteGirl, captures the unique perspectives of women and girls writing about love, fear, relationships, school, accordions, foreign countries, Los Angeles, pastrami and the world around us. SILHOUETTE celebrates the voices of teens from more than 60 different Los Angeles high schools, and women writers from top newspapers, entertainment companies and publishers. Writing advice throughout the book and an entire chapter with a variety of writing experiments will help you develop and share your own bold voice. "Of all the marvelous things women bring to the table of civilization—patience, love, warmth, food—our voices are the most important. WriteGirl is essential to helping our young women know how important their thoughts and feelings, not just their looks and bodies, are. Right on, girls—WriteGirl!"—Nikki Giovanni. "WriteGirl is one of the most inspirational, innovative, charming projects gracing the contemporary literary scene. And SILHOUETTE is one of its finer manifestations. These girls really CAN write!"—Carolyn See. LINK→

THIS BOOK WAS CLEARLY NOT WRITTEN FOR ME, BUT I BET THE PEOPLE IT WAS WRITTEN FOR LOVE IT. IT SOUNDS LIKE A BOOK THAT WILL GET A WIDE, DESERVED AUDIENCE. NOT APPLICABLE FOR ME TO RATE IT.


New Cookbook from AK Press
ANOTHER DINNER IS POSSIBLE: RECIPES FOR FOOD AND THOUGHT
Mike and Isy
$21.95 | paper | 256 pp.
AK Press
ISBN: 9781904859994

Nonfiction. Cooking. ANOTHER DINNER IS POSSIBLE is more than just a vegan cookbook-it's a guide to developing a healthier relationship with the food we eat. The emphasis is on innovative simplicity: these recipes use easy-to-find and easy-to-prepare ingredients combined in unexpected ways. All the basics of everyday cooking are included for those just starting out in the kitchen (with detailed instructions and essential tips on everything from sharpening knives to choosing the right variety of potato), but even more seasoned chefs will find a surprising number of must-try recipes for original concoctions and vegan versions of old favorites. LINK→

I'M NOT "THAT WAY" BUT I HAVE TO ADMIT IT PIQUES THE CURIOSITY. A SIX.


New Graphic Novel from Blaft Publications
MOONWARD
Appupen
$17.95 | paper | 268 pp.
Blaft Publications
ISBN: 9788190605670

Fiction. Graphic Novel. South Asia Studies. Primordial Halahala is at war. In a last-ditch attempt to stop the bloodshed, the wise and ancient Tortle draws the outline of a new creature into a rock—thus ushering in a strange dystopian world of weeping trees, robotic birds, and cities grown from seeds. LINK→

I DIG GRAPHIC NOVELS. TEN.


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