15.10.2010
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CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS & THE DEAD ON OCTOPUS & HTML GIANT

 

I don’t know why anyone cares what I have to say but they are putting up with it at HTML Giant and Octopus (where I get fuzzy about one of my favorite books no one knows about–Paul Blackburn’s The Journals). And hey–whatdya know–while you’re there also check out outstanding by Julie Doxsee, Molly Gaundry, J. Michael Martinez, etc.

Over at HTML Giant Robb St. Lawrence and Danika pitched in on a collaborative review of Chris Tonelli’s The Trees Around (Birds LLC). I was mostly the straight man here but thanks to Robb and Danika  challenging things are said about logopoetics, first books, and sadism.

Here’s a gem from Robb:

Because I’ve been reading Paul Mann’s book Masocriticism, I’ve been interested in the intersection of masochism and cultural production.  We could potentially group most poetry as motivated by either a sadopoetics or a masopoetics.  Of the two, the masopoetics would probably encompass those “complex conceptually…balletic strings of association,” as they submit themselves to structures and patterns that the poet encounters in the World; the sadopoetics of someone like Chris Tonelli, however, attempt the regulation of that World, to become master of it.  In Trees’ case, the thought tends to want to make it clear to us that one is not in control (but in the process, of course, yearning toward its own sort of mastery, and a reflection of the drive toward such).

So…is it possible for a young poet to write logopoetic poetry without gesturing toward how absurd it is to claim to know?  I would say that it is, but that when it does, it happens in the midst of a foregrounding of much larger structures.  This is the masochist in me.

And another from Danika:

Eeyore was always my favorite Winnie the Pooh character. Eeyore has a place in the canon. He acts as foil to the rest of the song-and-dance group and is the only character who internalizes his world and his place in it. He makes the 100 acre woods three-dimensional because he shades shit in. Like Eeyore’s, Tonelli’s poetics struggle with existentialism. “It is odd to be in this world,/so there must be another where we belong” (p. 15). The whole book is about how the brain is always thinking hard and it’s the only way we exist, which makes us separate from the actual WORLD. Oh, bother. That’s how shit is. “What ARE you going to do?” Nothin.

Thanks again to Danika & Robb for their help–and Ryan for plugging me into this. & Birds & Chris T for answering questions about their process.

11.10.2010
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Oh Belated

Sometimes the cure is bitter.

There are a lot of reasons to read Joyelle McSweeney’s story “Welcome A Revolution.”  Mostly because it is out for blood, cutting in multiple directions as it does. Protect your orifices. I did.

And I feel like an idiot for not reading Bernadette Meyer sooner. Will you read some of her too? We can talk. Her conversations with her own houses are brilliant and simple. Her house fluctuates, poses questions. It is quite a lot like a house Gins and Arakawa propose.

In a house like that, you can live forever.

So I had a pretty good time in Albany. Thanks all.

06.10.2010
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Fri OCT 22 – Big Wheels Roll Into Cheryl’s Gone

We are crapping our pants with excitement over each of these readers. The picture above is from a woodcut. A woodcut of skyscrapers. Deal with it. Come to the reading.

Cheryl’s Gone Reading Series *Special Friday Night Edition* October 22 – 8pm featuring: Antonya Nelson, Tony Mancus, Merrill Feitell, & Dan Brady   Big Bear Café 1st and R NW Washington, DC

Antonya Nelson is the author of four novels, including Bound (Bloomsbury, 2010) and six short story collections, including Nothing Right (Bloomsbury, 2009).  Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, Redbook and many other magazines, as well as in anthologies such as Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She is the recipient of a USA Artists Award in 2009, the 2003 Rea Award for Short Fiction, as well as NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, and teaches in the Warren Wilson MFA Program, as well as in the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program.  She lives in Telluride, Colorado, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Houston, Texas.

Tony Mancus lives in Rosslyn, VA with his future wife and two cats. He teaches writing at GMU, Emerson Prep, and with Writopia Lab DC. In 2008 he co-founded Flying Guillotine Press with Sommer Browning and since then he’s been making short runs of hand-bound books. Some of his ramblings and links to published poems can be found at inlandskirting.blogspot.com.

Merrill Feitell’s first book, Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes, won the Iowa Award for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in such publications as Best New American Voices and VQR’s special issue: Fiction’s New Luminaries, and have been short-listed in both Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards. She is on the MFA faculty at University of Maryland in College Park and is Fiction Editor for Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety. She lives in Baltimore.
Dan Brady is the poetry editor of Barrelhouse. His work can be found in Big Lucks, BlazeVox, Circumference, Gargoyle, IsReads, and Specs, among others. *******************************************************************************************
upcoming
Nov 18 – Sandra Doller, Ben Doller, Nicole Tong, Stripmall Ballads
Dec 16 – Jennifer Atkinson, David Kinloch, Reese Kwon, Dolsy Smith www.cherylsgone.com