Sunday, May 31, 2009
New Titles by No Tell Poets
Alice B. Fogel, Strange Terrain: A poetry Handbook for the Reluctant Reader (Small Press Distribution)
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Recommended Summer Reading - Marcela Sulak
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Marcela Sulak's recommendations:
I usually travel in the summer, but this time I'm stuck at home. My three recommended books are leaving me as unmoored, surprised, and newly in love with the world as if I'd been exploring the globe for three months.
Putting down Michele Battiste’s frenetic, brain-bending book is going to leave skid marks all over your desk. Indeed, while reading Ink for an Odd Cartography (Black Lawrence Press, 2009), I find myself speaking thus to my two-year-old: “if you don’t put down those matches, I’m going to come take them away as soon as I finish this poem!” In Battiste’s cartography, the most unlikely and disparate entities, locations and people are connected by a tender, tough and disarming intelligence.
Libyan-born Khaled Mattawa’s third book, Amorisco (Ausable, 2008), is both expansive and local, exploring the suburban and rural idiosyncrasies of America as well as the ancient past and revisited present of a native North African landscape. What I love most about the book is the playful, imaginative anarchy, the prayerful, sincere apostasy. I would call this book a collection of love poems, even though some of them start off with lines like “When I call out to you now/I still have to pause before calling her name,/and for endearments I have failed to tell you/anything other than what I’ve whispered to her.//But that’s not why I’m not in love.” Cat lovers will be gratified to see that one of the most powerful and gorgeous of all the poems is an paen to “Buster.”
I’m still waiting for my copy of Brandel France de Bravo’s Provenance (WWPH 2009) to arrive. But poems like “Licking the Woman,” and “Apricot,” which you can read on the WWPH website, promise exhilarating explorations of previously unrecorded territory. Campbell McGrath describes the book like this: “Taking her cue from Ralph Waldo Emerson who said ‘Every word was once a poem,’ she has written 26 poems—one for every letter—inspired by etymologies.”
* * *
Marcela Sulak is the author of two collections of poetry Immigrant, forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press, and the chapbook Of All The Things That Don't Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She's translated three books of poetry from the Czech Republic and Congo-Zaire and teaches translation and poetry at American University.
Marcela Sulak's recommendations:
I usually travel in the summer, but this time I'm stuck at home. My three recommended books are leaving me as unmoored, surprised, and newly in love with the world as if I'd been exploring the globe for three months.
Putting down Michele Battiste’s frenetic, brain-bending book is going to leave skid marks all over your desk. Indeed, while reading Ink for an Odd Cartography (Black Lawrence Press, 2009), I find myself speaking thus to my two-year-old: “if you don’t put down those matches, I’m going to come take them away as soon as I finish this poem!” In Battiste’s cartography, the most unlikely and disparate entities, locations and people are connected by a tender, tough and disarming intelligence.
Libyan-born Khaled Mattawa’s third book, Amorisco (Ausable, 2008), is both expansive and local, exploring the suburban and rural idiosyncrasies of America as well as the ancient past and revisited present of a native North African landscape. What I love most about the book is the playful, imaginative anarchy, the prayerful, sincere apostasy. I would call this book a collection of love poems, even though some of them start off with lines like “When I call out to you now/I still have to pause before calling her name,/and for endearments I have failed to tell you/anything other than what I’ve whispered to her.//But that’s not why I’m not in love.” Cat lovers will be gratified to see that one of the most powerful and gorgeous of all the poems is an paen to “Buster.”
I’m still waiting for my copy of Brandel France de Bravo’s Provenance (WWPH 2009) to arrive. But poems like “Licking the Woman,” and “Apricot,” which you can read on the WWPH website, promise exhilarating explorations of previously unrecorded territory. Campbell McGrath describes the book like this: “Taking her cue from Ralph Waldo Emerson who said ‘Every word was once a poem,’ she has written 26 poems—one for every letter—inspired by etymologies.”
* * *
Marcela Sulak is the author of two collections of poetry Immigrant, forthcoming with Black Lawrence Press, and the chapbook Of All The Things That Don't Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She's translated three books of poetry from the Czech Republic and Congo-Zaire and teaches translation and poetry at American University.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Recommended Summer Reading - Adam Deutsch
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Adam Deutsch's recommendations:
Here's a list of books I'll read over and over all summer.
Collected Poems 1957 - 1982 by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1987)
Seven full books spanning twenty-five years. Pastoral and meditative, Berry's poems are of a higher consciousness that I believe we should all be moving toward. This is one of the books to read when you're trying to change your head so you can sit and write.
The Date Fruit Elegies by John Olivares Espinoza (Bilingual Press, 2008)
Though his explorations back into a childhood defined by location and cultural identity struggles, these poems speak to a common innocence and confront universal fears we all encounter in youth. And the second poem in the collection, "Economics at Gemco," makes me cry.
Resin by Geri Doran (Louisiana State University Press, 2005)
This book has a rare resonance that most seem to avoid, or try to hit and miss entirely. It is not clever nor easy. The poems have a place in the tradition of great poetry, and they know what that place is. I renew my membership to the Academy of American Poets, and am annually sad, purely in hopes that I am sent another book as masterful and full of presence as Resin.
Drunk By Noon by Jennifer L. Knox (Bloof Books, 2007)
I've said it before, and I'll say it over and over again: this is a wonderful book. The voices of animals, children, women and dudes all in agonizing pain under tattered bandages of our ridiculous culture. And it has replay value; a quality we need more of in our contemporary poetry collections.
The All-Purpose Magical Tent by Lytton Smith (Nightboat Books, 2009)
I just got this a few weeks ago, and it's terrifying, magnificent, gritty and mysterious. The poems are transportive. The collection moves and disorientates as if you sat in marathon of your favorite films, and when you walked outside, some how, it was still day light. I will be reading this book all summer because it earns that devotion to time. If you read it too, get in touch, and we'll talk about it.
* * *
Adam Deutsch lives in San Diego, CA. Some poems have appeared with Juked, Caffeine Destiny, Slurve, Anti-, No Tell Motel, and Gander Press Review. He is an Editor at Cooper Dillon Books and can be found at adamdeutsch.blogspot.com.
Adam Deutsch's recommendations:
Here's a list of books I'll read over and over all summer.
Collected Poems 1957 - 1982 by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1987)
Seven full books spanning twenty-five years. Pastoral and meditative, Berry's poems are of a higher consciousness that I believe we should all be moving toward. This is one of the books to read when you're trying to change your head so you can sit and write.
The Date Fruit Elegies by John Olivares Espinoza (Bilingual Press, 2008)
Though his explorations back into a childhood defined by location and cultural identity struggles, these poems speak to a common innocence and confront universal fears we all encounter in youth. And the second poem in the collection, "Economics at Gemco," makes me cry.
Resin by Geri Doran (Louisiana State University Press, 2005)
This book has a rare resonance that most seem to avoid, or try to hit and miss entirely. It is not clever nor easy. The poems have a place in the tradition of great poetry, and they know what that place is. I renew my membership to the Academy of American Poets, and am annually sad, purely in hopes that I am sent another book as masterful and full of presence as Resin.
Drunk By Noon by Jennifer L. Knox (Bloof Books, 2007)
I've said it before, and I'll say it over and over again: this is a wonderful book. The voices of animals, children, women and dudes all in agonizing pain under tattered bandages of our ridiculous culture. And it has replay value; a quality we need more of in our contemporary poetry collections.
The All-Purpose Magical Tent by Lytton Smith (Nightboat Books, 2009)
I just got this a few weeks ago, and it's terrifying, magnificent, gritty and mysterious. The poems are transportive. The collection moves and disorientates as if you sat in marathon of your favorite films, and when you walked outside, some how, it was still day light. I will be reading this book all summer because it earns that devotion to time. If you read it too, get in touch, and we'll talk about it.
* * *
Adam Deutsch lives in San Diego, CA. Some poems have appeared with Juked, Caffeine Destiny, Slurve, Anti-, No Tell Motel, and Gander Press Review. He is an Editor at Cooper Dillon Books and can be found at adamdeutsch.blogspot.com.
This Week at No Tell
Jennifer Bartlett drags fists into the forest leaves this week at No Tell Motel.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Recommended Summer Reading - Piotr Gwiazda
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Piotr Gwiazda's recommendations:
New & Selected Poems by Charles O. Hartman (Ahsahta Press, 2008)
This volume by an accomplished poet, scholar, and musician shows the full range of his inventiveness and craftsmanship. To give just two examples, “A Little Song” is one of the most beautiful and perfectly executed poems in sapphics, while “Tambourine” is a post-Romantic meditation on selfhood and nature in which (in another formal feat) the decimal digits of pi are used to determine the length of successive words. Ultimately, what is most impressive about this collection is not even its versatility but the fact that nearly every page of it contains genuine, unpredictable verse.
The Proteus (Moria Books, 2008) and Joys: A Catalogue of Disappointments (BlazeVOX, 2008) by Christophe Casamassima
“Having nothing to say, no words but the words of others, I have to speak,” says the narrator in Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable. This statement could serve as the motto for Christophe Casamassima’s “Proteus Cycle” project which will culminate with a third volume scheduled for release later this year. Profound in its implications, Casamassima’s technique entails “writing through” other authors, from Joyce and Jabès to a variety of more or less obscure texts. The result is a dizzying array of words and sounds, allusions and quotations, useless sense and useful nonsense—a pure experience of intertextuality.
* * *
Piotr Gwiazda is the author of Gagarin Street: Poems (WWPH, 2005). Recent poems appear in Baltimore Is Reads, linebreak, With + Stand (The Red Issue), Poetic Voices Without Borders, and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel: Second Floor.
Piotr Gwiazda's recommendations:
New & Selected Poems by Charles O. Hartman (Ahsahta Press, 2008)
This volume by an accomplished poet, scholar, and musician shows the full range of his inventiveness and craftsmanship. To give just two examples, “A Little Song” is one of the most beautiful and perfectly executed poems in sapphics, while “Tambourine” is a post-Romantic meditation on selfhood and nature in which (in another formal feat) the decimal digits of pi are used to determine the length of successive words. Ultimately, what is most impressive about this collection is not even its versatility but the fact that nearly every page of it contains genuine, unpredictable verse.
The Proteus (Moria Books, 2008) and Joys: A Catalogue of Disappointments (BlazeVOX, 2008) by Christophe Casamassima
“Having nothing to say, no words but the words of others, I have to speak,” says the narrator in Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable. This statement could serve as the motto for Christophe Casamassima’s “Proteus Cycle” project which will culminate with a third volume scheduled for release later this year. Profound in its implications, Casamassima’s technique entails “writing through” other authors, from Joyce and Jabès to a variety of more or less obscure texts. The result is a dizzying array of words and sounds, allusions and quotations, useless sense and useful nonsense—a pure experience of intertextuality.
* * *
Piotr Gwiazda is the author of Gagarin Street: Poems (WWPH, 2005). Recent poems appear in Baltimore Is Reads, linebreak, With + Stand (The Red Issue), Poetic Voices Without Borders, and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel: Second Floor.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Recommended Summer Reading - Steven Karl
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Steven Karl's recommendations:
The Green Lake Is Awake by Joseph Ceravolo (Coffee House Press)
Ceravolo’s selected poems are a collection of fragmented, sometimes absurd but always immediate lyric. Who wouldn’t want to read poems like “Ho Ho Ho Caribou,” and “Spring in This World of Poor Mutts?”
Zoland Poetry, An Annual of Poems, Translations & Interviews No. 3 edited by Roland Pease (Zoland Books/ Steerforth Press)
Summer is perfect weather for anthology reading. This one features original poems by a variety on “known” and “up and coming” poets such as Albert Goldbarth, Ron Padgett, Major Jackson, Noah Eli Gordon and Lynn Xu.
Delivered by Sarah Gambito (Persea Books)
Gambito’s second book is an exploration of identity, politics, and prejudice (both systemic and private). This book finds Gambito in top form with a fiery tongue and a heart big enough to heal or frighten each one of us.
Tuned Droves by Eric Baus (Octopus Books)
This book arranges and deranges senses and intellect always shifting just left of periphery. What is stilled is static but what is static may not be stilled. Eric Baus does that to you. Makes you double-think so that everything is at once familiar and foreign.
Hurry Home Honey by Sawako Nakayasu (Burning Deck)
Ok, I’m still waiting for this one to arrive, but this is the book I’m most excited to read for summer. Here’s a blurb about the book, “These love poems are unusual for their sense of moving between cultures, their awareness of physical space as articulated by the intersection of human beings, the land, and architectural structures. Love itself is now game, sport, speed-time, dance, performance, now contract, conflict, failure, but always a shifting structure of relation.”
* * *
Steven Karl is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, State(s) of Flux (Peptic Robot Press), which is a collaboration with the artist, Joseph Lappie. His poems are forthcoming from Coconut, Vanitas, and Taiga.
Steven Karl's recommendations:
The Green Lake Is Awake by Joseph Ceravolo (Coffee House Press)
Ceravolo’s selected poems are a collection of fragmented, sometimes absurd but always immediate lyric. Who wouldn’t want to read poems like “Ho Ho Ho Caribou,” and “Spring in This World of Poor Mutts?”
Zoland Poetry, An Annual of Poems, Translations & Interviews No. 3 edited by Roland Pease (Zoland Books/ Steerforth Press)
Summer is perfect weather for anthology reading. This one features original poems by a variety on “known” and “up and coming” poets such as Albert Goldbarth, Ron Padgett, Major Jackson, Noah Eli Gordon and Lynn Xu.
Delivered by Sarah Gambito (Persea Books)
Gambito’s second book is an exploration of identity, politics, and prejudice (both systemic and private). This book finds Gambito in top form with a fiery tongue and a heart big enough to heal or frighten each one of us.
Tuned Droves by Eric Baus (Octopus Books)
This book arranges and deranges senses and intellect always shifting just left of periphery. What is stilled is static but what is static may not be stilled. Eric Baus does that to you. Makes you double-think so that everything is at once familiar and foreign.
Hurry Home Honey by Sawako Nakayasu (Burning Deck)
Ok, I’m still waiting for this one to arrive, but this is the book I’m most excited to read for summer. Here’s a blurb about the book, “These love poems are unusual for their sense of moving between cultures, their awareness of physical space as articulated by the intersection of human beings, the land, and architectural structures. Love itself is now game, sport, speed-time, dance, performance, now contract, conflict, failure, but always a shifting structure of relation.”
* * *
Steven Karl is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, State(s) of Flux (Peptic Robot Press), which is a collaboration with the artist, Joseph Lappie. His poems are forthcoming from Coconut, Vanitas, and Taiga.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Galatea Resurrects #12 featuring 87 new reviews!
AT: http://galatearesurrection12.blogspot.com/
* * *
No Tell contributor highlights:
Nic Sebastian reviews HARLOT by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Tom Beckett engages CADAVER DOGS by Rebecca Loudon
Nicola Trumbull reviews NEVER CRY WOOF by Shafer Hall
Tom Beckett interviews Reb Livingston
Thomas Fink reviews 237 MORE REASONS TO HAVE SEX by Denise Duhamel & Sandy McIntosh
Kristin Berkey-Abbott reviews 237 MORE REASONS TO HAVE SEX by Denise Duhamel & Sandy McIntosh
Tom Hibbard reviews FRAGILE REPLACEMENTS by William Allegrezza
Eileen Tabios engages DISCLOSURE by Dana Teen Lomax
Eric Gelsinger reviews TIME MACHINE by Ric Boyer
Nicole Mauro reviews [LAPSED INSEL WEARY] by Susana Gardner
Steven Karl reviews THE STARS ON THE 7:18 PENN by Ana Bozicevic
Eric Gelsinger reviews LETTERHEAD VOLUME 2, Eds. Eric Johnt, Bradley Lastname, Brian McMahon, Robert Pomerhn
Eileen Tabios engages PORTRAIT AND DREAM: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Bill Berkson
Ching-In Chen reviews THE ALPS by Brandon Shimoda
Eileen Tabios engages OPEN NIGHT by Aaron Lowinger
Craig Santos Perez reviews RIVER ANTES by Myung Mi Kim
William Allegrezza reviews DIPTYCHS: VISUAL POEMS by Nico Vassilakis
Eileen Tabios engages LUNCH POEMS by Mark Young and DELTA BLUES by Skip Fox
Nathan Logan reviews THAT TINY INSANE VOLUPTUOUSNESS by Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney
Nathan Logan reviews THE AMPUTEE´S GUIDE TO SEX by Jillian Weise
Steven Karl reviews CLARITY AND OTHER POEMS by Thomas Fink
Steven Karl reviews LOST WORK BOOK W/ LETTERS TO DEER by Catherine Meng
Eileen Tabios engages PLAGIARISM/OUTSOURCE by Tan Lin
* * *
No Tell contributor highlights:
Nic Sebastian reviews HARLOT by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Tom Beckett engages CADAVER DOGS by Rebecca Loudon
Nicola Trumbull reviews NEVER CRY WOOF by Shafer Hall
Tom Beckett interviews Reb Livingston
Thomas Fink reviews 237 MORE REASONS TO HAVE SEX by Denise Duhamel & Sandy McIntosh
Kristin Berkey-Abbott reviews 237 MORE REASONS TO HAVE SEX by Denise Duhamel & Sandy McIntosh
Tom Hibbard reviews FRAGILE REPLACEMENTS by William Allegrezza
Eileen Tabios engages DISCLOSURE by Dana Teen Lomax
Eric Gelsinger reviews TIME MACHINE by Ric Boyer
Nicole Mauro reviews [LAPSED INSEL WEARY] by Susana Gardner
Steven Karl reviews THE STARS ON THE 7:18 PENN by Ana Bozicevic
Eric Gelsinger reviews LETTERHEAD VOLUME 2, Eds. Eric Johnt, Bradley Lastname, Brian McMahon, Robert Pomerhn
Eileen Tabios engages PORTRAIT AND DREAM: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Bill Berkson
Ching-In Chen reviews THE ALPS by Brandon Shimoda
Eileen Tabios engages OPEN NIGHT by Aaron Lowinger
Craig Santos Perez reviews RIVER ANTES by Myung Mi Kim
William Allegrezza reviews DIPTYCHS: VISUAL POEMS by Nico Vassilakis
Eileen Tabios engages LUNCH POEMS by Mark Young and DELTA BLUES by Skip Fox
Nathan Logan reviews THAT TINY INSANE VOLUPTUOUSNESS by Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney
Nathan Logan reviews THE AMPUTEE´S GUIDE TO SEX by Jillian Weise
Steven Karl reviews CLARITY AND OTHER POEMS by Thomas Fink
Steven Karl reviews LOST WORK BOOK W/ LETTERS TO DEER by Catherine Meng
Eileen Tabios engages PLAGIARISM/OUTSOURCE by Tan Lin
Recommended Summer Reading - Cati Porter
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Cati Porter's recommendations:
Serious Pink by Sharon Dolin (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003)
I ordered this book several years ago because I was interested in ekphrasis and wanted to see what others had done. I fell immediately in love with this one. The poems are very pictorial -- both in image and in their placement on the page; I reacted to these poems in a very visceral, visual way, almost as though they were written in technicolor. Three of the four sections are after works by different artists: Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Mitchell, and Howard Hodgkin, with a fourth an “Ode to Color” that invokes poets’, painters’, and philosophers’ thoughts on color.
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (Vintage Books, 1999).
Autobiography of Red is billed as a novel in verse, and reads like one. I couldn’t put it down. It tells the story of a young man named Geryon who falls for Herakles, who is reckless and restless. It is a recasting of the original myth in modern terms, with an introduction to Stesichoros’ work, the original fragments of his Geryoneis, appendices investigating whether or not Stesichoros was indeed blinded by Helen, and a final “interview” with Stesichoros himself. The title page reads “Autobiography of Red: A Romance”, and it is.
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson (Vintage Books, 2002)
Here is another group of fragments rescued from papyrus and pieced together into something amazing. Of Sappho’s remaining work, only one poem is intact. Carson has taken these disparate fragments and placed them alongside one another so that they form an intricate mosaic. It’s not as fanciful as Autobiography of Red, but shares an aesthetic of reconstruction and illumination of the past through a process of revisioning.
Descent of Alette by Alice Notley (Penguin Books, 1992)
Notley’s Alette is a terrifying journey into an underworld ruled by a “tyrant”. Another novel in verse, it uses a typographical device (“ “) to draw attention to and disrupt the natural phrasings of the text: “all lines” “are broken into” “fragments that” “threaten to halt your” “reading while propelling” “you ever forward”. The story of Alette is described as a female epic, and is strange and disconcerting, and amazing. I know this isn’t a new book but it really affected me and I’d like to pass that on to any of you out there who have not read it yet.
Revolver by Robyn Schiff (Kuhl House Poets series/University of Iowa Press, 2008)
I especially admire collections that revolve (get it, revolve?) around a theme (evidenced by the above). In the case of Revolver, many of the poems in this collection riff on an object, including the original Singer sewing machine, an eighty-blade sportsman’s knife, de la Rue’s envelope machine, and multi-purpose steamship furniture that doubles as a flotation device. Oh, and of course the title poem-object, a Colt Rapid Fire Revolver. Other sundry items include a custom dress from the House of Schiaperelli hand painted with a lobster by Dali, the avian flue H1N1, and an exploration of the abduction of Calvin Klein’s daughter, Marci. Schiff’s poems are aptly constructed, strictly adhering to self-imposed syllabics even if it means breaking the line on an article or preposition, or hyphenating a word. And I use the word “riff” because, while she may start in one place, she leads us through a maze to get where she’s going, but always the thing is there, and one way or another, in the end it all makes sense.
* * *
Cati Porter is the author of Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press, 2008) and small fruit songs: prose poems (Pudding House, 2008). Her poems appear in the recent anthologies Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel -- Second Floor (No Tell Books), White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood (Demeter Press/York U., Canada), and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press). She is an associate editor for Babel Fruit, and founder & editor-in-chief of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry.
Cati Porter's recommendations:
Serious Pink by Sharon Dolin (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003)
I ordered this book several years ago because I was interested in ekphrasis and wanted to see what others had done. I fell immediately in love with this one. The poems are very pictorial -- both in image and in their placement on the page; I reacted to these poems in a very visceral, visual way, almost as though they were written in technicolor. Three of the four sections are after works by different artists: Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Mitchell, and Howard Hodgkin, with a fourth an “Ode to Color” that invokes poets’, painters’, and philosophers’ thoughts on color.
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson (Vintage Books, 1999).
Autobiography of Red is billed as a novel in verse, and reads like one. I couldn’t put it down. It tells the story of a young man named Geryon who falls for Herakles, who is reckless and restless. It is a recasting of the original myth in modern terms, with an introduction to Stesichoros’ work, the original fragments of his Geryoneis, appendices investigating whether or not Stesichoros was indeed blinded by Helen, and a final “interview” with Stesichoros himself. The title page reads “Autobiography of Red: A Romance”, and it is.
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson (Vintage Books, 2002)
Here is another group of fragments rescued from papyrus and pieced together into something amazing. Of Sappho’s remaining work, only one poem is intact. Carson has taken these disparate fragments and placed them alongside one another so that they form an intricate mosaic. It’s not as fanciful as Autobiography of Red, but shares an aesthetic of reconstruction and illumination of the past through a process of revisioning.
Descent of Alette by Alice Notley (Penguin Books, 1992)
Notley’s Alette is a terrifying journey into an underworld ruled by a “tyrant”. Another novel in verse, it uses a typographical device (“ “) to draw attention to and disrupt the natural phrasings of the text: “all lines” “are broken into” “fragments that” “threaten to halt your” “reading while propelling” “you ever forward”. The story of Alette is described as a female epic, and is strange and disconcerting, and amazing. I know this isn’t a new book but it really affected me and I’d like to pass that on to any of you out there who have not read it yet.
Revolver by Robyn Schiff (Kuhl House Poets series/University of Iowa Press, 2008)
I especially admire collections that revolve (get it, revolve?) around a theme (evidenced by the above). In the case of Revolver, many of the poems in this collection riff on an object, including the original Singer sewing machine, an eighty-blade sportsman’s knife, de la Rue’s envelope machine, and multi-purpose steamship furniture that doubles as a flotation device. Oh, and of course the title poem-object, a Colt Rapid Fire Revolver. Other sundry items include a custom dress from the House of Schiaperelli hand painted with a lobster by Dali, the avian flue H1N1, and an exploration of the abduction of Calvin Klein’s daughter, Marci. Schiff’s poems are aptly constructed, strictly adhering to self-imposed syllabics even if it means breaking the line on an article or preposition, or hyphenating a word. And I use the word “riff” because, while she may start in one place, she leads us through a maze to get where she’s going, but always the thing is there, and one way or another, in the end it all makes sense.
* * *
Cati Porter is the author of Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press, 2008) and small fruit songs: prose poems (Pudding House, 2008). Her poems appear in the recent anthologies Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel -- Second Floor (No Tell Books), White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood (Demeter Press/York U., Canada), and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press). She is an associate editor for Babel Fruit, and founder & editor-in-chief of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Small Publishers & Magazines Need Your Support Now More than Ever
From the director of Salt Publishing, Jen Hamilton-Emery:
As many of you will know, Chris and I have been struggling to keep Salt moving since June last year when the economic downturn began to affect our press. Our three year funding ends this year: we've £4,000 due from Arts Council England in a final payment, but cannot apply through Grants for the Arts for further funding for Salt's operations. Spring sales were down nearly 80% on the previous year, and despite April's much improved trading, the past twelve months has left us with a budget deficit of over £55,000. It's proving to be a very big hole and we're having to take some drastic measures to save our business.
Here's how you can help us to save Salt and all our work with hundreds of authors around the world.
JUST ONE BOOK
1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.
2. Share this note on your profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.
With my best wishes to you
Jen
Director
Salt Publishing
http://www.saltpublishing.com
* * *
Middlebury College has stated New England Review must eliminate its operating deficit (an admittedly nebulous term considering the way literary magazines are funded) by 2011 or funding for the magazine will be eliminated altogether.
* * *
I would be remiss not to mention that sales have been down for No Tell Books, as well. If the press sold a single book for each manuscript inquiry, it would be in pretty good shape. Sadly, that has never been the case.
Poetry will not be receiving a bailout. So be sure to support the publications and presses you care about. Many will likely not survive these next few years.
Signed,
Reb Livingston
* * *
As many of you will know, Chris and I have been struggling to keep Salt moving since June last year when the economic downturn began to affect our press. Our three year funding ends this year: we've £4,000 due from Arts Council England in a final payment, but cannot apply through Grants for the Arts for further funding for Salt's operations. Spring sales were down nearly 80% on the previous year, and despite April's much improved trading, the past twelve months has left us with a budget deficit of over £55,000. It's proving to be a very big hole and we're having to take some drastic measures to save our business.
Here's how you can help us to save Salt and all our work with hundreds of authors around the world.
JUST ONE BOOK
1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.
2. Share this note on your profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.
With my best wishes to you
Jen
Director
Salt Publishing
http://www.saltpublishing.com
* * *
Middlebury College has stated New England Review must eliminate its operating deficit (an admittedly nebulous term considering the way literary magazines are funded) by 2011 or funding for the magazine will be eliminated altogether.
* * *
I would be remiss not to mention that sales have been down for No Tell Books, as well. If the press sold a single book for each manuscript inquiry, it would be in pretty good shape. Sadly, that has never been the case.
Poetry will not be receiving a bailout. So be sure to support the publications and presses you care about. Many will likely not survive these next few years.
Signed,
Reb Livingston
* * *
Recommended Summer Reading - Elizabeth Bradfield
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Elizabeth Bradfield's recommendations:
Sight Map by Brian Teare (University of California Press, 2009)
Queerness and lust are woven into the interior language, which for some reason never becomes just clever, but keeps coming back to the real and the consequences of the real. I admire that tremendously. This book is earthy as well as heady. It’s romantic as well as modern. It's formally innovative without ever feeling tricky. Interesting. Compelling. Yes.
Azores by David Yezzi (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2008)
What a beautiful book... redolent of Larkin, of Thom Gunn. That fierce eye, fierce and formal control. Yezzi paints himself in a bad light --self-centered, a bit cruel. Of course it makes for compelling reading. The sequence the book is named for “Azores,” is a gorgeous sequence of sonnet-likes.
Bucolics by Maurice Manning (Harcourt, 2007)
The original and compelling and entire vision of this book just sucked me in. 70 poems all in one voice, all spoken by a farmer to "Boss" (God). No punctuation, the sense of it made by the rhythms. And it works. This person talking about weather, plants, animals, addressing Boss intimately and crankily and reverently is amazing.
Slave Moth by Thalias Moss (Persea Books, 2004)
The plot: the book recounts the inner life of Varl, a slave, over what seems to be a few months. Slave to a strange master who likes to have “oddities” (an albino slave, a dwarf, a literate woman (Varl's mother) who teaches the neighboring slaves to read.), Varl herself is an oddity for her independent spirit and her literary-ness. The poems' central concern: the nature of freedom, of slavery. Moss moves into complicated territory, into taboos and moral uncertainties.
Ornithologies by Joshua Poteat (Anhinga Press, 2006)
What a pleasure to discover, at the end of the book, a whimsical index of bird references. Whimsical and accurate, I should say. Poteat reaches wide, casting to art, memory, landscape for anchors to his emotional poems.
The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Presea Books, 2005)
This book is strong and tightly-written. Formally conservative. Subject-wise... woah. Especially “Adult Movie” -- sexuality and industrial collapse and the violence of growing up. It’s all there.
Eva-Mary by Linda McCarriston (TriQuarterly Books, 1991)
Eva-Mary is brutal and direct, yet delicately wrought. The poems move down the page without any visual trickery, letting the extruded words do their work. There is nothing unnecessary in the poems here, nothing gratuitous, and the poems work to reach beyond the specifics of one life to reach out to the other many unspoken lives that must recognize what’s in here.
* * *
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Interpretive Work (Arktoi Books, 2008), which won the Audre Lorde Prize and is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Orion, and No Tell Motel. She is the founder and editor of the grassroots-distributed and guerilla-art-inspired Broadsided Press. Bradfield’s second collection Approaching Ice, will be published this winter by Persea Books. A Wallace Stegner Fellow, she works as a naturalist.
Elizabeth Bradfield's recommendations:
Sight Map by Brian Teare (University of California Press, 2009)
Queerness and lust are woven into the interior language, which for some reason never becomes just clever, but keeps coming back to the real and the consequences of the real. I admire that tremendously. This book is earthy as well as heady. It’s romantic as well as modern. It's formally innovative without ever feeling tricky. Interesting. Compelling. Yes.
Azores by David Yezzi (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2008)
What a beautiful book... redolent of Larkin, of Thom Gunn. That fierce eye, fierce and formal control. Yezzi paints himself in a bad light --self-centered, a bit cruel. Of course it makes for compelling reading. The sequence the book is named for “Azores,” is a gorgeous sequence of sonnet-likes.
Bucolics by Maurice Manning (Harcourt, 2007)
The original and compelling and entire vision of this book just sucked me in. 70 poems all in one voice, all spoken by a farmer to "Boss" (God). No punctuation, the sense of it made by the rhythms. And it works. This person talking about weather, plants, animals, addressing Boss intimately and crankily and reverently is amazing.
Slave Moth by Thalias Moss (Persea Books, 2004)
The plot: the book recounts the inner life of Varl, a slave, over what seems to be a few months. Slave to a strange master who likes to have “oddities” (an albino slave, a dwarf, a literate woman (Varl's mother) who teaches the neighboring slaves to read.), Varl herself is an oddity for her independent spirit and her literary-ness. The poems' central concern: the nature of freedom, of slavery. Moss moves into complicated territory, into taboos and moral uncertainties.
Ornithologies by Joshua Poteat (Anhinga Press, 2006)
What a pleasure to discover, at the end of the book, a whimsical index of bird references. Whimsical and accurate, I should say. Poteat reaches wide, casting to art, memory, landscape for anchors to his emotional poems.
The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Presea Books, 2005)
This book is strong and tightly-written. Formally conservative. Subject-wise... woah. Especially “Adult Movie” -- sexuality and industrial collapse and the violence of growing up. It’s all there.
Eva-Mary by Linda McCarriston (TriQuarterly Books, 1991)
Eva-Mary is brutal and direct, yet delicately wrought. The poems move down the page without any visual trickery, letting the extruded words do their work. There is nothing unnecessary in the poems here, nothing gratuitous, and the poems work to reach beyond the specifics of one life to reach out to the other many unspoken lives that must recognize what’s in here.
* * *
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Interpretive Work (Arktoi Books, 2008), which won the Audre Lorde Prize and is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Orion, and No Tell Motel. She is the founder and editor of the grassroots-distributed and guerilla-art-inspired Broadsided Press. Bradfield’s second collection Approaching Ice, will be published this winter by Persea Books. A Wallace Stegner Fellow, she works as a naturalist.
Monday, May 18, 2009
New Titles by No Tell Poets
Joshua Marie Wilkinson, The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth (Tupelo Press).
This Week at No Tell
Jason Fraley is limbs-for-wings transaction gone awry this week at No Tell Motel.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Recommended Summer Reading - Evie Shockley
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Evie Shockley's recommendations, two books and a reminder:
Expressway by Sina Queyras (Coach House Books)
If you live in NJ, NY, or Philadelphia and have a relationship (intimate or otherwise) with the NJ Turnpike, or if you know any interstate (U.S.) or Canadian highways like the back of your preferred steering-wheel hand, you want to read this book. If the rest of you would like to know what it's like to be attuned to the frequencies of high-speed asphalt and all that goes with it, you should read this book. If you have or want to attain a super-heightened consciousness of the environmental consequences of our being able to travel by car with the ease we have had for the last half-century, you must read this book. If you like your poetry brainy, funny, viseral, and ethical, simultaneously and by turns, you have no excuse for not reading this book. Read more here.
Hecate Lochia by Hoa Nguyen (Hot Whiskey Press)
I read the first half of this book a few months ago, when it was first released, and fell immediately in love with the language and ideas and heart that were flying around in its lines. I couldn't bear to finish it so quickly (a response usually reserved for novels, in my experience), so I put it down . . . and got so buried in work that I have yet to get back to it. My reward: absolutely fabulous summer reading to look forward to. Reward yourself, too.
Reminder. ]Open Interval[ by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Pitt)
Back at Christmas, I recommended a book that I couldn't wait to have its release . . . but I *did* have to wait, as it turns out. Until late April, no less. Now it is in my hot little hands, and I offer you this brief reminder that you deserve (you've been good!) to put a few of your poetry-reading hours into Van Clief-Stefanon's strong, agile hands. This book is not astrology, but it is about what the stars have to tell us about our lives. This book is not a meal, but it is about hungers, how to satisfy them, and at what cost. For details, click here. Soothe your own hot little hands.
* * *
Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Tuesday; An Art Project, Pluck!, The Southern Review, Achiote Seeds, Studio, and, of course, No Tell Motel, among others. Currently a co-editor of jubilat, she teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Evie Shockley's recommendations, two books and a reminder:
Expressway by Sina Queyras (Coach House Books)
If you live in NJ, NY, or Philadelphia and have a relationship (intimate or otherwise) with the NJ Turnpike, or if you know any interstate (U.S.) or Canadian highways like the back of your preferred steering-wheel hand, you want to read this book. If the rest of you would like to know what it's like to be attuned to the frequencies of high-speed asphalt and all that goes with it, you should read this book. If you have or want to attain a super-heightened consciousness of the environmental consequences of our being able to travel by car with the ease we have had for the last half-century, you must read this book. If you like your poetry brainy, funny, viseral, and ethical, simultaneously and by turns, you have no excuse for not reading this book. Read more here.
Hecate Lochia by Hoa Nguyen (Hot Whiskey Press)
I read the first half of this book a few months ago, when it was first released, and fell immediately in love with the language and ideas and heart that were flying around in its lines. I couldn't bear to finish it so quickly (a response usually reserved for novels, in my experience), so I put it down . . . and got so buried in work that I have yet to get back to it. My reward: absolutely fabulous summer reading to look forward to. Reward yourself, too.
Reminder. ]Open Interval[ by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Pitt)
Back at Christmas, I recommended a book that I couldn't wait to have its release . . . but I *did* have to wait, as it turns out. Until late April, no less. Now it is in my hot little hands, and I offer you this brief reminder that you deserve (you've been good!) to put a few of your poetry-reading hours into Van Clief-Stefanon's strong, agile hands. This book is not astrology, but it is about what the stars have to tell us about our lives. This book is not a meal, but it is about hungers, how to satisfy them, and at what cost. For details, click here. Soothe your own hot little hands.
* * *
Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Tuesday; An Art Project, Pluck!, The Southern Review, Achiote Seeds, Studio, and, of course, No Tell Motel, among others. Currently a co-editor of jubilat, she teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Monday, May 11, 2009
This Week at No Tell
Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney sometimes like to pointedly miss the point this week at No Tell Motel.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Open Reading Period: Pilot Books
Introducing: The Meddling Kids Series....Just wait'll we get our hands on those books!
Pilot Books will hold our first open reading period in May of 2009 to select a manuscript to be published in our new Meddling Kids Series. Please submit 2 printed copies of your original poetry manuscript (10-25 pages of verse) postmarked between May 1st -May 31st , 2009. Include two cover pages--one with manuscript title, your name, address, email and phone; another with manuscript title only. Manuscripts will be logged in by an impartial third party, read anonymously by the editors and a panel of outside readers. A selection of finalists may be asked to submit their manuscript electronically. No SASE necessary, we will communicate via email. Post your entries, along with a $10 reading fee to the address below. (All entry $$ will fund the production of the selected manuscript.)
Pilot Books
39 Lilly Street
Florence, MA 01062
Pilot Books will hold our first open reading period in May of 2009 to select a manuscript to be published in our new Meddling Kids Series. Please submit 2 printed copies of your original poetry manuscript (10-25 pages of verse) postmarked between May 1st -May 31st , 2009. Include two cover pages--one with manuscript title, your name, address, email and phone; another with manuscript title only. Manuscripts will be logged in by an impartial third party, read anonymously by the editors and a panel of outside readers. A selection of finalists may be asked to submit their manuscript electronically. No SASE necessary, we will communicate via email. Post your entries, along with a $10 reading fee to the address below. (All entry $$ will fund the production of the selected manuscript.)
Pilot Books
39 Lilly Street
Florence, MA 01062
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
ANNA NICOLE: THE UNTOLD STORY
May 21 7-9 PM THE WRITERS CENTER
4508 Walsh Ave. Bethesda MD. 20815 301-654-8664
PANPIPES presents a reading of Act 1, draft 1 of
ANNA NICOLE: THE UNTOLD STORY
by Grace Cavalieri
featuring:
Rose Solari as Anna
Jimmy Patterson as Horshel
Ellen Cole as Anima
Jim Gagne as Pushkin
Ken Flynn as Interviewer the marvelous
Also featured Cliff Bernier and his fabulous jazz ensemble
4508 Walsh Ave. Bethesda MD. 20815 301-654-8664
PANPIPES presents a reading of Act 1, draft 1 of
ANNA NICOLE: THE UNTOLD STORY
by Grace Cavalieri
featuring:
Rose Solari as Anna
Jimmy Patterson as Horshel
Ellen Cole as Anima
Jim Gagne as Pushkin
Ken Flynn as Interviewer the marvelous
Also featured Cliff Bernier and his fabulous jazz ensemble
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Recommended Summer Reading - Jessy Randall
During May and June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Jessy Randall's recommendations:
How to be Perfect by Ron Padgett (Coffee House Press, 2007)
Ron Padgett is part of the New York School of poets, like Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara. How to be Perfect is worth buying for "Words from the Front" alone ("We don't look as young / as we used to / except in the dim light / especially in / the soft warmth of candlelight / when we say / in all sincerity / You're so cute / and / You're my cutie. / Imagine / two old people / behaving like this. / It's enough / to make you happy.") This book might be enough to make you happy, too.
The Cheap Seats by Scott Poole (Lost Horse Press, 1999)
These poems are funny and weird. Another one to make you happy. I bought The Cheap Seats solely because it contained "New York Women" ("I have never been to New York / but I imagine all New York women / having long hair, long hair / they are always combing, / thick hair that gets loose / and crawls down the skyscrapers / in the static of the afternoon...") but all the poems in it are good.
* * *
Jessy Randall's collection of poems A Day in Boyland (Ghost Road Press, 2007) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her young adult novel, The Wandora Unit, is forthcoming from Ghost Road in September 2009. It's about friendship and love in the high school literary magazine crowd. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.
Jessy Randall's recommendations:
How to be Perfect by Ron Padgett (Coffee House Press, 2007)
Ron Padgett is part of the New York School of poets, like Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara. How to be Perfect is worth buying for "Words from the Front" alone ("We don't look as young / as we used to / except in the dim light / especially in / the soft warmth of candlelight / when we say / in all sincerity / You're so cute / and / You're my cutie. / Imagine / two old people / behaving like this. / It's enough / to make you happy.") This book might be enough to make you happy, too.
The Cheap Seats by Scott Poole (Lost Horse Press, 1999)
These poems are funny and weird. Another one to make you happy. I bought The Cheap Seats solely because it contained "New York Women" ("I have never been to New York / but I imagine all New York women / having long hair, long hair / they are always combing, / thick hair that gets loose / and crawls down the skyscrapers / in the static of the afternoon...") but all the poems in it are good.
* * *
Jessy Randall's collection of poems A Day in Boyland (Ghost Road Press, 2007) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her young adult novel, The Wandora Unit, is forthcoming from Ghost Road in September 2009. It's about friendship and love in the high school literary magazine crowd. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Ringing Video Contest
Kitchen Press is now accepting submissions of short home-made videos to accompany individual poems from Rauan Klassnik's online chapbook Ringing.
Details for contest here.
Details for contest here.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Kyle Semmel Interviews Reb Livingston
Poetry is a Gift Community: An Interview with Reb Livingston
I don't think I'd use the word "industry" to describe poetry publishing and don't consider it to be some sort of capitalist venture. I don't approach publishing with a supply/demand model. If I approached it in those terms, I never would have done any of it. In those terms there's a poem glut and a dismal demand for them. In those terms there should be 2 publishers putting out 5 books a year and maybe 4 or 5 poetry magazines.
No Tell Motel Reading Period
No Tell Motel's reading period is open during the month of May.
Before submitting poems, please familiarize yourself with our guidelines. Submissions that fail to follow the guidelines are not considered. If you have any questions, please inquire beforehand.
Before submitting poems, please familiarize yourself with our guidelines. Submissions that fail to follow the guidelines are not considered. If you have any questions, please inquire beforehand.
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