During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Melissa Barrett's recommendations:
Cloud Shaped Room by Matt Anserello (Open Thread, 2009)
Hilarious and spastic—a great little book from a great (and new) little press: Open Thread. Anserello writes in "Scuzzoid Kid in a Tree": “My girlfriend is going to be so cool about my broken arm. She’ll buy colored markers and all the beer.”
The Master Letters by Lucie Brock-Broido (Knopf, 1995)
I reread this book frequently, though each time it feels like the first. That’s Lucie’s biggest talent: surprise. Each linebreak tilts the reader: here, here, and there—into a room you’ve never been in before. “I pray / Alone. In the ashes, nobody’s isotope, / No glass of milk. Nobody’s stained- / Glass messages, not the radium / In its dish, wide-eyed / As Madame Curie.”
The Kingfisher by Amy Clampitt (Knopf, 1983)
Her first book, published when she was 63, bursts off the pages; it’s a hardworking but oft-forgotten “vegetation of unbarbered, virgin, foot-thick / velvet,” à la GM Hopkins.
Ave, Materia by Jean Hartig (The Poetry Society of America chapbook series, 2009)
One of my most favorite little books: tender, obsessive, and comprised entirely of word pairings you wished you had thought of—“Corona Isobel in the grasses, / a series of citrine kitestrings / holster the miniature heart.”
Afterpastures by Claire Hero (Caketrain, 2008)
A textured but beautifully-paced collection, hungry for a good reader. The cover art alone is worth the asking price. “[A] lantern / to light this bonethicket / & the little path of crumbs / away, away—”
Walking to Martha’s Vineyard by Franz Wright (Knopf, 2003)
In his Pulitzer Prize winner, Wright is imploring, he’s haunting, he follows few conventions. Read it in one sitting, though you might get dizzy. “I don’t miss you, and I don’t wish you well / Says crocuses / coaxed out of hiding / and killed in the snow / Says six o’clock and a billion black birds / wheeling.”
* * *
Melissa Barrett is the author of False Soup, a veg-friendly recipe book from Forklift, Ink. Her poems can be found in current or forthcoming issues of No Tell Motel, Sotto Voce, Grasslimb, Forklift Ohio, and the Wittenberg Review of Literature and Art. She has received honors from Tin House, Indiana Review, and Gulf Coast, and currently lives in Kent, Ohio.
Monday, June 28, 2010
This Week at No Tell Motel
Bernadette Geyer follows her down that rickety staircase this week at No Tell Motel.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Megan Kaminski
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Megan Kaminski's recommendations:
Debts and Obligations by Alicia Cohen (O Books)
The poems are full of unsettling beauty. They explore the connections between people, animals, and the worlds we all inhabit--all the while interrogating how we make these categorical distinctions.
Elapsing Speedway Organism by Bruce Covey (No Tell Books)
Smart, tactile, giddy language. How could anyone not love a book containing "14 Kung Fu Climaxes”? This should whet your appetite for Covey's Glass is Really a Liquid, coming out in the fall.
The Last 4 Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta Press)
“One begins with so little—collecting, sweeping. Or seeing it, just seeing.” Light, perception, creating and being captured by images. There's a lot going on here. All held together by Greenstreet's gorgeous music.
Neighbor by Rachel Levitsky (Ugly Duckling Presse)
"Detachment is the thing/ I create when I// Am not aware of the I/ I am aware of." Explores distinctions between private/public, interior/exterior, individual/collective. Her writing simultaneously pulls the world into it, and expands itself into the world.
O Resplandor by Erín Moure (House of Anansi Press)
My current summer reading--another wonderful book from one of my favorite poets. Reading as embodiment--of selves, others, places, and sensation.
* * *
Megan Kaminski is the author of two chapbooks: Across Soft Ruins (Scantily Clad Press, 2009), and The Prairie Opens Wide (La Ginestra, forthcoming). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published or is forthcoming in 6x6, Coconut, CutBank, Denver Quarterly, Phoebe and other fine journals. She lives in Lawrence, KS, where she teaches poetry at the University of Kansas. Find her online at: http://megankaminski.com/
Megan Kaminski's recommendations:
Debts and Obligations by Alicia Cohen (O Books)
The poems are full of unsettling beauty. They explore the connections between people, animals, and the worlds we all inhabit--all the while interrogating how we make these categorical distinctions.
Elapsing Speedway Organism by Bruce Covey (No Tell Books)
Smart, tactile, giddy language. How could anyone not love a book containing "14 Kung Fu Climaxes”? This should whet your appetite for Covey's Glass is Really a Liquid, coming out in the fall.
The Last 4 Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta Press)
“One begins with so little—collecting, sweeping. Or seeing it, just seeing.” Light, perception, creating and being captured by images. There's a lot going on here. All held together by Greenstreet's gorgeous music.
Neighbor by Rachel Levitsky (Ugly Duckling Presse)
"Detachment is the thing/ I create when I// Am not aware of the I/ I am aware of." Explores distinctions between private/public, interior/exterior, individual/collective. Her writing simultaneously pulls the world into it, and expands itself into the world.
O Resplandor by Erín Moure (House of Anansi Press)
My current summer reading--another wonderful book from one of my favorite poets. Reading as embodiment--of selves, others, places, and sensation.
* * *
Megan Kaminski is the author of two chapbooks: Across Soft Ruins (Scantily Clad Press, 2009), and The Prairie Opens Wide (La Ginestra, forthcoming). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published or is forthcoming in 6x6, Coconut, CutBank, Denver Quarterly, Phoebe and other fine journals. She lives in Lawrence, KS, where she teaches poetry at the University of Kansas. Find her online at: http://megankaminski.com/
Friday, June 25, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Suzanne Frischkorn
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Suzanne Frischkorn's recommendations:
The Last Lie by Tony Gloeggler (NYQ Books, 2010)
The Last 4 Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta)
Elements by Deborah Poe (Stockport Flats)
Stealing Dust by Karen J. Weyant (Finishing Line Press)
Phantom Noise by Brian Turner (Alice James Books)
Bear Country by Dana Sonnenschein (National Federation of State Poetry Societies Press)
Ruthless by Jeff Mock (Three Candles Press)
Memoir
Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa by Rigoberto González (UW Press)
One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest (Harper Collins)
All Screwed Up by Steve Fellner (Benu Press)
* * *
Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Girl on a Bridge, (2010) and Lit Windowpane (2008) both from Main Street Rag Publishing, as well as five chapbooks, most recently American Flamingo (MiPO, 2008). She is also an Assistant Poetry Editor for Anti-.
Suzanne Frischkorn's recommendations:
The Last Lie by Tony Gloeggler (NYQ Books, 2010)
The Last 4 Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsahta)
Elements by Deborah Poe (Stockport Flats)
Stealing Dust by Karen J. Weyant (Finishing Line Press)
Phantom Noise by Brian Turner (Alice James Books)
Bear Country by Dana Sonnenschein (National Federation of State Poetry Societies Press)
Ruthless by Jeff Mock (Three Candles Press)
Memoir
Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa by Rigoberto González (UW Press)
One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest (Harper Collins)
All Screwed Up by Steve Fellner (Benu Press)
* * *
Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of Girl on a Bridge, (2010) and Lit Windowpane (2008) both from Main Street Rag Publishing, as well as five chapbooks, most recently American Flamingo (MiPO, 2008). She is also an Assistant Poetry Editor for Anti-.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Tony Mancus
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Tony Mancus's recommendations:
The Bugging Watch by Kim Gek Lin Short (Tarpaulin Sky)
Weird and wonderful little book that unravels its story: bugs on the page, bugs in the heart of the doll that can’t be recreated and an exhibition of obsession and precisely off-kilter syntax. Good read and pocketsized (or almost), so good for the traveling. The newest round of TS books are all pretty stellar, too.
On Wonderland & Waste by Sandy Florian (Sidebrow Books)
They make very beautiful things happen at Sidebrow (also Selenography is well worth admission). The book’s got accompanying collages that work to give the prose-poems contained within it another set of mirrors to work onto and away from. The living spaces created here are as natural and as startling as the world should be.
sum of every lost ship by Allison Titus (Cleveland State)
Something in me likes the winter and seafaring. And when it’s this stupidly hot already in June, it’s nice to have a place where it feels like I could disintegrate into snow. Aside from being a seasonal transport, these poems strike notes that make my bones feel shaky (in the best way possible).
Pigafetta Is My Wife by Joe Hall (Black Ocean)
Again with the seafaring…the opening section wraps the warped head of Antonio Pigafetta up in blankets, so the fever he carries will only push the mercury further down the glass. Later there are images and lines and erasures and spaces that make a can out of your head and kick it some.
Chapbooks
Revenant by Stephanie Balzer (Kore)
A series of domestic scenes folded into meditation/mediation. The house and people within it get balanced and then cut away by a bevy of voices and contemplation. And the speaker is a reflection of all of us, in ways.
No Omen by Heather Green (Love Among the Ruins)
Very tightly wrought poems dance in sound. Again there’s something wintery here—a loss steeled by wonder and tonally (totally) grounded in its images.
* * *
Tony Mancus lives in Rosslyn, VA with his fiance, a chinchilla, and two cats. He is co-founder of Flying Guillotine Press and he has poems coming out in Verse, Fawlt, and Artifice.
Tony Mancus's recommendations:
The Bugging Watch by Kim Gek Lin Short (Tarpaulin Sky)
Weird and wonderful little book that unravels its story: bugs on the page, bugs in the heart of the doll that can’t be recreated and an exhibition of obsession and precisely off-kilter syntax. Good read and pocketsized (or almost), so good for the traveling. The newest round of TS books are all pretty stellar, too.
On Wonderland & Waste by Sandy Florian (Sidebrow Books)
They make very beautiful things happen at Sidebrow (also Selenography is well worth admission). The book’s got accompanying collages that work to give the prose-poems contained within it another set of mirrors to work onto and away from. The living spaces created here are as natural and as startling as the world should be.
sum of every lost ship by Allison Titus (Cleveland State)
Something in me likes the winter and seafaring. And when it’s this stupidly hot already in June, it’s nice to have a place where it feels like I could disintegrate into snow. Aside from being a seasonal transport, these poems strike notes that make my bones feel shaky (in the best way possible).
Pigafetta Is My Wife by Joe Hall (Black Ocean)
Again with the seafaring…the opening section wraps the warped head of Antonio Pigafetta up in blankets, so the fever he carries will only push the mercury further down the glass. Later there are images and lines and erasures and spaces that make a can out of your head and kick it some.
Chapbooks
Revenant by Stephanie Balzer (Kore)
A series of domestic scenes folded into meditation/mediation. The house and people within it get balanced and then cut away by a bevy of voices and contemplation. And the speaker is a reflection of all of us, in ways.
No Omen by Heather Green (Love Among the Ruins)
Very tightly wrought poems dance in sound. Again there’s something wintery here—a loss steeled by wonder and tonally (totally) grounded in its images.
* * *
Tony Mancus lives in Rosslyn, VA with his fiance, a chinchilla, and two cats. He is co-founder of Flying Guillotine Press and he has poems coming out in Verse, Fawlt, and Artifice.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Lucy Biederman
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Lucy Biederman's recommendations:
Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon by Mel Nichols (Edge Books, 2009)
The first poet that ever made me think WOW POETRY was Frank O'Hara (I think that's probably true for a lot of people). The mental and physical city that this book takes place in reminds me in some ways of a weirder, more wild and scary and sad and beautiful Frank O'Hara-era New York. It makes me love to be a poet and love to live in the DC area.
Apology for the Book of Creatures by Dan Beachy-Quick (Ahsahta, 2008)
This is a chapbook with black and white and purple prints by Stephanie Bacon. I love the way DBQ reads in his writing; he has a beautiful and exciting way of reading texts, and the world, in his poetry.
Sight Map by Brian Teare (U of California Press, 2009)
This book is full of weird and brilliant forms and lyrics that make me think in new ways about the kinds of things you start to think it might be impossible to think in new ways about--things like love and loss and God.
Bobcat Country by Brandi Homan (Shearsman Books, 2010)
I loved reading this book because it filled me with so many feelings: I felt nostalgic, then annoyed, a little bit shocked, amazed, wistful, sad, excited, anxious, wowed. I had this feeling of wanting to sing along with it.
* * *
Lucy Biederman lives in and loves Fairfax, VA. Her poetry is forthcoming in No Tell Motel, The Apalachee Review, and PMSpoemmemoirstory and has recently appeared in The Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, and Gargoyle.
Lucy Biederman's recommendations:
Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon by Mel Nichols (Edge Books, 2009)
The first poet that ever made me think WOW POETRY was Frank O'Hara (I think that's probably true for a lot of people). The mental and physical city that this book takes place in reminds me in some ways of a weirder, more wild and scary and sad and beautiful Frank O'Hara-era New York. It makes me love to be a poet and love to live in the DC area.
Apology for the Book of Creatures by Dan Beachy-Quick (Ahsahta, 2008)
This is a chapbook with black and white and purple prints by Stephanie Bacon. I love the way DBQ reads in his writing; he has a beautiful and exciting way of reading texts, and the world, in his poetry.
Sight Map by Brian Teare (U of California Press, 2009)
This book is full of weird and brilliant forms and lyrics that make me think in new ways about the kinds of things you start to think it might be impossible to think in new ways about--things like love and loss and God.
Bobcat Country by Brandi Homan (Shearsman Books, 2010)
I loved reading this book because it filled me with so many feelings: I felt nostalgic, then annoyed, a little bit shocked, amazed, wistful, sad, excited, anxious, wowed. I had this feeling of wanting to sing along with it.
* * *
Lucy Biederman lives in and loves Fairfax, VA. Her poetry is forthcoming in No Tell Motel, The Apalachee Review, and PMSpoemmemoirstory and has recently appeared in The Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, and Gargoyle.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Bernadette Geyer
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Bernadette Geyers's recommendations:
To me, summer is a time for delight, so I will list a selection of poetry collections that have delighted me. If you ask me again next week, I will probably come up with a completely different list.
Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees by Julianna Baggott (LSU Press)
Wit and sass abound in this collection. In fact, they mambo fiercely together.
Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man - Volume 2 by Marvin Bell (Copper Canyon Press)
This collection poked a cattle prod into my previously staid way of thinking about poetry.
Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
If only this had been the version taught in my high school English class!
Selected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco Press)
Fabulist poems with generous doses of subversive politics and inanimate objects that “reprove us constantly for our instability.”
Burning the Empty Nests by Gregory Orr (Harper and Row) Out of print, sorry. But it’s available on AbeBooks.com
How can you resist a poet who is able to make you cry over the love life of a stone?
The Myth of the Simple Machines by Laurel Snyder (No Tell Books)
If contemporary fairy tales could kick sand in the faces of those Brothers Grimm, these would.
Selected Poems by Mark Strand (Knopf)
This was my introduction to how well surrealism can be woven into the fabric of a poem.
* * *
Bernadette Geyer is the author of a poetry chapbook, What Remains, and recipient of a 2010 Strauss Fellowship from the Arts Council of Fairfax County. Her poems have most recently appeared in Los Angeles Review, Waccamaw, Center, and Barn Owl Review.
Bernadette Geyers's recommendations:
To me, summer is a time for delight, so I will list a selection of poetry collections that have delighted me. If you ask me again next week, I will probably come up with a completely different list.
Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees by Julianna Baggott (LSU Press)
Wit and sass abound in this collection. In fact, they mambo fiercely together.
Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man - Volume 2 by Marvin Bell (Copper Canyon Press)
This collection poked a cattle prod into my previously staid way of thinking about poetry.
Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
If only this had been the version taught in my high school English class!
Selected Poems by Zbigniew Herbert (Ecco Press)
Fabulist poems with generous doses of subversive politics and inanimate objects that “reprove us constantly for our instability.”
Burning the Empty Nests by Gregory Orr (Harper and Row) Out of print, sorry. But it’s available on AbeBooks.com
How can you resist a poet who is able to make you cry over the love life of a stone?
The Myth of the Simple Machines by Laurel Snyder (No Tell Books)
If contemporary fairy tales could kick sand in the faces of those Brothers Grimm, these would.
Selected Poems by Mark Strand (Knopf)
This was my introduction to how well surrealism can be woven into the fabric of a poem.
* * *
Bernadette Geyer is the author of a poetry chapbook, What Remains, and recipient of a 2010 Strauss Fellowship from the Arts Council of Fairfax County. Her poems have most recently appeared in Los Angeles Review, Waccamaw, Center, and Barn Owl Review.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Dave Newman
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Dave Newman's recommendations:
Tiny Teeth (the Wormwood Review Poems) by Ann Menebroker (R.L. Crow Publications, 2004)
Okay, this has been out for six years but, like so many other small press poetry books, I missed it. My copy just arrived in the mail yesterday and I’ve been flipping around and reading random poems out loud. I’m excited about this book for two reasons: 1.) Ann Menebroker and 2.) Marvin Malone. Ann, a fixture on the small press scene for decades (going back to typewriters and carbons), is a great poet. Marvin Malone, long time publisher of the Wormwood Review, was a great editor. He recognized great American voices and Ann was one. These are the poems he accepted and published by Ann over a twenty-year period. Ann’s poem “Ernest Hemingway Is On My Mind” is still one of my favorites, and it’s right here, on pg. 4.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin (Melville House, 2006)
This guy is a walking talking publicity machine, mixing it up on the internet with various writers and editors. I read his novella Shoplifting From American Apparel and thought it was great—a short, realistic story about how a young person lives while being broke and intellectual. Then I read his novel Eeeee Ee Eee and it was sort of the same book but with more references to celebrities and dolphins appearing randomly and then dolphins killing a celebrity. I don’t think I huffed enough glue in my youth to understand this one. So now I’m on to his poetry. I’m also looking forward to his novel Richard Yates (due this September, also from Melville House).
Sequin Soul by Joan Jobe Smith (Chance Press, summer 2010)
Chance Press makes beautiful chapbooks and Joan Jobe Smith writes beautiful poems with beautiful long lines about all kinds of beautiful and not-so-beautiful people, especially the ones who used to hang out at the bars where she used to go-go dance back in the 60s and early 70s. Lately, her poems have been filled with recipes and love letters to her machinist husband. I’m sure I’ll love whatever this one delivers.
After-Dinner Declarations by Nicanor Parra (Host Publications, 2009)
If Pablo Neruda is the great and beautiful sun burning bright at the center of Chilean poetry, then Nicanor Parra is the Lenny Bruce, wisecracking in the corner with a couple drinks and some lines you need to hear. All of Parra’s poetry books are spectacular, playing with our ideas of poetry and politics and sex and religion, so I’m excited to see what this collection of speeches will deliver.
Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty by Tony Hoagland (Graywolf Press, 2010)
I really liked Hoagland’s first two books. His third book felt mean and, worse than that, mean on purpose. He even has an essay on being mean. Sarah Silverman is mean. Dane Cook is mean. Charlie Sheen, on that show I’ve seen ten seconds of, is mean and in his real life he pulled a knife on his wife. Every reality TV show on TV is mean. I understand that lots of contemporary poetry lacks character and humor and is politically correct, but still, culturally speaking, we’re plenty of jackoffs in a row; thus, I’m seldom interested in hanging out with an asshole on the page. Hoagland, in his third book, was on my nerves. In one poem, there’s this line about watching a black woman and a white woman play tennis and rooting for the white woman “because she was one of my kind, my tribe.” Maybe it’s the sort of insight to whip an English Department into a tizzy but out here it sounds sort of flat and naïve and mean. So I’ll be reading Hoagland’s new book this summer and maybe hating him and possibly hating myself.
* * *
Dave Newman lives in Trafford, PA. His novel, Please Don't Shoot Anyone Tonight, should be out any day now from World Parade Books. He's is also the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently, Allen Ginsberg Comes To Pittsburgh.
Dave Newman's recommendations:
Tiny Teeth (the Wormwood Review Poems) by Ann Menebroker (R.L. Crow Publications, 2004)
Okay, this has been out for six years but, like so many other small press poetry books, I missed it. My copy just arrived in the mail yesterday and I’ve been flipping around and reading random poems out loud. I’m excited about this book for two reasons: 1.) Ann Menebroker and 2.) Marvin Malone. Ann, a fixture on the small press scene for decades (going back to typewriters and carbons), is a great poet. Marvin Malone, long time publisher of the Wormwood Review, was a great editor. He recognized great American voices and Ann was one. These are the poems he accepted and published by Ann over a twenty-year period. Ann’s poem “Ernest Hemingway Is On My Mind” is still one of my favorites, and it’s right here, on pg. 4.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin (Melville House, 2006)
This guy is a walking talking publicity machine, mixing it up on the internet with various writers and editors. I read his novella Shoplifting From American Apparel and thought it was great—a short, realistic story about how a young person lives while being broke and intellectual. Then I read his novel Eeeee Ee Eee and it was sort of the same book but with more references to celebrities and dolphins appearing randomly and then dolphins killing a celebrity. I don’t think I huffed enough glue in my youth to understand this one. So now I’m on to his poetry. I’m also looking forward to his novel Richard Yates (due this September, also from Melville House).
Sequin Soul by Joan Jobe Smith (Chance Press, summer 2010)
Chance Press makes beautiful chapbooks and Joan Jobe Smith writes beautiful poems with beautiful long lines about all kinds of beautiful and not-so-beautiful people, especially the ones who used to hang out at the bars where she used to go-go dance back in the 60s and early 70s. Lately, her poems have been filled with recipes and love letters to her machinist husband. I’m sure I’ll love whatever this one delivers.
After-Dinner Declarations by Nicanor Parra (Host Publications, 2009)
If Pablo Neruda is the great and beautiful sun burning bright at the center of Chilean poetry, then Nicanor Parra is the Lenny Bruce, wisecracking in the corner with a couple drinks and some lines you need to hear. All of Parra’s poetry books are spectacular, playing with our ideas of poetry and politics and sex and religion, so I’m excited to see what this collection of speeches will deliver.
Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty by Tony Hoagland (Graywolf Press, 2010)
I really liked Hoagland’s first two books. His third book felt mean and, worse than that, mean on purpose. He even has an essay on being mean. Sarah Silverman is mean. Dane Cook is mean. Charlie Sheen, on that show I’ve seen ten seconds of, is mean and in his real life he pulled a knife on his wife. Every reality TV show on TV is mean. I understand that lots of contemporary poetry lacks character and humor and is politically correct, but still, culturally speaking, we’re plenty of jackoffs in a row; thus, I’m seldom interested in hanging out with an asshole on the page. Hoagland, in his third book, was on my nerves. In one poem, there’s this line about watching a black woman and a white woman play tennis and rooting for the white woman “because she was one of my kind, my tribe.” Maybe it’s the sort of insight to whip an English Department into a tizzy but out here it sounds sort of flat and naïve and mean. So I’ll be reading Hoagland’s new book this summer and maybe hating him and possibly hating myself.
* * *
Dave Newman lives in Trafford, PA. His novel, Please Don't Shoot Anyone Tonight, should be out any day now from World Parade Books. He's is also the author of numerous poetry chapbooks, most recently, Allen Ginsberg Comes To Pittsburgh.
This Week at No Tell Motel
Dave Newman says hello and that he is in love this week at No Tell Motel.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Eileen Tabios
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Eileen Tabios' recommendations:
So far this year, I've read 280 poetry publications. I usually—and deliberately—make reading choices at random (except for books I’m obliged to read when judging a poetry contest, as I did this year for the SFSU Poetry Center Prize). But from such reading, I recommend the following, e.g. for "summer reading."
The Collected Poems Of Barbara Guest, Ed. Hadley Haden Guest (Wesleyan University Press)
Which I recently chose as the winner of The Poetry Center Prize.
Had Slaves by Catherine Sasanov (Firewheel Editions)
Outstanding! Not only has my highest recommendation but my deepest Respect!
Juvenilia by Ken Chen (Yale University Press)
Far far above the typical poet's first book. Admirably -- and effectively -- ambitious. Sophisticated. Will make you fall in love
The World In A Minute by Gary Lenhart (Hanging Loose Press)
The authenticity is impressively due to the seamlessness between the social and the personal.
Praying To The Black Cat by Henry Israeli (Del Sol Press)
There's a poem in there, "Creation Myth Number One", that has one of the most powerful beginnings I can remember reading in a poem...
Bending The Mind Around The Dream's Blown Fuse by Timothy Liu (Talismans House)
Simply: Magnificent!
The Trees Around by Chris Tonelli (Birds, LLC)
Marvelous nuances--they seduce with their subtlety.
Occultations by David Wolach (Black Radish Books)
Powerful and moving.
The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail (New Directions Press)
Some of the most compelling “war poems” or political poems I’ve read from contemporary poets.
A Musics by Carrie Hunter (Arrow As Arrow)
Wonderful wander-full wanting.
Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina (Cleveland State University Press)
Svalina is offering among the most stick-to-Memory reads in my deliberately-random poetry readings.
Easy Eden, collaborative poems by Micah Ballard and James Patrick Dunagan (Push)
Luminous and wise gems. A ravishingly glorious read.
Diary Of A Wave Outside The Sea by Dunya Mikhail, trans. From the Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow and Dunya Mikhail (New Directions Press)
Interesting.
Undocumentaries by Rosa Alcalá (Shearsman)
Intelligent social poems with welcome verbal flourishes; nice to see these poems by an author I first knew as a translator.
The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert (Birds, LLC)
Many exquisite gems.
Much Like You Shark by Logan Ryan Smith (Dusie)
Very clever music from a fallen angel.
Genji Monogatari by Mark Young (Otoliths)
Freshly clever and musical take on intertextual reading.
Ntst: The Collected Pwoermds Of Geof Huth (if p then q)
Ffreshly rolicking read.
Letters To An Albatross by Anita Mohan (BlazeVOX Books)
S freshly auspicious debut.
I Was The Jukebox by Sandra Beasley (W.W. Norton)
The muscular confidence underlying these poems are a fresh antidote to the more common self-deprecation found in contemporary poems.
The House Of Mae Rim / La Casa De Mae Rim by Mariano Zaro (Carayan Press)
Beautifully spare.
After Rimbaud's Illuminations by David-Baptiste Chirot (tir aux pigeons)
Beautifully resonant.
Submissions by Jared Schickling (BlazeVOX Books)
Beautifully intriguing.
Texture Notes by Sawako Nakayasu (Letter Machine Editions)
Intelligent luminosities!
The Importance Of Peeling Potatoes In The Ukraine by Mark Yakich (Penguin)
So good it made me immediately go to order his other book.
Ashes Gifted, poems and painting reproductions by Joshua Abelow (Sacrifice Press)
A witty and funny self-awareness.
Another America / Otra America by Barbara Kingsolver, with translations by Rebeca Cartes (Seal Press)
Surprisingly captivating.
God Damsel by Reb Livingston (No Tell Books)
A welcome, and all-too-rare sophistication in its poetic approach.
Cooking With Organizational Structures by Francis Raven (Moria Poetry)
Witty and smart.
Mondo Crampo by Juliet Cook (Dusie)
Nice harmony in concept and design that supports text.
No Choice But To Follow by Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita and Christy Passion (Bamboo Ridge Press)
A project where the sum is greater than its parts--befitting how these poems were written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the wonderful Bamboo Ridge! And speaking of poet-discoveries (or at least poets new to me), this Christy Passion's poetics and poems are wonderful!
The Black Automaton by Douglas Kearney (Fence Books)
Loved this wonderful wonderful collection with its fabulous energy!
* * *
Eileen Tabios' most recent book is THE THORN ROSARY: Selected Prose Poems and New 1998-2010 (Marsh Hawk Press). She edits the most fun poetry review journal online, Galatea Resurrects.
Eileen Tabios' recommendations:
So far this year, I've read 280 poetry publications. I usually—and deliberately—make reading choices at random (except for books I’m obliged to read when judging a poetry contest, as I did this year for the SFSU Poetry Center Prize). But from such reading, I recommend the following, e.g. for "summer reading."
The Collected Poems Of Barbara Guest, Ed. Hadley Haden Guest (Wesleyan University Press)
Which I recently chose as the winner of The Poetry Center Prize.
Had Slaves by Catherine Sasanov (Firewheel Editions)
Outstanding! Not only has my highest recommendation but my deepest Respect!
Juvenilia by Ken Chen (Yale University Press)
Far far above the typical poet's first book. Admirably -- and effectively -- ambitious. Sophisticated. Will make you fall in love
The World In A Minute by Gary Lenhart (Hanging Loose Press)
The authenticity is impressively due to the seamlessness between the social and the personal.
Praying To The Black Cat by Henry Israeli (Del Sol Press)
There's a poem in there, "Creation Myth Number One", that has one of the most powerful beginnings I can remember reading in a poem...
Bending The Mind Around The Dream's Blown Fuse by Timothy Liu (Talismans House)
Simply: Magnificent!
The Trees Around by Chris Tonelli (Birds, LLC)
Marvelous nuances--they seduce with their subtlety.
Occultations by David Wolach (Black Radish Books)
Powerful and moving.
The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail (New Directions Press)
Some of the most compelling “war poems” or political poems I’ve read from contemporary poets.
A Musics by Carrie Hunter (Arrow As Arrow)
Wonderful wander-full wanting.
Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina (Cleveland State University Press)
Svalina is offering among the most stick-to-Memory reads in my deliberately-random poetry readings.
Easy Eden, collaborative poems by Micah Ballard and James Patrick Dunagan (Push)
Luminous and wise gems. A ravishingly glorious read.
Diary Of A Wave Outside The Sea by Dunya Mikhail, trans. From the Arabic by Elizabeth Winslow and Dunya Mikhail (New Directions Press)
Interesting.
Undocumentaries by Rosa Alcalá (Shearsman)
Intelligent social poems with welcome verbal flourishes; nice to see these poems by an author I first knew as a translator.
The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert (Birds, LLC)
Many exquisite gems.
Much Like You Shark by Logan Ryan Smith (Dusie)
Very clever music from a fallen angel.
Genji Monogatari by Mark Young (Otoliths)
Freshly clever and musical take on intertextual reading.
Ntst: The Collected Pwoermds Of Geof Huth (if p then q)
Ffreshly rolicking read.
Letters To An Albatross by Anita Mohan (BlazeVOX Books)
S freshly auspicious debut.
I Was The Jukebox by Sandra Beasley (W.W. Norton)
The muscular confidence underlying these poems are a fresh antidote to the more common self-deprecation found in contemporary poems.
The House Of Mae Rim / La Casa De Mae Rim by Mariano Zaro (Carayan Press)
Beautifully spare.
After Rimbaud's Illuminations by David-Baptiste Chirot (tir aux pigeons)
Beautifully resonant.
Submissions by Jared Schickling (BlazeVOX Books)
Beautifully intriguing.
Texture Notes by Sawako Nakayasu (Letter Machine Editions)
Intelligent luminosities!
The Importance Of Peeling Potatoes In The Ukraine by Mark Yakich (Penguin)
So good it made me immediately go to order his other book.
Ashes Gifted, poems and painting reproductions by Joshua Abelow (Sacrifice Press)
A witty and funny self-awareness.
Another America / Otra America by Barbara Kingsolver, with translations by Rebeca Cartes (Seal Press)
Surprisingly captivating.
God Damsel by Reb Livingston (No Tell Books)
A welcome, and all-too-rare sophistication in its poetic approach.
Cooking With Organizational Structures by Francis Raven (Moria Poetry)
Witty and smart.
Mondo Crampo by Juliet Cook (Dusie)
Nice harmony in concept and design that supports text.
No Choice But To Follow by Jean Yamasaki Toyama, Juliet S. Kono, Ann Inoshita and Christy Passion (Bamboo Ridge Press)
A project where the sum is greater than its parts--befitting how these poems were written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the wonderful Bamboo Ridge! And speaking of poet-discoveries (or at least poets new to me), this Christy Passion's poetics and poems are wonderful!
The Black Automaton by Douglas Kearney (Fence Books)
Loved this wonderful wonderful collection with its fabulous energy!
* * *
Eileen Tabios' most recent book is THE THORN ROSARY: Selected Prose Poems and New 1998-2010 (Marsh Hawk Press). She edits the most fun poetry review journal online, Galatea Resurrects.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Jamison Crabtree
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Jamison Crabtree's recommendations:
Ghost Lights by Keith Montesano (Dream Horse Press, 2010)
I’ve dug his first-book interview series for a while now, but it’s the series of nocturnes that I’ve seen in various journal that have me really excited to read this book.
Black Eyed Heifer by Shelly Taylor (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)
Another first book that I’ve been waiting for. Southern gothic is perfect for the summer.
Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland, translated by Johannes Goransson (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007)
“Sure / the ocean is like a woman / despite oil stains and drift canisters.” In seven lines Parland can delight and frighten in ways that would take most other writers an entire book. I’m going to be rereading this all summer long.
treason by Hédi Kaddour, translated by Marilyn Hacker (Yale University Press, 2010)
A translation of his poem “The Bus Driver” was included in an anthology I’d read a few years back but I couldn’t find any book-length translations of Kaddour’s work at the time. This selection pulls poems from three books published between 1989 and 2000 and it’s definitely worth checking out.
hurry home honey by Sawako Nakayasu (Burning Deck, 2009)
“…water too watery but & it’s summer it’s summer but & I still can’t & I still can’t & I still can’t let it go…” These are the love poems that you want to read during a heat wave.
Scary. No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean, 2009)
There’s a good reason that this book keeps showing up on recommendation lists. Poems that manage to simultaneously unnerve and charm are rare.
For The Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions, 2008)
The title comes from a play on words, where the word ‘suffering’ in Japanese is formed by inserting the word ‘death’ into the word ‘walnut’. Partly a book on poetics, partly a book about the way we interpret loss; there’s a speed and liveliness to these prose poems which make them a true pleasure to read.
Gurlesque edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg (Saturnalia Books, 2010)
Eighteen amazing poets. You just can’t go wrong with this book.
* * *
Jamison Crabtree’s poetry appears (or is forthcoming) in Anti-, Poor Claudia, Spork Online, LIT, Best New Poets 2009, and elsewhere. He sometimes lives in Tucson, Arizona
Jamison Crabtree's recommendations:
Ghost Lights by Keith Montesano (Dream Horse Press, 2010)
I’ve dug his first-book interview series for a while now, but it’s the series of nocturnes that I’ve seen in various journal that have me really excited to read this book.
Black Eyed Heifer by Shelly Taylor (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2010)
Another first book that I’ve been waiting for. Southern gothic is perfect for the summer.
Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland, translated by Johannes Goransson (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007)
“Sure / the ocean is like a woman / despite oil stains and drift canisters.” In seven lines Parland can delight and frighten in ways that would take most other writers an entire book. I’m going to be rereading this all summer long.
treason by Hédi Kaddour, translated by Marilyn Hacker (Yale University Press, 2010)
A translation of his poem “The Bus Driver” was included in an anthology I’d read a few years back but I couldn’t find any book-length translations of Kaddour’s work at the time. This selection pulls poems from three books published between 1989 and 2000 and it’s definitely worth checking out.
hurry home honey by Sawako Nakayasu (Burning Deck, 2009)
“…water too watery but & it’s summer it’s summer but & I still can’t & I still can’t & I still can’t let it go…” These are the love poems that you want to read during a heat wave.
Scary. No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean, 2009)
There’s a good reason that this book keeps showing up on recommendation lists. Poems that manage to simultaneously unnerve and charm are rare.
For The Fighting Spirit of the Walnut by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions, 2008)
The title comes from a play on words, where the word ‘suffering’ in Japanese is formed by inserting the word ‘death’ into the word ‘walnut’. Partly a book on poetics, partly a book about the way we interpret loss; there’s a speed and liveliness to these prose poems which make them a true pleasure to read.
Gurlesque edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg (Saturnalia Books, 2010)
Eighteen amazing poets. You just can’t go wrong with this book.
* * *
Jamison Crabtree’s poetry appears (or is forthcoming) in Anti-, Poor Claudia, Spork Online, LIT, Best New Poets 2009, and elsewhere. He sometimes lives in Tucson, Arizona
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Mike Young
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Mike Young's recommendations:
10 BOOKS THAT DON'T MIND THE HEAT
Scape by Joshua Harmon (Black Ocean)
The Romance of the Happy Workers by Anne Boyer (Coffee House Press):
The Last Four Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsata Press):
Tremble & Shine by Todd Colby (Soft Skull)
Town by Kate Schapira (Factory School)
Pink and Hot Pink Habitat by Natalie Lyalin (Coconut Books)
Black Life by Dorothea Lasky (Wave)
Drunk By Noon by Jennifer L Knox (Bloof)
Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina (CSU Press)
Let's Collaborate by Jack Christian(Magic Helicopter Press)
* * *
Mike Young is the author of poem book, We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (Publishing Genius 2010), and a story book, Look! Look! Feathers (Word Riot Press 2011). He co-edits NOÖ Journal and Magic Helicopter Press. Find him online at http://mikeayoung.blogspot.com.
Mike Young's recommendations:
10 BOOKS THAT DON'T MIND THE HEAT
Scape by Joshua Harmon (Black Ocean)
The Romance of the Happy Workers by Anne Boyer (Coffee House Press):
The Last Four Things by Kate Greenstreet (Ahsata Press):
Tremble & Shine by Todd Colby (Soft Skull)
Town by Kate Schapira (Factory School)
Pink and Hot Pink Habitat by Natalie Lyalin (Coconut Books)
Black Life by Dorothea Lasky (Wave)
Drunk By Noon by Jennifer L Knox (Bloof)
Destruction Myth by Mathias Svalina (CSU Press)
Let's Collaborate by Jack Christian(Magic Helicopter Press)
* * *
Mike Young is the author of poem book, We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (Publishing Genius 2010), and a story book, Look! Look! Feathers (Word Riot Press 2011). He co-edits NOÖ Journal and Magic Helicopter Press. Find him online at http://mikeayoung.blogspot.com.
Recommended Summer Reading - Gary L. McDowell
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Gary L. McDowell's recommendations:
Though I’ll be spending the majority of my summer reading for my Ph.D qualifying exams, there are a few new-ish poetry books that I’ll definitely be reading voraciously during the warm months nonetheless. There are:
Ghost Lights by Keith Montesano (Dream Horse Press, 2010)
The poems collected here explore the psychological, spiritual, and physiological repercussions and limits of elegiac speech, poesy, rhetoric, and shape. The poet, while in control of his world and the life he spins from the crumbs of love and death, never--and yet always--succumbs to the beauty of language and image above all else.
Then, Something by Patricia Fargnoli (Tupelo Press, 2009)
Any book that’s titled after my favorite Frost poem will definitely make its mark on me! A great, beautiful, spasmingly gorgeous book.
Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon (Milkweed Editions, 2010)
An incredibly vibrant follow-up to Lemon’s Hallelujah Blackout, Fancy Beasts engages with a more political bend in the cosmos, though the energy, the syntactic play, the humor, the virtuoso handling of idea vs image still prevails and wallops with the best of his work.
* * *
Gary L. McDowell’s first book, American Amen, won the 2009 Orphic Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press. He is also the author of two chapbooks, including They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009), and co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His new poems are forthcoming in journals such as The Bellingham Review, H_NGM_N, Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, Parthenon West Review, and Quarterly West.
Gary L. McDowell's recommendations:
Though I’ll be spending the majority of my summer reading for my Ph.D qualifying exams, there are a few new-ish poetry books that I’ll definitely be reading voraciously during the warm months nonetheless. There are:
Ghost Lights by Keith Montesano (Dream Horse Press, 2010)
The poems collected here explore the psychological, spiritual, and physiological repercussions and limits of elegiac speech, poesy, rhetoric, and shape. The poet, while in control of his world and the life he spins from the crumbs of love and death, never--and yet always--succumbs to the beauty of language and image above all else.
Then, Something by Patricia Fargnoli (Tupelo Press, 2009)
Any book that’s titled after my favorite Frost poem will definitely make its mark on me! A great, beautiful, spasmingly gorgeous book.
Fancy Beasts by Alex Lemon (Milkweed Editions, 2010)
An incredibly vibrant follow-up to Lemon’s Hallelujah Blackout, Fancy Beasts engages with a more political bend in the cosmos, though the energy, the syntactic play, the humor, the virtuoso handling of idea vs image still prevails and wallops with the best of his work.
* * *
Gary L. McDowell’s first book, American Amen, won the 2009 Orphic Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press. He is also the author of two chapbooks, including They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009), and co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His new poems are forthcoming in journals such as The Bellingham Review, H_NGM_N, Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, Parthenon West Review, and Quarterly West.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Rob MacDonald
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Rob MacDonald's recommendations:
What to read while you patiently await the arrival of new books by Matthew Lippman, Emily Toder and Alexis Orgera.
Frances by Emily Kendal Frey (Poor Claudia)
"Swing out over / water and it opens / You come back / along the lake / but you're not / the same"
The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)
"Magnificence comes / in a small car, but we all fit."
How by Emily Pettit (Octopus Books)
"We etch-a-sketch / the problem being solved. It's pretty / complicated looking."
The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert (Birds, LLC)
"Your sweat / Chinese-water-tortures me, you make / my heart feel like a would-be Houdini, / etc."
The Trees Around by Chris Tonelli (Birds, LLC)
"Above the browned, trampled grounds, the lights on Tilt-A-Whirl bloom."
Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon)
"I did not walk here all the way from prose / To make corrections in red pencil"
Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! by Peter Davis (Bloof Books)
"Not everything that is written is as fascinating and life-changing as this poem, but there is some pretty good stuff out there."
* * *
Rob MacDonald lives in Boston and is the editor of the online journal Sixth Finch. His poems can be found in various online journals, including Octopus, Anti-, H_NGM_N, So and So, Sink Review and No Tell Motel.
Rob MacDonald's recommendations:
What to read while you patiently await the arrival of new books by Matthew Lippman, Emily Toder and Alexis Orgera.
Frances by Emily Kendal Frey (Poor Claudia)
"Swing out over / water and it opens / You come back / along the lake / but you're not / the same"
The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)
"Magnificence comes / in a small car, but we all fit."
How by Emily Pettit (Octopus Books)
"We etch-a-sketch / the problem being solved. It's pretty / complicated looking."
The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert (Birds, LLC)
"Your sweat / Chinese-water-tortures me, you make / my heart feel like a would-be Houdini, / etc."
The Trees Around by Chris Tonelli (Birds, LLC)
"Above the browned, trampled grounds, the lights on Tilt-A-Whirl bloom."
Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon)
"I did not walk here all the way from prose / To make corrections in red pencil"
Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! by Peter Davis (Bloof Books)
"Not everything that is written is as fascinating and life-changing as this poem, but there is some pretty good stuff out there."
* * *
Rob MacDonald lives in Boston and is the editor of the online journal Sixth Finch. His poems can be found in various online journals, including Octopus, Anti-, H_NGM_N, So and So, Sink Review and No Tell Motel.
Recommended Summer Reading - Marcela Sulak
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Marcela Sulak's recommendations:
Inseminating the Elephant by Lucia Perillo (Copper Canyon, 2009)
Knock out poems that draw on Perillo’s training as a biologist. Perilla does for animal anatomy what Roebling did for steel cables.
Noose and Hook by Lynn Emanuel (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009)
I don’t know how to describe her book, so here’s a couple of lines from “Dream in Which I Meet Myself,” : Whitman, I fell in love with capitalism / because of your commas // in lines that cannot decide / if they are crowbars for rending and tearing or sutures for holding the wound together.
Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia, 2009)
Prose poems so tender and startling. Mark Doty likens them to “episodes from a lost, slightly sinister children’s book on the nature of love and time.” And I agree. They also remind me of Randall Jarrell & Edward Gorey.
The Garden Room by Joy Katz (Tupelo Press 2006)
After this little chapbook, your home will never feel familiar again. And that’s a good thing, if you like cosmic.
These Mountains: Selected Poems by Rivka Miriam, translated from the Hebrew by Linda Stern Zisquit (Toby Press, 2009)
Quiet poems steeped in Bible, history, geography, hovering between the physical female body and her spirit, these poems subtly shift the ground beneath your feet until you are either gasping in terror or walking on air. Depending.
Friendly Fire by Katrina Roberts (Lost Horse Press 2008). I love how this book emergizes the sonnet form by playing with rhyme.
New-to-me: The Bat Poet & The Animal Family by Randall Jarell (reissued by Harper Collins in 1997 & 1996)
Beautiful accounts of oddballs and the hard happiness they create through art and community.
* * *
Marcela Sulak is the author of Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and Of All The Things That Don’t Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She’s translated poetry collections from Congo-Zaire and Hapsburg Bohemia, and directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Creative Writing Program at Bar-Ilan University.
Marcela Sulak's recommendations:
Inseminating the Elephant by Lucia Perillo (Copper Canyon, 2009)
Knock out poems that draw on Perillo’s training as a biologist. Perilla does for animal anatomy what Roebling did for steel cables.
Noose and Hook by Lynn Emanuel (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009)
I don’t know how to describe her book, so here’s a couple of lines from “Dream in Which I Meet Myself,” : Whitman, I fell in love with capitalism / because of your commas // in lines that cannot decide / if they are crowbars for rending and tearing or sutures for holding the wound together.
Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (Saturnalia, 2009)
Prose poems so tender and startling. Mark Doty likens them to “episodes from a lost, slightly sinister children’s book on the nature of love and time.” And I agree. They also remind me of Randall Jarrell & Edward Gorey.
The Garden Room by Joy Katz (Tupelo Press 2006)
After this little chapbook, your home will never feel familiar again. And that’s a good thing, if you like cosmic.
These Mountains: Selected Poems by Rivka Miriam, translated from the Hebrew by Linda Stern Zisquit (Toby Press, 2009)
Quiet poems steeped in Bible, history, geography, hovering between the physical female body and her spirit, these poems subtly shift the ground beneath your feet until you are either gasping in terror or walking on air. Depending.
Friendly Fire by Katrina Roberts (Lost Horse Press 2008). I love how this book emergizes the sonnet form by playing with rhyme.
New-to-me: The Bat Poet & The Animal Family by Randall Jarell (reissued by Harper Collins in 1997 & 1996)
Beautiful accounts of oddballs and the hard happiness they create through art and community.
* * *
Marcela Sulak is the author of Immigrant (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and Of All The Things That Don’t Exist, I Love You Best (Finishing Line Press, 2008). She’s translated poetry collections from Congo-Zaire and Hapsburg Bohemia, and directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Creative Writing Program at Bar-Ilan University.
This Week at No Tell Motel
Kim Young grows longer and darker as the earth rotates toward twilight this week at No Tell Motel.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Trina Burke
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Trina Burke's recommendations:
Chapbooks:
from Doll Studies: Forensics by Carol Guess (Dancing Girl Press)
I heard Guess read exerpts from this project in Seattle sometime last year and have been dying to read the rest ever since.
Between the Devil and the Deep by Lindsay Bland (Dancing Girl Press)
OK, true story: I went to school with Lindsay Bland. Then again, I went to school with a lot of people, and their books didn't make my summer reading list. Maybe that's because I've already read them or they aren't out yet. Anyway. What matters right here, right now, is that I've been missing Bland's poems because they exhibit a sophistication and hotness that cannot be denied. I am so very excited to see what she's been up to.
Book Books:
Raptus by Joanna Klink (Penguin)
Klink's work has a sincerity about it that I keep hoping will rub off on mine.
Orange Crush by Simone Muench (Sarabande)
I really dug Muench's Lampblack & Ash. Something about the way she takes the subject of her homage and runs with it. Both that book and this are rooted in(inspired by? seeded by? playing with?) the historical, but Muench has the power to take them totally off-world.
Exilee and Temps Morts: Selected Works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (University of California Press)
I've read and reread Cha's Dictee so many times that I was ecstatic to see that this edition of her other work had come out.
* * *
Trina Burke’s poems have appeared recently in Drunken Boat, Word /for Word, Fawlt, Prick of the Spindle, The Iron Horse Review, and Quarterly West. Her chapbook, Great America, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana and an MA in English from Western Washington University.
Trina Burke's recommendations:
Chapbooks:
from Doll Studies: Forensics by Carol Guess (Dancing Girl Press)
I heard Guess read exerpts from this project in Seattle sometime last year and have been dying to read the rest ever since.
Between the Devil and the Deep by Lindsay Bland (Dancing Girl Press)
OK, true story: I went to school with Lindsay Bland. Then again, I went to school with a lot of people, and their books didn't make my summer reading list. Maybe that's because I've already read them or they aren't out yet. Anyway. What matters right here, right now, is that I've been missing Bland's poems because they exhibit a sophistication and hotness that cannot be denied. I am so very excited to see what she's been up to.
Book Books:
Raptus by Joanna Klink (Penguin)
Klink's work has a sincerity about it that I keep hoping will rub off on mine.
Orange Crush by Simone Muench (Sarabande)
I really dug Muench's Lampblack & Ash. Something about the way she takes the subject of her homage and runs with it. Both that book and this are rooted in(inspired by? seeded by? playing with?) the historical, but Muench has the power to take them totally off-world.
Exilee and Temps Morts: Selected Works by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (University of California Press)
I've read and reread Cha's Dictee so many times that I was ecstatic to see that this edition of her other work had come out.
* * *
Trina Burke’s poems have appeared recently in Drunken Boat, Word /for Word, Fawlt, Prick of the Spindle, The Iron Horse Review, and Quarterly West. Her chapbook, Great America, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana and an MA in English from Western Washington University.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Elisa Gabbert
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Elisa Gabbert's recommendations:
For People Who Like Gravity and Other People by Chris Tonelli (Rope-a-Dope Press)
These poems in the voice of a carnival ride unexpectedly tackle the Big Questions. Includes a DVD if you're more of a "watcher."
Run by Kim Gek Lin Short (Rope-a-Dope Press)
These prose poems tell the tale of La La, who dreams of escaping her brutalized life in China to become a crooning cowgirl.
Post Moxie by Julia Story (Sarabande)
The little chunks of prose in Post Moxie are like the journalings of an obsessive mind that sees a sad hilarity in everything.
Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon)
A lovely meditative book to make you question the line, the lyric I, the political poem, and other stuff you thought poetry could and couldn't do.
* * *
Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent and the author of The French Exit (Birds LLC) and Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press). Recent poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Puerto del Sol, The Rumpus, and Salt Hill. She currently lives in Boston, works at a software startup, and blogs at The French Exit.
Elisa Gabbert's recommendations:
For People Who Like Gravity and Other People by Chris Tonelli (Rope-a-Dope Press)
These poems in the voice of a carnival ride unexpectedly tackle the Big Questions. Includes a DVD if you're more of a "watcher."
Run by Kim Gek Lin Short (Rope-a-Dope Press)
These prose poems tell the tale of La La, who dreams of escaping her brutalized life in China to become a crooning cowgirl.
Post Moxie by Julia Story (Sarabande)
The little chunks of prose in Post Moxie are like the journalings of an obsessive mind that sees a sad hilarity in everything.
Mean Free Path by Ben Lerner (Copper Canyon)
A lovely meditative book to make you question the line, the lyric I, the political poem, and other stuff you thought poetry could and couldn't do.
* * *
Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent and the author of The French Exit (Birds LLC) and Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press). Recent poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Puerto del Sol, The Rumpus, and Salt Hill. She currently lives in Boston, works at a software startup, and blogs at The French Exit.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Leigh Stein
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Leigh Stein's recommendations:
The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert (Birds, LLC)
"When a car almost hits you / you actually scream; it's embarrassing. / Unless you die instantly." Dudes, birds, and boredom. I would like to go to the beach with Elisa and make her sing the greatest hits of the '90s to me.
I Is to Vorticism by Ben Mirov (New Michigan Press)
"The camels were parked in the moonlight, ready for whatever. Janice and I were mostly naked by the smoldering fire, though, as I unfastened the bolts that held my face intact, she stopped me. No need to ruin things yet, she whispered..." Ben is a character in these poems. So is Murakami. I would like to go to Applebee's with Ben and eat appetizers.
The Haunted House by Marisa Crawford (Switchback Books)
"Dear Libby, there's months and months of getting ready, / and then there's the prom. And there's the post-prom." This book is haunted by girlhood. I would like to go on a cross-country road trip in a convertible with Marisa. We'll listen to old mix tapes.
* * *
Leigh Stein is the author of the chapbooks How to Mend a Broken Heart with Vengeance (Dancing Girl Press), Least Inhabited Island II (h-ngm-n), and Summer in Paris (Mondo Bummer). She lives in Brooklyn.
Leigh Stein's recommendations:
The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert (Birds, LLC)
"When a car almost hits you / you actually scream; it's embarrassing. / Unless you die instantly." Dudes, birds, and boredom. I would like to go to the beach with Elisa and make her sing the greatest hits of the '90s to me.
I Is to Vorticism by Ben Mirov (New Michigan Press)
"The camels were parked in the moonlight, ready for whatever. Janice and I were mostly naked by the smoldering fire, though, as I unfastened the bolts that held my face intact, she stopped me. No need to ruin things yet, she whispered..." Ben is a character in these poems. So is Murakami. I would like to go to Applebee's with Ben and eat appetizers.
The Haunted House by Marisa Crawford (Switchback Books)
"Dear Libby, there's months and months of getting ready, / and then there's the prom. And there's the post-prom." This book is haunted by girlhood. I would like to go on a cross-country road trip in a convertible with Marisa. We'll listen to old mix tapes.
* * *
Leigh Stein is the author of the chapbooks How to Mend a Broken Heart with Vengeance (Dancing Girl Press), Least Inhabited Island II (h-ngm-n), and Summer in Paris (Mondo Bummer). She lives in Brooklyn.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Noah Falck
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Noah Falck's recommendations:
A Plate of Chicken by Matthew Rohrer (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009)
I have read all of Rohrer’s books with the exception of A Plate of Chicken. Rohrer has been one of those poets for me who knows his way around the language so well, the words appear to radiate off the page. I am sure A Plate of Chicken will be nothing less than dazzling.
Ghost Machine by Ben Mirov (Caketrain, 2010)
Probably the most anticipated chapbook to come out all year, though it clocks in at 97 pages. Caketrain simply produces beautiful books. I picked up this one and Bird Any Damn Kind (Lucas Farrell) for only $12. You can’t beat that. Simply put Mirov is sentence sculptor. “I plan to be another language in the body of a deer.” Don’t we all plan on this?
The Black Eye by Brian Foley (Brave Men Press, 2010)
I read Foley’s first book, The Tornado is not a Surrealist, a strange yet beautiful experiment that left me full of candlelight and glaciers. The Black Eye is less of an experiment and more of a surrealistic dance of orphans. Everyone should have a copy.
Shot by Christine Hume (Counterpath Press, 2010)
I saw Christine Hume read in Cincinnati sometime in March and when I say read, I mean perform. She had her iPod collaboratively play unusual sound and music as she read. Hume is a creative soul. She seems to always be on the new frontier of experimentation. Something that summer should be all about.
* * *
Noah Falck is an elementary school teacher, a Columbus Area Writing Project Summer Writing Fellow, and the author of three chapbooks, most recently Life As A Crossword Puzzle (winner of the Ohio Open Thread Chapbook Award). His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared or will appear in Forklift Ohio, Greensboro Review, Diode, and The Pinch. More at noahfalck.org
Noah Falck's recommendations:
A Plate of Chicken by Matthew Rohrer (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009)
I have read all of Rohrer’s books with the exception of A Plate of Chicken. Rohrer has been one of those poets for me who knows his way around the language so well, the words appear to radiate off the page. I am sure A Plate of Chicken will be nothing less than dazzling.
Ghost Machine by Ben Mirov (Caketrain, 2010)
Probably the most anticipated chapbook to come out all year, though it clocks in at 97 pages. Caketrain simply produces beautiful books. I picked up this one and Bird Any Damn Kind (Lucas Farrell) for only $12. You can’t beat that. Simply put Mirov is sentence sculptor. “I plan to be another language in the body of a deer.” Don’t we all plan on this?
The Black Eye by Brian Foley (Brave Men Press, 2010)
I read Foley’s first book, The Tornado is not a Surrealist, a strange yet beautiful experiment that left me full of candlelight and glaciers. The Black Eye is less of an experiment and more of a surrealistic dance of orphans. Everyone should have a copy.
Shot by Christine Hume (Counterpath Press, 2010)
I saw Christine Hume read in Cincinnati sometime in March and when I say read, I mean perform. She had her iPod collaboratively play unusual sound and music as she read. Hume is a creative soul. She seems to always be on the new frontier of experimentation. Something that summer should be all about.
* * *
Noah Falck is an elementary school teacher, a Columbus Area Writing Project Summer Writing Fellow, and the author of three chapbooks, most recently Life As A Crossword Puzzle (winner of the Ohio Open Thread Chapbook Award). His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared or will appear in Forklift Ohio, Greensboro Review, Diode, and The Pinch. More at noahfalck.org
Monday, June 7, 2010
Save 10% on All No Tell Books Titles
Use Promo Code: VACATION to save 10% on all No Tell Books titles at Lulu, including the latest releases: PERSONATIONSKIN by Karl Parker, God Damsel by Reb Livingston and Cadaver Dogs by Rebecca Loudon.
Offer valid through 6/31
http://stores.lulu.com/no-tell-books
Recommended Summer Reading - Julie Babcock
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Julie Babcock's recommendations:
The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven by Mairéad Byrne (Publishing Genius)
When you want to laugh and cry at the same time pick up a copy of this wonderful book just out from Publishing Genius. This is poetry for the people. People who have everyday lives filled with couches and dentists but are still able to see miracles of beauty and joy.
Noose and Hook by Lynn Emanuel (Pitt Poetry Series)
This is on the top of my reading list. What a title and what a cover! Check out those mean dog teeth! I’ve been a fan of Lynn Emanuel’s poetry since Hotel Fiesta and The Dig. Her poetry is tough women lighting firecrackers all over the page.
The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)
2009 flashback! I was turned on to this book through No Tell’s December recommendations and was delighted by its strangeness. Thanks to all who recommended it in 2009. May The Difficult Farm grow and prosper.
* * *
Julie Babcock’s poetry and fiction have recently appeared in PANK, Corium, No Tell Motel, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She is a lecturer at University of Michigan.
Julie Babcock's recommendations:
The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven by Mairéad Byrne (Publishing Genius)
When you want to laugh and cry at the same time pick up a copy of this wonderful book just out from Publishing Genius. This is poetry for the people. People who have everyday lives filled with couches and dentists but are still able to see miracles of beauty and joy.
Noose and Hook by Lynn Emanuel (Pitt Poetry Series)
This is on the top of my reading list. What a title and what a cover! Check out those mean dog teeth! I’ve been a fan of Lynn Emanuel’s poetry since Hotel Fiesta and The Dig. Her poetry is tough women lighting firecrackers all over the page.
The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)
2009 flashback! I was turned on to this book through No Tell’s December recommendations and was delighted by its strangeness. Thanks to all who recommended it in 2009. May The Difficult Farm grow and prosper.
* * *
Julie Babcock’s poetry and fiction have recently appeared in PANK, Corium, No Tell Motel, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. She is a lecturer at University of Michigan.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Kathleen Rooney
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Kathleen Rooney's recommendations:
Bobcat Country by Brandi Homan (Shearsman Books, 2010)
Funny, confessional, daring and dangerous—Homan’s writing is the literary equivalent of NASCAR.
Bluets by Maggie Nelson (Wave Books, 2009)
Built of a collection of facts and quotations, as well as Nelson’s own stories and interpretations, Bluets is an indispensible addition to the lyric essay genre.
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry edited by Gary L. McDowell and F. Daniel Rzicznek (Rose Metal Press, 2010)
Fifty percent anthology, fifty percent critical study, one hundred percent excellent, this is the companion book to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction.
* * *
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author, most recently, of the memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object and the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs. Her first book of poetry, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) was released by the feminist publisher Switchback Books.
Kathleen Rooney's recommendations:
Bobcat Country by Brandi Homan (Shearsman Books, 2010)
Funny, confessional, daring and dangerous—Homan’s writing is the literary equivalent of NASCAR.
Bluets by Maggie Nelson (Wave Books, 2009)
Built of a collection of facts and quotations, as well as Nelson’s own stories and interpretations, Bluets is an indispensible addition to the lyric essay genre.
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry edited by Gary L. McDowell and F. Daniel Rzicznek (Rose Metal Press, 2010)
Fifty percent anthology, fifty percent critical study, one hundred percent excellent, this is the companion book to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction.
* * *
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author, most recently, of the memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object and the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs. Her first book of poetry, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) was released by the feminist publisher Switchback Books.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Michael Gushue
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Michael Gushue's recommendations:
Love is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire by Carol Guess (Vrzhu Press)
I love the way these poems strain against narrative, line, allusion, social-personal, and still retain and exalt their music. The infuriating Denira and a national crisis haunt in equal measure. The city in Love Is A Map is so precise, the thread through the book spun from dream logic, with a humor that slices so close to dismay, that you won’t be able to stop reading. So don’t read it while driving. And you're going to say one day, yeah I knew about Carol Guess back when...
The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)
Generous and fun and delicious, close bosom-friend of Dada and Satie, with a kind of magic hour smart aleck clarity that makes my mouth water. Cocorico has us swimming in air. The Fledgling Crocus is looking out the window, waiting at the bus stop, a mutant in fur. Also includes useful guidance on how to talk to a small husband. As I said, delicious.
The Golden Age of Paraphernalia by Kevin Davies (Edge Books)
Boy, do I love this book. It’s wry, cutting, hilarious, sly, and shot from a cannon. If there was a poetry book that was a silent movie comedian explaining Feynman’s diagrams, except the diagrams were about our psycho-capitalist, crypto-orwellian consumer brainwash instead of quantum interactions, then that book would be in the same yoga class as the Golden Age of Paraphernalia, but not as good at doing the Lion.
Life Is A Dream by Paul Durcan (Harvill Secker)
Durcan is a wild man of Irish poetry. His poems are loose, often written from a women’s point of view, conversational, bitter, funny, compassionate, and angry. In The Mary Robinson Years he’s in Rio de Janiero talking with the most stunning woman he’s ever seen: a 6 foot Irish transvestite relief aid worker. My Beloved Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout is the sexiest, scolding-est, tenderest poem there is. He's popular over there, you should get to know him over here.
Indeed I Was Pleased With The World by Mary Ruefle (Carnegie Mellon)
You’re probably way familiar already with Mary Ruefle, but I if you haven’t read her in while, give this book a try, where thank you notes get eaten by lambs. I’m always ready to read, and be rollercoastered by, her bullet-fast poems.
Your Ancient See Through by Hoa Nguyen (Duration Press)
Is Hoa Nguyen the greatest or what? I don’t have her most recent—Hecate Lochia— yet, but I recommend this earlier book for its awesomeness. She is so quick and real, we are lucky to have her around. The poems are somehow both direct and allusive, and so >>present<<. I don’t know how she does that.
The Dailies by John Gilgun (Vrzhu Press)
A selection from Gilgun’s poem-a-day discipline (how does he do it?), these poems are a like a Be Here Now brain massage. He’s completely himself, but if you had your Gilgun channel up on Pandora, you'd be getting a little New York School, then a touch of a less excitable Ginsberg, followed by a bit of Snyder, and coming up on a bit of Thom Gunn. The whole world looks a little better after you read a Gilgun poem.
That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney (Otolith Press)
A book of collaborative poems that makes you want to throw rocks at other people’s collaborative poems. Gabbert and Rooney are have this insane juju together that leave poems in its wake as tasty as BBQ, as funny as stand up, as speedy as Daytona. EG & KR, I salute you.
The New Century by Ewa Lipska (Northwestern)
Can I get serious here for a moment? Ewa Lipska. And I mean it. Hannah Arendt, Keats, Newton, Spinoza, God, and Gianni Versace (“We die more and more beautifully/in Gianni Versace’s collection.”) show up here, in world where a lot of bad things happen. And these short poems bite. And then kiss. And then bite again.
* * *
Michael Gushue co-curates the Brookland Poetry Series in Washington, DC, co-runs Beothuk Books/Vrzhu Press and posts on the Vrzhu Bullets of Love blog. His work appears online and in print, most recently in the anthology Full Moon On K Street from Plan B Press. He has a poetry chapbook and it is called Gathering Down Women, from Pudding House Press.
Michael Gushue's recommendations:
Love is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire by Carol Guess (Vrzhu Press)
I love the way these poems strain against narrative, line, allusion, social-personal, and still retain and exalt their music. The infuriating Denira and a national crisis haunt in equal measure. The city in Love Is A Map is so precise, the thread through the book spun from dream logic, with a humor that slices so close to dismay, that you won’t be able to stop reading. So don’t read it while driving. And you're going to say one day, yeah I knew about Carol Guess back when...
The Difficult Farm by Heather Christle (Octopus Books)
Generous and fun and delicious, close bosom-friend of Dada and Satie, with a kind of magic hour smart aleck clarity that makes my mouth water. Cocorico has us swimming in air. The Fledgling Crocus is looking out the window, waiting at the bus stop, a mutant in fur. Also includes useful guidance on how to talk to a small husband. As I said, delicious.
The Golden Age of Paraphernalia by Kevin Davies (Edge Books)
Boy, do I love this book. It’s wry, cutting, hilarious, sly, and shot from a cannon. If there was a poetry book that was a silent movie comedian explaining Feynman’s diagrams, except the diagrams were about our psycho-capitalist, crypto-orwellian consumer brainwash instead of quantum interactions, then that book would be in the same yoga class as the Golden Age of Paraphernalia, but not as good at doing the Lion.
Life Is A Dream by Paul Durcan (Harvill Secker)
Durcan is a wild man of Irish poetry. His poems are loose, often written from a women’s point of view, conversational, bitter, funny, compassionate, and angry. In The Mary Robinson Years he’s in Rio de Janiero talking with the most stunning woman he’s ever seen: a 6 foot Irish transvestite relief aid worker. My Beloved Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout is the sexiest, scolding-est, tenderest poem there is. He's popular over there, you should get to know him over here.
Indeed I Was Pleased With The World by Mary Ruefle (Carnegie Mellon)
You’re probably way familiar already with Mary Ruefle, but I if you haven’t read her in while, give this book a try, where thank you notes get eaten by lambs. I’m always ready to read, and be rollercoastered by, her bullet-fast poems.
Your Ancient See Through by Hoa Nguyen (Duration Press)
Is Hoa Nguyen the greatest or what? I don’t have her most recent—Hecate Lochia— yet, but I recommend this earlier book for its awesomeness. She is so quick and real, we are lucky to have her around. The poems are somehow both direct and allusive, and so >>present<<. I don’t know how she does that.
The Dailies by John Gilgun (Vrzhu Press)
A selection from Gilgun’s poem-a-day discipline (how does he do it?), these poems are a like a Be Here Now brain massage. He’s completely himself, but if you had your Gilgun channel up on Pandora, you'd be getting a little New York School, then a touch of a less excitable Ginsberg, followed by a bit of Snyder, and coming up on a bit of Thom Gunn. The whole world looks a little better after you read a Gilgun poem.
That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney (Otolith Press)
A book of collaborative poems that makes you want to throw rocks at other people’s collaborative poems. Gabbert and Rooney are have this insane juju together that leave poems in its wake as tasty as BBQ, as funny as stand up, as speedy as Daytona. EG & KR, I salute you.
The New Century by Ewa Lipska (Northwestern)
Can I get serious here for a moment? Ewa Lipska. And I mean it. Hannah Arendt, Keats, Newton, Spinoza, God, and Gianni Versace (“We die more and more beautifully/in Gianni Versace’s collection.”) show up here, in world where a lot of bad things happen. And these short poems bite. And then kiss. And then bite again.
* * *
Michael Gushue co-curates the Brookland Poetry Series in Washington, DC, co-runs Beothuk Books/Vrzhu Press and posts on the Vrzhu Bullets of Love blog. His work appears online and in print, most recently in the anthology Full Moon On K Street from Plan B Press. He has a poetry chapbook and it is called Gathering Down Women, from Pudding House Press.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Steven Karl
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Steven Karl's recommendations:
The Wonderfull Yeare by Nate Pritts (Cooper Dillon Books)
My first response was “Holy Shit Nate Pritts, I love your book!” Once I regain the art of articulation I’ll have a “proper” review of this book on Coldfront.
Ghost Machine by Ben Mirov (Caketrain Press)
What makes this book so formidable & exultant is the ease in which Mirov’s poems remain on the page while simultaneously entering the back door of our brains & then furiously begins tunneling towards our hearts. Exercise. Take your vitamins. Heart attacks are imminent for some.
Texture Notes by Sawako Nakayasu (Letter Machine Editions)
If you know me then you know I love everything Sawako does. So don’t just take my word for it, take Reb’s too.
Underground National by Sueyeun Juliette Lee (Factory School)
I had lots of thoughts on this book. They are here.
Chapbooks
Run by Kim Gek Lin Short (Rope-a-Dope Press)
I heard Kim read from this chapbook at AWP. Myself & at least three other people bought this chapbook immediately after. Here are photos of the smitten.
Last Ride by Abraham Smith (Forklift, Ink.)
One long poem filled with gasoline & verve. Absolutely stunning.
The Lack Of by Joseph Massey (Nasturtium Press)
“Is there a voice today/ to write in,/ beyond/ what I alone/ mumble?/ These words/ plunged daily/ into hunger./”
A Pelt, A Shrub, a Soil Sample by Ross Brighton
If Joseph Massey gives us the landscapes of life & Jay Wright explains the landscape of life, then Brighton’s chapbook gives us the haunting in between.
FEELINGS, Assoc. by Nate Pritts & Matt Hart (Hubcap Art)
Recently, Matt Hart & Nate Pritts embarked on a reading tour & made a chapbook of collaborative poems. This collab seamlessly captures Hart's buzz-saw riffs & Pritts' sonic tightness. This book feels punk and d.i.y. like blood guts & lots of love.
Is This January by Jai Arun Ravine (Corollary Press)
Beautiful chapbook that invokes vellum paper so that words blur in & out like drops of dew on early winter ghosts.
The Heart Is Green From So Much Waiting by Sampson Starkweather (Immaculate Disciples Press)
"There is a precise moment in every child's life/ when they must dismantle a TV to see what little gods/ live inside."
Now that's what I'm talking about!
Journal
Cannibal 5
Okay, I know this isn’t a “book,” but at 112 pages it’s longer than most of the chapbooks I mentioned & it has an amazing amount of great work in it. Definitely a summer’s worth of inspiration & enjoyment.
Steven Karl's recommendations:
The Wonderfull Yeare by Nate Pritts (Cooper Dillon Books)
My first response was “Holy Shit Nate Pritts, I love your book!” Once I regain the art of articulation I’ll have a “proper” review of this book on Coldfront.
Ghost Machine by Ben Mirov (Caketrain Press)
What makes this book so formidable & exultant is the ease in which Mirov’s poems remain on the page while simultaneously entering the back door of our brains & then furiously begins tunneling towards our hearts. Exercise. Take your vitamins. Heart attacks are imminent for some.
Texture Notes by Sawako Nakayasu (Letter Machine Editions)
If you know me then you know I love everything Sawako does. So don’t just take my word for it, take Reb’s too.
Underground National by Sueyeun Juliette Lee (Factory School)
I had lots of thoughts on this book. They are here.
Chapbooks
Run by Kim Gek Lin Short (Rope-a-Dope Press)
I heard Kim read from this chapbook at AWP. Myself & at least three other people bought this chapbook immediately after. Here are photos of the smitten.
Last Ride by Abraham Smith (Forklift, Ink.)
One long poem filled with gasoline & verve. Absolutely stunning.
The Lack Of by Joseph Massey (Nasturtium Press)
“Is there a voice today/ to write in,/ beyond/ what I alone/ mumble?/ These words/ plunged daily/ into hunger./”
A Pelt, A Shrub, a Soil Sample by Ross Brighton
If Joseph Massey gives us the landscapes of life & Jay Wright explains the landscape of life, then Brighton’s chapbook gives us the haunting in between.
FEELINGS, Assoc. by Nate Pritts & Matt Hart (Hubcap Art)
Recently, Matt Hart & Nate Pritts embarked on a reading tour & made a chapbook of collaborative poems. This collab seamlessly captures Hart's buzz-saw riffs & Pritts' sonic tightness. This book feels punk and d.i.y. like blood guts & lots of love.
Is This January by Jai Arun Ravine (Corollary Press)
Beautiful chapbook that invokes vellum paper so that words blur in & out like drops of dew on early winter ghosts.
The Heart Is Green From So Much Waiting by Sampson Starkweather (Immaculate Disciples Press)
"There is a precise moment in every child's life/ when they must dismantle a TV to see what little gods/ live inside."
Now that's what I'm talking about!
Journal
Cannibal 5
Okay, I know this isn’t a “book,” but at 112 pages it’s longer than most of the chapbooks I mentioned & it has an amazing amount of great work in it. Definitely a summer’s worth of inspiration & enjoyment.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Kim Roberts
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Kim Roberts' recommendations:
I recommend four new books by authors with strong DC ties:
non/fiction by Daniel Gutstein (Edge Books)
Are they short stories? Are they poems? They are both--and they are terrific.
Glow of Our Sweat by Francisco Aragon (Scapegoat Press)
Steamy poems of sexual desire, perfect reading for summer nights.
Up Jump the Boogie by John Murillo (Cypher Books) http://www.cypherbooks.org
Gritty urban poems that move from stark violence to glorious beauty.
Immigrant by Marcela Sulak (Black Lawrence Press)
A series of poems on the origins of fruits and vegetables that will make your mouth water.
* * *
Kim Roberts is the editor of the online journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly, now in its tenth anniversary year. She edited the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC, and her third book of poems, Animal Magnetism, won the Pearl Poetry Prize and will be published in January 2011. Her website: http://www.kimroberts.org.
Kim Roberts' recommendations:
I recommend four new books by authors with strong DC ties:
non/fiction by Daniel Gutstein (Edge Books)
Are they short stories? Are they poems? They are both--and they are terrific.
Glow of Our Sweat by Francisco Aragon (Scapegoat Press)
Steamy poems of sexual desire, perfect reading for summer nights.
Up Jump the Boogie by John Murillo (Cypher Books) http://www.cypherbooks.org
Gritty urban poems that move from stark violence to glorious beauty.
Immigrant by Marcela Sulak (Black Lawrence Press)
A series of poems on the origins of fruits and vegetables that will make your mouth water.
* * *
Kim Roberts is the editor of the online journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly, now in its tenth anniversary year. She edited the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC, and her third book of poems, Animal Magnetism, won the Pearl Poetry Prize and will be published in January 2011. Her website: http://www.kimroberts.org.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Jessy Randall
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Jessy Randall's recommendations:
Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean Press)
I came to this book after Verse Daily printed "Love is When a Boat is Built From All the Eyelashes in the Ocean." Maybe you will too.
Are You There, God? It's Me, Whitney Houston by Brad Liening (Hell Yes Press)
A zine-like chapbook of poems with a throwaway elegance and humor that strikes me as just right for summer reading. I got this book as a bonus gift when I ordered something else from Hell Yes Press, and ended up liking it more than the thing I originally ordered.
* * *
Jessy Randall's collection of poems A Day in Boyland (Ghost Road, 2007) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her young adult novel, The Wandora Unit (Ghost Road, 2009) is about friendship and love in the high school literary magazine crowd. She has books forthcoming from Pecan Grove and Red Hen. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.
Jessy Randall's recommendations:
Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean Press)
I came to this book after Verse Daily printed "Love is When a Boat is Built From All the Eyelashes in the Ocean." Maybe you will too.
Are You There, God? It's Me, Whitney Houston by Brad Liening (Hell Yes Press)
A zine-like chapbook of poems with a throwaway elegance and humor that strikes me as just right for summer reading. I got this book as a bonus gift when I ordered something else from Hell Yes Press, and ended up liking it more than the thing I originally ordered.
* * *
Jessy Randall's collection of poems A Day in Boyland (Ghost Road, 2007) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her young adult novel, The Wandora Unit (Ghost Road, 2009) is about friendship and love in the high school literary magazine crowd. She has books forthcoming from Pecan Grove and Red Hen. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Recommended Summer Reading - Evie Shockley
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Evie Shockley's recommendations:
Summer reading is reading you think you're going to get to do between the time you grade the last spring semester final and the time some very energetic student emails you for a fall semester syllabus -- if you're me. And I say to you (myself): good luck! With great optimism and a strong sense of purpose, I present (in no particular order) my list of Poetry Books I Will Read This Summer, If I'm Lucky:
Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions Press, 2010)
Nothing like an art book to heighten one's experience of poetry. In this case, the unusual presenation has an utterly mournful history, but having heard Carson read from the poem, I'm grateful that she went so some lengths to share her grieving with the rest of us.
The Heart's Traffic by Ching-In Chen (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009)
I won this book in a National Poetry Month Giveaway! How lucky am I? I'd otherwise have bought it. Look at how Chen arranges her poems on the page -- it's "open field," not "boring field" or "random field." I know with this much care for the visual, the language is going to be good...
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (Penguin, 2010)
Actually, I've already buzzed through most of this collection -- had the good and unusual fortune of acquiring it just hours before a plane ride -- but I'm planning to go back and savor it. From "Lighthead's Guide to Addiction": "If you are addicted to masturbation, seek company."
God Damsel by Reb Livingston (No Tell Books, 2010)
Is it tacky to mention the new book by the blog's host, if it's on your summer reading list? It is? Well, pretend I didn't do it.
Tongue by Rachel Contreni Flynn (Red Hen Press, 2010)
Rachel and I have something in common besides poetry. : ) But that has nothing to do with her new book. Or does it?? I guess I'll find out when I read it! The cover is terrific, by the way.
Suck on the Marrow by Camille Dungy. (Red Hen Press, 2010)
We have a lot of catching up to do, trying to conceive of the experience of African Americans, enslaved and free, during the 19th century, /in poetry/. Dungy is moving that collective project ahead a few steps. I want some of that.
The Plot Genie by Gillian Conoley (Omnidawn, 2009)
I also won this book and I also have already begun reading it, but because I didn't fly away from my routine that day, I didn't get terribly far with the read. Looking forward to this new incarnation of star-crossed lovers.
Apocalyptic Swing by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Persea, 2009)
For a good while, I thought the title referred to the kind of music that would be playing at the end of days. It is now my understanding that, instead, it has something to do with boxing. I will read and learn more!
A Toast in the House of Friends by Akilah Oliver (Coffeehouse Books, 2009)
I've been wanting to read this book since Oliver's magnificent reading at St. Mark's almost 2 years ago. This poetry sings (as I recall)! It also does a total takeover of the page. I want to dive into this book and swim -- an appropriate summer activity, no?
Words in the Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell ed. Thomas Travisano w/ Saskia Hamilton (FSG, 2008)
Okay, this isn't poetry, it isn't small press, and it isn't even new. But it's about poets, poets writing to one another about lives in/and poetry! And, damn it, I want to read it this summer! Who else besides you, dear poetry readers, would I tell??
* * *
Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), the new black (Wesleyan UP, forthcoming 2011), and two chapbooks. She co-edits jubilat and teaches African American literature and creative writing (poetry) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Evie Shockley's recommendations:
Summer reading is reading you think you're going to get to do between the time you grade the last spring semester final and the time some very energetic student emails you for a fall semester syllabus -- if you're me. And I say to you (myself): good luck! With great optimism and a strong sense of purpose, I present (in no particular order) my list of Poetry Books I Will Read This Summer, If I'm Lucky:
Nox by Anne Carson (New Directions Press, 2010)
Nothing like an art book to heighten one's experience of poetry. In this case, the unusual presenation has an utterly mournful history, but having heard Carson read from the poem, I'm grateful that she went so some lengths to share her grieving with the rest of us.
The Heart's Traffic by Ching-In Chen (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009)
I won this book in a National Poetry Month Giveaway! How lucky am I? I'd otherwise have bought it. Look at how Chen arranges her poems on the page -- it's "open field," not "boring field" or "random field." I know with this much care for the visual, the language is going to be good...
Lighthead by Terrance Hayes (Penguin, 2010)
Actually, I've already buzzed through most of this collection -- had the good and unusual fortune of acquiring it just hours before a plane ride -- but I'm planning to go back and savor it. From "Lighthead's Guide to Addiction": "If you are addicted to masturbation, seek company."
God Damsel by Reb Livingston (No Tell Books, 2010)
Is it tacky to mention the new book by the blog's host, if it's on your summer reading list? It is? Well, pretend I didn't do it.
Tongue by Rachel Contreni Flynn (Red Hen Press, 2010)
Rachel and I have something in common besides poetry. : ) But that has nothing to do with her new book. Or does it?? I guess I'll find out when I read it! The cover is terrific, by the way.
Suck on the Marrow by Camille Dungy. (Red Hen Press, 2010)
We have a lot of catching up to do, trying to conceive of the experience of African Americans, enslaved and free, during the 19th century, /in poetry/. Dungy is moving that collective project ahead a few steps. I want some of that.
The Plot Genie by Gillian Conoley (Omnidawn, 2009)
I also won this book and I also have already begun reading it, but because I didn't fly away from my routine that day, I didn't get terribly far with the read. Looking forward to this new incarnation of star-crossed lovers.
Apocalyptic Swing by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Persea, 2009)
For a good while, I thought the title referred to the kind of music that would be playing at the end of days. It is now my understanding that, instead, it has something to do with boxing. I will read and learn more!
A Toast in the House of Friends by Akilah Oliver (Coffeehouse Books, 2009)
I've been wanting to read this book since Oliver's magnificent reading at St. Mark's almost 2 years ago. This poetry sings (as I recall)! It also does a total takeover of the page. I want to dive into this book and swim -- an appropriate summer activity, no?
Words in the Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell ed. Thomas Travisano w/ Saskia Hamilton (FSG, 2008)
Okay, this isn't poetry, it isn't small press, and it isn't even new. But it's about poets, poets writing to one another about lives in/and poetry! And, damn it, I want to read it this summer! Who else besides you, dear poetry readers, would I tell??
* * *
Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006), the new black (Wesleyan UP, forthcoming 2011), and two chapbooks. She co-edits jubilat and teaches African American literature and creative writing (poetry) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Recommended Summer Reading - Mike Gubser
During the month of June, No Tells is featuring "Recommended Summer Reading" selections by No Tell contributors.
Mike Gubser's recommendations:
Here's four books I've liked recently, three by modern American poets and one by an Albanian:
Bird and Forest Brent Cunningham (Ugly Duckling)
Irresponsibility by Chris Vitiello (Ahsahta)
Key Bridge by Ken Rumble (Carolina Wren -- about DC)
The Condemned Apple by Visar Zhiti (Green Integer)
* * *
Mike Gubser is a history professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. His first book of poetry, Secret but Kept it Room, was published in 2006 by Ahadada Press. You can read poems from his latest manuscript, entitled The Historian, in Effing Magazine #7 and No Tell Motel.
Mike Gubser's recommendations:
Here's four books I've liked recently, three by modern American poets and one by an Albanian:
Bird and Forest Brent Cunningham (Ugly Duckling)
Irresponsibility by Chris Vitiello (Ahsahta)
Key Bridge by Ken Rumble (Carolina Wren -- about DC)
The Condemned Apple by Visar Zhiti (Green Integer)
* * *
Mike Gubser is a history professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. His first book of poetry, Secret but Kept it Room, was published in 2006 by Ahadada Press. You can read poems from his latest manuscript, entitled The Historian, in Effing Magazine #7 and No Tell Motel.
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