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.