This Week at No Tell

Kate Schapira invites the bird of spite to live in your mouth this week at No Tell Motel.

Poems That Make Me Go All Tingly

A few weeks ago, Reb asked me if I would like to go through the No Tell archives and write a little bit about some poems that really got to me. After accepting this “mission”, I began browsing poems that have been published on the website and Bedside guides, and found several that seemed to stick with me as I did my search. As a result, I’ve ended up with a pile of poems that could use a second read.

At the Museum, Molly
By Shann Palmer

This is a tight little poem with an overload of images. Each line builds up to the embrace between two people and the “statue of a faceless women,/Jaipur marble perfectly carved” that seems to watch them. The description of the sun in this poem is another thing that made me like it. How it “slides into the wall, touch behind her ear, treasure her”. The opening two stanzas I liked a lot for their description of the museum and of Molly. The air in the museum that tastes “like fresh peaches” and Molly with “a mouth full of feathers”, humming Dulce Domum.

Copper Harbor
By Mary Biddinger

Here is a poem that I really like for it’s rhythm and sound. Lines like “the dark smudge of fish/ shanties and smokehouses.” and “The seagulls were quick as equinox, Evinrude,/ flypaper lit with a zippo.” make this poem fun to read. The rhythm and images flashing past you with every line keeps you on your toes till the very end. Also, this is another poem I really liked for it’s images; “your body an arrow into the lake.” and “the ether surge of a mower on the parkway slapped us out of reverie.”

Parlor
By Charles Jensen

This poem is one of my favorites. With it’s simple language, you really get the feeling of closeness the speaker has for his lover, who is laid out in a funeral parlor. With stanzas like “He’s laced your fingers/ incorrectly. Your left handed:/left thumb goes on top. A lover would know/ those little details…”, the feeling of intimacy is cemented in the readers mind. Yet through the mourning, signs of humor can be found as well. “The undertaker is young, attractive-/ your type. Sharp suit. Muted Tie./ The kind of moment where I’d imagine/ you’d make a joke about things that are “stiff”,

These poems can be found in The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - Second Floor along with plenty of other great ones for you to get lost in. Keep a look out for more poems that make me go all tingly, and if you have any that you think should be brought back from the past, just comment or leave me a message.

This Week at No Tell

Stuart Greenhouse reads from the stone slab at the basin’s head this week at No Tell Motel.

Galatea Resurrects #11 featuring 72 new reviews!

AT http://galatearesurrection11.blogspot.com

* * *

No Tell contributor highlights:

Steven Karl Reviews SHY GREEN FIELDS by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

Tom Beckett Reviews YOUR TEN FAVORITE WORDS by Reb Livingston

Eileen Tabios Engages DEMENTIA BLOG by Susan M. Schultz

Eileen Tabios Engages RED by Marilyn R. Rosenberg

Steven Karl Reviews STATE OF THE UNION--50 POLITICAL POEMS, Edited by Joshua Beckman & Matthew Zapruder

Karen Rigby Reviews THEORIES OF FALLING by Sandra Beasley

Nathan Logan Reviews THE ROMANCE OF HAPPY WORKERS by Anne Boyer

Nathan Logan Reviews ON THE FLY by Amy King

Eric Gelsinger Reviews SO THAT EVEN by Tawrin Baker

Pamela Hart Reviews THIS IS WHY I HURT YOU by Kate Greenstreet

Last Day for Holiday Book Sale

Get any 2 No Tell Books titles for $20 (shipping included within US, complimentary gift wrap on request).

Paypal only -- send payment to orders@notellbooks.org.

Offer good until December 15.

Please indicate which titles and where you want the books shipped.

Thank you for supporting independent poetry publishing this holiday season!

This Week at No Tell

Laynie Browne is holding something in one hand as you walk away from something else this week at No Tell Motel.

Best Poetry Books 2008 - Bruce Covey

Bruce Covey's choices:

Sandra Beasley, Theories of Falling (New Issues)

Anne Boyer, Romance of Happy Workers (Coffee House)

Brenda Coultas, The Marvelous Bones of Time (Coffee House)

Barbara Guest, Collect Poems (Wesleyan)

Lyn Hejinian Saga/Circus (Omnidawn)

Sueyeun Juliette Lee That Gorgeous Feeling (Coconut)

Bernadette Mayer Poetry State Forest (New Directions)

K. Silem Mohammad Breathalyze (Edge)

Alice Notley, Grave of Light (Wesleyan)

Danielle Pafunda My Zorba (Bloof)

Ariana Reines, Coeur de Lion (Mal-O-Mar)

Aram Saroyan, Complete Minimal Poems (Ugly Duckling)

Leslie Scalapino, It's go in horizontal (U California)

Sandra Simonds, Warsaw Bikini (Bloof)

Jack Spicer, My Vocabulary Did This to Me (Wesleyan)

Jen Tynes, Heron/Girlfriend (Coconut)

* * *

Bruce Covey lives in Atlanta, GA, where he teaches at Emory University and edits Coconut Poetry. His fourth book, Glass Is Really a Liquid, will be published by No Tell Books in 2009.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Scott Abels

Scott Abels' suggestions:

For your neighborhood masturbator: My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, Edited by Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan, 2008)

For the MBA in your life: Harryette Mullen, Recyclopedia (Graywolf, 2006)

For the honey lover and big oil: The Georgics of Virgil. Any edition that can fit in their pocket.

* * *

Originally from Nebraska, Scott Abels has an MFA from Boise State University. His poems can be found online at Spooky Boyfriend, Past Simple, Sawbuck, No Tell Motel, Shampoo, and Action Yes. Currently, he lives and teaches in Honolulu.

Best Poetry Books of 2008 - Dora Malech

Dora Malech's choices:

Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse by Darcie Dennigan (Fordham University Press)

Logotherapy Pant by Crystal Curry (Cosa Nostra Editions)

The Usable Field by Jane Mead (Alice James)

Revolver by Robyn Schiff (University of Iowa Press)

* * *

Dora Malech's poems have appeared most recently in Redivider, Gargoyle, Anti-, La Petite Zine, Columbia Poetry Review and The New Yorker.

Best Poetry Books 2008 - Michael Farrell

Michael Farrell's choices:

πO (or Pi O) - Big Numbers: New and Selected Poems by πO (or Pi O) (Collective Effort Press)


fantastic book by local genius (i.e. melbourne, australia). someone who knows how to sue punctuation for both sound & comic effect. includes greek australian dialogues; concrete poems; number poems .. it might seem a bit expensive at $AUS39.60 but its a fat book full of history, humour and language. theres never been a better time to buy australian poetry - our dollars worth virtually nothing!

Patrick Jones and Peter O'Mara's How To Do Words With Things (Tree-Elbow Publishing) is a post-god, post-genre sandwiching of manifesto and poetry featuring 'freedragging' film stills, conceptual maps, ads-as-vispo, math as emotion.




* * *

Michael Farrell has published 3 books: ode ode (Salt, 2002); BREAK ME OUCH - graphic poems (3 Deep, 2006); and a raiders guide (Giramondo, 2008). He is included in The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, edited by John Kinsella (Penguin, 2008).

Best Poetry Books 2008 - Kathleen Jesme

Kathleen Jesme's choices:

Zone : Zero, by Stephanie Strickland (Ahsahta Press). Wonderful both visually and soundwise, and includes a terrific CD of two of the long poems in the book in an electronic version. State-of-the-art!

Flight: New and Selected Poems, by Linda Bierds (Putnam). The quality of language and attention paid to it is amazing in Bierds' work. She writes a lot of historical and persona poems, and they are truly gorgeous, every one of them.

Red Rover, by Susan Stewart (University of Chicago Press). I don't think this is Stewart's best book, but it's really fine, and the sonnet sequence titled "In the Western World" is just stunning.

Night Scenes, by Lisa Jarnot (Flood Editions). What a great, funny, and sly little book! What sound! Jarnot is about the funniest poet around, but the humor shades something else.

* * *
Kathleen Jesme is the author of three books of poems: The Plum-Stone Game, Motherhouse, and Fire Eater.

No Tell Books Holiday Sale

Get any 2 No Tell Books titles for $20 (shipping included within US, complimentary gift wrap on request).

Paypal only -- send payment to orders@notellbooks.org.

Offer good until December 15.

Please indicate which titles and where you want the books shipped.

Thank you for supporting independent poetry publishing this holiday season!

Poetry Holiday Guide - Kim Gek Lin Short & Chris Collision

Kim Gek Lin Short & Chris Collision's suggestions:

Our holiday book recommendations are for the nonpoets on your list, as poetry is for all people. Here's just a few great books to consider:

For the classicist/lumberjack: Creation Myths, Mathias Svalina (New Michigan Press, 2007)

For the mystic/romantic/guy who can't afford the therapist he needs: The Real West Marginal Way, Richard Hugo (W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).

For the historian/entomologist who habitually befriends low things: archy and mehitabel, don marquis (Doubleday, 1927)

For the statistician/pragmatist/diviner: The Weather, Lisa Robertson (new star books, 2007)

For the existentialist/Home Depot enthusiast: One Way No Exit, G.C. Waldrep (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2008)

For the spoiled mind who needs a reason to quit/keep drinking: The Dream Songs, John Berryman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982).

For the vegetarian/activist who also dabbles in voodoo: Ready-to-Eat Individual, Frank Sherlock & Brett Evans (Lavender Ink, 2008)

For the ghost/essentialist who wants to come back as a film: The Marvelous Bones of Time: Excavations and Explanations, Brenda Coultas (Coffee House Press, 2007)

For the mopey excitable youth who forgets that to go for a walk is to fall in love: Leaves of Grass: The Original 1855 Edition (Thrift Edition), Walt Whitman (Dover Publications, 2007).

For the stuffed or haunted or reminisced or sublime: The Exotic Moods of Les Baxter, Paul McCormick (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2008)

For the person you don't know but who is magically familiar: The Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson (Vintage Books, 1998)

* * *

Kim Gek Lin Short lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. Her chapbook, The Residents, is forthcoming from dancing girl press. Other new work is forthcoming in journals such as Tarpaulin Sky, Drunken Boat, and SoMa.

Chris Collision just moved to Oakland, where he continues to specialize in beer, bikes, brunettes and coffee. He collaborates with KGLS at http://rowsselavy.blogspot.com, with D. D. Tinzeroes at http://dauntlesscomics.com, among others, and makes up for that by cooperating as little as possible with everybody else all the time.

PF Potvin

blogs at If Poetry Journal

Delirious Hem Advent Calendar

is here.

This Week at No Tell

Jill Alexander Essbaum dreams of doors and ceilings this week at No Tell Motel

This Week at No Tell

Rebecca Loudon talks about the dead woman, the movie star as if she never lived, this week at No Tell Motel.

Best Poetry Books 2008 - Chris Tonelli

Chris Tonelli's choice:

Chris Vitiello, Irresponsibility (Ahsahta Press)

* * *

Chris Tonelli is the author of three chapbooks: For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule-Shaped Cloud (w/ Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006). He teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.

No Tell Motel's Pushcart Nominations

"Shrapnel's dotter" by Kirsten Kaschock

"I'm Nothing and Can Therefore Never Be Locked Up or Even Captured Really" by Lynn Behrendt

"Ten Days in Arkansas" by Martha Silano

"The Greenest Body" by Rebecca Loudon

Black Ocean Celebrates Black Friday

***Buy One, Get One Free***

On November 28th, from 12:01am to 11:59pm, buy any book priced $11.95 or more and get a second title of your choice FREE (offer does not apply to issues of Handsome). Just write in a note on the PayPal order page which title you’d like to receive. And, as always: Free Shipping! Go to http://www.blackocean.org/catalog.html to place your orders.

Support independent publishing and have a very handsome holiday.

A Special Message From Bruce Covey

Dearest Friends of Coconut,

There's a brand-spanking-new Coconut 14 live on the web, featuring new poems by David Lehman, Snezana Zabic, Denise Duhamel, Nin Andrews, William Minor, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Chad Sweeney, Brigitte Byrd, W.B. Keckler, Shira Dentz, Jared White, Eileen Tabios, Amber Nelson, Sam Pink, Molly Arden, Graeme Bezanson, John Most, Dana Guthrie Martin, Sarah Bartlett, Matt Turner, Lara Glenum, Susana Gardner, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Jackie Clark, Gale Nelson, Stephanie Berger, Rauaun Klassnik, and Jed Rasula!
Pfew--this issue is hot!!!!! http://www.coconutpoetry.org.

Plus, sparkly brilliant new book titles from Jen Tynes and Sueyeun Juliette Lee!!!!!!!! http://www.coconutpoetry.org/books1

(You'll hear more about the books very soon! They'll make great gifts!)

Much love,
Bruce Covey
Coconut Editor

Best Poetry Books of 2008 - Janaka Stucky

Janaka Stucky's choices:

My top 3 nepotistic picks for 2008 -

1. Holy Land by Rauan Klassnik (Black Ocean). I admire people with no scruples; this book is amazing. When I publish someone else’s book it means putting my own writing on hold, and I love my own writing a lot. That should tell you something.

2. Dear Ra by Johannes Göransson (Starcherone). Bold, abrasive and playful this “story in flinches” puts the ‘poetry’ back in ‘drinking, fucking and fighting.’ Read it with a glass of your favorite vodka, neat.

3. Undersleep by Julie Doxsee (Octopus Books). Julie succeeds at crafting the kind of abstracted, deliberate surgeries of language that everyone else seems to be trying these days. She just does it better than most.

My fourth pick is from someone I’ve never met and it’s a chapbook:

4. Hit Wave by Jon Leon (Kitchen Press). I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much reading poetry. Hit Wave isn’t ha-ha funny, it’s just dry, brilliant and insane. Narrated in first person by the cocaine-love-baby of Oscar Wilde and Brian Wilson, this story will take you to every height and depth any artist of the 20th century has ever been to. When the book ends, instead of being exhausted you’ll just feel hungry for more.

* * *

Janaka Stucky is the founder and managing editor of Black Ocean, and publishes the magazine Handsome. He published Rauan’s book, will be publishing Johannes’ translations of Aase Berg in 2009, and will also be publishing Julie’s second book later on in 2009. He has no relation to Jon Leon. His own work has appeared in: Cannibal, Denver Quarterly, No Tell Motel, North American Review, Redivider, VOLT and many other lucky journals.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Rauan Klassnik

Rauan Klassnik's suggestions:

My holiday book recommendations are for the boatload of contemporary poets mired in obscure and useless wizardry. Please stop patting each other on the back (in person and through the internet) and actually try to say something. In the meantime some meat and potatoes reading might be helpful:

The Essential Haiku (Buson, Basho, Issa) edited by Robert Hass

Dreaming the Miracle (Three French Prose Poets: Follain, Jacob, Ponge) (White Pine Press) I especially recommend the first two. Surreal-yes. Nonsense-no.

Jesus' Son (Harper Perennial) by Denis Johnson"

* * *

Rauan Klassnik tends goats in Chiapas. He also blogs at rauanklassnik.blogspot.com. Sometimes he believes in capital punishment, and he almost always thinks lamb tastes good. His first book, Holy Land, released April 2008 from Black Ocean. Two chapbooks are forthcoming in 2009. In January/February, Ringing from Kitchen Press and, in the summer, Dreaming"from Scantily Clad Press.

Evie Shockley's Must Read List

Evie Shockley's choices:

This is my wholly incomplete list of books I want to read (or finish reading) that I can think of right off the top of my head while most of my "library" is in another state (of the U.S., not of being), in no particular order -

Zong!, by M. NourbeSe Phillip (Wesleyan UP) -- An amazing poet tackles the Zong Massacre (a Middle Passage horror) with the fragment.

Open Interval, by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Pitt) -- If you are named for a kind of star, and you are a poet, you are destined to write about your life in terms of astronomy.

Hughson's Tavern, by Fred Moten (Leon Works) -- A poet who remembers vinyl records fondly and in context, not to mention with interesting line breaks.

Matadora, by Sarah Gambito (Alice James Books) -- The kind of graceful ferocity you'd expect from a woman who fights bulls successfully.

Irresponsibility, by Chris Vitiello (Ahsahta Press) -- This poet gives language no quarter, nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

My Zorba, by Danielle Pafunda (Bloof Books) -- Poetry from a poet who is always surprised (thus surprising) and never boring, even when she's cutting (or biting) her nails.

* * *

Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and two chapbooks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, Tuesday; An Art Project, Pluck!, The Southern Review, Achiote Seeds, Studio, and, of course, No Tell Motel, among others. Currently a guest editor of jubilat, she teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

This Week at No Tell

Donald Illich thrusts back from the shore this week at No Tell Motel.

MiPO Sexy Issue

THE SEXY ISSUE: CHECK IT OUT. A NEW TRIUMPH IN VISUAL AND VERBAL BY DIDI MENENDEZ



The new issue is now online.

Featuring: PF Potvin, Bruce Covey, Nicole Mauro, William Allegrezza, Amy King, Denise Duhamel, Adam Fielded, Grace Calavieri and many others

Please stop by www.mipoesias.com to see it, read it, print it, embed it, gobble it up for Thanksgiving...

A hard copy will be available in a few days from here:

https://www.createspace.com/3360578

Best 2008 Poetry Books - Scott Abels

Scott Abels' choice:

J. Reuben Appelman, Make Loneliness (Otis/Seismicity Editions)

Appelman is locking up family ghosts and offering them up floating for display in sterile glass dioramas. The result becomes way more human than you'd think--way more vulnerable, in the end. Exactly as sad.

* * *

Originally from Nebraska, Scott Abels has an MFA from Boise State University. His poems can be found online at Spooky Boyfriend, Past Simple, Sawbuck, No Tell Motel, Shampoo, and Action Yes. Currently, he lives and teaches in Honolulu.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Adam Fieled

Adam Fieled recommendations:

-- Globe-trotting Australian poet David Prater hits us with his best shot in We Will Disappear (SOI3 Modern Poets), a book so heart-rending that it will tear down your battalions.

-- Juliet Cook's Gingerbread Girl (Trainwreck Press) will take you in to a kitchen that is Martha Stewart's worst nightmare, where sex is on the grill, and then is laid on ice.

-- Watch Skip Fox deconstruct deconstruction with a deconstructive deconstructor in For To (BlazeVox), which will leave you unstitched.

* * *

Adam Fieled is a poet based in Philadelphia. He has released three books and three chaps, and is a PhD candidate and University Fellow at Temple University.

Grassroots Marketing Panel - NYC

No Tell Motel and No Tell Books editor, Reb Livingston, will speak on the following panel at the LWC}NYC tomorrow:

Saturday November 22
GRASSROOTS MARKETING
The New School (66 W. 12th St.).
3:00-4:30 PM
Featuring Allison Amend, Melissa Kirsch, Reb Livingston, and Thisbe Nissen

Best 2008 Poetry Books - Steven Karl

Steven Karl's choices:

Sueyeun Juliette Lee, that gorgeous feeling (Coconut Books) -- Because it's beautiful, heart-wrenching, political, funny, and intelligent.

Jay Wright, Polynomials and Pollen (Dalkey Archive Press) -- Interiors/Exteriors. Rushing Rivers. Music. Inquisitive I's (eyes).

Takashi Hiraide, For The Fighting Spirit Of The Walnut translated by Sawako Nakayasu (New Directions Press) -- I carried this book everywhere. These poems fit any landscape.

Geoffrey Olsen, End Notebook (Petrichord) -- Lovely chapbook with quiet sparse poems that get inside your body and ruminate.

J. Mae Barizo, The Marble Palace (fields press) -- Who doesn't want a limited edition chapbook? This book will make you fall in love with words again.

Prageeta Sharma, Infamous Landscapes (Fence Books) -- I know, technically this came out in 2007, but I don't think it actually made it into stores until 2008 besides it's an awesome book. An intense lyrical examination of humanity where ethics and desire sometimes co-exist and other times collide.

* * *

Steven Karl is the author of the chapbook, State(s) of Flux (forthcoming, Peptic Robot Press, 2009) which is a collaboration with the artist, Joseph Lappie. His poems have been published in, or are forthcoming from Barrow Street, Vanitas, Sawbuck, No Tell Motel, Eleven Eleven and others. His reviews have been published in or are forthcoming from Cold Front Magazine, Sink Review, Octopus Magazine, Galatea Resurrects, and LIT online. He lives in New York City and teaches at a couple of CUNY schools.

Scott Odom on Rebecca Loudon's Cadaver Dogs

It is more beautiful. It is more harrowing. It is a wrench in a man's hard hand and swinging, whistling as it arcs down. It is a flower that floats in the air in front of you in the night at the foot of your bed and the sound of your mother singing in the bath down the hall. It is the monster breathing low and deep in the closet and the doorknob is turning, slowly, slowly...

Read full review here

Buy Cadaver Dogs here

Best 2008 Poetry Books - Donald Illich

Donald Illich's choices:

Valzhyna Mort, Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon) -- This is a punk book with heart. She's a rising star in the poetry world.

Jeffrey McDaniel, The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press) -- The maturation of an amazing talent. More entertainment than any Hollywood movie.

Mark Yakich, The Importance of Peeling Potatoes in Ukraine (Penguin) -- A weird book and an emotional one. A great read.

Tao Lin, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (Melville House) -- A funny book that I carried around everywhere. Hamsters are awesome.

Todd Boss, Yellowrocket (Norton) -- Best "formalist" book this year. It's light, emotional, and a pleasure to read.

Bernadette Mayer, Poetry State Forest (New Directions) -- Odd poems that stand up to many readings.

* * *

Donald Illich was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and it is just like you saw it in Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick, except different. He is slightly less smelly than he used to be since he got married in June. He publishes and writes poetry.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Donald Illich

Donald Illich's recommendations:

For the werewolves on your list: Shafer Hall, Never Cry Woof (No Tell Books)

For the Martians on your list (any poet at all must have this one): Jack Spicer, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan)

For the formalists on your list who enjoy reading about Alaska: Ted Genoway, Anna, Washing (University of Georgia Press)

For anyone on your list who isn't perfect: Ron Padgett, How to be Perfect (Coffee House Press)

For anyone who's an American: Matthew Dickman, All American Poem (American Poetry Review)

For people who like their poems in short story form: Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

For Mom and Dad and anyone who's not into poetry and who will soon will be (or hippies): Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, and In Watermelon Sugar (Mariner Books)

* * *

Donald Illich was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and it is just like you saw it in Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick, except different. He is slightly less smelly than he used to be since he got married in June. He publishes and writes poetry.

Poetry Holiday Guide - Jessy Randall

During November and December No Tell contributors will recommend poetry books that would make fabulous gifts. Here are Jessy Randall's recommendations:

Kenneth Koch, The Art of the Possible (Soft Skull): Poetry comics -- what's not to love?

Jordan Davis, Million Poems Review (Faux Press): out of print, but available secondhand (try bookfinder.com). I believe Jordan Davis is referencing Frank O'Hara here, who said if you want to know about art, look at a million paintings.

Margaret Atwood, The Door (Houghton Mifflin): The title poem is fantastic.

* * *

Jessy Randall's collection of poems A Day in Boyland was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her work has appeared in Asimov's, McSweeney's, and No Tell Motel, and she occasionally guest edits Snakeskin. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.

Best 2008 Poetry Books - Jessy Randall

Jessy Randall's choice:

Nate Pritts, Honorary Astronaut (Ghost Road Press)

* * *

Jessy Randall's collection of poems A Day in Boyland was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her work has appeared in Asimov's, McSweeney's, and No Tell Motel, and she occasionally guest edits Snakeskin. Her website is http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall.

Best 2008 Poetry Books - Kim Roberts

During November and December No Tell contributors will share their picks for Best Poetry Books published during 2008. Here are Kim Robert's choices:

Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins)

Gregg Shapiro, Protection (Gival Press)

Jane Shore, A Yes-or-No Answer (Houghton Mifflin)

A.B. Spellman, Things I Must Have Known (Coffee House Press)

Dan Vera, The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books)

* * *

Kim Roberts is the author of two books of poems, most recently The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007), and has published in literary journals beginning with every letter of the alphabet. She is co-editor of the Delaware Poetry Review and sole editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Her website: http://www.kimroberts.org.

Meet Kurt the No Tell Intern

After years of swearing I would never, ever, No Tell got an intern. Which is either a sign of End of Days or a signal that I'm mellowing just a smidget. Among his duties, Kurt will be blogging here, posting new books by No Tell contributors and conducting interviews. Get to know Kurt now, while he's fresh and before I corrupt him with my crazy cat lady ideas regarding publishing, poetry and DIY.
--Reb Livingston



Kurt Geisler is currently a sophomore at Frostburg State University. He is an English Major, with a creative writing concentration. He has a journalism minor and is pursuing a certificate in professional writing. His main focus is poetry, but he enjoys (and attempts) all other forms of writing. After graduating, he wishes to go onto graduate school. His free time (or rather, when he’s procrastinating) consists of playing the bass (badly), the guitar (horribly) and singing (we wont even go into that) songs he has written with his friend/band mate Elliot.

This Week at No Tell

Michelle Detorie has to look like a girl this week at No Tell Motel.

New Titles by No Tell Poets

-Suzanne Frischkorn, Lit Windowpane, (Main Street Rag Publishing)

-Shin Yu Pai, Tom Gilroy, Jim McKay, Patrick So, Grant-Lee Phillips, Denise Siegel, Rick Roth, Alison Roth, Haiku Not Bombs, (Booklyn Artists Alliance)

-Bronwen Tate, Like the Native Tongue the Vanquished, (Cannibal Books)

-Boyer Rickel, Remanence, (Palor Press)

-Eileen R. Tabios, The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys, (BlazeVOX Books)

-Noah Falck, Measuring Tape For The Midwest, (Pavement Saw Press)

-Adam Fieled, When You Bit..., (Otoliths Books)

-Grace Cavalieri, Anna Nicole: Poems, (Casa Menendez)

-Marcela Sulak, Of All the Things that Don’t Exist, I love You Best, (Finishinglinepress.com)

-Justin Marks, Voir Dire, (Rope-a-Dope Press)

-Justin Marks, A Million in Prizes, (New Issues Press)

-Deborah Ager, Midnight Voices, (WordTech Press)

-Alex Smith, Lux, (Black Maze Books)

-Ryan Flaherty, Novas, (Bateau Press)

-Jilly Dybka, Trouble And Honey, (Bear Shirt Press)

-Michael Rerick, X-Ray, (Flying Guillotine Press)

-Michael Rerick, In Ways Impossible to Fold, (Marsh Hawk Press)

-Alice B. Fogel, Be That Empty, (Harbor Mountain Press)

Alice B. Fogel, Strange Terrain: A Poetry Handbook for Reluctant Readers, (Hobblebush Press)

-Cati Porter, Seven Floors Up, (Mayapple Press)

-Cati Porter, Small Fruit Songs, (Pudding House Publications)

Scott Glassman Wrangles Never Cry Woof

Never Cry Woof
by Shafer Hall
No Tell Books, 2007

It’s time, folks. So saddle up. Change has finally come to America . . . and its name is Shafer Hall. This poet-cowboy has ridden into town with his six-shooter grace to shake up the elite I-know-poetry establishment. To know what you’re getting into, look no further than the cover of this tumbleweed-meets-Merlot gritty serenade, this transformative debut called Never Cry Woof. There in caricature you’ll hear a softer egalitarian echo of post-Bush middle America, a shirtless, overweight cowboy wearing a heart-patterned bikini, sipping red wine as he lounges beside a cigar-smoking George Bush senior. This strange bedfellows campfire scene anticipates the flickering filmstrip of black-and-white moods and softly threatening situations to come. Did I mention a good deal of Jack and Coke is required drinking on this ride?

Hall evokes the magic-wielding colloquial endearment of a Jack Spicer, hearing music sharply in language as Spicer did, the outsider persona howling in tandem. Here, our rogue guide’s sensitive Dionysian swagger is deadened by the “cold trucks and curves” of rural wasteland, lulled by dim harbor lights, made ecstatic by the arcane. We’re awkwardly at peace in these short poems, as if listening to a hypnosis tape narrator wonder aloud whether he should eat some poisonous oleander leaves. Hall’s poetry stitches together dust bowl ennui and big city nerves, a late night world populated by people we need not know in order to really know them: Aunt Cindy, four-year-old Nick, T-Bone’s Old Lady, and a Polish girl named Miriam “trying to make heads or tails of evolution.” Try to match that, creationist Wasilla-girl.

Hall’s poems are “demon rubs” offering no full-bodied conclusions, just glancing accounts from witnesses to misdemeanor crimes. “See for yourself,” he writes, where “in the nickel light / a slender woman dances / and mispronounces your name.” His commentary is a fist on the piano keys, the deflated “Aha” you feel when the evening “outdresses” you. Rather than explain, he points to a brick thrown through his uncle’s rotting fence. Half-grinning statements wink at your expectations for more, such as “I had forgotten the beauty of banana.”

The collection carries the insular and sad-clown soundtrack that a retired sidekick might choose for his biopic as he clings to the faint whiff of romanticism and last-minute rescue. It’s as if Sancho Panza and Shafer Hall are strolling hand-in-hand through a junkyard of American dreams . . . tinged with chrome-blind hope. There’s the inscrutable school bus incident involving a catfish and feminine hygiene product, the yelling at a wastebasket on a subway platform (“Mister!”), the“Falling out / Of Tony Randall’s eyes,” and an entourage of other regressive self-xeroxing incursions that would accompany your typical alien abduction hangover. There are the resurgent smells that make your lungs “hard as coconuts” and require “the strength of one thousand turkeys / on a pre-colonial Manhattan Island” to endure.

When you travel with Shafer, you are Alice, but no doubt on a first-name basis, joining an amiable posse with a taste for the humorously grotesque. The mission is to seek out a little comfortable paranoia. Your guide’s primary goal is some “Gin to make / Me tall again,” but next on the list would be an unceremonious duel with that authority which would “have you stone-tablet everybody.” Don’t worry, God told me to write that. The rules in this town are especially flexible, alchemically shifting, based on what the late Tony Randall described as “everything you were supposed to have learned in elementary school.” In Hall’s tiny dramas, hissing at sheep and letting milk dribble down your chin are essential rites, both then and now. Restoring the You-Show-Me-Yours and I’ll-Show-You-Mine zeitgeist becomes a sacred act, the “exploding crabapple” salvation that the “king of the animal kingdom” unwittingly craves. As Hall chides:

                                             Dawn
and water meet for the aloof
and curious alike; egg creams
and jellybeans are sustenance
too.

The meal satiates us on the prairie overlooking the collapsing landscape of the mundane as we welcome rise of a new real poet. And damn, aren’t we happy as pigs in crap for Hall’s impassioned winking brain. Let’s only hope he ties up Maya Angelou and delivers the inaugural poem wearing the $150,000 bikini featured on the cover, compliments of the happy-go-lucky RNC.
--Scott Glassman

Scott Glassman is the author of the chapbooks Exertions (Cy Gist Press, 2006) and Surface Tension (Dusie, 2006) with Mackenzie Carignan. His poems have appeared in 580 Split, Jubilat, Iowa Review, Sentence, Sidebrow, Cranky, and others. He has also co-curated the INVERSE Reading Series and Emergency Reading Series in Philadelphia.

Donald Illich's Iffy Proposition

I used to be a 98 lb. weakling writer. I'd submit poems on the beach with my best manuscript, and I'd be afraid of too much sun and whether my work was good enough. A poetry editor like Paul Muldoon would come by my blanket and read my pages. “You call that a simile, you wussy? I ought to kick tons of sand in your face.” Which he did, metaphorically speaking, by letting me know that I should stick to the kiddy pool. The poets' lines around here were too defined and muscular for the likes of me. My manuscript left with Mr. Muldoon, to be ground up as chow for the junior New Yorker editors. That's when I read this book by this amazing poetry-builder Reb Livingston, “Stop Getting You Ass Handed to You and Do It Yourself.” Using her simple 12 step program (a few steps: 1. Write/find some poems, 4. Raise a llama, 7. Work with POD publisher to publish them, 12. Have a margarita.) After I recovered from my hangover and that night with the llama, I decided to publish my own journal. Now, when writers come by I'm the one kicking sand and other debris, though I try to be nice. I take a liking to many of them, and maybe one day, I'll be able to settle down with one of these manuscripts, have a baby chapbook, put it through trade publishing.... Oh, never mind that, just please submit to the online version of my journal by e-mailing at ifpoetryjournaleditor@gmail.com. No attachments, 3-5 poems, and bribes help.
--Donald Ilich

Donald Illich was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and it is just like you saw it in Biloxi Blues with Matthew Broderick, except different. He is slightly less smelly than he used to be since he got married in June. He publishes and writes poetry.

Rauan Klassnik Dreams of Silliman

Sometime in early October I began having dreams that involved Ron Silliman. At the time I was kind of worked up at how Ron had suggested legal action was possible against the creators of Issue 1 of forgodot.com.

At the end of a post on his blog Ron wrote 'Play with other people’s reps at your own risk.' I thought this was, of course, ridiculous-- and then Ron started appearing in my dreams. At first I was kind of freaked out. But I'm not someone who places too much stock in my dreams. Some people (nudge, nudge, Reb Livingston) believe that keys to understanding one's own psyche lie in one's dreams. I am not one of those people. However, I do like to remember my dreams. And when they're interesting I am quite intrigued. But, I see them in the way that I approach a movie or work of art or a walk in the park. Sometimes my dreams are just pointless. Sometimes, though, I think they are indeed interesting and amusing. I think this is the case with the Ron Silliman dreams I had, and that's why I decided to post them to my blog. And, luckily, Ron Silliman hasn't sued me yet-- what would he sue me for anyways? Dreaming?
--Rauan Klassnik

From "Ron Silliman Dream #6 (2nd batch): Gorgeous"

I’m walking through tall, dry grass and suddenly Ron Silliman’s whispering to me:

“Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky”

I look around but I’m completely alone and, so, I keep on shopping. But when I reach for a carton of eggs

“But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin”

Again I look around——but, alas, nothing.

Then, while I’m unpacking, reaching deep into the sack for a bag of asparagus

“We’ll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind.”

Again I look around and this time I notice a note on the refrigerator: “Come upstairs”--- and there are candles all the way upstairs and then down the corridor and all through the bedroom. I knock on the bathroom door:

“Come in, baby. It’s Ron. It’s Ron.”

And, there, rising out of a mountain of bubbles is the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen——a bit like Botticelli’s Venus, but so much greater...

Stepping into the steaming hot bubbles I take her, giggling, in my arms...


“Who knows how long this will last
Now we’ve come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us”

For more Klassnik dreams Silliman

Rauan Klassnik is the author of Holy Land.

This Week at No Tell

Erin Elizabeth Smith is okay with settling this week at No Tell Motel.

New Titles by No Tell Poets

Shane Jones, I Will Unfold You With My Hairy Hands (Greying Ghost Chapbook Series)

Anne Gorrick, Kyotologic (Shearsman Books)

Carolyn Guinzio, Quarry (Parlor Press)

Gina Myers, Behind the R (Ypolita Press)

Michael Schiavo, The Mad Song (Northshire)

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: REBECCA LOUDON

Cover Art: Scott Odom
Cover Design: Maureen Thorson

Available for purchase at Lulu NOW $15
Available at retail outlets SOON.


Rigoberto Gonzalez interviews Rebecca Loudon:

My ideal reader is a person who has suffered, who feels apart, who has known trauma, and who is capable of honestly engaging with the lot they've been handed. Everyone has suffered, but some people are willing to embrace the forest that surrounds us, some are not. Many readers prefer the tranquil, the pastoral, the serene. These are not usually my readers. The groundbreaking photographer Diane Arbus once wrote of her work, "There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." (From Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph). I think perhaps Diane's aristocrats are my ideal readers.

No Tell Nominations

Every year No Tell Motel nominates poems for "best of" anthologies as a way to bring further attention to the poems and poets it publishes.

NTM's Best of the Net 2008 Nominations (Sundress)


"Bupleurum Wandering Chamber" by Anna Maria Hong

"[ directions to my house ]" by Brent Goodman

"Poem in Which I Sort of Break Down" by Clay Matthews

"pink-think (a primer for girls of other colors)" by Evie Shockley

"That Morning" by Rauan Klassnik

"Saw This & Marked It" by Mia Nussbaum



NTM's Best of the Web 2009 Nominations (DZANC Books)


"Alys: Architect, Prodigal and Witch." by Paula Mendoza-Hanna

"Jack’s Physical" by Scott Glassman

"Immigration Quotas" by Marcela Sulak

No Tell Poets Interviewed by Joe Milford

Reb Livingston 7/26/08

Jill Alexander Essbaum 10/4/08

Ravi Shankar 11/2/2008

Hugh Behm-Steinberg Reading Schedule

11/9: Myopic books in Chicago, 1564 N. Milwaukee Ave. 7:00 PM

11/12: Avol's Books in Madison, WI, 315 West Gorham St. 7:00 PM

11/14: Imaginary Press Reading Series, Minneapolis, MN, w/ Louise Mathias and David Dodd Lee. At DIAMONDS: 1618 Central Avenue NE. 7:30 PM.

A Good Christian Mustn't Fear the Darkness of the Grave