Scott Pierce's new letterpress & chapbook

If you're into letterpress printing, you might stop by Scott's blog if you haven't peeked lately. He recently acquired his very own letterpress (SWOON) and has been blogging about his projects, including forthcoming Effing stuff, some broadsides, and a very cool idea for "coaster sides."

     

With photos, naturally. Check it.

He's also got a new chapbook out from Small Fires Press (Tuscaloosa, AL--hello! Adding you to the press links!). Called Some Bridges Migrate, it can be yours for a mere ten spot. Details.

Playing ketchup: New release roundup

Oh, what happened to January? February? Yeah, well, things have been in flux 'round here. I can't possibly catch up with everything I missed, & many ephemeral chaps have already come & gone in that time, but here are buncha things with noting. After this, I'll try to keep up better! (Keep sending me yr announcements, links, etc., please.)

In no particular order:

Zachary Schomburg's The Man Suit is available for preorder from Black Ocean Press. (& they've been added to the resource links.) I haven't seen the book yet, but I like Zach's work a lot & have been looking forward to this. It'll be shipping April 2. 112pp. $12.95. They take PayPal. Get it here.

Jen Tynes has a new chapbook, from Dancing Girl Press, called See Also Electric Light, for a mere $5. I think this might be the one with Jen's poems riffing on a vintage book about boys and electricity, yes? She told me about it in Cambridge, but didn't read from it, so I'm curious about this one too. Get it here.

Speaking of both Zach Schomburg & Jen Tynes, lookie what they've done now: Horseless Press just published Zach's chapbook Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene. (I have read an earlier version of this, when it appeared in LIT a while back. Good stuff.) 22 pp. $5 via PayPal. Sorry, no cover image up yet. Get that here

Octopus #8 has also been released. (Gee, Zach has been really busy.) This boxed chapbook issue includes The Knife Grasses by Julie Doxsee, The Ohio System by Jen Tynes & Erika Howsare, Perfect Villagers by Sueyeun Juliette Lee, DJ Spinoza's Dozen by Eugene Ostashevsky, The Tides by Genya Turovskaya, The Continuing Misadventures of Andrew, the Headless Talking Bear by Jonah Winter, & Goodnight Lung by Samuel Amadon. You can also get the chaps individually ($6 each), but it's a much better deal (& idea) to collect all eight ($28) here.

Apostrophe Books has just released their first title, Catherine Meng's Tonight's the Night. At 80 pp at $13.50, it can be had via SPD (though maybe not quite yet), Amazon, or directly from Apostrophe (checks only, no online store yet). Details here. (Looks like they've got some other interesting things coming up too, including books from Elizabeth Robinson & Johannes Göransson.)

Mairéad Byrne has a new e-book, SOS, in PDF format from UBU Web's Ubu Editions here. [Link goes direct to PDF. For a complete index of UBU Editions titles, click here.] It's FREE to browse, print or save to your computer these 88 terrific pages. So you've no excuse. (& incidentally, Mairéad published all of the poems first on her blog Heaven, which you should really be reading, if you're not already. It's all poems, prose poems & poem-essays, all the time.)

Brian Kim Stefans has a new book, It's Not Time: Early Poems & Translations, which he's published through Lulu.com. It's available as a 151pp. paperback for $12 or a PDF download for $4. He talks about using Lulu a bit on his blog. Get it here.

Dusie entices us all to preorder Logan Ryan Smith's forthcoming book, The Singers. Here's more info.

Joe Massey has been busy too. A recent sequence of his (twelve short form works) called November Graph has been published by Bob Arnold's Longhouse Press in Guilford, Vermont, as an accordion-style fold-out booklet with wrap-around band. Only 50 copies were printed, & honestly, I may be too late. (Curses & apologies, if so.) But the website doesn't say sold out.) The chap is 7.95 and can be obtained directly from the press by check only. Checks should be made out to "Longhouse" & sent to LONGHOUSE, 1604 River Road, Guilford, Vermont 05301. (Sorry, no cover art to show ya.)

Also from Mr. Massey (as guest editor) comes the latest issue of Effing Magazine, with work by Zach Barocas, Christopher Rizzo, Mairéad Byrne, Andrew Mister, Rae Armantrout, Shannon Tharp, Aaron Tieger, Thomas Devaney, Julie Doxsee, Sandra Simonds, Jess Mynes & John Phillips. It's got a very beautiful letterpress cover featuring linocut lilies by Jared Faulkner. $6 for 64pp. Get it here.

Finally, if you're near Buffalo or in the lucky position to make the trip, the Buffalo Small Press Fair is coming up in a few weeks. Scheduled for March 31, the event schedule includes readings by DIYers Aaron Tieger, Jess Mynes, & others, plus music by I Feel Tractor & more. It's FREE to attend. (Wish I could.) Rocking.

OK, that's it for this update. I know, I know. I missed stuff. Pretend your fave missed project is that much cooler for being underappreciated. (It probably is.)

The new h_ngm_n dangles a coupla chapbook reviews

Gina Myers on Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse, Arlo Quint's Days on End, & Kristen Hanlon's Proximity Talks here.

Jen Tynes on Carrington by Elizabeth Robinson, Steam by Sandra Simonds & Morning News by Ana Bozicevic-Bowling here.

Go shopping:

Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse from Effing
Arlo Quint's Days on End from Open 24 Hours Press (no website? Seek Greg Fuchs or John Coletti for info.)
Kristen Hanlon's Proximity Talks from Noemi Press
Elizabeth Robinson's Carrington from Hot Whiskey
Sandra Simonds's Steam (write ssimonds23 [at] aol [dot] com)
Ana Bozicevic-Bowling's Morning News from Kitchen Press

I know I'm behind again, but you know a good apocalypse just can't wait.

& so here it is, Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse which has some poems in it and also some art in it (including this, one of my favorites).

Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse
w/ illustrations by the author
5x7.5, 36 pages
$7, available now

There is nothing, really, more to say (yet) except that you should purchase it. Right away. To soothe your little eschatological heart.

Tags: Effing Press

Chapbooks on the cheap from Effing!

From Scott Pierce:

CHAPBOOK SALE

We could really use some cash for some printing projects so for $12.00 you can receive any 3 effing books that are in print as well as a handful of broadsides, postcards, and bookmarks.

See details here.

Already have all the effing books? Consider making a donation of any amount and still receive at least a handprinted postcard as well as our love.

C'mon, you know you don't have enough love, do ya.

Please spread the word.

Summer downtime = very busy DIYers. Awesome.

Effing Press has just released Is It the King? by Farid Matuk

5 x 7.5
48 pages
saddle-stitched
cover art and design by Jared Faulkner
bound in assorted endpapers
$7.00

Get it here.







Introducing the Onion Union, a new online journal edited by Marcus McCann.

The Onion Union pledge: We recognize a liberating promise in the unmooring of poetry and economics. Poets have gained unparalleled freedom to produce their work unapologetically, free from the external pressures facing artists working in other mediums. On the internet, poets have the unprecedented ability to reproduce and distribute their own work. And, most importantly, poetry's readers have an enormous amount of choice about what they read, unfiltered by traditional industry constraints. We will sever the last ties between poetry and economics, which are imaginary rather than material anyway. We will celebrate a post-capitalist poetics. Self-publishing is a revolutionary anarchic act. The poems are free.

The first issue features poetry by Mark Young, William Piety, Sawako Nakayasu, Liam Wilkinson, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Eileen Tabios, Eric Lehman & Caleb Puckett.

Check it out.


Brian Howe's chapbook Guitar Smash is out too.

GUITAR SMASH, the debut poetry chapbook by Brian Howe.

GUITAR SMASH is what happens when you force-feed language to technology until it vomits!
It’s c r a z y …

GUITAR SMASH is available by way of purchase, trade, bully tactics, flattery, comp.
Contact Brian for details.

(By the time I got around to this announcement, copies are already scarce. But Brian notes on his blog, the chap is also available as a free PDF here.)


Logan Ryan Smith reviews Parad e R ain by Michael Koshkin

After Johnson wrote, or etched out his radi os, one might wonder why anyone else would want to do erasures ever again, as it is a capsulation of an idiosyncratic and clever idea. As well, the idea of creating poems from erasures seems almost endless--where would it ever stop? Could one create a whole literary "career" out of erasures? If not, why not? If so, how? Yet, erasures seem to be a form of translation, and also a way to create a whole new poem. And again, one might ask why someone would write another erasure from Milton's trilogy after Johnson tackled Paradise Lost. The answer to that is: Because Michael Koshkin can, and did. The differences between radi os and parad e r ain are remarkable. It's interesting to see how an erasure done in the 70s and one done in the 2000s of similar source material can be so different.

Read the rest here.

Then visit Big Game Books to get your copy.


New! Beat Roots by Anne Waldman, with illustrations by George Schneeman, from Hot Whiskey Press

Speaking of Michael Koshkin, he and his Hot Whiskey partner Jennifer Rogers have just published Beat Roots with a letterpressed cover and Japanese stab binding.

The 250 copies are going fast--the first 10 signed copies were snapped up immediately.

Click and ye shall receive.


And finally, CAConrad's Mooncalf Press offers a new chap by Frank Sherlock

Frank Sherlock's poem from the Poetry, Politics, Proximity: Third Annual Kerry Sherin Wright Prize event at Kelly Writers House on April 27 is now available in chapbook form: Spring Diet of Flowers at Night with cover art by Jonathan Allen.

There should be infinite
meaning in
the blandness of a shot
victim in an unfamiliar
neighborhood but

prospects of imagined life
are tied to clean logic

Diagetic background
music has been used to
steer me into attempting
an architectural line

Copies are available at Robin's Bookstore in Philly (108 S. 13th Street), or to order contact Mooncalf Press at CAConrad13 [at] aol [dot] com.

Illuminating the Why in DIY

Scott Pierce (of ever effervescent Effing) & Shann Palmer have been talking chapbooks vs. "real" books in the comment boxes dangling from Ron Silliman's blog, & as a result Scott has articulated in an open letter something of his love for making poetry.

See, I don't see the problem with handwork. Exercise and serious intent are for you, and you, and you. There is an issue of outsourcing here in our complainy poetry world too, see. It fits into the big-ass picture. I don't see how it is vain to go to the end of what you've started. What if, bear with with me, what if you are an artist. Say a mind and body not wholly satisfied or sated by merely writing, by merely seating the buttocks in the chair at the machine and its hypnotic glow. What if the artist writes and then the artist wants to do more with the words, wants to wrap them in silky cornleaf too, wants to make art of the vessel, maybe extend another of one's interest in the arena of graphics and textile manipulation to blend together in a thing called Book? What is a book.

A business so small and crucial you will be allowed to keep your day job. You will be allowed to think of others.

Is the choreographer that performs her dance vain for doing so? Is it a vanity dance?

Vanity art: a new movement in the age of inkjet?

I wonder if the inventor who tests her own creations is vain. Did not the Lumiere bros not make their own films with their own cameras? Wright bros? Did Ford drive a car?

Chefs cook vanity meals when they taste their own recipes?

To read Scott's letter is to vicariously settle your butt in that chair & feel your beer growing warm from the extended concentration of printing, trimming, binding & burnishing. Even simple bookmaking is a meditative experience, repetitive but not dull, exacting but exhilarating, that is difficult to convey. Hooray.

UPDATE: Kristy Bowen adds her thoughts about books vs. chapbooks, legitimacy & vanity here. An excerpt:

The vanity thing is complicated too. I think it's a loaded term with negative connotations. And I agree with Shann, we're all vain in the creative arts, and maybe there's nothing wrong with that. In regard to the other arts, the means of delivery are not quite so dependent on distribution and legitimacy bestowed by a third party. Visual art, while yes, getting into a posh gallery is one way to show your art, another is to rent out a space and show by yourself or with some fellow artists. End result is the same. Same with music. A hit record is nice, but no one calls it "vanity" if you put your own record out, or filmmakers vain when they shoot an indie without a big Hollywood budget. Literature, in general, seems so fucking squeamish about this. And maybe it's all the bad things that are passed off as poetry these days. Some of them ironically published by big presses (And how much of an advance did Billy Corgan get for his book with Faber and Faber? Does that make him a legitimate poet?) . We feel like we need that sort of legitimacy or we're no better than the woman writing and publishing poems to her cats.

Have I mentioned that I've got an essay about these very things in the latest issue of the Tiny? (I'll reprint it here, eventually, but not until their next issue comes out, & that's several months from now. Anyway, you should subscribe!)

PS: If you're interested in letterpress book arts, stay tuned for a week of daily notes as I take this class at the Center for Book Arts in May.

Effing does it again

Jim Goar's new chabook Whole Milk is just out from Scott Pierce's supercool Effing Press in Austin, Texas.

Whole Milk by Jim Goar
3.75 x 5.75
40 pages
saddle-stitched
cover & interior illustrations by Josh Riosw
handmade Korean endpapers
$6.00

A few of the things some people have said about the book:

"I don't know what the words in it mean but the book fits in my back pocket and I look hotter and thinner when it is there." -- girl on street

"Jim Goar writes some good English for a Korean." -- guy at bus stop


"When I get high with you in the near future this little book of Jim Goar's is what I'll want to reach for" -- Farid Matuk

"Any book with two poems that begin with the line 'a tree sprouted from my penis' is destined to break new ground. " -- publisher's mom

Here is a sample poem.

Also, this monkey likes it.

Effing #4

Edited by David Hadbawnik & Farid Matuk
Cover image by Justin Ulmer

Featuring Walid Bitar, Susan Briante, Kris Bronstad, Tom Clark, Linh Dinh, Meagan Evans, Susan Gevirtz, Brooks Johnson, Kent Johnson, Kyle Kaufman, Friedrich Kerksiek, Rodney Koeneke, Judith Kroll, Sara M Larsen, Evelyn Lauer, Elmo Lum, Pablo Miguel Martinez, Khaled Mattawa, Aaron James McNally, Eileen Myles, Andrew Neuendorf, Philip Pardi, Estella Ramirez, Elizabeth Robinson, C Vincent Samarco, Dale Smith, Michael Smoler, Roger Snell, Roberto Tejada, & Stephanie Young

100 pages, thread-bound, $6.00.

Get it.

Another review of Tony Tost's World Jelly

"[I]f there is a single word I would think of for this book, it would be elegant, a terrific combination of grace & compactness throughout. Tony Tost, of whom I’ve been aware for a few years without ever really reading closely, makes it look effortless. And, in a funny [way], it probably both is and isn’t." --Ron Silliman

Read the rest here.

And git on over to Effing Press to buy yr very own.

Effing Press realeases Threnody by Tom Clark

Threnody by Tom Clark
8x10.5, 28 pages
text and illustrations by Tom Clark
w/ iron oxide endpapers
$8.00

An excerpt:

Prologue: Dead End

The heavy industries that built our world and shaped our lives are dying. The sounds and sights in these grim cathedrals they’ve left behind—the empty vestiges of their once throbbing rituals, the iron foundries and sheet metal works, the copper smelting and cable manufacturing plants—echo and reflect their death throes. A pall of absence as dense as a toxic cloud hangs over things. Yet time continues to move forward: along rusted tracks and corroded rails, down dark alleys, across suspended gangways, past girders dangling precariously in black air, around blind corners through a labyrinth of internal factory corridors. Time that is the ghostly material medium in which we think and act—compelled onward yet never knowing where we’re going, turned aside, derailed, misled, diverted, confused, disoriented and finally lost—continues to grind on, as long as we keep breathing. This world of time through which we travel, which we have made, and which has made us, has only one direction, forward, and one speed, this speed, and one destination, a dead end that repeats itself over and over.

You can get it here via Pay Pal. Or by sending cash, check, or m/o to Scott Pierce, 703 W. 11th Street #2, Austin, TX 78701.

UPDATE: A review of Threnody by Dale Smith in Big Bridge here.

New review of Red Juice by Hoa Nguyen

Verse magazine has published an admiring review of Hoa Nguyen's Red Juice, available from Effing Press.

And speaking of Effing, Scott Pierce recently announced that Effing Magazine will be revived in 2006, featuring a new guest-editor for each issue.

Rocking.