Late Summer...but not too late: News & new releases!

Why yes, this is the aforepromised ginormous post I started before I went on vacation. My apologies for taking so long to complete it. (A few things actually dropped off because they'd already happened or sold out. Whew!) I've got a few more things in the inbox & will try to get those up soon as well. Enjoy!

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Michelle Detorie of WOMB & Hex Presse has been busy making/planning handmade sets of cleromancy dice, poetry puzzles in specimen bottles, & a fresh new blogroll of more than 300 women poets. Stop by the Womb blog and/or the Hex Presse blog for more info. Hex has also been added to the press section of the sidebar.




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E. M. Bertram of Shadowbox Press believes all good things come in threes. So for a limited time, you can get 3 books for 3 bucks off. The set includes Fuel In Vacant Lots: Essays On Queer Existence by Jen Alabiso, Woody Loverude, Zachary Jean Chartkoff, Jaffa Aharonov, Kim Schneidman, & E.M. Bertram, Flood by Woody Loverude & constellations gathered along the ecliptic by Craig Santos Perez. To order, email shadowboxpress [at] gmail [dot] com. (Please include "Order" in the subject line.)




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Jen Tynes of Horseless Press has also been busy. Two new chapbooks are now available: [Summer_insular] by Justin Marks & Fog Quartets by Julie Doxsee.

Each is 5.5 x 8.5, staple bound, with cover art by Conan Kelly, 40 pp. & available for $5 via PayPal or mailorder.




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INCH #4 IS OUT NOW! The smallest magazine around is back with microfiction from Michael McFee & Cynthia Reeves, & poetry from Jeffery Beam, Sebastian Matthews, & Mischa Willett. Order single issues (only a buck!) here or subscribe here. One, two, and three year subscriptions are available.

Also, check out the two latest offerings from the Bull City Poetry Series, The Smallest Talk by Michael McFee & Licorice by Ellen C. Bush. In addition to buying online from Bull City's secure website and/or Amazon.com, you can purchase Bull City Press books from several locations in North Carolina, including the Regulator (Durham), Quail Ridge Books (Raleigh), McIntyre's Fine Books (Pittsboro), and the Bull's Head Bookstore (Chapel Hill).




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Tiny books. Big hearts. Eileen Tabios of Meritage Press has been up to some poetical philanthropy. First, she paired up with Baksheesh (a fair trade retailer) and Heifer International, introducing a new series of Tiny Books. The miniature blank books are handmade by artisans in Guatemala & Eileen handwrites the poems inside. Dan Waber & Tom Beckett are the first two authors in the series. (Photo of Tom Beckett's Tiny Book above by Crag Hill.)

Next, she auctioned off a copy of Ivy Alvarez's limited-edition tinyside from Big Game Books, raising more than $300, which purchased 30 mosquito nets from the Nothing But Nets campaign against malaria (the leading killer of children in Africa).

Tiny Books are still for sale--because they're HOD, handwritten on demand. (Now that's DIY.) Each Tiny Book costs $10 plus $1.00 shipping/handling. To purchase the Tiny Books & donate to Heifer International, send a check for $11.00 (each, please specify title(s)) made out to "Meritage Press" to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

Meritage Press has also recently released William Allegrezza's Fragile Replacements & Allen Bramhall's chunky two volume Days Poem (which I've just started reading). Order Meritage books from SPD, Amazon, or Lulu.




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House Press has many shiny new items avaiable, including Just as Form by Eric Unger, Friend Delighting the Eloquent by Matthew Klane, & some very cool grave rubbings by Barrett Gordon. (Since House Press is a collective, each item has different ordering instructions, so check the links for details.)




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Josh Hanson's got a newish press, kids. It's called End & Shelf Books. Just released is Stuart Greenhouse's beautiful new chapbook, All Architecture. Just like all End & Shelf productions, All Architecture is available as a **FREE** PDF. While you're downloading, also check out Clay Matthews' Western Returns & The Collaborative Poem by the Hundred Day Party.




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Justin Marks' Kitchen Press has recently released Run Down the Emphasis by Erin Elizabeth Burke. Get it for $5 in the Kitchen Press bookstore here. Justin's also been posting some reviews & interviews relating to other Kitchen titles on the main blog, so take a peek at those as well.




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Carrie Hunter's Ypolita Press offers a new bilingual English/German edition of CAConrad's THE FRANK POEMS with translations by Holger, with assistance from Jonas Slonacker and Sigrid Mayer. Available for $5 via PayPal. And Conrad's posted an excerpt here.




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From Paul Chavez's Vértice 1925 comes the Spam Poetry Anthology, described as "the first book compiling the works of spam poetry authors from around the globe." The book is edited by Morton Hurley, with a foreword by K. Silem Mohammad & cover are by Tony Millionaire. Here's a review from 3AM. 60 poems, 76 pp. of spam you actually want to read? Not a bad deal for a mere $10.




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Three new books from Mark Young's Otoliths Press are now available: Nick Piombino's by now legendary "visual collage novel" Free Fall, Sheila E. Murphy's first integrated linear & visual collection The Case of the Lost Objective (Case) & Rochelle Ratner's memoir / found text / poetry journal Leads. All are available via Otolith's Lulu.com storefront here.

Allen Bramhall's Days Poem: Vols. 1 & 2 now available from Meritage Press!

   
So summer is here and you're looking for something substantial to kerplunk down in a lawn chair with, right? Here's just the thing.

Days Poem, Vol. 1 & 2 by Allen Bramhall

Says the author, "Begun casually, the writing of Days Poem quickly grew into a daily necessity to write, even to plug onward. In this way, it resembles a journal or novel, tho it claims neither genre as its own. It started with an idea of writing large and embracing extent. It settled (and unsettled) itself within the compelling philosophical argument that it is what it is. The thrill of relentlessness and perseverance pushed it until, you know, it came to an end. As the writer of these pages, I wanted to play with hobos, and bears, and Tarzan & Jane, and Walden Pond, and all the words in between. I wanted a little amazement in every day."

Allen Bramhall was born by the banks of the Concord River in 1952 and has lived in Massachusetts ever since. He was educated at Franconia College and Lesley University, and in nonacademic places as well. Simple Theory (Potes & Poets Press) was his first book. He maintains a blog called Tributary, and a life with Beth and Erin.

DAYS POEM, VOL 1.
ISBN: 978-0-9709-1798-0
6" x 9", perfect binding
510 pp.

DAYS POEM, VOL 2.
ISBN: 978-0-9709-1799-7
6" x 9", perfect binding
442 pp.

Those links above will take you to Meritage Press's Lulu store. Or the books are also available directly from the press. Details here.

I've been waiting for this MAJOR EVENT, and my copies are on the way. Report to come, but why wait?

UPDATE: To celebrate the release of Days Poem, Meritage Press is pleased to offer the following SPECIAL OFFER:

To order a single volume, a 20% discount and free shipping/handling (about a $3.00 value) for a single-volume price of $22.40

To order both volumes, a 25% discount and free shipping handling for a 2-volume price of $42.00

This offer will be good through June 30, 2007...and is expected to be the least expensive rate for purchasing the book(s). Please send checks made out to "Meritage Press" and mail to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

Reviews of Tom Beckett's Unprotected Texts & Katie Degentesh's The Anger Scale

Just haven't been able to keep up here during the last month or so! (Apartment hunting, packing to move, holidays, etc.--it's just too much.)

I did manage to squeeze out a couple of mini reviews of micropress books on my other blog that readers here might be interested in:

           On Tom Beckett's Unprotected Texts
           On Katie Degentesh's The Anger Scale

Will be back after the holidays with resolution to do better in tow. Remind me then if you have something new to announce, and YES, send reviews and/or links to reviews elsewhere. You make the news, I just gather it into a lovely ball.

So until then,
s

Unprotected Texts by Tom Beckett

UNPROTECTED TEXTS: SELECTED POEMS (1978~2006) by Tom Beckett
Meritage Press
Fall 2006
$19.95

From editor/publisher Eileen Tabios:

Meritage Press is pleased to announce the release of Tom Beckett's long overdue and much anticipated first poetry book. Unprotected Texts encompasses work from nearly three decades. To celebrate this historic release, Meritage Press is pleased to offer a PRE-RELEASE SPECIAL. Through September 30, 2006, you can acquire this book direct from the publisher for $14.00, a 30% discount, as well as receive free shipping/handling for orders sent to U.S. addresses. Send check/money order made out to Meritage Press to:

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Road
St. Helena, CA 94574

Zombies and Wittgenstein bracket a series of autonomous zones populated by the Book, Harry Partch, 100 Questions, shadows, holograms, the Subject, the author himself, and numerous pronouns. These Unprotected Texts flood the tones of speech wrenched from the bent notes of a life lived looking for a connection to 'the conversation' that takes place among musics of meaning. 'Is this speech balloon a rubber?' Sex and text are synonymous here.

ADVANCE PRAISE:

"There is a powerfully osmotic draw to this welcome volume of selected poems, spanning nearly thirty years of work and concluding with a stimulating interview of the author by Tom Fink and Crag Hill. That this book is overdue results in a level of concentration that intensifies the experience of reading. The poetry itself, the intellect and personality that exude from it, reveal a mind and heart that bring to the fore the infinite variety of life in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. References to composer and musical theorist Harry Partch seem apt, as Beckett's Unprotected Texts reveal intervals in sound, discovering heretofore undiscovered instruments.

"There is Beckett as designer who 'underpaints. Beckett as builder: 'Stanzas are rooms in Italian.' Beckett as political and social observer: 'Is the president a hologram?' 'Do fingerprints have babies?' Beckett as aesthetic investigator: 'At some point I turned out to be my method.' 'Closure affects circumference.' Beckett as honest individual/ articulate creator: 'It's a boy and it's a girl.' 'Often I am permitted to do absolutely nothing that I want to do.'" --Sheila E. Murphy

"For three decades now, Tom Beckett has been writing the most hard-headed, clear-eyed, unsentimental poetry in America. He has the rigor of a master & the mind of a first-rate detective. Long before the internet made it relatively easier for a poet to work from somewhere other than one of the two or three major literary centers, Beckett was writing poems from deep inside Ohio that ring as true--and as clearly--now as when they were first written." --Ron Silliman

Well known for editing The Difficulties (1980-1990), a now legendary critical journal, Tom Beckett has long been associated with the Language Poets. His poem "The Picture Window" (included in this volume) was published in Ron Silliman's landmark anthology In the American Tree. More recently, he has become a popular figure in the world of blogs. Unprotected Texts comprises work taken in whole or part from broadsides, chapbooks, journals, online and other publications. It is his first, much anticipated, full-length book. He lives in Kent, Ohio.

Get those checkbooks out, people.

The break-even point: traditional offset vs. POD

I missed a few interesting things last week while reporting in excruciating detail on my letterpress class, y'all. And one of them is this post by Meritage Press publisher Eileen Tabios.

Having just released my first POD title, I can make some comparisons, including the number of book sales I must sell to cover costs related to printing and designing a book. Here's a comparison of this "break-even" sales point for a POD title versus a title printed through more conventional means, to wit:

POD title: about 133 books

Conventionally printed title: about 435 books.

These numbers are based on moi Meritage Press' experience -- but possibly reflective of many poetry presses. The comparison results mostly from how a publisher doesn't have to incur right away the costs of creating an inventory, which, for Meritage Press titles, historically has been about 1,000 copies. That inventory cost offsets the advantage of conventional printing in its lower cost-per-book basis.

For a POD title, I'd probably first order about 200 copies to cover anticipated review copies, some initial sales, author copies and so on. That's 200 versus 1,000 copies I need finance right away. (Of course I'd order more than 200 copies, depending on a particular poet's "market" but it likely still wouldn't near 1,000 right away.)

Now, if you're a poet or publisher, you know that selling 133 books -- let alone 435 books -- is a chore. It's probably a near-impossibility for many poetry books, at least within a reasonable period of time. (Let me stress -- I'ma talking real poetry sales, not comps or trades. Sales.)

As Eileen notes, the break-even point will vary for each publisher, and is affected by how much is spent on promotional activities such as advertising and complimentary review copies (and their postage), etc., in addition to the base operating costs of running a press (which depends on the size of the outfit, number of employees, distribution system used, etc.) But her analysis gets straight to the advantages of POD over traditional offset printing and warehousing of a full print-run: less money up front and greater flexibility in terms of resource commitment and even storage space (which some publishers have to pay for as well). Cheers to Eileen for sharing, and don't forget to check out Meritage's books!

Not Even Dogs now available from Meritage Press!

Not Even Dogs is a first in three ways: it's Ernesto Priego debut poetry collection, it's the first single-author hay(na)ku collection, & it's Meritage Press's first book to be published after making the switch to POD production via Lulu. Counting to three is a potent little charm.

Not Even Dogs by Ernesto Priego
6 x 9, perfect bound, 116 pp.
ISBN 13: 978-1-4116-8992-3
$12.99

An sample poem from the book's third section, "Cities,":

Tenth City

You
were here
before I could

understand
what cities
do to people.

I
used to
play baseball in

cornfields
now condos
with tennis courts,

and
soon you
became the monster

under
everyone's beds
waiting, breathing, grey,

enormous,
fierce, beautiful
yet horribly impossible,

full
of possibility
and still sad

and
so frustrated,
infiltrated by fears

you
yourself cannot
properly define. City

of
lost corners
and savory folklore,

full
of tastes
and noises and

overt
chaos controlled
by god knows

what
call it
quantum physics or

divine
intervention but
you are everywhere

like
a weary
fury deciding futures

of
those who
lived within you.

Here
every inch
is replete with

stories
of unrequitted
love & hate

of
aspiration &
reconstruction & the

abduction
of dreams
& everything else

for
treinta pesos
al día sobrevives

if
things go
well, remember that,

city
of lost
origins & horizons,

of
ambitions &
claxons, of ghosts

under
the fallen
buildings and tents

under
the wealthy
fantastic urban landscapes

of
non-existent cities
that are not

&
could not
but still are.

Unnamable
city, breathing
still, in spite

of
everything you
are because you,

city
where skies
have forgotten all

skies
were meant
to be remains,

loved
and hated,
populated by spectres,

seeking
justice, or
just some peace,

without
hiding behind
self-imposed jail bars.

In
my dreams
I see you

always
from above,
from the sky

or
from an
illuminated cloudy hill,

seeing
you shine
as an artificial,

sick
heart, counting
pulses before finally,

tragically,
silently, turn
out your lights.

Read the other nine cities in the sequence here. (The poems appear in the book in reverse numerical order, 10-1).

The economics of poetry publishing (again)

Poet and Meritage Press publisher/editor Eileen Tabios is doing her taxes, and letting us all peek at a tally of her poetry-related expenses vs. her profits for last year at her Chatelaine's Poetics blog. [Note: scroll down to March 27 entry.]

(Thanks, Eileen. I hope switching to POD production helps you keep costs down, and that you'll continue to share your experiences so generously for the enlightenment of all!)

Eileen has also just announced the goodies planned for her 2006 list:

NOT EVEN DOGS by Ernesto Priego

DERIVÉ by Bruna Mori, with sumi-ink paintings by Matthew Kinney

UNPROTECTED TEXTS: SELECTED POEMS (1978~2006) by Tom Beckett

KALI BLADE by Michelle Bautista