David Brazil reading at the Green Arcade!

Brazil killing it at the Green Arcade. Thanks Patrick, impresario and incredible supporter of Bay Area poetry, for putting us up. David's book is moving fast. Don't wait too long to pick one up or it might not be around...

Jackqueline Frost reading at the Green Arcade!

In case you missed it, here's Jackqueline Frost's reading from The Antidote at the Green Arcade. Thanks Stephen Novotny for masterfully working the camera...

Songs of Surrender || pallaksch. pallaksch.

Two new Steven Seidenberg projects, both featuring his photographs of rusted surfaces on the covers. pallaksch. pallaksch. is a new journal co-edited with Elizabeth Robinson featuring new work by Bev Dahlen, Martin Corless Smith, Kimberly Lyons, Lew Ellingham, among others. You can read Steve's introduction to the journal here, and purchase a copy while you're at it...   

Songs of Surrender is a chapbook that materialized through a recent artist's residency in Germany. The press is called, I think, Gummi Geleibter Verlag, but you can also get one from Steven through his homepage.

Here's a sample:

Such as this
Panoptic trough

alloys with dusk

the blood mouth

of this teeming foss,

the sodden lips

choked open

to accomodate

the shine.

The sodden tongue

surrendered to

the carrion prayer

of leeched afflatus,

vultures of

parousia, such

as this, we sing-

Finally, I think Steven might have a show going up at Right Window sometime in the fall, so keep yr. eyes peeled...

Boris, 1991

George Albon's A Small Sill

New George Albon is always a very welcome treat, and this past week I received TWO new Albon numbers in the mail. This first, on Sardines Press out of SF (edited by Roger Snell?) is kind of impossible to find: no homepage, no distribution, just an address: 303 Ortega St., SF, 94122. So if you want one, you'll have to write a note. The incredible book-making achievement here is that the thread perfectly matches the cover stock (which is actually a pretty significant feat!). Here's a taste of George at work:

*
Sun cut frost
light green bud
noon bend in

*
I felt the lilac
in my hand
the stem-stalk
a living throat
proximal to some
urban sheds

Gauss PDF

I had the pleasure of meeting Gordon Faylor at the Brazil/Frost reading on Saturday night (which was AWESOME btw! Stephen Novotny promises video footage soon...). Turns out he just moved to the Bay Area from Philadelphia, and he's bringing his Gauss PDF archive with him. There are tons of top-shelf contributions in the achive, which you can find here, and check out this useful interview with Gordon and Chris Alexander over at Jacket.

And this is what Gordon looks like: if you see him wandering the streets of San Francisco, say hello and make him feel at home!

THIS SATURDAY!

Don't forget to join us tomorrow night!
Help us celebrate the arrival of three new Compline titles (David Brazil's The Ordinary, Jackqueline Frost's The Antidote, and The Animal is in the World Like Water in Water, a collaboration by Leslie Scalapino and Kiki Smith) with a reading at the Green Arcade this Saturday, July 20th. Brazil and Frost will read from their books, and all three titles will be on hand for purchase.

Here are the pertinent details:
Brazil/Frost
The Green Arcade
1680 Market Street @ Gough
Sat. July 20th, 7pm

Strong Beats

Etel Adnan's The Ninth Page

Now that Etel Adnan's show is down at CCA (finished June 29th), does anyone know what happens to the additional copies of the "catalog," Adnan's collected journalism from Beirut? The writing here perfectly compliments her poetry, and I would happily distribute these to poets myself if there are extra copies. If someone knows, would you fill me in?

Romulan Soup Woman

This new Damn the Caesars (or I guess "Damn the Caesars Suspended") is a fucking nutso commentary on science fiction, poetry and labor called Romulan Soup Woman. I include some of the comics from the issue above to give you a sense of what you're working with! Editor Rich Owens calls it "passing remarks, communiques, lineated critiques, speculative commentaries and inter-ludic disquisitions on science fiction, the culture industry, thermonuklearen terrors and crustaceous justitia" featuring a ton of heads including Jo Crot, Benjamin Friedlander, Anne Boyer, Verity Spott, Joe Luna, Amiri Baraka, and tons of others. This is the kind of journal you've absolutely got to see for yourself; I couldn't begin to do it justice. Pick one up here.

Compline Book Launch

Help us celebrate the arrival of three new Compline titles (David Brazil's The Ordinary, Jackqueline Frost's The Antidote, and The Animal is in the World Like Water in Water, a collaboration by Leslie Scalapino and Kiki Smith) with a reading at the Green Arcade this Saturday, July 20th. Brazil and Frost will read from their books, and all three titles will be on hand for purchase.

Here are the pertinent details:
Brazil/Frost
The Green Arcade
1680 Market Street @ Gough
Sat. July 20th, 7pm

Jackqueline Frost's You Have the Eyes of a Martyr

In celebration of the arrival of The Antidote, I thought to mention that Jack's follow-up chapbook (which she's described as a sequel or afterward to The Antidote) is now available from new-to-me O'Clock Press. These folks (Kit Schulter and others?) are printing really cool work by a bunch of poets who are also totally new to me (which is exciting!). Buy The Antidote, have your mind blown, and then read this and have your mind blown all over again! Essential if you care about the new guard (and you should)...

David Brazil's The Ordinary

To say that David Brazil's The Ordinary is "long in the making," or "highly anticipated," or "essential" is to do little justice to how important and rabidly anticipated this book really is. Brazil's presence in the Bay Area poetry scene is felt everywhere, and this book will further solidify his role as innovator and soothsayer. Which is why it's my great pleasure to announce that The Ordinary has arrived! There is no question that you need this book (really), and I can assure you that it will sell out faster than one might think. Make it happen NOW!

You can order your copy from Small Press Distribution,or you can order directly from me (which will likely be faster) here with FREE SHIPPING.

Learn more about David's work here, or read the blurb below for the short story:

David Brazil was born in New York and lives in California.  His publications include The Ordinary (Compline), The Book Called Spring (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), Spy Wednesday (TAXT), Meet Me Beneath the War Angels (OMG!), Orphica (Lew Gallery), Aevum (Vigilance Society), Mass of the Phoenix : A Mina Loy Portal (Trafficker) and To Romans (Compline).  With Kevin Killian, he edited the Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater : 1945 - 1985.

Along with his partner Sara Larsen, David produced over sixty issues of the xerox periodical TRY!, featuring the work of dozens of contemporary writers.  Part of the editorial collective which produced the daily Oscar Grant Plaza Gazette during Occupy Oakland, he now works with the Bay Area Public School to promote free & radical education.  He makes his living as a bookseller.

Jackqueline Frost's The Antidote

I am very pleased to announce that Jackqueline Frost's The Antidote has finally arrived! Poet Enrique Winter writes of the book, "THE ANTIDOTE generates the unrest of strong political poetry. The book pricks the battle, but never tells it. Images are sensorial in the maneuver of color and form, while mottos become more violent each page, growing together with the reading towards experience and conspiratorial action. Then discourse runs over image: tension in the verse as paragraph, in the word as unstable material, in the social (dis)order. The reciprocity of touch and the choral composition; the loss of patience towards rage." For real, though.

You can order the book from SPD directly here or from me (which might be faster) WITH FREE SHIPPING here.

If Jackqueline's work is new to you, cruise over to Compline's website to learn more about it here.

And here's a little blurb to get you started:

Jackqueline Frost was born and raised in the Deep South, and lives in Oakland, California. She is the author of The Antidote (Compline), as well as three chapbooks: You Have the Eyes of a Martyr (O’Clock Press), The Soft Appeal (Nous-Zot Press), and When We Say Brutal (Berkeley Neo-Baroque). Her poetry and essays have appeared, or are forthcoming in Rethinking Marxism, Lana Turner, The Death and Life of American Cities, What is Called Violence, Steamer (Australia), The Depressive Position (UK), and LIES: a journal of materialist feminism. With Zoe Tuck, Jackqueline curated the East Bay reading series Condensery in 2010-2011. Currently, she is part of the Tsega Center Collective, a group of women, queers, and trans folks, working to open a feminist community and organizing space. She collects wages as an oyster-shucker and a research assistant in antique literatures.

Crane Giamo's Lumen

Another Crane Giamo joint (co-publisher of Delete Press w/ Jared Schickling (and Brad Vogler?)) just out on his own Pocalypstic. This book is really incredible to behold in person: really fucking impeccably produced, highlighting Crane's penchant for streaks and explosions of color and palimpsests of image and text. Crane's printing straddles the divide between poetry chapbook and "print," so his books sometimes feel like autonomous serial broadsides bound together. More than most printers these days, Crane (along with folks like Aaron Cohick at Newlights) is really investigating what poetry books are through a constructivist process: building and layering (or inversely subtracting and deconstructing) one page at a time. Get everything you can from him as quickly as it's listed, as he prints in small runs, and his books are gone before you know it. And I've found that he sometimes doesn't list one-off broadsides and other ephemera at his website, so ask him what he has in the stacks...If you don't know Crane's work, and you're one of the few people who cares about the art of the small press and its essential role in pushing poetry composition further, you MUST start collecting these books...

Brenda Iijima's going blooming, falling blooming

Brenda Iijima's new chapbook, going blooming, falling blooming, is out now on Delete Press. This book is INCREDIBLE. Don't sleep.

Coming Soon!

The Antidote is coming in just a few days! Preorders go out by the end of the week...

The Animal at SPD

Leslie Scalapino & Kiki Smith's collaboration, The Animal is in the World Like Water in Water, is now available from our friends at Small Press Distribution! Pick it up here...

Chris Dunsmore, stopping place (edition of 85, 2012)

John Thorp, Stitch and hem and line and flight (edition of 50, 2013)

I was pleased and honored to receive these two incredible books from Chris Dunsmore and John Thorp, both of whom are poets currently living in Salt Lake City and both are (or were?) in the joint book arts / poetry MFA program at U. of Utah. These books are really something to behold in person. They make me want to return to the drawing board and simply start over. There's something about SLC that inspires these really sophisticated and minimalist approaches to design that are way more pleasing than most of the maximalist approaches of contemporary presses: deeply tactile, super intentional design ideas (that perfectly compliment the text). Someone is doing something right out there...If there's interest, I might be able to convince them to send some out...