Double Burst #1

Speaking of new work by Ted Rees, you'll find more in this recent issue of Stephen Novotny's Double Burst. Really interesting work here by both Rees and Jared Stanley. My understanding is that Novotny picks one author and asks said poet to pick another for the double feature? Next issue features Anne Lesley Selcer, I think...

Armed Cell 7

Due to the craziness of the Poetry Summit, I forgot to mention this new incredible issue of Armed Cell, edited by our own Brian Ang. New Joshua Clover, Angela Hume, Dereck Clemons, Olive Blackburn, Ted Rees, and Kenny G. I'm especially partial to the Rees sonnets here...Get it.

Additionally, the cover image comes from Nicholas Komodore's photo essay "An Odyssey" which can be found at Komodore's Mayakov + Sky Platform site.

Chap. XXIV by Craig Dworkin

This might be one of the most beautiful books I've ever owned! What's going on in Salt Lake City?! Tons of amazing book arts and poets converging, etc. Here's Craig Dworkin's contribution to Tristram Shandy from Red Butte Press. I don't know how to get one, as it's not listed on the website, but maybe if you write and ask nicely? This one's immediately finding its home on the top shelf...  

Timeless, Infinite Light

It's almost always a great time to be a poet in Oakland, but the current constellation of folks residing in the East Bay boggles the mind. And with great people come great small presses and little magazines doing the work to capture a snapshot of this activity.

2014 might mark the busiest year of small press activity in the East Bay in, like, forever, what with the recent inauguration of Mess Editions, talk of a fledgling press connected to the Public School, and the recent incredible publications from Timeless, Infinite Light. Most everyone in the world has probably heard of the new anthology It's night in San Francisco but it's sunny in Oakland, but I thought to post some excerpts here as I read through it to entice folks to pick it up. You can already see the exquisite wear in my tattered copy (scanned above), mostly scarred as I stumbled through the East Bay Poetry Summit, granted; however, its wear should also speak to how often I dive in. I'm including scans here of a few favorite pages from the beginning: I especially love stanza #4 from Amy Berkowitz's "San Francisco Poem," and below that you'll find a page from Zoe Tuck's "Answering Machine." Get it here.

And folks love to talk shit about a "book trailer," but I've got to say that T.I.L. is making a super compelling case for why your press should have one! In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that they invented this shit (though that's probably not true!). Someone at T.I.L. (Otis Pig?) is a branding wizard!



Timeless, Infinite Light Info Session (trans-temporal) from Timeless, Infinite Light on Vimeo.

Say Hello to Your Last Chapbooks

Here are the covers for the three newest chapbooks in Aaron Cohick's (mostly) dos-a-dos series  through his New Lights Press featuring (mostly) two poets who he invites to his (and Noel Black's?) Say Hello to Your Last Poem! reading series in Colorado Springs. If you care at all about books, you need to seek out EVERYTHING that New Lights Press releases. These books are incredibly beautiful, and I'm especially digging what Aaron's been up to with lettering and titling. Get them here.
 

Three new poems by David Grundy

It was a pleasure to have David Grundy in town this past week visiting from the UK. He gave a useful introductory lecture at BAPS on the uncollected Amiri Baraka volume he's working on with Rich Owens for Punch Press, and then he handed off these three new poems on the way to the airport this morning. Take a look and keep your eyes out for the Baraka soon....

The Heart Sutra

If you've passed through the Bay Area in the past, say, four years, you've probably also passed through David Brazil and Sara Larsen's comfortable and welcoming apartment in Berkeley. If you've passed through said apartment, there's a good chance you've seen the worn copy of The Heart Sutra affixed in their bathroom. For me, this text has become a kind of objective correlative for their love, so I printed a version as a party favor and distributed it at their recent celebration in Alameda. My goal was to highlight the the wear of the document as a testament to the difficulties and joys of domestic labor. 

As a preface to distributing the broadside, I read the following text by Judith Butler from her incredible essay "To Sense What is Living in the Other: Hegel's Early Love," which was printed in the Documenta 13 catalog:

"...the development of the phenomenon of love involves a displacement of that purely subjective point of view--some dispossesion of the self takes place in love. Internal to the singular and living feeeling of love is an operation of life that exceeds and disorients the perspective of the individual. That operation of life has to be followed as a process or development that is instantiated in the absolute singularity of that perspective that it also exceeds...each is understood "to sense what is living in the other." This is an important formulation, since there is something living in love, and has to be, even though love can never be the whole of life."

The whole essay is incredible and worth reading (especially in light of Leslie Scalapino's injunction, in Front Matter, Dead Souls, that it's time to reevaluate love as a concept). And it's worth mentioning that Judith Butler is incredible.

The broadside's colophon reads: "This broadside was produced in July 2014 to mark the happy union of Sara Larsen and David Brazil. It is an exact facsimile of the photocopied Heart Sutra that has hung in their bathroom for the past many years, and its wear speaks to the challenges and joys of domestic labor. May it hang in your bathroom and bring with it domestic bliss."

I'm all out of these at Compline HQ, but David and Sara should have extras if you're a friend from "abroad."

May this broadside work as a talisman to fight domestic strife of all kinds...