After Ellen, Ana Bozicevic; also new events, reviews, interviews, books received, Göransson, McSweeney, and a humongous White Fungus among us

New reviews of Ana Božičević's Stars of the Night Commute

* at After Ellen: "thought-provoking, inspired and unexpected. Highly recommended."

* at Tower Journal: "On the edge of explosion. . . . an extremely talented and relentless young writer."

* at the University of Arizona's Poetry Center: "Following in O'Hara's footsteps, it challanges us to place the stuff of daily life under the adjective 'poetic.'"

If you haven't already picked up a copy of Stars of the Night Commute, we hope you will. 14$ includes free first-class shipping.


New Reviews at the Tarpaulin Sky reviews blog

Louis Streitmatter's A New Map of America (James Brubaker, Ed., The Cupboard, Vol. 2, 2008) reviewed by Jack Boettcher

Brubaker diverges from the conventions of the fiction-as-scholarship in the book’s subtle, rewarding humor and its rich characterization of Louis Streitmatter, which is intimate even as Brubaker professes greater and greater distance from his acquaintance. We see Streitmatter’s map not as a perfect, chiseled elucidation of the idea—as in the fictions of Borges—but through Streitmatter’s obsessions and oddities as a character, a man “in search of my country.” [Read the full review here.]

Timothy David Orme’s Catalogue of Burnt Text (BlazeVOX Books, 2009) reviewed by Jodi Chilson

Timothy David Orme dares us to exist, to become part of the motion, part of the plane his speaker inhabits; he dares us to take up the absence in the work and fill it with the speaker-self and our-self engaged in motion, through the act of reading becoming accomplice to the act of creation. [Read full review here.]

Noelle Kocot's Sunny Wednesday (Wave Books, 2009) reviewed by John Findura

Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote in Slaughterhouse-Five, of death, “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” In Noelle Kocot’s fourth book of poetry, Sunny Wednesday, that sentiment is only partly true: everything here hurts. [Read the full review here.]

TSky Press author Joyelle McSweeney on The “Future” of “Poetry” from her talk at the Minnesota Book Festival. Excerpt below. Read the rest here.

The future of poetry is the present, and it has already arrived. The present tense rejects the future. It generates, but it generates excess without the ordering structures of lineage. It subsumes and consumes pasts into its present , erasing their priority. It’s self-defeating; its rejection of survival into a future may be infanticidal.. Without a concern with past or future it necessarily negates many of the values which come with Western literary tradition, including stability, well-craftedness, elegance, restraint, timelessness, humanism. It is concerned with the media through which it moves, flimsy concerns and flimsy conceits, superficiality, errata and (likely) ephemera, flexibility, instability, unevenness, but it also partakes of a non-productive productivity typified by bombast, excess and overproduction. This art often involves failure and ‘bad fits’—the ‘bad fit’ of one genre into another, the bad fit of one media into another. Its modality is violence, frequently a self-violence against the text itself, so that text is something that explodes, exhausts, breaks down, flounces around, eats and/or shits itself, is difficult to study or call a text at all.

Forthcoming TSky Press author Johannes Göransson is interviewed at eXchanges--"An alternately illuminating and awkward conversation"--regarding translation, or, more specifically, "Closeness and Distance in Translation | Dada and Capitalism | Everyone Forgets Lawrence Venuti’s Critical Terminology | Translations Ghettoized as the Foreign | Pilot and Bilingualism | Get Rid of the Native Speaker | Future of Poetry Translation in America | The Internet as a Myth of a Neutral Space | Homophonic Translations: America Looks at the Foreign through a Mirror? | Foreignization Is a Kind of Domestication." Read an excerpt below. Read the entire interview here.

Part of the problem with a lot of translation is that the way they are packaged has sort of ghettoized them as the foreign text. And we go to them out of some kind of ethical duty to engage with the foreign and widen our horizons and learn more about foreign cultures. I didn’t want Remainland to be that kind of book at all. I wanted that book to be a book of poetry that was from a foreign country that would interest Americans, people I knew in America, as a book of poems—that would not be bracketed as the foreign text. To me, Aase is a great poet and in some ways, a major European poet. I didn’t want to bracket it off too much so that this European poet would be read when we wanted to take some medicine or something like that.

Recently Received at TSky Press

Macgregor Card, Duties of an English Foreign Secretary, Winner of the 2009 Fence Modern Poets Series (Fence Books, 2009)

Douglas Kearney, The Black Automaton, Winner of the National Poetry Series (Fence Books, 2009)

Brian Evenson, Baby Leg (limited hardcover edition, Tyrant Books, 2009)

Catherine Wagner, My New Job (Fence Books, 2009)

James Westwater, Blue Boy and Pinkie, Together Again (self-published, 2009)

& from New Zealand, coming live to New York to melt your freakin head, White Fungus:



White Fungus is set to launch its 11th issue at P.P.O.W in New York on Thursday, January 14 with a night of performances as part of the gallery's Hostess Project series of events.

Kick-starting at 7pm, the event will feature:
Our Love Will Destroy the World (Campbell Kneale)
David Watson
Tao Wells
Anne Fiero
Millions (David Suss)
If, Bwana (Al Margolis) with Tom Hamilton, Jacqueline Martelle and live video by Katherine
Liberovskaya

P.P.O.W
511 West 25th Street, Room 301
(at 10th Avenue)
New York, NY

White Fungus issue 11 is the first to be produced in the formerly Wellington-based publication's new home, Taichung City, Taiwan. The new issue comes with a CD compilation of artists off New York record label Pogus Productions. It includes articles on Miya Masaoka, Hijokaidan and experimental and non-academic music in Beijing. It features interviews with David Watson, Taiwan artist Isa Ho, Robert Voicey of Vox Novus and New Zealand curator Laura Preston; articles on artists Don Driver (Auckland), Jonathan Terranova (New York) and a critical look a Post-colonial and Oceanic art by Rudolph Hudsucker; art works by Yao Jui-Chung, Dan Arps, Su Hui-yu and Chung Shih-shun; poetry by McArthur Gunter and Peggy Chang; part three of Juan Santos' series Capitalism at the Expense of All Life, an article by Jane Janesly on New Zealand's Neo Liberal economic reforms of the 1980s, a reflection by Tao Wells on the letter-writing of Lazlo Toth, a review of The Coming Insurrection by Harold Grieves, and a 20-page black & white comic adaptation of The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Tim Bollinger.

Pogus CD compilation is compiled by Al Margolis and features artists: Ellen Band & David Lee Myers, Annea Lockwood, Noah Creshevsky, Anla Courtis, Big City Orchestra, Chris Brown, Jorge Antunes, Nick Didkovsky, Tom Johnson, Beth Anderson, Tom Hamilton/Bruce Eisenbeil, Christian Wolff/Larry Polansky/Chris Mann/Douglas Repetto/Tom Erbe, MartÌn Alejandro Fumarola and If, Bwana.

White Fungus at P.P.O.W is kindly supported by Creative New Zealand.
White Fungus' relocaton to Taiwan is kindly supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation.

www.whitefungus.com
www.ppowgallery.com
www.thehostessproject.com
www.pogus.com

Outbreak! TSky Editors & Authors Cropping Up All Over the Place

NEW BOOKS BY TSKY EDITORS & STAFF

Feminaissance
Edited by Christine Wertheim
Poetry | Prose | Essays | $20
Les Figues Press, 2010
ISBN 13: 978-1-934254-17-2
ISBN 10: 1-934254-17-7
Size: 6“x9”
Pages: 132
Binding: Softcover, Perfect

Contributors: Dodie Bellamy, Caroline Bergvall, Meiling Cheng, Wanda Coleman, Bhanu Kapil, Chris Kraus, Susan McCabe, Tracie Morris, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Juliana Spahr, Vanessa Place Christine Wertheim, Stephanie Young, Lidia Yuknavitch

Identity is dead. The 21st-century subject is an unstable fiction with no identifiable features or group affiliations. He’s a man without inherent qualities, a post-human ideal. But those who have long been hailed as Other exist in a different relation to this ideal. Unlike those traditionally self-possessed |s, these Others may find themselves split between a yearning to be contemporary and unqualified, and longing for a continued allegiance to their qualitative, albeit constructed, group identity.

It is with an awareness of this more ambiguous and refined notion of self that Feminaissance approaches questions of femininity and its relation to writing. Topics include: collectivity; feminine écriture; the politics of writing; text and voice; the body as a site of contestation, insurgence and pleasure; race and writing; gender as performance; writing about other women writers; economic inequities; Hélène Cixous; monstrosity; madness; and aesthetics.

If the fact that “women do not say ‘We’” was one of the constitutive problems for 20th century feminism, the fact that women do and still clearly feel the need to say “We” is just as rich and interesting a topic for feminism today. The writings gathered here prove feminism to be alive and more relevant to all genders than ever: not just because feminist discourse remains a political necessity, but because of its artistic and intellectual pleasures.
--Sianne Ngai

Inconceivable Wilson
a novella by J.A. Tyler
Scrambler Books
4.25"x 6.875", paperback, 129 pages
Cover photo by Andrew Ilachinski
$12.00
* Order your copy now and receive free shipping (will ship sometime between December 15 and December 30, 2009)

About Inconceivable Wilson:

A woman in a red dress, ankles strapped in shoes, leaving a man at the airport, at a terminal, holding a photograph of him, this man, and on the back only written: Wilson.

Forgive him, he has become so much less now.

Wilson goes: planes, boats, walking until the sun quits rising, until the sun stops existing, and there he begins, there he becomes. A place where the trees change shape and purpose, the environment lost to nothingness, where people speak in clatters and clicks, incomprehensible, a place where he is lost in blindness, deafening sickness, waves of unencumbered night. And Wilson unties within their circle, these people of pitch and tar, this village, these men and their women, their children. He should be reading them, writing words, penning a culture, creating a world from the tips of sentences, but he is instead consumed by them, bent to charcoal words on canvas made of darkness, hearing always and only the rattling of bones and laughter. Curtains open and he becomes less.

Forgive him, he should not have gone.

Men, women, children play in his brain, finger the creases of his thinking, until he comes undone.

Go, he has gone. Go Wilson. He goes.

Go Wilson. Go.

Museum of Vandals
by Amish Trivedi
(accordion-fold mini-chapbook)
Cannibal Books
Boundless Books Series #1
$5



TWO TSKY EDITORS PLEAD NO CONTEST

Advising Editor Elena Georgiou has new fiction in No Contest, the online magazine from GenPop Books, wherein you will also find a review of Asst. Poetry Editor Jamey Dunham's The Bible of Lost Pets (Salt Publishing, 2009).

From the GenPop Blog:

An excerpt from Elena Georgiou's short fiction, "Hummus," from The Immigrant's Refrigerator:

She spent the hour between the piano lesson and the black-eyed peas and spinach for dinner trying to calculate the correct answer. The first time, d - y equaled Jesus answering a prayer. The second time, d - y equaled the separation of piano + pianist from family. The third time, d – y equaled government intervention and her being placed in care (which, in effect, was the same as the previous answer). The fourth time, d - y equaled a struggle for independence. The fifth time, d - y equaled being swallowed up by the Loch Ness Monster and living happily inside Nessie’s stomach, like Jonah had done inside the whale. Once inside Nessie’s stomach, she would repeatedly practice the "Sonata Pathétique" until her whole body was filled with music.

An excerpt from Charles Freeland's review of Jamey Dunham's The Bible of Lost Pets:

At the school where I teach, the creative writing students, through close contact with Jamey Dunham’s work, have been for some time filling their prose poems with all manner of small animals doing cute and/or zany things. I hope this will stop. Such superficial emulation does not so much stunt the student writers’ growth as threaten to rob Dunham’s accomplishment of its power. It gets everything wrong.

TSKY AUTHORS: MAKING MORE THAN TO-DO LISTS

We're delighted to report that Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay is hanging tough at #7 on SPD's Fiction Bestsellers list, and Ana Bozicevic's Stars of the Night Commute receives not one but four shoutouts at No Tell's "Best Poetry Books of 2009" list.

Also, this amazing "congratulations" greeting card image was, like, totally free for the taking.

Buggin Out: new look, new staff, new reviews & interviews . . ., and even some news re: chapbooks

BUGGING OUT W/ DANIEL RHODES

Daniel's the artist who designed Kim Gek Lin Short's wraparound cover for The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits. His work is so bloody great, we can't wait until the book's Spring release--so we're excerpting some images for the TSky website. & Keep on the lookout for other cover art making sneaky-preview appearances on the site.

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NEW STAFF @ TARPAULIN SKY PRESS

The bad news: we're no longer hiring. The good news: we're delighted to welcome new editors and staff to the TSky crew. While we're at it, we'd also like to thank the good folk that have been here a long time, some from the beginning.

Big props to all, then: Advising Editors Rebecca Brown, Elena Georgiou, Bhanu Kapil, and Selah Saterstrom; Publisher Christian Peet; Editor in Chief Colie Collen; Editors Laynie Brown, Blake Butler, Sandy Florian, Lily Hoang, Karla Kelsey, and Joanna Howard; Managing Editor Dianthe Harris; Associate Editors Duncan B. Barlow and Christine Wertheim; Production Editors Cristiana Baik, E. B. Goodale, Annie Guthrie, Kristen Nelson, and Stephen Shoup; Assistant Editors Brian Mihok, Jamey Dunham, and Michael Tod Edgerton; Reviews Editors Ross Brighton and Jared Schickling; Events Coordinator Michelle Puckett; Asst. Managing Editor Amanda Skubal; Line Editor J.A. Tyler; Copy Editor Caroline Ashby; Liaisons Sarah Brown, Jac Jemc, Deanne Lundin, and Brian Rogers; Events Assistant Megan DiBello; Production Assistants Ginger Knowlton, Josh Neely, Joseph Mains, and Joanna Pelletier; Editorial Assistants Erinn Mann, Eireene Nealand, Nathaniel Otting, Janna Plant, Mark Rockswold, Julianna Spallholz, Julie Strand, and Amish Trivedi.

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FOR THE PATIENT FOLK WONDERING WHADDUP W/MY CHAP MSS?

Notifications are already being being mailed. We're running behind (shocking!) but hope to finalize all decisions within the next week or two.

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NEW INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW ZORNOZA

TSky Press author Andrew Zornoza is interviewed by Molly Gaudry at Keyhole Magazine: includes "out-takes" from Where I Stay, a craving for negative reviews, good advice for homeless people in verdant pastures, a childhood pic, review copies for Eddie Vedder, and heaps of the refreshingly humble genius we've come to expect from Mr. Z.

An excerpt:

MG: Are you an experimental writer? What do you think about the possible overuse of the term "innovative"?

AZ: I like the word innovative. I don't like the word experimental. To me, the word conjures up failure and the white humped backs of balding scientists. All writing is experimental if you insist on having a reader. Even Judy Blume. But I'm not experimenting. I'm not trying anything new. New has nothing to do with it. I'm just putting the words the way I want to hear them. You may be experimenting by reading it, but me, I'm just trying to make it feel right.

Click here to read the entire interview

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NEW REVIEW OF BIG AMERICAN TRIP AT VERSE MAGAZINE

Brittany Taylor reviews TSky publisher Christian Peet's Big American Trip, at Verse magazine.

An excerpt:

As we follow the lone wanderer from Blaine, WA, to Brooklyn, we are given an increasingly intimate view of his private frustration with a society that wipes out all that has come before and simultaneously acknowledges its ravaged past with cheerful sound bites. The captions that crown many of the postcards are not-quite-prosaic bits of encyclopedic arcana that offer insight into the matter-of-fact manner in which Americans have treated their predecessors. With these tidbits, Big American Trip seeks to recall America’s erased history, deridable and otherwise. . . . The postcards are at once addressed to no one and everyone; it does not matter who reads them, but everyone will. Buckle up for Christian Peet’s worthwhile Big American Trip.

Please click here to read the whole review.

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NEW REVIEWS AT TARPAULIN SKY

James Belflower’s Commuter (Instance Press, 2009), reviewed by Joel P. Sodano Jr.

Commuter plays host to a constellation of motifs (international tourism, industrialization, photography, memory, identity) in addition to its main thematic focus—the juxtaposition of marriage and childbirth with the trauma of experiencing terrorist violence. In short, Commuter invites the reader on an aesthetic journey that tests the concept of relation through its positioning of various fragmentary manifestations of event, memory, emotion. This is illustrated at the book’s outset by a metro map that forms a multi-nodal system of simultaneous connection and separation. Thus, reading Commuter results in an experience greater than the sum of its parts, wherein one discovers unpredictable connections between various points of entry and departure. [Click here for the full review.]

Richard Froude's The History of Zero (Candle-Aria Press, 2008), reviewed by Sarah Suzor.

Zero questions the relationship between “fictions” (poetry, prose, literature) and “facts” (history, definition), and where in both fiction and fact language fails in conveying anything of absolute truth. . . . Zero is meant to be read and re-read multiple times, and Froude knows this, for it is our desire, as audience, to “make sense of something” that Froude is manipulating. [Click here for the full review.]

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FENCE

is up to its usual jaw-dropping amounts of goodness, not the least of which is a book that must be seen to be believed: Brandon Downing's text-image opus Lake Antiquity, wherein kitsch acquires gravity, becomes pathos, becomes a reckoning with the fairly unbelievable images and text that we'd sooner forget that we "own" in more ways than one. If you've seen [WARNING: seizure-alert at following link:] Dark Brandon, then this book might explain it to you. If you haven't seen Dark Brandon, then you should buy that as well. Says the promo for Lake Antiquity: "Brandon Downing has been scouring refuse piles and skimming the creme/scum off the top of two centuries of cultural production for these chiming elements. His paste-ups are cut-ups; his cut-ups are pasted with a discrimination that shares a border with insurgency." Yes. That, and a butt-nekked gnome.

Do yourself a favor and check out FB's holiday deals on Lake Antiquity, as well as Catherine Wagner's My New Job, Douglas Kearney's The Black Automaton, Macgregor Card's Duties of an English Foreign Secretary.

Think how great you'll feel when you already own those books, and then show up at the 4-author book release party on Dec. 12th.

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RECENTLY RECEIVED AT TSKY PRESS

Most of the titles below are available for review, though we include the friend copies and the purchased copies as well, thinking we can probably scare up another copy if you're interested in reviewing one for TSky. Titles marked with asterisks are hand-bound books or are otherwise special editions and are limited, if still available at all.

Oana Avasilichioaei, Erín Moure, Expeditions of a Chimæra (BookThug, 2009)

* Jack Boettcher, The Deviants (Airforce Joyride, 2009)

Rob Budde, Declining America (BookThug, 2009)

Angela Carr, The Rose Concordance (BookThug, 2009)

Barbara Claire Freeman, Incivilities (Counterpath Press, 2009)

* Emily Kendal Frey, Mark Leidner, and Zachary Schomburg, Coincide Series #5 (Brave Men Press, 209)

Katrine Marie Guldager, Copenhagen (P.K. Brask, translator, BookThug, 2009)

* David Highsmith, congregations (Plan B Press, 2009)

* David Highsmith, Petroglyph (Painted Bison Press, 2009)

David Highsmith, your wilderness & mine (BlazeVox Books, 2009)

Christine Hume, Shot (Counterpath Press, 2009)

Matt Jasper, Moth Moon (BlazeVox Books, 2009)

* Scott Alexander Jones, One Day There Will Be Nothing to Show That We Were Ever Here (Bedouin Books, 2009)

Garrett Kalleberg, Malilenas (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)

Diane Klammer, Shooting the Moon (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2009)

Karyna McGlynn, I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande Books, 2009)

* Christina Pacosz, Notes from the Red Zone (Seven Kitchens Press [Rebound Series], 2009)

Stephen Ratcliffe, Reading the Unseen: (Offstage) Hamlet (Counterpath Press, 2009)

Joanna Ruocco, The Mothering Coven (Ellipsis Press, 2009)

* 6 x 6 #19 (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)

* Claudia Smith, Put Your Head in My Lap (Future Tense Books, 2009)

Jane Sprague, The Port of Los Angeles (Chax Press, 2009)

Nancy Stohlman, Searching for Suzi (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2009)

* Michael Stewart, A Brief Encyclopedia of Modern Magic (The Cupboard, 2009)

* Michael Stewart, Almost Perfect Forms (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)

* Janaka Stucky, Your Name Is the Only Freedom (Brave Men Press, 2009)

Spring Ulmer, The Age of Virtual Reproduction (Essay Press, 2009)

Busloads of news: books, reviews, interviews, other & elsewhere

RE: OPEN READING PERIOD

Two weeks remain for submissions of full-length manuscripts to Tarpaulin Sky Press's open reading period. Details here.

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Now available for pre-order (ships Nov 1st):

Ana Božičević
Stars of the Night Commute

ISBN: 9780982541609
Poetry | 6"x8", 84 pp, pbk | Nov. 2009
$14 includes shipping in the US

Cover: Remedios Varo | Ícono, 1945 [Icon]
Óleo, incrustaciones de nácar y hojas de oro sobre tríptico de madera [Oil, mother-of-pearl and gold leaf inlays on a wooden tryptich] | 60 x 39,3 x 5,5 | Malba - Fundación Costantini, Buenos Aires | Reproduced with kind permission of Anna Alexandra Gruen.

Click here for more information. Click the PayPal logo to pre-order online:

Stars of the Night Commute haunts in three dimensions, knit by a below-words rumble in the sure rhythm of dreams. Many of the poems carry a shamanistic, elemental quality, as if real matter were articulating out of word-fragments. Božičević writes, "At the end of poetry the poem can no longer be remote." If this is "the end of poetry," perhaps poetry is, after all, reaching forward back to its beginning.
—Annie Finch

Ana Božičević's poetry has everything—a mastery of language, a distinct and singular voice and a worldview so visionary and all-encompassing, so as to both terrify and astound. The words bristle with life, and they command the deepest reverence for the Ineffable, for pure Being. This poetry is clever without being shallow, and this is truly rare. Silence is my most honest response to her work, but a silence rooted in respect and awe for that which is truly great art.
—Noelle Kocot

Ana Božičević's work is sort of animist—it’s either about silence or the racket of the world. How does she do it? Clicks the switch to say it’s silent & it’s happening then on a distant tiny stage. She’s muttering, and then it’s a story and a very good one. I mean in poetry at some point you don’t know what the writer means. In Ana’s work I watch “it” vanish (all the time) & I trust it.
—Eileen Myles

Ana Božičević's work is filled with a wild freedom, and reading it often reminds me of reading Wallace Stevens, in that you know absolutely anything can happen next but whatever it is, it will be perfect. In her poems she expresses an attitude of solemn responsibility to history, both the world's and her own, yet there is often a marvelous lightness, even playfulness about them. She is able to stretch language to its most ineffable and musical limits while maintaining a masterful grasp of the colloquial. These are not just technical matters. An émigré from reality (in the form of one of modern time's most monstrously and moronically cruel wars) and a Cassandra, she is able to perceive with the eyes of language—then render with lyrical immediacy—the experience of our collective sleepwalking soul, who may well soon awaken to discover that its terror was not a dream.
—Franz Wright

About Ana Božičević

Ana Božičević was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1977. She emigrated to NYC in 1997. Stars of the Night Commute is her first book of poems. Her fifth chapbook, Depth Hoar, will be published by Cinematheque Press in 2010. With Amy King, Ana co-curates The Stain of Poetry reading series in Brooklyn, and is co-editing an anthology, The Urban Poetic, forthcoming from Factory School. She works at the Center for the Humanities of The Graduate Center, CUNY. For more, visit nightcommute.org.

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This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like

features an essay by TSky Press publisher Christian Peet. Peet's response includes three mini-essays on the work of past TSky Guest Editors Bhanu Kapil and Selah Saterstrom, as well as the work of Aase Berg.

In May 2009, Danielle Pafunda curated the first installment of Delirious Hem's "This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like." This forum featured women discussing the relationship between their feminism & their poetry, and these contributions elicited thoughtful responses from women & men bloggers alike. Mark Wallace was one of those bloggers. Together, they've curated "This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like."

All this week, new essays are posted:

Monday October 5: Brian Teare, Christian Peet, & H.L. Hix
Tuesday October 6: Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Kareem Estefan,
& Kevin Simmonds
Wednesday October 7: Mark Wallace, Mike Hauser, & Nate Pritts
Thursday October 8: Philip Jenks, Tim Atkins, & Tony Frazer,
Friday October 9: Tony Trigilio, David Lau & Rodrigo Toscano

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In mudluscious #9, J.A. Tyler provides a kind & concise review (shoutout may be a better term?) re: Christian Peet's Big American Trip.

Says Tyler, "The most impressive aspect of Big American Trip is how Peet is able to interlace politics, linguistic commentary, and a subtle narrative through-line into one book, undercutting any notion that we cannot swell a sentence to something more than just words by breaking its structure, by making it new, by challenging our readers to read for more than one thing, and even more than two; in fact, like the narrator in Big American Trip, Peet asks each reader to look for and decipher everything, all at once.

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Fence & Tarpaulin Sky Press author Joyelle McSweeney is interviewed as only Joyelle McSweeney can be interviewed, at Rob McClennan's blog.

Here's a taste:

When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word!) inspiration?

I turn to South Bend. Really, until you have lived in a rotting rust belt town you have not lived. People are hurting here, and they are dogged and ingenious. They drive their trucks through the walls of their living rooms on a nightly basis. They get in fights and throw pregnant dogs at each other. They find remarkable items to pawn (one winter morning two middle aged people were standing outside one of the many pawn shops at 7 AM trying to hold a window airconditioning unit up out of the snow. They were wearing sweatsuits and no coats.). There are residential motels here, one is called the Wooden Indian and it has almost no interior. So it’s a shelter without any shelter. We have a lot of yard sales around here where everyone tries to sell used goods to everyone else. The same used goods just pass back and forth. Capitalism is played out and distended here and very visibly broken. As a pregnant woman and a mother with a toddler, I fit right in to most expectations about women in this place, at least until I open my mouth and reveal myself not to be a Hoosier. But most of the time, at the supermarket, the BMV, the playground, the IRS office, daycare, I do not open my mouth. One is not invited to do so. As Denis Johnson writes at the end of Jesus’ Son, “I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.”

Go here for the rest.

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Sean Lovelace wins the TSky Press "Hells Yeah, Go Fondle Some Art" Award for most entertaining review of Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay.

Here's a taste:

I would like to light my velvet pipe, stuff it with velvet tobacco, lean back, and say to you now that only sophistry could infer the “existence” of nonbeing. The nothingness which fascinates recent literary folks/analysts is a myth of declining capitalist society, and I should know. I got your tower ivory. The earth is black and buckled.

I finished the Andrew Zornoza book and it had me thinking. It was a small animal gnawing my shin, a teething, bloody type of thinking. I had class in five minutes and my head felt like the way men lay on a loading dock. You know how reading can be a cave (writing too, and Percodan). I didn’t know how I was going to use these feelings from Zornoza’s book in my class. I mean I wanted to do something.

So I took the class down to the BSU art museum and told them to touch something, to reach out and teach a piece of art, a painting or a sculpture. The BSU museum contains Warhol and Greek statues and Jesus bleeding all over lush crosses and all those museum necessities. The response was interesting . . .

Go here for the rest.

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TSky Press author Mark Cunningham has been busy since publishing Body Language. Not one but three new chapbooks are available from Mark:

nightlightnight, a collaborative web chapbook, with photographs by Mel Nichols, hosted at Right Hand Pointing

&

Nachträglichkeit, an ebook (PDF file) from Beard of Bees

&

10 specimens, an ebook (PDF file) from Gold Wake Press

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Alan Semerdjian's In the Architecture of Bone is now available from GenPop Books. Order directly from GenPop Books, get free shipping anywhere in the U.S., and save around $5 off what you'd pay at Amazon. Yeah, it's a sweet deal.

Click here for excerpts and more information. Click here to order

Alan Semerdjian's In the Architecture of Bone reads like a long poem cycle that pulls the reader into an open field in which Semerdjian weaves his explorations of language and art, Armenian history and family. These dynamic poems mingle the ghosts of the past with the pace of contemporary life. This talented, young poet is well worth your reading.—Peter Balakian

Writer/musician Alan Semerdjian’s poems and essays have appeared in several print and online publications and anthologies including Chain, The Lyric Review, Adbusters, Arson, Ararat, and Diagram. He released a chapbook of poems called “An Improvised Device” (Lock n Load Press) in 2005. His songs have appeared in television and film and charted on CMJ. Alan has performed and read all over North America. He currently teaches at Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, NY and resides in New York City’s East Village.

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Also, if you haven't checked out GenPop Books' online magazine, No Contest, now may be a good time to start. They've just posted new work by Alissa Nutting, whose first collection of short fictions, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, was picked by Ben Marcus for publication by Starcherone Books. Nutting kicks off October at New Contest with a story about "free sex" on the set of a children's television show, dancing in a mouse costume, and a little blond star named "Missy."

An excerpt from "Dancing Rat":

I’m haunted by how physically perfect Missy is, her clear skin and her white white teeth. She just landed a detergent commercial, and because I want to punish myself I will not be able to resist switching to that brand. I am a zombie-slave under Missy’s control, I often think. I don’t have a child and I probably will never have a child: I hate this but trying any harder to have one seems like it would make the reality sink in even more. It is far easier to just do the bratty things Missy asks me to do, buy her endorsed products, and act like this agonizing relationship somehow brings me closer to motherhood. . . .

Going back on set when I know I have semen inside of me reminds me of that urban myth about a chemical that will turn all the water around people purple if they pee in the pool. I kind of expect that one day, while walking across the Rainbow River Bridge over to the Sharing Seat, I will look down and realize my crotch is flashing like a police siren due to some product that detects seminal fluid on the sets of children’s shows.

Go here for the rest.

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NEW REVIEWS AT TARPAULIN SKY

some excerpts:

Albert Goldbarth's Griffin, reviewed by Katie Eberhart

[Griffin] explores the nature of truth, of illness, and relationships, deftly hooking together information and experience in a shape-shifting narrative that moves forward, reverses, follows surprising detours and tangents, settling for truth that resides in the complicated messiness somewhere between a carnival ride and a Carl Sagan lecture. The narratives tackle tricky topics like failing relationships, illness and mortality with the grace of a poet, the thoroughness of a historian (and student of “the contemporary”), sensitivity, and humor. . . .

Chris Tonelli's No Theater, reviewed by Christopher Salerno

Masks here are also symbols of potential, often allowing the speaker the distance he needs to gain perspective on nature and the self: “Memories, / interior resonance, you / are inventing / new natures.” If a mask is a symbol of potential, it is one that, for Tonelli, certainly doesn’t muffle the voice. The masks of No Theater are a vehicle through which the character navigates emotional complexity, and the result is often personal and forthcoming: “The audience, / a constellation / scalding the silence. / They are waiting / for my feeling. I am waiting / to feel their absence." . . .

Michelle Detorie's Ode to Industry, reviewed by Juliet Cook

Many of the poems in Ode to Industry also present certain domestic trappings within unlikely contexts, so that ordinarily innocuous or even utilitarian objects suddenly take on a tone of menace or veiled threat. Seemingly routine assembly line rhythms are juxtaposed with an underlying sense of unease that just might spring forth like the blades in a spring loaded tampon, hidden within until a moment of hideous impact. Flesh containers and domestic constraints intermingle and brush up against each other, sometimes coalescing; other times, repelling or resisting. . . .

Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas, reviewed by J.A. Tyler

Scorch Atlas is a world of mold, a world of festering wounds, a world of hurt. Scorch Atlas is a carefully and meticulously distraught world of language, a trembled and shaken line of thought, a vibrant dead trance of phrasing, the measure of words put together all and in the right ways. Blake Butler has made something enormous here, in the reams of his Scorch Atlas, and if nothing else, we are simply destroyed by it, mistaking our skin for its cover, our blood for its damage, our eyes for its violent and broken images. . . .

Alexis Orgera's Illuminatrix, reviewed by Mark Rockswold

Illuminatrix . . . questions the rigid boundaries between high and low art, the sciences and arts, and language’s conceptualizing work in general: “there are mighty critics, illuminators deft / in the art of finding meaning /where none should exist” (30). Therefore, in the midst of its own illuminating project, the collection asks, is illumination a good thing? What is lost in the process? To have illumination, there must inevitably be darkness—in this way paradox and equivocal possibility become Illuminatrix’s only sure reality. . . .

Skip Fox's For To, reviewed by Megan Burns

Fox tells us early on: “Even the boy raised by wolves had a language” (15). He wavers between presenting language as quintessential to the human condition and also limiting and laughable in its design. In witty aphorisms and slingshot asides, Fox pokes fun at us, the users of language, who think we know what we’re talking about when we do talk. “Reason is one thing that happens” (61) . . .

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More great news: ecopoetics 06/07 is now available, and comes highly recommended by TSky.

Edited by Jonathan Skinner, ecopoetics is "a (more or less) annual journal dedicated to exploring creative-critical edges between making (with an emphasis on writing) and ecology (the theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings)."

ecopoetics 06/07 2006-2009 is 324 pages of poetry, essays, fiction, translation, interviews: Emily Abendroth, Fatho Amoy, mIEKAL aND, Kristen Andersen, Karen Leona Anderson, Stan Apps, Robert Ashton, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Christine Boileau, Timothy Bradford, Pam Brown, Julieann Brownton, James Bunn, Andrew Burke, Bonny Cassidy, Louise Crisp, Justin Clemens, Jon Cone, Jack Collom, Matthew Cooperman, Gregory Day, Tyler Doherty, Thom Donovan, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Theodore Enslin, John Estes, Kate Fagan, Michael Farrell, Alec Finlay, Lisa Fishman, Benjamin Friedlander, Forrest Gander, Jody Gladding, Liberty Heise, Krista Ingebretson, Jill Jones, Patrick Jones, Michael Kelleher, John Kinsella, Kyhl Lyndgaard, James Koller, José Martí, John McBain, Ray Meeks, Graeme Miles, Stuart Mills, Peter Minter, Luis-Aguilar Moreno, Derek Motion, Jesse Nissim, Alistair Noon, Lucas North, Antonio Ochoa, Peter O’Mara, Isabelle Pelissier, Carol Quinn, José Rabéarivelo, Daniel W. Rasmus, Joan Retallack, Sarah Rosenthal, Linda Russo, Kate Schapira, Andrew Schelling, Jared Schickling, Jonathan Skinner, Gary Snyder, Juliana Spahr, James Stuart, Alf Taylor, Angélica Tornero, Rodrigo Toscano, Lauren Tyers, Erica Van Horn, Stephen Vincent, Damian Weber, Simon West, Les Wicks

$17 Postage included; outside US & Canada, add $5

ecopoetics current and back issues are distributed by SPD and are also available directly from the publisher: Please make checks payable to Jonathan Skinner: ecopoetics ~ 145 Carding Machine Road _ Bowdoinham, ME ~ 04008

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Edited by TSky faves Adam Clay and Matt Henriksen, Typo 13 features poems from TSky contributors Laynie Browne, Carolyn Guinzio, Lucy Ives, and Rauan Klassnik, along with a host of other greats: Cynthia Arrieu-King, Zach Barocas, Brooklyn Copeland, Christopher Deweese, Claire Donato, Kathryn Donohue, Joshua Harmon, Philip Jenks, Ben Mazer, Rachel Moritz, Sara Mumolo, Tom Orange, Anthony Robinson, Susan Scarlata, Nate Slawson, and Stephen Sturgeon.

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We're new to Wag's Revue, and were pleased to discover that its new issue contains interviews with John D'Agata, Lee Gutkind, and George Saunders, as well as six H.C. Artmann poems translated by Rosmarie Waldrop, and Rimbaud translated by Christian Bök.

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RECENTLY RECEIVED

Most of the titles below are available for review, though we include the friend copies and the purchased copies as well, thinking we can probably scare up another copy if you're interested in reviewing one for TSky. Titles marked with asterisks are hand-bound books or are otherwise special editions and are limited, if still available at all.

* Emily Abendroth, Toward Eadward Forward (Horseless Press, 2009)

* Sarah Bartlett and Chris Tonelli, A Mule-Shaped Cloud (Horseless Press, 2009)

James Belflower, Commuter (Instance Press, 2009)

Birkensnake #2

* Sommer Browning, Vale Tudo (Horseless Press, 2009)

Brigitte Byrd, Song of a Living Room (Ahsahta Press, 2009)

* Allison Carter, Shadows Are Weather (Horseless Press, 2009)

* Thomas Cook, Anemic Cinema (Horseless Press, 2009)

Denver Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 1

Kate Durbin, The Ravenous Audience (Black Goat, 2009)

Elena Georgiou, Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants (Harbor Mountain Press, 2009)

Kate Greenstreet, The Last 4 Things (Ahsahta Press, 2009)

Barbara Henning, Thirty Miles to Rosebud (BlazeVox Books, 2009)

* Alex Lemon, At Last Unfolding Congo (Horseless Press, 2009)

Michael Leong, e.s.p. (Silenced Press, 2009)

P-Queue, Vol. 6

* Andrea Rexilius, To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Horseless Press, 2009)

Alan Semerdjian, In the Architecture of Bone (GenPop Books, 2009)

Jered Schickling, O (BlazeVox Books, 2009)

Zachary Schomburg, Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean, 2009)

Jason Whitmarsh, Tomorrow's Living Room (Utah State University Press, 2009)

Tarpaulin Sky Press Open for Submissions of Full-Length Manuscripts: October 2009

During the month of October, Tarpaulin Sky Press will be reading full-length manuscripts of poetry, fiction, and cross-genre work. Manuscripts should be postmarked between October 1 and October 31, 2009. There is no need to query first; simply mail the manuscript according to the directions below.

Please send one copy of your manuscript along with two copies of the title page (note: the reading process is not "blind"--we ask for two title pages only so that we may keep one with the manuscript, and the other for reference/notes, etc). Be sure that your title pages include your name, address, telephone number, and email address.

Cover letters are read with interest. We like to know who your are, what you're up to, and where we can read more of your work.

We do accept simultaneous submissions but ask that you let us know immediately if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere. Individual pieces from the manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, anthologies, and short-run chapbooks, but the collection as a whole must be unpublished. Manuscripts will not be returned. Please do not send us your only copy.

Writers who have not been published in our literary journal should include a $20 reading fee in the form of a check or a money order made payable to Tarpaulin Sky Press. Past contributors to Tarpaulin Sky may submit their manuscript with a $10 reading fee. Current subscribers to Tarpaulin Sky Press do not need to include a reading fee (you've already done plenty to support the press--thank you). Everyone submitting a manuscript is welcome also to choose from any TSky Press trade paperback (sorry, no chapbooks)--just let us know which title you would like, and enclose with your submission packet a 9x12, self-addressed, stamped envelope with $2.64 in postage. We will ship the books separately from your notification SASE.

Mail your submission to

Tarpaulin Sky Press
PO Box 189
Grafton, VT 05146

For notification of decisions, include a business-size SASE. If you would like to receive acknowledgment of the receipt of your manuscript, please include a stamped, self-addressed postcard. Notification of decisions will be made in February 2010. Publication of accepted manuscripts will be in 2010 & 2011.

If you are not familiar with our press and the type of books that we publish, we encourage you to explore our work before submitting, by purchasing one of our titles.

FREE BOOKS & JOURNALS

Tarpaulin Sky Print Issues # 1 and #2 are now available free, in their entirety, online. They remain available for purchase as paper issues as well.

Tarpaulin Sky Issue #15 | Print Issue #2

Cover Art by Brandon Downing. New work by 35 contributors: Aidan Thompson, Amber Nelson, Andrew Michael Roberts, Bernard Noël, Blake Butler, Brian Henry, Brigitte Byrd, Cal Freeman, Corey Mesler, Dan Thomas-Glass, Erin Lyndal Martin, George Kalamaras , Gregory Howard, Heather Green, Jamey Dunham, Jess Neiweem, Jill Magi, Joanna Ruocco, Jonah Winter, Kim Gek Lin Short, Kristen E. Nelson, Kristi Maxwell, Laynie Browne, Mark Cunningham, Megan Martin, Michael Clearwater, Michael Rerick, Patrick Morrissey, Peter Davis, Rae Gouirand, Rauan Klassnik, Richard Froude, Rob Cook, Sara Veglahn, and Tim Roberts.

Read it here for free. Or buy it here because you like what you read.


Tarpaulin Sky Issue #13 / Print Issue #1

Featuring new work by Rosa Alcalá, Samuel Amadon, Lucy Anderton, Claire Becker, Cara Benson, Ilya Bernstein, Joseph Bradshaw, Popahna Brandes, Daniel Brenner, Lily Brown, Julie Carr, Laura Carter, Jon Christensen, Heather Christle, John Cotter & Shafer Hall, Patrick Culliton, John Deming, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Danielle Dutton, Sandy Florian, Hillary Gravendyk, Annie Guthrie, Brent Hendricks, Anna Maria Hong, John Hyland, Lucy Ives, Karla Kelsey, Steve Langan, Barbara Maloutas, Sarah Mangold, Justin Marks, Teresa K. Miller, Jefferson Navicky, Bryson Newhart, Nadia Nurhussein, Thomas O'Connell, Caryl Pagel, Nate Pritts, Elizabeth Robinson, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Spencer Selby, Brandon Shimoda, Lytton Smith, Sampson Starkweather, Mathias Svalina, Jen Tynes, Prabhakar Vasan, Della Watson, Theodore Worozbyt, Bethany Wright, and Kristen Yawitz.

Read it here for free. Or buy it here because you like what you read.


A SORT-OF-FREE BOOK

A handful of review copies of Gordon Massman’s The Essential Numbers 1991 – 2008 are available to anyone who sends an email to editors[at]tarpaulinsky[dot]com letting us know why you’re interested in Gordon’s work and where you’ve placed reviews in the past.


RECEIVED LAST WEEK

Most of the titles below are available for review, though we include the friend copies and the purchased copies as well, thinking we can probably scare up another copy if you're interested in reviewing one for TSky. Titles marked with asterisks are hand-bound books or are otherwise special editions and are limited, if still available at all.

James Haug, Legend of the Recent Past (The National Poetry Review Press, 2009)

* Jamey Jones, Twelve Windows (Brown Boke / Ugly Duckling Press, 2009)

Bhanu Kapil, Humanimal: A Project for Future Children (Kelsey Street Press, 2009)

Rachel Levitsky, Neighbor (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009)

* 6X6, Issue 18: A barrel of herrings (Ugly Duckling Press, 2009)

Chapbook Open Reading Period & A Month-Long Roundup

TSky Press Chapbook Reading Period
(ends 31 August)

Tarpaulin Sky Press is reading chapbook manuscripts during the month of August. Chapbook manuscripts should be postmarked between August 1 and August 31, 2009.

There is no need to query first; simply mail the manuscript according to the chapbook submission guidelines.

*

The New TSky is the New Trickhouse

Tarpaulin Sky #16
Summer 09:
Trickhouse

The current issue of Tarpaulin Sky is the current issue of Trickhouse; i.e., the current issue of Trickhouse is the current issue of Tarpaulin Sky. Think of it as Trick Sky or Tarp House. Or just don't worry about all that, and instead proceed directly to the goods:.

Trickhouse Vol. 5 / Tarpaulin Sky #16
Curated by Noah Saterstrom

• texts by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Thalia Field, and Joanna Howard (from Heide Hatry's Heads and Tales)
• video by Anne Waldman and Lisa Jarnot
• sound by Caroline Bergvall
• correspondence from Lisa Birman
• an experiment conducted by Brandon Shimoda & Lisa Schumaier
• an interview with Gordon Massman, conducted by Ana Božičević, Blake Butler, Elena Georgiou, Amy King, and Selah Saterstrom
• visual art by Josh Friedman
• and guest curator, Verbobala's "Hex-ologram"

*

Steven Karl reviews Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay & Christian Peet's Big American Trip

"Both Peet and Zornoza’s books are examples of not submitting to a status quo in literature, instead they use the traits once synonymous with Wong Kar-wai: originality, vision, risks, and experimentation to give you back this country as it is: flawed, fractured, hypocritical, greedy, beautiful, breathtaking, mesmerizing, and the constant dialect of a lie and a truth."

Read the entire review here.

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Where I Stay is also reviewed at Small Press Reviews:

"As haunting as it is gritty, Where I Stay has the feel of an impressionist watercolor and underscores the value of the small press in literary culture. Indeed, I hesitate to simply call it a book; its ambitions, beautifully realized, make it a hybrid of textual and visual arts." Read the full review here.

*

See also: a great interview with Andrew Zornoza at Bookish Us.

*

Fence Vol. 12 No. 1 Spring/Summer 2009

The latest issue of Fence is particularly stellar. The two poems by Janaka Stucky are worth the price of admission alone. And since we couldn’t afford to make the AWP where Kate Bernheimer, Brian Evenson, Laird Hunt, Eric Lorberer, and Joyelle McSweeney were in a panel discussion on nonrealist fiction, we were delighted to be able to read the transcript. TSky faves Karla Kelsey and Eugene Ostashevsky also figure prominently in the mix. As well as Kate Greenstreet, with whom I'll be reading--huzzah!--in October.

Need more? Well, then, you’ll also find James Gendron, Jannifer MacKenzie, Chris Pusateri, Lizbeth Keiley, ennifer Kronovet, Meena Alexander, Steve Langan, Brett Fletcher Lauer, Dean Young, Chris Tysh, Heather Winterer, Christine Hume, Rachel Sherman, Gregg Bordowitz & Lisa Johnson, images by Jason Middlebrook—and still more.

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The Best of Fence, The First Nine Years

Including essays from Fence editors Caroline Crumpacker, Anthony Hawley, Katy Lederer, Frances Richard, Matthew Rohrer, Christopher Stackhouse, Max Winter, Rebecca Wolff, and Jason Zuzga, along with 400+ pages of poetry and nonfiction from TSky editor Christian Peet and TSky contributors Amy Catanzano, Geoffrey Detrani, Brandon Downing, Eugene Ostashevsky, and Lance Phillips

*

Francis Raven's Provisions

Interbirth Books is pleased to announce Francis Raven's hybrid collection of poems & prose: Provisions. Fifty books were printed, assembled, and hand bound in-house at Interbirth Books using a combination long / kettle stitch. Twenty-six books are lettered A through Z and signed by the author. This hardcover edition includes cover art by Francis Raven. 84 pages — 5.25 x 7.25 — $22 (free shipping in the US).

We have a copy. You should too. Even if you're broke, you should go to the Interbirth website just to peruse the photos: interbirthbooks.org. Oh yeah, another reason: the contents of the books are pretty alright, too. The David Hadbawnik book is sold out, but Francis Raven, Mary Burger? Handbound? Really, what the heck else can we ask of a book?

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Also check the latest issue of kadar koli, from Habenicht Press. Edited by Roger Snell; designed by Ann Marie Snell; cover by Yasuhiro Esaki. Featuring work by Joanne Kyger, John Phillips, Nicole Mauro, Lal Ded (trans. Andrew Schelling), Betsy Andrews, Beau Beausoleil, Jacques Roubaud (trans. Eleni Sikelianos), George Albon, Kate Colbu, David Miller, Carol Snow, Dale Smith, Laura Solorzano (trans. Jen Hofer), Chuck Stebelton, Rosmarie Waldrop, Theodore Enslin, Gypsy Cante (trans. Will Kirkland), and Kristin Prevallet. $5 plus shipping.

*

H_ngm_n #8

The long-awaited 8th issue H_ngm_n is live.

Edited by Nate Pritts, the issue features art from Nikki Painter; fiction by Bill Dunlap, Christopher Higgs, A D Jameson, and Zachary Tyler Vickers; comix by John Dermot Woods; poems by Nico Alvarado-Greenwood, Scott Bade, Erica Bernheim, Joseph Bienvenu, Jason Bredle, Paula Cisewski, Nina Corwin, Jordan Davis, Jessica Dessner, John Duvernoy, John W. Evans, John Findura , Matt Hart, Steve Healey, Cynthia Arrieu-King, Eric Kocher, Ben Kopel, Gregory Lawless, B.J. Love, Tony Mancus, Anthony McCann, Pete Miller, Alexis Orgera, Chris Rizzo, Broc Rossell, Brandon Shimoda & Julia Cohen, Rachel M. Simon, Jeff Simpson, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Chad Sweeney, Robert Whiteside, Joseph P. Wood, and Jon Woodward; and a hell of a lot more. See for yourself.

*

RECENTLY RECEIVED

Most of the titles below are available for review, though we include the friend copies and the purchased copies as well, thinking we can probably scare up another copy if you're interested in reviewing one for TSky. Titles marked with asterisks are hand-bound books or otherwise special editions and are limited, if still available at all.

* Samuel Amadon, Each H (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009).

Shaindel Beers, A Brief History of Time (Salt Publishing, 2009)

A Best of Fence, the First Nine Years: Vol.1 Poetry & Nonfiction
* Ross Brighton, A Pelt, A Shrub, A Soil Sample; with drawings by Anne Mackenzie (Neoismist Press, 2009)

Rebecca Brown, American Romances (City Lights, 2009)

Allison Carter, A Fixed Formal Arrangement (Les Figues Press, 2008)

René Char, The Brittle Age and Returning Upland, Gustaf Sobin, tr. (Counterpath Press, 2009)

Ginnetta Correli, The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scarelli (Marshmallow Press, 2008)

Michael Cross, Throne / Michelle Detorie, A Coincidence of Wants / Johannes Göransson Majakovskij en tragedy (Dos Press, 2007)

Jeremy M. Davies, Rose Alley (Counterpath Press, 2009)

* Shira Dentz, Leaf Weather (Tilt Press, 2009)
Denver Quarterly, Vol. 43. No. 4

* Claire Donato, Someone Else's Body (Cannibal Books, 2009)

* Jeffrey Encke, Most Wanted: A Gamble in Verse (Last Tangos Editons, 2004)

Fact-Simile, Spring/Summer 2009

Fence Vol. 12 No. 1 Spring/Summer 2009

Christine Gardiner, My Father’s Sister (Nascent A Press, 2009)

K. Lorraine Graham, Terminal Humming (Edge Books, 2009)

* Carolyn Guinzio, Untitled Wave (Cannibal Books, 2009)

*Caia Hagel, Acts of Kindness and Excellence in Times Tables (The Cupboard, 2009)

* Melanie Hubbard, Gilbi Winco Swags (Cannibal Books, 2008)

Elizabeth Hughey, Sunday Houses the Sunday House (University of Iowa Press, 2007)

Robert Krut, The Spider Sermons (BlazeVox Books, 2009)

Fred Marchant, The Looking House (Graywolf Press, 2009)

Sabrina Orah Mark, Tsim Tsum (Saturnalia Books, 2009)

* C.J. Martin, City (Vigilance Society, 2007)

* Laura Nash, Brownfields (Ugly Duckling Presse Dossier, 2009).

* Akilah Oliver, The Putterer's Notebook (Belladonna Books, 2006)

Timothy David Orme, Catalogue of Burnt Text (BlazeVox Books, 2009)

Poezija June 2009: If We Crash Into A Cloud, It Won’t Hurt (Croatian Poetry 1989 – 2009)

Kevin Rabas, Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano (Woodley Press, 2009)

* Francis Raven, Provisions (Interbirth Books, 2009)

Tomaž Šalamun, There’s the Hand and There’s the Arid Chair; edited by Thomas Kane; translated by the author with Thomas Kane, Peter Richards, Phillis Levin, Joshua Beckman, Ana Jelnikar, Christopher Merril, Matthew Rohrer, Brian Henry, Anselm Hollo (Counterpath Press, 2009)

* Carter Smith, Therefore You Are That Other One You Love (Dos Press)

* Andrea Strudensky, Incident Light Poem (Dos Press)

Marina Temkina, What Do You Want? (Ugly Duckling Presse Eastern European Series, 2009)

Mark Wagstaff, In Sparta (Troubador Publishing, 2009)

Rebecca Wolff, The King (W.W. Norton, 2009)

John Dermot Woods, The Complete Collection of People, Places, & Things (BlazVox Books, 2009)

Elizabeth Marie Young, Aim Straight at the Fountain and Press Vaporize (Fence Books, 2009)

Subscribe. Support. Save Big Money

TSky Press Fall 2009/Spring 2010 subscriptions are now available http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/catalog.html

$60 for six books w/free shipping
(vs. $103.94 from Amazon, or $107 from SPD)

Yes, you read the above correctly. $60 will get you five paperbacks and one chapbook w/ free shipping. & Yes, you'll save around $45.

All first books. All from women writers. Which excites us no end. Although we have always been committed to publishing both new writers and women writers, the 2009/10 subscription series really puts our money where our collective mouth is. Fall 2009 books include Ana Bozicevic's full-length poetry collection, Stars of the Night Commute; Traci O Connor's book of short fictions, Recipes for Endangered Species; and Emily Toder's poetry chapbook, Brushes With. Spring 2010 titles include Joanna Ruocco's book of short fictions, Man's Companions; Kim Gek Lin Short's lyric novella, The Bugging Watch and Other Exhibits; and Shelly Taylor's book of interlocking short fictions/prose poems, Black-Eyed Heifer.

As they say in Fargo, “That’s a pretty sweet deal.” We hope you’ll think so, too. Please consider renewing your subscription and continuing to support TSky Press and its mission—which, in this case, includes publishing young women writers whose work, we’re willing to bet, you’ll be reading—and reading about—for years to come.

Please visit our catalog at http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/catalog.html to order online or pay by check.

Review of Christian Peet's Big American Trip

Cynthia Reeser reviews Christian Peet's Big American Trip, in the new issue of Prick of the Spindle.

"Written as a collection of postcards in a non-native voice, the slim volume packs a mighty punch, especially in its exploration of the constrictions and deceptions of, not only the expansive American dream, but also of the English language as an embodiment of something that often serves to identify borders and boundaries. . . . It is, in its broken English, as native as the rest of us caught in the tide and flux of the melting pot." [Read the full review.]

Review of Brandon Shimoda's The Alps and The Inland Sea

In the new issue of Harp & Altar, Jered White reviews TSky Press author Brandon Shimoda's books, The Alps and The Inland Sea.

"It may be helpful to see the two books not as distinct projects, but rather as complementary angles on the same subject, the same interior/exterior geography with its troubles and anxieties. As the trinity bomb haunts the speaker in The Alps, the radioactive specter of the bomb casts a similar plume of destruction over The Inland Sea as well, with... Read More its language of horrible “flash burn” followed by “flame.” The speaker imagines himself as subject and product of violence and atrocity done to and by the body: “The guards found me wrapped / in a bladder / seized with the enormity of flesh / spoiling / trigone—ureter, urethra and bulwark.” Every vista, from the vast to the quantum, becomes an insistent, unyielding self-portrait: “Inside of the nucleus of the Atomium / every surface is / a mirror I see my family in // though I never learned any of their names”." [Read the full review here]

And then run out and buy one of the last copies of The Inland Sea.

Review of Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay

Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009) is reviewed at HTML Giant, courtesy of Blake Butler.

"Refreshing, pitch-perfect kind of steering that is innovative not only for the genre it might get called into, but for experiential and language-focused texts of every stripe."

Read the entire review, here.

New Reviews at Tarpaulin Sky: Art, Blossom, Crawford, Hightower, Konar, Marcom, Novey

• Robyn Art's The Stunt Double in Winter (Dusie Press, 2008), reviewed by Drew Dillhunt

• Idra Novey's The Next Country (Alice James Books, 2008), reviewed by Joshua Neely

• Scott Hightower's Part of the Bargain (Copper Canyon Press, 2005), and Laurel Blossom's Degrees of Latitude (Four Way Books, 2007), reviewed by Carl Rosenstock

• Affinity Konar's The Illustrated Version of Things (FC2, 2009), reviewed by A D Jameson

• Micheline Aharonian Marcom's The Mirror in the Well (Dalkey Archive, 2009), reviewed by John Madera

• Stanley G. Crawford’s Log of the S.S. Mrs. Unguentine (Dalkey Archive, 2009), reviewed by John Madera

Now Available from TSky Press: Gordon Massman's _ The Essential Numbers 1991-2008 _

Gordon Massman, The Essential Numbers 1991-2008

ISBN: 9780977901999
Poetry. 6"x8", 184 pages, perfectbound
June 2009
$14 includes shipping in the US
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/catalog.html


from The Essential Numbers

1624

First we plunge knife into dog, she fell to knees, toppled, lay
like any meal in gravy, spotted tongue, then baby Lulu, thirt-
een months, pillow over face, pressure, turkey before baking,
extracted pussy by back legs from cabinet, beheaded him,
whole head glued to chair like shish kabob, marinated head-
less body in loggy toilet bowl, you sliced my clothes like
gutting fish, whack whack cling, strips, I lopped your bras
for mastectomy, slashed French panties like jelly crea-
tures, we eyed each other, “love,” you said, “love,” I assented,
“screw you,” you said, “agreed,” I chimed, “I despise your
mother,” “yours drank herself dead,” “None will adore
you like me,” she warned, “Echo,” I responded, one by one
we pulled the feathers off Dante our Parrot, poor Dante
caged and fruited like a bauble, several primary feathers
plucked killed him like a shot weight, claws clutching a
finger, “monster,” she screamed, “Frankenstein,” I fired,
“piece of shit,” shot out the canon my mouth, bereft
of pets and babies her wishbone glittered like a lit ship-
sail, meathooks, striations, bruise red bloomed in my
mind, psychopath, maniac, she studied me like a cannibal,
and down we tumbled in a flurry of slurp, boner, juice,
and squish, slacks and shirts collapsing like parachutes.


1562

Dear God, I wish to register my unhappiness about a few things: mor-
tality is a crock of shit, I could pop you in the mouth for that; gen-
ocide sucks, you deserve a penitentiary gang raping; what about cer-
ebral palsy? hanged by the neck, my good man, hanged by the neck;
I’m a little discontent about mashed teenager canon-fodder wars,
you know, blown off limbs and heads , amputated appendages,
post traumatic stress syndrome, freckled unwrinkled babies mud-
trudging, one could fucking kick you in the gonads or plier them
off like taffy and feed ‘em to chickens, here chick chick, you cel-
estial amateur, scratchy violinist botching Bach; the little matter
of pederasty, the constitutionally sour buggering preadolescents,
or fucking itself between consenters whipping themselves lee-
ward-to-stern chasing that momentary dopamine-filled squiggle
infusing emptiness shame hunger megalomania and finally spir-
itual death, smashed in the kisser, banished, bibles burned simul-
taneously like flushing at once a skyscraper of toilets, bloody
nutcase; what about space travel, you serve up famine, they
booster to moon in million dollar foil suits to tramp around,
demigods to television applause, famine’s worth decapitation,
(I assume neck not in ass a blade can find); oh boy peanut
brickle Lucky Charms Mars AIDS Coke, finger-poke out
your eye, sanctuary fornicator, superstition wrapped in faith
wrapped in fear, Mr. Potato Head; I’ll praise you this; blood-
covered morsels ceaselessly bursting, new beautiful victims.


1379

Huey, Dewey, and Louie bring home three whores for dinner.
Huey gets spanked and blown, Dewey’s a blind patient at the
doctor’s, Louie does it dog style on the sheepskin throw, three
women contain duck come like mechanically filled mustard
jars. How they worship zooming tits, purchased lips, the soft
slot machine of the naked woman. A stogie turns Huey green
poor mallard, night’s growing sour, the promise of vomit,
frankly diarrhea’s looming in guts of three like bruisy storms,
but hell we’re men aren’t we? gimme a Pabst, and red be-
tween the orange webs sucks off his purple cock, and even-
ing drags, dies, the females split, the males blacked out, ash
trays, tumbler rings, mixer packets, missed chunks, Donald
and Daisy anticipating an after the movie tumble pissed at
the profligate nephews, sailor suits and menstrual blood. Don-
ald to Daisy: God dammit! Daisy to Donald: fuck! Donald
to Daisy: Look at this shit. Daisy to Donald: Idiots. Dish-
washer filled, blender upright, the boys covered in blankets
where they lay, Daisy fucked Donald hell for leather till
both sets of genitals failed with satiation, Donald stunned
with love, penis a limp sore biceps, Daisy drunk with semen,
inside out like a flaccid flower, hiving for conception, both
fired and blown apart, hinged at the knees. Oh Donald, Oh
Daisy, Oh Huey, Dewey, and Louie, swaddled, lifted, and
held by God, suckled on heaven’s nipple, do not sob the flesh-
y mess of eggs and lust, sperm and hurt, the slimy floor of
booze, musk, and promises; sleep, safekeep, angels angels angels.


1316

Against my will, I rip down zipper, shove porno before face, grow
tumescent, and rape myself. Rapist fist-squeezes, tears undercircum-
cision tissue, violences orgasm into toilet, and bangs away like a
striking hawk leaving me on carpet weeping. Crisis response team,
rape squad, description (shot sharded glances in mirror), unrpedic-
table, unexpected, brutal, Caucasian, fled into the night of self, vast,
anonymous like a whiptail; rage, not sex; revenge against distant
abusers; howl in heart; injustice gnawing cerebral wires; I’ve not
confessed—shame—he’s hit before, cracked open hard core and
beat incessantly ripping out my stuffing and fled like a murderer
into my soul, slaked on subjugation and spermatozoa. I can take
victimization by his hunger no more, the horror, the shock, the
degradation amidst a beautiful world, his closet appearance ir-
repressibly, he’s always within dead bold perimeters, his shoe-
toes replicating mine and the gutturals wrenched out his throat
iterate details he could not know; Karen’s tampax, Sheila’s lub-
rication, the exquisite blood orange and yellow pipefish, the
unexpurgated yank through caverns of emptiness, cravings of
Joyce, weird tectonic schisms in the earthplates of stability; my
superinformed assailant confusing me with identification; smash-
ing my dick between fist with jackhammer-aching arm, he hal-
lucinatorily grunted, “fucker, you are me,” then incomprehen-
sibly vaporized the instant my come blew me off its string; pride
terrorizes—I’ve slaved, I confess, for years, homosexually, pain-
fully, grievingly, plumbing swallowing my esteem; the tidal sucks
off a devastation-home. No more: hazel; six feet; gray wreath-
tonsure; straight teeth; cupcake mole, left shoulder; moustache;
olive; one-ninety; deceptively soft spoken; black bush; left lobe
crease; fiftyish; big fingers. Grab handful of flesh, wrap fist, rip
him through sewer grate to light, to justice, imposter, fake soc-
ialite, slime-liar, hit/run impresario, abominator of stainlessness
and gorgeous stacks, chickadee household blackguard bastard.


1262

Dear God: thank you for the physical beauty in the world, etc.
and get fucked. Brutality festers under veneer. Abercrombie
and Fitch and the other even-cornered orderly little boxes at-
op the cauldron of rage. I’ve read your absurd prevarications,
burning bush, parting sea, water to wine, the whole bloody
idiotic litany. What do you take me for? My son’s in jail, my
parents hate each other, and love is the biggest crock of shit
in our world. Take it up the ass mr. big. I shove it in and
squirt my ever-regenerating fascist through your anus. You
“work in mysterious ways.” Sure. Gotcha. Like multiple
sclerosis, cerebral hemorrhage, schizophrenia, ovarian can-
cer, gang rape, endless battlefield slaughter, hunger and
starvation, crack cocaine, mandatory economic survival,
family annihilation, serial killer, christmas eve, the whole
bloody genocidal mechanistic panoply of madness, dema-
goguery, power-lust, and blood papered over with The
David, Notre Dame, Starry Night, The Cello Suites, The
Divine Comedy, A Night at the Opera. You don’t fool me
with your poured concrete. The devil created you. Oops!
a brief eulogy-interlude for my latest decimated friend—bone
cancer—chemotherapy, steroids, morphine, marrow trans-
plant—closed his lids on two blonde daughters, 9 and 13—
hole in air, let me chant: HeyHeyHeyHey, HeyHeyHey,
Hey, Hayi-o-ku-oo, tum tum. Thank you mr. zero for an-
other picnic in the park. And he believed! But we know
the irrefutable; invisible wasp with hypodermic stinger whir-
ring through walls, money, steel, petition to jab it in the
neck. “Come down, Come down, why dost thou hide thy
face?” one frustrated poet begged. I will reveal. The mere
hideous outline of you visible would decimate all animal
hope or happiness. You think my personal circumstances
blind and embittering? Don’t make me laugh. I observe
with microscopic scientific objectivity the botanical, zo-
ological, and geological, and state with emotionless inan-
imacy the incontrovertible: I could wedge a baseball bat
up your lower orifice, swing, and Hercules-hurl you to
plague another planet-island of cripples and cruciality with
your miracle-laden-liturgy and it would take a lifetime of
restitution to clean the crap off the end of Louisville wood.


About Gordon Massman

Gordon Massman divides his time between Medford, MA, and the island of Frenchboro, ME. Poems from The Essential Numbers have appeared in The Numbers (Pavement Saw Press) as well as in Exquisite Corpse, The Harvard Review, The New York Quarterly, Pleiades, Tarpaulin Sky, and elsewhere.

Recently Received

Most of the titles that follow are available as review copies at Tarpaulin Sky, except for titles marked with an asterisk, which are hand-bound or otherwise short-run editions and are limited, if still available at all.

Radu Andriescu, Iustin Panta, Cristian Popescu, Memory Glyphs: Three Prose Poets from Romania, translated by Adam J. Sorkin (Twisted Spoon Press, 2009)

Elizabeth Bachinsky’s Curio: Grotesques & Satires from the Electronic Age (BookThug, 2009)

Anselm Berrigan’s To Hell With Sleep (Letter Machine Press, 2009)

Michael Boughn’s 22 Skiddoo / Subtractions (BookThug, 2009)

Stephen Burt’s Close Calls with Nonsense (Graywolf Press, 2009)

Melissa Buzzeo’s Face (BookThug, 2009)

Ed Cyzewski’s Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life (NavPress, 2008)

Reg Darling’s Hartwell Road (iUniverse, 2009)

Denver Quarterly Vol. 43, No. 3

Ben Doller’s FAQ (Ahsahta Press, 2009)

Elena Fanailova’s The Russian Version (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)

Skip Fox’s Delta Blues (Ahadada Books, 2009)

* Inter #1

Rachel Loden’s Dick of the Dead (Ahsahta Press, 2009)

Justin Marks’ A Million in Prizes (New Issues, 2009)

*Pocket Myths #2, 3, & 4

Michael Rerick’s In Ways Impossible to Fold (Marsh Hawk Press, 2008)

Matthew Rohrer's A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009)

Micahel Schiavo’s The Mad Song (Shires Press, 2008)

Adam Seelig’s Talking Masks (BookThug, 2009)

*Kim Gek Lin Short’s The Residents (Dancing Girl Press, 2008)

Spider Vein Impasto (Blood Pudding, 2009)

*Mathias Svalina’s Play (The Cupboard, 2009)

Tight #4 (Shires Press, 2008)

Sara Veglahn’s Another Random Heart (Letter Machine Press, 2009)

With + Stand #3

Now Available from TSky Press: Andrew Zornoza's _Where I Stay_

Andrew Zornoza, Where I Stay
ISBN: 9780977901913
Fiction. 8"x5", 108 pages, perfectbound
June 2009
$14 includes shipping anywhere in the US
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/catalog.html

In the process of constantly disappearing, the unhinged, unmoored and unnamed narrator of Where I Stay travels through a cracked North America, stalked by his own future self and the whispers of a distant love. From Arco, Idaho to Mexico City, he flees along the highways and dirt roads of a landscape filled with characters in transition: squatters, survivalists, prostitutes, drug runners, skinheads, border guards and con-men. Where I Stay is a meditation on desperation, identity, geography, memory, and love—a story about endurance, about the empty spaces in ourselves, about the new possibilities we find only after we have lost everything.

Consider Andrew Zornoza’s Where I Stay a loose retelling of Werner Herzog’s 1974 march from Munich to Paris to try to save a dying friend—only set in the arid, ominous nowherescape of the contemporary Southwest and composed by a strung-out W.G. Sebald. Zornoza dedicates the book to “all those he's lied to” before prosecuting a narrative in stark photographs and crisp, lurid text that will make you wish we had more liars like him in the world.
—Matthew Derby, author of Super Flat Times

A gifted journey through borderlands between text and image, glassy prose and suggestively indirect prose poem, facts and fictions, sanity and the other thing, but most of all those borderlands crossed and recrossed on the West's back roads—the kind that always exist just off the grid, just below the radar, and always in beautiful pieces.
—Lance Olsen, author of nine novels including Anxious Pleasures, Nietzsche's Kisses, and Girl Imagined by Chance

Excerpts from Where I Stay

About Andrew Zornoza

Andrew Zornoza is a visual artist and writer born in Houston, Texas and now residing in Brooklyn. His fiction and essays have appeared in magazines such as Sleepingfish, Confrontation, Porcupine Literary Arts, CapGun, Matter Magazine, Gastronomica and H.O.W. He can be found teaching writing at The New School University and fiction at Gotham Writer’s Workshop.