Clay Matthews' Superfecta

Superfecta
poetry by Clay Matthews
Ghost Road Press
Publication date: 15 April 2008
ISBN: 0-9796255-5-6
84 pages
$13.95 (special April Sale price $10)

Superfecta examines our relation to time and memory with surprising energy and consistent empathy. The tension between system and chance connect Clay Matthews’ poems, balanced as they are between the abstractions of symbol and the immediacy of language. For Matthews, there is a thin line dividing the body’s physicality and the wonder of the mind, where “The cartography of a rat is the same for all species/ in that it is always a map of the unknown.” Matthews writes about our desire to identify mythos in everyday experience, and celebrates when it’s discovered amid our anxious and uncertain place in history.

In Posse #24

Guest edited by Richard Garcia and TSky's own Julianna Spallholz, the 24th issue of In Posse Review features a host of TSky folks: publisher Christian Peet, press authors Jenny Boully, Mark Cunningham, and G.C. Waldrep; and journal contributors Annie Guthrie, Tom O'Connell, and Cody Walker. Spallholz's section is a refreshing experiment in curating and co-creating. Spallholz conceived a "Prose Poetry Chain Story," in which she invited "a small collection of writers from our big community to speak to each other through pieces of original prose poetry, passed along like whispered messages in a child's game of Telephone." The project "started with a word that was known only by Kristen Nelson, the writer who began the chain. Kristen composed a piece with this word in mind and passed the piece on to the next three writers in line, who then composed a piece in response to Kristen's piece and passed it on to the next writers, who composed and passed on to the next and final writers."

Other writers in the chain include Dana Elkun and Johnny Horton. The rest of the issue, "Prose Poems Straight Up," includes work by Nin Andrews and Peter Conners, Tony Barnstole, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Barbara Berg,Rick Bursky,Robin Clarke, Wyn Cooper, John Estes, Christine Hamm, Peter Johnson, Christopher Kennedy, Andrew Neuendorf, Alexis Orgera, Eugenia Hepworth Petty, Jason Stumpf, Thom Ward, Charles Harper Webb, Orlando White, and Katherine Williams.

Kristin Palm's _The Straits_

The Straits
Kristin Palm
Palm Press
100 pages, perfectbound
ISBN 9780978926236
$15.00

In The Straits, Kristin Palm presents us with a portrait of the mythological city of Detroit. By tracing its construction and destruction, Palm invokes the glory and tragedy of America in the 20th century. Among Palm’s lyric narrative of the names and places, the ruins of Detroit represent promise and possibility as a model for urban landscapes. The Straits should be required reading for all lovers and dreamers of the great American City. —Brenda Coultas

The Straits is a Cadillac collection down to its pistons and rims. Within these pages, Kristin Palm exhales into the city of accumulation (by dispossession) a new Detroit, extending a poesis first laid out by Grace Lee Boggs, Tyree Guyton, Cybotron, Lolita Hernandez, and MOCAD. Welcome to Detroit, voyeurs—now go home. —Mark Nowak

Child of the so-called “Rust Belt” (moniker denoting a kind of pastoral abandonment of Capital’s Capacity, instead of a concertedly choreographed replacement of its machinery and its train of human effects—emotional / intellectual / artistic), Kristin Palm has come “back home” with The Straits. But this “return” is a journey outwards and forwards. It is for all of us interested in demystifying the effective discourses of place around a global-urban nexus. The Straits is a poetic investigatory tour-de-force that stands alongside Mark Nowak’s Shut Up Shut Down as to how “experimental narrative works can enter this scene as cultural forces or vectors that provide other narrative structures for imagining places and histories…towards a cultural imagining of “Another World”“ (Jeff Derksen). —Rodrigo Toscano

New Review at TSky: Amy King's _Kiss Me with the Mouth of Your Country_

Amy King's Kiss Me with the Mouth of Your Country
by Caroline Wilkinson

Kiss Me with the Mouth of Your Country is a potent work not only artistically but politically, more so than King’s earlier poetry. Instead of loaded words, we get moments that bring us into a body where the borders shift. In this “country,” the “I” and “you” suddenly change because the line between the two keeps moving. The borders here are insecure . . .

[READ MORE]

Spinning Jenny #10

Issue #10 of Spinning Jenny features work by TSky Press author Joyelle McSweeney, TSky Journal contributor Michael Rerick, and other delights: Stephanie Anderson, Cristiana Baik, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Graeme Bezanson, Tina Cane, Tom Christopher, Darin Ciccotelli, Julia Cohen, Molly Dorozenski, Suzanne M. Fischer, Adam Golaski, Rae Gouirand, Wayne Hogan, Cecily Iddings, Henry Israeli, Karyna McGlynn, Ashley McWaters, Caroline Morrell, Ryan Murphy, Gillian Parrish, Rodney Phillips, James Reiss, James Roderick, Ravi Shankar, and Leigh Wells. Edited by C.E. Harrison.

Johannes Göransson's _Pilot _("Johann the Carousel Horse")

Pilot ("Johann the Carousel Horse")

by Johannes Göransson
Fairytale Review Press
$12, available here, at SPD
Poetry
ISBN 978-0-9799954-1-5

Pilot ("Johann the Carousel Horse") is an assemblage, a book of nursery rhymes gone wrong in translation. Its strange characters, abandoned from other texts, include Lilja, the Pearls of Stockholm and assorted imperiled girls. Here, in Johannes Göransson's glittering exocity, they find a new and beautifully stitched home. Göransson was born and raised in Skåne, Sweden, but has lived in the US for many years. He is co-editor of Action Books and has translated the work of Aase Berg, Henry Parland, Ann Jäderlund and other Swedish and Finland Swedish poets.

New Issue of Action, Yes

We're a couple weeks late in noticing, because Joyelle and Johannes apparently left us out of the loop, but we won't hold it against them. Indeed we encourage you to stop reading this and just click here to check out the new issue.

Among other things, it includes poems and translations by TSky contributor Rosa Alcala, along with Ray Bianchi, Rocio Ceron, Lara Glenum, Sergio Medeiros, Gabriel & Marcel Piqueray, Lila Zemborain and many others. It also includes the documentation of a multimedia performance by Daniel Tiffany, Andrea Loselle, Daniel Rothman, Theodore Mook.

The issue also features Swedish scholar Lars Bäckström's analysis of how issues of translation have influenced discussions of theories of the avant-garde.

Action, Yes would be interested in running response-essays in the next issues. If you are interested, email them.

The Jungle, from Rope-a-Dope Press

What Tarpaulin Sky Press wants for its birthday: The Jungle, Rope-a-Dope Press' handbound anthology of The Manila Broadsides.




Tarpaulin Sky has not only seen but has touched this book. It vibrates on a frequency somewhere between Lascaux cave paintings and the Dead Sea Scrolls.





The Jungle. 13" x 11", hardcover, Coptic binding. Inside of which, gathered by publishers & editors Robert daVies & Mary Walker Graham, is a collection of broadsides featuring So and So Reading Series poets Shafer Hall, Cecily Parks, Ravi Shankar, Dan Boehl, Dan Hoy, Gina Myers, Michael Carr, C.S. Carrier, Lori Shine, Phil Cordelli, Hazel McClure, Keith Newton, Douglas Hahn, Daniel Magers, Maya Pindyck, Andrea Baker, Jennifer Bartlett, and Reb Livingston; and artists Anna Trzaska, James Weinberg, Catherine Bourassa-Hebert, Sadie Bliss, Robert daVies, and Nik Gulacsik.

A collaboration between Rope-a-Dope Press and The So and So Series, The Jungle was made by hand in an edition of twelve in January 2008. The covers, doublures, and end pages were printed on LamaLi and Rives BFK papers using lead type, polymer plates, and screenprints. The text throughout was set by hand on a Vandercook SP20 in the typeface Caslon. The Manila Broadsides were printed in editions of seventy-two each on Rives BFK and French Co. papers.

billet-doux

What TSky Press discovered, coveted, and PayPal'd first thing this morning:

billet-doux
dancing girl press, 2008
$22.00 (includes S&H)
Edition of 100





This special dancing girl press limited edition collection of missives is sure to entice and delight. 15 poets. 15 love letters. Each piece written and designed by the poet themselves and collected in a lovely box. A volume sure to thrill the poetry and art lover (as well as the occasional voyeur.)

Each box includes letters, postcards, and prints by Jane Pupek, Erin Bertram, Bronwen Tate, Michaela Gabriel, Cecilia Pinto, Shawn Fawson, Diane Kendig, Christine Hamm, Jeannette Sayers, Suzanne Frischkorn, Annie Finch, Emma Bolden, Julie Enszer, Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis, and Kelli Russell Agodon.

Forklift, Ohio #18 (Winter 2008)

Ever refreshing, handcrafted in small batches, Forklift, Ohio delivers more yummy goodness with Issue #18 (Winter 2008), featuring TSky Press authors Chad Sweeney and G.C. Waldrep, as well as TSky Journal contributors Adam Clay and Amanda Nadelberg, along with a kitchenful of other great folks: Aaron Balkan, Adam Fell, Alexis Orgera, Ann Stephenson, Bo McGuire, Charlie Clark, Christina Clark, Dean Young, Dobby Gibson, Dorothea Lasky, Dustin Williamson, Erin M. Bertram, Evan Commander, James Longenbach, Jeremy Hoevenaar, Jillian Weise, Jim Goar, Lindsay Bernal, Lori Shine, Lucas Farrell, Matthew Rohrer, Maud Casey, Michael Schiavo, Mike Shaffer, Peter Davis, Rachel Contreni Flynn, Sally Ball, Timothy O'Keefe, Todd Colby, and Virgil Renfroe. Cover art by Elizabeth Zechel.

Edited by Matt Hart, whose work TSky has not only published, here, but whom TSky's editor Christian Peet was thrilled to finally shake hands with, at AWP. It was, as we call it in the small press biz, a great hair moment.

With + Stand

Eleven Important Writers + Spray Paint + Free Copies = A Welcome New Journal

The inaugural issue of With + Stand features new work by TSky Journal contributor Juliana Spahr, along with 10 other greats: Michael Scharf, Dan Thomas-Glass, Derek Henderson, Megan Kaminski, Joshua Clover, Ben Lerner, Ange Mlinko, Christopher Nealon, Rodrigo Toscano, & Tim Kreiner

51 pages.

Limited numbered edition of 100 copies spray-painted by hand.

Available only for free, via post or from the hands of an author.

For press copies, trades or inquiries, email them after finding their address here:

Dim Sum

From Delirious Hem comes Dim Sum, a multivoiced conversation around Juliana Spahr's and Stephanie Young's essay, “Numbers Trouble" (as well as those that came before and after). Organized by Elizabeth Treadwell, the dialogue includes TSky Press author Joyelle McSweeney, alongside Esther Belin, Susan Briante, David Buuck , CAConrad, Michelle Detorie, Rachel Blau DuPlessis , Tonya Foster & Evie Shockley , Rachel Levitsky , Sina Queyras, Linda Russo, Sandra Simonds, Carmen Giménez Smith, Elizabeth Treadwell, Catherine Wagner, and Christine Wertheim.

New Reviews at TSky: Buzzeo, McSweeney, Stefans

Melissa Buzzeo's What Began Us
Leon Works, 2007
Reviewed by M. Perel

"In What Began Us, Melissa Buzzeo writes the space of absence, the space of the irretrievable love, thing, memory that marks its presence by its elusive nature. As if she is carving a body out of time, as if a body can be birthed by the space it leaves behind, Buzzeo uses language like small tools that carve up this flesh, or monument to a past no longer retrievable...." [READ MORE]

Joyelle McSweeney's Flet
Fence Books, 2007
Reviewed by Nick Bredie

"If Flet is the dreamscape of 21st century America, its grimly beautiful portent is that the dream can only go deeper, crushing language and the individual under its pressure. There is no waking up." [READ MORE]

Brian Kim Stefans' What is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers
Factory School, 2006
Reviewed by C St Perez

"Stefans’s poetry, extended through the axis of punk, offers new possibilities for a “punk-avant” rebellion." [READ MORE]

Big Bridge 2008

BIG BRIDGE is pleased to announce its 2008 issue--quite possibly the most in-depth issue we've ever seen--which includes:

CHAPBOOK

Up By The Maritime Museum
Poem by Nathaniel Tarn; Drawings by Nancy Victoria Davis

FEATURES

BERKELEY DAZE
Exhaustive anthology and commentary on the Berkeley Poetry Scene of the 1960s; some writers went on to become major figures; others set up a unique dispensarion of their own
Edited with Commentery by Rychard Denner

BOLINAS DREAMING
Book-length study of community of poets just north of San Francisco from the mid 60s to mid 80s, many of whom went on to play major roles in the literary modes that followed throughout the century
by Kevin Opstedal

AN ANTHOLOGY OF BAY AREA WOMEN WRITERS
Spritely and diverse anthology of women living in the San Francisco Bay area today
edited by Katherine Hastings

On The Publication of Philip Whalen's COLLECTED POEMS
Celebration of the Collected poems of one of the most important American poets to emerge at mid century. One of the original Beats, his poems do not age or become dated, as this ample selection of commentary, poems, and appreciations makes clear.
Commentary and poems by: Dale Smith, David Schneider, Karl Young, Neeli Cherkovski, Brian Howlett, Ron Silliman, John Tarrant, Tom Clark, Anne Waldman, and David Meltzer.
Edited by Dale Smith

THE CHILDREN
Poems by Philip Whalen; Photographs by Aram Saroyan:
Saroyan took photos of children more or less his own age while travelling in Europe with his father. He sent them to Whalen who wrote poems based on them.

WAR PAPERS (2)
Poems, essays, comments, and hyper-text art against war.

First Impressions of
OCEANS BEYOND MONOTONOUS SPACE:
Selected Poems of Kitasono Katue
For most readers in the west, Japanese poetry of the 20th Century remains almost if not completely unknown. Yet it had its Avant Gardists comparable to Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, and Kenneth Patchen (to mention three who saw Kitasono as a peer. Kitasono foreshadowed most concerns and methods of western poets, from Concrete to Language Poetry to the PhotoPoetry emerging today decades before his western counterparts. This gathering respresents initial responses to the first large and easily available selection of his work.

NOW, AS YOU AWAKEN
Poems of Mahmoud Darwish; Translated by Omnia Amin and Rick London
Generally considered the most important contemporary Palestinian Poet, this selection of poems shows a poet steeped in a great tradition dealing with contemporary issues, and doing so outside of stereotypes and predictable misconceptions

a d.a.levy satellite
Still controversial 39 years after his death, levy is finally emerging as a major American poet, inovator, publisher, and influence. This widly diverse collection of responses gives a sense of his range and his appeal to audiences of all sorts.
Comments by T.L.Kryss, Joel Lipman, Ingrid Swanberg, Karl Young, Dan Waber, Stephen Nelson, Joshua Gage, jon beacham, John Oliver Simon, Richard Krech, Geoffrey Cook, and Charles Potts.
Edited by Ingrid Swanberg and Karl Young

Nathaniel Tarn:
French translations of some of Tarn's best-known poems

A California Trip: Salutations from Ira Cohen -
Two Spontaneous Odes and a Photo of Terri Carrion

CORNUCOPION BOSEGSZARU
Ira Cohen in Hungarian

A Retrospective of the Publication Work of Karl Young, Part 3

ART

The Convergence of Then and When: A Game Without Rules
by Jane Dalrymple-Hollo

Spitzer Breakdown
A Reading of a Poster by Jim Spitzer

La Femme Mecanique
Photo Art by Johnathan Kane

Family Photos: Beats In Winter
by Larry Keenan

The Fine Art of Conversation
Collaborative art by Brian Howlett and Associates

Memories of Vali Myers

Waning Moon - March 20, 2003
In Memoriam Carl J. Young
by Karl Young, Jr.

FICTION

Fiction by Chris Wells, Paul A. Toth, Roberta Allen, Ann Bogle, Stephen-Paul Martin, Tsipi Keller, Tsipi Keller, Marc Lowe, Richard Martin, Mel Freilicher, Fisher Thompson, Nickolay Todorov, Paul Kahn Lou Rowan, and Jordan Zinovich.

REVIEWS and INTERVIEWS

Reviews of: Vali Myers, Joanne Kyger, Alice Notley, Judith Roche, Allan Weisbecker, Lou Rowan, James Broughton, Jack Foley, Jeffrey Side, William Allegrezza, and Raymond Bianchi

Reviewed by: Allan Graubard, Kirpal Gordon, Stephen Vincent, Allan Davies, Lynn Coffin, Mary Sands Woodbury, James Tierney, Katherine Hastings, Jake Berry, Michael Schumacher, T. Hibbard

Interviews:
Malcolm McNeil
Interviewed by Larry Sawyer
with some of McNeill's graphic collaborations with
William S. Burroughs

Vernon Frazer
Interviewed by Ric Cafagna

Lou Rowan
Interviewed by Dominic Aulisio

POETRY

Index of poems by more than 138 writers, including

War Papers Poetry (2) includes poems by:

Keith Wilson, Robert Sward, Rebecca Kavaler, Harriet Green, Tad Richards, Jennifer Compton, Joel Solonche, Chris Mansel, Steve Dalachinsky, J=E9anpaul Ferro, Hugh Fox, H. Palmer Hall, Louis Armand, Gay Partington Terry, John M. Bennett, Paul C. Howell, Eileen Tabios, Harriet Zinnes, Philip Metres, Ruth Lepson, Edward Field, Susan Donnelly, Neil Nelson, Larissa Shmailo, Hal Sirowitz, Laura Lentz, Jeffrey Beam, Frank Parker, Alan Sondheim, Murat Nemet-Nijat, Sheila Black, Barbara Crooker, Richard Kostelanetz, Rodney Nelson, Karen Alkalay-Gut, Patricia Valdata, Sybil Kollar, Mark Pawlak, David Howard, Marcus Bales, Jose Padua, Patrick John Green, John Bradley, Kent Johnson, CL Bledsoe, Joseph Somoza, Martha Deed, Lisa Sewell, Hugh Seidman, Sheila E. Murphy, e k rzepka, Harris Schiff, Bobby Byrd, Clarinda Harriss, mIEKAL aND, Jayne Lyn Stahl, Rachel Loden, Jorn Ake, Paul E. Nelson, Alexander Jorgensen, Helen Duberstein, Michael Heller, Georgios Tsangaris, Stephen Vincent, Michael Maggiotto, Marthe Reed, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Ana Doina, James Scully, Glenn R. McLaughlin, and Ray Craig

Berkeley Daze includes poems by:

Luis Garcia, Belle Randall, Helen Breger, Ron Loewinsohn, David Bromige, Gail Dusenbery, Gene Fowler, Jim Thurber, David Meltzer, Doug Palmer Facino, John Bennett, John the Poet Thomson, Rychard Denner, Julia Vinograd the Bubble Lady, Larry Kerschner, Charles Potts, Joel Walderman, Harold Adler, Richard Krech, Michael Upton, Ron Silliman, Doug Palmer, Patricia Parker, Martin P. Abramson, Richard Denner, Gene Fowler, Norm Moser, Charles Potts, De Leon Harrison, John Thomson, John Oliver Simon, Andy Clausen, Jefferson D. Hils, Richard Krech, Jack Foley, Al Masarik, Kay Okrand, James Koller, David Cole, Thanasis Maskaleris, Sister Mary Norbert, Lennart Bruce, Marianne Baskin, Hillary Ayer Fowler, Sam Thomas, D.R. Hazelton, and Jim Wehalage

An Anthology of Bay Area Women Writers includes poems by:

Mary-Marcia Casoley, Sharon Doubiago, Adelle Foley, Judy Grahn, Susan Griffin, Katherine Hastings, Beatriz Lagos, devorah major, Tennessee Reed, Nellie Wong, Leslie Scalapino, and Maw Shien Win

& LITTLE MAGS

Humonomous

Versal

Heaven Bone