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Thanks to poet Erin Lyndal Martin.
Make-believe does not last forever, the page says. There is something waiting to replace, to consume, to lay a cloak over the days of play and make-believe. The dreaming life will be eradicated. Wendy grows up and dies. A love story does not develop. Death and decay await. The playroom is revealed as a crypt, the love bed a coffin....
Read the full interview here.
If you want to buy the book or read a big swath of excerpts while you decide, check out the official page for Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them.
We don't know how we missed this, but we are glad to have discovered Helen McClory's excellent review of Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them at PANK Magazine.
Writes McClory:
In this prose-poem hybrid, the texts of Peter Pan have been enmeshed, re-corded, and spun into a thickness of sensual detail and slippery cross-reference. Under Boully’s fingertips, Neverland has burst open like a sodden swollen root, spilling out cutlery, birds, bearskins, thimbles, peas, open windows, mermaid scales, pubic hair, damp pirate beards, and fairy dust, of course....
Read the entire review here.
Read more about, perhaps buy, Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them.
Not sure how we missed this, when it first went live in April, but Rebecca Hazelton published a great review of Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them.
Here's a snippet:
Peter and Wendy is [J.M.] Barrie’s novelization of a stage play, originally intended for adults but significantly altered for a child audience. The later Disney adaptation, Peter Pan, bears only a passing resemblance to the original story. Boully’s book retells the tale through the lens of memory, bringing the subtext of sexual and adulthood anxieties into the foreground. Tiger Lily, who competes for Peter’s attentions in the source text, is here even more overtly sexual, “her thong all encrusted with the little shells from the seashore…she doesn’t shave her pubes, and they’re all sticking out and out.” Wendy, who, as in the book, plays house with Peter in a kind of mock-marriage, wants a “marriage made more real” and is regularly associated with images of growing, pregnancy, and menstruation.
Also brought to the fore are the intentional and unintentional cruelties of Peter, about whom we are told: “this much is ever so real; this much isn't make-believe. Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes. He can do a great deal to you. For example, he can put a little something inside of you, and you will carry that for the rest of your life..."
Read the rest of the Hazelton's review at Devil's Lake, published by the good folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
And follow this link to read more about--perhaps even to purchase!-- Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them.
At The Huffington Post, poet and attorney Seth Abramson provides a succinct, spot-on review of Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them (along with brief reviews of some other favorite books of ours, including Julianna Spahr's This Connection of Everyone With Lungs and Ariana Reines's Mercury).
Writes Abramson:
Peter Pan was a postmodern tour de force written at the height of Modernism -- and if the very best collections of literary art at least gesture toward their immediate influences, this is undoubtedly the contemporary re-treatment that Peter Pan deserves. Boully has captured the darkness of Barrie's text, and in elevating its inter- and sub-textualities to the level of discourse she illuminates and reinvigorates her source material without sacrificing any of its creepiness, wonder, or violence. Simultaneously metaphysical and visceral, these addresses from Wendy to Peter in lyric prose are scary, sexual, and intellectually disarming. Read all of Abramson's December 2011 Contemporary Poetry Reviews
At The Lantern Review, Jai Arun Ravine provides a unique, probing, and ultimately fab review, locating not merely within the contexts of Boully's The Body and J.M. Barrie's "source text," Peter and Wendy, and drawing parallels with Souvankham Thammavongsa’s Small Arguments (Pedlar Press, 2003) and Padcha Tuntha-obas’ Trespasses (O Books, 2006).
Here are a couple excerpts:
“Sewing,” “pockets” and “stories” being things that don’t quite exist in the Neverland, Jenny Boully’s not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them sews pockets in and around the mythos of J.M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy. Cutting snippets of Barrie’s source text, including Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and events in Andrew Birkin’s J.M. Barrie & the Lost Boys, Boully centralizes Wendy’s experience and sews up bits of her story, stitching the make-believe into the made-quite-real. In her pockets, open ends and open endings fit and hover....
Having also read Barrie’s text, I find that the original story is already quite dark and awkwardly twisted. The Neverland is a world of recurring trauma and chronic amnesia, wrapped up in a child’s ignorance, which continues to circle itself. Sexuality is no stranger to Barrie’s story either, but Boully does unravel the hems a bit further, taking a peek at Tiger Lily’s pubes, Hook’s pubic-y beard, Wendy’s panties, poo, peepee and pooper holes.
The realness of make-believe washing, make-believe medicine, make-believe food and make-believe sex—stink, sickness, malnutrition and still-birth—peep through Boully’s stitches. Read the full review.
Buy Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them directly from Tarpaulin Sky Press and save about $6 off the Amazon price.
DIAGRAM Issue 11.5 includes an intelligent and thorough engagement with Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them. Here's a snippet:
unlike in Book of Beginnings and Endings and "The Body," the idea of text in Not Merely Because of the Unknown that was Stalking Toward Them is not being erased. Instead, conventions are being uprooted, turned upside down. Boully establishes complex characters inconsistent in their observations, unfaithful in their desires, untraceable in their animation, unknowable in their thoughts. All of this "unning" undoes the traditional gesture in fiction where the primary character's desire is clearly understood. Boully goes underground to root out the darker desires.
The book is divided by a horizontal line that moves around but usually appears in the middle of the page. One might read what's underneath the like as one does David Foster Wallace's footnotes, all at once. Or, one might read them as they do in Boully's essay, "The Body," and read nothing but the footnotes. But when I started to read them as individual poems, my reading of the book became clear and the premises apparent. . . .
Peter's love of power, his deviousness, his lasciviousness, appear in the original text but it's not until Boully digs them out from the underground, from the subtext of Barrie's work that those characteristics seem so cruel. What does it mean, to say to a woman, never grow up? Is there any curse worse for a woman to grow old? Old is alone. When you imagine Wendy, you must imagine her at her most lonely. She's twelve, then fourteen, then sixteen, then married. She'll leave the window open; she'll wear the same nightgown; she'll keep whispering stories, stories out the crack of the window, through keyholes, through fissures in the ground. Whenever she hears a twig snap or the fluttering wings of moths, she'll think that Peter's back, but he's never back, at least not for her (6).
[READ THE FULL REVIEW AT DIAGRAM] Via Examiner, Lisa M. Cole also dives deeply, and smartly, into Berrie's and Boully's divergent approaches to the "same" characters. Writes Cole:
The novel Peter Pan has many troubling aspects when viewed through today’s modern lens. It is often sexist, and too preoccupied with etiquette. Also, rather than being charming, Peter often comes off as too cocky, and Wendy too eager to fit into her predetermined gender role. However, there were a few interesting things about the story, despite these objections. Take, for example, the severe blurring of roles in the relationship between Peter and Wendy. Are they lovers? Are they mother and son? Are they siblings? This quandary is the emotional center of Boully’s book. As she retells the story of Peter and Wendy, she focuses on the universal theme of unrequited love. The supposedly whimsical and light children’s story transforms into something much more mature, much darker, as Wendy’s feelings of abandonment are at center stage. Most people have felt the sting of rejection that Wendy feels when Peter does not reciprocate her feelings for him. The fact that the audience can so readily empathize with Wendy’s character is part of what makes Boully’s book so haunting, and so intense an experience. . . .
This retelling is valuable because by bringing the true darkness of the story to the forefront, Boully’s text is not masquerading as something it is not, which is a problem identified in the original. It is not often that a response to a literary work is more successful than the original work, but that is certainly the case with Not Merely Because of the Unknown That Was Stalking Toward Them. [READ THE FULL REVIEW AT EXAMINER] Buy Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them directly from Tarpaulin Sky Press and save about $6 off the Amazon price.
At HTML Giant, Kristin Sanders reviews Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them:
Sanders discusses structure and hybridity and all that good stuff, and her engagement is wholly intelligent and insightful throughout--
. . . perhaps most prominent are questions related to traditional gender roles and the budding sexuality of the story’s youth, which every other adaption appears to have dulled down . . .
--though it's Sanders' appreciation of the book's humor that we particularly enjoy:
. . . [not merely] offers more questions than answers. Who are the Lost Boys, really, and why are they clothed in bearsuits? What’s the history between Peter and Mrs. Darling? How many other little girls did Peter whisk off to Neverland? How does one properly dispose of Never poo? About Tinkerbell, Boully wonders: “where ever will we get such small medical supplies for you? The Tinker dental dam; the Tinker tampon.” . . .
Read the full, totally awesome review here.
Read more about the book at the following link, where you can also buy Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them for $2 off the Amazon price, with free shipping.
While Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them is still a brand new baby, currently "recommended" at Small Press Distribution, toddlers such as Johannes Göransson's Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate and Sarah Goldstein's Fables, we are pleased to report, are already on the SPD's poetry and fiction bestsellers lists.
Nick Sturm, at The Rumpus, reviews Sarah Goldstein's Fables.
"Horrifying and humbling in their imaginative precision, the stories of Sarah Goldstein’s collection, Fables, awaken the tension between human and nonhuman in these haunting vignettes. . . . Entering Goldstein’s Fables is good fodder for dreams and the conscience, but be sure not to leave this one laying out for the kids." [ READ THE FULL REVIEW]
Karen Hannah, at Open Letters Monthly, reviews Jenny Boully's not merely. (Though, it's less of a review and more of a dissertation. Thank you for your attention, Karen and Open Letters Monthly!)
"Boully’s book subtly reveals how we engage in the act of creating narrative through our reading in order to find our own place within a narrative—in order to be placed within a narrative ourselves—in the same way that we place characters via our definition of them. This makes narrative a kind of place that we look to find ourselves within or that we try to settle ourselves within. We seek it out like a home because it feels familiar or because it began from the origins of something that felt familiar." [ READ THE FULL REVIEW]
Fence poet and Capo of the Racine Public Library system, Nick Demske, provides a thought-provoking review of Johannes Göransson's Entrance to a colonial pageant.
"Göransson pays the ultimate penance and shoulders the heaviest burden: to reflect a culture accurately, no matter how disfigured. His art drinks deep of the disease it most fears so that we can learn more from his symptoms. He’s the Poet Laureate of the Coal Mine, our savior canary, dying and producing perpetually death-obsessed art that we might all be spared. So for all its ugliness—all its child predators and body dysmorphia, its castrations, its Ronald Reagans, its hate crimes and artists and anorexia, everything— Entrance is the dubious gift of the diagnosis we’ve been too afraid to confront on our own. It’s embarrassing, it’s frightening, but it’s also potentially the long-neglected first step in addressing a major disease." [ READ THE FULL REVIEW]
Joseph Michael Owens, at PANK Magazine, also reviews Göransson's Entrance.
" Entrance to a colonial pageant… demands its reader to engage it on a close sentence-to-sentence level and rewards the reader with some truly spectacular prose. Prose that, page after page, begins to infect the reader, begins to parasite the reader as host, parasite the host’s inner child . . . before immolating the host, the reader." [ READ THE FULL REVIEW]
At Bookslut, Micah McCrary reviews Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, out this month from Tarpaulin Sky Press.
Here are two of our favorite quotes from the review.
Boully, both a poet and an essayist by experience, knows perfectly well how to weave together the intricacies of chosen words and images with an arc essential to an impacting story, and the key to her prose here lies not in its darkness or its grownup-ness, but rather its careful tiptoeing between the minds and hearts of characters whose surfaces we've known for decades....
[T]o delve into Boully's work is to dive with faith from the plank -- to jump, with hope and belief and a wish to see what the author has given us: a fresh, imaginative look at a tale as ageless as Peter himself. One must, when reading the work, “dispel every other thought,” as Calvino would say. They must find themselves in a locked room, perhaps on a couch, perhaps in the bath (to dream of mer-creatures), or perhaps almost prostrate in bed with wide and absorbing eyes. They must be willing to fly themselves....
Click here to read the full review at Bookslut
"Jenny Boully is a deeply weird writer—in the best way. It's not just her subject here, the Peter Pan story, but the way she reconfigures it—rips all the stuffing out of it, pops off its heads and parts, then shuffles, sexes, and reanimates it. You might expect her primary mode to be narrative, and it is, but this book's weird sweet homunculus heart is in the inquiry into and against these narratives, and the seams between real and not-real. I for one am glad that Boully sanded that safe, sane veneer right back off the story so it's become raw, confused, glorious, new."--ANDER MONSON
JENNY BOULLY
not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them
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For The Book of Beginnings and Endings: Passionate sensitivity of the kind that makes us fear for our adolescent children. Its absence in our own lives may well make our children fear for us as well. ( Los Angeles Times) Jenny is the future of nonfiction in America. What an absurdly arrogant statement to make. I make it anyway. Watch. ( John D'Agata) The binding is neither genre nor gender but eros itself, both of the physical variety and the type that caresses the noun and its attendants. Anne Carson comes to mind. But so does Lawrence Durrell, because cerebral as the book is, it is often winkingly so, and if not the overlay, the interior is sensual. ( C. D. Wright) Yes, Aristotle, there can be pleasure without 'complete and unified action with a beginning, middle, and end." She uses form in a way that undercuts our every expectation based on previous encounters with prose. ( Mary Jo Bang)
For [One Love Affair]*: Nominated for five awards, winner of two—B est Book of New Poetry Published in 2006, and Best Second Book— Coldfront Magazine. A genre-bending back-pocket book.... gritty and intellectual ... addictive and soothing ... fitting for just about anyone’s bookshelf. . . . You’re reading the book for second, third, and fourth time. ( Coldfront) Her fresh style challenges the ways in which we construct narratives and read texts . . . and ultimately leaves us wanting more, more, always more Boully. ( Matrix) Boully’s fluid, lyrical writing makes what could be a difficult, intimidating read instead a delightful one.... Playful engagement with narrative levels of reality (poems within poems, stories within stories). I highly recommend it, especially if you’re looking for a way into the “trans-genre” of prose poetry. ( Open Letters Monthly)
For The Body: An Essay: From the most minute particulars of intimate confession to the long history of literary forms, from the body of the lover to the body of the text, note for note, Jenny Boully's The Body: An Essay documents and destroys in equal measure. ( Craig Dworkin) A strange and magical performance. It resembles a novella overheard through a keyhole, or a nouvelle vague film beheld through a plume of Babylonian smoke. Jenny Boully's mini-epic makes its statement quietly, and with a devilish, terraced charm, like a Derridean outburst turned into topiary. ( Wayne Koestenbaum) A courageous and thoughtful new voice in literature. ( Jacket)
ABOUT JENNY BOULLY
Jenny Boully is the author of The Book of Beginnings and Endings (Sarabande, 2007), [one love affair]* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2006), The Body: An Essay (Essay Press, 2007 and Slope Editions, 2002), and the chapbook Moveable Types (Noemi Press, 2007). Her work has been anthologized in The Next American Essay, The Best American Poetry, Language for a New Century, and Great American Prose Poems. Born in Thailand and reared in Texas, she teaches nonfiction and poetry at Columbia College Chicago.
TSky Press publisher Christian Peet offers all sorts of amazing insights, no doubt, in the new issue of The Writer, in which he never expected to find TSky, and but is now rather tickled, though he can't recall anything that he said in his interview with the very kind Lori A. May, whose article is aptly titled: " Micro presses offer more opportunities: Putting art above sales, boutique presses embrace writers of experimental work. . . ." Thanks for featuring TSky Press, Lori!
TSky Press author Kim Gek Lin Short's The Bugging Watch and Other Exhibits is the subject of a rather brilliant review in the sixth issue of Sink Review. Also reviewed is Kim's chapbook Run, which is not only a wicked read (we'll be publishing the full-length version, China Cowboy, next year) but is also gorgeously produced by the handbound-book gods, Rope-a-Dope press.
TSky Press author Jenny Boully holds forth on Thailand, Texas, and all things 'tween, in "A Short Essay on Being," in the all-new TriQuarterly. An excerpt:
He said that he went there to stay at a Buddhist retreat and paid several thousand dollars to do so, and on the final day, he let them take a high-pressure hose and rinse his anus. He said all of this to me as if I knew what he was talking about. I went to temple many, many times—both in Texas and in Thailand—and never once did I have my anus rinsed, or hear of anyone else having their anuses rinsed. Just like I have yet to find a Thai person eating a dog. Jenny also has new work in The Huffington Post, as part of a larger, " Huffington Post exclusive game of artists' telephone." Highly recommended--all of it--but you'll have to scroll a bit to find Jenny's work.
TSky Press author Gordon Massman has a new chapbook, Core Sample, which is cause enough for celebration (or locking up the children), but what makes it doubly exciting/frightening is that the book is published by those other handbound-book Gods, Spork Press.
 Hola and howdy, readers and friends,
During the month of February we will be reading submissions for the next paper edition of Tarpaulin Sky. We hope you'll give it a go, and send your best, as this is the only submission period for the magazine this year.
We're trying something new, too--well, new to us--the online submission manager. So you'll be able to keep tabs on the status of your submission throughout the process.
Also new this year are many of the journal's editors: Blake Butler and Joanna Howard editing Fiction; Laynie Browne and Karla Kelsey editing Poetry; and Sandy Florian and Lily Hoang editing "Other"; presided over by Editor in Chief Colie Collen, with all submissions shepherded through the process by Associate Editors Duncan B. Barlow, Jamey Dunham, and Christine Wertheim, as well as Assistant Editors Michael Tod Edgerton and Brian Mihok.
Please visit our guidelines for all the deets.
SEE YOU AT AWP DENVER?
We hope so. TSky authors and editors will be reading from new books and selling them as well, and we'll be joining our favorite presses for various kickass events: readings with Action Books, Apostrophe Books, Astrophil Press, Black Ocean, Featherproof Books, and Slope Editions, just to name a few. Events Coordinators Michelle Puckett and Megan DiBello invite you to keep
on top of our events blog for forthcoming details.
IS YOUR BOOKSHELF NOT SO FRESH?
We can fix that. Subscriptions to Tarpaulin Sky Press's forthcoming Spring titles are still available--as are huge savings on forthcoming titles. If you're looking for some of the most exciting literature being published today, you may want to have a look at our catalog, or take a look at some of our forthcoming Spring 2010 titles: Traci O Connor's Recipes for Endangered Species, a book of short fictions that Brian Evenson calls "a marvelous debut. . . . moving fast enough that you could end up anywhere, Connor’s thought about every single word, every gesture, and she can turn each story on a dime" or Kim Gek Lin Short's The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits, book of interlocking short fictions / prose poems that Joyelle McSweeney deems "twisted," and Norma Cole calls "irresistible.... with its incantations of quantum teleology, its footnotes & sources.... it is a magnificent work." Also on the way, Joanna Ruocco's book of short fictions, Man's Companions; Shelly Taylor's book of interlocking short fictions / prose poems, Black-Eyed Heifer; and Emily Toder's poetry chapbook, Brushes With.
& Let us not forget the three chapbooks we just picked from the last reading period: Lara Glenum's The Hotling Chronicles: A Horror in Trans; Sarah Goldstein's Fables; and James Haug's Scratch. Plus forthcoming full-lengths-with-really-long-titles, Jenny Boully's not merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, and Johannes Göransson's Entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate.
LOOKING TO SCORE FREE BOOKS?
 We can help. We have Advanced Reader Copies of all Tarpaulin Sky Press's Spring full-length titles, and we have hundreds of review copies from other publishers, from Ahsahta to Vagabond. Want to review a brand new title from Fence Books? We got 'em. Burning Deck, City Lights, Dalkey Archive, FC2, Graywolf, Salt, Sarabande, Shearsman, Ugly Duckling? No problem. Or how about Counterpath, Dusie, Ellipsis Press, Essay Press, Subito? Or Canada's positively stellar BookThug?
Our Reviews Editor Ross Brighton reads submissions of reviews and interviews all year long. Writers whose work is accepted for publication receive any two Tarpaulin Sky Press trade paperbacks of their choice. Send a brief cover letter and your previously unpublished review to reviews[AT]tarpaulinsky[DOT]com, and be sure to include "Attn: Review Editors" in the subject line. Click here for a list of review copies currently available. Publishers may send review copies to Book Reviews ~ Tarpaulin Sky Press ~ PO Box 189 ~ Grafton, VT 05146
Write some reviews, yo. Get paid. In books.
GOT SOME NEWS TO SHARE YOURDARNSELF?
If you have something to say about a new journal, new book, new press, new reading series; and if said newness will be of interest to the people who read TSky Press's books or journal, or--better yet!--includes TSky Press authors or journal contributors; and if you'd like to share this newness and can do so in a way that includes some chewy content and few superlatives, then please send your brief shoutout, sidebar, or feature article to our News Editor Amish Trivedi at news[AT]tarpaulinsky[DOT]com
OKEEDOKEE
We're probably forgetting as much as we're including, but we hope you'll forgive us.
Send some work!
Cheers,
Christian Peet, Publisher
Colie Collen, Editor in Chief
& Editors, Tarpaulin Sky Press
FOURSQUARE Editions, a branch of Outside Voices Press, is a literary publication printed on single, 8"x8" sheet which folds up to 4"x4"and is housed in a screen printed and embroidered fabric sleeve. Each issue contains four poems by women writers and one image by a woman artist. Jessica Smith, editor of FOURSQUARE Editions, was kind enough to talk about how and why this beautiful periodical was created. What was your inspiration for FOURSQUARE's design, size, sleeves, etc? Jessica: I wanted to incorporate screen printed fabric that hadn't been mass-produced into the design of a periodical dedicated to bringing together women from various artistic backgrounds (visual art, fabric design, poetry). I also wanted to pay homage to the crafts of sewing and embroidery which have been considered women's arts, "folk arts," "cottage industries,"--that is, of lesser value than whatever "men's arts" might be. When FOURSQUARE was brewing, I was living at home, having taken a semester off of my PhD program, and was in the realm of fabric, embroidery, and the handmade. My parents both work or have worked in the clothing industry. My dad sells uniforms and my mom used to make children's clothes, and I wanted to involve my parents in the project. I also wanted to make use of my dad's huge embroidery machine, which is what makes the embroidered "FOURSQUARE" on the front of the sleeves. The folded interior of FOURSQUARE grew out of discussions with my friend Maureen Thorson of Big Game Books, who makes "tinysides." These small chapbooks are usually under 3"x5" in size and are made from a single sheet, or broadside, folded to make multiple pages and bound along one side. To make poetry objects small and folded was kind of a Mid-Atlantic zeitgeist at the time, although Maureen's design for tinysides is more advanced than mine for FOURSQUARE. She takes multiple page sizes into account and must fold accordingly, where I make authors conform to a particular size requirement. The way the poems are arranged and which poems are chosen to work together in an issue, aims to influence the way the poems are read. There is an interplay that is more obvious than in a magazine where the authors' works are separated by pages. What is the poetic and art aesthetic of FOURSQUARE? Jessica: The idea was to bring together female artists and poets, with an emphasis on ones that were emerging and/or visual. I wanted to show my female poet friends, especially the visual poets, what my female artist friends were doing, and vice-versa. I think more collaboration between poets and artists would be fruitful-- would make "visual poetry" more informed, would provide more interesting words in visual art that uses them. FOURSQUARE is a women's magazine. It is edited, made, and populated by women. In its pages I wanted to create a safe place for women to "play." There has been much discussion about gender equality in poetry and especially with regard to editorial policies. When I edited the magazine (name) before FOURSQUARE, it was hard to get women to "submit." I hoped that if I created a publication that was safe space for women, they would be more likely to send me poetry. I think it worked, but not in the way I expected. I expected to solicit submissions, when what has actually happened is that people who are in FOURSQUARE share their extra copies with friends, who then submit, or encourage their friends to submit. It has become more like a small network than a free-for-all of blind submissions. Several authors have appeared in Tarpaulin Sky publications as well as in FOURSQUARE-- Jenny Boully (FOURSQUARE 1.2), Brenda Iijima (1.2 and Special Edition), Juliana Spahr (1.2), Jane Sprague (1.6), Amy King (1.8), Jen Tynes (1.11), Ada Limon (2.8), and Michelle Naka Pierce (3.1). What about these authors' work speaks to you as an editor, reader, writer?
Jessica: To make a broad generalization, what I like is that many of these poets mix genres. I am a poet who enjoys exploring the interrelationship of nacheinander and nebeneinander, and appreciate other poets who mix language and visual art like Brenda Iijima and Michelle Naka Pierce do, or poetry and the essay, like Jenny Boully and Juliana Spahr do. Although I support, encourage, and admire experimentation, I do not like experimentation for its own sake. Each of these poets seems to cross formal boundaries because the poetry's content requires it. To concentrate on Boully's [one love affair]* for a moment, I enjoy the blend of journalistic self-expression and self-evaluation, academic references, prose poetry and essay-like prose (as the best essays are often "poetic"); the Wallace-esque hypertextuality of reading the text and its endnotes, the Duras-like sensuality of language, and the production values of the book itself. FOURSQUARE is a home for short poems, do short poems speak to you differently than longer poems do? Jessica: Indeed. I have a short attention span and am a busy person. I want a poem to do something for me quickly. I am not good at "getting lost in a book." Instead, I like to think of a singular project or point that a poem is making. I like to dwell on such a point for a long time-- months, years--rather than spend months or years reading a book. I enjoy the life of the mind, but I like to be in control of it. When I'm reading, the author is in control of me--I have to pay attention to what s/he is saying and I have to physically be sitting in front of the book. I would rather be cut loose to think on my own. This is one reason that poetry appeals to me as a genre-- it is often shorter than novels or plays and I don't have to follow the plot so much as I have to think of the aesthetics and what is at stake in terms of form/content. 
Although it may be small, FOURSQUARE sets out to accomplish a lot and does. Thoughtfully, it showcases the short poem, creates a safe space for women writers and artists to play, incorporates sewing and embroidery, utilizes fabric, and creates a dialogue between arts. The amount of time, thought and love that goes into FOURSQUARE is evident. For more information on FOURSQUARE Editions visit: http://looktouch.com/press/
 1. We have finally made it through all full-length manuscripts and will announce new titles within the week.
2. Cynthia Reeser reviews Mark Cunningham's "beautifully designed" (thank you, Ms. Reeser) Body Language and interviews Mark (wherein he discloses what we've always suspected: "the book as a whole has for its ideal readers curious children and space aliens") at Prick of the Spindle.
3. Craig Santos Perez reviews Jenny Boully's one love affair at Rattle.
 4. "Hypocrite Lecteur" Tim Marcuson, new to blogging, commits an early post to kind words about GC Waldrep's chap, which, it so happens, has now officially sold out.
5. And TSky has posted new reviews as well:
a. Sidebrow#2 reviewed by AD Jameson
b. Denise Newman's Wild Goods, reviewed by Aidan Thompson
c. Anne Blonstein's memory's morning, reviewed by Kathrin Schaeppi
d. Dmitry Golynko's As It Turns Out, reviewed by Eireene Nealand 6. Justin Mark's new chapbook, Voir Dire, is now available from Rope-a-Dope Press. Letterpressed in an edition of 96, one would be hardpressed to spend $8--which includes shipping--more wisely. 7. Shampoo Issue 35 features a section of poetry from Germany (in German with English translations) brought to you by Guest Editors Ron Winkler and Christian Lux, as well as a special section from Guest Editor Ronald Palmer. Poets & translators include Stephanie Young, Uljana Wolf, Jan Wagner, David Trinidad, Thien Tran, Barbara Thimm, Mark Terrill, Brian Teare, Gary Sullivan, Ramsey Scott, Tom Schulz, Katharina Schultens, Sabine Scho, JD Schneider, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Andre Rudolph, Jan Volker Röhnert, Lawrence Rinder, Nikola Richter, Kevin Prufer, Georgina Paul, Ethan Paquin, Danielle Pafunda, Peter Nickowitz, Daniel Nester, Steph Morris, Sara Larsen, Norbert Lange, Wayne Koestenbaum, Kevin Killian, Ernst Herbeck, Duriel E. Harris, Catherine Hales, Matthias Goeritz, Jane Gibian, Iain Galbraith, Johannes CS Frank, Michael Farrell, Daniel Falb, Carl Christian Elze, Peter Covino, Ann Cotten, CAConrad, Jenny Boully, Jennifer Blowdryer, Nico Bleutge, Mark Bibbins, Susan Bernofsky, Dodie Bellamy, Toby Axelrod & Shane Allison, with scratch&sniff ShampooArt by Otto Chan. Edited by Del Ray Cross.
Forklift, Ohio #18
by Cara Benson Rare is the journal that works as a true collection of corresponding and communicating poems, each piece leading into the next. Even rarer is the one with kitchen tips. Simultaneously cheeky, vulnerable, funny, ominous, and lyrically toying with what is or is not “accessible,” Forklift, Ohio makes me love poetry again. It even comes with postcards. [ READ MORE ]
Jenny Boully's The Book of Beginnings and Endings
Two Reviews: Kristina Marie Darling & Jac Jemc Boully skillfully manipulates her audience’s expectations of form and genre, opening in medias res and closing as further questions surface in the minds of her readers. Filled with works of prose that masquerade as novels, biographies, notebooks, and literary criticism, The Book of Beginnings and Endings takes on a range of voices, with lyricism and originality throughout. [ READ MORE ] Mark Wallace's Walking Dreams
by Cynthia Reeser Wallace doesn’t just tell an interesting story––he tells it in an interesting way, finding new and unexpected methods of presenting the tales. His characters are often pensive creatures who risk being drowned out by the city, which is always “full and alive,” and where “loneliness is only an impression carved out of the hard wood of a world in motion.” [ READ MORE ]
 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.
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