Iron Caisson

Tarpaulin Sky

2011-08-08T18:54:00.002-04:00

And some Dead Girls in the ever delicious Tarpaulin Sky!

I've been so busy elsewhere on the interwebs, I've been neglecting my poor Iron Caisson. More updates to come, eventually. Meanwhile, check out what's been happening at Montevidayo, and you're likely to find me yakking.

New Delta Review

2011-08-08T18:51:00.001-04:00

Louisiana State University's gorgeous New Delta Review features some of my "The Dead Girls Speak in Unison" poems.

WINTER 2010-11

FICTION

D.J. Thielke, Phantom Limbs
Rebecca McKanna, Joys and Concerns at Parkview Church
John Vanderslice, The Evangelist
Beth Konkoski, Fifth Grade

POETRY

Danielle Pafunda, The Dead Girls Speak in Unison; The Dead Girls Speak in Unison; The Dead Girls Speak in Unison; The Dead Girls Speak in Unison
Adam Scheffler, My Failed Poems
Joshua Marie Wilkinson, from the Dogs (part 3)
Hafizah Geter, it’s just that the sun has bones made of people
Sarah Bartlett, If I Could Only Find You, I’d Find You.; So Many Things Are So Important
Rachel B. Glaser, Every time my pills fall, I feel very much like an addict; 2 Poems
Seth Landman, 2 Poems
Gladys Justin Carr, Collage Poem
Rob Stephens, Throw Me Something, Mister
Valerie Hsiung, Trunk
Keith Burkholder, Satellites

NONFICTION

Kate Jordan, What You Want
Radha Narayan, Hymn
Julie Marie Wade, Meditation 29

BOOK REVIEWS

M.O. Walsh, Shuffle and Breakdown
Becky Kaiser, Horse, Flower, Bird
David Newman, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

Spoon River Poetry Review

2011-08-08T18:48:00.002-04:00

I'm flattered to be in the current issue of Spoon River Poetry Review, edited and revamped by the excellent Kirstin Hotelling Zona who also has what looks to be a lovely new book Drift coming out from Finishing Line Press.

Winter/Spring 2011
Volume 36, Number 1
Featuring SRPR's Illinois Poet, Austin Smith, including poetry and an interview; new work by Danielle Pafunda, Kristin Prevallet, Edward Hirsch, Spring Ulmer, Joseph Dorazio and many others; and Judith Harris' review of new books by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Duriel Harris.

NaPoMo Cento, anyone?

2011-04-20T22:39:00.001-04:00

Announcing the 2011 National Poetry Month Cento Contest! Dreamed up and launched by Danielle Pafunda, while she has the keys to the Academy of American Poets Twitter feed, and with the gracious help of 36 poet judges.

This Thursday April 21st, I'll Tweet under the generous umbrella of the Academy of American Poets at http://twitter.com/POETSorg All day long, I'll Tweet lines of poetry from the Academy's Poem-A-Day Archive. To enter the contest, assemble some of these lines into a cento, and by noon on April 23rd post your cento at the contest blog http://napomocento.blogspot.com/

Our 36 poet judges join me to choose 3 winners, each of whom will receive a selection of the judges' signed books. Absolutely anyone can enter.

The complete contest guidelines can be found here:

http://napomocento.blogspot.com/2011/04/guidelines-for-napomo-cento-contest.html

The list of judges can be found here: http://napomocento.blogspot.com/2011/04/judges-for-napomo-cento-contest.html

Thanks!

On the Huffington Post State of American Poetry

2010-09-13T15:47:00.000-04:00

You'll find me cheerfully yakking at the Huffington Post (along with Annie Finch, Clayton Eshleman, & Ron Silliman) in response to some questions Anis Shivani poses about the fey nature of American Poetry. Here's a bit:

The legacy of modernism: If we mean Great, as in the lone transcendent mind, escaping body and berth, recasting history in its own image, lurching (leching!) through the centuries, marking every muliebral fragment with its initials, contemplating eugenics, lolling in Freudian privilege, then boo! hiss! I certainly hope we're betraying it.

If we're talking about the great legacy of modernist freakout--horror in the face of global warfare, the dissolution of the marriage between progress and improvement, the emperor's-new-clothes revelation that the self is an ever-shifting and incoherent cuckoo bird, masculine hysteria, cyborgery, civil rights, and all the seeds of the postmodern condition--then I cheerily submit that we're keeping that legacy alive and kicking. Even those of us who embrace the spectacle and our slip-sliding within it struggle against the instability. These may be my favorite American poets. Those who long for and reject stability simultaneously. Those who are attracted to and repulsed by those institutions that confirm, and those that deconstruct "the real."

Have You Been to Montevidayo?

2010-09-13T15:35:00.003-04:00

We've* started a new art/lit/crit/thrilla gorilla kinda blog: Montevidayo.

We talk about genre, gender, meat, detritus, Lady Gaga, Swedish S.K.A.M, slasher films, Peaches, GHOSTS GHOSTS GHOSTS, apocalypse, the favorite books, and etc. etc. etc. Sometimes you'll find animal-creature-hair-hats. I love it, there.

*John Beer, Kate Bernheimer, Ken Chen, Sarah Tuss Efrik, Sarah Fox, Lara Glenum, Johannes Göransson, Brent Hendricks, Josef Horacek, Dan Hoy, Lucas de Lima, Joyelle McSweeney, Megan Milks, Danielle Pafunda, James Pate, Sami Sjöberg, Julia Tidigs, John Dermot Woods

VIDA: Women in Literary Arts

2010-09-13T15:25:00.002-04:00

Ever so much is going on at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts! In the September edition, you'll find Barrie Jean Borich on our State of The Art: "Where We Bump and Grind It: On Resisting Redemption in Women's Memoir," Erin Belieu on our Deal With It "Full Disclosure: I Was a Teenage Poetry Bride," a conversation with Arielle Greenberg on For The Record: "Gynocentric Anthems, the Gurlesque, and Creative Partnerships," and don't forget to check in on that always controversial, often grim, ever galvanizing catalogue of publishing parity/disparity The Count.

In related news, check out VIDA's Alyss Dixson at The Atlantic: On Invisibility, Gender, and Publishing and Cate Marvin & Susan Steinberg on The Rumpus: VIDA: On Commotion .

October issue coming soon! (In October, durr!)

Missed Connections by Brett!

2010-09-13T15:19:00.002-04:00

Don't get heartbroken. The wonderful Brett Fletcher Lauer has been commissioning Craigslist Missed Connections from a wild delicious lotta poets, publishing them, and then publishing the replies at Ships That Pass.

You can read mine here:

Crazy Toxic Miss You! / w4m / 39 Queens (JFK)
Where are you going, ponyboyfriend? Some velvet panda snow globe forever island? You’re eating mango jelly! You’re drinking water from a waterfall so PERFECT that anyone standing under it becomes a virgin again! Coating yourself in shea butter! If I had one of those tiny plastic half-knives they give you in the lid of the cream cheese container, or an itsy little ice cream sampler scoop, I’d scrape a rippling layer of shea-and-sweat off your back while you’re napping and spread it on my HEART OF HEARTS!

The Nepotist Likes Me!

2010-09-13T15:14:00.003-04:00

Who is The Nepotist? I'm not entirely sure, but ze likes me, and I like hir!

Four poems, and a lovely introduction *blush* here at The Nepotist:

Danielle Pafunda is made of awesome. So classy and lovely is she that The Nepotist adjusts his habit of publishing up to three poems per poet just for her. These poems-- all four of them-- are each titled "The Dead Girls Speak in Unison." It's easy to think of them as a series, though I'd discourage that. Instead try this: think of each poem as the same poem, only written with different words. It's not so strange, is it? I'm convinced that I've been writing the same poem for years. We all do. It's whatever hectors and nags us. What we can't let go of or what won't let go of us. The germ of an idea, the impetus of an image, that squinting twinge of truth in a stereogram's squiggles. Yes, that's what these poems are like, those Magic Eye pictures. Only through a choreography of alternating focus and dilation can they be truly seen. I won't quote from the poems here as I usually do. Just read them. These dead girls will haunt you. As they haunt me.

Sundry Pubs!

2010-09-13T15:05:00.003-04:00

Recently, poems in:

Cannibal 5

Eleven Eleven

Court Green 7

In American Poet Magazine

2010-09-13T14:54:00.003-04:00

In April, I had the happy honor of reading with James Tate and Sabrina Orah Mark for the Academy of American Poets American Poet magazine launch. An essay of mine about the pregnant body and its lyric potentials appears in American Poet Volume 38 (as well as a few poems from my "Mommy V" series). "On Human Cylindars: The Pregnant Poet," an excerpt:

I’ve always dwelled in a body and am suspicious of those who don’t. My body is surface and interior. It isn’t along for the ride, it is the ride, and not only do I have a body, but I also am that body. It’s the stuff of science-fiction. Or poetry. While the Cartesian mind-body split governs many a lyric, there’s an abiding lineage of writers who are freaked out and rapt (wrapped!) in the body. Without them, poetry is a sorrier pursuit, and without the body, it rings a bit hollow. Consider the modernist repertoire. It tends well to the mind, but for the most part, it does a ham-fisted, half-assed job on the body. Enter Mina Loy. In Loy’s speakers, we travel the extraterrestrial terrain of genius and the “spoiled closet” of the human form, starkly aware that we can’t party in the former without waking hungover in the latter. Loy’s bodies shamelessly ferment, rebel, and hum. In the introduction to Lost Lunar Baedeker, we learn “the public’s prevailing objections: if she could dress like a lady, why couldn’t she write like one?” A lady eschews the corporeal and ignores her immanence therein. Through painting, drawing, music, and fine linens, ladies transcend their vulgar physicality, which otherwise has the nasty habit of reminding men that they too sport bodies. It isn’t ladylike to insist that all bodies are subject to lust, birth, disease, and age, but it is awfully human.

The Dead Girls Speak in Unison on Everyday Genius

2010-09-13T14:51:00.002-04:00

An excerpt from my new project The Dead Girls Speak in Unison at Everyday Genius. Thanks to Kate Zambreno, who guest edited and assembled some extraplanetary wonders!

Excerpt:

The Dead Girls Speak in Unison

You took us out of the freezer, unwrapped, split our sticks.

We still get eventide. We still get luminescence. We get our feet caught, sometimes, in the ropey intestine of your funny little dream. You think you’ve found the sweetest hole in which to bury your craggy face, and then out pops the rabbit.

The double bunny. Its many red eyes giving you a good scorching.

Whatev, little legs. Make with the running. Up the sheets
like a ladder, everything horizontal will beckon
your wreck.

AWP 2010 Denver, CO!

2010-04-02T02:04:00.002-04:00

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7 • 7:00-11:00 PM

Pussipo/Dusie Press/Stonecoast Femiganza

Danielle Pafunda & Shanna Compton reading with Bronwen Tate, Ann Bogle, Jennifer Karmin, Marthe Reed, Annie Finch, Amy King, Cara Benson, Mackenzie Carignan, Deborah Poe, Ana Bozicevic, Teresa Carmody, Kate Durbin, Megan Volpert, Elizabeth Hildreth, Anna Aguilar-Amat, Sarah Rosenthal, Krystal Languell, K. Lorraine Graham, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Robin Reagler, Cheryl Pallant, Lara Glenum, Deb Marquart, Elizabeth Searle, Mel Nichols, Jesse Glass,
& j/j hastain

Packing House Center for the Arts
835 E. 50th Ave
Denver, CO

FREE | AWP registration not required
RSVP @ Facebook

THURSDAY, APRIL 8 • 7:00-10:00 PM

Small Press Party with Bloof Books • Cooper Dillon Book • Noemi Press

Danielle Pafunda, Jennifer L. Knox, Peter Davis,Sandra Simonds & Shanna Compton reading with Ada Limon, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Claire Hero, Gary L. McDowell, Nate Pritts, and Shya Scanlon

Green Spaces Colorado
1368 26th Street (@ Walnut Street)
Denver, CO

FREE | AWP registration not required

RSVP @ Facebook

FRIDAY, APRIL 9 • 12:00-1:15 PM

Gurlesque Anthology Reading

Danielle Pafunda, reading with Lara Glenum, Cathy Wagner, Dorothea Lasky, Cathy Park Hong and Elizabeth Treadwell

Hyatt Regency Denver
650 15th Street
3rd floor: Mineral Hall

A reading in celebration of Gurlesque, a new anthology of contemporary women poets and visual artists now out from Saturnalia Books.

AWP registration badge required for entry.

FRIDAY, APRIL 9 • 7:00 PM-late

WILLA (Women in Letters and Literary Arts) reading

Danielle Pafunda is reading with Kim Adinozzio, Mary Akers, Erin Belieu, Ana Bozicevic, Jami Brandli, Barrie Jean Borich, Nickole Brown, Kara Candito, Mary Cappello, Jennine Capó Crucet, Carolyn Forche, Ru Freeman, Lara Glenum, Cathy Park Hong, Olivia Johnson, Lynn Kilpatrick, Amy King, Dorianne Laux, Roxanne Banks Malia, April Manteris, Cate Marvin, Carol Muske-Dukes, Antonya Nelson, Ann Pancake, Jennifer Park, Carmen Gimenez Smith, Patricia Smith, Susan Steinberg, Cheryl Strayed, Ann Townsend, Emily Warn, Leni Zumas

Denver Press Club
1330 Glenarm Place
Denver, CO

$10 at the door | AWP registration not required

RSVP @ Facebook

Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies available for pre-order!

2010-03-12T23:47:00.007-05:00

My new book Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies (from the excellent Noemi Press*) can now be pre-ordered at Amazon.

The cover uses one of the ever-swoon-worthy images from Ray Caesar, whom I can't thank enough for his generosity!

*Thank you Carmen, Rosa, Krystal, Atticus, & Evan!

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Forum #2

2010-02-01T01:02:00.007-05:00

Delirious Hem is running This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like forum #2, where each day this week you will find new responses.

Featuring:
Monday February 1: Ching-In Chen, Jennifer Bartlett, & Kate Durbin
Tuesday February 2: Juliet Cook & Kate Schapira
Wednesday February 3: Kirsten Kaschock & Michele Battiste

Thursday February 4: Michelle Detorie & Stephanie Strickland

Friday February 5: T.A. Noonan & Theodora Danylevich
Saturday February 6: Amy King & Kirsten Kaschock 2

With more to come!

There are likely as many strains and modes of feminist poetics as there are of feminism, but in reviews, discussions, and even our own manifestos, we often fall into shorthand that fails to explore this valuable friction, our own variations. I'd longed for unpacking, and so issued this open-ended call:

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like: what branch of feminism, model of feminist poetics, feminist icon, or etc. informs your poetry? Or, from which of these does your poetry diverge? Are there particular feminist tactics you employ? Do you consider yourself a feminist in many ways, but don't particularly involve it in the poetry? Feel free to take liberties with the questions! Short, long, essay, manifesto, whatever appeals to you!

Our first forum was full of such provocative, funny, thoughtful, revealing, and kick-ass work, I thought we'd better run another. We hope you'll enjoy and join in the conversation. If you post on your own blog in response to this conversation, please drop a note in the comments!

Curated by Danielle Pafunda

A Preview: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Forum #2

2010-01-18T02:24:00.005-05:00

A Preview: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Forum #2: This is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife. by Jennifer Bartlett On feminism & disability.

Mommy is full of cookie-ookie.

2010-01-01T14:00:00.005-05:00

What in the heck, as my beloved little creature would say. It's New Year's, and I have just figured out which button to click to follow blogs. I am following exactly those that I'm hungry for. Thus far:

Kate Durbin (from whom I swiped this knife-cake)
Dusie/Susana Gardner
Carmen Gimenez Smith
Johannes Goransson
Becca Klaver
Reb Livingston (whom my psyche has now appointed to some position of dream management, and she often appears in the spook hours, lucky Reb, wry grin)
D.A. Powell (who doesn't post often, but I like having him in blog world)
and someone new to me, Kate Zambreno (srsly, this blog--so exciting!).

Oh, let's add
Anne Boyer and Anne Boyer
and
Nada Gordon.

I tried to follow my darlin' Bloof Books, but I'm not sure I clicked the correct icon. Plus, I am like this (crossed fingers, psychic link) with Bloof news. Um, that is, Google Alerted!

I wish Joyelle McSweeney had a blog. Her talk posted over at Johannes's blog is incredible. The comments thread, well, some can't but suck the folle de jois out of the room.

I wish Alissa Nutting had a blog! I wish Rachel Zucker had a blog. I wish Lara Glenum kept up her blog. I wish I kept up my blog. I wish Killing Kanoko and Mommy Must be a Fountain of Feathers and With Deer would get together and start their own blog.

Also, I have received a grant from my university to write a novel about a mommy vampire. Mommy V. I'll be doing that this year.

Lots of love,
Danielle

Delirious Hem Pussipo Adventskalendar 2009!

2009-12-21T21:38:00.003-05:00

It's my day on the Adventskalendar!

Or, here: http://dusie.org/mommy_v_dh.mp3!

Some audio of Mommy V(ampire), which selection first appeared in the excellent Saltgrass.

A Fab Review of My Zorba

2009-12-06T03:12:00.002-05:00

The Lesser of Two Equals has a really sharp review of My Zorba. Whoo!

And, in case you're looking for stuff to stuff in stockings, Bloof Books is still running the Bloof Bundle Special!

Delirious Hem Pussipo Adventskalendar 2009!

2009-12-06T03:07:00.005-05:00

This year, it's audio poems! Count down with us. Thank you Susana Gardner!

The WILLA List of Great Books by Women in 2009

2009-11-14T23:50:00.011-05:00

And WILLA Women in Letters and Literary Arts is developing its Web site here. Exciting stuff!

FICTION
Megan Abbott Bury Me Deep
Marguerite Abouet Aya: The Secrets Come Out (Graphic Novel)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Thing Around Your Neck
Margaret Atwood The Year of the Flood
Margo Berdeshevsky Beautiful Soon Enough
A.S. Byatt The Children's Book
Amina Cain I Go To Some Hollow
Chelsea Cain Evil At Heart
Bonnie Jo Campbell American Salvage
Mary Caponegro All Fall Down
Emily Chenoweth Hello Goodbye
Farai Chideya Kiss the Sky
Inger Christensen Azorno
Jennine Capó Crucet How to Leave Hialeah
Randy Sue Coburn A Better View of Paradise
Lydia Davis The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Rachel DeWoskin Repeat After Me
Elissa Elliot Eve: A Novel of the First Woman
Louise Erdrich The Red Convertible
Janet Evanovich Finger Lickin' Fifteen
Gillian Flynn Dark Places
Ru Freeman A Disobedient Girl
Amanda C. Gable The Confederate General Rides North
Diana Gabaldon An Echo in the Bone
Mary Gaitskill Don't Cry
Mavis Gallant The Cost of Living: New and Uncollected Stories
Meg Gardiner The Memory Collector
Kate George Moonlighting in Vermont
Amelia Gray AM/PM
Lauren Groff Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories
Tina May Hall All the Day's Sad Stories
Masha Hamilton 31 Hours
Samantha Harvey The Wilderness
Elina Hirvonen When I Forgot
Joanna Howard On the Winding Stair
Michelle Huneven Blame
Tania James The Atlas of Unknowns
Holly Goddard Jones Girl Trouble
Toni Jordan Addition
Stephanie Kallos Sing Them Home
Laura Kasischke In a Perfect World
Barbara Kingsolver The Lacuna
Deidre Knight Butterfly Tattoo
Laila Lalami Secret Son
Dylan Landis Normal People Don't Live Like This
Glenda Larke The Last Stormlord
Stacey Levine The Girl With Brown Fur: Tales and Stories
Laura Lippman Life Sentences
Sophie Littlefield A Bad Day for Sorry
Sheila Lowe Dead Write
Li Yiyun The Vagrants
Lisa Lutz Revenge of the Spellmans
Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall
Juliet Marillier Heart's Blood
Joyce Maynard Labor Day
Jill McCorkle Going Away Shoes
Jen Cullerton Johnson Seeds of Change
Maile Meloy Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It
Anne Michaels The Winter Vault
Marie Mutsuki Mockett Picking Bones from Ash
Lorrie Moore A Gate at the Stairs
Nami Mun Miles From Nowhere
Alice Munro Too Much Happiness: Stories
Antonya Nelson Nothing Right
Bich Minh Nguyen Short Girls
Audrey Niffenegger Her Fearful Symmetry
Sara Paretsky Hardball
Ann Parker Leaden Skies
Gaile Parkin Baking Cakes In Kigali
Victoria Patterson Drift
Samantha Peale The American Painter Emma Dial
Lydia Peelle Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya There Once Was a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby
Gin Phillips The Well and the Mine
Jayne Anne Phillips Lark and Termite
Naomi Pringle Ginga' Root Tea
Amy Reed Beautiful
Sarah Rosenthal Manhattan
Joanna Ruocco The Mothering Coven
Preeta Samarasan Evening is the Whole Day
Lisa See Shanghai Girls
Nicole Seitz A Hundred Years of Happiness
Heather Sharfeddin Windless Summer
Brooks Sigler Five Finger Fiction
Emily St. John Mandel Last Night in Montreal
Kathryn Stockett The Help
Jean Thompson Do Not Deny Me
Laura Van den Berg What The World Will Look Like When All The Water Leaves Us
Kate Walbert A Short History of Women: A Novel
Sarah Waters The Little Stranger
Jennifer Weiner Best Friends Forever
Tracy Winn Mrs. Somebody Somebody

POETRY
Carrie Olivia Adams Intervening Absence
Kim Addonizio Lucifer at the Starlite
Deborah Ager Midnight Voices
Rae Armantrout Versed
Jessica Bozek The Bodyfeel Lexicon
Ana Bozicevic Stars of the Night Commute
Brigitte Byrd Song of a Living Room
Teresa Cader A History of Hurricanes
Gabrielle Calvocoressi Apocalyptic Swing
Kara Candito Taste of Cherry
Andrea Cohen Long Division
Norma Cole Where Shadows Will
Gillian Conoley The Plot Genie
Rita Dove Sonata Mulattica
Kate Durbin The Ravenous Audience
Robin Ekiss The Mansion of Happiness
Sarah Gambito Delivered
Amy Gerstler Dearest Creature
Kate Greenstreet The Last 4 Things
Marilyn Hacker Names
Leslie Harrison Displacement
Brenda Hillman Practical Water
Janet Holmes The ms of m y kin
Julie Kane Jazz Funeral
Bhanu Kapil Humanimal
Jesse Lee Kercheval Cinema Muto
Myung Mi Kim Penury
Amy King Slaves to do These Things
Ish Klein Union!
Noelle Kocot Sunny Wednesday
Jennifer Kronovet Awayward
Rachel Levitsky Neighbor
Rachel Loden Dick of the Dead
Dana Teen Lomax Disclosure
Barbara Maloutas The Whole Marie
Sabrina Orah Mark Tsim Tsum
Jen McCreary :ab ovo:
Karyna McGlynn I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl
Nicole Mauro The Contortions
Helena Mesa Horse Dance Underwater
Chelsey Minnis Poemland
Mel Nichols Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon
Hoa Nguyen Hecate Lochia
Lisa Olstein Lost Alphabet
Alicia Ostriker The Book of Seventy
Gaile Parkin Baking Cakes In Kigali
Carol Peters Sixty Some
Kiki Petrosino Fort Red Border
Marie Ponsot Easy
Lisa Robertson Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip
Sophie Robinson a
Kim Rosenfield re: evolution
Lee Ann Roripaugh On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year
Lisa Samuels Tomorrowland
Sarah Sarai The Future is Happy
Sandra Simonds Warsaw Bikini
Carmen Gimenez Smith Odalisqued in Pieces
Pamela Sneed KONG
Alison Stine Ohio Violence
Terese Svoboda Weapons Grade
Stacy Szymaszek Hyperglossia
Michelle Taransky Barn Burned, Then
Eleanor Ross Taylor Captive Voices
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon Open Interval
Catherine Wagner My New Job
Anne Waldman Manatee/Humanity
Liz Waldner Trust
Susan Wheeler Assorted Poems
Dara Wier Selected Poems
Allison Benis White Self-Portrait with Crayon
Rebecca Wolff The King
Karena Youtz The Shape is Space
Rachel Zucker Museum of Accidents

NONFICTION
Julie Abraham Metropolitan Lovers: The Homosexuality of Cities
Diana Athill Somewhere Towards the End
Nancy Balbirer Take Your Shirt Off And Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences
Carlene Bauer Not That Kind of Girl
Helen Benedict The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
Eula Biss Notes From No Man's Land
Rebecca Brown American Romances: Essays
Lily Burana I Love a Man in Uniform
Ashley Butler Dear Sound of Footstep
Gwen Cooper Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale
Mary Cappello Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life
Staceyann Chin The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir
Jennifer Culkin A Final Arc of Sky: A Memoir of Critical Care
Jenny Diski The Sixties
Hope Edelman The Possibility of Everything
Lise Eliot Pink Brain, Blue Brain
Barbara Ehrenreich Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Terry Galloway Mean Little Deaf Queer
Michelle Goldberg The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World
Temple Grandin Animals Make Us Human
Debra Gwartney Live Through This
Duchess Harris Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton
Lyanda Lynn Haupt Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness
Monica Holloway Cowboy & Wills
Jane Jeong Trenka Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee's Return to Korea
Diana Joseph I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother and Friend to Man and Dog
Mary Karr Lit
Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor Traveling with Pomegranates
Hermione Lee Biography: A Very Short Introduction
Sara Maitland A Book of Silence
Brenda Miller Blessing of the Animals
Eileen Myles The Importance of Being Iceland
Maggie Nelson Bluets
Rebecca K. O'Connor Lift
Lilian Pizzichini The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys
Dawn Potter Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton
Ruth Reichl Not Becoming My Mother: And Other Things She Taught Me Along the Way
Harriet Reisen Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women
Robin Romm The Mercy Papers
Laurie Sandell The Impostor's Daughter (Graphic Novel)
Rebecca Solnit A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
Helen Thorpe Just Like Us
Andrea Tone The Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers
Spring Ulmer The Age of Virtual Reproduction
Rebecca Walker One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love
Lauren Weber In Cheap We Trust: The story of a misunderstood American Virtue

CHILDREN'S & YOUNG ADULT
Katie Alender Bad Girls Don't Die
R.J. Anderson Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter
Pam Bachorz Candor
Cyn Balog Fairy Tale
Eileen Beha Tango - The Tale of an Island Dog
Lauren Bjorkman My Invented Life
Molly Breen Darkwood
Sarah Rees Brennan The Demon's Lexicon
Leigh Brescia One Wish
Jennifer Brown Hate List
Ann E. Burg All the Broken Pieces
Megan Crewe Give up the Ghost
Kirstin Cronn-Mills The Sky Always Hears Me (and the Hills Don't Mind)
Sarah Cross Dull Boy
Kate Di Camillo The Magician's Elephant
Kate di Goldi The 10 PM Question
Erin Dionne Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies
Deva Fagan Fortune's Folly
Megan Frazer Secrets of Truth & Beauty
Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl Beautiful Creatures
Matthea Harvey The Little General and the Giant Snowflake
Cheryl Renee Herbsman Breathing
Kerry Cohen Hoffman It's Not You, It's Me
Deborah Hopkinson Keep On! The Story of Matthew Henson, Co-Discoverer of the North Pole
Mandy Hubbard Prada & Prejudice
Jennifer Jabaley Lipstick Apology
Stacey Jay You Are So Undead to Me
Danielle Joseph Shrinking Violet
Suzanne LaFleur Love, Aubrey
Cynthea Liu Paris Pan Takes the Dare
Malinda Lo Ash
C. Lee MacKenzie Sliding on the Edge
Sarah MacLean The Season
J.E. MacLeod Waiting to Score
L.K. Madigan Flash Burnout
Lisa Mantchev Eyes Like Stars
Nan Marino Neil Armstrong is My Uncle and Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me
Neesha Meminger Shine Coconut Moon
Kate Messner The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z
Saundra Mitchell Shadowed Summer
Jenny Moss Winnie's War
Sarah Ockler Twenty Boy Summer
Rosanne Parry Heart of a Shepherd
Jackson Pearce As You Wish
Diana Peterfreund Rampant
Shani Petroff Bedeviled
Aprilynne Pike Wings
Cindy Pon Silver Phoenix
Sarah Quigley TMI
Amy Reed Beautiful
Carrie Ryan The Forest of Hands and Teeth
Sydney Salter My Big Nose and Other Natural Disasters
Fran Slayaton When the Whistle Blows
Kristina Springer The Espressologist
Jen Cullerton Johnson Seeds of Change: The Wangari Maathai Story
Rhonda Stapleton Stupid Cupid
Heather Duffy Stone This Is What I Want to Tell You
Charity Tahmaseb & Darcy Vance The Geek Girl's Guide to Cheerleading
Jessica Verday The Hollow
Lara Zielin Donut Days
Michelle Zink Prophecy of the Sisters

The WILLA List of Great Books by Women in 2009

2009-11-06T01:18:00.003-05:00

Think Publishers Weekly missed something on their top ten list? Add to The WILLA list Great Books by Women that Publishers Weekly Missed in 2009!

WILLA's Press Release from November 2, 2009

Why Weren’t Any Women Invited To Publishers Weekly’s Weenie Roast?

Publishers Weekly recently announced their Best Books Of 2009 list. In their top ten, chosen by editorial staff, no books written by women were included. Quoted in The Huffington Post, PW confidently admitted that they're “not the most politically correct" choices. This statement comes in a year in which new books appeared by writers such as Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Rita Dove, Heather McHugh and Alicia Ostriker.

“The absence made me nearly speechless.” said writer Cate Marvin, cofounder of the newly launched national literary organization WILLA (Women In Letters And Literary Arts), which, since August, has attracted close to 5400 members on their Facebook web page, including many major and emerging women writers. “It continues to surprise me that literary editors are so comfortable with their bias toward male writing, despite the great and obvious contributions that women authors make to our contemporary literary culture.”

WILLA’s other cofounder, Erin Belieu, Director Of The Creative Writing Program at Florida State University, asked, “So is the flipside here that including women authors on the list would just have been an empty, politically correct gesture? When PW’s editors tell us they’re not worried about ‘political correctness,’ that’s code for ‘your concerns as a feminist aren’t legitimate.’ They know they’re being blatantly sexist, but it looks like they feel good about that. I, on the other hand, have heard from a whole lot of people—writers and readers--who don’t feel good about it at all.”

PW also did a Top 100 list and, of the authors included, only 29 were women. The WILLA Advisory Board is in the process of putting together a list titled “Great Books Published By Women In 2009.” This will be posted to the organization’s Facebook page and website. A WILLA Wiki has also been started for people to share their nominations for Great Books By Women in 2009. Press release to follow.

WILLA was founded to bring increased attention to women’s literary accomplishments and to question the American literary establishment’s historical slow-footedness in recognizing and rewarding women writers' achievements. WILLA is about to launch their website and is in the process of planning their first national conference to be held next year.

(Note: until recently, WILLA went under the acronym WILA, with one “L.” If you’re interested in the organization, please Google WILA with one “L” to see background on how this group was originally formed.)

Delirious Hem Poetics Forum This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like

2009-10-04T16:31:00.014-04:00

Delirious Hem's third poetics forum is up, and each day this week you will find new responses.

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

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, we've curated This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like. We hope you'll visit, read, comment, & enjoy!

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

Upcoming Forums:
December: 2009 Advent Kalendar (check out 2008's!)
January: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like, 2

Sous Rature 3ssue

2009-09-29T13:15:00.002-04:00

You can read another piece of "The Desire Spectrum is Dead to Me Now" here at Cara Benson's very own animal 3ssue of Sous Rature

Shaula Evans Ross Priddle Aidan Thompson Lydia Davis Kyle Schlesinger Uchay Joel Chima Charles Freeland Rebecca Wolff
Stephen Webber Edwin Torres Joel Chace Danielle Pafunda Urayoán Noel Douglas A. Martin Stephanie Strickland Alejandro Crawford Jared Hayes & Joseph Cooper Erin Casey Russell Pascatore Adam Katz Thierry Brunet & Jeremy Geddes Anselm Berrigan
Donald Breckenridge Michael Basinski Claire Hero Judith Goldman Jerome Rothenberg Chris Rizzo & Katherine Sullivan Anne Gorrick Ching-In Chen Andrew Zawacki

Saltgrass! Issue 4!

2009-09-29T03:08:00.001-04:00

The new issue of Saltgrass is out, starring these awesome poets & writers:

Laura Solomon, G.C. Waldrep, Cecily Iddings, Anne Boyer, Ben Mirov, Ish Klein, Claire Hero, Hugh Merwin, Jason Bredle, Karla Kelsey, Lisa Ciccarello, Danielle Pafunda, Brett Price, Genya Turovskaya, Maureen Thorson, Ron Rash

For only $5, you can purchase a copy of this issue here: http://www.saltgrassjournal.blogspot.com, where sample poems are also available for your viewing.

Please kindly snag a copy and/or pass on the word.

Also, we are now open to submissions for issue 5.

Thanks,
Julia Cohen, Poetry Editor

This Week at Delirious Hem

2009-09-29T03:05:00.002-04:00

Please check out this week's collaborative feature at Delirious Hem, Jennifer Karmin & Bernadette Mayer with poems on neutrinos (and thensome!). And stay tuned for our October forum This is What a (Pro)Feminist [Man Poet] Looks Like!

Poetry and science. The etymology of the clitoris. The unnameable. The undefinable. We read our newly finished poems in the living room to Philip Good and Hector the dog. Phil took a picture.

-- Jennifer Karmin

The most difficult poetry assignment I ever envisioned is to write a 10-line poem about neutrinos with alternating lines containing a metaphor and a gerund. Here are Jennifer Karmin’s & my, Bernadette Mayer’s groundbreaking neutrino poems.

-- Bernadette Mayer

GlitterPony!

2009-09-03T17:51:00.004-04:00

In the hot new issue of GlitterPony, some poems out of my series "The Desire Spectrum is Dead to Me Now" (from Manhater, and cheery news on that, soon!).

O Say Can You See

2009-09-03T01:26:00.007-04:00

Nonverbal Reviews and Adaptations of Women's Poetry

Mina Loy, Surreal Scene

September 1

* Abi Stokes collages Matthea Harvey
* Tyler Flynn Dorholt splices Sandy Florian, Joyelle McSweeney, Laura Solórzano, and Kim Hyesoon
* Jennifer Karmin street teams Kristin Prevallet

September 2

* Daniela Olszewska puts a bow on Chelsey Minnis
* Christine Neacole Kanownik horses around with Jennifer Scappettone
* Janet Snell goes Dickinson on Nanette Rayman-Rivera

September the Rest

* You? We'll accept rolling submissions through September 20.

What book, chapbook, performance, or poem by a woman poet published/presented in the last year or two has left you speechless? How might that speechlessness manifest itself visually, sonically, or through another nonverbal medium?

Please create a response to this piece; your response can act like a review, adaptation, homage, investigation, companion piece, Frankenstein, child, or any mash-up of the aforementioned. In August, all responses submitted will be featured as part of a forum here on Delirious Hem.

Curated by K. Lorraine Graham and Becca Klaver.

FAQ

Are all words banned?
Although the projects should not be text-based, words are not banned.

I want to create a response to a poem published in 2007. Is this too early?
Nope. We mean "published in the last year or two" loosely.

Can I create a response to a book written by:
a) a man?
b) a biological male who identifies as a woman?
c) a drag queen?
a) No. b) Yes. c) Yes, if they self-identify as a woman.

Can non-Pussipo members participate?
Yes. If you'd like to forward this call, feel free.

Can men participate?
Yes.

What file formats can you accept?
For videos, Blogger can accept AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media, 100 MB maximum size. For images, jpg, gif, bmp and png images, 8 MB maximum size.

Responses might include videos, songs, performances, photographs, or photographs of visual pieces, but are not limited to these, so please query if you're not sure if Blogger can support your format.

Please email your submission and a bio to K. Lorraine Graham (klorraine[at]gmail[dot]com) and Becca Klaver (beccavista[at]yahoo[dot]com).

My favorite librarians

2009-08-16T17:00:00.002-04:00

of The Desk Set are touring libraries of Vermont. Including the Center for Cartoon Studies.

They are also making me east coast homesick. Quit it.

NYers, check out their fundraising parties like Dance, Dance, Library Revolution, benefitting Books Through Bars.

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

2009-08-07T13:48:00.003-04:00

Ben Marcus & Starcherone Books know what's what! (And La Petite Zine, yo.)

Alissa Nutting of Las Vegas, Nevada, is the winner of the 6th Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction contest (2009-10) for her manuscript, Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls. Nutting was selected from among five finalists by Final Judge Ben Marcus.

Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls is a hilarious and terrifically inventive collection of short fiction where each story in the book is predicated upon a would-be career choice for women. The stories are titled, sometimes very fancifully, after these "unclean jobs," such as "Model's Assistant," "Knife-Thrower," "Bandleader's Girlfriend," "Corpse Smoker," and "She-Man." Ten of the stories have been published in literary journals, including Fence, Tin-House, Mid-American Review, Denver Quarterly, Southeast Review, and Swink.

And the collection gives good heartbreak. Hurts so good.

Tweak Job! Warsaw Bikini!

2009-08-06T15:42:00.003-04:00

The Bloof Books Tweak Job contest to win a copy of Sandra Simonds's Warsaw Bikini now ends August 23rd. The first poems are up at Tweak Job proper.

Here's my entry...taken from Sandra's "Bon Voyage." I already have a copy of Warsaw Bikini, so if I win, I will send my deliciously disturbing surprise to some lucky you!

**********

so goodbye bulky red train—pulse sack of meat

Oh artificial ticktock, black funnel transit
which rides me out the door and back in the door

on the opposite side of this room
terrible terrible

choo-choo soot-soot circuit of RIGHT HERE.

This is not a no thank you situation.
This is not a pretty nook, the hook

and nail, the metal welcome.
This is the cul-de-sac of the frontier.

This is where the wig comes off,
and beneath it only skull.

This is where, everything you’ve done,
you’ve done yourself in.

Fat flesh on a rail thin rail,
roped down, the sick thunk

where you travel again and again,
the same dismal kill, it never completes.

Bon voyage, pretty bird. So long,
thirsty long throated cuckoo.

WILA (Women in the Literary Arts) Association & Conference

2009-08-05T23:32:00.001-04:00

Huzzah, ya'll, the Facebook group has over 2,000 members.

Dear Friends,

A few days ago, Cate Marvin sent out an open letter to a group of women writers detailing her concerns about certain aspects of the AWP conference and asking if other women felt the same way. She then suggested the brilliant notion of a women's writing conference and wondered who would be interested in such a thing. The letter has since gone out to hundreds, has been posted in many places, and the response has been absolutely tremendous. This leads us to believe that our moment is definitely NOW (pun intended). Cate has asked me to be one of the co-directors of this potential conference and she and I have spent the last several days working on a model for such a thing and beginning the organizing process. We have quickly moved away from an initially (and understandably) reactive pose to envisioning just how positive and constructive this is going to be. We believe AWP serves a good and important purpose, but we intend to serve another.

I'll include her original email at the bottom of this post. If you find that you're interested in the ideas she lays out here, I'd ask that you reply to this and join our Facebook group. We are actively seeking every kind of support for this venture--people to help organize by region, to spread the word to other women writers, to potentially volunteer their time on site when this thing comes together. We're also looking for people who have backgrounds in grant writing, accounting, arts administration, fund raising, web and graphic design, database management and non-profit law to possibly volunteer a little time to help us get this off the ground. If you are one with these skills and are willing, or know someone who might be, please let us know asap.

Ideally we would like to have a number of university sponsorships to help support the costs of such an undertaking. We hope that some of you who are interested would be in the position to approach your schools about sponsorship when the time comes. I don't think this will be a hard sell to most places and we are quickly putting together a heavy hitting board of directors that has the star power to attract universities and colleges. And my thought is, hey, all they can say is no. No harm, no foul there. Participating schools would be advertised in every conference promotion, program, t-shirt, foam finger, beach towel and coffee mug. Even small sums would be incredibly helpful. You can tell them a little money will get them in cheaply on the ground floor of something that's going to be big!

Obviously you would need details of our organization and funding structure (we'll be applying for non profit status just as soon as possible), so be in touch for more information on this if you decide that you can speak with your school about sponsorship. Of course private donations will also be gratefully excepted. We don't discriminate against the financially-abled!

Finally, we're very interested in making sure ALL women of every race, creed, socioeconomic situation, sexual orientation and physical ability are included in this invitation. Oh, and we need more fiction and non-fiction writers. Cate and I know a lot of poets, but could use some help reaching women in other genres. Please feel free to pass along this email to anyone you think would like to know. Cate's letter follows...

Remember, it takes a nation of millions to hold us back. Imagine what will happen when we come together...

Yours,

Erin Belieu, Associate Professor
Director of the Creative Writing Program
English Department
Florida State University
ebelieu@fsu.edu

**************

Dear Friend,

I just experienced a moment of vicious self-mockery, in which I imagined myself in the same pose of concentration over the laundry I had spread over my bed as the narrator of Tillie Olsen's legendary piece in which a mother's considers the circumstances of her gender as manifested in her daughter's (lack of) self-confidence . . . I was dwelling on a thought not entirely different. You see, I had an AWP panel proposal rejected today. Big deal, right? Everyone has their proposals rejected. Yet, this rejection really nagged at me. I proposed on a topic concerning the narrow field (sarcasm intended) of contemporary American women's poetry . . . I've had a lot of panels accepted over the years. Last year, one on Wallace Stevens. The year before that on the elegy; before that, the crafting of an anthology. Then transgression in poetry. Ahah! This was the first panel I ever
proposed that concerned women's work exclusively.

It was an excellent proposal. Because it was interesting. I just honestly can't see HOW it could be turned down. Here it is:

Title: Arsenic Icing: Sentiment as Threat in Contemporary American Women's Poetry

Description:
Six contemporary female American poets explore how sentimentality is deployed in twenty-first century women’s poetry, with regard to both content and rhetoric, as a means to counter traditional assumptions regarding female desire and identity. What personal and political alchemies occur when the affectionate address verges on acerbic? What transformations are sought when a female speaker, once familiar as
mother, daughter, sister, wife, or lover, employs sentiment to reveal herself as Other?

Rationale:
The first female American poets to be respected for their intellect, Marianne Moore and her protégé, Elizabeth Bishop, were careful not to express an excess of sentiment; poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath would make a stark departure from this mode by channeling emotional extremity. It is now important to explore how twenty-first century American women poets understand and reinvent these opposing traditions in their work.

By the way: I had a stellar group of panelists (VARIED and FAMOUS) lined up for this.

*

As I stood rolling my socks into balls and shoving folded shirts into drawers (warning: dangerously clumsy use of heavily figurative language in use: the women are the clothes, get it?? Being shoved into drawers, i.e. repressed!), I considered how another panel proposal I was on was accepted. It concerns the uses of criticism, harkening back to the New Critics, Eliot in particular. Nothing WRONG with that . . .
but hasn't it been done?

And I thought, too, of how often I see more men's names in prominent magazines than women's, how I see men getting prizes more often than women, how even though female students would love to read newer work by female writers, they are rarely taught the work of women-- except for the usual suspects.

And I thought about how a male poet friend of mine discouraged me from getting involved with editing a book of feminist poets/poems from the past two decades because it would be "dangerous" and "divisive."

And I thought about how one male poet friend of mine only refers to Ellen Bryant Voight and Louise Gluck when he speaks of female poets. Not that I don't love these two poets-- but I am sure these two women would be none too happy that they are the sole representatives of where women's poetry has arrived (and, practically, to this
male-poet's mind, where it comes from).

I am, in short, irritated, and it's not just because I'm on the rag.

Here's the thing: why can't we have an organization of female writers (poets and fiction writers) that has a conference every year? Where we writers of women's lit can get together and talk about issues that affect our work as women? An organization that would be very open aesthetically, one that would really be a forum for discussion along any lines of the female writer's experience? An opportunity for women writers to be exposed to everything (or almost everything) that's going on in our country with regard to women's literature?

Like AWP, it could be an organization for writers, not scholars. And in that way different from some organizations that no doubt already exist.

Perhaps this organization could also produce a literary journal to present women's writing (prose) on what it means to be a woman writer in our time? An overview of some of the presentations from the conference itself?

Perhaps we could have a retreat at which established female authors MENTOR younger women writers? (Like Cave Canem does for younger African American poets.)

We'd have to start out small, and we'd necessarily become big (there are lots of women writers!). We'd need grants and the help of our affiliate universities. We'd have to be national, with representatives from all over the country. And our organization would have to be DISTINCTLY different than those of the past that have the lingering smell of post-feminism and the eighties hanging over them.

We need not even announce ourselves as a feminist project. The very definition of feminism in women's work could be discussed at our conference. (By a panel, naturally.)

Eventually, we might think of creating a press or an imprint of female writers.

But, first things first . . . are any of you as "concerned" as I am? I really do think we need unity as females more now than we have for some time.

You are welcome to tell me I'm crazy. Or offer ideas. Am I crazy? Am I?????

Your friend,

Cate

--
Cate Marvin, Associate Professor
Department of English
College of Staten Island, CUNY
www.catemarvin.com

Good Things: Tweakjob: Win a copy of Sandra Simonds's Warsaw Bikini

2009-07-27T22:30:00.004-04:00

From Bloof's new Tweakjob:
How to win a copy of Sandra Simonds's Warsaw Bikini:

1. Write a poem (or very short prose piece) based on a line, title, image, or whole poem by Sandra Simonds. (See list of suggestions below.) You may tweak the original in any way you like. You may illustrate it or respond to it visually or in music, if you are so inclined.

2. Post your piece to your blog, website, or Facebook wall. (If you do not have a blog, website, or Facebook account, feel free to post it at the Bloof Books Facebook group.)

3. In your post, mention Warsaw Bikini and the title of the poem of Sandra's your piece tweaks, and include a link back to the post at Bloof Books Tweakjob [http://bloofbooks.com/2009/07/tweakjob-win-copy-of-sandra-simonds.html].

4. IMPORTANT: Send an email to tweakjob[at]bloofbooks[dot]com letting us know you've entered, and including a link to your post.

5. Emails will be assigned numbers in the order they are received. A random number generator will be used to choose winner(s). One book will be awarded per 15 entries, up to a maximum of 5 winners. (So, if we get 36 entries, 2 winners will be chosen; 45 entries equals 3 winners; if we get more than 90 entries, we will be happy but we will still only award a maximum of 5 books.)

6. ALSO, our favorite pieces will be collected at Tweakjob.

7. Tweaking begins Friday, July 24 and ends Monday, August 3.

NOTE: ONE entry per person/email address. There no restrictions to US-only entries, or any silly business like that. We will ship winning books anywhere. No purchase is required to enter.

SUGGESTED POEMS

You may use any poem or piece of writing by Sandra Simonds, either from Warsaw Bikini, one of her chapbooks, or in a print/online magazine. Here are several possibilities that are freely available online:

A Poem for David Schubert at Verse Daily
Three poems in La Petite Zine
Bildungsroman Americana in Typo
Four poems in Coconut

Also see the list under "MY WORK" in the sidebar of Sandra's blog for more.

Happy tweaking!

42opus!

2009-07-02T15:10:00.000-04:00

Between now and July 8th, I'll have some poems up at the delicious 42opus. Today, it's The next time you survey your land, your land will accommodate your skull. Happy Independence Day.

If you're in Chicago, or you miss it...

2009-07-02T15:09:00.004-04:00

You'll find the poetry haps here at Chicago Poetry Calendar. Thank you Kristy Bowen!

Delirious Hem: Deviant Beach Reads Forum

2009-06-01T02:59:00.010-04:00

Visit Delirious Hem for June's poetics forum Deviant Beach Reads

Monday June 1:
Michele Battiste on Emma Donoghue
Cara Benson on Marianne Apostolides
Mary Biddinger on Banana Yoshimoto

Tuesday June 2:
Michelle Detorie on Carol Emshwiller
Kate Durbin on Angela Carter & Joan Didion
Elisa Gabbert on Joy Williams

Wednesday June 3:
Brandi Homan on Selah Saterstrom
Becca Klaver on Miranda July
Kathleen Ossip on Jennifer Moxley

Thursday June 4:
Evie Shockley on Renee Gladman & Selah Saterstrom
Elizabeth Treadwell on Janet Frame

Friday June 5:
Erika Meitner on Marjane Satrapi
Sarah Murphy on Margo Lanagan & Maggie Stiefvater

This forum includes a DIY option. If you'd like to suggest a Deviant Beach Read, fill out the following form (take your liberties!), and post it in the comments field at Delirious Hem.

Title and author of your pick for Deviant Beach Reads:
Six words that describe this book:
When I first read this book, I...
When I finished this book, I...
This book will...
This book [verb]
This book is a [adjective noun].
A favorite quote from book:

Please write a blurb, endorsement, homage, imitation, or the like re: the experimental/innovative/feminist/deviant woman fiction writer of your choice. You may choose one of her works, or many. You may write about yourself if you write fiction. Has this work been important to you as a poet? As a feminist? Mother? Daughter? Partner? Human? Is this work right for the beach? Is it edifying? Should it be? Is it a destroyer of worlds? When did you first encounter the work? To whom would you give this work? What kind of noise in your head does this work produce? Etc.!

Curated by Danielle Pafunda

Past Forums & Features:
May 2009: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like curated by Danielle Pafunda

December 2008: Advent Kalendar! curated by Susana Gardner

May 2008: Disarming, Destabilizing, & Creeping Out the Patriarchy a Conversation on the Gurlesque with Arielle Greenberg and Danielle Pafunda

February 2008: Dim Sum Being several & a few responses to the trio of "Numbers Trouble" articles in last fall's Chicago Review curated by Elizabeth Treadwell

Future Forums (subject to change and mutation):
July 2009: Summer break, no forum planned, read something deviant.

August 2009: TBA curated by K. Lorraine Graham & Becca Klaver

Fall 2009: Non-normative bodies,(pro)feminist men poets, and This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like Part 2!

Thunk: Me v Ryan Manning

2009-05-21T01:34:00.001-04:00

what do you aspire to?

Foresight. Patience. Unimpeachability. Lust.

Talk: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like

2009-05-21T00:26:00.005-04:00

Catherine Daly here.

Feministing's Community page here.

Jeannine Hall Gailley here.

Becca Klaver here.

Mark Wallace here.

And don't forget:

Reb Livingston here and here

Adam Robinson at HTMLGIANT

Stan Apps here

You! At Delirious Hem; c'mon over.

The girl is important to Gurlesque II

2009-05-13T20:59:00.013-04:00

To be clear, this is my thinking about gender & the Gurlesque. Lara says she'd consider Johannes Goransson & Mayakovsky (to name just two men) Gurlesque. I wouldn't--I'd consider their work of an affinity-aesthetic yet unnamed. Perhaps I'm over-specializing, but I suspect there are a number of highly specific categories with gender-bender affinity, and each of them would be important not only for the bending, but for the mode of bending. A Written on the Body category, for instance, shouldn't be lumped in with the kitschy performance of the feminine, or the hypermasculine, or etc. And I should clarify that I don't believe in an essentially feminine or masculine experience, but I do believe that girls/women and boys/men experience significantly different culturing in the US and abroad, and while we question, challenge, and subvert the binary, we also remain to some degree subject to it.

Questions I'll advance answer to:

1. Could a man/male/masculine manifestation write a Gurlesque poem? Sure, but the speaker to my thinking, would still have to reside in some manifestation of feminine. Or the poem would have to mess with femininity a la the grotesque/burlesque/girly kitsch/etc. that Lara & Arielle describe. I don't think Lara (or Arielle?) agrees with me on this point, and you may find me changing my tune if I see poems + persuasions.

2. Does a human need female biology to perform feminine? No, of course not. But the way girls/women/feminine manifestations are cultured cannot be divorced from our notions about the female body. Consider: testosterone, from testicle, from the Latin root meaning to testify. Estrogen? From oestrus, Latin for gadfly or frenzy. Culture informs biology informs culture...and this to me seems quite central to the poets in whom Gurlesque has been identified. It's vital to examine how these poets confront the powers that police and define female bodies. Further, the female body has long been a site on which aesthetic camps planted flag in a way the male body has not, so there is some very different, necessary work to be done on that stomping ground.

Other questions that seem to be nagging at the borders of discussion:

3. Does the Gurlesque envision gender as a spectrum? Or some other non-binary model? (Answer probably = yes.) And, if so, would that be more significant than, or overwrite the work it does to interrogate explicitly feminine gender roles and the cultural responses to the female form?

4. Do the Gurlesque poets go drag? Do they mess with masculinity? Do they create types neither masculine nor feminine?

5. If so, #4, are those Gurlesque things they do, or are those things they do in addition to the Gurlesque?

There's also discussion afoot over at Johannes Goransson's.

The girl is important to Gurlesque

2009-05-13T02:18:00.002-04:00

Dudes,

I like to think there's a large umbrella of non-normative body/gender work under which Gurlesque and related aesthetics would fall. Mantasia! Dogirlelle! TransManlantic!

Chelsey Minnis & Joe Wenderoth & David Trinidad & kari edwards & so on might all end up in a wonking-huge Gender Trouble Poetry Trouble anthology.

But Gurlesque is descriptive of girls/women/females/feminine manifestations camping up, kitsching up, f-ing up, xing out, troubling femininity--girl type, woman type, mother type, daughter type, hey-lady baby bitch...type, gorgon siren pillar of salt type, wife/girlfriend type, or vagina as social agent type gender. It is not the only mode of interrogating (feminine) gender norms, and all modes are not interchangeable. In my opinion.

Other opinions of late?

Lara Glenum's Gurlesque guest post on Johannes's blog.

Good Things(on the Internet)

2009-05-13T01:01:00.001-04:00

The state I most like to see another human in is “nervous but brave,” says Anne Boyer to Ryan Manning at Thunk.

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like

2009-05-08T13:58:00.006-04:00

Who's talking:

Reb Livingston here and here

Adam Robinson at HTMLGIANT

Stan Apps here

You! At Delirious Hem; c'mon over.

Featuring:
Monday May 4:
Mary Biddinger, Anne Boyer, & Brandi Homan
Tuesday May 5:
Megan Kaminski, Becca Klaver, & Majena Mafe
Wednesday May 6:
Gina Myers, Martha Silano, & Leah Souffrant
Thursday May 7:
K. Lorraine Graham, Elizabeth Treadwell, & Sarah Vap
Friday May 8:
Teresa Carmody, Kim Rosenfield, Vanessa Place, & Christine Wertheim

There are likely as many strains and modes of feminist poetics as there are of feminism, but in reviews, discussions, and even our own manifestos, we often fall into shorthand that fails to explore this valuable friction, our own variations. I've lately longed for unpacking, and so issued this open-ended call:

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like: what branch of feminism, model of feminist poetics, feminist icon, or etc. informs your poetry? Or, from which of these does your poetry diverge? Are there particular feminist tactics you employ? Do you consider yourself a feminist in many ways, but don't particularly involve it in the poetry? Feel free to take liberties with the questions! Short, long, essay, manifesto, whatever appeals to you!

Delirious Hem's monthly poetics forums are designed to give women poets a platform from which to address topics we all grapple with, obsess over, cram down the craws of our cohabitant lovelies. DH's poetics forums invite creato-critico-bio-cultural-multi-dimensional responses. Political personal public private. Theory-rich, yammer-strung, high-octane, molecular-fringe. DH's poetics forums invite contributors to drop in briefly or never shut up. We hope you'll do the same (see fig. 1, the comments box).

Poetics Forum #1 at Delirious Hem

2009-05-04T02:05:00.005-04:00

Over at Delirious Hem, you'll find the first installment in the new poetics forums I'm curating. I hope you'll visit, comment, thrill.

Featuring:
Monday May 4:
Mary Biddinger, Anne Boyer, & Brandi Homan
Tuesday May 5:
Megan Kaminski, Becca Klaver, & Majena Mafe
Wednesday May 6:
Gina Myers, Martha Silano, & Leah Souffrant
Thursday May 7:
K. Lorraine Graham, Mytili Jagannathan, Elizabeth Treadwell, & Sarah Vap
Friday May 8:
Teresa Carmody & co.

There are likely as many strains and modes of feminist poetics as there are of feminism, but in reviews, discussions, and even our own manifestos, we often fall into shorthand that fails to explore this valuable friction, our own variations. I've lately longed for unpacking, and so issued this open-ended call:

This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like: what branch of feminism, model of feminist poetics, feminist icon, or etc. informs your poetry? Or, from which of these does your poetry diverge? Are there particular feminist tactics you employ? Do you consider yourself a feminist in many ways, but don't particularly involve it in the poetry? Feel free to take liberties with the questions! Short, long, essay, manifesto, whatever appeals to you!

Poet Craig Arnold has Gone Missing

2009-04-30T12:59:00.005-04:00

Many of you have been following this story. You can get regular updates at Find Craig Arnold. Craig is a professor here at the University of Wyoming, and the university is also taking an active interest in finding him.

The search has been extended a few days, but help, support, and spreading the word are all still very appreciated.

I'm Sorry About the Tori Amos, too

2009-04-29T13:20:00.004-04:00

But what're you gonna do?

Farrah Field has made a juicy Gurlesque syllabus. A particularly inspired choice, Gremlins.

There's some neuron I've got to trace, connecting Gurlesque (and other feminist poetics, I'd suspect) to Haraway's companion species work.

And here are five poems by Farrah that Jeff & I got all hyped up about. Why didn't I buy Farrah's book at AWP? Next year, shopping list.

We Should All Have Trailers For Our Books

2009-04-17T19:51:00.002-04:00

Maximum Gaga from Josef Horáček on Vimeo.

You Cannot be Inoculated

2009-04-07T13:33:00.004-04:00

If you scroll down to the podcast player at Bloof Books, you'll find Todd Colby, Reb Livingston, Michael Schiavo, and Peter Davis reading some beauts. Poems from Anne, Shanna, Sandra, and myself abound. And links will take you to Ada Limon's blog where you can find Jen Knox posting as well, or to Anne Boyer's Odalisqued, in case you have some socks you've desperately been trying to knock off.

In other news, 8.3% of US American adults have contracted poetry in the past year. While Newsweek notes that the rate of infection has decreased over the past decade, the epidemic is by no means under control, and the virus itself grows stronger. We must turn our attention to its potential mutations, as "poetry seems likely to persist, in one form or another."

Poets House Showcase

2009-04-03T23:10:00.003-04:00

If you're in NYC, and would like some face time with this year's 2000+ poetry related titles, check out the Poets House Showcase. Zorba is there, along with the others from Bloof.

The 17th Annual Poets House Showcase
April 4-11, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4, 1:00–4:00pm
Exhibit Hours: Saturday, April 4-11, during regular library hours

Catch an eyeful of what's happening in poetry today with this divergent, cacophonous display of all the new poetry and poetry-related books published in the United States in the last year. From micro-press chapbooks to masterworks from major commercial publishers, over 2,000 titles share shelf space for one week.

NaPoWriMo at Bloof Books Blog

2009-04-02T02:38:00.002-04:00

Over at Bloof, you'll find us participating in the poem a day NaPoWriMo madness. I hear there are podcasts to come, and in the meantime, an embarrassment of riches from Anne Boyer, Shanna Compton, Jen Knox, Sandra Simonds, and myself. Really, blush.

It's Probably not for Sale, but

2009-03-26T03:10:00.006-04:00

some folks are not "buying the Gurlesque," over at the fine Lemon Hound blog. Commence somewhat circuitous line of inquiry: This refutation seems to revolve around the idea that the subject position girl (or any grotesque performance thereof) cannot be occupied without demeaning or infantilizing oneself, and thus threatens, or perhaps offends, the feminist movement(s). Have I got that right?

Either way, I should point out that poets who work with the Gurlesque aesthetic do not all bank on girlhood or girl speakers. But yes plenty do, and plenty question whether or not the subject position woman/women ever escapes infantilizing cultural constructions (some day I'll draw the connection to "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm"). Perhaps this is where Joyelle McSweeney's comment about Gurlesque as "the rejection of empowerment" becomes pertinent. (Aside: I don't think anyone's ever suggested Joyelle herself writes Gurlesque poems.) (Aside: And I don't claim to speak for other Gurlesque poets--just about the aesthetic and the poets who employ its various tactics. 'Cause it's not a school or a movement--we do not, whoever we are, hang out and plan new lip-glossed-cattle-suited-grave-stinking-rat-fetus-femme-factories.)

Notably, a lot of these critiques suggest that Gurlesque won't, as Lemon Hound puts it, "bring us forward." I assume "us" is women or feminists and "forward" is closer to gender equality? I'm tempted to say that such critique relies on a reductive reading of the aesthetic and a dangerous notion about poetry's relationship to edification.

Another problem--I think critiques/critics need to distinguish between the various strains of theorizing Lara & Arielle do (which won't be available in full until the anthology's out), the burgeoning ideas Arielle's advanced up until this point, and the actual poems/poets identified as Gurlesque. When a person claims to be "bored" or "offended" by the Gurlesque, I'm never sure to whom or what she's referring. Heh heh, and some of the poets identified as Gurlesque have written poems explicitly intended to bore and offend, so then a positive review?

It's further strange to me when the critiques are made by those who provoke with the woman/dog or woman/monster parallel, who interrogate desire and violence, who identify as third-wave or po-mo-feminist, animate grotesque bodies, load their poems with small cuddly animals, and so on. What am I missing?

I'd also love to see some actual fem theory or feminist thinkers referenced if the value of Gurlesque as a feminist practice, a form of feminist poetics is going to be called into question...I've had the good fortune to bring Arielle & Lara to Wyoming, to bring the aesthetic in front of women's studies scholars, and it's met with excitement and interest. And perhaps some polite disinterest, of which I remain stubbornly unaware, but so far no one's suggested it's an offense to feminism, or likely to wreck the joint...and actually, the dissent among feminist poets is a point of interest. Which could yet use articulation, eh? So if anyone would like to spin it out further here or via e-mail or in a sequined placenta-dome, I'm game. And also quite interested in what Gurlesque's critics would view as positive or "forward" moving feminist poetics.

[Update: Lara dropped a note over at Lemon Hound, saying: "the Gurlesque is an entirely descriptive project, not proscriptive. In other words, Arielle and I are describing a set of aesthetic strategies/tendencies being engaged by a fairly disparate set of poets. We are not spearheading a movement or branding a product. I think the actual publication of the anthology (Spring 2010) will greatly clarify this." I think I've failed to articulate the descriptive/proscriptive difference as well as I should here, and am still considering what it might mean that these "tendencies" are being identified in such a broad range of so loosely, even un-connected poets...]

Noemi's Full-length Titles: Sing, Mongrel and Guardians of the Secret

2009-03-20T14:03:00.004-04:00

The first full-length titles are out from Noemi Press (which will publish my Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies later this year, thrills!). I can't wait to get my own, but if you'd like a preview you can check out this excerpt of Sing, Mongrel, or Claire Hero's work at La Petite Zine!

There's also another translation of Lila Zemborain's work. For those of you who haven't gotten hands on copy of Mauve Sea-Orchids, and so aren't yet jonesing for more, you can check out an excerpt from the new title here.

The Long Goodbye, La Petite Zine

2009-03-18T16:48:00.003-04:00

We're not sure what will happen with La Petite Zine now that Jeff & I are moving on (keep you posted!), but this recent review of The Best Online Literary Magazines in Every Writer's Resource makes us feel pretty good about the past seven years:

4. La Petite Zine http://www.lapetitezine.org/

We have said before that we do not like to see magazines judge writers by their bios, but looking at La Petite Zine for more than 2 minutes will tell you that the best of the best are submitting work to this online journal. Writers here publish with Tin House, Swink, American Letters and Commentary, and on and on. If you throw a stone on this site you hit a writer who has been published in an outstanding literary magazine. If this was all they do, it might honestly disqualify them from this list, but it isn’t. You can find many writers on the site who are publishing for the first time. The quality of work of both well-known and unknown writers is outstanding. Not enough can be said about the impact of a magazine like this on the status of online publications. This is why it has made it into the top 5.

The journal doesn’t boast its status, so it is easily overlooked. Their “about us” page consists of a picture of a sign that says “throw nothing into the sea,” and nothing more. The editors are a little flippant in revealing info about the journal, but they don’t have to. The work speaks for itself. Est. 1999 appeared in BAP in 2004.

Xantippe has Zorba's Number

2009-03-16T13:33:00.003-04:00

The first online issue of Kristen Hanlon's Xantippe is up, and Jesse Nissim contributed a kind and uncanny review of My Zorba. The issue also features reviews of Anne Boyer, Kim Hyesoon, and other treasures.

La Petite Zine, We Had a Good Run!

2009-03-15T23:18:00.003-04:00

We've finally launched issue #22 of La Petite Zine, and it's a stunner! After seven years and ten issues, Jeff and I have decided to step down as editors. Because LPZ is published by Web Del Sol, it'll go on and on and on and on... Our affectionate thanks to all y'all!

Issue 22, featuring: A.M.J. CRAWFORD, ABY KAUPANG, AMY CATANZANO, ANDREW LUNDWALL, BEN DOLLER, CLAIRE HERO, CURTIS RHODES & MONICA MCFAWN, EVIE SHOCKLEY, FARRAH FIELD, GEOFFREY CRUICKSHANK-HAGENBUCKLE, GRACIE LEAVITT, JILL BEAUCHESNE, JON LEON, K. SILEM MOHAMMAD, KARYNA MCGLYNN, KATHRYN L. PRINGLE, SANDRA SIMONDS, SARA NICHOLSON, SASHA STEENSEN, SHERMAN ALEXIE, and JEFFERY CONWAY & GILLIAN MCCAIN & DAVID TRINIDAD

Where's the funny?

2009-02-23T12:47:00.003-05:00

Over at Mark Wallace's blog, a Michael Theune review concerning third way poetics has been reprinted (that is, posted). In the comments box, among other interesting threads, Theune & Mlinko have an exchange on humor in middle-way and elliptical poetries. I've always thought it was strange that elliptical poets aren't read as more hilarious. Susan Wheeler has such comic timing! Burt initially sites Berryman & Dickinson as two of the elliptical predecessors, and I dunno, I laugh heartily when I read those terrifying, anxious, wilds. Also always have trouble with the term "elliptical," especially as used to describe poetry by women. It suggests a trailing off, a delicate elusiveness, where I think there are much louder crashing-ups. Which is not to fall into the wretch soft/hard binary. Something to puzzle, yet.

Good Things, from AWP

2009-02-20T23:57:00.004-05:00

I thought I would erratically post one at a time about some of the treats I brought home from AWP. Julia Cohen makes chapbooks solo & with Mathias Svalina. This one, The History of a Lake Never Drowns, she calls a "svelte little f*cker," and it is. From Dancing Girl Press (aside: lovely to finally meet publisher Kristy Bowen). Measured sylvan dismemberment, peculiar relationship to physical absence, maybe a little kin to DeLillo's The Body Artist. I think my favorite title: "There is a Naked Body up There & I Need to Touch It."

If you didn't know this, you must not've had a sister

2009-02-18T16:17:00.003-05:00

and she must not have locked you, tiny boy, in the rabid poodle's cage and called you sweetums and fed you Cat Chow wrapped in Carefree bubblegum, classic bubblegum flavor. You must never have been so adorable. Here, let's bring you up to speed. Lara Glenum has a piece on Aase Berg, gurlesque, grotesque, burlesque, so forth at the jam-packed with treasures new issue of Action, Yes.

Berg’s poem radically upends the notion that women, young girls in particular, are free from sadistic compulsion and cruelty, burrowing into the heart of the dialectic between cuteness and violence. The preoccupation of pre-adolescent girls with all things cute, perhaps, speaks not to their attraction to things that mirror their own innocence but to things that mirror their own abjection and fear of further deformity; it reflects the degree to which they have already found themselves stripped of significant social agency. Cuteness, then, far from being a harmless aesthetic category, reveals a state of acute deformity.

Krill-Coating Shampoo Poetry

2009-02-15T23:54:00.004-05:00

Shampoo Poetry's Issue 35 is up, guest-edited by the outrageous & super smart Ronald Palmer, who was kind enough to include two of my banshees.

Zorba Makes Coldfront's Year in Review

2009-01-06T20:45:00.003-05:00

Coldfront reviews the WHOLE year! Check out their picks for best books, best lines, worst covers...

My Zorba made the Best Second Book list, along with press-mate Shanna Compton:

Best Second Book

For Girls (& Others), Shanna Compton
cognitive behavioral therapy, Tao Lin
My Zorba, Danielle Pafunda
Irresponsibility, Chris Vitiello
Picture Palace, Stephanie Young

Bloof Books Special for Poets in Need!

2009-01-03T02:24:00.003-05:00

BLOOF BUNDLE SPECIAL: JANUARY 2009

Warsaw Bikini by Sandra Simonds
My Zorba by Danielle Pafunda
For Girls (& Others) by Shanna Compton
Drunk by Noon by Jennifer L. Knox

FREE SHIPPING...
plus $5 from each bundle purchase goes to benefit Poets in Need

That's 4 books for the price of 3, free shipping, and a charitable cause we
can all get behind. What's not to love? Already have one of the books? They make excellent gifts / warnings / party hats / mace substitutes / tiger bait /
$45.00

If you click on door 16

2008-12-16T22:35:00.003-05:00

You'll find a couple from me.

My Zorba, Finalist for St. Louis Post Dispatch Best Books of 2008

2008-12-07T15:26:00.003-05:00

Kind words about me, and other finalists here at STLtoday:

My Zorba by Danielle Pafunda (Bloof Books, 80, $15). Pafunda sees the world through her own eyes and through those of her male alter ego, Zorba. The result is a manic internal dialogue that becomes as schizophrenic and fragmented as the postmodern world it inhabits. Considering this poetry's dual citizenship in the classical era and the information age, its fragmentary style is particularly effective.

Considering the fine company, I'm honored to be a finalist, but Zorba's already extricating his/her ceremonial gown from the mothballs.

Delirious Advent

2008-12-01T15:28:00.003-05:00

Susana Gardner's made something gorgeous for Delirious Hem. Go check out the Advent Kalendar. A new selection each day; better than stale German chocolate, even.

Writing in from Rabid Cuddle

2008-12-01T15:21:00.003-05:00

Johannes and Joyelle have made a manifesto. Go find out where to put your body, and which one at Johannes's blog: http://exoskeleton-johannes.blogspot.com/2008/11/find-us-with-lemurs-soft-surrealism.html

"1. We admit a fatso poetry, lemur poetry, disabled poetry, språkgrotesk. A softness, malformation, which may be penetrated, distended by multiple languages from multiple directions, which is a process, which undermines hierarchies of wellness and illness, ability and disability, which is becoming, minor and non-exemplary."

Fou Deux!

2008-11-03T12:03:00.002-05:00

FOU 2

Tony Aarts * Ana Božičević * Heather Christle * Adam Clay * Peter Davis * Denise Duhamel * Adam Fell * Emily Kendal Frey * Brian Henry * Brad Liening * Chris Martin * Clay Matthews * Corey Messler * Danielle Pafunda * Matthew Savoca * Michael Schiavo * Brandon Shimoda * Mathias Svalina * Chad Sweeney * Bronwen Tate * Dara Wier * Joshua Marie Wilkinson

The Home Video Review of Books

2008-11-03T12:00:00.003-05:00

I'm in some astounding company at The Home Video Review of Books
Volume 1, Issue 1

www.thehomevideoreviewofbooks.blogspot.com

In this Issue:
Reviews of:

Kristi Maxwell's Realm Sixty-Four
Eugene Ostashevsky's The Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza
Alex Lemon's Hallelujah Blackout
Abraham Smith's Whim Man Mammon
Anselm Berrigan's Have a Good One
Selah Saterstrom's The Meat and Spirit Plan
Jay Wright's Polynomials and Pollen
Danielle Pafunda's My Zorba
Tisa Bryant's Unexplained Presence
K. Silem Mohammad's Breathalyzer
Jasper Bernes' Starsdown
Rauan Klassnik's Holy Land

Editors:
Julia Cohen & Mathias Svalina

Staff Reviewers:
Stephanie Sherman, Ken Rumble, Jon Pack, Jayna Maleri

Kind Words at the BAP blog

2008-09-24T15:05:00.004-04:00

You know Julia Cohen, whose poetry'll give you the jealous swoons ("Bury your beard on the porch where I first found it"!)? I met her ever so briefly at KGB, and here she writes up the KGB reading, with a hearty helping of Zorba, and also I am pretty sure that all the rest of the audience members, like I am, are collecting the ingredients to make a "Salad."

Me, Michael Quattrone (an elegant host!), and Caroline Knox.

Good Things

2008-09-23T12:49:00.003-04:00

1. Caroline Knox, with whom I had the great pleasure of reading at KGB bar last night, impressive to no end and so very smart (that is intelligent, sharp, savvy, wise and wry), also made me laugh soda out my nose cafeteria style when she read "Salad" from the Wave Books published Quaker Guns (shouldn't Jeff Clark have himself a Quemadura exhibition? gorgeous!).

2. Laura Sims is giving me a run for my creepy creepy money with her new serial killer project. A second book, Stranger, is due out from Fence not too far down the line...I saw Mathias last night (so nice of him to come!), who reminded me about an excerpt from Stranger at Octopus.

3. If you've been living in a cave, and the cave is underground, and there are stacks of newspapers dating back to 100 BC blocking the entrance to this cave underground, then perhaps you don't know how hilarious and brilliant are Sharon Mesmer and Nada Gordon. I'm a lucky lucky poet this week. Shanna made us incredible vegan cookies, and read that poem where she fake-cries, and I fall for it every time. Every. Time.

NYC KGB & Bloof Readings 9/20, 9/22

2008-09-15T16:48:00.003-04:00

Saturday, September 20 at 3:30 PM in Brooklyn

Nada Gordon ("flamboyantly brillant!")
Sharon Mesmer ("mesmerizingly genius!")
Danielle Pafunda ("V.C. Andrews-creepy!")
Laura Sims ("utterly astounding!")

Hosted by Shanna Compton ("winningly self-effacing!")

Unnameable Books ("easily the best bookstore ever!")
456 Bergen Street
Brooklyn, NY

FREE, including refreshments. A party in the middle of the day...why not?

(Subway: Any train that goes to Atlantic Hub)

+++++

Monday, September 22 at 7:00 PM in Manhattan

Danielle Pafunda & Caroline Knox
Hosted by Laura Cronk & Michael Quattrone

KGB Bar
85 East 4th Street
FREE

Subway: 6 to Astor Place or F/V to 2nd Ave

Good Things

2008-08-09T17:38:00.003-04:00

1. Dodie Bellamy's Belladodie brand new blog is indeed as good, smart, and necessary as you thought it would be when you sighed to yourself, if only Dodie Bellamy would start blogging. This week, the talk's about Ariana's Coeur de Lion (check the link below), which has been getting a lot of well-deserved airtime. There's a toothsome thoughtful comment from David Rylance, whom I had not before come across in blogland, that appears as a post. Great thoughts on Ariana, Chelsey Minnis, the female body's bondage to "ugly feelings."

2. I am rereading Hannah Arendt's On Violence, which gives me fits, paroxysms, brainstorms, and sometimes inflames the bratty superiority of baby boomer offspring. That latter, I'm keeping in check, but the rest has me gunning for a forum on hyperbolic violence in women's poetry. Will probably run it over at Delirious Hem. I'll sometime soon go harvesting participants in those circles I frequent, but if you're curious, do get in touch.

Good Things

2008-07-31T15:36:00.005-04:00

1. Apostrophe Cast! "Welcome to Apostrophe Cast, and this episode, to the exquisite hideousness of Alissa Nutting. Nutting's suburban feminist gothic prances over manicured lawns through palaces of neglect and dementia in which tracheotomies, self-produced teen porn and routine abortions are rites of passage from a childhood without innocence to an adulthood without maturity. Ms. Nutting's story, "I Feel Nothing 4U," is witty, charming and incredibly disturbing." Interview between Alissa & me? Here.

2. Johannes Goransson's Dear Ra is here. It hits the grotesque, sublime, uncanny, and awkward in equal fevered measure. If you live at high altitudes, do watch out for the breathless.

3. Ariana Reines Coeur de Lion is a love poem. Love = exquisite gruesome fistchest , poem = post-paroxysm field. See newer poems from same human at Bruce Covey's new Coconut.

Now at Delirious Hem, Gurlesque! Part 3 of 3

2008-07-17T22:51:00.003-04:00

Head to Delirious Hem, and you will find the rest of my conversation on the Gurlesque with Arielle Greenberg, and links a'plenty guiding you to the blogosphere action.

My Psychedelic Sermon

2008-07-17T22:48:00.001-04:00

Now, at Apostrophe Cast:

We are proud to present Danielle Pafunda reading a creative lecture. With dizzying erudition, she delights us at the intersection of poetry and scholarship, biology and criticism. The effect is something like a psychedelic sermon. Please enjoy Danielle Pafunda.

Click here for an interview with Danielle Pafunda and Alissa Nutting.

Good Things

2008-07-07T22:51:00.005-04:00

1. Starting in August, I've the honor of being Visiting Assistant Professor of English, creative writing, and women's studies at University of Wyoming. Hats a'plenty, and I'm already driving friends and fam nuts with my mid-conversation syllabus epiphanies. Do not call me, unless you want to hear me say, "yes, the weather is very--Judith Halberstam! That's it!" If you don't know much about UWyo's MFA program, check it out! The faculty, huzzah! And guess who will be among this year's visitors. Salman Rushdie will be here in September, and Joy Williams will be here all year long as Eminent Writer in Residence. Swoon worthy.

2. A juicy parley on the Gurlesque over at Johannes's blog. I'm holding my tongue a bit, waiting for the thrillsville anthology that Arielle Greenberg & Lara Glenum are editing (Saturnalia 2009), and since the third segment of my conversation with Arielle will be out in another week or so. Suffice to say, while I'm not in agreement with all parties (and quite befuddled by some of the comments), I'm enjoying the lively investigation. The ever-smarty K. Lorraine Graham is thinking on it, too, and Jilly Dybka talks about what her work has going on that's most Mars.

3. Hair hats, as the above. Alissa sent me this.

New at Delirious Hem: Gurlesque Part 2 of 3

2008-06-25T02:40:00.001-04:00

The second part of my conversation with Arielle Greenberg on the Gurlesque! Here if you've already read the first installment.

Kind Words Abound Zorba

2008-06-25T02:32:00.003-04:00

From the Bloof Books newsies:

A perceptive review of Danielle Pafunda's My Zorba by Caroline Depalma may be found in Coldfront:

Pafunda addresses you indirectly; she relies on shocked fragments, on jagged rhythms and imagery [...] on your ability to intuit a whole, not your ability to apportion its parts. There are times when you won’t know what the speaker is getting at just yet. Mirrors reflect the most insignificant details right beside the ostensibly significant. Does this require too much imagining on our part? Is it worth the leap? Lay your cash on the table beside her hairbrush and hatchet; this isn’t a disappointing gamble.

Another astute, yet different, take on My Zorba appears in Tarpaulin Sky by John Findura:

The book vacillates between the drawbridge and the gangplank, just as Zorba morphs between a “he” and a “she.” As each poem unfolds, there is a sign of welcome, but as quickly as it is noticed, next to it is the gangplank leading us off into the murky depths. It is an apt metaphor for reading this book as each turn of the page sucks us in deeper.

Denver House Party Reading!

2008-06-13T19:57:00.003-04:00

Noah Eli Gordon & partner Sarah are hosting a house party reading salon type deal on Saturday June 14th. If you'd like the address, drop me a line, or get in touch with Noah!

Things will begin at 7pm.

Feel free to bring snacks, beverages, and friends.

Readings by Barbara Barg, Bhanu Kapil, Bin Ramke, Danielle Pafunda, and Trevor Calvert.

Bhanu Kapil is a French cat, on the verge of becoming a real dog. A new U.S. citizen, she is looking forward to writing an American book, an American poem. It's as if all the writing before this doesn't count. And, it doesn't. Written in passage, or years after arrival, it doesn't matter unless you stay. A literature of stay. She is the author of The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works, 2006), and Humanimal, a project for future children (forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press).

Bin Ramke’s ninth book Tendril was recently published by Omnidawn. Some the origami swans he’d made at our pervious house readings can be found on a ledge in our kitchen.

Danielle Pafunda is the author of My Zorba (Bloof), Pretty Young Thing (Soft Skull), and the forthcoming Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies (Noemi). She’s recently moved to Wyoming . Her poems have been chosen three times for Best American Poetry (2004, 2006, and 2007). She is coeditor of the online journal La Petite Zine.

Trevor Calvert is a poet living in Oakland, California where he is finishing his Masters of Library and Information Science. His first book, Rarer and More Wonderful (Scrambler Books, 2008) was published in May. His poems have appeared in in*tense, syllogism, 580 Split, BlazeVox, and the anthologies Involuntary Vision and Bay Poetics. This is his first time visiting Colorado. We have it from a reliable source that he is some kind of ninja, but uses his skills only for good.

Barbara Barg, grew up in a small town in Eastern Arkansas and moved to New York City after college where she became a several-times-recognized-in-a-coffee-shop poet/musician on the downtown poetry/music scene. Currently, she's a singer/songwriter/drummer with the Denver band Coyote Poets of the Universe. She also conducts a sensory/creativity/focus/energy/joy enhancing workshop: Voluntary Evolution (www.voluntaryevolution.com). She is the author of The Origin of The Species from Semiotext(e).

Pilcrow Lit Fest Chicago: May 22-25

2008-05-18T13:18:00.002-04:00

For four days in May, Pilcrow Lit Fest will bring authors, writers, poets, librarians, booksellers, and publishers from around the country together in support of small presses and independent media through small workshops, panel discussions, lectures and author readings.

There will be parties, readings, workshops, and panels. All galore. I'll be around for the festivities, and on this panel:

Saturday May 24th
Trader Todd's, upstairs
3216 N Sheffield Ave Chicago, IL 60657
5:00-5:45

The Poem Is The Event: Not all fiction. Not all non-fiction.
Moderator: Peter Davis
Panelists: Bruce Covey, Larry O. Dean, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Adam Deutsch, Danielle Pafunda, Laura Van Prooyen, Laural Winter

Good Things, a New Enterprise

2008-05-18T10:00:00.001-04:00

1. The Widow Party

"...The main action of The Widow Party was scripted by Johannes Göransson, based on visions revealed in a semi-comatose conflation after a carcrash following a hazardous homejourney after the 2007 MLA. With Joyelle McSweeney and Jen Karmin in a pas de deux for the miracle twins Hannie Oakley and Annie Weiner, and Patrick Durgin performing a Declamation which will be an explanation and evaluation of all that has come before. With two Widows, a Reporter, Crash, Walter Cronkite, You, Satchmo, Lisa Janssen and James Shea in alarming and supporting roles..."

It's not done yet. It's vaudeville sci-fi, and it'll pluck your heart out, fill it with crickets, put it back in your chest. Keep looking over your shoulder.

2. by Christine Hume, from Ugly Duckling. Includes sound collage CD. Rhythm is bacterial.

Verse Daily has My Sea Legs

2008-05-12T16:01:00.001-04:00

You can read here, today, which tomorrow will be a new wonder.

Or permanently, here.

If you like this slice, you may buy the whole cake here. Or here.

Women Poets on Mentorship arrives!

2008-04-17T15:01:00.004-04:00

From Rachel Zucker (and Arielle Greenberg):

Women Poets on Mentorship is a collection of 24 essays by young women poets about living women poets that have inspired or mentored them. The essays are funny, articulate, touching, and sometimes gossipy.

From the jacket:

The poets in this collection describe a new kind of influence, one less hierarchical, less patriarchal, and less anxious than forms of mentorship in the past. Vivid and intelligent, these twenty-four essays explore the complicated nature of the mentoring relationship, with all its joys and difficulties, and show how this new sense of writing out of female experience and within a community of writers has fundamentally changed women's poetry.

We hope this anthology will be of great interest to poetry enthusiasts, feminists, readers and writers (and we hope everyone in the world fits into at least one of these categories!).

Here is the link to Amazon.

The link to the University of Iowa page.

Please buy the book and buy another for a friend. And, if you like it, consider writing us a short amazon review (we've heard that helps with sales). If you are interested in teaching the book or reviewing the book, please let me know and I can pass your request along to Iowa.

Thank you all so much!

Rachel (and Arielle)

And in case you're wondering: Jenny Factor on Marilyn Hacker, Beth Ann Fennelly on Denise Duhamel, Miranda Field on Fanny Howe, Katie Ford on Jorie Graham, Daphne Gottlieb on the Circle of Mentorship, Matthea Harvey on Anna Rabinowitz, Kirsten Kaschock on Being Non-mentored, Joy Katz on Sharon Olds, Katy Lederer on Lyn Hejinian, Valerie Martínez on Joy Harjo, Erika Meitner on Rita Dove, Jennifer Moxley on Susan Howe, Aimee Nezhukumatathil on Naomi Shihab Nye, Mendi Lewis Obadike on Toi Derricotte, Danielle Pafunda on Susan Wheeler, Kristin Prevallet on Anne Waldman, Cin Salach on Maureen Seaton, Robyn Schiff on Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Kathy Lou Schultz on Myung Mi Kim, Eleni Sikelianos on Alice Notley, Tracy K. Smith on Lucie Brock-Broido, Elizabeth Treadwell on Paula Gunn Allen, Crystal Williams on Lucille Clifton, and Rebecca Wolff on Molly Peacock

My Zorba can be yours, now.

2008-04-13T23:15:00.000-04:00

You can buy it HERE! Amazon, Powell's, etc. coming soon.

Want to review? Bloof, or I will send you a free one. Pink and hatchety and full of something like love.

April 7 2008

2008-04-08T01:31:00.001-04:00

On the Bearskin Rug in Front of the Fire I Construct the Following Tableau:

I decapitate the ceiling of its ceiling fan. Invert fan, set great-great-granny atop. Mount her atop. From her mouth drips the pull chain. Pull it, and out pops the wolf’s head, bare in some spots, mange-ridden, rid of teeth, one eye vacant and the other eye boiling. Pull it twice, and out pops the lumberjack, crammed deep his own axe. Set the lights to blazing, the blades to spinning, and great-great-granny rises like Shiva. Narrate: A long for the ride.

[tour notes, gush-thanks, and surprises to follow, but meanwhile not to fall behind NaPoWriMo]

Pre-Tour NaPoWriMo April 1 2008!

2008-04-02T12:46:00.006-04:00

NaPoWriMo begins this week, and the Bloof comrades and I will be posting from the road here: http://www.bloofbooks.com/news.html I join the tour tomorrow (check out all our readings you Midwestern darlings, and NYC, get yourself ready!).
**********************************************************

Delirious Hem: Poetics, Live

2008-02-13T15:04:00.003-05:00

The first installment is up at Delirious Hem:

Organized by Elizabeth Treadwell, Being several & a few responses to the trio of "Numbers Trouble" articles in last fall's Chicago Review, featuring:

Esther Belin, Susan Briante, David Buuck, CAConrad, Michelle Detorie, Tonya Foster & Evie Shockley [essay to come], Rachel Levitsky, Joyelle McSweeney, Sina Queyras, Linda Russo, Sandra Simonds, Carmen Giménez Smith, Elizabeth Treadwell, and Catherine Wagner.

What is it, Delirious Hem?

Some of us wished the women poets we admired would write more about poetry and poetics, experimental, post-avant. Some of them weren’t writing about these things at all. Why not? They’re busy, some of us surmised. Some of them were writing about these things, but some of us were greedy, and wanted them to write more. Some of them were men, and some of us wanted some of them to write about experimental women poets, gender performativity on the page, masculinity via grotesque, etc. Wanted some of them to write about some of these things more/at all.

What if some of us built a platform? What if the parameters were informal, relatively boundless? What if the form invited conversation and huzzah?

But some of us are busy, too. Some of us can’t possibly fit one more dish on our plates, and some of us can’t possibly spin one more plate in the air, and some of us can’t possibly...

Well, here’s what some of us offer all of us: It’s a blog, it’s a poetics journal, it’s a platform. From time to time, a post will appear. It will be written by or with a poet whom some of us were curious to hear from. It will be exciting, provocative, fresh, or bombastic. It will go with your eyes and it will make you look ten years younger. It will never stop stop making sense, it will always love you, it will probably work.

Discussion in the comment boxes below is ecstatically encouraged, with the understanding not all members of Pussipo are likely to agree on any given topic (oh how rare, and how delicious the disagreements too), not all contributors herein are members of Pussipo, each contributor is the rightful possessor of her or his own opinion, and some contributors may be more inclined to respond to comments directed their way than others. Which is just to say what should be obvious: We are various. We aim to mix it up.

Welcome to Delirious Hem.

La Petite Zine Issue 21!

2008-01-27T16:31:00.000-05:00

First Loves, New Loves, Pretty Mamas, and Old Men,

La Petite Zine Issue #21 is here. We swear, the entire time we're cross-country moving, reproducing, dissertation writing, and future sussing, we're thinking of you. Contributors, submitters, readers, and friends, you've been patient with us. A token, more like a behemoth of our appreciation, we've loaded this issue with old friends, new finds, and beds shaped like clam shells. Look for us at AWP, and we'll give you a magnet with a Queen Naked Mole rat extolling our virtues (see fig 1).

Meanwhile, come give some love, get some love:

Adam Peterson, Alissa Nutting, Anne Heide, Ashley VanDoorn, Chris Schmidt, Daniel Borzutzky, Deborah Woodard, Dora Malech, Emily Frey, Gregory Lawless, James Pate, John Boettcher, Kristin Aardsma, Kiki Petrosino, Kristy Bowen, Lucas Farrell, Mark Bibbins, Matina Stamatakis, Paige Taggart, Phillip Griffith, Robyn Art, Ronald Palmer, Sara Levine, and Stefi Weisburd

InteReview
Shin Yu Pai & Sightings Interviewed by Rick Benjamin

Serial! Serial!
Kristen Iskandrian

warmly,
Jeff and Danielle

Bloof Books Pageantry, and then some!

2008-01-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

See post below for more details!!

Bloof No Tell & Coconut Break the Reading Mold

2008-01-11T17:18:00.001-05:00

Or perhaps scrape the mold off the marathon model. What does that mean? What are we doing? At very least, it'll be quite silly, and at very best we will wear costumes. In any case, fab poetry and good spirits (of all types) will abound!

Friday February 1, 8pm at Stain Bar in Williamsburg Brooklyn 766 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211(L to Grand,1 block west)718/387-7840

Come see me, my fellow Bloof Books authors Shanna Compton and Jennifer L. Knox, Coconut and No Tell authors galore. We'll warm you up and make you giggle, and maybe even swoon. Looking wonderfully forward to it!

Stain Bar proclaims itself: "so cozy, you'll never want to leave." A "unique arts lounge dedicated to local products and talent" and soft pretzels, wow! Apparently on the 31, the bar is hosting an "Army of Bjork" costume party, so maybe we can borrow the leftover swan gowns and braid nests.

For Girls, On Girls, And the Sisters are DIYing it for Themselves

2008-01-11T02:28:00.001-05:00

On Lemon Hound, you will find a poem from Shanna Compton's gorgeous new For Girls (Bloof Books), a list of contemporary women poets you might like to add to your shelf, and what's looking to be some sanguine and sage advice on DIY publishing.

Pond ering

2007-11-01T12:01:00.000-04:00

I join Andrea Brady, Geraldine Monk, Evie Shockley, Emily Critchley, Jow Lindsay, and Stephanie Young in Jacket 34:

Post-Marginal Positions:
Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community
A Cross-Atlantic Forum — Moderated by Catherine Wagner

http://jacketmagazine.com/34/wagner-forum.shtml

No Tell Ya Before it's to Late

2007-10-19T09:25:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from the new project at No Tell Motel this week!

Chicago A Go Go Go

2007-08-24T00:27:00.000-04:00

Dear Snowbirds and Lake Effects,

I've been lucky enough (charged and thrilled!) to be invited to Columbia College Chicago as spring 2008 Poet-in-Residence. If you live in the windy city, breeze through it, or otherwise have some low-down, give a call?

New Press News

2007-05-17T11:01:00.000-04:00

In April 2008, Bloof Books will publish my second book My Zorba. Thrills!

Flap Yer Yap at Action Yes

2007-05-17T10:49:00.000-04:00

New discussion forums to add your too sense to:

Why I Opt for a Postmodern Ethic; a Specifically Grotesque, Uncanny and/or Sublime Strategy; Physical Pain; a Speaker Who Wears Human Drag; Childbirth; a Planet that is not Necessarily in Outer Space:
by Danielle Pafunda

...........The Manner in Which Pain Becomes Me
A fistula wrote a pamphlet. He claimed that the males of the species were stalking him. He claimed to be ignorant of their whereabouts at the time of the writing. He found a pair of their shoes clutched in the arms of a sodden homo erectus. He compared the soles of the shoes to the prints outside his window. He found their tissues in his garden. “What they want,” said the fistula, “is a repeat performance.” He claimed that the male of the species was doing it for his own good. He claimed that the theater was musty, its curtains vulgar, and he emptied its costume loft into a bin marked rubbish.

A calcified fetus wrote a pamphlet. It claimed to have been present at the hour the siren began deafening the village. It claimed to be a black woman’s problem. It claimed to be a Ukranian grandmother’s snuff box. In its humble opinion, it couldn’t imagine a more spacious turf. It refused to give up its box seats at the opera. To be jolly, it said, one must never cede...........

And fine work on excess by Anne Boyer, Lara Glenum, Johannes Goransson, K. Silem Mohammad, and Jed Rasula.

La Petite Zine Stealth Issue #20

2007-05-17T10:39:00.000-04:00

With all the international moves, new babies, PhD exams, and extraterrestrial cavorting, you might've been to busy to check out La Petite Zine Issue #20. Take a breather, reanimate, and get Frankenstein with:

Adam Clay, Amina Cain, Amish Trivedi, Ashley Vandoorn, Carol Novack, Daniela Olszewska, Don Mee Choi, Elizabeth Hughey, Gordon Massman, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Kristi Maxwell, Kristy Odelius, Lesley Jenike, Nate Pritts, Sandra Miller, Sarah Vap, and Sean Kilpatrick.

Plus: A serialized release from Kristen Iskandrian; the legacy continues with Justin Marks, Hayley Heaton, David Sewell, and Cate Peebles; and our new InteReviews featuring Andrea Baker & Eve Grubin on Grubin's Morning Prayer and Jen Tynes & Erica Howsare on their The Ohio System.

Meet us in the engine room. Current mood: zing.

xo,
Danielle and Jeff

LA PETITE ZINE ISSUE #20, FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE, INVEST IN IT, WATCH IT PROGRESS, SELL IT FOR A PRETTY PENNY.

A note on our new sections:

We have been haunting the circuits of La Petite Zine for five years now, and we find it time for an expansion of sorts. In this issue, you will find our new InteReview section, wherein interview and review collide and poetics, potentials, manifestos emerge. You’ll find a Nepotism Depot, as we travel to our alma mater and shake out a sample of what’s shaking among the current New School darlings. Between this issue and #22, you’ll be able to thrill to our first serialized release, Kristen Iskandrian’s curious, dazzling “The School.” Future issues will featurette slices of the English and Canadian experimental poetry scenes, quarantine the hot hot hotties under twenty-five, and delve into particular aesthetic strategies Iron-Chef-style.

As always, we’re accepting beauts and brutes of all manners. Query with the inchoate, and we’ll be glad to consider.

________________________________________________________

Postmodernism does not create an ethical vacuum, and/or please stop handing me that Baudrillard snack cake.

Postmodernism cannot be reduced to a single-celled organism. Like all theoretical categories (feminism, romanticism, X), the category postmodernism entertains a gaggle of tactics, which do not all operate in tandem (though some do), and do not all hold fast to the most dogmatic and hyperbolic postmodern position (though some do). Haraway, Foucault, Butler , Anna Tsing, D&G, for example, provide theories that convert smartly into glossy-hided hydra-headed praxes of possibility. You/I/we = the brokers of conversion.

So, grim prophetsm, keep crying endtimes! Queasy birds, take fright and—if you must—weave the nest rife with caricatures of connection. The rest of us, sleeves and sleaze rolled, ticker on, tentacles flexed, get down to the subterranean business. Pack your neo-decadence, modesty, fastidiousness. Your uteri, spleen, excess, brevity. Pack your surprises, organs, and strategies. Take the earnest wig from its case, screw the ironic monocle to its peeper. Trimmings overflow our aesthetic flux. Dig deep for the adjective that temporarily stuns the quickening. Where hybrid formerly arrowed original, we see nothing but fields of hybridity. That is, nothing but micro-historical mish-mash. Shine the nexus, meet me in the engine room.

Editor D

current mood: moody

current mood: trifle

current mood: brooding rifle

current mood: rooting for you

current mood: in your corner

current mood: cornered

current mood: technically

current mood: zing

current mood: do you hear something ringing? I think the neighbors are ar it again. Seriously, do they ever stop? I mean, that's loud, right? Can you hear that? Unbelievable.

current mood: sleeping naked

current mood: ashamed

current mood: in need of permission to not feel ashamed

current mood: in debt

current mood: many diplomas

current mood: mini diplomatic moments

current mood: a new daddy

current mood: can I possibly embarass a fetus?

current mood: waited too long to see Pan's Labrynth, was good but not

current mood: never want to give my opinion on music again

current mood: never want to post a blog, never want to defend myself on-line, tired of 16 year olds logging on to call me fat, tired of forty year olds assuming I'm in some cabal of popularity, wait, John Ashbery's on the phone, he's a big March Madness fan, we're going to do a big wang thang (his words) with jalapeno poppers and ranch dip. Go Minutemen! Wait, what do you mean they had a good football team this year? John, say it ain't true! Hold on, I've got Lyn Hejinian on the other line.

current mood: never

current mood: coining the phrase "Twistery" for any movie thriller or TV show during sweeps

current mood: willing

current mood: me:brooding boy on L platform
you: breakdancer performing to Can's "Vitamin C"
we shared a moment, let's share a lifetime?

Editor J

Pussipo at Eyedrum Wednesday February 28th 8-10pm, AWP Atlanta Kickoff Reading

2007-02-07T14:23:00.000-05:00

Pussipo is a high-octane collective of 160 women poets who view poetry as an act of skilled knife-throwing. As founder Anne Boyer notes, “Pussipo is SUPPOSED to wreck you.” Pussipo’s members hail from across the U.S. and Canada, and 20 of them will erect their carnivalesque midway at the sensational arts venue EYEDRUM (in The Mattress Factory), 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive (corner of Hill St.) in Atlanta (a five-minute cab ride from the AWP conference hotel) on Wednesday, February 28th 8-10pm. Get to town early, and come one, come all to the spectacle. Witness them sing loud their dynamo engines. Don’t bring anything you’re not prepared to lose. Preview show coming soon at Delirious Hem!

Books, manifestos, spangly creatures for sale, gift, and thrill! Suggested donation teeny-tiny $2 at the door. Readers include:
Rosa Alcala, Anne Boyer, Susan Briante, Catherine Daly, Lara Glenum, Kate Greenstreet, elen gebreab, Janet Holmes, Kirsten Kaschock, Amy King, Reb Livingston, T.A. Noonan, Danielle Pafunda, Meghan Punschke, Evie Shockley, Sandra Simonds, and Sarah Vap

Eyedrum's - 290 MLK Jr. Dr. SE, Suite 8, Atlanta, GA 30312, at the corner of Hill St. and M.L.K. Jr. Dr. 3 blocks west of historic Oakland Cemetery, on the west end of the Old Mattress Factory complex. Enter the chain linked gate, opposite DaddyD'z BBQ (the gate is open when Eyedrum is), look for the orange Silo drum just outside our door.

From downtown, heading east on Decatur Street / Dekalb Avenue
Turn right onto Bell Street / Hill Street
Turn left onto MLK Jr. Drive
Eyedrum entrance is immediately on left.
From downtown, heading east on Memorial Drive
Turn left onto Hill St.
Turn right onto MLK Jr. Drive
Eyedrum entrance is immediately on left.

Every Other Day

2007-02-07T14:15:00.000-05:00

Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean! You'll find my rendition at Every Other Day. Kate Greenstreet's fab primer of new poets. Where you'll hear me cajole:

If anyone would like to make me a sort of ravaged Victorian riding habit? Please?

Please?

~~Womb Poetry Vol.1 : Hives & Covens~~

2007-02-07T14:06:00.000-05:00

It's here, it's phenom! And I got to write an (m)essay; big thanks Michelle Detorie:

~*~Womb Poetry Vol.1 : Hives & Covens~*~

dedicated in memory to kari edwards

* t h r u m *

: kari edwards : Eileen Tabios : Barbara Jane Reyes : Elizabeth Treadwell : Ann Bogle : : Alison Cimino :Susan B.A. Somers-Willett : Amy King : Kristy Bowen : Julie Choffel : : J.B. Rowell : Ebony Golden : Jenna Cardinale : Juliet Cook : Susan Morrison-Kilfoyle : : Holaday Mason : Toti O'Brien : Jessica Schneider : Karen McBurney : Sunnylyn Thibodeaux : : Sarah Mangold : Meagan Evans : Jennifer Bartlett : Marcia Arrieta : Michele Miller : : Priscilla Atkins : Anne Elezebeth Pluto : Marie Buck : Michalle Gould : Anne Heide : : Susan Meyers : Melissa Eleftherion : Susan Settlemyre Williams : J. Elizabeth Clark :

* s p a r k l e *

: Danielle Pafunda : Kathryn Miller : Julia Drescher : k. lorraine graham : Karen McBurney : : Michelle Caplan : Marcia Arrieta : Ashley Smith : Annette Sugden : Christine Bruness :

* c h i m e *

: a chapbook by Julia Drescher :

Hang 'em High

2007-01-22T12:08:00.000-05:00

This from Editor Extraordinaire, Nate Pritts (and you'll find me in the EP section, thrills!):

Boys & Girls—

H_NGM_N #6 goes live today!

http://www.h-ngm-n.com

Featuring:

Poems from Katy Acheson • Anonymous • Robyn Art • Daniel Borzutzky • Jessica
Bozek • Michael Broder • Laura Cherry • Evan Commander • Mark DeCarteret •
Neil de la Flor & Maureen Seaton • Darcie Dennigan • Julie Doxsee • Elisa
Gabbert • Matt Hart • Anne Heide • Dan Hoy • Michael Jauchen • Robert Krut •
Justin Marks • Clay Matthews • John Pursley III • Mathias Svalina • Joshua
Marie Wilkinson • William D. Waltz • Wynn Yarbrough

A special section –THANK YOU, STEVE ORLEN – featuring 2 new poems from the
man, a review of his New & Selected & other contributions by Adrian Blevins,
Laura Cherry, Tony Hoagland, David Rivard & Martha Zweig.

Selection from longer works by Jim Goar, Viola Lee, Brent Pallas & Chris
Rizzo.

2 new EP Poets – Philip Jenks & Danielle Pafunda.

Fiction by traci o connor, Jason Ockert & Magdalen Powers.

&

essays & reviews: Tom Dvorske on Anthony McCann • Justin Marks on
Christopher Salerno • Gina Myers on 3 chapbooks • Brett Price on Richard
Meier • Clay Matthews on Ron Padgett & the Postmodern Sublime

All this plus a portfolio of artist Joey Slaughter’s work & some comix by
Sommer Browning!

http://www.h-ngm-n.com

*

Also today – the launch of COMBATIVES Vol. 1 #3 – a series of exquisite
corpses written by Sarah Lilius & Erin M. Bertram.

http://hngmn.squarespace.com/combatives/

As always, place one paypal order for Vol. 1 #3 & receive 3 copies of the
issue.

Because we like you lots & lots.

La Petite Zine Issue #19

2006-11-06T11:45:00.000-05:00

Vagabonds and Homebodies,

Greetings from down under--in Danielle's case, Chile; in Jeff's, the human construction site. Despite the excitement, we find time to think of you daily, and wish you were here on the sandy beaches of/in the historic city of/on the peak of Mount:

Anne Boyer, Brent Armendinger, Clayton A. Couch, Craig Morgan Teicher, Cynie Cory, Elizabeth Treadwell, Erin Martin, Estelle Boelsma, Hugh Steinberg, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Jasper Bernes, Jessica Dessner, Jonah Winter, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Julie Doxsee, Karyna McGlynn, Peter Davis, Sarah Goldstein, Sarah Mangold, Stefania Heim, Thomas Hummel, and Tony Trigilio.

(Estelle Boelsma)

La Petite Zine Issue #19
http://www.lapetitezine.org

kisses and misses,
Jeff and Danielle