Frippertronics and Writing

I think this could be a mode for production of poetic texts just as well as musical ones…the formal description of the Frippertronics method is here, but any variation of it could be applied to writing in general, with arbitrarily-repeating input (with any manner of modification) being re-input as new material is added.

The Best of What I’ve Read, Version 2011

This, this blogposting thing, is something I should do more often. A Year-end post is as good a place as any to start. Reading this year was a bit of a mess as far as documentation was concerned–I spent the summer away from home and neglected to pack the book in which I’ve been recording the books I’ve read since 1995.  But I’ll do my best to reconstruct.

These are in no particular order.  And I was going to have a list of at least ten, but here’s what I’ve got:

–The Avian Gospels by Adam Novy.  I reviewed this book earlier in the year for Cow Heavy, and the review will soon be on Lit Pub’s (wonderful, wonderful) site as well.  Wonderfully written, beautifully published, and worth rereading.

–Best European Fiction 2011, edited by Alexandar Hemon.  I’m working my way through the 2012 installment of this wonderful series (and that volume is sure to appear on next year’s best-of list), but the 2011 collection has astounding work, from a tale of artistic expression under the heel of political repression by Michal Ajvaz (honestly, more of his novels need to appear in translation),  to Frode Grytten’s beautifully portrayed dissolution of a marriage in “The Railway Station.”  It’s my hope that the inclusion of these authors in this anthology leads to more of their respective works to be translated into English for a wider readership.

–Normally Special by xTx. Appearances shall deceive.  Harrowing stuff for such a small book.  People on the bus will see you reading that brightly colored little thing and have no idea what you’re going through.  Get it get it.

–Poems for the Millennium, Vol. 1, Edited by Pierre Joris and Jerome Rothenberg.  This was my summer of avant-garde poetry, and at over 830 pages, this was a sizable chunk of that summer.  You’ll find important works here that you can find nowhere else in English, mainly because this is the first time they’ve been translated into English.  Representative work by important members of influential movements.

–Atomised, by Michele Houellebecq.  “…outside the strict confines of history, the ultimate ambition if this book is to salute the brave and unfortunate species which created us.  This vile, unhappy race, barely different from the apes, had such noble aspirations.  Tortured, contradictory, individualistic, quarrelsome, it was capable of extraordinary violence, but nonetheless never quite abandoned a belief in love.”  Houllebecq has been in the press quite a bit in the past year or so, and not only due to his mysterious disappearance.  I really was on the fence about putting this on the list, in that I didn’t like it.  This, however, seems a rather shallow determining factor, considering how much the book affected me after finishing it.  I thought about it for days.  Sure, it’s explicit.  Sure, it’s occasionally irrritating, but it’s unforgettable.

–The City, Our City by Wayne Miller.  A beautifully-unified collection of poems that explores the idea of City. My review of it appears in this month’s edition of The Sycamore Review, available now.

–The Book of Hours by Marianne Boruch.  This book is a departure of sorts for Boruch. The control, the intensity of her earlier work is here, applied to what could be seen as a book-length poem.  A series of untitled poems, in quatrains, that portray the events surrounding the death of her mother and the writer’s dialogue with herself on the dificulty of “how do I write this?  What do I do to get this to stick to paper?”  Beautifully written.

–The Songs and Stories of the Ghouls by Alice Notley.  I admit I’m a bit of a freak fan of Notley.  I don’t entirely understand what’s going on in all of her astonishingly-burgeoning oeuvre (her recent Reason and Other Women remains mostly opaque to me), but she’s interesting. Her classic Descent of Alette was the result of Notley wanting to write a feminine epic.  Such stories had been told only from the masculine point of view. This latest book grabs at women in mythology:  Dido, Medea.  “Nothing is changeable except for a myth.  Let’s change that.”  Power, even in the hands of women, was only there to give to men:  “No one really believes in her power, I assure you.  She is only allowed it as an adjunct to her passion.  She can’t just have it.  No woman is as yet allowed that.”

What I’m Reading: The Chronology of Water, by Lydia Yuknavitch

This is impressive and harrowing writing.  You can get it at The Lit Pub, the best thing to hit the small-press scene in centuries.

Oh Yes, I’m Sure My Life Was Well within Its Usual Frame…

Noelle Kocot and The Bigger World

Kocot’s wonderful new book is out, and my review is here. Click here to find her book online…

Narrative, As Determined by 4-year-olds, with Dolls.

What I’m Reading: J. A. Tyler’s A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed

Currently working on a review of J. A. Tyler’s latest book, brand-new and available through Fugue State Press, here, while the purple finches engage in turf wars with the sparrows at the feeder.

Fugue State is a wonderful small press, well worth your patronage.  Their offerings are here.

Featured book: The Avian Gospels, by Adam Novy

My review of Adam Novy’s wonderful dystopian novel is up at Cow Heavy Press, here.  It’s well worth picking up.

Here Are Things I Did.

It’s nice to say this:  I have some work out.  I’d meant to post on this a while ago, but single-digit temperatures and huddling in dark and quiet rooms kinda got in the way.  Of the pieces online that are out, I’ve got a poem that can be found at Disquieting Muses Quarterly. I have several in Willows Wept’s Fall issue, and hot off the microchips, I have two additional pieces that can be found in the Winter issue of Willows Wept.

Also published this month is a piece in Artifice Magazine, whose link appears in the column to the right.  I’ve been consistently amazed by the stuff they publish and it’s exciting for me to see my work there. And, come to think of it, you should really subscribe…

An interview with Poet Laureate Ted Kooser has also just come out in the new edition of Sycamore Review, available for purchase here. He was quite generous with his time, and it was fun getting a chance to chat and share a cinnamon roll.

There are more things coming down the pike.  Stay tuned…

Melville House’s New Catalogue

It looks like Melville House has a great, really great, 2011 planned, judging by the upcoming publications they’ve got in their catalogue. Not being able to see these folks at AWP is one of my big regrets.

Melville House, who have been quietly rereleasing Heinrich Böll’s novellas (and whose Art of the Novella series is worth your attention), along with Dalkey Archive, Open Letter, and Archipelago, publish some amazing literature in translation.  Melville House also has a great deal going on in that, if you pre-order a book, you get it 30 days before its official release date.