Coach Steve

Check out 3 minutes of video of Steven Zultanski reading at the Zinc Bar! He gets about halfway through his poem "My Best Friends".

Nude Arrivals

Today's new arrivals consist primarily of two volumes from bookartist Keith Smith, Text in the Book Format & Structure of the Visual Book. I had originally seen these at the Book Art Book Fair but as so many vendors were dealing only in cash, I had to prioritize, especially since these can be ordered very easily from Keith's website. They are hefty, beautiful tomes, even though they are paperbacks. Interestingly, you could also order these as folded & gathered sheets in addition to the Smythe-sewn paperback. I haven't had much time to dive in, but my immediate impression is that these will become indispensable. Part instruction manual, part history lesson, all riveting, it makes me wonder why it took me so long to find Keith Smith, but really I'm just glad now that I have.

Also, aPlod issue 2 made it's way into my hands, along with a couple appropriately selected pogs. This one, edited by Brad Flis, features work from Ray Hsu, Marie Buck & Brad himself along with some truly hot shit from Jon Link. I have met Jon before but didn't know his work very well at all, so was excited to see his inclusion, which delivered in every way. Brad has such a keen sense of design, & handles the task of design so deftly, packing in a maximum of material without ever once approaching discomfort for the recipient. The little booklet is a pleasure to hold in the hands.

Ron Silliman's post about issue 1 of President's Choice reminds me yet again that I have failed to record a great literary event on this blog. For some reason, a few of my favorite nights since coming here in January haven't gotten the treatment, who knows why. The reading at MOMA in March where I met Rob Fitterman, Caroline Bergvall, Kenneth Goldsmith & Kareem Estefan all in one night. The utterly badass Joel Kuszai/Wiston Curnow fully catered event at Saatchi & Saatchi. Back on Nov 3 there was a Prez Choice release party at Bar 169. The lineup was insanely good--definitely the best I'd ever been to in one place, & a perfect combination of deserving friends & bona-fide great poets. Friends such as Lauren Spohrer, Lawrence Giffin & Kareem Estefan read alongside sports heroes such as Rodrigo Toscano, Kim Rosenfield, Rob Fitterman & Brian Kim Stefans, who has a couple interesting books available on lulu right now. All of this MC'd by editor Steve Zultanski, with the perfect number of interludes. A few individual works remain in the fore of my mind, including Kareem's excellent, frantic Instant Message poem & Rob Fitterman's voyage through the nonpoetic asides & sayings of a poetry reading. You know, the shit they say before & between the poems. It was truly hilarious, & it didn't hurt that it was happy hour, which was of the buy-one-get-one variety. At one point, a bartender said to another that Fitterman's reading was unbearable, that he couldn't wait for it to be over. Then, Rob culminated with a sudden, moving, totally normal short pastoral poem, from what source if any I don't know. The effect was quite like Kenny Goldsmith at the end of a reading of Traffic, with Rob's version perhaps the more seamless. Finishing up the evening, bearded, perfect Lawrence Giffin totally won my heart as he does each & every time I engage with one of his works (I haven't figured out exactly how he continually accomplishes this). All these readings culminated with (I think) Vietnamese food & me being something of a beer hero.

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Shed like Swatch


Asimov credits us with eras of concomitance
Happy to resolve the freight of having acted
Out of character, unless one were to budget
Sheer words over a week's length, what would we
Move from Ground Zero to Ground One?

He would have been more assertive in our calling
The injustices of institutions our little ones
So that life might continue

To pillory the sham of inexpugnable rewards.
Sadly enough, it is through these self-same theses
That you and I together, caught in our egg and spoon
Battalion, would hardly be at a loss of words
To describe the health of the economy.

Could it not then be said that a pencil sketch
Approximating the take down of a giraffe
By a pride of hungry lions in the bush, dragging
By its legs the carnivorous which it is feeding
Would be but one way to communicate

Our democratic presentiments?



----Bradley Flis

The Phenomenon

There is a new publication, of particular merit, out of Northampton, MA: the first volume of The Physical Poets series, helmed by Lawrence Giffin. This first volume is titled "The Neo-liberal American Poetry" & it is a total & complete success. Given the price of the item, of a mere $5, it could justly be described as perfect. The singular, handsome booklet features the work of Steve Zultanski, Marie Buck, Brad Flis, & Lawrence Giffin. Some discussion of the luscious contents may be found here, which mentions the lovely Suri Cruise piece in Marie Buck's section, which opens the book. The poem in its entirety can be read at the above physpo link. Also mentioned at the Pioneer Valley link are Brad Flis' Digital Underground riffs, which, along with his other work, are equally not to be missed. Steve Zultanski's piece, "Previously on the O.C." is worth noting as well. It is an unbroken nine-page juggernaut featuring bits such as:

"What do you think about Newport?"
"I think I could get in less trouble where I'm from."
"You have no idea."
"Shouldn't her boyfriend be doing this?"
"Sure they're not doing anything we didn't do, heh huh."
"My dad's not here."
"It's just a thing with a client."
"Put him down!"
"Hey Ryan."
"Ugh."
"Welcome to the OC, bitch."

Which leaves us with the editor & helmsman Lawrence Giffin. His "A Bourgeois Interior" is a multifarious, pleasurable prose work. The section "The Touch, the Feel, of Cotton" begins thusly:

The valuables cramming the homes of the very rich cry out helplessly for the museum; yet there the meaning of sculpture and paintings, as Valery perceived, is destroyed, only architecture, their mother, showing them their rightful place. But kept by force in the houses of people with whom they have no ties, they are an open affront to the mode of existence which private property has now adopted.

The section ends, about a page later, with a nice bit of song-verse, which I will not spoil. The excerpt is indicative of the quasi-informational inexhaustable Giffinesque style that will be well known & imitated in the coming years. I highly recommend getting on board now with this excellent, highly various new item, which is one of my favorite new books, despite all the high-dollar stuff I tend to buy.