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.

* * *

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

Triune, Troika, Ternion

President's Choice #1 has landed. Featuring new work from Marie Buck, Craig Dworkin, Rob Fitterman, Rodrigo Toscano, Bhanu Kapil, Laura Elrick, & Paper Rad. Edited by Steven Zultanski. One of the great features of the magazine is that ample space is given to all contributors, sometimes up to 10 pages of work, in the case of Ms Buck. Marie's poems here range from somewhat controlled pieces (from a work called Whole Foods) such as "Cheese," "Authenticity," & "The Seaweed That Thickens" to some really exciting, all-over-the-page works like "Starlet Bang" & "19 I Just Pissed Out Disaster". This last one is especially great, ending with a stanza-sea of celeb names ("Jen's Katie Tom Corey Abdul Holmes Jennifer Paula Aniston...") followed by another of stray numbers & pieces of punctuation ("32 - 32 -- 36 ! 38 ? 40 ! -- ! ://. :-/;....").

Toscano's first work, "Great Awakening", is probably my favorite of his, since it so reminds me of the most convoluted portions of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, replete with cop-on-civilian tongue-&-brain twisters.

A: Average poetry readings reveal much.

B: I Improve...when the content is based on some other kind of--contract.

A: Respect for The Lord! Respect for Cable Coppersmooth, Cinnamon Face,
and all verifiable accomplishments, in tow.

B: The local is pushed out. Amen?

A: Amen! This re-flavoring of certain...distinctions. Other bitterness's applied lightly to the rippled surface. Property mud bars for the whole family!

B: Audit the flow--incoming. Admit the lord. You're were about to This Very
Moaning In Private Seems Necessary. What's the immediate effect?

A: Piety, double-digit snide, "bilk bilk".

B: What's the immediat goal?

A: Light up the mall.

B: And the lonely shark around the cage?

A: Amen. The people are--poking back--at it.

Craig Dworkin turns things even more conceptual, entering perhaps into Goldsmith territory. His first piece, "Noun Compound Roman Numeral period" begins "In the sentence 'Write the book that pleases you best,' what is the subject of 'pleases?' Perhaps you may ask the question in the usual way, 'What pleases?' Answer, 'the book.' But this is not right. marks of quotation Noun marks of quotation present tense third person singular appositive verb definite article Noun genitive pronoun marks of quotation noun period marks of quotation" & happily continues thus. Laura Elrick's "Diagram (III)" is perhaps the best single work in the issue, clocking in at 6 pages. It begins:

At a dinner party or forum I rip hair out of my leg with a special machine.
At a dinner party (or forum) I rip hair out of my leg with a special machine.
At a dinner party or forum I - RIP - IT - OUT with a special machine.
At reception: opening their suits a dress collapsing shoes turn up at odds, strange.
And walking says it would be drinks and eats its head of their legs with a
Special machine.

It is a work that is simultaneously elusive & highly visible, a formula that makes for enthralling reading.

Next comes Bhanu Kapil, someone I'm entirely unfamiliar with. Bhanu's work (from "Humanimal") features numbered paragraphs, some of which have a slightly larger font size. For some reason I find the work almost indescribable, though there are elements of magic, mystery, narrative & a folkloric sense throughout. I cannot get past how pleasing the syntax of this phrase, near the beginning of the work, is to me: "When it started to rain, the banyan tree outside the girl's room, where she lay in a profound coma, shook."

Next comes Paper Rad. Though I had known of their visual work prior, I wasn't aware that they also worked in text. The work is full of jokes & eschews capitals. All but one of the works features a clash in the title, such as "DJ Cyber Knife vs Cool Cafe" or "Jim Morrison vs Poetry," which commences

god is like love, love is like god
what is this? AARP card?
don't say a word
that's what she said
who said that?
beyonce?

The last feature in the magazine belongs to Robert Fitterman. Here we get two works from the upcoming Sprawl: "Big Box (Category Killer)" & "BISQUICKMARK, an afterward." Fitterman is firing on all cylinders here, the first work featuring a straightforward form of prose-stanza-blocks that Rob is able to make surprising despite their simplicty of form. The work is similar to some of his Metropolis series, focusing on combinations of corporate language, tv language, family language, advertising language. His 2nd & the final piece in the magazine quilts the present & history of Bisquick (originally intended for making biscuits very quickly) with the history/legend of Otto von Bismarck, that Prussia/Germany dude, to delightful effect.

The issue itself is immaculately put together. There is, correctly, no contributor's notes. There are few adornments, next to no info on the title pages, thus the look & contents are allowed to speak for themselves. There is, in the end, only one flaw, which is that the cover paper is of such quality that it retains your grubby fingerprints, should you, like me, take your reading in a more interactive manner: meals, subways, journeys.

Thus the threesome is consummated: Model Homes, The Physical Poets, President's Choice.

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.