I just got my box of pre-order copies of The Complete Collection of people, places & thingsin the mail, which means everyone can buy the book. It’s currently available on Amazon, directly from BlazeVOX (and soon it will be available from Small Press Distribution – the best place to buy indie books – and in some independent bookshops). If you didn’t pre-order, go ahead and get you a copy.
If you did pre-order a copy, it’s already in the mail. (And if you happened to be at the Cadman Plaza post office this morning while I was mailing them all out, I sincerely apologize for making you an hour late for work.)
If you want to learn more about the book, go here and here. Spreading the word to friends, family members, pets, and acquaintances would be greatly appreciated.
Much like PictureBox, Flatmancrooked will be publishing a series of little books completely funded by the money of readers and fans who support specific writers’ potentials and are willing to put up a few bucks of capital to get the thing started. More literature with increased reader stake. Read about it here.
I meant to write about this a couple of weeks ago. Tim Wood and I presented our first Nine Frayed Leaves book project at a book arts show on the North Fork of Long Island earlier this month and it went even better than we could have hoped. We asked people to create books by arranging text and image cards that we gave them, and make any other marks, edits, amendments, etc. that they wished to make. I’ll post samples of the books soon, which were amazing, but for now here are some pictures from the exhibit. People really got into it. They even edited and cut and augmented other people’s books.
This book and Sabrina’s book hit the open market in the same week – that’s an embarassment of prosaic booty. There’s no reason to believe that Scorch Atlas will kick you in the junk any less hard than Blake’s last book.
…and I got a comic in it. It’s called “Awake to the Terror” and it’s the third in my slowly emerging series of comics using all found text. (There’s two more to complete the collection.) I like this one a lot – I was looking at lots of Herge when I drew it. Brian Connell wrote a song in response to this (as he’s done with the previous two found-text comics), and it’s amazing. It’s the title song off his upcoming album. (The first two pieces in our collection are “The Sordid” which was published in 3rd Bed and “Friction Free” which was published in the Indiana Review).H_ngm_n’s dear captain Nate Pritts has this to say about his new issue:
Like, it’s night time & there are these two guys & they’re all like, I’m gonna break into this BANK, yo. To steal the MON-ey. And the other guy is like, yo, what about the H_NGM_N? Like for realz? And the first guy is like what – that tired old washed up old guy? Like no one has even SEEN him for like YEARS or something. Guys probably dead.
http://www.h-ngm-n.com
And the second guy is like yo. And so it was that there were guys straight up robbing banks all over the city & when I say bank I mean JOURNALS PUBLISHING BAD POETRY & then there’s like this quick cut, right, where you see like SOMEthing on a balcony or some junk, like high up like looking down all bad@$$ & then these two guys are like about the break into the bank still? By which I mean BAD POETRY RUNNING RAMPANT all up in the grill of the fair city? And what?
So that’s it man. It’s like yo – H_NGM_N #8. SWOOP. And like everyone thought he was dead & yo & like that was it? But he’s here & cleaning house & by house I mean THE LANDSCAPE OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY & by cleaning I mean like straight up cleaning.
So it’s like not only for you but for the city & banks & POETRY & also for yourself that you must needs click yon link & spread the word that, like, if you were afraid to go out at night? Or read poetry? There is no more reason to fear ever now:
Sabrina Orah Mark’s Tsim Tsum is available for pre-order. Go to Amazon and lock one up ASAP. Also buy Sabrina’s first book, The Babies, if you’re really slow and haven’t yet. In all honesty, I haven’t looked forward to a book’s release as much as this one in years (I’ve already read it, so that takes some Christmas Eve-y anticipation out of it, but I still can’t wait to marvel at the words in their perfect bound goodness). Sabrina’s prose poems tell these fanciful stories that are challenging and fun like Lewis Carroll and word gamey like Nabokov, until you realize what the hell you’re getting so giddy about – that’ when the whimsy flutters away and the harsh-burn-of-a-treeless-day soul-stripping get’s started. That’s why I love Sabrina’s work.
This NEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL features 25+ new short video works, mostly from 2008-2009, drawn from recent performances and screenings for the Flarf Collective, the Poetry Time at SpaceSpace reading series in Queens, and other venues. Please view, deride, subscribe, spam, ratchet, or tear…and let me know what you think.
Come on, you’re bored and hot and you’re at a desk anyway.
Frequent new content will be added, as I am continually receiving new dispatches and camera angles from GOD.
Summer is the New Spring!
Brandon Downing
And after you watch all of those videos (and there’s no reason not to watch them all), go look at his collage poems up at the new issue of Action,Yes.
This is a portrait of Keith Hernandez smoking a cigarette created by comics artist David Kushner. He’s wearing his form-fitting, 1980s racing-stripe Mets grays.
Speaking of Mex, if you haven’t seen the award winning film I’m Keith Hernandez yet – go see it – buy the DVD, it comes with what will be your favorite t-shirt. (I just looked at their site and see that there’s a picture of Nina and me up there – wow – they must have pulled it from our Flickr site.)
