Last summer, I completed a collaboration with Catherine Kasper that I really enjoyed working on. I often discuss working on image-text collaborations with my poet friends, but this is one of the few that I was moved to follow through on (and Catherine and I have never even met each other).  I usually prefer to work on my own (although Johannes Göransson and I are in middle of creating a graphic novel together, the scope of which is growing into a beast, which is a very good thing).  Catherine published my collaboration with Kristen Iskandrian (the only other one I’ve completed) in American Letters & Commentary, and then she sent me her amazing poetry collection Lost Debris and asked if I had any ideas of how images might work with it (she had felt it was a collection that needed image).  I was profoundly unsettled my her imagistic writing, and imagistic writing is usually the last kind of writing that benefits from including graphic work.  But, I agreed with her, and I began to see compositions as I read her poems. I developed a method for this project of developing a single collage-drawing for each poem, in full color.  They each include Hergé-like figures (as that was my ax to grind last summer) and a background consisting of abstracted photo-collage. I’m really satisfied with the way this collaboration came out, and I hope that someone is moved to publish it as a book one day.  Here’s a few of the images. (There’s a couple more on my ‘Works’ page.)

Tao Lin has recently started a book press (print and online content) called Muumuu House.  They were kind enough to send me a copy their first book earlier this week.  It’s Ellen Kennedy’s Sometimes My Heart Pushes my Ribs and I had a lot of fun reading it before bed the last couple of nights.  You can buy it directly from Muumuu House at a discounted rate.

I meant to write about this one last week. James Warner is featured on our new episode of Apostrophe Cast and he can really tell a story.  This one will make you feel bad about yourself when you laugh.  Enjoy…

I think Michael Silverblatt might be America’s best reader.  It amazes me how many people DON’T listen to his weekly show Bookworm which is on KCRW in Santa Monica, CA, but is podcast for all to hear, and can be found here (there’s some amazing archives too).  I began listening to Bookworm in binges while I biked an hour to and from campus each day in Tokyo.  Now I listen while I pencil my comics.  He has the ability to make even writers that I believe I will have no interest in absolutely compelling. He’s dogged and never panders to his guests nor does he turn his nose up at them, no matter how much smarter and more insightful he usually is that the writers who sit across from him.  And his taste is uncannily in tune with my own, his personal literary universe stemming from Beckett, Barth and Barthelme (the killer b’s, the Wu Tang Clan of postmodernism).  Anyway, Michael Silverblatt just gets it, and there’s is no one else that I can stand to listen for hours on end (except maybe “The Schmooze,” Steve Somers).

Read Silverblatt’s article from Good magazine on the the vitality of independent publishing in America. As always, he restores our faith in contemporary literature.

My friend (and colleague) Tim Wood and I are working on a couple of book projects.  We’re creating the books themselves.  In other words, form is the leading the way on these. The first one we started about a year ago and is an ever-expanding  pair of duplicate hand-made books.  We each add bits and pieces to it and hand it back and forth.  I’m hoping that in final form it will be an untameable beast.  (A page from this project was published in the final print issue of sleepingfish).  Eventually, if you’re reading this blog, you may find one of these books in your mailbox one afternoon.

The other project is a series of cards.  The cards are small squares.  It began when Tim printed lines of text on a few cards, and then I drew a pictures on a few cards in reply, he then responded with text, and I responded with drawings, in kind, etc.  (Tim doesn’t just write text; his presentations are as integral as his words. Look for Tim’s essay on Robert Grenier – with Grenier’s own colorful edits – in the next Action,Yes for more on his ideas concerning the concrete nature of text.) The goal is to create a stack of these text and image cards for a book arts exhibit this summer.  We will make several copies of each card and offer visitors hand-made folder books in which to tuck the cards in whatever manner they choose – creating their own books for display.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why it is I’m so fascinated by the anecdote.  I think it’s because it’s the narrative construction that’s most haunting.  It makes no attempt at comprehensiveness.  It allows mystery to exist.  The book of stories I’m writing are all anecdotes, not finely crafted tales, but captured impressions and instances.  To me there is something more essentially truthful (for better or for worse) in the anecdotal story.  When I read Kafka or Calvino or Barthelme or Lydia Davis, I don’t feel compelled to relate a well-executed series of plot machinations to my friends on Friday night (like those who watch Lost do).  Something much more personal is triggered that seems inappropriate to “externalize” or “capture.” I don’t know if my anecdotes do anything like this, but this feeling is what compels me to write them.

I’m pretty excited about three new tools that I’ve found recently.  Here they are. (Move on if you find tool talk irritating.)

1. The Parker Vector STAINLESS STEEL Fountain Pen. I first discovered the Vector fountain pen in high school and have been dedicated since.  It’s it the best writing pen there is.  And the quick drying Quink Ink that it uses works particularly well for lefties like me.  It disappeared from the drugstore shelves so I had to keep up my habit by buying them on eBAy.  I go through them quickly because the the plastic barrel always cracks and then the cap can’t stay on and the the nib slips – and none of this is good for carrying in a bag that you throw on a train every day.  I recently discovered, though, that Parker makes a stainless steel version – this solves the cracking barrel problem making it the perfect writing pen. (You can get get if for ten bucks at Pens ‘N More on eBay and they even throw in a handful of free refills.  They also offer Quink cartridges in colors I didn’t know existed – green, red, purple – and they sell them cheap.  I just got 5 dozen blue catridges – my favorite color for writing in my green-paper notebooks – for $15.)

2. Rosemary and Co. Watercolor Brushes (Series 33). I first learned about these at the invaluable Comics Tools blog.  These are a handmade alternative to super-expensive Windsor and Newton Series 7 Kolinsky sable brushes, and they work beautifully for comic inking. (She also makes a line more equivalent to Raphael brushes.) They cost about a quarter of the price of W&N brushes too.  You can call her up at her home in England and she’ll answer any questions. Even though wisdom says not to buy a brush you haven’t tested, these are pre-tested, guaranteed, and she will replace any problematic brushes.  Her customer service was so good that when the standard S&H more than covered my order, she threw in a couple extra brushes.  (Keep in mind, her brushes are a bit smaller than the W&N equivalent, so order larger than what you use.)

3. White Gelly Roll pens.  These thick inked gel pens made by Sakura have been a favorite of middle school girls for more than a decade.  You can find them anywhere.  One of the great tool limitations that comics artists suffer with is decent white ink or drawing in white on a black background.  White Gelly Rolls lay down a vibrant and substantial white line.  Its line is pretty fine but it’s easy to see.  This one could be a godsend for certain artists.

A few months ago, I read Dash Shaw‘s Bottomless Belly Button, which is an excellent book.  It’s a long comic that is particularly novelistic in an almost Victorian sense (in the vein of other contemporary novels like Jonathn Franzen’s The Corrections).  He experiments with several highly stylized modernistic tropes, which are sometime incredibly successful (Peter’s frog aspect, a reflection of his self-image) and other times affected or slightly irritating (frequent written description in the place of emanata or onomatopoeia).  While I think the case for Bottomless Belly Button has been overstated in the unfortunate glut of “year-end lists,” it is certainly a book worth reading, and its flaws are all commendable ones that are a result of an attempt to stretch the confines of comic vocabulary.  It shows that Shaw is an evolving artist who is headed in a very right direction.

His next long work, Body World, is now available – in whole – at his website.  I’ve actually waited to read Body World, until it was finished. (This thinking – I’m sure – flies in the face of comic-day serial purists.  But, you know what, that’s not how I learned to read comic books.) Just last night, I finally read the prelude, and it’s amazing.  It’s what webcomics should be.  His use of borderless color and hand-done effects in conjunction with Photoshop is incredibly impressive.  It makes the rare case for substantial use of computer drawing (coloring).  The regular panel and long-scrolling pages read very naturally.  (I’ll be interested in comparing this to the print version which, I believe, will have a spine at the top and will be published later this year.)  My plan is to read a chapter a day over the next few weeks.  I’m really excited about this one.

We have, at long last, released another issue of Action,Yes.  It arrived in the night after everyone (included my co-editors) had already absconded to Chicago for some hotel lobby conference, that I imagine involves them getting rooked into a real estate ponzi scheme.

This issue is well worth the wait – one of our biggest and most diverse yet.  We have stories, pictures, performances, videos, songs, postcards (2 sets), essays, essays about other contributors, poems, poems about former contributors, and, most importantly, PowerPoint presentations.

If you think this issue looks particularly sharp, you can thank the newest member of our editorial team, Emily Hunt.

When you get a chance, go over to Action,Yes and spend a long time poking around all the wonders that we’ve collected and assembled for you.

I started writing a book on the train this morning. I think I’m going to call it Balitmore.  It’s prose – no pictures – as yet.  I haven’t done anything without images in years. I bet a few will find their way into the manuscript.

I’ll let you all know when I’m finished.

(I’m writing it in a tight-ruled, green-papered Chemistry notebook that Sabrina gave me years ago and I’ve been waiting for just the right time to use. It’s the greatest writing notebook there is.  Moleskins are for hacks.)