Only two more days to submit to the Brave Men Press Open Reading Period. Details at the bottom here.

Im reading Lisa Jarnot's Ring of Fire, and cannot excise a comparison to Goddard. The way the cosmic and popular culture are told in a "breathless" manner. Sorry. Bad joke.



I was assured this morning of a teaching job for next year. Celebrate with me by being a Bunny Man.

via BMP blog

Dan Wickett at the Emerging Writers Network wrote a wonderful profile of Brave Men Press. Check it out.

He also had a special feature on Julia Cohen's For the H in Ghost, saying

A great portion of my personal interest in chapbooks, while I'm obviously hoping to find writing that I enjoy, is the chapbook as object itself - this particular edition is stunning - Emily Goodale has created a lovely, sturdy, piece of art all her own here, infused with the art of Cohen's poetry.

Sadly, we are sold out of the book online. However, if you're going to AWP in Denver we will have a handful of copies available at our table. Look for us.

Sixteen Candles
Barcelona
Greenberg
Masculin Feminin
Kicking and Screaming
The White Ribbon
She's Out of My League
The Complete Films of Robert Frank, disc 1
The Crazies
The Last Days of Disco
Shutter Island

There should be a Good Reads type website for movies.

My beautiful cat died so Ive been watching movies.

Cultural Society always has good work, but last night I was pinned.

Here is Steven Manuel with a poem I could sit with on clear nights until never comes.
Ticks are underused.

Untitled

a star
w /
tick
legs

but all
white

stuck
on the wall
of heaven

And here is another

"Whether a night-owl screaming"

Whether a night-owl screaming out
in regular intervals
or a train at either 3 a.m.
or 1 a.m. or some other time
scolding the night’s dark quiet

I lift my head and ear
to the window’s screen
and feel tight cold air
strain in, too, for a glimpse

I love the ramble of the first stanza that gives way to the clarity in the second. Also am taken by the image of cold air, peering.

Here is one from Shannon Tharp. This poem made me buy her book which is older, but I dont care.

An Edge

Patience now’s
a more substantive

shadow, as in
waves changing

in the dark. There’s
an echo here, the ghost

of which is something
like a voice that grows

as it’s eroded. What
remains is listening’s

trace, a struggle
for another pattern;

a growing into
need, want;

a process to not
remember. One

learns this ground
through flashes of

doubt — thought’s
only matter.

Friends,

Birds, LLC is a new independent poetry press specializing in close author relationships in order to make the most awesome books in the world.

The first two books published by Birds, LLC are The French Exit by Elisa Gabbert and The Trees Around by Chris Tonelli.

SPECIAL PRE-SALE OFFER: Buy the first two Birds, LLC releases for just $20. Pre-Sale offer lasts until March 31st. Books ship the first week in April.

About The French Exit:
It’s a pleasure to listen to the opinions of the narrator of The French Exit. Clear-eyed imagery and wit control the anxiety: “[A] boy at the counter disappears / or I can see through him.” Likewise, in a fine prose poem: “Do not be afraid of angering the birds. What angers the birds is fear.” The energy throughout Gabbert’s collection has the clip of the French exit itself – allons-y! – self-aware, self-sufficient, in control, in touch.
- Caroline Knox


About The Trees Around:
Full of the will and the weather, that great skeptic Wallace Stevens walked to work and wrote his poems, poems you may well already love and believe. (Good, as they say, for you.) And as for Chris Tonelli, he walks in that integrity: read him, and be merciful unto yourself. His foot standeth in an even place. This book’ll make you bloom.
- Graham Foust