The Constitution

My chapbook THE CONSTITUTION is now available from Horseless Press. It is hot pink and only $6.00. These poems are very important to me. I hope you will choose to read them. You can purchase a copy here.

Poems from THE CONSTITUTION havent arrived yet in the places that I can show you. They'll be in Action Yes and The Columbia Poetry Journal. So for now I will show you one, and take it down when they come home.


Many thanks Jen Tynes. She is wonderful person.

You can get this book and another book from Horseless for only $10. I suggest Chris Salerno's ATM. That book is just great. At one point Chris says "The sale is inside me." I won't forget that.

I'll be doing some readings soon. On March 4th at Multifariuos Array w/Jared White. Chris Carrier, & Chris Hosea.

And on April 23rd in Denver at the Bad Shadow affair with Natalie Lyalin.

Huge Updates from BRAVE MEN PRESS

Hark Brave All,

As we plan our descent into this years AWP conference in Washington DC, we hope that you will spend some thought on the Brave Men & Women who fight for you - Chris Martin, Lily Brown, Ben Kopel, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Jennifer Denrow, Mathias Svalina, Brian Foley & EB Goodale.

It is right to say we have been up to much - four new chapbooks, a box set, posters, finer art, a massive reading. So in one fell swoop, we share with you all their awesome and our devotion, that you may now see for yourselves with your internet eyes.

Chris Martin - How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem

Chris Martin's second book of poems, Becoming Weather, is just now precipitating into material form compliments of the wonderful people at Coffee House Press. His first book, American Music, won the Hayden Carruth Prize and last year he was named one of the Poetry Society of America's New American Poets. Currently he is an editor at Futurepoem books and curator of the response blog Futurepost.

Lily Brown - Being One

Lily Brown is from Massachusetts and currently lives in Athens, where she is a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia. Her first book, Rust or Go Missing, is out from Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and recent poems have appeared in American Letters and Commentary and Colorado Review.

Ben Kopel - Because We Must

Ben Kopel, a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts where he edits Laminated Cats Press. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, he is currently continuing his education at UMass Amherst. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Conduit, Sir!, Forklift: Ohio, H_NG_M_N, Sixth Finch, Diagram, and elsewhere. Sorry ma, he forgot to take out the trash.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson - In The Trade of Alive Letters Mis-sent

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Selenography, featuring Polaroids by Califone's Tim Rutili (Sidebrow Books, 2010). He has edited two anthologies for University of Iowa Press: Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook12x12: Conversations in 21st Century Poetry & Poetics. He lives in Chicago, where he is Assistant Professor in the English Department at Loyola University.


2011 Brave Men Press Coin Library

Made up three chapbooks by Lily Brown, Ben Kopel, & Joshua Marie Wilkinson, this custom designed box set comes with an exclusive etching by Brave Men designer and artist
E.B. Goodale. Supplies are limited.


Limited edition bad ass BMP posters designed by E.B. Goodale



We will also have books on hand limited quantities of BMP titles still available, by Jennifer Denrow, Brian Foley & Mathias Svalina

Jennifer Denrow - From California, On

Jennifer Denrow has two chapbooks: A Knee for a Life (Horse Less Press) and From California, On (Brave Men Press). Her first book, California, is forthcoming from Four Way Books.

Mathias Svalina - Whatever You Love of Weapons You Love For Weapons

Mathias Svalina was born in Chicago, where his parents were both chemists. He is the author of five chapbooks as well as five collaboratively written chapbooks. His work has been published widely in journals such as American Letters & Commentary, The Boston Review, Diagram, jubilat, and Typo. With Zachary Schomburg, he co-edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. Destruction Myth is his first book out from CSU press.

Brian Foley - The Black Eye

Brian Foley is the author of the chapbooks The Constitution ( Horseless Press, 2011) & The Tornado is Not A Surrealist (Greying Ghost, 2008). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Action Yes, Columbia Poetry Journal, Poor Claudia,Typo, H_NGM_N & elsewhere. He edits SIR! Magazine, curates The Deep Moat Reading Series, and with EB Goodale, runs Brave Men Press.

WHERE?

You can find us and these books at AWP this Thursday- Saturday at the HTML Giant table. Supplies are limited, so please plan accordingly. New titles & ephemera will be on sale on our website soon after AWP, providing we don't sell out.

READING?

On Friday night please join BRAVE MEN in celebrating WIDE NIGHT, an evening of readings with the following presses!

*BATEAU*

*BIRDS, LLC*

*BRAVE MEN*

*FACTORY HOLLOW*

*FLYING GUILLOTINE*

*IMMACULATE DISCIPLES*

*MINUTES*

*PILOT*

Readers include:

Chris Martin, Lily Brown, Mark Horosky, Sasha Steensen, Emily Pettit, Dan Boehl, Sommer Browning, Jessica Young, Farrah Field, Guy Pettit, Kelin Loe, Alex Phillips, Luke Bloomfield, Megan M. Garr & Francesca Chabrier!

Brave Men will be represented by Lily Brown & Chris Martin, reading somewhere near the end of the line up, for those of you planning a full evening.


There will always be a lot going on, but we really hope you stop by the table and/or reading and introduce yourselves. We've come to meet you.


Other Brave Men Happenings

Poems by Jennifer Denrow in 751 Magazine & Sixth Finch

Joshua Marie Wilkinson's new journal of poetics, EVENING WILL COME

Poems by Chris Martin in Sink Review

Sounds Thoughts & a poem by Mathias Svalina at Coldfront

A poem by Brian Foley in H_NGM_N

A book cover by EB Goodale of Aaron Burch's How to Predict the Weather



Safe travels to all traveling

Best,

Brian & Emily
Brave Men Press

bravemenpress@gmail.com

I talked about some books I enjoyed this year

A new Rabbit Light Movies is up. I like the look of this full length poem film by Zach. I dont know what it is exactly, but I see a lot of faces I know.


Im reading in New York next weekend with some friends from our MFA program at UMASS. That'll be good. We're on break now and I miss them.



Today is Dara Wier's birthday.

Happy Day Dara.

Here is one of my favorite poems of hers, taken from Fou (whatever happened to that magazine?)

Chinese Restaurant on Fire

There they were sitting in the shade of a twisty gingko only more it was he

and less it was she conversing, only is it conversing when one does all of the

listening and the other does all of the talking, it probably is in some and not

in all circumstances. These were the subjects and the subjects were many:

his recent move, his eating habits, his phone manners, his headaches, his

sleep apnea, his poor eating habits, his non-cooking ways, his laundry

phobia, his desire to have children, his house hunting activities, his failure to

receive results in this endeavor, his apartment complex, his mother’s

dependence, his inheritance, his brother’s mental ill-health, his wife’s long-

suffering, his several ambitions, his many good qualities, his friends in

important places, his past of dark and glamorous drug addiction, his bad

knees, his dental work, his plans for future projects, his preferences in

footwear, his reading habits, his fear of failing to succeed, his ambitions, his

history of past successes, his taste in music, his this that and the other which

went on uninterrupted as the smell of smoke accumulated and eventually

insisted on gaining her attention which did nothing to deter his continuing

his involvement with his it turned out to be nothing less than all he could

find in his mind at the time, each piece of it leading to another, while she

had by now looked in the direction from which the smell of smoke was

coming to see rising up out of the rooftop just over her shoulder Chinese

cooks frantically scrambling from out of what must have been some sort of

escape hatch, it looked as if they were ascending, smoke did this to them, it

created an aura of beauty around their danger and it looked as if they would

successfully free themselves in time to survive as he continued talking

though it had become difficult to hear him above noises of people running

and by now at least three different kinds of sirens so she said look the

restaurant is on fire and he ignored her and kept right on talking as if none of

this registered as he was so lost in his thoughts nothing could derail them or

stop their headlong streaking into the future where everything was in flames,

everything in ruins, uninhabitable.

Lilys book is finally available. You can get it here.

Julias book is finally out. You can get it here.

I couldnt be more excited about these books. These are two of my favorite poets out there right now and these are their first books.

If you live around my neck, come see Julia and Lily read with Cynthia King on Dec 19th at Flying Object in Hadley, MA. details here.

This event is one of the last Im going to put on in the area for a while. As of next year I'll be co-running the JUBILAT reading series at the Jones Library in Amherst.

JACKIE!

Buy Office Work by the beloved Jackie Clark, out now from Greying Ghost, and (maybe) receive a pamphlet of a poem by me called You Are On Fired.

JACKIE!

This weekend was for hero worship. I saw the "classic line up" of Guided by Voices. Did they play "Kicker of Elves?"

No.

But they did play this.

Not all Guided by Voices songs are about elf kicking. Something that has always irked me in critical treatment of the band is the focus on Pollard lyrics as some sort of fantastical theatre. When you name songs "Postal Blowfish" or "Zoo Pie," you can see this trend forming. There is even a GBV Song Title Generator. This is where poet Tony Tost found the title for his long poem, World Jelly. But this fantasy treatment has always been reductive. Look at the song Tractor Rape Chain, which at first glance looks ridiculous by title alone. But then there are the words

why is it every time i think about you
something that you have said or implied makes
me doubt you
then i look into your cynical eyes and i know it
as if it never meant anything to me

parallel lines on a slow decline - tractor rape chain
better yet, let's all get wet on the tractor rape chain
speed up, slow down, go all around in the end

in the first place it's probably just paranoia
but there's a ghost in my room
and he says i better run
it's a thing i know - it's a thing i believe in
won't you tell it to go away?

An anthemic charge against the dissolution of relationship, of once tender eye looks now gone jaded, of workman-like routine pushing two people in separate paths. It is very human, very familiar and very sad.

That same voice sings confidence to another utilitarian object (utility & work being one of the most persevering themes in Pollard's music & common for a man who worked for years as a forth grade teacher while trying to get his band noticed, only experiencing success when closely pushing forty. That and the fact Pollard has the hardest work ethic in indie rock, release 3-5 albums a year since GBV's 2004 dissolution) in My Valuable Hunting Knife, my favorite GBV song.

I want to start a new life
With my valuable hunting knife
She will shine like a new girl
And I want to shout out our love to the world
Everything I think about I think about
Everything I talk about I talk about
With you
But you don't know what I go through
You don't know

Days, they will turn into nights
But my valuable hunting knife
It will not rust through the tears
And it will not lose its appeal over years

Pollard's music has always been about world making. GBV came from, and continue to live, in their own world. But here is a voice in post traumatic desperation, making real what's not to find a reliable commitment to his cause, which is loneliness. This feeling is echoed throughout his best ars poetica, I am a Scientist.

I am a lost soul I shoot myself with rock n roll The hole I dig is bottomless But nothing else could set me free

Sometimes it is just for the music. But GBV's best songs - Teenage FBI, Game of Pricks, Smothered in Hugs, The Official Ironman Rally Song, Don't Stop Now, Blimps Go 90, Exit Flagger, Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory - wear their self conscious loneliness for anyone to see. It is what I will always remember them for.

***

I need a camera. I went to this great restaurant with this great person. I would have liked to have shown you the fried Brussels sprouts. I would like to have shown you the copy of Macgregor Card's THE GERM #1 I found in a used record shop.

Im reading tonight with Elaine Kahn at this place. Why don't you look at the menu? Its a pretty good menu. Details are not on the menu, they are here

New from Brave Men Press - Jennifer Denrow - FROM CALIFORNIA, ON

FROM CALIFORNIA, ON
Jennifer Denrow

Shaped in inventive diction that reflects her disjunction, Jennifer Denrow knows what we encounter won't ever answer back. In this singular narrative of a trip through known bucolics, she charts the inadequacies of experience in a voice that stranges; aware of itself and its beautiful incapability. She tells us “everyone who sees us insists that we are here” but only through its lasting impression does From California, On think itself possible.

Jennifer Denrow is the author of California, out soon from Four Way Books. She is also the author of two chapbooks, A Knee for a Life (Horseless Press) & From California, On.

Cover letterpressed with black ink on blue paper.
Printed in a limited edition of 85.
22 pages.

read sample poems

$9

Buy it along with the Limited Edition Coinside

$11.50

Visit us at Brave Men Press

Please pass the word around on your blogs, Facebook, or by email. We count on your generosity to help us keep going.



I completely love this book. When I first read it, I was very affected, and continue to be so. It is a pleasure to help put it out. And Emily made the just-right cover, package,etc. Very happy. I know you will enjoy it.

FORTHCOMING from BRAVE MEN PRESS - chapbooks by Chris Martin , Lily Brown, Ben Kopel, Michelle Taransky & Joshua Marie Wilkinson

H_NGM_N

I've a new poem in H_NGM_N.

In fact, a lot of people do.

I made this for your autumn.

#


The Groupies – primitive
Charlie Feathers – Can’t Hardly Stand It
Carl Perkins – Honey Don’t
The Rumblers – Boss
The Cramps – Fever
The Sonics – The Witch
Elvis – Blue Moon
Howlin Wolf – Smokestack Lightning
Link Wray – Fire and Brimstone
Scott Walker - Jackie

new absence

A new issue of Absent.
Below is a great landscaper from Josh Harmon.



Also New Poems by Rauan Klassnik at last weeks' NO TELL MOTEL.




Saw High on Fire last night. In describing, I should say things like "I got my brain blasted through my face melt" but it was more like "hugged by a sweating teddy bear"




My last cat has gone. Willy. He disappeared a week ago into the woods. I hate the woods. It never gives back.

Bernadette Mayer was all eyes

Studying Hunger

Sharon Van Etten came to town the other day. She carried us away with her. We brought her back to our place. She's touring a ton and you should meet her halfway.



Bought this album the other day. Les Ralliezes Denudes An extreme feedbacker, better than Fushitusha.

From another blog

There are no official recordings, they never recorded in a studio (?) Les Rallizes Dénudés are quite possibly the only rock group that can be genuinely described as revolutionary and not only because their bass player took part in a airplane hijack!

I’m not surprised to read their sound was originally inspired by the Velvets groundbreaking 1967 noisefest “White Light White Heat”.

Just look at that guy. And the title. Who could pass it up. Not me. Not you.

A new Octomom is up.

Look at this Jennifer Denrow

The people come from themselves. They’re the operations they couldn’t afford. On the other side of the room, they are dressed like clouds. We give them the personal history of wind. When it gets too loud, we shut the door and never go back. The room sits empty for months, filling up with the sound of each drama. We stop imagining what’s happening in the room, and later forget there was ever a room to begin with. Our participation in each other still occurs, but slowly, forgetfully.

Now look at this Jennifer Denrow.


(More on that soon)

Congrats to SIR! contributors Chris DeWeese & Rebecca Farivar. Octopus Books will be putting out their first this year.

SIR! has its next issue all lined up. But I dont know HTML. I need an HTML Giant to help put this issue into one piece. Its not too much and I am pretty demandless. If you can help, please contact me.

Im Not A Witch

Its been...a while.

I've lost a some things these past few months.
My partner & love.
My home.

My ability run without coughing.

Some people I like died.

Michael Gizzi ("May you keep this memory, the one you’ll never see.")
Tony Curtis
Arthur Penn

It was an endless summer


But I did gain some hair, pack-a-day habit, a new apartment, poems.



Horseless Press is going to put out a collection of my poems called THE CONSTITUTION.

I've never been able to commit to a sustained thought in words before. Not well anyhow. THE CONSTITUTION was meant to begin from a source poem and everything thereafter would be an amendment to that original idea, turning over and over. Its also an examination of a moral constitution, what it is to have one, what mine is. I'm excited about these poems.

Horseless recently put out a book by Jennifer Denrow. You should get that here. Murphy Brown makes an appearance. The next book by Brave Men comes in a few weeks from Jen and it is just astounding. She's got a big diction.


Excited too Greying Ghost will be pamphletting a poem of mine called YOU ARE ON FIRED. (I dont mean these announcements as a gloat but a repeat to convince myself I still have a shadow. Like shadowboxing.) Sam Starkweather has some new SELF HELP POEMS, some of which you can see here

and here

The perfect drug is one you only experience once, and the rest of your life is spent chasing that feeling. After McCain’s concession speech I didn’t think I could get any higher. But when he was standing in front of 100,000 people talking about the transitive properties of hope, it felt like I was at a once-in-a-lifetime rock concert. The movie we had all been waiting for was finally before us and impossibly, was better than we imagined, and with each newly delivered line, it kept getting better. There, sitting in my car in the dark, listening to that voice coming from the radio, I achieved absolute belief, and it had nothing to do with politics or humanity or any of that shit, it was simply the fact that language did this.

Sam also runs BIRDS LLC who're putting out some good books together.

	Either Way I'm Celebrating Poems and Comics by Sommer Browning
	The Kings of the F**king Sea Poems by Dan Boehl, Images by Jonathan Marshall
	Goat in the Snow Poems by Emily Pettit

I joined Twitter, to kill time, but mainly just to read Vag Talk ("Just discovered the woman-centric channel OXYGEN. It's all of the content of Ass Sluts 5, minus the sex." )

I was lucky to be part of some nice readings this summer with Janaka Stucky, Julie Doxsee, Josh Harmon, Emily Pettit, Dottie Lasky & Sarah Goldstein. That felt good. That was my vacation. I didnt take pictures, but thank you to them for letting me play.

I'm reading NOV 3rd in Northampton with Elaine Kahn. Its at the Green Steet Cafe, which is a nice place. They comp you food and drink if you read, for each reader, as well as plus one. If you'd like to be my plus one please wheeze at me.

A lot of things in the Northampton area. Song Cave has put out new chapbooks by Macgregor Card, CD Wright, and Geoffrey G Obrien. Also Sea Ranch.

Zach Savich has new collection of poems from Colorado University Press, which was much better than I anticipated. Plus the cover is pretty. Rachel Glaser & Mike Young both have books out from Publishing Genius. There' s a great new record store. And there's this place.

The next Deep Moat Reading Series will be on NOV 20th, featuring Jeremy Sigler, Damon Krukowski (!) and Alex Phillips.

This is a lot. I wish I could remember more about myself.


Pieces of a poem by CS Ward. I like its patience.

And I am bad at naming
But, every so often

I am given a green grace
Like rusty books burning

Smells coming over the mountains
And then I can just listen

To small wings
I normally wouldn't hear

I've a poem in the Typo. Thank you Adam and Matt. You can also find this poem in The Black Eye.

Here is the funniest video from 1987