mischievoice

2010-02-25T13:09:00.000-08:00

mischievoice has moved & will continue here

2010-02-24T09:29:00.000-08:00

this photo, blurry as it is, was taken by me in barcelona on december 12 last year. we were in a bar near camp nou having really good platos combinados, the usual watery spanish beer & the usual amazing spanish coffee before going to watch a game. the victim of the camera this time is petra, my lovely wife, who has now started her social photography blog & fickr site i know more is to come from both sites. go to her

2010-02-24T05:22:00.000-08:00

haitian times

haiti progres

2010-02-24T04:32:00.000-08:00

videos of readings from the stain of poetry series. some fine poets

liberación. a really good weekly in spanish, produced in malmö

2010-02-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

MERITAGE PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT

Open Palm Press (an imprint of Meritage Press), is pleased to announce the series:

Hay(na)ku for Haiti

-- a fundraiser for Haiti, edited by Eileen R. Tabios and blessed by support from chapbookpublishing.com.

Poets who write in the hay(na)ku form (about which more information is available at http://haynakupoetry.blogspot.com) have consented to create hay(na)ku for helping Haiti's recovery efforts. The results are to be released as "pocket poem booklets" by Open Palm Press. Each will be sold for $3.00, reflecting the hay(na)ku's three lines, with all proceeds to be donated for Haiti relief.

The first five of the series are:

#1: PARTICLE AND WAVE and FROM THE CHAIR, two hay(na)ku sequences by Jean Vengua
#2: On A Pyre: An Ars Poetica by Eileen R. Tabios
#3: Hay(na)ku for Haiti by Tom Beckett
#4: when the earth moves by Lars Palm
#5: After René Depestrne’s “My Definition of Poetry”, as translated by Edwidge Danticat, with lines at the end by Lafcadio Hearn by John Bloomberg-Rissman

Over time, more releases will occur as it is anticipated that Haiti's relief requirements will be prolonged and deep. Poets interested in exploring the hay(na)ku through this fundraising effort may contact the series editor at MeritagePressATaolDOTcom

"H for H" booklets are lovingly produced by chapbookpublishing.com (http://chapbookpublisher.com/) on lilac-colored paper to fit, at 2.75" x 4.5 X 2", on an open palm -- ideal for giving engagements.

To order some or all of the series, please send checks made out to "Meritage Press" for $3 per booklet and send to

Eileen Tabios
Meritage Press
256 North Fork Crystal Springs Rd.
St. Helena, CA 94574

For more information: MeritagePressATaolDOTcom

2010-02-23T05:10:00.000-08:00

hay(na)ku for haiti. any of you surprised that eileen tabios would jump at the opportunity to start that impromptu imprint, in collaboration with dan waber's chapbook publishing outfit? Small five page chapbooks to be sold for $3 each as fundraisers for haiti relief. i am delighted to be part of that series. my when the earth moves in will be #4, hot on the heels of chaps by jean vengua, tom beckett (another shadow? anyone?) & señora tabios herself. it's the second time my hay(na)ku try to feed the world, the first was/is some hay. this is my kind of political poetry. will post more on this when the first chaps are released

2010-02-22T06:17:00.000-08:00

ah, but wild life rifle fire, the new book by paul siegell is out from mark young's otoliths

& issue 2 of soandso magazine has some fine poets

2010-02-19T01:20:00.000-08:00

Halvard Johnson - THE PERFECTION OF MOZART'S THIRD EYE & Other Sonnets is new from chalk editions

2010-02-18T15:29:00.000-08:00

& i have to link the three blogs by megan barron i just found

2010-02-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

i post these photos to fend off the endless ice age having besieged the far north end of europe for two months now. they were taken from our hotel window in barcelona in december by my wife petra a.k.a social photographer (when she has her blog & flickr site up & in working order i'll link to them). this is a way of remembering that there are places where winters can be pleasant

2010-02-18T07:09:00.000-08:00

amy king wants to know who the "most innovative poets" writing today are. can that question even begin to be answered?

2010-02-17T14:21:00.000-08:00

(rob tomorrow)
for rob mclennan

1
for many years
in the 70s & 80s

my father worked on
a container ship doing

the route from gothenburg
to vancouver via all

manner of ports from
harwich & rotterdam to

seattle. 2 months on & 2 months
off. he said once

he preferred vancouver
to seattle but now i

can't for the life
of me remember if

he's ever given a
reason

2
snow in málaga. a rare thing
the news says the first

in something like 50 years
& show respectable pinstripes

running to the top
of what little hill they

can find using their brief-cases
to slide down laughing

oblivious of work

then brushing the snow
from their pants

3
we eat you cook

how we learned the rivers
of halland in school

now an amateur chef asks

how do you move a river
or do you just move

the names?

2010-02-15T15:01:00.000-08:00

about a year ago, waiting for the bus, going to work, i saw a poster for a students hiphop club in lund, a nearby town. the club was called don't be quiet, start a riot. of course my first thought was “book title”. when i got home i sent off an email to adam fieled telling him about it & asking him if he wanted to write half, kind of in the punk/hc tradition of the split single/ep/lp/cd. he did. & sent the manuscript to ana bozicevic & amy king, who had then published two chapbooks for the new dusie kollektiv through their newly started weekend press. although they will not make the formal announcement until next week & neither adam nor i have seen the physical book yet, it is now available. adam will read at the stain of poetry reading series on february 26 & that will serve as the new york release. i may try to set something up here in the first half of march

2010-02-15T02:07:00.000-08:00

i pick this from eileen tabios & her latest list of relished w(h)ines. those ties alex gildzen sent out are moving around nicely

TIE ONE ON 1 and TIE ONE ON 2, conceptual art by Alex Gildzen (very entertaining -- RECOMMENDED and AVAILABLE FOR FREE AT ungovernable press. I thought Bill Allegrezza was HOT until I saw Kevin Killian. Grin.)

2010-02-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

encuentros imaginarios has a new website. it's run by roberto mascaró & publishes nordic poets in his spanish translations. seriously worth checking out for those of you who read spanish

2010-02-12T03:34:00.000-08:00

maureen thorson (of big game books fame) is back online & accepting queries for long book manuscripts. i would also say i thoroughly enjoy(ed) her twenty questions for the drunken sailor from the recent dusie kollektiv

2010-02-11T04:47:00.000-08:00

surprise, surprise. the ceaselessly active rob mclennan has a new long book out, this time it's wild horses from university of alberta press. which comes hot on the heels of his most recent chapbook how it is I am not married/I want to sleep in the runcible spoon from lipstick press. many of his books ago i published solids, or, strike out (a suite)

2010-02-10T04:36:00.000-08:00

it looks like prefab eulogies volume 1: nothings houses, the first long book by david wolach, will be published in a near future by Geoffrey Gatza's blazeVOX. this is indeed thrilling news. you may find bits & pieces of the book in various online zines. i would also like to remind you of his book alter (ed)

2010-02-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

some taqwacore for y'all

the kominas

secret trial five

al-thawra

sarmust

diacritical

2010-02-09T01:58:00.000-08:00

in my temporary adopted town there is a comics press that has been plodding on for just about a decade now, doing lovely things with the form. i think it's time they get our attention. C'est Bon Kultur recently released entanglements, their 9th anthology. you like what could be called experimental comics?

2010-02-08T10:53:00.000-08:00

got the first five chapbooks from sacrifice press in the mail today. will write some, hopefully, sensible things about them sometime soon. they are a varied bunch & look tasty. for now i leave you with a poem from whomeanswhat, due out from that very same press in may or june

THE RIVER

meandering to
the sea to see
what's up there
& what to bring
meandering to
the sea bringing
bikes, fish, shoes
cows, garden rakes
cigar butts, beer bottles
grenades, villages
& other general
debris & the sea
turns over & goes
back to sleep for
it's still very
early & hardly
even dawn yet
the river meanders
finally noticing
you splashing &
hollering & your
friend undressing
while running to
wards its west bank

2010-02-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

a very old dream is coming true. Hidenori Hiruta san is going to translate some of my haiku into japanese & publish them on the akita international haiku network site in march, maybe along with photos by my wife petra who, by the way, is starting out as a freelance photographer

2010-02-03T03:04:00.000-08:00

an afterthought to the last post, a hay(na)ku i wrote when living in las palmas after a few hours of slightly lighter rain. it was published in the hay(na)ku anthology vol. II

streets
swept &
flushed yet the

rain does a
far better
job

2010-02-03T02:47:00.000-08:00

there has been some heavy rains over the canary islands the last couple of days. luckily only a handful wounded. canarias7 here & la provincia here

2010-02-02T02:54:00.000-08:00

now enter dusie 9: Das Kollektiv 3 & get no less than 48 chapbooks to dive into

2010-02-02T02:27:00.000-08:00

this is a great idea. letting poets in any given country publish a few poems, a statement on poetics, a short bio & name a few others they feel an affinity with. so far it's latin america, spain & the u.s. i'm hoping others will follow. & i would be deeply happy if someone set up a global one where all posts were in the poet's original language

las afinidades electivas in

argentina
bolivia
chile
colombia
costa rica
ecuador
mexico
panamá
peru
spain
uruguay
venezuela

as escolhas afectivas in

brazil

elective affinities in

u.s.a

2010-02-01T06:36:00.000-08:00

a grand new issue of otoliths is out. amazing poet & editor mark young (terracotta worriers) once again provides us with hours of fascinating writing & visual wizardry

& on a new subject. arsenal may have pissed away their chances of taking their first premier league title in six years by losing against manchester united yesterday. they weren't even on the field. not one of the players were even close to doing the job they're paid for. you just don't lose against manchester united. it doesn't happen. their last straw now is getting their shit together & giving chelsea the proper whipping they normally should on sunday

2010-01-31T02:59:00.000-08:00

oh, yes. ungovernable press expands into new vast buddha fields of writing. Today i bring you

Tie One On part 1 & part 2 by Alex Gildzen being 25 ties

Traveling with Virginia Woolf by Kristina Marie Darling being an essay. & it was reviewed even before it was published

coming up next is Connor Stratman

2010-01-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

& i found these lovely parts on Tom Beckett's new blog. which reminded me to remind you of his Another Shadow?

2010-01-30T06:12:00.000-08:00

two poems of mine in the autumn 2009 issue of simply haiku

2010-01-29T05:11:00.000-08:00

ungovernable press is back. today i bring you no less than three new books. this is sort of an experiment. i'm hoping each of them may get the others some extra readers

Passages: Annotations by Jill Jones is 35 pages of extracts from a work book

Intersecting Views of the Possible Interaction by Felino A. Soriano is 23 painter's exhalations

Take It by Amanda Laughtland is 19 poems inspired by ads for free things on various craigslist communities

in a very near future you may look forward to books by Kristina Marie Darling & Alex Gildzen

also yours truly had a short manuscript accepted for publication in may or june from Sacrifice Press

2010-01-23T14:01:00.000-08:00

ubuweb publishes the unpublishable

2010-01-22T04:29:00.000-08:00

as i was collecting links for a post planned for tomorrow or sunday i came across two chapbooks i hadn't seen from the ongoing collaboration between diana magallón & jeff crouch (both from vugg books)

bully null

piano for the left ear

i'd also like to remind you of their ungovernable book

riot wrong

i am, by the way, going into production mode & you may look forward to new ungovernable books shortly

2010-01-21T03:03:00.000-08:00

so today i go to silliman's blog only to find that robert b. parker died a few days ago. i read many of his books, mostly from the spenser series, but also recently all our yesterdays, with great pleasure. mr. parker will be missed by me &, i suspect, many more readers of crime fiction

2010-01-19T02:10:00.000-08:00

my thoughts go to juliet cook, may she have a speedy & complete recovery

2010-01-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

the nation on how haiti was made the poorest country in the western hemisphere

2010-01-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

Lars Palm - fragments from this

just as i had posted the prevoius note i saw that fragments from this had been published by chalk editions. huge thanks to peter ganick & jukka-pekka kervinen

2010-01-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

is this my war? that
person shovelling snow
down in the yard dressed for
going to the north pole. no
this is not my war. not even
a battle. filibuster all you
like. this issue will be
settled & made public. going
down to the water's edge
they see another town near
by. & maybe a fishing
boat. & a bridge landing on
an artificial island where it
becomes a tunnel. that was
a battle for many years. be
fore the scoreboards got
first mechanized & then digital
some janitor had to hang
the numbers on them. how
exciting might that task have
been he wonders. nowhere is
a towel to be found. only
towers with spiral stairways
& ceilings stained with
wine & wild damp cells. bells
call you to arms & me to
torsos turning. learning lower
registers. barbarisms clashing
flashing their scars. cars
leaning over whispering in
their drivers' ears. hear ye. here
yeast stays at least three
days befor the rain comes
sweeping it off by then not
so dry land. don't fret. there
are very few true words hiding
here. severe trees look up to
the airplanes making tracks
in the sky. those ghost riders
are elsewhere. maybe jumping
ship. skip the next skipper. &
those tiles are beautifully over
stated. statements coincide
with harvest. moon over
some marina. are those really
flowers? they do look a lot like
fish

this is the beginning of a longish poem in progress titled, not surprisingly, this is my war. most of it was written in the wee hours of last night. am thinking it might become "chapbook-length" when it's done

2010-01-05T07:11:00.000-08:00

a couple of days ago when me & petra were at one of our local pubs the staff played this song. la camisa negra was something like the soundtrack to my time in las palmas. it was strange going outside in winter clothes after hearing it. ah, the force of habit

2009-12-24T14:35:00.000-08:00

juan carlos mestre is not only a beautiful person & a fine poet, in cuaderno de roma he shows some of his visual work. my eyes like

2009-12-17T08:42:00.000-08:00

at first i thought of doing this as a comment to a post on adam fieled's blog, but found even the short version would be too long for that. hence

i love the print chapbook for all the reasons adam states. i have been preaching to swedish poets & my local constant readers about how almost all the interesting new poetry, at least in north america, is published in chapbooks

the e-book or e-chap has some advantages & some disadvantages to its print counterpart. the, to me, most obvious disadvantage is that it lacks the tactile delights of a printed book, which in the case of the chap is often beautifully & lovingly designed & produced. the most obvious advantages are ecological (using less natural resources) & the potentially unlimited readership. as for the risk adam sees with poets sending their second rate work to e-chap presses, that strikes me as a strange practice. but if poets do that they will have to live with the fact that their second rate work will be available indefinitely to anyone who wants to read it. & i for one don't submit anything that isn't exactly the poem(s) or manuscript i want it to be at the time. posterity will show what's good & what's not

the two e-books i have forthcoming in the near future, more about them when they're released, are fairly different from each other. one is a poem, or 150-some poems/fragments, mostly culled from a couple of older, only partly functional, unpublished manuscripts, with some new ones added. that one was submitted for e-book publication because it felt too long for a print chap & too short for a long book, which to me makes it the perfect length for the e-book format. the reason i chose chalk editions is that i think they have published some fine things. the other one is a selection of prose poems sporadically written over three years or so. i was thinking of who to submit it to & if it should be print or online. then felino of differentia press asked if i had something i wanted to submit & as i was completely happy with the prose poem manuscript that was the one i sumitted. ye readers will have to judge if either of them is second rate

2009-12-16T07:48:00.000-08:00

david rovics reports from copenhagen in counterpunch

2009-12-15T17:21:00.000-08:00

time now to speak of a tiny poetry press in malmö called poesía con c. it's the only cartonera press i know of outside latin america. they publish some really fine stuff for those of us who can read spanish (& in some cases swedish translations of the poems)

2009-12-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

blue
blue man
blue man with
blue man with his
blue man with his beer
blue man with his beer inside
blue man with his beer inside the
blue man with his beer inside the sun
man with his beer inside the sun
with his beer inside the sun
his beer inside the sun
beer inside the sun
inside the sun
the sun
sun

the photo is by petra pacifico, the poem is by me. both were part of our berlin exhibition (the poem in swedish) which just ended. i have plans to, probably sometime in the spring, publish the photos & english poems (not quite translations) as an e-book

in other news weekend press, operated by amy king & ana bozicevic will start production of my & adam fieled's split chap don't be quiet, start a riot this weekend. & pfs post is back. hooray

2009-11-30T05:36:00.000-08:00

& now the swiss voted for a ban on construction of minarets. when will the horror end?

2009-11-28T10:01:00.000-08:00

& here's the guardian on honduras

2009-11-28T05:23:00.000-08:00

pax americana

current example honduras
manuel zelaya elected

pentagon coup d'etat re
moves him & installs

rightwing army officers

now elections
candidates? a variety
of army officers

pero donde esta manuel?

2009-11-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

nada gordon has a whole lot of interests. & andrew lundwall's scantily clad press publishes a whole lot of interesting books

2009-11-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

this is the current u.s administration & its relationship to south america. thanks to the angry arab news service for the link

2009-11-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

on a brighter note you could go get yourself some claire becker from the mighty duration press

2009-11-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

i just heard about this on the radio a couple of hours ago. there is a handful of questions to be asked

what does a german court-room look like?

why doesn't someone (except her husband) in a populated room intervene to stop a person stabbing another at least 16 times in the upper body?

why do the cop rushing in immediately assume the only other adult foreigner (Marwa's husband, by the way also full of fresh stab wounds) present is the culprit & shoot him in the leg?

court-room security? are european racists less dangerous than angry egyptians?

an obvious, & quite disturbing, answer seems to be that the average european values people & their lives differently. as, in this case, a russian man has a higher value than an egyptian woman

it's fucking sickening

2009-11-19T03:27:00.000-08:00

swimming
in an
outdoors pool with

a late autumn
storm crashing
in

2009-11-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

shall we take a little trip to occupied territory?

report of the united nations fact finding mission on the gaza conflict

executive summary (advance 1)

conclusions and recommendations (advance 2)

the site of the united nations fact finding mission on the gaza conflict

& finally the human rights council homepage

2009-11-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

it's not often i post my own poems here. this is a fairly recent one. what will happen to it i don't know yet

who's for dessert?
one time we were romantic in public
are you going that deep into the desert?
car bomb versus cricket team
do i want to get out of my own medina?
calm perfectly dark surface on that lake
are we somewhere else now?
deporting people to certain disappearance
might that field open to us?
heaven scattered on my trouser legs
can you pass that alley over this way?
if we slap some fines on them
how come there's so little coffee in that milk?
god has not seen fit to call me
how much longer will that stone be yellow?
heavy rain in the mountains
how about the snow?
we know where your pen lives
when will the notion of power become a psychosis?
no means yes means no means

2009-11-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

adnan al-sayegh is in town for a week long arabic festival. he used to live in malmö, but now lives in london & it's not often we get to see him these days. the deleted part is a recently published book in english translation by stephen watts & marga burgui-artajo. some of the poems in it were also included in a swedish volume of his work

2009-11-13T06:40:00.000-08:00

2009-11-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

peter hallin. have a look

2009-11-09T06:35:00.000-08:00

grass
hopping over
the wall

& off
to

canonize
pauli

& back
to over
turn the

fucking
thing

this image, taken by petra in berlin this august & the poem, being a shadow version of the swedish original, are from our exhibition die kinder aus berlin hanging at the pub which has served as mine & my friends' living room since i first moved to malmö in 1996. &, yes that's a cricket in the photo

today people celebrate the 20th anniversary of the berlin wall being torn down. that's all good. now let's put some irresistible pressure on israel to tear down their anti-semite wall at the very latest a year from today

2009-11-06T10:19:00.000-08:00

sometimes i write flash fiction. crime stories. i have written before on this blog about my love for the hardboiled tradition. some of my flashes were published in the lovely defunct online zine flashing in the gutters edited by tribe (couldn't find the link to his site)

now i have decided to self-publish a small simply designed broadside of the first story i wrote & published in the gutters. it's titled Under the Sun & will be available for free from now until december 4. if you want a copy just send me a snailmail address & i'll print & mail it to you

2009-11-03T03:59:00.000-08:00

does belgian poetry exist?

go ask poetry international

the attached image was taken in berlin by petra pacifico & will be on the cover of an e-chap of prose poems to be published by differentia press probably in december or january

2009-10-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

i just have to post this lovely review of Susan Maurer's Perfect Dark. these are the words of George Wallace

Peering Through Perfect Dark: New Poems by Susan Maurer

In PERFECT DARK (ungovernable press, 2009), a new collection of poems Susan Maurer, the urban dilemma that is New York is told in fine style, offering up poem after poem with the kind of duality that satisfies and tantalizes readers. There's fine understated humor in many of the poems, which softens the otherwise urbane voice -- one part wary and another part earnestly yearning. It is this combination of vulnerability of the heart and toughness of spirit that results in a compelling volume with fabulous range.

Some of Maurer’s poems are ineluctably of the moment, seeming to have been traced in a foggy train window and glimpsed in passing as we hurry by. Like BLUE CHALK LINE, at once suggestive of the emotive moment and dismissive of it:

"He wrote on the brick wall in blue chalk
'I know who wrote this.'
Well I know who wrote this and
you know who's reading this
and that takes care of that."

In the poem WITH THE UNBEARABLES, by contrast, we are rushed along pell-mell with the high intensity crowd -- stretching our legs and striding energetically, Frank O'Hara style, through the New York City streets.

"I notice I am running and the red dirt hits my Reeboks
Up or down, I'm baffled, go for up
I stumble to the crosswalk, see no clumps of people, ask
The first man sitting and the man who's sitting next to him
Tells me it's on further and yes, they do want readers"

There is a nuanced balance going on here between eagerness to experience the world and desire to maintain crowd control. We’re offered up a kind of innocence in the face of it all: "She made this cap/unafraid of the city's lingering threat,/was not troubled by thoughts of mutability,/of how this ephemeral thing would fare 5 years from now" writes Maurer in CORONA.

There is also a wry kind of cynicism, which only partly masks the underlying passion of the speaker, as in this couplet which concludes JARDIN CREPUSCLE: "The death penalty comes back on Monday/I guess I'll wear black". Or in the opening lines from TO PAUL CLAUDEL BEFORE I FOUND OUT HE WAS AN ANTI-SEMITE AND TURNED IN THE PLANE TICKET.

"Claudel, Claudel, Paul, Paul,
cent phrases pour l'eventails.
You have cured me of the sea
but fanned from a cinder to a torrid blaze
my love for you.
I'm saying
this book is S
O beau ti
ful, I'm afraid it
might fly away.
And you, Paul, I love you for your poetry.
But I hope your teeth aren't bad."

True to their urbane nature, Maurer's characters are equally unafraid to cut off a potential moment of intimacy in a New York minute.

It is this tentative place she defines -- between the fully realized human being living just below the surface of the urban defensive shell -- which makes Susan Maurer's poems so poignant and winning. Time and time again we are offered characters torn between the desire for human connection and puzzlement over how to remain safe while achieving it -- perfectly enunciated in the anecdotal CALLING BILL KUSHNER, one of her strongest poems from the collection,

"And so we collaborated.
He did one line and I did another.
I wanted to look down his throat
to see where some of them came from.
I mean how'd he come up with them?
And he was mad at me sometimes
'cause he didn't think of some lines I did.
I was honored.
It was so intimate I wasn't sure we should be doing this."

One almost wants to cry out with the same perplexity: 'yes, you SHOULD be doing this, Sue – no, no, you should NOT be!'

The ability to enunciate the dilemma of possessing a human heart in the treacherous urban environment is one of the hallmarks of New York poetry -- and in PERFECT DARK, Sue Maurer's got it in spades. There are vignettes and anecdotes of experiences from Mozambique to Tallahassee, as befits a globe-trotting Manhattanite. But whether it's at home or abroad, we are confronted with experiences and environs that both entice us and warn us away. PERFECT DARK is a world where a back yard is a 'concentration camp for drunks,' people with Walkmen in their ears 'deaf to their own drama,' and some kind of 'Guantanamo on the Hudson.' Even the butterflies become 'colors/fraught with wings.'

The whole question of selfhood in the tumult of stimuli can lead to a violent clipped and yet captivating directness, as in DREAM ADDICT

"I've been having to look at a
number of faces that will
no longer look at me.
Ocatillo living fence, what the blue turtles like.
I can smell snow,
the brilliance of what is
left unsaid.
You hope the clown distracts the bull.
Where's the who. There's no who.
Horse of a different color. Same
fucking ride.
Glass beast. Mud garden. Ecstatic devouring.
My body is a foreign country."

If in the end it is about survival, Maurer poses for her readers a profound question -- what it is that is worth surviving for. Throughout PERFECT DARK, we are reminded that there is beauty yet to be found within people and things, if we can just safely find our way through-- something inside that continues to offer enthrallment, and remains worth fighting for. "They are not the correct colors/it's o.k. to admire like/taupe and beige. These are Day-Gloes,/gawked at, cheap, carnival,/ what one doesn't like" she writes, in ZINC: FRANKLIN AND OGDENBERG NJ.

Yet rocks, she reminds us, "have secret/lives, fluoresce, have/double selves, turn from ordinary stone/to Day-Glo slash, or hot coal orange" and in the end, we want like the author to succumb to their beauty:

"I gawk. I love them,
in the same category of miracle as
eggs which stand on end at equinox."

2009-10-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

this man was found a month ago outside one of the police stations in malmö. he had suffered a stroke & a heart attack. it also turned out he has full-blown amnesia. he doesn't have a clue who he is or what he is/was doing here. the hospital staff & cops have no clue either. all anyone knows is that he speaks fluent english

2009-09-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

both i & ungovernable press have been absent from this blog. now we return. to announce

{uniquely constructed self] by Nate Pritts

&

to finally announce my own

cantar de mio corman

available for the price of a SASE from Amanda Laughtland's Teeny Tiny Chapbooks

that's all for now

2009-08-18T06:44:00.000-07:00

now who would have thunk ungovernable press would live to see its 25th book published? anyway, here it is

Altered Aesthetics by Felino A. Soriano

i thank all ye who made me go on doing this

in other news i returned from four days in berlin yesterday. a lovely & probably mad city

2009-08-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

2009-08-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

this has taken way too long for several reasons, the most important one being personal & hence not fit for this blog. but now your waiting's over, dear constant ungovernable press reader, for i unleash

Perfect Dark by Susan Maurer

this book is unique in our catalogue in a couple of ways. it is a collection of poems written over a long period of time, something like 15 years, & it's the first (& last) manuscript i've received in hard copy with all the extra work that brings when you don't own a scanner. at times i feel i know this book by heart, which, as this is the book it is, is a good feeling

i may also add that ungovernable press might become we, as someone who may be introduced later, if she's still game, has volunteered to do future cover designs

2009-07-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

the mighty wheelhouse collective has published three new free e-chapbooks

my own over this here rainbow

tongue like a stinger by juliet cook

xenomorphia by matina stamatakis & john moore williams

i read the cook & the stamatakis/williams an hour or so ago & am wildly happy to be in such company

2009-07-16T06:08:00.000-07:00

ah, ungovernable press got

another shadow? by tom beckett

who is otherwise known for his unprotected texts from meritage press. & a little book of zombie poems available from poet's corner

other announcements & things will follow

2009-06-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

the weekend & many a day ahead are saved. you now have ample opportunity to read the works of this man. ungovernable press just published

hexapoems II

&

song of chin (part I,II)

by ed baker. who has been publishing quite extensively in recent times. he has the first 3 (of 6) books of neighbor at new mystics, points/counterpoints from fact-simile & g oo dnight from moria. another chap, asherah, is forthcoming from wheelhouse later in the summer

2009-06-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

what? again? sure, news from ungovernable press

Bash Slasho by Alana Madison

& she does things to a well known dead japanese poet that make me blush when i think of them

go, have ye some fun

2009-06-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

new from ungovernable press

terracotta worriers by Mark Young

where he with a broad mind & a (deceptively, i'm sure) light hand takes on the chapter headings of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. ever productive this is his second book since the generous new & selected pelican dreaming from Meritage Press. earlier this year he had more from series magritte out from moria

2009-06-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

mackerelling by james harvey. published by intercapillary editions, the press extension of intercapillary/space

2009-06-01T05:17:00.000-07:00

should you so want you might head on over to ungovernable press & check out our latest thing

the white album by adam fieled

in which he does wild things to the song titles of that famous beatles album

2009-05-23T06:45:00.000-07:00

a small prose poem for your reading pleasure

(british colonialism & swedish public service radio)

an hour extolling the virtues of the old-school colonial white landowners in zimbabwe (& this is 2009?)

2009-05-22T03:19:00.000-07:00

elizabeth williamson has a brief review of david wolach's book alter (ed) on goodreads. i reproduce it here because it's interesting

The two sections of book alter(ed) reproduced here by ungovernable press are startlingly different; the differences reward attention. In the first section, the fire speaks, but this is not T.S. Eliot's epic voice. Anchored both in the material horror of the Tokyo firebombings (depicted on the cover) and in the philosophical problem of the historical events that seem to return to us over and over again, this section plays with the terror of "as if." The work seems to be backing into history, ripping holes in the fabric as it moves in and out of what we think of as our factual experience.

The second section, which draws on excerpts from online pornography, deals far more directly with bodies and their vulnerability (and of course with the book as body). Here Wolach is doing a different kind of inversion, taking language that is firmly anchored in the present (Home Depot, foreclosures, etc.), but shifted slightly out of our normal range of perception, as in lines like this: "His hands ran up the left side of my life." Together the two sections are deeply intimate, but also--and importantly--unsettling.

2009-05-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

will
you walk
with me in

to this thunder
storm? clearing
the

air
of silence
adjusting the nothing

so it may
run with
interesting

interruptions
the axe
came down, blood

all around. that
woke me
up

shall
we go
then or have

you something better
to execute?
like

maybe
a movement
swinging an axe?

& this is where the axe came from

2009-05-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

2009-05-19T16:29:00.001-07:00

2009-05-19T11:51:00.001-07:00

2009-05-19T10:04:00.000-07:00

three poems each by jason bredle & jean vengua & two by adam fieled at pfs post

david wolach blogs

i occasionally play with poems on twitter

a grand new issue of blazevox i'm still swimming around in

Mothers, Daughters & Nightbirds by Martine Bellen new from beard of bees

the haiku foundation

2009-05-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

2009-05-19T07:59:00.001-07:00

2009-05-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

2009-05-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

this is really stupid behaviour from an irish writers festival. thanks anny for posting it

2009-05-13T04:55:00.000-07:00

on a brighter note. yes, another ungovernable book for your reading pleasure

book alter (ed) by David Wolach

of course there's a political element to writing & publishing poetry (more so than prose) & to the name of my little press, but these activities are not yet considered acts of terrorism

2009-05-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

usama kassir was found guilty. he now faces a probable life sentence. the main witness for the prosecution was a man who had previously been sentenced to 30 or so years for terrorist crimes. he had been promised a reduced sentence if he helped get usama kassir convicted

why do these "terrorist trials" remind me so much of the medieval witch trials?

2009-05-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

ungovernable press is happy to announce its first collection of visual poetry. & its first collaboration

riot wrong by Diana Magallón & Jeff Crouch

it turned out the file was too large to be uploaded to my free weebly site. so those of you thinking of submitting visual work, please keep the files under 5 MB

you may also want to check out ungovernable poet paul siegell with six poems in pfs post today

2009-05-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

rene engström. see for yourselves

2009-05-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

my pieces of lanzarote are now up at pfs post along with four lovely poems by k. silem mohammad. we are part of the quite amazing spring line-up adam has pulled together

2009-05-01T03:49:00.000-07:00

a new issue of otoliths with lots of great work & a cover by editor mark young

& i forgot to mention the latest issue of ars interpres has some of its content online

2009-04-13T02:32:00.000-07:00

a few days ago i bumped into rasmus gran, a really fine cartoonist. my bumping into him is not unusual as we move in the same places & largely the same circles. this time, however, he told me about his english sites. of course i need to link them

& in the guardian marina hyde asks who shall police the cops

2009-04-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

Usama Kassir, a swedish citizen, is going on trial in new york

he is accused of being one of a number of people who in 1999 were going to biuld a training camp for "terrorists" outside bly, oregon

the accusations were tried in sweden in 2004 & the charges dropped

american authorities demanded that Usama Kassir be extradited, but it wasn't until the fall of 2005 that he was taken by the f.b.i during a touchdown in prague. in 2007 czechia handed him over to the u.s

even though the "crime" he is accused of was supposedly committed in oregon he is being sentenced (for he will be found guilty, of course) in new york which is still so heavily marked by terror

this will not pass in silence

2009-04-09T02:30:00.000-07:00

two things ungovernable

first

please welcome Someone struggles by Jonathan Ball to the world

second

bookmark the new ungovernable press site

& a third thing apparently unrelated

pfs post is having a jolly season. you might want to dive into it

2009-04-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

this is just a brief note to say that because my hotmail account was hi-jacked twice since saturday i have closed it, i managed to rescue my list of contacts but lost all the messages & any mail you may receive from it from now on is NOT from me & should be regarded as junk mail. my new email address is

larspalm69ATgmailDOTcom

i'm sorry for any inconveniance this may have caused

2009-03-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

Sal Salasin in Guadalajara, february 2008. Photo by Jim Stapleton

Sal Salasin passed away on thursday. i knew him as founding editor of RealPoetik &, when he went to central america to study spanish, as author of a long line of quite amazing correo electronicos

here is the poem i sent to him via his daughter

(correo electronico)
for sal salasin

today the electronic
postman brought me
news no one wants
to hear. so i washed
out my ear with a
small explosive followed
by the seven deadly
sins. & later seven
drunken pirates speaking
damn near perfect
spanish stagger in
to the room surprisingly
switching to swedish
as they try to say some
thing along the
line of when
death knocks i will
open neither door
nor window but
bring out the chess
board & start practicing
like mad

2009-03-23T11:07:00.000-07:00

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. ~Timothy Leary. & thanks Amy for posting it

2009-03-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

chimes, the new book by adam fieled arrived in the mail yesterday. i'll let these serve as example for now. it's a sequence of autobiographical prose poems. it's a really good sequence of autobiographical prose poems. my relation to autobiography is not very friendly. i read this book yesterday afternoon at my regular pub along with a couple of pints of a legendary stout. it was a great hour or so. i think you might want to read it too

2009-03-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

christopher rizzo explores little boxes

2009-03-13T11:14:00.000-07:00

charles bernstein assaults morality

2009-02-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

sometimes señor silliman hits it perfectly. check out the first stanza of todays post. my poets are not the same as his, but what he describes is one of the major reasons i find poetry to be so much fun