The Alps

The Alps
by Brandon Shimoda
October 2008

Valentine's 10/7

ALBANY POETS PRESENTS
in association w/ Flim Forum + Les Figues Press

Tuesday, October 7th
Valentine's
17 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, NY
8pm


featuring

Vanessa Place
Matthew Klane




Vanessa Place is a writer and lawyer, and co-director of Les Figues Press. She is the author of Dies: A Sentence (Les Figues Press), a
50,000-word, one-sentence novella; the post-conceptual novel La Medusa (Fiction Collective 2), and the forthcoming Notes on Conceptualisms (Ugly Duckling Presse), in collaboration with appropriation poet Robert Fitterman, and a nonfiction book, The Guilt Project: Rape and Morality (Other Press). Other work has appeared in other publications, including Western Humanities Review, Northwest Review, Insert Fold Magazine, Greetings #10, 4th Street: A Poetry Bimonthly, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Bookforum, and theextraroom (Ger.). Her collaboration with artist/performer Lamya Regragui will debut at Cent Quatre in Paris/Los Angeles in 2009, and she is collaborating with conceptual artist Stephanie Taylor on the film “Murderous Square Dance at the Spiral Jetty.” Place is a co-founder of Les Figures Press, described by critic Terry Castle as “an elegant vessel for experimental American writing of an extraordinarily assured and ingenious sort.”





Matthew Klane is co-editor and founder of flim forum press, publisher of the experimental poetry anthologies Oh One Arrow and A Sing Economy. His book, B____ Meditations, is forthcoming, this fall, from Stockport Flats Press. His recent chapbooks include Sorrow Songs, Friend Delighting the Eloquent, and The-Associated Press. Also: The Meister-Reich Experiments, an evolving hypertext, online at House Press. Other recent work can be found in The New Chief Tongue and online at Open Letters Monthly and Otoliths. He currently lives and writes in Albany, New York.


$3 suggested donation


ALBANY POETS PRESENTS is Albany Poets’ monthly open mic for poetry, spoken word, and music.

FLIM FORUM PRESS, founded in 2005, is an independent press that provides SPACE to emerging poets working in a variety of experimental modes.

The Alps

The Alps
by Brandon Shimoda
October 2008

Welcome to Boog City

Boog City
5th Annual Small Press Fair

Saturday, September 20th
11am-8pm

Cakeshop
152 Ludlow St.
NYC
$5

Featuring readings from authors of the exhibiting presses:

11:10 a.m.-Brant Lyon, LOGOchrysalis
11:20 a.m.-Andrew Bishop, Graphic Union Press
11:30 a.m.-Celena Glenn, Bowery Books
11:40 a.m.-Mark Lamoureux, Cy Gist Press
11:50 a.m.-Ariana Reines, Fence/Fence Books
12:00 p.m.-Adam Golaski, flim forum press
12:10 p.m.-Damian Weber, House Press
12:20 a.m.-Virna Teixeira, Litmus Press/Aufgabe
12:30 p.m.-Jaye Bartell, little scratch pad
12:40 p.m.-Jeff Downey, Octopus Books
12:50 p.m.-Melissa Christine Goodrum, Other Rooms Press
1:00 p.m.-Jessica Smith, Outside Voices
1:10 p.m.-Austin Alexis, Poets Wear Prada
1:20 p.m.-Tom Savage, Straw Gate Books

-----------------

1:30 p.m.-Stephanie Gray
1:45 p.m.-Bill Kushner
2:00 p.m.-Oak Orchard Swamp (music)
2:30 p.m.-Ryan Eckes
2:50 p.m.-Eric Gelsinger
3:10 p.m.-Douglas Manson
3:30 p.m.-Heart Parts (music)
4:00 p.m.-Elise Ficarra
4:20 p.m.-Kristianne Meal
4:40 p.m.-Kathryn Pringle
5:00 p.m.-Maureen Thorson
5:20 p.m.-Carol Mirakove
5:35 p.m.-A Brief View of the Hudson (music)
6:05 p.m.-Jen Benka
6:20 p.m.-Todd Colby
6:35 p.m.-Kyle Schlesinger
6:55 p.m.-David Hadbawnik
7:15 p.m.-Sharon Mesmer
7:30 p.m.-Casey Holford (music)


Directions: F/V to 2nd Ave.
Venue is bet. Stanton and Rivington sts.

Order Flim / by Credit Card w/ PayPal

A Sing Economy
ISBN 978-0-9790888-1-0
7 x 9, 256 pages
$20 (includes S&H)

Featuring extensive selections from:
Kate Schapira, Barrett Gordon, Jennifer Karmin, Stephanie Strickland, Mathew Timmons, Kaethe Schwehn, Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Jaye Bartell, Jessica Smith, David Pavelich, Erin M. Bertram, Laura Sims, Deborah Poe, a.rawlings, françois luong, Michael Slosek, Kevin Thurston, Hannah Rodabaugh, and Tawrin Baker. Also, three cover films by Scott Puccio. (more...)

Oh One Arrow
ISBN 978-0-9790888-0-3
7 x 9, 208 pages
$20 (includes S&H)

Featuring extensive selections from:
Brandon Shimoda, Thom Donovan, Jonathan Minton, Adam Golaski, Lori Anderson Moseman, Katie Kemple, Christopher Fritton, Eric Gelsinger, Jacqueline Lyons, John Cotter, Jeff Paris, Michael Ives, Jaime Corbacho, Matthew Klane, Pierre Joris, and Aaron Lowinger. Cover art by Luke Daly. (more...)

A Sing Economy and Oh One Arrow are also available, together, for the combined price of $30.

that so tiny! so insane! so voluptuousness!!

That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness is a book of collaborative email poems by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney. The book is always clever, mostly light-hearted, sometimes crass, and occasionally wise. "Tips for Better Writing" is one among many about writing and/or poetry. Here’s a few wise lines from "Tips...": "...You’re better off embittered// & careless than carred & idealistic, haunting themed bars./ P.S. If you ask who’s winning, you automatically lose." That last line is good, it’s like looking back at the shark you’re swimming fruitlessly away from, it’s the need for fanatical, blind faith in one’s self in order to endure as a poet, wrongheaded meddling be damned. The lines that precede the post script are better, though, because they prick the ear with a music Gabbert and Rooney do possess: forget about what the line means: "better," "embittered," "careless than carred" "themed bars." Carred? Is this a typo? Oh, I hope not, I hope it means "to be with car." No, it’s not a typo. Rather, typical of the book's wit.

Two poems in the book interest me especially, stand out because the language almost takes over (though never completely; Gabbert and Rooney always tug a narrative thread. Usually a joke). Here is "O, Lucky Pushpin!"

Bastard blood leaves bastard stains
antic on the landscape: paper, Arctic

circle, Rock of Ages: God trumps
contagion, God trumps trumpets,

even playing “Taps.” Play craps
w/ angels & you’re likely to lose.

Choose only one path in life, &
one epitaph. God trumps cages.

Only God can touch the animals
the way they want to be touched

Man turns to animal slowly,
in stages. Angels become us.

Typically, the language becomes less wild as the poem moves to its close/conclusion, and nothing in this poem beats the first couplet, but the repetitions and the off-rhymes keep the lines quick. I would love to see what they begin here pushed; I'd love to see purpose ignored for the pure pleasure of pace and word. (As it stands, though, "O, Lucky Pushpin!" is excellent.)

Here’s the opening lines from "II.," the other that interests me most: "She kept a chamois-soft list of Things That Set My Heart Aflutter/ & she sent it in a letter, the envelope encrusted with ruby glitter.// The fire-engine sound. The baby-sitter. Her trusty mechanical pencil/ w/ the .5 mm lead scraped the rough paper: Rainwater in the gutter." Thus begins a poem in form, I believe a gazelle? I can’t remember. The form forces Gabbert and Rooney to carry the beautiful language from the first lines most of the way through; the form alone cannot be credited with the music here: the language catches the mouth and tongue and leads lively across the page, right to the solemn end of the poem.

That these are collaborations interests me, mainly because I don’t like to collaborate as Gabbert and Rooney do, that is, back and forth (ask Rooney, she knows!), and I find it amazing that it ever works. I imagine that Gabbert hits the downbeats, but I don’t know. All that’s clear to me is that both Gabbert and Rooney sometimes let sound lead their pens, and somehow when they’re together that isn’t cancelled out. Collaboration too often leads to a middle ground; here it does not.

Some of the poems in the book are on their blog, Even the Details Have Details. And I note, or confess, that I responded to every poem in the comments field with a poem of my own. As I wrote my poems--all extensively built on Gabbert and Rooney’s language--I essentially emphasized what I like most in their work, the music, and deemphasized meaning, cleverness, and conclusions. This is not to suggest that my way is the way, but I’d love to see their future collaborative projects veer into full-on language experiment, because the results could be gorgeous. That’s not a criticism, it’s a request.

I know both poets, and Rooney is publishing my book (Color Plates, Rose Metal Press, 2009), so this review is written entirely without bias. If you buy That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, you will spend $12.50. Some of that money will go to Otoliths press. “Otoliths” means, by the way, "fun with spontaneous," and is best known for its coffee-table books depicting the shoes of those who combusted unexpectedly. The cover of That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness features--and they will deny this--a picture of Gabbert’s legs and Rooney’s infamous blue beehive wig.

Singinging

In the new June edition of Open Letters Monthly, poet and scholar Derek Henderson reviews A Sing Economy. "The poets in this book sing, each in their own register, and their singing produces in the reader an invaluable joy." Sing it to the ceiling.