A product of Third Factory
Chus Pato | A Ponte das Poldras | Galaxia | 2006
A reissue of a book of poems from 1996 that I hadn’t had a chance to read as it was out of print... incredible work as usual, in language, in its wild mix of discourses and levels of language, in its “Galicianness” that doesn’t constrain it, in its insistence on language. Pulses.
Manuel Rivas | Os Libros Arden Mal | Xerais | 2006
A 750 page novel that is a portrait of the city of A Coruña, through the entwined lives of a whle plethora of its inhabitants from pre-uncivil war days to the 1960s, still in Franco’s Spain, but a Spain that cannot be sustained much longer. But a city, a culture, a world emerges from these pages, from these people, from these words.
Jacques Derrida, trans. various hands, ed. Pacale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas | The Work of Mourning | Chicago | 2001
A selection of essays on the deaths and works of friends, sustained me in the past year. Also introduced me to the work of Louis Marin and Max Loreau, while bringing me back to Roland Barthes again (and through Lévinas, Lyotard, Foucault, Jabès... standbys of mine). The thoughts especially on friendship and mourning are openings. And it is a strangely lovely assemblage, it is not a book in French, only exists as a book in English. It should exist in French.
Lisa Robertson | The Men | Bookthug | 2006
Lani Maestro | Sing Mother - Twilight Eats You | Dalhousie Art Gallery |2007
I have a wandery text in this catalogue but what compels are the images of Lani’s work and how she works with liminality, which means, with our bodies too, with air, with light.
Dennis Deletant and Yvonne Alexandrescu | Teach Yourself Romanian | Hodder Arnold | 2002
I like muttering directions to myself in Romanian or just trying to think very small Romanian thoughts, with hardly any vocabulary. I can now distinguish Romanian being spoken by people in the street, and startle them by saying hello.
Caroline Bergvall | The Franker Tale (Deus Hic, 2) | Jacket Magazine issue 32 link | April 2007
Paul Celan, trans. by Julian Semilian and Sanda Agalidi | Romanian Poems | Green Integer | 2003
A bilingual edition, thankfully. I have it to sink into the Romanian, as if reading it over and over, I can learn.
Giorgio Agamben, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen | The End of the Poem | Stanford | 1999
I usually like to read Agamben in Fr. translation as it seems better but this book came to me via a conversation with Meredith Quartermain, so I read it in English. Amazes me.
Nichita Stanescu, trans. Oana Avasilichioaei | Occupational Sickness | BuschekBooks | 2006
Also a bilingual edition. The book that piqued my curiosity about Romanian. And the curiosity of Elisa Sampedrín.
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Jules Boykoff | Once Upon a Neo-Liberal Rocketbadge | Edge | 2006
A beautiful kick-ass poetic fairy tale of the 20th century, a must-read.
Juliana Spahr | This Connection of Everything with Lungs | California | 2005
Matvei Yankelvich | The Present Work | Palm | 2006
Still very present a year later—I loved it &laughed out loud throughout.
Anna Moschovakis | I Have Not Been Able To Get Through to Everyone | Turtle Point | 2006
Unique &gritty voice, held my attention throughout, I’m anxious to see more of her work.
Dietmar Elger | DADAISMUS | Taschen | 2004
“Bevor dada da war, war dada da,” though I would venture to say Mama was there as well.
Elizabeth Treadwell | Birds and Fancies | Shearsman | 2007
This is a beautiful book.
Diane Ward | Flim-Yoked Scrim | Factory School | 2006
I really like what she does with language, especially in terms of subject! She is writing about what’s going on and does so in an inspiring, energy filled way.
Anne Boyer | Anne Boyer’s Good Apocalypse | EFFING, 2006
Quite Simply Amazing.
CA Conrad | Deviant Propulsion | Soft Skull | 2006
This is the best fuck-you of a book i’ve read in a while, I love Conrad the more for it, and all of his deviant propulsions herein.
Jenny Boully | (one love affair)* | Tarpaulin Sky | 2006
Boully’s interest in redefining text(s) as well as form has found its way into my hands (for a reread) on more than 2 occasions.
Laura Solorzano, trans. Jen Hofer| lip wolf | Action | 2007
I was all aquiver.
*
DUSIE
I think it would be much amiss on my part, as an editor, not mention at least a few of the titles put out through Dusie Press, as these are such varied chaps and wee-chaps that I have worked most intimately with and care about...
Kaia Sand | Lotto | 2006 | Elizabeth Treadwell | The Graces | 2006 | From Stems | Edmund Berrigan | 2007 | Matina Stamatakis | Ek-ae: A Journey into Ekphrastic Aesthetics | Michelle Detorie | Bellum Letters | 2007 | Jennifer Scappettone | BEAUTY (is the new absurdity) | 2007 | samar abulhassan | fa’rah | 2007 | Jared Hayes | CaGeD | 2007 | Sawako Nakayasu | Insect Country B | 2007 | Anne Boyer | Selected Dreams, with a note on Phrenology | 2007
This is just a small handful of some of the wee chaps and *dusi/e-chaps which have rattled me up...many many more to come...
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Brent Cunningham | Bird & Forest | Ugly Duckling | 2005
Drinking whiskey with Brent in the kitchen (any kitchen!) is almost as fun as his book (in a good way)...
Logan Ryan Smith, ed. | Small Town PZA Vol. 2 | 2006
RIP Zane.
Rodney Koeneke | Musee Mechanique | Blazevox | 2006
Rodney is a wonderful person. Rodney looks a little like my brother James and/or Liev Schrieber. I have one of Rodney’s infamous reading “set lists.” As a BA at SFSTATE I once wrote a really really crappy poem called “Musee Mechanique.” Rodney’s book is the opposite of that.
Bhanu Kapil | Incubation A Space for Monsters | Leon | 2006
Bhanu likes to say “interiority” and “liminal” in person more than on the page, Bhanu once fed me sugar from her hand, she said “now john, tilt your head back and open your mouth, good...” and then she sort of threw a fistfull of sugar into my mouth and i liked it.
Logan Ryan Smith | The Singers | Dusie | 2007
This is what I posted to my blog a while ago “if you can get past the totally inapropriate cover this is one of the best poetry books of 2007, or Steve Evans Attention Span 2007 material for sure.”
Anna Moschovakis | I Have Not Been Able To Get Through To Everyone | Turtle Point | 2006
I read Anna’s book on my stoop with beer. I want to re-read Anna’s book on my stoop with beer. I don’t want that experience to stop.
Nick Moudry | a poem a movie & a poem | Braincase | 2003
I didn’t know who Nick Moudry was until recently reading The Tiny #1. Nick Moudry’s poems in Tiny #1 made me sit up in bed and go “who the hell is Nick Moudry?”... I posted something to my blog stating as much and then a few weeks later Alli Warren handed me Moudry’s chapbook a poem a movie & a poem, I read it on my stoop with beer and was sad when it was over.
Daniel Clowes | Pussey! | Fantagraphics | 2006
I don’t know, maybe I’m just one of these people that thinks that Daniel Clowes comics shouldn’t be made into movies. Ghostworld sucked, so did Art School Confidential. I recently dated a girl who was into the 60’s as like a genre, a personal aesthetic. Her hair, wardrobe and music were all from the 60’s. I almost bought her a copy of Pussey! but then thought that she might resent me for it...anyway, we’re not dating anymore.
Busdriver | Roadkillovercoat | Epitaph | 2007
“and in Baypoint/ Pittsburg I suck”... I was at that show in 2000...he didn’t suck. I was at his show in 2006 at the Great American Music Hall with Young and my brother. Again, he didn’t suck. In fact, he was so good he rendered the headliners, Deerhoof, moot.
D-Structure | Apparel | Lower Haight | 2007
I play records here every Friday night. They shit all over Upper Playground. This place is my sanctuary. Plus they have the best t-shirt lines in SF. Plus I’m broke because of that.
Demosthenes Agrafiotis, trans. Angelos and John Sakkis | Chinese Notebook | Erato | 1988
This is self-aggrandizement but what the hell. With Angelos Sakkis, I recently translated Demosthenes’s Chinese Notebook. I wouldn’t have spent a year doing that if it sucked. It’s very good.
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Barbara Guest | The Confetti Trees | Sun & Moon | 1999
Franco Loi | Voci d'osteria | Mondadori | 2007
Max Jacob | The Dice Cup | Sun | 1979
Ronald Mason | The Spirit Above the Dust: A Study of Herman Melville | John Lehmann | 1951
Tim Atkins | Horace | O Books | 2007
Jean Day | Enthusiasm | Adventures in Poetry | 2006
Maurice Collis | The Land of the Great Image | New Directions | 1943
Robert Adamson | Inside Out: An Autobiography | Text | 2004
Bill Berkson | Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 | Cuneiform | 2007
Charles Baudelaire, trans. by Keith Waldrop | The Flowers of Evil | Wesleyan | 2006
Kevin Davies | The Golden Age of Paraphernalia | Edge | forthcoming
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Arlo Quint | Photogenic Memory | Lame House | 2007
Read the whole thing aloud and the room swoons.
Michael Nicoloff | “Punks” | TAXT | 2007
Jump up to get to beat down.
Corrine Fitzpatrick | on melody dispatch | Goodbye Better | 2007
I love the avant-garde…. I love to wave at it as it norms its way by.
Dana Ward | The Wrong Tree | Dusie | 2007
Beauty wasn’t born high enough for Dana.
Jessica Dessner | Wit’s End with Bric-a-Brac | Green Zone | 2006
At the bottom of this bottomless handbag.
Mike Hauser | crets crets crets | Rust Buckle | 2006
Jump in lone noodle constellation, jump out plush teal pink black bear.
Farid Matuk | Is It The King? | Effing | 2006
I am buck stupid nothing when I fall to the side of money.
Karen Weiser | Pitching Woo | Cy | 2006
The heart, that vapor-engine, wakes in an incubator.
Evan Kennedy | The Cheer-Up Book of Wounded Soldiers | Dirty Swan Projects | 2007
From the mouths of WWI deserters.
Michael Scharf | For Kid Rock/Total Freedom | Spectacular | 2007
To sing the song that is fantastic.
Note: The first nine are not books in the manner of, like, reproductable spines. I dig Herodotus and Edward Gibbon. And Pauline Oliveros. And Loose Balls.
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My list would be much different had I compiled it in June, and it would have contained a lot more art books. As it is, this list reflects very specific concerns, limitations of mobility (as I relocate temporarily to take up residency at the University of Calgary for the academic year), and upcoming projects. But these are the books I can’t let go of and was sure to pack, or reacquire, first.
Samuel Beckett | Volume III: Dramatic Works | Grove | 2006
All the plays in one—plus the radio plays—what’s not to love here? Until having this edition in my hands I had never read the plays straight through. It’s a whole new world.
Mary Burger | Sonny | Leon | 2005
Burger’s richly condensed, kinetic and lyrical novel is one I enter and re-enter with a measure of disturbing pleasure. This book may have found the limit of sustainable fragmented narrative as far as this reader is concerned.
Judith Butler | Giving Account of Oneself | Fordham | 2005
Narrating, self-narrating or self justification? How to come to terms with oneself in the world? What role? Ongoing reading in an attempt to come to terms with the notion of “I,” the sincerity and complicity of it as a poetic stance and as citizen.
Anne Carson | Glass, Irony & God | New Directions | 1995
Let’s face it, Carson can be an addiction. This year it’s “The Glass Essay,” her elegant and startling weaving of mother/daughter anxieties, aging, and Bronte that occupies.
Margaret Christakos | Sooner | Coach House | 2006
Christakos does amazing things with language. Erotic recombinant work from a practitioner at the height of her powers.
Erin Mouré | Little Theatres | Anansi | 2005
An homage to the force of the potato? The introduction and commentary on little theaters and their role in community? Mouré makes me rethink the poet’s basic tool kit.
Alice Notley | Grave of Light | Wesleyan | 2006
What a trajectory.
Jena Osman | An Essay in Asterisks | Roof | 2004
It was hard to choose one title of Osman’s, and the last issue of Chain sits close to this text. Osman is onto something here, the work on the Dickinson text, the blurring of the essay, how she includes her thinking as well as her procedure.
Lisa Robertson | The Weather | New Star | 2001
Although I carry the entire Robertson library, this is the one that I return to most often, for pleasure as much as to try to put my finger on the lyric pulse.
Susan Sontag | Regarding The Pain of Others | FSG | 2003
What are we looking at and why? Do we have any say in what we see? My favorite essay here is the one that takes up where Woolf left off. Sontag assumes we have moved on from that moment but I’m still thinking about that.
Juliana Spahr | This Connection of Everyone with Lungs | California | 2005
Spahr’s ongoing project of inclusion and meditation compels and directs.
Gertrude Stein | Geographical History of America | Writings 1932–1946 | Library of America | 1998
Ulla Dydo & William Rice | Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises: 1923-1934 | Northwestern | 2003
Fascinating read.
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