horse less notes

2009-09-20T00:10:00.001-05:00

Hi Everybody,

Since moving to Denver, I've been busy with work and school and writing, and horse less has suffered. For the past year it's been mostly quiet, and for the year before that we were running way way behind. We've got new projects underway this year though, including our first full-length perfect bound anthology and some fabulous chapbooks. This year I want to revamp, reconsider, recreate, get ready to move out of the oughts. And I would love your help.

*We need someone to design a new website for us. Something very simple that can be easily updated. We can pay (a little)! We'd really like to get something basic and new up quickly, so that we can begin to advertise our upcoming publications in a fresh, bright space, so if you're at all interested, please please get in touch asap!

*We need someone(s) to design chapbook covers for us. This could be on a book-by-book basis or a regular gig. If you're interested in being considered for either, let me know.

Pretty soon we will officially begin considering submissions for our next online review AS WELL as new chapbook submissions. I'll send out an official announcement shortly, and of course I would love to see your work.

Thanks for your help, and more from me shortly!
Jen

2009-02-06T17:43:00.000-05:00

All the poets on the interweb are talking about going to AWP, which reminds me that I'm going to AWP too. (AWP: sort of like "yawp" except not at all like that.) I will not have a book table and I will not be on a panel. I will fly into Chicago early Friday morning and leave early Sunday, and I will have a bag of my own books and the horse less chapbooks of some of my friends which I would love to peddle your way. Also, I will be part of the very exciting-looking Coconut/Milk Reading Saturday night at Myopic Books. The line-up keeps getting more and more exciting; here's the most recent list I've seen: Denise Duhamel, Jenny Boully, Susan Wheeler, Daniel Nester, Prageeta Sharma, Gene Tanta, Jen Tynes, Lea Graham, Reb Livingston, Mirela Ramona Ciupag, Ken Rumble, Gina Myers, Natalie Lyalin, Emily Kendal Frey, Zach Schomburg, Larry Sawyer, and Bruce Covey. Also, it is on Valentine's Day! Spend part of the evening with us, would you?

-Jen

2009-01-25T17:10:00.001-05:00

Our December chap/book sale has been quite popular, so we're extending it into 2009! See the post below for details.

2008-12-17T21:50:00.001-05:00

Happy December from Horse Less Press!

Here's a couple deals for you.

1. Pick up any two of the following chaps for only $7 (plus $1 shipping)! (Don't forget to let us know which two books you want!)
Anemic Cinema by Thomas Cook
To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation by Andrea Rexilius
Shadows are Weather by Allison Carter
Toward Eadward Forward by Emily Abendroth
A Mule-Shaped Cloud by Sarah Bartlett and Chris Tonelli
Vale Tudo by Sommer Browning
The Photograph by Sampson Starkweather
At Last Unfolding Congo by Alex Lemon

2. Or! Get any one chapbook from the above list plus a copy of Jen Tynes's new book, Heron/Girlfriend, for $10 (plus $1 shipping). More info about Heron/Girlfriend, published by Coconut Books, here: http://www.lulu.com/content/2203360

2008-11-24T11:17:00.001-05:00

Another new chapbook from horse less press!

ANEMIC CINEMA
Thomas Cook

Read more about it here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/cook.html

And then order it here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

From ANEMIC CINEMA:

Forgive the pin my hand was giving a flower
Upside down
So here extends the path to my heart

I make sense of skin
And it is light like sun
The pin my hand was giving a flower

The door twists like a cloak
And collapses like a hinge
So here extends the path to my heart

The pin is the path of the hinge
The pin
The pin my hand was giving a flower

The door collapses all the light in the room
And the room is a pin
So extends the path to my heart

I filled the room the door collapsed the door with a hinge
And the light with the sun like a flower
The pin my hand was giving a flower
So here extends the path to my heart

2008-11-23T13:14:00.001-05:00

A new horse less chapbook!

TO BE HUMAN IS TO BE A CONVERSATION
Andrea Rexilius

28 pages, staple-bound.
$5 + $1 shipping

More info here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/rexilius.html

Buy it here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

Two New Chapbooks

2008-11-06T23:12:00.000-05:00

Look what we've been doing! Two new chapbooks from horse less press:

Shadows are Weather by Allison Carter

Allison is the author of A Fixed, Formal Arrangement (Les Figues, 2008). Work of hers has also been included in journals such as Fence, 5_Trope, P-Queue, 3rd Bed, and others. Allison currently lives on the east side of Los Angeles, where she co-edits PS Books with Joe Potts and teaches a workshop in hybrid forms at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

&

Toward Eadward Forward by Emily Abendroth

Emily Abendroth is a writer and artist, alternately residing in the San Franciso Bay Area and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where she co-curates the Moles Not Molar Reading Series with poet Justin Audia). Recent work of hers can be found in Encyclopedia, Pocket Myths: The Odyssey Edition, horse less review, and Cut & Paste. A chunky excerpt from her book-length work-in-progress “Muzzle Blast Dander” can be found in Refuge/Refugee (Volume 3 of the Chain Links book series).

Order them both here.

HLR #6

2008-08-02T21:51:00.002-05:00

Better late!

HORSE LESS REVIEW ISSUE SIX: MTC Cronin, Jesse Crockett, Nicholas Grider, Joshua Ware, Mike Sikkema, Jared Stanley, James Belflower, Anne Heide, J Michael Martinez, Robyn Art, Mg Roberts, Jason Stumpf, Mark DeCarteret, Clint Frakes, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Daniel Godston, Jared White, James Capozzi, Laura Carter, Conan Kelly.

http://www.horselesspress.com/wintero8/review6.html

2008-07-21T13:49:00.004-05:00

We're out of hiding and back to work!

Coming in the next 2-3 months: chapbooks!
Anemic Cinema by Thomas Cook
To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation by Andrea Rexilius
Shadows Are Weather by Allison Carter
toward eadward forward by Emily Abendroth
Threat of the Wing by Anne Heide

Also coming soon: Horse Less Review #6

And more news about our first print anthology, New Pony.

2008-05-03T17:36:00.002-05:00

Writers & Friends:

We have fallen behind in our work & as of May 2008 are not currently accepting any new submissions. Check back in the Fall! If you've not heard back on your submitted work or are anxiously waiting to see the next issue, never fear. We'll get back to you soon. If you have questions or concerns, please feel free to email. Horse Less Review #6 is really and truly going to be out and about soon, and we'll be announcing the rest of our 2008 chapbook line-up. Also coming soon, more information about our first print anthology New Pony: Collaborations & Responses from Horse Less Press.

2008-02-27T16:14:00.001-05:00

Boyd Spahr's The Julias is reviewed at Sustainable Aircraft.
http://sustainableaircraft.com/?p=9
Thanks, Alex Linhardt!

2008-02-13T23:03:00.000-05:00

The power of video! Hearing and seeing, simultaneously!
Kitchen Press & Horse Less Press authors read some poems in Hell's Kitchen, USA.
Thanks to Justin Marks for organizing and hosting this event.
http://youtube.com/user/KitchenPress

2008-01-19T14:38:00.000-05:00

Two new chapbooks from horse less press!

Vale Tudo by Sommer Browning
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html
http://www.horselesspress.com/valetudo.html

A Mule-Shaped Cloud by Sarah Bartlett and Chris Tonelli
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html
http://www.horselesspress.com/mule.html

And the reading period for our collab/response anthology has almost come to an end! Send your work! Info below:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

HORSE LESS PRESS will publish a print anthology in 2008. THE THEME is response. WE ARE INTERESTED in the following 1) writings that respond to, collaborate with, collage from, extend, elaborate, etc. a piece of writing that HAS APPEARED in horse less review, 2) COLLABORATIONS WITH WRITERS who've been published by horse less press or review, 3) BEGINNINGS, FRAGMENTS, PROPOSALS, HALF-MADE WORKS which desire some attention. We may also be interested in collaborative or response-based writings that do not fall into these categories. Please query early if you have an idea. SUBMISSIONS GO to horselessresponse at gmail dot com. Our deadline is January 31, 2008. Send work IN THE BODY of email or as a single word, rtf, or pdf file. IN A COVER letter please tell us a little about yourself and a little about the work you are submitting. PLEASE CLARIFY whether your submission falls into category 1, 2, 3. If #1, MAKE SURE you identify the source work. IF YOU NEED MORE information, visit our website or send questions to the above email address.

2008-01-18T19:59:00.000-05:00

Justin Lacour's poem Sees the ______ and Waits, published in Horse Less Review #4 (Summer 2006), was chosen by poet Chad Davidson to be included in the 2007 Best of the Net Anthology. Woohoo, Justin!

2007-12-19T21:01:00.001-05:00

A new chapbook from HORSE LESS PRESS!

THE PHOTOGRAPH
by Sampson Starkweather

Learn more about it here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/photograph.html

Buy it here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

Coming soon: chapbooks from Sommer Browning, Chris Tonelli & Sarah Bartlett.

And only 43 more days to submit work for our response/collaboration anthology:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

HORSE LESS PRESS will publish a print anthology in 2008. THE THEME is response. WE ARE INTERESTED in the following 1) writings that respond to, collaborate with, collage from, extend, elaborate, etc. a piece of writing that HAS APPEARED in horse less review, 2) COLLABORATIONS WITH WRITERS who've been published by horse less press or review, 3) BEGINNINGS, FRAGMENTS, PROPOSALS, HALF-MADE WORKS which desire some attention. We may also be interested in collaborative or response-based writings that do not fall into these categories. Please query early if you have an idea. SUBMISSIONS GO to horselessresponse at gmail dot com. Our deadline is January 31, 2008. Send work IN THE BODY of email or as a single word, rtf, or pdf file. IN A COVER letter please tell us a little about yourself and a little about the work you are submitting. PLEASE CLARIFY whether your submission falls into category 1, 2, 3. If #1, MAKE SURE you identify the source work. IF YOU NEED MORE information, visit our website or send questions to the above email address.

2007-12-11T00:02:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

Please stop by and get your copy of Alex Lemon's brand new horse less chapbook, AT LAST UNFOLDING CONGO.

http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html
http://www.horselesspress.com/congo.html

The most recent postal rate increase means we're adding a $1 shipping charge to our books, but wait! Why don't you avoid the shipping cost by getting yourself a 6-book or 12-book subscription! Titles and purchasing info on the chapbook page.

http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

Don't forget our upcoming collaboration/response anthology: the call for submissions is pasted below. If you've got an idea that doesn't fit into one of the submission categories listed, tell us about it! We are very open-minded.

Coming soon: chapbooks from Sampson Starkweather, Sommer Browning, Sarah Bartlett & Chris Tonelli.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

HORSE LESS PRESS will publish a print anthology in 2008. THE THEME is response. WE ARE INTERESTED in the following 1) writings that respond to, collaborate with, collage from, extend, elaborate, etc. a piece of writing that HAS APPEARED in horse less review, 2) COLLABORATIONS WITH WRITERS who've been published by horse less press or review, 3) BEGINNINGS, FRAGMENTS, PROPOSALS, HALF-MADE WORKS which desire some attention. We may also be interested in collaborative or response-based writings that do not fall into these categories. Please query early if you have an idea. SUBMISSIONS GO to horselessresponse at gmail dot com. Our deadline is January 31, 2008. Send work IN THE BODY of email or as a single word, rtf, or pdf file. IN A COVER letter please tell us a little about yourself and a little about the work you are submitting. PLEASE CLARIFY whether your submission falls into category 1, 2, 3. If #1, MAKE SURE you identify the source work. IF YOU NEED MORE information, visit our website or send questions to the above email address.

2007-12-03T15:46:00.001-05:00

Below is a call for submissions from HORSE LESS PRESS for our first print anthology. Please forward or link to it far and wide! Our schedule has shifted a little, so we've extended the deadline for submissions to January 31.

Additionally, our mailing list has been disappeared! Whether you were on the old list or not, if you'd like to receive somewhat regular -- but not at all overwhelming -- notices from HORSE LESS PRESS, please email horselesssubmissions@gmail.com with "subscribe" in the subject line.

Coming soon: chapbooks from Alex Lemon and Sampson Starkweather.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

HORSE LESS PRESS will publish a print anthology in 2008. THE THEME is response. WE ARE INTERESTED in the following 1) writings that respond to, collaborate with, collage from, extend, elaborate, etc. a piece of writing that HAS APPEARED in horse less review, 2) COLLABORATIONS WITH WRITERS who've been published by horse less press or review, 3) BEGINNINGS, FRAGMENTS, PROPOSALS, HALF-MADE WORKS which desire some attention. We may also be interested in collaborative or response-based writings that do not fall into these categories. Please query early if you have an idea. SUBMISSIONS GO to horselessresponse at gmail dot com. Our deadline is January 31, 2008. Send work IN THE BODY of email or as a single word, rtf, or pdf file. IN A COVER letter please tell us a little about yourself and a little about the work you are submitting. PLEASE CLARIFY whether your submission falls into category 1, 2, 3. If #1, MAKE SURE you identify the source work. IF YOU NEED MORE information, visit our website or send questions to the above email address.

http://www.horselesspress.com

chapbooks a'comin

2007-09-21T13:46:00.000-05:00

I can finally announce our Fall/early Winter chapbook schedule!

October// Alex Lemon's At Last Unfolding Congo
November// Sam Starkweather's The Photograph
December// Sommer Browning's Vale Tudo
January// Chris Tonelli & Sarah Bartlett's A Mule-Shaped Cloud

2007-09-11T13:27:00.000-05:00

TWO NEW CHAPBOOKS FROM HORSE LESS PRESS:

SURVEYIC HERO by JACK BOETTCHER

THE JULIAS by BOYD SPAHR

BUY THEM HERE!

2007-07-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

Justin Marks is interviewed at the Ploughshares blog.

2007-07-09T18:46:00.001-05:00

TWO NEW CHAPBOOKS FROM HORSE LESS PRESS:

Fog Quartets by Julie Doxsee
http://www.horselesspress.com/fog.html

[Summer_insular] by Justin Marks
http://www.horselesspress.com/summer.html

Buy them both here
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

COMING IN JULY/AUGUST:

Chapbooks from Boyd Spahr and Jack Boettcher

2007-06-13T17:47:00.001-05:00

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

HORSE LESS PRESS will publish a print anthology in 2008. THE THEME is response. WE ARE INTERESTED in the following 1) writings that respond to, collaborate with, collage from, extend, elaborate, etc. a piece of writing that HAS APPEARED in horse less review, 2) COLLABORATIONS WITH WRITERS who've been published by horse less press or review, 3) BEGINNINGS, FRAGMENTS, PROPOSALS, HALF-MADE WORKS which desire some attention. We may also be interested in collaborative or response-based writings that do not fall into these categories. Please query early if you have an idea. SUBMISSIONS GO to horselessresponse at gmail dot com. Our deadline is December 15, 2007. Send work IN THE BODY of email or as a single word, rtf, or pdf file. IN A COVER letter please tell us a little about yourself and a little about the work you are submitting. PLEASE CLARIFY whether your submission falls into category 1, 2, 3. If #1, MAKE SURE you identify the source work. IF YOU NEED MORE information, visit our website or send questions to the above email address.

2007-06-13T14:28:00.000-05:00

A new chapbook from Horse Less Press!

Lyric by C.S. Carrier.

Read more about it here: http://www.horselesspress.com/lyric.html
& then buy it here: http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

2007-06-09T20:07:00.001-05:00

It's a late, wild bloomer.
Horse Less Review #5 (Spring 2007) is here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/spring2007/review5.html

Containing work by Nate Pritts, Noah Falck, Claire Hero, John Duvernoy, Philip Oakes, Seth Perlow, Jay Snodgrass, Mark Cunningham, Annalynn Hammond, Simon DeDeo, Sean Kilpatrick, Paul Siegell, Michael Aird, Thomas Cook, Gina Abelkop, Melanie Hubbard, Justin Marks, Gareth Lee, Emily Abendroth, Conan Kelly.

Enjoy, tell your friends, and send us work for #6.

Coming in the next week: LYRIC, a chapbook by C.S. Carrier.

Coming in the next six weeks: Chapbooks by Justin Marks, Julie Doxsee, Boyd Spahr, and Jack Boettcher.

Yrs,
Jen & Erika

2007-05-24T14:06:00.001-05:00

Check 'em out: two new reviews of Kathleen Ossip's Cinephrastics:

latenightwriting.blogspot.com/2007/05/chapbook-review-cinephrastics.html

amyking.org/blog/?p=333

Interview with Ravi & Reb

2007-04-25T19:06:00.000-05:00

Say It Hot: An Interview with Reb Livingston and Ravi Shankar
This interview, mediated by Jen Tynes, took place via email between March 5 and April 24, 2007.

Reb Livingston is the author of Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books, Fall 2007) and Pterodactyls Soar Again (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series, 2006). She's also the editor of No Tell Motel and publisher of No Tell Books. With Carly Sachs she co-curates the Burlesque Poetry Hour.

Ravi Shankar, founding editor of the international journal of the arts Drunken Boat and poet-in-residence at Central Connecticut State, has published a book of poems, Instrumentality (Cherry Grove), named a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards. He has appeared as a commentator on NPR, written poems, reviews and essays for such publications as The Paris Review, Fulcrum and Poets & Writers , and read his work in many places, including the Asia Society and the National Arts Club. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he is currently editing an anthology of contemporary South Asian, Middle Eastern and East Asian poetry, due out with W. W. Norton & Co. in Spring 2008. You can read an interview with him at Jacket magazine.

Buy Wanton Textiles by Ravi Shankar and Reb Livingston.

J: I'm interested, first of all, in the way you went about collaborating on Wanton Textiles, and to what extent you think the process is relevant to the work itself. Erika Howsare and I have been doing some somewhat long-term collab work, mostly by email, and I've found it interesting to note how the "I" of those pieces -- even when our individual writings are in correspondence form or otherwise clearly dilineated -- is modifed by all kinds of factors (from place to mode of writing to awareness of the collaboration process itself). In Wanton Textiles, I notice that the first several pages created a definite sense of two people corresponding (There are sections addressed to Ravi from Reb), though oddly -- the letter-like pages from Reb are, even in their mysteriousness, very personal, individually voiced. The sections that read as responses are line-broken and, though intimate in their own way, seem much further removed from an author or personality. In keeping with the title and cover, there seems to be a seduction going on -- the Reb letters calling the Ravi (?) poems out. And I say "Reb letters" and "Ravi poems" here instead of assigning authorship, exactly, because the construction and assignation of voices here seems so intentional, so part of the piece and worth considering in its own right. At one point, about midway through the book, I lose track of which voice is which, if there is, in fact, a division -- a conversation between two voices. The nicknames and pen names also add to this sense that identity shifts, that, in fact, some of these letters are written to a place -- the landscape and city -- as much as a person. So back to my question: can you talk a little bit about your sense of "self" or voice in this writing and how it relates to the collaboration process?

Reb: There's three combined veins going on in the chapbook, first a long poem that both Ravi and I wrote and edited together via e-mail over the course of a year. The single poem is a blended voice and can be read alone here. For the chapbook we interspersed the long poem with individual postcard poems written the following summer after completing the longer piece. To help distinguish between the three in the book, I used different fonts. The long poem has an elegant, perhaps sophisticated [deadpan!] font, Didot, and the postcards are done with Lucinda, a font resembling correspondences. For the "Reb" postcards I used a script variation (Lucinda Handwriting) reflecting the more personal and for the "Ravi" postcards a more old-fashioned and official-esque style (Lucinda Fax) -- the kind a courier might open and read aloud at your doorstep. To me, each of the three directions are connected and building on each other, although in completely different and at times frustrating angles. I was concerned that what was happening might not be so obvious to someone not intimate with the book's creation, so I did my best to make it clear, without over-explaining, over-labeling. I hope.

The "Reb" postcard poems and "Reb" lines in the longer poem (which became blurry in places with editing as we both tinkered with each others lines) are definitely more unguarded, personal, open -- mystery aside. Part of that is drastically differing styles, how do cats and dogs learn to live together? Another part is the expectations and boundaries within the longer co-written poem and the postcard correspondences. Sometimes the interaction is very direct, at times indirect and in others completely disconnected [maddening!]. Are the poems and lines struggling for control or merely desperate to be heard on their own terms? Do they want to be joined together or admired from afar? Tenderness or validation? Are the poems and lines offering a warmth to each other? Are they generous? Is there a level of phoniness at play? Yes, landscapes and cities are often incorporated in the poems, but to me the bigger idea of "place" is the place these interactions intentionally carve out. Where are the poems putting themselves? Why the incredible distance? There's a lot of talk of meeting up, but never an encounter. Could they not get their acts together or was that never the point? What is touchable, what is off limits, what is delicate, what is sturdy enough for the dryer, what places itself in "dry-cleaning" only space, or a wear once and disregard and what is so stiff and scratchy it's only meant to be regarded, never worn?

Perhaps what the chapbook does is show two very different selves, what they are on their own [blindly groping, sad, directionless, inconsolable] -- and what they could achieve in unison [self-awareness, responsiveness], if even for a very brief moment before inevitably falling back into the fractured, flawed selves.

J: Yes, I did definitely notice the fonts and use them as one kind of "guide" -- it's interesting, though, how the organization of the manuscript subverts and complicates (all for the better, I think!) the divisions and thus the identities. In the first pages, the way the poem sections alternate with the letters signed by Reb suggest a correspondence. Though the poem voice is talking about Lycra and the miseries/mysteries of the body, its lack of address or salutation, in contrast to (and seemingly in conversation with) the letters signed by Reb make it less corporeal, a sort of over-voice. What's really interesting, meaningful, and yes, hot, for me about this part of the "correspondence" is the sense of an individual drawing out and addressing directly and personally this abstracted voice. Though I hadn't guessed the breakdown entirely correctly, I imagined that perhaps you and Ravi had been in cahoots creating EACH of the voices -- that the "Reb" letters were just as collaborative as the rest. Because this poem seems, to me, to be interested in how conversation defines self.

So can you tell me a little more about your sense of the "place" of this poem? You talk about postcards -- did you actually use postcards for corresponding? Do you think it matters whether there were actual postcards (as opposed to, say, email pretending to be postcards) in the making of this book? That is, how does the physicality of the making process shape the reality of the product for you, specifically in this project? And talking about the physical of course leads us to the fabrics. I'll get to that shortly, but if you want to start talking...

Reb: No, we used fake e-mail postcards, the entire chapbook was written, edited and proofed via e-mail. All of my writing was done from home. I haven't been to all places mentioned or alluded in my postcards (for instance, Oklahoma) and while I have been to Tahoe, I never got in the lake. As for Vegas, I swear I never met up or got busy with Harold Bloom. Honest. But if I did, I imagine it would be a lot like how I described. Crusty old men cannot resist me.

This may sound dopey, but for me traveling is heavily connected with textiles. I put a great deal of thought into what clothing and shoes to pack yet despite all planning, something often goes awry, usually involving shoes. Wherever I stay, I'm very conscious of the fabrics; towels, robes, bedspreads, sheets, carpets, curtains. Fabrics can either bring comfort and security or wreak havoc, chafe, itch, poorly fit, etc. Fabrics can tear, accumulate scents, stains, other fibers, hairs -- all remnants from the journey. Most can be mended or washed, but occasionally textiles are destroyed or lost, often the most beloved and cherished item.

I wasn't necessarily conscious of any of this while writing my half of the book -- my process is very intuitive, I follow the pull and work -- afterwards when there's enough distance I can analyze, recognize patterns and come up with reasons why I went a certain direction. For instance, I didn't pick up on how often clothing was making it into the longer piece until practically the end.

Ravi: OK, just wanted to ring in on the collaborative process a bit. In the interim between promoting Instrumentality and finishing work on my second ms. I had been aspiring towards collaboration, in the hopes that it would enlarge my pinched horizons a bit and keep me writing through the fallow, dust-bowl months between projects. I have a done a handful of these exercises and each time, the shape, parameters, and volition of participants has varied, but inevitably they began the same way. I came up with a series of potential first lines (which I’m including below) and sent them to my collaborators, empowering them to choose one and continue with it. That’s how Reb and I began – she chose the one with Lycra, fortuitously, and we began to stitch a quilt, patch a hole, graft vinyl to silk. That first long poem that referred to was born out of that and the exercise, which began discretely began to converge. There was a sense of revelatory giddiness in the exchange, an idea of pleasure deferred or deferral pleasuring itself in the absence of touch. Subconsciously, certain tropes began to emerge – Penelope waiting for Odysseus while weaving his burial shroud, or Lady Chatterley pining away for her gardener Mellors, reveling simultaneously in the impossibility of ever being together and the utter, urgent need for it. That the life of the mind needed the life of the body, but the imagination could somehow sustain both. So the lines began to twine, entangle, and while our particularly syntactic and ideational proclivities remain initially intact, as we went forward, they began to blend. I’d pick up an idiom from one of Reb’s lines and turn it, transform it, make it mine or other; and in some cases, Reb would return the favor or reclaim her line, else leap from the implication into something even further afield. I think there was throughout the process both a sense of coquettish competition (anything you can do, I can do better) and a foundation of mutual respect (anything you do, I will respond to), which resulted in a wonderful friction – tugging, teasing, reveling, retreating, absorbing, rejecting – and this continued on into the revision process, where we treated none of what we individual wrote as “ours,” but the entire poem as one cohesive lyric. And so we changed lines, our own and the other person’s, indiscriminately.

The postcards, as Reb alluded to, came later, but from the sense of longing that had been built into the longer poem. They weren’t physical postcards though they might as well have been, since they came from literal or figurative distance. I was away at the MacDowell colony or on the road during much of the summer, and so it was through this telescoping sense of time that I addressed the postcards, and like any correspondence, they were disproportionate and inconsistent. So Reb wrote three postcards to me before I even wrote one back and that dynamic got absorbed into the conversation. The self lagging intention, the meant-to-do courting the meant-to-be. Those more discrete sections were meant to punctuate the completely blended longer poem, so that some trace of each consciousness remained, even while being subsumed by the collaboration itself. The postcards were almost like a residue of the guiding principles of masculinity and femininity that were critiqued and ultimately abandoned in the poem itself, even while they bespoke of distance and closeness, of questions and more questions, of observation from our “actual” lives and elaboration into the personas we had begun to inhabit in our correspondence. Maybe the analogy would be to a method actor getting into character to prepare for the actual performance, except in this case, the chronology had been reversed: the actual performance had already happened and so the postcards were almost a means of getting out of character and back into the more familiar idiom of our selves. Place of course had much to do with this transformation.

In any case, here are the starting lines I gave Reb, from which she began our Wanton Textiles:

Rasp, scrape, reverb, the loop bounce stuttered

Overturning a Balinese gong to use as cutting board

Yes, Lycra can improve your performance

Burnt-out taxis rust like lozenges on a tongue of rain

The discordance between thinking and thought

Slither a tether between top and bottom

At the pasture for failed seeing-eye dogs

The castle looms blue upon the porcelain plate

Incursions into the fabric of the seawater revealed vitreous lemons

Turn, hover, bulge as newspaper mâché, billow

I know no knot not nautical in nature

Graze on the face like a fly on honeydew

Give me wings and a wagon wheel for a belt buckle

Reb: For historical accuracy, I was only given the following four first lines to choose from:

Rasp, scrape, reverb, the loop bounce stuttered

Overturning a Balinese gong to use as cutting board

Yes, Lycra can improve your performance

Burnt-out taxis rust like lozenges on a tongue of rain

J: I'm interested in the link that both of you are beginning to discuss between the fabrics theme which emerged in this book and traveling, between traveling and identity. On page 15, in a postcard, Reb writes, "...and then I remembered if faced the other direction eventually there would be a familiar abode that I would always know and so begins the foot voyage. In beautiful pinching stilettos." This got me thinking about a little weekend-radio story I heard on NPR several weeks ago, a report back from an American couple who pilgrimaged to Mecca. Both were really struck by the physicality of their trip -- not so much the walking itself, but the unsanitary, crowded camp sites, the pilgrims pushing and trampling over one another, the sense of never being alone, pilgrimaging en masse. The couple seemed conflicted, still, about how this shaped the "spiritual" element of the trip -- did it contradict or diminish, emphasize or create? I'm interested in the ways not only the physical and metaphysical interact with each other in Wanton Textiles. The book begins in the desert, but it's Vegas. The sex of the book all seems theoretical, hypothetical, and more powerful because of it. Both baggage and "refuse" become important -- what do we do with these things, how do we use them, how do we get by whether on the road or seated in the suburbs. The section of poem on page 18 tries to "stretch, recover, uncover, unstitch, redo, wallpaper with wet tongue, unrepentant as Mohammed, arms akimbo, caverns craved..." That is, this voices seem simultaneously engaged in laying things bare and developing artifice (both sometimes via fabric), which I find pretty potent and engaging. Can you talk to me about the "real" and the "fake" in these poems? The trash and the treasure and the fuzzy line between? How the vestigial reincarnates?

Reb: The simplest trips always seem to end by scraping the car on a pole in a parking garage. Just when you think you've made it, let your guard down -- crunch, bye bye paint job. Trips are a lot like sex and relationships, they're never how you imagine, expectations are rarely met -- even those most basic. The dress on the mannequin looks different on you -- of course it does, its hips are 36", yours are 42" -- how on Earth could you identify with that? You're not a statue! Statues represent the dead. On the other hand, expectations are a necessity, else you're walking around like an fool, sticking your tongue in light sockets, crying about the foul taste of your crispy tongue. How do we protect ourselves, prepare, for the many letdowns we self-create? Do we subject ourselves to a life of lowered expectations and set in motion a constant presumption of failure? What a miserable way to live. The balanced accept the letdowns are always coming. Do they always have to be letdowns? How many times afterward do we say "it's better that I didn't get that or this happened instead because now I have ________." What if we did married that boy in the fourth grade? I didn't hear the story on NPR, but if I had to guess that couple had "little kid" expectations of what a pilgrimage to Mecca would be like and I imagine a lot of people have the same. We think we're smart, we think we're sophisticated, but generally we're kids eating the entire Easter basket Sunday morning and learning the hard way by barfing all afternoon. I definitely came to this collaboration with "little kid" expectations. That probably the most useful result of any experience -- being disabused of certain notions.

Recently I traveled to Prague. On my flight I read two travel guides and soon my mind blended all the sites together. On my first full day there I decided to walk to the Charles Bridge and blindly go from there -- soon I was standing on the steps of the Church of St. Nicholas, which I recognized from my reading, but couldn't discern it from all the other cathedrals mentioned. I went in not knowing what I'd find and was dumbstruck, bowled over, utterly enchanted. I instantly wanted to join that church, pray in it everyday, began planning both my wedding and funeral -- dogma be gone. After 30 minutes of gasping, I referred to my handy guide book that described St. Nicholas as ". . . perhaps the supreme example in Bohemia of the way in which the Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation sought to seduce the public by appealing directly to the senses rather than the intellect." Click -- that is what I want my poems to be, that experience is what I dream for my readers -- step inside expecting nothing and find everything. Hell, that's who *I* want to be. Stick your theory in your arse and stand in front of a classroom, like a ridiculous mannequin if that's what you want -- I'll hang with the rest of the feeble masses. Mmm, my tongue tastes like smokey peppermint.

On my last night in the city I attended a marionette show with a woman I met on the trip. I wanted to hear a Mozart concert at the Municipal House, but she had her heart set on the marionettes and I wasn't feeling especially passionate one way or another, so I agreed to her pick. I thought it was OK, I wasn't expecting the bawdiness, the puppeteers groping the female puppets, but whatever, when in Prague . . . but my evening companion came with big expectations and was sorely disappointed -- we left at intermission and drank ourselves silly.

There's a lot of "junk" in my office, I want to create collages – so I'm saving cards, magazines, pictures. Aren't some people going around to fast food restaurants and taking the frying oil to fuel their cars? What about natural fertilizers? I think there's a lot less trash in this world than we think. We're not using what we have, we're looking around for something better. Another miserable way to live. We treat people like refuse -- usually the ones who love and care for us most. Probably cause they don't live up to our expectations, our narrow points of reference, our mounting inability to conduct ourselves decently.

I can only speak to what I wrote, but everything I wrote was real -- especially the things that never happened. That said, I think there's definitely a layer of artificiality at play in Wanton Textiles.

J: Amen & I hear you. Re: artificiality, I like how you let the threads of making show, the exposed call and response that collaboration allows for. Ravi wrote earlier about borrowing and adapting idioms from each other -- I love those little moments in Wanton Textiles when we (audience) get to see the idiom shift, see the language turn over and show a second or third or seventh side. I think this is also happening in the content -- discussion of how to dress, to appear, how to approach. Did you experience -- in this project and in collaborative writing in general -- a different kind of self-consciousness or self-awareness than when writing solo (or on other projects)?

Ravi: Regarding fabrics and refuse, trash and treasure, I think the very notion of a collaboration has certain interesting parallels to each. First, there’s the idea that we’re quilting something together, but that process is polyvalent and there are multiple layers: the patchwork, the batting and the backing, all being quilted together by hand. So that’s how I think of the triad of syntax, theme and momentum for example, forces that are at odds with each other some of the time, or in synchronicity, but brought together by the needle and thread. So the silk of a certain diction is stitched together with the rough-hewn and leathery diction of another part, and the thing we are making is both sum of its parts and something that transcends its particular elements. In a quilt, what is personal and idiosyncratic and probably should be thrown out becomes part and parcel of its value. The old handkerchief becomes one square and the baby’s bib becomes another. Literally trash transmuting to treasure. I don’t think I was thinking of this particularly at the time, but certain quilt patterns come to mind now: Hearts & Gizzards, Tangled Garters, Crosses and Losses, Air Castles and Circle Saw.

That word refuse was an important one I think, for its multiple connotations. Something discarded as worthless, for sure, the bit of experience that we cannot quite make sense of or do without, the throw-away affection that has abnegation at its crumpled core, the trace of ourselves on another, transient and disappeared too quickly, except in memory, where it is recycled, the trashiness of the pick up and the letdown. Of course part of the point is the conservation of energy – nothing created, nothing destroyed. Diamonds no more than compressed coal. But the other meaning of refuse is also just as important – to decline, spurn, rebuff. How tactfully to turn away from an unwanted advance. How to preserve the right of first refusal. How to contradict the self’s suggestion that something might be unsavory, that behavior that might be judged or condemned in someone else should be allowed regardless. And what does it mean to refuse to refuse? Is disembodied appetite the corollary of Emerson’s transparent eyeball? Finally, there’s also re-fuse, to make something combustible again, to add a wick, else to allow something to melt together. In the best of all worlds, this is the sense that I hoped we achieved. A liquefaction of each of our individual personalities and perspectives into something smelt, blended, greater than and more.

I guess that to me is the difference between writing solo and writing collaboratively. In the former, you are caught in the barricade of a solitary room, trying to find light and claw your way out into the open. You’re trying to tame something, or wring something out, or like a magpie, bring bits together. But when you’re writing together, there’s a new attention that’s born of playfulness, of genuine surprise and revelation, and the lack of isolation is like ventilation or bouncing a big red rubber ball. It energizes and permits things that wouldn’t be possible in one’s own work. For instance, I am fairly certain that I would have never straddled the western canon on my own.

J: I did some editing work for an artist who grew up during the Depression and was -- in part because of this -- interested in using the things we tend to throw away or disregard as art materials. He told me something funny about this: He'd been making some sculptures and things using the aluminum from coffee cans and found he really liked using them, and then Folgers etc. started selling more coffee in "brick" form instead, so the cans were getting to be very difficult to come by. He was, in fact, going to great, dumpster-diving lengths to sniff them out. I was interested in how his aesthetic enjoyment of a thing was developed by and then in some conflict with his instinctively ethical notions about using what's available. A bit of a topic shift here, thought I think there's some "American Dream" connection -- I like how mediation of experience becomes a focus in Wanton Textiles. The D.H. Lawrence epigraph ("Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot") is a seductive idea, makes me think of one of my favorite Jerry Lee Lewis quotes (he's quoting Revelations), "Either be hot or cold. If you are lukewarm, the Lord will spew you forth from His mouth." Do you think that you -- or the voices in this book -- agree with it, though? On one hand, there's some definite wisdom in knowing when to experience, observe and keep your mouth shut. On the other hand, it sounds a little like the notion that a writer should only write when they are inspired, etc., and that doesn't seem like an idea inacted in or by this book. On the contrary, it seems like both voices are putting a great deal of effort--even in the "cold" moments-- into creating something to say to one another and thereby keeping the line open, so to speak, staying connected in whatever way possible. When Reb describes considering straddling the western canon all night long "so I could write I considered it and gaze upon your face learning of my consideration" and when Ravi describes the morning garbage pick-up, these seem like exploratory acts, "hotness" and "something to say" arrived at, of course, through writing. What do you think it means, as a writer or a person or the voices in this book, to "be still" and to "say it hot"? No one wants to be mediocre, but do you have to risk lukewarm-ness -- working even when you don't really "feel" it-- in order to make something good? Any American or Un-American dreams you want to share?

Reb: When this chapbook was just the long poem, minus the postcards, I sent it to two editors for publication consideration before deciding to do it myself. One said he wanted "saucier" and more "extreme." The other said he didn't see a "dramatic-ness...oratory." I thought a long time about both of those comments. I decided those weren't paths I was interested in taking with this chapbook and my discussions with Ravi and what he wanted confirmed my stance. That doesn't mean those aren't valid paths, no doubt some people see the title "Wanton Textiles" and the cover and expect to find hardcore thread on spool action. Other will come expecting a "love me or I'll just croak" angle. I'm not particularly into porn, if I'm feeling especially frustrated I'll watch my Gladiator DVD or turn off the sound and switch on some professional wrestling -- show me the pumped waxed flesh and let my imagination do the rest thank you very much. And I absolutely despise the hokey trials and tribulation films where after two hours of suffering the lovers finally get together, so they can make love once and then one promptly dies in a horrible, senseless tragedy. I cheered when Jude Law died at the end of Cold Mountain. Talk about agony.

Not that I believe that's exactly what those two editors were proposing -- but I think they were responding to the chapbook's pace, the ebbs, the dynamics, the disappointing lack of butt fucking. The kind of movies I find hot are Lost in Translation, Swimming Pool and Donnie Darko. They're slow-paced, drawn out, deliberate and take great care with their presentation. Don't make me endure Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction or its countless imitators. For Christ's sake I'm not in middle school anymore.

J: In the inter-review that Erika H. and I recently did for La Petite Zine, Erika, at one point, tells a story about watching The Shawshank Redemption in a hotel room after having been walking and writing in rural New Mexico for a week or so -- she says that she was "totally blown away by the violence traditional 'gripping' narrative does to time." I tend to be most aware of skewed time in biopics, and generally more in movies than writing, though this week I've been reading variations of the Cinderella story -- oral tellings for the most part that have been eventually written down -- and it's interesting and sometimes jarring to me to see what gets the emphasis, what's huddled off under the guise of "two years later," etc. These stories make me very attentive to how time functions in my own work and whatever else I'm reading. The correspondence aspect of Wanton Textiles certainly emphasizes time, while the blocks of poem that intersect with them seem to take the reader out of time a little, or create a sense of two simultaneous "time zones" (not to mention the likely separation by time zones of the two writers). Can you talk a little about how you thought about time in Wanton Textiles?

Reb: The entire chapbook was written over a span of almost two years, not that we wrote two years straight -- there were long breaks, the longest in 2005 when a daughter was born to Ravi and a son to me. The long poem was written while I was pregnant and the postcards didn't come until after both children were born. Towards the end of my pregnancy I became adamant that we finish the long poem. In total loose end mode, I need to take care of all the serious business, from writing projects to home improvement -- when it came time for baby -- that's all I wanted to concern myself with. The same thing kind of happened with the postcards, we talked about doing them for months, but got a late start -- I wanted to release the chapbook the same time as three other No Tell Books titles, so again I was Dave Chappelle with the Wrap It Up box.

Although I don't think any of that shows in the final work, in fact as I mentioned before, the pacing is rather unhurried. Perhaps because both of us were in two different zones so to speak, each could indulge in his/her own momentum. I thought about time somewhat in the postcards because it was a kind of a journey record, but still kept it rather ambiguous. I don't think time ever crossed my mind in the longer piece. Guess I'm guilty of the "two years later" guise -- I had my own ideas of what needed emphasis, damn the rest.

J: Reb, what was it like and how do you feel about handling the publication of your own work? In what ways was the process or your approach or concerns different than the other three books you were (impressively) publishing simultaneously?

Reb: Overall it was positive and I'm likely to do it again at some point. While I didn't try especially hard to place it at another press, it became clear early on that wasn't going to the best route for this particular project. At the same time I was working on three other titles for No Tell Books so the decision to add Wanton Textiles to that list seemed obvious. There was no reason to get bent out of shape dealing with editors and publishers when I myself am an editor and publisher and could easily do it myself. I enjoyed doing it, laying it out and picking a designer (in this case, the fabulous Charles Orr). I've become a considerably less angry poet now that I do many things myself. Doing it myself means nobody is holding me down -- I'm told I have problems with authority. I'm in the early stages of a new manuscript and my plans for it are kind of, I don't know, weird. It's too premature to think about how to go about publishing it, but I do know that if I'm unable to find a publisher on board with my ideas, I'll do it myself. I find myself incredibly agreeable and easy to work with. For me, publishing is a means to get the work out there. Whether my press or somebody else's press does it isn't especially important. Yes, it's nice to have somebody else publish it, if they truly believe in the work, support and nurture it, treat it as art first, commodity second (or ninth or one-hundredth). But if that option isn't available, the second is pretty good too.

There have been a handful of stumbling blocks created by my self-publishing, primarily with the more traditional review outlets who have antiquated (to put it kindly) concepts of legitimacy. Can the publisher be trusted if she published a title that she half wrote? How many cats does she own? Since the press also does print-on-demand, another "flag" is raised. Can No Tell Books be a "real" press if it uses Lulu for printing and distribution? Contrary to some reports, I'm not loaded and all the financial backing comes from my personal funds -- six titles so far has bumped the cost into the upper four figures. None of those books would have ever seen the light of day if I tried to go about it with any sizable print run with distribution and warehousing costs. I get pretty annoyed having to explain that to people who know the business. Very few poetry titles are being published by corporate publishers and not so many by university publishers. Most poetry titles only sell a few hundred copies (or less). There's no reason for me to put on mom's red power-suit and carry around dad's cracked briefcase playing very important big-time publisher.

Publishing four books at one time was too much. I over-extended myself in a serious way and am paying the price now, all my upcoming projects are behind, specifically the next Bedside Guide. Also, I've mostly only been able to give Wanton Textiles support in the capacity of a publisher, not so much as an author. I am disappointed with that.

J: How many cats do you own? Kidding. Your comment about supporting the book as an author, though, has me thinking about readings and Wanton Textile's oral/aural presence. Have you done any readings from this? Do you think of it in terms of sound, what it's like to read aloud? I keep bringing up my collabs with Erika because they are the most long-term and extensive collabs I've done -- I remember when we were first writing The Ohio System we went through a period of reading it aloud (which we had a few opportunities to do because we were both in Providence the) to folks like a back and forth, call and respond. At the time there were pieces I'd written and pieces she'd written, though we'd often switch it up when we read, mix them around, etc. Later, though, after we had highly revised and smooshed and worked it over, and it was published and I decided I wanted to do a reading from it (and she wasn't available), it seemed pretty natural to read it as one voice. It was as one-voiced as any of my writing ever is, I think. What would your dream presentation of this book, beyond its covers, be like? How do you think it should exist off the page?

Reb: One kitty cat. Yes, I have done readings from the chapbook, a few with Ravi and a bunch by myself. No reading has ever been the same, whether together or solo, we're/I'm always trying something new. The best one together was probably at the Anchor Bar in New Haven, CT where we had an attentive (although perhaps a little too serious) audience. We read the postcards, in order, and if I'm remembering accurately, parts of the longer poem. We did some minor explaining at the beginning, which I realize is probably necessary, but I really hate explaining and setting up poems -- I think they're better just read. But people expect an explanation and it's only polite, I suppose. When I've read alone, I've done parts of the longer poem, but never Ravi's postcards. Maybe I'll try that at my next reading. I've been hesitant to do that. The best solo reading I had was at my home at the No Tell Books release party in December -- I only read my own postcards. It was a warm, well-fed, well-lubricated, comfortably seated audience of 30 or so. They got the funny parts, the sad parts, the silly parts. They were poets, fiction writers, lawyers, computer people, salesmen, family and friends. Any dream presentation would have to have an audience in a setting like that. I love home readings in inviting, friendly spaces. I plan to have them for all future No Tell Books releases.

Ravi: Yes, the specter of time, right? I'm a few missives behind and just now coming to American or un-American dreams, which is a result not just of my pathological over-committedness but also because I just found that I will be teaching a summer class in the Shandong Province in China, which is unexpected and exciting and necessitates me turning my special brand of speculative bs (well, we'll go visit Confucious' birthplace and a few monastaries and eat sea cucumbers) into something parsable by a course description booklet. So pardon my delay but I think that the dream of China, now realized, is essentially un-American, and I hope to return with relics of Mao Zedong to disperse along the New England countryside.

Hotness and luke-warmness and coldness....well, yes, I think the act of collaboration involves a certain amount of writing through and beyond any notion of brilliance, because the kind of nestled-in, monomaniacal polishing and buffing that we might do on our own work, polishing the facets of a line until it gleams like an amethyst, is not really possible or desirable in collaboration, because, first of all, you're required to respond. It's like being in a relationship, you can't just sit on something and get to it in your own due time (though probably I tried), and so you're forced to write through your insecurities to arrive at something that propels the initiative forward.

I love the idea of being still and saying it hot. Like what Reb was saying about the drawn out and the deliberate, being poised on that moment, and poised, and poised still, langorous but urgent, simmering but one notch of the stove's dial away from boiling, and I think Wanton Textiles prolongs and attenuates and extends any potential closure, points in fact to an infinity of coupling, could have, if we didn't have the parameters of time and space in a book to contend with, gone on forever. Because who gets to say when something ends when you are collaborating, right? I'm not sure how we ended except that we both felt like our long poem had run its pace and had covered enough ground that it was beginning to speak back to the beginning of the poem, like a snake eating its tail, and so that was as good a point as any to end it.

And of course seduction and the deferral of pleasure is very un-American.

The time question, yes, I’m aware that I run on IST (Indian Standard Time) so that an hour late is early for me and that sensibility brought itself to bear on Wanton Textiles, surely. Sometimes days would pass without an addendum by me, other times hours, but Reb is right, it was composed over two years. Probably if it were up to me, we’d still be working on some inchoate version of the long poem, but thankfully Reb had an editor’s eye on the stopwatch and really her instinct reflected an uncanny sense of when our process was really wound up. The chapbook pub date was another shadow cast by the gnomon, and certainly the concept behind the postcards is one of distance separating the speakers, but the long poem, that actually was more time-bound in its way, feels, when I reread it like a leisurely swim in a sun-flecked laguna with some rapid doggy-paddling when a fin or a hand appears, but more or less, back-float and dilation of the pupils into the movement of constellations. Of course the notion that inherent in our particularized aesthetic sensibilities is an encoded notion of time is also there – narrative and lyric time is probably vastly different for me than it is for Reb – so when we were combining lines it was like an acrylic painter daubing on top of an oil painter then being color-washed by a spray painter. Collisions of time zones. I actually like how the part that seems the most distant in time and space, the postcards, was actually when we were closest and working most rapidly and the long poem which is mostly of one piece was actually stitched together over a couple of years.

J: Ravi, maybe we could end with your thoughts on the last question I asked Reb -- What would your dream presentation of this book, beyond its covers, be like? How do you think it should exist off the page?

Ravi: So after this, I’m all caught up? Amazing. Did I mention how fun it was to write collaboratively. I feel like in all of my answers that might not have come across, but it was. And performing from it has been fun too. I agree with Reb – we actually gave two readings together from the chapbook (actually, now that I think of it, three, though the one in Atlanta was not your typical reading, since it was in a large group – I think I got two postcards out, Reb one, before the egg timer went off and we were swept from stage like beer bottle labels). The first one at CCSU was not your ideal reading, partly because of the venue, a Barnes & Nobles masquerading as a down-home campus bookstore and therefore antiseptic, partly because of the jitters of our first reading together, partly because of the audience, or lack thereof, the few students and Book Store manager present were mostly perplexed I think and my colleague and good friend who sat glowering the back had just recently tried to take a swing at me (long story), so the vibe was all screwy. The Anchor Bar reading was just the opposite – and the presentation of the work seemed very good to me. Reb and I both read the long poem, which is what I prefer, interspersed with the postcards. I prefer reading from the long poem because that was more intrinsically collaborative and I like to read her words and have her read mine, because, as previously alluded to in this discussion, ownership is dual in this textile. In fact, I would encourage Reb to read my postcards at her next reading – that’s part of the point, isn’t it? And the venue, the Mermaid Room, a small, darkly lit room in the basement of the oldest bar in New Haven, and the eager audience, and the other readings all conspired to make that reading shimmer. We had a thing going, an electricity between breaths, a sense that the poem was alive and lively, transmogrifying as we read it, and that was pretty dope. There was also a broadside made of an excerpt of the long poem and I thought that was a nice existence also. So, to sum up, in a dream scenario, to adulating audiences the poem might be vocalized in two voices but harmonized the way we intended it – as a cohesive, stitched together, multiple yet singular chapbook. Then members of the audience would shower orchid petals, gift certificates and silken items of clothing upon us.

2007-03-18T12:05:00.001-05:00

A new chapbook from horse less press!

Phoenix Memory by Kate Schapira
Learn more about it here: http://www.horselesspress.com/phoenix.html
Order it here: http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

Coming later this Spring: horse less review #5 & a chapbook by C.S. Carrier.

2007-03-17T14:52:00.000-05:00

Don't you have a map?
Part 13
E responds to J, here-

http://www.gimcrackd.com/dross/?p=62

It’s a doozy.

2007-03-05T17:12:00.000-05:00

Justin Marks reviews Matt Henriksen's Is Holy at Word For/Word.

2007-02-27T21:56:00.000-05:00

A review of Kathleen Ossip's Cinephrastics by Jessica Millnitz at Laurus:
laurusmagazine.com/view_feature.php?feature=12&PHPSESS

Don't you have a map?

2007-02-20T10:16:00.000-05:00

Go visit
Don't you have a map?
Part 12
at Tyler's I Wanted to Write an Email

The Transparent Dinner by Christine Hamm (Review)

2007-02-16T18:40:00.001-05:00

Notes on

The Transparent Dinner
By Christine Hamm
Mayapple Press 2006
www.mayapplepress.com

The title poem is so uncanny that it gets canny again, which I believe is a strategy of many of these poems, to come out the other side of “stranged.” Tactics and themes of Gothic and Surreal writing are pressed until their stitches begin to show, and it is at that point that the poems acknowledge their real agenda, looking the reader in the eye and forcing the reader to look back.

The title poem is also the first poem in the book, and it provides an accurate introduction to the themes and domestic landscapes that follow. Mothers are suspect, suspicious, dangerous, important, monstrous, manic. Food is tied directly to its before and after, what it came from and what it will be. Violence is suggested when you expect it to be overt, overt when you expect it to be suggested. Much is grotesque. Sex is a dark cloud and a hot poke in the eye. And every thing and every body just keeps rolling along, complicit.

Poems like “Once Upon a Time” borrow their notion of the uncanny from fairytales, while poems like “Christmas in Hell” end with dry punch lines, make us move beyond the humor to find the real joke. “My Mother’s Basement” forces us beyond metaphorical thinking, into something more literal and bleak:

Since that man broke your neck
you had trouble dipping your
chin or seeing anyone under four feet tall;

On the other side of uncanny, everyone’s always saying, “no really,” and it’s a question that I keep asking and answering for myself throughout these poems, not because it matters where they come from, but because biography and autobiography become such a necessary aspect of the poems. In poems like “Signs You’re Ovulating,” a collage of languages and images tells us to beware, there’s no one true voice here, while other poems, like “Diary of a Thief,” seem to rely on creating a character, a person or persona that can provide contrast for itself, its actions. “Sex Ed” focuses on the self-conscious act of narration, autobiographical definition, while “American Dream” makes the act of making, of narrating, seem haphazard, a slip of the tongue. The reference to “me, Christine” in “The Weight of the World, the very last poem, creates a new tension in which the rest of the poems must necessarily exist and be revisited. No, really?

The final section, “A Walk in the Park,” is my favorite, because Christine and I, we are finally looking at each other, seeing things whole-heartedly if not wholly, assuming wholly never happens, not even—especially not—in poems. The first poem in this section, “The Clinic,” ends:

the electric wheelchairs are corralled
in the lobby

occasionally one tries
to escape, bust through the ropes

they hum to themselves and click

here people talk and there is silence

each office is the same size

each of us is the same, talking

And in another of the final section’s poems, “Joy School,” Hamm’s Cornell-inspired suggestion that joy is “tiny and dark with delicate moving parts…made of straw/ and teeth,/ with a few white feathers” sends me back to the beginning of this volume, looking closer at the evidence of its love.

-Jen

Navigate: Amelia Earhart's Letters Home by Rebecca Loudon (Review)

2007-02-16T18:26:00.000-05:00

Notes on

Navigate: Amelia Earhart's Letters Home
Rebecca Loudon (No Tell Books 2006)
notellbooks.org

Written "as" Amelia Earhart, these poems display and explore the art and artifice of persona and the "I." The obvious – that these poems are fiction, arranged – becomes electric, a white-hot elephant in the room. Why? Maybe because this is a topic that interests me right now, and I'm reading it into everything. I think, though, this charged tension between author and speaker is part of what gives Navigate its teeth, and it is apparent first in the poems' focus on audience.

The book is divided into "letters" and excerpts "from my missing diary." The letters deal, in part, with address. "To my Muriel, my doppelganger, my darling, my negative eye," "Dear Anita Neta my curly headed Mary," "Darling Snook," "Mother," "Father" and "Dear George." The letters greet self-consciously, aware that time changes things, that distances warp and swell relationships. Important here, though, that “distance” isn’t metaphorical, “isolation” isn’t subjective. Narrative demands attention: her parents are going about their routine, her “Darling Snook” is getting married, and Amelia’s really, bodily stranded somewhere. She is both waiting rescue/company and realizing the impossibility of the distance that her letters are meant to cross. A letter to “Seamstress Pidge” contrasts the acts of domesticity with acts of survival:

I have mended my trousers 117 times
using the needle in my emergency kit
and black thread until black thread
emptied into spool now I build
worsted by chewing the leaves
of a pepper tree my lips bleed

A letter to “Miss Visser my one and only piano teacher” ends:

Shit shoe
I wished you dead then
I still do.

Sincerely,
Amelia Mary Earhart

The only suggestion that Amelia receives communication is an unwelcome and surreal wedding invitation; meanwhile the tone of her letters shifts, grows subtext, gets volatile – it’s distance, and a new way of measuring distance, that’s doing that. The epigraphic poem, though addressed specifically to Frank Hawks, is a collection of O’s, a romantic address to a wide audience. As the letters become more specific, more keenly focused, the listing, remembering, detailing that begins in that first incantation of O’s becomes complicated, gathers weight and branches. I love the things of these poems, because they are made of stuff and they make stuff – because the things show the reader how detail becomes mile marker, horizon line, navigation point too. I am especially drawn to the “missing diary” sections of the book in which the plane and its goods are inventoried and checked, insofar as these poems illustrate a day, a way of understanding context and landscape, “place,” that is key to this voice. From Amelia’s first look at an airplane, I am wondering who came before and after, who this voice is that is keenly informed and shadowed but not possessed or contained by historic, biographical Earhart. “There are waves here that don’t move” leads to “are you affected” – physical geographies and social conventions become equally real and powerful forces. Amelia is “beyond” and gone “other” and examining the texture of that – a tin of starfish is both practical and fantastic, part of society and so clearly separated from it.

When, in a letter to Fred, Amelia writes

we have come to this
we have come to understand
we have come to understand
we have nothing
we are a piston instrument
we are spark
we are fuselage

does it mean we are only a small part of a larger machine? Or does it mean we are every part, that there is nothing sparking besides us? Descriptions of Amelia’s body aging, starving, and becoming adapted to or shaped by its surroundings carries a similar tension; she mourns “my breasts gone my hair a shrub” even as she uses these details to track her progress, her understanding of the geography. “My body is a delta, a three-in-one.” She is telling us where and how and why to find her. It is both inevitable and just too much when we don’t come.

A passage in the final poem lets all the voices and intentions of this narration collide:

I want to tell you how it felt
falling and knowing
what a bad idea it was
to have decided against the parachutes

ha ha

She truly wants to show this, and it is through the spirit of discovery just as much as loneliness, anger, loss. The joke is both a joke and not, the missing parachutes only a bad idea on one side of the punch line, which is itself a memory. I realize now that I haven’t mentioned the author’s name once, but Loudon has been buzzing and ghosting these poems the whole time, considering the “fly girls” to whom the book is dedicated, making this personal, and I imagine these final lines are no different. I know how it feels.

-Jen

2007-01-28T10:34:00.000-05:00

Julia Cohen reviews Zachary Schomburg's Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene:
ALDS review

2007-01-26T20:55:00.000-05:00

If you haven't yet gotten your hands on a copy of our newest chapbook, Zachary Schomburg's Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene, we've only got a half-handful left; do it now.

And while you're at it, please note that an earlier version of Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene first appeared in LIT. We love LIT, and acknowledgements, and we're sorry that this one was accidentally left out of the final chapbook copy.

42-Loudon by Frischkorn

2007-01-21T15:21:00.000-05:00

Radish King, by Rebecca Loudon
‘Poems that burn.’ These poems ignite and sear with white heat. Like a fever to read them is to feel flushed, disoriented and ritually cleansed. ‘…bats flap in my cherry tree, little broken umbrellas…..My hands reek of gasoline, …smell leaking into albumen…’
-Suzanne Frischkorn

Info on Radish King here
Suzanne Frischkorn blogs here

2007-01-16T13:57:00.000-05:00

Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene
by Zachary Schomburg

Zachary Schomburg’s first full-length book of poems, The Man Suit, will be published in early 2007 by Black Ocean Press and he has poems from a new manuscript in, or forthcoming in, Pilot, Absent, Same Storm, the Hat, Forklift Ohio, and Denver Quarterly. He lives in Lincoln, NE, with A, M, S and G where he is a co-editor of Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books, a co-curator of the Clean Part Reading Series, and a PhD student. Abraham Lincoln’s Death Scene will be included as a section within The Man Suit.

Details here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/abrahamlincoln.html

Buy it here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

Return of the 42 Review, and other responses

2007-01-12T20:59:00.000-05:00

We've said it before, but we really mean it this time, baby. In the coming weeks we hope to revive the 42 review. We'll be migrating it to the blog, but archived 42-word reviews can still be found here: http://www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html

We're interested in reviews of any and all kinds of books, but we especially love reviews of poetry. If you want to get involved, email us your 42-word review: jen AT horselesspress DOT com. Included below are a few reviews that have been banging around my inbox for way too long:

***

Winter Prophecies by Ralph Gustafson
Written in spare verse, this work offers surprisingly evocative and fresh meditations on death, hiding the human's place in the world's splendor underneath a surface melancholy – a must read from a deceased Canadian poet who lacks the exposure he rightly deserves.
-Rick Morrow

Wild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom Robbins
"[C]areless fart in a bottle by the stove" punches Satan a new gut – a miscellany of nonsense for bored pragmatists. Wonderful. Exuberant. Forgettable apocrypha, for the phosphate Moonlight Whoopee Cushion Sonata. Skip to Responses, love your delicate mind, and meditate half-crazy smooches.
-Michael Donnelly

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
An ocean planet, a once-dead romance, textbooks, and nihilism. Quietly intelligent, neurotically detailed, mercilessly mysterious. Science takes a century to tell us how something probably works--no certainty, no reason. Humanity, desperate to understand, to love, to see itself in the unknown.
-Callie Fournier

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Father and son stagger through charred America, pushing a shopping cart in black snow drifts, drinking ashy river water, scavenging the crumbs of crumbs, cough blood mist on the fruitless ground, fence with the truth of starvation, of cannibals, of futile charity.
-Callie Fournier

***

Also look to this space for longer reviews, responses, discussions soon.

2007-01-02T12:14:00.000-05:00

AVAILABLE NOW FROM HORSE LESS PRESS:

Wind is Wind and Rain is Rain
by Brynne

Brynne is six. She enjoys playing with her petit fauve brother. She loves toads and trains them to do really cool stuff. She wants to be a gymnast and a veterinarian when she grows up. P.J. Harvey is her favorite singer.

Details here.
Buy it here.

COMING SOON:

Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene
by Zachary Schomburg

Zachary Schomburg’s first full-length book of poems, The Man Suit, will be published in early 2007 by Black Ocean Press and he has poems from a new manuscript in, or forthcoming in, Pilot, Absent, Same Storm, the Hat, Forklift Ohio, and Denver Quarterly. He lives in Lincoln, NE, with A, M, S and G where he is a co-editor of Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books, a co-curator of the Clean Part Reading Series, and a PhD student. Abraham Lincoln’s Death Scene will be included as a section within The Man Suit.

Details here.
Pre-order it here.

2006-11-06T16:56:00.000-05:00

You maybe thought we forgot?

Don't You Have A Map? Part 11

2006-11-05T17:04:00.000-05:00

AVAILABLE NOW FROM HORSE LESS PRESS:

Cinephrastics by Kathleen Ossip.
Details here.
Order here.

2006-09-27T18:54:00.000-05:00

I'll be reading a little poetry in New Haven Tuesday night. You should come!

October 3rd: Short-Story Writer Paul Beckman and Poet Jen Tynes Read at The Anchor Bar

On Tuesday October 3rd at 7:00 PM, please join the Ordinary Evening Reading Series to welcome fiction writer Paul Beckman and poet Jen Tynes to the Anchor Bar's Mermaid Room.

Paul Beckman is a writer who lives in Madison, CT. His short stories, four of which have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, have appeared in both print and on-line journals (among them, Playboy, Currents, Connecticut Review, Mad Hatter's Review, and Exquisite Corpse). His first collection, Come! Meet My Family and Other Stories was published in 1995 by Weighted Anchor Press, and a second volume is expected in 2006. Paul's work has been published in New Zealand, translated into German for an anthology entitled Humor by Jewish Writers ("The P Word"), and several of his short stories have been adapted into plays.

Jen Tynes lives in Providence, Rhode Island and edits horse less press. Her poems have appeared in jubilat, Diagram, CutBank, H_NGM_N, Typo, Octopus, Verse, No Tell Motel, The Cultural Society, and other journals. Her first book, The End Of Rude Handles, is available from Red Morning Press.

2006-09-02T07:22:00.000-05:00

Myopic Books & horse less press present
An Entirely Horseless Reading!

Please join us at Myopic Books (5 S. Angell St., Wayland Square, 401-521-5533)
Saturday, September 16, 7 pm
for poetry from Matthew Henriksen, Kate Greenstreet, and Adam Clay.

Matthew Henriksen co-edits Typo and Cannibal and curates The Burning Chair Readings in Brooklyn and New York City. His poems have appeared recently in Fascicle, Coconut and Indiana Review; others will soon appear in Lit, Wildlife Poetry Magazine, Action, Yes!, and The Agricultural Review. horse less press has published his first chapbook, Is Holy.

Kate Greenstreet was born in Chicago and has lived mostly on the east and west coasts of the U.S., currently back on the Atlantic side, in New Jersey. She received a Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts in 2003. Her poems have appeared in Bird Dog, Conduit, can we have our ball back?, GutCult, Diagram, Octopus, POOL, The Massachusetts Review, No Tell Motel, Fascicle, Barrow Street, Word For/Word, the tiny, Free Verse, MiPOesias, LIT, CutBank, Kulture Vulture, TYPO, 26, KELR, XANTIPPE, and other journals. Her chapbook, Learning the Language, was published by Etherdome Press last fall and her first full-length book, case sensitive, will be out from Ahsahta Press in September 2006.

Adam Clay lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan and co-edits Typo. His first book, The Wash, is forthcoming from Parlor Press, and Canoe, a chapbook, is available from horse less press. Recent poems appear in Denver Quarterly, CutBank, Barrow Street, and elsewhere.

2006-08-26T18:56:00.000-05:00

From the Desk of Horse Less Press:

IS HOLY
a chapbook by Matthew Henriksen
is available for peruse and purchase here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html
http://www.horselesspress.com/holy.html

2006-08-23T07:32:00.000-05:00

Please welcome HORSE LESS REVIEW ISSUE FOUR!

Featuring work by-
Andrew Wollard, Adam Clay, Michael Donnelly, Jason Fraley, Allison Carter, Justin Lacour, kari edwards, Andrew Seguin, John Hyland, Jim Goar, Andrew Demcak, Clint Frakes, Bruce Covey, Nick Montfort, Jack Boettcher, Amanda Lichtenstein, Ryan Daley, Christine Hamm, Katherine LaPlant, Sarah Lang, John Mulligan, Michael Stewart, Mark DeCarteret, Danielle Hill, Conan Kelly.
http://www.horselesspress.com/summer2006/review4.html

Please read, enjoy, and send work for #5.
http://www.horselesspress.com/horselessreview.html
http://www.horselesspress.com/howto.html

COMING LATER THIS WEEK: A chapbook! IS HOLY by Matt Henriksen.

Thanks for stopping by, & tell your friends.
Erika & Jen

2006-08-11T07:16:00.000-05:00

We took a little pitstop, but part 10 of “Don’t you have a map?” is now up at Grand Text Auto:
http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2006/08/10/dont-you-have-a-map-part-10/

Coming within the month:
Horse Less Review #4
IS HOLY, a chapbook by Matt Henriksen

Thanks for reading!
yr editors

2006-07-05T19:07:00.000-05:00

Order your copy of IF FIRE, ARRIVAL by Julia Cohen here.

Details including an excerpt here.

2006-07-04T10:48:00.000-05:00

Friends,

Part 9 of Don’t you have a map?
is here:
http://breadnjamforfrances.blogspot.com/2006/07/bread-and-jam-for-frances-is-delighted.html

Please read & enjoy.
Correspond with us, even!
And if you have an electronic spot that would like to host
a part of this project, please drop us a note.
We’ll make it special for you.

Coming soon:

Chapook!
IF FIRE, ARRIVAL by Julia Cohen
will be available in mere days.

Review!
HORSE LESS REVIEW #4
is coming together nicely
& will be live as soon as possible.

Spread the words.
Yr editors-

horse less chap reviewed at Rain Taxi

2006-06-20T16:46:00.000-05:00

Rain Taxi has begun reviewing chapbooks! In the most recent (Summer 2006) issue, Noah Eli Gordon says this about Winter Constellations by Nate Pritts:

2006-06-13T13:08:00.000-05:00

Don't you have a map?
A collaborative, traveling essay in letters
'twixt Erika Howsare & Jen Tynes.

Part 8, J to E—

You don't call you don't write your letters.

They are big plastic windpipes, expanding and contracting out of all the windows in town.

The things that people throw away from them are the things we know something about. We know something about them via the things they throw out, like light, their forensics like on television.

We know whodunit this time? Red. Leaf. I might not be prepared for these changes (amber to chlorophyll and back again).Did I tell you about the bridge?

Between 10 and 2 I had my heart set upon becoming an actual person of letters. Traffic was disrupted, people stood on the bank and watched for the difference (a line suddenly missing its arc).

I called for a ferry and got some chicken wire solution. No one could give it a place. The little houses that I utilized as a youngin are now all full of dirt dobbers and collectibles.

Where I am right now, instead of soaring, is a long and dirt-beaded hum. It's the machinery they use after the glow of a residence. It's my pile of it on the floor.

Not knowing how to read or read into—an up close shot of some hedges.

Please send a notary public by and we will see how s/he likes it.

To "like it" there must be intensity leading to activation. There must be a curl at the cusp.

We'll see what is stamped with that particular stamp. We'll see if we don't get some (just now a bird bee-lined) different kind of sickness.

You don't call dogs they come to conclusions.
You don't make trash you learn a lesson.
I don't know why I get hung up in this space, where the little kids wear helmets.
Being around here is like a hanging basket of fern.
How is a fragile thing archaic?

How do they get over there sucking their thumbs?

Or I will ask you another question and you will give me this answer.

All of the viewpoints that I mentioned were pointing at somebody else.

E responds to J at http://breadnjamforfrances.blogspot.com in about two weeks.
Please visit http://www.horselesspress.com/amap.html for the whole hog.
Email Erika & Jen: editors AT horselesspress DOT com.

2006-06-02T20:56:00.000-05:00

Don’t you have a map?
Part 7
Now live at
http://kore.livejournal.com/1326872.html

totally without horses,
Jen & Erika

2006-05-16T08:03:00.000-05:00

Don't you have a map? Part 6 is up at The Cultural Society. (Follow the "texts" link.)

2006-05-04T14:44:00.000-05:00

E & I are currently reading submissions for the 4th horse less review.
It's filling up quickly, but we still need your help.
Guidelines, such as they are, and also some goats, are here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/howto.html

Email submissions are preferable. Go on, now.

2006-04-19T16:29:00.000-05:00

Part 5 of Don’t you have a map?
A collaboration ‘twixt your editors,
is visiting Ivy Alvarez’z electric pad:
http://ivyai.blogspot.com/2006/04/dont-you-have-map-is-brainchild-of.html

Please visit.

Erika and I will need some new haunts for this project soon,
so if you’ve got some virtual space to share,
please let us know.

IN OTHER NEWS-

Adam Clay’s CANOE is live;
order your copy here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

****

We are currently accepting submissions for the next issue of HORSE LESS REVIEW.
Deadline is mid-May; get more info here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/howto.html

***

And on a personal note, this HORSE LESS editor will be giving a couple readings
in NYC during the last weekend of the month.
On April 28th I’ll be at the first of a new reading series by MiPoesias
http://miporeadingseries.blogspot.com/
On April 30th I’ll be forgetting/forging my own name at Lungfull’s Zinc Bar reading series:
http://lungfull.org/zinc/

Come let me get a look at you!

Jen

Don't you have a map? Part 4

2006-04-03T15:28:00.000-05:00

Saddle up.
Part 4 of Don't you have a map?
is now available at Josh Hanson's Killdeer.

2006-03-29T21:33:00.000-05:00

PRACTICE: NEW WRITING + ART publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and photography, as well as work that defies these genres.

Our debut issue, arriving in April of 2006, includes 160 pages of ART & PHOTOGRAPHY by Angela Buenning, Ryan Mrozowski, Anne Wilson, Karen Barbour, and Paula McCartney; POETRY by Aaron McCollough, Christi Kramer, Cole Swensen, Dan Beachy-Quick, Eleanor Graves, G.C. Waldrep, Graham Foust, H. L. Hix, Janet Holmes, Joan Wilcox, John Cross, Peter Streckfus, Rod Smith, Susan Tichy, and an interview and new work from Semezdin Mehmedinovic; PROSE by Betsy Andrews, writing about art, activism, and poets against the war; Gabe Weisert, offering a contemporary account of Odysseus' route home; Jamy Bond, remembering her sister who died while serving in the Peace Corps in Mozambique; and Gerald Tiffany, describing the only diet that worked.
Send your address to info@practicejournal.com and we'll mail you a free first issue in April. Offer good until we change our minds (or April 10th, whichever happens first).

http://practicejournal.com

2006-03-29T21:24:00.000-05:00

In other horse less chapbook news, I've slightly redesigned and am making a new run of Erika Howsare's Elect June Grooms. Elect June Grooms was the first book I made, besides my own, and my binding experiment didn't go as well as I'd hoped. It was a little too thin and too hard to open, and the paper I used was too thin for the couple accordian pages.

This is a big shame, because Erika is one of my favorite poets (she has since become my co-editor and collaborator-friend) and Elect June Grooms is one of my favorite chapbooks. So I'd hate for the book not to get out into the world, or for the reading of it to be hampered by my early book-making attempts.

A new, more readable version is available now. It's simple: 8.5 x 6, 21 pages, same plain cover, staple-bound. The font may be a little big, but it's time to move forward. The poems are beautiful, absolute, something to linger in. Do yourself a favor and buy yourself a copy.

2006-03-29T17:01:00.000-05:00

CANOE by ADAM CLAY

is just about ready, and it sure is something.

Get the details & read an excerpt.
Pre-order your copy now.

2006-03-16T10:20:00.000-05:00

I'm doing a couple readings in April-

(Providence) April 5, 8pm
Myopic Books
alongside Erica Carpenter.

(NYC) April 30, 7pm
Lungfull's Zinc Bar Talk/Reading Series
alongside James Wagner.
(Scroll down to the bottom of the Zinc page to see me with Gertrude Stein.)

With luck, more soon. Invite me to read at a venue near you!

2006-03-15T19:58:00.000-05:00

One of many sexy discoveries at last week's AWP: Cloverfield Press. I haven't read the books I bought yet, but the bindings & layouts are lovely, tiny, precise. You want to put them in your back pocket and never sit down. You want to read them standing up, and I think they are just about the right length to allow you to do so before your legs give out. Short fiction. Fine covers. Check it out.

2006-03-15T19:36:00.000-05:00

Go on & check out Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Review). Smart people reviewing good books.

2006-03-15T15:17:00.000-05:00

The End Of Rude Handles can now by ordered online, via credit, debit, paypal, etc. About it, the good fellows at Red Morning Press say:

A book-length sequence that draws together lyric, collage and essay elements, 'The End Of Rude Handles' explores landscape and the landscape of language with curiosity and tenderness. Jen Tynes' distinctively handmade poems are at the same time intellectual and playful, elusive and inviting: "When I speak of you some object is / also formed in light of that. // I enfold the brimming object to you."

You should probably go pick up your copy right now.

2006-03-14T10:29:00.000-05:00

Just flew back from AWP, and boy are my arms tired...

Part 3 of Don’t You Have A Map?
A collaboration twixt your horse less editors,

is now available at TYPO’s Burning Chair:

http://www.typomag.com/burningchair/2006/03/dont-you-have-map.html

Part 4 will show, in about 2 weeks, at the internet homeplace of Mr. Josh Hanson. Stay tuned.

Next month a beautiful new horse less chapbook, Canoe by Adam Clay, will be creeping out of the woodwork.

This month, and for many months afterwards, my first full-length collection, The End Of Rude Handles, is available from Red Morning Press.
Red Morning Press has this to say:

Red Morning Press is pleased to present The End of Rude Handles, a debut poetry collection from Jen Tynes. In The End of Rude Handles, Tynes explores landscape and the landscape of language with curiosity and tenderness.

Award-winning poet C.D. Wright describes Jen Tynes as “attentive to polyester as she is the human hand’s extension into unlikely space, out of which she conceives a unique pattern…We do not know where she will take us. We have to read along to find out. We want to know.”

Please stop by www.redmorningpress.com for more information and get yourself a copy.

2006-02-14T20:51:00.000-05:00

Don't you have a map?
A collaborative, traveling essay in letters 'twixt Erika Howsare & Jen Tynes starts tonight, over at The Pines.

2006-02-08T13:31:00.000-05:00

Winter Constellations by Nate Pritts
c 2005, 30 pages.
Lyric meets process among the wind-tossed grasses.
6x6, staple-bound.
Fabulous cover print by Kate Schapira.
$5

Read an excerpt and place your order.

And if you haven't already, pick up your copy of our other new books by Mark Kanak, Adam Tobin, and Tyler Carter.

chapbook

2006-01-19T21:17:00.000-05:00

Coming Soon!
Winter Constellations by Nate Pritts.

2005-12-19T10:59:00.000-05:00

Coming soon: a bucketful of poetry reviews for the 42 review.
http://www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html

In the meantime, want to be a 42 reviewer? Ask me how:
jen@horselesspress.com

2005-12-16T14:35:00.000-05:00

http://www.horselesspress.com/winter2005/review3.html

HORSE LESS REVIEW #3 IS OUT AND ABOUT!

FEATURING:Shannon Tharp, Jenna Cardinale, Jon Leon, Susan Scarlata, Glenn Bach, FJ Bergmann, Leigh Stein, Nathan Schneider, Pirooz Kalayeh, Tyler Carter, Daniel Nester, Caroline Whitbeck, Geoffrey Babbitt, Monica Berlin, Kate Schapira, Carrie-Sinclair Katz, Andrew Lux, Christopher Mulrooney, Terri Light, Matt Henriksen, Emma Ramey, Nate Pritts, Alex Carnevale, David Trame, Conan Kelly.

http://www.horselesspress.com/winter2005/review3.html

& DON'T FORGET TO BUY A COPY OF OUR NEWEST CHAPBOOK:

CROIX NOIRE by MARK KANAK
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

COMING SOON: WINTER CONSTELLATIONS BY NATE PRITTS

2005-11-28T20:15:00.000-05:00

CROIX NOIRE by MARK KANAK
c 2005, 54 pages.
Long awaited, thick as thieves.
5x5, bound by gaffer's tape and common sense.
Smart cover art by Kate Schapira.
$9
See pictures and an excerpt here.
Buy it here.

COMING SOON: HORSE LESS REVIEW #3!
Chapbooks by NATE PRITTS and KHALIL HUFFMAN!
A 42 WORD REVIEW REVIVAL!

2005-10-06T19:11:00.000-05:00

It's been dead & down at 42, but here a few.
http://www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html
I have this sense I've lost someone's review -- if you sent one that you haven't seen posted, please re-send. If you've never sent one, please send. If you've not sent one in a while, please send some more. I know you are reading some books, some where.

2005-09-22T19:56:00.000-05:00

At 42, it's been August way too long. Go see three new reviews for the month of September, keep an eye out for good, new poetry reviews to come, and please do send your reviews to jen AT horselesspress DOT com.

www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html

2005-08-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

Friends,
Horse Less Review is currently accepting submissions for #3.
We want your poetry, your fiction, your genre-defying best.
Guidelines & a photo of some prize-winning goats at www.horselesspress.com/howto.html.
For inspiration, view #2 at www.horselesspress.com/revspring05/review2.html.
Deadline is September 15 or until we are satisfied.
Please send all submissions and any queries to editors@horselesspress.com.
Yr Editrs,
Jen Tynes
Erika Howsare

forty-two

2005-07-27T07:52:00.000-05:00

We're catching up at forty-two: book review. Check out reviews of a chapbook by Suzanne Frischkorn, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, new novels by Nicole Krauss and Michael Cunningham. And send reviews of your own summer reading, stat. There's a hole to fill.

2005-07-16T16:29:00.000-05:00

Ooh, ooh, ooh. So many new things in the noggin for horse less press. It has been a year and we are ready to cast off an old skin and slip into something more comfortable. Hopefully come August we'll have something to show you on the page and in the atmosphere.

Don't forget. Chapbook by Mark Kanak is really really on the way.
Go check him out.

Don't forget. Shadow Fixed The Toilet With An Old Trombone. Refer to earlier for details. You can totally be a host. Email me and say so. I believe in you.

Don't forget. Soon we'll be playing HORSE, live. HORSE, live. Bone up and be ready.
And here's something new to remember: Mythologies. Soon we'll shew them. I can't explain it. But you can help us. If you have stories, reviews, appreciations, raves, pleasant or revelatory things to say about horse less press, horse less review, and any of its productions or faces, please email them to jen AT horselesspress DOT com. They don't have to be true. We will do all the work. We will weave our own history.

-yr friend

2005-07-11T18:27:00.000-05:00

horse less reading
and chapbook series
presents:

shadow fixed the toilet with an old trombone:
some improvisations

we have been thinking long and hard about how to host a reading tour without actually going anywhere, and this is what we came up with. during the first week of october (2005) we'd like to coordinate a series of readings all over the world (or at least the country) with a united theme:

shadow fixed the toilet with an old trombone:
some improvisations.

that is, writing that somehow involves or speaks to the idea of improvisation.
individual hosts will determine the time, place, shape, parameters, location, etc. of each reading.
they will be in livingrooms, restaurants, laundromats, buses, back stoops, sofa-beds, amphitheatres, planes.
they will be readings for 2 or 200.
some writings will certainly appear on the walls like graffiti or miracles.
some writings will be elaborately choreographed, only-children, in the making for years.
afterwards a chapbook will be compiled that includes a piece of writing from each reading.
with luck there will be other artifacts and remains.

interested in hosting a reading? email jen AT horselesspress DOT com for more details.
interested in attending a reading? check back at horselesspress.com and watch the schedule develop.

2005-07-03T21:13:00.000-05:00

I am really hoping to pretty up the old website soon.
In the meantime, take note:

All previously-sold-out chapbooks are now print-on-demand. Check out the chapbooks page for details.
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html
A chapbook from Mark Kanak is coming soon, swear.

We added some new blogs to the list this weekend--browse and enjoy. If you have any journal, blog, or project suggestions for our link pages, please email jen AT horselesspress DOT com.
http://www.horselesspress.com/blogs.html

promotion of poetry, self

2005-06-16T10:56:00.000-05:00

You can listen to me & my girly voice reading poems here:
http://bsrlive.com/archives/playlist.php?p=2510
William is responsible for the cool music in the background, and for the show in general, whose archives you should really check out. Lots of good poetry and tunes.
http://www.spinelessbooks.com/eclecticseizure/

I have a one-sentence story in T H E L I T T L E B O O K O F W A T E R , R O A D S , V I O L E N C E , F I R E F L I E S , C I G A R E T T E S , H E A R T B R E A K , D I S T A N C E , D E A T H , D E V A S T A T I O N , A N D L ' A M O U R,along with a bunch of other cool people. It looks fabulous -- you should buy a copy.

On June 26th @ 8pm @ The Cloister Cafe (NYC)I will be reading with Simon DeDeo and Rachel Moritz to celebrate the dawning of the upcoming issue of TYPO.

2005-06-11T18:39:00.000-05:00

I have a sunburn, the grill is hot, the weekend's here at 42 (short-ee reviews of Mairead Byrne, Ander Monson, Sean Norton):
http://www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html

2005-06-06T12:43:00.000-05:00

Belated but here: the first week of June at 42, including reviews of books by Roxanne Carter, Ivy Alvarez, Merrill Gilfillan, Joseph Massey, Nate Pritts, and Kate Schapira.
http://www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html

Coming, though not especially soon: chapbooks by Mark Kanak and Khalil Huffman.

Also, due to desire: out-of-print chapbooks will soon become available on a print-on-demand basis.

Also, coming as quickly as possible: a new oldtime game to play.

review & chaps

2005-05-14T00:30:00.000-05:00

PUT OUT LIGHTS.

HORSE LESS REVIEW #2 is here and includes work by: Tyler Carter, Thomas Cook, Phil Cordelli, Maria Filippone, Sandy Florian, Michael Geier, Garth Graeper, Matthew Henriksen, Sean Hoade, Mark Kanak, Kirk Keen, Conan Kelly, Andrew Lux, Andrew Lynes, Clay Matthews, Carolina Maugeri, Jim Maughn, Jerry McGuire, Corey Mesler, Nick Montfort, Bryce Newhart, Scott Pierce, Marc Pietrzykowski, Nate Pritts, Maggie Queeney, Marthe Reed, Kate Schapira, Brandon Shimoda, Brian Kim Stefans, Hugh Steinberg, and Bronwen Tate.We like it. Please enjoy & spread the word.
http://www.horselesspress.com/revspring05/review2.html

Also fresh out: TWO new chapbooks. "Egg Breakfast" by Tyler Carter and "Ode To Pumpsie Green & Stretch Phillips" by Adam Tobin. Buy both and get more. http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

Your good editors,
Jen Tynes
Erika Howsare
http://www.horselesspress.com

2005-04-27T21:24:00.000-05:00

Things are happening @ horse less press!

Horse Less Review #2 will hit the streets any day now, featuring:
Tyler Carter, Phil Cordelli, Maria Filippone, Sandy Florian, Michael Geier, Garth Graeper, Matthew Henriksen, Sean Hoade, Mark Kanak, Kirk Keen, Andy Lynes, Clay Matthews, Jim Maughn, Jerry McGuire, Corey Mesler, Nick Montfort, Andrew Lux, Bryce Newhart, Scott Pierce, Marc Pietrzykowski, Nate Pritts, Maggie Queeney, Marthe Reed, Hugh Steinberg, and others.

*******

And two new chapbooks are just about to hit the presses!

from Egg Breakfast by Tyler Carter:

Hello Cactus

My man! How strange you are! These yellow growths glued to
your body (at one time strong and disdainful of touch, you would
sit as your ancestors sat, in the hot sun waiting, living but never
sweating, and never bored) but now look at you! Your resiliency
has gotten the best of you!

from Ode To Pumpsie Green & Stretch Phillips by Adam Tobin:

Whitey Whitey Dutch Doc Whitey

Red Red Doc Dutch Red

Doc Dutch Red Doc Red

Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit

Dutch Dutch Dutch Doc Dutch

Whitey Red Whitey Whitey Red

Red Dutch Dutch

*************************************************************

For pre-ordering information, go to

http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

National Velvet

2005-04-18T08:31:00.000-05:00

The month of April is looking pretty sparse over at forty-two.
http://www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html

I think we ought to flesh it out retroactively. Come in like a lion, midway.

Please send me 42 word reviews of your favorite books. In honor of NaPoMo, especially send me reviews of your favorite books of poetry. Email to jen AT horselesspress DOT com.

yr editor's agenda

2005-04-17T21:27:00.000-05:00

A little about me:

#1 http://spinelessbooks.com/eclecticseizureWilliam is playing some recordings of me reading poems on his radio show tonight, along with live music & such from Vulpine. You can listen online, at 11 est or later when it's archived. You should check out all the archives, in fact, for lots of good readings.

#2http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/470I am doing a reading for NYU's Washington Square, with Eric Anderson & Elisa Albert, on April 29th @ 7pm. Tickets are very un-pricey and you get to support a literary endeavor. Also, I might just wear a skirt. I've been into them lately.

A little about horses:

http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/lisajarnot/blog/
I'm sorry I haven't kept up my promise to educate us on the ponies. It's been a busy poetry month, and it looks like, once again, I'm going to be watching the derby like a fool. If you want to read poets talking about horses, though, check out Lisa Jarnot's blog. She's a smart cookie.

New Octopus

2005-04-10T09:33:00.000-05:00

From Zachary Schomburg:

Octopus #5 is alive!

http://www.octopusmagazine.com

It features:

New POETRY from Jean Valentine, Stan Mir, Craig Morgan Teicher, Wayne Chambliss, Dara Wier, Louis Armand, Paul Muldoon, Aaron Kunin, Standard Schaefer, Jennifer Knox, Kate Greenstreet, Matthew Thorburn, Daniel Coudriet, Shafer Hall, Bob Hicok, Joe Wenderoth, Barry Schwabsky, Christopher Janke, Jen Tynes, Rob Stanton, Paul Foster Johnson, Carolina Maugeri, Joshua Beckman & Matthew Rohrer, Jennifer Moxley, Chris Glomski, Shane McCrae, Dobby Gibson, Nathan Parker, Maureen Thorson, Lawrence Raab, and TRANSLATIONS of Daniil Kharms by Matvei Yankelevich and of Thanh Thao by Linh Dinh.

REVIEWS of Eric Baus’ The To Sound by Monica Fambrough, John Witte’s The Hurtling by Gina Myers, Matthew Thorburn’s Subject to Change by Richard Scheiwe, Noah Eli Gordon’s The Area of Sound Called the Subtone by Thomas Fink, Sarah Manguso (ed.) and Jordan Davis’ (ed.) Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books by Travis Nichols, and Peter Gizzi’s Periplum and Other Poems by Julie Misso.

ESSAYS including the first volume of The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! by Matvei Yankelevich, a series of field notes on Russian-American poets and the question of bilingual poetry. This volume includes notes on Philip Nikolayev, Eugene Ostashevsky, Ilya Bernstein, and Genya Turovskaya. And including some thoughts on James Tate’s “Same Tits” by Ian Ganassi.

RECOVERY PROJECTS on William Heyen’s Lord Dragonfly: Five Sequences by Matthew Henriksen, and Kamau Brathwaite’s Ancestors by Joyelle McSweeney.

Thinking

2005-03-31T10:47:00.000-05:00

Thinking
for Alex

Thought feels the edges.
Just so far it was only yesterday?
So far it seems now till tomorrow.

Time isn't space.
Away for the day, one says--
gone fishing. Now and again.

The sounds echo in the quiet morning--
such faint edges of place, things, not yet quite seen.
But one knows the familiar presences.

The world will be as one left it,
still there, to reappear again perhaps
where it always is.

--Robert Creeley

this cocaine's for horses

2005-03-18T17:10:00.000-05:00

this cocaine's for horses, it ain't for men
the doc says it'll kill me, but he don't say when

(from cocaine blues)

the inside of a man

2005-03-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

There is something about the outside of a horse
That is good for the inside of a man.

-Sir Winston Churchill

Afleet Alex

2005-03-18T16:41:00.000-05:00

We interrupt this horselessness to offer you a little horse.

Early May: Jen's thesis is due
May 5: cinco de mayo; also, Jen teaches her final class @ brown
May 6: Jen attends her final class @ brown & gives a reading with her fiction class
May 7: THE KENTUCKY FRIGGIN DERBY!

What a week the first week of May will be! There is, to be sure, a derby party in the works. (If you're reading this, you're invited.) At last year's party, I really felt shamed for not being able to provide more information about the horses & history of the derby. Anytime someone asked me something I didn't know, I just shoved another mint julep in their face. But not this year! I'll still be shoving mint juleps, of course, but we're going to do our homework.

I think the first horse we ought to check out is Afleet Alex. Granted, his name doesn't have the poetry that I covet in my racehorses, but then neither did Smarty Jones. I haven't been keeping up with the races lately, but apparently Afleet Alex is kicking some booty.

http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/horse_racing/articles/2005/03/18/afleet_alex_is_in_it_for_the_long_haul/

http://www.horsehats.com/AfleetAlex.html

"This horse is a beast," said Jockey Jeremy Rose after the race. "He's classy enough to sit off the speed and take off. I really didn't have to do much with him, other than keep him out of trouble. I've been on decent horses before, but this one is special because of the way he runs. He is so athletic and professional. He does everything you ask him, whether it is in a workout or a race. It seems he has an unlimited amount of gears; that's why I think he can easily go longer."

And also new, DIAGRAM

2005-03-05T20:20:00.000-05:00

Issue 5.1 of DIAGRAM is up and live and crazy, at the usual place:
http://thediagram.com

:: WHAT YOU'LL FIND IN 5.1TEXT (variously, including collaborations, javascript poems, multimediacraziness, and lots more) by: N. M. Courtright, Chad Davidson and John Poch,DJ Dolack, Ryan Flaherty, Miriam Greenberg, Kelle Groom, Janis Butler Holm,Elizabeth Kerlikowske, Christine Boyka Kluge and Rick Mullarky, Lisa Lee,Menage a Trois: Brea Burton, Jill Hartman, and Cara Hedley, Peter Mishler,Caryl Pagel, Marc Pietrzykowski, Derek Pollard, Peter Jay Shippy, EricTorgersen, Gautam Verma, and Scott Withiam.

PART TWO (of Three) of Matt Vadnais' novella, REAL-TIME VIDEO OF DEAD PEOPLEYOU WANT TO HAVE COFFEE WITH

REVIEWS: Matt Dube on Marie Curie, Shara Lessley on Sabrina Orah Mark's THEBABIES, and the DIAGRAM staff on Brian Leung's WORLD FAMOUS LOVE ACTS andJessica Helfand's REINVENTING THE WHEEL.

IMAGES BY: Adelheid Mers and Alexander Rose

SCHEMATICS: 2 Irrigation Engineering Images; Combinations for PyramidBuilding; The Contrast Between Natural and Enforced Releases of Doubles;Extraction of "Prominence" Feature; Fully Developed Cumulonimbus CloudShowing Internal Currents. After this Stage the Cloud Will Decline; TheGeneral Procurement Procedure; and Some Insect Wings

H_NGM_N #3 is new!

2005-03-05T09:30:00.000-05:00

[[There's some great stuff in this journal -- check it out! And look for writing by editor Nate Pritts in the upcoming issue of horse less review.]]

http://www.h-ngm-n.com

H_NGM_N #3, our first fully online issue, features poetry by Adrian Blevins, Adam Clay, J.L. Conrad, Mike Dockins, Tom Dvorske, Matt Hart, Clay Matthews, David Saffo, Jim Simmerman, Tony Tost & Thom Ward, essays by Daniel Becker on Frank O'Hara & Robert Lowell & by Joe Wenderoth on Chaim Soutine, a story by Matt Dube, a portfolio of artist Keith Gamache's work & some gags by Tom Horacek to keep the mood light.Spend some time with the site & you'll find we've archived our first two print issues as fully downloadable (& free) pdf files. Pop into the editor's office to hear what I have to say & check our submission guidelines to find out how you can be a part!

call for submissions

2005-02-23T18:42:00.000-05:00

horse less review would love to read you.

please send your fiction, poetry, or slippery-genre'd submissions to editors [at] horselesspress [dot] com by april 15 to be considered for our second issue.

check out issue #1 here
http://www.horselesspress.com/review.html

and guidelines for submission
http://www.horselesspress.com/howto.html

Words Spoken In Winter

2005-02-14T20:59:00.000-05:00

Words Spoken In Winter Will Not Be Heard: A Valentine
Writings by Leigh Stein, Jen Tynes, Jesse Castaldi, Erika Howsare,
Joseph Massey, Timothy Baker, John Mulligan, Brandon Shimoda,
Roxanne M Carter, Kirk Keen, Kate Schapira, and Shae Krispinsky.
http://www.horselesspress.com/chapbooks.html

Sale-copies are limited, so don't wait!

dear friend

2005-02-13T23:18:00.000-05:00

Check out some great new Want/Adds.
http://www.horselesspress.com/wantadds.html

And coming tomorrow, photos & order information for Words Spoken In Winter Will Not Be Heard: A Valentine.

new blood.

2005-02-07T19:54:00.000-05:00

The mourning doves are mewling in Rhode Island
and we are finally getting back on track with the
(usually) daily 42-word reviews.

Go check out new ones by Timothy Baker, Stevie Lynne
Kohler, Erika Howsare, Matthew W Schmeer, William
Gillespie, and Burke Gerstenschlager.
http://www.horselesspress.com/fortytwo.html

Also happy to announce the presence of our new
co-editor, Erika Howsare. She prefers to be called
Ms. Howsare. One day soon she will walk all the way
across Rhode Island. Learn more about here here:
http://www.horselesspress.com/editors.html

Off the press and in the mail shortly:
Words Spoken in Winter.

desired: 42 word reviewers

2005-02-01T09:40:00.000-05:00

Our apologies for the recent silence over at forty two. Several of our regular reviewers have gone fishing, and we're busy looking for their stand-ins.

Would you like to be a regular or irregular reviewer? Horse Less doesn't send or assign you books, and we do not specify or limit subject, genre, publication date of books reviewed (although we especially appreciate reviews of contemporary poetry). The only requirement is that your book review be exactly 42 words long (excluding the book title/ author's name).

Please email jen (at) horselesspress (dot) com for more information, or just jump right in and send us a review. We're interested in what you're reading.

words spoken in winter / your el dorado

2005-01-23T14:36:00.000-05:00

Words Spoken In Winter Will Not Be Heard: A Valentine is just about full! Included are works by Leigh Stein, John Mulligan, Shae Krispinsky, Jesse Castaldi, Kirk Keen, Erika Howsare, Tim Baker, Kate Schapira, and your humble editor. I'm still accepting submissions through the last day of January, the only guideline being that the poem/prose was written during January 2005.

And this has worked so well that we're going to try it again! Up next: The Lord Does Not Care For Your El Dorado. All through the month of February I will be accepting submissions -- poetry or prose with the aforementioned title. If there's anough good stuff we'll make a book of it.

All submissions can go to jen (at) horselesspress (dot) com, pasted into email or attached as Word/RTF files.