BlazeVOX [blog]

Small Press Highlights, 2010 Edition | National Book Critics Circle

2010-12-21T20:35:00.000-08:00

From "Critical Mass" The Blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors

Small Press Highlights, 2010 Edition by rigoberto gonzález | Dec-20-2010

BlazeVOX [books]: Urayoán Noel, Hi-Density Politics: No other poet can make music out of NYC’s white noise and stage a play using the “scenes from an apocalipsync” like the inimitable Noel--a poet who packs more energy into a single page than most can pack into an entire book. So what’s the book about?: “IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SLIGHT LIMPS, BABY, THE ETHNIC FOOD THE QUEER RAZA THE SITUATIONALIST THEORY THE MECHANICAL BULLS THE INCA TEMPLES THE LEATHERETTE GLOVES THE STIRRUPPED CUTUPS THE BAD BEATITUDES THE STILLBORN MORNINGS THE PARTIAL MEMORIES THE UNDERWEAR HANGOVERS THE S&M AT THE H&M...”

Buy the book here

Greg Bem Reviews Tom Clark’s At the Fair

2010-12-21T20:02:00.000-08:00

At the Fair by Tom Clark. 132 pages. BlazeVOX [books], 2010. $16.00.

Tom Clark’s latest book of poetry is a welcome assortment of verse and prose featuring diverse styles, impeccable themes, and moving stories, all told in retrospective, West Coast candor. Through the emulation of a small town world made complete with an intrinsically international mythology rooted to mankind’s relationship with the universe, At the Fair is like a “best of” for a poignant culture. The book makes the attempt to go from microcosmic reliance to macrocosmic necessity and succeeds in forging an alliance between the two, achieving a noble goal to unite timeless queries: foster meaning with language, empathize with undeniable Memory, and bolster with compassion toward life and beauty.

Read More here:

http://www.pilotbooksseattle.com/blog/book-reviews/greg-bem-reviews-tom-clarks-at-the-fair/

Another fine review of Multiverse up at Poet's Quarterly

2010-12-13T09:12:00.000-08:00

Multiverse by Michael Smith
http://poetsquarterly.yolasite.com/winter11_smith.php

Buy it here:
http://www.blazevox.org/bk-msmith.htm

Happy December :-)

Hurray for GALATEA RESURRECTS

2010-12-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce the release of Galatea Resurrects' 15th Issue, which presents 72 New Poetry Reviews as well as other feature presentations. The issue can be accessed directly at

http://galatearesurrection15.blogspot.com

Check out these BlazeVOX [books] reviews!

John Bloomberg-Rissman reviews AT THE FAIR by Tom Clark

Buy it here:

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-tc2.htm

Eileen Tabios engages APPARITION POEMS by Adam Fieled

Buy it here:

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-af2.htm

Edric Mesmer reviews ON SECRETS OF MY PRISON HOUSE by Geoffrey Gatza

Buy it here:

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-ggatza.htm

Jon Curley reviews CLEANING THE MIRROR: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by Joel Chace

Tom Beckett reviews CLEANING THE MIRROR: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS by Joel Chace

Buy it here:

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-jchace.htm

G.E. Schwartz reviews THE FUTURE IS HAPPY by Sarah Sarai

Buy it here:

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-ss2.htm

Best, Geoffrey

2 new reviews!!!

2010-12-06T09:32:00.000-08:00

Multiverse by Michael Smith at storySouth

http://www.storysouth.com/2010/09/mike-smiths-multiverse.html

From Old Notebooks by Evan Lavender-Smith at HTMLGiant.

Check it out: http://htmlgiant.com/feature/writers-respond-an-interview-with-evan-lavender-smith

Hurray! The Fall issue of BlazeVOX 2kX Fall 2010 is now online!

2010-11-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

Hurray! The Fall issue of BlazeVOX 2kX Fall 2010 is now online!

http://www.blazevox.org/

Read it here:

BlazeVOX2kX Fall 2010

Fall Introduction

Ezra Pound at 125: Either move or be moved

Welcome to the Fall issue of BlazeVOX 2kX. Once again we have a wonderful issue of wild fictions, poetry, and visual poetry. We have 86 authors presenting a varied array of writings from authors around the world, from varied backgrounds and whose ages range from 17 to 82. So hop in and be moved by these works!

Either move or be moved is a favorite quote of mine from Ezra Pound. This simple phrase resounds in my mind of all the possibilities that can be open by the act of using ones own potential. In this case writing, but it is applicable to all the arts. I myself say, be relevant. We chose Ezra Pound as our Editor in Chief as he is still quite a relevant figure for today. We cannot forgive his politics but on his Quasquicentennial anniversary, we say hurray!

On October 30^th Erza Pound turned 125 years old. This is a big day for any writer and since he is our Editor-in-Chief, Ezra’s birthday was something we did not want to miss. We had a nice celebration in Buffalo, NY that trailed on the tails of another literary event going on that day, Big Night. It was a lucky coincidence that I had already been scheduled to cook up a feast for this event, so it was natural that I themed it a birthday party. This is one of the best reading series in Buffalo featuring poetry, poets theater, music, film and of course, food. I have been cooking for these events since the inception of the series last year. It is always a thrill to entertain so many through food and poetry. And it is the perfect way to pack a room for a poetry reading. Although, to be honest, Ezra’s birthday was not mentioned during the event, a simple slip of the mind of the hosts, as there was a lot going on that night. So not everyone knew that this was going on. But I was near the dining table and doing my best to explain that the Ezra Pumpkin was a tribute to our Editor-in-Chief. All one hundred guests had a good time and that is all that matters. So hurray!

The full menu is below and many pictures of the event follow.

For More information on Big Night:

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/article46762.ece

And an iTunes Podcast treat for all:

Ezra Pound: Early Poems and Translations

Free Podcast of Pounds works read by Alan Davies Drake.

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/ezra-pound-early-poems-translations/id211007656

List of Authors:

Alban Fischer

Amy Hard

Amanda Stephens

Amy Lawless

Amylia Grace

Andrea Dulanto

AE Baer

Anisa Rahim

Antony Hitchin

Brad Vogler

Barbara Duffey

Benjamin Dickerson

Bob Nimmo

Billy Cancel

Brian Edwards

Brian Anthony Hardie

Ashley Burgess

Carlos Ponce-Meléndez

Carol Smallwood

Caroline Klocksiem

Chad Scheel

Christine Herzer

Darren Caffrey

David Toms

Debrah Morkun

Diana Salier

Donna Danford

David Plumb

Ed Makowski

Elizabeth Brazeal

Eric Wayne Dickey

Erin J. Mullikin

Julie Finch

Flower Conroy

George McKim

Geoffrey Gatza

Sarah Sweeney

Geer Austin

Heather Cox

henry 7. reneau, jr

Howie Good

Ivan Jenson

Ian Miller

James Mc Laughlin

Jason Joyce

Jeff Arnett

Julia Anjard Maher

Joshua Young

Jennifer Thacker

Kate Lutzner

Kelci M. Kelci

Laura Straub

Martin Willitts Jr

Margot Block

Myl Schulz

Camille Roy

Megan Milligan

Michael Caylo-Baradi

Michael Crake

Michael Hartman

Nick Miriello

Nicole Peats

Orchid Tierney

Philip Sultz

SJ Fowler

Steven Taylor

Steve Potter

Stephan Delbos

Simon Perchik

Sean Neville

Sarah Sousa

Bob Whiteside

Ricardo Nazario y Colón

Santiago del Dardano Turann

John Raffetto

Bruce Bromley

Carl Dimitri

Gregory Dirkson

Jordan Martich

Natalie McNabb

Moura McGovern

Jennifer Houston

Robert Vaughan

Christi Mastley

pd mallamo

bruno neiva

--

Best, Geoffrey

Geoffrey Gatza
Editor & Publisher
-------------------------------------
BlazeVOX [ books ]
Publisher of weird little books
--------------------------------------

editor@blazevox.org
http://www.blazevox.org

Some Odd Afternoon by Sally Ashton reviewed in Rattle!

2010-10-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

Some Odd Afternoon by Sally Ashton
Reviewed in Rattle

http://rattle.com/blog/2010/10/some-odd-afternoon-by-sally-ashton/

Book Information:
· Paperback: 100 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 9781935402817

$16 Buy it NOW

John M Bennett on Jared Schickling

2010-10-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

John M Bennett on Jared Schickling

http://wordforwordpreview.blogspot.com/2010/10/john-m-bennett-on-jared-schicklings-o.html

Check out Jared's new book: Zero’s Blooming Excursion
http://www.blazevox.org/bk-js4.htm

Book Information:
· Paperback: 126 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-001-9
$16 Buy it NOW

2 reviews of N7ostradamus by Travis Macdonald

2010-10-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

N7ostradamus by Travis Macdonald

Tarpaulin Sky (http://tsky-reviews.blogspot.com/2010/09/twofer-tuesday-travis-macdonalds.html)

Monkey Puzzle (http://monkeypuzzlepress.com/blog/review-of-travis-macdonalds-n7ostradamus-by-travis-cebula/)

Book Information:
· Paperback: 168 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-009-5
$16 Buy it NOW

Thirty Miles to Rosebud review

2010-10-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

Thirty Miles to Rosebud was reviewed in the Marquette
Michigan newspaper.

http://www.mmnow.com/z_current_a/b/c/arts.html#thimil

Thirty Miles To Rosebud
Barbara Henning

Book Information:
· Paperback: 234 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 9781935402251
$18Buy it NOW

Henry Williams reviewed in Harvard Review Online

2010-10-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

First Books, First Looks:
A Review of Thirteen Debut Books of Poetry

by William Doreski

http://hcl.harvard.edu/harvardreview/OnlineJournal/HRO_3/main/SpecialDoreski.html

seasons smooth & unperplext
Henry R. Williams

Book Information:
· Paperback: 100 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 9781935402725
$16 Buy it NOW

From Old Notebooks was reviewed in TriQuarterly Online!

2010-09-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

From Old Notebooks was reviewed in TriQuarterly Online!

http://triquarterly.org/reviews/old-notebooks-evan-lavender-smith

Dale Smith's plug for At the Fair

2010-09-29T12:23:00.000-07:00

Buy this one!

—Dale Smith

$16 Buy it NOW

New Release: Unusual Woods by Gene Tanta

2010-09-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

Unusual Woods by Gene Tanta

$16 Buy it NOW

Read more: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-gt2.htm

“Gene Tanta's Unusual Woods is at once shocking, lively, and oddly nurturing, imprinted as it is with the down-home authority of language's deep hands.”
—Annie Finch

“The poems in Unusual Woods are energetic little bulletins from the front.”
—John L. Koethe

History with its betrayals lurks behind Gene Tanta, lends his writing wisdom and gravity, but he’s also playful and wickedly humorous. Infused with a deft surrealism, these subtle yet startling poems are like parables, brief films, elegant dreams, baffling skirmishes or erotic near misses. They demand and reward repeated readings.
—Linh Dinh

Gene Tanta’s Unusual Woods is just that, a journey through the dark forest of the poet’s mind. Tanta’s poems are at once playful and haunting, turning the everyday into the grotesque, the carnivalesque, the beautiful. His is a world in which, “sometimes the squeaky wheel / gets the hammer.” A speaker in one of Tanta’s poems says, “I too want to fully conjugate the human heart.” In Unusual Woods, in Tanta’s unique way, a way simultaneously foreboding and alluring, he already has.
—Shaindel Beers, author of A Brief History of Time

In the 50 demi-sonnets that make up Unusual Woods, as original a debut collection as I've ever read, Gene Tanta asks us to enter history in unusual ways: through the noose of a joke, the music of assassins, the slippery holes in the sidewalk of logic. This remarkable sequence reminds me that there is no music more beautiful and terrifying than an open mouth, breathing, singing, dreaming. How Tanta, a child of Romania and Chicago, became heir to so many rich traditions (Dickinson, Berryman, Simic, Popa, to name only a few) is our pleasure to discover as we chart the terrain of an important new voice in poetry.
— Maurice Kilwein Guevara

Gene Tanta’s “Unusual Woods” should come with a warning label: Handle With Care. Contents Extremely Volatile. Each thirteen-line poem is a powder keg taking on politics, history, and language itself. While in search for the “myth or origins”, Tanta experiments with sounds and striking, original images, in turn creating new worlds that are entirely his own. Tanta writes in the surrealist tradition but he is no follower. This is poetry as it should be—irreverent, visionary, breaking expectations.
—Andrei Guruianu

“Where are we, in Gene Tanta’s Unusual Woods? We’re where Charles Simic would live, if he’d been born a few decades later, under the signs of ellipsis and disjunction. These are woods with at least two borders running through them. The first of them divides the surreal anecdote from the elliptical meditation, and along this border we find deformed aphorisms, slippery allegories, cryptic personifications, and parables bent out of shape and away from meaning. This is a zone filled with almost-expressive artifacts like faceless dolls and faded photos. The second border runs between Tanta’s Romanian past and his American present. Both Eastern Europe and the United States appear in fragments of iconic figures: Stalin, fortune-tellers, gypsies, elders with samovars, spies, and Paul Celan; or Black Hawk Indians, Gulf War veterans, teenagers dancing the funky chicken, and Ernest Hemingway. No one but Tanta lives at these exact poetic co-ordinates. You’d be wrong not to visit.”
—Robert Archambeau

"Gene Tanta's Unusual Woods is deceptively simple and candidly devious. Reading it is like looking in a funhouse mirror for the first time."
—Mike Topp

Gene Tanta sees the world through the “two-way mirror of my (that is Tanta’s) itchy eye.” He is positioned on both sides of the mirror at once. He watches reflections of his self against an ever-changing background of unusually absurd situations. Like dreaming about having a dream of being lost in the woods.
—Yehuda Yannay

“Gene Tanta’s poetry reads like documentation of the lost, just come to light after being hidden in an ammunition box buried at the site of some anonymous atrocity. It feels personal, ravaged and beautiful, hovering on the far bank of some inexplicably authentic nightmare, the first and last thoughts of a band of survivors. Distant light is intensifying but it’s not clear if dawn is on its way, or some further conflagration.
Unlike some of the leading-edge poetry of recent decades, Gene Tanta’s does not impersonate an explosion. There is no scattering of attention or resources. Instead, we are in a verbal landscape of aftermath and preparation. The work is careful and inclusive, each fragment of dream and vision brought back to the table for inspection and reassembly. We are invited to participate at this stage as if it mattered: as if the orchestration of meanings had to be collective because of ethical imperatives it is now too late to ignore.
Behind these poems range the ghosts of victims and the ghosts of poetic forms. None is banished. This generosity is a gift to the reader who (tired of the brash, cocky or complacent) may feel that here is a poetry adequate to our times: an art humming with political and aesthetic urgency, and with a resonance that feels at times mythic.”
—Peter Hughes

_________________
Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania and lived there until 1984, when his family immigrated to the United States. Since then, he has lived in DeKalb, Iowa City, New York, Oaxaca City, Iasi, Milwaukee, and Chicago. He is a poet, visual artist, and translator of contemporary Romanian poetry. His two poetry books are Unusual Woods and Pastoral Emergency. Tanta earned his MFA in Poetry from the Iowa's Writers' Workshop in 2000 and his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2009 with literary specialization in twentieth-century American poetry and the European avant-garde. His journal publications include: EPOCH, Ploughshares, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, and The Laurel Review. Currently, he teaches creative writing online for UC Berkeley Extension.

At the Fair by Tom Clark now available

2010-09-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

At the Fair by Tom Clark

$16 Buy it NOW

I've known and read Tom Clark for almost half-a-century as a master of many genres: a writer of plays, biographies, novels; as an editor and critic — but always foremost, as a poet. At the Fair gives glimpses of this poet peering through the eyes of his reflection in the mirror of time and reporting on the memories of that image. Part autobiography of the author in shards; part philosophy of atmosphere and thought; part natural history of air, land and water; part defense of the local; part the literate writer at work, translating, being distracted by the logic and beauty of language: this book, which I read straight through, is a tribute to a lifelong addiction: a mutable one-handed keep-awake smack in the forest of loss. One's hat is raised as observation passes.
—Tom Raworth

Remembering his first glimmers of vocation as a boy in power-charged mid-century Chicago, Tom Clark has given us some of the most beautiful American Poems that I know. At the Fair is the work of a living master.
—Aram Saroyan

Not nostalgia transports us here, but the sweet pulse of "vanished ephemerae", love of the Voyage, the illumination, and "throbbing rituals" of a life lived always inside poetry. Tom Clark's prodigious archive of memory trembles on the edge of a teetering universe, calls us back toward the imagination of Reverdy, Vallejo, Ungaretti as witness to the power and thrust and ethos of language. "The universe is strange, the universe is dangerous, the universe doesn't answer the phone." Indeed. But Clark does answer here for all us dreamers.
—Anne Waldman

I read At the Fair driving through the vertiginous rock castles of Utah on the way to Moab, and it hit me like a gong in perfect synch with the incredible landscape. Memory, time, and the suffering of puny humans who resonate nonetheless with beauty, are indelible in this work; it is majestic, profound, and smart. For a language-user that's about the utmost. You can read this in a cave and you'll know grandeur.
—Andrei Codrescu

Doors swing open on this shock of light. Here you will experience scripts and mind-telegrams, shapely in nerve and essence, moving always, and moving on. A circus at the settlement's edge: with memory-movies, new songs, and travellers' tales. We are reminded of frontier days when poetry was the better politics, proud inside itself. As Tom Clark's fresh voice echoes, and re-echoes, so beautifully, in the head. Across oceans and continents from Mediterranean California. And back. Mind kites in marine haze. Streaks. Showers.
"A theory of games is not the same thing as games," the poet says. Hitting on the precorporate is no retreat. Let this book happen. Its pleasures are subtle and true.
—Iain Sinclair

What a world. Every sinew in Tom Clark's verse-and-prose combine, taut and eloquent as can be, answers to a bevy of emergent occasion beyond the door, under the bed and in every phantom portfolio, whatsoever the unseen powers have slipped over gadzillion cubicles and the overextended imaginations of this our Earth. The poet's smooth lines and sudden-sprung fancy are the gentle observer's only comfort here. Large as that is, expect no closure as the page flips from "This is where we came in" to "So here we go." Go with Tom, boldly.
—Bill Berkson

"M'illumino / d'immenso," as Ungaretti wrote in Santa Maria La Longa on the 26th of June, 1917; "Morning arrives / Big Time // (Morning arrives / Wide Eyed)," as Tom Clark 'translates' it, in Berkeley, California, on the 12 of June, 2010. What a pleasure it was for me to read it that morning, posted there on his blog (http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/) accompanied by an array of amazing photos — closeup of a "Peach Glow" water-lily just after rain; astronaut's view of an ash cloud from a volcanic eruption, Mt. Cleveland, Alaska; the Hubble Space Telescope's image of the Cone Nebula (seven light years long, 2,500 light years away); one final closeup of Red-eyed Tree Frog standing on a bright green leaf near Playa Jaco, Costa Rica. So now too what a pleasure to read this book, having seen it 'in pieces' each morning with the pictures that are here 'missing.' But if these words are all that remain of such an original work (words plus pictures), are they 'ruins' — Shelley's "shattered visage" around which "the lone and level sands stretch far away"? Yes, in one sense, because the poems are (as Tom says in a comment on the blog) "a mythic history of presence within the irretrievably lost"; but also no, since the words are still here, and in each present moment of reading invite us to imagine those now missing pictures along with the "disquietudes" of the world they look at and think about and feel, the one that "Just before sunrise... seems to wobble slightly on its axis." And so as Tom writes at the end of "Homecoming," "here we go."
— Stephen Ratcliffe

_________________
Tom Clark was born in Chicago in 1941 and educated at the University of Michigan, Cambridge University and the University of Essex. He worked variously as an editor (The Paris Review), critic (Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle) and biographer (lives of Damon Runyon, Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn), has written novels (Who is Sylvia?, The Exile of Céline, The Spell) and essays (The Poetry Beat, Problems of Thought: Paradoxical Essays). His many collections of poetry have included Stones, Air, At Malibu, John's Heart, When Things Get Tough on Easy Street, Paradise Resisted, Disordered Ideas, Fractured Karma, Sleepwalker's Fate, Junkets on a Sad Planet: Scenes from the Life of John Keats, Like Real People, Empire of Skin, Light and Shade, The New World, Something in the Air and Feeling for the Ground. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife and partner of forty-two years, Angelica Heinegg.

FROM OLD NOTEBOOKS in the new RAIN TAXI

2010-09-21T09:44:00.000-07:00

Stephen Burt has a great review of Evan Lavender-Smith's FROM OLD NOTEBOOKS in the new RAIN TAXI, calling it "a charm, a goad, an anti-masterpiece of an anti-novel -- a work of art that's easy to enter, and hard to put down."

$16 Buy it NOW

Sarah Sarai interview!

2010-09-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday night Sarah Sarai was interviewed on
The Joe Milford Poetry Show :

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joe-milford-show/2010/09/18/joe-milford-hosts-sarah-sarai

Buy it NOW

Sarah Sarai interviewed by Anne Fiero in podcast!

2010-09-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

Sarah Sarai interviewed by Anne Fiero in podcast!

http://www.annecammon.com/audio/Sarah_Sarai.mp3

WKCR is the Columbia University-affiliated station. Anne Fiero is the interviewer.

buy the book here

Awesome Review in TriQuarterly!!!

2010-09-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

FROM OLD NOTEBOOKS BY EVAN LAVENDER-SMITH
by Barry Silesky

http://triquarterly.org/reviews/old-notebooks-evan-lavender-smith

Buffalo News review of Sherry Robbins' "or, The Whale"

2010-08-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sherry Robbins' new volume of poems or, The Whale (BlazeVox Books)--her long awaited "re-conception" of Melville's Moby-Dick--is a career defining work of epic scope and imagination. It's the best book of poems I've read this year. Here's the review:

ArtsBeat - Robbins' genius surfaces in "or, The Whale" - The Buffalo News <http://blogs.buffalonews.com/artsbeat/2010/08/robbins-genius-surfaces-in-or-the-whale.html>

Find out more on "or, The Whale" here http://www.blazevox.org/bk-sr.htm

Buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Whale-Sherry-Robbins/dp/1935402323/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278457773&sr=1-1

New Releases! Secrets of My Prison House by Geoffrey Gatza

2010-08-24T10:39:00.000-07:00

Secrets of My Prison House by Geoffrey Gatza

Geoffrey Gatza’s poems go straight to the point. From one to another the plane is consistent, the tone both literate and congenial; the feeling, one of an assessment of options while moving through choice to definition, a definition-in-progress of how to be, allowing large time outs for horseplay, an inventory of asides that end up occupying large chunks of mind. The book as ethos – you can live with it -- you wish – why not?

—Bill Berkson

Poetry expects poets to do their duty, writes Geoffrey Gatza in "Tempus Fidget". GG certainly does his duty by us, poetry readers. In so many ways. His vast publishing energy, so much to be grateful for. And in these pages you will find unmistakable evidence of a perhaps even greater benison: many terrific original works. This is one of the brightest new voices in poetry today.

Secrets of My Prison House is a consistently exciting, nervy collection of mind-moment-heart-truths that will slip inside you and unpredictably grow. A Gatza poem inscribes (as the great cover photo promises) the tears of a clown wandering in the city. Vividly and freely colored by the golden crayon of choices, the poems like a clown's tears may enter your busy day for a while and quickly enough wash away. But not from the whacky inner sanctum of feeling. And only until night falls.

Steel is heavy, steel is art.

I'd rather speak to the cat.

Yes, and yes.

—Tom Clark

Inventions. I want to say that Gatza’s poetic inventions get inside my mind and change it, “stopoped” in this uncomfortable era where elegance is mismatched with a kind of directness that zeros in and rockets. Inventions that make one think twice and look again. “Well strike me up a gum tree.”

—Hoa Nguyen

Read More Here: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-ggatza.htm

Book Information:

· Paperback: 100 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-000-2

$16
Buy it NOW

Read a sneak peek here: http://www.scribd.com/Secrets-of-My-Prison-House-by-Geoffrey-Gatza-eBook/d/35856907

New Releases! Apparition Poems by Adam Fieled

2010-08-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

Apparition Poems by Adam Fieled

#549

I'm conscious of freedom, how it
flares against brick, how it stirs.
Yellow backs of combatants, &
chain-gang commerce in armor,
mind-forged manacles scraped,
muscle-displays in times diaspora.
Lastly, they turn away from facts,
look instead at trunk-scissions,
leafy morasses, all over smalltown
America, steeples chased.
I'm conscious of this, of my own
yellow writing it down, seated.

Read More here : http://www.blazevox.org/bk-af2.htm

Book Information:

· Paperback: 150 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-019-4

$16
Buy it NOW

New Releases! or, The Whale by Sherry Robbins

2010-08-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

or, The Whale by Sherry Robbins

“Into this first and oldest cradle / I invite you, reader.” from “The Fossil Whale” by Sherry Robbins. “me in in in / in the boat / of my body” from “The Chase – First Day” by Sherry Robbins. This is her book of poetry. I read her returning to this poetry. Sherry Robbins, ubiquitous saillore at voyage in the allegorical myth of and in her life, explores her journey, the wovenings of woman currents, root drinker and her map of heaven. She is her life of adored poetry and summoning her poetry is here a balance of all the corners. She discovers that water is where Sherry Robbins stands upon or, The Whale.

—Michael Basinski

“We’ll sail/widdershins/and keep the cauldron/hot. Blubber/and apple chowder,/a mother-daughter banquet.”

So, in the title poem, Sherry Robbins focuses her rendering of Moby-Dick. Her female Ishmael moves counter to Melville’s as she voyages deeply: “We know almost everything/worth knowing,/for the womb/is our Yale College and our Harvard.” Facing squarely her deepest fears, Robbins probes the inland sea of her body and of her city, builds upon the mother-daughter bond, and forces life’s boundaries out. Although “Where I am/this moment/is the mystery,” she accepts that state and, contemplating Pip’s fate, offers bold advice: “Leap from the boat.” Contrary to Ahab, “That inscrutable thing/is chiefly what I love.”

At once a tribute to Melville and a vision of woman in our world, this sublime book, or,The Whale, gives birth to Robbins’s grand hooded phantom and—although she remains always, as she begins, “all at sea”—finds a way “in this golden light,/content to be.”

—David Landrey

Read More Here: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-sr.htm

Book Information:

· Paperback: 178 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 9781935402329

$16
Buy it NOW

New Releases! Cracked Altimeter by Joe Milford

2010-08-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Cracked Altimeter by Joe Milford

Joe Milford's Cracked Altimeter is fantastic. Each line is packed with such intense vividness and rhythm. Its overwhelming. Milford's labyrinthine constructions of language tear your head off and make you taste the colors of the imagery, leaving you begging for more. One of the best books of contemporary poetry I've read in a long time.

— Connor Stratman, author of Invisible Entrances and First Testament

Here are multitudes. In Joe Milford's hell-bent Cracked Altimeter, All the names of Heaven/become a universal phonetic. I'm grateful for his effusiveness; these hexed poems dispense grace enough to make even the warped and wayward begin to see again, and to believe. And its as if T. Roethke has been invited to participate in the first decade of this century. Marking transcendence is more of a challenge than ever and also endless play and fun for Milford and his readers. No one knows I have this psychic ray gun, he writes. But of course we do. One in the holster, one in his belt, and another, just in case, under his pillow.

—Steve Langan, author of Meet Me at the Happy Bar

Read More here: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-jm.htm

· Paperback: 176 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-934289-78-5

$16
Buy it NOW

New Releases! Theoretical Animals by Gary J. Shipley

2010-08-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Theoretical Animals
Gary J. Shipley

Beggars, fortune tellers, barge captains, bloated corpses, and the ominous tolling of church bells hover anachronistically over a bleakly existential world whose once-physically-present signs have been reduced to html code, rss feeds and online ad campaigns. Such is the dark side of our celebrity technotopia explored in the densely lyrical prose comprising Gary J. Shipley's Theoretical Animals, a tour de force of historical and philosophical meditation on a world teetering at the brink of its own disappearance.

—Michael Kelleher, author of Human Scale and To Be Sung

Shipley's writing is important because itís a fearless attempt to advance the art of literature, to force us to breathe something, to drown in something, to bloody our hands. Itís an unforgettable experience.

—3:AM Magazine

Read more here: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-gs.htm

Book Information:

· Paperback: 124 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 9781935402701

$16
Buy it NOW

New Releases! BEAST BOOK by Michael Gessner

2010-08-24T10:16:00.000-07:00

BEAST BOOK by Michael Gessner

“These poems are lively and smart and musical.”

—Robert Pinsky

“Spun like fractals from the poet’s personal and cultural history; from art, science, and myth, the images of Beast Book stalk the imagination, exposing the symmetries deep within the psychogenesis that informs us . . . . dialectic serves this collection well in its motifs— poet-anima, satyr-sylph, Apollonian-Dionysian—in the process of illuminating our understanding and in the perception of the self . . . . Gessner’s best volume, a milestone in contemporary poetry.”

—Gerald Mills

“If you think Beasts exist only in the ancient world, then open this book and meet your makers. Mantichore, Hydra, The Lamia, and various tritons co-exist with nymphs and sylphs; appear side by side with Robert Creeley, Sylvia Plath, John Ashbery, and the legendary barnacle geese of medieval naturalists. History, Justice, Conscience Purity, Predictability are introduced by the Beast Handler. Everything leads to ‘Care and Feeding’ in Michael Gessner’s capable hands.”

—Sue Ann Simar, Editor, 10x3

Read more here : http://www.blazevox.org/bk-mg2.htm

Book Information:

· Paperback: 104 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-002-6

$16
Buy it NOW

New Releases! IDIOGEST by Ed Taylor

2010-08-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

IDIOGEST by Ed Taylor

Like gems in their deer parks and their bus scenes, the broadways and jurassics, the Edens and Manhattans, Ed Taylor's Idiogest is a work of poems that do more than just delight; his book is a new bright star, a refreshing awe of intelligence.

—Kim Chinquee

The poems are by turns melancholic and comic, performing the paradoxes and pratfalls to which we are subject. This is a viscous onslaught of imagery and emotion. A tone of quiet desperation lurks behind every question mark, every affirmation, every fragment, and every exclamation. This is wild and honest work.

— Geoffrey Gatza

Find out more here: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-et3.htm

Book Information:

· Paperback: 72 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-004-0

$16
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New Releases! Embankments | Outtakes | Uppercuts by Richard Owens

2010-08-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

Embankments | Outtakes | Uppercuts
by Richard Owens

Embankments | Outtakes | Uppercuts brings together three discrete constellations of divers lyric constructions that testify with alacritas to the bullbaiting, cockfighting and bear beating of the present moment. In no ways molested or prejudiced for perswuasion, the songs collected here work to ease the good weights of man and beast in their dayly common labour. Frequent to maintain. Qualefied. Trust in the vertiginous offices of their affection.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 114 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-037-8

$16
Buy it NOW

Paul Sutton: Review and Interview

2010-08-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a review and an interview of Paul Sutton's new book Brains Scream at Night

http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag2010/july%202010/Brains%20Scream.htm

http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag2010/june2010/Questions_for_Paul_Sutton.htm

BlazeVOX [books] web page:
http://www.blazevox.org/bk-ps.htm

Buy it here

The Antiracism Trainings – a New Book Review on The Scrambler

2010-08-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

Slowly I Turn in My Ergonomic Desk Chair: The Antiracism Trainings – a Book Review

The Antiracism Trainings. by David Reich. BlazeVOX, 2010. 367 pages.

Read the Review here:
http://thescrambler.com/eng/issues/issue-41-august-2010/slowly-i-turn-in-my-ergonomic-desk-chair-the-antiracism-trainings/

Buy it here:
http://www.blazevox.org/bk-dr.htm

A Great review of Ron Burch’s Bliss Inc.

2010-08-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a great review of Ron Burch's novel, Bliss Inc. at the Outside Writers Collective and Press. Hurray!

http://www.outsiderwriters.org/archives/6180#more-6180

Buy the book here:
http://www.blazevox.org/bk-rb.htm

David Shapiro one man show on September 15th!

2010-08-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

Be sure to check out a show of collages by David Shapiro!!! This promises to be great! Hurray on him!

September l5
Woolworth Building at Turtle Point Press
233 Broadway
ninth floor
Room 946. 6-8 PM

Also be sure to check out our Thanksgiving Menu Poem this year featuring David as our guest of honor. This too will be great fun. This will be released on Thanksgiving Day 2010! Hurray and best as always!

Geoffrey Gatza

BlazeVOX [books] makes a big splash in the current issue of American Book Review

2010-07-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

BlazeVOX [books] makes a big splash in the current issue of American Book Review: http://americanbookreview.org/

May/June 2010

Micropresses

Ted Pelton’s “Introduction to Focus: A Company of Companies: Essential Micropress Reading”

“Essential Micropress Reading: The Publishers”—Action Books (Joyelle McSweeney and Johannes Göransson), Belladonna Books (Rachel Levitsky), BlazeVOX [books] (Geoffrey Gatza), Calamari Press (Derek White), Chiasmus Press (Lidia Yuknavitch), Counterpath Press (Julie Carr and Tim Roberts), Ellipsis Press (Eugene Lim), Fairy Tale Review Press (Kate Bernheimer), Les Figues Press (Vanessa Place and Teresa Carmody), Futurepoem (Dan Machlin), Mud Luscious Press (J. A. Tyler), Other Voices Books (Gina Frangello), Siglio Press (Lisa Pearson), and Slope Editions (Ethan Paquin)

Here's a review of eaQ Oor by Andrew Martrich, the translation is

Below: http://szreniawski.blogspot.com/2010/07/eaq-oor.html

Buy it here: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-am2.htm

Do you remember Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’? Have you ever gone through a newspaper, switching TV and radio channels at the same time? You get a similar impression when you are reading Andy Matrich’s album ‘eaQ Oor.’

On the cover, you will see a stained glass which reminds Chagall (maybe Chagall did make stain glasses?), then the beginning is quite minimalistic- the title is written once again, blank page, tile, author, publisher and place of publication (BlazeVOX[books], Bufallo, New York), more detailed publishing notes and then the content starts. Oh no, it’s not the content in the end. The letters ‘B’ and ‘X’, which I thought were a poem, are only a preface (maybe it’s a reference to the publisher, ‘B’ laze and VO ‘X’?), the next page is blank again, acknowledgments, blank page, and then again the book title (and then again a blank page, OK let it be).

The poems included in the book remind me of parts of a dictionary. They are in alphabetical order; the leading phrase is ‘Entrance Examinations’, which is a quadruple combination of phrases related to entrance exams. First there are entrance examinations overall, then entrance examinations to colleges and universities. Every time each phrase is used, there is also the broader meaning of it “colleges and universities- entrance examinations.’ Interesting, it came out as a poem that makes you think. Once I wrote poems using a dictionary myself meaning I was copying parts of dictionaries. In this case, there is then a ‘meta’ level (which refers to guessing which dictionary was used), and there is also a ‘poetic’ level, which refers to a particular matter. In this case, I began to think about American universities. It’s a part of a bigger system, service to the government, service to society? A market, selection, discipline. On the other hand, this poem seems to be brutally torn out from some context, as you read it, it seems as the world it refers to is not important or it doesn’t exist anymore. But this is only the first poem, what comes next will be shocking.

You turn the page, and all of a sudden there is a picture of chains and some kind of toys, collage made of some photos with pieces of someone’s poem about Joanna: “she messes up the/punchline of every joke.//Can tell a Burgundy/from a Bordeaux///And her legs…/oh yes, Joanna’s legs.’ (I found on Google that this text comes from a commercial http:/tiny.pl/h7d9p, on this page there are again pieces of various texts which look like a dictionary and a guide. But the next page is a real shock. The font, even though the book is very nicely printed, looks like primitive signs published some years ago. The text is about a poem, or it is a poem, but it’s not the content that is important but the how it looks like. On the page, there are also two side columns, one as if it was taken from a dictionary or a reference book about universities, the second column is a part of a photo- it seems as there is a part of a window on it and some kind of plants.

The next page, a Xerox picture of someone’s hands, multi-layered scribble, which look like ancient temples or pictures from a school notebook done during a boring class. Let’s keep moving on. I think it will be best if I cite the phrase from the next page: ‘rhyi e-not in [plokh] of lineated however altogether ragged prose turns further soi e words for any of apparent of reason’ (there are no dost over letters ‘i” in the words “rhyi” and “soi”). Are you feeling this? This is exactly what reads like Joyce. In the linked text about Joanna, the author of this text about advertisements also referred to Joyce. I don’t want to go deeper into it, I’m just absorbing. I must add though, that the entire book is not an easy lecture. There is eclectism, all kinds of things jammed between two ‘polite’ covers (on the back cover there are parts of positive reviews of the ready to be printed volume, but let’s get back to the content). The pages are not numbered, so let’s say, we are going back to the next piece of work. There is a lot of black, pieces of a poster, and two parts of some kind of advertisement or maybe photos of a TV with a subtitle in the bottom. The next page- a couple of centred words with some of the letters stressed by being bolded or capitalized, there are also signs in brackets (+) or (x), for example. gaiN (+) haiKu, the last line is a word “daglocks” (a surname? a type of a weapon?). So, this column looks a bit like a collection of equations of letters, which remind me of poetry made of single words, but put together in one mega-poem.

The next two pages are a game “what is on this picture,” in addition; there are notes wi8th numbers and other calculations from a discipline I can’t identify at all. With regards to the game, I am betting it’s a game with pixels, pieces of a rock and a washing machine manual, there is also something reminding of a microwave, and elements of a collage with faces and cars, etc….

You could go on and on like that, the album is very diverse, there are print screens, concrete poetry, drawings with prices included, photographs and collages, poems using various texts from the library indexes, scribbles, maps, music notes, and even Andy’s college ID scan. I could keep going on, but I think that’s enough. The book causes a storm in your brain but at the same time it’s calm and civilized. Pleasant lecture, volume extremely interesting.