Sherry Brennan, poet and translator, lives in New York and works at New School University. Earlier chapbooks include Taken, again today and The Resemblances. She has published widely in journals such as Chain, How(ever), New American Writing and raddle moon. Recent essays can be found in African American Review and the online journal...
This anthology of not-yet household names, edited by Jordan Davis and Sarah Manguso, features work by Max Winter, Michael Savitz, Jeni Olin, Amy Lingafelter, Tanya Larkin, Jennifer Knox, Cole Heinowitz, Tim Griffin, Johannes Göransson, Greta Goetz, Alan Gilbert, Tonya Foster, Katie Degentesh, Del Ray Cross, Chris O. Cook, Carson Cistulli, Jim Behrle, and B. J. Atwood-Fukuda. “What excites me about these poets is that, beside their talent, they are all blessed with the terrible freedom of not yet having published books. I take special joy in reading work by these poets who, while already setting their new stars into the poetical firmament, are not mired in the stability-enforcing, niche-assigning public consciousness.” —Sarah...
Given that there are two kinds of readers in English, those who are passionate fans of the poetry of Linh Dinh and those who have yet to read his writing, All Around What Empties Out is a major event, too long overdue. These are works without waste, with the driest sense of humor and, throughout, an underlying feel for the pain of living that calls to mind Kathy Acker as much as Kafka. –Ron Silliman From Publishers Weekly Following up on the short stories of Fake House, Linh Dinh compiles three coveted, lacerating chapbooks in All Around What Empties Out. From the hilarious and horrific rhetorical questions of “Drunkard Boxing” (“My hump for your glasses?”) to the withering stanzas and paragraphs of “A Small Triumph Over Lassitude” (“wildlife frolicking at ground level”) and the definitely half full “A Glass of Water” (“Baby I’m not a dictionary bloated I-Ching”), the cover’s translucent toilet seat is just the beginning. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. Dinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam, came to the US in 1975, and is living in Philadelphia. In 2005, he was a David Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England. He spent 2002-2003 in Italy as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers and the town of Certaldo. His books include the story collections Fake House (Seven Stories Press, 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press, 2004), and the poetry chapbook Drunkard Boxing (Singing Horse Press, 1998) and the collections American Tatts (Chax, 2005), Borderless Bodies (Factory School, 2006), Jam Alerts (Chax, 2007), and Some Kind of Cheese Orgy (Chax, 2009). Published by Subpress/A’A Arts/Tinfish....
Composed but in disregard for order,’ this marvelous collaboration after the fact results in a wisdom literature for our time, living out its adage: ‘the self is a planned obsolescence / and can be out done.’ Writing separately off of eastern philosophical texts, then splicing their work together, Carll & Marsh reaffirm a link between chance and change, wisdom and accident, while suggesting new possibilities for poetic two-upsmanship. When prompted by their names, my on-line I Ching pronounced their book a ‘Gathering Together. Success.’ And so it is. —Susan M....
Richards’s diagrammatic readings of some classics in American cinema engage those ever present questions of race, identity, class, and culture with humor and chaos. Blowing apart the reading experience with boxes and columns that read both horizontally and vertically, and infusing each text with shadows and crevices from which retreat is impossible, Deborah Richards has created her own genre. Her own template, even. —Renee Gladman Richards’s work can seem more like an information map for the mind, like the insights recorded in a study guide we create for ourselves before an exam. She creates a form in which to record and relive the moment of insight. —Ed...
