The Steinach Operation

A place of semi-natural vigor.

5.20.2008

JUSTIN!!!


The Winner of the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize

Justin Marks has won the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize for his manuscript A Million in Prizes. Carl Phillips, author of Quiver of Arrows, judged the award. Justin wins a $2,000 award and publication of his manuscript in the spring of 2009.

Justin Marks’s latest chapbook is [Summer insular] (Horse Less Press, 2007). His poems have recently appeared in Cannibal, Soft Targets, Tarpaulin Sky and the Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel – Second Floor, and are forthcoming in Handsome, the New York Quarterly and Wildlife Poetry Magazine. He is the founder and Editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks and lives in New York City.

From Judge’s Citation:
“‘I wake, my not-yet-self/projecting back on the life I rise into.’ That’s but one example of the kind of logic (and syntax) that informs the poems of A Million in Prizes, a logic that often resists initial sense, only to reward with a clarity and maturity of insight that make these poems more powerful—more persuasive—with each reading.” —Carl Phillips

4.21.2008

This Friday Night


The Burning Chair Readings
present

A Gathering of Cannibals
at The Pierre Menard Gallery & Lame Duck Books
w/ readings from Cannibal: Issue Three poets

Samuel Amadon
Stephanie Anderson
Elisa Gabbert
Erin Lyndal Martin
Ben Mazer
Christopher Rizzo
Thibault Raoult
Chris Tonelli
Jared White

Friday, April 25th, 7:30-10 pm
The Pierre Menard Gallery
10 Arrow Street
Cambridge, MA
pierremenardgallery.com

next to
Lame Duck Books
12 Arrow Street
Cambridge, MA
lameduckbooks.com

FREE – BYOB

Copies of Cannibal: Issue Three, Ben Mazer’s The Foundations of Poetry Mathematics & other Cannibal Books artifacts will be on sale at the reading.

Cannibal Blog: flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com


Samuel Amadon's work has appeared recently in Boston Review, Cannibal,Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Modern Review, and The New Review of Literature. He lived in Boston for several years and does not remember most of it.

Stephanie Anderson's work has appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Spinning Jenny, and Tin House, among others. Her chapbook, In the Particular Particular, won the 2006 DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press Chapbook Contest. She will live in either Philadelphia or Chicago next year.

Elisa Gabbert
's recent work can be found in Colorado Review, Eleven Eleven, Pleiades, Meridian, Washington Square, Cannibal and Diagram. She is the author of two chapbooks from Kitchen Press, Thanks for Sending the Engine (2007) and My Fear of X (forthcoming), as well as a collection of collaborative poems written with Kathleen Rooney, That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008).

Erin Lyndal Martin
recently finished her MFA at the University of Alabama. Her work is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and Hotel Amerika.

Ben Mazer is the author of The Foundations of Poetry Mathematics (Cannibal Books) and Johanna Poems (Cy Gist Press). He is the editor of Landis Everson's Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2005 (Graywolf Press), and a contributing editor to Fulcrum.

Christopher Rizzo
is a writer and publisher who lives in New York. Over the years, his work has appeared in Art New England, The Cultural Society, Cannibal, Dusie, H_NGM_N, and Spell among other magazines. Christopher has also authored several chapbooks, such as Claire Obscure (Katalanche Press, 2005), Zing (Carve Editions, 2006), and The Breaks (Fewer & Further Press, 2006). Full on Jabber, a collaborative work written with poet Jess Mynes, was released by Martian Press in 2007. Christopher also edits Anchorite Press, an independent poetry publisher of innovative work. He is a doctoral candidate in English at the University at Albany.

Thibault Raoult was a Dolin Scholar at the University of Chicago, and, for two years, OFF(icial) poet-in-residence at Brown University. I’ll Say I’m Only Visiting emerged from Cannibal Books (Brooklyn) in Nov/07; a second run is now available. A new volume, El p.e. [physical education of the elevated train, emerges from Projective Industries in the coming months. Born in Pithiviers, France, raised in Rochester, NY, Thibault generates the dreams [of the congregation of details—a most real e-(s)tat(e) near 3Coasts.

Chris Tonelli
lives in the Boston area where he runs The So and So Series. He has work forthcoming in Saltgrass, Salt Hill, Absent, and Good Foot, and is the author of three chapbooks: For People Who Like Gravity and Other People (Rope-A-Dope Press, forthcoming), A Mule-Shaped Cloud (w/ Sarah Bartlett, horse less press, 2008), and WIDE TREE: Short Poems (Kitchen Press, 2006).

Jared White grew up near Boston and is currently living in Brooklyn, New York. His poems have appeared in such journals as Barrow Street, Fugue, Harp and Altar, The Modern Review and Sawbuck; they are forthcoming in Fulcrum, Horse Less Review, LVNG and elsewhere. He’s about to finish his MFA at Columbia University, where he received a prize from the Academy of American Poets in 2005. He blogs from time to time about poems and culture at jaredswhite.blogspot.com.

4.14.2008

I'll Be Reading With These Two Jokers

This Saturday, April 19th at The Imaginary Press Reading Series. Just in case you're going to be in Minneapolis.


Justin Marks' latest chapbook is [Summer insular](Horse Less Press, 2007). His poems have recently appeared in Soft Targets, Tarpaulin Sky and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel – Second Floor, and are forthcoming in Handsome and New York Quarterly. He is the founder and Editor of Kitchen Press Chapbooks and lives in New York City.




Matt Rasmussen’s poetry has been recently published or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Cimmaron Review,Passages North, Dislocate, New York Quarterly, LIT,and What Light: This Week’s Poem at mnartists.org. He currently lives in Robbinsdale and teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College and Rasmussen College. Last year he participated in the Loft Mentor Series and this year he received a SASE/Jerome Grant for Emerging Writers to assist in the writing, editing, and publication of his first full-length manuscript. His chapbook, Fingergun, is available from Kitchen Press.

4.12.2008

NaMoWriBLOW

Me and Sarah canned our project. It sucked.

4.08.2008

NaPoWriMo Days 5-7

Self Portrait as Slow Growth


Posing as La Reine Soleil,
Heffernan's figure grows an entire

globe of gardens (the planet
Versailles), conjures up a cosmic

bouffant of roses from one
of the miniature beds--a bouquet

to landscape her white-hot
head.

4.04.2008

NaPoWriMo Days 3 & 4

SELF PORTRAIT AS SLOW GROWTH


Employing microvilli, Heffernan's
landscape absorbs its color

from the figure of herself, so that
the bouffant bouquet

must be leaching from some
internal source. Perhaps the body

is a prism; perhaps this symbiosis
has a third wheel.

*

Though they spin along the same
axis, each world evolves

separately. Each atmosphere
expands, then contracts,

breathing similar air. They are
unaware that the sun they orbit

is a sun they share.

4.02.2008

NaPoWriMo Days 1&2

Here's the first two "installments" of the long poem Sarah and I will be attempting to write based on the painting below. You will be privy to it as it grows and changes (how lucky are YOU?!?!). I imagine some days will just be spent revising and not adding anything...who knows. Anyway:

SELF PORTRAIT AS SLOW GROWTH

Employing microvilli, Heffernan's
landscape absorbs its color

from the figure of herself, so that
the bouffant bouquet

must be leaching from some
internal source. Perhaps the body

is a prism; perhaps this symbiosis
has a third wheel.

NaPoWriMo '08!!! Woo-hoo! I'm going to Daytona!!!


Didn't sleep well last night, Poetry Fan? Our apologies. While we are getting a late start on this month's festivities, I can assure you, it will be well worth the wait. In the meantime, feast your eyes on this Julie Heffernan painting we'll be loosely using as our muse (See! It's already working).

Until next time,
Chris and Sarah

3.30.2008

The Greatest Poem I Ever Wrote


I've been watering this damn plant for like 5 friggin' years, and finally...a flower!

3.19.2008

Upcoming So and So/Boston Poetry Collective Readings



Air Jordan, Air Jordan, Air Jordan.

That's right, people...So and So turns 23! Come help us celebrate!

John Mercuri Dooley * Derek Fenner * Ryan Gallagher * John Mulrooney

Saturday * March 22nd * 8pm * The Distillery * 516 East Second Street * South Boston, MA 02127

Feel free to bring booze and snacks.

John Mercuri Dooley lives in Cambridge, Mass., where he and his husband, Andrew Richardson, curate the Demolicious Poetry/Multimedia Series. MuBet, an ongoing online project, can be seen at . Other work has appeared in literary magazines and sites including Blaze Vox, facsicle, Gut Cult, Moria, No Tell Motel, Shampoo and Word For/word, and has been distributed as mail art by Marymark Press. His multimedia work has been presented at the Brickbottom Gallery in Somerville, and Oni Gallery and Atlantic Works Gallery in Boston. He has written book reviews fo Boog City and Jacket.

Derek Fenner is a graduate of the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics MFA Program and currently resides in Lowell, MA above Page’s clock. He is the director of “Unlocking the Light”, a federal grant for a program he helped design to incorporate art in the professional development of the Department of Youth Services in Massachusetts. Previous to this, he began an art mentorship program and taught art to juveniles in a maximum security lock-down facility for the State of Massachusetts. Some of the work he did with these students was chronicled at the Rhys Gallery from February 10th - March 4th, 2006 and called "Temporary Walls: The Visual Voices of Detained Youth." He is the author of My Favorite Color is Red: Experiments with Lines 1999-2005. Derek has also finished his portraiture series: 100 People You Should Know. He also runs the Union Square Poetry Series,a bi-monthly Saturday reading at P.A.'s Lounge in Somerville, MA with Ryan Gallagher.

Ryan Gallagher lives in Lowell, MA with his wife and daughter. He is the author of Plum Smash and Other Flashbulbs published in 2005. Ryan has finished translating The Complete Works of Gaius Valerius Catullus, a project he began at the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where he completed his MFA and where he was the recipient of the William Burroughs scholarship. He received his B.A. in Literature from Boston College. He also studied Thangka painting, traditional Tibetan Buddha paintings, for two years and is an accomplished oil painter. Ryan currently teaches high school literature.

John Mulrooney’s chapbook If You See Something, Say Something came out from the Anchorite press in 2006. His poems have appeared in Fulcrum, Pressed Wafer foldemzines and Shampoo, and are forthcoming in Process.



and



The inaugural Boston Poetry Collective reading!

Josh Bell * Ashley Capps * Noah Eli Gordon * Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Monday • March 24th • 7pm • The Lily Pad • 1353 Cambridge Street • Inman Sq. • Cambridge


Josh Bell's first book is No Planets Strike, Zoo Press/University of Nebraska Press, 2005. He received his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing Fellow and Paul Engle Postgraduate Fellow. He was the Diane Middlebrook Fellow at the University of Wisconsin's Creative Writing Institute, 2003-04, and in the Summer of 2006 was a Walter Dakin Fellow at the Sewanee Writer's Conference. His poems have appeared in such magazines as 9th Letter, Boston Review, Hotel Amerika, Indiana Review, Triquarterly, Verse, and Volt. He is currently an instructor at Columbia University and is finishing his doctoral dissertation for the University of Cincinnati, where he was University Distinguished Graduate Fellow.







Ashley Capps received her MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2006. Her first book of poems, Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields, was also published in 2006. New poems appear in the current issues of Granta and Black Warrior Review, and are forthcoming in H_NGM_N and Columbia Poetry Review. She is working on a second collection of poems entitled Then Self.






Noah Eli Gordon is the author of six collections, including Novel Pictorial Noise, selected by John Ashbery for the Nation Poetry Series. He teaches at the University of Colorado at Denver, and worked in Boston for a few years in the '90s selling jewelry from a cart at Downtown Crossing.






Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of three books, including Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk (Iowa) and Figures for a Darkroom Voice (with Noah Eli Gordon, Tarpaulin Sky). Next Spring two new books are due out: The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth (Tupelo) and 12x12: Conversations in Poetry and Poetics, an anthology of younger poets in conversation with their mentors (Iowa). After growing up in Seattle, he lived in Turkey, Slovakia, Arizona, Ireland, and Colorado, and he's recently settled in Chicago to teach at Loyola University.

3.13.2008

Breakfast with Pessoa


from The Book of Disquiet:

"To speak is to have too much consideration for others. Both fish and Oscar Wilde die because they can't keep their mouths shut."


"Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions--the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way." (this one reminds me of Elisa's "prenostalgia for [her] hangover")


"I frequently do not recognize myself--it's something that often happens to people who know themselves...I accompany myself in the various disguises with which I am alive. Of everything that changes, I possess that which is always the same; of all that which makes up everything, I possess that which is nothing [...]

Fatigue. Remembering is a respite, because it is doing nothing. How many times, to get better rest, have I remembered what I never was, and there is no clarity or nostalgia in my memories of the provinces [?] where I was just like those who live board to board with the floor, I oscillate the oscillation of memories, in vast halls where I never dwelt.

I turned myself into a fiction of myself to such an extent that any natural feeling that I have, of course, from the moment it's born, becomes a feeling of imagination--the memory in dreams, the dream of forgetting about the dream, knowing myself by not thinking about myself.

I stripped off my own being to such an extent that existing means dressing up. Only when I'm disguised am I really myself. And around me all unknown sunsets, as they die, gild the landscapes I shall never see."

2.18.2008

Hail to the Chiefs

Thanks to President's Day, I have the day off. It couldn't be drearier here in Cambridge, which is perfect, because I have a luxuriously regimented day planned...all of which takes place indoors. I'm in the writing/procrastination phase of the day. It was preceded by the reading and breakfast phases. They were very successful phases I must say, and the bar has been set pretty high for the rest of the phases. Phases, did you hear that? Yeah you did.

Anyway, I started reading Hejinian's The Language of Inquiry, which reminds me to apologize for my Goodreads behavior...I keep accepting friends w/o posting any books. Perhaps it is more important for me to appear to have friends than it is for me to appear to read a lot. As far as you're concerned I am superior at both having friends and reading voraciously, ok? Good.

Back to Hejinian, in which I came across this sentence:

The air quivers with the qua! qua! of fleeing geese, while the thought of their formation in flight lingers.

I point this our because Sam and Ana both live in towns ending in "qua" (Chappaqua and Massapequa, respectively) and when they get together, they "qua" (like crows rather than Hejinian's geese) as a sort of gang sign, flapping their "wings." Also, Elisa uses the word "qua" more than any poet ever. Seriously, Google it.

This made me think about something I read (all of 15 minutes ago) in Hejinian's intro. She says this of her friends:

For almost thirty years now, I have depended on the friendship and on the challenges they have offered. They have provided a context for my work; they have given it meaning and made the undertaking of it meaningful, at least to me. My gratitude for this is enormous.

This is how I feel about my friends. I think this sort of community building that results from poetry is often confused with nepotism. I used to hate when I could make social connections between the editors of journals/presses and authors in/on those journals/presses. Now I prefer to be published by my friends. The cold, artless anonymity of blind submissions seems like a dangerous lottery of resources. Resources used to reward or create art. Resources for art seem more precious than that, no? For these resources to be given outside the context in which the art was or will be created seems...something...irresponsible?...I don't know. While I'm sure I could easily disprove what I just said (something like art should be judged solely on its merit, etc.), I just wanted to thank my friends for giving my work meaning via context.

2.15.2008

Drunken Boat #9


Go here, then click on "Poetics."

Rare Mule Footage

A video from the Kitchen Press/horse less press reading at Justin Marks' apartment, 1/30/08:



Go here to see it all.

2.11.2008

Welcome to...


If you got the money, honey, we got your disease.

THE JUNGLE is a bound collection of the Manila Broadsides--a collab between Rope-A-Dope Press and The So and So Series. For more pics, go here.

1.28.2008

"It's up to you...New...York......New York!"


The So and So Series and Rope-A-Dope Press have big plans for AWP. Come visit us at table #285.

1.20.2008

A MULE-SHAPED CLOUD


Now out from horse less press.

1.12.2008

Belated VICTOR Pictures


Our boy Chad Reynolds (known to his sensei as Reywads) had his chapbook launch at The Distillery a couple Thursdays ago. VICTOR IN THE NEW WORLD is now out on Rope-A-Dope Press (the press behind the So and So Series broadsides).
He was nice enough to have Elisa Gabbert, Rope-A-Dope's own Mary Graham, and I open up for him. And then Ara Vora (Chad, TJ Weihing, Colin Tracy, and I) played afterwards.





MC Loc Chanler














Elisa Gabbert












Mary Graham














Yours truly













The star of the evening, Chad Reynolds











w/ musical guest, Ara Vora








For better pics of the evening, go here.

1.07.2008

Pt. 2

12.25.2007

How To Build The Ghost In Your Attic

An interview with Peter Jay Shippy. His new book is out on Rose Metal Press.

12.09.2007

Pull Out the Train

Matt Mullins on WIDE TREE. Thanks, Matt.

12.07.2007

Boog City

46

Boog City 46, New York City Small Presses Issue

The issue features pages put together by six of New York City's finest small
presses. It is in conjunction with a Tues. Dec. 18, 6:00 p.m. levy lives
event at ACA Galleries, 529 W.20th St., 5th Flr., featuring readers from
each of the presses' authors.

Inside the issue are pages from the below presses with work from some of
their authors:


**Belladonna Books
--Latasha N. Nevada Diggs
--R. Erica Doyle


**Cuneiform Press
--Ted Greenwald


**Cy Gist Press
--Scott Glassman
--Carrie Hunter
--Ben Mazer
--Guillermo Parra
--Sandra Simonds


**Futurepoem Books
--Jill Magi


**Kitchen Press
--Ana Bozicevic-Bowling
--Lily Brown
--Elisa Gabbert
--Mathias Svalina
--Chris Tonelli


**Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs
--Sueyeun Juliette Lee
--Nathaniel Siegel
--Christopher Stackhouse

12.05.2007

H_NGM_N


ISSUE #7



POEMS: Gavin Adair • Claire Becker • Daniel Becker • Julia Cohen • Simon DeDeo • Eric Elliott • Charley Foster • Noah Eli Gordon • Eryn Green • Timothy Green • Matt Hart • MC Hyland • Becca Klaver • Robert Krut • Brad Liening • Chris Martin • Lauren McCollum • David Sewell • Lori Shine • Peter Jay Shippy • Brenda Sieczkowski • Leigh Stein • Chris Tonelli

INTRODUCING RIC CADDEL: A Preferatory Note by Aaron Tieger

FROM: Joseph Bienvenu • John Hyland • Clay Matthews • Ben Mirov • Amber Nelson • Craig Morgan Teicher

EP POETRY: Sean Thomas Dougherty • Dobby Gibson

FICTION: Charles Israel Jr • Michael Piafsky • Darrin Doyle

Artist’s Portfolio: Fumiko Amano

COMIX: Gabrielle Bell • Jessica Hagy

ESSAYS & REVIEWS: David Saffo on Charles Olson & Antonio Damasio • Gina Myers on some chapbooks • Jen Tynes on some chapbooks • Matt Dube on Gabrielle Bell • Monica McFawn on Rachel M Simon • Timothy Bradford on Paige Ackerson-Kiely • Tom Dvorske on Adam Clay • Zackary Sholem Berger on Sean Thomas Dougherty

10.30.2007

Interviewed

10.21.2007

Providunces


I am Sam's opening band.










Sam gives the audience my home address.










Thanks to Kate and James and Brent for hosting, and Elisa, Julia, Heather, and Mike for coming along.

10.19.2007

I and Sam


Come see us read at Ada Books in Providence, RI this Saturday (tomorrow!) at 6pm. Shout out to Publicly Complex's Kate Schapira.

10.11.2007

Christopher Columbus vs. Christopher Tonelli






He didn't make it to India. I eventually made it to New Hampshire, but not before this happened.




He drove three boats with names like Nina, Pinta, and Santa Marie. I drove this sweet canoe named Old Towne or something like that.






I bet he didn't get to drive this while his wrecked boat was in the junkyard ('73 Dodge Charger, btw).








And my guess is he used, like, a map...complete with serpenty sea monsters. I used this.










And he prolly wore tights and a shirt with a big ruffled collar. Not me.







WINNER: Christopher Tonelli

9.25.2007

Camp Starkweather


Pics here, here, here, and here.

9.24.2007


It was great meeting Dottie Lasky and hearing her work. She guessed my birthday within two days. Thanks to John and Michael for having us.

9.19.2007

I'm reading. You should come witness the meltdown.


Come hear me and Dottie Lasky read at The Plough & Stars this Sunday, 9/23, @ 7pm-ish.