Poetry Win

Today was a great day.

I got a copy in the mail of the latest issue of American Poet (the journal of the Academy of American Poets), that has a small write-up on With Deer in their "Books Noted" section. Excerpt:

"The levels of metaphor here and throughout the book keep the mind working to connect the blood of the world and the groteque quality of feelings."

They also mentioned some other books I've enjoyed recently:

Tuned Droves by Eric Baus (Octopus Books)
Versed by Rae Armantrout (Wesleyan University Press)
Take It by Joshua Beckman (Wave Books)
The King by Rebecca Wolff (W.W. Norton)

Also found out today that our books are featured over at the Chicago Publishers Gallery, located in the Chicago Cultural Center. And that, is super cool.

Lastly, got the PDF proof of my next poem in North American Review. It's strange because that poem was written a while ago, and so different from the new ones that just came out in my chapbook with Brave Men Press. Nonetheless I am glad it's going into print because I feel it's a seminal narrative piece from my years as an undertaker. They were one of the first people to publish me after I finished grad school, so it's kind of fun to have a poem coming out again with them again years later.

Anyway, all this is to say that I'm reminded (during a personally difficult time) of how fortunate I am for the support and interest this little press has received. I'm immensely grateful that all the hard work we put into publishing these books is appreciated and cared for by other people. I'm also grateful for the attention that my own poems get. It means something to mean something to someone else.

You all are so great.

JMW picks WITH DEER

Here.

Microreview Tuesday?

Don’t ever stay the same; keep changing
Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney
Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2009
$5.00

Sometimes it’s fun to read a book of poems that’s been written collaboratively and wonder, line by line (or however), who’s written what.  But sometimes that can drive me a little crazy, and it’s better for me to forget all that and read like it’s any other book.  Don’t ever stay the same; keep changing, a chapbook by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney, is not any other book, and every way I read it I enjoy where it takes me.

I’m hooked before I even get past the first two lines:  “With this dead, damp leaf / I thee wed.”  A lot of the lines have question marks in them.  Here are two of those lines, followed by a parenthetical that seems like some sort of definitive answer to something--while the answer itself blows me away:

    That “making is thinking”--can it be true?

    Function perfectly married to form? (It had to be shiny, it had to be this
        gleaming blue.)

Much of the book has a playful quality to it, which I love; one of the poems is titled “13 FACTS ABOUT COCKS.”  But here’s a line I really like because it starts out being playful but ends up being playful and profound:  “The drums--in the signature time signature of her brutish suitor--insisted If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough of it.”

“The best kind of sad” can be knowing you’re getting to the end of a book.  But at the end of this one I also feel reassured--by the writing, and by what the writing has done for me:  “All this has been yours / since the day you were born & even before.” [Erwin Ponce]

Black Ocean on tour this weekend!

11/6 Friday: Janaka Stucky & Johannes Goransson at the EARSHOT Reading Series in Brooklyn.

11/7 Saturday: Janaka Stucky & Chris Tonelli at the Yes, Reading! series in Albany.

11/8 Sunday: Janaka Stucky & Chris Tonelli at Paige Ackerson-Kiely's house in Vermont. Don't you wish you were invited?

11/9 Monday: Janaka Stucky & Chris Tonelli at the Slope Editions Reading Series in Turner Falls, MA.

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Janaka Stucky is practicing the perfection of effort while working on silent relationships with knives, whiskey and pugilism. He is also the Publisher of Black Ocean and its literary magazine, Handsome. Some of his poems have appeared in Cannibal, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Free Verse, No Tell Motel, North American Review, Redivider and VOLT. His chapbook, “Your Name Is The Only Freedom,” is available from Brave Men Press.

Johannes Göransson was born in Sweden, but has lived around the US for several years. He is the author of: Dear Ra (Starcherone, 2008), Pilot (Fairy Tale Review Press, 2008) and A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (Apostrophe Books, 2007)—and the chapbook Majakovskij en tragedy (Dos Press, 2008). He is also the translator of: Collobert Orbital by Johan Jonsson, Gingerbread Monuments by Victor Johansson & Klara Kallstrom, Remainland: Selected Poems by Aase Berg and Ideals Clearance by Henry Parland. He is the co-editor of Action Books and the online journal Action, Yes.

Chris Tonelli is the author of four chapbooks, and his first full-length collection, The Trees Around, is forthcoming from Birds, LLC. Chris co-curates The So and So Series and teaches at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he lives with his wife Allison.

Scary, No Scary Halloween Sale

Good Morning Guys & Ghouls,

Black Ocean is offering a very special Halloween Sale this week! From 12:00 am on 10/30 to 11:59 pm on 11/1 any purchases of Zachary Schomburg’s limited edition hardcover Scary, No Scary from our website will receive any other book in our catalog for free. Simply specify which title you’d like in the notes during PayPal checkout and we’ll include it at no extra charge.

Each hardcover edition of Scary, No Scary comes signed and numbered by Schomburg himself, and includes a limited edition letter pressed mini-broadside from Brave Men Press. This package was created in a limited quantity of 200 and only about half of them remain.

As always, every order receives free shipping from our website. Thanks for your time and enjoy your Halloween!