flim forum press

Iowa Reviews aaaaaaaaaaaalice

2011-07-05T15:44:00.006-04:00

Erika Jo Brown reviews aaaaaaaaaalice @ The Iowa Review:

"Let us, for a moment, judge a book by its cover. The title of Jennifer Karmin’s debut poetry collection, aaaaaaaaaaalice, stretches across the span of the book in hollow, clean, orange typeface. Several blue keywords wrap around laterally. The front cover, mostly white space, is modestly embellished with three inky bunnies in the bottommost corner. The astute typography and layout design reflect the accomplishments of the book, which experiments with space and presence in an unpretentious and, frankly, perky way. It is at once socially generous (the keyword “hello” is bolded in salutation), intellectually inquisitive, and aesthetically tickling. aaaaaaaaaaalice is a generous book that innovates its own space in which to breathe and invites the reader to do the same." Read the rest here

Erika Jo Brown is author of What a Lark! from Further Adventures Press and the editor of Stretching Panties Magazine.

The Alps in the embrace of } The Girl Without Arms

2011-05-25T23:01:00.003-04:00

Notorious HTML Giant posted "a conversation between Brandon Shimoda and Matthew Henriksen." Not a conversation two poets trying to out-weird each other. I was thinking about thinking about Brandon Shimoda and this made me think about Brandon Shimoda: his The Alps, Flim Forum's The Alps. I contacted Black Ocean and suggested since they were publishing Brandon Shimoda's second book Flim Forum and Black Ocean ought to put the two books together and we did, with a beautiful paper band made by maids in Black Ocean Tartarus. More than the paper band, tho, you get The Alps and The Girl Without Arms together, each for $10, so for $20. The Alps usually priced at $14 and The Girl Without Arms at $14.95. Even if you have one or the other why spend $14 or 14.95 when you could kick in another $6 or $5.05, get both, and give the one you already own away, to, like, your mother? Think about it. In this economy.

[Both Flim Forum and Black Ocean are making the offer--email us or them. However, Black Ocean has no link to this offer because it's a secret that they have a huge crush on us.]

A land between sleep & } Flim Forum

2011-05-21T16:53:00.004-04:00

Woke up to Barzakh 03. Read three Flim poets. John Cotter with three poems. Anne Gorrick dedicates "When the Noon Wears Ermine" to Lori Anderson Moseman. Pages from Adam Golaski's OUTLAND (dedicated to Jessica Smith).

Flim @ the Fridge, DC

2011-01-13T15:17:00.006-05:00

Thursday, February 3
7:30-9:30
@ The Fridge
REAR ALLEY, 516 8th Street, SE
Washington, DC
FREE

featuring:

Charles Alexander (Chax Press)
Amy Allara (Highway 101 Press)
Andrea Bates (Toadlily Press)
James Belflower (Instance Press)
Joe Elliot (Lunar Chandelier)
Jennifer Karmin (Flim Forum)
Laura Moriarty (Nightboat Books)
Hoa Nguyen (Fact.Simile Editions)
Sarah Suzor (EtherDome Chapbooks)

w/ books and snacks!

aaaaaaaaaaalice

2010-11-24T11:38:00.001-05:00

by Jennifer Karmin

ISBN 978-0-9790888-3-4
112 pages, 7x9
$16 (+$4 shipping & handling)

or:

Send a check for $20 to:

Flim Forum Press
611 N. Johnson Street, #3
Iowa City, IA 52245

Query: klane at flimforum dot com
flim forum press

___

"This book, a score, is full of information both literal and (im)possible. Do dip in; see what you come out with."

—Bernadette Mayer

"Jennifer Karmin brings an openness and generosity to these poems of public address and private insistence. Aaaaaaaaaaalice's buoyant charm calls out for new listeners."

—Charles Bernstein

"I like tightly proposed structures in which anything can happen & does because the more tightly controlled the structures, the more explosively the language will implode, disseminate, fold in or out or whatever it is it needs to do to loosen up or reverse direction & meaning. And that’s the fun of Aaaaaaaaaaalice, lithe row of straight a’s followed by biting animal commentary."

—Pierre Joris

"Alice and anime, Asia and uncertainty, we do so want our sounds to make sense, our textual travels to have a guide, even if that guide is the white rabbit that will hide. Aaaaaaaaaaalice is the sound and sight of the disappearing rabbit, the one with a hat, the one who pops up with regular unpredictability whenever we go somewhere not here, and while words will swivel around us like our very own heads, making the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar, making no sense but nonsense and non-sense sense, like in this very text, what’s moreover curious, as Karmin rightly notes, is that 'yesterday a man was walking.' "

—Vanessa Place

___

Jennifer Karmin has published, performed, exhibited, taught, and experimented with language across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets, including Betalevel (CA), Links Hall (IL), the French Broad Institute of Time and the River (NC), the Poetry Project (NY), the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (MI), and Woodland Pattern Book Center (WI).

A proud member of the Dusie Kollektiv, she is the author of the Dusie chapbook Evacuated: Disembodying Katrina. Walking Poem, a collaborative street project, is featured online at How2. Her poems are widely published in anthologies and journals, like A Sing Economy (Flim Forum Press), Come Together: Imagine Peace (Bottom Dog Press), Not A Muse (Haven Books), The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books), Bird Dog, Cannot Exist, Delirious Hem, MoonLit, Otoliths, and Womb. She is the Community Aesthetician for Les Figues Press at Give A Fig.

In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools. She earned her BA in the Poetics Program at the University of Buffalo and MFA in the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Past grants and residencies were funded by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Djerassi Program, the Joseph Kellman Family Foundation, the Poetry Center of Chicago, Poets & Writers, Rochester Community Savings Bank, Summer Literary Seminars, and the Synapses Foundation.

___

Read some early reviews of Aaaaaaaaaaalice selections here, and of Aaaaaaaaaaalice in performance here and here.

Flim Night @ the Poetry Project

2010-11-08T00:00:00.005-05:00

Brandon Shimoda & Jennifer Karmin (with special guests)

Monday, November 8
8pm

@ The Poetry Project
131 E. 10th St. (and 2nd Ave)
New York, NY

see: The Alps and aaaaaaaaaaalice

Reading } Forget the terrible lies you've heard about us.

2010-09-13T19:45:00.003-04:00

Jjjjjjjjjjjennifer Karmin and Adam Golaski will be reading together in Chicago on the 18th at Myopic Books. Jennifer will read from (or in close proximity to) Aaaaaaaaaaalice, oh, have we mentioned Aaaaaaaaaaalice?, and Adam will read from Color Plates, his new book from Rose Metal Press.

Adam will also read on the 19th at the Orange Alert series. This will be the official debut of Color Plates, suggesting--at least to this reporter--that the Myopic Books reading will have a delicious illicit feel to it, like eating a kiwi fruit while wearing someone else's underpants.

Out again } at Stain

2010-08-27T10:15:00.006-04:00

jennifer karmin's self-propelled and multi-dimensional aaaaaaaaaaalice tour lands in brooklyn tonight, that's right, tonight the most evil-sounding poetry series presents an absurd number of poets--perfect for performing a multi-vocal text-sound-epic, if I do say so myself. I do. the stain of poetry begins at 7pm with jennifer, julie doxsee, curtis jensen, eric lindley, ben mirov, and peter spagnuolo. I suggest you wear a hat.

Yes! / Stain

2010-08-21T10:53:00.004-04:00

Jennifer Karmin and aaaaaaaaaaalice will be in NY this week, Albany on the 26th, and Brooklyn on the 27th...

___

Thursday, August 26th
Yes! Reading Series
@ the Albany Social Justice Center
33 Central Avenue
7:30pm

w/
Sarah Giragosian
Maryrose Larkin
Jennifer Karmin

Friday, August 27th
Stain of Poetry
@ Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway, Brooklyn
7pm

w/
Julie Doxsee
Curtis Jensen
Jennifer Karmin
Eric Lindley
Ben Mirov
Peter Spagnulo

The Alps

2010-08-10T07:46:00.007-04:00

The Alps has a new online home - the place thereof is thither

Roland blows the olifant. } + bleeds.

2010-08-02T21:37:00.010-04:00

so. th'first fitt'v Green furnished by th'folks at fopen fletters fmonthly. the translator is briefly interviewed here, and expounds on a single line here.

@ Everyday Genius

2010-07-21T07:57:00.007-04:00

flim's Jennifer Karmin is July 20th this month @ Everyday Genius, guest editor Kate Zambreno. There's a host of other exciting writers on the July roster. Go day by day.

Not Content: Unnatural Acts

2010-07-19T08:23:00.006-04:00

Jennifer Karmin and aaaaaaaaaalice will be in LA this week, July 21-24, to participate in Les Figues' Not Content. All events at LACE.

July 21: Installation (12-5) and Hunger Texts Read in the Dark performance (5-5:30pm) by Amina Cain

July 22: Installation (12-5) and 4000 Words 4000 Dead street performance (5-6pm) by Jennifer Karmin

July 23: Unnatural Acts, 8 hours of collaborative writing (12-8pm). Collaborators include: Harold Abramowitz, Tisa Bryant, Amina Cain, Teresa Carmody, Saehee Cho, Kate Durbin, K. Lorraine Graham, Jennifer Karmin, Laida Lertxundi, India Radfar, and Mark Wallace.

July 24: Artists’ Talk (2-3pm). Collaborative Reading (4-6pm). Readers include: Harold Abramowitz, Tisa Bryant, Amina Cain, Teresa Carmody, Kate Durbin, K. Lorraine Graham, Jennifer Karmin, India Radfar, and Mark Wallace.

More info here

-Shaped

2010-06-28T10:41:00.010-04:00

Jennifer Karmin's aaaaaaaaaaalice tour hit The _____-Shaped Reading Series in Madison, WI this past weekend. Here's the proof thru the Youtube Youtube Youtube.

Jen also has some new poems in the latest Requited. Give some love.

Ongoing: you can purchase aaaaaaaaaaalice here.

reading experiment in progress } tour

2010-05-01T19:20:00.007-04:00

four readings led by jennifer karmin in support of aaaaaaaaaaalice:

THURSDAY, MAY 6th @ 7 PM
Amina Cain & Jennifer Karmin
at Franklin Pierce University
40 University Drive
Rindge, NH

FRIDAY, MAY 7th @ 6 PM
Amina Cain, Jennifer Karmin & Anne Shaw
at Symposium Books
240 Westminster Street
Providence, RI

SATURDAY, MAY 8th @ 3 PM
Amina Cain, Jennifer Karmin & Anne Shaw
at Small Animal Project
Outpost 186
186 1/2 Hampshire Street
Cambridge, MA

&

MONDAY, MAY 10th @ 7:30 PM
Andrea Henchey, Adam Golaski & Jennifer Karmin
at La Paloma Sabanera
405 Capitol Avenue
Hartford, CT

aaaaaaaaaaalice is lovely to hold and brilliant to read but as a multi-vocal epic, it's meant to be performed, too--don't miss this east coast opportunity.

[photos: jennifer conducting mad science with the mysterious jessica leigh, disappeared since denver, and with poet / avant-translator adam roberts.]

Jennifer Karmin's aaaaaaaaaaalice

2010-03-16T12:46:00.006-04:00

ISBN 978-0-9790888-3-4
112 pages, 7x9
$16 (+$4 shipping & handling)

or:

Send a check for $20 to:

Flim Forum Press
418 Brown Street, #17
Iowa City, IA 52245

Query: klane at flimforum dot com
flim forum press

___

"This book, a score, is full of information both literal and (im)possible. Do dip in; see what you come out with."

—Bernadette Mayer

"Jennifer Karmin brings an openness and generosity to these poems of public address and private insistence. Aaaaaaaaaaalice's buoyant charm calls out for new listeners."

—Charles Bernstein

"I like tightly proposed structures in which anything can happen & does because the more tightly controlled the structures, the more explosively the language will implode, disseminate, fold in or out or whatever it is it needs to do to loosen up or reverse direction & meaning. And that’s the fun of Aaaaaaaaaaalice, lithe row of straight a’s followed by biting animal commentary."

—Pierre Joris

"Alice and anime, Asia and uncertainty, we do so want our sounds to make sense, our textual travels to have a guide, even if that guide is the white rabbit that will hide. Aaaaaaaaaaalice is the sound and sight of the disappearing rabbit, the one with a hat, the one who pops up with regular unpredictability whenever we go somewhere not here, and while words will swivel around us like our very own heads, making the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar, making no sense but nonsense and non-sense sense, like in this very text, what’s moreover curious, as Karmin rightly notes, is that 'yesterday a man was walking.' "

—Vanessa Place

___

Jennifer Karmin has published, performed, exhibited, taught, and experimented with language across the U.S., Japan, and Kenya. She curates the Red Rover Series and is co-founder of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets, including Betalevel (CA), Links Hall (IL), the French Broad Institute of Time and the River (NC), the Poetry Project (NY), the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (MI), and Woodland Pattern Book Center (WI).

A proud member of the Dusie Kollektiv, she is the author of the Dusie chapbook Evacuated: Disembodying Katrina. Walking Poem, a collaborative street project, is featured online at How2. Her poems are widely published in anthologies and journals, like A Sing Economy (Flim Forum Press), Come Together: Imagine Peace (Bottom Dog Press), Not A Muse (Haven Books), The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books), Bird Dog, Cannot Exist, Delirious Hem, MoonLit, Otoliths, and Womb. She is the Community Aesthetician for Les Figues Press at Give A Fig.

In Chicago, Jennifer teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the public schools. She earned her BA in the Poetics Program at the University of Buffalo and MFA in the Writing Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Past grants and residencies were funded by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Djerassi Program, the Joseph Kellman Family Foundation, the Poetry Center of Chicago, Poets & Writers, Rochester Community Savings Bank, Summer Literary Seminars, and the Synapses Foundation.

___

Read some early reviews of Aaaaaaaaaaalice selections here, and of Aaaaaaaaaaalice in performance here and here.

2010-02-02T22:39:00.002-05:00

spare as space

2010-01-16T13:32:00.004-05:00

Here's a new review of The Alps from The University of Arizona Poetry Center e-newsletter, written by Bonnie Jean Michalski.

Also, there's this from the print world:

"Shimoda uses the full page, bumping up against left and right margins, sometimes both in the same poem. Punctuation is as spare as space is plentiful, which makes the poems feel all the more delicately orchestrated, as if the words were set down deliberately one letter at a time to resonate with both sound and sense, within and beyond the page's margins. The double columns create movement within an established field, and because the poems vibrate with war references, the columns suggest tension and opposing forces. The formal play might say that one manner of managing something unmanageable, chaotic, or wretched--like war--is to break it down into parts (bombs and butter and blue flowers and tongues), float it sideways from its context, and peer at it closely. The line folded into the first poem, "I wish the arrangement would formally buckle," feels epigrammatic and expressive of intention as much as desire."

--Jacqueline Lyons in the Colorado Review, summer '09

under the small lights } awp denver

2010-01-13T09:33:00.004-05:00

announced officially by the university of miami press, john cotter's short novel under the small lights will be published this may.

under the small lights will be of especial interest to those familiar with poet charles jodoin, whose work you likely read in the kate schapira edited leopard print chapbook anthology, as he makes an appearance in the novel as a character named... charles jodoin. (jodoin also makes a brief, lecherous appearance in adam golaski's historical essay "the dairy barn.")

john will embark on a national book tour, beginning at the university in ohio; flim forum will post dates so you may begin work on your cotter tour tee, which will be retro cool when your children start college.

on a far less interesting note, flim forum press will share a table with open letters monthly at the upcoming awp conference in denver this april. flim will debut its new title, soon to be officially announced; brandon shimoda's book and both flim anthologies will be available, along with a plethora of side projects, including new genre. open letters monthly will have on hand a print anthology that brings together twelve of their best essays.

The Alps

2010-01-04T16:26:00.003-05:00

Read new reviews of Brandon Shimoda's The Alps by Ching-In Chen (white space, inevitable), Brandon Downing (cautious as a groom), Stephen Hong Sohn (such brutality, such violence), Jared White (staring upward, wide-eyed), and Craig Santos Perez (behold the blank)...

More on The Alps

or:

Send a check for $16 to:

Flim Forum Press
418 Brown Street, #17
Iowa City, IA 52245

Query: klane at flimforum dot com

trenchant } trenchart

2009-08-31T21:12:00.002-04:00

trenchart: maneuvers, is the fifth annual trenchart series, "with aesthetics written by participating series writers and visual artists. maneuvers explores the possibilities of re-ordered time and content framed with the understanding that one cannot separate content from time, and that to shift the form or the order is to shift the subjectivies of a text." flim poets harold abramowitz and matthew timmons, along with paul hoover, lily hoang, and vincent dachy are this year's participants in the series.

trenchart : material caught my eye way back--a damn fine set of books----

and remember, when you hear the theremin outside y'r window, the invasion has begun: "watch the skies, everywhere! keep looking. keep watching the skies!"

2009-08-27T09:14:00.010-04:00

In the library:
Something
Of note

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Belongs in a box.

(laura sims stranger)

Arabic } Alps

2009-08-25T20:22:00.003-04:00

brandon shimoda writes:

"i wanted to send you... an arabic translation of the third section (the food section) of the "trinity/neutrality/the draft" poem from THE ALPS, translated by lebanese poet sabah zwein. my girlfriend and i read in beirut and damascus a few weeks ago, and i read this poem on both occasions--the first time to a small crowd of devoted listeners (including the governor of south lebanon), following a 30 course meal, and preceding a dance party at a tiny, unnamed communist bar, with bowls of half-frozen fruit and a loaded rifle behind the counter, and the second to a packed, smoke-filled hotel basement dive bar in the new, dirty-glittery section of damascus. i only brought two copies of the book with me, but i gave them both to poets in beirut--sabah zwein being one of them, and iskandar habache, a poet and writer for the as-safir political daily, the other. but, flim now exists in lebanon, among the mattresses of cheese, silver earth rising off the mediterranean, and mid-day calls to prayer, with sandwiches."

abell } 2218

2009-08-19T23:06:00.003-04:00

this galaxy cluster bends and magnifies light in a process called gravitational lensing. as a result, astronomers have been able to increase the power of earth and space telescopes enough to see redshift-10 galaxies, galaxies that formed shortly after the dark ages of the universe, galaxies that "may have kicked off the subsequent phase of reionization, in which ultraviolet starlight stripped electrons from hydrogen gas," causing galaxies to grow larger than the earliest galaxies (because reionized hydrogen "would have been too hot to clump together").

"secret caves" } beget } "pech de l'azé"

2009-08-17T21:54:00.007-04:00

secret caves sez:

(0,0)
The Ghost of Khorasan

mausoleum
(in a moraine)
deposit

pech de l'azé sez:

12.
open uh ancient coffin
find.

uh shovel inside.

torpedo volume six "our first almost entirely graphic issue features comics, fake ads and other miscellany from the likes of jeffrey brown, paul o'connell, oslo davis, tim molloy, stanley donwood, ghost patrol, mandy ord, adam golaski, eric dando, laurie clancy and many more. comes with mini colour supplement and cover by the mysterious kingdom of ludd"

whut up, whut up: the golaski "miscellany" is excerpts from "pech de l'azé," a blog comments response to matthew klane's poem "secret caves."

postage is cah-razy fo non-australian buyers*, but torpedo is always gorgeous. get the complete set, get the postage over w/, + get joy.

the following is an except from an interview between adam golaski + torpedo editor chris flynn:

golaski: is it true, that on every shelf in every readings location is a nest full of the world's deadliest spiders?

flynn: we do have some scary creatures here, their bites create a gangrenous sore that never heals and eats slowly away at the flesh and yes, there have been three shark attacks in the past two weeks, but in only one case was the guy devoured. But we don't have guns!

[note from editor: flynn's response was edited heavily w/out permission. he may also not be real. this conversation may never have happened. flim forum is of the opinion that the ocean is mostly a bag of very salty potato chips.]

*an addendum from the torpedo offices: "good news! I just went to the post office and it turns out this issue sneaks under the weight limit as it's a bit slimmer than normal, so postage to the UK and US is half the usual exorbitant rate. it's $6.50 instead of $12.50, which is $5 US and about 3 quid in the UK. that might make it easier for your legions of fans to buy it. hope this helps."

seriously, dudes, you paid five to have amazon ship that dvd of "fluff house apocalypse: director's cut," + that was being shipped from, like, the blockbuster down the street from you, so, like, torpedo up, friends of flim.

drunken boat } myth-fueled slander pants

2009-08-12T11:27:00.004-04:00

sat., aug. 15th, 7pm, new london, organized by hygienic art + drunken boat, held in the aardvark, a "a multi-media bash" an "anniversary celebration" for/of drunken boat, "a decade-old online literary journal."

the what what from hygienic's site:

"Headlining Mat Bevel, from the Surrealistic Pop Science Theatre in Tucson, AZ and the maestero of 'a gizmotronic fanfare of spunk, funk and kinetic junk,' and featuring rare video footage of Charles Olson, father of the Maximus Poems and the Black Mountain School, Harlem native and vocal deconstructor Latasha Natasha Diggs, Guggenheim Fellow and stereoscopic projectionist Zoe Beloff and New London's own native son, novelist and frequent contributor the New York Times, Richard Rand Cooper, among others. Share drinks and a memorable evening of literary alchemy and intermedia performance."

a slightly different but equally dubious what what from the new haven advocate:

"Mat Bevel from Tucson's Surrealistic Pop Science; a rare film of the late modernist poet Charles Olson; vocalist/dialectician Latasha Natasha Diggs; eclectic myth-fueled author/translator Adam Golaski; music-savvy poet Larissa Shmailo; new media artist Steve Ersinghaus, mainstream-friendly writer Rand Richards Cooper, plus a short film by stereoscopic projectionist Zoe Beloff."

+ last, from the drunken boat site, announcing the addition of another performer:

"Sabina Murray is the author of the novels Forgery (Grove, 2007), A Carnivore’s Inquiry, and Slow Burn. Her short story collection The Caprices was the winner of the 2002 PEN/Faulkner award. ...Associate Professor of English, Creative Writing, at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst."

we at flim forum press have come to doubt the veracity of all this infromation.

you look cute } for you

2009-08-10T14:05:00.002-04:00

living italian renaissance poet elisa gabbert's the french exit.

wordless post.

it's quite possible that she is k. lorraine graham's mother.

hot knees turns skirt red hot.

"i want to thank you for putting me back in my snail shell."

mud luscious press } a field of colors

2009-08-09T22:31:00.004-04:00

400 copies of "a field of colors" by charles lennox were sent out in june by mud luscious press--if you've got a copy in your cupboard of tiny chapbooks but've yet to read it, bust it out now.

then, you'll wanna check out mlp here + here + you'll wanna study charles lennox too, who apparently suffers from dog-chewed fan wiring. time to get new dogs.

if y'r cupboard is bare, fear not: "a field of colors," was reprinted at keyhole: thas crazy goot nudes f'r yous.

chompity chompity chomp.

singing and omitting } words are A-OK.

2009-08-06T20:52:00.004-04:00

we already knew this.

however this is a review from the future!

(since jennifer karmin's reading is/was awesome, go on august 9th to myopic books, 1564 n. milwaukee, at 7pm. but be careful! don't let your future self see you there--unless you want to ruin the universe.)

new genre } no. 6: it sings----

2009-08-05T22:25:00.004-04:00

new genre no. 6 is 4 new stories--horror + science fiction--by stephen graham jones, eric schaller, michael filimowicz, + matthew pendleton, plus the essay "a sing economy" by adam golaski. the essay title is no coincidence, as golaski (me) is "the lazy half" of flim forum press, while he's also new genre: editor, publisher, etc. the essay takes up the the idea of a poet economy--as a number of us flim poets discussed (in part via poems--check out "a sing economy symposium")--+ pairs that with "the current state" of short fiction. golaski writes:

Every article I've read about the current state of the short story sets its focus not on the short story as a literary form but on the short story as a product nobody wants to buy.... Blame publishers, then blame editors, then blame writers, and not the other way around. Reader complacency may be impossible to overcome, but it will never be overcome if the only fiction on offer is pablum (and to bring it back to publishers, of the only fiction promoted is pablum).

I make this bold statement confident that the fiction in new genre no. 6 is very good, worthy of promotion and of your attention. of especial interest to poets will be the two science fiction stories, which emphasize language over sense (tho both make a wild + fantastic kind of sense).

the cover--see the front/back spread up top--was designed by jeremy withers, who also designed oh one arrow. as a result of jeremy's work, new genre no. 6 is a beautiful object.

"In speaking to the need for new forums and a greater seriousness, New Genre is extremely welcome. I support the journal whole-heartedly." ----Peter Straub

"...I think this magazine has the potential to really stick its thumb in the eye of literary snobbery." ----Jennifer Gomoll

art space } aug 8 } hartford

2009-08-04T12:35:00.004-04:00

the libertine collective's upcoming "bestia phasmatis: animal spirits both benign and malevolent" ain't easy to suss--it's an art bacchanal inspired by bob barker and it's painted naked supermodels toting boxes of fluffy kittens. there's music by kate callahan and the kelvins, a duo marishka dance musical, there's ravi shankar, there's "interactive poetry & a writer's wall" (this will feature poets' drafts and etc.), and there's flim editor adam golaski, who'll read from "outland," a long poem dedicated to jessica smith. when interviewed, golaski said, "one day I'll finish 'outland'." brilliant.

when puppies and arthur schnitzler? August 8th 2009, 6:30 - 10:30. where? hartford artspace, 555 asylum ave., Hartford, CT. wherefore art thou? suggested donation of $5.00. fuzzy wuzzy? free brine and weir.

open letters monthly } poetry +

2009-08-03T13:46:00.005-04:00

flim forum poet john cotter is the poetry editor at open letters, an online "arts and literature review." besides reviews, there's poetry--an easy-dose poem-a-month.

begin here + check f'r flim favorites such as kate schapira, kaethe schwehn, maureen thorson, elisa gabbert & kathleen rooney, shafer hall, + sampson starkweather. + if you missed it in theaters, there's che, ah, "being."

+

whiles y'r there, don't miss the OL blog----

harp & alter } the alps + the inland sea

2009-08-02T21:28:00.004-04:00

jared white's review of the alps + the inland sea (published by tarpaulin sky).

white writes, "What animates both these books of Shimoda’s is the unknowability of the self even as it offers more and more angles, more ideas, more perceptions and experiences" + suggests that "It may be helpful to see the two books not as distinct projects, but rather as complementary angles on the same subject, the same interior/exterior geography with its troubles and anxieties."

let's encourage that reading: from Aug. 2nd - Sept. 2nd, if you can demonstrate that you ordered the inland sea (email us your receipt), you can purchase the alps for $10 ($4 off the cover price). this offer is only good for orders placed directly to flim forum press (i.e., checks only to the flim forum office).

march, 2009 } b-lo spf } a tale f'r children

2009-08-01T20:55:00.012-04:00

here, fairy godmother jessica smith and magically transformed alix bamford assemble the flim forum table. look! it was beautiful!

then, this bird bought a copy of oh one arrow.

then, this bird bought a copy of a sing economy.

when christopher fritton said the fair was over and it was time to go home, matthew klane bellowed, "we never close!" his words were so mighty, they became neon.

but christopher really needed us out of there, so after he bought a copy of brandon shimoda's the alps, he sent a bear and a giant tire to trash our stuff and eat us.

eaten but not defeated, matthew and adam flew the bear into an ice cave at the bottom of niagra falls where we began work on jennifer karmin's aaaaaaaaaaalice.

greatly moved, the giant tire converted from radial to catholicism.

the end.

Book Sale!

2009-07-13T15:06:00.014-04:00

Flim Forum Press volumes Oh One Arrow and A Sing Economy are now on sale for $8 each (over 50% off, includes S & H). Oh and Sing contain extensive chapbook-size selections from a wide range of exciting contemporary poets...

Oh One Arrow
ISBN 978-0-9790888-0-3
7x9, 208 pages

from Brandon Shimoda's "The Alps"; Thom Donovan's "Devotions"; poems by Jonathan Minton; Adam Golaski's "Voice Notes"; from Lori Anderson Moseman's "All Steel"; Katie Kemple's "Plant Poems"; Chris Fritton's "The String Witness"; poems by Eric Gelsinger; and Jacqueline Lyons; and John Cotter; prose poems + by Jeff Paris; a clutch of Michael Ives' lyric constructions; poems by Jaime Corbacho; Matthew Klane's "The- Associated Press"; meditations from "the 40 Stations of Mansour Al-Hallaj" by Pierre Joris; and Aaron Lowinger's blog project, "Moundz", in print! w/ cover and insert drawings by Luke Daly.

more info

A Sing Economy
ISBN 978-0-9790888-1-0
7x9, 256 pages

from Kate Schapira's "How We Saved the City"; Barrett Gordon as "Bartimus"; two of eleven cantos from Jennifer Karmin's "aaaaaaaaaalice"; from Stephanie Strickland's "Huracan's Harp"; from "The New Poetics" by Mathew Timmons; Kaethe Schwehn's "Tanka"s; "Sin is to Celebration", elisions by Amanda Ackerman and Harold Abramowitz; "Sketches" by Jaye Bartell; Jessica Smith's notebook-scrawled "Cortland"; from David Pavelich's "Boxelder"; "[Bestiary With A Broken Window & A Thin Though Not Unkind Smattering of Light]" by Erin M. Bertram; poems by Laura Sims - On Murder; from Deborah Poe's "Elements"; a collaboration, "Voyage", from a.rawlings and françois luong; from Michael Slosek's "A Sequence for Cinematic History"; from Kevin Thurston's "SPECIAL MANAGE MEET"; soundscapes by Hannah Rodabaugh; and "The A Down" by Tawrin Baker. w/ three fleeting films gracing the cover by Scott Puccio.

more info

To purchase both volumes, for $15...

The Alps

2009-06-15T11:14:00.006-04:00

Read new reviews of Brandon Shimoda's The Alps by Ching-In Chen (white space, inevitable), Brandon Downing (cautious as a groom), Stephen Hong Sohn (such brutality, such violence), and Jared White (staring upward, wide-eyed).

More on The Alps

or:

Send a check for $16 to:

Flim Forum Press
PO Box 549
Slingerlands, NY 12159

Query: klane at flimforum dot com

Sin and Yes!

2009-06-08T09:04:00.005-04:00

The Arrow as Aarow series, a satellite of House Press, has just published Sin is to Celebration, a beautiful collection of elisions from Harold Abramowitz and Amanda Ackerman. Flim Forum Press published a small, slightly sour, selection of these fleeting lyrics in our A Sing Economy.

also:

This Friday night, in Albany, the Yes, Reading! series presents Sing poets Deborah Poe and Laura Sims. The event will be held at The Social Justice Center, 33 Central Avenue, and will start at 7pm. Deborah's new book, Our Parenthetical Ontology, is out from Custom Words, and Laura's new book, Stranger, is just out from Fence Books.

Flim in Philly

2009-05-12T12:29:00.003-04:00

Saturday, May 23rd
Flim Forum Press @ Robin's Bookstore
108 South 13th Street
Philadelphia
7pm

w/
Jennifer Karmin
Eric Gelsinger
Aaron Lowinger
Matthew Klane
Emily Abendroth
& Eli Drabman

Potlatch Poetry

2009-05-03T16:21:00.004-04:00

Flim Forum is the featured press this month @ Potlatch Poetry, a site dedicated to the free exchange of poetry resources.

PotLatch Poetry promotes a gift and exchange economy surrounding poetry books, chapbooks, journals and ephemera: a revolving bookshelf, moving material through the hands of writers across the world. PotLatch is concerned with the inherent limitations of a regionalized, institutionalized, capitalized or otherwise constrained exchange of literature. It exists to enliven and expand a spirit of trading and gifting. Every item on PotLatch is either for free or trade.

Flim has posted three free copies each of Oh One Arrow and A Sing Economy.

Joshua Harmon/Andrew Zawacki

2009-04-12T21:56:00.007-04:00

Flim Forum Press presents
a Yes, Reading! satellite event

Friday, April 24th
Upstate Artists Guild Gallery
247 Lark Street
Albany, NY
7pm

w/
Joshua Harmon and Andrew Zawacki

Joshua Harmon is the author of Scape (Black Ocean), a book of poems, and Quinnehtukqut (Starcherone Books), a novel. His work has appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, jubilat, TriQuarterly, and Verse. A graduate of Marlboro College and Cornell University, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Dutchess County Arts Council.

Andrew Zawacki is the author of three poetry books—Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House), Anabranch (Wesleyan), and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia)—and of the chapbooks Arrow’s shadow (Equipage); Georgia (Katalanché), co-winner of the 1913 Prize; Roche limit (tir aux pigeons); Bartleby’s Waste-book (Particle Series); in motion from the Meridian, a collaboration with artist Jennifer Schuberth (Dusie Kollektiv); and Masquerade (Vagabond). His work has appeared in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande), Walt Whitman hom(m)age, 2005/1855 (Turtle Point), The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (Iowa), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner), and other anthologies. He teaches at the University of Georgia.

Weekend in Buffalo

2009-03-16T08:34:00.007-04:00

Small Press Poetry Fest
Friday, March 20

Sugar City
19 Wadsworth Street
Buffalo, NY
7:00-12:00

Just Buffalo's Small Press Poetry reading series will host a celebration of small press poetry activity in Buffalo and beyond in advance of the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair. The presses involved are Slack Buddha, House Press, Flim Forum, Lil' Norton, Punch Press, Blazevox, Broke Magazine, Little Scratch Pad, and Bookthug.

Reading for Flim Forum Press, in the 8:00-8:30 slot, will be: Adam Golaski, Jaye Bartell, Jessica Smith, Eric Gelsinger, and Tawrin Baker.

And then...

The 3rd Annual 2009
Buffalo Small Press Book Fair
Saturday, March 21

Karpeles Manuscript Museum
453 Porter Avenue
Buffalo, NY
12pm-6pm

The Buffalo Small Press Book Fair is a regional one day event that brings booksellers, authors, bookmakers, zinesters, small presses, artists, poets, and other cultural workers (and enthusiasts) together in a venue where they can share ideas, showcase their art, and peddle their wares.

Remember this event is FREE and open to the public!

And then...

Electric City Music
Saturday, March 21

Neitzsche's
248 Allen Street
9pm
$3

w/
Line Fatigue (chicago, il)
Eric Unger (chicago, il)
Mock Syringa
Giant Science
Oak Orchard Swamp

poetry project + other flim nudes

2009-03-09T14:35:00.007-04:00

Adam Golaski reports: "After I caught a show by my new favorite band Verge End (pictured above; a shot of them playing the Costume Shop near Union Sq.), I headed down East 14th to St. Marks (pictured below).

"I first went into the church proper; turns out the reading was in the lamppost. Surprisingly, a spacious room. See previous (lamp)post for a list of the readers, which did include me. Below are some shots of everyone after the reading."

The very next night, Jennifer Karmin, Matthew Klane, and Adam Golaski read at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. Six cantos of Jennifer's Aaaaaaaaaaalice were performed. Adam's wife Zetta and daughter Elizabeth were there, as were the poets Melissa Goodrum, Thom Donovan, and Jeff Paris. Jenna Lawrence, the famed Columbia University biology professor, also made an appearance. Everyone reports having a wonderful time.

Flim Forum Press editors Adam Golaski and Matthew Klane announced that their next book--following the highly wonderful The Alps by Brandon Shimoda--will be Aaaaaaaaaaalice. Publication details to come soon.

There are no photos from Unnameable, because there was no light. The total absence of light rendered our cameras (and our eyes) useless. As famously stated in the film Event Horizon, "Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

Flim Forum poet Katie Kemple has started a blog only Eric Gelsinger won't need to read Love Your Layoff. I actually quit my job so I could make better use of her wisdom.

Our next big post will be from Buffalo, where the Small Press Fair will celebrate its third year, and where Flim Forum Press will have a table. The night before the fair, some Flim poets will be reading, too: Adam Golaski, Jessica Smith, Eric Gelsinger, Jaye Bartell, and Tawrin Baker. I've heard that they all agreed to read good poems, except for Eric, who will only read awesome poems.

Project Photos

2009-03-02T22:58:00.008-05:00

Here's a partial record of Flim's trip to the Poetry Project last Friday night. Many thanks to Nicole and Diana Wallace and Hamilton for the generous invite and many more to all the folks who came out!

Eric Gelsinger

Deborah Poe

John Cotter

Kate Schapira

Jessica Smith

Adam Golaski

The Alps on ThisRecording.com

2009-03-02T13:27:00.009-05:00

Now, on ThisRecording.com, Jaye Bartell empties himself into the white squares which column through the heart of The Alps. Here is the introduction to his withholding:

The blank squares accompanying each poem in The Handmaidens and Bridesman section of The Alps struck me immediately, fascinated and moved me to respond. The squares display vivid possibility, actualized by the writing beneath them, poems that are far more than captions. Possibility, in fact, is the prevailing sentiment I’m left with; there is much to discover in The Alps, and the squares serve as a kind of field guide. They at once refuse to be empty, or to contain anything. The slightest suggestion of an image, –gold / lightning struck / water–, and the square floods. Turn the page, a new square is presented, empty, simple, but vulnerable to the foment of cognition, memory, grasp, and total loss.

Read the rest of Jaye's review here, In Which a Lack Should Speak Louder Than Words. Also, see Jaye make birds.

Poetry Project / Unnameable Books

2009-02-22T11:48:00.009-05:00

Flim Forum Press + PEACE EVENTS
present

aaaaaaaaaaalice @ Unnameable Books
Saturday, February 28th, 8pm
456 Bergen Street
Brooklyn

Jennifer Karmin (with guest readers Tisa Bryant, Jennifer Firestone, and a few surprises) performing selections from her text-sound composition aaaaaaaaaaalice. There will also be readings by Flim Forum Press editors Matthew Klane and Adam Golaski.

Jennifer Karmin curates the Red Rover Series and is a founding member of the public art group Anti Gravity Surprise. Her multidisciplinary projects have been presented nationally at festivals, artist-run spaces, community centers, and on city streets. She teaches creative writing to immigrants at Truman College and works as a Poet-in-Residence for the Chicago Public Schools. Recent poems are published in Cannot Exist, MoonLit, Otoliths, and the anthologies Come Together: Imagine Peace (Bottom Dog Press), Not A Muse (Haven Books), and The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books).

A Sing Economy @ The Poetry Project
Friday, February 27th, 10pm
131 E. 10th Street
NYC
$8 / $7 students & seniors / $5 members

w/
Jennifer Karmin
Thom Donovan
Jessica Smith
Matthew Klane
John Cotter
Adam Golaski
Kate Schapira
Stepanie Strickland
Eric Gelsinger
Deborah Poe

One Year of Thyme Out (& Other Stories)

2009-02-08T20:00:00.010-05:00

Friend of Flim Angela Denstad-Stigeler--poet, short story writer, and memoirist--has self-published a collection of her "Thyme Out" column, a column devoted to word-play, whimsey, and recipes. I have made two meals from the book: "Overnight Waffles" and "Macaroni and Cheese with Peas, Please." With the former I produced brilliant pancakes unlike any I've had before (Angela writes, "...a complex and well-rounded flavor, a tangy playfulness and rich sense of taste"); the latter is about 20 minutes easier than every other mac and cheese recipe I've ever followed (it eschews baking, and while it does take about 10 minutes longer than the stuff that comes in a box with a packet of cheese dust, it also eshews coming from a box with a packet of cheese dust).

As any feminist worth their Judy Chicago knows, cookbooks have often been a sneaky form of self-expression for women who spent their days plowing the fields, their evenings cooking, and their nights darning socks, etc., ad nauseum; Thyme Pieces: One Year of Thyme Out unselfconsciously taps into that history. To order a copy, email Angela at thymeout@stigeler.com. While waiting for your copy to appear in the mail, read her column online at the Caledonia Argus.

...& other stories:

Adam Golaski is reading in Hartford, CT at the Alchemy Juice Bar, 7pm, Wednesday the 11th. This is the third reading in the Inescabable Rhythms series (Deborah Poe will read in March) hosted by Andrea Henchey (whose work will appear in the next issue of Elisa Gabbert's Absent magazine). Deb is promoting her new book, Our Parenthetical Ontology. I'm not promoting a book.

Don't foget to ch-ch-check out Flim Forum at AWP. Matthew Klane will be there alone, shivering and frightened, so stop by with a blanket or a cup of hot soup (his favorite is "woe") and buy The Alps--the mountain range or the book. He'll take your money for either.

Finally, keep clicking "Favorites: Flim Forum Blog" for an upcoming post re. two NYC readings that could save your life. In the meantime, would someone please make me some gruyere-thyme icebox crackers?

AWP Chicago

2009-02-06T09:36:00.007-05:00

Flim, Coach House, TinFish

AWP Off-Site Event
Thursday February 12th
Links Hall
3435 N. Sheffield, #207
6:30-11:30pm

Flim Forum Press will join Coach House Books and TinFish Press @ AWP afterhours in Chicago. The Flim section of the evening will be 9:30-10:30, and feature readings from Brandon Shimoda, Barrett Gordon, Laura Sims, Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Mathew Timmons, Matthew Klane, and Deborah Poe. The event will conclude w/ a tag team reading open to all.

$5
Drop in anytime. Last entry 10:30pm.

Links Hall will also be hosting AWP events on Friday, February 13th (Red Rover Experiment #26: A Small Press Showcase) and Saturday, February 14th (Performance Ventures).

See you in Chicago!

Metroland

2009-01-23T09:23:00.008-05:00

The month-long small press show @ UAG has come to a close. Many thanks to the gallery, and many thanks to all the presses, performers, listeners, and purchasers!

In this week's Metroland, Josh Potter profiles Albany's small press scene, using our January events as brackets, and it's replete w/ comment from the editors. Check it out!

And here are some photos from the event on Saturday, January 17th, taken by Pierre Joris.

Dan Wilcox

Eric Gelsinger

Oh so very much

2009-01-19T15:11:00.003-05:00

Let me draw y'r attention to two publications of note and of interest:

Torpedo 4 & Open Letters (Jan. 2009)----

Torpedo, from Melbourne, Australia, has this to say about itself:

"Commemorating the 25th anniversary of his untimely death, Volume 4 is a tribute issue to Richard Brautigan. Fiction from 40 writers, a nifty envelope containing 8 full colour double-sided pieces of art based on Brautigan's novels, an intro by Brautigan's daughter Ianthe, an outro by Radiohead illustrator Stanley Donwood and a cover by L.A.'s Kristian Olson."

the Jan. Open Letters is devoted to poetry, and there are a few essays of note, but I also want to point out that there's some terrific original art in this issue, especially the charcoal of Jack Spicer----

(+ there's poetry, too, in abundance, including translation by friends of flim Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney...)

Small Press Poetry @ UAG

2009-01-12T01:11:00.005-05:00

SMALL PRESS POETRY @ UAG
Saturday, January 17th

UAG Gallery
247 Lark Street
2-5pm

The January show "New Beginnings" continues at the Upstate Artists Guild (UAG) Gallery with a poetry reading featuring poets of the Albany Small Press.

Across poetics, aesthetics, and institutional status, contributing presses will include: Flim Forum Press, Fence Books, A.P.D. Press, Anchorite Press, and Albany Poets.

w/ featured readers: Pierre Joris, Rebecca Wolff, Anthony Bernini, Eric Gelsinger, Colie Collen, Thom Francis, and more.

Free to the public. For more information, call (518) 426-3501, or email: klane@flimforum.com.

The Alps

2009-01-05T11:56:00.001-05:00

A Sing Economy Symposium

2009-01-05T11:41:00.003-05:00

See: the complete transcripts of the A Sing Economy board meetings...

Sing it to the ceiling
from How We Saved the City by Kate Schapira
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
from The New New Deal by Mathew Timmons
On the Mohegan Sun Bus with Robert of Kinshasa by John Cotter
May by Lori Anderson Moseman
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
from Your Imagined Reader by Jennifer Karmin
Poem by Kate Schapira
Tuesday by Barrett Gordon
The Burgaloos by Kaethe Schwehn
from The A Down by Tawrin Baker
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
Take Aim by Barrett Gordon
The New Media State by Mathew Timmons
from Secret Caves by Matthew Klane
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
from Receipt Piece (drafts) by Adam Golaski
from How We Saved the City by Kate Schapira
Food Poem #56 by Harold Abramowitz
from Secret Caves by Matthew Klane
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
Neon by Deborah Poe
Poem by Jennifer Karmin

First Friday

2009-01-03T12:22:00.006-05:00

Small Press Poetry @ UAG

2008-12-28T05:44:00.003-05:00

SMALL PRESS POETRY @ UAG
First Friday, January 2nd

247 Lark Street
6-9pm

The Upstate Artists Guild (UAG) Gallery, as part of their January “New Beginnings” show, will be hosting a Publisher’s Open House for many of the poetry small presses producing books in Albany, NY.

Across poetics, aesthetics, and institutional status, contributing presses will include: Flim Forum Press, Fence Books, A.P.D. Press, Anchorite Press, and Albany Poets.

This will be an opportunity for interested gallery-goers to engage with some of the independent, underground, and/or experimental writing and publishing happening here in Albany today.

The show opens on First Friday, January 2nd, and will last throughout the month. Free to the public. For more information, call (518) 426-3501, or email: klane@flimforum.com.

a ship thing economy

2008-12-27T19:19:00.005-05:00

a ship is a thing

that will take you away
blue blue blue
blue collar blue class blue sky

are you aware of
the absence of color
wheat and factory and smoke
click click click
the place where we live

pig iron
booms and busts
passage of time
country mouse and city slicker

stripped down truth
here is beauty

poem by Jennifer Karmin

see A Sing Economy

Neon

2008-12-22T17:55:00.017-05:00

Neon (Ne)
10

New York City, Saigon
   consuming, air drawn, homeless light

   cher frère, draw back the signs—
   December's briars iced, distilled
   trees, merchandise-less field—

   Neon traces, ghosts (erasure's laugh),
   gesture reddish-orange tracts—

the bone lottery blink drones on

Neon by Deborah Poe

see A Sing Economy

I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

2008-12-21T21:08:00.005-05:00

Against fate I put courage; against custom, ambition; against nature, man.

Even the homeless have toadies: pigeons squawk for their breadcrumbs.

Knowing a man’s true worth is like knowing his probity.

Take those who loudly proclaim themselves the honest poor. Show them your wallet, and hear them quietly lie that they don’t pain for it. It is far easier to find a rich honest man than a poor honest man; envy leads men to deception.

There are no gods, only men.

The wage earner is more curious about what he sees on TV than what he sees with his own eyes.

If you’re going to steal, steal big. Little thieves are punished ruthlessly.

Do not give money to panhandlers -- they’ll think it their salary.

Had to steal a peek the name tag to know whether it was a man or woman.

If you do business with a dog, why are you surprised if he pisses on you?

The arts: the better you are, the worse for you.

excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

Secret Caves

2008-12-20T21:10:00.005-05:00

• (0, 0)
Prostrate Dollars

bend and
rise
(in rhythmic prayer)

• (0, 0)
The Latrine Floor

poorest
of the piss-
poor

• (0, 0)
Desert Loopholes

mining lapis lazuli

• (0, 0)
Scandals

sinuous conspiracies
slosh beneath
the sand

from Secret Caves by Matthew Klane

see Oh One Arrow

Food Poem #56

2008-12-19T01:15:00.009-05:00

A VEGETABLE or fruit may be expen-
sive or not depending somewhat on the
item, season, and supply and whether
it is fresh, canned, frozen, or dehy-
drated.

   The vitamin A
value in the fat of the whole milk is lacking
in these more economical nonfat prod-
ucts unless the manufacturer adds it.
   Reconstituted nonfat dry milk and
fluid skim milk have only a little more
than half the calories of whole milk—
an advantage to weight-watchers but
a disadvantage to persons needing
more food energy.

   You could save 2 cents each time you
use a cup of evaporated milk (recon-
stituted) in place of a cup of whole
milk, or 4 cents if you use a cup of
nonfat dry milk (reconstituted) instead
of a cup of whole milk.

   $3.26 if you use all nonfat dry milk
instead of whole milk bought at the
store.

   $1.64 if you mix one-half nonfat dry
milk (reconstituted) with one-half
whole milk bought in half gallons at
the store.

$0.63 if you buy skim milk instead of
whole milk in half gallons at the store.

   In some places, one can save
even more by buying the gallon rather
than the half-gallon container.
$0.63 by getting your milk in half
gallons at the store, not through home
delivery.

   By
making a few changes in the way you
buy and use milk, you could make the
following savings each week in the
Washington, D.C., area in January
1965:
   Let us say yours is a family of four—
two adults and two teenagers—and
you use 21 quarts of milk a week, the
minimum suggested in the guide.

OTHER SAVINGS can be made on pur-
chases of milk.

   Eggs, dry beans, and peanut butter,
often used as alternates for meat, usu-
ally are good buys in nutrients.

Amounts of these meats usually served
may cost less than servings of average
size of other meats but do not give as
much in food value.
   Exceptions
are frankfurters, sausages, bacon, and
some meats with breaded coatings.
   Regardless of cost, you can get about
the same food value from equal-size
servings of cooked lean from different
types and cuts of meats.

   Specials, such as those given for
chicken, pork roast, and sirloin steak,
may bring expensive cuts within my
budget limits or make inexpensive
items even better buys.
   An average serving of cooked lean
meat at this store would have cost as
little as 14 cents and as much as 69
cents if I chose from these selected
items.

Food Poem #56 by Harold Abramowitz

see A Sing Economy

How We Saved the City

2008-12-15T15:32:00.005-05:00

+ dishes by hand - no dishpan, inefficient + organic lettuce and carrots + she smiles at me - down the disposal - outside my neighborhood (- I make my paper copies - their chemicals) + health-food dish soap - in the brick zombies of my friends' old home (- driving to get them - don't know who picked them - for the chain store - trucked them) - lights on in the kitchen - on North Main Street - at Eagle Square - (the honor system + lingering) - in plaza geometry - good edible particles - uncertain goya and eggplant + dishwasher we don't use - driving distances - filling with swampy runoff - mosquito larva - bleaching it =

from Weird Math 1 by Kate Schapira

in A Sing Economy

drafts from receipt piece (cell phone pics)

2008-12-12T23:05:00.005-05:00

I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

2008-12-10T23:37:00.007-05:00

Those without money lecture us on the rich.

All contests over ideas aspire to and simulate trade. Why not trade instead?

Happy is the man who decides to marry and stays the course, who plans a voyage and takes it, who wants to belong to the circle of an influential man, and wins influence.

Raising sons: teach them mathematics, and athletics. Business itself, and history are not essential, and can be learned later. Teach them how to make someone smile, talk nicely, how to be respectful to gain respect. Teach them to discriminate among near things, and how to use a mirror. Teach them to scorn the ordinary, but to seem contented when efficacious. Instruct them in countenance, so that no feelings govern. No piercings or tattoos or strange haircuts. Have them speak loudly when they speak, seem busy, and be busy while modestly betraying self-admiration.

In a poor man’s house, one can spit anywhere.

The poor have made leisure an affliction.

The last time I was there, the mayor included me in her toast.

A magician his tricks; a great man his wealth - know enough not to really show the stuff.

In business and in love, there are virgins and don juans.

Go about with your poverty showing, and people will say you’re mad. Go about with your riches displayed, and people will be mad to cultivate your acquaintance.

$350,000 will get you a Bentley. $2,000 will get you a used KIA.

Employees should obey their employers; patients, their doctors; investors, the trends.

excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

Secret Caves

2008-12-09T20:28:00.006-05:00

• (0, 0)
Proxy Battlefield

box-office

• (0, 0)
Proselytizing Wealth

petro-

apostle fuel

• (0, 0)
The Commodity Nexus

selling
ibex-jerky

• (0, 0)
Kalashnikovs and Korans

hand-over-fist

from Secret Caves by Matthew Klane

see Oh One Arrow

The Home Video Review of Books

2008-12-09T19:54:00.009-05:00

Issue 2 of The Home Video Review of Books is up. Therein, editors Julia Cohen and Mathias Svalina review The Alps home video-style i.e. mettle in its hollows and alit the lattice w/ static. Take a peek.

Bookslut reviews The Alps

2008-12-05T14:56:00.009-05:00

Gina Myers reviews The Alps in the December edition of Bookslut. Here's an excerpt:

Over-sized and heftier than typical single-volume poetry releases, The Alps uses its space well. There is a highly visual aspect to this book -- not just because of the visual poems that are included, but also in its incredible use of white space throughout. Marked by conciseness, the poems almost feel as if the words were carved into the page. Short lines and brief haiku-like poems (“every leaf / from somber wood // opens / the likeness of a grand defect”) take on an added weight from the vast blankness that surrounds them. There are even a number of entirely blank pages throughout -- perhaps giving room for the reader to pause before diving back in.

and:

There is a strong lyric mode at work in The Alps. Shimoda skillfully shifts between seriousness -- pondering death in the harsh environment of the Alps -- and lightness -- incorporating playful rhymes, “Take care to mind / listera / ovate fine,” and interesting enjambments, “What I do is organ striking no stop.”

Read the full review: here

Gina Myers currently lives in Saginaw, MI, where she makes books for Lame House Press & co-edits the tiny with Gabriella Torres. Her blog is A Sad Day for Sad Birds.

The New Media State

2008-12-05T13:14:00.011-05:00

#2 Globally brand New Mexico as the New Media State. #3 Promote New Media business products and services to the local, regional, national, and international levels. #1 If an offer / answer / transaction succeeds, then The New Media State becomes active. I have never heard about a "proposed media state" ... it isn't written anywhere.

All those people back East may one day get on the wagon train and become a citizen of the New Media State. And if they don't, many of their children will.

Despite the explosion of The New Media State, television, due to its monopoly and to the absence of an adequate system of press distribution is by far the media state. The New Media State is selected by incrementing the media state by 1 and the disk access parameters associated with The New Media State are set up. The New Media State, where now each media is hype-linked to sites related to the media context as well as to the user context. The user can now provide The New Media State of spelling as effectively as the opposite of the birth of printing-undoing the crystallisation of spelling, taking it back to The New Media State of fluid.

from The New Poetics by Mathew Timmons

in A Sing Economy

= to th'love you make / carnival of links

2008-12-03T12:54:00.006-05:00

john cotter & crew's december open letters is up. here find a poem, selected by john, written by michael trocchia. also essays on the alps, well, hannibal, among a slew'v fine others----

----this after the brookline booksmith open letters reading, celebrating ol's second year, with readers steve donoghue (who read this excellent essay on the subject of book reviewing), nicolas wey gomez (he read from his lovely The Tropics of Empire), and our own matthew klane (uh, B?).

now: y'r attention, please, to the open letters blog, f'r which I wrote about sir paul mccartney, who wishes to release a beatles track long archived.

also: I had the distinct pleasure of reading with jessica bozek last night, who, until last night, I'd not met. she's got a book coming from switchback. ch-ch-check it. she's also quite nice, tho has yet to figure out how to flint her matchbooks. that's not a euphamism. we read at the new england institute of art in boston. she a series of animals, I a bunch'v babies. we were joined by other poets, including david blair, shana deets (who read from a cool novel about a woman named nathan), and steven lee beeber (who bought a copy of my book)----

moonlit this is issue number three

2008-12-01T00:43:00.004-05:00

did I mention moonlit 3?

2 copies arrived via post haste & I’ve been reading 1.

some notes:

hello Chuck Stebleton, I like your poems. from “Red Walls”: “Another spoon / bender in the lobby. // The net of next / events is thrown / wide to each.” yeah, man. &, from “Talking Book”: “Persimmons shook often // once we stopped / to knock our weapons. // Still the peripheral // let’s an ideogram be.” I’ll keep an eye out for y’r work.

of th’Flim folk: Amanda Ackerman’s “Autumn Poem Written in Spring” lists what “we would like to see changed, altered, improved, ended, stopped, enacted, protested, organized, continued, or brought to justice, if we had our say, and others like us as well. If we had our say. If we did make decisions that are recourses to actions.”; we've friendship from Harold Abamowitz’ “Measure #1,” “such stuff, such violent and dedicated stuff, such stuff, that friends are made of” & from “Measure #2," “in front of a train / the train is your / friend // in a fiery furnace”; close-ups “from Lip Service,” by Matthew Timmons, “impress upon the audience / the best lips are now.” & how; & Kate Schapira leads us into her city, “…made magic by apricot…” her city in “from The Bounty: You’re a Stranger”: “New lights and darknesses cross the same faces….” as an editor, it is reassuring to see again how excellent the poets I’ve published all are.

Jessica Bozek’s poems, typed on the inside of matchbooks must be seen; a reshuffling of words plays across the flaps; from “4: a”: “where I am / wax // walls extend // up from //the roof / inside // my arsenal / raindrops”; then, from “4: b”: “I prefer / the roof // a gun to / most walls // wax seams // rain anodyne wolf.” patterns emerge & criss-cross--these poems avoid the problem, for example, of Jenny Holzer’s visually striking but texturally dull text art--both components are interesting, vital.

on Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney’s collaborations: here they’ve corresponded with a series of letters to each other--mostly “Elisa to Kathy”--a clever conceit for collaborators. “Elisa” seems to be querying Kathy for advice to escape a relationship: “Any tips for getting a ring off my finger / &/or becoming a better singer in public / you sometimes careerist?” & “With this dead, damp leaf / I thee wed. Kindling / my love, but killing my joy / your stable of words / falls upon me like a / cartoon anvil.” w/in the context of collaborative poems, this desire for escape is particularly perverse: “Terrified / my success will soon dwarf yours & / then explode & die.” clever & perverse? fine.

moonlit 3’s good looking: take a look

A Sing Economy Symposium

2008-11-28T23:28:00.017-05:00

For the duration of 2008, Flim Forum poets are singing the economy. See: the contents of our November board meetings...

Sing it to the ceiling
from How We Saved the City by Kate Schapira
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
from The New New Deal by Mathew Timmons
On the Mohegan Sun Bus with Robert of Kinshasa by John Cotter
May by Lori Anderson Moseman
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
from Your Imagined Reader by Jennifer Karmin
Poem by Kate Schapira
Tuesday by Barrett Gordon
The Burgaloos by Kaethe Schwehn
from The A Down by Tawrin Baker
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
Take Aim by Barrett Gordon

...and look for new Econo-poems in this forum throughout the month of December, as we continue infrawriting the reconstruction.

The Inland Sea

2008-11-26T22:26:00.004-05:00

The Inland Sea
by Brandon Shimoda

Tarpaulin Sky Press
6" x 8", perfectbound, black endsheets, 40 pages.
$10

Normally

2008-11-26T00:29:00.006-05:00

2

goal,
water bars

old wet
trigger vacant

binge into white
rice red leaf
not to plug
the hole or
un-pend queue

however randomly
the weather
to finish at 3
when i come
out & things
weigh
down
but to their strength &
place floats old
sticks w/ water thoughts

3

the unplayed horn
of the goat u-turns
back slowly to pick
the lock

alley's larval moan
mobs the mulberry-
died & -shaded walk

noise-hop, kodak city
crag w/ plunger-bridge
& air-chain truss

4

tumble satellite
extra-fine
detritus
company bound
↑, a(root)float

the pressure too
however imaginably
sky- ____-high
nut-wound round
the bolt tight
___high
& snap-button dry
on water magic
falling normally

excerpted from a poem by Barrett Gordon
art: Take Aim by Barrett Gordon

see A Sing Economy

The Alps

2008-11-22T22:17:00.004-05:00

I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

2008-11-22T07:59:00.007-05:00

Observing soup kitchens should teach you the power of ambition.

Handshakes strengthen memory.

A good teacher will instruct you to cultivate your image as much as your learning.

There is no stick hard enough to drive me away from a man whom I can better in a deal.

Watch a cashier, a laborer, a cleaning woman, and you will conclude that man is the stupidest of animals. But watch a dealmaker, a fund manager, or a diplomat, and you will beg if creation can display a finer thing.

Poverty is a halter. Any man with a grip will yank it.

Why India, friend? Can you not buy their rich cigars and pretty sandals in America?

Ask some old money for a hundred dollars, and they give you a thousand. They do not give as they are asked, nor act as if they earned it.

Share a plate of oysters with old money, and they will savor each bite, talk discursively, even let fall napkins – anything to make sure you eat more than your share. Their type is easy, their generosity is stylized greed, their magnanimity degrades.

If you’re going to be a dog, you might as well be a bad dog. If you’re going to be a man, though, be a man.

excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

The A Down

2008-11-21T13:30:00.013-05:00

Determined his default logic's
Struggling within a sick metaphysic.

"What I mean is when I think maybe I identify with certain thoughts, maybe that's—and they might jump from this to that, and all the while I'm scratching my ass, shifting in my chair. Someone might come over and say 'hi' absentmindedly and my attention's on them, but it's still not me who's acting there, the center" I know that that's a tree "held barely edges in—the worn curtains revealing of an ecology of social surplus, as fruit color energetic surplus—holding"

Bureaucratic order forms.

I've made a few assumptions, but have yet to work out their conclusions. For instance, take "the first principle," that of non-contradiction. "For instance. Take" the first principle "that of non-contradiction," take the first "that" of the "non-contradiction" principle for "of for the" that instance principle, take first "non-contradiction."

Partly because I like to keep it fresh, and avoid adapting, and partly because my schedule is subject to interruptions and I need to workout when I can, however I can.

Since our hip flexors are generally stronger than our ab muscles, we rely on them by yanking ourselves up as our hip flexors tug on our spine. But she was also able to talk and laugh as we visited and I told her I was proud of her for that, and for so many things. The former you can get from watching. The circumstances that led to the victim going to the floor included noise, terror, seeing others shot, concern for his classmate, overwhelming confusion about what to do. But laying on the floor is a bad idea. But laying on the floor is a bad idea. CCC Here at World Stock Report we work on what we here from the street. Big news expected. This should invoke LARGE gains.

from The A Down by Tawrin Baker

in A Sing Economy

THE BURGALOOS

2008-11-20T23:07:00.002-05:00

I will tell you a story about a black virgin glove.

Shy glove.
Shy glove.

Never a hand in the glove.
sunset + love = good kind of glove.

But we were robbers.
We were burgaloos.
That’s what we called ourselves, me and Tom.

Tom liked to press the belly of the Happy Chef.
I liked to place a blade of grass between my thumbs and blow.

I cut my mouth once, so hard did the grass reverberate against my lips.
That’s why they call it a blade, asshole, said Tom.

We let the glove lay tenderly on the dash while we robbed banks.
While we robbed army surplus stores.
While we robbed a house with orchids in the windows.

Next to the orchids was a harp and next to the harp
a framed poem called “The Load Star.” It began

I don’t know how. But the neck of the harp was womanly and soft
like a stilled northeasterly wind. Movement glinted in the fiber.

Tom wrapped his arms around the harp and lifted it to his chest.
I did not open the door for him.

Instead I examined the orchid, the deep purple color in the center
fraying and scattering as the color moved up the petals.

I thought of my mother and the cancer in her chest.
I thought of the log we split open in the woods and then
the leg of a man we shot and how it kept kicking.

With my mouth I made no sound.
I went back to the car and put on the glove.

Tom, I said, let’s drive away from here.

My hand was warm inside the glove.
Greatness reared her head in front of me.

poem by Kaethe Schwehn

see A Sing Economy

moonlit 3

2008-11-19T23:42:00.006-05:00

quite a few flim poets--kate schapira, matthew timmons, harold abramowitz, amanda ackerman (all victims of a sing economy), & adam golaski--and a coupla friends 'o flim--kathleen rooney & elisa gabbert--appear in the newest issue of moonlit, edited by lisa janssen & clair mcmahon, which suggests to me a rather solid book. ch-ch-check it.

Matter of Days

2008-11-19T20:20:00.011-05:00

1

just about
bone dry
w/ upward
dust mobile
can not
now as dampness had
slept-thru

things take the place
whistle dry
sit-in
chokes the
croon under
head
the volunteering guard
whimsy

all pacing day in
to & out the _____, what is it?
barrel
wagon
?
out—over
strapped to middle

in the park wherever

all distance caves
& more suspect
life’s just so

for win—total immeasurable gain

matter of days

excerpted from a poem by Barrett Gordon
art: Tuesday(2) by Barrett Gordon

see A Sing Economy

The opposite of credit is blame

2008-11-17T11:30:00.010-05:00

My sweater, which I wash in the bathtub because

of the economy, is sour and stiff. I get a hanger.

I hang it from the fire escape. When I bring

it in it’s soft, smells good. I don’t

attribute this to the fire escape, its metal or rust.

I want a map of the moon.

Now appearing with failure, its source.

Everyone wants to know for blaming purposes

now that they can’t save. Something to do.

The moon’s disc fits over the sun’s disc

by accident, but wanting can be powerful.

My friend explains mortgage bundles carefully over

and over email, using analogies, but nothing

but wanting is exchanged, right up

to the minute of total obscurity.

Maps work by analogy. Trying

to navigate is only like.

The opposite of credit is blame.

poem by Kate Schapira

see A Sing Economy

The Words Go Round

2008-11-16T17:26:00.007-05:00

alphabet | pocket | world

currency you got art to make words from one mouth to another a concentration of wealth receipts yada yada this economic poetry poverty makes the world go round do you got spare change in your pocket in your poem can you bankroll these syllables an enterprise of language a tax deductible alphabet a cut back cut up cut off page a long term plan a big mac big chief can’t remember what you bought but make it bigger

from Your Imagined Reader by Jennifer Karmin

see A Sing Economy

Fomalhaut b: fhqwhgads

2008-11-14T21:32:00.004-05:00

Faced with economic meltdown, the universe blithely continues to expand. From one globe to another: panic! O Fomalhaut b, bask in Fomalhaut's glow whilst ye can. News from the universe: Fomalhaut b's moon will be called fhqwhgads.

I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

2008-11-13T21:39:00.008-05:00

Children are genetic capital.

Before you go into a job interview, it is best to practice on statues.

It was when I decided to leave The Fund, that I did my best work: ensuring good feelings.

When my brother, now a senior citizen and restaurant manager, asked me why I was late to dinner at his house, I said I didn’t want to watch him work.

Experience turns a woman from loving handsome men, to loving successful men. Just so, experience turns a young man from giddiness with quick riches, to respect for paying one’s dues.

When I was called to the board to account for an error I made, I told them I’d only come to see how great other men can be.

When the Founder asked me what he could do for me, I told him: let me be useful.

Great crowds are the strength of the citizenry.

The first time I saw a computer, I bought it.

We can only explain you, bum, by assuming your mother was penniless the night she begot you.

To be strict and optimistic is a judicious response to those who want money; it will demonstrate for them what it is they truly lack.

To be saved from folly you need either trustworthy friends or well-paid employees. To be saved from ruin, know what trustworthy and well-paid mean.

excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

Manage Reverence by Singing Mercy

2008-11-13T01:20:00.012-05:00

8 May 1546

Reverend Lord Vicar-General* ordered the offending

weevils (a colony of "creepers") to pay their tithe
without delay to make three processions
around the vineyards in which they had feasted.

Having escaped excommunication, the beetles left
before, we think, completing their required devotion.
So we (with pitchfork and prayer) tromped clockwise
1, 2, 3 times round the grapes singing mercy mercy.

10 May 1979

To this day our hounds round the worn path with us.
The youngest son of the oldest man leafs out: green
face, green hands, foliage from his mouth. We toast
1, 2, 3 times round the grapes singing merci merci.

We take turns being Reverend Lord Vicar-General.
If a bee light on your arm, you're to do his homing
dance, circle your footsteps (1, 2, 3) decrying,
for God himself, the right of all creatures to consume.

8 May 2525

To produce a vision of our past, we trace beetle paths
in bark. Yes, there's still trees. Pheromone planning
controls the pests. We keep our best vines secreted
away from those still bent on Mars. Foliage abounds

from each corner of the mouth. The middle of three
daughters leads the parade: 1, 2, 3, times round home.
Lording the particular over the general, we manage
reverence by singing mercy. Pitch forks tuning us.

May from All Steel by Lori Anderson Moseman

see Oh One Arrow

_____

* If it wasn't Reverend Lord Vicar-General, it was someone like him.

See page ix of Luc Ferry's Ecological Order (U. of Chicago Press, 1992).

Sun Bus

2008-11-11T19:53:00.004-05:00

These roads! In three hundred
Years, we will never

Have these roads. And can I see the red man?
What do they look like? Are they red like

that car?
No? Copper?

Ah! Do they have the
Same rights as A-

mericans? And who provides
security for their region?

I have heard of that, and of Martin Luther
King. And do they make a

thousand dollars a day?
Ten thousand?

More? You
know, I think you must love your

country—where are we?—because at home there are no roads like
This, no bridges like this. I

Think the
Cold makes you innovate, we cannot

innovate. In three hundred years, we
may have roads like this, but I don’t

think we will, because
somehow the world has to end.

On the Mohegan Sun Bus
With Robert of Kinshasa
by John Cotter

see Oh One Arrow

The New New Deal

2008-11-11T08:57:00.008-05:00

The New New Deal is upon us. The president can either lead the charge or be run over by it. This upsurge will be called The New New Deal, and it presents a plan to deal with... The New New Deal! One of our greatest frustrations is when we collectively get wrapped up in theoretical discussions about The End of Reform and The New New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War... The New Republic of The New New Deal is original. It represents solid economic engineering and a straightforward Time of progress in The New Era of The New New Deal.

The New New Deal talks about The Rabbits Going Back in the Hat, The Dance of the Crackpots, Welcoming the Enemy: and The Ride of the Wild Rabbit--summarizing a wide variety of ambitious but viable projects to improve all of our country by launching what's called The New New Deal--a multipronged plan founded upon Bankruptcy--The New New Deal!

The New Republic of The New New Deal will be mindful of both the successes and disappointments of The old New Deal of the 1930's. Conservatives and small government types are going to be run over by The New New Deal!

from The New Poetics by Mathew Timmons

in A Sing Economy

publicly complex

2008-11-10T22:11:00.005-05:00

sat. night kate schapira, host of the publicly complex series, invited adam golaski and andrea henchey to read at ada books in providence, rhode island. a good turnout in a delightful setting. highly recommended. check out these upcoming:

Isabelle Garron, Sarah Riggs & E. Tracy Grinnell
Sunday, 11/16, 6 pm
Ada Books, 717 Westminster St., Providence, R.I.

&

Jeffrey Yang and Katy Lederer w/ special guest Forrest Gander
Saturday, 11/22, 6 pm
Ada Books, 717 Westminster St., Providence, R.I.

Flim on Facebook

2008-11-10T13:48:00.003-05:00

Flim Forum Press is now on Facebook - fans take note.

I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

2008-11-10T12:17:00.014-05:00

I have come to strengthen the currency.

Everything belongs to someone.

Difference drives commerce, it drives envy, it steers.

A friend is a fellow investor.

In America, even the boys are men.

We have more possessions and live longer than animals.

Praise your boss’s faults and mimic his virtues.

No two prices are the same.

Wealthy by anyone’s standards: wise, independent, and content.

excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

How We Saved the City

2008-11-09T21:19:00.009-05:00

To belong to ownership: a twist too neat for inverse. The signs are going up everywhere, like rabbits along the highway. Looking around, we see them. Root the birds' -nest fungi out of the aloe pot. Humble underpinnings, that desire has. Safe to own: the warp in your board, meld in your corner, to set your windows in. We should hang out our shingle: one kind of math or another done here. Every tenant's shingle should be out. The floor slopes from its hump. Time paid for by the wet trees that surround us explains the difference between "fewer" and "less." Properties. And less. Ownership links and sets through the city, puts on, shrugs off. Shuns and shuts out the bleared opposite.

Architecture supports each moment financially, moments that could be floating their independence over bridges. So say borrowed dwellers, tender more (weirdly, mathematically) to some moments than others. Not dream-logic but of the dream house, it proceeds, we can state about it. A waterdrop changes the shapes of everything nearby through reflection, not accuracy, just reflection. It isn't a true mirror or a rear-view or a mugger's mirror or the one James found on garbage night, big as me, with carven frame. All over the city in the waterdrop members members of a privileged group rise early and snap at their husbands.

The belief that ownership will save the city qualifies, comes under the heading, or falls. It's like saying that slow dreamlike boats piloted by mimes will, or dirty Valkyries on bikes. It's like going without saying to a city made of wood, PVC pipe and brick, bundles of hair that used to be rats and tax forms and windows that can't be saved, this way: teetering on the lip of preservation. Sill of surface tension. City snapped at that moment. The key on rent day sears the hand, the office cools me by name, i hand over my math. Posters up for the New Urbanism, olive- and rust-colored friendly fire. Blades of fans that fall with a crash for no reason, or a rented wind. Apartment like paid silence, house, an alibi. Fewer lots, but less time.

Safe as Houses by Kate Schapira

in A Sing Economy

Sing it to the ceiling

2008-11-08T10:49:00.023-05:00

The evening was alive with first responders. Poets, report, restoring song to the dollar. Daily drilling, bottom lines, dying signs, in the streets all day. Negotiate atoms and national ethos, form and efficiency, input and output, sin and celebration. Sense and memory, happiness radii, spatial happenstance interface. Desire, dinner, damn cameras, family houseflies, worms and a swarm of eyes. Rain for rent, cattle for sale, cryotext sandwiches, a pumpkin in the bassinet. Cost of walking, cost of talking, breathing shoals of technology, new kinds of knowing. Oh, emotional ecosystems. Oh, local and global grief. Key conservation, relative abundance, savior selves, we are on that brink, over / whelmed thin dime. Sing: shingle and shingle and bricks and windows. Sing: research and development, fall off and shatter, offer/answer/transaction. Sing: Gigigigigigigive. Sing: next and next and next annexed. Love with a love that was love than love. Sing it to the ceiling.

more on A Sing Economy

Rabbit Face The Alps

2008-11-06T20:45:00.011-05:00

e. points to the rabbit's face + sez: "eye." Then, "nose." But the way she pronounces the words: "I" + "no." Something anti-descartesian about this rabbit exploration.

Cynicism, of course, is no longer cool. Thank goodness. Nothing generates worse poetry. + hope springeth. People smile in the streets, Europeans are slightly less frightened of us, + the office manager at the university had cake in the common room, simply because America is awesome once again.

The reason for all this change? Brandon Shimoda's The Alps. I will always remember where I was when The Alps arrived from the printer. There's no doubt about it; since the release of The Alps, more cookies were baked, more wars were discontinued for lack of interest, + more flim forum poets found prosperity.

Proof? The proof, m'dears, is inneth the puddingeth:

Stephanie Strickland has a new book, ZONE : ZERO; Laura Sims' new book, Stranger, is forthcoming from our friends at Fence; + Harold Abramowitz's new book, Dear Dearly Departed, is due soon. Jessica Smith and Amanda Ackerman have poetry at the very cool Womb Poetry. Adam Golaski is reading at Kate Schapira's series, hosted by Ada Books, in Providence on Saturday the 8th. Lastly (for now), John Cotter has just put up a new issue of Open Letters.

Yup, all this good fortune--and more!--is due to the release of The Alps. Don't be surprised if you see people rubbing their copy of The Alps. Don't be surprised when you crack open your fortune cookie + inside is The Alps. Don't be surprised if you order The Alps, + soon after win a big pink teddy bear at the carnival. Did the candidate you want to win the election win? Yeah, The Alps. What was the prize baked into the cake brought by our office manager? The Alps.

I will be most curious to hear e. read The Alps outloud. For I believe only then will I penetrate its most hidden wisdoms, the wheels that turn our fortunes to good.

all saints day alps

2008-11-01T13:38:00.005-04:00

the alps is out and orders for copies are tumbling into the flim offices. that folks are excited about the alps is hardly surprising. what has surprised me is how rapidly the book has penetrated popular culture.

last night--halloween--I counted seven trick-or-treaters dressed as brandon shimoda. one shimoda mask in particular caught my eye: by squeezing a pump, hidden in the tongue of a sneaker, the wearer caused letters to flood across the face, just as in real life! some of the cheaper, knock-off shimoda masks looked--oddly enough--quite a lot like jaye bartell.

that so many of the neighborhood kids already owned a copy of the alps did present one problem--I had to dash to CVS to pick up copies of organic furniture cellar and our parenthetical ontology to give as treats!

my mask? a klane face, of course.

The Alps

2008-10-27T10:21:00.003-04:00

by Brandon Shimoda

ISBN 978-0-9790888-2-7
144 pages, 7x9
$14 (+ $2 shipping & handling)

or:

Send a check for $16 to:

Flim Forum Press
PO Box 549
Slingerlands, NY 12159

Query: klane at flimforum dot com

Browse: flimforum.com

"Part elegy, part celebration, Brandon Shimoda’s debut interweaves glimpses of individual lives, fragments of revolution and war, and a bird’s-eye view of the waxing and waning of generations in mapping profound issues of identity and history. Viewed through the lens of his particular family history, Shimoda stations The Alps in an eerily beautiful yet threatening landscape, one entangled, inextricably, with the brutality of human existence. By turns playful, detached, and deeply emotional, the myriad voices of The Alps resonate with a spare and violent beauty."

—Laura Sims

"There are the Alps, standing impossibly high and shining like pieces of the Moon grafted onto Earth. They pour their substance down into the valleys, rewriting the human landscape with passages of ice. The words of Brandon Shimoda’s The Alps also seem to arrive in this way, transfixed by cold cascades of glacial time. Human narratives embedded here are carried great distances across the white space of the page. And while Shimoda’s poetic glaciers may have the power to grind words themselves to rubble, they also serve as windows (symbolized by the empty frames of one section) into a meaning beyond words. Here, frozen records of the past––personal memories, along with the traces of ancestors both literary and familial––are fractured and reassembled according to an ‘unknown intermixture of laws’ (in the words of the British physicist Tyndall, describing glacial structure). Shimoda (citing Tyndall) looks toward the ‘order and beauty’ hidden behind the ‘utter confusion’ of the Real."

—Andrew Joron

"Brandon Shimoda’s The Alps is an exploration across modes of perception and through them, primarily the visual and the intuitive, which encompasses the feeling-out of experience (whether one’s own or others’) as memory, invention, collage, bricolage. A formally interdisciplinary text, The Alps expands the borders around forms of identity and, in one section, confronts the breakdown of language as the medium constitutive of identity.

Shimoda’s is a welcome voice among a new generation, one saturated by images and so compelled, at times, to creatively, renewingly engage and remake them."

—Lisa Fishman

"A scattering, a drowning, a droning, a hoofing; a bombing, a sinking, a plugging, a mapping; a feasting, a birthing, a stitching, a sewing, The Alps is an avalanche inventory ceremony. Part Maximus, part Cremaster, The Alps proceeds across a 'cropping continent"' variously sounding, muffling, digesting, and smoking out histories and voices 'eroding nation-blankness sort of.' If it is true that '[…] there is/no witness//to vanquish/language from the books you know,' The Alps, in its omnivorous, flesh-eating pursuit, invites us at least to banquet with it, to be among the 'self-fertilized/guests, among ghosts' in its vast and nomadic recalibrations performs a dazzling new archeology."

—Anthony Hawley

hodge-podge pre-alps party

2008-10-26T12:51:00.003-04:00

much hath o-ccured that's Flim-tinted:

boog city in nyc: th'flim forum table was flanked by jessica smith's outside voices and fence books (w/ editor colie collen + poet ariana reines). many flim poets attended, all of them good-looking: jaye bartell (w/ new book Ever After Never Under), eric gelsinger, jessica smith, adam golaski, + jeff paris. this was ashley spears' first small press fair, + tho the room smelled like a hotel swimming pool + sucked light like a black hole, she had a marvelous time. as editor golaski's new intern, she is one of the lucky few to've read The Alps in ms. form. she loved it.

four weeks later, flim forum headed to lowell, mass, for lowell's first annual small press book fair. we waved to colie while we sold copies of oh one arrow + a sing economy, and while we promoted the alps w/ a gorgeous postcard (see previous post for art). the weather was spectacular. baby elizabeth and mom amy enjoyed the trolly. we'll be back next year, and hope to set up a reading. for The Alps. did I say "The Alps"?

indeed.

adam golaski's first book, a collection of weird stories called Worse Than Myself, was published in July, just in time for baby elizabeth's birthday. she has not read the book, but thinks adam is awesome. more information can be found at the raw dog screaming press website. if you like experimental poetry but wish it was scarier, this book is for you.

flim poets adam golaski + john cotter read ghost stories at symposium books in providence, rhode island, where a lovely oh one arrow reading was held in early '07. edward bell, the store owner, is a beloved supporter. flim poet kate shapira, oh one arrow designer jeremy withers, + golaski-intern ashley spears were in attendance. kate invited adam to read in her series at ada books in providence on nov. 8th. he accepted.

katie kemple, flim poet (remember how much you loved the plant poems in oh one arrow?), has a poem in foursquare vol. 2 no. 11. it's one of her "pregnancy sonnets" and is not to be missed.

next post: The Alps. dig it.

The Alps

2008-10-17T11:09:00.001-04:00

The Alps
by Brandon Shimoda
October 2008

Valentine's 10/7

2008-09-29T15:19:00.004-04:00

ALBANY POETS PRESENTS
in association w/ Flim Forum + Les Figues Press

Tuesday, October 7th
Valentine's
17 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, NY
8pm

featuring

Vanessa Place
Matthew Klane

Vanessa Place is a writer and lawyer, and co-director of Les Figues Press. She is the author of Dies: A Sentence (Les Figues Press), a
50,000-word, one-sentence novella; the post-conceptual novel La Medusa (Fiction Collective 2), and the forthcoming Notes on Conceptualisms (Ugly Duckling Presse), in collaboration with appropriation poet Robert Fitterman, and a nonfiction book, The Guilt Project: Rape and Morality (Other Press). Other work has appeared in other publications, including Western Humanities Review, Northwest Review, Insert Fold Magazine, Greetings #10, 4th Street: A Poetry Bimonthly, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Bookforum, and theextraroom (Ger.). Her collaboration with artist/performer Lamya Regragui will debut at Cent Quatre in Paris/Los Angeles in 2009, and she is collaborating with conceptual artist Stephanie Taylor on the film “Murderous Square Dance at the Spiral Jetty.” Place is a co-founder of Les Figures Press, described by critic Terry Castle as “an elegant vessel for experimental American writing of an extraordinarily assured and ingenious sort.”

Matthew Klane is co-editor and founder of flim forum press, publisher of the experimental poetry anthologies Oh One Arrow and A Sing Economy. His book, B____ Meditations, is forthcoming, this fall, from Stockport Flats Press. His recent chapbooks include Sorrow Songs, Friend Delighting the Eloquent, and The-Associated Press. Also: The Meister-Reich Experiments, an evolving hypertext, online at House Press. Other recent work can be found in The New Chief Tongue and online at Open Letters Monthly and Otoliths. He currently lives and writes in Albany, New York.

$3 suggested donation

ALBANY POETS PRESENTS is Albany Poets’ monthly open mic for poetry, spoken word, and music.

FLIM FORUM PRESS, founded in 2005, is an independent press that provides SPACE to emerging poets working in a variety of experimental modes.

The Alps

2008-09-16T10:46:00.005-04:00

The Alps
by Brandon Shimoda
October 2008

Welcome to Boog City

2008-09-15T10:36:00.004-04:00

Boog City
5th Annual Small Press Fair

Saturday, September 20th
11am-8pm

Cakeshop
152 Ludlow St.
NYC
$5

Featuring readings from authors of the exhibiting presses:

11:10 a.m.-Brant Lyon, LOGOchrysalis
11:20 a.m.-Andrew Bishop, Graphic Union Press
11:30 a.m.-Celena Glenn, Bowery Books
11:40 a.m.-Mark Lamoureux, Cy Gist Press
11:50 a.m.-Ariana Reines, Fence/Fence Books
12:00 p.m.-Adam Golaski, flim forum press
12:10 p.m.-Damian Weber, House Press
12:20 a.m.-Virna Teixeira, Litmus Press/Aufgabe
12:30 p.m.-Jaye Bartell, little scratch pad
12:40 p.m.-Jeff Downey, Octopus Books
12:50 p.m.-Melissa Christine Goodrum, Other Rooms Press
1:00 p.m.-Jessica Smith, Outside Voices
1:10 p.m.-Austin Alexis, Poets Wear Prada
1:20 p.m.-Tom Savage, Straw Gate Books

-----------------

1:30 p.m.-Stephanie Gray
1:45 p.m.-Bill Kushner
2:00 p.m.-Oak Orchard Swamp (music)
2:30 p.m.-Ryan Eckes
2:50 p.m.-Eric Gelsinger
3:10 p.m.-Douglas Manson
3:30 p.m.-Heart Parts (music)
4:00 p.m.-Elise Ficarra
4:20 p.m.-Kristianne Meal
4:40 p.m.-Kathryn Pringle
5:00 p.m.-Maureen Thorson
5:20 p.m.-Carol Mirakove
5:35 p.m.-A Brief View of the Hudson (music)
6:05 p.m.-Jen Benka
6:20 p.m.-Todd Colby
6:35 p.m.-Kyle Schlesinger
6:55 p.m.-David Hadbawnik
7:15 p.m.-Sharon Mesmer
7:30 p.m.-Casey Holford (music)

Directions: F/V to 2nd Ave.
Venue is bet. Stanton and Rivington sts.

Order Flim / by Credit Card w/ PayPal

2008-06-25T11:50:00.001-04:00

A Sing Economy
ISBN 978-0-9790888-1-0
7 x 9, 256 pages
$20 (includes S&H)

Featuring extensive selections from:
Kate Schapira, Barrett Gordon, Jennifer Karmin, Stephanie Strickland, Mathew Timmons, Kaethe Schwehn, Harold Abramowitz, Amanda Ackerman, Jaye Bartell, Jessica Smith, David Pavelich, Erin M. Bertram, Laura Sims, Deborah Poe, a.rawlings, françois luong, Michael Slosek, Kevin Thurston, Hannah Rodabaugh, and Tawrin Baker. Also, three cover films by Scott Puccio. (more...)

Oh One Arrow
ISBN 978-0-9790888-0-3
7 x 9, 208 pages
$20 (includes S&H)

Featuring extensive selections from:
Brandon Shimoda, Thom Donovan, Jonathan Minton, Adam Golaski, Lori Anderson Moseman, Katie Kemple, Christopher Fritton, Eric Gelsinger, Jacqueline Lyons, John Cotter, Jeff Paris, Michael Ives, Jaime Corbacho, Matthew Klane, Pierre Joris, and Aaron Lowinger. Cover art by Luke Daly. (more...)

A Sing Economy and Oh One Arrow are also available, together, for the combined price of $30.

that so tiny! so insane! so voluptuousness!!

2008-06-15T22:54:00.011-04:00

That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness is a book of collaborative email poems by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney. The book is always clever, mostly light-hearted, sometimes crass, and occasionally wise. "Tips for Better Writing" is one among many about writing and/or poetry. Here’s a few wise lines from "Tips...": "...You’re better off embittered// & careless than carred & idealistic, haunting themed bars./ P.S. If you ask who’s winning, you automatically lose." That last line is good, it’s like looking back at the shark you’re swimming fruitlessly away from, it’s the need for fanatical, blind faith in one’s self in order to endure as a poet, wrongheaded meddling be damned. The lines that precede the post script are better, though, because they prick the ear with a music Gabbert and Rooney do possess: forget about what the line means: "better," "embittered," "careless than carred" "themed bars." Carred? Is this a typo? Oh, I hope not, I hope it means "to be with car." No, it’s not a typo. Rather, typical of the book's wit.

Two poems in the book interest me especially, stand out because the language almost takes over (though never completely; Gabbert and Rooney always tug a narrative thread. Usually a joke). Here is "O, Lucky Pushpin!"

Bastard blood leaves bastard stains
antic on the landscape: paper, Arctic

circle, Rock of Ages: God trumps
contagion, God trumps trumpets,

even playing “Taps.” Play craps
w/ angels & you’re likely to lose.

Choose only one path in life, &
one epitaph. God trumps cages.

Only God can touch the animals
the way they want to be touched

Man turns to animal slowly,
in stages. Angels become us.

Typically, the language becomes less wild as the poem moves to its close/conclusion, and nothing in this poem beats the first couplet, but the repetitions and the off-rhymes keep the lines quick. I would love to see what they begin here pushed; I'd love to see purpose ignored for the pure pleasure of pace and word. (As it stands, though, "O, Lucky Pushpin!" is excellent.)

Here’s the opening lines from "II.," the other that interests me most: "She kept a chamois-soft list of Things That Set My Heart Aflutter/ & she sent it in a letter, the envelope encrusted with ruby glitter.// The fire-engine sound. The baby-sitter. Her trusty mechanical pencil/ w/ the .5 mm lead scraped the rough paper: Rainwater in the gutter." Thus begins a poem in form, I believe a gazelle? I can’t remember. The form forces Gabbert and Rooney to carry the beautiful language from the first lines most of the way through; the form alone cannot be credited with the music here: the language catches the mouth and tongue and leads lively across the page, right to the solemn end of the poem.

That these are collaborations interests me, mainly because I don’t like to collaborate as Gabbert and Rooney do, that is, back and forth (ask Rooney, she knows!), and I find it amazing that it ever works. I imagine that Gabbert hits the downbeats, but I don’t know. All that’s clear to me is that both Gabbert and Rooney sometimes let sound lead their pens, and somehow when they’re together that isn’t cancelled out. Collaboration too often leads to a middle ground; here it does not.

Some of the poems in the book are on their blog, Even the Details Have Details. And I note, or confess, that I responded to every poem in the comments field with a poem of my own. As I wrote my poems--all extensively built on Gabbert and Rooney’s language--I essentially emphasized what I like most in their work, the music, and deemphasized meaning, cleverness, and conclusions. This is not to suggest that my way is the way, but I’d love to see their future collaborative projects veer into full-on language experiment, because the results could be gorgeous. That’s not a criticism, it’s a request.

I know both poets, and Rooney is publishing my book (Color Plates, Rose Metal Press, 2009), so this review is written entirely without bias. If you buy That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, you will spend $12.50. Some of that money will go to Otoliths press. “Otoliths” means, by the way, "fun with spontaneous," and is best known for its coffee-table books depicting the shoes of those who combusted unexpectedly. The cover of That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness features--and they will deny this--a picture of Gabbert’s legs and Rooney’s infamous blue beehive wig.

Singinging

2008-06-03T09:48:00.008-04:00

In the new June edition of Open Letters Monthly, poet and scholar Derek Henderson reviews A Sing Economy. "The poets in this book sing, each in their own register, and their singing produces in the reader an invaluable joy." Sing it to the ceiling.