Kate Greenstreet's The Last 4 Things

As you all probably know, I am a big fan of Kate Greenstreet's work (I've previously written about her work here and I published her chapbook This is Why I Hurt You). Kate will be coming to read in Saginaw on September 18th to promote her new book The Last 4 Things, a book I can't wait to get my hands on. Publisher's Weekly has just reviewed it:

The Last 4 Things Kate Greenstreet. Ahsahta (SPD, dist.), $17.50 (104p) ISBN 978-1-934103-09-8

The austere second volume from Greenstreet (case sensitive) picks up on her other career as a photographer. Brief prose poems, spare stanzas and suggestive sequences return to such notions as frame, tint, profile and point of view: “We don't know what it means but we do know that the person disappears.// The bridge/ attracts us with its brightness.” One page can present Greenstreet as a war photographer, getting horror on film; the next can make her a victim, a dreamer, a wanderer, an examiner of linguistic particles at a very far remove. Abstractions and almost mystical hints imply lessons from Michael Palmer (“Dear When-you-stop-you-will-feel,/ Black, the color of space, mourning/ is green for rain”) or from Elizabeth Robinson. Greenstreet is nothing if not challenging, electric and crisp. Readers who find the verse and the situations in the fragment-packed first half of the volume fascinating yet hard to assemble may turn to the concluding set of prose poems, each given a date like a diary (“6 January”): here events and plots mix and dissolve (civil war, childbirth, hiking), but the hurt tone and the laconic technique make them cohere. The book includes a DVD (not seen by PW) with video art by Greenstreet. (Sept.)

Ryan Murphy at RealPoetik

Ryan Murphy is the featured poet this week at RealPoetik. Check it out here. Down with the Ship is a great book, and I look forward to seeing his new collection from Krupskaya, The Redcoats.

Alli Warren's Cousins

I recently discovered 18 copies remaining from the 2nd printing of Alli Warren's Cousins. Please visit the Lame House site for more information.

Gabriella Torres & JodiAnn Stevenson

On Wednesday, July 29, 2009, Gabriella Torres and JodiAnn Stevenson will be reading in the Home Sweet Home reading series. Gabi and JA are two of my good friends, and I am very happy that they are reading together, so happy in fact that I decided to attend the reading. I will be in NYC briefly for other business, but if you want to catch up with me, I highly recommend coming to this reading. It starts at 7pm. Home Sweet Home is located at 131 Christie Street.

Some things

I have been keeping myself very busy and (mostly) out of trouble lately. The work at 360 Main Street is consistent and is really up to me to pace. I have two new pieces up this weekend: an interview with Robert Martin, editor and publisher of The Review, where we discuss Saginaw, journalism, and music, and an event announcement/press release for this Saturday's Rumble in Flint, a rockabilly, burlesque, and car show brought to you by Rumbleville Underground Clothing Company. Expect to see two more pieces up there this week: one a book review of Chey Davis's Collection, and the other an article on the legendary DJ Psycho.

I have two new-ish poems in the new issue of Ekleksographia, guest edited by Amy King. You can read them here.

Other things: I have a review of Kaya Oakes's Slanted and Enchanted forthcoming in the August BookSlut, and I believe I will have a review of Claire Donato's Someone Else's Body in the August issue of The Chapbook Review. Plus, I have an interview with Jeff Vande Zande scheduled to come out in Review Magazine's special fiction edition at the end of this month.

My book: I received the proof copy, and there are a couple of minor changes needed for the cover. Once those are done, it will be out.

And finally, Lame House: working on laying out a new chapbook by Nathan Hauke, and also working on a broadside by another poet (don't want to announce things too early).

Oh, and I have been writing poems, which is strange and wonderful.

I belong.

Mean Mother this Friday

This Friday Detroit-based rock band Mean Mother will be playing their first show in Saginaw at Hamilton St. Pub with Death Valley Dragline and Neighborhood Muscle. This should be a fun night. I got to interview a former college friend and write a little something about it here.

I should come to my office on days off more often

It's not even 9:30 this morning and I have already accomplished most of what I wanted to do today, which means I can get a jump on tomorrow.

My review of Union! by Ish Klein is now up in the July issue of BookSlut. If you're so inclined, you can check it out here.