From California, On: Jennifer Denrow

When I was in high school, I dreamed of California, a place I'd never been, but a place I believed would somehow make everything in my life better. Tonight after reading Jennifer Denrow's 2010 Brave Men Press chapbook From California, On, I feel like this might be a common delusion.

Consisting of long lines and fragmented thoughts, the twenty-two page poem is a disjunctive narrative about a trip to California, an idealized place that doesn't quite align with how the speaker imagined it would be. Or perhaps the speaker doesn't quite fit how she imagined herself would be in California--that things would be somehow different and that she herself would be somehow different:

"In California, I look like me but with a better person inside.

I scratch myself. I scratch I'm here into me.

I thought it would be like everyone else to be here. They are. They're meaning it. I mean to be with them."

The poem is a journey, not because it involves an actual trip & time spent traveling in a car, but because it involves a mind at work, thinking & re-acting & going somewhere with the reader along for the ride. There is a quietness to the collection, but also occasionally a subtle humor: "We say everything once in French and once in English. We don't know French so it's hard to understand us during that part." However, overall the poem is melancholy; the speaker describes her environment--encountering a doe and a fawn in the wild, sitting by redwoods, and frequently staring at the ocean--but she remains disconnected from it and from the people around her.

Overall I enjoyed the book and I am looking forward to reading her full-length collection, California. I'm also looking forward to seeing her read this Friday in Atlanta.

Albums of Our Lives

When Katy Henriksen first mentioned the series she was starting at The Rumpus that would feature a poet writing about a single album, I had the hardest time settling on a single album to write about. Of course, I thought about my favorites: The Clash's London Calling and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, but those albums have been written about so much already. Then I considered Bright Eyes's I'm Wide Awake It's Morning and Arcade Fire's Funeral, but those albums have been with me for years. I finally settled on boy sets fire's the day the sun went out, which really represented a specific time and place for me, which I thought fit better with the idea of "Albums of Our Lives." It is just one of many. Anyhow, the piece went up today. You can read it here.

Vouched ATL

I've only made it to two readings since moving to Atlanta so far, and they both have been excellent. This past Sunday I attended the VouchedATL reading at Young Blood Gallery, featuring Heather Christle, Bruce Covey, Amy McDaniel, Ben Spivey, and James Tadd Adcox. And everything about the event was fantastic--the space, the turn-out, and especially the readings. It was my first time hearing a number of the readers, a couple of whom whose work I was completely unfamiliar with though I had seen their names around.

James Tadd Adcox kicked things off. I wish I could remember what it was that he read (I should have taken notes or perhaps had less to drink)--I remember there were two pieces, each of which I found engaging and funny. He has a book forthcoming from Tiny Hardcore Press that I am looking forward to based on the quality of his reading and the quality of the press.

Ben Spivey read from his novel Flowing in the Gossamer Fold, which was kind of heartbreaking. (You can read more about his novel here.) He finished his set by reading Dennis Cooper's hilarious piece "Three boys who thought experimental fiction was for pussies," from his collection of stories Ugly Man.

Amy McDaniel read third, and I was glad to get to hear her read before she leaves Atlanta. She read from her sold-out chapbook Selected Adult Lessons along with some newer poems, including a list of items her brother can have since she's moving overseas. I was disappointed to find out she didn't have any chapbooks available, but I'm looking forward to seeing more from her in the future.

Bruce Covey was next, and I always love getting to hear him read because he's such a strong reader of his work. He read a number of poems from Elapsing Speedway Organism and Glass Is Really a Liquid, as well as a poem so new that he read it off his iPad. Overall his poems were playful, whether they created new words from binaries or listed off silly descriptions pulled from Time Magazine's "100 Hottest People" lists.

The final reader of the evening was Heather Christle, who is another poet I was happy to see read before she leaves Atlanta. She began by having everyone stand-up and spin around for ten seconds because she claimed the first poem she was going to read (from The Difficult Farm) was better if everyone was dizzy. For the rest of the reading she read from her new book The Trees The Trees, which has been receiving a lot of well-deserved attention. If you haven't already, I recommend getting a copy.

It was a full night of excellent readings for a standing room only crowd. I hope there will be more VouchedATL events in the future.

Recent Reading

I recently finished reading Brian Oliu's So You Know It's Me & the Rose Metal Collection of five flash chapbooks, They Could No Longer Contain Themselves--reviews of both titles are forthcoming elsewhere, but I'll briefly say here that I recommend both.

I also read Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which I enjoyed and am looking forward to discussing next week in the Noble Reads book club. The club, which is sponsored through my office, counts as "work." So far I'd say this job is pretty sweet.

I'm about to jump into Justin Taylor's The Gospel of Anarchy and Tony Tost's 33 1/3 book, now that I have a properly printed copy! I've also been reading here-&-there in a number of poetry books, including Heather Christle's The Trees The Trees, Rod Padgett's How Long, & Anslem Berrigan's Notes from Irrelevance.

Noble Reads: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The next meeting of the Noble Reads book club is on Monday, July 18th from 11 am to 12pm at the Emory Bookstore. We'll be discussing Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. If you purchase your copy at the Emory Bookstore and mention the club, you'll receive a 20% discount.

Amazon Nightmare

Below I mentioned the book that was misprinted that I received from Amazon. I wrote to the publisher, Continuum Books, and they said I needed to return the book to Amazon for an exchange. However, Amazon will not let me return the book because my window to return it expired on June 27th. I would very much like to speak to a customer service representative at Amazon, but they have no contact info available on their website. Does anyone know how I can contact Amazon?

When I buy books, I often don't read them right away, especially when I buy several at a time. So I made the misprint discovery too late. I suppose they will tell me that I should have thumbed through the book page-by-page upon receiving it to make sure it was in proper condition, which is something I will do if I order from them again--though now that I am in a city with good independent bookstores, I think I will prefer to buy my books in person. I already found a copy of the book at A Cappella Books, and I flipped through the pages to see that it was properly printed.

Printing Error

About a month ago I ordered a book as a gift for my boyfriend through Amazon. He began reading it immediately, only to discover that the copy I ordered had a major printing error. When he completed reading page 146, the following page was a re-print of page 115. In fact, pages 115-146 are printed twice in this copy. This wouldn't be such a problem if page 147 followed after the second page 146; however, this time the book jumps from page 146 to page 179, so he's missing out on a decent section of the book. Does anyone have suggestions about what to do about this? Should I contact Amazon? The publisher? Just give up & buy a new copy? (I saw a correctly-printed copy of the book on the shelves at A Cappella Books in Atlanta.) Suggestions welcome.