Update

The newest GlitterPony is live and pleasing to the eye-ear-inner eye: Check out new writing by Eileen Myles, Jeannie Hoag, then check out some of The Baseball Poems: Issue #12

Also, SHAMPOO's 10th Anniversary Edition ( #38 ) is on-line and hyphy. Rae Armantrout, Emily Liebowitz, Debrah Morkun, Dodie Bellamy: Get yr nails done; Get yr hair did.

And and and, Otoliths has their new Southern Summer issue ( #20 ) set to come out on the 1st of the new month. Dedicate a few days of your life to sniffing this glorious bouquet filled with pistols. And Baseball Poems (!)

Amazon.com Distribution

In addition to, apparently, using mail rates to which they were not entitled, Amazon.com has been busy renegotiating the terms of their distribution pricing for small publishers in the new year. Small presses/publishers, therefore, are incentivizing book sales on their own websites and encouraging readers to purchase directly from the press/publisher.

Fact-Simile bids you a happy 2011 with new titles and a new issue.

"Glad as a bridge my / way throw it my way..." / Baseball poems in Out of Our

The newest Out of Our, a San Francisco poetry quarterly, will include a hearty-bowl-of-hotbeef-soup-on-snow-days portion of "I'm sorry , about Baseball," and one other piece, "The skeleton may perform, a great Clown."

I happened upon Out of Our's booth at a recent zinefest held in Golden Gate park and struck up a conversation with editor Sarah Page. We chatted briefly on the state of local lit culture, Anne Waldman, and beat godfather Lawrence Ferlinghetti ( both of whom were featured in the display copy of their most recent volume ).

And so, all of The Baseball Poems* have found a home, blessed are parents of little orphans. Due out at the end of this month, Out of Our will be available for theft, examination, purchase (?) at these respectable sources:

City Lights Books, chinatown adjacent

Dog Eared Books, on Valencia

Bird and Beckett, Glen Park/Bernal Heights

University Press Books, Berkeley

Rebound Bookstore, Mill Valley

* "I'm sorry , about Baseball" is, yes, yes, still available in book form, still peripherally attached to the 2010 Champion SF Giants, still handsome, still 30 pgs/$5.

Pop is The Devil's Consistency

Picked up the newest Asheville Poetry Review, vol. 17, no.1, issue #20. A hefty 204 pages of poems, reviews, interviews. A good deal at 13$ ( a sublime deal at free: gift cards, hallelujah ). Were it not for the special features scattered throughout, though, I might be tempted to say it's a loss for readers.

The high points are Fred Chappell's succint, and opinionated (yee-uh), take on a book of new Rimbaud translations, Thomas Rain Crowe's translations of four Hugh-Alain Dal poems, two 'in memorium' pieces by Lucille Clifton, and a hardtalking interview with Ai.

Of the barby satires of sonnets, nature pieces, and narrative tales is a lean towards pop-poetry mediocrity I cannot disassociate with the journal now.

( Also, the author's are presented in homogenizing alphabetical order, something that I have come to regard as a curious shying away from deliberate presentation ( why not order the pieces by word count, smallest to largest, or place writers in an order by their geography? ), something more akin to a simple index of authors that a reader may passively ingest. )

Head over to the free and mighty Horseless Review or check Caketrain for a look at some challenging, delightful work, and, if you've got some bread, spend it ( don't just read the free sample of 20-40 pages like I do ).

Can literary magazines thrive if only contributors form their readership?

Is There a Lit Mag in This Class?, written by Nicholas Ripatrazone, over at Luna Park. There's also a smashing "Race, Class, Gender, & Sexuality in Indie Publishing" section of essays, articles.

Also, at the international exchange for poetic invention: a method ( which is less than a poetics ) akin to how I've approached The Insulation Poems. Quantum Poetics, an article, a bit shoddy in explication ( perhaps the exact manifestation of the technique? ), but flush interesting in its treatment of the blessed are all one concept.

"With / no sound of metals this tundra sings..." / Baseball Poems in the next GlitterPony / Chapbook Announcement

I'm overjoyed at the news that a few pieces of "I'm sorry , about Baseball" have found a more homier home over at GlitterPony. Listed in the 'Other Legit Places' section over on the right of this page, GlitterPony is, as its placement defines, legit. Here's their most recent rag, Issue Ten. Keep your ears open for Issue Eleven, due out god knows when.

And so...

A poem that started as universal apology for baseball's tired meanings unfolded into a glory song of hidden celebrations enacted in the game. Youth-age, masculine-feminine dichotomy, commercialism-peasantry, formlessness-geometry, memory-statistic, nationalism-community, black magic-polytheism, selfhood-voyeurism, urban-agrarian associations, performance-solipsism, speech-mantra. Celebrate the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants with an abstract long poem whydon'tchya?

Each chapbook showcases a unique cover/back-cover done up by artist Meagen Crawford.

"I'm sorry , about Baseball"

By Matthew Johnstone

4.5" x 6"

30 pages

$5 ( or not )

Email me for details. hemouthsmewrong@gmail.com

Mrs. Ted Hughes, the writer

Re-reading Miss Plath's 84 page The Colossus and Other Poems ( Random House, 1960 ). A gorgeous construction of pieces - "for Ted" - in the same way religious passages are gorgeous.

I am lulled by the acute attention to rhythm of the short line and the manner by which single sentences are skewed/tugged into three, four, five shorter lines, pulsing along, prompting a series of re-reads, evaluating a re-surging connectivity ( the entire of "Man in Black" joins three line stanzas to exhale 21 lines from a single sentence ). Stabilizing this trail of impression is always a period at the end. Always a capital letter begins the flushed-left line. One is placed within the poem, directed to sense, intuit from the conditions, on the terms, of the poem.

The manner in which simple lists of noun become surreal landscapes through an exact diction akin to meditation spurring epiphany. Lulled by the corset of the stanzas. They are trim. There's a taxing and archaic, but/therefore genuine, quality to the poetry. I don't use the word surgical, or deliberate, or reasonable ( though the poems are all of these things ), I say painful, and that which is painful deserves to be considered directly in composition, post-composition. That Sylvia informs me how to engage and disengage my own aggressions and maddenings is only one compliment.

"The Eye-mote," "Suicide off Egg Rock," and "Full Fathom Five."