Big Books, Small Presses

As an avid reader and lover of all things books, I get really excited by small scrappy upstart presses that publish really bold, beautiful books that are a little bit grainier, hard-edged, strange or literally foreign for the big guys to pay much attention to. Small presses print translations you can't find anywhere else, raw, gutsy memoirs, poetry that burns bright with cleverness and an experimental air. They're small enough to take risks on books they believe in and while I LOVE me some books that the big guys print, I think a book club dedicated to small presses would A) give some recognition to books without big promotional budgets that might get overlooked, and B) encourage all you smarty Booksmith shoppers to go to a book club where it isn't necessarily a novel we read, but maybe a collection of poetry, or a book of literary non-fiction. I'm not a  poet but sometimes Wave Books prints a book of poetry so beautiful I have to read it and when I do I want to talk about it because I DON'T UNDERSTAND POETRY BUT I THINK I LIKE IT A LOT ANYWAY. What does this meeeean? Let's talk about it together!

If the prospect of the Small Press Book Club appeals to you, drop me an e-mail and I'll contact you before September when we'll (hopefully) start to meet. Meetings would be once a month for about an hour, and there would be SNACKS. E-mail me if you're interested! The more people I know are interested the more likely this will work out. And that means MORE snacks to you, the consumer. E-mail me at natasha -at- brooklinebooksmith -dot- com.

What I Am Reading.

Wolf Among Wolves
by Hans Fallada
Melville House | $18.95 |Buy

From the publisher: "This sweeping saga of love in dangerous times – the 1923 collapse of the German economy, when food and money shortages led to rioting in the streets and unemployed soldiers marauding through the countryside – is deemed by many to be Hans Fallada’s greatest work. Yet its 1938 publication made his publisher so fearful of Nazi retribution that he told Fallada, “If this book destroys us, then at least we’ll be destroyed for something that’s worth it.”"

Wolf... is a dangerous read. Its engrossing enough to zone you out so that you end up two T stops past work. The physical act of reading this book is not all dissimilar to drinking a few beers at the carnival before hitting the Pirate Ship. You get nauseous with both anticipation and experience. Along the way there are barkers begging you, men and women in the shadows, grime, and above all various forms of wetness (sweat, rain, drool, etc). So good you'd think the Dalkey Archive published it.

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Bird Any Damn Kind
by Lucas Farrell
Caketrain | $8.00 |

I'll just leave you with this sample rather than ramble on about how immensely terrific this book of poetry is. That was a really poor sentence. Whatever. Its late. Enjoy.

Open publication - Free publishing - More poetry

National Poetry Month!

We have an entire shelf dedicated to bad-ass small press poetry...I want it there permanently, but that's not a likely bet (if I were a bettin' woman.) The long and short of it is...Come check out all the crazy-great new stuff Mark brought in while we have all this amazing extra space!!!

How sexy are these covers? How chic? The ultimate spring accessory...but vanity aside...these are some seriously entertaining reads. If you are uncomfortable with poetry...just think of them as edgy flash fiction...genre is a fluidity anyhow...

Next week I'll be writing about my month long speed date with a kindle... it'll be rich.

best assignment ever

My sophomore year in college, (what i can piece together of it)...involved a lot of East African dance, and a lot of reading. My professor Lorna Dee Cervantes (colossal poet activist all around swell lady) assigned a very simple task for her creative writing workshop...to go to a bookstore once a week, preferably an independently owned one...to walk up to the poetry section, and buy one book of poetry a week, based on intuition....don't think- grab one - throw the money down- and go.

I can't tell you how many of my favorite writers I found this way...writing roulette...I think it is important to buy poetry, to read poetry, and to write poetry. Poetry is the easiest thing to read and the easiest thing to write if you can take the time to find kindred writers, and take the time to trust your right to write it down...any of it.

Art should be affordable, accessible...I am drawn to poets who are largely un- experimental with their language and prosody...I am drawn to writers who aren't afraid to speak simply...and meet the reader face to face, and say what it is they are saying...

The reason a lot of people don't bother with poetry is that their formidable experience was one of a fear...a close reading of poems written by affluent white men, birds on fences, metered trochee, iamb, snore...If we could get more working class thinkers into our canon...we would have 7 full cases of poetry spanning our walls...

So my challenge to anyone who has bothered to read this far...Take a chance, and bring home a book (used if you're strapped) of poetry based on anything and everything...including its cover.

This Stack of Books on My Desk

We all do it. Some use shelves. Some have empty shelves but lots of books. Some have full shelves and a tidy abode. A few have stacks on the floor in front of the shelves. Some have a full shelf, stacks on the floor (sort of) and a big ol' fresh stack on their desk. I am the latter. The photo above my stack in its most recent form - though a little bit positioned to give it a sexy aura. In reality, my desk is cluttered with books. Mostly chapbooks and pamphlets. Ephemera. I prefer it that way. What's the point in trying to get work done if you can't have a little fun?

my biggest book-genre distractions are poetry, books about civil war-era generals who (debatably) went haywire, books about the building of books, and, the sweet-tooth of them all, books about carnival barkers. So here it is, This Stack of Books on My Desk:

O City by Wayne Miller
Boris By The Sea by Matvei Yankelevich
Bookbinding by Edith Diehl
The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick (ARC)
Nightmare Alley by William L Gresham (ARC)
To Hell On A Fast Horse by Mark Lee Gardner (ARC)
A Plate of Chicken by Matthew Rohrer
G-Point Almanac: Passyunk Lost by Kevin Verbone
Transcendental Studies by Keith Waldrop

All (except O City) I either got at or through Booksmith, which speaks to the diversity of our selection. Especially in the area of small presses. But that will be next week's topic.