A quick post to announce the next Further Adventures title, "Bee-Stung Aviary" by one Mr. Eric Baus. It is so fantastic that I've decided to use it as the first stand alone FA title. No combos this time, my friends. Nope, this time you get page after page after page of Eric Baus.

I'm hoping to have it done (again with artwork by Dan Perry) in about a month, so be on the lookout.

In the meantime, check this out...it was this beaver's dying wish.

The new issue of Matchbook is out, and that bird wants you to order one, maybe more. I don't know, it's hard to read birds. Well, not that bird, he's got big white letters across his chest, but you know what I mean.

FK has managed to round up a great group of poets: Emily Kendal Frey, Zachary Schomburg, Garth Graeper, Susan Briante, Matt Hart, Fred Schmalz, Brenda Iijima, Kyle Schlesinger, David B. Goldstein, Cherie Weaver, Matvei Yankelevich, Hoa Nguyen, Philip Dacey, Megan Gannon, Miles Waggener, anna olivier, Ana Bozicevic, Paul Killebrew, Nate Pritts, BJ Love, Dale Smith, Farid Matuk, Mathias Svalina, and a scratch and sniff gallery of sensory abstractions.

Wait. Did you see that? I think it said, BJ Love. That's me. That's awesome. I'm really stoked to be involved with this project. In this way. I helped Friedrich with issue one; called for submissions, layedout and threw in my two logistical cents, but because I was so involved I didn't feel comfortable submitting then.

You should buy a few, give them to friends and relatives. Buy a few more, save them for yourself. Do this all here.

A few days ago my father-in-law found a machete at work in amongst some returned pallets from South America. He called it a knife. A friend of his swears there's blood stains on it. I carried it around all day yesterday. I think I like myself with a machete. Sometime, in the future, I want somebody to be talking about me and go, "You know B.J., right? The guy with the machete?"

These are things I've machete sliced:

1. Large bottles of Mountain Dew (as seen in the video above)
   
2. Apples being tossed in my general direction
3. Empty cans
4. Full cans
5. A hedge my mother wanted trimmed
6. A sign my mother no longer wanted
   
7. A 1/2 inch tree limb that was looking at me funny
8. Every reason I had to not own a machete
   

A few interesting machete facts:

• Some tropical countries have a name for the blow of a machete; the Spanish machetazo is sometimes used in English.

• Danny Trejo plays a series of characters named Machete in Spy Kids, Grindhouse and finally into a planned feature film named for the character, Machete.

• After hardening, many blades are tempered to maximum toughness, often nearly spring tempered. This also makes the blade relatively easier to sharpen.

I've been reading Alex Lemon's "Hallelujah Blackout" the last couple of days. It's good, but reads slightly disjointed. The range of styles Lemon uses (and has mastery of) is broad, but stacked next to one another in a text, the variations are often jarring. Before I go any further I want to emphasize that I really like every poem, it's their ordering that miffs me. For instance, Lemon writes some poems in an open, dreamy style where words and ideas are cross-hatched into a larger picture. Lemon also writes in wispy conversational style that could very well be your best friend describing his day. What becomes difficult is bouncing between these two (and other) styles, especially since the rules that the poems rely on change from one page to the next; empty space means one thing here and another over there, punctuation, capitalization, etc.
What this really got me thinking about, though, is the importance (too much?) I put on coherence within a manuscript. I like the idea of grouping similar poems into sections, or even writing poems with repeated ideas with the hope that a larger narrative emerges. My favorite examples of poets who do this are Matthew Rohrer, Mathias Svalina, Zachary Schomburg, Jack Spicer and Frank Stanford...each poem in their books is like another ingredient in a recipe; eggs, flour, sugar and butter...cake! And though in many cases the poems don't always look or feel like each other, there is always something tying one to the other, so that, when you finish the book, you are left with the feeling that you've read a book of poems and not a collection of poems.
Alex Lemon's book did not feel this way to me...in fact, it read a little more like samples of an Alex Lemon yet to come. So much so, that as we are perusing the poems, you almost need to stop and sniff a coffee bean between each one. Some of my favorite poems ever have been written by this man, so the jarring variety of styles was never too much to keep from carrying on, hoping that the next one might be a new favorite. But therein lies the problem, it became to easy to disregard the "book" and only focus on the poems...which maybe isn't a problem, I don' know.

The new issue of jubilat found its way to me this morning. I'll be finding my way to the toilet shortly. The toilet is where I do the bulk of my reading these days. It's the only place in my in-laws house that I can sit, have a bit of peace and loose my bowels.

My car was in the shop for 4 days and they didn't do anything to it. Yesterday I got tired of waiting and walked down there, went back behind the garage and took my car back. I don't know the legality of that particular situation, but 4 days for an oil change and a new tire seemed a bit much...that, and I'm a renegade.

I also got paid for my unused vacation days at work. I didn't know I had vacation days so I'd managed to accrue almost a months worth. I'm not unemployed, I'm on vacation...for one more week. Then I'm unemployed.

Last night I used every PayPal cent I had to pre-order a limited edition hardcover copy of Zachary Schomburg's new book. It's called Scary No Scary and you too can get it...but first, you must go here, because I can't do it for you. I would, in fact, The Man Suit has been my gift of choice for the last two years, but I think you should give it a shot yourself.

I'm reading in Cedar Falls, Iowa on July 25th. Details are forthcoming, i.e., do not yet exist.

I'm still looking for a place to live in Iowa City...have you heard of one?

On Tuesday, a big storm blew through the neighborhood, the poor bird above never realized that. I burried it. I think it was a bluejay, but I'm no orinthologist.

The most amazing thing about moving out of Chicago is remembering that there are such things as skies and they do super-cool tricks. These are just a few of the tricks they were doing last night.

In a Big Country

Iowa, on occasion, can fill you with awe. Clouds can be this pretty and then two hours later drop tornadoes like Mike D drops rhymes. Awesome...

In Iowa I drive like an asshole. In Iowa there is ample parking. In Iowa it only costs $28 to go to the vet. In Iowa you watch little league baseball games and tell kids to keep with it, turn hard and use two hands. In Iowa there is such a thing as fried cauliflower. In Iowa you finally have cell phone reception but still go outside to talk. In Iowa everybody wonders what you're doing there. In Iowa you tell them without actually answering there question. In Iowa your dog takes naps under trees while still, technically, on walks. In Iowa it is possible to buy 12-packs of Miller Lite tall boys without knowing it. In Iowa, after a few weeks, people will ask you to tell them again what you're doing in Iowa. In Iowa you always tell people to come and visit because there is no way to understand Iowa unless you're there, which is to say, come visit me in Iowa. In Iowa I will always have a place for you to stay.

Cannibal Books has a sale, you should check it out.

Moved away from Chicago this weekend and these are the things I was made to leave behind:

1. Hyde Park Records
2. Seminary Co-op Bookstore
3. Friends
4. The Blue Line
   
5. Reckless Records
6. The Med
7. My Apartment

My cast came off and what fell out was this:

CAConrad from joshuamarie on Vimeo.

RLM#9...go.

This is the sound of one-handed typing...shhh

Eileen Myles hates poetry...and so do I. Well, at least what the wider public's imagination conjures when they care to think of of poetry. I hate being embarrassed, or even conscious, of people's reactions when I tell them I'm going to study poetry. I also hate having to talk to people about Maya Angelou. I hate Maya Angelou and am tired of working real hard to not make you feel ridiculous for liking Maya Angelou. And though I agree with most of Myles' post, I hate when people bite the hands feeding them. I hate the commercialization of the MFA, but I love that I'm getting one and so, anything I say towards that has no credibility. I respect Eileen Myles...think that she is the last great bastion of punk sensibility in poetry, but c'mon, you can't rail against literary journals and be associated with the only one sold in most B&N and thusly, the most recognized journal in our culture. That's like the rich guy telling you how to be a better Christian...

Anyway, I packed up all my books last night. Six boxes of nothing but poetry books. It was like the time I transferred all my cd's into those travel books and realized for the first time that I'd accumulated over 900 albums; storing them differently changes your perspective, and clues you in to just how mad you are about certain things.

How to Look Cool Sitting in a Car

If only I could convince her to wear a cowboy hat...

So for those that don't know, I'm moving out of Chicago in two weeks (TWO WEEKS, SHIT!) and into my in-laws house for a month or so. This is happening for two reasons; one, because Iowa City is a college town, no apartments worth moving into open up until August and two, because the University of Chicago is a giant piece of crap and terminated our lease two whole days after my wife graduates (tip: the University of Chicago is the place where dreams go to die, don't ever come here). This means that all my books will be packed in a box for the summer and so I've spent the last week sitting in front of my book shelf looking over every title and putting books aside. Last night, in a moment of drunken clarity I finalized what will be my "Summer Reading List." It is as follows:

1. Take It, Joshua Beckman (because I haven't gotten around to it yet)
2. The Glass Age, Cole Swensen (because I haven't read too much new Swensen, and I thought it might be a good thing to do before I try to study with her)
3. Lining, Lisa Fishman (I bought it awhile ago, but lost it in a shuffle of papers and have recently rediscovered it)
4. Hallelujah Blackout, Alex Lemon (he's been responsible for some of my favorite poems over the last year)
5. My Vocabulary Did This to Me, Jack Spicer (because I can't imagine a week without it)
6. The Ghost Soldiers, James Tate (it recently came out in paperback and was thus recently affordable to me)
7. The two Letter Machine chap books (Veglahn and Berrigan)
8. This Nest, Swift Passerine, Dan Beachy-Quick (he's "visiting" the workshop this fall and I want to have my bases covered)
9. Ours, Cole Swensen (same as the other Swensen book)
10. The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, Frank Stanford (I'm teaching it this fall and need to read it a few more times before that happens. Basically, if a student mentions a section of the book, I want to be able to envision its place in the whole text and to be able to turn to that page in the book)

and that's it.

Weather men are always wrong, especially in Chicago. In fact, if the weather man mentions rain, there is a better chance that it won't at all. Which makes me wonder if it's possible to be both critic and artist. Is it? Can you create the model and then take it apart to see why it works? In my own experience, the answer is no...at least, not simultaneously.
I don't know much about brain halves, outside of the fact that they exist and that one is creative and the other analytical, but I'm pretty sure that my brains work together like brothers; begrudgingly, and only then because they were told they couldn't play until the job was done. My best critiques usually come in times of drought, in the poetry sense, and conversely, when I'm writing poems almost everyday the only thing I see in the stuff I read is more poems, or ways I would make the poem better if it were mine (which, in itself is a critique, but never a sort of academic reading). But I can never seem to function in both modes at the same time, or even switch from one to the other very quickly, or even when I want to.
I've been thinking about this lately because I have to go back to school soon and I'd like to do better than I did last time, which means being able to pass all my examinations. I've always done well on course work, but you can usually choose when that gets done, it's those exams that worry me, especially as I move towards a career in academia.

It scares me, I think is what I'm really trying to say...

Happy Memorial Day. I mean that.

I'm getting a chapbook ready to send off to a few places by the end of the week. It's mostly made up of poems I've written to my friend Aaron McNally on his facebook page over the last few weeks. Is that cheating? Does that count as "already published poetry." Anyway, if you're friends with both Aaron and I, you've read every first draft.

Writing poems that way has been freeing for me. I don't know if it's having an exact idea of audience, or if it's the instant "publishing," or if it's simply the challenge of trying to write a poem for him everyday in the free seconds I have at work, or if it's all these things combined, but it has been great fun. And there's something about having to write everyday that makes your place in the world a little more interesting.

It's full on Spring here in Chicago...just in time for Summer.

I'm moving in 3 weeks and have hardly packed a thing.

I think the greatest discovery I've made in the last few weeks is the Goose Island Pub Pack; you get 3 bottles each of the Honker's Ale, 312, their IPA and the Summerland.

Last Friday I sat up until 4 am talking to a bald guy in a ladies wig about his divorce and drank 3 bottles each of Honker's Ale, 312, IPA and Summerland.

I got all my training materials to teach at the Workshop next Fall...this shit just got real, but I am really excited to be able to have an answer I'm proud of to the question, "What are you doing now?"

My wife got me a new pork pie hat yesterday. I hate hipsters, but occasionally they do some good things, like making pork pie hats trendy and easy to find again.

What the Heck Elk!

1. Last Friday I bought Bob Dylan's new record, watched Bob Dylan: No Direction Home and then when that was over turned on PBS only to find Bob Dylan's Newport performances.
2. All three of those things led to me talking like Bob Dylan for two whole days...
3. Bob Dylan's, "Together Through Life," is an okay Bob Dylan record, but a great anyone else record. It reminds me of state fairs, or old theme parks in September...it's dirty, stinky and falling apart, but you're totally glad you came.
4. Today I started packing, I packed up Further Adventures...all of it. I have two books left, so if you wanted one, buy it now.
5. When I was home for my grandpa's funeral, it was like a summer vacation appetizer; we grilled, drank beer and let the dog run free. It was hard to come back to work, especially for the dog.
   
6. This is a big month for open manuscript readings. Do you have one ready? Send it off...
7. One of the things I love about Bob Dylan is the fact that he used to buy people leather jackets to convince them to do stuff he wanted he wanted to do.
   

My gramps died the other day. He was a pretty tough dude, but then, who doesn't say that about their gramps. You spend an entire life building a family, how can the fruits of that labor not think their tree is the best their ever was? I love my gramps and think I'll miss him, once I hit the point where I realize I haven't seen him for awhile.
The question, I guess, is, what does a poet do in these situations? Well, for me, he gets asked to write the chincy poem inside the "remembrance folder." I've done it, and I think I like it (it covers the middle ground between what I do and what was expected...i.e. greeting card bullshit), but I'm going to sleep on it, do one more round of drafting tomorrow morning and hopefully send it off to be printed in the morning.
A part of me wishes I hadn't been asked to do that...to be that voice, but I also realize that as a writer (a practice that is weird and abstract to most honest, hard-working people), there was really nothing else I could offer and nothing else they could have asked of me and, ultimately, I'm happy to do it. To have your family flipping through all the "verses," and coming to the conclusion that they have a son/nephew/grandson that could do better, is humbling and for a guy as popular as my grandpa, quite an honor.
Anyway, the point is, I'm really not into occasional poetry and the pressure of writing a poem that may be the only poem a person ever reads is daunting, but the reward (for both me and my family) will hopefully be worthwhile.

Check you later Gramps, I guess it's my turn to buy the Mountain Dew.

Nate Slawson is bad motherfucker. Not only does he do this, but he also writes these. Nate's a friend of a friend whom I've only met a couple of times, but he can grow a wicked mustache and write totally rad poems. The odd for me about reading Slawson's poems, though, is that our styles are oddly familiar. He uses a bit more curse words than I do, but the phrasing is almost exact (i.e. long run-on sentences that take advantage of time-buying verbage to create space where there technically is none), and the things he chooses to write about isn't necessarily what I choose to write about, but the loose yet logical flow of ideas is also quite similar.

Appetizers are my favorite part of the meal and its a joy to share them with you...

you are a pharmacy

you have a hundred secret names & I am the world’s worst shoplifter.
you know what I mean? it’s like it’s 1992 & we’re so happy for cigarettes
& de la soul & lightning bugs & shit like that. sometimes I wish you knew
someone exactly like me who wasn’t so obsessed with your knuckles.
they make me hurt like alligator teeth. I want you to be all fists & bruises like
tiny sparrows on my face. I want you to be a handgun muzzled into my gut

I've always thought that I made more sense on paper, that my best ways of saying things aloud confused people and I get that same feeling from Slawson's poems...that, you can imagine hearing someone speaking this poem, but if spoken to you outside the context of poetry, you'd be pretty feaked out.

Something unrelated, I've totally fallen for the XYZ Affair.

Topic at hand...go read Nate Slawson's poetry and then go buy his books, his beautiful books and do what I did and wear the free pin everywhere.

Be inspired to whisper in your own projection booth

Joshua Marie Wilkinson has had a shit-ton of books released this year; this one, this one, this one, and not the least of which is this one, out on a little press close to my heart called further adventures. But now comes his third full-length, from Tupelo, The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth.

I have a tendency to gush on JMW quite often and have been forcing his books on my friends and co-workers for years, but I can say with complete seriousness that I have never met anyone who is as willing to give to the community as much as he is willing to take from it. The guy runs a lit mag, two small presses and a reading series, and let us not forget he teaches as well. If you love poetry at all, this is the kind of life you should aspire to...and to help Josh live his version of it, buy this book.