I submitted poems last month to The Normal School, a new literary magazine from CSU Fresno. The fledgling publication intrigued me a few months back when I first received word of its submissions call. Though I couldn’t have a look at a back issue (with the inaugural issue coming out Fall 2008), I figured the chances that this Normal bunch would come out with a nicely done pub were pretty good, especially since the website’s color scheme is a near-match to that of my living room (hmmm…tasteful!), and I thought I should try to submit something. Of course, I then promptly let that to-do slip away as so many others have. The last-call call came around last month by email, to which I submitted, and then just as promptly received an auto-reply stating that, due to the overwhelming number of electronic submissions, only postal submissions would be accepted and email submissions would remain unread. Oh.

But by then, I was inexplicably driven by Central Valley poetic ambitions, here explicated: I’ve lately felt nostalgic about seemingly disregarded or forlorn areas of California; true and imagined “vaca” “villes”; culture outside of major cities; my own origins in Sacramento; planned family visits to Modesto and experiencing nothing to do there; the biases I have about these places (and Fresno) as geographical punctuations for Wal-Mart instead of art and literature; and also reading about Lee Herrick’s recent, heartening launch of another issue of In The Grove (also out of Fresno), which contains work by fellow Intergenerational Writers Lab poet, Oscar Bermeo, as well as Facebook friends with shared OCHO #16 pages, Craig Perez and Sasha Pimentel Chacón.

So, despite postal submissions being kind of a hassle and probably wasteful as to time, money and tree product, I printed out my former email submission and submitted via the post, with a SASE. Well, that envelope was returned today with a thinness that betrayed its sealed contents. The envelope contained a pleasant rejection (as shown here and here). And a sticker. First two reactions: 1. Oh well, a rejection. 2. Oh! A sticker!

It is way, way cooler than an “I Voted [American flag]” sticker one gets at their polling place on designated Tuesdays. Even those I don’t get anymore now that I vote by absentee ballot.

The point being, that, despite receiving a rejection slip so many poets and writers know all too well, my 5th-grade, sticker-album, Care-Bears self was totally won over by the fact that the editors sent me a sticker:

Litquake and the San Francisco Public Library are joining forces in 2008 to host a bi-monthly series of events in branches throughout the city as a lead up to the big temblor, scheduled this year for October 3-11, 2008. Both Litquake and the Library are committed to fostering interest in literature and bringing feisty and creative events to the local literary community.

Please join us for our first event “Noe—and Nearby—Poets” at the recently renovated Noe Valley branch, featuring poets who live in Noe Valley and nearby neighborhoods.

Noe—and Nearby—Poets
Tuesday, May 20, 7-8:30pm
Noe Valley branch
451 Jersey Street (near Castro), SF
355.5707

Debbie Yee, Keith Ekiss, Pireeni Sundaralingam & Colm Ó Riain, Kirsten Lee Andersen and Zack Rogow will join the audience for a reception afterwards.

About the poets:

• Debbie Yee is a trusts and estates attorney. A Kundiman Fellow, Debbie’s poems have appeared in Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women, Barn Owl Review, OCHO, and MiPOesias.
• Keith Ekiss is the Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford, and a recipient of scholarships and residencies from the Bread Loaf and Squaw Valley Writers’ Conferences, Santa Fe Art Institute, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Petrified Forest National Park.
• Pireeni Sundaralingam was named one of America’s “Emerging Writers” by Ploughshares. She is editor of Writing the Lines of Our Hands, the first anthology of American South Asian poetry. Colm Ó Riain is a founding member of the Spoken Word theater group Dhaia Tribe, and violinist with avant-garde animation orchestra The Sprocket Ensemble. Together they perform as “Word and Violin.”
• Zack Rogow has published thirteen books, including five collections of poetry. His sixth book of poems, The Number before Infinity, will be published in September. He teaches in the low-residency MFA in Writing at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.
• Kirsten Andersen received her MFA from NYU. Her poetry appears in Barrow Street, Swink Magazine, Notre Dame Review, and other journals. Currently a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Kirsten has received fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Space is limited; please call 355-3707 to reserve your spot.

Keep an eye out for upcoming Litquake + the Library events at Mission Bay Branch in July and at Sunset in September!

Before: After:

So, basically I feel really very prepared for some upcoming chapbook construction challenges, and am meandering (in a more directed way) into growing { bee + spool } press. Additional I-want-thats still include a saddle stapler.

In chapbook news, I’ve made some great swaps with Logan Ryan Smith and Transmission Press, Juliet Cook and Blood Pudding Press, and Jen Tynes and horse less press with my DIY chap. I’ve just received Hossannah’s small chap Lorem Ipsum printed on bright white cardstock and clipped at the corner with a silver binder clip filled with poetry and patent illustrations. I’m looking forward to the read. Upcoming, a chap trade with Michaela A. Gabriel in Austria, whose chapbook The Secret Meanings of Greek Letters was published by dancing girl press.

Interested in a chapbook swap? Email me (replace the (at)). Alternatively, order mine here and know that the proceeds of the sale will be donated to Asian American Women Artists Association, a non-profit organization here in San Francisco.

Now, a work in progress by Didi Menendez.

]]> http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/05/02/tickled/feed/ http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/04/28/gocco-joy-a-mini-chapbook-bound-and-finished/ http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/04/28/gocco-joy-a-mini-chapbook-bound-and-finished/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:27:31 +0000 Debbie http://www.debbieyee.com/?p=318 Long craft-deprived, I finally took this past weekend to crack the knuckles, pull out my Print Gocco and complete a chapbook project for twenty-one Kundiman fellows who exchanged poems written on postcards for the month of September 2007. Ten poets contributed their small-size poems.

After months of mulling it over, conceiving of it and mostly just not getting around to it, I charged forward last weekend by visiting SCRAP, hoping to find some different papers or envelopes at rock-bottom, re-use prices. The warehouse had several reams of textured cover stock in a beige-type color. Not sexy, but I thought it’d contrast well with the ream of turquoise copy paper I got at Staples a few months back for the purposes of chapbook-making and paper projects in general.

Fast forward one weekend later. I layed out and edited the interior of the booklet on Adobe Pagemaker on Saturday night, went to OfficeMax for double-sided copying Sunday morning. (Tip: OfficeMax offered color paper at the self-service copiers for the same price as regular white copy paper, but I did not partake as I’d already brought my turquoise paper). Sunday afternoon I created the Gocco-ready cover image, then flashed the screen with these Gocco bulbs pictured here as glistening still-life in the Sunday afternoon light.

The covers were printed on the Gocco using brown and pearlescent aqua inks.  Sunday night, albeit with an interlude at The Fillmore (Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks), I completed binding, with brown linen thread, an edition of 40 baby chapbooks for contributors, postcard writers and Kundiman-related folk. Other helpful project materials included a Stella.

The product specs for this little chappy, “Postcard Poems by Kundiman poets” ({bee + spool} press 2008): Dimensions 4.25″ (w) x 5.5″ (h). 16 pages.  Edition of 40.

]]> http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/04/28/gocco-joy-a-mini-chapbook-bound-and-finished/feed/ http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/04/24/top-ten-things-you-can-do-for-literature-z-style/ http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/04/24/top-ten-things-you-can-do-for-literature-z-style/#comments Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:43:59 +0000 Debbie http://www.debbieyee.com/2008/04/24/top-ten-things-you-can-do-for-literature-z-style/ Contents of a postcard received in the Wednesday afternoon mail:

Top Ten Things
You Can Do For Literature

10. Read the current issue of ZYZZYVA cover to cover.
9. Give a free issue to a friend (just send ZYZZYVA the address).
8. Give a gift subscription to a friend.
7. Link to http://www.zyzzyva.org on your blog or website.
6. Check in to the ZYZZYVA blog every day.
5. Mention ZYZZYVA in your blog.
4. Renew your subscription without being asked more than once.
3. Nominate the editor for a MacArthur “genius” grant.
2. Make a token grant of your own.
1. Make a tax-deductible gift commensurate with your capacity to contribute.

Pegasus Books Downtown is proving to be fertile ground for limited edition, locally-produced chapbooks and journals, including my own DIY chap, which it is carrying as of this past Thursday. (Thanks, Clay Banes!) A find this week is the I-got-the-last-one-there, 100-quantity poetry journal Mrs. Maybe (Issue 1) edited by Lauren Levin and Jared Stanley. The 46-page publication includes their poems as well as two by Sandra Lim (author of Loveliest Grotesque, a recent (2006) Kore Press first book award winner) and the work of thirteen others. Bearing creamy ecru pages under navy cardstock, I was drawn to the cover that looked possibly like a Gocco-job (a device near and dear to my heart), or other screenprinting process. With a circulation of a hundred, the journal is small and handsome. This is no mere superficial consideration, as I discussed one recent evening with Barb and Oscar on the wondrousness of small-press publishing and the sadness of the chapbook contests and micropress outfits out there that really miss the mark (sometimes quite literally, as when the a poet’s work is published with poor page-gutter considerations, mis-stapling, toner-streaked pages, etc.).

Onto the guts: The array is fairly diverse, with poems committed to the structure of stanzas to prose poems to more experimental forms. What catches my eye at times tends to be the familiar, so, having read Lim’s Loveliest Grotesque, I’ll pick out her “Please, Don’t Call Me Sandy” to excerpt, where she writes on name as identity, but identity as undetermined and incomplete:

First, “It just wears me down. / A used-car salesman / my whole life. / A dog in a Broadway musical. // Oh what a feeling. What a pale furry feeling this is.”

And last, “For what did I know of anything, / shedding & barking, / lying on the floor / like this, calling my name.”

Issue 1 seems a little insular, a private affair amongst a small group who nod at you from the bookshelf, but aren’t exactly extending their palms for a handshake and introductions; missing from this first volume are the journal’s mission and the poets’ biographical notes, though the origin of the journal’s name is explained on the last page.

While the supply of Mrs. Maybe is dwindling around local Bay Area bookstores, there “may be” issues 2 and 3 in the works, according to the journal’s blog.

Dan Magers‘ spooky teen/frat/sorority horror sonnets are collected in the clever Exploitation Poems (Immaculate Disciples Press 2007), a 32-page square-shaped chapbook that I recently found at Pegasus Books in downtown Berkeley. Framed under muted olive covers (with silkscreen art) and Japanese stab binding, this handmade chap includes response illustrations to Magers’ poems by Matt Bollinger, who also designed the book. Both art and poetry underscore the lesson to be imparted from all teen horror flicks: If you get it on with a co-ed or fall asleep in the woods, you’re dead.

The chapbook begins with “Frat House Massacre”. Lest you wonder about its outcome, “Frat House Massacre II” is in store for you on page 14. Given the contemporary theme, one may figure a grouping of poems in some free verse manner, but the poems are structurally marvelous for a writer who is reading both for pleasure and to learn how to write (like me). (You can read the sonnets in a duh-DUM-duh-DUM-duh-DUM fashion, which is a very pleasant activity on the short BART commutes this chap and I’ve been riding.) Magers honors the 14-line form and rhythm throughout.

Poetry, and this set in particular, suits the idea of horror being more horrible when left to the imagination (where more is said when it is unsaid). Exploitation Poems becomes increasingly gory in later pages, and poems such as “Pyongyang Experiment Camp” and “The Lurid Method of Dr. Mamoto” departs from the sorority-carnage theme and re-creates in sonnets the plots of the Yellow/Oriental monster also found in the exploitation-fear-flicks genre. Magers’ uses the vehicle of poetry, the compact space of the pages and the line limitations of the form with creepy swellness, as in the poem, “Cheerleader Rout”: “Until they sleep, the lights are on. They sleep… / and then unlighted rooms come creeping red.” Then, “The Johnson’s dog is barking– / forced unquiet in the assured silence.” When the Johnson’s dog comes abarking, you know it’s going to be a long night.

Exploitation Poems is an edition of 100. A few copies were available at Pegasus the few weeks ago I got this. Otherwise, try emailing Immaculate Disciples Press (Brooklyn, NY) here.

Small Press Distribution invites you and your friends to our Spring Open House & Book Sale:

Saturday, April 12th, 2008
12 Noon – 4PM
20-50% off all books!
Readings at 2PM

About our readers: Joanne Kyger is a Bay Area master poet and author of two recent books, ABOUT NOW: COLLECTED POEMS and NOT VERACRUZ; Marjorie Welish is a poet, painter, teacher and art critic, whose most recent book ISLE OF THE SIGNATORIES is just out from Coffee House; Taylor Brady is an education activist and the author of several books, most recently OCCUPATIONAL TREATMENT; and Rob Halpern is a teacher and the author of RUMORED PLACE. Brady and Halpern are also the co-authors of Snow Sensitive Skin, from which they will read at the event.

FREE & OPEN TO ALL!

SPD Warehouse
1341 7th St. (@ Gilman)
Berkeley, CA
510-524-1668

POEMS PHOTOGRAPHS PRINTS are the contents advertised on the wrapper of Jennifer Flescher’s twice-yearly art and poetry journal in the form of a 5″ x 7″ deck, Tuesday; An Art Project.

I first learned about the since-2007 pub at Duotrope’s Digest, where I scout out pubs to submit to. Being an ephemera and letterpress lover, I was enchanted by the idea of it, but resisted subscribing for no other reason than that the semi-colon of the title seemed disconcerting to me. What’s it doing there? Shouldn’t it be a colon instead? Thoughts.

But, oh, it’s a lovely thing to receive in the mail and hold. Each issue consists of 15+ weighty cream cards (or semi-gloss cardstock in the case of the photographic offerings) secured by a letterpress paper band and wrapped in a sheet of cardstock also letterpressed with masthead, table of contents, contributors’ notes and a poem reprinted from that issue’s deck. The decks have a curated mix of poetry, photographs and art prints. Very clearly the opposite of the world of online journals and the immediacy of PDF chapbooks discussed previously in my National Poetry Month poetry journal review #1.

At $13 for a single issue ($25 for a 1-year subscription of 2 issues), Tuesday; An Art Project does put a dent in the reading budget, but it is quite the singular package, unlike any other poetry and art periodical I’ve seen. Flescher writes on the website, “I wanted to make a thing we could hold.” And, “Work should be enjoyed tactilely. Poems should be kept, when loved. Passed on. Sent out.” Coming in at under $1 a card, the art and poems can be sent as correspondence as well. (I am not sure if parting with portions of the deck will be an easy thing to do for ephemera nuts and bibliophiles.)

Favorite line in a poem: “Pass me that bottle of Scotch, I need a mitten / for my soul.” –“Sunday” by Cate Marvin in issue 1:1 (Spring 2007)