bee + spool

Today, poetry review #3 for National Poetry Month. Reviews 1 and 2 are here and here.

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.

As discussed in previous posts here and here, SPD will be having its semi-annual (every winter and spring) Open House and Book Sale at its warehouse in West Berkeley. All titles are at least 20% off. Roam the stacks, then trade a poem for a free book. There will also be author readings.

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

Here’s poetry review #2 of 2 for National Poetry Month:

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)