Tonight at KGB...

Monday, December 17 at 8:00 PM

Great American Prose Poems

Mark Bibbins, Charles Bernstein,
Jenny Boully, Billy Collins,
Jennifer L. Knox,
Mark Strand, Paul Violi,
Susan Wheeler, & others

KGB Bar
85 West 4th St
New York, NY

Sina Queyras reads Drunk by Noon

Read the rest, plus two sample poems. (Thanks, Sina!)

Tomorrow night in Brooklyn!

& now a message from the sea horses whinnying in our mailbags:*

Hi everybody! I'm doing a little reading tomorrow
for an awesome new magazine called
The Agricultural Reader at Stain Bar
with Jared Hohl and Mary Jo Bang

You remember Stain Bar? aptly named for
all the beers one spills on oneself
when one's there having one. Or four.

Will I see you there? Gosh I hope so.
I'm reading first so I'll have plenty of time
to chat with you!

Friday, December 7, 7:30
For the Agriculture Reader
with Jared Hohl and Mary Jo Bang

Plus a music/theater performance of
"A Kind of Madness" by Aaron Petrovich
and Chris Forsyth.

Stain Bar
766 Grand Street, Brooklyn
L train to Grand Street, 1 block west

Jen will have copies of both of her books on hand for your holiday shopping pleasure. (Give the gift of laughter, yo.)

*The ever-popular poem "And Now a Message from the Sea Horses Whinnying in Our Mailbag" is available in A Gringo Like Me.

Danielle Pafunda on Verse Daily today!

I Am Talking Dirty to You Like You are the Only One in the Room

Don't you just love that title?

We're working on Danielle's next book, My Zorba, right now, to be released by Bloof in April 2008.

Report from Florida...now with audio!

Jennifer just got back from FSU & the reading was a smashing success. The campus bookstore had 20 copies of each book...& sold them all!

Here's a podcast from the reading.

Rocking good news. We love FSU.

If you were there & have photos to share, give a shout, will ya?

Galatea Resurrects...

...one of the most open, most innovative, and most enthusiastic poetry-review publications online or in print, has posted an updated list of books and chapbooks seeking reviewers. (One of the coolest things about this magazine is that it encourages multiple perspectives on the same book, meaning, once a book has been reviewed it is still available for another look!)

Details here. (Ours are there too, if you're so inclined.)

And do dive into the latest issue, which speaks to books by some of our tiny press friends like No Tell Books, Effing Press, Octopus Books, BlazeVOX, Otoliths Press, Bootstrap Press, and many others.

Review copies available

The publicity mailings have mostly gone out & the response has been good so far.

But, if you're a reviewer or editor and would like to review/assign Drunk by Noon or For Girls (& Others), there are a limited number of review copies remaining.

Please get in touch. (Email at upper right.)

Thanks!

Allen Bramhall on For Girls (& Others)

Read the rest.

Knox tonight!

Monday, November 19 at 7:00 PM
in Manhattan

Jennifer L. Knox, Rachel Simon & Kenneth Goldsmith
read for Readings Between A & B

11th Street Bar
510 East 11th Street
New York, NY

Photos from the Drunk by Noon party

Is that a cat playing piano? Why, yes it is.

See what else you missed in this cool slideshow by Jeremy Hinsdale.

Here are a few more from Kaelea's Flickr set:


Total Poetry Freak-Out!
Originally uploaded by kaeleaann


Total Poetry Freak-Out!
Originally uploaded by kaeleaann

& some crappy phone cam shots:

Bloof invades the Midwest Territories

Advance warning so there's plenty of time for you to sweep the cobwebs outta the fallout shelter in your backyard, lay in some canned goods, toiletries, purified water, matches, etc. & get whatever shots you're gonna need:

Bloof Books will be making a tour of the Midwest...& possibly West...come April.

Here's what the schedule looks like so far:

April 2: Shanna Compton at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, WI.
April 3: Jennifer L. Knox, Danielle Pafunda & Shanna Compton at the Fixx Series in Chicago, IL.
April 4: TBD
April 5: TBD
April 6: Jennifer L. Knox, Danielle Pafunda & Shanna Compton at the Actual Kansas Series in Lawrence, KS.

We're also planning to hit Fargo, ND (date to come), and possibly Iowa City (where, as we know from "The Best Thanksgiving Ever,"* Jennifer's spent "a lot of time.")

So where else should we go? We've got this roadtrip thing down. Four or five hours in a car is nothing for poets with our stamina. Heck, we've done much as 10.5 at once, back in 'aught-five. (Those were the days.) We've got a cooler.

If you're in the Midwest or West Coast--or really any place at all--we'd like to come see you. If you invite us, we'll do our best to get there. Shoot us an email (address in the sidebar).

*A holiday favorite from A Gringo Like Me & way less risky than turducken.

This Saturday

Click if it's too small to read.

Her big German bra*...

Jennifer L. Knox took it off in the company of Aaron Belz, Michael Schiavo & Peter Davis last night at Lolita & Gilda's Burlesque Poetry Hour.

Photographic evidence here.

*Disclaimer: "My Big German Bra" actually appears in A Gringo Like Me, not the new book.

Pics from Buffalo...

Rocking beetle podium at Rust Belt
Originally uploaded by abelz



Jennifer L. Knox reading from Drunk by Noon
Originally uploaded by Michael_Kelleher



Jennifer & Shanna signing books
Originally uploaded by abelz



Kevin Thurston & Aaron Belz at Founding Fathers
Originally uploaded by abelz



Aaron Lowinger & Becky at Founding Fathers
Originally uploaded by Michael_Kelleher



Shanna, Aaron & Jennifer at Founding Fathers
Originally uploaded by Michael_Kelleher

Now available in the Bloof store: For Girls (& Others)

For Girls (& Others)
by Shanna Compton
November 2007
Trade Paper Original
ISBN: 978-0-6151-6697-1
80 pp. | $15.00
more info


Grand opening special! For a limited time, get For Girls & Drunk by Noon for the reduced price of 2 for $25 (plus shipping). Details on the main store page.

Bookstores, libraries, and folks who prefer Amazon et al. should be able to order Drunk by Noon any day now. For Girls should be in the system by the end of November.

"The Invisible Stuff"

Aaron Lowinger warms up Buffalo for our upcoming reading and takes a look at Drunk by Noon, For Girls & Aaron Belz's The Bird Hoverer in ArtVoice:

"[...] Knox has the uncanny ability to make you laugh and then make you feel weird about what you just laughed at. The reason for this being, of course, that the subject matter is actually germane to something important. The entertainment value in Knox’s work is balanced by the intelligence and ingenuity of her verse."

"[Belz's] poems have the remarkable ability to turn the mind in multiple directions, line by line. The subsequent dizziness approximates euphoria rather than chaos, as Belz’s energetic verse charges on to the next line, the next take, the next punch, the growing mystery masked by layers of representation. [...] Belz here is throwing the party; times are weird, God is a mummy, so let’s dance!"

"The text of the poems [in For Girls], culled from a variety of other sources as well, presents an unceasing attack on female humanity for the sake of perceived femininity (“never let them see you perspire”). The prevailing and unabashed objectification of women should not come as a surprise in a text that predates universal suffrage, however Compton makes her point inside the many surviving prejudices. When Britney Spears shearing her golden locks is followed with such intense public zeal, surely the unwritten gender rules continue to be heeded. Using this critique as her context, Compton delivers the unexpected other side of the coin, reaching beyond the politics on the surface and delivering delicately crafted and amusing poems."

Read the rest. (Thanks, Aaron!)

A Pafunda a day...

Danielle Pafunda (My Zorba, forthcoming from Bloof in the spring) is the feature of the week over at the always seductive No Tell Motel, with a new poem each day through Friday.

For additional insight into Danielle's luxe grotesquerie, she points helpfully to this essay in Action, Yes.

Didi Menedez also recently interviewed Danielle for Women of the Web.

A Bloof Books celebration at Earshot!

Join us for the next installment of EARSHOT at The Lucky Cat, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. EARSHOT is a bi-monthly reading series, dedicated to featuring new and emerging literary talent in the NYC area.

Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 8 PM
Hosted by Nicole Steinberg

EARSHOT!
A BLOOF BOOKS CELEBRATION

Featuring:

Jennifer L. Knox (author of Drunk by Noon and A Gringo Like Me)
Shanna Compton (author of For Girls and Down Spooky)
John Reid Currie (Queens College)
Seamus Scanlon (City College)
Olivia Kate Cerrone (New York University)

Admission is a mere $5 plus one free drink (beer, wine or well drinks only)!

The Lucky Cat
245 Grand Street
Brooklyn, NY
(between Driggs and Roebling)

For more information on Earshot or e-mail Nicole Steinberg at earshotnyc [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Bloof store is open

Available now from Bloof Books:

Drunk by Noon by Jennifer L. Knox (Nov.)

A Gringo Like Me by Jennifer L. Knox (Nov.)

Or both books for $25 plus shipping. A grand opening special!

Coming soon from Bloof Books:

For Girls by Shanna Compton (Nov.)

My Zorba by Danielle Pafunda (Apr.)

Bloof Books fall reading schedule

The first local reading with books! Jennifer L. Knox and Shanna Compton will be reading from their brand new Bloof books on Friday, October 26 at the Earshot Series in Brooklyn. And whaddaya know, the night before that, they're alllllll the way up in Buffalo reading for Just Buffalo with Aaron Belz. Because that's how they roll.

Now that the books are on the truck, we can get totally excited about Jennifer L. Knox's Drunk by Noon launch party, planned for November 10 at Stain Bar in Brooklyn.

Check the events page for details! (If you'd like to book a Bloof reading, please get in touch.)

Knott on Knox. Kneato.

"Jennifer L. Knox's first book A Gringo Like Me is a rarity in that it is almost as good as the blurbs on its back say it is, and her second book is even better.

"Knox is a tragic poet, though her poems at times seem comic. Very USA in other words. Filled with the despair of our 'fallen names' finding poignant resolutions where none exist.

"The characters in Drunk by Noon are sad spasms desperate for the entertainment promised by the photographs of empty American landscapes, and finding it after all only in each other. For which Knox has the heart to forgive them. Knox has a sympathetic eye for the caricatures and celebrations we USAers use to evade the cultural horror she depicts with complicity as if she too were not entirely innocent of it.

"Her poems typify and experience our angst hypes, our hopeless flippancies. She braves to save whom, herself or us."

--BILL KNOTT

RIP Soft Skull. Long live Soft Skull!

Soft Skull Press is being acquired by Winton Shoemaker, which is also acquiring Counterpoint Press. [More info.] Soft Skull and Counterpoint will be restructured as imprints of the larger organization, and Soft Skull's former publisher Richard Nash will be overseeing both.

Shifts in focus related to the Soft Skull's growth, our own theories about what works and doesn't for poetry publishing, and everything we learned along the way have lead to the founding of Bloof Books, which will continue to publish poetry in the same spirit.

As Richard notes in his post, Soft Skull is not over. And they deserve and can really use your support now! He's offering 40% off ALMOST EVERYTHING now at the Soft Skull store. So allow us to take this opportunity to suggest you pick up some of the poetry, if you haven't. You might consider the following: there are fewer than a dozen copies of Jennifer L. Knox's A Gringo Like Me left in stock there. (After those are sold, Bloof will be rereleasing the book in a new edition to match her forthcoming Drunk by Noon.) [Update 10/8/07: Bloof's version of Gringo is now available.]

Our best wishes to Richard & Soft Skull.