Orders out; store closed

OK, all the December orders through 6 AM this morning have been sent out.

The Bloof Store is now closed. We can continue to take your orders (thanks!), but they will not be processed until we get back from the holiday break on January 2.

If you need something faster than that, why not try our friends at Powell's? They have The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway too.

Have a good one.

Publishers Weekly reviews The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway

The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway
Jennifer L. Knox, Bloof (Ingram, dist.), $15 trade paper (83p) ISBN 978-0-9826587-1-0

"Gene Kelly Sings to the Cow," "A Coyote Walks into a Quiznos": these scenarios, both titles of poems from Knox's third book, are only two of the thoroughly whacked-out setups explored here. Knox's characteristic dark humor is counterbalanced not so much by moments of lyric seriousness as by the work's energy and intensity: Knox not only probes the wrecks and recklessness of a speaker's personal past--most notably, in a literal and drug-induced series of car accidents in the prose-poem sequence "Cars"-- but also turns her sharp eye and sharper ear on the collective wreck of contemporary culture and its distortions of appetite and desire. And although the book is a wild ride, the feeling of being out-of-control is purely illusory; this is, rather, a carefully and artfully designed tour, one fueled by the joint energies of guilt and violence and of the poet's gift for the propulsive sentence, the tight and resonant line. If in the end the poems are too loud for "the quiet work of caring," it's a worthwhile sacrifice: graphic, crude, hilarious, critical, and exhilarating, Knox's poems have the reader "taking the curve magnet-tight--no gap--cresting/ the hill and not falling back to earth but flying off." (Dec.) LINK

Get it direct from the Bloof store here.

Now available for preorder: The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway!

Order here.

We have a limited number of early copies in right now, and first-come orders will go out right away. After those run out, purchases will be preorders and will go out as soon as the shipment comes in (approx 2 weeks).

The official pub date is not till December, so the books will not be available anywhere else (Amazon, etc.) for another 6 weeks, give or take.

Why are you just sitting there?
You know you want one.
You can't wait!

What's up with Sandra Simonds?

Hey, we can answer that question.



Sandra recently appeared on the Joe Milford Poetry Show. Listen in, as she and Joe discuss MFA programs, poetry, and more.

Her poem "Wife's Job at the Perpetual Alps Factory" appears in the latest Believer.

Steven Fama offers a really terrific (and extensive) appreciation of Sandra's work from Warsaw Bikini, Made from Scratch and her recent reading in San Francisco on his blog, the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica, here.

And in case you missed it back in July/August, check the back issue of Poetry for 2 new poems and a podcast featuring Sandra!

We're so looking forward to her forthcoming Cleveland State book, aren't you?

In the meantime, we happily remind you Warsaw Bikini stuns & delights. Get it.

Catching up with Danielle Pafunda

Our dear D always has a lot going on! Here's a rundown of what she's been up to lately.

Yesterday, a piece from her series-in-progress "The Dead Girls Speak in Unison" was featured as the Poem of the Day by the Academy of American Poets at Poets.org, complete with a cool little flash video in Text Flow.

Nic Sebastian offers this mellifluous audio performance of Danielle's poem "The Girls in the Apartment Upstairs," at Whale Sound.

Susana Gardner speaks up for Danielle's latest book, Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies, at Steve Evans' annual Third Factory Attention Span. (As usual, the whole list is fascinating and you'll find some new loves.) And you can purchase the book from Noemi Press here.

She offers her thoughts on the state of American poetry (along with many others!) in this forum-type piece in a recent edition of The Huffington Post.

And the formidable Ms. Pafunda continues to mix it up with the women of VIDA & Pussipo.

Look for her frequently on the new group blog sponsored by Action Books, Montevidayo.

As always, we encourage you to greedily obtain a copy of My Zorba here.

Christian Bök is jealous

You can get it here, in our store. How about that?

The Equalizer 1.3

From editor Michael Schiavo comes a new pdf mag, in serial form. Please copy/forward/repost/tweet, etc. Oh, and don't forget to read it.


Click icon to download the 468K pdf

In this installment:

The Equalizer 1.3

Joshua Corey, Stephanie Anderson, Buck Downs, Shanna Compton, Laura Carter, Peter Davis, Alana Dagen, Reb Livingston, Cody Walker, John Cotter, Craig Santos Perez, and Chris Martin.

"Please forward this email and attachment to interested readers. If you'd like to sign up for The Equalizer mailing list to receive sections as they're released throughout October 2010, please email theunrulyservant [at] gmail [dot] com. Visit michaelschiavo.blogspot.com for more information, including updates & links to websites that will be hosting some or all of The Equalizer sections. Feel free to post this PDF to your blog or website. Please include the names of contributors in your post.

The Equalizer 1.1 available online via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

The Equalizer 1.2 available online via HTMLGiant and Maureen Thorson.

Oct. 7: The Equalizer 1.4 featuring a selection of John Gallaher's Guidebooks.

Report from Atlanta, Now with More Tallahassee!

Now up at The Best American Poetry blog.

Speaking of The Best American Poetry, see you at the launch reading Thursday!

UPDATE: Also one up now from Tallahassee, by Peter Davis.

Dispatch from Muncie

Our first road report is up, at the Best American Poetry blog. (Thanks, Stacey!)

Probably post some pics and stuff later. We're about to get on the road to N A S H V I L L E!

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! in The Midwest Book Review

Hey, look at this:

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!
Peter Davis
Bloof Books
9780982658703, $16.00
Midwest Book Review

As demonstrated by the pieces that comprise Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!, Peter Davis is a master of the prose poem format. A kind of one-man poetry slam (the titles of his poems are as unusual as the poems themselves), the quality of his work is nothing short of impressive and highly recommended reading, especially for those with an appreciation of his contemporary avant garde style. "Poem That Belligerently Addresses People Who Believe I'm Self-Obsessed Or Something Like That":

Well, you have an enormous ego too. That's why you're reading this, you narcissist! Get over yourself! Sure, you're smart because you get what this poem is about and how cool it is, or you get how crappy this poem is, and you know why, but you're still just another reader. So, don't look at me. You're the one obsessed with yourself!

Get it here...or come see us at one of these places.

On the road with Bloof

We're leaving in the morning. Today, we're feeling giddy.

We may be posting some here and probably to our Facebook group.

We'll definitely be doing some reports from the road as guests on the Best American Poetry Blog. What the hell, we'll even spell check those.

Please note that if you order a book from bloofbooks.com in the next ten days, it will probably not ship until the 24th. The whole staff will be in the rental car.

Hope to see you out there. Do say hi!

Eeeeeeeek rhymes with next weeeeeeeeek: The final schedule

Ta da! The Bloof Books 2010 Tour Booking Extravaganza c'est fini!

See our events page for the complete schedule, in such high-def all its age spots and enlarged pores are showing (and who told it to wear that fleshtone polo?!?)

Just kidding; it looks FAB.

Oh, and did we mention that these stops are the only opportunities you will have until mid-November to get one of these:



Or one of these (ever)?



If you want one of these, we'll have those too, but you don't have to wait. Just click on over to the Bloof store:



So...are you gonna come see us, or what?

It's going to look a little something like this:

View Larger Map

See the events page for (developing) details. Just about got it done.

COMING SOON: The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway by Jennifer L. Knox

Painting by Charles Browning; design by Charlie Orr

Fascination with the down-and-out lurks behind Knox’s layers of irony and comic distance. She’s at her best and most entertaining in bursts of everyday surrealism. Publishers Weekly

These are not poems to be placed on a pedestal. They are to be read and, most importantly, enjoyed. She is doing something that captures attention, is truly artistic, and fills a void in contemporary poetry. Jacket

Though many tout Knox’s humor as her most popular quality, like the best technicians of comedy it is the jugular she goes for, by way of the jocular. Knox’s voice comes at us courageous and stouthearted, sticking her flag deep in the soil of this weird and wicked world. Harriet

The humor in Knox’s poetry is used with precise skill. Indeed, behind every comic moment is a tragedy shouting through its megaphone. Knox never gives the impression that comedy is her only purpose. American Poet

Not since I first read James Tate have I encountered a poet who is able to create a world that is at once so bizarrely asymmetrical to ours and yet somehow uncannily accurate in its portrayal of humanness. I’d recommend this book to anyone, even if they don’t start their day with a sixer. Coldfront

Knox’s poems knock me out. They have a pace of imagination, an ease of inventiveness that gives me an excuse to use the word brio. The oddities of her work create a space in which it’s possible to be oddly sincere. It’s as if Knox is asking what really matters, in poems that move powerfully toward an answer. Bob Hicok

Of all the clowns in the poetry circus, Knox is my favorite because her work is stunning to look at, full of showbiz savvy, and more than a little scary. David Kirby

Jennifer L. Knox’s poems are poignant, smart and compassionate. I love this poetry, and I feel very close to it. Knox is the kind of author one wants to be friends with, in Holden Caulfield’s sense, after reading the work. As far as I’m concerned, there is no higher compliment for a writer. Noelle Kocot

Man, this book is fucking genius, and I never say shit like that. Sharon Mesmer

Danielle Pafunda at The Nepotist

Go peek.

If you appreciate those you will most certainly be delightfully creeped out by the shapeshifting prose-poemish My Zorba.

Mark Wallace on Sandra Simonds' Used White Wife & Made from Scratch

Two chapbooks by Sandra Simonds, Used White Wife and the self-published Made From Scratch, are fascinating and energetic reads. In UWW, Simonds’ flair for high octane, historically detailed Surrealism takes a flarfy turn for the outrageously comical: “You’re not supposed to fuck your first cousin, expert/ on Reform Era pamphlets,/ or eat an oatmeal-flavored Powerbar on/the toilet. Even my dog, Scruffy-Pie, knows/not to shit in the room/where you sleep or sleep/where you’re not supposed to think of the clitoris.” UWW is hilarious, but also psychological insightful, a rollick through the ages that turns up a lot of hidden cultural embarrassments. Made From Scratch has a few outrageous moments, but seems more personal, historically specific, and sad by turns, and at times its emotional power runs deeper than that in the other chap. Both books feature Simonds’ startlingly rich vocabulary. She’s a writer who is only continuing to grow into the range of what she can do.

Mark's blog is here.
Used White Wife is here.
More good news re: Sandra's forthcoming book Mother Was a Tragic Girl is here. (Congratulations, Sandra!)

Oh, and naturally Warsaw Bikini is available right here.

Sale extended through July 10

The Best American Poetry blog gets even bester.

Our own Jennifer L. Knox guest blogs this week, on topics of her inimitable choosing.

Yesterday, we learned about fireworks (among other things). Link.

Today, we are enjoined to compare Comment Field Bullies (CFBs) to rednecks, trashing a state park. Link.

Go & become enmirthed. I mean, immersed.

Celebrate (this) independent: 2 books for $20, this holiday weekend

Saturday, July 3-Monday, July 5 Saturday, July 10
Get any 2 Bloof Books for $20 + free shipping.

Browse the store here, then use the button below to order.

[Expired. Thanks for your orders!]

And try not to set any corn fields afire with those roman candles. We speak from experience.

Update: Let's celebrate Jen's guest-blogging gig at BAP too, and extend this sale through the rest of the week.

The New Yorker this week...

...features "Pimp My Ride" by Jennifer L. Knox.

The cover depicts the creatures of the Gulf calling for testimony from an evil *%$#&@ in a suit.



For those of you visiting via The Google seeking more info on Ms. Knox, we're pleased to tell you we're publishing her third book this fall.

It's called The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, and will sport another awesome cover painting by Charles Browning in a design by Charlie Orr. (Sorry we can't show you yet.)

In the meantime, you'll want to pick up Drunk by Noon and A Gringo Like Me, Jen's first two books. Hey, we got those!

Jennifer L. Knox (& more) at Charlie Orr's The Hypothetical Library

In case you missed it, Charlie Orr's [awesome] new design blog The Hypothetical Library recently featured Ms. Knox as a guest designer.

Or shall we say, guest plagiarizer? Guest vandalist?

>>>Link<<<

Mark Bittman, come to find out, has a sense of humor. Whew.

---

If you have not yet checked out The Hypothetical Library, go do so now. Charlie Orr is one of those rare folks who reads poetry--and even goes to poetry readings--while not writing poems himself. He has designed both of Jen's books for Bloof (and will be doing her third), as well as a bunch of other poetry stuff, and recently guest-blogged about these projects for the Best American Poetry blog:

Designs for Reb Livingston
Designs for Shanna Compton
Designs for Jennifer L. Knox
Designs for Kenneth Koch, David Lehman, Jim Cummins & LIT

In the last week and a half he ran a totally rad three-part on Neil Gaiman, featuring an unreadable apocalypse-inducing hypothetical book in three formats: hardcover, audio & digital. Yeah, Twitter went nuts. Start here.

Early reviews for Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!

Yes, this is a cake decorated to look like PPP by Peter Davis. How cool is that?

Reb Livingston at We Who Are About to Die:

Last month at the AWP conference in Denver, I had the pleasure of hearing Peter Davis read at two off-site events. One thing was confirmed: drunks love Peter Davis’ poems. This is not an admission of my own looped state. I’m somebody’s mother. Perhaps the drunken connect to Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! (Bloof Books) has to do with its exhilarated title and excessively self-conscious poems. These poems really want you to like them. They beg for love.

Adam Robinson at HTMLGIANT:

Peter Davis’s new collection, Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!, is just asking to be reviewed. Literally. The poems, each one an address, are not poems so much as they are statements of what the poem is saying, and what they are saying in many cases is: I’d love it if you would write about this poem at your blog or in a review at a very good journal. Davis wants to get a tenure-line job as badly as he wants the reader to like the work. I thought at the beginning that the gag would become tiresome as the poems went along, but on the contrary — the more I read, the deeper the spread and in spite of their homeliness, the book becomes a really beautiful thing. The way this book works will take a long time to figure out.

Joshua Corey on his blog, Cahiers de Corey:

Bloof's latest, Peter Davis' Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! [...] made me laugh out loud. They're prose poems that are kind of like the voice-overs to other poems.

Sean Lovelace, who also posts a video of Pete reading:

I’ve seen him read these before and it kills. The delivery, the subject, the meta. I don’t find that many poems truly funny, as in layered funny. Davis does that. Get the fucking book is what I’m saying. It is and is not poetry. That’s the thing to me. It is wonderful. It is odd.

Direct link to the YouTube thingy.

But where oh where can you get one (with a 100% totally straight spine)? We just happen to know a place.

The press has been informed

Free! Behind!

Construe that as you must, but what we mean is:

FREE pdf books by Anne Boyer (author of the forthcoming Bloof book JANE) are awesomely available for FREE download, FREE. Right here.

BEHIND is what we are on NaPoWriMo, thanks to the confluence of family visits, AWP, and tax day. But thanks to the existence of "weekends" we will be catching up soon.

Love,
Bloof

Preorder special! Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! by Peter Davis with free shipping

The book won't officially be out till JUNE or JULY, but we have early copies and Pete debuted it at AWP in Denver with two rocking readings. We're so excited, we'd like to offer you free shipping as a preorder special.

You can read sample poems on Pete's book-specific blog here.

$16, no tax, free shipping UPDATE: It's now available in our store...and will be at other retailers soon. Official pub date August 2010, with a mini tour to follow. Stay tuned!

7

[a poem was here]

NaPoWriMo Twenty Ten

Starting this Thursday, Sandra and Shanna will be posting daily poems here at the Bloof blog, alllllllllll through the month of April.

Jennifer will be posting hers, along with Ada Limon and Jason Schneiderman, at Ada's blog here.

And hopefully we'll have some visits from Danielle, Anne & Pete too.

Also, check MC Reen's list of other participants here at her fancy new Official NaPoWriMo Website®.

Bloof @ AWP 2010: Denver, CO

The full schedule is now up at our events page.

Review of For Girls (& Others) by Laura Carter

[Since the original blog this appeared no longer exists, we have replaced the link with the text of the review.]

THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010
Shanna Compton
For Girls (& Others)
Bloof Books, 2007

The Preface to Shanna Compton's mysterious, sometime flarfy, and always intriguing book of poems from 2007, For Girls (& Others), is taken directly from another book with the same name, Mrs. E. R. Shepherd's For Girls: A Special Physiology, from 1882. The preface, uncannily flarfy for an 1882 manual, is as follows, at least in part:

The author of this book lays no claim to originality of subject-matter. She has nothing new to say. She does, however, claim originality upon one ground, that of making selections from the writings and teachings of others, and from observation and experience; that of culling here and there knowledge, facts, motives, ideas, and grouping them into practical form.

There is something about Compton's work (those of you who have read Down Spooky may seem common threads of interest) that this introduction pins down, and the poems she includes in this collection are delightful. She also tells us in the notes that many are borrowed poems, found poems, flarf-like, or pure flarfy intelligence. And what do we learn? Well, the book is separated into two sections, "For Girls" and "Comedy of Manners," and the poems contained in both sections are darkly humorous and (as I originally thought when reading the book) present a radical presentation of, well, what goes by the name of "the negative," and can oddly enough apply to either Keatsian negative capability or to a critique of ideology (take your pick) that negates the material presented by mirroring it, by tarrying in its underbelly. Much as flarf does, yes.

And so we have lines like these from "Opening Address," the book's beginning:

We shall now begin
the study of girls
upon whom the universe
bestows fullness
in all the right places. (1-5)

The fullness of the girls in question lets us know that (as we poets perhaps already know) that Compton's narrator is not quite still a girl herself, so what is the negation of this fullness? We get the sense throughout the poems that Compton is picking fun at girls, as in the following poem, which I'll present in its entirety:

Pruning of the Shrubby

Think of growing the funny little things
in your own garden from seed
Find & love an unpretentious patch

A pinkish variety is known
as the maiden's blush

If your aim is ornamental,
ostentatious but without poison,
she may be slipped
until she is tall & decorative

Likewise a gift of old growth
in water or sand
she may be coaxed to give off
the heady scent of roses

A balm with hairy leaves
Yellow, variegated
Nutmeg or apple-scented
Large, dark green, velvety
A true fingerbowl geranium

Her feathery foliage
spreads rapidly

She is very white & woolly

Better known as sweet asylum

This poem is subtly critical of such white, woolly, churchiness as the girl might embody. It also subtly picks fun at the ornamental while not mincing words, while making sure that the stanzas lead up to the ultimate assessement: "sweet asylum." For what, we may ask, is the world of a girl without the inevitable conclusion: she must become a woman, as a Comptonian feminism would have it. And continuing to prune away until there is no excess left, to use a gardening metaphor, would perhaps break the girl of her finest furies and perhaps plausibly strengths. We get the sense throughout the book that Compton is holding out a sort of warning to girls, but also a comic relief that puts the picture of one's life into perspective. The next poem, on the opposite page, aptly called "The Bloody Intellect," gives a similar perspective in the last stanza, as follows: "So public a face, hers, / it hardly belongs. / A camera. All poses. All lies." (14-16) Here we understand that the idea that a pose is essential to a woman's becoming is perhaps an outdated psychoanalytical conception of what feminism is all about (borrowed perhaps from some of Lacan's ironic positions?). This poem is brilliantly imaginative and suggestive, and here I quote the third stanza:

Beginning with white
is to erase the body,
blank the self
to receive the costumes it consumes. (7-10)

There's a sense in which an a priori positioning is rightly refused and replaced with an insistence that one begins from what is, in fact, actually there. In many ways, this poem is a little critique of an idealistic intellect that would preclude the possibility of coming to terms with the physical and sensual world in which we reside: the real. Does one begin with a blank, or is there not already a world or a set of chemical and biological predispositions to consider, much less flesh?

I could continue by quoting more of these gems, but I'll only end with the following: Compton's book deftly shows the errors of girlhood, the incessant questionings and idealisms that preclude the world. And in that sense, she provides a negative mirror to the "Snow White" myth (the word "white" appears a good deal in this book). For what are we, as women, without material positions and real worlds? This book is an empowering testimony to what can happen when these things are given up and a material (or at least more pragmatic) conception of the world is embraced. And hence, their timeliness. And hence, their relevance.

Welcome to the Hypothetical Library!

Book designer to the stars (Soft Skull, Top Shelf, Bloof, No Tell Books, LIT, Penguin, et al.), Charlie Orr kicks off a new project designing covers for books that will never exist. Welcome to the Hypothetical Library!

Party in Denver: BLOOF + COOPER DILLON + NOEMI

Mark your AWP calendar for Thursday night!

7-10 PM
Green Spaces Colorado
1368 26th Street

We're throwing a small press party in Denver, featuring Bloof Books, Cooper Dillon Books & Noemi Press.

Readings by:

Shanna Compton
Peter Davis
Jill Alexander Essbaum
Jennifer L. Knox
Gary L. McDowell
Danielle Pafunda
Nate Pritts
Sandra Simonds

& more TDB

RSVP at the Facebook page here.

This Friday in Manhattan: LIT party w/ Jennifer L. Knox

To come one, come all ...

And join LIT Magazine & Housing Works Bookstore Cafe for an evening of literary refreshment, complete with prose, poetry, and a dandy selection of snacks and beverages.

Your invitation is cordially attached. (Please note: The date of the event is FRIDAY FEBRUARY 5, 2010 and begins at 7 PM sharp.)

Celebrate: The LIT 17 Launch Party!
Time: Friday February 5, 2010 at 7 PM
Place: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
Address: 126 Crosby Street in SoHo.

With readings by Sasha Feltcher, Phillip Gardner, Jennifer L. Knox, and Anne Ray.

Sasha Fletcher's novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS AND WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE SKY is due out from ml press in December in the year 2010. He is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Columbia University in the city of New York. http://anicecoldcocacola.blogspot.com

A three-time winner of The South Carolina Fiction Project, Phillip Gardner has recently appeared in The North American Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Potomac Review, and New Delta Review. He is the author of Someone To Crawl Back To, a collection of short stories. Two new collections, That Place Love Built and Freaks Out are forthcoming.

Jennifer L. Knox’s new book, The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, is
forthcoming from Bloof in fall 2010. Her first two books of poems, Drunk
by Noon and A Gringo Like Me are also available from Bloof Books. Her work has appeared three times in the Best American Poetry series, as well as in the anthologies Best American Erotic Poems and Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to Present.

Anne Ray was raised in suburban Maryland and has been an English teacher, a waitress, a gardener, and a fish monger. She attended the Brooklyn College MFA Program and the undergraduate writing program at Carnegie Mellon University. Her fiction appeared in Brooklyn Review, and her nonfiction has appeared in Washington City Paper and Baltimore City Paper. She lives in Brooklyn.

Sincerely,
The Editors

Coming soonish

Monday night reading change

Please note, Sandra Simonds has had to cancel her reading at the Poetry Project on Monday the 11th. But the show goes on with Diana Hamilton & Laura Jaramillo!

January readings

Sandra Simonds: NYC in January 11

Jennifer L. Knox: NYC in January 14

Details on the events page.