We've moved!

Hello, this is our old blog. As of November 2018, we have moved.

This archive will remain available for a bit as we relocate some of its contents, but new posts are appearing here:

bloofbooks.com/blog

Website redesign in progress. If we disappear, don't worry.

Please pardon our appearance as we migrate the site to WordPress and refresh the look and content. This is a long-overdue update, but we will be back ASAP to announce our new chapbook lineup.

This blog should stay stable until we've completed the transition, but the rest of the site may disappear or look odd as we work.

If you need to order something, you can always find our Square store here: https://squareup.com/store/bloof-books/ 

Monday in Philadelphia at the Black Sheep Pub

Monday, September 10 at 7:30 in Philadelphia

Painted Bride Quarterly presents

hosted by Paul Siegell

Kirsten Kaschock

Pattie McCarthy

Catie Rosemurgy

Shanna Compton

Black Sheep Pub

247 S. 17th Street

Facebook Event Page

Four Philadelphia-area poets of Bloof will be reading at the Black Sheep Pub! Copies of Catie's new chapbook, First the Burning, will be available. Come see us.

FIRST THE BURNING by Catie Rosemurgy

First the Burning, "dark" cover art: typescript, matches,
compressed charcoal, eraser, fire, river water

First the Burning, "light" cover art: typescript, matches,
compressed charcoal, eraser, fire, river water

First the Burning 

Catie Rosemurgy 

July 2018
7 x 7 | 42 pages
$8

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CHOOSE A COVER STYLE: If you have a preference for the cover style, please indicate in "notes to seller" during checkout. (If you ordered before we added "light" on 8/4/18 you will receive "dark.") 

Cover art: typescript, matches, compressed charcoal, eraser, fire, river water
Giclée print on Mohawk i-Cream Eco Tone 80 lb cover
Laser-print interior on cream 70 lb text
Hand sewn in natural twine

Limited to 150 numbered copies

BLOOF BOOKS CHAPBOOK SERIES
Volume 3: Issue 7 (2018)
ISSN 2373-163X

NOTE: Shipping charges are for US orders only. Please email sales at bloof books dot com to request international shipping, including Canada. (Sorry, new US postal rules for Canada.)

FIRST THE BURNING begins with a girl emerging soot-smeared from a river, having miraculously survived a fire that engulfed everything for miles. "Every so often there's a fire that changes everything," she explains. But what if that fire somehow returns to burn again, impossibly, every day? What happens to the girl who survives, who does she become? As she persists in the cycle of daily disaster, she begins to wonder if there is more than one girl, herself and another, a not-quite twin, in her perpetually scorched surroundings. Every day as the townspeople are "strung onto the fire like beads," we lose track of which fire is raging now, and which girl in these burning woods is which.

Excerpt: 

They say that just before the fire arrived, animals came pouring silently
out of the forest, all kinds together, heading to the river, “enemies and friends,”
their tongues hanging out.

For days before, the sun was “red” and “swollen,”
“many times its normal size.”
The moon was “not itself.”

The earth is always showing us how to have the wildest experiences.
While she runs, I remain still and mark her trail
like an axe blaze on a tree.

Also this: up close, her pupil moves quickly,
like a whole other creature living in her head.
If you don’t know what I mean, maybe it’s been too long
since you’ve had a friend.

Haven’t you ever been a rough, rough man a hundred miles away
from even a scrap of soft cloth to rub against your skin?
Then you look down and see a bolt of silk.

Not once such a man? I don’t believe you.

--

About the author:

Catie Rosemurgy is the author of two books of poems, My Favorite Apocalypse and The Stranger Manual, both from Graywolf Press. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Pew Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at the College of New Jersey. First the Burning is an excerpt from a longer book in progress, The Forthcoming Disasters of Gold River.

From First the Burning (Bloof, 2018)

Unique scorch marks on each copy's front flyleaf

BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS by Peter Davis

BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS

Peter Davis

6 x 9 inches

236 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9965868-70
$16

Publication date: April 2018

NOW AVAILABLE
The fourth book of poems by Peter Davis, Band Names & Other Poems. 
Preorders ship in February, exclusively from Bloof Books. Retailers will begin stocking the book in mid-March.

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Big book shipping options

1 copy ($16.00 + $5 priority shipping) $21.00 USD 2 copies ($16 ea + $5.00 priority shipping) $39.00 USD

*NOTE: The domestic shipping charge automatically added by PayPal is for US addresses only. Square will only accept US addresses. For international shipping including Canada, contact us at sales at bloof books dot com. Postal rules have recently changed and we are unable to use First Class Mail to Canada for this item. (Check your favorite online booksellers in your home country—they can probably save you on shipping. Our books do have global distribution.)

In Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!, Peter Davis asked himself, "What would happen if poets told the whole truth about themselves and their artistic ambitions? What if every poem were stripped down to radical honesty?” In TINA he asked, "What would happen if every poem were addressed to the same person, someone not exactly a beloved?" 

This time around, Davis started not with a question but a dare as his constraint: create an endless list of band names, each plausible, spanning a variety of musical styles and eras, without exhausting the concept.

BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS is the result of that experiment, the Oulipo-inflected descendent of Raymond Queneau’s 100,000,000,000,000 Poems, sort of, but funnier and about bands. Turns out, naming bands is a peculiar linguistic activity—they’ve got their own grammar, and a flexible form that’s as ready to satirize current events as to indulge in a really bad pun. Readers will soon find themselves visualizing and even hearing the bands: understanding how Shock Fawn differs from The Stitch Release, why Stations of the Crossbow could never share a bill with Trauma Rasta or Gretchen Retch, while Midnight in Fairy Tales opening for Paper Kate makes total sense. When Trump Wall and the Mexico Pays does a contemporary-country cover of “Foreign Scandal” by 80s punk legends Reagan’s Assassination the crowd goes unwittingly wild.

Two books in one! OTHER POEMS consists of 40 standalone pieces like “Ocean Radiator,” “The Use of Youth,” “The Future as We Planned It,” and “Succeeding in America.”  

PETER DAVIS's previous books of poetry are Hitler’s Mustache, Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!, and TINA. He writes, draws, and makes music in Muncie, Indiana, where he lives with his wife and kids and teaches at Ball State University. For more information visit artisnecessary.com.

Poems from this new book have appeared in Ampersand; the Awl; the Believer; Big Bell; Columbia Poetry Review; Forklift, Ohio; Masque and Spectacle; interrupture; Juked; Omniverse; Open Letters Monthly; Poet Lore; Powder Keg; Rhino; and Sixth Finch.

Cover design for BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS

EXCERPT (originally published in Omniverse):

Succeeding in America

It is not as if I can capture the high road simply
by mowing everyone down at the ankles. In fact,
as I try to navigate the crust, I find my desire
to spring forward is held in check my desire
to fall back. It’s like, for each and every Newton
there is an opposite Newton, say, a fig, a Wayne
who is chubby as a tween but a real fucker
on the banjo. Also, as far as showmanship goes,
it’s hard to beat a drum harder than all the
daydreaming eyes at the soda fountain or all
the twinkling cheeks at the record store. For
every black button on a lapel, there is a tiny wish
in my heart. At every hopeful talent show
the number of dance steps is the same number
of steps to my bed. In my bed, where my dreams
are cartoon surfers, I can feel the musing of
the future. I feel the skin that isn’t yours spread
across an ocean that isn’t ours. It’s like the foam
in my throat is a bubbled snake, like the vest
in my chest is a fur grenade.

Note on shipping to Canada

We are unpleasantly surprised to find it is no longer practical for us to ship our books to readers and reviewers in Canada, at least not directly from our HQ in New Jersey.

Here are the new USPS rules: http://blog.stamps.com/2017/12/26/important-usps-making-changes-first-class-mail-international-flats/

We have processed all outstanding orders, but as of today we will be refusing/refunding orders and review copies that call for shipping into Canada. We're researching some workarounds, but here's the gist:

For a typical 6-oz. poetry paperback, the shipping to Canada via First Class International Package Rate would be $9.50 US, above and beyond the $15 or $16 cover price.

Some of our books are a good deal heavier than that. Recently it cost us $16 in postage to mail a single copy of our largest book to a reviewer in Canada. To ship that book to a reader, we'd have to charge $32, double the cover price.

We can reroute review copy requests via our international printer network, but that also costs us $10 a pop. So we can't do that, like, a lot.

We are internationally distributed though, via Ingram/Lightning Source and various wholesalers. So your favorite local booksellers and online bookstores up there should be able to get the books to you that way, with much lower shipping fees.

Exception: We think the chapbooks can still squeak by as First Class International Letter Rate, unless they are over 3.5 oz. The only way to get our handmades is to order them directly. We're upset that this means some chapbooks may not be available to our readers outside the US.

But we'll keep looking into this.

In the meantime, please note that the PayPal buttons on this site do not accurately reflect this new rule, and orders placed to Canadian addresses will be refunded/rerouted as necessary. (We're about to rebuild the site and store and will address that then. Our Square store only accepts US orders anyway, per their own policy.)

My pre-revolutionary decadence

My body is ready to defend my babyand run. The ants scout new paths.
Or I am agitated, anxious and irritable
while the male dove sits on the eggs at night
and the female roosts nearby. The mild
mania of sleep deprivation and the
sleep deprivation of late Capitalism. The
good enough worker and the good
enough mother. No more "mom" as
prefix, no more reader suggestions
on regressions and sleeping. I lack
ambition but want some things: Love,
sleep, travel, wit, a healthy spine.
A spine with natural curves. Slight euphoria.

Figure 16

 Anyone can say     he might have made errors in judgement    or most of the performers were the audience but         did the intended recipient ever hear you are my favorite professor      so far in collage?    The book most occupied       was the one counting   on modular dividers while the mail carriers      and adjuncts changed without notice Does anyone need          a general understanding when the obvious pelts us daily? Right under our noses       which have mysteriously departed or euphemism for being suffocated in the immediate death-trap         of planning or not planning for that which isn’t Paradox of discarded objects         that ought to be described                I would rather be a student     in collage than college in mess than mass         no paradise The dancers rearrange themselves to think about gravity      as agency then drape their bodies over the nearest available surface--     watermelon ottoman autocratic exaggeration each other each other           each other Attention glues to contact Instead of going to sleep she said           I’m just going to close my eyes and think about what I might dream about

Affect-moulding behaviour

(Milk) expression. Napoleon thought he was civilized
and civilizing when he marched his army to Egypt
in 1798. And in 1932 the Seventh Heavy Battery
of the Royal Australian Artillery alighted at
Campion in Western Australia to shoot migrating emu.
That was this morning. Is a breast pump face plate
replaceable? When babies who can barely
speak great each other with waves. Rabbits touch noses,
and I am strangely familiar with colleagues. We're
alive, please don't fire me. The breast pump face
plate is broken. There is no one to appreciate
how calm I am or see my abbreviated rage
toward this badly-made object, it's design unchanged
since the 30s. Abbreviated rage about metonymy:
that old cow. There's this idea that animals can
shake off stress and not take things personally.
There's this idea that we can suffer less.

Without Warning

One day, I will begin dressing like Tania Balachova
as Inèz Serrano in Huis clos and I will be
honest about my evil deeds and cruelty.
But just now I tried to rub toothpaste
into my dry hands. I have a leather sofa
from Ikea, not un canapé bleu. I think of the savory 
snack first not an antique sofa.
I'm so tired. An antique sofa sounds uncomfortable.

Jennifer L. Knox in the Washington Post

A glorious surprise! We didn't know this was coming, but it's a great piece in the Washington Post for National Poetry Month/NaPoWriMo, in which Jen discusses what happened in her classroom when a student (for the first time in her experience) included an ableist slur in a poem he brought to workshop.

Read it here. 

Find all four of Jennifer's books—Days for Shame & Failure, The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway, Drunk by Noon, and A Gringo Like Me—in our store here.

8

[expired]

An Elaborate Kind of Turn

When emotion becomes uncontainable, what
happens when we map the cave, visit the penguin

colony, create a database of all the flowering trees
in our quadrant of the city? I've said that linoleum

would be better than wall-to-wall, that a cave
is as good as a portal, that I'm sorry for breaking

that vase while doing a particular kind of pirouette
with a name I don't know then remember:

fouettees rond de jambe en tournant. It's absurd
to wake up in bed instead of somewhere on the

Platte River in Nebraska at sunset, near migrating
sandhill cranes. In the story, she does not dream of levitating.

She just levitates.

Water, Light, Air

I'm giving you everything. You can't
know anything. She's not going to read that
Jean-Paul Sartre play, not today. To celebrate
an unremarkable birthday in her late 30s,
she went to a Theravada Buddhist monastery
in rural West Virginia to cultivate awareness
of death. "Of course I want to die, Mom."
There are hundreds of mattress reviews
declaring how "very firm" the mattress is,
but it's so soft, and what is language, anyway:
"Sometimes I lay in bed and think about
what it would be like to live on a pirate ship,"
she said. I look at a bird, probably a robin
or sparrow or dove. Imagine rage you cannot imagine
between every sentence.  What has someone
done to you and what have you done. What's missing
is the sound of the dishwasher. The headache 
that begins in your teeth. The sound of your
sweetheart breathing. Everything is missing.

Kash6: 8-count

She walked at a clip down the street 

in front of his shop every week-

day for seven years. All spring long 

she wore an ankle-length raincoat-- 

eggshell--whether or not the fore-

cast called for it--and a matching 

hat in rain, but did not clutch an in-

elegant umbrella. Pastel

sweaters took her through fall, as if 

November could chance courting May. 

He never stepped out, purposely

forgetting apron, to sweep clear 

the stoop. He imagined she had 

a schedule she would mind him up-

setting. It pleased him to refrain 

from causing her inconvenience.

Minor exchanges he made up 

he filled with fine talk, her pale voice 

tidy. She must be frugal, yes—

wasn’t the coat proof? He could not 

fathom the type of woman who

would repurchase a piece season

after season and--once it be- 

came finally unfindable--

have it unconstructed and re-
made. Yet her walk-bys were as Swiss 

as clockwork. Of his dreams he did 

not want to be cured, though they be

lean game. Her face was not the face 

he dreamt of as he cut. Faces

matter little when a life is 
freshly killed red slabs twined, packaged 

in brownpaper, unspoilt. What is 
a yolk but a bit of sun saved 
for breaking later--on the day 
she fails to rise to precisely 

cross the vision of a humble 
man? An egg can be beaten, is

indeed pleasurable to beat.
A metronome beats until stopped.

We're OPEN

Guidelines: http://news.bloofbooks.com/p/open-reading-period-guidelines.html

April at the Bloof Blog, aka NaPoWriMo 2018

We're going to write poems every day in April, participating in NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo, a public poetry celebration initiated by Maureen Thorson. Read about the history of this unofficial, unaffiliated, noncommerical event here. NaPoWriMo coincides but is unaffiliated with that other April poetry thing—National Poetry Month sponsored by our friends at the Academy of American Poets/Poets.org.

The poets who will be posting at this blog, so far are: 

Shanna Compton

Natalie Eilbert

Farrah Field

K. Lorraine Graham

Kirsten Kaschock

Becca Klaver

Jennifer L. Knox

Amy Lemmon

Rebecca Loudon

Danielle Pafunda

Catie Rosemurgy

Sandra Simonds

Maureen Thorson (at her own blog here)

Elisabeth Workman

You can use those links to follow individual poets, or just see what floats by here. 

Some of us will be posting full drafts, some of us snippets or revisions of work already in progress. Some of us will disappear the drafts after a day or so—so stop by daily to catch them all—and some of us might now. There are really no rules. Except to write. 

BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS update (& other updates)

Dear readers of Bloof,

Hello!

Remember blogs? We're delighted to discover we still have one. We're gonna be redesigning the site soon to streamline and update lots of its features, including this old thang. The URL might change a bit, but we'll let you know. Because we have stuff to tell you that we want you to actually see.*

First, if you preordered a copy of Peter Davis's BAND NAMES & OTHER POEMS it is now in the mail. You will have it in a few days (if you don't have it already). It'll start showing up in stores/online stores sometime next month.

If you need a review copy, please get in touch. We're preparing the publicity mailing now. (info at bloof books dot com)

We're still working on the proofs for THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED by CAConrad & Frank Sherlock. As we get closer to finalizing that we will keep you posted. That preorder special is still available in the store. [This book was dropped by the press in a joint decision by CAConrad & the publisher. It is no longer available as of 4/12/19.]

This post is also to warm up the blog for April daily poems. That's right—we're going to participate in NaPoWriMo again this year. Learn about the event (or sign up your own site) here.

We're going to be shifting most of our announcements to this venue (and our monthly or less than) email newsletter, because *Facebook is sucking for Pages these days. And because we're unhappy bee-ing there in general. For now these blog posts will still show up on our FB page as links, but we're hoping you'll follow us here too, and/or Twitter and Intagram (both @bloofbooks) where we plan to stay for now.

(Yes, we know Instagram is FB, but it's sufficiently different that we still find it useful…and enjoyable.)

May the bees be with you,
Bloof

SOLD OUT: Exercises in Painting by Khadijah Queen

Now available as a free ebook!

Get the PDF (770 KB)

Exercises in Painting
Khadijah Queen

SORRY, this chapbook is sold out. But the free ebook version is now available at link above!

Hand-sewn in natural twine
Natural White Felt Textured 80# Cover, full-color inkjet
Natural Smooth 70# Text Interior, b&w laser jet
5.5 x 8.5
24 pages
$8

Bloof Books Chapbooks Series
Volume 3: Issue 5 (2016)
ISSN 2373-163X
ISSN 2373-1648 Online (2018)

>> Limited to 100 copies <<

more drafting on KQ's (my fave so far)

A post shared by Bloof Books (@bloofbooks) on May 15, 2016 at 2:09pm PDT

Excerpts

__________________ after dreaming that hungry women may resort to violence 

An all-woman riot in the wilderness &
chained vultures & wolves smell the brawl
from their caves & forests policing, by force
of habit wanting everything for themselves
but the women channel a raging
feast, raining from the sky &
pushing up from the ground, so the animals
only end up eyeballing
bits of sky between the dull cloud of rank
wings & bared teeth

"__________ my loved blacknesses & some blacknesses I knew" at Poetry

Three more from the chapbook at Dreginald

About

Khadijah Queen is the author of four books, most recently Fearful Beloved (2015), and four chapbooks. In 2015, The Relationship theater company staged her verse play, Non-Sequitur, in NYC as part of the Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers, with publication by Litmus Press. Individual poems appear in Brooklyn Magazine, Tin House, Fence, jubilat, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks from Vietnam to Iraq, and widely in other journals and anthologies. Her fifth book, I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On, will be published by YesYes Books in spring 2017. She is core faculty for the low residency Mile-High MFA program at Regis University.

Cover painting: Untitled (2010), Khadijah Queen

Exercises in Painting is the fifth chapbook in the 2015–2016 series from Bloof Books. Each chapbook in the series is released in a limited edition of one hundred numbered copies, followed by a digital release, and eventually in a combination volume called Bound.