Taking a Break

It's been a month since my last post, and I've decided that I'm going to take a blogging hiatus of indeterminate length. Rather than blogging, I'll be focusing my energies in participating in several print-based micromedia, including zines, amateur press associations, mail art, and related projects. I might post occasionally, but in general, there will be other places you can find me. If you're really curious what those are, let me know, and I'll point you in the right direction.

Recent Arrivals

It's been a good week-plus for zines and such. Here are some of the highlights:

Comicopia #108 (August 2008): The 18th anniversary issue of this international comics APA. ($6 133M) Savage Enterprises Publishing, 10 rue de la Valline, NDIP, Quebec, Canada J7V 9S5.

Musea #165 (August/September/October 2008): Writing on shared culture, the "art Olympics," and YouTube videos. (8S) Tom Hendricks, 4000 Hawthorne #5, Dallas, TX 75219.

Opuntia 66A (September 2008): Geology, pronghorns, and a literature scan. ($3 16S) Dale Speirs, Box 6830, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2P 2E7.

Rap Sheet #138 (September 2008): The official newsletter of the Small Press Syndicate. ($3 52S) Dale Martin, P.O. Box 442612, Lawrence, KS 66044.

Worry Stone #1: The first issue of Jerianne's new zine about the concerns of adulthood. (28XS) P.O. Box 330156, Murfreesboro, TN 37133.

Zen Baby #19: Christopher Robin's freewheeling zine of correspondence, poetry, news, reviews, and collage art. ($2 56M) P.O. Box 1611, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1611.

Zine World #26: Perhaps the zine review zine of today. I contribute an article on censorship in California and Russia, as well as assorted zine reviews. ($4 62M) P.O. Box 330156, Murfreesboro, TN 37133.

ZYX #48 (December 2008): Progressive poetry, reviews, and collage art, including poems by A. D. Winans. (10M) Arnold Skemer, 58-09 205th St., Bayside, NY 11364.

Vote for My ChangeThis Manifesto Proposal

I submitted an idea for a ChangeThis manifesto, and it's currently one of the proposals you can vote for. Vote for my proposal, if you think it's a good idea, and help me get selected... I'd love to do this ebook and think it's a useful topic: How to best leverage the many business book summary services out there.

While you're there, check out the other proposals, as well. It's an interesting project -- and an interesting process!

You Don't Get There from Here #8

Carrie McNinch, P.O. Box 49403, Los Angeles, CA 90049; Web; Email
($2 36XS)

Daily, three-panel diary comic strips. Sent as trade for a Bundle of Wonder. Excellent.

ZYX #48

Arnold Skemer, 58-09 205th St., Bayside, NY 11364
(Free 10M)

Innovative poetry, and reviews of same. One of the best poetry zines I get.

Poet's Espresso: September 2008

1426 Telegraph Ave. #4, Stockton, CA 95204; Web; Email
($1, 28S)

Poetry from multiple poets in at least two languages, as well as local events listings.

A View #135

Michael Goetz, 1340 Brandywine Dr., Rockford, IL 61108
($1 16XS)

Simply drawn single-panel gag strips with an emphasis on puns.

Several Items from SSO Press

Yesterday, I received a wonderful envelope from the folks who share P.O. Box 2645 in Olympia, Wash. Among the items included were:

Well, I Don't See Why Not CD-R: "A compilation of unsigned/barely signed Northwest artists" released in July 2008. Musical groups include Twig Palace, Yes Please, the Hail Seizures, Ariel Birks, Blindfolder, and other bands. 17 songs available via Bicycle Records.

Basic Paper Airplane #2 (August 2008): Cut-and-paste perzine by Joshua Amberson, SSO Press, P.O. Box 2645, Olympia, WA 98507. (Trade 20S)

Jesus Christ Super Zine #1: Hand- and typewritten perzine by Ariel Birks, SSO Press, P.O. Box 2645, Olympia, WA 98507 (Trade 40S)

These are begging to be read and listened to, and full reviews will follow in the near future.

Xerography Debt #24

Davida Gypsy Breier, P.O. Box 11064, Baltimore, MD 21212
($2 16M)

The first issue of a new approach to Xerography Debt, this issue largely contains a lettercol-driven discussion of the intersection between zine culture and the Web. Breier and her team are moving the review aspect of XD to a new blog and will devote the pages of the print -- and PDF -- version to other matters. Contributors to the discussion include yours truly, James Dawson, Jeff Somers, Christopher Robin, and others. Somers also contributes items on post office etiquette, how to mail a zine "properly," and the longevity of online zine reviews. Sinasi Gunes's piece "Zines and Contemporary Art in Turkey" is a brief survey of zine culture in that country, and there are a couple of pages of calls for submissions. I might be most intrigued by the calls for submissions. Even if zine culture is being supplanted in some ways by the Web, there's still a place for the papernet, and this is a healthy expression of the Eternal Network. Oddly, this is the first issue of XD I've ever read, and I feel like I've been missing out -- but joined the party at an interesting point in time. To the future!

Sensing the Future

The future tastes like ice-cold artesian well water, like copper, like blood on your tongue, like the tang of a nine-volt battery.

The future smells like ozone, like burning rubber, like plastic water bottles, like snow.

The future sounds like white noise, like train whistles in the distance, like doorbells, like the staticky space that shifts and sits between radio stations.

The future looks like daybreak, like sunset, like early-afternoon sunlight, like cellophane, like lightbulbs.

The future feels like polyester, like velour, like Tupperware, like bubblewrap and packing foam, like cold steel.

Opuntia #65.5

Dale Spiers, Box 6830, Calgary, AB, Canada T2P 2E7
($3 16S)

This edition of Opuntia is a perzine and contains correspondence from and with readers (Spiers responds within brackets in the text of the letters), an item on this year's World Wide Party -- I've not heard of this previously and will suitably recognize the next June 21! -- and offers journal entries covering roughly four months. This is the way I'll learn more about Spiers, for sure.

Wakeup Call

A review I wrote of Kevin Prufer's poetry collection, National Anthem, was published in the July-August 2008 edition of Small Press Review. Here's the review draft I sent editor Len Fulton:

National Anthem
By Kevin Prufer
2008; 82pp; Pa; Four Way Books, P.O. Box 535, Village Station, New
York, NY 10014. $15.95

"There is nothing so lonely as an empire detached from its people," writes Prufer in his poem "What We Did with the Empire." If anything, that line could well serve as the thesis statement for this collection of more than 40 poems by the English professor at the University of Central Missouri and editor of Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing. In two sections, the slim book collects poems that consider the failings and foibles of politics and government, urban life and consumerism -- belated wakeup calls for citizens of a police state that's constantly at war with other nations (and itself). The tenor and tone is largely one of careful but unavoidable and perhaps understandable neutrality and distance -- reminding me slightly of the prose of Ben Marcus and the comic books of Peter Milligan -- and Prufer's imagery is strong but subtle: birds and boats, coins and coffins, snow and soot. This is a poetry of decay and decline, and there's little hope in the book outside of the occasional lines like, "and the office towers bending down to us as if they'd cup us in their hands and warm us, / as if they'd lift us from the streets before we froze." ("We Wanted to Find America") Too little, too late, for now, and for that, I am thankful.

If you'd like me to consider any small-press poetry or prose books for review in SPR, please email me.