After reading Joseph Riippi’s A CLOTH HOUSE I am overwhelmed with many sentiments concerning the psychic and physical sensations of…
Creative Engagement with Doug Rice’s dream Memoirs of a Fabulist (copilot press, 2011)
“She says, so slowly that it is nearly autumn by the time she comes to the end of her sentence,…
Creative Engagement with HR Hegnauer’s Sir (PP@YYL, 2011)
HR Hegnauer’s Sir is a gorgeous, heart-breakingly honest tale (or non-tale?–“perhaps this is grief in its most idyllic form”) that…
Creative Engagement with Tod Thilleman’s Egghead To Underhoof (our concluding the poem), MEB, 2010
Tod Thilleman’s book Egghead To Underhoof is nothing but brink. Not stacked, really—but trickling downward in chaotic organization. This entire…
Creative Engagement with Kathy Conde’s “Georgia Nights” (Published by CutThroat in February 2012, Volume 12 Issue 1)
Kathy Conde’s “Georgia Nights” is a beautiful full circle type of story–like in the span of a few moments, traversing…
Creative Engagement with Michelle Taransky’s No, I Will Be In The Woods (Brave Men Press, 2011)
The sweetest letter-press book came in the mail a few days ago. I put it in my pocket (yes, it…
Creative Engagement with Jill Stengel’s dear equinox (Dusie, 2011)
Generally, equinox refers to the poise of a dependent figure (Earth), inclined neither away from nor toward the sun. So–equinox is the short-term experience of a figure that is in usual relation to the sun (being held in correlation by the sun) becoming its own temporary primary—becoming abandoned, becoming the painful solitudes of a thing forced into the position/ poise wherein it has to be its own light.
Jill Stengel writes deeply of the losses and lonelinesses of the solitudes of such equinox realities
in the Dusie chap dear equinox. This book is an unintentional prothalamion (“I am out here raw as the/ night sky waiting for you”)–a pouring song to a not yet found future beloved. This sweet little book is an agonizing, loving pitch that emerges by way of calling out to the night (“dear night [] filled with longing and seek”).
Calling out to the night as a figure to relate to, pulls the sun toward us (“the sun always comes”), which is the power of a “passive chalice [being] ruptured.” I think of the sore nights in the cave where the tears were countless and no matter what I did the night seemed to thicken. It may seem dramatic, but moving from the hermetics of the cave into nomadisms
with bare feet (until the feet bleed) in the darkest hours is worth—is something more romantic and vigilant than time merely passing in an awaiting bucolic zone (“there are tears there is ache there is such desire”). It is a way to promise presence to the not yet seen or not yet seeable (“and if the match is wet with tears I will find my own light”).
-j/j hastain
Anthology of Queer Nudes
Friends–I wanted to post here regarding an Anthology of Queer Nudes that I am curating. The book is slated to be published in color by Knives Spoons and Forks Press in 2013. The premises of the book are honesty, nudity and ink (interpretations encouraged). There are already a few very exciting submissions in the queue. We have quite a bit of space to work with in the book so likelihood of being published is high (depending on quality of submission). The submission will need to include photographic images as well as a body poetics statement. Please feel free to forward my email (or post on other lists) to anyone whom you think might be interested:
julia_loveintention@hotmail.com
Almost like visceral Déjà vu
Almost like visceral Déjà vu Normally Special by xTx Published by Tiny Hardcore Press 2011 First Edition, 94 pages…

