effing blog

got the new press yesterday and within hours of putting it together I was perfect binding books with tight, strong spines. it's a simple clamp n board press that allows the block edge to be gathered, glued, and pressed before you slip pre-scored covers behind the block and glue it to the spine and press again. Stupidly easy really. In time such binding work will look indistinguishable from the real thing. so you know.

this morning I rode the elevator with a grim reaper.

the snapper will find work for idle hands to do

effing magazine #5

pleased to announce effing magazine issue number five, as edited by Allyssa Wolf

7 x 8.5, 88 pages, thread bound, $6.00

featuring

Jenny Boully / Heather Brinkman / Noah Eli Gordon / Brian Howe / Dan Hoy / Philip Jenks / Kent Johnson / Kirsten Kaschock / Jon Leon / Patrick Masterson / Scott Miles / Ryan Murphy / Kaia Sand / Leslie Scalapino / Standard Schaefer / Paul Vangelisti / Catherine Wagner / Sarah Wagner / Allyssa Wolf

selected video work by David Meiklejohn

For those of you in and around Portland, Maine.

moth dirge. or, the mist comes through the windows

dulling the pain with labor can do the trick. angry? score some covers and sew some signatures and you'll feel better. if sad, take your machines apart and grease the gears and reassemble them cleanly, you'll see.  heave the boxes of printed matter and displace the cat and sing along. chop through a stack of books with fervor! pack orders by lamplight! get done. get tired and read through the tendrils of smoke and then rest. labor: for what else is a body for. labor: I mean c'mon, there isn't much time.

I was gifted a beautiful work table by a beautiful girl.

and a new binding press is on its way which means spines.

looking at a new printer.

the new issue of effing magazine is bursting with flavor and kicking at the gate. it's time. be ready.

today is the day of my mom.

have you seen my art experience?

About eight years ago I shot a script with a wind up 16mm Bolex camera over the course of a couple of weeks. It was a complex list of shots and I took my time and did the shots to a T and it was good. I sent the dozen rolls of film to a lab in NYC for processing but alas, upon their return to me in New Mexico the processed goods got lost in the mail and I never saw them again. For shame.The film, which was to be titled Elms & Other Arteries, was never edited, obviously, and was never screened anywhere but behind my own eyes (where it is still playing to this day). I lament the loss of this unrealized film like I lament the loss of a pet (for I have never parented a child) and I try not to think about it because the pain...it is so deep.

And so I've learned to safeguard and protect my jank over the years and keep it close, whether it be film or writing or whatyouwill. To horde the notes and the looseleaf and the debris on the cutting room floor so to speak. And it's worked, for the most part. Until now.

And so it happens that I have again come to the fact of suffering with the misplacement of my latest notebook, a plain 64 pager, with three months of my longhand scrawl from cover to cover. Gone. I had named the suite Westside Trim and had, as you must understand, an attachment to it as an ongoing conversation and documentation of my extra special brain waves. We were close, it and me. I last saw it at the bar a week ago when I was having drinks with Anna Eyre who was visiting from Taos. I read to her a letter to Farid Matuk I had written in it in September and then I may as well have lit the thing on fire and threw it in a gutter. Cuz I never made it home with it and they don't have it at the bar. Gone.

Oddly I do not feel as crushed as I felt eight years ago. I should, I think, considering the caliber of genius that is now scattered in the cosmos never to be seen again. Considering what can never be conceived replicated or paraphrased again. Yeah I guess part of me wants to eat a gun over it. Or wants you and everyone else to eat a gun over it. I'm past those phases (though I know I may be back).The other part of me though feels indifferent. Almost funny too, like just on the verge of a grin. That part says Hey what didya expect. And it's right you know.

Though it's not literature, I kind of like that it only exists right here behind my eyes. It's all a dream. That is my official response to this my latest tragedy.

days and nights

by night finishing mag layout and doing the proofs with Allyssa W. just a few days shy of printing that one, effing's 20th bound publication. by day working like the rest of us. by day reading books during lunch breaks by fountains of mist in plazas. making meals. scribbling. business. sour evenings taking apart the machines and putting them back together. worn metal.  wear an apron, no shirt, no shoes. doing one thing at a time sometimes two. doing dozens of things at a time. writing in between the price points. remembering to stay quiet. stay high. read books. talk books with some people who talk books. tend the garden and feed the animals. take notes. take notes far away and back again. drink scotch. taste gourds. wear blue boots and wait for cool rain. make love in the mornings. grow a beard, sink in, press ink to paper near an open window. sweep. repeating movements, isolating verbs, no comparisons nor descriptors. no lists no threats no program.  get background. get off the computer. walk the town and be the town. walk alleys and creek beds. handle rebar and read the tunnel walls. cruisers in hoodies, homeless in jackets, punks in spikes and leather. get milk for the coffee and the cereal. get lightbulbs for the studio. paint the studio and frame broadsides. box books, shelve books, wrap books in archival sleeves. stop paying attention. run at night with the bats and the bugs and the punks and the thugs. consider a moped. consider a trip to new york. or west to the rockies. or a trip to my lady's lap for a nap.

Dustin Williamson on IS IT THE KING ?

at Rust Buckle Reviews

WAVE POETRY BUS in AUSTIN Thursday October 12 at BIG RED SUN

Stopping at 50 cities in 50 days the 2006 Poetry Bus Tour, sponsored by Seattle-based independent press Wave Books, is the biggest literary event of 2006 and the most ambitious poetry tour ever attempted.

Beginning September 4 and ending October 27, the bus tour will visit a variety of venues, including the Space Needle in Seattle, the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, the Museum of Natural History in LA, the Green Mill in Chicago, the DiA Arts Center in New York, and a number of bookstores, galleries, bars, prisons and schools all across the US and Canada.

www.poetrybus.com

10/12, 6 pm - Austin, TX

Big Red Sun, 1102 E Cesar Chavez St

Performers: Joshua Beckman, Matthew Zapruder, Lori Shine, Jen Hofer, Hoa Nguyen, Travis Nichols, Dale Smith, Dara Wier, Gillian Conoley, Joshua Clover, Matvei Yankelevich, Anna Moschovakis, Farid Matuk, and Valzhyna Mort

www.BigRedSun.com

Jack Kimball on IS IT THE KING?

at Pantaloons