Saul Bass is best known as graphic designer for films, including several classics by Alfred Hitchcock and Otto Preminger.
Here are three pages from a less acknowledged gem, a picture book for children called
Bass provided art for Leonore Klein's story.
This article by Noam Cohen published in the New York Times suggests that Borges' fiction foreshadowed (if you will) the brave new world of the web. Cohen refers us to “Borges 2.0: From Text to Virtual Worlds” by Perla Sassón-Henry, which I haven't read yet, but the idea sounds right to me. I like it.
(photo by fuksija via flickr)
Mutabilis Press published a new book this month, an anthology of poems by Texas poets called The Weight of Addition. It was edited by Randall Watson. Two of my poems appear in the book. The selections seem to disarm any notion a reader might possess about what a "Texas poet" might be. I'm enjoying reading it.
tempering
•
brush against, brush with death
birds bead the balcony
dawn spires
countless stories of two kids dropped like eggs into hot water
alseep in your bed, her long beauty
every man could love so long
••
you boarded a ship
no land ho
mostly fate swims beyond character
here is pain’s bandwidth, individual as
wasted months of watching one life slip away
about the time the purple sky
found:
a Linda
a pearl
rightawayrightawayrightaway
by Stephanie Marlis
from her book Fine
published by Apogee Press
New Zealand environmental artist and photographer Martin Hill recently published Earth to Earth.
I read a positive review of this picture book on Art MoCo. The Octonauts and the Sea of Shade is the second book by Meomi, a dynamic duo also known as Vicki Wong and Michael Murphy. Based on the title and cover alone, this one's going onto my wish list.
I’m standing on 10th Street. I’m not the
only one. Buildings rise like
foliage and human touch.
And so shall dig this cigarette as my last,
and rattle trains, and rot the fences
of the gardens of my body—
or without the harmony of speaking here the
many sounds and rhythms that
sound a lot like anger
when anger’s silent, like a painting, though
in the stillness of the paint itself
the painter nods or waves or asks
for help.
I’m not the only one. The pharmacy’s untitled.
The stars are there at night.
In this Humidity
the forlorn singing of the insects clings to anything
nailed down. A whole bag of
things I’m working
through, some set things that I know, like words
I know that mean "from
one place to another," the word that
means
"to carry." I’m standing still on 10th Street. I’m
not the only one.
The dark tastes of salt and oranges.
Its eyes
wander round and round. I am its thousand windows.
I think about the future
and the sea. And stay.
by Ralph Angel
From Exceptions and Melancholies: Poems 1986-2006 by Ralph Angel, published by Sarabande Books, Inc. © 2006 by Ralph Angel
I went to the doctor
I went to the doctor. It had been so long since I'd seen a doctor I thought she was doing an interview with me. When we first met, she said: Married, Single, Widowed, Divorced? I thought that was a bit personal. But I told her about my children, my husbands, my job, my furnace, my fall. About how I slept like a top. And Gold's Gym. And the sunken garden in the Pendleton House which is a house inside a museum. And my famous story of how I immigrated 11 years ago with $400 and a 7-year old child. We talked about poetry. Well, duh. But it was actually much broader than most poetry interviews, looser yet more intense. She asked me about drug use. Marijuana. Cocaine. That made me laugh. Everyone was so interested in me. It was marvelous. Even the nurse in Reception asked as she was passing: Do you happen to know your height? Boy did I! Then the Office Manager arranged all my appointments. I haven't had so much attention since the MLA or my first wedding. I'm going back.
by Mairead Byrne
published by Fascicle
and in her book Talk Poetry
lakes submerge us
in our strength of cool
soft ribboned hues
the brightest outlines
closer to the lakes
hulled by silt &
grass banks, rust
pumping pine
lengthens a granite
alignment
scattered on charity
so cool the lake
expanding limbs
your broadened foot
& toes extend, always
to an upper clear
a brighter line
from fathoms
by Peter Jaeger
from his book PROP
published by Salt
Dan has posted some great new work on his Altered Books blog.
This summer Houston's Rice University hosts When the Animals Rebel, a new installation by Los Angeles artist Mike Stilkey. Much of the art is done on the covers, spines, and pages of hundreds of old books.
Here's a book I'm rejoicing over. It's a new edition of The Age of Huts (compleat) by Ron Silliman, published by the University of California Press.
I want to recommend whole-heartedly the chapbook series that Octopus books
has launched. These 3" by 4" books could not be any cooler. Please. Buy the
whole series if you can.
