Distant Early Warnings, from Nancy Flynn, in the January Issue.

1. How does one unclot a vapor?

With the wave of a magic wand? Alchemy? Other dark arts?

When I wrote that line, I was channeling the ancient Greek and Roman “four humors” theory of medicine. And how doctors as late the Victorian era believed that melancholy feelings hadtheir roots in the spleen, rising up through the body in the form of vapors thataffected the mind. So often our explanations for the cause of so many things—illness,event, catastrophe—are rooted in the superstitious and fantastic. If a body hasthe vapors, then surely, like blood, couldn’t they clot? And isn’t poetry just socrazy?

2. If Captain Planet read “Distant Early Warnings”, how would he react? What do you think he would do in response?

“Here I come to save the day!” Sorry,just kidding. You made your damn beds. Now lie in them.

3. Would you be arrested by the Secret Service for counterfeiting pain?

No need for me to counterfeit it—Imanufacture it openly, brazenly borne a bit like Hester Prynne and the scarletletter on her chest. Poor me, boo-hoo, indulgently self-pitying when I am (truly)the luckiest girl in puppet land with my life of central heating, organic quinoa,and Stumptown’s Italian Roast. For those reasons alone, I should probably betaken into custody—stat! Continue reading →

Laura Ellen Scott’s excellent and quirky debut novel, Death Wishing (Ig Publishing, 2011), is set in post-Katrina New Orleans. In this wonderfully reimagined world, random dying wishes are granted by some unknown and arbitrary power. Wishes that can cure cancer, magick-away cats, resurrect Elvis (Elvis!), give mothers an eye in the back of their heads, and turn the clouds a gorgeous, vibrant orange. Continue reading →

and it was awesome.

I could sum it up at that, but I’ll go into a little more detail: ten hour drive, bookfair, reading, BBQ, concert, ten hour drive.

I can go into further detail still:

Dubuque Iowa in the sunshine is perhaps the prettiest Midwestern city I’ve seen.
And Old Chicago is perhaps the best franchised pizza I’ve ever eaten.

Other lessons learned while driving: (1) driving ten hours alone after not having owned a car for over a year is more stressful than one might expect, (2) it is bad etiquette to pass a hearse, in my opinion, and, (3) sometimes they have condom dispensers in gas station restrooms. Continue reading →

We’re at the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City today. Come see us at the Mission Freak book fair at the Mill. Or come to the reading we’re hosting tonight with Draft and Uncanny Valley, 5-6pm at the White Rabbit.

1. Night at Target, poetry by Ryan Bender-Murphy at elimae

2. Stealing Bic, fiction by Laurence Pritchard at Used Funiture Review

3. As The Hours Grow Smaller the Smaller Grows Flour, poetry by Ben Mirov at Everyday Genius

4. Exits Are, game with Christopher Newgent and Mike Meginnis at Artifice

5. Eulogy for Barnes & Noble #2628: A Personal History, essay by Aaron Burch at The Rumpus

As far as the schools of literary criticism go – and damn do they go far, so far that you need a dozen diabeticless Labrador Retrievers with MFAs to fetch them – I’ve always favored those theories, like Historical-Biographical criticism, that focus on the author of a work because, if you ask me, every work of literature is a direct reflection of its author’s life and times and. . . mental illnesses.  Vladimir Nabokov wouldn’t have written Lolita if he didn’t have pedophilic desires – desires masked through his fetishizing of butterflies, which are just like pubescent girls: nice to look at but bad to touch.

Continue reading →

We went to Portland, Oregon. We went to Seattle, Washington. It was good.

Next up, Iowa City on Saturday! Go to there.

[PANK] Invasions :: Portland :: Seattle from M. Bartley Seigel on Vimeo.

SEATTLE, TONIGHT!

Join us. RSVP on Facebook.

Engine Books, March, 2012, $14.95

Dear Myfanwy Collins,

I want to thank you for telling my story, and the story of the others too, especially the women. I’m glad you didn’t just write down all the terrible. That you saw more than the bad that we done and the ugly that we made. I never imagined our story would make its way to strangers. Never believed our missing parts and empty spaces could fill anything, least of all the pages of a book.

I sure as hunger never knew so much brutal could be turned into this strange kind of beautiful, sort of like hearing the music in one person beating on another. I wish I’d done better. Not least because then you’d have a better story to tell. Or maybe it’s only our mistakes and sins and banged-up bits that are worth picking-over. I reckon we should all be made to see our insides, like a punishment that’s really a present where we take off the liar wrapping paper, open the stupid tissue, and pull from the box our wet, slippery, dark parts.

You helped me see inside the others too, every last one of them, and got down all our betrayals, how we wronged ourselves and each other over and over. You made me want to bring back the book’s dead and glue its damaged together again. Whatever about repairs, though, the dead are gone and the rest of us just have to get on. You also got me thinking about how we subtract and add to ourselves, and usually in the wrong ways. We have these lacks, then, and this haul, too, and we’re always in motion, struggling to get to the next place, or back to some previous place, and none of us seems to know just where it is we’re trying so hard to get to. While I read, though, I was still.

I also see in here who and what you allowed to be saved, and I thank you most for that.

Yours truly,

Geneva

*****

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