Banango Lit

M.G. Martin’s Pangur Ban Party chap Fall Out Of Your Skin came out a couple weeks ago. this ain’t no jagged little pill. it’s very short and very swallowable at just 8 poems. 

The poems are odd and surreal and sometimes when there’s an “i” or a “we” it’s hard to tell exactly who that is, but it’s secondary. 

M.G. Martin doesn’t care about punctuation unless it’s in his name you can read the middle four poems all in one breath because there are no periods or commas but there are so many cool images you’ll have to go back and read them again two three four times and sharks cigarettes hurricanes fruitflies grandmothers with knives and a lot of motherfuckers all make sometimes repeat appearances throughout  

This might be an insider’s judgement because he has sent me drunken emails in the past few days, but i think Martin might’ve written some of these poems when he was drunk, or at least started them drunk and then gone back and worked on them a little sober the next day, but then probably gotten drunk again and finished them.

My favorite thing here is the opening poem, “depth perception oven,” which is one of the more conventionally structured pieces in the book. It has this terrible sadness about the end of childhood innocence. It reads like a Jeff Mangum or Will Sheff lyric. Someone get a guitar and sing this shit and send me a video. A taste: “Everything was so large that mother had to explain that because we could fit in the oven we weren’t allowed to shower with father any longer.”

FOOYS ends with a poem called “even though i probably won’t,” and it’s about the poet’s imminent death, and it’s even stranger because it comes at the end of the book. So it almost feels like Martin just died after you finish reading it. Spooky.
 
Also, Mr. Martin gets an automatic 1000 bonus points just for including richard brautigan’s name in a poem, and then writing a poem about brautigan’s grocery store purchasing habits.

Read these standout lines, and then read the book, motherfucker.

“when we were children everything was so large we thought growing up meant being able to turn out the moonlight when the sun started to rise & o to do this with our hands.” (depth perception oven)
 
“richard brautigan never pays for a massage.” (richard brautigan)

“grandma is brandishing a knife of lust & death is cross-dressing in my darkroom” (o grandma you cigarette)

“when the floodwaters bring the sharks into the streets if this happens it is better to feed the sharks day time television than to say anything at all” (if a shark has ears)

“o death you are a cigarette in a hurricane” (even though i probably won’t)

BY: DIANA SALIER

a roundup of a few things I’ve read in the first part of 2012 and would like to recommend.



The Emperor’s Sofa by Greg Santos

This book is split into 3 sections: Thinking Things Through, Thinking Through Things, and Travels Around the Empire. I’m way way drawn to the first section most of all.

It opens with “Road Trip (after Mary Ruefle),” a cataloguing of the most freeing year you’ve never had, but apparently (hopefully) Greg Santos has. Baking cookies on the dashboard of a VW and taking a trip seaside. Then the freedom of the road is juxtapose with the loneliness of hotels in “All Hotel Rooms Are Alike”:

“You request an early morning wake-up call
just so you may mumble,
‘Good morning. I love you.’

Only when you reach into the hallway
for a strange newspaper
do German backpackers
make you realize
the foreign air is very cold.”

Greg’s attitude in these poems seems almost hopeful, something that I think is rare in alt lit circles. everyone’s so jaded and cynical these days. i love that, but there’s an innocence to his work that is really, really likeable.  there’s dancing and loneliness and self-improvement and eating pork rinds and not caring.

“Commuting” is, I think, the result of a long morning commute where you start thinking randomly about everything, like so:

“Evacuation procedures are a matter of life and death.
One false move and WHAM! the Mir space station
freefalls to the earth in an orgy of fire and destruction.
You don’t want that, do you?
Think.”

And with the recent upswing of pop culture-inspired poems out there, his Hulk poems are some of the best. Hulk has a crush on a girl named Shelley and is just trying to make his way through life. check this out:

“A Love Poem for Shelley by Hulk”
Your brown hair ripples
like Captain Marvell cape
in spring breeze.

Hulk’s heart
THUMP THUMP THUMP
for you more thunderously
than mighty Thor hammer.

Your pale skin glistens
like milky white Space Ghost
costume beneath stars.

Hulk wait in moonlight for you
to smash side by side,
to search for mythical
green songbird called love.”




My Hologram Chamber is Surrounded by Miles of Snow by Ben Mirov

i love everything Ben Mirov writes, and this YesYes ebook was no exception. these are 12 poems in his distinct, straightforward, fuck-my-life-fuck-everything-let’s-talk-about-dying voice. this is the shit they should teach in undergrad lit interpretation classes. maybe less people would drop their English majors. or whatever, maybe I wouldn’t have dropped my English major if they had taught me Ben Mirov. 

sweet stuff from this book as follows; my favorite line has to be “fuck my life says the ocean”:

“the shadow surgeon and his tools” -
“i wanted to write a poem / about a walrus a beautiful / animal with deadly tusks / and dark pitiless eyes / but what i really wanted / was the walrus itself / and the beach beneath it / and real frothing waves.”

“my hologram chamber is surrounded by miles of snow” -
“i began reading on page 6 / because fuck it nothing matters “

“for ben mirov” - 
“All your crystalline thoughts clinking in your head. Each one a terrarium filled with what.”
“you think you’re someone named ben mirov. you’re a little hung over. Thursday, June 11, 2009”

“to the island in the mirror” -
“I feel so far from the ocean. / Miles and miles away / watching the slow methodical / unfolding of my day. / fuck my life says the ocean / in a tender caring voice / that sounds exactly like my own. / i always trust the ocean. / i trust it with my life”

“moonlight in the forest of mistakes” -
“I took a walk through another forest, one I hadn’t made. The moon was shining through the trees. A squirrel rustled the leaves above my head. I felt I was being erased a little at a time.”



Stories V! by Scott Mcclanahan

I really thought this book was nonfiction the entire time, until i flipped to the beginning and it had the usual “these events are fictional” disclaimer. i read the entire collection in one sitting, it took me about 1 1/2 hours on a sunday night. i stopped three times to tweet about a loud couple fighting outside, one time to check FB, and once to check my horoscope app. which is to say this is a really good fucking book, because normally there’s also falling asleep while playing iphone games and combing through netflix wedged in there somewhere.

A lot of these stories made me squirm. I squirm easily, and I was already on edge after watching The Grey (don’t judge) and some horror trailer for Silent House. but even so, I think the book might make you uneasy too even if you don’t freak out a lot. Especially the end of “Sex Tapes,” which I won’t give away here, and the end of “Dead Baby Jokes.”

My only real criticism is that  some of the endings were dissatisfying in that they were too “wrapped up” for me.

Some personal favorites:
“Nicky”
“Jenny Sugar”
“Dead Baby Jokes”

A child’s take on BIG LIFE THINGS is always kind of interesting to watch. “Jenny Sugar” is about young protagonist Scott, elementary school age, and the aftermath of a classmate’s death.  Scott doesn’t attend his classmate’s funeral and stays at school to watch Superman IV with the only other two kids who don’t attend either, one of whom isn’t allowed to go because he always shits his pants. Not making this up. I liked seeing how the other kids dealt with the girl’s death, and how even at a tiny age they judged Scott for missing the funeral and seemingly not caring.  Also i’m sure everyone remembers watching movies whenever something out of the ordinary happened at school. in 6th grade my history teacher’s husband passed away and we watched Blue Streak in the auditorium, or one of those police films with Eddie Murphy, and the vice principal got me in trouble for talking through the movie.
 


 
Everything Was Fine Until Whatever by Chelsea Martin

i’m super late to this game, like 3 years too late or something, because this book came out in 2009. i read it in portland when i visited in january and finished it over a series of lunch breaks at the fisherman’s wharf in san francisco. her writing style is undeniably awkward but super straightforward, and i promise you will laugh and be like holy shit i do that too// did that this morning.

i FBed chelsea after starting to read her book and said that it inspired me to be more honest and open about girls in my own work. she writes all about these old boyfriends and lovers and in-betweens in such a frank way.

i recently loaned this book to a friend so i can’t quote any specific parts that i like, but if you ever felt uncertain about your sex life or your romantic life or your life in general, you should read Chelsea Martin. if your mom has ever bothered you about why you’re single, you should read Chelsea Martin. if you’ve ever made a drunken mistake, you should read Chelsea Martin.

this book has some rad sketches and drawings too. my favorite was this 2x2 chart that shows the chances of embarrassing yourself if you’re drunk and the person you like is sober, or vice versa, or if you both stay sober or both get drunk.  you’ll have to see it to believe it, so buy this book, or borrow it from someone, or whatever.



 

By: Diana Salier

i first read nate slawson last year on linelinelineline — he wrote an echap of love poems to zooey deschanel, and i share his love for zooey d, so i really enjoyed that. last month i bought PANIC ATTACK USA at powell’s and started reading it on donald dunbar’s living room couch. i read it on a plane from portland back to san francisco when i thought i was going to die because the turbulence was so bad. i finished it in bed tonight.

the point is, i think it’d be so fucking cool (and ok maybe a little creepy) to be the “you” in one of nate slawson’s poems. his style is breathless and electric and most of all, weirdly obsessive over whoever the “you” actually is, if it’s anybody, but he’s full of amazing images of who this “you” is to him (or the speaker, but i think the speaker is slawson) — everything from musical instruments, and there are a lot of music references here, to bodies of water, places in the Midwest, indispensable body parts, various states of mind.

though the poems are short, you have to take a deep breath before reading any of these and then just dive in. they take you from point A to point B really quickly. slawson is real good at staying locked within the microscopic frame of his poems and existing within their world, whether the world is gym class, antidepressants, or Cameron Frye.   

the book is broken up into 4 sections and the ones that resonated the most with me were part 1, Teenage Sonnets, and part 3, Essays for a Broken Heart.

here are my favorite poems from both sections, respectively:


YOU ARE EMILY VALENTINE
I know I promised you
I wouldn’t make a scene
in front of all your friends
but is it wrong if I write
your name on the soles
of my tennis shoes is it
wrong if I want to stand
next to you in gym class
your legs remind me of
a Bruce Springsteen song
I would do a hundred sit-
ups for you & whisper your
name every time & kiss my
knees pretending they are you.


AN ESSAY ABOUT BLACK KEYS
at the movies I play
the same character
every time so you will
always recognize me
I would like you to believe
I am not acting
I would like you
to believe my hands
do not shake
my arms do not go dumb
my body is the house
you grew up in
& the way my face gets
when I look at you
sometimes is difficult
practice not unlike
drawing maps of your
circulatory system or
making you the perfect
grilled cheese sandwich
which is one more thing
I’d rather be doing
than talking to you
on the telephone or
writing you this letter
on my old Casiotone.

grab a copy over at YesYes Books.

BY: DIANA SALIER  

edward mullany has written my new favorite love poem:

    the poet envisions his death
   
    it is true i love
    you more each

    day, you for
    whom i’ve never

    written a love
    poem.


i first met edward last week in an abandoned apartment on haight st. in san francisco for a house reading. he was very tall and soft-spoken. he read poems about hairdryers and dying and dogs and men and our general existence.

i met him again in portland one week later at a reading/house party at donald dunbar’s house, by the alcohol table, alongside his lovely wife anjali, to whom If I Falter At the Gallows is dedicated.

i bought his book at powell’s and read it in one sitting at a coffeeshop back in my neighborhood in san francisco. the poems are as quiet and unassuming as edward. it’s like what they say about people’s dogs mirroring their owners. only i don’t think people’s poems shed on the floor and whine for food.

this book, which is split into parts I and II, is like a sunday morning in a quiet town with or without someone you love reading the newspaper next to you.

small, mundane things happen. sometimes no one notices.
big, important things happen. sometimes no one notices them.

i’m no longer surprised that edward mullany isn’t on facebook. his poems have a pastoral quality that dims the noise of the modern world.

they’re refreshing. read them.

I interviewed Chad Redden, author of The Lesson of Furniture (The Red Ceilings Press, 2011) and Thursday (Plain Wrap Press, 2012), Mayor of NAP Mag, my new sensei, and all-around good dude. Here’s what he had to say.

Who are you?

Always the hardest question first. Some dude. Get back to me on that question.
 

How long have you been a writer or person who writes or whatever you’re comfortable calling it? What got you started with writing?

I guess the writer title works. I’m working on being a person first. I know a few writers in person, but I’d rather have conversations with them about people things than writer things. People things are much more interesting and have a stronger influence writing than writer things.

I played around with telling stories when I was like 8. It started with Stephen King’s It, and as I started reading more adult books instead of children’s books, I had the idea that I could write 1000 page books too. So I bought a bunch of notepads and calculated how many pages I needed to fill up per day to create my masterpiece. It was hard. I had a haunted house as a setting and a few characters who I had to kill, revive, and kill again just to keep the story going. I think I filled up one of the notepads. By the end of that notepad I began to write with really large letters to fill up the page. After that experience, I’d write a bit here and there, never really finished anything until I was much older and gave up reminding myself of that early failure, which gave me permission to write again.


How’d you start NAP? Did the idea come to you in a dream while you were napping?

I am a big fan of letting the unconscious mind surface during sleep to solve problems. I don’t remember if I read it or what, but Leonardo DaVinci (and maybe Leonardo DiCaprio too) would meditate on a problem before sleeping. When he woke up the next day he found that his sleeping mind had figured out how to build a helicopter and all sorts of death machines.

I’ve applied the method to tons of issues. Everything becomes clearer after waking. “What should I eat tonight?” NAP WAKE “Fuck yeah, curry sounds good!”

One afternoon I meditated on the issue of me writing in a more serious fashion after a year of casually submitting a few places and not taking things very seriously. This is after 10 years of living life and not writing. I really didn’t know where to submit the crap I was casually writing. I wasn’t really reading anything current or interesting. So I took a nap and after I woke I decided to start NAP and figured the best way to learn to do anything was to jump in. I used to make zines long, long ago and I had a few experiences editing undergraduate publications. I really don’t know why I thought it was a good idea. I’m used to failing so I wasn’t worried that NAP might never get a single submission. I didn’t think I’d be where I am at now. I have discovered many very talented people and very talented publications. I’ve maybe made some virtual friends too that one day might turn into real friends. It’s something to do and feel a little useful in the world.

That might not even answer your question. Easy answer: I have dreamed about a small press publishing empire since birth and wanted to name it Panty Hammer, but I found out some Blues/Rock Band already has a Myspace page under that name. NAP was the second name I came up with.

NAP is undergoing a big ol’ expansion in 2012. Can you talk about that?

The focus of the first year of NAP was simply to get started, make some mistakes, and building up my skill level to deliver a magazine on a regular schedule. Year two takes a lot of the things I’ve already tweaked, and added just a couple of things. The final step of course was to develop a website I wouldn’t hate. I wanted a simple and pleasant experience for the reader. The focus of each page should be the work that is on it, not a crap ton of links and distractions. I almost have it where I want, while keeping the functionality of the site. I will keep uploading things to Issuu and smashwords, so people that like that experience, can keep that experience. I put the pdfs up so if people want to print things out on paper, they can do that too. I’m not interested in audio unless it is a part of a much larger project, which of course there will be a much larger project in the future. Oh, yeah, plus now I have a crew (which obviously you know because you are a part of my crew, DS). I figured a one-man show for a year and a half was about all NAP could last before getting stale. So new editors with their eyes and brains and guts will do a lot to add to the quality and reach of NAP. Plus, there are other things. Sort-of payments to writers, phone calls, more print chaps, more echaps. Now, I’ll have help to execute these things. Oh yeah, and I should probably work on my own writing too.

Who is a writer or writers that you’re kind of excited about these days?

Oh jeez, I can’t keep up at the moment. Many exciting things in the NAP pipeline like e-chaps from Will Henderson, Mark Cunningham, and a team-up between Russ Woods & Brett Elizabeth Jenkins. It’s hard to read submissions and the dozens of posts that hit my feeds every day. Serious radar pings from what I’ve seen lately from Adam J Maynard, Janey Smith, Rose Hunter, and James Tadd Adcox. Plus, whoever is on HOUSEFIRE for the day.


If you weren’t NAPing and writing what would you be doing?

Not napping. I work three part-time jobs right now. Sometimes I go to school. I drive around Indy a lot, but never for fun. I do dad stuff too. I like dad stuff. The only thing I regret that I can’t do in life because of my responsibilities to others in my life is to just walk around and sort of be homeless, but not really be homeless. I would probably have some sort of great magic skills that would impress people into letting me sleep on their couch and use their shower. Or maybe that is my retirement plan, what I will do when I make it to 90 or 100, whenever they let people retire in the future.


Can I see anything you’re working on lately?

I’d be a happier person if I could just download what’s in my head. I’m a mess when it comes to writing. And a turtle. Everything is in notes on notepads that I lose so I buy more notepads, but that’s only when I remember to write things down. Most of my writing happens in my head in conversations with myself. I’ll get an idea or image or something and think about it a few days until it gets to a point that I remember I should record it and then by that time I forget what the idea was.

I started this whatever it is for a micro-chap I’m putting in as a bonus for NAP chapbook orders. It’s about the Wright Brothers and their childhood as hybrid mutant sugar gliders. It might not work out. Or I’ll set it aside for a few years before I finish it.

“Once, in a former life long ago, I was a tree. I saw the predecessors to the earliest flying men, known then as the mid-late falling men, fall from my branches.

When their bones snapped as they hit the ground, I LOLed as much as trees could LOL in that time. LOLed some more when their cries for help attracted the large cat carnivores of the age which then ate the mid-late fallen men that fell from my branches.

Trees LOL all the time. Just listen.”


What did you eat for breakfast this morning?

I eat one meal a day. I try not to eat too early, then I have to be awake and hungry the rest of the day. Unless I go to bed early. Today, I had cigarettes for breakfast.


Boxers or briefs? Summer or winter?

Boxers are my speed. I like lots and lots of heat.

Where do you think the world will be in 2031?

The Chelsea Clinton White House will be okay. Not as entertaining as the Kardashian White House. Everyone will have their own clothing line. Coke and Pepsi will finally go to war. A cat that always remains a kitten will finally be invented. Life in the US will be very much like a medium security prison, so everyone starts calling prison “double prison” and that somehow lowers crime. No one wants to go to double prison.


Read The Lesson of Furniture

Read the latest issue of NAP



 

Lizzy Acker’s MONSTER PARTY has been a book for almost a year now, but i didn’t get my hands on a copy until about a month ago.

i met her when we read together in San Francisco and she left me with this lovely inscription on the title page: “For Diana! LOL JKBFF BRB (let’s be internet friends 4eva)”

i read the whole thing in about three days, finishing the final story while lying in the grass at Crissy Fields with some engaged couple taking photos a few yards away.

the book has 15 stories, most of them starring a protagonist named “Lizzy.” many times throughout i really wanted to FB Lizzy and ask her if she was the protagonist in these stories or if it was some manifestation of who she wants to be, who she imagines herself to be, or something entirely different. i won’t do that though because that’s annoying.

the first story, “The Basement,” has made me reluctant to go into the laundry room underneath my house. i was already reluctant but now i’m a little more reluctant. don’t let that scare you away though.

“Dave Is Looking for the Devil and He Wants to Be Friends” is one of the few longer pieces. Dave’s a college English teacher — Shakespeare to be exact — and he must be lonely or something, because he gets the narrator (I think it’s Lizzy again) to come by and clean his house even though it doesn’t look like it needs any cleaning.

in fact many of the characters seem to have something missing, or their lives are going nowhere, and I really liked seeing things and people through Lizzy’s (the narrator, not necessarily the author but maybe the author too) eyes.

one of the common threads is Lizzy meeting up with guy friends and kind-of-boyfriends with these sk8r dude names like Ben, Jared, Joe (he makes several appearances), Dave and Mike, or recounting the story of meeting up with one of these guys. sometimes there was a previous romantic entanglement or the wish for a romantic entanglement, and often there’s an absence of climax (no pun intended). things just kind of don’t happen, in a way that i think everyone is familiar with.

i realize that this sounds very carrie bradshaw-esque, but it is not. there’s not a whining rich girl moment in any of these episodes. it’s a collection of small towns and people who were important at one time or another, and maybe are still important but you don’t remember why and you’re unsure how to feel about that.

the title story is another longer piece about Lizzy going back to Oregon to hang out with Joe for his birthday (I’m assuming this one is author Lizzy, because she has an Oregon tattoo and is I think unashamedly all about OR and the Northwest) (with good reason). Twentysomethings get together and drink beer and eat barbecue and talk about whose ex-girlfriend has done a slutty, not cool thing. that’s the TV Guide synopsis.

a few of the stories are shorter, flash fiction-type pieces with a different tone:

“Winter” - driving on an icy road in a 1982 Honda as a metaphor for ill-advised, fumbly sex.

“Bug Attack!” - orange cockroaches. trillions of them. that’s all i’m gonna say.

“Baby” -  really great satirical tone in this one. if the apocalypse happens, this is how i want it to happen.

“Bus” - this could be a prose poem. examination of a simple moment in the kitchen between what i think are two lovers, seamlessly pairing it with a flashback.

TL;DR    basically, you should read MONSTER PARTY.

you can get started on that by clicking here.

last tuesday morning, Adam Moorad tweeted “verybeautifulwomen.blogspot.com.”  i was at work and thought it was a snarky porn blog or something so i didn’t click on it.

later i realized that verybeautifulwomen.blogspot.com is actually the home of Very Beautiful Women, a new collaborative e-chap from Pangur Ban Party curated by DJ Berndt and written by 36 female writers of words from the alt-lit/internet community.
 
Beach Sloth was very thorough and wrote about all 36 writers. i’m less thorough and just going to write about some highlights, but you should really go read them all.

Becky Lang - untitled fiction piece about the sun being depressed and not giving a shit.  in this story, a guy and a girl named joe and kaylee start dating through eHarmony and also seem to not give a shit. 

“The sun knew it was alienating people, but it seemed like time to just hang out. It felt like maybe it wasn’t spending its energies right, and instead of burning hot all over, it should occasionally send out one huge flare that would reach like a billion miles into space. That would be cool, like something not that many stars have done.”


Cassandra Troyan  -  a poem called “I was going down on you, but the birds were just coming up.”  is that a reference to morning sex?  morning sex is nice.  

“how your promise to fuck me/but refusing to fuck my life/was most endearing in its hope,/as if fucking me,/and the fuckedness of/my life are not somehow intertwined…”


Elaine Sun  - a poem called “mechanisms.”  this is a poem in three parts denoted i, ii, and iii.  part i is my favorite and comes from the poetry school i call “one-liners and random thoughts,” the kind of stuff you write in your iphone notes when you’re in the bathroom and have a random thought. or at least, i do. i don’t know. 

“You Are So Beautiful is something only heard directly before sex/and I Love You is something entirely different from I Am In Love With You”

Jillian Clark - a poem called “the airplane seat at best.”  the speaker is in an airplane thinking about someone who’s back on the ground. she references frank o’hara, which is always awesome.  and i’ve never really thought about him writing from his nose.

“the only thing i like about a street/ you singing in it / the reason i like frank o’hara / he wrote from his nose”

 
Megan Boyle - an excerpt from ‘selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee.’   more from the school of one-liners and random thoughts.  i think these all could make awesome book and/or poem titles in themselves.

“i want to pull very long, multi-colored strings out of my brain and place them next to a bowl of doritos at a party”

Nicolle Elizabeth - a work of fiction called “they do and they don’t.”  a girl meets up with her friend’s ex-gf on christmas eve to try and reconcile them. they talk a lot about fathers and say the word “like” a lot.

“We sit on stools at the far end of the countertop, and I order a beer. She gets something fruity. I hate that I have slept with a woman who orders fruity drinks. Get bourbon, be someone else.”

Stacey Teague - a poem called “75.” i think it is a love poem. 

“i am a bulk bin full of gummy bears/and you are the metal scoop thing/you take every part of me/i am gummy and delicious”

Summer Robinson - a poem called “The Uncertainty.”  this poem seems to fold in on itself. or it’s like a funnel shape. it starts really wide and broad and you aren’t really sure what’s going on and by the end it hits you.  i can’t give a choice phrase for this one without giving away the ending.


Read the rest here. I promise it’s not random porn. I guess it’s lit porn if anything.