Yesterday was a grrreat day for books. I got copies of the following--all ripe for review for the next issue of Octopus (which will be exclusively devoted to reviews and Recovery Projects). So, keep that under your hat and get back to us.














Slip by Christopher Stackhouse was already reviewed in Octopus, so check that out here if you're not too busy.

I also picked up the new Swink, which has my fifth favorite poet in it.

If you would like to know what I will be doing this weekend, I will tell you. I will be reading every poem in Typo 9, out loud, pretending I was the one who wrote it. And watching this repeatedly until something snaps in my mind causing me to pour out the best poem I've ever written. I will also be going to Russ's supermarket at some point.

Clayton Banes' post about a ZS afternoon made me very happy--made me blush. It is all in the box opening. That is what it is all about and I'm so excited that his box opening was a good one, and that, at least in that moment, Octopus trumped Thomas Hardy.

Also: I hear the thunder of Typo 9 and Fascicle 3. We need more rain on this flood: this has been online mag launch week. No doubt.

This is what ALDS would look like to you if you were about 500% your normal size, probably.

OCTOPUS #8

This issue is special. It is both online:



And in print:

My copies of ALDS have arrived! This may give you a better idea of what the thing looks like. It is quite lovely. A double cover: the first, the heavy red curtain from the poem with doves and crayfish and whatnot in the folds. Nice.

My chapbook of poems, Abraham Lincoln's Death Scene, is now available from horse less press. Hoorah!

Go buy it here. It will cost you $5 (aha, $5. Coincidence? Yes).

You should get this if you like/don't like Abraham Lincoln and/or death scenes (bloody + fiery). The above is not the cover image, but I will try to post the cover image as soon as I can snap a picture of it. There is no cover image on the horse less press site either--I'm told it is too incredible to be photographable (I have not yet actually seen it). I guess you'll have to buy it: whoa ho ho yesssss.

This puts it in perspective for me. I worked all day on this holiday preparing Octopus #8 for the world. It wasn't enough.

Joel Tomfohr and I are reading to a tiny little audience tomorrow at Sur Tango. I'm going to break them off some of the new stuff, and the new stuff only. If no one shows up at all, not even Joel, I probably won't read the new stuff, or anything at all. I'll just sit there in the Sur Tango with a beer, maybe shirtless.

This is a diagram showing various cuts of beef.


This is Loverboy.

I am excited about three things.

1. Last night, while taking G for a walk, I found a pair of skeleton hand gloves in the middle of the street. They were in perfect condition. I took them and now I can't stop wearing them. Also, they glow-in-the-dark.

2. I had a dream in which I was a chosen to be a crop duster, but I had never before flown a plane. And not just any crop duster: I was the crop duster for all the corn in North and South America.

3. Apparently, I, along with M and J, am excited about starting the spring semester.

JMW has an image of his book's cover for the Octopus #8 chapbooks. Consider this a timely tease. They're almost out of the oven. We'll update the Octopus Books site, complete with paypal buttons, sometime soon (as well as the Octopus Magazine site with an online counterpart issue). I'm pretty anxious to spread these things out around the country--hope you dig 'em.

Simon wrote a review of Erica Fiedler's poem in Octopus #7. I'm glad he dug it. It was one of my favs from the issue.

School starts back up tomorrow. I'm not sure I'm ready. I need one more week--just one more.

Been trying to stay up late this past week before school starts back up and pen some good poems. Ideally, I want them to read a little like the sound you would get by combining these five records:













I'm wondering if I'll ever write something I'll love as much as these (for example):







Danielle tagged me. Wants me to tell secrets, but not-too-secret secrets. Trying to decide if I'll comply. She does happen to be the first person in the universe to call me a tovarish (that I am aware of).

Shoveled the roof today.

A and I got sleeping bags.

Between road trips and hanging out with M and J, I've had a lot of time to think. I have two very bankable and very big ideas, invention-wise. Of course, I'm not going to announce them here. Backchannel me if you want to invest (though know that you must pay your money up front).

Good news from Forklift, Ohio. This will be my very first repeat-contribution to a mag.

Having fun with P's iBook

I've been reading Brandon Shimdoda's fresh new manuscript draft pretending as though I had written it. It is crazy good. It is winning. I have been winning and losing at Spades, Pitch, and Quiddler. I have been winning at getting a new tent and sleeping bags. I have been winning at the pumpkin pie.

Ok. Let the sleeping-in commence. I'm playing cards, exchanging presents, watching football, eating incredible food and desserts, cooking new (to me) desserts from an cookbook in a kitchen more equipped than my own--in Grand Island, NE, and Council Bluffs, IA. Then A and I will make the drive to southern Wisconsin to hang with M and J for like 3 days. Looking forward. The Octopus Chaps are at the printers. My beard is getting thick.

Today was an excellent mailbox day. In it (my mailbox) were no bills, no Bed Bath and Beyond coupons--only 2 packages. One from Pilot Books and the other from Black Ocean. Pilot graciously sent me review copies of Anthony Robinson's Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision and Friedrich Kerksieck & Aaron James McNally's Cruel, Yes, but Company. I've already read the latter heating up some lasagna. Lovely. These are postcards with actual poems handwritten on them. Actually handwritten. Each set have different post cards. One-of-a-kind. Betsy Wheeler and Pilot have their stuff together. Octopus note: FK/AJM have some of these poems in the upcoming online counterpart to Octopus #8. Soon, so soon.

I'm going to read Anthony's tonight, by the fireplace perhaps. I got #82 of his 200 and #39 of FK and AJM's 50. What did you get?

Black Ocean sent me the final pre-print typeset proof of The Man Suit. My last chance to figure out what exactly I want y'all to see.

Holiday Wish List #2

4. Eggers' What is the What




5. Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (33 1/3 book by Kim Cooper)



6. Kensington Digital FM Transmitter/Auto Charger (Black). This is too long a road trip to be messing with cds and hunting for the clearest NPR.


7. A used David Schrigley book or two.



8. Camping/Tenting supplies. Primarily A and I are taking a chunk of the summer to go roadtripping in the Yukon and Alaska. We're going to rent a car and Drive (capital D). We'll be doing a lot of camping/tenting. So we'll need to update our camping/tenting supplies.







9. A zip-up hooded sweatshirt (grey and/or black).



10. Socks. Mostly ones with patterns.



11. I'm not sure I have the energy to list all the music I want at this time. Itunes $?

Holiday Wish List #1

This is the first installment of Holiday Wish List. There will be one or two more as I think on it. Here is just what was in my head at the moment.

1. A Ushanka. My Cleveland Browns headscarf is not doing the trick. They're a tad more expensive, but I probably would prefer a Gorbachev-style Astrakhan.



2. A year's supply of quality fake tattoos. And not corny ones either. Cool ones, like anarchy symbols or giraffes or black panthers.




3. I am embarassed to say that I have not yet had a chance to buy these books. I should have them already, but sadly I do not. If you do not give them to me, I will buy them myself. Graham Foust, Linh Dinh, Tao Lin, Ben Lerner, Michael Earl Craig, Tina Brown Celona, and Alex Lemon.



*













*This image is supposed to instead represent Linh Dinh's Borderless bodies.

Hyah! I'm done for the semester (in an academic sense). I'm now wearing the first day version of the outfit that I will wear constantly for a couple weeks. I was happy with how my paper turned out. I'm not going to post it here, but you can have the title: Problematizing the Removal of the Wink Wink: A New Sincerity in the Context of the Post Avant. Thank you to the following public rhetoricians for their fuel: (straight from the Works Cited page): Aitken, Behrle, Canary, CWHOBB (have you seen what is over there now? This gave me much to consider), Corey, Hart (I just wrote Corey, Hart), Epstein, Glenum, Hoy, Jensen, Mayhew, Massey, Mohammad (2), Octopus, Robinson (3), Silliman, Snyder, Sullivan and Tost.

There's just one more hurdle before I'm done with this semester. I'm writing a paper examining the legitimacy of a New Sincerism within the context of the Post-Avant. Maybe I'll let you know how that turns out. Maybe some of you insiders can drop me a line today--give me some fertilizer for this thing. I've got myself holed up in my dark little office for today and tomorrow. Then I'll have some time off to hit a brand new to-do list, a fun one, for the most part. One with the word Octopus on it.

I doubt you'll ever need this, but just in case: here's a detailed floorplan I created of my house labeled entirely in Russian. Right now, I'm blogging in the lower right portion of the house, in my кабинет. As you can see, this comrade got a 100.

I have 3 poems from this manuscript I'm working on in issue #1 of this impressive young po-journal called Absent. Ch ch ch check it out.

And check out UNL's undergrad mag, Laurus. It grows a little stronger right in front of us. Keep your eye on Sarah Fattig. I'm telling you this now. Mark the date.

This weekend my sister, K, and her boyfriend, J, came over to help us decorate for the holidays. We put Kenny and Dolly on the box and drank some cider. Ate a few yuletide burritos.


Our tree as it gets netted. Its like a right of passage for a tree.


From left to right: J, tree (mid-decoration), K.


A and the man who sold us our tree. He had a nice leather jacket with a black panther on the back. He also thought I took too much rope with which to secure the tree to our vehicle. I disagreed with him.


We put lights on our fence/pillars out front.

Volume #7 of Lincoln's own, The Cupboard, is done. And it is free and ready for you to print it out and fold it up according to its new easier to use pdf instructions for assembly (or if you're in town you could find one at a local hangout). This one is all about the concept of doneness. So, a poet, songwriter, breadmaker, high school history teacher, mix cd compilationist, book editor and graphic designer all write about what it means to be done. The Cupboard!