Attention Span 2010 – Joel Bettridge

Kaia Sand | Remember to Wave | Tinfish | 2010

Roberto Tejada | Exposition Park | Wesleyan | 2010

Nancy Kuhl | Suspend | Shearsman | 2010

Graham Foust | A Mouth in California | Flood | 2009

Kate Greenstreet | The Last 4 Things | Ahsahta |  2009

John Williams | Stoner | New York Review Books | 1965

Gino Segrè | Faust in Copenhagen | Viking | 2007

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, trans. Sidney Monas | Crime and Punishment | Signet | 1968

Jane Sprague | The Port of Los Angeles | Chax | 2009

Richard J. Pioli, editor | Stung by Salt and Water: Creative Texts of the Italian Avant-gardist F. T. Marinetti | Lang | 1987

Jack Spicer, ed. Peter Gizzi & Kevin Killian | My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer | Wesleyan | 2008

More Joel Bettridge here. His Attention Span for 2009, 2008. Back to directory.

Attention Span 2009 – Joel Bettridge

Linh Dinh | Jam Alerts | Chax | 2007

Tom Bissell | The Father of All Things | Pantheon | 2007

Michael Frayn | Copenhagen | Anchor Books |1998

Lyn Hejinian | Saga/Circus |
Omnidawn | 2008

Devin Johnston | Sources | Turtle Point Press | 2008

Hank Lazer | Lyric & Spirit | Omnidawn | 2008

Nathaniel Mackey | Splay Anthem | New Directions | 2006

Marilynne Robinson | Gilead | FSG | 2004

Cole Swensen | Ours | University of California Press | 2008

Rodrigo Toscano | Collapsible Poetics Theater | Fence | 2008

Andrew Zawacki | Petals of Zero Petals of One  | Talisman House | 2009

More Joel Bettridge here.

Featured Title – Let’s Not Call It Consequence by Richard Deming

Richard Deming | Let’s Not Call It Consequence | Shearsman | 2008 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 3 mentions in Attention Span 2008

Incommensurate space between the verb and the noun. Whatever we dream, whatever we group by words. (Patrick Pritchett)

Also mentioned by Joel Bettridge and Michael Kelleher.

Featured Title – Human Resources by Rachel Zolf

Rachel Zolf | Human Resources | Coach House | 2007 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 3 mentions in Attention Span 2008

The back cover suggests reading this book as “the creative potential of salvage” and that’s a pretty good description. This book has a pissed-off ironic tone that reveals how junk-language permeates our everyday life, and there’s no redemption: “Our abstractions stink of pure gibberish.” Ain’t that the truth! This book is definitely not wallowing in abstractions – which is very refreshing. (Kristin Prevallet)

Like spam but better, Human Resources reworks the junk language of the internet to bring to the surface it’s conflicted relationship to desire. On the one hand, spam is work written by a bot. On the other hand, spam is work written to be an intrusion in lives of people who are not bots: to spark the reader’s interest with its outrageous subject-heading or its surprising collage of often-sexualized language. Zolf uses this language to write a book not written by a bot, a book about desire as articulated by a person who speaks the language of spam, a language which is not necessarily rational, but which as immediate as a Jaguar eating a man’s face (as seen in Apocalypto). This book is spazzy, surprising and over-the-top. Since I only like things that are over-the-top, I like this book. (Steven Zultanski)

Also mentioned by Joel Bettridge.

Featured Title – Landscapes of Dissent by Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand

Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand | Landscapes of Dissent: Guerilla Poetry and Public Space | Palm | 2008 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 3 mentions in Attention Span 2008

Field manual for the practice of not sitting on hands, pitched against “the almost imperceptible social octave known as normality.” (Rodney Koeneke)

The smartest demonstration and open invitation I’ve seen of what a poetics off the page and engaged with the world does, can and might look like. (Tom Orange)

Also mentioned by Joel Bettridge.

Featured Title – The Poem of a Life by Mark Scroggins

Mark Scroggins | The Poem of a Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky | Shoemaker & Hoard | 2007 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 4 mentions in Attention Span 2008

Sometimes, all you need is a firm grip from a friend to make it across slippery ground. With Zukofsky, Scroggins is that friend. (Benjamin Friedlander)

Illuminating and exemplary. To those writers I know who cannot even imagine why one would read a “literary” biography, I say: read this and see. (Tim Conley)

Also mentioned by Joel Bettridge and Kit Robinson.