Featured Title – On Spec by Tyrone Williams

Tyrone Williams | On Spec | Omnidawn | 2008 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 3 mentions in Attention Span 2008

Massively riveting. A linguistic ultrasound into the innards of language. (Marcella Durand)

Cornucopia of hybrid texts. Jimmy Webb and Jacques Derrida tango on one page: “Pop ain’t s’posed to drawl and corn in the bright can’s just plain wrong.” “Derrida clarifies and develops this difference between the Platonic and Christian concepts of the soul in Chapter Three.” (Keith Tuma)

Also mentioned by Michael Kelleher.

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 – PPL in a Depot by Gary Sullivan

Gary Sullivan | PPL in a Depot | Roof | 2008 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 3 mentions in Attention Span 2008

Gary Sullivan demonstrates that free speech is all about hurting people, wanting to hurt people, and other illusions of agency. These plays show us how much it matters by being brutally honest about how little it matters; the formal care and attention that goes into these collages weights even the lightest, most banal statements with foreboding emblematic import. (Stan Apps)

Brecht shutting cell phone to mustachio Mozart with Caucasian circle chalk. “Between the dark and the thyme soufflé … mmmm …” (Rodney Koeneke)

Also mentioned by Michael Kelleher.

Featured Title – The Transformation by Juliana Spahr

Juliana Spahr | The Transformation | Atelos | 2007 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 4 mentions in Attention Span 2008

Spahr’s poetic memoir blends the personal and the political in a different way. (Rae Armantrout)

The Transformation may be, by the author’s account, a novel. I’m not sure. If so it’s a little out of place on this here poetry list, but who cares? The disregard for genre is part of its charm. Spahr’s increasingly intensive connective writing brings as many things into relation that can fit into a linguistic scene. Actually that’s not quite true – the relationships she builds are precise ones, with particular contemporary and political resonances. For instance, the migration from Hawaii to NYC narrated in The Transformation brings us from a colonial scene to it’s obverse: late 2001 America. Within this broader frame, all manner of institutional effects, social contradictions and forms of natural life are brought into conversation. That’s what keeps Spahr’s work from lapsing into a hippie monism or relativism: the politicized frame always reconfigures the disparate material into a specific critique. And Apocalypto. (Steven Zultanski)

Also mentioned by Megan London and Michael Kelleher.

Featured Title – The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Roberto Bolaño, trans. Natasha Wimmer | The Savage Detectives | FSG | 2007 | Goodreads | LibraryThing | 5 mentions in Attention Span 2008

The tale of two wild poet boys in an On The Road Adventure… at least that’s how the book is characterized by reviewers. It seems to me to be more about the attempt to recover the mythology of poetry and the bohemian ethic of beauty, love, and self-indulgence … remember when we were racy, spontaneous, scandalous, drunk, oversexed, high on ambition, low on productivity? Not me, I came of age in the 90s. But I remember clearly thinking that literature ended with my generation—now that’s youth! Bolaño hits it on the head (sometimes…). In my reading, however, Natasha Wimmer is the true genius here—she’s clearly an amazing writer herself, and the book reads as if it was written in English. Quite a feat, given how raunchy most of the language is. (Kristin Prevallet)

I read it too, and it’s as good as they say. The best conventional novel about avant-gardism ever! (Stan Apps)

Mentioned by Gina Myers, Allyssa Wolf, and Michael Kelleher.

Attention Span – Richard Deming

Patrick Pritchett | Antiphonal | Pressed Wafer | 2008

Sarah Riggs | Chain of Miniscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling | Reality Street | 2007

Nancy Kuhl | Nocturnal Factory | Ugly Duckling | 2008

P. Adams Sitney | Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Emersonian
Heritage | Oxford | 2008

Susan Howe | Souls of the Labadie Tract | New Directions | 2008

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds | Dig, Lazarus, Dig! | Mute Records | 2008

Lawrence Jordan | The Lawrence Jordan Album | Facets Video | 2008

Joe Brainard | The Nancy Book | Siglio | 2008

Kyle Schlesinger | Hello Helicopter | BlazeVox | 2007

Michael Kelleher | Human Scale | BlazeVox | 2007

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More about Richard Deming here.