Attention Span 2011 | Stacy Szymaszek

Etel Adnan | The Cost for Love We Are Not Willing to Pay | dOCUMENTA (13) | Hatje Cantz | 2011

Pier Paolo Pasolini, trans. Norman MacAfee & Craig Owens | “Observations on the Long Take” | October 13 | 1980

Robert Kelly | Uncertainties | Station Hill | 2011

George Albon | Ryman Room | Albion | 2011

Anne Waldman | The Iovis Trilogy | Coffee House | 2011

Roberto Bolano | Antwerp | New Directions | 2010

Gail Scott | The Obituary | Coach House | 2010

Donna J. Haraway | When Species Meet | U of Minnesota P | 2008

Edric Mesmer, ed. | Yellowfield Issues 1 & 2 

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Stacy Szymaszek is Artistic Director at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. She is the author of Emptied of All Ships and Hyperglossia (both with Litmus Press). She is the editor of Gam, coeditor of Instance Press, and was one of the editors of the “Queering Language” issue of EOAGH.

Back to 2011 directory.

Attention Span 2010 – Paul Stephens

Seth Price | How to Disappear in America | Leopard | 2008

The ultimate how-to guide for the hobo Houdini in us all.  The book itself has almost disappeared from circulation—for now at least, it can be ordered online from Ooga Booga.

Robert Kelly | Fire Exit | Black Widow | 2009

R Kelly may have reached the height of his fame in the 70s; he may be reaching the height of his powers in his 70s. The strongest case yet made against flarf….

Monica de la Torre | Public Domain | Roof | 2008

Will the real Monica de la Torre please stand up? An important addition to the growing pantheon of conceptual writing.

Miles Champion | Eventually | The Rest Press | 2008

The cover, the endpapers, the front matter, the body, the colophon…. A true chapbook de résistance.

Stuart Bailey, ed. | Dot Dot Dot 18 & 19 | Dexter Sinister | 2009-2010

The ne plus ultra of contemporary meta-journal design. Not well enough known among poetry types, Dot Dot Dot regularly features writing by Seth Price, Angie Keefer, Liam Gillick and more. Conceptual? Relational? Quasi-conceptual? Or all of the above.

Clark Coolidge | The Act of Providence | Combo | 2010

The graphomanic master returns with a hometown epic. In the grand tradition of Maximus and Paterson—sort of.

Chris Burnett | SprawlCode: descriptions | Preacher’s Biscuit | 2006

Got forty dollars burning a hole in your pocket? You could buy one share of BP and hate yourself. Or you could procure this beautifully printed, brilliantly conceived book that somehow hasn’t yet sold out, despite having been printed in an edition of only 100 copies. Consider cornering the market. (Special shout out also to Journal of Artists’ Books 24 edited by Craig Dworkin and Kyle Schlesinger, which features a fascinating meta-road trip dialogue between Burnett and Tate Shaw.)

Reza Negarestani | Cyclonopedia: Complicity With Anonymous Materials | re: press | 2008

Page turning theory-fiction. One part Bataille, one part Deleuze, one part Said, one part Pynchon: put them in a blender and you have an inimitably paranoid critique of the global petrocracy as seen from the perspective of the underground noosphere.

Drew Daniel | 20 Jazz Funk Greats | Continuum | 2008

A completely engrossing account of Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats. Just the right mix of fandom and critical distance. Read it as you listen to the album—you won’t be bored.

Larry Eigner, ed. Curtis Faville and Robert Grenier | Collected Poems | Stanford | 2010

Who wants a wi-fi Kindle for $139 when you can have the four-volume Collected Poems of Larry Eigner? At $120, 3,072 poems comes out to less than four cents each. A bargain in disguise.

More Paul Stephens here. Back to directory.

Attention Span – Tim Conley

Gunnar Olsson | Abysmal: A Critique of Cartographic Reason | Chicago | 2007

The map is a territory, just not the territory in question.

Mark Scroggins | The Poem of A Life: A Biography of Louis Zukofsky | Shoemaker & Hoard | 2007

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.

Daniel Heller-Roazen | The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation | Zone | 2007

This book isn’t just about that itch you’ve always had but could never quite scratch; it is that itch.

Javier Marías | Your Face Tomorrow, Volume One: Fever and Spear | New Directions | 2005

Robert Kelly | Red Actions: Selected Poems 1960-1993 | Black Sparrow | 1995

Kelly’s work has been a recent, embarrassingly late, and joyous discovery for me. “Can you forgive us all? We / who were your alphabets.”

Rebecca Solnit | Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics | California | 2007

Clearing the air. A mind to walk with.

Jean-Michel Rabaté | 1913: The Cradle of Modernism | Blackwell | 2007

Let there be more such histories, a discreet span studied from every angle, profound and multifaceted contemplations of a month in Spain, a single day in an African village, a late afternoon shared by the world.

Jonathan Williams | Jubilant Thicket: New and Selected Poems | Copper Canyon | 2005

John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft | John Peel: Margrave of the Marshes | Chicago Review | 2007

When radio was something you did, an activity for both listener and programmer. Unexpectedly poignant is how Ravenscroft takes over the narrative when her husband dies: this is a memoir in stereo.

David Graeber | Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology | Prickly Paradigm | 2004

Jay Millar | Mycological Studies | Coach House | 2002

One of my students asked me whether this book was “for real.”

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More Tim Conley here.