Cradle Book Virtual Book Tour Stop 1: My Chair

Welcome to my virtual book tour!  I wasn't able to embark on an actual book tour to promote my new collection of stories and fables, Cradle Book, just published by BOA Editions (please buy it--please, please, in print or as a Kindle E-book), so I decided I'd stage this little virtual tour, reading a few fables from various places around my house.  Here's the first stop--my favorite chair!  Each video features one fable.  Thanks for watching!

"The Prisoner"



"The Story of the Stone"

See you at the next stop...

This Game Is Ruining Me

This is Angry Birds, an iPhone and iPad app where you shoot birds out of a slingshot at green pigs, but you probably know that because it's like the third most popular game in the app store and you have an iPhone and can't stop playing it either. It's all I do. I don't read or talk or anything, and I'm still trying to beat the first group of levels cause I suck at video games.

My Q&A with Thomas Sayers Ellis

Thomas Sayers Ellis second book, Skin Inc., is coming from Graywolf in September.  It's wild, very complicated, and will make you feel conflicted feelings about the state of black identity in America.  I did a Q&A with Thomas for today's issue of PW, and here it is, along with a link to the PW review.

My Virtual Cradle Book Book Tour

As you may or may not know, my second book, a collection of stories and fables called Cradle Book (available in print and in a Kindle-exclusive--how controversial of me--e-book edition) was just published by BOA Editions.  The demands of fatherhood having basically prevented me from embarking on an ambitious book tour, or even a small one, for which I feel bad, not just because I'm depriving you of the awesome experience of my readings, but because BOA did me the great good turn of bringing out the book, and I owe it to them to promote the darn thing.  Plus, I like reading--it's the last vestige of performance in my life (I did comedy once a upon a time, you see).


So, I've decided to borrow some tricks from Dorothea Lasky, who conduced her virtual Tiny Tour for her first book, and from some video reviews I did for eBookNewser, and do my own little virtual book tour.

Here's the plan: I'll post probably three ten-minute readings--three is enough, I think--in which it'll just be me reading stories from Cradle Book.  If anyone bothers to tune it, I think it'll be a smashing success.  If not, I'll still have fun making the videos.  I'll try to keep 'em lively.  These events will be BYOWAC (bring-your-own-wine-and-cheese).  I'll try to post the first one tonight or tomorrow.  More info and/ or a reading coming soon.

John Taggart's New and Selected

Wow.  I haven't posted on this blog for over a year.  Much of that year has been spent working as a paid blogger, so I guess I had my blogging fix. I'm still blogging for work, but now, back at PW, I edit our new blog PWxyz.  But maybe here I'll write a bit about some poetry and nonfic books I'm looking forward to.

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But, on to the cover to the left.  This is an upcoming book I'm quite excited about.  John Taggart is a poetry stalwart, having plugged away in the trenches of poetry for decades, taking off from Oppen and finding his own way toward a kind of ambient pastoral poetry that's somewhere between Oppen and Bronk.  Flood Editions did has last couple of books, and then, surprisingly, Copper Canyon signed him on for this selected poems, Is Music, which is a monumental book.  I say it's ambient, meaning the poems don't exactly begin or end, or quite conclude.  So to have so many of them together really makes them work, like turning off all the lights and putting on an Eno album.  And what a stunning cover!  The book was supposed to pub in May but has been delayed, so it's not quite out yet, but should be in stores soon.  Look out for it.

The App Boom Hits Publishing

Check out my article on how mobile phone apps are changing the publishing business, in today's PW.

albums in heavy rotation

FOLK ART by Joe Lovano Us Five
SOLAS by Masada Quintet feat. Joe Lovano
FROM A COMPOUND EYE by Robert Pollard
MOON: LIVE by Robert Pollard

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

A Profile of Novelist Chandler Burr

Here's my profile of Chandler Burr, author of YOU OR SOMEONE LIKE YOU, a new novel I'm very excited about: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6661549.html

Twitter and Publishing

A story I wrote for Publishers Weekly about how Twitter is changing the publishing business.

laid off

I was laid off from PW but am still editing PW's poetry section and doing a hell of a lot of freelance reviewing.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Me on FSG's Poetry Month Blog

FSG's Alyson Sinclair interviewed me for the Farrar, Strauss & Giroux poetry month blog about my work as poetry editor at PW and on the board of the NBCC.

Daniel Mendelson's Cavafy

I'm very excited about this book.  See why:

Che Fece…Il Gran Rifiuto

 

For certain people there comes a day
when they are called upon to say the great Yes
or the great No.  It’s clear at once who has
the Yes within him at the ready, which he will say

as he advances in honor, in great self-belief.
He who refuses has no second thoughts. Asked
again, he would repeat the No.  And nonetheless
that No—so right—defeats him all his life.

                        --C.P. Cavafy, trans. by Daniel Mendelsohn

A Profile of Poet-Critic Stephen Burt

Poet-critic Stephen Burt has a new book of essays, Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry. I wrote a profile about him and the book for my annual National Poetry Month roundup in Time Out New York. There are also three tiny reviews of new poetry books by Rae Armantrout, Matthew Dickman and Sasha Steensen.

Albums in Heavy Rotation

INNER URGE, Joe Henderson, Blue Note, 1964
COMPASS, Joshua Redman. Nonesuch, 2009
BACK EAST, Joshua Redman. Nonesuch, 2007
WAY OUT WEST, Sonny Rollins, Fantasy, 195?
HOLD TIME, M. Ward, Merge, 2009
CONNER OBERST, Conner Oberst, Merge, 2008
FOR ALL I CARE, The Bad Plus, Do The Math, 2008
PROG, The Bad Plus, Do The Math, 2007
KICKING TELEVISION:LIVE IN CHICAGO, Wilco, Nonesuch, 2006?

Me on the NBCC

My term on the board of the National Book Critics Circle begins today. I'm very excited. I was also elected VP in charge of membership, so if you want to join, which you really ought to do, you'll be dealing with me.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

jazz

I've been listening to an obsene amount of jazz lately, just downloading like mad--Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman, Paul Motian, The Bad Plus, Joe Lovano, Chris Speed, Coung Vu, Jordi Rossy, Chris Cheek--and trying to write about it.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

listening

I tend to alternate between exclusively instrumental and lyric-having music. On a jazz jag now. I love how jazz is all about moments. Even the albums aren't meant to be big deals in themselves--not like rock albums. They're just records of events, to be taken however a listener wants.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

I've become really interested lately in the idea of blogger as a way to communicate with a smeall, predefined group of people--blogs for classes or 4 friends that want to share some particular kind of information.  In that situation, the blog becomes a kind of table, and everyone puts their stuff on it and people can look and comment if and whenever they want to.

Video of My University of Chicago Reading

This is me reading at U of Chicago on 2.18.09. I'm SO HAIRY.

Two More Books I'm Excited About

PRESENT IMPERFECT by Suzanne Buffam

THE NEST, SWIFT PASSARINE by Dan Beachy-Quick (Tupelo, April 2009)
-I love DBQ's first book, NORTH TRUE, SOUTH BRIGHT, but couldn't quick follow him on the two books about Moby Dick, nor on the last book of poems for Tupelo, but I think I'm back on board with this one.