Box of Replenishments

Bought books this week! 3 from the local indie (The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer, and The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter), 1 from a press website (In the Carnival of Breathing by Lisa Fay Coutley), and 1 from Amazon Marketplace (Robert Penn Warren's Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce). Looking forward to devouring them when I'm unplugged in Oregon next week.

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Killer first line of the moment:

Like a twentieth-century dream of Europe--all

from Laura Kasischke's "Time"
(Space, in Chains, Copper Canyon Press, 2011)

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New York Quarterly Books is the perfect example of the way a small poetry press should be run: editor Raymond Hammond solicits books from poets already published in the New York Quarterly (one of the most eclectic, well-rounded, and exciting journals I've seen--and I read them all!--with a mix of reviews, essays, and interviews along with very generous offerings of poetry); while the journal has been around for four decades, the book publishing program is new, getting started only in 2009 but already having picked up a lot of steam. Among their new poetry books, I've really liked Amanda Bradley's Hints and Allegations, Shelley Stenhouse's Impunity, Tony Medina's My Old Man Was Always On the Lam, Steve Henn's Unacknowledged Legislations, and Luke Johnson's understated After the Ark.

Anis Shivani features NYQ Books and After the Ark over at Huffington Post in his 4th of July post: "20 of the Best Books from Independent Presses You Should Know About."

Whoa. How bout that. Though, the last line of the poem quoted should read "exploring the sky, open and distant."

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Even with the band's tireless work ethic (or perhaps because of it), happenstance trails the Head and the Heart everywhere: The day Billboard met the band at a dimly lit New York diner marked the one-year anniversary of its self-released debut album. For the release show, the members returned to their birthplace: Conor Byrne Pub, where more than 200 friends and fans congregated in support. The show sold out easily, and during the next few months, the band members found themselves ordering box after box of replenishments for local record stores Sonic Boom and Easy Street. Fans were not only sharing the music-they were buying it multiple times over, as gifts for friends and family.

I remember that show. How bout a picture of it?

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Violin-y