lit shiz...

well, it's official; Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon: The Cunningham/McCreesh Letters will be published by Orange Alert Press out of Chicago. we're very excited to get underway, the editing has begun, the artwork is being created, the special editions are being designed (there will be 26 special lettered editions of Sunlight, and we'll post more info later on those), etc.

here is the brief description of the book:

At first glance these may seem like simply a few letters between two nobody poets slowly becoming friends. But a deeper look reveals a kind of autobiographical novel, a long-form poetic snapshot, an independent document, a written record of two artists struggling with life in America at the beginning of the 21st century. It is a discussion that explores poetry, craft, politics and social criticism in intimate and stark detail. What unfolds here in these pages is the story of two lives as they struggle and search for meaning, for understanding, for some small measure of sense in a cold and often brutal, senseless world. Sometimes scathing and brash, sometime vulnerable, sometimes self-assured, the conversational threads are woven into a constant, furious tapestry covering the landscape of the American South, the desert Southwest and all the way to the cold mountains of Switzerland. Here are two writers clinging desperately to typewriters as war in the Middle East breaks out, as fear and terror motivate and penetrate the culture at large, gouge into its electronic eye, as the artistic mind is flattened, anesthetized. These letters represent a refusal to submit and a wild shout to the heavens that art can still matter.

it's slated for release on Inauguration Day 2009. we hope it is a documentation of a time that is at long last drawing to a close (even as peak oil, the unabated consolidation of executive and corporate power, the impossible to sustain credit markets, the vast propaganda of the media, and the rest of the global economic and military troubles, threaten all that tasty 'hope...') and a representation of how art matters most during the ugly, dark days...

much sooner, my new chapbook A Sound To Drive Away The Coming Darkness is slated for a late September 2008 release from Propaganda Press. it will, most likely, punch you in the face, in the best possible way. I hope you dig up your four bucks or so and pick up a copy when it becomes available. if not, I hope you feel some kind of minor foot pain that makes walking uncomfortable if you do it for a long distance, but isn't so bad if you're just like, walking to get a beer from the fridge or whatever. that's about four bucks worth, I'd say.

even sooner than that, on Labor Day, you can pick up In Gambler's Blood from KSE. bill shute is excited and so am I to present this book of poker poetry to the small press. and hey, it has a fucking handpainted insert signed by the asshole who painted it! how can you go wrong? buy one and tell me I suck (I know you can just tell me I suck right here on this bloggie but buy one anyway)...

and don't forget about the Ten Point Press broadsides coming very soon. these works of art are going fast so reserve your copy soon. and if you've not heard back from Sean, he's been on vacation, and will be right back on top of things upon his return.

it's exciting times to be a broke ass poet. thanks to everyone who thinks enough of my words to publish em and shove em out into the world to hopefully do their job, as well as everyone who takes the time to read em. that is the magical communication connection that is at the core of the creation of art...