2008 in retrospect

I am having a decidely low key New Years Eve this year. I've been busy playing catch-up this week, and today, after some mid-afternoon debauchery with R and a nap, I intend to settle in with some Meditarranean food and some new little things (pendants and paperweights) I need to work on, and perhaps even a little bit of writing. I'm feeling more anti-social than usual and I totally blame the weather and recovering from the week with my parents which is always a little draining. Luckily I'm library-free this week and have spent the last couple of days in the studio catching up on orders, finishing the chaps on which I am perpetually behind, and working on some lovely new notecard designs to soon be unveiled.

The holiday was the usual round of various visits over the course of the week, lots of family I hardly ever see, loads of delightful presents --bookstore and Starbucks gift cards, a new saucepan to replace the one I threw away after being too lazy to wash it, yummy soda flavored lipglosses, last season of The Office, and a new dvd player which will no longer necessitate me watching everything on my laptop. There were bad cable Christmas movies and too many cookies, and one night, a bit too much Southern Comfort. The entire time, I was uneasy with the snowfall and ridiculous cold and a general cabin-fever restlessness that always surfaces when I visit and so anxious to get back to the city.

Once again, it has been a crazy wonderful year (okay parts were not so wonderful, including the middle part which sort of sucked) but in retrospect, alot happened. There was much poetry & awesome chapbooks, lovely crafty things, thrift stores, antique fairs, gorgeous art, the new book, a handful of poems in journals, awesome readings, lots of trashy novels and pretty dresses. Not perfect, considering a big chunk of romantic drama (which for the moment has worked itself out) unusual malaise and uneasiness both related and unrelated to the above , and pretty much perpetually being behind schedule on just about everything and a bit overwhelmed at times, but *sigh* such is life in general.

For once, however, I am unusually excited about the new year. There is so much to do in getting chaps out, both the stragglers from 2008 and new ones from Susan Slaviero and Kristen Orser, plus gearing up for AWP (we're sharing adjoining tables with Switchback and Featherproof, which will be fun.) I've also started working our much anticipated full-length poetry/photography extravganza by Robyn Art & Robin Barcus, which will be out in the next couple of months.

In terms of my stuff, I plan on whipping the kissing disease into shape, and possibly sending it to a couple of contests, probably moreso for the possible prize cash and ego boost, since if nothing pans out in the next year or so, I have no problem with just doing it myself eventually. I am also hatching some new collage and shadowbox series projects, and am hoping now that the pre-holiday production & shipping frenzy has slowed, I can work a bit more on these. And always, new ideas for little things for the shop, including map and postage stamp pendants, little conversation heart necklaces, and if I can get the iron-on sheets to work, some canvas totebags.

Until then...

now available from dancing girl press

The Residents
Kim Gek Lin short
dancing girl press, 2008

available here.

When I was 19 and in my Beat worshipping, black turtleneck wearing phase I scrawled this in one of my journals. Though I've only retained my love of Ferlinghetti, it still holds true and is somewhat beautiful..


"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."

-jack kerouac



(okay, I still wear the turtleneck sometimes...)

we already know they rock..

but it seems the rest of the world is definitely starting to notice...

dgp gals Kathleen Rooney and Daniela Olszewska get major props in Time Out Chicago's Best of 2008...

red-handed

limbo (not the fun kind with the pole)

It's been a busy, busy week, and since the weather has sucked and my sinuses are still wonky, plus I am working the dreaded day shift, I am pretty much just hanging in there til Friday. We did survive the massive deluge of returns, so at least my arm isn't sore anymore from hefting art books across the desk to check them in. Otherwise there is much looking busy and really just staring at the computer and moving stuff around on my desk waiting for the weekend. I had intended to get the wicked alice issue up before I left town, but I don't think it's going to happen until after I get back, since it's a pretty hefty issue (30+ contributors.) I will, however, be getting three dgp chaps up for sale in the next day or so, and another couple laid out and ready to go when I come back on the 28th....Meanwhile I am still packing orders and folding books, wrapping presents, chasing the kittens away from the christmas tree with a squirt bottle, and eating peppermint ice cream, all whilst trying not to fall asleep....

procrastinator's special

All this week, through Friday, we'll be upgrading all orders to Priority mail to ensure pre-holiday delivery for any order over $20...

oh my, yes

Addicted to Pretty Porn

monday night

I will be one of the features (w/Joe Roarty) at:

Waiting 4 the Bus

Monday, December 15th
Jak's Tap
901 W. Jackson-7:30-10pm

the portal

On the third floor of the library, we recently punched through the wall into the building next door, the latest CC aquisition, in order to make more room in the library for both books and people...Since there are staff areas in the new annex that need to be accessed, though the building itself (the old Spertus Institute) is not officially open, we've been required, if we want any access at all from this side of the wall, to post a guard, a sentry all hours during which the library is open who will sit there and not let anyone not suppsed to be in there through the door until it's officially open. We've been calling it "The Portal" and part of me wonders whether the urge to open the forbidden door by our patrons is not exacerbated by the fact that we seem to be guarding it so closely. Were it simply a nondescript metal doorway, surely no one would find it half as enticing as one closely guarded with a sentry complete with a sign-in sheet and a well placed table...is it not sort of like the button that says "Do not push this button..."

I've been amusing myself with thoughts about what the random person might possibly guess could be hidden behind such a door. The secret to the Dewey Decimel system? a super computer? The gateway to the underworld? (actually the reference staff, newly relieved of their cushy offices to make way for group study rooms and now relegated to cubicle-land are now housed there. Given how most of them seem to get along, and now the complete lack of their former privacy or any ability to get away from each other, I'm guaging we may one day open the door to bloodied librarians strewn far and wide...)

Hmm..Perhaps it IS the gateway to evil...

new and pretty things

aviary notecards




dragonfly letter opener



vintage typewriter key ring




dictionary necklace





monarch gift set

I think we need to get a bigger box...

August:




Today:

snow day

okay, well not really. It's actually only about an inch and a half, but it's enough to talk me out of going downtown to the studio to take photos of my new vintage goodies(too dark and dreary anyhow) and just stay home. I was going to sneak in some chapbook folding, but that can wait until Monday I suppose if I just go in earlier. I will reiterate once again how much I hate winter and it gets a little harder to bear every year. (Last night, I walked outside and swear it was so cold it made my eyes a little blurry, and that was before I stood at the bus stop for a half hour. Bites.) It might just be pre-Christmas stress and craziness. It might be just a general sense of anxiety and malaise in just about everyone I know around me that's starting to creep into me. I am trying to concentrate on the very good things going on in my life and not sweat the details. But winter makes it harder to do this. I find myself continually telling myself under my breath that everything is going to be fine, that things will work out, that this all isn't some awful downward spiral into bad badness.

I always feel more vulnerable in the winter, since bad things things tend to happen then more than any other time--car accidents, sickness, crises. I used to be convinced that my neighboorhood would unearth at least one good tragedy shortly after Christmas. Once, our neighbors garage burned down. Once, a prostitutes body was found in a hedge of trees. When I was in college, another neighbor nearly fatally burned himself to a crisp while working on his car. Even my own mental health takes a turn for the worst in winter. In grad school, there was an entire January I spent, besides going to my classes at DePaul, sitting in the dark in my apartment and crying (or at least it seemed like it..) Another December about 5 years ago where I was convinced my upstairs neighbor had killed his girlfriend and that her body was lying up there decomposing (I heard somoene breaking down a door, two men's voices arguing, a woman screaming from otherwise quiet neighbors). Obviously not true and rather ridiculous in retrospect, but in my head, it constantly bothered me, even though I heard her clicky heels walking around above me after that, I was still convinced she'd been bludgeoned..it did not help that I had just seem Mulholland Drive. That was also the winter of the leaky radiators the landlord would not fix, which was resulting in a few Dark Water like moments of despair while they managed to ruin my beloved hardwood floors. Tragic, no, but overwhelming to me, yes..that constant dripping was enough to drive me insane. And of course, let us not forget the great Starbucks crying melt down a couple of years ago right before Christmas..

Everything is just HARDER these bleak months. Maybe it's some weird cabin fever restlessness..argh..just wish I could be free of it...

dgp, 2009 style!

January
Apocrypha / Susan Slaviero
Squint / Kristen Orser

February
The Nested Object / Dawn Lonsinger
Choral Mimeographs / Stephanie Anderson

March
This Admirable Miry Clay / Talia Reed
Amelia Earhart: Fragments Found in a 1937 Aviator’s Boot / Kate Durbin


April
Outgrowth / Jen Blair
Sawdust, Sugarcube / Sarah Den Boer

May
Blue Grotto / Rachel Webster
The Mae West Defense / Julie Strand

June
The Calculus of Owls / Sarah Gardner
Raid Your Own / Brooklyn Copeland
Silt / Erica Wright

July
Lost Colony / Jacqueline Lyons
We Sing You, Jimmy Sky / Deirdre Dore
The Chainsaw Bears / Erin Elizabeth Smith

August
Elpenor Falls / Elizabeth Barbato
Land Wide Enough to Get a Hold Lost In / Shelly Taylor
TBA (by Erika Mikkalo)

September
Flood Year / Sara Tracey
Picking Cherries in the Española Valley / Leah Browning

October
The Plath Poems / Nava Fader
The Classic Game of Murder / Katie Capello
My Imaginary / Laura Madeline Wiseman

November
This Room Has a Ghost / Stephanie Goehring
Amplexus / Melinda Wilson
People who Are in Love Will Read this Book Differently / Cindy St John

December
Lucy Design in the Papal Flea / Renee Angle
View from My Banilla Vanilla Villa / Eva Schlesinger

January 2010
Dear Darkest Sky: Postcards / Jessica Bozek

seventh grade slow dance

for your viewing pleasure:

sunday night

UniVerse of Poetry presents a series of events in partnership with Chicago Public Radio, recorded live by Chicago Amplified for archiving and broadcast

Chicago Amplified/Chicago Public Radio


Green + Free
A Solstice Celebration of Poetry & Music



featuring :
Kristy Bowen
Kevin Coval
Onam Liduba
James Reiss
Cin Salach


&
Pont des Arts Ensemble
www.myspace.com/pontdesartsensemble


The celebration of "future now" continues in Chicago with Green + Free, featuring
nationally renowned performance and page poets Kristy Bowen, Kevin Coval, Onam Liduba, James Reiss and Cin Salach. “A sensual banquet of poetry & music, passion & spirituality,”

Pont des Arts Ensemble is the finest example of the global renaissance of the marriage of poetry and songs and new performance media. Pont des Arts features Richard Fammerée, Carrie Ingrisano, Meg Lauterbach, Zara Zaharieva, Victor Sanders, Meg Thomas and guest poet Rachel Webster.



Sunday, December 7, 2008
8 PM
Uncommon Ground North
1401 W. Devon Avenue
Chicago

773.465.9801 (reservations recommended)

www.uncommonground.com

Start the Evolution!
Free & open to the public

UniVerse of Poetry is pleased to be a partner of Chicago Public Radio's Chicago Amplified, who will be in attendance to record this event in its entirety.

resurfacing

I had a rather glorious week off from work that began with my very fun reading last Saturday at Quimbys, was followed by the usual fun holiday festivities (turkey, family, shopping) but ended this weekend with 24 hour flu that laid me flat (literally) and involved all sorts of badness (including a nasty knot on my forehead from passing out in the bathroom at my parents house and an unfortunate collision with the furnace grate..) I am just a little shaky, but back at work, and looking rather bewildered at the mountain of things that need to get done before the end of the year. I have two chaps on the verge of being ready to go, two others in the process of layout, and another to start. Also, there is the issue of wicked alice that is in the works, with (finally) all the work selected and due to debut on Friday if all goes well. Not to mention a general holiday swell in the shop, which has me happily packing and shipping like a madwoman the past day or so. (I am also a bit behind in the sudden rush of chapbook sales as well since the beginning of November, but if you ordered something, it will be on its way soon.)

I will have next year’s lineup of dgp posted in the next day or so, though, as soon as I hear back from a couple authors to confirm. Final cuts were messy, messy, and I still had to turn away more books than I would have liked, but we wound up with about 8 books per season –a total of around 30 for the entire year. (I’m aiming for seasons these days, not months, since I’m always off by a couple..) I will say again I am continually shocked and amazed by the work we get, and even whilst working today on an upcoming chap (Kim Gek Lyn Short’s The Residents), astounded at what we get to publish. It totally makes all the extra work, the juggling, the insane stapling marathons worthwhile.

start your holiday shopping early

and avoid the crunch..

Friday and Saturday, I will be updating the shop with tons of new lovely things, including new paperweights, letter openers, vintage wallpaper journals, notecard designs, flasks, cigarette cases, dictionary pendants and typewriter key rings..stay tuned..

release reading this Saturday at Quimby's

7pm.
Quimbys Bookstore
1854 W North Avenue


Kristy Bowen's poems are sexy and smart. The poems in in the bird museum fool around with dictionaries, notebooks, concordances, and the ways that bodies get lost and found in real and imaginary places. There are dance halls and graveyards here, footnotes and invocations. One poem asserts, " I suggest everything is a metaphor for sex. Even the bird." These poems let us know pleasure and danger are often in close proximity. These poems are inhabited by girls and women who move through the world with a sense of urgency, and Bowen invites us to join them. Or rather, she INSISTS we do. This book is delicious.

--Susan Denning


Kristy Bowen’s sparkling and spellbinding poems are full of the things of households and Victorian interiors: corsets, envelopes, books, hooks, and spoons. Bowen’s vigilant attention to the danger and fragility of these environments is manifest in her description of the beings (women, girls, and birds) who inhabit or are bought into these spaces. These are the muses of Bowen’s museum (“a seat or shrine of the muses”). Like a careful curator, Bowen gathers and assembles stories, scenes, and objects related to her subjects. The result is a densely packed cabinet of gothic wonders and haunting relics. Reading these poems makes one keenly aware of the inticacies, intimacies, and inconsistencies staged in the theaters of domestic spaces.

--Michelle Detorie


I was apprenticed to the frenzied atmosphere, the verandas that open into dark wind. Kristy Bowen is apprenticed to the “frenzied atmosphere” and in it she finds the crucial minutiae, in it she finds skirts of night and a woman’s heart as a wind-up bird. Bowen’s poetry is where we go to read that heart—as old- time paper valentine and as fist of flesh: valved and valued, the bric a brac and phobias it contains in each of its Cornellian chambers and the placards labeling each exhibit are letters written with the bones of birds. So it is, so it was that Here, we came for the ghost of the word/ inside the other word: and here, in The Bird Museum we are haunted by all that is visual as it is visceral and Bowen, playful, brilliant, curator, reminds us that this place is a synaesthete’s playground--where the eye partakes in the delicious but no less-so than the ear, for here: If you listen, you can hear the holes in the alphabet, sounds lit by the lamps of our bones. Like birds we might even rise, our lamp-lit bones: luminous and (as Bowen does here so often,) fly in a perfect line.

--Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis

---

art (or something like it)

These were some collages that just came down from an exhibit in the library. Since they tend to look to me whenever they have some blank wall space to fill, I also have some pages from a zine project I'm working on involving children's books and electrical tape in the new show...(one of those, wouldn't it be funny if I...? projects)..I will show you those soon, but for now, I give you these..

tis the season, part deux

Right before I went to bed last night I realized that my slight sore throat of the past day or so was going to turn into a nasty little cold.. I had to be at work early to boot, which made it extra unbearable. I should know better than to go two weaks straight with no days off to rest but November is always super crazy, and December does not look much better. I was going to head over to the studio tonight to work on my new notecard designs, but I'm feeling sluggish and will probably just go home. I do, however, have the entire glorious week of Thanksgiving off, for which there will be be the usual excesses, I'm sure, in food, family, alcohol, and shopping. I just need to get through the reading at Quimby's on Saturday and I'll be home free...

tis the season (apparently)

I have finally started seeing holiday displays in the Michigan Avenue windows and the big Salvation Army tree in front of the Hancock building has been up for days. I am in love with Starbucks' Hazlenut Hot chocolate and twinkle lights, and have finally posted the holiday ornaments in the shop after much trial and error. The sequin balls are courtesy of my mother, who has much more patience than I, but I love the little birds, which are one of my favorite decorations.

a history of lolcats

studio shots

Yesterday, I was finally able to get enough sunlight in the morning to actually get photos taken of the holiday ornaments, as well as tame the pre-craft show craziness in the studio, so since I had the camera with, decided to take a few photos of the place in it's nice orderly state (and not how it looks usually with shipping boxes and paper cuttings everywhere...) I'd still like to maybe get a couch for along the remaining empty wall for more seating when we have events (and my own napping when working late), but it's much fuller now than it was last November when we moved in the Fine Arts.





see more pics here...

november 22nd @ Quimby's

will be the official release reading for in the bird museum. Come on out and get a copy in person. I will even sign it for you..probably whether you want me to or not... Save money on shipping! Plus, I promise there will be porn...okay not in the book (well, not much) but in the bookstore...

7pm.
Quimbys Bookstore
1854 W North Avenue

---

in the bird museum
by Kristy Bowen
Dusie Press, 2008
$15.00
ISBN: 9780615256863

available here


Kristy Bowen's poems are sexy and smart. The poems in in the bird museum fool around with dictionaries, notebooks, concordances, and the ways that bodies get lost and found in real and imaginary places. There are dance halls and graveyards here, footnotes and invocations. One poem asserts, " I suggest everything is a metaphor for sex. Even the bird." These poems let us know pleasure and danger are often in close proximity. These poems are inhabited by girls and women who move through the world with a sense of urgency, and Bowen invites us to join them. Or rather, she INSISTS we do. This book is delicious.

--Susan Denning


Kristy Bowen’s sparkling and spellbinding poems are full of the things of households and Victorian interiors: corsets, envelopes, books, hooks, and spoons. Bowen’s vigilant attention to the danger and fragility of these environments is manifest in her description of the beings (women, girls, and birds) who inhabit or are bought into these spaces. These are the muses of Bowen’s museum (“a seat or shrine of the muses”). Like a careful curator, Bowen gathers and assembles stories, scenes, and objects related to her subjects. The result is a densely packed cabinet of gothic wonders and haunting relics. Reading these poems makes one keenly aware of the inticacies, intimacies, and inconsistencies staged in the theaters of domestic spaces.

--Michelle Detorie


I was apprenticed to the frenzied atmosphere, the verandas that open into dark wind. Kristy Bowen is apprenticed to the “frenzied atmosphere” and in it she finds the crucial minutiae, in it she finds skirts of night and a woman’s heart as a wind-up bird. Bowen’s poetry is where we go to read that heart—as old- time paper valentine and as fist of flesh: valved and valued, the bric a brac and phobias it contains in each of its Cornellian chambers and the placards labeling each exhibit are letters written with the bones of birds. So it is, so it was that Here, we came for the ghost of the word/ inside the other word: and here, in The Bird Museum we are haunted by all that is visual as it is visceral and Bowen, playful, brilliant, curator, reminds us that this place is a synaesthete’s playground--where the eye partakes in the delicious but no less-so than the ear, for here: If you listen, you can hear the holes in the alphabet, sounds lit by the lamps of our bones. Like birds we might even rise, our lamp-lit bones: luminous and (as Bowen does here so often,) fly in a perfect line.

--Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis

---

not quite a weekend

Yesterday at The Empty Bottle was so-so in terms of sales (I blame the economy), but it was followed by an excellent dinner at Leonas with our proceeds, so we broke even at least..I sold a bunch of cheapie typewriter key rings though, a newish thing I haven't tried on etsy yet.. Plus I arrived home to a couple of online sales while I was gone, so all is good. I went to bed early and slept late before coming in to work today and plan a quick housecleaning when I get home, some dinner, and then some poetry work. Then, of course, it's up early tomorrow and down to the studio and I start all over again, a very long week since I'm working on Saturday as well. Tuesday, I do get a brief reprieve and an evening off from the library anyway, since the dgp show will be on the road to Flourish Bakery with the awesome Cecilia Pinto, as well as me reading some other pieces from billet-doux from non-local contributors..(details here..)

Otherwise on tap this week: finishing up one chap, its cover design, and layout finalization on two others. I have still yet to be able to photograph the Christmas ornaments due to a profound lack of sunlight the last week, plus I'm still working on the little wallpaper notebooks and the gift sets.

But it was a good week in the ever ongoing romantic drama arena ..no idea if the weather will hold, but I'm enjoying it while I can...

saturday

Indeed it is the time for Handmade Chicago to go back to The Empty Bottle...we will be there with all sorts of books and paper goodness.


***

I am still, however running around like mad most days and things probably won't let up until around Christmas. We are still a bit behind on chaps, so look for a massive slew of titles soon playing catchup. I am also almost done with the second round of dgp submission cuts. If I still have your manuscript, and haven't sent a rejection, you are still in the running I am hoping to have all decisions made and confirmed by the end of next week. I was hoping to do it all in October, but it gets a bit tougher every year to decide.




In other news, a big box of bird museums arrived yesterday, and after I unpacked them, I just sat and drooled over them for awhile. I was paging through it thinking about the poems inside. I think perhaps even more than girl show, which was my actual thesis, this book is actually more in line with the developemental path my poetry took while I was in the MFA program (probably because I was in there FOREVER (4 years part-time) and girl show was actually mostly written in 2006 almost at the end of it all.. There's sort of a line where the poems that wound up in the fever almanac ended (late 2004, about a year in) and the beginnings of what would become this book as my writing style started to shift. And of course, certain sections of it were actually projects for classes, the errata poems, and archer avenue. Much of the other stuff (especially the stuff from feign) was written in 2005, when I got to work with Stephanie Strickland, probably the faculty member (sadly only visiting) who had the best concrete suggestions for improvements I encountered. Some of the later pieces were initially parts of girl show and another manuscript that just seemed to fit better in this one. And then of course there are the andromeda poems, which spanned all four years. The entire book is sort of a collection of what I was doing all those years back in grad school, which is sort of cool snapshot of my own history and obsessions.

next tuesday

---

Tuesday Funk at the Flourish Bakery, Nov. 11 at 7pm

Please join us for the next installment of Tuesday Funk on Tuesday, November 11th at reading at the Flourish Bakery in Edgewater. Tuesday Funk is a monthly reading that combines poetry, essays and fiction with an emphasis on new work and works in progress. It's free and open to the public. Some of the poets we've hosted are: Kristy Bowen, Jett McAllister, Carl Marcum, Roy Guzman, and Adam Jameson.

This month we're having a special love themed edition of Tuesday Funk. Dancing Girl Press founder Kristy Bowen commissioned fifteen poets to imagine the love letter and sold them boxed together under the title billet-doux The result was something breathtaking, beautiful and full of surprises. Now Kristy and some of those same writers come to Tuesday Funk to share these letters in front of our microphones. Lisbeth Levine, co-author of the The Wedding Book: The Big Book for Your Big Day will share her thoughts on the phenomenon of the contemporary American Wedding. And poet and essayiest Roberta Wilson reflects on the nature of love itself.

Flourish Bakery
1138 West Bryn Mawr
November 11th, 7pm.

---

new and pretty things

sweet little deer necklace, $13.



bird ephemera letter opener, $14.



poesy ring, $8

insert temendous sigh of relief

I am feeling all warm and fuzzily American tonight...

new from dancing girl press

lit
danielle vogel
dancing girl press, 2008

get it here

from god's mouth to our ears

This blog just keep getting better and better. Since the other day she has managed to take on Sarah Palin, pro-choicers, etsy admin, "evilution," and yes, even Halloween.

This comment from "god" below the evolution entry had me in hysterics though..

I did make some stupid people (mostly for my own entertainment), but not that many.

kitty hijinks and the usual ghosts

Yesterday was a weird day and it wasn’t even Halloween yet. I woke up to find that the kittens, in the middle of the night had succeeded in TPing the living room. Then, later, when I ran over to the studio, I was greeted by a door deadbolt locked from inside (apparently my key does in fact work to open, it just takes a little muscle, but since I don’t use the deadbolt, I did not know this. ) When I knocked on the door to ask the manager about it, he said he’d send an engineer and it was
“probably just the Fine Arts Building ghost, bwahaha!”. Oh great. I’m more inclined to believe it was the night crew who emptied the garbage…but nevertheless. Later, there was weirdness again with R that has me bewildered and worried and all the usual emotions associated with him.

I was thinking I might sneak over to the studio tonight to finish a couple of things, but now the idea of being there on a Friday night, with all the ghost talk, I think I’ll just go home..

In other news my Medusa costume was quite a failing, my snakes too slippery, my hair too resistant to to actually attaching them, so I wound up just being a regular old black clad cranky poet-girl today. Maybe I'll stick my head in an oven later just for kicks.

yikes...

I just discovered that on Tuesday, Obama and a million expected supporters will be anxiously awaiting election tallies in Grant Park. I will be right across the street from the whole shebang (literally) and getting off work at 10. It's supposed to go til 11, but lets' hope it's a happy celebratory million and not a cranky, disappointed million...

However, if there's even the slightest chance that Caribou Barbie will be running the country after McCain keels over, you will find me in Canada come Wednesday morning...

Evening Edit: Actually, I just found out they will be closing the campus at 6pm. on Tuesday. The Fine Arts is also apparently closing at 6 (and rumor has it, some businesses down here have been asked to close at 3pm. that day.) I know CC closed up early on the night before the 4th of July when the fireworks mob assembles downtown, so this must be similar...so I guess I will be going home to watch election returns that night (actually online since I get no tv reception without cable anyway....)If the Dems do lose, and the crowd goes all riot crazy and burns down the building, at least they won't miss me when I flee to Canada...

jesus had two mommies

STAY AWAY FROM THE ONES RUN BY GAYS, WITCHES AND PAGANS AND FEMENISTS...

I really try not to talk about the idiocy I quite regularly witness over in the etsy forums, but this had me cracking up. The nativity set is actually rather sweet, and if I were at all religious would think of getting one…I like that it focuses on the expansiveness and inclusiveness parts of Christianity, the redefinition of family units, incorporating different lifestyles, etc..

But that blog entry, which seems to be started and written solely to attack the artist, is hilarious in its awfulness, misspellings, idiocy, and bad grammar galore…I just had to share..

12th Street

interview

new and pretty things

mechanical mermaid necklace, $25




dragonfly ephemera paperweight, $8




garden party rose necklace, $23

randomness

Once again, in lieu of last Friday off, I am stuck working Sunday. The good side is that I didn't have to come in until noon. The bad side is this week will be ever so ridiculously long. But then again Friday is Halloween so I'm excited, and my Medusa cosume is shaping up well...though how I will actually get the snakes to stay in my hair is still in question, and whether I actually want to wear them on the way to work also in question (I tend not to be the sort of person who likes to attract attention themselves. I've also always thought it would be cool if EVERYONE, grownups and kids alike did Halloween, so that you didn't feel like such a spectacle when you do..) It's a damn serious business here in the library, sometimes terribly cuttthroat when it comes to the costume contest. There is, after all, money and cupcakes involved.

in progress

I'm not your bitch, bitch

Reb Livingston says it here and says it very well...

"For those poets who are not married to a particular way of doings things, i.e. Legitimacy's Bitch -- it's time for more of us to start using that creativity we possess towards getting our work out there -- "


***

Occasionally, even I find myself the only poet in the room who's saying that self-publication, or at least founding presses ourselves --the whole redistribution of cultural capital is a good thing. I found this, with a few obvious exceptions, to be especially when I was getting my MFA, and even among alot of poets I consider friends. That nasty little hydra "legitimacy.." I wrestled with it for years, frettling over where I published, who would publish my book, all the things that I was supposed to want but didn't really care all that much about--prizes, teaching positions, residencies, fellowships. But really all I wanted to do was write and have people read it and like it. I've been thinking about this and I believe it all boils down to audience. Everything you do as a poet (including all those things above, are really about getting an audience aren't they?) Yes, send your work out. Spread those poems everywhere to reach new readers. Do readings. Get involved in literary communities. Make it easy for them to find you, to find more work if they are inclined. If a good number of editors have found enough promise in your work enough to publish, you might be ready to put together a chapbook. Enough work and maybe you have a book.

Now comes the hard part, the bottleneck. I know, looking at even dgp submissions, 50 percent of the manuscripts we will not publish are infinitely publishable. Some I am going to hate to turn down, but there's limited time, limited resources. I hope they will search and find another home, hope they will consider starting collective ventures, or possibly publishing their own work. If you believe there is audience and readership enough to support a book you send to someone else to publish, and you have the resources to do it, why not take it on faith and consider doing it yourself? Now granted, it's nice when another press wants you. It means at least one other person (or people) think it should be published and we poets are an uncertain lot sometimes. We also hope that the press will give us reach that's bit farther than we could do on our own..and this is an awesome thing. Reaching new audiences. But those presses have limits to what even they can do. Sometimes it's necessary to just take matters into your own hands. Winning a prize can be awesome, and I'm definitely not against them as a whole, but you shouldn't place your viability solely in them as an artist. Your book's existence, it's opportunity for readership, should not rest solely on one manuscript being chosen among hundreds..especially when the contest system is over burdened. Some poets wait years hoping for that brass ring and all they get is air...

things on my plate, plates in the air

I am having one of those weeks where I feel like I am treading water, accomplishing really much of nothing in the way of any actual productivity. I'm no further along now than I was on Monday in terms of various projects that need to be done..including printing the B-side of one chap, re-laying out another one and designing its cover, drawing up a wholesale price list for someone on bracelets, photographing and finishing Christmas ornaments, finishing some new notecard designs and stationary sets, work on the feasibility of some new little blank journals I have planned, as well as some cool decorative letter openers I just got the makings of this week (I know, who DOESN't get excited about decorative letter openers?). This is all in addition to reading press submissions, making decisions, and well, any writing of my own I might want to get to this week.

I'm also having problems concentrating lately, feel slightly off, and possibly like I'm coming down with something. I can't seem to get enough sleep, no matter how long. Lats week, I fell asleep on the ride home and missed my stop by two blocks. I'm loopy, forgetful, like if I don't write it down, I'm sure to forget about it completely. I have these moments where I swear I'm daft.

I had this dream the other morning, again about my grandmother's house, in which I somehow convinced myself, in the dream and for about 20 minutes after I was awake, that she had a soda machine on her back porch (a small detail but it figured prominently in the dream, which I don't really remember much of except for the end). She, of course, did not, and when I thought of it again, later in the day, it was so glaringly apparent that she never did. But somehow, I'd convinced myself, could even remember what it looked like (one of those older machines that had the soda cans lines on a shelf inside the glass, and in this case, they were all Shasta. The machine, I realized later, was in fact familiar (a grocery store we always shopped in when I was a kid, had one right when you walked in and my mother always let us get one if we shut up and behaved ourselves while she shopped. I was mesmerized, I remember, by the pretty fruit colors of the cans. )Somehow, I placed that machine on my grandmother's porch in the dream as if it'd always been there. I was crying in the dream, I remember because I had lost something important and people kept revealing things to me to elicit emotional response, and when someone revealed the soda machine, I associated it so distinctly with my grandmother I started sobbing. Of course, WHY is still a mystery.

I am too nostalgic lately for my own good it seems. I've also been paying attention to my dreams more since I've been finishing up the anxiety dream poem sequence, which may get longer. I dreamed the night after that I was driving around with my parents past our old house in Loves Park, and after driving past it twice, determined that it had either been torn down to make the house next door larger, or had been replaced by a horse pasture. What was important, however, was not this, although I seemed to be in tears again because the house was gone, but that, when driving, I happened to glance up at the sky and saw weird space lights (a la close encounters). After we had determined that the house was in fact gone, we were driving through the country and evading what looked to be WWII-like missles and debris being dropped along the road. (This was so freakishly like that nasty spate of post 9/11 dreams I had it freaked me out a little..) In the dream, we find a church in a field (the same church it appears this was also the scene of this dream)...where they were apparently having some sort of picnic in the dark with haystacks and guitars...and we were all going to hide from the aliens there, or something like that. This is probably why I feel like I don't get any sleep...

dear aunt jane

Occasionally I have days that feel very Austeny (endless cups of tea, empire waisted dresses, romantic miscommunication, and over-analyzing everything to absolute death), so I give you these...



jane austen paperweight, $8


pemberley charm bracelet, $45


jane austen earrings, $16

and it's official...

in the bird museum
by Kristy Bowen
Dusie Press, 2008
$15.00
ISBN: 9780615256863

available here


Kristy Bowen's poems are sexy and smart. The poems in in the bird museum fool around with dictionaries, notebooks, concordances, and the ways that bodies get lost and found in real and imaginary places. There are dance halls and graveyards here, footnotes and invocations. One poem asserts, " I suggest everything is a metaphor for sex. Even the bird." These poems let us know pleasure and danger are often in close proximity. These poems are inhabited by girls and women who move through the world with a sense of urgency, and Bowen invites us to join them. Or rather, she INSISTS we do. This book is delicious.

--Susan Denning


Kristy Bowen’s sparkling and spellbinding poems are full of the things of households and Victorian interiors: corsets, envelopes, books, hooks, and spoons. Bowen’s vigilant attention to the danger and fragility of these environments is manifest in her description of the beings (women, girls, and birds) who inhabit or are bought into these spaces. These are the muses of Bowen’s museum (“a seat or shrine of the muses”). Like a careful curator, Bowen gathers and assembles stories, scenes, and objects related to her subjects. The result is a densely packed cabinet of gothic wonders and haunting relics. Reading these poems makes one keenly aware of the inticacies, intimacies, and inconsistencies staged in the theaters of domestic spaces.

--Michelle Detorie


I was apprenticed to the frenzied atmosphere, the verandas that open into dark wind. Kristy Bowen is apprenticed to the “frenzied atmosphere” and in it she finds the crucial minutiae, in it she finds skirts of night and a woman’s heart as a wind-up bird. Bowen’s poetry is where we go to read that heart—as old- time paper valentine and as fist of flesh: valved and valued, the bric a brac and phobias it contains in each of its Cornellian chambers and the placards labeling each exhibit are letters written with the bones of birds. So it is, so it was that Here, we came for the ghost of the word/ inside the other word: and here, in The Bird Museum we are haunted by all that is visual as it is visceral and Bowen, playful, brilliant, curator, reminds us that this place is a synaesthete’s playground--where the eye partakes in the delicious but no less-so than the ear, for here: If you listen, you can hear the holes in the alphabet, sounds lit by the lamps of our bones. Like birds we might even rise, our lamp-lit bones: luminous and (as Bowen does here so often,) fly in a perfect line.

--Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis

WomanMade Gallery presents

"Objects of Desire"
a poetry reading with two Chicago Feminist presses,
dancing girl press and Switchback Books

featuring:

Mairead Case
Melissa Culbertson
Helen Kiernan
Simone Muench
Beatriz Ruiz
Susan Slaviero


Sunday, October 19, 2 – 4 p.m. FREE
685 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago
www.womanmade.org
Light refreshments served

otherwise..

Daniela Edburg, Death by Cake

okay, seriously...

when we have open submission periods for dgp, kindly stop sending such awesome work. Really, you should only send badness that I can quickly and expeditiously respond to with a brisk "no" and get on with it.. I will very likely be forced to not only abandon any hope of scaling back the operation next year, but might just be lured into publishing MORE. You have to understand this very may well shorten my lifespan, ruin my social life, and turn me into wild eyed reclusive bone folder weilding fiend with no friends. Not to mention, my poor printers, already abused, both physically and verbally on occasion. Sometimes, I can almost hear them protesting. And think of the Staples and UPS guys, every time they have to deliver another heavy box of paper, another toner cartridge, another box of envelopes. More chapbooks, and I will very likely have to practically live at the studio and thus neglect my poor kitties, random boys, the dishes, the laundry, and quite possibly my own mental well-being.


PLEASE THINK OF THE KITTENS!

*sigh*

Okay, obviously I'm loopy today (and have far surpassed my cute kitten pic quota this month). There is much goodness, and I am overjoyed at getting to read them, and that these amazing writers want my little ole press to publish them, but I'm also getting anxious over what I have to cut. I've already accepted a couple, have about 8 in my definite file, and another 30 in my maybe, with about another 50 to read.. Of course, the more submissions I read, I keep thinking back to that snotty Billy Collins comment in his BAP intro a couple years ago, about how some tiny percentage of poetry was actually good and measured up to his standards…. I WISH. It would make my decisions a lot easier…

Indiana Jones meets Antiques Roadshow..

My dreams are very Alice-like of late.

In one, I was in the spare bedroom at my grandmother's house, long ago torn down. There was always a curtained closet in that bedroom which, when I was a kid, held all manner of my grandmother's cool 70's polyester and chiffon dresses, frilly nightgowns, and colorful robes she used to let me and my sister play dress-up in. The back bedroom was one of my my favorite places in the house, where she kept her ginormous collection of costume jewelry and all her makeup, and I would play in there for hours. After she had died, and my cousins had moved into her house, and remodeled, they wound up, for whatever reason, drywalling over that closet and creating a new, larger one in another corner. Since I babysat for them alot since they were next door to my parents' house, I was always a little weirded out by that phantom closet that was tehre but not there, not because the house was haunted or anything, but just because I'm always a little spooked by things like that, the forgotten things behind other things, that which is lost and walled over. (For example in the basement at Myopic books, since the street was built up around the turn of the century, there is actually a storefront window and doorway looking into nothingness, which unnerved me endless when I had to read down there before they moved the events to the second floor.)

Anyway, in the dream, the closet apparently, though on a different wall, held all sorts of lovelies..old dresses and coats, and behind it, a secret endless passage way lined with shelves filled with depression glass, and costume jewelry, and old purses and suitcases, and enough ephemera and collageable goodies to set me up for years..all of them pristine and untouched as far as the eye could see.(As you can see, I've been prowling thriftstores far too much..and yes, I often dream of vintage housewares.)Just when I'd found yet another anteroom filled with old steamer trunks overflowing with gorgeous stuff, I turned to find on a low ledge some sort of fiendish idol wrapped in a greasy towel, and thus, after a bit of discussion, we determined that the closet was, in fact the gate to hell. (Who knew it would be paved with pyrex?) Of course, this discovery was followed an mad, Indiana Jones-ish dash to get out of there before the closet closed door on us forever, some people eaten by the idols which had comes to life, and were chasing us (they looked not unlike that freaky little trilogy of terror monster)--at the point of which I woke up.

This morning, I dreamed that at work, there was this secret storage area of stacks that one had to get through by diving into box of those small little golf pencils (empty, but only about 5 by 5 inches). Apparently if you placed the box on the closet shelf correctly, you could just dive into it head first and it would expand to accomodate you. Though, in the dream, I had apparently been doing this for awhile, I was suddenly convinced it would be impossible to get through it, and when I remarked this to a co-worker, she pulled out the back of the closet where the pencils were, and showed me a 12x12 whole into the space that she used to get to it (er..instead of the pencil box.) This made perfect sense to me in the dream, but we were surprised that we could see other people in this secret room, apparently sitting at tables and studying, but we didn't know how they had gotten in.

Of course this dream followed one in which I was riding the red line (which I rarely do anymore)and they had remodeled the station and I could not for the live of me find the southbound trains. First I wound up in what I can only decribe as a seventies waiting room with green walls and brown chairs, with a window that looked onto the correct tracks, but no where to catch the train. Then, I followed a bunch of people down a stairway into this weird underground world that reminded me of Navy Pier, only underground, with boat rides and foodstands and balloon vendors, and still nowhere could I find the train I needed to take..When I found another stairway, I asked a woman who was decending where the train was and she yelled at me in another language, then stabbed me, with a finger, clean thru my side, drawing blood. I assume the pain was what woke me up.

more chapbook editors than you could shake a stick at ...

Dan Wickett, over the The Emerging Writers Network was nice enough to ask dgp to be part of a virtual panel on chapbook publishing he put together. Very interesting to read the responses of the other presses (and to find out I'm not the only luddite still laying chaps out in MSWord, thank god)...

amazing two headed cat

Today, even though it's reasonably warm outside, I am making chicken soup. Mind you, I am definitely not my inner Martha Stewart when it comes to the kitchen, (usually it doesn't involve the microwave or dialing the phone, I'm at a loss), so this may be a failed experiment but it smells really good. Otherwise I am working on poems and making bracelets, watching movies, and sleeping alot.. However, the later I sleep, the more disturbing my dreams it seems. The problem as such is that I daily convince myself that I truly am completely over the whole R thing, that I've moved on sufficiently, that I don't care and I'm going to stop being so goddamned obsessive about it. But it's all working itself out as I sleep..so in addition to the general anxiety dreams about the rest of my life, he keeps unnervingly showing up in them..It doesn't bode well...

happy friday and new things

I made one of these over the summer, and plan on making a bunch more. I took this picture yesterday and it's one of my favorite shots I think. Since I'm daily still learning how to use the camera, this turned out splendidly. And those little roses are so pretty and detailed that I ordered some others in pink and beige...




This is a pared down frills version of the charm bracelets without out the glittery stuff for the more subdued among us...




This is one of the new deer boxes I was talking about (product of the Great Woodland Massacre). I love the look on his face. There are a couple others in the shop as well...

books you must read

Cadaver Dogs/ Rebecca Loudon (No Tell)

I just ordered a copy of this last week, and an very excited about getting it. As if the cover alone was not enticing and creepy enough, but it’s by one of my favorite poets ever.




Oneiromance: An Epithalmion / Kathleen Rooney (Switchback)



Hard Reds Brandi Homan (Shearsman)

I’m hoping to make it out to the release party for these two books by former dancing girl poets. I also had the privilage of reading B-Ho’s manuscript as her thesis so I know it’s awesome, and given Kathleen’s work with Elisa Gabbert in Something Really Wonderful, am stoked to get the chance to read her solo venture.

the etsy shop is getting a jump on the holidays by offering free shipping on every purchase over $50. Perfect for all your gift giving needs...watch for more vintage-inspired lovelies and holiday decorations in the coming weeks..

I spent a little time today trying to tame the mess of ribbon, fabric, and other little sewing supplies that was starting to take over by moving these shelves from the entryway closet and into another little corner of the apartment. Since I do most of this work, and most of the jewelry making at home, it helps to have somewhere to stash the accoutrements. I also just ordered some cool apothecary jars from one of my favorite vintage shops to hold buttons and whatnots.



In my organization frenzy, I managed to track down that blasted down comforter, which was, as I suspected all last winter, in the trunk in the living room beneath the pile of library books awaiting their return home. Otherwise, I have been working on some bracelets, including the one below my mother wants as a gift for someone, and another plum colored one. I am very excited about all the new shop things, including some baby onesies appliquéd with vintage chenille scraps, some new notecards, and all sorts of surprises.



In poetry news, Fridays reading at St Pauls was…er..interesting. I can’t say I’ve ever been at a poetry event that involved an irate, grudge-weilding disgruntled dude hollering at the poets and the audience about everyone being elitist and his right to free speech right before he was kicked out (a friend, not knowing the backstory, said she thought he was going to come back with a gun). Otherwise, though, it was fun, and a great new space for the former DvA series……

wandering

Instead of working on the kissing disease like I probably should be, I've been flirting with that other abandoned project (the whole narrative novel in verse turned prose poem sequence that used to be called once dulcet til I tossed that name for another (and subsequently purloined that one for the etsy store since it's one of my favorite words ever..) That project feels actually more "finished" than the former, easier somehow, but then I am suspicious of even that...

odd, anxiety laced dreams..

A few weeks ago I dreamed I was working on my laptop and someone who I knew from highschool and was apparently (in the dream) a good friend showed up, knocking at the door. Because I had work to do, I decided to pretend I wasn't home, but her and someone else climbed up the side of the building somehow and saw that not only were my lights on, but that I was very obviously home. So after letting them in, I allowed them to convince me to go out drinking with them, which I aquiesced to reluctantly, since not only was I busy, but the apartment was trashed, the laundry needed to be done, and I needed to take a shower. As I began hunting through a pile of dirty clothes, my friend suddenly stopped me and pointed to the corner of the room behind me. "What are you going to do with that?" she said, and I turned around to find a girl, about four or five years old, sitting in the corner. I was suddenly panicky and could not remember if the child was mine, or if not, whose it was, where it came from, how long I had been neglecting it since I didn't remember every having taken care of it before, or even reaalizing it was there.

Suddenly I was resentful at having to worry about its welfare, my own lack of freedom, angry at whoever had saddled me with the it. Suddenly I was doomed, anchored to that messy apartment forever and it's endless laundy and dishes. I was trying to convince my friend to allow the child to come along, but she insisted the car was already full of people and who wants to take a child into a bar? I responded by saying that my grandmother used to take me to bars all the time. (which she did, or did at least a few times). I was even trying to think up ways to ditch the child by leaving it in a parking lot or mall. Surely, if it wasn't mine, no one would hold me responsible for abandoming her. Then she pointed to the chair in the bedroom, which I suddenly realized harbored another child, an infant--and all of the sudden it was this sinking hopelessness that I'd ever be able to really do anything on my own again. The despair terrible enough to wake me...as well as trouble me for a few hours afterward...

Seems ripe for analysis, no? If the children are meant to be actual children, it definitely confirms my uspicion that I'd be a terrible mother and that my biological clock no doubt has a spring broken or two. What else could the children be? poetry? the press? the general feeling of suffocation when I think about things that are permanent, immutable...

Of course yesterday morning I dreamed of hotel rooms and zombies (this happens occasionally), and the care of two small kittens, who having bit me, we were trying to determine whether of not they were, in fact, zombie kittens...

foxy

in the shop...

I am obsessed with foxes of late, and initially got these pieces for the charm bracelets, but realized they make rather nice pendants for sweet little necklaces as well....

this friday

1st Friday Poetry Series

New Venue!
St. Paul's Cultural Center
2215 W North Avenue

Todd Heldt
Kristy Bowen
Scott DeKatch
Kurt Heintz

OCT 3
8:00-9:30 PM
Free Admission
Donation Appreciated

new & pretty things

I've begun listing the charm bracelets the last few days, as well as some new glasses. I'm still working on more in a all sorts of colors, so stay tuned.

Yesterday at the antique market was glorious weather, lots of browsing, and quite a few sales (mostly earrings it seemed..)Today, however, is rainy and cold and I fear late summer is finally gone for good. Last week was a bitch, having started my having out rather organized and productive, and ending with the whole wicked alice issue and apparently losing my work/spare keys somewhere between Thursday night and Friday afternoon, not particularly catastrophic problems, but pains in the ass nonetheless. Also the rushing to finish up notecards and a thousand little details for the market. Today, however, I am doing much of nothing besides adding a couple of things to the shop, reading my newly arrived Foursquares, drinking tea, and playing with the kitties whilst waiting for my grocery delivery (seriously, it's disturbing how much glee I get from those things that come to me withut my having to leave the house for them (Peapod, Netflix, Drugstore.com).

saturday

(click for larger)

My sister discovered this neat little site and made the above image. But a warning, she says it's addictive...

the perils of electronic media

Apparently the entire sundress.net shebang was hacked and I will now have to upload everything again to get everything back online at wicked alice. I do not know how long this will take, and when the archives will be back up and running, provided I have time to a) find the files on my computer at work and b) determine what edits I made to them after the saved versions, which tend to be alot...) I hope to get at least the last issue back online in the next couple of days. And of course this comes possibly the worst possible moment, so you might be witness to a serious meltdown in the coming week or so...or on the bright side, perhaps a fresh start entirely...

weekend projects

These are a slightly larger, shinier, version than the old cases (which I couldn't find anymore on ebay..)



It's been a paperweight making frenzy. I always used to think these didn't really sell and I just liked making them, but actually the bird ones usually sell pretty quickly...I'm always having to make more..




I finished a bunch of these charm bracelets Friday..am just waiting on the toggle clasps..they all have adorable book charms on them..so I'm thinking of calling them "bookish bracelets" or somesuch. Some have little typewriters on them, and so far rabbits, mermaids, squirrels, teapots, and birds..I'm also going to be doing children's versions as well....


I also worked on some christmas ornaments involving wood bird cutouts, old map pages, and german glass glitter, but I ran out of glue and daylight, so I'll show you those later...instead you get a kitty (Zoe) on the verge of disaster (luckily I saved the votive holder..)