contest winners & part 2 of the HANK LAZER TOC CONTEST!!!

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thanks for all those who played our week-long Hank Lazer TOC contest.

first, we are happy to announce that JOSEPH MASSEY guessed all three blanks correctly 1) The Lyric VALUABLES 2) Lyricism of the SWERVE and 3) John Taggart's PASTORELLES, so he gets 3 Omnidawn books of his choice.

for the radical guesses, we are giving MATT a prize for his answer: "Nice work if you can get it: john taggart's HIGH PAID, SECRET GOVERNMENT JOB." Matt wins an Omnidawn book of his choice.

and finally, we chose DEREK's answer: "elephant" for the final winner. He also wins any Omnibook of his choice.

LOTS OF PRIZES. these crazy people at Omnidawn must really love its blog readers!!!

to claim your prize, please email me: cperez [at] omnidawn [dot] com

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YES, i did mention a second contest. rules are the same. correct answers get books, funny answers get books. this will be up till the end of april. SO GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN!

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PART TWO of the Table of Contents of Hank Lazer's new Omnidawn book Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays 1996-2008

Spirit

Returns: Innovative Poetry and Questions of “Spirit” 209

Sacred Forgery and the Grounds of Poetic Archaeology:
Armand Schwerner’s The Tablets 265

The Art and Architecture of Holding Open:
The Radical ____1_____ of Architectural Body 281

Meeting in the Book: Reading Edmond Jabes through
Rosmarie Waldrop’s Lavish ____2____ 297

Poetry & Myth: The Scene of Writing, Thinking As Such 307

Force, Vector, Pressure: The Phenomena of that
Relationship (An Interview with Chris Mansel) 321

Reflections on The Wisdom Anthology
of North American Buddhist Poetry 329

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Lyric & Spirit: Hank Lazer & a CONTEST!!!!

These pics of Hank Lazer are from the Poetry Flash Reading Series, featuring Hank and Mark Salerno, at the new Cody's in Berkeley, which took place on April 5. Mark Salerno:















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Hank has a new book out from Omnidawn titled Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays 1996-2008

BIO:

Hank Lazer is both a critic and a poet. His brand new book from Omnidawn Publishing, Lyric and Spirit: Selected Essays, shows new ways of writing spirituality and the lyric, drawing on Language poetry, Buddhist verse, the jazz of Monk and Coltrane, Heidegger, Derrida, and much more. Lazer is also the author of twelve books of poetry perhaps unique in their developmental track from the tradition of William Carlos Williams on into a Language-based tradition. His two most recent books of poetry are The New Spirit and Elegies & Vacations. With Charles Bernstein, Hank Lazer edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama.

A little about the reading series, hosted by Richard Silberg (who I just met yesterday -a really cool guy):















"From 1982-2006, Poetry Flash curated one of the West Coast's most exciting, inclusive, and longest running reading series at Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, a leading, historically significant, independent bookstore. (The series began in the late sixties/early seventies.) That store closed on July 10, 2006. However, the Poetry Flash reading series continues, alive and well. Over one-hundred writers---primarily poets---continue to be introduced each year by our host, Poetry Flash Associate Editor Richard Silberg in various locations listed below. Now, as in the past, our series is open to diverse poetics, while providing a forum for poetry's best." (quoted from the poetry flash reading series website)

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I was going to post a copy of the Table of Contents of Hank's new book to give you a sense of the essays, but instead i think i'll have a little 2-part contest. first, i will post half of the table of contents and leave a few words omitted. to win the contest, you have to guess one of the missing words. the first to guess correctly wins. NOT ONLY THAT, we will give prizes to the FUNNIEST responses! so have fun! the prize: any OMNIDAWN book of your choosing!!!! the contest will be open for a week.

Contents

Introduction 21

Lyric

The Lyric ___1___: Soundings, Questions, & Examples 29

“Vatic Scat”: Jazz and the Poetry of Robert Creeley
and Nathaniel Mackey 83

Lyricism of the ___2___: The Poetry of Rae Armantrout 95

The Early 1950s and the Laboratory of the Short Line 129

Nice Work If You Can Get It: John Taggart’s ___3___ 159

Q & A Poetics 171

Thinking/Singing and the Metaphysics of Sound 185

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OMNI-NEWS!!!

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POETRY READING THIS WEEKEND!

Saturday, April 5, 7pm: Poetry Flash presents

Hank Lazer (Lyric & Spirit, Omnidawn 2008)
and Mark Salerno (Odalisique)

at **New Cody's Location**

CODY's BOOKS, 2201 Shattuck Avenue,
corner of Allston Way, downtown Berkeley
Across the street from Berkeley BART,
near parking garages.

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POETRY READING TODAY!!!!

Reading @ Pegasus Books
Friday, April 4
7:30 pm

Poet/filmmaker/destroyer of dictionaries Chris Vitiello, in a rare west coast
appearance, will read from his new book Irresponsibility (just out from Ahsahta
Press) and provoke and alarm in a multitude of ways.

Writer/landscape-architect-in-training Mary Burger will read poems and essays from
the forthcoming book A Partial Handbook for Navigators (from Interbirth Books), and
attempt to figure out where she is.

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NEW PUBLICATION FROM TRANSMISSION PRESS:
from editor, Logan Ryan Smith:

DOROTHEA LASKY'S, TOURMALINE-- a collection of brilliant,
vibrant, honest, imaginative, and send-yr-ass-into-orbit kinda poems.

for more fun stuff, including very candid pictures of TOURMALINE hanging out
with the reclusive Pink Panther.

As always, trades are welcome, and if ye be too broke all you need to do is
tell me you have (or will have) voted for Obama when you had yr chance, and
you'll get yrself a free copy, lickity split. Seriously. Try me.

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EXCITING NEWS FROM BURNING DECK:

Catherine Imbriglio's book,

PARTS OF THE MASS (Burning Deck 2007),

has received the Norma Farber 1st Book Award of the Poetry Society of
America. It was selected by Thylias Moss.

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OMNIDAWN BOOKS RECEIVE PRAISE:

Our book IN A TOWN CALLED MUNDOMUERTO is on the SFSITE as one of
their top 10 Editors Choice List.

&

Tendril, by Bin Ramke (Omnidawn, 2007)
recommended by Reginald Shepherd

Ramke's Tendril is a book of lyric meditations and intellectual musings that mixes personal memory with social and cultural history in a mesh of intertextuality that demonstrates how poems come out of poems and writing comes out of writing, but also out of passion and emotional necessity. This web of literary, scientific, and historical discourses both sustains the voice and is something against which the voice struggles to be heard. Ramke also demonstrates a gift for sustaining his meditations through extended formal, thematic,
intellectual, and musical arcs. - RS

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First Annual Poetry Contest

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The 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize is Omnidawn Publishing's first annual contest for a first or second full-length collection of poems by a poet writing in English. The contest will be judged by Marjorie Welish, with a cash prize of $2,000 and Fall 2009 publication by Omnidawn Publishing. Manuscripts will remain anonymous until a winner is selected.

Please visit us at: http://www.omnidawn.com/contest.htm

More contest details:

The $25 entry fee entitles entrants to one free Omnidawn title of
their choice, if they enclose SASE with postage. (See our web page
for full list of titles, and see poetry guidelines checklist for SASE
postage).

Book Production, Distribution, Advertising, and Complimentary Copies. The prize winning book will be produced, distributed, and advertised to Omnidawn standards and will also meet the Green Press Initiative standards and have the Green Press Initiative statement on the copyright page. The book will be printed using the same archival quality acid-free paper and full four-color cover used for other Omnidawn books. As with other Omnidawn books, we will encourage the winning poet to participate in the design of the book, including choice of typefaces, cover colors and artwork, with all stages subject to the approval of the winning poet. The book will be distributed worldwide by Omnidawn's distributor, Independent Publishers Group, and will be advertised along with other Omnidawn books in Poets & Writers Magazine, American Poetry Review, American Book Review, Rain Taxi, and other publications. All costs, including production, distribution, and advertising will be fully paid for by Omnidawn. In addition to the $2,000 cash prize, the winning poet will also receive 100 copies of the book free of charge.

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Last AWP photos & A Contest

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Farewell AWP! See you all at the Omnidawn table next year!














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CONTEST: the first person to name ALL 3 poets in this photo will receive any Omnidawn poetry book of your choice.



















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EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENTS

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1.  From Letterpress to Hypertext--KELSEY ST PRESS
on the Web!

In 2004, Kelsey St. Press celebrated its 30th  anniversary. Now,
just four years later, we are excited to say that we are growing
and changing in many ways. What started in 1974 with an old
letterpress dressed in leopard print in Patricia Dienstfrey's
basement has extended its arc through pixels and html. With much
thanks to Jerrold Shiroma, who redesigned our web site, we
can offer online ordering for our readers for the first time.
Please try out this new feature and if you don't already have
it, add Renee Gladman's Newcomer Can't Swim (2007) to your
shopping cart!

The internet has become a vital part of today's small press
world and as a long time member of the publishing community,
KSP is thrilled to begin this blog and have a voice in this
forum. Like any good blog, the goal is to keep you up-to-date
on projects, readings and other news related to our authors,
artists and friends in innovative writing. But we also hope
to bring you special features-not only interviews with our
authors and artists but by newer writers, book artists and
designers. Just as with works like Symbiosis and our most
recent, Concordance, we welcome collaboration and we are eager
to see where that can go in the more impromptu and open space
of the blog.

In the next year or two, I hope to revisit and blog about
the KSP oeuvre from start to finish, to better familiarize
myself, as a new member with our history, but also to
revitalize dialogue around these books. This kind of re-imagining
is happening on many levels at KSP. Other members are exploring
possibilities for e-books, re-issuing out-of-print works, and,
any moment now, you will be able to visit our Listen page and
hear readings and other audio from KSP writers. We have been
able to make these recording thanks to Ross Craig's know-how
and generous donation of studio space. Stay tuned for recordings
from Bhanu Kapil, Kathleen Fraser, Laynie Brown, Susan Gevirtz
and more!

And please email me with your questions, comments, or ideas
about blog features, interviews, guest writers, etc. Also,
don't forget to send me links to your personal blog or press
so I can be sure to add them to the side bar. Finally, be sure
to join our brand new e-mail list. Click on the About page 
to sign up.

[or link to them from our sidebar]

2. Press Release, Newcomer Can't Swim

Newcomer Can't Swim, Renee Gladman. Kelsey St. Press, 2007.

Written as seven loosely connected pieces, Renee Gladman's
Newcomer Can't Swim mixes poetry with prose to recreate life
for the twenty-first century flaneur in urban America, where,
amid a confusion of aims, identities, and miscommunication
devices, being attuned to different frequencies also means
being lost. In this contemporary world of signs that crisscross
a global culture, how can one maintain a firm existence and
make human connections? Gladman posits a fluid self and parallel
existence: "The / body moves away from living, from the flesh
and bone of life, / and becomes regions. I take on / water.
I look outward." In languages of elegy and splintered
consciousness, Newcomer holds all frequencies together,
keeping the contradiction of a life that animates the "I" of
this book at the same time that it goes on without her.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.

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EXCITING EVENT FEATURING 32 POEMS MAGAZINE:

32 Poems is having a reading at The Writer's Center in
Bethesda. We're going to mix poetry with indie rock music
from a band named The Caribbean and see if we can blow
the roof off. (Shhhh, don't tell Sunil, the director,
I said that, okay?)

Want to know the cost?  Zero dollars.

Oh, guess what? You can become a 32 Poems "fan" on Facebook
to follow who we're publishing, where poems from the magazine
are appearing (Best American Poetry 2008!)
and see photos of events we hold. CLICK HERE.

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The Sound of Words: A Scheme to Rock the Writers Center
Featuring: The Caribbean (a rock band) and 32 Poems Magazine
(a poetry magazine)
DATE: Friday, May 9
TIME: 8 PM
LOCATION: The Writer's Center,
4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD 20815

DESCRIPTION

32 Poems Magazine, The Caribbean (an indie rock band), and
the Writer's Center join together to bring you outstanding
poetry from Sandra Beasley and Bernadette Geyer
and songs from The Caribbean.

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EXCITING NEWS FROM BURNING DECK:

2 new Burning Deck titles are available from:
Small Press Distribution, or orders@spdbooks.org
In Europe: H Press

1. vol. 51 of the “BURNING DECK POETRY BOOKS”:

CYRUS CONSOLE
Brief Under Water
Poetry, 64 pages, offset, smyth-sewn
ISBN13: 978-1-886224-87-2, original paperback $14
ISBN13: 978-1-886224-88-9, limited signed edition $20
Publication date: March 15, 2008

Brief Under Water is a sequence of 55 short passages that uses prose
narrative as a design element in a larger lyric structure. The title
refers to Kafka’s 1919 Brief an den Vater, reflecting a struggle with
the notion of literary inheritance. So does Console’s sentence,
refined nearly to the point of anachronism, that owes a great deal to
Melville and to Garnett’s translations of  Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and
Turgenev.

The book was written while the author supported himself as a
metalworker, housepainter, and waiter. The clashing of these
professional spheres contributed to the struggle outlined above. The
binary numbering (1, 10, 11, 100, 101…) is meant to express his sense
of movement-in-place.

“[The] manuscript is terrific….The sensory detail of the writing, not
surrealistic, not plot-oriented, is not even with the sense of
'leading anywhere' but accumulating both detail and expansion at
once, opening a floating, fascinating, sometimes apparently violent
yet detached terrain, as if not the author's psyche…but the world
itself… seen from at once extreme and mundane edges.”—Leslie Scalapino


2. volume 20 of SERIE D’ECRITURE:

Caroline Dubois
You Are the Business
translated from the French by Cole Swensen
Poetry, 104 pages, offset, smyth-sewn
ISBN 978-1-886224-86-5 original paperback $14
Publication date: March 15, 2008

C’est toi le business uses an eerie cadence to examine the
construction of identity in a media-saturated world. Focusing on
icons of cult film from Simone Simon to Blade Runner, she develops a
haunting collage of overlay and echo, populated by unsettling twins
(a “sister,” a clone, a verbal stutter), that evokes the doubles with
which a society based on representation invests us.
In “talala” for instance, the terms of identity taken from the
film Blade Runner (human being vs. “fake” or “android”) are used to
raise questions of authorship: do phrases come to us or do we make
them, and if they come to us, then from where?
Always conscious of the role that language plays in the
mediation between self and media, the book is poetry in its
linguistic freedom, film criticism in its thematic aspects, prose in
its physical shape. But it always pushes language toward new sensual
territory.

Caroline Dubois lives in Paris and teaches at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Rueil-Malmaison. She has translated American poets like
Norma Cole and Deborah Richards. C'est toi le business is her most
recent book (2005). Earlier books include Je veux être physique [I
want to be physical; P.O.L., 1999], Arrête maintenant [Stop now;
Editions de l’Attente, 2001] and Malécot [Ed. contrat maint, 2003].
Cole Swensen’s recent books include The Book of a Hundred
Hands (2005), The Glass Age (2007), Noon  Try, Oh, and Such Rich
Hour. She has translated Pierre Alferi, Olivier Cadiot, Pascalle
Monnier, Jean Frémon and others. Both her poetry and her translations
have won many prizes.

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OMNIDAWN AUTHOR EVENTS

Please join us for these three author events:

Saturday, March 8, 2008: WRITERS WITH DRINKS

Fan Wu (February Flowers)
Justin Courter (Skunk)
Declan McCullagh (News.com, Politech)

At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St.,
San Francisco CA,
from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.
$3-$5 sliding scale, All proceeds benefit
Other Magazine.
Charlie Anders MCs.

see web for announcements about this reading series

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Monday, March 10, 7:30 pm: Omnidawn Press Night
at Moe's

Justin Courter
Mary Mackey
Laura Moriarty

Moe's Books
2476 Telegraph Avenue
Berkeley (510) 849-2087
Events begin at 7:30

see web for announcements about this reading series


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Sunday, April 5, 7pm: Poetry Flash presents

Hank Lazer (Lyric & Spirit, Omnidawn 2008)
and Mark Salerno (Odalisique)

at **New Cody's Location**

CODY's BOOKS, 2201 Shattuck Avenue,
corner of Allston Way, downtown Berkeley
Across the street from Berkeley BART,
near parking garages.

See web for announcements about this reading series


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AWP Conspiracy Theory

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click here to see what all the conspiracy talk is about. feel free to comment as well.

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Ken and Rusty asked me to post their thanks to everyone who visited the Omnidawn table, and to everyone who came and enjoyed hearing the authors at the Omnidawn reception.

Rusty writes: "It's a highlight of the year for us -- to be able to meet some of the people who read our books, and talk to them about what interests them and excites them. We're very grateful to everyone who reads our titles. And this year, we want to also thank the wonderful people who worked with us behind the tables."

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also, CONGRATS to REB LIVINGSTON who won the game in this post. She will receive a free copy of any Omnidawn Book (she recently chose Rosmarie Waldrop's Love, Like Pronouns. An excellent choice).

stay tuned for more giveaways.

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