Noting Stuff

Hitler's Mustache gets the old shout out here.

Alex Chilton Is Dead

Alex Chilton Is Dead.

AWP, Denver-Style

AWP, Denver-Style

Poems in a Poetry Related Publication

6 new Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! at the very cool journal Action, Yes.

Additional Proof, and Additional Proof

Also, four poems from Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! will be in The Best American Poetry 2010, thanks to the guest editor Amy Gerstler. This is a very cool thing. Amy Gerstler is very cool. The book is coming. The book is going to be beautiful. Have I mentioned to what degree I should thank Shanna Compton? I don't believe I have. I could thank Shanna Compton all day long. Had we but world enough and time. Shanna Compton is a tiny, vibrant poetry saint. She is what we poet people should all hope to equal. I'm really grateful to her. I feel lucky, which feels lucky.

Okay

I have ideas. They happen,

then end.

It's an over and over situation.

You get the picture

but you hate it. Like me.

This Is Soon!

Reality

A proof copy of Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! is in the mail. I have been told that it looks terrific. I believe it and am excited to see it. See how excited I am? You can tell because I'm adding all of these exclamation points!!!!!!! This is way more exciting than the Colts losing the Super Bowl.

The Colts Lost

Proof

Proof copy of Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! should hopefully be here by end of the week!

The Cover

BLOOF

Just, Bloof.

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! News!

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! is closer to becoming a book entitled Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! than it has ever been. The poems? The poems are in it. The acknowledgments? Acknowledged. The blurbs? Existent. The font? Pretty much so. The inside, layout, you know? Well, you know, I think we're feeling pretty good. The cover? Not done, but happening, literally and metaphorically. The other stuff (because there's always other stuff)? There's stuff and it's nearly done.

I'm doing some readings in the next year. Are you wanting a reader? Let me know and I'll let you know and then you can let me know and we'll really be on to something then. That'd be fantastic! Hope to see you soon! In honor of that idea, a poem from the book:

POEM ADDRESSING PEOPLE WHO HAVE INVITED ME TO PARTICIPATE IN THEIR READING SERIES

That’s great. I like to do that type of thing. It’s a very good feeling for me to be wanted and listened to. Of course, I’d love it if you financially compensated me in some way, but really, I consider the boost to my ego compensation enough. Thanks for your efforts and including me.

More Poems? Yes, More Poems

New Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! poems in Sir! Yes sir.

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! poems in Forklift, Ohio

The new Forklift, Ohio looks like this. Inside there are good poems. And, two Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! poems! You should support this journal and keep your eye on Matt Hart because he's always worth keeping your eye on. I've had Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! poems in Forklift, Ohio before, as you can see here. It is always nice to see your poems in a journal that does everything right and could not be any better.

Review of Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! Poems

Coming via the Comment box at Escape Into Life. Joseph Allgren says:

"Funny, yes. Poetry, no."

Thanks, Joe!

From Jennifer L. Knox, regarding Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!

"Poets love to dress up their work in all sorts of outfits—professorial corduroy jackets with leather patches at the elbows, diaphanous Renaissance gowns, white lab coats and rubber gloves, clown drag—but this is what so, so many poems look like naked. Peter Davis deftly and unswervingly reveals a truer motive for metaphor."

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!: The Epigraphs

For Christ’s sake, our young lad thinks, am I going to have to spend my days behind these glass walls instead of going for walks in flowery meadows? Am I going to catch myself hoping the night before each promotion exercise? Am I going to calculate, connive, champ my bit, me, who used to dream of poetry, of night trains, of warm sandy beaches?

--Georges Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties

Money is a kind of poetry.

--Wallace Stevens, “Adagia”

What Is Coming and the Blurbs that will Appear with It

Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!

Passing Professor Davis’s office door yesterday— Professor Davis’s closed office door—I found myself wishing he was on a Fulbright like before, not a MacArthur, so that he would be back among us sooner, casting his brilliant (and humane) light. Because how is our intellectually restless little ivied community to survive without him? This book will help. From a time when he was young, full of hope, teaching in Muncie, it looks us straight in the eye, inviting us to identify with this nubile and insouciant David—before he became the giant that is Peter Davis."

--Mairead Byrne

Poets have long labored under the illusion of a readership when, in fact, the notion of audience is often the last thing on poetry's mind. It's in this sense of contradiction -- the need to be loved & the need to be left alone -- that much poetry finds its spirit. Peter Davis further complicates this picture by creating a book addressing a totally fictive audience thereby foregrounding this ambiguous condition. Uncomfortably self-conscious and maddeningly self-referential, Davis has constructed a complex book-length work of institutional critique that both refutes and upholds that presumed sacred bond between author and audience. Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! is a perfect work for an age where thinkership has triumphed readership.

-- Kenneth Goldsmith

Perhaps readers might expect this blurb for this collection of delightful, self-referential meta-poems to be self-referential itself. If you think that while you read the back of this book, you’re wrong. We made it to the third sentence already without expressing any ambivalence about it: in Poetry! Poetry! Poetry!, Peter Davis breaks new ground by naming the ground itself in an Adamic fashion only he can do. I was pretty proud of myself with that term, Adamic fashion.

--Daniel Nester