Saturday, December 8, 2007

Fence v10 n1

The new issue of FENCE is out now (not sure where, but their website features the issue and you can order it there under the subscribe tab).

The issue, like all of Fence's issues, looks smashing:



and is full of a ridiculous amount of incredible writers, including: NICK FLYNN, JOE WENDEROTH, J'LYNN CHAPMAN, ROB COOK, JOYELLE MCSWEENEY, PAUL MALISZEWSKI, RIKKI DUCORNET, ALISSA NUTTING, and PRAGEETA SHARMA (whose new book is also just released from Fence Books).

I don't know how I ended up among such people.

My contribution is another list, this time published as a poem. I have now published lists as fiction, nonfiction, poetry and other.

This one is #26 and titled: RAIN.

I have a poem called RAIN.

Next I am going to write a poem called: PAIN.

And then one called: DADDY.

I hate that Plath poem DADDY. I don't know why it is so revered.

Anyway, here are the first few lines of RAIN.

1. Today I wanted to feel evil.
2. To put my lips to the breach and breathe.
3. Corral the remnants of my spirit as in the way a horse is trained to jump for show.
4.
In the high-jump event, the puissance wall may get taller than seven feet.
5. Last week while running I saw a muscular Italian with a little fluffy dog. He was jogging very slowly: slow enough that the dog tried to stop and take a shit.
6. The man didn’t notice. He kept on running, and the dog felt itself getting pulled, causing it to run to keep from getting choked while the shit still fell out of its ass.
7. Soon I will be finished moving in to my new home.
8. My loft apartment where the trains pass and my next-door neighbor has Tourette’s.
9. In the evenings his whoop and whistle, his grunt, his bark, his woo-hoo! ha!
10. Laughing in some forced way as if having an orgasm he doesn't want.
11.
To most religious believers evil consists of more than a series of individually destructive acts, constituting a powerful and mysterious supernatural or metaphysical force that lies behind individual instances of hurt and suffering.
12. At my parents' house, a photo on the fridge of me at 15, weighing 80 pounds more than I do now, in a turquoise shirt with sweaty pits and a bowl cut.
13. Beneath, the caption:
You can do it!
14. Most nights I lay awake until 4 AM.

To read the rest, buy the issue. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but Fence is always worth the money.

One time they had tits on their cover, if you didn't see:



Supposedly I was yelling about tits the other night drunk in Fellini's Pizza at 1:30 am.

Another day a man was trying to sell me a lizard in the street.

To receive this publication, I tailored the inseam of a young man's pantshorts so that it would more befit his crotch region, thus increasing his attractability and increasing his odds of finding a wife, so that he will not grow old alone and masturbating and at the gym staring at women in their spandex pants and buying coffee at the Starbucks and talking too long to the barista, who wishes she could drink Frappuchino for breakfast, lunch and dinner without the anguish of gaining weight, and therefore growing old alone and masturbating.








My girlfriend is very beautiful.

13 comments:

Ken Baumann said...

I like fiction and tits.

I will purchase Fence.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

thank you ken.
i like you blog. i linked you.

Zachary German said...

is your writers and blogs list in any order?

BLAKE BUTLER said...

zach: nope. i just kinda sandwich people in there...

jereme said...

Living out your days alone and masturbating is extremely underrated in my opinion.

That girl has nice boobs. Nice real boobs. Those are rare here in southern california.

Everything is processed here, cheese, meat snacks, titties.

Living under the glare of paradise.

Kathryn said...

congratulations! i will buy this issue.

also, i love the will oldham song on your myspace page. i have that problem where almost no music sounds good to me anymore, and music that sounds good for awhile quickly becomes tired and boring. i feel very appreciative when i find songs that sound good.

sam pink said...

those breasts make me want to bite the webbing between my forefinger and thumb and see what my bones look like.

Really Rosie said...

now, who decides what genre the list is published as? you or the publication? And that cover is bad. It looks like an ad for the suicide girls or something. though, I like tits. maybe just not in my literary magazines.

-bree in disguise

BLAKE BUTLER said...

i submitted the list as a poem. it was accepted as a poem. i submit different lists as different genres depending on what i think it has the best chance as, or what it most seems like. some are more obviously nonfiction and some seem more like poems.

that cover was Fence's best selling issue and upped their subscription rate by 55%. you can read the editor's note of why they did it. i think it was smart.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

you can read the editor's note about tits here: http://fence.fenceportal.org/v8n1/text/editor.html

they made it look like suicide girls on purpose, to sell issues.

and she is a suicide girl.

tits are more popular than avant garde writing, it seems.

Really Rosie said...

I found it and was reading the note it just as you posted this... Yeah I see the point, ha ha, tits sell, breast feeding etc... I still think it's bad. Now, I guess it's slightly comforting that it is self aware in its badness. But yes they sold more cos most people went, "nice tits," and bought a copy. In fact, I imagine my emo students are jerking off all over it. Their adolescent cum is seeping all over Jorie Graham's Disenchantment as we speak (type).

Don't get me started I have a whole irritating rant about the suicide girls and the new popularity of "burlesque" shows... I've gave this drunk rant at a local indie rock show at a bar when said local indie band decided to spice up their boring music by throwing in a chick in fish net stockings and pasties. I was not fooled, my male counterparts... they thought it brilliant.

Really Rosie said...

as for the genres... you genre bender you! I like lists.

jereme said...

Hmm, i think the titties apropos. Most art is a product of:

Men wanting women
Men fucking women
Men lamenting over lost women

So having titties and writing makes sense to me.

Men like titties. We are mesmirized by the female anatomy. We could change the picture to a half naked man but that would only appeal to the gay community.

Now flowers and ponies and nordstroms on the cover? Well, it wouldn't be men caring about the cover.