Friday, January 9, 2009

'You might as well sit in the chair, your ass has been all over it.'

EVER is now 'officially released.' You can not check out specs on the book and order direct from Calamari Press.

All preorders will be shipped next week when the book is slated to arrive on my birthday, Jan 14. Thanks again to all who preordered the book, you should be finally getting it + bonuses very soon (ie: I will begin shipping them by the end of next week if all goes as planned.

A bunch of EVER-related stuff is also coming out, by chance, on my birthday.

We will be having an Atlanta release party (in addition to the NYC release party on March 5 with Gary Lutz and Robert Lopez), which will be Feb 6th at Kavarna in Decatur with Jamie Iredell reading and a couple of live bands, etc. More info later.

Speaking of Mr. Iredell, his new chapbook 'Atlanta' is out now from Paper Hero Press's Achilles chapbook series. Jamie is the shit (the title of this post came from him last night at a bar where this douche in a suit was rubbing his big mound up on the Dockins at our table until finally Dockins had to move, then the guy turns around and asks if he can have the chair, which turned into quite a nice heehaw scene), and his chapbook is well worth the $4. Here is my blurb on the book:

"If Mary Robison listened to more punk, grew up in Las Vegas in the 80s before the 80s sucked, did whippits while reading Ben Marcus and scrolling the alternative personals for golden lines to crib, she might have exploded into the post-post-Beat sentence index that is Atlanta. But she didn't. Jamie Iredell did, and in reading this lean but dense meat-eater of a sui generis prose poem cycle, one realizes there might still be a way for chapbooks to compete with porn."


Get that shit.





Why is it that at readings often you will hear someone tell a story that led them into writing a poem or something, only you realize as they go on to read the thing that the thing they wrote is way less interesting than the description of the thing that caused them to write the other thing. I'm not sure what went wrong there.

Last night at a reading this guy said something along the lines of 'I always tell my students on the first day to stop trying to write in imitation of what they admire' and I had to fight myself from standing up and taking the nearest book off of the nearest shelf and winging it at the guy's head.

The guy seemed really nice, and I was told he is one of the nicest guys around, that's cool too though.

Later he also said something about how he always tells his students not to write love poems then a few minutes later he read a love poem.





I almost got into an accident several times last night because I was driving in traffic and reading at the same time. I got Lara Glenum's new one from Action Books Maximum Gaga and couldn't quit reading aloud from it to myself. Two kids outside the car saw me reading while going slow and they were pointing at me and I think talking shit and I read louder and made a face at them with teeth. The book is really fucking good. Like terror good. I will write more about it when I have finished reading, but you should go ahead and get it now. We can talk about it. While I was almost rearending people while reading the book aloud I thought, 'This would be worth it, to get in an accident while reading this book aloud, and even appropriate.' In this way Lara Glenum's book managed to impress danger on myself and those around me, good.




I did some automatic writing the night before last, with a specific set of inputs on me and with time restraints induced by those inputs, and with a focus of imagining on another body. That sentence was unclear and should be. The automatic writing produced 14 pages of text. I reread the text today and changed 8 words in it and was otherwise very surprised with what came out. I am going to incur this same procedure 2-3 more times with the inputs slightly altered, though still on the same focus. I have an idea what to do with it then, but I don't know. I think it will be called 'Music for Bobby Beausoleil'. Bobby Beausoleil appears briefly in this film:



shshshshshshhshshshshshshshshshsh

15 comments:

Ken Baumann said...

Congratulations. I await my copy rabidly.

AWP > Hawaii. What I'm saying: If I can, I will, for sure. I may try for the NYC in March, too.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

ken, no. i will see you there. i am going to mail a man to your house for abduction purposes, though you will think you are reading the book.

Anonymous said...

Here is what you will do:

1. You will open up a bookstore.
2. You will sit at a desk at the front of the store, facing the door.
3. You will be wearing only your underpants.
4. The front end of your underpants will be shit-stained.
5. All the books will be stocked behind you.
6. You will request $10-12.
7. You will get up and pick out a book.
8. You will hand that person a book, any book, whichever book you like.
9. You will clone yourself and franchise, but you-- the original-- must shit in the crotch pouch of a fresh pair of underwear each time you open a new store.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

michael, full concurrence

Jamie Iredell said...

We must have Lara Glenum for the Anus. The reading series, of course. Although I suppose, taken the other way, that would again make her dangerous. Thanks for the prop and the blurb. Sometimes I kiss my pillow at night in practice for how I will kiss you in the next day's daydreams.

DB said...

awesome. when my copy arrives i'm going to have it framed and read it through the glass with my fist.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

yes we must have the lara at the anus, i will drop her a line

i like jamie

i like daniel

Matt DeBenedictis said...

The arrival of the book is perfect timing as I am getting sliced and diced by a doctor and will be bed bound to only be able to read for a few days. I'm awaiting more news of this glorious reading in Decatur.

Johannes said...

My favorite story about Bobby B is the one Anger tells about Bobby stealing the print to Lucifer Rising, bringing it to Charles Manson and then burying it out there at the old western set where the Family hung out. And then supposedly Anger made "Demon Brother" out of the leftover frames that he had cut from the Lucifer Rising print that Bobby supposedly stole. I think Anger made it all up, but it's a good story. Like there is some ghost film out there in dead hollywood.

Johannes

BLAKE BUTLER said...

hi matt, good luck with the doctor. i hpe the book helps, though it may make it worse ;)

i love that beausoleil story too, though he mostly denies it. i've read a bunch of interview with him and mostly he shrugs it off though his story seems to change too. i think that's what i like about him: everytime he says something it come out differently, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

Matt DeBenedictis said...

Blake, I doubt the book will make the surgery worse, unless that shiny artwork has a picture of a doctor pouring peanut butter and rotten grapes in my mouth while I'm medically-stoned out.

John Holten said...

Blake, was wondering what the 'inputs' would be? restrictions?druqks?

BLAKE BUTLER said...

hi john,
inputs = sound (specific music of a certain non-genre based selection; image (video); text (reading); physical situating; plus lighting in room, and conditions locatable to that room.

i could be more specific i guess, but each section i have done so far (3) has had specific selections of those inputs that together are intended to cause the waves on the output.

for instance, i am only using music that is titled 'music for ____), except in one section, for a reason. i've used the whole album to write from beginning to end and each time a track changes, that is the end of a page. thus causing a kind of hysteria in me to be 'finished' with the page before the track ends, etc.

no drugs, i'm not a dabbler therein.

Ben Spivey said...

Any idea when/where the Atlanta release party will be? I'd like to go. Looking forward to EVER.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

hi Ben,
yeah it will be Feb 6th at Karvarna in Decatur. a few minutes out of downtown atlanta, but still close. you should come out! it would be most awesome. i will announce more specific time info and all closer to event, but i am imagining a kick off of like 8/830 :)