Bests

here's some best of 2011, off the top of my head.

best books:
I Wore The Ocean in The Shape Of A Girl - Kelle Groom
Running In The Family – Michael Ondaatje
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
The Lost Father – Mona Simpson
The Caged Owl – Gregory Orr
Gravity and Grace – Simone Weil
The Captain Asks For A Show of Hands - Nick Flynn


songs listened to on repeat:
Stick With Me Baby – Allison Kraus & Robert Plant
Love More – Sharon Van Etten
Challengers – New Pornographers
For What It’s Worth – Stevie Nicks
For Kalaja Mari – School of Seven Bells
Excuses – The Morning Benders
Solitude – Girls
Marked – EMA
Flirted With You All My Life – Vic Chestnutt
Cannons – Little Scream
Too Young – Taken By Trees
Helplessness Blues: Fleet Foxes
Secrets- Silver Swans
It’s Okay – Land of Talk
Ring – Glasseer
Eleanor – The Turtles
Say No More – Humble Pie


best movies:
Biutiful
Beginners


best places:
The Ocean
The West Village


stay warm, chickadees.

3.1

Gigantic Sequins 3.1 is now available for pre-order.

Featuring:

Poetry from Carrie Murphy, Ken Taylor, Jake Kelly, Chrissy Friedlander, Candice Wuehle, Laura Goode, Analicia Sotelo, Kimberly Grey, Amanda Auchter, and Chuck Carlise.

Fiction from Kelli Trapnell, Olivia Kate Cerrone, Nathanael Green, and Meg Cameron.

Art &/or Comics from Sarah Schneider, Gillian Lambert (cover art), and Goodloe Byron

& lonely offices

self-portrait with the source of winter as a far-off cry


The Way Things Work
by Jorie Graham

is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
moving through blue;
blue through purple;
the objects of desire
opening upon themselves
without us; the objects of faith.
The way things work
is by solution,
resistance lessened or
increased and taken
advantage of.
The way things work
is that we finally believe
they are there,
common and able
to illustrate themselves.
Wheel, kinetic flow,
rising and falling water,
ingots, levers and keys,
I believe in you,
cylinder lock, pulley,
lifting tackle and
crane lift your small head--
I believe in you--
your head is the horizon to
my hand. I believe
forever in the hooks.
The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.

the misfit, the judge

THE PRISONERS OF THE LITTLE BOX

Open little box

We kiss your bottom and cover
Keyhole and key

The whole world lies crumpled in you
It resembles everything
Except itself

Not even your clear-sky mother
Would recognize it any more

The rust will eat your key
Our world and us there inside
And finally you too

We kiss your four sides
And four corners
And twenty-four nails
And anything else you have

Open little box


by Vasko Popa



I'm writing a paper on Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy, the Grotesque, the Gothic. Violence, intelligence, religiosity.

Yesterday over Twitter I had a nice chat with Kelle Groom after we simultaneously posted about Francesca Woodman. Kelle is very lovely, & said that an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir would be in the same Ploughshares as my poem in the spring.

The Fader did a long profile on our mister Cass McCombs. Looking forward to seeing him & his crew over New Year's.

Remember sleep? I remember that.

angel in the thicket

There is a wonderful post today at The Rumpus today: All At Once Is What Eternity Is: Musings on Kenneth Patchen. Kenneth Patchen is one of those rare writers who truly gives his wildness permission. If you have not read The Journal of Albion Moonlight, stop reading this post right now, go to your local bookstore, and buy it immediately.



This post is written by Carolyn Zaikowski, who apparently is a strong and brilliant writer:

"...Your language does not need permission to be said, to be written. Your life does not need permission to exist. Your blur, your cliff, your bewilderment does not need permission.... You don’t need permission to be just as you are in this moment. Your strange language doesn’t need permission to be itself. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar who wants your power, who wants war, who wants your beautiful huge seed. Anyone who tries to shame or break your language is betraying you."

Amen. This is exactly the kind of voice we want in Gigantic Sequins. Yes, our submissions are open.




onwards, chickadees.