i can't really sing, so

New Year's Resolutions :: 2012

2011-12-27T18:18:00.002-05:00

Earlier, I tweeted my New Year’s Resolutions. Please let mebegin by saying that I am not big on these things. I’ve never aspired to loseweight, just gain it (don't be a hater.) I don’t have some horrible habit to kick (oh, exceptwasting time on the internet, but, let’s face it, that’s never going tohappen.) And finally, I already recycle, eat healthily, have a decent job, andpay my bills on time. All in all, I am a stand-up citizen.

But this year, well, I fear that I’m falling into a pattern.I’m not big on patterns. They bore me. I like shirts that lack symmetry, forexample. Also, I have three holes for earrings in one of my ear lobes and twoin the other. I only ever use one of each, but that’s not the point. The pointis, I need to step it up. I should probably resolve to not be on the internetas much, but I need the internet for school, so there goes that for breaking upthe monotony. Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook & Gmail, don’t sweat it, I’ll stillbe visiting. Daily.

But I have come up with some legitimate goals for the newyear, and I wanted to elaborate from my tweet.

@kimannjosouth tweeted: My#NYResolutions:Get GS nonprofit status, read at least 52 books, send out PhD apps in December,discover 10 new bands that I like.

1) Get GS nonprofit status

This is something that just needsto happen for Gigantic Sequins. I am not the best when it comes to business orlegal or mathematic related things. Nonprofit status falls in there somewhere.I’ve done some research, heard it was hard, heard it was easy, had otherpeople do research for me, but it seems like Greek to me when I try to sit downand sort through any of it. I need to sit down with someone, face to face, andhave them walk me through the steps, and then send out the forms/money/bakedgoods, whatever the heck it takes to make it happen. One of our raffles gotshut down off of the ‘net by Google Checkout in 2011, and we had to sell thetickets for it in person. This was a shame because we had really good prizes,and our staff didn’t have as much success as we would have in selling thetickets had we been able to push for people to purchase them online. We did have enough success that 3.1 will be hot off the press in a couple of days, but we could have made more had we been able to sell online. One of myformer professors offered to help me figure out the best route to take, and I’mgoing to take him up on it. This needs to happen. It’s important to me and tothe future of Gigantic Sequins.

2) Read at least 52 books

I’ve seen people have goals likethis in the past. Ever since I’ve been adjuncting, finding time to read hasbeen more difficult in the past. This upcoming semester, however, I will offerno excuses. I’ve already taught the four classes that I am scheduled to teachcome January. At Rowan, I have American English Grammar (2 sections) andExperiencing Literature. And at the University of Phoenix, I’m teaching a5-week class Elements of University Composition and Communication I. This givesme no excuses when it comes to lack of reading time. Sure, I should refreshmyself on the details of the shorts stories, poems, and novels I’ll be teaching,but that should not interfere with my reading like it did the first time Itaught a literature class. Why 52 books? That’s one book a week. Considering Ipolish some off in a day, and with dedication, most in no less than a week anda half, that should be easy. I have a list of every book I’ve read (and reread,or read part of—marked as such) since 2001. No partial or rereads count: I want52 new books added to that list. Any suggestions? I’m currently readingInferno: a poet’s novel by Eileen Myles. Has someone created an app yet whereyou plug in books you like and books you’ve read and whether you feel likereading fiction, non-fiction, poetry at this time, and it spits out the perfectbook you should read next? Emphasis on the “perfect”? No? Didn’t think so.

3) Send out PhD apps in December

I made this goal back in Novemberafter meeting with one of the Deans at one of the Universities I taught at thissemester. In my awkward way of talking about things that really mean a lot tome, I told her quite scatteredly about how I want to teach classes on Jay-Z and Walt Whitman andsmall press poetry and advertising—how I feel like English Departments thataren’t Comp. Lit. departments need to expand before they become completelyirrelevant—and how much getting into a good school is important to me. Sheearnestly said she thinks I’d be a good candidate. Rather than waiting untilthe summer, I want to start this process now. Doing the research, drafting theperfect Statement, electing past professors as letter-of-recommendationwriters. I love teaching at the University level. Let’s make this thing permanent.But wait. There are two things standing in the way, here, more than anything I’velisted so far. I need to get at least a 600 on the Verbal section of the GRE.And I need to retake the English Subject GRE. Any tips on how not to completelybomb the latter? And any tips on how to pass the former? I was so close lasttime. But we all know what close counts in.

4) Discover 10 new bands/musicalartists that I like

The emphasis here is on “that Ilike”. And ten may seem like a small number, but I am content to only discoverten. I love music. I love sounds and lyrics. I love them separately, and especiallywhen they come together. I have an extensive collection of music on iTunes, butI’ve found that I haven’t bonded very much with music like I have in the past.This may be a “Symptom of Getting Older”, and is perhaps why so much music ismarketed to teenagers and college kids. But I did mention above that I lovemusic. And I am absolutely positive that there is music out there, or even yetto be made in 2012, that I can and will love. And I’m going to find it.

Exciting Things in the Mail

2011-12-12T17:00:00.000-05:00

Today, when I got home from grading papers at Ultimo, two packages were waiting for me in the mailbox. Like Darla Jackson, I love receiving mail. I love sending mail, too. But we'll get there. Often, my mailbox is full of advertisements and bills. I'm still happy when I see my name on the envelope, but I was happier today with what was in that mailbox than I have been for awhile,

First, I took advantage of a deal on litmags and bought the first three issues of the UK journal Popshot for a discounted rate. Boy, am I glad I did so! The mag's "byline" is "Poetry & Illustration", and it delivers as promised. Each issue is an accessible amount of pages. There's nothing like a compact, well done lit journal, in my opinion. And the art is fabulous. I am into lit journals that value their artists' work in the same way that they value their writers' work. Each issue also has a theme, but from flipping through the three copies I have, its theme-ology is loose enough that it doesn't interfere with the quality of the work. They've put out three issues since, and I hope to splurge on the rest of them soon. Let's see how my bank account looks after this holiday season. Yay for Popshot in the mail!

I also received my Night Fruit 7''. Don't be fooled by their bandcamp page, where it says that it won't be released until 12/2012-- Dark Horse is out. Along with the purchase of the vinyl, you get mp3s of the songs, which I have yet to download to my computer, but hey, I can crank open that record player, spin this baby and dig the tunes. PSYCHED.

These 2 packages in the mail make me excited for some upcoming things in my own life-as-a-person-who-visits-the-post-office-often. Being the editor in chief of Gigantic Sequins, I am the person who has the privilege of mailing out our journal when it is released. Since we are sending our 3.1 issue to print this week, this means, soon enough I will be mailing copies of that out to all who have pre-ordered/subscribed. I already posted the cover image to our pre-order page and also to our official website, but because of the beautiful art by Gillian Lambert and the great job on design by Goodloe Byron, it's worth repeating here.

In addition, we'll soon have our GS totebags and t-shirts, that feature our logo, available for purchase. We have a limited supply, so keep checking back if you're interested. I modeled with one of the prototypes for our totebags-- dig it below!

I Re-Read Slaughterhouse-Five to teach it.

2011-11-21T23:21:00.001-05:00

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Teaching this book to my Experiencing Literature students at Rowan has truly given me a new perspective on its greatness. I was almost moved to tears addressing the class after we read through chapter 6. We were having a discussion on what a certain passage meant, on how the Tralfamadorian point of view was un-human, how things aren't "stuck in amber" and how we CAN do something to "change the world"-- "do you think Vonnegut thought he could 'change the world' when he wrote this book?" scattered nods and shaking of heads, scattered yeses and nos and idon'tknows. "Does it matter?" No. Even if it is only a little piece of the world around us that we have a positive effect on, it's worth it. Even if our idea of "changing the world" into a more positive place to live only involves encouraging others to read and learn from books like this. It was a gross oversimplification, but something snapped. Clarity rang. They got it. I couldn't breathe.

View all my reviews

Events You May Have Missed

2011-11-13T21:22:00.001-05:00

A lot of good things happened over the past week and a half-ish in Philadelphia, and I missed a lot of them.

Barrelhouse had a reading at Temple. It apparently went well. I was napping on my couch with a headache, and I slept until about 4 (it started at 3:30.)

Literary Death Match came to the World Cafe. I was at the horrific game that the Eagles played against the Chicago Bears. They lost in the fourth quarter. I shunned one death match for another: the Eagles' playoff hopes are all but dead after today's loss against the Arizona Cardinals.

...Because I watched that game at my Dad's house, I also missed a reading this evening. Asher Lewis invited me to a reading at the Walking Fish Theater that I should have gone to. Football: 0, Literature 2. Kimberly: 0, Literature: 3.

Okay. Wait. I need to fix that score. I DID go to the Tirefire Reading Series at the Tattooed Mom on Thursday night, which was pretty damn great. I at least have one point. Mike Young, who I taught in my lit class this semester, read along with Anna Louise Neiger and Karl Taro Greenfield. A few of my students came out to the event for extra credit.

I met a lot of writers/people writers were friends with/married to/people who liked to go to readings who all told me that they lived in South Philly. This makes me enormously happy. I must be doing something right.

christian & crowd

"dudes best reckon"

josean's skull sticker!

Order Gigantic Sequins 3.1

2011-10-24T12:42:00.000-04:00

Please use this page to order a copy of Gigantic Sequins 3.1. There are many options-- do you also want 3.2? Do you just want 3.1? Do you want to check out our back issues? Choose what's best for you!

The issue features the following work from these talented writers and artists:

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.

3.1 also features book reviews of two poetry books, Emergency Room Wrestling by The Dirty Poet (Words Like Kudzu Press) and Next Extinct Mammal by Ruben Quesada (Greenhouse Review Press)

COVER IMAGE BELOW!

2011-09-26T14:13:00.001-04:00

The Gospel of Anarchy: A Novel by Justin Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

We almost read this book in August for our bookclub. Many of my fellow bookclubbians said that it sounded interesting, but we wound up with Kurt Vonnegut instead. I am glad that I chose to read this book on my own volition this month, and I found it to have a soothing voice and driving plot. Justin Taylor gives equal attention to his characters and his plot, so in the end, you are not left 'missing' the characters, as many books leave you, but instead glad that you got to follow them for this ride in their lives. It seems he's chosen the right pathway to lead his reader down into the lives of the folks at Fishgut. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in anarchy, religion, the intersection of the two, Florida, punk rock, college towns, or just humanity in general. It is an exploration of all those themes and more, and it's very well written.

View all my reviews

Above is my review from Goodreads! Enjoy.

Gigantic Sequins does Google Gravity

2011-09-18T18:27:00.001-04:00

For the past ten/fifteen minutes or so, I've been having fun with Google Gravity. You can, too!

1) Go to Google and type 'Google Gravity'.
2) Click on the 1st result that appears i.e. Google Gravity
3) Wait 2 seconds. Something cool will happen--
4) Play with it for a while.
5) Then write any word in the Google search bar and press Enter. (I chose "Gigantic Sequins". It was a good choice!)
6) Wait and see. Cool things happen again!
7) Share this with your friends!

____________________________________________________

Here are some pictures from the fun I had...

Become of Friend of Gigantic Sequins!

2011-09-17T20:42:00.001-04:00

Help us print our 3.1 Issue!

One of the more difficult things for any journal is funding our endeavors. Gigantic Sequins wants you to be a part of our moving forward. We hope that you will join us in achieving our fund raising goals. To become a Friend of the Magazine, we will accept any amount, but the following amounts are suggested:

Friend: up to $50

Donor: $51-$200

Patron: $201-500

Benefactor: over $500

If you decide to support Gigantic Sequins, you will be credited as a Friend in the issue we send to you. You can request to be listed anonymously. You can donate on our website by using the "buy now" buttons below, or by emailing us at giganticmagazine@gmail.com if you would like to request a different amount than those indicated. Buying a copy of our journal also helps a lot! Purchase the 2.2 issue and our previous issues!

Being a Teenager During September 11th, 2001: Irony, Poetry, and History Making

2011-09-11T10:49:00.002-04:00

I had known all along that I didn’t want to be a journalist. I had known it early in high school, after the school newspaper’s Levendis editor assigned me my first Arts & Entertainment article on Pokèmon. I discovered then that I didn’t like talking to people who I didn’t know.

But there I was, early in my senior year of high school, 8^th period, alongside my fellow Arts & Entertainment editors Mark and Chris. It was September 11^th, 2001, and earlier that day, during 2^nd period, our entire school had listened over the loudspeakers to the news from New York City, live, including hearing the reaction of the broadcasters as the second tower fell. I had been surprised to see my peers pulling cell phones from their bags to call to see if their parents who worked in the area were okay—kids my age had cell phones? Parents from Cherry Hill, NJ travelled all the way to New York City for work?

In the middle of the day, we watched the repeated footage of the towers aflame, the planes crashing into them, during Phys. Ed. as the news stations on the television in the gymnasium played it again and again and again. In some of my classes, my teachers ran improvised lessons—what can we learn from this? How do you feel about this? In others, we sat at our desks quietly. The name Osama Bin Laden traveled the lips of my fellow students, many who were Jewish with an interest in the Middle East that I lacked. I’d never heard of him.

My math teacher, 7^th period, Ms. Hu, if I remember correctly, ran our math class as though nothing had happened. A fellow student kept raising his hand, saying, “Can we talk about what happened earlier?”

She ignored him.

“I really can’t focus on math today.” His hand waved incessantly in the air.

“Ms. Hu. Can we talk about New York?”

She paused. His eyes lit up. “We are learning our pre-calc today like any other. Open your book. Get out your homework.” She went around the room and checked our homework. I diligently took notes that I wouldn’t understand now, probably didn’t understand then. And not because of what became known as “9/11” but because I was horrible at pre-calc.

But 8^th period, my fellow Eastside editors and I shared my most common emotion that day: confusion. I had written in my journal over and over throughout the day that I wanted to go home and see my family—but I also had taken notes as to what was going on around me. Something between shock, sadness and… dare we admit, excitement, filled the air in that last classroom. This was a tragedy, yes, and terribly sad—but it was history in the making, and here we were. Were we allowed to feel this undercurrent of excitement that ran hot, below the grief and the fear? It was confusing, to say the least.

That night, the PATCO trains didn’t run. Where I lived in Ashland, their back and forth every fifteen minutes or so were key to the noises that sung me to sleep. I defined the mood, in a note to my best friend Jordan, as “that snowstorm silence”. The only other time the trains didn’t run that I could recall was during blinding white blizzards. I didn’t talk to anyone on the phone that night. I sang “God Bless America” along with the House and Senate when they broke out into it on the television. I watched the same images we’d watched in the gymnasium, but this time sitting next to my mom and brother, relieved to be surrounded by my family.

The next day Jordan and I exchanged notes on yellow lined pieces of paper, his just as spooky and well written as mine. This is what we did. We recorded history in the slanted light. But as an Eastside editor, I still had a duty to my fellow students at Cherry Hill High School East.

That next day our journalism teacher, Mr. Gagliardi, led us into probably the best discussion we would have about the tragedy: As editors, what should we do? Our fearless four-part editorial board agreed that we needed to do something. We talked it out. This was history. This was the most tragic thing that had happened on a national level in our lifetime. We ran the school newspaper. It was our responsibility to publish something, to get something out there that physically and emotionally captured this moment in time, and quickly. One of the editors in chief (who would go on to marry, no kidding, one of the others) said that she had an idea for the editorial. She went home to write it, we discussed it the next day, and soon then we had it printed.

We published a one page editorial, “Where Do We Go From Here?”, a couple of days after the tragedy, our Eastside banner, one article, one photograph. It was a beautifully sad piece that mourned the victims and also briefly mentioned an occasion where a student at our school of Arab decent was pushed by another student. One line. The day it came out, the editors were buzzing throughout the day about gossip that our principal was angry and threatening to pull our budget— because of that line. That day, we sat in 8^th period for a meeting with the principal. All of us: Gags and the whole masthead. We were to tell him who did the pushing and who was pushed, or he was going to shut us down. It was serious. We had done something serious enough to get attention, direct, in-person attention, from our school’s principal.

I had never been suspended. I had barely missed a day of class. I never even got a single detention throughout my entire public school career. And here was the principal, in person, days after our nation’s greatest tragedy, and we were in trouble. This was scary—and exciting.

I remember little about the resolution of that incident, only that we were allowed to continue to print newspapers. Only that we did not want to tell him who the people in the incident were, yet we also stood firm on the validity and the confidentiality of the report of the incident.

The first full-length issue of Eastside was also, of course, in part a tribute to 9/11. The front page was a beautifully melancholy photograph of an American flag balloon in the sand. Chris, Mark and I had fun designing the Levendis section. The two of them were especially good with witty headlines, and many times, we chose what articles we assigned based on how amusing a headline they could produce was. We had a mournful article titled, “…And the Band Played On”. We wrote about the movies that had been delayed in their release, as well as about how MTV played only music for the day of and days after. That latter we titled, maybe too cleverly, “WTC Puts the M Back in MTV”. Was it too soon for a rhyme like that? Well, we didn’t care.

The centerfold of that issue was dedicated to promoting the idea that displayed a quote from an article by one of our editors in chief that read, “America must uphold its tradition of sarcastic humor that helps keep the country honest.” The following year, Eastside, an award-winning newspaper to this day, implemented a humor section as a regular feature. Gags says, about that next issue, “the message on the double-truck was that, two months later, we needed to be able to laugh again. So the double-truck had four (maybe five) humor columns unrelated to 9/11.” We knew what we were doing, and we meant every word of it.

While late night hosts and comedians were at a loss for words, proclaiming irony dead, as teenagers, we knew that it wasn’t or at least that we couldn’t allow it to be. What would have happened if irony died with the tragedy of the Civil War? There would have been no Mark Twain, no Huck Finn. We knew that humor operated in part as a way to cope with tragedy. Had America forgotten this in its burst of patriotism? Decades prior, when cultural critic Theodor Adorno wrote, “How can one write poetry after Auschwitz?” Mark Strand, American poet, famously retorted, “And how can one eat lunch?” (a conversation taken from the essay “Uncommon Visage”, Joseph Brodsky.) We understood Strand better than Adorno. Life would go on. Things could still be funny, still had to be funny.

My brother and his friends were a few years younger than my fellow editors and I were, but they also found a way also to share in the history making during this tragedy, though not through comedy. One of them had made a sign that said “Honk 4 America”, and others soon joined, making similar signs. They stood at an Ashland intersection, encouraging rampant honking from passerby. At some point, someone pulled over and gave them $20.00, and my brother and his friends decided to use the intersection they’d taken over to raise money for the Red Cross. (The money eventually went, instead, to a New York Fire Department, in memory of a fallen firefighter, Michael Kiefer, who was 25. I still have one of the memorial buttons that came with the thank you letter my brother received.) They made more signs and all stood around that intersection the weekend after 9/11. Every honk they received elicited cheers. This went on for a few hours every day for a few days— until the world started pulling itself back together again, until it got boring.

I came by their intersection with my SLR loaded with color film and took pictures of them, as well as of American flags that the gas station, owned by people of Arab descent, had leaning against a street sign and also displayed between their pumps. (See the first image above in this post for the flagpole shot). I finished that roll of film on a photography field trip our photo class took after that weekend. I took pictures mostly of a flag, waving in the beach wind. The cover that would grace Eastside’s first full-length cover was taken by a peer on the same photo trip.

During my senior year, I also ran the school’s literary magazine, Demogorgon, where, at the end of the school year, my work and others’ was featured in a beautiful, bound copy with a color cover. After we first began to bomb Afganistan, I wrote a vignette about driving up the Jersey turnpike, listening to WTRI Philly and its news briefs about how we were seemingly indiscriminately attacking the Middle East. As a friend of mine put it, humorously, when adults weren’t even allowing themselves to laugh at all, “They terrored that whole city, and now we’re terroring the terrorists. That doesn’t work.”

The piece I wrote that was published in Demogorgon is still my Nana’s favorite work by me. She always refers to it as “that piece you wrote about the bombs, about blowing up the other side of the world,” referring to a repeated line in the vignette. “That one’s my favorite. I still show it to my friends. I understand it,” she says proudly. She claims also that she relates to it emotionally, she can feel what I mean. I’m glad that she can relate to it, too. It felt good, as a blossoming teenage writer, to write something that adults connected with, were moved by.

***

I went to the Boog City Arts & Music Festival this past summer. Boog City is a New York-based publication that celebrated its 20^th anniversary during this festival. The literary arts journal I now run, Gigantic Sequins, had a table at the small press fair there, and Boog had invited me to read poetry as well. The Sunday that I read, they held a panel discussion between three writers on “The Death of Irony; The Triviality of Poetry in the Face of Such Tragedy; and Other Myths of 9/11; a Retrospective”. The panel was interesting to me, as I sat at my table, trying to do the math to see if I had made back the $30 I spent to be a part of the small press fair. (See my above note on math class…)

Looking back on the title of the panel now, the writers didn’t discuss the things listed there as straight mythology. The conversation struggled to get past the recollection of the reality of these myths during autumn of 2001, which was remarkable on many levels. The stories that the writers told of their experiences were powerful and interesting. Perhaps the most moving was an anecdote of one panelist’s son’s school that assigned the students to build what should replace the World Trade Towers. One of the kids constructed a building with blocks that featured a hole in the middle of it. “So the planes can go through.” The panelist went on to say how they had felt that irony was dead in the face of the collapsing towers, how poetry then did feel trivial, and how difficult it had been for them to write, for a while.

I timidly raised my hand at one point to raise the idea that as a teenager living in South Jersey, it had been just the opposite. As a shy 17-year-old girl with my future shaping different paths in front of me, still worried about boys and college applications and boys and whether or not I was a good writer… and boys… 9/11 opened a set of doors that led to many different kinds of expression. It gave me, and I am sure many other teenagers, something to write about that adults would actually read, something to say that people would listen to. It gave meaning to my photography. It gave me a prose poem that my Nana still loves to this day, a letter to my high school best friend that he still might have, two products from my high school newspaper that are an important part of history. It gave our output an adult audience, willing to listen and to respond.

But at the panel, I realized everyone my age who didn’t have a direct personal link to the tragedy who had been excited—and scared to death—must have their own small triumphs from the weeks and months following this great tragedy. (I did have a personal connection: a friend of my mother's who I knew from the Philadelphia Folk Festival was a first responder, but I digress--) 9/11 gave us a glimpse into the real world, into the adult world, into a world where our voices mattered, where people listened to us. Things we said and wrote and photographed and joked about, raised money in the streets for, were of consequence. We were in mourning, but we were sarcastic and artistic and moved to action when some adults were afraid to be, when most people felt they weren’t “allowed” to be, when many others were righteously speechless.

***

9/11 is one of those events in human history where everyone who was alive for, born during, or lived in the immediate aftermath of it has a story to tell. Depending on the size of your crowd, swapping these stories can be an experience where you want to jump in as soon as possible to fit yours in or rather one where you wait patiently and listen to the unique factors of everyone else telling theirs. These imprints of that day and its aftermath on our memories push deeper into the tissue of our cerebrums the more we tell them, and they survive in the cultural consciousness the more of them we hear.

I look at television, film, the entertainment that can be found online nowadays, and I see irony abounds. The teenagers that once were the first to reintroduce irony to their small versions of media are now the ones writing articles for The Onion, producing their own art, running their own charities, and laughing at the Daily Show. Irony was never dead, poetry lives on, and the 9/11 tragedy’s imprint survives. As teenagers, we didn’t take the events lightly, but we didn’t let them render us mute, either. We used the day and its aftermath as learning experiences that would help to build us into the stronger versions of the adults we are today.

May the victims of this tragedy be in peace. May those who responded to the tragedy directly be in peace. May the families of the victims be in peace. May they know, though, that the tragedy that took away the lives of people gave others strength, in more ways than one.

Art Faccia // Boog // 13 Myna Birds

2011-08-10T10:59:00.006-04:00

Art Faccia, a website that features articles, reviews, interviews, essays and fiction and other great stuff published two things of interest to fans of Gigantic Sequins... and fans of me!

Here's an article I wrote for Art Faccia about poet Christie Ann Reynolds and the Philadelphia Parking Authority. You should probably read it and then post comments about how great it is. If you are familiar with the PPA's wrath or even if you're not, you will enjoy the sense of triumph that the article leaves you with.

In addition to publishing that article from me, J.E. Reich posted an "On the Scene" review of the reading Gigantic Sequins did at Word Up, a pop-up bookstore in Washington Heights. Check it out! She 's a great writer, and she does an excellent job detailing the experience of our reading as well as providing background information on the bookstore, GS and our lovely, fantastic, wonderful readers.

***

Recently, Gigantic Sequins tabled at the Boog City Small Small Press Fair, which was held at the Brooklyn Bookstore Unnameable Books-- The fair itself perhaps could have been renamed a Teeny-tiny Small Press Fair, but I digress. We sold some copies of our two most recent issues (2.1 & 2.2), had a poet from issue 2.2, Helen Vitoria, read, and gave out our free stickers and bookmarks.

The GS table, plums & an iced tea @ the Boog Small Small Press Fair.

I read there, too, and I enjoyed reading. I am always wary of reading at first, but, much like teaching, when I'm up there in front of the crowd, I usually have a good time. I also was able to vocally promote the Small Press Fair tables and talk about how being an editor is not too time-consuming to cut into my writing as a customer at Strand once suggested, but inspirational.

Me reading @ Boog City Fest @ Unnameable Books

I met some of my fellow vendors, and of note were my neighbors on both Saturday & Sunday, Stonecutter Journal. They are a new Brooklyn-based journal with a beautiful print book to show for their hard work. I didn't get a chance to read or buy a copy (I am so totally absolutely incredibly unbelievably broke. Or I would have.) but the journal itself was beautiful, and one of the coolest things I noticed about it was that an artist had drawn a portrait of each of the contributors to go with their bios. Awesome.

***

Finally, I have two poems up at Thirteen Myna Birds right now, "Poem for S., late September" and "near sonnet for working too much" that you should read and also tell me are good.

Poppin' Up:: Veronica Liu & WORD UP in NYC

2011-06-27T13:27:00.007-04:00

Do you know what I love about my generation? How easy digital communication makes everything. I've been in touch with Veronica Liu, the woman who's set up Word Up, the pop-up bookstore in Washington Heights, NYC, since I found out about the pop-up store via Karen Lillis's wonderful "Small Press Librarian" blog, and she is not only sweet, but excited about what she's doing and what others are doing. She is the managing editor for Seven Stories Press, and as far as I can tell, she knows what she's doing. This is what makes being an editor so thrilling to me. She has been fast to respond to my emails, informative when need be and possesses a level of small excitement that can go undetected via email, but I can sense it. See a fraction of our email exchange below, from today. She had asked me to send copies of the 2.2 issue asap, in order that they could promote the reading by displaying them. I had sent them on Friday, and I wasn't sure when they'd arrive.

Yes, I like being a poet. Yes, I like the big flapping butterfly I get in my stomach when I get to read in front of other people. But there is nothing like collecting other people's fantastic work into a cohesive volume and getting it out there. I find it much easier to rave about Gigantic Sequins than I would ever rave about anything I myself have written. Someone once told me, between the shelves of poetry and film books at the Strand, that being an editor detracts from your own writing. I haven't found that. I have found that the inspiration I get from others by being part of a literary arts journal is essential, and without Gigantic Sequins, who knows where my writing would be.

This being said, Veronica Liu seems to have the same caring about bringing people's works together, on a different scale, and I am happy to be a part of Word Up. Gigantic Sequins will be gracing the shelves soon [see below], and a reading will be there to celebrate our 2.2 issue. Ian Carlos Crawford, Michelle Cheever, Leigh Phillips and Helen Vitoria will all be reading their work. I've met Ian and Leigh (she read at our ACA Galleries reading with Boog City) in the past, but I am glad I get the chance to meet Helen and Michelle now, too. I hope that I also get to meet the wonderful Veronica, to thank her for her enthusiasm, if nothing else.

NOTE: I will have an flyer/more info on the July 12th reading at Word Up in NYC soon. Meanwhile, please check out the facebook event for it! In general, Word Up, at 4157 Broadway near 176th Street, is open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and noon to 4 p.m. on weekends.

kimberly southwick to Veronica

show details 1:25 PM (1 minute ago)

Thanks for the info! the books have been sent, you should get them soon.

We're excited for you to have us! i'll have the bios soon, too.

kimberly

- Show quoted text -

Forward

Veronica Liu to me

show details 1:26 PM (1 minute ago)

They JUST ARRIVED!

- Show quoted text -

2.2 day is today!

2011-06-08T19:19:00.005-04:00

Gigantic Sequins 2.2 came out today. I have no human children, but I do have literary arts journal babies. Today, I picked up my fourth baby from Perfect Printing in Moorestown, NJ, early, before the heat wave that began around noon had set in the area. It was 85 degrees and rising as I pulled up, parked, paid and held the door for the nice man who lugged the four boxes from the company's lobby where they were waiting for me.

Each of the boxes has the image of the cover plastered on it, and I have opened one of them, slit the plastic and flipped through one. I got a "proof" copy, which is exactly the same, but splitting the plastic and flipping through and breathing the books, still warm from being out in my car while I worked today, well, that's magical.

We sent away for the inserts today and they should be in by early next week, and then we will begin shipping out our 2.2 issue to all of our friends, contributors and purchasers. Gigantic Sequins 2.2 was born Wednesday, June 8th. She is a Gemini, half bird, half old lady. She can't wait to meet you. I hope that you choose to add her to your summer reading list. Order one today if you have yet to, and remember, each $5 you spend towards your order enters you into our Welcome Summer Raffle, for a chance to win one of ten amazing prize packages.

the WELCOME SUMMER raffle

2011-05-15T17:28:00.017-04:00

the WELCOME SUMMER RAFFLE is here!

brought to you by Gigantic Sequins!

We have TEN prize packages-- that's right, TEN-- that each include between 2-4 prizes.

Here's what you can win:

SIGNED BOOKS: Tea by D.A. Powell, The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn & Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Come On All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder, The Pajamist by Matthew Zapruder, Cocktails by D.A. Powell & Lunch by D.A. Powell, Like a Sea by Sam Amadon

HARDCOVER BOOKS: Landing Light by Don Paterson, Hart Crane, a life by Clive Fisher, The Bigger World by Nicole Kocot, Destroyer and Preserver by Matthew Rohrer & I <3 Your Fate by Anthony McCann

PAPERBACK BOOKS: Glass City by John Grochalski, Revisions Of by Goodloe Byron

ART: pins handcrafted by Savannah Schroll Guz & animal sculptures made by Darla Jackson

CDs: blanketfort records Sampler 1.1, Bright Day by Emily Rodgers, VDMA by VDMA, Glenrose by Brendan Little

VINYL: Emily Easterly/J Seger split 45''

Enter today!

Our fabulous prizes were donated graciously by these wonderful folks:

Brendan Little

Nick Flynn

Matthew Zapruder

Wave Books

Emily Easterly

Emily Rodgers

Darla Jackson

D. A. Powell

FSG

Low Ghost Press

Blanketfort Records

Goodloe Byron

Savannah Schroll Guz

Sam Amadon

Our raffle begins today, MAY 15th and ends JUNE 30th.

Tickets are 1/$5.00, 3/$10.00 or 7/$20.00

TO ENTER: You have a few options!

1) Send a check made out to our editor in chief, Kimberly Ann Southwick, to 1223 Daly St. Philadelphia, PA 19148

2) Every PRE-ORDER of our upcoming issue 2.2 comes with a chance to win one of the ten prize packages! Get more for your money and pre-order today!

2) Email one of our editors to arrange a purchase: Sophie Klahr (sophie.klahr@gmail.com), Zach Yontz (zyontz@gmail.com) or Kimberly Ann Southwick (kimberlyannjosephine@gmail.com). We will be selling tickets in person, wherever we are.

3) You can also find us at our events! There will be a TBA event in Pittsburgh celebrating the release of issue 2.2. We are in the process of setting up various other events in places like Philadelphia, New York, Boston and/or Chicago!

WE ARE EXCITED. YOU SHOULD BE TOO.

ORDER Gigantic Sequins 2.2!

2011-05-10T12:08:00.006-04:00

Kickstarter updates!

2011-03-21T16:02:00.005-04:00

Cassie M. of the Kickstarter Blog wrote up our Gigantic Sequins fundraiser! This is really exciting to me. She calls us "ambitious and, frankly, adorable." Thanks, Cassie!

As of March 21st, our project is 48% funded-- we still need your help to meet our goal of $500.00, though, by March 17th. Please donate today, or if you can't afford it: tell your friends!

Gigantic Sequins launches its first Kickstarter!

2011-03-18T20:46:00.003-04:00

The editors of Gigantic Sequins, Sophie Klahr, Zach Yontz and I, have been working hard to put together our first ever Kickstarter fundraiser. It just went live tonight, giving us 29 days and some amount of hours, now, to raise the $500 we hope to raise. This money will help us commit to putting out our 2.2 issue on time.

Please, please, please, please, please help us meet our $500 goal! The way Kickstarter works is that you only get your funding if you meet your goal-- We really hope that we can successfully launch our project on time by raising this money! You can donate $5-$500--- every little amount helps! We hope that you find it in you to give whatever you can today!

Tell all of your friends! Tell all of your friends' friends! Spread the word so that we can bring you THE BEST poetry, prose and art in our unique journal. We need to raise $500 by 4/17/11. We know that you can help make this happen. Thanks.

AWP Wrap-up

2011-02-08T20:44:00.003-05:00

Well, I still haven't been able to get together all of the "names" missing from my last post, and I fear it will be too late if I ever get the motivation to do so-- not because I am, generally, a lazy person, but because I have the flu, or something flu-like, that is a persistent drainer of all of my energy and ability to concentrate.

This being said, the last day of AWP, Saturday, was a success for me. I finally did an extensive stroll through the bookfair, I bought a book, I promised I would buy other books, I picked up a million flyers, and I both talked to and took photos of some fabulous people. All of my AWP photos can be found on my facebook page in an album called AWP 2011 DC: capitol letters. That's the public link, so you should be able to access it there.

After dinner, we went to the Black Squirrel for the Megareading, of which we missed most, but got to hear the lovely Christie Ann Reynolds and the fabulous Matt Hart (who killed it.) We proceeded to Cheif Ike's Mambo Room to perform some killer dance moves and, again, found ourselves rather not sober. Oh, us writer types.

All in all, minus contracting the flu or the flu-like infestation ravaging my body, AWP was a whole-hearted success. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the Big Lucks table and bought a copy of either of their fabulous issues that they had for sale, and thanks to everyone who also glanced through, commented on or bought a copy of Gigantic Sequins.

I will be updating about GS soon, but I want to make one last reminder that our submission period closes on FEBRUARY 15th!

AWP Days 2 & 3

2011-02-05T09:08:00.003-05:00

Our reading on Wednesday night (Day 1) went better than I thought it could. All of the readers and editors were friendly, everyone read very well, and I enjoyed meeting Darren and getting to see Jeff. Thanks again to Folio and Phoebe and especially to Big Lucks for letting Gigantic Sequins be the "Plus" in the "Local Plus" reading event.

Day 2

Having not drank entirely too much on Wednesday night, we made it to the bookfair by about 9:30. I went to my first panel on WAMfest, a words and music festival put together by Farleigh-Dickinsin and spear-headed by one of my former professors from Emerson (who now works at Farleigh-Dickinsin), David Daniel. John Wesley Harding and Josh Ritter discussed how they compartmentalize some of the pluralized visions of art: fiction and music. They discussed why they chose to write, though being musicians, and they both read from their new books. They talked a lot about the ballad, which I had just taught in my Experiencing Literature class recently. It was a great slot, and it involved hearing some music.

The other panel I attended was a reading by Marie Howe, Gregory Orr, Bob Hicok and Kevin Young. It was fantastic.

I spent a lot of time running around from the bookfair to the panels and doing things in between. I bought two books: Justin Taylor's new novel and Jeremy Schmall's book of poetry, from which Gigantic Sequins published one of his poems before the book came out. (I'll add the names of the books in when I get home. All of my belongings are in the corner, chaotic.) I went to many of the tables I had wanted to go to and met a lot of people. I feel like at the end of this whole thing I will make a list of this, but it's too much for this moment. I had dinner and went to a few different bars before drinking entirely too much and then finally falling asleep. It was a great day.

Day 3

I got off to a late start, but made it in time to be at the bookfair briefly and go with Andi Quinn and Kathleen Rooney to see Joyce Carol Oates read from her forthcoming memoir. I bought a book from Rose Metal Press on my way back (see above note on names of books). After that, I met up with Mike Young and along with people from a few different collections of people, we walked over to the DC zoo for a reading.

The idea of the zoo reading was brilliant: poets would read a piece "About" an animal of their choice standing near that animal. Though this didn't exactly happen (except a woman, Stephanie, read about otters near a real otter), the reading still went well. It was great to be in open spaces imagining cheetahs as compared to the indoor cage of AWP. Matt Bell and Mike Young read. (I'll add in these names, if I can get ahold of them.) I liked everyone's work, and I *really* liked some people's work.

I ate an Asian-inspired dish alone at Ipoh after putting one of my stickers up on the lone walk back. I had to leave the zoo early because I was starving. I sat at the bookfair until it ended, and then walked with K. Rooney and crew to a bar for the Table X reading. I spoke with Joey C. and David, who used to work in the Strand basement, before the reading. David complimented our Gigantic Sequins website for the amount of updating we do. He said it was "just enough" or something like that, and I was flattered. I really appreciate the compliment because sometimes, I'm not entirely sure I'm coming at this thing at the right angle. Things like that reassure me that I'm doing just fine. Thanks, David.

The Table X reading was interesting to say the least. I will list some people who I saw read eventually. I had a happy walk from Steve's Bar to The Black Cat, where The Literature Party was to be held. Tao Lin, Amelia Gray and someone else whose name I'll find when I gather all of my names all read and then there was a dance party. I'd been hoping that the music would prove interesting and/or appropriate, but found myself vaguely disappointed with a lot of it. I wandered around and met and talked to a lot of people. We were there for awhile, but it didn't feel that way.

So far so good, I keep saying, though the thing is almost over! Day 4: let's do it.

AWP 2011 update: Day One

2011-02-02T13:14:00.007-05:00

I arrived safely in DC yesterday, and spent the evening with the lovely and wonderful editors of Big Lucks, Mark and Laura. They have been kind and hospitable and a joy as hosts. After a lovely night sleeping on the couch and then waking up to some grisly news from Egypt, I was glad to distract myself from Al Jazeera English and go with them to the hotel where the conference will be held out to register and help them set up their table.

The Big Lucks editors are gracefully allowing Gigantic Sequins a spot on their table, so I set up a few of our newest issues, with a small stack of the first two beneath it. I also have our Gigantic Sequins stickers, submission flyers, and flyers advertising the 2.1 issue there. The Big Lucks table, K2, looks fantastic with its big banner, copies of their issues, fabulous (FREE!) buttons and a flyer for the raffle they're holding.

After registering and setting up the table, we made our way to the train station to pick up Mike Young. We enjoyed the DC traffic, found Mike (who I'd never met until then) and then went to eat at a pretty nice place. I had some Ahi Tuna Tacos. I remembered to take my vitamins. We are now home prepping for our reading, which beings shortly at 7pm. Prepping means: Marks is reading for the class he teaches on Friday, Mike is checking the weather on his laptop, Laura is reading/scrolling on her laptop and I am writing this blog.

Our reading is TONIGHT, 7pm at Grand Central in DC. See the flyer below! Reading are Mike Young, who is a Big Lucks contributor; Darren Frey, who is a Gigantic Sequins contributor; Jeff Laughlin, who is a Gigantic Sequins contributor as well, and many others. We are psyched.

I'll keep everyone updated as the conference proceeds!

AWP 2011

2010-12-30T11:39:00.001-05:00

Gigantic Sequins will be attending AWP 2011! We are late in the game here, and we have our fingers crossed that someone out there may still want to split a table with us. If not, our presence will be noted in various other ways.

We hope to see you there!

Support the Little Guys with the Big Ideas

2010-12-21T14:25:00.005-05:00

Gigantic Sequins has always been and will always remain a fan of the literary and artistic underdawg--- big talent, smallish audience. But, hey, as the Superbowl tells us, the underdawg is not to be looked down on or discouraged. They always have a chance. Here is your chance to help out some of the smaller guys.

This winter, give your support to Rose Metal Press, who turns 5 this January. They specialize in hybrid genres from writers all shapes and sizes, and their books are always eloquent and beautiful. They have donation packages for every budget. We ask that you show your support this holiday season to this lovely small press.

Also, one of my favorite bands, a group of guys who had played our fundraiser/release parties at least once or twice, shoney lamar & the equal rights, is finally taking their circus to the road. That's right, shoney and the guys may show up in your town late this winter! They do need your help, also, though in funding their tour. Give a little, get a little by checking out their Kickstarter page. You can also download a lot of their badass music for free on their bandcamp page.

Of course, we at Gigantic Sequins can always use your help as well. Become a friend of our small literary arts magazine (with a big heart) and you'll get a complimentary copy of our 2.2 issue, scheduled to be published in the spring.

Gigantic Sequins: On Sale!

2010-12-15T12:34:00.006-05:00

Order today! You can order just issue 2.1--- OR you can order 2.1 + all of our past issues OR you can order 2.1 plus our next 3 issues! Either way, the more sparkle you add to your cart, the more you save!

At least pick up issue 2.1--- it's eloquent and beautiful, everything you would expect from Gigantic Sequins.

What I Read While Teaching Grammar (and other things) This Semester

2010-12-09T19:10:00.008-05:00

If there is one thing I've learned being a professor at a University, it is to never make promises. Never promise you will have anything graded by a certain date. Never promise that something will or will not be on an exam. Never promise that something will be easier or more difficult than something else. Seeming objectivity becomes soft, marshmallow-like when entering the brains of students.

So when I promised myself that I would read more this semester than last semester, I should have known better.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy a few fabulous books this semester.

Books Read Fall 2010

Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey

I read this on recommendation from a friend of mine from the Philadelphia Folk Festival. It took me a couple of months to get through. Kesey's descriptions of Oregon are often long winded, but clear as blustery winter day. The events of the book don't span a long period of time, and a good reader can trace where they are going from early on in the plot, but the climax and conclusion of this novel are thrilling. Because the novel was arduous for me to read, I expected by the time I had finished it to dislike the book; however, the opposite happened. I felt as though all of the time it took me to read was part of the reading experience, and the novel was, in the end, worth every page and recommendable. Forgive Kesey the flowery, descriptive first twenty pages and acquaint yourself to his jumping from one character's brain to the next. He set out to write the Great American Novel, and he succeeded.

Richard Yates by Tao Lin

Tao Lin is a dichotomy waiting to happen. His work is completely polarizing amongst his readers. And among those who will call themselves fans, I would say that Lin manages to baffle me at times. Richard Yates is a semi-autobiographical 21st century novel of emotion and lack of emotion; it is set in New York and New Jersey. I read it quickly, and I enjoyed it, though I would have trouble explaining why. Lin's tone is addictive to read, and one quickly becomes immersed in his characters and cares about them while also hating them; then, the book is finished. And you wonder if you've been played. Nope, you just made it through your first (or second, or third, or...) book authored by Tao Lin.

Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett

This book came with a strong recommendation from Kathy Rooney. She said that it was funny and well written. This book was both of those things. Its clever title turns out to be highly relevant to the plot of the novel. Its characters, if you met them, would be people whom you would call "characters". Twin sisters front the cast list and they are as close and opposite as novelistic twins can get. I enjoyed this novel up until the end, when I felt vaguely let down by Willett. The whole novel seemed leading to a certain climax, and I found myself reading something not as thrilling as what I expected.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Freedom was a gift from my friend, Jesse Coleman, that I requested and received in the mail. I heard an interview on NPR with Franzen and, via that, decided I wanted to read his newest novel. No, I have yet to read The Corrections, though I decided that Freedom would help me decide if I would ever crack the used paperback copy I have of that previous Franzen novel. Freedom was a fantastic literary journey. The author invested me in the characters, their personalities, woes, weaknesses, small joys and large sadnesses. My problems with this mostly stellar novel were not from a reader's standpoint. As a reader, Freedom was an enjoyable and entertaining character-driven 21st century and (mostly) post-9/11 novel. As an editor, though, I had some problems with how the story ended, neatly tied together with brown string, wrapped in a recyclable paper bag, and mailed off into the world to be read, and enjoyed, dammit, by all. I won't get specific, as to not give away any key plot points, but I wished it hadn't ended so... perfectly.

Endnote: Gigantic Sequins 2.1 is here! Get your copy today! Make it your winter vacation reading.

PRE-ORDER GS 2.1

2010-11-27T11:10:00.013-05:00

Pre-Order Gigantic Sequins 2.1 by clicking on the "Add to Cart" button below!

Gigantic Sequins 2.1 features cover art by Marek Danielewski and art inside by shoney lamar, Samuel Ferri and Marek Danielewski. Gigantic Sequins was designed by JM Tavenner Design.

Gigantic Sequins 2.1 features poetry by Tom Laskow, Anne Marie Rooney, Jeremy Schmall, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Alayna Frankenberry, Alicia Case, Elizabeth Hoover, Darren Frey, Mark DeCarteret and Howie Good.

Gigantic Sequins 2.1 features fiction by Adam Moorad and Erik T. Johnson and non-fiction by Ian Carlos Crawford.

GS: Accepting Submissions Again!

2010-11-23T13:33:00.003-05:00

Gigantic Sequins is now accepting submissions. We have chosen to use an online submissions manager, Submishmash, to maintain order. So far, it is going smoothly. All of our guidelines for submitting to our literary arts journal can be found via the link. Send your work to us today!

Gigantic Sequins Onlins Submissions Manager

ALSO: Keep an eye out VERY SOON for Gigantic Sequins 2.1 PREORDER and more PREVIEW.

To join our mailing list for all of our updates delivered to your inbox, send an email to giganticmagazine@gmail.com. In the subject line put the words "Mailing List" and in the body, "Add me!" (or something else to that affect.)

Thanks for your attention and your support.

2010-11-09T18:59:00.000-05:00

COMING SOON...

RAFFLE ME BAFFLE ME: Get your tickets today!

2010-10-07T15:11:00.014-04:00

RAFFLE NOW CLOSED. Check back to this website soon for a video drawing of the winners as well as a list of who they are, what they won and where they're from! Thanks to everyone who entered! We'll leave the FAQ up in case anyone is still curious about things. ALSO: check out our sponsors! -GS staff

FAQ

1) What can I win?

You can win one of FIVE prizes. Our sponsors are listed below. ALL of our prizes were provided by our sponsors, so click around to see how great they are!

Our GRAND PRIZE consists of the following:

complete collection of the publications from Wave Books in 2010
bag, book & change purse from ModCloth
shirt, LP, CD & buttons from Anna Vogelzang
CD from Christine Lyons
novel by Tao Lin
EP by shoney lamar & the equal rights with exclusive art by shoney
book of poems by Peter Jay Shippy & a book of short short stories from Rose Metal Press
chapbook by Paul Siegell from Splitleaves Press
original movie poster from “Little Miss Sunshine”
exclusive chapbook by James Yeh & Andrew Bulger
and, of course, a copy of Gigantic Sequins 1.2 & 1.1

AND MORE, of course.

(hey, if you’re a die-hard GS fan and already have our issues, you can distribute the ones you win to a friend!)

2) How do I win?

You buy raffle tickets using the purchasing link above. You will receive an email from Gigantic Sequins that will confirm your tickets, their numbers and how many you bought. As it goes with any raffle, the more tickets you buy, the better chance you have to win. This has been proven in the past. BUT if you can't afford but one ticket, well, you definitely STILL have a change to win one of these fabulous five prize packages that us and our sponsors are offering! So throw in the money.

You also can buy tickets from our editors in person at our events.

3) How much is each ticket?

Each ticket is $5.00 OR 5 for $15.00 OR 10 for $20.00. WOW.

4) When will I know if I won?

Gigantic Sequins is allowing this raffle to run the course of October. OUR GOAL: to have enough money to get our 2.1 issue printed. We are going to print this month, and when we have enough money, we can hit the stacks. So buy those tickets! We will be drawing the winners on All Soul's Day via video. You don't want to miss it. If you've won, you will be contacted via email.

5) How do I find out more about Gigantic Sequins?

Why, you check our official website occasionally! Here is the link:http://giganticmagazine.wordpress.com/

6) What am I waiting for?

We're not sure. Scroll up and enter our raffle today! But be sure to scroll down and check out our sponsors sites as well!

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER, we are grateful for...

the elegant and melodic Anna Vogelzang

Tao Lin, in all his shoplifting glory

rock and roll done right: shoney lamar & the equal rights

"the" poetry press Wave Books

ModCloth for keeping the world beautiful

Philadelphia's small-but-strong Splitleaves Press

the fantastic tunes of Christine Lyons

the beauty of the hybrid genre at Rose Metal Press

the water color wonder, Drew Falchetta

& last but not least, keeping collaboration real in New York, James Yeh & Andrew Bulger

It's been awhile...

2010-09-16T17:28:00.003-04:00

I am sometimes a "bad" blogger. August, I out and about a lot. I spent a week at the Old Pool Farm in PA volunteering at the Philadelphia Folk Festival as I do every year. Following that, the semester began. I am teaching four classes right now, two semester long and one five week. I will be teaching another five-week course immediately following the one I'm teaching now. No wonder I have yet to make it through Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion!

...However, there's some exciting Gigantic Sequins news!

We are almost at our financial goal that will send us to print. Help us out by becoming a Friend of Gigantic Sequins or buying a copy of our 1.1 or 1.2 issues. Or both of them.

We are holding a RAFFLE with prizes from... ModCloth, Rose Metal Press, Tao Lin and MORE. An itemized list of EVERYTHING you can win will soon be available here and on our Official Website.

So it looks like our 2.1 issue with me as editor in chief, Sophie Klahr as poetry editor and Jordan Tavenner as designer will be going to print in OCTOBER 2010! Hooray.

Those who submitted for our 2.2 issue should be notified or will be notified soon. We hope to bring that issue out in the spring.

And for those of you waiting, we should soon be accepting submissions for our 3.1 issue. This also means that our Brand Spankin' New submission guidelines will be up soon. HOLLER.

And finally, last but not least, we have promoted Zach Yontz to fiction editor for our 3.1 issue.

Hang in there, folks. It's almost that time...

books read: labyrinths, big and small

2010-08-03T18:16:00.004-04:00

My summer reading has continued. a Pynchon novel, the last in a children's trilogy I began in the spring and, most recently, a collection of stories by David Foster Wallace. In other news, I reorganized my fiction bookshelf so that all of the books on it are books I have read, except for a small section where there was still room at the bottom which now contains hardcovers I have not read. This brings some organization between "stack" and "shelves". The stack is now all books I haven't read. Now, the next problem will occur if I haven't come upon another bookshelf before I finish more books than can fit on the bookshelf I have the "read" fiction on! And when I do get another, will I keep the read/unread separated still? Hm...

books read: July

V. by Thomas Pynchon.

I bought a bumper sticker from catandgirl.com that says "My Other Car is a Pynchon Novel" and decided that I couldn't put it anywhere (not my car, anyway, but anywhere) until I read another Pynchon novel. After finishing Moby Dick, I wanted something not-as-long, so I looked past Gravity's Rainbow and chose V.. I am not really going to tell you anything about this novel that the back of it cannot tell you; instead, I am going to tell you of the experience of reading it which, to me, has added much to the definition of The Experience of Reading Pynchon.

I started reading the book on the beach. When I got home, I had to turn back all of the pages I read and reread them. The pace of his novels is very quick, but if you read them too quickly, you miss details. Pynchon is a novelist of details and a novelist of mazes. He will lead you down failed paths again and again, and it is up to you to determine the importance of his labyrinth's details that, in the end, do not solve the mystery of the plot line. His characters are mainly caricatures of people, though their humanity does seep through the ink on occasion.

In the end, I was not sure if I was satisfied with my ability to read this book, comprehend it and appreciate it for all that Pynchon packed into it. I felt like I needed to read it again, but I wasn't sure if I will ever want to. I know who I think Pynchon needed V. to be, but I wanted more about one of the dead ends than I wanted to remember more about who she turned out to be.

I also did some readingtweeting again:

reading #Pynchon's V. over sushi: "Anything that can get drunk, he reasoned, must have some soul. Perhaps this is all "soul" means." p. 781:53 PM Jul 19th via Twitter for iPhone

The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart

My friend has been lending me these, and gave me this one while I was in the middle of Pynchon. It was a breath of air from the heavy reading I've been doing lately. The only part I don't like about this trilogy is that it's over! I found some of my GRE words in this novel (I've been studying) which is always refreshing in a kids' book. The earlier one is exposed to words, the earlier they will know their definitions. Way to go, Stewart.

Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace

I have always wanted to read a book by this man. I am a girl with curious hair, if you will excuse self-complimenting (if you would consider it that), so I have always wanted, too, to read this book. After his death, his books were impossible to come across at Strand Books where I worked in NYC, so I never got around to owning a David Foster Wallace book. My roommate's favorite short story is the first story in this book. Since I love Jeopardy, and the story involves Jeopardy, she wanted me to read it. I did. It was great. I decided to read the rest of the book.

The problem ensues here. The next story, "Luckily The Account Representative Knew CPR" wasn't very good. I also have a problem with Wallace's lack of proper grammar, but I do try to put these things aside. I read on. The title story was more intriguing, but I didn't care too much about the characters, even by the end. The following story, "Lyndon", I liked. "John Billy", next, I had to skip. When I came back to it, I thought it was one of the better ones. "John Billy", "Little Expressionless Animals" and "Lyndon" are by far my favorite stories in this book. The rest, especially the longest one put at the end, were boring. And the last one bordered on unreadable.

Maybe meta-meta(-meta?) fiction was cool once. Maybe it was new and fun to read. The only part of the past story I liked was when Wallace made a graduate-school-style joke about Pater and two other critics. And, to be fair to my opinion of how much I disliked this story, I laughed out loud when I read that part-- but can't even remember where on the page it is. When I like a part in a book-- and I think a lot of people are this way-- you can remember seeing it on the page. I can't remember this time.

Many of the stories I didn't like were gimmicky. This book made me rethink the genre of the short story. Is there even a pay-off if the whole story turns out to be a gimmick? I had the same problem with this book as I did with Dave Eggers' How We Are Hungry, though I assure you I have talked a lot more trash on Eggers than I ever will on Wallace. I at least liked some of the stories in Girl with Curious Hair. Oh, Dave Eggers, I'd apologize, but...

these are some things you can buy @ catandgirl.com including the Pynchon sticker I discuss above. yay.

Driven as the Whale: Reading Moby Dick down the shore (and other places)

2010-07-20T12:48:00.010-04:00

I have wanted to read Moby Dick for awhile now, but the classic was not always on my list. In high school I was made to read "Billy Budd", a Herman Melville short story that I loathed. In undergrad, though, I read his "Benito Cereno" and "Bartleby, the Scribner"-- my harsh opinions of Melville abated. (I highly recommend the novella "Benito Cereno" if you haven't read it yet.)

But this post is about his Moby Dick. It's the whale of it, really; the extent to which whales fascinate humans is historical and addictive. If you ever meet someone with any sort of strong feeling towards the leviathan, it is quite easy to get swept up in obsession. Moby Dick asserts this, though I admit the book was not what I expected.

I expected the chase, the hunt and the obsession, but not 1) in such intricate detail and 2) in any way I could relate to as a non-whaler. The book does make one think about whales, either by reinforcing and expanding ideas, thoughts, fears, that one has already have, or creating these. Whales are intricate creatures. I believe them to be at least as smart as us if not smarter. I think that it's their hugeness that hinders their abilities, somehow. I will not espouse my beliefs on the whale any further here, but suggest instead that you read Moby Dick and come to your own conclusions about whales.

Please do not pick this book up expecting an adventure-- it is an adventure, but the bulk of the book is information. What a whaling boat needs before it sets sail, what the boat looks like, what a whale looks like, what a certain kind of whale's head looks like compared to another kind, an existential dissection of why the white in the white whale is perhaps what makes the white whale most frightening, how to extract oil from a whale, what the carpenter's job on a whale ship is... I could go on. Melville's novel is a novel of obsession. Of Ahab's obsession with the white whale, yes, but also of obsession in general. It is a novel of detail. It is a novel of intricacy. It is a novel I had to read slowly at times, and at other times could not stop turning its pages.

I kept dog-earing pages because Melville is highly quotable. What makes this book a classic, and what took me a few hundred pages to realize, is that Moby Dick is not just about its characters or the hunt or the obsession or the whale-- all important qualities, though, as discussed above-- but Moby Dick is also about what it means to be human. Not what it "meant" to be human, either. A classic is defined as a book that stands the test of time, and what is important in this definition is determining why any classic novel has withstood this test. Moby Dick has because it's a document of the whaling industry in the mid 1800's, yes, and because its characters are at their core ineluctably human. I related to things that Melville was saying, though the book was written over a century ago. Maybe this is what makes a book powerful to my personal literary sensibilities, but as a constant, diligent and solicitous, even, reader, what is important to me is what is important to good readers. Moby Dick is about being human in the same way that all incredible books must be.

As I was dog-earing my pages, I sometimes would tweet the quotation that caught my eye if it was short enough to tweet and if I felt like it needed sharing. It started because I began reading this while I was in Ocean City, NJ for a week and a half. I thought it was an apropos book to read on the beach. As someone who is not just a little afraid of the ocean and its creatures, perhaps I was feeling brave in my decision. But fears are things to confront, not to let sit tight. Melville's classic whale-hunting novel is not your standard easy-going "beach reading", but I found the copy I read at the Boardwalk bookstore and, ultimately, found my choice apposite. An example of one of my tweets:[ "a noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! all noble things are touched with that." #MobyDick pg 78 / sun in my eyes on the porch in OC. 4:57 PM Jun 23rd via web ] (I think that tweeting quotes from books I read is something that I will continue to do, especially as I read through classic novels. If this interests you, here is a link to my twitter page.)

I continue to see whales everywhere. On a man's belt and a woman's wallet at work, on a girl's bathing suit a day I returned to OC. I notice whales in songs, in people's gchat statuses, in the news. (In fact, while I was reading the novel, they named a whale after Melville.) I would like to meet a whale someday. I would like to tell him or her that I'm sorry.

books read :: caught up & redesigned

2010-07-13T23:23:00.006-04:00

dear faithful readers, lately i have not been blogging about the books i've been reading. i have many good reasons for this. first off being, i have moved. moving takes a lot out of someone. it involves packing, moving, unpacking, organizing. i'm still not through with the last one. on top of this, i spent a week and a half plus another day and a half in ocean city, two days (when i meant to spend one) in nyc, and i believe, since i've written last, a few days in boston. i am putting miles on my car. i am remembering to roll my windows up at night.

so how are we going to do this? i have been moving towards a new approach to my books blogging anyway. why not blog every two books i read instead of every month? why not blog each book? i am going to come at this at a new angle because i think it will give me more to say about the books i'm reading and why. and i think it will be more interesting. since July began, i have been reading Moby Dick. when i am through with that, i will tell you all about it. i tweet about it often.

HOWEVER. for now. i must tell you all about everything i've read since i last blogged about books i read! there are a lot. hence, my commentary will be shorter than usual. which is probably still comparably long... i give you...

books read MAY / JUNE

The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop

fantastic tome. my copy is especially pretty. good to pick up put down pick up put down.

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

should have read a different Murakami. the plot kept me going but i wasn't too invested in his characters. i have heard he has better.

Hera Calf Lightning Rod by Debrah Morkum

i review this in the forthcoming issue 2.1 of GIGANTIC SEQUINS. please read all about it there. also, Morkum is reading at the Boston Poet Tea Party at the end of this month, which i am also reading at. yay!

Writing Degree Zero by Roland Barthes

i liked the beginning parts better than the end parts. he sort of lost me at the end, but i was right with him in the beginning. lit crit always goes in my brain and out my brain unless i reread it, though. i will admit that much.

2666 by Roberto Bolano

one of my new favorites. this book is worth all of the hype and was a quicker read than i expected. it was worth every page. i have been having trouble reading since i read this because this book was so good. you know when you read something that envelops you so completely that to leave the world of it and to enter any other world makes the next world seem mediocre? finishing reading this book is like when you are on vacation and you know you have to leave.

The Collector by John Fowles

quick read about kidnapper and his victim. interesting format to the book, written from both points of view. the characters, though, were unlikeable. i could relate to some things that the girl was saying, but in the end she annoyed me. and i didn't like the end! a friend read this and said that she liked the end better than the rest of the book. but i didn't.

The Captain is out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship by Charles Bukowski

i read this at a bar while i was eating dinner. bad idea. never read Bukowski at a bar. excellent journal. makes me want to go to the horse races. he puts everything so simply and smart and true.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

fantastic memoir of Smith's beginnings and early life with Robert Mapplethorpe. this book made me miss NYC intensely, though. also, it made me envy her and Mapplethorpe's relationship because i think i almost had a friend like that once and it just didn't work out like theirs did. or maybe it did. everything is everything. (nothing is everything.)

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

cute intense book. i have trouble with Gaiman's novels because Sandman is so brilliant, but i made it through this only doubting him in the beginning. the characters they build are surprisingly kinetic and strong despite how the book's plot jumps all around.

All Things David Markson | as of today

2010-06-08T08:31:00.006-04:00

David Markson New York Times obituary: here. --I've been waiting for this one. It's simple and earned and honest.

James Yeh, a tribute on & to the late great writer: here. --in an unpretentious imitation of Markson's style, Yeh resurrects the spirit of his life and work in a small but concise piece on the author.

A.D. Jameson on Markson: here. --this I found thru Yeh's piece, and I found it sly and even funny.

Markson reading at Strand books: here. --where he was more comfortable browsing than speaking, but still told a good story even behind a microphone.

What are the two best novels you've never heard of? find out here. --and then go read them.

Crime fiction blogger weighs in on Markson with an emphasis on his earlier work: here. -- there is a list, too, at the bottom of her post of many things Markson related. If you don't find enough here, I recommend it.

Scott Bryan Wilson calls Markson "a completely unfuckwithable writer": here.

If you're not sure what all this is about: here is a good introduction to Markson. It has excerpts and concise yet detailed information on the late postmodern great.

I wish I hadn't read this obituary. I cringe at the idea of him as a "body". It seems an insulting word to use for someone who was much much more.

I wish I could find those two pictures I talked about in my farewell blog. One was a gift, though, to our department at Strand. Maybe it's best it stays there and not plastered all over the internet. The other, the dust jacket picture... Well, I guess you should just get ahold of his critical study, Malcolm Lowry's Volcano.

We had this review of The Last Novel hanging over his table of books for sale at the Strand. It wasn't meant to be the last novel, I'm sure.

Saying Farewell to a Writer and Friend: David Markson

2010-06-05T11:07:00.011-04:00

June 5, 2010 :: elegy in essay form

I found out this morning via Jim Behrle's facebook and then his twitter that David Markson has passed away. "David Markson has died." Behrle doesn't blither. Quick search on the web, and I've got nothing, but this makes sense to me. Markson, a giant of postmodernism-- if you're true to the word-- maintained closer friendships than he courted publicity. His life and work are intertwined, and his memory will live on in those he touched as well as in his works of art.

Perhaps I find my method of discovery at his passing ironic considering Markson himself would have never found out about anything the way I did. He would tell me, visiting the poetry and literary non-fiction stacks of Strand Bookstore, how he still used a typewriter to write, wrote things down on notecards when planning his novels, only took calls on his landline and didn't feel he had any need for a cell phone or computer. It wasn't that he was against technology, though. I told him he could probably find a piece of information that he was looking for (whether a dedication in a Les Murray book was something Murray did for all or just some of his poetry books) online. He said he wouldn't know where to start but would consider having someone else look it up for him. He liked to tell a story of a French woman he was acquainted with who was surprised he still used a "typing machine". He loved anecdotes that played with language.

Markson had an intense interest in anecdotes in general, especially of great writers, musicians, artists, philosophers, etcetera. This becomes apparent in his later novels, especially in The Last Novel (2007) and also in what I consider his masterpiece, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988). This novel, so ahead of its times in the 80's and--to this day--unique, is strong because it balances the truth of a variety of anecdotes, thoroughly researched by Markson in an unscrupulous manner, with the growing madness of the last woman on Earth. The collage nature of his anecdotes and plot are postmodernism at is core. The gimmick of the unreliable woman as narrator is barely ever as agile and un-gimmicky as Markson's in this book.

But as mentioned, he was more than a writer, but an acquaintance, an inspiration and a master storyteller. He came through Strand Books on various occasions, stopping and talking to many employees there, some he'd known for ages, others he'd recently began speaking to, wearing a path though the stacks, not once bragging about the table there displaying his novels. Markson warned me of habits of booklovers after I noted how working at Strand had made me into a different kind of bibliophile than I could have imagined being. When he was younger, he said he would keep money in books. One book for each of his children. Money that wasn't theirs now, but for them in the future. Books as little banks. I remember him saying he kept one of his daughters' money in a James Joyce book. I remember him saying that one day he realized what a mistake this was, keeping money in books. As a frequent buyer and seller of books at the Strand, imagine if one day he decided to sell his book to the store before removing the money. He noted that it was entirely possible that a book he's sold to us had a few dollars in it or something else of value. I find myself stashing checks and tips in books to this day, and smiling thinking of his story (and hoping I don't lose these things! So far so good. I think.) I also find myself searching in used books for "treasure", even now that I no longer work at a bookstore.

Nana, my grandmother on my mother's side, would always ask about him. When David told his stories, sometimes I would tell stories of her growing up in Queens that often had similar elements, and I would tell her that I was talking to a gifted New York author about her. Because she would always inquire about him, I bought her a book for Christmas that I had him sign for her. He helped me pick out which one (one of his first novels, The Ballad of Dingus Magee,) and was modest as ever when signing it. Nana was pleased with the gift. I also received a signed copy of a Markson book as a gift, a first edition copy of Springer's Progess (which Markson said was not one of his favorites that he'd written, but I digress), inscribed to me from Markson. I valued this before, but now even more.

Markson was friends with another customer with whom I became acquainted, Stewart, who works for Barnes and Noble and planned (or plans) on publishing a collected volume of Markson's poetry, (which I imagine should come out soon.) He and Stewart were always pulling books off of the shelf for me that were mis-shelved. I was sure to tell them both that they shared this endearing quality, and I myself continue this tradition when I visit bookstores. They both, later, told me that they ran into each other and laughed about how I had mentioned this to both of them. They must not have known that they shared this characteristic, and I was glad to have brought it to their attention. Lovers of books flock together, it seems.

Once, in the literary non-fiction section where I shelved, we found a copy of his very first book, a critical study of Malcolm Lowry. The author picture had a much younger David holding a cigar or a cigarette. We photocopied the picture and taped it up around the store. He feigned embarrassment and told us, "oh, take that down." But we could tell he got a kick out of it, despite his modesty. He found a new picture for us, instead. A picture of him and Jack Kerouac on a couch. Kerouac is passed out drunk. Markson is giving the thumbs up, grinning wickedly at the camera. Classic.

He recommended to me that I read Celine and also Under the Volcano, his favorite book. I bought some Celine as well as the Lowry, but I have yet to read either. I will read the Lowry soon, in his honor.

I will remember him best coming into the store and asking, "anything new?" He would tease himself for coming in again and again, searching the same shelves, looking over the same books. Yet he came because he was a lover of books and a friend to all who shared his love. He was glad to support me when I told him about the literary-arts journal I planned to start, and he was impressed with the first issue of Gigantic Sequins. He told me again and again how proud he was and how professional our magazine looked. He also chuckled at our inclusion of "Editors Bios" in the back of our first issue. He said he'd never seen a magazine that included them, but he thought that they were clever and unique addition to the magazine. Even after I moved from New York, a coworker told me that David would still ask about me and my magazine. I had planned to send him our latest issue before I heard the news of his passing.

The Wikipedia page on David still tells me that he was born in 1927 and is living in the West Village. David Markson will certainly be missed by those of us who had the privilege (and I would like to emphasize this word) of knowing him as well as the scholars and fans of his work who know him through the words he wrote and the stories he tells in his books. If you have yet to hear any of his stories, please pick up a copy of one of his novels at your library or local book store and read it this summer. He will be greatly, greatly missed as a friend, but he will always live through his books. Rest in Peace, David.

edit: someone's updated the wiki page now (Sunday, June 6th), and I've poked around this piece and made some edits. As I did for Salinger, I will have a post soon of things about him to glance thru. Keep an eye out this week.

May books read / ate is the past tense of eat / part one

2010-05-27T22:43:00.003-04:00

The class I've been teaching at Rowan University ended. I sadly said goodbye to my first two classes I ever taught this month, and following this farewell, I devoured a number of books. Eight to be exact. It's the 27th, so if I manage to finish Bolano's 2666 by midnight on the 30th, it will be nine, but I'm doubt that will happen.

Because of the large number of books I finished reading in May, I will write the first half of this now, and the second probably soon after the month ends. Enjoy.

BOOKS READ: MAY: PART ONE

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

To be fair, I started reading this in April and read it for a long time. This book will change the way that you look at American History. That's it's motivation, and it succeeds. I was afraid that Zinn would get a bit preachy, but instead he gets the majority of his preaching over in the beginning of the book and just let's his title "People" speak for themselves through references, sources, documents and articles of history. This book is American history from the point of view of everyone who the history books don't give a point of view to. In it you will learn the story of labor unions, why Andrew Jackson does not deserve to be on the twenty dollar bill, and how the history of this country's origins is far from the fairy tale that elementary school students learn. This book is not basic, but long and detailed. But it's not too dense. I thought it was worth every page.

For You, For You, I Am Trilling These Songs by Kathy Rooney

This book of essays is one of those books that is both fun and smart simultaneously. Rooney was one of my teachers at Emerson College; she taught my Intro to Personal Essay class, and this book testifies to her talents that she shared with us during that class. The best thing about this book is its honesty, poignant yet brutal at times. Rooney is not someone whose honesty you want to be on the other side of, yet I appreciate that she is willing to tell all in order to let other woman, other humans, even, know that it's okay to act and fell and be this way or that. My favorite essay in it is titled "All Tomorrow's Parties" (...get it?) and is about a party Rooney attends after the end of a semester with her students from that semester.

Disobedience by Alice Notley

Notley read at Rowan towards the end of the semester, and I started reading this book of hers in honor of her reading. Let me just say, first, that seeing this woman read in person is worth how ever far you have to drive to get there. She loves doing it and exudes poetry; despite her many years of experience in the field, she has still got it, whatever "it" is. This book itself is my favorite of hers I've read so far. It's like a novel-journal of poetry that you can just read and keep reading and just when you think you don't know what's going on, you get it, you relate, you're in.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

This book was a birthday gift from my friend Skye, who I promised I would read it for as soon as I was done Howard Zinn. So, I picked it up, wary of the titled, but intrigued by the blurb on the back cover. This is perhaps one of the most driven, moving and even at times suspenseful modern novels I've ever read. It's divided in ways that give you insight to many of its different characters, all of whom you are routing for throughout, and after I finished reading this book, I wished the story would just keep going. If you are looking for a fantastic, smart and touching (without being anywhere close to sappy) book to read this summer, I highly recommend this book. It's smart people's great modern fiction. Hard to come by. It tells the story of a man who seeks attention who once wrote some novels of which he no longer has the manuscripts, a widow with two children who is translating a book that was a gift from her late husband for a mystery man she only knows via letters and the people around them.

Become a Friend of Gigantic Sequins

2010-05-21T16:22:00.002-04:00

Help us print our 3.1 Issue!

Friend: up to $50

Donor: $51-$200

Patron: $201-500

Benefactor: over $500

Events Update | GS in Philly & Boston

2010-05-16T10:10:00.004-04:00

Hello there! We have exciting events coming up related to Gigantic Sequins.

We have two readings coming up. The first one is at Robin’s Bookstore in Philadelphia, PA on Wednesday, May 26th from 7pm-9pm. Jordan Bowen and Jeff Laughlin, two of our contributors from issue 1.2 will be reading their work, as will our editor in chief, Kimberly Ann Southwick. Come show your support, and while you’re there, grab a copy of the magazine for only $5.00! | http://robinsbookstore.com

On June 10th, we will be having a night at Trident Booksellers & Cafe in Boston, MA. So far, two of our 1.2 contributors, Zach Yontz and Cheena Marie Lo, will be reading there. We will have more information on this event as the date approaches. | http://www.tridentbookscafe.com

In addition to these fun events, the Gigantic Sequins editor in chief-- me! Kimberly Ann Southwick-- has been invited to read at a poetry festival in Boston this summer. I'll keep you updated with more information on that, and also if any of our contributors will also be reading there.

ALSO: just a reminder, our submission deadline for 2.2 is JUNE 30th. ALSO: we are hard at work to bring issue 2.1 to you; we hope we can by the end of the summer.

Doubles :: Books Read April / March

2010-05-05T21:19:00.002-04:00

Just to keep you all updated. I have been reading, I have just been reading less because I have been teaching a semester of American English Grammar at Rowan University. Since classes just ended, May should be a big month for books.

But here are March and April's 'books read'...

Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger

I reread this. I have to say, rereading this while teaching a grammar course is NOT the best idea. It made it much more difficult to enjoy. However, I always liked J.D.'s other three books better than this one. I read this one last when I first read him, and enjoyed it the least. Perhaps reading it alone doesn't change my opinion of it. Good, good for what it is, especially good for teenagers. But not his best.

The Mysterious Benedict Society | The Mysterious Benedict Society & the Perilous Journey by Trenton Stewart Lee

Intelligent little series, of which there are three and I have read two. Especially recommended for smart smart children who love to read. Especially recommended for adults who like to read more than they like to watch television and enjoy indulging in young adult novels.

Already Dead by Denis Johnson

Fantastic novel that embodies California in a way that Inherent Vice (Pynchon) made fun of in a campy way. This book is strange and serious and complicated. It reminded me at certain turns as the adult version of Palahniuk's Rant-- its oddities, its twists. It wasn't as twisty or gimmicky as Rant, though. Worth reading.

National Poetry Month Poetry Giveaway Winners

2010-05-01T11:37:00.003-04:00

Happy May Day!

Today we announce our winners from our National Poetry Month contest, where just by commenting on our blogpost about our giveaway, you could have been entered to win one of two books. Here are our winners, who have been notified by email:

winner of unstill by Kimberly Ann Southwick and a copy of Gigantic Sequins: Caroline M. Davies

winner of Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert and a copy of Gigantic Sequins: Mallery K.

You can check out their bloggings by clicking on their names.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and congrats to our winners!

Gigantic Sequins Robin's Bookstore event!

2010-04-29T20:23:00.002-04:00

Our calendar listing for our reading at Robin's is up on their website.

Check it out HERE.

Alice Notley : at Rowan University on Monday, 4/26

2010-04-24T16:31:00.005-04:00

Alice Notley, prominent poet from the 2nd generation of the New York School, will be reading at Rowan University on Monday, April 26th in the Rowan Art Gallery in Wesby Hall at 7pm.

This event is both FREE and OPEN to the PUBLIC. If you are in the area, you should probably attend. Visit the official link on the Rowan website HERE. It advises you to contact Bill Friend at friend[at]rowan[dot]edu for more information.

In honor of continuing our "poem a day" posts for National Poetry Month, I would like to guide you to the poets.org site on Alice Notley. There are six audio recordings of her reading here as well as two text versions of her poems. Check it out HERE.

I read the Selected Poems of Alice Notley earlier this year, and I started my copy of her collection Disobedience this weekend in honor of her Monday reading, I recommend strongly that you get your hands on a copy of her work. I would, personally, like to own Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005. I once had a copy of it hidden in the aisles of The Strand where I once worked. An acquaintance came into the store saying that he couldn't find this book that he had seen on the internet we were supposed to carry. It was Grave of Light. And, foolishly, yet kindly, I took it from my hiding place and let him buy it. I regret this action to this day!

So, if you live in the area, don't miss out on this event. I wouldn't want you to have any regrets.

2.2 Submission Period Deadline : JUNE 30th

2010-04-24T13:40:00.001-04:00

With National Poetry Month coming to an end, Gigantic Sequins would like to remind all of our poets out there that our submission period will end on JUNE 30th. This gives you plenty of time to edit all of the poems that you’ve written and decide which are appropriate to send to our magazine. Please see our submission guidelines link to the right of this update for more specific guidelines.

In addition to encouraging our poets to submit, we would like to remind everyone else, also, that the deadline to submit for our 2.2 issue is JUNE 30th.

TIPS from the GiGANTiC SEQUiNS EDiTOR-iN-CHiEF …

1) Proofread your work by reading it out loud to yourself and your dog or having a friend look over it for errors. A simple misplaced apostrophe can throw or turn a reader off from your work.

2) Send us multiple pieces! We will read up to five pieces per author per reading period. Send three poems, one short story and one essay! Send five poems! Send five essays! Send away!

3) BUY a copy of Gigantic Sequins so that you understand the kind of work that we enjoy publishing. One of our motives as a literary-arts journal is to KEEP THE PRICE OF GOOD ART CHEAP. Its tough for artists, so we know, then, that we must support each other. Most literary journals cost more than ours. Invest in our latest copy!

4) Enter our National Poetry Month contest here where you can win a copy of a poetry book. All that you need to do is comment on the blog post. No purchase required. Reading good poetry helps one write good poetry. And if you aren’t a poet, reading good anything will help you write anything better.

Thanks! Questions / Comments / Love Letters can be directed to : giganticmagazine@gmail.com

9 poems for 9 days of poetry month

2010-04-19T20:41:00.004-04:00

9 poems by 9 authors better known for something that isn't poetry

1) James Joyce -- best known as an author of novels, including Ulysses and A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.

A Flower Given to My Daughter

Frail the white rose and frail are

Her hands that gave

Whose soul is sere and paler

Than time's wan wave.

Rosefrail and fair -- yet frailest

A wonder wild

In gentle eyes thou veilest,

My blueveined child.

2) D. H. Lawrence - best known as the author of novels such as Women in Love and Sons and Lovers.

Self Pity

I never saw a wild thing

sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

without ever having felt sorry for itself.

3) Denis Johnson - best known as the winner of the National Book Award for his novel Tree of Smoke.

Surreptitious Kissing

I want to say that

forgiveness keeps on

dividing, that hope

gives issue to hope,

and more, but of course I

am saying what is

said when in this dark

hallway one encounters

you, and paws and

assaults you—love

affairs, fast lies—and you

say it back and we

blunder deeper, as would

any pair of loosed

marionettess, any couple

of cadavers cut lately

from the scaffold,

in the secluded hallways

of whatever is

holding us up now.

4) Mike Doughty - best known as a singer-songwriter who once was the lead singer of the now defunct band from the nineties, Soul Coughing

From a Gas Station outside of Providence

This kiss, unfinished, lips to receiver in the parking lot,

a pucker shot through a fiber optic wire

to an answering machine

toward switchboards and stations transmitting

in blips to satellites, this kiss

thrown earthward and shooting down

coils, around pipeline and electric power

lumbering underground,

up threads and transistors

and transference points.

This kiss is zeroes and ones jumbled

and tossed into a pneumatic system,

unscrambled at the end and scrawled

onto a tape recorder slowly rolling

at the side of your bed,

then slapping back, reverbed

off the ringer, a tinny phantom

of the smooch like a smack on

an aluminum can, up the same

veins through the belly of the same satellite

and softly to the side of my head;

this kiss is home before the next exhalation leaves.

I'm stooped in the booth,

pounding quarters into the slot;

yellow light droops over the asphalt,

and your ghost, too cool

and elusive with those hands and mouth

sings around me in the smell of gasoline;

whose mouth is this, scratched in static,

some droplet of a sigh, atomized,

and sputtering digitized into my room?

5) Tupac - best known as an excellent West Coast rapper who was mysteriously killed

The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature's law is wrong it

learned to walk with out having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,

it learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

when no one else ever cared.

6) Jack Kerouac - best known for his novel On the Road and as one of the main men of the Beat Generation in the fifties.

Bus East

Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend

5 years ago - other furies other losses -

America's

trying to control the uncontrollable Forest fires, Vice

The essential smile In the essential sleep Of the children Of the essential mind

I'm

all thru playing the American

Now I'm going to live a good quiet life

The

world should be built for foot walkers

Oily

rivers Of spiney Nevady

am Jake Cake

Rake

Write like Blake

The

horse is not pleased Sight of his

gorgeous finery

in the dust Its silken

nostrils

did disgust

Cats

arent kind Kiddies anent sweet

April

in Nevada - Investigating Dismal Cheyenne Where the war parties

In fields

of straw

Aimed over oxen At Indian Chiefs

In wild headdress Pouring thru

the gap

In Wyoming plain

To make the settlers

Eat more dust than dust

was eaten In the States From East at Seacoast Where wagons made up To dreadful

Plains

Of clazer vup

Saltry

settlers

Anxious to masturbate The Mongol Sea (I'm too tired in Cheyenne -

No sleep in 4 nights now, & 2 to go)

7) Roald Dahl - best known as a children's author, most famous for books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach.

I Had a Little Nut Tree

I had a little nut-tree,

Nothing would it bear.

I searched in all its branches,

But not a nut was there.

'Oh, little tree,' I begged,

'Give me just a few.'

The little tree looked down at me

And whispered, 'Nuts to you.'

8) Ernest Hemingway - best known for his novels such as The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Poem

The only man I ever loved 

Said good bye 

And went away 

He was killed in Picardy 

On a sunny day.

9) Roberto Bolano - best known for his novels such as The Savage Detectives and 2666.

Godzilla in Mexico

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling 

over Mexico City 

but no one even noticed. 

The air carried poison through 

the streets and open windows. 

You'd just finished eating and were watching 

cartoons on TV. I was reading in the bedroom next door 

when I realized we were going to die. 

Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself 

to the kitchen and found you on the floor. 

We hugged. You asked what was happening 

and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s program 

but instead that we were going on a journey, 

one more, together, and that you shouldn’t be afraid. 

When it left, death didn’t even 

close our eyes. 

What are we? you asked a week or year later, 

ants, bees, wrong numbers 

in the big rotten soup of chance? 

We’re human beings, my son, almost birds, 

public heroes and secrets.

BUY & CELEBRATE GS 1.2

2010-04-15T17:41:00.004-04:00

Gigantic Sequins 1.2 is for sale!

four days, four poems! all by Elizabeth Bishop!

2010-04-09T23:57:00.009-04:00

Today, I will post three poems for three days in NATIONAL POETRY MONTH. All three poems are by Elizabeth Bishop. I have been reading selections of the beautiful FSG paperback I have of her Complete Poems for awhile now. Her poems can be both simple and complex simultaneously, her imagery is vivid and clear, and her ideas are always immensely human. The first and last in this set of four are among a few of my favorites by her, though I do recommend that you check out this link, which contains the text of "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore" in its proper formatting. I have yet to figure out how to properly 'indent' on this blog. Please enjoy the following four poems by Elizabeth Bishop.

Some more of my favorite Bishop poems that are not featured in this blog post are: "From the Country to the City", "The Man-Moth", "Sleeping Standing up" and "Late Air". Be sure to check them out after you enjoy those featured here today!

Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

The Imaginary Iceberg

We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship,
although it meant the end of travel.
Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock
and all the sea were moving marble.
We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship;
we'd rather own this breathing plain of snow
though the ship's sails were laid upon the sea
as the snow lies undissolved upon the water.
O solemn, floating field,
are you aware an iceberg takes repose
with you, and when it wakes may pasture on your snows?

This is a scene a sailor'd give his eyes for.
The ship's ignored. The iceberg rises
and sinks again; its glassy pinnacles
correct elliptics in the sky.
This is a scene where he who treads the boards
is artlessly rhetorical. The curtain
is light enough to rise on finest ropes
that airy twists of snow provide.
The wits of these white peaks
spar with the sun. Its weight the iceberg dares
upon a shifting stage and stands and stares.

The iceberg cuts its facets from within.
Like jewelry from a grave
it saves itself perpetually and adorns
only itself, perhaps the snows
which so surprise us lying on the sea.
Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off
where waves give in to one another's waves
and clouds run in a warmer sky.
Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.

Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.

Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.

Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.

Gigantic Sequins 1.2 PARTY

2010-04-08T16:35:00.005-04:00

SATURDAY APRIL 17!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8pm!!!!!!!!!!!!! 255 McKibben St. #507!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gigantic Sequins 1.2 will be celebrated.

raffle : booze : music : poetry : prose : prizes : fun

8PM//////SEQUINS READING featuring:

Leigh Alexander
Jeff Laughlin
Lucrecia Zappi

10PM////PARTY TIME MUSIC with:

GunFight!
Quiet Loudly
Pet Ghost Project
& more to come...

ENTRY - Just $1! We'll be selling raffle tickets, and all we ask is that you buy at least one. But for $5, you get 7 tickets AND a copy of GIGANTIC SEQUINS 1.2. For $4, you just get 4 tickets. That's it. Raffle prizes will include books, CDs, and booze!

4/5 & 4/6 :: two sonnets and then some.

2010-04-06T22:12:00.004-04:00

John Keats "Bright Star" ---> here.

Denis Johnson "Heat" ---> here.

A movie about Keats came out recently that I did enjoy. It was titled "Bright Star" and paced oddly, slowly, but the movie felt appropriate for its subject-matter: poetry. Keats is a romantic poet from early nineteenth century England. In high school, you may have been made to read his "Ode to a Grecian Urn". This sonnet, also, is rather famous, very romantic and also precise. I like it.

Denis Johnson wrote the book of short stories Jesus's Son as well as a few great novels, one which recently one the National Book Award. I have only read Jesus's Son and Already Dead, but I hear the NBA winner, Tree of Smoke, is stellar. Johnson, also, is one of those rare writers who can successfully and without any frustrating overlap write both excellent poetry and excellent fiction. "Heat" is one of my favorites. It's a "sonnet", where "Bright Star" is a sonnet.

Last year in April I wrote many "near sonnets" after thinking for a while that I was in fact writing sonnets and realizing I was not. The online poetry journal Sawbuck published a few in one of its past issues. If you are interested in reading them --and you should check out Sawbuck anyway, it's an excellent online journal-- check two of them out here.

4/4: poem for poetry month day four

2010-04-04T22:53:00.003-04:00

FOR Easter, today, I give you e.e. cummings, one of my personal favorites.

THE Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds

(also, with the church's protestant blessings

daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)

they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,

are invariably interested in so many things--

at the present writing one still finds

delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?

perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy

scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D

.... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above

Cambridge if sometimes in its box of

sky lavender and cornerless, the

moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.

Poems for 4/2 & 4/3

2010-04-03T10:19:00.002-04:00

Our national poetry month poems for today and yesterday are both rather short and both from Richard Brautigan. You can read about him here. He is pretty wonderful. He was born January 30th, 1935 and died September 14, 1984. His poems are gems that were ahead of their time.

TWO poems by RICHARD BRAUTIGAN from "The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster"

Man

With his hat on

he's about five inches taller

than a taxicab.

Sir Comma and Creeley Comma

It's spring and the nun

like a black frog

builds her tarpaper shack

beside the lake.

How beautiful she is

(and looks) surrounded

by her rolls of tarpaper.

They know her name

and they speak her name.

EVENTS: vague news of their impending approach

2010-04-02T08:22:00.003-04:00

Gigantic Sequins 1.2 was released last month, and we will have a few events in the upcoming months to celebrate!

Tentative NYC Celebration of Release: April 17th, @ the McKibben Lofts

also...

Reading in Boston, on a day in May still tbd , @ Trident Bookseller & Cafe on Newbury St.

AND

Reading in Philadelphia, on a day in May still tbd, @ Robin's Bookstore on 13th St.

This information right now is rather vague and readers and/or bands are still TBD, but we wanted to let everyone know that we will be having these events in April and May. As soon as we have more information, more information will be posted!

Happy National Poetry Month! Day One.

2010-04-01T21:50:00.007-04:00

Dear Faithful Readers,

April 1st marks the first day of National Poetry Month, and this is no joke. As a celebration of this month-long event, I, your wonderful editor-in-chief, am going to post a poem-a-day on this blog. I also am participating in the challenge to write a poem for each day of the month -- these, though, will not be posted to this page. I prefer, for the writing part of the challenge, to write them longhand in a notebook. I also do not give myself certain prompts for each day. I have done it this way for all of the years that I've participated in the celebration of National Poetry Month, and I know that part of something I love about writing is the kinesthetics of it-- the feeling of pen to paper, the way my handwriting looks, crossing things out (as opposed to making them disappear with the backspace key).

For April 1st, our poem is "To You" by the famous late nineteenth century American poet, Walt Whitman. In the Norton Critical Edition of Leaves of Grass that I own, it begins on page 233. It is not a short poem, though I personally usually prefer short poems, but the poem earns every line. There are two other poems with the same title in the book, but this one is my favorite of the three, and perhaps my favorite Whitman poem.

I will not use my space here to showcase my favorite poets and poems all month; instead, I hope to read new poems and discover new poets. This poem, though, has become an important part of my personal canon, and I welcome the opportunity to introduce it to those who have not read it yet. Enjoy.

Note: Please click the link provided above for the "proper" formatting of the poem-- the line breaks that overflow to the next line should be indented. This is indicated in this blog's version of the poem by a lowercase letter at the beginning of a new line, but with the indents, it reads and looks better. The text provided below is all correct, but you really should look at the poem with the proper indents, as on the link I've provided. =)

To You

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,

I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,

Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,

troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,

Your true soul and body appear before me.

They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,

farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,

suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem,

I whisper with my lips close to your ear.

I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,

I should have made my way straight to you long ago,

I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing

but you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,

None has understood you, but I understand you,

None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,

None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,

None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent

to subordinate you,

I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,

beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre-figure of all,

From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd light,

But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus

of gold-color'd light,

From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it streams,

effulgently flowing forever.

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!

You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself

all your life,

Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,

What you have done returns already in mockeries,

(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in

mockeries, what is their return?)

The mockeries are not you,

Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,

I pursue you where none else has pursued you,

Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the

accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from

yourself, they do not conceal you from me,

The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these

balk others they do not balk me,

The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed,

premature death, all these I part aside.

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,

There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,

No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,

No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully

to you,

I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing

the songs of the glory of you.

Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!

These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,

These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense

and interminable as they,

These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent

dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,

Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,

passion, dissolution.

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing sufficiency,

Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,

whatever you are promulges itself,

Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing

is scanted,

Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are

picks its way.

By Walt Whitman

Poetry Giveaway!

2010-03-29T21:49:00.003-04:00

The Gigantic Sequins Editors' blog is participating in the Book of Kells 2010 National Poetry Month Poetry Book Giveaway this upcoming April. Guidelines, if you are a blogger and would like to participate, can be found here.

And here is what Gigantic Sequins is giving away ---

A copy of our editor-in-chief's one and only poetry chapbook, unstill and, also, a copy of Refusing Heaven by the great Jack Gilbert. All you have to do is, at some point between NOW and APRIL 30th, you must comment on THIS blogpost. By commenting, you've signed up for this giveaway--- yes, giveaway. Your name will be entered into a hat, and two random winners will receive either unstill or Refusing Heaven.

Meanwhile, keep up with this blog during the month of April-- if you can. We will be celebrating National Poetry month, announcing release event dates and writing about random and all things literary, per usual.

[ I will replace this line of text with a picture of each of the books being given away as soon as I scan them. ]

GS 1.2 Preview: why don't you own this yet?

2010-03-25T22:19:00.002-04:00

back / front covers:

1.2 Cover Art by Mark Toneff, Cover Design by Shereen Adel

INSIDE issue 1.2…

poetry by Geoffrey Cruikshank-Hagenbuckle, Leigh Alexander, Adam Falkner, Jeff Laughlin, Cheena Marie Lo, Kyle Tacsit, Joe Letourneau, Kiara Kharpertian, Sophia Natasha Sunseri, Kathleen Rooney and Ryan Hunton

fiction by Zach Yontz, Lucrecia Zappi, Jordan Bowen and Ben Dover

book reviews of Poemland by Chelsey Minnis and The Second Elizabeth by Karen Lillis

all art by Mark Toneff

GIGANTIC SEQUINS 1.2: has arrived

2010-03-17T09:23:00.003-04:00

Gigantic Sequins 1.2 has arrived! Please expect your copies in the mail within the next week or so if you are a friend, contributor or subscriber of our magazine.

If you have NOT yet ordered your copy, You can do so in the post below!

If you would like information on becoming a friend or contributor to Gigantic Sequins, you can visit our "Official Website", which you can find via the link on the righthand sidebar of this page. Also, you can email giganticsequins@gmail.com with any questions or comments, and we will gladly answer you!

Thanks for everyone's support and patience. Let's keep this thing going, though! Buy your copy and browse the fantastic art featured in it, as well as the clear and confident writing that hold the pages together.

Expect information on upcoming events soon.

GIGANTIC SEQUINS 1.2

2010-03-02T12:02:00.002-05:00

Production Delay: over. Expect your copy in the mail SOON if you are a contributor or subscriber to Gigantic Sequins 1.2 issue.

If you have yet to order your copy, you can do so here: ORDER 1.2 ISSUE.

YAY.

Sentence Diagramming

2010-02-25T18:46:00.002-05:00

I have been busy in the month of February. Usually, I am a prolific reader, amongst other things in my life. However, for the month of February, I have not been reading much. Mostly, I have been building lesson plans for the class I teach at Rowan University: American English Grammar. Using a book on grammar and sentence diagramming by Cindy Vitto, I have already learned more and learned how to teach more, about the English language than I ever thought I knew existed.

If you are a lover of language and ever would like to brush up your grammar skills, I highly recommend looking into the art of sentence diagramming. I find myself, when writing or speaking or laying in bed thinking, imagining how my thoughts/words would be diagrammed. Though this can sometimes prove distracting, thorough (and I mean THOROUGH) understanding of American Standard English is an excellent tool to have and use.

Here is a link to the Declaration of Independence diagrammed. It's kind of pretty and mostly awesome.

Continued Production Delay

2010-02-09T02:20:00.004-05:00

Because of a few unexpected production delays, Gigantic Sequins 1.2 has not yet been able to go to print. However, be assured that the magazine is ready to go, we are just waiting on a few things.

This is preventing us from both distributing this issue to our subscribers and also from going ahead with the schedule we have made for issue 2.1. We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused anyone, but look forward to going ahead with our plans as a magazine as soon as the production issues we are facing dissolve. We hope that this will be soon as in, within the next week or so. We appreciate everyone’s patience with this issue. Please direct all questions to giganticmagazine@gmail.com

As an editor, this is not something that makes me happy. The above two paragraphs were posted on our official page, but this being our blog, I would like to add my two cents' worth. Unfortunately, due to the fact that two of us have left New York City in the past year, the cohesiveness we had as a team has somewhat faded and made things difficult for us. Because of this, our schedule of production for the future needs to be amended. When we were all living closer together, we did not anticipate the differences in time management that living apart would cause. Though Gigantic Sequins will continue to exist in the future, a new plan will be announced as in a production schedule for our volume two issues.

Thank you again for your patience and continued support. Mostly, I look forward to seeing our 1.2 issue in print. I hope you do, too.

K. Southwick

editor in chief

in january it's so nice while slipping on the sliding ice to read

2010-02-06T09:27:00.004-05:00

I am now teaching an American English Grammar course at Rowan University, and as much as I do not like to admit it, it has seriously affected the amount of time I usually spend reading. However, in January I read and enjoyed all of the following books.

books read: January

Complete Minimal Poems by Aram Saroyan

I read a review in the nyt of this book awhile ago. This book, as much as a book of 'minimal poems' seems also an ode to the typewriter. While minimalism is something easily faked, Saroyan is a true original. His poems are akin to a Jackson Pollack painting, in that the untrained eye will scoff, "my five year old could do that!" True, but he didn't, and could never do it that well.

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

I picked this up to read for a failed book club. I read the whole thing, but was highly disappointed, and wish I had instead read a class Pynchon that I haven't gotten my hands on yet. This is a detective novel set in 1960's California with too many characters, not enough substance, but too much substance abuse. Don't waste your time unless you love complex detective pulp or want to experience one of our greatest authors highly disappoint you.

The Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

I read this on a suggestion to read any Coetzee book. The only one I've gone through in the past was Foe and that was for an undergraduate course and at a point where I was not giving my reading all of the attention I should have been. This book's lyrical prose at first seemed an obstacle-- because I am a poet, when I read fiction, I feel the need to be driven by dialogue and plot. However, the near reticent character of Michael K soon grew on me. The story is set in South Africa during a Civil War in the later twentieth century. The war time order and what Michael K sees as the order of nature and life are not parallel. He has a physical deformity, a harelip, and is slower than most others; these two things, though, do not weigh his humanity down. This novel's pace and eloquence leads its readers to explore what it is like to be human, in someone else's shoes.

His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

I had been waiting for the proper time to indulge myself in another young adult fantasy series. This trilogy in particular has been on my life for awhile, and I finally got to it. The first part in it, The Golden Compass, is exhilarating. It shows you a world you've never seen in young adult fantasy and brings it to life with an incredibly likable main character, Lyra. The next book, The Subtle Knife, is probably the best of the three, where Lyra and her friend Will begin to open doors to new and different worlds in a power struggle with organized religion. The last book, The Amber Spyglass is the most disappointing of the three and leaves a few questions unanswered. It is the hardest to get into, but about a third of the way through it picks up in pace. However, the questions that the series forces both young adults and its older readers to pick apart are what make this series stand out. The series can be lauded as one that not only questions organized religion, but explores its structures as unstable and debilitating to life. If god is not the center of these universes, than who is? If god is an impostor, than how easily could a lesser being defeat him/her and take on the ultimate role? Is not having values that are just and kind more important than worship of any kind? Let Pullman guide you through these questions. If you don't feel like answering them, well the ride along the way through different dimensions, I assure you, is a fun one.

Salinger Related Everything.

2010-01-30T13:02:00.005-05:00

+I am not a fan of Dave Eggers. What is the polar opposite of a fan? That is what I am. However, let it be known that I, Kimberly Southwick, an opposite-of-a-fan of Dave Eggers, enjoyed very much his short piece written for the New Yorker on the deaths of J.D. Salinger and Howard Zinn. -- http://bit.ly/cm2KKW

+Stephen Colbert's "Salinger Watch" from August 2008. Needless to say, Salinger never appeared on the 'Colbert Report', however, the video is very funny. "Listen up, Salinger! No one stands me up!" And he calls him 'Jerome'. Must watch. -- http://bit.ly/9F4AsR

+The Onion posted an Onion-esque blurb on the day of his death, which I found perfectly hilarious -- http://onion.com/duwPD H

+Here is a website that contains much of the once-or-'under'-published work of Salinger, as well as the text of many of his work that *was* printed in book form, which I recommend you go buy immediately, because the cost of the mass market versions of his novels is very inexpensive, and now that he has died, there is a possibility of a raise in price. We're talking less than $8 each for four of the most eloquently-written published books of fiction in the twentieth century. But yeah, the stuff you won't find in the stores is collected on this website -- http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/

+Here is a news story which discusses the reticence of those involved in the Salinger Estate. There are no forthcoming new stories, says the report. Everyone who knows anything about the possibility of anything isn't saying anything. -- http://bit.ly/9hlD3B

+My friend Ian Carlos led me to this one. It's a montage of all of the low-budget versions of Catcher in the Rye made, probably, mostly by phony film students at godamn universities. It's quite funny. -- http://bit.ly/aSU1hU

+I hate this article. I think Jay McInerney can suck it. I take back everything nice I said about 'Bright Lights, Big City'. But yeah, the article is about people who didn't really like J.D. Salinger -- http://bit.ly/djiktZ

+This is a Huffington Post article on movies that were inspired by Salinger -- http://bit.ly/cUBz5s

+ and others: Coilhouse: http://bit.ly/ahwix3 ; permalink to the NYT obit: http:bit.ly/d9pJMd ; link to the NYT page with all of its Salinger-related articles on it: http://bit.ly/bvYcpM ;

Wear Black and Party: the Death of J.D. Salinger

2010-01-29T16:33:00.008-05:00

So what's the big deal? Dude published four books, one of them was universally accepted as one of the greatest coming-of-age stories to over-use a single word (in this case, 'phony') since Huck Finn, the other three were rented out to the kingdom of hipster obscurity. So he died. What-ever... Oh, I almost wish I could feel so blasé!

On January 1st 1009, J.D. Salinger's 90th birthday, I posted a blog, a letter to the aging writer known as much for his esteemed first novel Catcher in the Rye as for his seclusion from society. I am pretty sure he never read it. When I first heard of his death (via text message, thank you, Liz; thank you, Ian), I instantly was overcome with emotion. It took me the next few hours to determine what this emotion was exactly. In the end, I have settled on: ecstatic mourning.

I have been waiting years (and years) for the Death of J.D. Salinger. Though I consider him one of the greatest 20th century American writers (if not the greatest) his seclusion not only kept him hidden, but kept his writing completely private, too. Since his disappearance from the public world, many have speculated on the possibility of a treasure trove of unpublished works. In her famous memoir At Home in the World, written mostly about the years she spent as Salinger's lover, Joyce Maynard claims to have seen files devoted to new and unpublished works from Salinger's own hand. Because of the intensely secluded and, most frustrating for fans and scholars, secretive nature of the writer's life, her claims function only as rumors. For someone who wanted no public attention and who gave sometimes baffling reasons for his lifelong decisions, Salinger mananged, as Paul Medina put it, to stay "sucessfully anonymous". Most things we know about his life since his last interview given in the 80's have been either simple, (and often unexciting) facts or speculation.

But still, why do I tingle with confusion and excitement from the news of the death of J.D Salinger? For the same reason that everyone else who loves his work does: the Glass family. The Glass family were his his main literary children. He cultivated and coveted them as a farmer does a harvest. It is widely speculated that Salinger, despite his seclusion from the public as well as the publishing world, did not abandon the Glass family as he abandoned us. Somewhere in archives left behind, more of their lives and histories are written and with the same devotion as a parent should give to its children. I cherish the day when these archives are unleashed, and I can read them with the same zeal that I read his work for the first time in the earlier years of the millennium. Never has a family so candid graced the pages of a book since 1953, when literature was first introduced to Seymour Glass in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". Seymour, a character honeymooning in this story, haunts every other story that follows this in the history of Salinger's publications. Seymour is one of seven children of former vaudevillians Les and Bessie Glass. Not every story in Nine Stories, Salinger's second book and the one with 'Bananafish', features a member of the Glass family. I read this collection as perhaps the greatest anti-war book ever compiled. But the anti-war sentiment is in no way pounded over the reader's head. Salinger, best known for writing one of the best coming-of-age stories in the 1900's, should also be acclaimed for his subtleties.

Seymour Glass's youngest brother and sister, Franny and Zooey are the title characters of two novellas published together in one book in 1961. This, followed by Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction in 1963, complete the published books of J. D. Salinger. Yes, that is it. Franny & Zooey is the only novel I've read completely and enjoyed where five minutes of a single character's life can last thirty pages (or more) and still fascinate me. Details like Mrs. Glass saying something to a bath mat or a description of an overflowing bathroom cabinet say more about what it is like to be human than any attempt Salinger could have made to describe the sensation. Oh, and his use of italics: exceptional. Completely unique. Constantly mimicked; never matched.

Yesterday, following the discovery of this man's death, the only death I have longed for, plotted, attempted to spiritually cause, I celebrated first, then panicked. During my panic, I left my apartment for a meeting. My panic included: not being able to read the New York Times' article on his passing, posting links, status updates and comments on others' links and status updates on Facebook, posting links and exclamations on Twitter and, finally, talking the ear off of my stepsister as soon as she walked through the door. I brought my hardcover copy of Catcher with me on the subway.

When I stepped off the subway at City Hall in Philadelphia, the cold January evening seemed both dim and bright at the same time. The air tingled, but felt almost like something impossibly solid. Across 15th St., in the direction I headed, stands a sculpture in the shape of a giant clothespin, a work by Claes Oldenburg. The Philadelphia Arts patron, Jack Wolgin, who commissioned the piece of art to be erected there, died earlier this month. And something was sudden and no longer looming, but immediate: Can it be, that this is what it is to be human? To know, to really understand, that there is death, and everywhere? The evening blew cold winds at me, my hands were frozen, but all I could think as I waited for a light to change, as I crossed the street, as I watched students hurry to class, businessmen and women hurry home, the general population of an urban landscape inhale and exhale, all I could think was that Salinger would have hated this: the city, its life, its pace, its capacity for so many things human. Yet it is the human-ness in Salinger's work that I cherish the most. How though his books were written over half a century ago, there is an enduring quality to their truths. I read his works to feel this truth. I write, also, to feel this truth. I traverse the city and relish in the fact that I am surrounded by a claustrophobic amount of humanity.

It was in this epiphany that I was the most sad for the loss of this man. For all the criticism he endured for his decisions he made about his fame and his art, for all of the unscrupulous praise he received despite his wish to be left alone, and for all of the rumors of his chauvinism and disturbing eccentricities, he was human. And when I read his novels, which are the only vehicles I praise him by, I love them because they are human. And now, he is dead.

J.D. Salinger is a time capsule of American literature. After his funeral, he will be buried underground like a good time capsule should be. And the wait for his work, for the glimpses of how a hermit of over fifty years saw the world and saw humanity and saw life from the inside of a New Hampshire house, begins. Tonight, I will wear black, in solidarity with the sadness of the passing of one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. But also, I will party.

some of my books... including my four hardcover Salingers...

Gigantic Sequins: production delay

2010-01-21T15:38:00.002-05:00

THOUGH we have our 1.2 issue prepared and ready to go, our main contact at printing company we use to print the book is on vacation. Therefore, the publication and distribution of this issue is taking longer than anticipated. We appreciate your patience while we wait for his return.

THANK YOU.

potpourri of December reading

2010-01-05T11:05:00.004-05:00

I read a lot in December. Perhaps to counteract one-book November? I am not sure. I think I just found the time and the energy to immerse myself into my reading, chose the right books, and thoroughly enjoyed a good number of them...

books read: December

Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov

I picked this book up because during lunch before I went to work, I finished the book I had been reading. I searched and searched in Book Trader for something. Book Trader is one of those can't-go-there-to-find-something-specific bookstores. I grabbed this book because the copy I found was a limited edition with an interesting textured cover that had a modern painting on both the front and back. The book was excellent. I immediately recommended it to at least two or three readers I know. Nabokov has a way of weaving stories you'd never think to create yourself with human emotions, tendencies and specifics that make you think "I do that!" or "I know someone who would think like that!" His writing is also eloquent. I think what I admire most about good writing is when it seems to easily be Human. This book does just that. It waxes prosaic at some points, but mainly it is a story of a philosopher's love for his son, hate for the government, and stubbornness in the face of an old schoolyard rivalry. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves reading fiction. Vague, yes. But the book will fill in its own specifics.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

I've read a more recent work, a book called The Wordy Shipmates, by Vowell in January 2009, before I started writing about the books I read. Vowell's writing has congealed more in her more recent work. Where The Partly Cloudy Patriot does its job as an excellent, funny, moving-at-times, historically accurate and smart liberal-minded book, The Wordy Shipmates takes all of that and makes it into one coherent narrative. The two perhaps should not be compared because one is a non-fiction book focused on the first settlers in America and their religious disputes while the other is a collection of Vowell's historical adventures, thoughts, emotions, researches. Perhaps what I found more appealing in the more recent book is its timelessness. Much of The Partly Cloudy Patriot revolves around Bush's second term election, which to me seems like old dead news. Though the essays on this topic are well-written, I do not think they will withstand the test of time like The Wordy Shipmates can and will. I cannot help but admire how one smart woman can write an excellent book of essays and mature enough to write an even better book focused on one topic. In The Partly Cloudy Patriot, I particularly enjoyed an essay called "The First Thanksgiving."

The Selected Poems of Alice Notley by Alice Notley

Notley's work is something to get your head around. She writes from the gut and the heart as though the two were intertwined. This book is a fantastic introduction to a variety of her capabilities. My favorite poem in it is called "The Prophet." I don't normally enjoy lengthy, confusing poems, but the repetition and slight moderations in its repetitiveness of this poem resound both verbally and emotionally. I also particularly liked "Dear Dark Continent" and "It Would," two shorter poems that strike hard and fast and force rereads.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

I believe I read this in high school, and it was the only book by John Steinbeck I thought, at the time, worth of publication. My opinions on this great American writing have changed a lot since then, and I did enjoy rereading this and enjoying it over again. Steinbeck writes the early twentieth century from a prosaic blue collar perspective in this novel. You open this book, and all of the frogs come bouncing out towards you.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

This book is intensely moving, set up almost like a Guy Davenport collection where fiction and non-fiction seem blended together centered around a central theme. In this Kundera book, the theme is its title, and the book is excellent, if not memorable. While I remember reading and enjoying every story in this book, my memory of its characters' names and the plots of the story do not compare to how it felt, to the emotion that the process of reading this novel evoked. This is not to say I did not enjoy the book or would not recommend it. I enjoyed it immensely, and I do recommend it.

Her Husband: Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath by Diane Middlebrook

I believe that the first and last books I read in December were my favorite. This was one of my last purchases from the Strand during my tenure there, after I had "stopped" buying books, and I am glad for it. Middlebrook analyzes the two writers' relationship through their many biographers perspectives, their journals, the interviews conducted with each and both of them, and, most impressively, through their poetry. This is not a book of tabloid gossip, but a touching account of how intelligent human beings touch each other in life and in death. This book reinvigorated my interest in both Plath, Hughes, journaling and poetry in general. Reading this book made me want to read and write more poetry.

PRE-ORDER GIGANTIC SEQUINS 1.2

2009-12-13T12:17:00.003-05:00

Pre-order Gigantic Sequins 1.2 and receive a FREE copy of issue 1.1 while our limited supplies last! ALSO, if you order an ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION before December 31, 2009, you will be entered into a drawing to win a lifetime subscription to Gigantic Sequins! And, you will also, while supplies last, receive a copy of our 1.1 issue.

Buy now before the end of the year to take advantage of the free issue as well as the chance to win! All prices listed below include shipping and handling costs.

DON'T stop: generations defined

2009-12-03T13:18:00.004-05:00

For November, I read one book. This is a rare occasion, but a good one. I suppose it took me longer than usual because I took time to absorb a lot of what the book was saying because it was non-fiction and contained a lot of proper nouns, some I'd heard of, others I hadn't. I read a lot about big news events of the late twentieth century, which I found to be highly rewarding. I read a lot about music and musicians, but also about artists and activists. This book was worth the month it took me to read it.

NOVEMBER: books read

Can't Stop Won't Stop: a history of the hip-hop generation by Jeff Chang

When I first picked this book up off of the shelves of the music paperbacks at The Strand and read the back of it and decided it was well past my due to own and read this book, I did not think I would have learned as much as I did from reading it about both America, hip-hop and the past forty years. The book, among other awards, won the 2005 American Book Award. I knew it was going to be good. I knew it was going to be informative. Though it is of course colored by its author's perspective and opinions, it is also a revisionist history of history that you don't learn in high school. I never understood why we never focused more on current or recent events in high school. I had heard of the L.A. riots, but I never got a firsthand in-depth view of them until I read Can't Stop Won't Stop. Though the first half of the book does primarily focus on the roots of hip-hop music and how art of the street first came into the American psyche, the book tackles all that and more. The book covers more than just Afrika Bambaataa, Basquiat, Lady Pink, Run DMC and Boyz in the Hood, but also what led people to follow them by listening and paying attention to what they were doing. How hip hop and street culture came to be taken seriously in the eyes of the American hipster, artist, businessman, consumer and political activist are all covered in these pages. With extensive footnoting of his sources, Jeff Change manages to tell his reader how all of these things came together and made sense. What gave us the great divide between artists like Sean Puffy Combs and Talib Kweli? The roots of the divide can be found in-between the front and back cover of this excellent book on the history of a generation. I hope he writes another book that continues his story, once the story has taken shape in its continuation.

transitions and translations

2009-11-17T11:26:00.008-05:00

I started to read Their Eyes Were Watching God in September, and after I finished it, I borrowed Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov from a friend. After reading this, I decided that since I am normally a translation-phobe, that I would focus October on reading only translations. So except for TEWWG, a translation month it was, just in time for my transition into life in the City of Brotherly Love...

books read: OCTOBER

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

I read this in highschool, but I knew that I needed to reread it after reading an essay by Zadie Smith, in her new non-fiction book that will be out this month. Smith talked about how enormously influential the book was on her as a teenager, how it had an affect on her not only as a young black woman in England, but also as a human being. Hurston's book is a must read as both a teenager and again as an adult. I look forward to reading more of her work.

Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov

This book is one of those funny books that you aren't quite sure is supposed to be as funny as it is. Nabokov employs a technique of minimalist story-telling in order to allow you as the reader into his main character's head entirely. This is free and direct discourse at its most chilling, most humorous and most telling of the human condition. A recommended quick read.

King, Queen, Knave by Vladimir Nabokov

This was one of Nabokov's earlier work, and reading it after Invitation was like reading one of Kerouac's first novels after reading Visions of Cody. The plot and prose are clear-cut, the story moves like a textbook story should move, and yet you can tell that the author has charisma that is not found in most of your typical works of fiction. This is a classic story with a classic twist, and the way it is written makes one want to read more by Nabokov. His introductions, also, in both this book and the one I read prior to it, are superbly informative for people like me who don't like to read translations. He discusses who translated it, some of the challenges and/or changes encountered in the translation, when the translation was done in comparison to when the book was written, etc. I found both introductions to the Nabokov novels I read intensely rewarding.

Stories & Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett

Beckett translated everything himself in this book. I enjoyed the stories in the beginning more than the Texts for Nothing that followed. They were more difficult to follow and seemed too easily to blend together. It seemed like fast reading, but then I felt like I kept losing track of the story-- then I wasn't sure if there even was supposed to be a clear cut story. His run-on sentences also abstracted me from what was going on a lot of time. I was glad to finish this book, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I enjoyed it in pieces. The stories, like I said, and many quotable passages in the Texts for Nothing. For example, from Text for Nothing #4: "There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough."

Nadja by Andre Breton

This novel was recommended to me by various people, customers and fellow employees, when I worked at the Strand. I looked for it on the fiction shelves occasionally, and we never had it. Usually when books are hard to get ahold of, there is a good reason for it. This book was worth the wait it took me to acquire it. It was not necessarily one of my favorite books, but the history of the surrealist movement seems masked and hiding throughout the pages. I enjoyed the story of this man and woman from start to finish, and all of the scrapbook like images contained throughout.

I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabel

Hrabel was another one of those grab-him-right-off-the-shelves-if-not-the-cart kind of writers. I, in fact, know three people, all former or current Strand employees, who would come into work or to visit and both covet and hide copies of his books (to the annoyance of the others who would come in... to do the same thing... it got messy... tempers flared... hiding places were relocated, etc.) ANYWAY. One of these nice young gentleman already owned a copy of this book, and handed it to me and told me to buy it. "It's only $5.00... $2.50 for you." SO, I did. This book was well worth the read. It is fantastical and hilarious. My roomate, Drew, told me that they made it into a film, and I wonder if the film can maintain the hyperbolistic yet oh so human feel that the book has. Perhaps I shall find out.

----

So, I started to read Plato's Republic, but that got shelved after Book Two as more of a long term, come-back-to-it-after-long-intervals sort of read. I have been making my way thru a non-fiction book about hip hop that I am enjoying a lot and immersing myself in. We'll see what else makes it onto my "books read" list in November...

for the love of PROSE

2009-10-23T16:16:00.003-04:00

:: ATTENTION WRITERS

OF AMAZING PROSE::

(this means you, novelists, fiction-writers, short-shortists, personal/travel/cultural essayists… etc...)

good lord, we need you over here at Gigantic Sequins. our submissions pile is overflowing with verse! send some prose our way to even things out a bit. though in the past we’ve published more poetry than fiction, this is because we receive more poetry submissions than fiction submissions. THEREFORE, get your ink on (or keyboard or whatever), edit your favorite unpublished short story, essay or excerpt, and SEND IT ON OVER to [ giganticsequins@gmail.com ] PLEASE.

Thanks Everyone!

Gigantic Sequins Editors

wanted :: RAFFLE DONATIONS

2009-10-20T18:43:00.004-04:00

Hello! It's that time again! When GIGANTIC SEQUINS asks you for your donations to our quatrannual raffle! Twice a year, this is a bigger deal than the other two times. And this is one of those times. We will be having a release party for our 1.2 issue coming up soon, and would like for you to donate something, anything to our raffle!

It's good for you, because it gets the name of your small press / store / product out there! And it's good for us because people love raffles! Well. We hope people love raffles as much as our editors (especially Kimberly) do. The better the prizes are, the more likely people are to buy raffle tickets. If you yourself can't offer us anything, but know someone who might, please let us know soon!

EMAIL US if you'd like to donate something. send questions and suggestions to: giganticsequins@gmail.com

THANKS for your continued and amazing amounts of support!

self-(m)education : books read September

2009-10-13T14:15:00.004-04:00

September was a recovery month for my book-reading habits. After it took me nearly the entirety of August to read Don Quixote, I was ready to read a variety and a lot of books for September. Also, I'm jealous of everyone who got to go back to school, so I tried to self-educate as much as possible...

books read: September

The Second Elizabeth by Karen Lillis

I must, unfortunately, refrain from commenting on this lovely little joy of a novel in order to encourage you all to buy Gigantic Sequins issue 1.2 and read my review there!

Eragon / Eldest /Brisingr by Christopher Paolini

Eragon and Eldest were rereads in order that I could finally, after purchasing it last fall the DAY it came out, read the third part of this series, Brisingr. I believe there is only one more book left in it, and I look forward to rereading these three again in anticipation of the fourth. Something about young adult fantasy always does it for me-- when it's well-done. Paolini truly captures his audience with his believable and likable characters. The world he weaves, also, is tangible. The suspense built throughout this series is taut and well-done. Paolini makes the mundane parts of the everyday life of his characters interesting and also touches on important social issues through the differences between the elves, humans, dwarves, dragons and kull in this excellent series. I anticipate the fourth book. OH. And I love dragons. Let's just put this out there.

Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin

Tao Lin is probably one of the most assessable and interesting modern writers right now. His appeal is not just that he presents himself as an interactive character amongst his fans, but that he has the talent as an innovative modern young novelist to make you feel kind of special that he remembers your name from the last time you saw him read. This gem of a novella, part of an excellent series that Melville House Publishing is putting out of novellas, takes its main character through a few different states as well as through some difficult parts of life. It is not over-dramatic. It is not cliche. It is not tepid or boring at any point. While its use of things like "gchat" as a forum for conversation may seem a bit weird, it's very real (and still not as weird as Tao's real life sales of chances to gchat with him.) The honesty of this book is attractive. Its length works well with the story, and the story, semi-autobiographical, like most of Tao's work, begins and ends neatly. Keep your eye on Tao Lin (he has quite the internet presence) , and go buy this excellent book.

Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith

Even this woman's books of essays are brilliant! A collection of her non-fiction, some previously published, others not, all edited to the writer's content, Smith lets her readers in on her familial life, her bookshelf, her love of film and her feelings on the process of novel-writing etc. This book is for fans of Zadie as well as fans of non-fiction. Check it out when it is released in November!

On Purpose: poems by Nick Laird

Nick Laird just so happens to be Zadie Smith's husband... I can't say I didn't read these two books simultaneously on purpose. I kind did. Which is kind of funny (as well as punny re: the title of Laird's book...) I enjoyed this book, but I definitely preferred some poems over others. The middle of the book kind of dragged for me, as did some of the "Art of War" poems-- but not all of them.

benefit PARTY 10/10/09

2009-10-09T14:01:00.002-04:00

#507. be there.

ADAM FALKNER @ the Nuyorican: 10/2/09 | 10pm

2009-10-01T15:26:00.003-04:00

TOMORROW, Friday October 2nd, 2009 @ 10pm :: Adam Falkner will be performing a thirty minute set at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe. If you have never seen him read before, I highly recommend you make it out tomorrow. Adam is a unique and gifted poet who we at Gigantic Sequins are proud to be publishing in our upcoming 1.2 issue. Please support this talented writer, and also do yourself a favor, by going to see him read this Friday.

Adam Falkner
@
Nuyorican Poets Cafe
236 East 3rd Street between Ave B & C
(DOORS right before 10pm)