New books from Otoliths - Raven, Gildzen, Topel & Leftwich, Fieled, Stempleman

This quarter's round of books from Otoliths has just been released.



Shifting the Question More Complicated
Francis Raven
76 pages
Cover design by Sheila E. Murphy
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6594-8
Otoliths 2007
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1137853

Francis Raven's original poems – with the occasional, collaborative and smartly alarmed interventions of Jeff Bacon – take on a world made hopelessly abundant by too much. Too many commodities, too much philosophy, too much poetry, too much music, too many reviews, too many misunderstood friendships, erotic deceptions and, of course, corporate obstacles, including the language of insufferable meetings:

           Our wires got crossed. We must be sitting in multiple meetings.

How do you respond to someone’s quest to make the perfect french fry? Where is truth, art, love, direction, and a sense of navigation? How can the mind, psyche, and body find a trajectory when fenced in by any and all options that present themselves as obligatory and legitimate representatives of the real? In the face of such a cascade from the other, how do you even write a poem, believe in, or trust its significance?

In playful, subtle and deceptively sharp language – from consciously flat to purely and quite beautifully poetic – Francis Raven has taken on these days of nausea to replant the flag, the stroke, and necessity of the poem:

                     Every painting has been landed on by critical flags, claimed:
           Swimming, I find a mystery in a poem I thought was a problem, solved.

---Stephen Vincent, author of Walking Theory

It's All A Movie
Alex Gildzen
92 pages
Cover design by Ray Craig
ISBN: 978-0-9803659-6-2
Otoliths 2007
$12.50 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1148196

Want to know Marilyn Monroe’s measurements? Or the first movie Jonathan Williams saw? Alex Gildzen provides answers in this unique book about film. His long love affair with cinema is reflected in a collection which brings together some of Gildzen’s recent poems, photographs of him with Hollywood legends such as Sylvia Sidney and Samuel Fuller, prose dating back to 1985 and a year from his important autobiography in progress Alex in Movieland.

SHADOWED TRUTH
Andrew Topel & Jim Leftwich
76 pages, full color
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6598-6
Otoliths 2007
$20.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1148212

"i remember very clearly working on these sheets, using boxes of trash and junk mail, writing in the names of songs i was listening to, riffing off of what was in front of and around me. five very busy years later these images have a very strong resonance for me. 'veil reveal re-veil', as andrew puts it, seems to express the dynamic quite clearly. at some point i think we would like for the process to halt at 'reveal' - but that isn't likely to occur often if ever, and certainly not with collaborative work like this. maybe we're looking at something more than 'shadowed truth', something like 'shadowed being' - perhaps hidden in plain view, but hidden all the same." — Jim Leftwich

Opera Bufa
Adam Fieled
64 pages
Cover design by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6595-5
Otoliths 2007
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1137210

           How can a prose poem be a comic opera? Take the following ingredients and stir: Chopin, Maria Callas, Baudelaire, Pluto, Orpheus, the Court of Ferdinand, Amherst wafer-eaters, Dante, Cleopatra, and Valium. Mix in a dollop of desperation, two dollops of perversity, and a small drop showmanship, and shake violently, as though in the midst of a fit. You have entered into a new realm; a foreign habitat; a fresh and unholy Opera Bufa. You may remain as long as you like. You may even sing along. The author, Adam Fieled, suggests exiting at the first sign of nausea, unless you find nausea pleasing. Oddly enough, some do.

Facings
Jordan Stempleman
64 pages
Cover design by David-Baptiste Chirot
ISBN: 978-0-9803-6597-9
Otoliths 2007
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1142300

Jordan Stempleman writes of his new collection, Facings: "These are poems that begin from the almost observed, places not yet finished, excuses untested, and individuals who only appear after they find comfort in retracting all they've been said to say."

In addition, the print editions of Otoliths issue six are out, with a spectacular piece of Geof Huth vispo on their covers.

Part One
90 pages
$10.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1234272

Part one of Otoliths issue six contains prose, poetry & visual poetry from Tom Beckett, Karri Kokko, dan raphael, Kristine Ong Muslim, David-Baptiste Chirot, Paul Siegell, Javant Biarujia, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, Matthew Medina, Adam Fieled, Bill Drennan, Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, Joel Chace, Brian Foley, Raymond Farr, Philip Byron Oakes, Rochelle Ratner, Julian Jason Haladyn, Alex Carnevale, Jeff Harrison, Juliet Cook, Alexander Jorgensen, Martin Edmond, J. D. Nelson, John M. Bennett, Mark DeCarteret, Michael Steven, Jordan Stempleman, Iain Britton, Andrew Topel & Ernesto Priego.

Part Two
56 pages, full color
$15.00 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/content/1234245

Part two of Otoliths issue six contains visual & text poetry from Reed Altemus, Joe Balaz, David-Baptiste Chirot, Spencer Selby, John M. Bennett & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Márton Koppány, Luke Daly, ek rzepka, Ray Craig, Mary Ellen Derwis, John M. Bennett & Sheila E. Murphy.