Esther Press

Two poems by Erin Lambert in WebConjunctions

Coolidge's Air

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Dovzhenko's Earth

I went to Cody's on 4th Street today in Berkeley, as I had received a gift card to it
some months ago. I have to say that while Sartre did say that hell was other people, he really wasn't specific enough. Being among the enslaved hip and trendy, wealthy hip and trendy, and just generally wealthy on 4th Street was actually as close to hell as I ever want to get. Bought a Scalapino.

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There is word out of our nation's capitol that a book about frauds and hoaxes will be published in the near future. Congratulations Harvey Strub!

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Received alloted copies of my abbreviated collection of short stories, Work Book. With artwork by Edgar Arceneaux and design by Heavy Rescue. I really enjoyed the part of San Francisco in which the Silverman Gallery is located. The area seems to be isolated from the main threat of San Francisco proper, using its unused, older buildings as buffer, though we did park directly behind this.

Here's my list of books (from the summer) posted at Steve Evans' Attention Span:


Benjamin Friedlander | The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes | Subpress | 2007

Tight little lyrical dramas.

John R. Soares | 75 Hikes in California’s Mount Shasta & Lassen Volcanic National Park Regions | The Mountaineers Books | 2006, revised edition

An unexpectedly deepening interest of mine.

Jeff Hull | Spoor | Subpress | 2002

The Ear Inn introductions are very nice.

Dodie Bellamy | Academonia | Krupskaya | 2006

Yes, disturbing. Yes, funny. Yes, experimenting. But it’s really the fearless drive for opening herself up/into various areas that keeps one reading these great essays.

Gary Lutz | Partial List of People to Bleach | Future Tense | 2007

Seven fictions. More complex cringing, misunderstandings, and power struggles behind and outside walls. I never tire of Gary’s worlds.

Ellen Lupton; J. Abbott Miller | The Bathroom, The Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste—A Process of Elimination | Princeton Architectural Press | 1996

A diamond.

Juliana Spahr | The Transformation | Atelos | 2007

Intense, personal, specific, painful, with reassembling diction.

Jocelyn Saidenberg | Negativity | Atelos | 2006

Currently reading. I feel this sense of information handed off to other hands handing it off once more. And so forth.

Anne Boyer | Selected Dreams with a Note on Phrenology | Dusie | 2007

This is pretty much a perfect little book.

Hannah Weiner | Hannah Weiner’s Open House | Kenning | 2007

I’m grateful to have this.

César Vallejo, trans. Clayton Eshleman | The Complete Poetry | California | 2007

“Thrips uprear to adhere / to joints, to the base, to napes, / to the underface of numerators on foot. / Thrips and thrums from lupine heaps.”

Reading Ariana Reines' The Cow. What a nice collection so far, a bright spot. Finally some vitality, some intelligent messiness, without smugness!

Gabcast! Esther Press #8



Reading three more poems from the current manuscript.

FWIW: I haven't been posting this last week due to my back going out (ie, hard to sit for any length of time). I've been to the chiropractor a few times now, however, and I'm feeling a bit better, though during the second visit I learned that I have spina bifida occulta (mild, it seems) and that my right leg is shorter than my left by 18 mm, or just under 3/4" inch, which is more than the usual, and which is also part of the mixture of reasons for my pain.

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In any case, Laura Carter has a couple of poems in the new Shampoo.

Rod Smith's poems in WebConjunctions.

And a very nice online chapbook, No Can Do by Alli Warren. Admirable control, wit, and some of the better titles to come through the ether in some time.