[New-Poetry] atticus/finch

[Alexander Dickow]

FIY, sorry for any cross-posting:

[Please distribute this post far and wide: small press
publishers
depend on your effort to get the word out!]

Dear Friends:

Atticus/Finch is honored to announce the release of
our newest
chapbook, Snow Sensitive Skin, a collaborative
long-poem by San
Francisco authors Taylor Brady and Rob Halpern. While
Atticus/Finch
commissioned this work back in 2005, the collaboration
didn't begin in
earnest until June of 2006, in the midst of the (most
recent) martial
conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Taking as their
point of
departure Lebanese musician and visual artist Mazen
Kerbaj's
composition "Starry Night" (see below for a link), an
improvisation
between Mazen and the Israeli airforce for "trumpet
and bombs," the
authors challenged themselves to face the violence of
war with the
deactivating non-force of the poem, drawing into stark
contrast
notions of responsibility, praxis, and the labor of
poetry during
times of war. The authors write in their
acknowledgements, "if we want
to give ourselves to a present that is something other
than the
debased 'now,' and to a future that will not have been
terminal, every
second language must be taken up as an act of love."
As such, Brady
and Halpern took the very notion of collaboration to
task, demanding
that the composition unfold together, in the same
room, in real time,
in order to undergo and occupy this second language
(in all of its
difficulty) in a present foreign to the terminal
'now.'

Snow Sensitive Skin is a tour de force in the most
literal sense, a
commitment to undertake the difficulty of language as
aporia and
possibility, and at 72 pages of tightly weft lines,
dedicated to "the
promise of demilitarized time," this "chapbook" is
certainly ambitious
in scope.

If that weren't enough, folks in and around the San
Francisco Bay Area
will have the pleasure of seeing Brady and Halpern
read from the book
at its launch this Sunday, November 11th, at Oakland
institution New
Yipes (21 Grand, 416 25th Street) at 7pm (along with
fellow poet
Garrett Caples), and copies of the book will certainly
be on hand for
interested parties.

In the meantime, for those of us happily residing
elsewhere, the book
can be purchased now using credit card or check. And,
as is the case
with all Atticus/Finch books, this volume will sell
out relatively
quickly, so order while you've got it on your mind!

To obtain a copy, use your credit card at our website
(www.atticusfinch.org), or send $10 (well-concealed
cash, check, or
money order (made payable to Michael Cross)) to:

Atticus/Finch Chapbooks
c/o Michael Cross
State University of New York at Buffalo
Samuel Clemens Hall #306
Buffalo NY 14260-4610


On a related note, we still have a few copies of
Patrick Durgin's
Imitation Poems, if you'd like to bundle your order,
and do keep your
eyes open for the next A/F volume (coming this
December), Lo, Bittern
by Austin poet C.J. Martin.

And, finally, here's the link to Kerbaj's "Starry
Night:"
www.muniak.com/mazen_kerbaj-starry_night.mp3

Please do not send messages to the entire list when
you intend only to
reply to the sender.



www.alexdickow.net/blog/
   
  les mots! ah quel désert à la fin
  merveilleux. -- Henri Droguet