The following chapbook titles came out throughout 2011 from Madison’s Cannot Exist Press, which is edited by Andy Gricevich. They are all, in form, traditional chapbooks, and yet each is quite different from one another. The poets here are diverse and exciting, established and up-and-coming, and never, ever tiring. Most importantly and most excitingly their work defines how their chapbook operates and not the other way around.
One: "How’s the Cows" by Jess Mynes
I might cop your jam
further mordant instead
what I am to broken noses
It takes a lot to host a literary event and it takes a lot more to host a literary series. In the social sphere of writers and readers, arguably as a paradox merging the acute and the encompassing interests of a relative small slice of the whole, each event or activity has its own special place, purpose, or fixture. Events are relational.
Typically I’ve used this space to write my interpretations and reviews of various texts that a poetry lover might appreciate. It’s usual for me to have a gazillion books sitting at my gnarled feet, ready to be looked at. All shapes and sizes, all styles, they would pile up and I’d feel obligated to dive in. Very disassociate, I know, but this mass-accumulation method really worked.
Kevin Sampsell is an editor (
Philadelphia poet, scholar and educator Jamie Townsend has had the success of seeing two chapbooks of his work released in the past few months. Ever since living in Philly, I have found Jamie’s work obscurely intimate and oddly accessible at a distance. And yet its poignant evocations have been attractive to me, not only as a thinker and writer, but as someone who believes in the power of aesthetic.
