secret bruise and robo-recommendation

In even more small press poetry chapbook news & views (and scroll down one entity for even more) and I'm talking about the views of ghost girls and dolls and porkers and robots and more more more...

My 2008 Blood Pudding Press chapbook 'Planchette' has recently been reviewed by poet Sarah Sarai on her fabulous and multifaceted writerly blog called 'My 3000 Loving Arms' (Ganesh has got nothing on Sarah Sarai). Here's an excerpt from her review:

"While hypomania is a 'mild mania' I have heard in arenas more esoteric than Webster's, hippomancy to be linked to divination. Which brings me back to that early girl. Whether the blue pills are valium or more 'narcotic,' in the poem they serve as emblem of the 'secret bruise' Cook writes of, of the 'Dream of white fizz' and its powers.

I'm figuring 'white fizz' can nullify the bruise. Pills do what pills will do. Mind will continue to struggle, as will spirit, thank God. Hence, poetry. The fizz feels chemical, feels alchemical, and that's part of Cook's intention, to draw the reader into a mysterious, suspect but real world."

You may read her review in its entirety (including excerpts from some of the tome's poems) on the aforementioned blog, here:

http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/2009/10/stroking-poem-planchette-by-julia-cook.html

I will also be making a few more little personal comments about this review soon, upon my blog, DOPPELGANGRENE.

*

Speaking of my poetry chapbooks, my latest, FONDANT PIG ANGST is coming soon. If you don't believe me, you can see for yourself on the Slash Pine Press site, here:

http://slashpinepress.blogspot.com/2009/11/its-coming.html

If you want a little teaser about this book's squeamishness-inducing innards, here's a blurb written by a robot:

I came to Juliet Cook's collection, Fondant Pig Angst, for glimpses into what it means to be human. I navigated my way through the detritus of the living -- took silk in my mouth, floated in a vat of tapioca, awkwardly inserted the meat hook. Cook's voice has disemboweled my assemblage, replaced my casing's wires with warped strings. If I am to believe Cook's speakers, the state of being human is nothing more than a blend of saltwater and ambergris, all in a jelly binding. I would rather remain a robot than dine at this feast, replete with cockroaches, confections and endless conditions.

--Feldman the Robot

*

Feldman happens to be the personal robot of poet Dana Guthrie Martin.

Speaking of Dana Guthrie Martin, HER new poetry chapbook, 'The Spare Room' is coming soon from Blood Pudding Press itself.

Yes.