Poet's Picks, Linh Dinh

A new feature where we ask some of our favorite poets to share with us some of their favorite SPD books. Starting us out we have Linh Dinh...

"Ask me another week, and I would give you a different ten."
--Linh Dinh

1. ING GRISH JOHN YAU

2. ANTIPHONAL SWING CLAYTON ESHLEMAN

3. HOMAGE TO THE LAST AVANT-GARDE KENT JOHNSON

4. PARADISE STORIES DUSTIN HERON

5. MOUTH LISA CHEN

6. PACT GIL OTT

7. THE COMPLETE BUTCHER'S TALES RIKKI DUCORNET

8. ANGLE OF YAW BEN LERNER

9. A TRANSPARENT LION: SELECTED POEMS ATTILA JOZSEF

10. PURO BORDER EDITED BY LUIS HUMBERTO CROSTHWAITE, BOBBY BYRD & JOHN WILLI

SPD at AWP

As it has been the last few years, AWP was a great success for SPD. It is always a pleasure to ask people stopping by the booth if they know of SPD and find that they do. It is also fun to explain it and have them be amazed and approving. In this case, they often sang specific praises of SPD and of Clay Banes and me personally (many expressed their longing for Brent Cunningham who didn’t go to this one) and we could’t help but feel really gratified by it. All books in the booth were much perused and pawed over. It is entirely worth it to send books to AWP, especially if a press will not be there in person. A lot of SPD catalogs were given away and innumerable business cards. The Bad Poem Contest went over well. There were a lot of bad poems being written and recited on the spot. We took a bunch of really bad submissions home on the redeye with us Saturday and have received a fair number by email. The contest (see post below) is open until Friday, Feb 20th.

I was struck by what I already know -- which is simply that the more you get out there as a writer and or publisher, the more people will look at the books. Often you won’t even know this is happening as it might not show up right away (or ever) in sales. Example – poet A sees a books by poet B, writes a number of poems in response, broods over it, designs a class, orders poet A’s book a semester or more later and bingo! 30 or 100 sold and you have readers, which is the goal, yes? If the teacher chooses to copy the poems instead of having students order the book, you are still getting readers though you aren’t experiencing it quite as happily. (Hear that poets?)

We shared our booth with CLMP and because information takes up less space than actual books we had lots of room. As they have in recent AWPs, CLMP give many incredibly useful workshops (most were run by our mutual fearless leader Jeffrey Lependorf) about how to market, budget, survive and even prosper in the small press world. In general there was way more going on than you could do. I wonder if a lot of what one takes away is actually absorbed by osmosis.

Many thanks are due and so --Thank you to Paul Ebenkamp, SPD intern, and to Patrick Durgin, SPD publisher (Kenning Editions) and writer, for helping at the booth and thank you to publishers for supporting your books at AWP, thank you poets and teachers for stopping by the booth and thank you other orgs for fighting the good fight.

Yours in Struggle,
Laura Moriarty

For more details see my personal version at A Tonalist.

BAD POEM CONTEST

WIN AN SPD BOOK!!!!!!

Even if you’re not at the AWP in Chicago, you can win an SPD book in our...

AWP BAD POEM CONTEST

You may think it’s easy to write a bad poem, but is it really? How bad can you be?

SPD will award the SPD book of your choice (up to $30) for the worst poem in each category. Shipping included.

Please select from one of the categories below and write the worst poem you can. Send to laura (at) spdbooksdotorg. Be sure to indicate the category the poem belongs to, and also include your name, email and address.

[ ] Worst haiku
[ ] Worst Language poem
[ ] Worst workshop poem
[ ] Worst poem mentioning your mother
[ ] Worst sonnet
[ ] Worst poem intended to lead to sex
[ ] Worst poem using the words rainbow, mist, luminous, crystal and anemone
[ ] Worst poem using the word capitalism
[ ] Worst Flarf poem (Complexly, this poem needs to be good.)
[ ] Worst poem using chance operations
[ ] Worst postmodern lyric
[ ] Worst New Formalist poem

Also, please tell us if you would rather not have your bad poem published on SPD’s blog.

At least one winner will be selected in each category. Winners will be announced soon after we return from AWP. Poems will be judged by bad poetry experts on the SPD staff.
Contest ends February 20, 2009.

SPD Archive, 1974

The second-oldest catalog in SPD's archives, this Jess-like cover was designed by Chuck Miller, who also did the photo for the 1973 catalog.

Above, the list of presses SBD carried in summer of 1974. Golliard/Santa Fe has now dropped. Meanwhile, seven new presses have joined: Arif, Cranium, Grey Fox, Ithaca House, Latitudes, Maya and Red Hill.

Above, two internal pages. One title to notice is Chameleon, the first book by Charles Baxter. He may be a famous novelist now, but it's a book of poems (with drawings by Mary E. Miner). The signed version, offered in 1974 for $10, is currently listed for sale online for $440.

Above, the next pages. There's something disorienting about seeing just about anything priced at $0.75 (in this case, it's for Bill Berkson's book Ants).

Above, staples signal the middle of the catalog, where we find (among others) a couple of books by Joanne Kyger, including one that's still without a price. Kyger is a rare example of a female writer in these early catalogs: the male-to-female ratio tends to run at something like 20-to-1.

Above, two more internal pages, including Michael Palmer's first book from 1971. The $3 signed cloth might fetch $150 today.

Above, two more internal pages. The Charles Simic signed cloth, here priced at $10, goes for about $180 nowadays. Just above it is Ronald (aka Ron) Silliman's first book.

Above, the ending section of the catalog, which lists magazines, folios and special sets.

SPD Archive, 1973

Spring/Summer 1973 catalog of what was then Serendipity Books Distribution, founded in 1969 by Jack Shoemaker and Peter Howard. SBD became SPD around 1980. This is the earliest catalog found in the SPD archives. Cover photo by Chuck Miller.

Above is the first page from that 1973 catalog, a checklist of small presses carried by Serendipity Books Distribution in 1973. SPD has grown from 20 presses in 1973 to 400+ in 2009.


Above is the beginning of the title list. Note the prices. We believe this was a complete catalog of books then available through SBD.


Above, a randomly selected section from the middle of the catalog.


Above is the last page of that 1973 catalog. The titles of the trio of magazines offered in the "Runcible Spoon Set" seem to tell a frightening little story: My Landlord Must Be Really Upset, Suck My Eyes!, and The Final Resting Place of the Ten Thousand Names of the Buddha.

SPD Archive, 1987

Ron Silliman's badge for the Socialist Review from the 1987 MLA conference. This piece of memorabilia was unearthed from the SPD Archives. Its complete provenance is unknown.

JUST IN!

Petals of Zero Petals of One by Andrew Zawacki (Talisman House)
Fourteen Hills Volume 15 No. 1 Fall 2008 edited by Lusine Khachatryan (Fourteen Hills Press)
ESCHATON by Michael Heller (Talisman House)
John Beargrease: Legend of Minnesota's North Shore by Daniel Lancaster (Holy Cow! Press)
Grandchildren of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories by William S. Yellow Robe (UCLA American Indian Studies Center)
Blue to Fill the Empty Heaven by Joel Friederich (Silverfish Review Press)
paths of SANCTUARY by ihsan bracy (Cool Grove Press)
Unnecessary Talking: The Montesano Stories by Mike O'Connor
Denver Quarterly Volume 43 No. 2 2009 edited by Bin Ramke
CALYX Volume 25 no. 1 Winter 2009 edited by C. Lill Ahrens, AliceAnn Eberman, Bverely McFarland, Marisa Silver, and Linda Varsell Smith
ON THE IMPERIAL HIGHWAY: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS by Jayne Cortez (Hanging Loose Press)
Debts and Obligations by Alicia Cohen (O Books)

JUST IN

The Poets Guide to the Birds edited by Judith Kitchen & Ted Kooser (Anhinga Press)
The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School by Francisco Ferrer (Factory School)
You Are Here by Donald Breckenridge (Starcherone Books)
Goodbye Tissues by Deborah Meadows (Shearsman Books)
The One and Only Human Galaxy by Elizabeth Swados (Hanging Loose Press)
The Other by Robert Dana (Anhinga Press)
The Whole Marie by Barbara Maloutas (Ahsahta Press)
Absence Where As (Claude Cahun and the Unopened Book) by Nathalie Stephens (Nightboat Books)
The All-Purpose Magical Tent by Lytton Smith (Nightboat Books)
The Ms of My Kin by Janet Holmes (Shearsman Books)
The Book of Frank by CAConrad (Chax Press)
World's End by Pablo Neruda (Copper Canyon Press)
SCAPE by Joshua Harmon (Black Ocean)
We Agreed to Meet Just Here by Scott Blackwood (New Issues Poetry & Prose)
Pink Car Crash by Itziar Barrio (Fly By Night Press)

Winter Institute '09

Sales Manager Clay Banes and I (being your humble narrator & Operations Director) just got back from five fabulous days in beautiful Salt Lake City. If that sounds like something you can only win on a game show, actually it sometimes did feel like we had gotten that lucky. Except that part of our five-day and four-night vacation package did include spending lots of hours telling about 500 booksellers about new SPD titles, and pitching them on SPD in general, which although pleasant enough is perhaps not the same as parasailing on the Big Island.

Still, we were extremely happy so many booksellers had heard of us and were grateful SPD existed. Our Grand Prize Getaway also included sitting in on some really astonishingly business-like panels on bookselling (for artsy liberal hippie-types these booksellers can really crunch those numerals I'll tell ya), and of course going to business dinners, business lunches, business breakfasts and business dancing-in-the-architecture-section (that was at Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore). We got to eat cookies and drink wines and build mini cold cut sandwiches in two of the most outstanding independent bookstores in all of Utah, being the aforesaid Sam Weller's and the delightful & hobbit-like rooms of The King's English Bookshop. Both very formidable bookstores with--let it be said for the doubters--very substantial and impressive poetry sections.

Truly, SPD did sort of win a golden superfabulous opportunity to attend the Institute, and we send special thanks to those who made it possible to go: the NEA and the ABA (extra special thanks to Mark Nichols of the latter org)!

PS: If you like German food and are near downtown Salt Lake City, you must must must eat lunch at Siegfried's Delicatessen. The bratwurst, yes, amazing, but oh my god the RED CABBAGE I am NOT kidding it is RIDICULOUS...

--Brent Cunningham