Issue 8

Issue 8 of InDigest is up and at it, right now.

What You'll Find In InDigest This Time:

New fiction from Jimmy Chen:

Each party was documented extensively using digital cameras. Everybody at the party took pictures of the party—either of other people, or more commonly, of themselves with other people, using a method in which one extends one's arms out at an upward angle, holding the camera at a backwards orientation towards themselves while taking a picture.

A gallery of animalia influenced paintings by Gina Germ



In Poetics both Eric Gudas and Nathan Hoks offer up some wonderful new work.

Charles Greene continues to purport that Ulysses is the greatest novel ever, in part II of The Ulysses Sage. Part II delves a little deeper into why exactly the novel is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literary fiction ever created.

Jess Grover takes on the newest collection of poetry from his former professor Alex Lemon in this month's Is That Cowardly? Jess acknowledges his bias, calls Lemon out once or twice, and states:

Make no mistake: I love Alex Lemon...This is a review of his second volume, Hallelujah Blackout, and it will likely contain descriptions such as magnificent, fractured, ardent, spatially resistant to replication on this page and seductive like a heart drawn on a splintered windshield by lipstick held between the toes of a young person with some sort of prominent facial asymmetry. (Crooked tooth, cleft lip, small stone of gravel healed into the chin).

Bedside Stacks takes a closer look at Anthony Varallo's newest collection Out Loud. Varallo's intentionally tepid dissection of suburban life, the objects that give the life meaning and the fantasies encounter in this landscape are both the pleasure and the bane in this month's column.

That's all for this issue. But keep checking back. We are about to have our one year anniversary here in the InDigest offices and we are going to have a special issue and a big announcement to accompany that special day.

As always, thanks for reading.

Dustin Luke Nelson & David Luke Doody

The Lab is Seeking Donations

The Lab has initiated it's annual "Angel Donor" program, where all donations made between now and Dec. 1 will be matched (up to $1,000) by the anonymous "Angel Donor."

For those unfamiliar with The Lab, it is a program that both David and I have been involved in previously. The program works with St. Paul students to give them time outside of regular class time to pursue the arts that they are interested in. From their website:

The Lab is a small group experience where youth are inspired, encouraged and empowered to discover, understand and share their voices and the truth of their lives.

Through four modalities, the Lab encourages the use of creativity in community as a healthy coping strategy. The small group experience offers a forum in which youth can practice social skills, creative self-expression and self-care, as well as improve skills in reading, writing, technology and performance.

It's truly a great program. So, if you are looking to give your X-mas time donation in the near future please consider this program, which is offered to students for free and has offered many students the chance to turn themselves into college bound students, allowed them to engage in their community and into students who are proud of what they are doing in school.

You can find more information visit their site at thelabspps.com or make a donation online at www.sppspay.org. (once you are there, click on The Lab icon)

Nosferatu

The kids over at Bear Parade have posted a new novella by Noah Cicero titled Nosferatu for Halloween. I know. Halloween is over. Still. Go read it.

A Poem Before the Election

The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less;
The times are winter, watch, a world undone:
They waste, they wither worse; they as they run
Or bring more or more blazon man’s distress.
And I not help. Nor word now of success:
All is from wreck, here, there, to rescue one—
Work which to see scarce so much as begun
Makes welcome death, does dear forgetfulness.

Or what is else? There is your world within.
There rid the dragons, root out there the sin.
Your will is law in that small commonweal…

If We Are What We Read, Than Who Are Barack Obama and John McCain?

Heidi Benson of the San Francisco Chronicle asks this question in a recent article published in the Chronicle. Among the favorites listed by the candidates are For Whom the Bell Tolls, All Quiet on the Western Front, & History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on McCain's list, and Moby-Dick, Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson), & Song of Solomon on Barack Obama's list.

These lists are kind of interesting, in that way where you are sick of hearing how Obama was raised by his grandmother and McCain was a POW and you need to read something a little different. Benson asks a few Bay Area authors to chime in on what they think about the lists. Susan Griffin, while analyzing McCain's choices, says, "This strange conglomeration leads me to wonder if the confusion McCain has displayed throughout his campaign may reflect a profound inner ambivalence."

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) may have my favorite response to the lists when he said:

All of us polish those lists for public view, and you can't get more public than running for president. But these lists do tell us something, even if it's not the truth.

Obama's list says that he'd like to convey a willingness to face heartbreak and irony, that he's open to the new and to the experimental, but that he's serious of purpose and true of heart.

McCain's list says that sure, he reads books, but he's not a pansy boy.

Read the article at the above link, and weigh in on what you think.

InDigest out.

Jazz Poetry

Every now and then I get really into poets.org. It largely focuses on more classical forms and authors, but also has a nice selection of some contemporary work.

Anyhow, they just featured Hayden Carruth in their recent newsletter and I thought I'd share how a person can get lost at poets.org for a couple of hours.

1. You begin by reading the bio of a poet (Hayden Carruth), and if you can avoid clicking all the links provided then you may proceed to step 2. Otherwise click through the links, get lost, then return for step 2.

2. Read some poetry by the author (Of Distress Being Humilated by the Classical Chinese Poets). You can often find recordings of the poets reading the poem embedded in the page for you to read along to. Nice.

3. Read another poem by your selected poet. (The Cows at Night)

4. Decide to look into the larger framework of their movement and read about the history of the movement they may have been a part of. Follow links or not as stated in step 1 (A Brief Guide to Jazz Poetry). Ultimately choose another poet whose work is listed in this section and begin again. (Jayne Cortez)

That's all there is to wasting time reading poetry at poets.org. I suppose you could do that anywhere. But that's what I was just doing. And it's not really a waste of time. So there.

UPDATED: I seem to have forgotten to mention that Hayden Carruth passed away this month. Read his Washington Post obituary.

InDigest Offices Temporarily Move to NYC

The InDigest office is temporarily located in New York for the week, as you may have read in the previous post (instead of being spread across the country like no office you've ever seen). This evening the whole office went out to the KGB Bar and saw two pretty great poets and the evening ended with David emerging a hero.

The reading consisted of both Rick Barot and CA Conrad reading some new poetry and I thought I'd provide some links here for you to go and check them out. I didn't get to see Mr. Barot read, but David promises that it was good, and I rather enjoy the poem that is located here. Mr. CA Conrad was also a very solid poet (and had a great delivery). His poems were funny in the way that you chuckle at a funny line, but can't full laugh because he then makes you grimace as you realize that, yes, life is both funny and very not funny. You can read his "Dear Mr. President There Was An Eggshell Under Your Desk Last Night in My Dream" here.

That's all for now.

I Could Use Your Lips on Me and a Little Bit of Dramamine

Holly Munoz, participant in Issue 7's Music section, invited me to ride on a bus with her and all the bands from Draw Fire Records on their trip out to New York for CMJ, where eight bands will play Friday night, before everyone piles back in the bio-diesel bus and drives another 20 hours back to the Twin Cities.

I am writing from Illinois about to cross over to Indiana. We have a long trip ahead still. It's not what you might expect from a bus full of bands. A lot of people (yours truly) are on their computers and, at least to my knowledge, there has been no drug use or drinking. And, if there has been, it certainly hasn't been in excess. Everyone panicked briefly before realizing that the bus was in fact equipped with wireless. We have updates heading into a number of places online: Twitter, How was the show, Facebook, etc.

The first few hours were kind of rough for me. When we stopped in Madison I picked up a little Dramamine and I seem to be doing better now.

I'll try to keep the updates coming. But it might be night time soon.

Our Friends at Whistling Shade Have a New Issue

Our friends over at the fine literary magazine called Whistling Shade have a new issue hitting coffee shops, book stores and the like across Minneapolis (and the world wide webs very soon). The intoduction to the release sounds familiar to us here in the InDigest offices, "I see that another issue of Whistling Shade is pulling into the station. This is a train that always makes its run - if not always quite on schedule!"*

Their new issue will contain poetry from Mary Kay Rummel, Gary Dop, Norita Dittberner-Jax, Thomas R. Smith and Bryan Thao Worra; new fiction from Eric Stener Carlson and Justin Teerlinck, and lots lots more. Check frequently to find out when the new issue is online...


*Look for issue 8 of InDigest to be out very very soon, and following on it's heels our One Year Anniversary Issue!

Some Good Stuff to Listen to From NPR

Poet Sharon Dolin talks about her new book Burn and Dodge. (there's a poem in it called "To The Family of the Man We Ate 130 Years Ago")

Neil Gaiman talks about his new book.

The Best Foreign Books You've Never Heard of.

Other Stuff to read:
Muumuu House is a new publishing house started by Tao Lin.

InDigest Columnist Jess Grover has new poems in the Fall '08 Forklift, OH. (the poems will be posted soon)

Ok, go read (and/or listen).

Travis Lindquist Gallery

New York artist Travis Lindquist, published in the Gallery of Issue 4, has an opening this weekend featuring many new pieces. The gallery, titled In The Darkest night, will take place at the McCaig Welles and Rosenthal Gallery in New York. The gallery opening will be held Friday night at the McCaig gallery from 7pm-10pm, and will be on display from October 10th - November 10th. The gallery is located in Brooklyn at: 129 Roebling Street, Suite B Brooklyn, NY 11211. We highly recommend you go and check out his work, Lindquist is a very engaging presence who's work is engaging, dark, fractured and incredibly beautiful.

The piece to the left is the gallery's title piece "Darkest Night".

Huffington Post

In case you haven't seen this yet, David has a great article up on the Huffington Post.

In case you haven't heard, I'm excited about the start of the hockey season. (I had to link to a page about the Wild, because I'm still in panic mode about not having found a bar in New York that will play all of the WIld games).