Books Received

Easter Halloween (Steve McLauglin), Infinite Unexplored Domain of Poetic Values, Principal Hand Editions, Philadelphia, 2011

"My life is like a/ little language, the only/thing listening,/ I have thought my audience./
Come on my little life-giver,/give your life, If this/should hot suffice, I ask/ what is the criteria?"....

"As the sad cliche goes,/broke writers/sell books to get by/And me? So broken, and not even a writer-/When I sell my books/I hope it is an act of pure/unrewarding/mortification"

[Steve McLaughlin explained to me after his reading at The Bowery Poetry Club this past Saturday that the poems in this, his first book, are parodies based on a character in a recent play he appeared in, thus the nom de plume "Easter Holloween",]

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A/small/magazine/in the form/of an/unbound sheaf,/assembled in the/spring of 2010/and reprinted in May 2011/for the occasion of/Steve McLaughlin's/Segue reading in New York City/(with the addition of an excerpt from his forthcoming book)

Includes work by Kareem Estefan, Cecelia Corrigan, Alejandro Crawford, Artie Verkrant,Astrid Lorange, Steven Zultanski, Diana Sue Hamilton,Eddie Hopely,Matthew Abess, Easter Halloween, J Gordon Faylor,Jarrod Fowler,Lawrence Giffin, Phillip Dmochowski, Sara Wintz,Joseph Kaplan, Vladimir Zykov,Patrick Lovelace, Stephen McLoughlin

"The appropriation of pre-textual material in conceptual writing- most often Google searches, text messages and so-called "status updates" or "tweets"- has always included two contradictory dimensions: a dimension of exploitation and a dimension of participation. These two dimensions are perversely confused in conceptualisms like Flarf, which explains most audiences' indifference, at the end of a reading, to both pure appropriation- which denies the hope of individual and collective agency- and the managerial lyric- which shrugs off the exploitation of the market economy"
Kareem Estefan

"Then a plant which tells me to do things, people/What people? you aren't, though./The smelly exotic plant is a tongue with tongue firmly planted in cheek./Even if you think you're superior. Even if you think I'm superior./Sometimes, it (the plant)makes funny sounds./Even if you think I'm superior/Threatening but it's just part of all the other plants in the store./A small cast, band, and unit set, all the other plants./That's why I love you (feed me)/Like it will help my neurosis/Selfish, selfish Seymour. It can't actually touch me./They don't even know who I am seriously./....I'm not sure. Back to little feed me. It will help my neurosis./The singular neurosis is a symptom itself, but the only way it can/actually be threatening is by forcing you to feed people to it/And it's not even actually forcing you./...."
Cecelia Corrigan: from Shop o' (for Gregory Laynor)