Saturday, February 21, 2015

Fervent Remnants of Reflective Surfaces by Evelyn Reilly (2006)

Fervent Remnants of Reflective Surfaces
Evelyn Reilly
Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs
(c)2006

This work, like so many books published by Yo-Yo Labs, has the fingerprints of Brenda Iijima all over it and that's not a bad thing. The work itself is a fun exercise in marginalia, reductionism, and playfulness. It is as though the author has gone outside after a significant snowfall and left her singular footprints in the white both for herself and her readers with a hot chocolate GLEE. Ms. Reilly incorporates some Moby Dick text in the second section (Lesser Levithans)to get Mr. Melville involved. It works well at every level. Unpaginated. All images by Ms. Iijima. Score one for the Labs!

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

the months since last posting

Sorry - overwhelmed by holidays and the remodeling of our house. Our front porch has become a mudroom/office. Whose office? well, mine actually and I am still going through my stacks and boxes and bins of chapbooks. It has been some time and now in the midst of WINTER the local school district doesn't know how to be ready for "winter" so my kids are home far more often than they should be.

Well known and loved poets have passed away over the past few months, including just a day about Philip Levine. His first few books were chapbooks/small press books. Rod McKuen passed away as well but I never liked his work and I don't believe he was published in chapbook form. More importantly to me, Allan Kornblum (Toothpaste Press) died in Fall. A generation of publishers is passing from the scene before our eyes. Their work remains and much be collected. That's where this blog comes in. That's what this blog has been about from the beginning, talking about people, publishers, Presses.