new from above/ground press: G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #26 : guest-edited by Adam Katz

NOW AVAILABLE: G U E S T #26
edited by Adam Katz
published as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
see here for Adam Katz’ introduction 

the new issue features new work by:

alex benedict
Marc E. Christmas
Adam Katz
Ron Silliman

Canadian/American/International rates (including shipping

Canadian orders $6.00 CAD American orders $7.00 CAD International orders $11.00 CAD

author biographies:

alex benedict runs betweenthehighway press. alex is a Jōdo Shū Buddhist from Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley, currently tutoring at The University of North Carolina’s Writing Center.

Marc E. Christmas currently lives in Columbia, MD and is a high school teacher for Howard County Public School System, and the Director for holistic healing at the Niyah Center. His recent poetry is a written to inspire those healing from personal tragedy and/or depression. He is a recognized thought leader in transformative leadership development, business development, energy healing, and critical life skills training. He’s also a Certified Reiki Master Teacher and a Certified Life Coach.

Adam Katz is a poet-scholar, fiction writer, English instructor, and editor living on Gitxsan territory in northwest BC.

Ron Silliman lives currently about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and his most recent book is an expanded edition of the collaboration Legend, written with Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, the late Ray Di Palma and Steve McCaffery. His last reading tours pre-Covid were of Oklahoma and Spain, more alike than one might imagine.

some author activity: Martin, Baus, Hajnoczky, Smith + Robertson,

Camille Martin is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey, as is Eric Baus; Helen Hajnoczky reads every page of Jordan Scott's blert (Coach House Books, 2008) all at once; Camille Martin has twenty poems from a work-in-progress appear online in Stride magazine; Jessica Smith writes on Ron Silliman over at Jacket2; and Maria Lind writes on Lisa Robertson in ArtReview.

Ron Silliman reviews Rae Armantrout's Custom (above/ground, 2012)

American poet, critic and blogger Ron Silliman was good enough to write a short review of Rae Armantrout's Custom (above/ground, 2012). Not a surprise he favours her work, since he did the introduction to her selected poems, Veil (a title I'd highly recommend along with everything else Armantrout has published).

Here's Silliman's review, lifted from a larger post (see the original here):

Rae Armantrout | Custom | above/ground | 2012
Lyn Hejinian | The Book of a Thousand Eyes | Omnidawn | 2012

It will be no surprise that Hejinian & Armantrout are two of my favorite writers. Both poets have long, important relationships with small presses. While Armantrout has published mostly with Wesleyan in recent years, Custom, from rob mclennan’s stellar micropress in Ottawa is a reminder that Armantrout’s roots are not in the academy. Although being with Wesleyan enabled Armantrout to collect the Pulitzer, the sameness of Wesleyan’s books, year to year, author to author, serves none of their writers very well. I can assure you that these poems will look tonier, but not any better, when they appear in Just Saying in ought-13. Hejinian on the other hand has published only one collection of essays with a university press, none with trade houses, 36 volumes with independent presses, including self-publishing several via her own Tuumba Press. Eyes is Hejinian’s masterpiece, a series of literary interventions that invoke the great Russian novels of the 19th & early 20th centuries. I never want it to end. & I hope Omnidawn sells copies of this book forever.