How to rate what is supposed to be one of the most culturally and politically bleeding edge book fairs in the United States?

On March 22nd, 2008 I attended the fabled San Francisco Anarchists Book Fair for the first time in my 15 years of living in the Bay Area. I’m not exactly an “on the scene” kind of guy in either the activist or small press world of the Bay Area (though that last part is changing some now) and it seems like I should have at least gone to the last few if only to get an idea of what real underground literature is doing.

It was a mixed bag to say the least. For me personally it was fantastic. In the way that a family reunion can be fantastic. I was reacquainting with activists I hadn’t seen in over a decade, and many of the writers I’ve been working with so recently. Old friends and new friends all together in one place is nothing to sneeze at. For the press I was there to represent, it was a tougher day. We had no poster and were squeezed in between Food Not Bombs and Z Magazine.

It became clear pretty quickly, not just to me but also to my Howling Dog Press partners in rabble rousing; Mike Palacek and Dan Benbow, that this event was a lot more about “networking” than it was about sales, or, god forbid, active or unified social change (I guess it wouldn’t be “anarchist” then.)

At least for the smaller, poorly organized presses like those of us in the HD crew. AK Press, Bound Together Books, and Left Bank Book Collective from Seattle all seemed to be doing a nice brisk trade in T-shirts, posters, chaps, DVD’s and stickers. Food Not Bombs, Coyote and the SF Bike Messengers union were all fundraising (Food Not Bombs under Keith McHenry could truly be classified as its own press/media outlet) and getting petitions signed for various good sounding causes, including the forming of a Tent City outside the White House in D.C. (inspired by Camp Casey) and the legalization of Prostitution (Coyote.)

But really and truly we were hoping to talk with other activists and other small press publishers about the war, about the peace effort and what is widely considered a genuine conspiracy when it comes to the events of 9/11 which has propelled the greatest superpower the planet has known to the brink of credibility, and yes, possibly even collapse.

A funny thing happened to the outrage over the war and the possibility that it was encouraged by profiteers in the U.S. government…

…no one really gave a shit. Part of the reason is that most of these folks has been down this road in one form or another…it’s even a big reason why all of us were even at this convention in the first place. It’s not as if disbelief in the corruption of the U.S. war machine were the issue. Why it is, so many hard edged activists refuse to identify with the 9/11 Truth Movement? Mostly it’s an insidious mix of hopelessness, helplessness and fear. Hopelessness in that the movement has nowhere to move to (what if Cheney admitted he knew the Twin Towers were coming down months ahead of time? What is there to allow us to believe anything would actually happen to him?) Helplessness in that the truth movement is overrun with agent provocateurs and manicacs. Fear in that already marginalized citizens are only going to be further marginalized by identifying with “conspiracy extremists.” These three things have manifested as a collective pathology in much of the working activist and progressive communities, not just the middle classes.

Dan Benbow said he resented the term “conspiracy theorist.” He much preferred the label “conspiracy realist.” Dan and Mike and I spent some time debating the semantics of the LIHOP (”Let It Happen On Purpose”) school of thinking versus the MIHOP (”Made It Happen on Purpose”) school when it comes to theories involving just how involved were aspects of America’s war machine in the events of 9/11. The obvious demolition of Building 7; the unexplained car bomb outside the Old Executive Offices in Washington DC; the status and mission of numerous military exercises taking place in Manhattan that particular day…not to mention the plain and obvious profit motive the petroleum industry would benefit from in the wake of a middle eastern war, which is why many in the peace movement have this extra paranoia working into the overarching everyday question “how the fuck did it get this bad?” It leads naturally too, “who let it get this bad?” which quite naturally ends up at “why would someone let it get this bad?”

Just take a look at the profits of Exxon/Mobile, Haliburton and Blackwater over the past few years.

Mike Palacek said he has heard from many quarters that Osama bin Laden is not even alive anymore; that he is kept alive like a construct, like Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s 1984.

We discussed these issues passionately, openly, and without any harassment, and conversely, without any interest from hardly anyone else.

Perhaps that is what drove what seemed to be the real topic of interest: Will Obama truly make a difference? Even here amongst this disparate group of radicals, there dialogued a sizable and hardened minority that feels Obama does have what it takes to take our nation out of its self-imposed dark age. But a minority nonetheless. The real overriding sentiment at the Fair could be summed up in a what a bike messenger’s union organizer from L.A. said to me: “Obama basically sucks at the same teat as McCain and Hillary.”

Certainly the people who question Obama see him pulling the most regular military from the middle east, but letting the mercenary groups and contractors who make up the larger part of the occupying Western forces stay on and play at whatever games is deemed necessary for them to play for the greater good of the economic interest.

We didn’t sell a single copy of the “Cost of Freedom” anthology, which is likely the finest anti-war anthology put together in recent history. I couldn’t help but notice that Keith McHenry was only having limited success in garnering enthusiasm from the browsers for an ultra-confrontational tent city in Washington D.C., but make no mistake: Food Not Bombs will be there to do their damndest to feed activists.

Still, I got to meet two fellow Howling Dog writers, folks who share a passion for representing the truly just, the truly more American concept of fairness and justice and not just business death scams perpetuated on other civilizations in our name. Writers aren’t necessarily the best people to unite the activists of the world…after all, theirs is a solitary trade to begin with. But we’re going to have to figure out a way to do it if we feel the human species is worth saving. If not, what’s the point in even trying? The reason I don’t give up is because I know there are some out there who want us to come to just this conclusion of despair…and those who want that most are people who invest in and control the arms and energy industry.

Covered:

Howling Dog Press: http://www.howlingdogpress.com/

AK Press: http://www.akpress.org/

Bound Together Books: http://www.boundtogetherbooks.com/

COYOTE: http://www.bayswan.org/COYOTE.html

Food Not Bombs: http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

9/11 Truth Movement: http://www.911truth.org/ or http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/

Not In Our Name: http://www.notinourname.net/index.php

People who actually care about what happens to the world, to include the many that pretend they do; and the many that pretend they don’t, are constantly bitching about how much the news media has sold its principles down the river. What they’re really complaining about is how homogenized the news has become in the face of media consolidation…but what’s being consolidated is the same old propaganda, lies and manipulation that have always been present in the media. The difference is that the news media, mainstream and otherwise, used to be a competitive gig…political and cultural friction when media magnates went head to head could produce the turdulets which allowed the weeds like social reform and business regulation to plant some roots in vast fields of manure. In that sense, today’s news media alarmists aren’t wrong to be concerned, but the romanticizing of the field’s past is a hollow distortion.

Poets like Vladimir Mayakovsky and Ezra Pound knew this and wrote about it, both of them stating the poetry is real news…news that matters and news that lasts through time. Florida poet (currently) Michael Grover also knows this, and his endeavor to chronicle a brief period of time in the life of a homeless man living in his local park, The Man That Lives In the Park (Covert Press, 2008) engages his subject in much the manner of an old school journalist with genuine principles (they did actually exist back in the day.)

The majority of Grover’s poems functions as a portrait of an encounter with his homeless friend living in a pavilion near the edge of a river, whose voice sometimes sneaks in between the slices of life presented by the author:

“Visitor today.
We sit at the edge
Of the water and talk.
I don’t talk much anymore.
Except to myself.
Hair grows longer.
Beard grows longer.
I am stranded
On this desert island.
Far away from the mainland
Of society.
The president can’t see me.
Congress can’t see me.
The media can’t see me.
Businessmen can’t see me.
america does not see me.”

- Vignette 14

Indeed, that is the progression of the little story that is created when Grover puts his 39 mini-poems together to create, not just one big poem, but a micro or flash novel even, of a man whose is growing more and more invisible by the day, until even the author can’t see him anymore. Grover could have stopped this manuscript after his twenty second “chapter” and The Man Who Lives In The Park would have had a nice, tidy ending.

But that’s not how real life works and Grover, particularly since he works in the medium of plain narrative (even more stripped down with even simpler details than “plainsong”) captures the feeling of old fashioned news features, or what passed for one of the finer forms of the non-fiction genre over 50 years ago.

“A visitor today.
He sits in the shade
His back turned to him.
The café owner walks by
He waves and calls her name.
She keeps walking.”

- Vignette 24

The author himself says he doesn’t feel much removed from his subject matter, having drifted much in his own life and having his own set of hard times…again, in the true journalistic tradition or dialectic, reminiscent of George Orwell’s Down and Out In Paris and London (Public Domain, available at http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/books/downandout.htm) where the author is not just a chronicler but a participant in the underbelly of the supposed “great societies.”

Grover’s story would be the perfect document to pick up one hundred years from now to see what it was like to be a homeless person in the suburban USA today. Since The Man Who Lives In The Park is in print it will have a chance to make it that far, though we can’t much say the same for the human species.

http://kendrasteinereditions.wordpress.com/

Some economist’s estimates have the number of book titles published each year surpassing the number of readers available to read any one of those titles somewhere around the year 2020. For the record, we’ll have to wait and see if there is even a human race still around by that date.

Correspondingly, there is an argument espoused by many in the Small Press that the Small Press is just a waste of resources and trees. When one considers the sheer number of copies of Newsweek and Time that essentially are never opened or used by anyone before making their way to the recycling mills or landfills of our fair land, the argument is fairly baseless. Walk into a Barnes and Noble sometime and witness the amount of pure shit spewed out by radio personalities (almost all assholes) and mass consumerist “personalities” and tell me the Small Press is anything remotely that evil with a straight face.

So when an independent press like Kendra Steiner Editions turns out 85 “chaps” and counting in a period of three years (at about two dozen pages and a run of around 50 copies per title) complete with an independent music biz distribution source in Scotland, one can’t say they’re “saturating” the market, indie or otherwise. But they are creating an unavoidable presence. One might even start getting the idea that some of these folks in the indie press know what they’re doing.

I say “chaps” because KSE books are miniaturized (that is, chap size) but instead of the fairly standard issue desktop/Kinko’s presentation, these subversives are true mini versions of the old school mimeo-zines which ruled “the underground” in the fifties and sixties (and somewhat into the 70’s.) This format, chosen intentionally by KSE’s Bill Shute and daughter Kendra Steiner, leads to the kind of releases we haven’t seen since that time as well. Many of the books are collections of collaborations. Shute’s collaboration with Stuart Crutchfield on Stream (salmon and blood) (KSE #29) is a single chap length poem:

“the plasma line
forms before sunrise

transient single moms
bring along half-awake
toddlers and infants
crayons and pacifiers”

It should be noted that the poems in this collaboration do snake and meander like the course of a river, steadily in one direction as well.

Shute again collaborates with David Keenan and Bryon Coley in Voluntary Quicksand (in memory of Richard Brautigan)) (KSE # 37) a collection of nearly two dozen fast and furious poems, one unable to determine which belongs to which author, and this is exactly the point of the manuscript, and in a nutshell, the point of KSE Press. While these are not desktop generic books (they are pressed and hand crafted) neither are they artifact like pieces of art that come out of the “salon” presses who are looking to ultimately sell their gorgeous fonts, colors and high quality paper to the library collections of academia. KSE books are nice looking, utilitarian and meant to be read in bus stations, on trains, in launder mats and coffee shops, sometimes several times over in the same sitting.

This type of presentation forces author and publisher to be more selective in content, take bolder chances in creative structure and generally convey a sense of something larger than just a small collection of poems.

An example of this would be the recent releases Rimbaud In the City: 10 Snapshots (KSE #83) by Glenn Cooper and Lullabies for Jackson (KSE #68) by Misti Rainwater-Lites. Rainwater-Lites in particular is someone who is unapologetically living out her literary growth process in front of the eyes of the small press and a growing core of fans. Her KSE title shows her engaging with both a pregnancy and motherhood, giving her work a tender authority that was missing from her prolific Texas tough ass persona:

“your daddy also disapproves
when I read vladimir mayakovsky to you
he says the last thing you want to hear
is poetry, especially that kind

so I drink water with ice and lemon
read dr. seuss
sing “winnie the pooh”
while daddy watches
the crumbling of America
on CNN.”

Or as an exercise in the kind of surrealistic tricks that seem to delight Shute and his fellow conspirators, let’s run the titles of Cooper’s reimagining of Rimbaud in the 21st Century consecutively:

Rimbaud chain smokes
In the Brothel
Rimbaud walks
Rimbaud winds down
Rimbaud picks up
Rimbaud wipes
in the sports bar
Rimbaud plucks
Rain falls against
Alone in his single room apartment

Rainwater-Lites book is one poem and Cooper’s could be. This could describe, I suspect the bulk of KSE’s catalogue, including many of Shute’s own titles which display a willingness to experiment with verse and line, nearly inversing their functions at points in Ground . (July, 2006)
The Mayakovsky reference above is appropriate (and not a little pleasing) in a KSE title…many of the collaborative exercises and experimentation found in these little books stem directly from the Russian Futurists innovations.

Brad Kohler’s Energy Fools The Magician (KSE # 45), Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal’s Keepers of Silence (for Luis Omar Salinas) (KSE # 82) and other titles recent and forthcoming from Michael Layne Heath, Stuart Crutchfield and MK Chavez display the wide range of focused and spare manuscripts with hard edged themes that fill in the lines between the playfulness.

The output of sheer titles by KSE is one of the most impressive things I have seen in the small press in some time. Shute states in his interview on Michele McDannold’s blog (http://wearduringorangealert.blogspot.com/2007/11/writers-corner_22.html) that his goal is to continue to release two titles per month through the calendar year of 2008. He also credits D.A. Levy, NY School, Beats and Flux movement for his inspiration.

If folks want to know where the Small Press movement is headed, one of the first places they need to look will be in San Antonio, Texas.

Cherry Bleeds Literary Grand Prize award to one work of poetry and one short story.
Prizes

Short Story Winner receives $100 and publication in the Cherry Bleeds Anthology.

Poetry Winner receives $100 and publication in the Cherry Bleeds Anthology.

Short Story and Poetry honorary mentions will be published in the Cherry Bleeds Anthology.

Winners will be chosen from finalists blind judged by Chief Editor M. K. Chavez.

Winners will have the option, if they choose, to read their works on the Drinks with Tony radio show.

How To Enter:

For poetry, entry fee is $5 per poem or $10 for 3 poems. Poems longer than six pages not accepted.

For short stories, entry fee is $10 per manuscript up to 7,500 words. Manuscripts over 7,500 are not accepted.

Enter as often as you like. Clearly mark your submission either poetry or short story. Simultaneous submissions A-OK.

Deadline: May 31, 2008

Enter electronically or via snail mail.

Internet entries:

Pay the corresponding entry fee at: www.cherrybleeds.com/contest.html then email your submission as either an MS Word attachment with the file extension .doc or .rtf to cherrybleedscontest@gmail.com.

The attachment should include a cover letter with your name, contact info and title(s) and the manuscript in which the author’s name does not appear.

We will send you an email that your submission was received.

A fifty cent processing fee is added to partially cover PayPal fees.

Short Story Submission Fee - $10 per story

Poetry Submission Fee - $5 per poem

Poetry Submission Fee - $10 for 3 poems

Snail Mail Entries

Send cover letter with your name, contact info and title(s) along with your manuscript that only includes the title of your piece and not your name to:

Cherry Bleeds Contest
c/o Tony DuShane
PO Box 720028
San Francisco, CA 94172-0028

Include your entry fee(s) with your submission. Checks should be made out to: Cherry Bleeds.

If you would like notification of acceptance or non-acceptance via mail, include a SASE.

———————————

Winners announced on June 20th.

Cherry Bleeds and The Creamery presents:

(KATHY) ACKER’S DANGEROUS DAUGHTERS (A.D.D.)
___________________________________________

Melissa Hansen
Hansen writes and edits poetry for The Guild of Outsider Writers. She works at the San Francisco Public Library and recently finished “the wild god” a collection of poetry.

Cassandra Dallet
Dallett’s body of work tells her story growing up punk rock to hip-hop.

Kathleen Wood
Wood is the author of “The Wino, the Junkie, and the Lord” and “Tenderloin Rose” published my Zeitgeist Press. She writes about the grittier aspects of urban life.

Julia Vinograd
Vinograd has published 36 books of poetry and is an editor for Zeitgeist Press. She’s Berkeley’s poetic living legend.

Saturday, February 9th

The Creamery
780 Valencia Street
San Francisco

7:00 PM - $5 Sliding Scale

Booze? - check
Bad Ass Bitches? - check
Writing w/attitude - check
Schedule Ones? - check

Celebrate the literary legacy of Kathy Acker through San Francisco’s transgressive women writers.

Bruce Issacson and MK Chavez could teach slam poets a thing or two about content.

Issacson is the main man at Zeitgeist Press, the legendary indie that has published Julia Vinograd, David Lerner, MK Chavez and a host of other legends (Danielle Willis, Joie Cook.)

Last night at the Poetry and Pizza series at Escape From New York (in San Francisco of course.) Chavez (nee: Maria Kaylib)read from her new book “Virgin Eyes” along with a host of newly written poems, and the good Mr. Isaacson read from his new tome, “Dumbstruck At The Lights,” perhaps indicative of his residence in the forever neon oasis/hell known as Las Vegas.

Issacson has a way of making poems about his father and his son sound edgy, while a passion about Rimbaud gives the old commune peripheral scalawag a “holy” sort of feel. Like a slam poet, he keeps his notes firmly in hand without ever really looking at them, subtly displaying his comfort and familiarity with his own material, but unlike a slam poet, not spending a lot of his alloted performance time trying to prove his cred or his mad skills or his alienated uniqueness…truth is, he’s just too grown up for all that. And it’s entertaining as hell to hear in poesy.

Chavez is too grown up for the young slammers too, not in terms of content but in terms of emotional maturity:

I’m in bed with the wrong man.

but it’s so human.

The poetry & pizza series at Escape from New York is a seriously hot SF reading, and always packs a full house which is an impressive accomplishment on a Friday Night in the Financial District for an establishment that is not a bar. Good on them for featuring two heavy hitting Zeitgeist poets last night.

Links:

http://littlebrownsparrow.com/

http://www.zeitgeist-press.com/