About The Speak Angel Series:

The Speak Angel Series is composed of six full-length books in various forms but towards the achievement of a unifying epic narrative in which the poet, as character, leads all the souls of all the living and dead to a point zero where the remaking of the cosmos can be performed. As this is being done, the official public world takes place in Paris, France and the United States, and new “characters” are incorporated from the news and from the poet’s life. The forms include a long-line narrative broken by lyric stand-alones, an operatic form designed to make the reader of it chant if reading aloud, a spiritual sequel to the author’s book The Descent of Alette, written in the same stanzaic form, a book that is simply a collection of different kinds of poems, a book formed by collaging, and a final, long book that is the volume’s ultimate culmination. The Speak Angel Series took years to accomplish but is finally ready; it is meant to be read for plot, pleasure, musical experience, wisdom and truth. Why not? The books present something like a cosmology in the philosophical sense, a reading of existence and of death. The dead are very close-by and available in the series, which is a work of stunning ambition. 

Paperback • 7 x 9.25 ” • 640pp • ISBN: 978-1-7378036-2-1 • Distributed by Small Press Distribution

About Early Works:

Winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Alice Notley is one of the greatest living poets. Nevertheless, Notley’s early poetry—published by small presses and in little magazines—has remained mostly inaccessible to readers. Early Works is the first volume to collect the poetry written between 1969 and 1974 that established Notley’s uncompromising vision. If in Notley’s Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970- 2005 we are encouraged to read her visionary poem “Your Dailiness” as the beginning of her career, Early Works offers a way to see “Your Dailiness” as the culmination of a writing practice that inaugurates her singular voice. Tracing Notley’s time living and writing across the United States and in Britain, Early Works gathers her first four books, 165 Meeting House Lane, Phoebe Light, Incidentals in the Day World, and For Frank O’Hara’s Birthday, as well as a little-known sonnet sequence “Great Interiors, Wines and Spirits of the World” and a large selection of uncollected poems. This work amounts to an unprecedented record of the relentless formal experimentation that Notley engaged in to create her own American poetic tradition. Full of permission to “Be unmetrical Be FRAGRANT,” as she writes in “A Corona,” Notley’s early poetry confirms, in the words of Ted Berrigan, “Alice Notley is even better than anyone has yet said she is.”

​Paperback • 6 x 8.5 ” • 321pp • ISBN: 978-1-7378036-3-8 • Distributed by Small Press Distribution Publicity

Contact: Jeff Alessandrelli • [email protected]

Poet and art writer John Yau has a gorgeous new book about Joe Brainard, out with Rizzoli. Yau describes in vivid detail how Brainard produced thousands of lush multimedia pieces radiant with poignancy, wit, intimacy, and a sheer beauty that express Brainard’s unabashed affection for the world.

Tyhe Cooper reviews the book at The Brooklyn Rail.

Ron Padgett: Dot

Featuring Padgett and Anselm Berrigan

Ron Padgett reads from his new book Dot (Coffee House Press), followed by a discussion between Padgett and Anselm Berrigan.

Wednesday, December 14, 2022, 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

REGISTER HERE
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Ron Padgett’s How Long was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and his Collected Poems won the LA Times Prize for the best poetry book of 2014 and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, from whom he also received the Frost medal. His translations include Zone: Selected Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars’ Complete Poems. His poems were used in Jim Jarmusch’s film, Paterson. Padgett will be reading from his new book, Dot (Coffee House Press).

Anselm Berrigan is the poetry editor for the Brooklyn Rail, and author of a number of books of poems, most recently Pregrets, from Black Square Editions.

Poet, artist, publisher, and scholar Bernadette Mayer died on November 22nd 2022, at the age of seventy-seven, at her home in East Nassau, New York. She will be so missed. Here's to her wonderful work being read and performed and taught and loved for a long time to come.

​Artforum have published her obituary: https://www.artforum.com/news/bernadette-mayer-1945-2022-89708.  

We were so sad to learn that Bernadette Mayer died in late November, and send love and strength to those who knew her. Here's to her wonderful work being read and performed and taught and loved for a long time to come. Artforum have published her obituary: https://www.artforum.com/news/bernadette-mayer-1945-2022-89708. 

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Here's a December update from the Network, plus, because it's December, a link to Schuyler's poem and Andrew Epstein's thoughts about it - enjoy.

Jordan Davis has a new pamphlet out with Sam Riviere’s If a Leaf Falls Press, Hidden Poems (this is a selection from Jordan's 2023 collection Yeah, No, forthcoming from MadHat): https://samriviere.com/index.php?/together/if-a-leaf-falls-press/. Jordan has also recently written about Ted Berrigan’s exuberant and idiosyncratic prose for the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/158608/what-do-i-say-next-fast .

Anne Waldman's Bard, Kinetic will be published in January 2023, with Coffee House Press, and is available for preorder. In Bard, Kinetic, Waldman assembles a layered compendium of essays, letters, poems, and interviews that form a portrait of her life and praxis as a groundbreaking poet. Waldman charts her journey through a maelstrom of radical artistic activity, from growing up in Greenwich Village to creative partnership with Allen Ginsberg and touring with Bob Dylan. She recalls founding the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church and later the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and she discusses the political and artistic philosophies that guide her activities as writer, activist, performer, instigator, and Buddhist practitioner. Throughout Bard, Kinetic, Waldman pays homage to friends and collaborators including Amiri Baraka, Lou Reed, John Ashbery, and Diane di Prima. 

Vincent Katz's Broadway for Paul is now out in paperback, with Knopf. Elaine Equi has talked about how this 'virtuoso collection' highlights 'the pleasure of sharing spaces, ideas, and art', whilst Paul Vangelisti describes the poetry as a 'voice in the grand tradition of New York poetry, from Walt Whitman to Frank O’Hara, engaging in ‘equable’ conversation (Whitman’s term) with the city’s people and places'.

Tia Shearer Bassett, a theatre-maker based in the Washington, DC area, performs a one-actor, Zoom theatre version of Kenneth Koch's Edward and Christine. It premiered in the spring of this year, and Tia is now beginning to perform it monthly (and by request). The next show is on Sunday 11th December at 3.30pm EST: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edward-christine-tickets-296927176177. You can read a review of the show here: https://dctheaterarts.org/2022/05/20/fun-and-intimate-edward-and-christine-plays-live-on-line/.

The Flow Chart Foundation is holding a group reading-through/thinking-through of John Ashbery’s book-length Three Poems. They will read the entire book as a group over 13 days, from December 1st through December 13th. They'll be inviting you later to join them for a concluding live, free virtual event on Friday, December 16th at 1pm EST. Daniel Kane will lead the online discussion, which will take place over Twitter and Instagram. More details here: https://www.flowchartfoundation.org/collectiveashbery.