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Punctum Newsletter for May 2021

Published onMay 26, 2021
Punctum Newsletter for May 2021
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Reviews and More

Punctum releases 2020 Financial and Activity Report

Check out our financial and activity report over 2020: 36 new books, 2 new imprints, and a lot of behind-the-scenes developments: https://punctumbooks.pubpub.org/pub/punctum-financial-activity-report-2020/

Mari Bastashevski reviews Karin Bolender’s The Unnaming of Aliass

The artist Karin Bolender wants a world in which humans and equines arrange their lives as equals. In Paris, Tennessee, in 2002, Bolender married an American Spotted Ass, a pregnant donkey, and the two rode off into the sunset at a pace of two miles per hour.

Read Mari Bastashevski's review of Karen Bolender's punctum book The Unnaming of Aliass in Burlington Contemporary Reviews: https://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/reviews/reviews/the-unnaming-of-aliass

Joe Safdie reviews Ammiel Alcalay’s A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs

[T]his volume focuses attention on those parts of books often dismissed with the word “ancillary” (prefaces, forewords, introductions, epigraphs, notes, references, afterwords, bibliographies), providing vagabond insight into how they can both provoke writing and perpetuate it. As such, the book celebrates what’s becoming more and more mysterious: old-fashioned scholarly methodology, as dependent on chance and good fortune and networks of friends as meticulous research habits

Read Joe Safdie's review of Ammiel Alcalay's punctum book A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs in Caesura: https://caesuramag.org/posts/joe-safdie-ammiel-alcalay-after-jews-and-arabs-ghost-talk

David Toms reviews Robert Kiely’s Incomparable Poetry

In Incomparable Poetry, Robert Kiely provides us with one of the strongest explorations yet of the impact of not just the global recession of 2008 on Irish poetry and writing but a convincing analysis of the way in which the very language of finance and late capitalism is part of the vocabulary of contemporary Irish writing. A poet in his own right, this sharp assessment of the impact of the financial crisis in Ireland on three poets is clear, concise and thought-provoking

Read David Toms's review of Robert Kiely's punctum book Incomparable Poetry: An Essay on the Financial Crisis of 2007–2008 and Irish Literature in the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry: https://poetry.openlibhums.org/article/id/3030/

Douglas Penick on Li Bo and other poets

Following Lao Tzu, alchemists like Li Bo sought to refine the subtle elements of body and mind to produce a perfect expression of harmony, an elixir of immortality, impervious to change and time. Following Confucius, Chinese poets emulated the lyrics in the ancient collection The Book of Songs, which, the sage asserted, would continue to purify language. Poetry does this by extending yearning and meaning beyond the limits of space and time. Intoxicated, spellbound, we return to a kind of communication, both primordial and undying.

Read Douglas Penick's appreciation of 3 ancient poets, including the Chinese poet Li Bo, featured in Kidder Smith's punctum book Li Bo Unkempt, in Tricycle: https://tricycle.org/magazine/master-buddhist-poets/

An introduction to noise artist Minóy

Get an in-depth introduction to the important (late) noise artist Minóy, the pseudonym of Stanley Keith Bowza, who held a key position in the independent cassette culture scene of the 1980s, and featured in Joseph Nechvatal's punctum book Minóy: https://www.ma3azef.live/show-info/?show=2878

Audio recording: Ant Lightfoot narrates John Schad’s Paris Bride

Hear Ant Lightfoot narrate Chapter 1 of John Schad's punctum book Paris Bride: A Modernist Life: https://youtu.be/95tGpO0SVzs

New Releases

Forthcoming

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