Luna Digest, 11/10

First—yes, even before the traditional Luna Park plug—one of the most interesting things to hit the lit-Internet for some time (from Guernica): “Bolaño Inc.”

I had told myself I wasn’t going to say or write anything more about Roberto Bolaño. The subject has been squeezed dry these last two years, above all in the North American press, and I told myself that there was already enough drunkenness. But here I am writing about him again, like a vicious old man, like the alcoholic who promises that this will be the last drink of his life and who, the next morning, swears that he will only have one more to cure his hangover…

Marcelle Heath (on Matt Briggs) on the Espresso Book Machine:

As Richard Nash writes on his recent blog post” The Emergent Landscape, or, The Continuous Permanent Reinvention of Publishing“: “transformation is irrevocable, continuous, multivalent, and potentially asymmetric.” One of the latest reinventions to emerge is the Espresso Book Machine, On Demand Books digital photocopier, book trimmer and binder, and desktop computer that can produce a trade paperback book in five to ten minutes. Books currently listed in the EspressNet software include titles from LightingSource, Ingram’s print-on-demand division, and public domain titles from Google Books. Those out-of-print and backlisted titles are now readily available. Matt Briggs points out in his Reading Local Seattle article that for writers, “an author merely needs to have their book listed in EspressNet, which costs less than having galleys printed and much less than an entire print run.” And for readers this means that along with ebooks, print-on-demand machines produce “the same cornucopia for literature that the music world has already been enjoying.”

Probably too much has been said about McSweeney’s upcoming newspaper issue—but, damn, these spreads look good.

Alex Lemon has a new column at InDigest.

And, on the subject of great things going on at InDigest, poet Ada Limón interviews Okkervil River lead singer Will Sheff.

Josh Bearman explains on The Rumpus how he finally “rode McSweeney’s coattails into a graduate English department.”

Editor Philip Gourevitch will leave The Paris Review. It will be interesting (to say the least) to see who will be asked to helm one of the most important English language literary magazines in history.

You should check out this very interesting poetry comic from Bianca Stone in the new issue of pax americana, “The Secret Intimacies of Insects.” (Pictured at right)

Some very, very (very) exciting lit mag news from A Public Space (a must read for literature & CW professors):

CALLING ALL TEACHERS

Are you interested in incorporating literary magazines in your curriculum? The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses is organizing a pilot program for the spring semester, the “Literary Magazine Engagement Program for Creative Writing Students.” The program offers half-price subscriptions for selected literary magazines to writing classes adopting them for course use (with desk-copy subscriptions to the professors). Additionally, once during the semester, senior editors from adopted magazines will participate in a virtual or in-person meeting with your class, allowing students to better understand the publishing community. The ultimate goal of this program is to expose students to the variety of magazines out there and promote an active, engaged reading culture among young writers.

You will be able to choose from the following magazines for adoption during this pilot program:

—Kenyon Review
—Ploughshares
—American Poetry Review
—The Oxford American
—A Public Space
—New England Review

If the pilot is successful, the program and the menu of magazines will grow significantly in the future. For more information, and to participate in the program, please get in touch with Jamie Schwartz at CLMP.

Finally, also from A Public Space, new work from Adrienne Rich, “Powers of Recuperation“:

A woman of the citizen party—what’s that—
is writing history backward

her body   the chair she sits in
to be abandoned  repossessed

The old, crusading, raping, civil, great, phony, holy, world,
second world, third world, cold, dirty, lost, on drugs,

gangrenous, maiming, class
war lives on

a done matter she might have thought
ever undone though   plucked

from before her birthyear
and that hyphen coming after

She’s old, old, the incendiary
woman

endless beginner

whose warped wraps you shall find in graves
and behind glass   plundered