A profile of small press publisher Jon Beacham, who handcrafts letterpress editions of American poetry from the 50s and 60s: “Beacham hand-sets every edition, aligning each individual letter into words, paragraphs and pages. A page can take up to two hours.”

Having taken a sudden interest in poetry broadsides, I went Googling last night for examples of good broadside design, but found instead these beautiful letterpress greeting cards from Sycamore Street Press. They’re enough to make me want to start my own print shop.

Deborah Ager, publisher of 32 Poems, asks how print journals can survive given production costs and the strain of the recession, and borrows a few answers from Charles Jensen.

Something I’d like to see, from Deborah or any publisher of a print journal, is more specifics on the economics of print. How much, for instance, does it cost to print and distribute an issue of 32 Poems?

In this, my triumphant return to the Linebreak blog, I’ll just say it: I sympathize with the artists on Cracked’s list of “5 Musicians Who Need to Find Something New to Sing About“.

Granted, this is only because I’m notoriously guilty of writing no fewer than 3 kinds of poems. True story. So, at least, I sympathize to some minimal degree, which is to say mostly as a knee-jerk reaction.

Comfort me: Are there poets besides me who ought to do anything it takes - anything – if it means new subject matter? What are your habitual poem topics? Which cliches need to stop immediately? (For example: Are you going to hunt down a dog next time you read the word “ether”? Tired of Salt Lake City  and midnight buffets showing up in Poetry – often in the same poem? I know I am.)

Help these tired poets: Comment sections exist for several reasons, and this is one of them. Use an alias if you must – like Judger McJudgerson. Or, you know, one that’s clever at all.

My Advice:

1. Cage a Jameson scholar in your office – one specializing in the theorist, the whiskey. Better: Specializing in both. 2. Pick up an adderall-driven prostitute problem. 3. Launch a mad quest, following the pirate map you drew on the back of a Wendy’s napkin three years ago, to rediscover Dr. Phil; keep in mind that this effort should be rooted in the good Christian guilt resulting from mass-murdering bluejays with an automatic pellet gun. Yes. Or not?

I’ll stop, having already been more than disturbing enough for reason. I don’t want to alienate more of our readers than I ought.

Apologies to the world-in-general. (So much sorrow fills me!)

We are not just in transition from one state or model to another state or model, we’re in transition to a state of permanent accelerated transition where the model is continuous rapid reinvention.

— Richard Nash, publishing consultant and former editor of Soft Skull Press

Ever wondered how much a writer makes from a bestselling mass market paperback? More than a year after the publication of her novel Twilight Fall, Lynn Viehl says she’s netted less than $25,000.

Interviewed in Spiegel, Umerto Eco talks about the importance of lists to learning and culture, and how the list has changed in the age of Google.

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.

A new ad campaign launched by Hyundai Card in subway stations in Seoul features mostly blank spaces. The company says the ads are a response to the loud, hectic nature of most subway advertising. Each ad is composed of a huge white panel that includes only a small icon and logo. More photos are available in this scan from Monocle.

My mother taught me to read when I was three.   When I was in first grade, my teacher was in the middle of a sentence in Tik-Tok of Oz when she was called out of the room.  While she was gone, I got up and finished the chapter out loud because I couldn’t stand being left hanging.    When she came back and asked who’d been playing with her book,  I told her what I’d done but she didn’t believe me until the rest of the class spoke up.   Her reaction wasn’t  surprising since I’d been reading Dick and Jane– those books with about three words to the page and the father with the hat who was always leaving for work—at exactly the same pace as everyone else.   Maybe I thought that was how you were supposed to do it.    Or maybe I didn’t want the other kids to know I could read.   I do know I wanted to pass for normal since by the time I was seven, I was looking up my age group in The Child from Five to Twelve, and if,  for example, the book said the average person my age  liked spinach I’d try to like it.

About that time I started memorizing songs. I’d take Daddy’s original cast LPs of musical comedies to my room and play them over and over until I’d learned all the words to everything on them.   Daddy had pretty much every classic show: South Pacific, Carousel, Kiss Me Kate, Brigadoon.     Somewhere, and I’ve never been able to trace where, I also picked up a lot of jazz tunes.  Then there were the hymns; I knew those because my mother made us go to church.

But with the exception of my favorite A.A. Milne poems, songs were all I memorized until I was in sixth grade.  My teacher that year, a Mrs. Barnette Robinson (in those days no one called teachers by their first names), was trying out something she called R.I.A.    I forget what the letters stood for but it  involved a piece of classical music (example: Finlandia),  a painting (example: Girl Before a Mirror), and a poem, new ones every week.   The poems tended towards the popular more than the selections from other genres, because Mrs. R. had chosen them by asking her friends what their favorites were.   I especially remember  liking “If.”  I took to “Invictus” too, because of the part about being master of my fate and captain of my soul.   Anyhow, at the end of sixth grade we were assigned to memorize and recite a poem for parents’ evening.      Most kids picked something with as few lines as they could get away with but not me.   I chose “The Highwayman” by Alfred, Lord Noyes.   I was willing to overlook Noyes’  odd middle name because being a romantic little girl,  I just loved the story he told.   And the fact that the poem was so long didn’t bother me either because  in the end, it was just another song.

I can still do “The Highwayman,” all the way through.  In fact when I taught Computer Science at the University of Florida—for more years than I care to revisit—I used to recite it to every class. The students could have complained since, looked at narrowly, this wasn’t what they were paying for– but I thought it was worth the risk.   By that time I was a born-again preacher of poetry and “The Highwayman” was exciting enough to cause some of my students who thought it stopped at the classroom door to think again.   Besides, I wanted to show them how, if they’d only memorize what they loved, they could keep it.

When I stood up to recite “The Highwayman” for a roomful of parents in sixth grade, I didn’t miss a beat. And for a long time after that my memory stood me in perfect stead.    But then came the day—I was a sophomore in high school–that  my English teacher, Miss Quick, passed out a test.   At first I felt the usual surge of adrenalin.   But then I looked around the room at Beaver and Brooksie and Church, all writing furiously, and suddenly I didn’t care about the test because what I really wanted, and deeply,came down to two things: to have a nickname and to be allowed to shave my legs.    The thought threw me so completely that when I looked back at my paper nothing on it made sense.   I came up with some random sentences for essays and marked the first letter that came to mind on the quotes.  The result was predictable enough.  When the test came back, I’d made a D.   After that, I began waking in the middle of the night.  What if it happens again?   What if I get to school some day and I don’t know who Hamlet is?   What if all the verses to “Come Thou Almighty King” just go away?   What if I wake up one morning and I’m not here?

And I would tell this child that one Tuesday when she’s long grown she’ll be walking across the Plaza of the Americas.   And when her best friend comes towards her and they stop to talk, she will realize she has forgotten his name. But she will never forget what she really knows.   And some day, years from now, she’ll see her father’s watery eyes fill with tears because she can still sing all the verses to” A Cowboy’s Farewell, ” his favorite of all the songs he ever wrote.   And as long as she lives, when she thinks  “The wind is a torrent of darkness, among the gusty trees,”  the hairs will rise on the back of her neck.

Every Sunday morning when I was growing up Daddy would drive me down to the bus station where he would pick up the newspaper and I would be allowed to choose a comic book. Well, not choose exactly since most comics were out of bounds. That was mostly no big deal because I didn’t want classic comics—I was reading the originals anyway– and I didn’t really like superheros like Superman or Batman or The Green Hornet either. And I could pass up the westerns because I got to see Roy Rogers on television. But I did, as I was choosing between Disney and Looney Tunes every Sunday, heave a little sigh in the direction of Sheena Queen of the Jungle. It’s not that I didn’t like the more innocent comics in spite of their lacking what I really wanted– that frisson of what my mother would have seen as bad taste. I did like them. And the Disneys in particular had an advantage I didn’t realize until half a lifetime later when my son, who used to curl up with the childhood comics we kept in a big green footlocker, kept coming up with big words which when we asked him where he’d heard them, he said he’d read in a comic. No linguistic dumbing down in those days.

But it’s not Disney or Looney Tunes that have stuck with me all these years. It’s – Mother be damned—Sheena. Of course on principle I tended to want anything my parents told me was out of bounds, but in this case I didn’t just WANT Sheena. I had to have her. And I got her too, because every week I’d trade my Disneys to my friend John Goddard for the Sheenas he’d been saving for me. I’d read them right away, someplace I couldn’t be seen, like in the attic or out on the roof, then stick them under my mattress. I’d heard about saving money under mattresses so that seemed like a good place at the time. And it must have been, because as far as I knew Mother never found them.

The reason I was so stuck on Sheena was that she was an independent operator, not like Jane whom I envisioned hanging around the trees peeling Tarzan’s grapes or waiting to see what he wanted for dinner. And of course when Sheena got into trouble, she didn’t wait for any Tarzan, she saved her own self. Perfect.

I also liked the way she looked. She was blonde, something I’d always wanted to be, and she had a whole wardrobe of skimpy little leopard skins and a figure that struck me as wildly exotic. And not only that, she wore an anklet—at a time when tattooed women were from circuses and when no one but sluts wore anklets.

Now, the house I grew up in was on a hill and where our land dropped off there were some trees with conveniently accessible branches I used to straddle-shinny out on. When I got towards the end, I’d drop down and swing to the next tree, my feet dangling over the abyss, all the while emitting what I thought of as the female version of the howl Tarzan used to let loose while he pounded his chest. Eeeeeyaeeeyaeeeya! Even now, every time I pass a tree I can’t resist checking it for possible ways up. And sometimes when I climb one, the years fall away and I’m nine again and platinum blonde. So if you happen to be passing through a jungle and hear an unexplained roar, look up. It will be my braceleted ankle you’ll see, vanishing into the leaves.

Actor, writer, and illusionist Ricky Jay is interviewed about his many film projects at The A.V. Club, where he shares a charming anecdote about the time he almost put Pierce Brosnon’s eye out with a playing card.

Writing for Harper’s, Denis Donoghue reviews Jay Parini’s Why Poetry Matters, and provides his own explanation in the process:

Reading a poem entails, to a special degree, the act of paying attention; we are required to concentrate our minds, not only to the extent we do habitually on words as they pass in ordinary life but as we are impelled to do on words in the intricacies, frictions, and evasions of lyric form. That so much in contemporary life encourages us to do otherwise — to accept things as they are, whether for the sake of ignorance or convenience — suggests, finally, why it is that poetry matters. Although Coleridge may have been referring specifically to poetry when he devised the phrase, might “a more continuous and equal attention” offer not just a way of reading but of living as well?

This American Life’s Ira Glass advises beginning artists not to give up when their taste exceeds their ability — even if it takes a long, long time to get better. The part where he reviews and mocks his own early work is priceless. A good thing to watch on those days when the muse abandons you.

Editor Ariel Schrag responds to the removal of her comics collection from middle school libraries in Sioux Falls, SD:

Banning the book isn’t going to change children’s behavior or somehow save them from the hard truths of teenage life–I find it very hard to believe that a child would hear a swear word for the very first time in the book, or that he or she would be made aware that teenagers sometimes have sexual relationships or smoke cigarettes.  The only thing that can make an impact in the way children act is communication, and this book provides a platform for that.

The VQR asks whether readers will read long form literary journalism online by posting a 16,000+ word piece on the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks to its blog. The piece, written by Jason Motlagh, is available in four parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

As much as this is a milestone for VQR’s reporting, it is also a test. Will readers embrace something of this length online? Will compelling life-and-death scenarios told in spare, gripping prose be enough to bring new readers to our website—and keep them coming back for subsequent installments?

When I give directions, to someone else or just to myself, I usually describe the turns in the air. Sometimes my hand-path ends up resembling the track you have to follow in one of those tilt-boxes if you want to keep your marble from falling in a hole.  If I’m going to take a trip using mapquest or google directions, I do better if I draw the turns ahead of time because to me direction is physical.  When I was a child I used to think of  “right” as going away from my body and “left” as going toward it. I was so literal I remember getting really mixed up when I first found out that north wasn’t towards the sky and south towards the ground.

I think it would be a lot of fun to look into the ways people navigate—stars, scratches in the dirt, cairns, blazes, and so on. I heard on NPR, for instance, that when they’re telling someone how to get to a place,women tend to use landmarks while men use mileages or street names.   I guess that means I’m a woman. Take a right, I used to say, at the Lighthouse Baptist Church—an institution that when it was first set up was called “Hour of Deliverance” and consisted of a tent and services that reputedly included snake handling.  Before there was any church on that corner, I’d tell people to turn at Dr. Healy’s road since Dr. Healy, being the only doctor in that rural area, had put up a little sign pointing toward his house in case someone needed medical attention.  I absolutely never said “Turn right at NW 246th Avenue” which I think, but I’m not sure, is the name the country gave the road when they numbered all rural roads for emergency vehicles.

But a general discussion’s too much for a blog so I’ll settle for telling you a story.   The Christmas season my grand-daughter Ava was five, she found out that if she went around the house holding a sprig of mistletoe over her head, she’d get kisses. Now since Ava likes kisses a LOT, and since the mistletoe gambit was her most sure-fire way so far to get them, she wasn’t about to give up just because her mother threw the mistletoe away after New Year’s— especially not when she knew where it had come from– a wild plum growing at the bottom of the pasture behind her house. So she decided to get more, mistletoe first, then kisses.

She started by drawing herself a map consisting of a wobbly rectangle for the back door, two more or less parallel lines, and a tree with squiggles at the top.   She made a copy for her little sister then tucked one copy into her pants and the other into Lydia’s diaper, and the two of them got ready to set out on the road to high adventure.  First, though, Ava had to tell D’Arcy (her mother), who was sitting on the front porch at the time, where she and Lydia were going.  So she did.  Then she started for the front door.  D’Arcy didn’t get why Ava was going inside.  Wouldn’t it be easier if she just went around the house?     NO, said Ava.  Her map started at the back door, and so would she.

Since this was a time when Ava was demanding adult attention/company pretty much twenty-four seven, D’Arcy was surprised Ava hadn’t demanded she come too.   She was also pleased, because if Ava and Lydia did make it to the plum tree, it would be the farthest from home Ava had ever gone by herself.   She waited until she heard the back door close, then went inside to watch out the window. She been sure the children would turn back.   They didn’t. But every few steps Ava would drop Lydia’s hand to consult the map, then tuck it back in and start off again (to get the point of that, you have to understand that there aren’t any paths in the pasture.)  Finally, Ava seemed to be satisfied they were on the right track and the two of them started decisively marching (and toddling) downhill.   Now, D’Arcy thought all this was sweet—any mother would– but she had her doubts because the mistletoe they’d picked was growing well beyond Ava’s reach, even assuming she could climb the tree. And since Ava, like most five year olds, tended not to be philosophical about defeat, D’Arcy spent the few minutes after she and Lyddy disappeared bracing herself.   But she needn’t have worried. The two of them came triumphantly back, each of them holding a good sprig of mistletoe over her head. Sometimes, fellow babies, maps work.

Allen Ginsberg’s 83 “mind writing slogans,” a list of writing tips that he famously shared with his friends and students, are now available online, thanks to Amy Hertz at The Huffington Post.

I have been sharing these slogans with the writers I’ve worked with over the years in different publishing houses, and for many authors, they have acted as catalysts, breaking through anything from solving a structural conundrum to bringing a long case of writer’s block to an end. When we started the books page, I contacted Ginsberg’s literary estate to see if we could post the slogans, and happily, the answer was “yes.”

The handwritten manuscript of Margaret Atwood’s poem “Frogless,” composed on hotel stationery and posted courtesy of The Paris Review.

The New York Times reports on the rise of smartphones as reading devices, despite the existence of dedicated reading devices like the Kindle.

At least half of my reading now takes place on my iPhone, mostly within Stanza (an eBook-reading application) or Instapaper (a wonderful app for saving and reading long articles found on the Web). Which is why I was surprised to see this quote from an Amazon exec:

But in the meantime, Amazon executives say that the limitations of the Kindle actually make it more attractive for reading.

“The Kindle is for people who love to read,” Mr. Freed of Amazon said. “People use phones for lots of things. Most often they use them to make phone calls. Second most often, they use them to send text messages or e-mail. Way down on the list, there’s reading.”

Perhaps I’m strange, but my habits are the exact opposite. I use my phone first for reading, second for email, and third for music listening. Phone calls are a distant fourth. In fact, the phone part of the iPhone is my least favorite function. All it ever does is interrupt my use of the device for other things.

Related: Laptops and smartphones give rise to watching porn in public.

Design nerds unite!  These shoes, by United Nude, patterned on the Eames chair, sent me round the bend:

There are different levels of design nerd.  To me, the name “Stefan Sagmeister” rings a few bells, and an Eames shoe is an appropriate dinner-table topic.  Others (and I suspect Johnathon is in this camp) have visceral, inexplicable reactions (of disgust) to (bad) design.  Something that’s off isn’t just ugly, it’s wrong.

If you fall into this category, proceed to this article on the New York Times on typography at your own risk.