Anyone in the Northeast who didn’t spend at least one entire day outdoors this weekend doubtless feels robbed and/or ashamed. Luckily for Fence, we avoided this fate, but only barely. We spent Friday evening and all day Saturday at the Juniper Festival in Amherst, Mass., peddling books to the few who dared come inside. (This is what happened in Albany while we were gone.)

Despite the fact that we were surrounded by great presses and journals (UDP, pilot, Bateau, The Sienese Shredder, Conjunctions, Pocket Myths, Small Beer…) the resounding sentiment, to me at least, was comprised of a semi-pitiful daydreaming about lemonade, campfires, and waterproof inflatables. We sold a very small amount of books and subscriptions, despite a deal that rocked Chicago in February; but you know, people shouldn’t be worried about buying anything that’s not ice cream on the first summer-like day of the year.

The day was pre-redeemed, however, by luxurious accommodations at the home of Andrea Lawlor and Bernadine Mellis, the sweetest people in Leeds, Massachusetts. Their apartment, tea, cats (Sleeves and T’other) conversation, and favorite breakfast spot were more than charming enough to make up for any amount of books dragged back home and put back upon the office shelves. In fact, we’re like sisters now, since they’ve shared their kombucha mother with me. Or does that make us cousins?

Check out their latest project, The Odyssey, a lovely zine with amazing contributors and an accompanying series of short films, all bound with a perfect sailor’s knot.

–posted by colie

is not so bad, even though I have wanted to exeunt it many times. Not suicidally, but career-changingly. And now just back from my first vacation ever–on Ocracoke Island–it’s been eye-opening to realize completely for the first time that Marx was totally right about how people are not meant to just do one damned thing over and over like this, but “do one thing to-day and another to-morrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner.” Home car office car grocery store car daycare car bed alarm clock yoga car work car home etc. A week on an island with no schedule or plan–such a cliche! I found in the bookshelf of the rental house and read Under the Tuscan Sun–is instructive beyond measure. It doesn’t matter what job I’m doing; at some point I will want to switch again. I just don’t want to do the same thing every day. I want to do different things with every day. I suppose the only answer is to become a train-hopping hobo. But I’m certain that gets old too.

Now off again at the end of the week to one of my favorite book-loving pockets of the country, the Happy Valley of Western Massachusetts, to sell books and see poets at the Juniper Festival. A teensy change-up to keep us changed up.

says Fence Books author Michael Earl Craig in this interview. “Even Mary Oliver is hilarious in her first drafts.”

Read to find out what Earl has to say about the West and History, about Surrealism and bowel movements, and about the Heavy Duties of Poetry.

& & & & 

AND see new poems by him in this (great) issue of Octopus.

by Colie

At our Saturday evening A Best of Fence event, two cameramen took up stations in the audience. One of them has shared his footage with us, and you can find it, organized by writer and poem, here.  Let us know what your favorite parts are. (I, for one, was singing penis, regis… for a week.)

by Colie 

This is Nick from Racine.

He works in a library.

His library ordered the entire Fence catalog.

He’s nice. His library is nice. Our books are on the shelves of his library,

in Racine, which is on the shores of a big lake, in Wisconsin,

near towns like Pleasant Prarie, Sturtevant, Mukwanago, Zion.

The states (Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin) divide

in the middle of the water. Someday perhaps Fence

can visit Nick in this seemingly beautiful place. Until then,

thanks be for the Nicks.

by Colie 

On Saturday afternoon in Chicago, we made our final purchases and packed them into boxes along with all the leftover merchandise (much less than we’d expected), the knuckle-buster credit card machine, our new lucky chinese cat and buddha-tramp bookends, and a half a can of peanuts. Then we sprinted to the hotel to fend off migraines with caffeine and lipstick before rushing to Ganz Hall, where the wine guy was waiting and the signs were confusing.

But the hall was gorgeous.

Oh Chicago, land of friendly fluorescents! How could we recap the best fragments without also discussing the infinite missed opportunities, the hundreds or thousands of events of funness (real or imagined) constantly occuring around every tapestried corner?

We wish to stretch the AWP landscape into a thin veil and place it over the entire country… wait. This is the case.

We want to concentrate more of the veil’s denser portions over Albany. That’s what we want. Bring yourselves, your critical poetry traincar mass, your puppet-shows, your dancing in striped sweaters, your free booze with donuts, bring your cooler haircuts and your tarot card handouts to Albany, please!

It was good. Now we’ve slept. More later.

. . . come visit us at table # 619 . . .

If you buy a book($15), you get a free subscription. If you buy a subscription ($15), you get a free book!

We’ll also be taking preorders for A BEST OF FENCE,

accepting credit cards,

and we can even ship your purchases to you.

Alright, I feel like a car commercial. Come say hi.

Putting in a word for the BEST falafel sandwich in New York City: That’s Pita City, on the corner of 21st Street and 7th Avenue. Fresh, warm, lemony, and with delicious lightly toasted eponymous circular envelope of pita bread. Try it with baba ghanoush. And get a side of roasted cauliflower and stewed fava beans if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

Hope to see you at AWP at one or both of our two events. And certainly at the book fair.

Here was a nice email from a nice lady a few days ago:

Dear Editors:

You can now read a review of Fence’s winter issue at The Review Review.

Enjoy!

All the best,
Becky

Editor, The Review Review

And then today Octopus’s new issue contains not only a very genial review of Khalil Huffman’s 19 Names for Our Band, but also work by poet Natalie Knight who is currently serving a one-year term (for credit!) as Fence’s graduate-student intern at the University at Albany (an interesting PhD program with a creative diss, for those suddenly considering going back for another degree).