Richard McGowan's Blog: Smashed-Rat-On-Press - Posts Tagged "bacon"

For reasons I don't completely understand, poetry is something I have a hard time taking "seriously" anymore. That's not to say I dislike poetry, because in fact I do like some poetry, even a lot of poetry. And admittedly, I was raised on poetry, particularly the poetry of Richard Brautigan and E.E. Cummings. (Purists might claim they were not real poets. Real poets were people like Bill the Bard, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, Sappho, and Sara Teasdale*. But I'll include "my" poets anyway in the pantheon. There are certainly enough laurels to go around.)

I've written my share of poetry, too. Most of it free-verse, much of it rather bad, and frequently resulting from youthful folly. A few bad sonnets, too, and some serious smooshy love poetry, which I am unlikely to share in public any time soon... Although, to plug more of my own more recent works haha because this is my 15 minutes to flaunt it... The Last Minstrel from Chaos actually contains seven strictly metered formal poems in middle Elysian (all painstakingly translated into modern English with explanatory material and specially commissioned erotic illustrations), as well as a couple handfuls of bawdy song texts in actually rhyming meters, in English. In case that's something you're dying to hear about.

Poetry was also kind of a first love in my literary life. Before I wrote much prose, I lived for poetry. I was raised almost entirely on a diet of Richard Brautigan until the age of fourteen, and I have an approximate ream of youthful sheets somewhere stashed away that are filled with bad Brautiganspiration to prove that assertion. And that has made all the difference, as Frost would say. I can't immersively read Browning or what have you without thinking inadvertently of Brautigan's essential irreverence for formality and The Establishment.

Too much of English poetry seems to be rooted in despair and angst. I'm not a big fan of despair or angst, so that kind of poetry doesn't usually do much for me... Too much seriosity makes me think of Anna Russell and The Rubens Woman (minus the anorexic images, sorry).

Aside from the function of poetry as a basis for song, what works best for me in silently reading or hearing poetry read aloud is really word play. I adore the juxtaposition of syllables and resulting synaesthetic marvelonymy.

This topic only comes up today because I have been working a little more on the decipherment of those recently discovered Shenanigan Cheesefield poems, and SROP is planning an early-summer release of that volume. So I had the opportunity to share the current State of the Decipherment with an artistic colleague of SROP who will eventually be doing some illustrations for the volume. And there you have it.

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* OK, as long as we're here on True Confession Sunday, I'll admit: I love-a-dove Sara Teasdale. I've read all of her work and I've set more of her poems to music than any other poet. For those keeping track at home, the score stands currently at Teasdale:7, W.S.Gilbert:4, Brautigan:1. And no, I can't really share the songs, sorry. That would be way too embarrassing.

Hurry hurry, step right up, Ladies, Gentlemen, and Aliens of all persuasions now ringing the planet in low-orbiting saucers!

The first big news of the day is that SROP has signed up with Payhip.com for payment processing through Paypal with instant delivery of e-books. This means you can now obtain some SROP e-books in "instant gratification" mode. No longer will you have to wait while a shady mule schleps these e-books back from some podunk star behind Antares in its hand luggage. You can now get them instantly; at least the first few of our so-called "most popular" items that we have uploaded to Payhip. (If there's an item from our catalog that you've been itching to buy but it's been too inaccessible, and you don't see it up there yet, just let us know.)

The second big news is... This Wednesday, April 2, 2014, Three Maidens in the Dark is slated for official release. That is the long-awaited third volume in Kajolium Broadwick's magnificent Embargoed Earth series.

To celebrate the conjunction of these two events, SROP is offering fifty percent off the first two volumes, The Santa Banana Double Love Suicides and Ice Skating in Hell with Molls. (The coupon codes are respectively LWDPOYR22N and YG7O8MOOTA, and they expire on April 3.) You can find information about these books in our catalog, and even read previews of the paperback versions on Lulu.com. (And if you follow the bread-crumbs, you could even get them for less, but we're tired of pointing that out.)

You won't want to miss this opportunity to stock up on Broadwick titles. It could be the last ever shipment of ultra-cheap e-books from the University Press of Brnzklug Bafnerpolg. We do expect to sell out, so please do your shopping early.

By purchasing now, you'll put yourself in the perfect position to also obtain, and perhaps even appreciate, the two Ginger Amelia Sprockette books when they're released later this spring.

P.S. Nobody who already read this will come back to discover this edit. Psst! The book was actually "published"—made available for public sale through the catalog—early on the evening of April First, about 7 hours early. Heh heh.

If you happen to be looking for a new/different line of series mysteries that most of your friends haven't read yet, but which can keep you engaged for a while, here are some to try. Links go to the author, and first book in each series:

Mae Martin series by Amber Foxx
Six books so far.




Veronica Barry series by Sophia Martin
Four books so far.




Maggie Sullivan series by M. Ruth Myers
Seven books so far.




Sugawara Akitada series by I.J. Parker
Eighteen books so far. The first few were trad published.




Penny Green series by Emily Organ
Six books so far, one brand new.




Gretchen Gallen series by Bridget Allison
Two books so far.




One of these series' is not like the others... Can you guess which one? ;-)

Speaking of de-cluttering and book purging, both hot topics in recent months... The SROP method begins with self-conscious pre-emptive decluttering. Briefly: we just don't print very many books in the first place, and we make them hard to obtain, so only people who are really aching to have SROP books on their shelves manage to get hold of them.

In this way we lower our carbon footprint as a "publisher", and hope to avoid the books becoming someone else's clutter in the future! Many SROP books exist in less than one handful of physical copies. Often, the number is two: one printed for the cover designer and one for the author. By avoiding sales, we contribute less to the cluttering of the world that results from too many copies of books lying around.

And if we discover (to our horror) any typos that require re-printing a book, we most often recycle excess copies... Except sometimes. So I'll take this opportunity to remind people: in only 12 more days the excess imperfect copies mentioned in a previous blog posting by Mantissa Etherbright, will be sent to either the shredder... Or possibly the incinerator... Viva la pyre? Or viva la compost heap?

Update February 17, 2019: No takers? Oh, well... Now they have all been shredded and recycled...