This is the eleventh installment of Entropy’s “Month in Books” feature. Holler over to Jenny (jenny@entropymag.org) if you are a small press and would like to see your new releases up on the monthly page. In the meantime, plenty to be thankful for this month as you cozy up to friends, family, or even just a really swell cat (or pup!).
Action Books
This Blue Novel by Valerie Mejer, translated by Michelle Gil-Montero
140 pages – Action Books/SPD
Ashagalomancy by Abraham Smith
120 pages – Action Books/SPD
“For over a decade, Abraham Smith has been pouring out into the night of American poetry a brilliantly made, variegated song. Smith’s jangling, brainy, tonically surprising and lyrically cornucopic work is undoubtedly influential but ultimately inimitable. In this his fourth book, Smith confects an entire mythic system, singing into existence a universe made of the ruins of the last one, whatever’s lying around the yard. Ashagalomancy shows us the poet at the height of his powers, a poet of reach, tenderness, ambition, a gimlet eye and a vatic voice.” –Johannes Göransson
Ahsahta Press
Stereo. Island. Mosaic. by Vincent Toro
112 pages – Ahsahta Press
Black Ocean
Justice by Tomaž Šalamun, translated by Michael Thomas Taren
152 pages – Black Ocean/SPD
Brooklyn Arts Press
Naturalism by Wendy Xu
42 pages – Brooklyn Arts Press/SPD
Červená Barva Press
The Chintz Age: Tales of Love and Loss for a New New York by Ed Hamilton
284 pages – Červená Barva/Amazon
Coach House Books
Men of Action by Howard Akler
128 pages – Coach House/Amazon
After his father undergoes brain surgery and slips into a coma, Howard Akler begins to reflect on the complicated texture of consciousness. During the long months that follow, Akler confronts the unknowable nature of another person’s life, as well as the struggles within his own unpredictable mind. With echoes of Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude and Philip Roth’s Patrimony, Men of Action treads the line between memoir and meditation, and is at once elegiac, spare and profoundly intimate. –from the Coach House website
Coffee House Press
The Falling Down Dance by Chris Martin
96 pages – Coffee House/Amazon
Coconut Books
Diary of a K-Drama Villain by Min K. Kang
80 pages – SPD
Crimson Cloak Publishing
Sasquatch Must Die by Anthony J. Gerst
24 pages – Crimson Cloak/Amazon
Curbside Splendor
The Voiceover Artist by Dave Reidy
310 pages – Curbside Splendor/Amazon
Dalkey Archive
Graal Flibuste by Robert Pinget, translated by Anna Fitzgerald
160 pages – Dalkey Archive/Amazon
Deep Vellum Publishing
Target in the Night by Ricardo Piglia, translated by Sergio Waisman
288 pages – Deep Vellum/Amazon
A passionate political and psychological thriller set in a remote Argentinean Pampas town, Target in the Night is an intense and tragic family history reminiscent of King Lear, in which the madness of the detective is integral to solving crimes. Target in the Night, a masterpiece, won every major literary prize in the Spanish language in 2011. –from the Deep Vellum website
Dzanc Books
Calloustown by George Singleton
272 pages – Dzanc/Amazon
Charmed Particles by Chrissy Kolaya
272 pages – Dzanc/Amazon
Europa Editions
Fitzcarraldo
Nocilla Dream by Agustín Fernández Mallo, translated by Thomas Bunstead
200 pages – Fitzcarraldo Editions/Amazon
In the middle of the Nevada desert stands a solitary poplar tree, covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes. Further along U.S. Route 50, a lonely prostitute falls in love with a collector of found photographs. In Las Vegas, an Argentine man builds a peculiar monument to Jorge Luis Borges. On the run from the authorities, Kenny takes up permanent residence in the legal non-place of Singapore International Airport. These are some of the narrative strands that make up this arborescently structured novel, hailed as one of the most daring experiments in Spanish literature of recent years. Full of references to indie cinema, collage, conceptual art, practical architecture, the history of computers and the decadence of the novel, Nocilla Dream finds great beauty in emptiness and reveals something essential about contemporary experience. –from the Fitzcarraldo website
Flood Editions
Time Down to Mind by Graham Foust
273 pages – Flood Editions/SPD
Futurepoem
Solar Maximum by Sueyeun Juliette Lee
128 pages – Futurepoem/SPD
“If Solar Maximum’s speculative fictions are more concerned with presents than futures, its rigorous calm is deeply disquieted, its systematic clarity vying with diffusion, blindness. Is it a reckoning of human success or error that the cannibalistic clouds over Lee’s blanched landscapes are full of weather and information? That they break themselves down as a body and communications must? Why poetry otherwise? These are stunning poems written to haunt a house we’re in the process of building or, in another light, gently dismantling.” –Douglas Kearney
Gauss PDF
My Father is Mickey Mouse by Jonay PMatos
GPDF
Explicit Content by Felipe Cussen
GPDF
Unearthed by Chris Alexander
GPDF
Graywolf Press
Empty Chairs by Liu Xia, translated by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern
144 pages – Graywolf/Amazon
One Out of Two by Daniel Sada, translated by Katherine Silver
112 pages – Graywolf/Amazon
H_NGM_N
Animals of the New World by Nathan Kemp
Chapbook – H_NGM_N
Hobart
Flashes of Life by Micah Ling
112 pages – Hobart/SPD
Featuring poems that engage songs by artists ranging from The White Stripes to Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie to Otis Redding; lists of albums; daily timestamps as poems; remixes and everything in between; Flashes of Life evokes not just the way we listen to music, but all the ways we interact with the music in our life. Designed to highlight its concept-album-like nature, Flashes of Life is split into four sections, echoing the four sides of a double album, complete with multiple sleeve arts, bonus/“hidden” tracks, and handwritten opening and closing songs, echoing the physicality of placing a needle on vinyl. This collection looks head-on at the music of memories. It is a map made of songs. And moments that stop life. Sparking the senses that make us human, Ling’s poems remind of us that we are a single, unique note in a song that has been playing long before we were born—a song that will play on long after we’re gone. –from the Hobart website
Hypertrophic Press
So My Mother, She Lives in the Clouds by Christopher D. DiCicco
234 pages – Hypertrophic/Amazon
Kenning Editions
Ring-O by Daniel Spangler
Kenning Editions
Lazy Fascist
Animal Money by Michael Cisco
788 pages – Lazy Fascist/Amazon
The Pleasure Merchant by Molly Tanzer
430 pages – Lazy Fascist/Amazon
“The Pleasure Merchant is a hilarious, sensuous, and ultimately ferocious quasihistorical novel about that most crucial of periods: the dawn of the modern era. The merchant class flexed its muscles, scientists turned their attentions to the workings of the human mind, sexual mores were challenged in public and in secret, and in every corner of society the unseen hand of the marketplace dominated all. Tanzer’s clever slicing of the era reveals every social stratum of her world–their conflicts, their compromises, and their kinks. Read this book to learn what you’ve been soaking in your whole life.” –Nick Mamatas, author of Love is the Law and I Am Providence
Maudlin House
Manic Depressive Dream Girl by Naadeyah Haseeb
Maudlin House
Milkweed Editions
In Winter’s Kitchen: Growing Roots and Breaking Bread in the Northern Heartland by Beth Dooley
300 pages – Milkweed/Amazon
Noemi Press
Beasts You’ll Never See by Nate Liederbach
178 pages – Noemi/SPD
Open Letter Books
War, So Much War by Mercè Rodoreda, translated by Maruxa Relaño & Martha Tennent
185 pages – Open Letter/Amazon
Despite its title, there is little of war and much of the fantastic in this coming-of-age story, which was the last novel Mercè Rodoreda published during her lifetime. We first meet its young protagonist, Adrià Guinart, as he is leaving Barcelona out of boredom and a thirst for freedom, embarking on a long journey through the backwaters of a rural land, accompanied by the interminable, distant rumblings of an indefinable war. In vignette-like chapters and a narrative style imbued with the fantastic, Guinart meets with numerous adventures and peculiar characters who offer him a surrealistic view of an impoverished, war-ravaged society and shape his perception of his place in the world. –from the Open Letter website
Other Press
Broken Sleep by Bruce Bauman
656 pages – Other Press/Amazon
Tightrope by Simon Mawer
432 pages – Other Press/Amazon
The Secret in Their Eyes by Eduardo Sacheri, translated by John Cullen
320 pages – Other Press
Memory Theater by Simon Critchley
96 pages – Other Press/Amazon
Platypus Press
Sausalito Poems by L.G. Corey
100 pages – Platypus Press/Amazon
Plays Inverse
The Shapes We Make With Our Bodies by Meg Whiteford
Plays Inverse
Queen’s Ferry Press
Where the Wind Can Find It by Ben Nickol
Queen’s Ferry Press
Rescue Press
The Division of Labor by Dot Devota
148 pages – Rescue Press/SPD
Babette by Sara Deniz Akant
100 pages – Rescue Press/SPD
Sara Deniz Akant’s Babette, selected by Maggie Nelson for Rescue Press’ Black Box Poetry Prize, mixes motor-thrum with incantation, promising to “make no pattern / known again.” Perpetually on the move, Babette‘s populous—from Penny “turned into a toy” to the always absent, always there “gohst in the glare”—are machines of the living, at once spectre, shell, meat, and instrument. Uneasy in their habits, these poems transition between spaces “not made for inhabitants,” sifting through manor walls as easily as fog banks. Babette is subversive, menacing, infectious. “There are hazards to Babette.” –from the Rescue Press website
Restless Books
Captivity by György Spiró, translated by Tim Wilkinson
864 pages – Restless/Amazon
Rose Metal Press
Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres edited by Marcela Sulak and Jacqueline Kolosov
464 pages – Rose Metal Press/SPD
When we talk about hybrid literary genres, what do we mean? Unprecedented in both its scope and approach, Family Resemblance is the first anthology to explore the answer to that question in depth, providing craft essays and examples of hybrid forms by 43 distinguished authors. In this study of eight hybrid genres—including lyric essay, epistolary, poetic memoir, prose poetry, performative, short-form nonfiction, flash fiction, and pictures made of words—the family tree of hybridity takes delightful shape, showcasing how cross-genre works blend features from multiple literary parents to create new entities, forms that feel more urgent than ever in today’s increasingly heterogeneous landscape. Introductions and an afterword discuss the importance and current popularity of hybridity in literature and culture and offer methods for teaching hybrid works. Intended for both scholarly and general readers, this seminal collection sparkles with inventiveness and creative zeal—an essential guidebook to a developing field. –from the Rose Metal Press website
Sarabande Books
Fox Tooth Heart by John McManus
224 pages – Sarabande/Amazon
Sator Press
Salt is for Curing by Sonya Vatomsky
80 pages – Sator/SPD
Salt Is For Curing is the lush and haunting full-length debut of Sonya Vatomsky. These poems, structured as an elaborate meal, conjure up a vapor of earthly pains and magical desires; like the most enduring rituals, Vatomsky’s poems both intoxicate and ward. A new blood moon in American poetry, Salt Is For Curing is surprising, disturbing, and spookily illuminating. –from the Sator Press website
The Song Cave
The Bartleby Poems by Amanda Nadelburg
Chapbook – The Song Cave
Sundress Publications
What Will Keep Us Alive by Kristen LaTour
86 pages – Sundress/Amazon
“Shifting from Barbie to Spidergirl, from shooting the family dog to lycanthropy, these poems are sirens filled with seething. Like the darkest of fairy tales, LaTour’s work repeatedly charms as it wounds. Transitioning us from the haunting assertion that ‘your own lion’s heart will be brave in darkness’ to the sinister tenor of incest where ‘The door cracked open/and light spread like broken yolks,’ What Will Keep Us Alive navigates childhood horrors as well as female oppression, erasure, and escape. And though these ‘Mid-western spells’ are strewn with bloody dresses, they are lit in ‘beautiful shades of Naples yellow,’ emphasizing succor, solace and healing.” —Simone Muench author of Wolf Centos
Sunnyoutside
SONGS & YES by MRB Chelko
24 pages – Sunnyoutside/Amazon
Two Dollar Radio
Not Dark Yet by Berit Ellingsen
216 pages – Two Dollar Radio/Amazon
The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing by Nicholas Rombes
162 pages – Two Dollar Radio/Amazon
Two Lines Press
The Boys by Toni Sala, translated by Mara Faye Lethem
256 pages – Two Lines/Amazon
Ugly Duckling Presse
Emergency Index: An Annual Document of Performance Practice, Vol. 4 edited by Yelena Gluzman and Sophia Cleary
448 pages – Ugly Duckling/SPD
The pages of Emergency INDEX are open to all who work with performance. In each annual volume, contributors document works made in the previous year. By including performances regardless of their country of origin, genre, aims, or popularity, INDEX reveals the breathtaking variety of practices used in performance work today. Each volume features a comprehensive index of key terms used by contributors in describing and discussing their own work. Begun in 2011, INDEX is a lens for seeing the field of contemporary performance from the ground up. –from the Ugly Duckling website
Unnamed Press
Eyes Full of Empty by Jérémie Guez, translated by Edward Gauvin
256 pages – Unnamed Press/Amazon
Wakefield Press
Life in the Folds by Henri Michaux, translated by Darren Jackson
168 pages – Wakefield/Amazon
YesYes Books
Love the Stranger by Jay Deshpande
YesYes Books
After by Fatimah Asghar
YesYes Books
