Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Illocuionary a In linguistics, an act carried out as an intrinsic consequence of an utterance, as for example the performance of a baptism ceremony, or the fulfillment of a promise. "You remember what I said I would do to you, young man, if you disobeyed your parents and failed to attend Sunday school this morning? And you remember my mention of the word 'illocutionary'? You will not, then be surprised to hear me say now that I hereby baptise you with this garden hose."


Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Illocuionary appears in the Third.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

All My Dogs - Washington Post

The Washington Post was kind enough to include this excellent review of Godine's All My Dogs by Bill Henderson in a round up "about how dogs, especially the ornery ones, can transform a life":

Pushcart Press founder Bill Henderson had the sound idea of chronicling his life through the dogs who shared it, and All My Dogs (Godine, $19.95) handily wins Best in Show. From Trixie, who taught him “to play without ceasing,” to tragic Ellen and Rocky, Henderson honors each one. Sophie, an adopted Labrador, saved his second marriage and watched his daughter grow up. “Opie was a rescue beagle — rescuing not him but rather his elderly owners.” Patient Lulu helped Henderson when he had cancer diagnosed. Accompanied by lovely drawings by Leslie Moore, memoirs like this don’t happen along very often.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Latibulize v To hibernate. Function of a teenager during that part of the morning when papers are being brought in, cats being fed, garbage cans put out, digital clocks being reset after overnight power failures, etc., etc.


Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Latibulize appears in the Second.

The Philosopher's Diet and Cheyenne Madonna - eBooks

Both The Philosopher's Diet by Richard Watson and Black Sparrow's Cheyenne Madonna by Eddie Chuculate have been available as an eBook via the Google eBookstore for a while. Now, we're happy to say, both titles are available through the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble nook, and many more eBook retailers.

For those of you with an e-reader by your side, please check out each title's book page on www.godine.com for links to buy.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Aram Saroyan @ Columbia College Chicago

Black Sparrow author, Aram Saroyan, will be the visiting artist at the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago from January 23rd–25th in celebration of the release of the artists' book Four Monologues, designed and published under the Center's Epicenter imprint. Saroyan will give a public lecture ("My Journey as a Writer") in addition to attending a staged reading of Four Monologues at the Poetry Foundation. For further details please click here.

Black Sparrow is very proud to have published Day & Night: Bolinas Poems (1998), Artists in Trouble: New Stories (2001), and, most recently, Door to the River: Essays & Reviews from the 1960s into the Digital Age (2010) by Aram Saroyan.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Huggermugger n, a, adv, v.t, v.i This grammatically chameleonic term denotes secrecy, clandestine activity, muddle, and/or confusion – generally all at once. A useful synonym for "Executive Management Team Meeting." The author admits to a weakness to a weakness for such double-barreled colloquialisms: "argle-bargle" or "argy-bargy," meaning a dispute or wrangle, and "arsy-versy," meaning topsy-turvy. Come to think of it, all these terms relate pretty well to the Executive Management Team Meeting.


Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Huggermugger appears in the Second.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Superior Person's Tuesday!

Otiose a Serving no useful purpose. Alternatively: leisurely. Both meanings presumably come from the same Latin origin, otium (leisure) – in the former case no doubt via the intermediate concept of idle. The overtones of odius, adipose, and obsese make this a useful word for unsettling the ignorant in a casual conversation.



Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Otiose appears in the First.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Juliana Spahr in The Nation

We were thrilled to see our own Juliana Spahr included in a poetry roundup last week in The Nation. Stephen Burt reviewed the new books of poems by Spahr, Noah Eli Gordon, Anna Moschovakis, and Kathleen Ossip. According to Burt, "all four poets are reacting to big modern systems, above all to the system called capitalism, whose results and failures seem inescapable, from the swells of the North Pacific (where miles of plastic collect and glaciers decay) to the American flag on the moon."

Here is Burt's take on Black Sparrow's Well Then There Now, Spahr's latest book of poetry:

Juliana Spahr taught at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, from 1997 to 2003. Her autobiographical novel The Transformation (2007) remembers how she and her closest friends became excited about Hawaiian ethnic nationalism, despite its efforts to exclude them, because it held some “possibility of escape from large systemic limitations. They too were trying to escape from large systems, from limitations on relation. . . . And while they had never indulged in the misunderstanding that art and music and literature could be independent of politics, [their] goosebumps were a reminder that they had a lot to learn.” In Well Then There Now Spahr shows what she learned. She is now a professor at Mills College in Oakland, California, but most of her new book dwells on her time in Hawaii, and it is by far the most detailed and satisfying of her four collections of poems. Five of its eight works concern the islands; all eight speak to the mixed emotions, or new emotions, that Spahr’s insistent attention to large systems—money, language, climate, geography—recommends.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Superior Person's Tuesday!

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! In honor of the new year and the promises we make . . .

Resipiscence n Recognizing one's own error, or errors; seeing reason once again. "I'm sure all of us look forward to your ultimate resipiscence, Jeremy."

Lacking resipiscence:


Each Tuesday, we’ll offer up a Superior Word for the edification of our Superior Readers, via the volumes of the inimitable Peter Bowler. You can purchase all or any of the four Superior Person’s Books of Words from the Godine website. Resipiscence appears in the First.