Oh my Elder Gods!

So my pal Grant saw this on BoingBoing and posted it on FB and here we are.

There is an awesome blog in the swirling aether we call the internet and it is full of eldritch, remorseless critters which can be found at Yog-Blogsoth. One artist, Michael Bukowski, risks madness most foul to illustrate every entity that Lovecraft ever put to page.

Can't find the words to express your revulsion and fascination? Don't worry, the Lovecraft Engine will find the words for you.

Schematics of a Librarian

It should be known that even I own a pair of cat eye glasses and wear them when I need to shhh patrons; when you receive your MLIS diploma, the glasses come with a ribbon.

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

Source: Master Degree Guide

Three of my favorite things! Poems, indices, comics together in one post

Never have I had the pleasure of labeling a post with three of my favorites: poetry, libraries, and comics. Yet thanks to Eric Baus, I can do so today. Eric's post at Jacket2 "...explores the poem as index, bibliography, catalog, or otherwise arranged list."

Of specific interest, Eric writes:

I am interested in what the arrangement and interplay between selected materials suggests as well as how indexical forms often point to the hidden, the unacknowledged, the invisible, the partial.

This is a topic that fascinates me as well. I am curious about syndetic structures. What rules act as their structure, what atypical forms might an index utilize and how might one use this creatively, and how do they look when they are evolved/automated as with somefolksonomies? These are just some ideas to play with you listen though the post, which can be read here:

https://jacket2.org/commentary/back

If you have patiently read thus far wondering when the comic angle was going to appear, then, first, thank you, and second, be sure to scroll down to Alice Notley's recorded poem which uses comic book titles to exist as both the poem and non-alphabetized concordance. Mar-vell-ous!

Brief review of Maureen Thorson's Applies to Oranges

Applies to Oranges by Maureen Thorson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Maureen Thorson's Applies to Oranges is an excellent first book of poetry. The oranges, spiders, ships, and Zeniths almost become recursive magical traps looping the reader into the speaker's longing. Some poems were stronger than others and some seemed to rely more on surprising language than content or structure, but even with this slight criticism, A to O is one of my favorite poetry books this year. As well, it's from Ugly Duckling Presse which consistently publishes lovely editions, and this collection as a book is really well-designed and looks great in its dark blue and orange letter-pressed cover.



View all my reviews

Just finished the first quarter of a new manuscript...

...and it feels terrific (and cetainly took long enough...).

Here's a poem from Somewhere there is a forest

O floor, O foothills. Languor
holds deep here, this tight
fitness of your mouth to mine,
cursive of your tongue
caught in my indecision, perfect
as quarks as photo emergent
as birth in its soup; soon wreckage
becomes what it is so nothing needs
be what it ought not; nothing
ought to be here in me but
the grace of your sweat, tender
looks, hips rolling yonder.

This one is a bit romantic I think. Anyhow, there are 24 more in this section, "The Book of the East;" now comes the fun part of sending these out, while finishing writing "The Book of the North."

Banned Book Week

This week, and until October 2, is Banned Books Week! I'm not going get on my pedestal too much here, but obviously it's pretty damn stupid to allow one group to tell another what they are allowed to read (if, for some, another type of rhetoric is more helpful, we can call this type of censorship Un-American. See? There's the librarianesque preference for "yes, and" rather than "no, but").



In any case, books get challenged all the time all over the place (check out the map linked below), and it's my job, and yours, to advocate for our freedom to read whatever we choose and for libraries to carry what their varied communities want. I've yet to meet anyone who has admitted to challenging a book, probably because deep down they know it's a jack move. With that, remember: you can call their bluff, and shame them into reconsideration.

Check out the links below for other Banned Book Week resources:

• 
  Map of Censored Books
  


• 
  Voice of Youth Advocates Banned Book Page
  


• 
  American Library Association of America's Most Often Challenged Books of the Century
  

Librarians do rock.

Thanks Wired for posting this and thank you Central Rappahannock Regional Librarians for making librarianship a little more awesome.