New books from Tarpaulin Sky

Dear Readers & Friends,

Now available from Tarpaulin Sky Press:

NYLUND, THE SARCOGRAPHER, by Joyelle McSweeney
FIGURES FOR A DARKROOM VOICE, by Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson,
with images by Noah Saterstrom

NYLUND, THE SARCOGRAPHER
by Joyelle McSweeney
Fiction. 5"x7", 132 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9779019-4-4
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/McSweeney/index.html

NYLUND, THE SARCOGRAPHER, McSweeney's first full-length work of fiction, is
a baroque noir. Its eponymous protagonist is a loner who tries to comprehend
everything from the outside, like a sarcophagus, and with analogously ornate
results. The method by which the book was written, and by which Nylund
experiences the world, is thus called sarcography. Sarcography is like
negative capability on steroids; this ultra-susceptibility entangles Nylund
in both a murder plot and a plot regarding his missing sister, Daisy. As the
murder plot places Nylund in increasing physical danger, his sensuous
memories become more present than the present itself.

"If Vladimir Nabokov wanted to seduce Nancy Drew, he'd read her NYLUND one
dark afternoon over teacups of whiskey. Welcome to fiction's new femme
fatale, Joyelle McSweeney." -Kate Bernheimer, editor of Fairy Tale Review
and the author of The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and The Complete Tales
of Merry Gold

"If Wallace Stevens had written a novel it might have come close to Joyelle
McSweeney's NYLUND, THE SARCOGRAPHER. But any imagined effort of Mr. Stevens
would pale next to Nylund's journey through the butterflied joinery of
syntax, the jerry-rigged joy of this tour de joist. And you thought you knew
your own language. This book hands it back to you on a platter and includes
the instructional manual for its further use." -Michael Martone, author of
Michael Martone

Joyelle McSweeney is the author of The Red Bird and The Commandrine and
Other Poems, both from Fence. She is a co-founder and co-editor of Action
Books and Action, Yes, a press and web quarterly for international writing
and hybrid forms. She writes regular reviews for Rain Taxi, The Constant
Critic, and other venues and teaches in the MFA Program at Notre Dame. Her
next book will be the science fiction novel Flet, forthcoming from Fence in
late 2007.


FIGURES FOR A DARKROOM VOICE
by Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson
with images by Noah Saterstrom
ISBN: 978-0-9779019-5-1
Poetry. 5.5" x 7", 94 pages
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/Figures/index.html

In FIGURES FOR A DARKROOM VOICE the rhetorical twisting of Noah Eli Gordon's
abstractions meld with the ominous narratives of Joshua Marie Wilkinson's
fragments, turning Wallace Steven's notion of a supreme fiction toward a
supreme friction, one where the work of these two poets is fused into a
voice as singular as it is sinister. Imagine a gallery in which Cornell
boxes talk back, a Maya Deren film in which the audience dissolves into
projector light, a Philip Glass composition played exclusively on medieval
weaponry, such are the compelling results of this collaborative work.

In prose poems, syntactically elusive sonnets, and haunting, haiku-like
fragments illuminated by the ink drawings of Noah Saterstrom, one encounters
a recurring cast of logically-skewed images, inauspicious yet arresting
aphorisms, and characters rendered fully bizarre in the lightest of
brushstrokes. Here, the slippage and disruptions of textually investigative
work collides with the mind-expanding project of conjuring paradox, while
never quite leaving linearity behind. When these poets write, "I am trying
to draw you a simple picture of explanation," one realizes the monumental
nature of such a task. And this task is made more complex, and ultimately
more rewarding, by the inclusion of Noah Saterstrom's dynamic images. "Who,"
Gordon and Wilkinson ask, "operates the levers in this darkroom dress-shop?"
Who, indeed! The rich history of literary collaboration just got richer.

These two guys tell us,
"There is nothing that summer can do to us
That we could not ourselves develop in the basement"
so we know
"the sleepwalkers enter a swimming pool
With their haggings& black dresses,"
"raising private horses"
Therefore it's true
"What mammal wouldn't want its own vibrant egg?"
They glitter. This book glitters.

-Tomaz Salamun

NOAH ELI GORDON is the author of Novel Pictorial Noise (Harper Perennial,
2007; selected by John for the National Poetry Series), A Fiddle Pulled
from the Throat of a Sparrow (New Issues, 2007), Inbox (BlazeVOX, 2006), The
Area of Sound Called the Subtone (Ahsahta, 2004), and The Frequencies
(Tougher Disguises, 2003), as well as numerous chapbooks, including That We
Come to a Consensus (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2005; in collaboration with Sara
Veglahn).

NOAH SATERSTROM has exhibited paintings, drawings, projects, and
installations nationally and internationally. The recipient of grants and
residencies, he also does numerous collaborations with writers and
musicians. Recent publications include The Denver Quarterly and Tarpaulin
Sky. With Selah Saterstrom he curates Slab Projects, a series of ongoing
investigations which generate public works in the New Orleans and Gulf Coast
region.

JOSHUA MARIE WILKINSON is the author of Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned
Rooms (Pinball, 2005), Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk (U of
Iowa, 2006), and The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth (forthcoming
from Tupelo Press). He holds a PhD from University of Denver and lives in
Chicago where he teaches at Loyola University. His first film, Made a
Machine by Describing the Landscape, is due out next year.