With Pee On Water (Publishing Genius, 2010), Rachel B. Glaser joins the esteemed company of Mary Miller, Miranda July, and Tao Lin in startling readers page by page with the real texture of daily life, which so much modern literary fiction fails to capture unless accompanied by that irritating fanfare of Big Author Celebrating the Quotidian.

Text message noises, poop floating in toilets, bulky men shining little lights onto drivers licenses, semi-attractive guys that watch you on the subway with plans to write Craigslist missed connections later—this is the world we know.

The bitter warmth of Glaser’s irony recalls Lorrie Moore at times, but her voice is all her own: darker, frailer, brutally and almost childishly matter-of-fact about supersexy sex times. Settings range from a high school skate park to a Beatles videogame to a space station housing five stir-crazy astronauts and a nicotine-addicted chimpanzee.

Scheduled to release in September, Pee on Water is a stunningly adventurous debut, both in its formal experimentation and the scope of its material.

$13.95 coming soon

Andy Devine’s alphabetical stories take out the old avant-garde beatin’ stick and whale on meaning in an entirely new way.

In Words (Publishing Genius, 2010), words from the narrative are rearranged into alphabetical order, annihilating syntax and playfully renegotiating the terms of the reader-writer contract. Akin to Robert Rauschenberg’s monochromatic canvases in their perfect execution of concept and aura of after-the-fact inevitability, Devine’s stories demand a totally new species of readerly engagement.

The question of just what they might have been about before their alphabetic dismantling is a devilishly tantalizing puzzle of the kind which life itself occasionally seems to be—finding the solution, if indeed one exists at all, is not exactly the point.

$12.95 cash, credit, or trade.

when all our days are numbered marching bands will fill the streets & we will not hear them because we will be upstairs in the clouds. 

All the hallmarks of the new breed of hipster fairytale from the likes of Zachary Schomburg, Shane Jones, and Heather Christle are present in this, Sasha Fletcher’s debut novel. Umbrellas, storm clouds, boxes, birds, and whales all shine with totemic power. Syntax is simplistic, commas elided, and adjectives–anathema to the nonevaluative daze of perpetual youth–are in short supply. Equipped with a huge and easy imagination and boundless heart, Fletcher might be the genre’s most seductive voice yet.

when all our days are numbered (Mud Luscious Press, 2010) is a love story for an age in which childhood blends uneasily into the sex, banality, and danger of a formless adulthood, one which arrives on the doorstep like a machine no one knows how to use.

$12 cash, credit, or trade.

Alex Phillip’s Crash Dome (Factory Hollow Press, 2010) bravely and with disarming casualness dives straight into “the greatest story of all: / Where did all the meaning go.” Those accustomed to more circumspection might feel a stab of anxiety to see things phrased so plainly, but Phillips knows enough to avoid hitting the question head on, instead embarking on a long discursive search full of doubt not only in the yearning it describes but in the purpose of its own explaining. Crash Dome seeks, perhaps, first, to be good company, and it certainly is—an easy voice that wanders through the mansion of its loss and leaves the doors open for you, calling over its shoulder a series of strange imaginings, running its hands over the objects lining the mantle, gently seeking, gently sad, worrying and walking its way to oblivion.

$12 cash, credit, or trade.

Summer/Fall 2010. What an issue. The opening piece of alone is worth the price of admission: a heartbreaking meditation on the sincere joy and tragedy in unabashed consumerism by David Antin, an aging radical who has seen it all and developed sympathy for most of it. Joseph Donahue, who was awesome in his recent reading at Pilot, appears here with a breathless, hallucinatory miasma of adolescent longing on a summertime beach that manages to be both nostalgic and powerfully unsentimental, with an undercurrent of violence and loss. Seattle favorite Matt Briggs brings a curiously affecting story of warts, Baltimore, and growing up, as well as an essay calling out the institutionalization of the avant-garde.

Eclectic, learned, deeply felt, and consistently challenging—what more could you ask from a journal?

$9.95 cash, credit, or trade.

Pilot recently came into possession of two new releases from Poor Claudia (named after a Portland drinking hole, not a sad person). Made me want to write a whole post about better-than-perfect-bound book projects.

The first is Poor Claudia the second. Over twenty loose sheets of poetry and art folded into a screen print cardboard sheath. Damn fine presentation of nineteen authors’ work, including Jenny Boully, Carrie Seitzinger, James Gendron, and Zachary Schomburg (see him here March 27).

Reminds me of another beloved quarterly, Tuesday; An Art Project.

Their standard format is a paper-wrapped bundle of poems, photographs, and prints.

This latest issue, Spring 2010, features such artists as Amy Thompson and Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort (so good!), dealing with subjects as diverse as panhandling for sperm (Katy Richey) and racism (Afaa Michael Weaver), negro hospitals (Cynthia Parker-Ohene) and yellow afternoons (Marc Harshman).

Poor Claudia’s second new release is not a journal or periodical of any kind. It’s Little Blind Thing, twelve film-poems by Zachary Schomburg.

The film-poems blend video and music with written words – new poems and poems from Zachary’s previous projects. Feels a bit like The Books (the band) and what they project on-screen during performances. I like the effect because I’m aware of my own participation in creating text (the text, the experience of text, hypertext, a new text) more so than when I’m reading off a silent page.

This brings me to the final act – a series of books + music produced by Monofonus Press.

Their multimedia IF Series pairs authors with bands or musicians and scores warm moist brownie points for  screen printed, textured, belly-banded packaging.  Issues 1 through 5 combine mini-book and CD. After 5 you get chapbooks, vinyl, and self-help guides for people cursed/blessed with a low self-esteem and a high (like stupid high) sense of humor. You’re invited to the shop for a look and a listen.

If you can’t make it in but want to purchase something, maybe, email pilot[at]pilotbooksseattle[dot]com.

Where have you been all my life since February?: The Bodyfeel Lexicon, by Jessica Bozek. (Switchback, 2009) Subtle, sparse, oh but sometimes thick and gooey poetry/not poetry.

Wry new memoir: All Screwed Up, by Steve Fellner. (Benu Press, 2009) Growing up in the Midwest can be a real trip when you’re poor, gay, and self-aware.

Newly published, and he’s still got it: The Brittle Age and Returning Upland, by Rene Char. Translated from the French by Gustaf Sobin. (Counterpath, 2009) Bilingual edition!

Low brow is the new high art: The Jook, by Gary Phillips and I-5, by Summer Brenner. (PM Press, 2009) Crime, suspense, sleeze! Who you callin’ book snob?

The newest of the new: What Do You Want?, by Marina Temkina. (Ugly Duckling, 2009) Still trying to figure this one out… In a good way.