March 2008 notes—-two new chapbooks ready!

I’m looking at a stack of freshly printed pages and covers for two of the three March releases and re-stocks of the February chaps. I’ll need to cut them and assemble them, and then we will have 100 or so new copies for YOU.

NEXT EXIT: EIGHT (KSE # 89) featuring Hosho McCreesh and Caleb Puckett is now available for order (I’ll post a blog entry specifically about it soon). NE8 is a wonderful combination of styles and a memorable trip through the landscapes and settlements of New Mexico and Oklahoma from two of the Southwest’s most distinctive poets. 11 new poems composed especially for this project and available nowhere else.

Also ready now is my newest offering, KSE #88, LUNA AMERICANA (creel pone sound study #8). The latest in the series of poetic suites inspired by albums of electronic music on the Creel Pone label, this one is based on Costin Miereanu’s 1975 album LUNA CINESE, originally released on the legendary Italian “Cramps” label. Instead of a Chinese moon, however, I transposed this into an American moon, and I took the moon through five phases (the five sections of the poem), and wove together lunar imagery and mythology with various characters living their lives in today’s San Antonio along with the things of their experience, punctuating these passages with interruptions from the general state of America 2008. Ultimately, we’re all under the same American Moon. Cerberus drools onto a brown lawn down the street from the Pizza Hut while “Taps” wafts over from the Air Force Base. The surge continues, but the train’s done gone.

MK Chavez is putting the finishing touches on the final March release, her awesome and disquieting VISITATION (KSE #90). Expect that soon.

Chapbooks are only four dollars each postpaid in North America, 3-for $10. Check payable to Bill Shute, 8141-B Pat Booker Rd. #399, San Antonio, Texas, 78233. Overseas orders are only $5 per chap postpaid, payable through Pay Pal. E-mail your order and request a invoice.

We have a strong release schedule planned for the rest of 2008. Stay tuned. Send off that order today. Most of the November/December/January releases are almost sold out. One of our UK customers just told me he was taking a stack of the recent KSE poetry chapbooks with him to re-read under the sun on the beach in Southern Spain while drinking the local beers. What an honor!