News and notes on small presses, periodicals, and literary goings-on

Midsummer has me thinking about inspiration. Who, in the midst of hot and humid July, couldn’t use a cool dose of it? W.S. Merwin, recently named the 17th U.S. Poet Laureate, is inspired by his Hawaiian hideaway. The 82-year-old poet lives on a former pineapple plantation atop a dormant volcano in Maui, and in his new role as poet laureate, he hopes to emphasize the need for connectedness to the natural world. Copper Canyon Press, a nonprofit publisher of poetry based in Port Townsend, Washington, has released many books by Merwin over the years and now has a form on its homepage where you can send the poet your personal congrats. (Or perhaps a congenial “Aloha”?)

Speaking of poetry, Lynda Barry speaks of poetry in a short documentary on the Poetry Foundation site, The View from Here, describing memorization as the best way to experience poems. She’s particularly inspired by the cadences of Emily Dickinson’s verse (which, she demonstrates, can be sung to the tune of “The Girl From Ipanema”) and her messy handwriting.

Many people were influenced by the late, great Harvey Pekar, who passed away on July 12 at age 70. In an appreciation, collaborator Dean Haspiel, one of the artists who worked on American Splendor, described Pekar as “a certified curmudgeon who became a cultural icon,” as well as a “true-blue mensch.”

For some visual artists, books serve as objects of inspiration. For his series “The Stacks”, artist Paul Octavious arranged his hardcover and paperback books into colorful, slightly precarious sculptures. Meanwhile, artist Brian Dettmer creates amazingly intricate sculptural works with altered books, such as vintage encyclopedias, handyman guides, and history textbooks.

Recently, the literary corners of the Internet were all abuzz about a new website called I Write Like a “statistical analysis tool” where you provide a few paragraphs of your writing (e.g., blog post/comment/journal entry), and then it informs you what author you write like. Developed by a 27-year-old Russian guy who modeled it on software for email spam filters, I Write Like may not be the most reliable analyzer of writing, but hey, it’s fun. (Or well, it was fun…until I found out I write like DAN BROWN! NOO!)

There has also been a lot of buzz about Tin House Books and Tin House magazine’s controversial new policy of requiring anyone who submits unsolicited work between September 1 and December 30, 2010, to include a receipt from a bookstore. Called the “Buy a Book, Save a Bookstore” campaign, Tin House specifies that “Writers who are not able to produce a receipt for a book are encouraged to explain why in 100 words or fewer,” which we assume will prompt some interesting responses. Ann Arbor, MI-based nonprofit publisher Dzanc Books responded this way: “We at Dzanc Books are motivated to reply with what we hope is an alternative solution to one of the issues Tin House seems to be raising; to wit the decline of books being purchased—and purchased at independent bookstores.” Dzanc is offering a program for the month of July where it donates a book to a school/library for each proof of purchase provided of a book bought at an independent bookstore.

On Friday, July 30, in Chicago, the sixth annual Printers’ Ball brings together a myriad of magazines, publishers, printmakers, and Chicago literary organizations. This year’s theme is “Print <3 Digital,” and to inspire attendance, the Chicago Underground Library is offering an online preview of “daily blog-down” to the Printers’ Ball throughout the month of July.

Photo by Flickr user kingdamus