longdaypress

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We talked with Entropy about what we do, as well as some things we're working up to working on.

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LongDayPress.com

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We’re hitting The Net again!

Josh’s parents bought our domain name back for him as a Christmas present. 

[longdaypress]

I’VE DONE WORSE & LDP JOURNAL 2 ARE ALIVE

Tomorrow, you can finally get your copies of Kevin Sterne's I'VE DONE WORSE and the long-awaited Long Day Press Journal 2. 

We'll be slinging and sewing books from 11-3 at the Revival Holiday Market at Curbside Books & Records, then join us for booze and books at the release parties for our new baby books. 

We'll be at The Whistler from 6-8 with readings from Kevin and Journal 2 contributor/friend of LDP Russell Jaffe, followed by a DJ, so you can get your dance fix after all the literature.

[longdaypress]

We’ve got new books coming into the world soon, but check out some of our (sadly out of print) past titles. http://longdaypress.bigcartel.com/

[longdaypress]

Kevin Sterne Writes Ghost Stories & Other Weird Stuff

Spookprise!

You can read Kevin Sterne’s zine Kevin Sterne Writes Ghost Stories & Other Weird Stuff right now! 

Not only is this a taste of Kevin’s style for his proper I’ve Done Worse chapbook (forthcoming December 2017 from Long Day Press), but this is also the first LDP Zine! Get it here and be sure to follow us for updates on new chapbooks, zines, and our upcoming Journal 2. 

[longdaypress]

No Endpoint - An Interview with Eric A. Cline

Long Day Press: What’s the longest day you’ve ever had?

Cline: Probably the day we first found out my mom had cancer. Six or seven hours sitting alone in an early morning waiting room before even beginning to get news and information, and then starting the constant bustle of hospital rooms, car-rides, etc. that would define the next month before she came back home.

LDP: When initially discussing your new book, something further across the ocean, with Throwback Books, you described the collection as if the poems were sent as a message in a bottle. The editors decided to take that literally, and published the collection in a bottle. How do you think the container of your work effects how your poems are read?

Cline: I think it makes things less traditionally rigid. There's more room for reading things in whatever order you want, for the manuscript to lack a set beginning and ending. What happens first or second? Given that the contents are just snapshots of the constant barrage of bigotry, shame, hatred, etc. that make up a gay life, does it matter? Homophobia has no end-point. Neither does the ocean, really. I'd like to think the format contributes to a sense of intimacy as well.

LDP: What would you want to read if something floated up to the shore of your island?

Cline: Something (at least semi-) autobiographical by someone whose life experiences are different from my own. I love writing and reading most as vehicles through which different people can come to know each other, even without meeting. I would want to catch a glimpse of someone I never would have come to know in my everyday life.

LDP: There are repeated images of water in the collection. How are you inspired by aquatic imagery in your art?

Cline: Of all the four classical elements, I think water is the most simple yet potent symbolically. It gives life and ends life. It symbolizes nature, and the very places where we believe life originated. It's intrinsic to life as we currently understand it—just as, I would argue, homosexuality and other non-heterosexual/cisgender experiences are. Water inspires me because it, more than maybe anything else, invokes the natural world and things as they most purely are. When so much of my work revolves around not fitting into societal molds but still being every bit as natural as everyone else, water is a reliable go-to for imagery that matches my thematic concerns.

LDP: The poem “Seahorse” plays with the idea that male seahorses are the ones to birth children. This strikes me as a Proustian technique of destructing gender through nature imagery. Can you speak to the natural elements in your poetry?

Cline: I began to touch on this in the previous question, but to expand on the point, nature is inseparable from my thematic and content concerns. Much of the dehumanization of homosexuals and other non-straight/cis people comes from the idea that they are unnatural, that they are a perversion, alternative, or chosen lifestyle. People buy their infants ugly, ironic clothes with phrases like "lady's man" but when confronted with the idea of a young person not being straight, they act like that's impossible, because they think that being gay is a detour, not a natural default setting for many people.

This is significant due to our cultural insistence that things being natural equates to things being moral. Of course, all these concepts are dealt with rather illogically in society, but my use of nature imagery can basically be summed up as a linguistic "up yours" to the idea that gay people don't actually exist, that they're just a bastardization of some purer, straighter setting. Whether its through images of the ocean, air, vegetation, or other non-human elements, I integrate gay themes into the natural world because that is how they actually exist, regardless of if people want to acknowledge it or not.

LDP: I love the way things and people are contained in your work. From male seahorses carrying their young, to the poem “Matryoshka” (Russian nesting dolls), to the poem “Diffi(loveyou)culty” where the narrator sees himself within his lover, everything feels contained within another vessel, and constantly evolves while contained. This isn’t a question, but it’s such an interesting way to look at the world. I’m hoping you can talk about this.

Cline: Thank you! I think there's a certain conception or sense of containment that's inherent to the way a lot of people experience life as a sexual minority. We talk about gay people as first being contained within closets, but once they come out they're still not really free, are they? Every person is contained by geopolitical boundaries and their respective cultural norms. I would argue that the pressure these norms and boundaries create are both mental and physical. We talk about freedom but each of us is limited by lifespan, and the various circumstances of where, when, and who we are. I think there's something to be gained from an awareness of how we are defined by things outside of ourselves, and how what we see within our bubble isn't all there is to see.

LDP: These poems carry a lot of weight of vulnerability during formative years. How did where you grow up effect how these poems were written?

Cline: I would say that where I grew up impacted the way I was treated and thus my emotional state. Art, of course, reflects the artist. With that said, I'm not particularly inclined toward long, detailed descriptions of physical geography and locations in my poems. I'm more concerned with the emotional truth of a moment that giving a reader a vivid image of where the moment took place. On the other hand, I've spent most of my life in places that were fairly rural or suburban, so nature has always been right at my fingertips. That may have had an influence.

LDP: How was writing these poems different from the poems in your previous chapbook his strange boy eve? Did you write them at the same time, or did the poems from something further across the ocean come about independently? Did you know you were writing a collection when you started, or did these come together as such later?

Cline: In both cases, I wrote each poem individually, with my main concern being that they were strong enough to stand on their own. I knew I wanted to publish collections, though, and when deciding what pieces to include, I looked for common themes and cohesion. Having already gone through the selection process once with his strange boy eve, I felt more like I knew what I was doing with something further across the ocean. I had seen what my first chapbook looked like and read like, so I was able to use it as a reference point for what I wanted to do again, while also distinguishing the new book from the first. I think this new collection is more cohesive; it focuses in on more specific aspects of my life rather than trying to touch base with a little of everything. It's very much a statement specifically on the way gay people are treated and experience life differently from other people.

LDP: You’re the editor-in-chief of Calamus Journal. What’s your mission statement with Calamus? Who are you looking to publish? Do you have plans for the future of Calamus?

Cline: I want to publish great work by great people. I want said work to be diverse in its content and style, and for the body of submitters to be diverse as well. There are so many different ways of living and thinking, and I want Calamus to provide room for things that need to be heard, to be known.

We've got a nice rhythm going where we publish 9-12 people each month, which I think is a good amount. We update frequently enough to be active, but we don't put out so much content that one would struggle to keep up. We did recently start publishing visual art submissions, which lets us showcase another type of art besides just writing. I'm happy with what we've been doing, so my plan for the foreseeable future is to keep up our pace publishing talented writers and artists who's work can remind people why they love poetry and art in the first place.

LDP: What album would you pick to be the soundtrack to something further across the ocean?

Cline: "Nude" by the Irrepressibles. They're one of my favorite groups, and their music is loudly, naturally queer, emotive and close to the bone. For lack of a better word, they tug at the heartstrings by touching on the everyday, which is one of my main goals with my collection.

Eric A. Cline’s new collection something further across the ocean is out from Throwback Books.

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Resolution Fraught with Foreknowledge

This year: Lose the hand-hold in the grocery maze, The mistake you can’t come back from, Breakdown on the wrong way home, Rub as much salt in the womb, As much as it needs to never lush

Again with velvet red & rest when You’ve, one day, met your fated Reaping—dry as barreled whiskey, as the barrel Of the gun’s kiss—as flesh feasts on its own decadence, Detonates the blackout whole—Kapow-der-kegs Up in smoking streaks of seasoned blush Bash my Christmas back to autumn, frost the bitten, Slaughtered bodies, chop each once-carved gourd-delys Holy, holy, hollyhock: all saints shall stop, drop & reconvene —Rob the junk shops—for the reckoning, for the retreat, The Reform (nailing themselves to every door) & then, there, Dormant sufferings must

Hatch in the rapture of each dauntless plot, each Lusted-after disaster—gutted of objections—lost Less than the wandering flock (awestruck, Astray); they flush with the simplest of longings, but Forget-me-nots may blossom then, Blue as borrowing—we’re borrowing—time

Taut on a livewire Runs to tell us all it’s seen, Stunned, shutter-stunted, Shunted electric, On its teetering detour: Resolves to carry on unchanging

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18:06:42:12 that is when the submissions for the new issue of Long Day Press will close. ATTENTION ALL WRITING FRIENDS: submit a story or essay that prominently features alcohol!

https://longdaypress.tumblr.com/subs

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You can get digital copies of Colette Arrand's chapbook TO DENOUNCE THE EVILS OF TRUTH for only $3 on her site now!

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The Balcony - John Langfeld

He did it all at once.  He took on the incredible burden of despair because the alternative was compromise.  His existence threatened everyone’s; though, if the truth be told, it was their existence that threatened his.  He could stand neither pressure.

He sat there, drinking beer, even though it was not yet noon.  He took on that burden, too.  His mind traveled the route of the past 3½ months in retrospect.  He’d stopped the journey to wallow in the pockets of self-pity that had become for him, quicksand or quicksilver.  For him, his only barometer was pain and, because of that pain, he almost lost it once or twice.  Lately, though, there was the hope of pain’s demise.  There was the hope that old roads would no longer call as strongly as they once did.

So, he sat there alone, drinking beer before noon, testing his condition by poking around in those pockets of self-pity to see how they felt.  Oh, they felt alright, but not as badly as once they did.

He didn’t drink to escape as most do.  He drank to wallow, to test, to make sure he avoided Nothing.  Liquor did that to him.  Perhaps, liquor did that for him.  He didn’t care, really.  All he knew was that the experience made him carve-up old ghosts and fears, treat them as cadavers to be inspected coldly, and boldly, too.  

Was he a drunk?  No.  Did others think so?  Sure.  He didn’t care, really.  They had not traveled the same routes as he.

A while back, he was fired.  An 18-year career in the classroom was cut-off because he was too threatening, too good, and too expensive to maintain.  How did he handle that?  At the ill-fated time, he was the consummate professional and resisted the temptation to stoop to the level of their lewd behavior.  He met their stupidity with lucidity and finesse.  They didn’t deserve that, but he did.  So, he was fired and fell apart later.  He made himself wait.  He was that much a man.  But, there’s more.

At the time of his professional execution, he was also involved in a loving relationship four years old.  It had always been a full-spectrum experience with passion and taste, compassion and waste; yet, those spectra had become less full.  The precarious balance that love requires was beginning to tilt in the wrong direction.  So, what did he do?  He ended it.  It was only fair.  It was only just.  Burden or not, he had no choice.  Anything less would have been compromise.

So, he sat there alone, drinking beer before noon, weighing pain against hope and you know what he did?  He jumped out of the window of the high-rise apartment he found death in.

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January Is Not As Cold As I Expected - Kenta Maniwa

I spent the day on Adderall, writing cover letters to advertising agencies, drawing on scratch paper and burning CDs for my car in-between.

I like to imagine blood dripping down my face like the red liquid in Gatorade commercials, the ones where the athletes sweat juice.

Sometimes I wonder how bowling alleys stay in business.

Last night I threw up chunks of ramen, then drank water, then immediately threw up the water.

My Philosophy 101 teacher looked like a homeless gigolo.

It would suck if you were the CEO of a big company and your last name was Compact, because then people with small cars would constantly be using your parking space.

I don't understand the purpose of hair conditioner.

Coconut water is overrated, expensive, and almost always disappointing.

I still drink coconut water regularly.

I think passion fruit is more of a drink flavor than an actual fruit.

I am tired. I want to feel like the basketball players sweating Gatorade on TV.

If I could go back in time, I would change all my side orders from soup to salad and vice versa.

People who say they have no regrets annoy me.

The only thing sadder than wasted talent is a wasted avocado. In that way, I guess, avocados and talent are similar.

Kenta Maniwa was born and raised in Oakland, California. He publishes two zines called Eat Pray Joog and Keeping It Real Estate. His chapbook is called Someone Else’s Toothbrush (Long Day Press 2016).

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Introducing Joshua Bohnsack’s Yr Phone tape.

Long Day Press Release 04 A. Starving Omaha Answer Yr Phone B. Lemonade Pyre Trying Empathy, Apathy, Mercury (2006)

Listen to it here: https://joshuabohnsack.bandcamp.com/track/yr-phone-tape

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You can read Issue .5 of our journal online, at NO COST TO YOU, aside from whatever means you purchased to access said issue. 

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“Where Are We Now” - David Bowie

The Next Day came out as I was working my application to study abroad. Between tweaking my story for submission and researching how to renew my passport, I repeatedly watched the music video for “The Stars (Are Out Tonight),” haunted by the resemblance between Bowie and Tilda Swinton.  

My time spent in Ireland became the highlight of my college experience, which previously consisted of a hazy blend of working and drinking, with flashes of being in a classroom between. Living in Dublin gave me perspective, if nothing else. I learned humility. Though the women were lovely, it was the streets that I came to love. 

In “Where Are We Now?” Bowie reflects on his time spent in Germany as a young man. The Next Day became a response to his 1977 album Heroes, so far so as to play on the album art. He recalls navigating the streets with a flippant “You never knew that I could do that.” With this track, Bowie manages to produce a shared nostalgia between himself and the listener he addresses.

When my Irish professor, was in Iowa City to promote the Irish Writing Program at the study abroad fair, we discussed Simon Jacobs’ Saturn (Spork Press) in which Jacobs creates scenarios for the mythos of David Bowie. My professor opened up about his own sentimentality with “Where Are We Now?” having studied in Hungary while pursuing his undergraduate degree. Though he is Bowie’s junior, the experiences of navigating a foreign city transcended a singular place or time. “I nearly want to cry with him,” he admitted. “I wasn’t there, but I was there.”

After the second chorus, the building section takes me back to those Dublin streets, taking the bus in town, trying to meet up with a local girl, an art student at a whiskey pub. I can’t help but hold my head in my hands as Bowie frailly exposes himself in his final lines, “As long as there’s me/As long as there’s you.”

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We’re back!

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