Thomas Fink

Yong Mao

The authors of this text discovered via a recherche branch of mathematics that although only four knots are traditionally used in tying neck ties, another 81 exist. This is the story of their discovery, of the history of neck ties, and the equation that expresses whether a tie is handsome or not.

The Science and Aesthetics of Tie Knots

The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie

Maya Diablo Mason

""A Pageant For Every Addiction takes its title from "A Few Promises," the last poem in the book. The phrase is but one of many promises in that tour de force distribution poem. Two other long poems anchor the book: "First Date Questions," the engaging opener, plays with naiveté as sophistication, or vice versa ("Can a pregnant woman drive 'solo' in the HOV lane?") & ("What color is nothing?"). And the free-spirited textural epic in the middle of the book, "Substitute Fossil" ("Can we force against these entropies a grunting glob of allegation?") & ("Let all our neurotics know that we shall joust with them to oppose agony. And let every prankster know that this heretic tends to remain the bane of its own houseplant.")! These three poems in themselves are enough book to satisfy this reader, but they are joined by a trove of enigmatic, probing short works whose unpredictable word choices challenge the logic of lyrical intention. As collaboration, the poems are seamlessly fused, never feeling like the back and forth between radically different sensibilities. Charmingly hilarious, studiously off-beat, brightly questioning, Tom Fink and Maya Mason's "pageant" is suffused with a literate pleasure whose engine keeps generating more pleasure."--Geoffrey Young"--

A Pageant for Every Addiction

Il manuale dell'uomo elegante

Tuzyline Jita Allan

Literature Around the Globe

The authoritative guide to being a man in the 21st century is here, at last. * Ever wondered which is the right way to walk with an umbrella? * Ever questioned just exactly what differentiates different types of beer or where all the single malt whiskies come from? * Ever wanted to work out without actually having to go to the gym and fancied doing it James Bond style? * Ever considered how a batiste shirt differs from a broadcloth one? If you have, you're in luck. The answers to every question you have ever needed to ask are within these pages, from how to strut your stuff on the dance floor to how to cook a decent chilli. Designed to help you out of any awkward situation, this book gives you any number of tips and hints for witty repartee down the pub, including why it's better to have an older mistress and the 85 ways to tie a tie. All this and so much more is explained in a systematic and intelligent way, with facts and figures, diagrams and tables. This indispensable guide for all men's rituals and practical habits belongs in every man's back pocket.

The Man's Book

This volume analyzes the work of a racially, ethnically, and geographically diverse group of recent social poets. These figures -- Thylias Moss, John Yau, Denise Duchamel, Carolyn Forche, Joseph Lease, Gloria Anzaldua, Martin Espada, Melvin Dixon, and Stephen Paul Miller -- utilize a diversity of aesthetic strategies to address a number of central problems, such as poetic speculations about dangers and opportunities of visual representations by dominant and marginalized groups, effacement of specific communities' histories, and attempts at restoration of history.

Problems of Community in Late-twentieth-century U.S. Poetry

"A Different Sense of Power"

Judith Halden-Sullivan

The bold essays that make up Reading the Difficulties offer case studies in and strategies for reading innovative poetry. Definitions of what constitutes innovative poetry are innumerable and are offered from every quarter. Some critics and poets argue that innovative poetry concerns free association (John Ashbery), others that experimental poetry is a “re-staging” of language (Bruce Andrews) or a syntactic and cognitive break with the past (Ron Silliman and Lyn Hejinian). The tenets of new poetry abound. But what of the new reading that such poetry demands? Essays in Reading the Difficulties ask what kinds of stances allow readers to interact with verse that deliberately removes many of the comfortable cues to comprehension—poetry that is frequently nonnarrative, nonrepresentational, and indeterminate in subject, theme, or message. Some essays in Thomas Fink and Judith Halden-Sullivan’s collection address issues of reader reception and the way specific stances toward reading support or complement the aesthetic of each poet. Others suggest how we can be open readers, how innovative poetic texts change the very nature of reader and reading, and how critical language can capture this metamorphosis. Some contributors consider how the reader changes innovative poetry, what language reveals about this interaction, which new reading strategies unfold for the audiences of innovative verse, and what questions readers should ask of innovative verse and of events and experiences that we might bring to reading it. CONTRIBUTORS Charles Bernstein / Carrie Conners / Thomas Fink / Kristen Gallagher / Judith Halden-Sullivan / Paolo Javier / Burt Kimmelman / Hank Lazer / Jessica Lewis Luck / Stephen Paul Miller / Sheila E. Murphy / Elizabeth Robinson / Christopher Schmidt / Eileen R. Tabios

Dialogues with Contemporary American Innovative Poetry

Reading the Difficulties

Traces the history of the knotted neckcloth from the seventeenth century to the present day, and includes eighty-five ways to tie a tie.

Joseph Lease

Possessing a singular musical gift, David Shapiro problematizes self and culture and challenges conventional notions of fixed and commodified identity in work that discovers and resists meaning. This title features essays that illuminate a useful range of Shapiro's major texts through diverse critical approaches.

David Shapiro's Poetry and Poetics

"Burning Interiors"

George Quasha

Awareness Inside Language is the most comprehensive discussion of poet-artist George Quasha's "axial poetics" as it plays out in his work of the past twenty years, called "preverbs," represented in four published volumes: Verbal Paradise, Things Done for Themselves, The Daimon of the Moment, and Glossodelia Attract. In the form of an interview conducted by poet Thomas Fink, it addresses how apparently difficult poetry teaches new ways of reading and thinking.

Awareness Inside Language

The definitive handbook of men's customs, habits and pursuits. How to be the sexy, knowledgeable, confident, poker-playing, roast-carving, whiskey-drinking man you know you can be. And how to have fun being him. The authoritative guide to being a man in the 21st century is here, at last. * Ever wondered which is the right way to walk with an umbrella? * Ever questioned just exactly what differentiates different types of beer or where all the single malt whiskies come from? * Ever wanted to work out without actually having to go to the gym and fancied doing it James Bond style? * Ever considered how a batiste shirt differs from a broadcloth one? If you have, you're in luck. The answers to every question you have ever needed to ask are within these pages, from how to strut your stuff on the dance floor to how to cook a decent chilli. Designed to help you out of any awkward situation, this book gives you any number of tips and hints for witty repartee down the pub, including why it's better to have an older mistress and the 85 ways to tie a tie. All this and so much more is explained in a systematic and intelligent way, with facts and figures, diagrams and tables. This indispensable guide for all men's rituals and practical habits belongs in every man's back pocket.

Thomas Fink

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