New e-editions site

Dear All,

We are in the process of converting to a brand new, dazzling interface for LRLe-editions. In the meantime, the site is temporarily down. This should be resolved quickly, but please feel free to contact us at littleredleaves at gmail dot com with any questions.

Thanks!,
Ash Smith

LRL e-editions sneak peek: Group Review of Michael Cross's HAECCEITIES

Here's a little taste of the next round of e-editions. Please stay tuned--big things in the works!

You can (& should) purchase a copy of Haecceities at SPD: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780982792643/haecceities.aspx.

Ephemera for poems by Lisa Fishman and C.S Carrier

Counting down to the launch of Little Red Leaves #6: The Ephemera issue. I've completed two more poems for this issue and have stepped back for a second to talk a little about the how-and-why.

Lisa Fishman submitted a gorgeous short poem called [Can you carry this object]. The poem's short lines, teetering on curt, generate a kind of unfolding conversation wrapped around playful grammatical oppositions. The paper airplane ephemera design was inspired by the title of the poem as well as this folding/unfolding structure. You have to construct the airplane in order to read the poem.


C.S. Carrier sent us an equally excellent abecedarian poem entitled For a Lyric Opera. After bumbling through a few drafts of ill-conceived versals, I settled on the most literal ephemerization possible. I made the poem into lyrics/notes. Holding this piece in my hand, I swear I get hymnal flashbacks from my southern baptist days. As Carrier says: "...O lyric, god's foreskin / O meringue that dries, hardens the ceiling..."

In progress... Ephemera Issue - "Dawn" by C.S. Carrier

As a lover/hater of all things pantoum, I was truly excited to read "Dawn" by C.S. Carrier.

The poem feels more like a procession than a beginning. Lines like "she's splotched with porcelain" and "the rain pools in the turquoise ashtray" immediately evoke stillness, silence, inactivity. You feel the inevitability of the day, the stillness that marks the start, the coming that already feels gone as the poem's "mouth poceeds through life." Carrier uses the repetition inherent in the pantoun to create a kind of stalemate, a time that is timeless--four steps forward, two steps back.

What's more poignant in this poem is the mention of Kurosawa ("Kurosawa presides over the cinema") in the wake of current events in Japan right now. It feels like a dedication to the past, a rumination on the "what was" in the "will be" of the earthquake's aftermath.

I decided to go with this vague, wistful feeling when designing the ephemera. I found some lovely Polaroids taken by Jeremy Pettis who graciously let me use the photos in this piece. (Polaroid's, to me, a always muddled in their own Polaroid-ness--much like pantoums always jilted by their very pantoum-ness).

The final ephemera is a procession of pictures with each (repeated) line of the poem scribbled underneath. If you like, please consider purchasing a subscription to issue #6 (only 7 left!).

In progress... Ephemera Issue - Lauren Levin's "Tresk"

Little Red Leaves has taken on a pretty ambitious task. Issue #6 will consist of individually owned and operated ephemera objects that promise to be all over the place (in a good way).

The first poem up for ephemerization was Lauren Levin's 'Tresk," a wonderfully jagged poem that stomps down the page. Here's a sneak peak at the final pamphlet that accentuates the short lines with thick black highlights and adds red "T" accents (ala the red cross) on the word 'Tresk.'

(Note: TRESK has been called a migraine gene, acting like a switch that can control the sensitivity of pain nerves in the brain.)

If you like, please consider purchasing a subscription to issue #6 (only 7 left!).

Open Reading Period, New Submission Manager, Ephemera Issue 6 Subscriptions

Dear Readers,

Thank you for following five years of LRL -- to celebrate, we have some exciting announcements for our sixth issue: we will be holding an open reading period for LRL e-editions, converting to a new (way more organized) submission manager, as well as selling subscriptions for a new mail-out (extremely limited) ephemera issue!!

OPEN READING PERIOD for LRL e-editions (http://littleredleaves.com/ebooks ) will be from January 15th - Feb 15th. Please send a chap or book length ms. through the appropriate section of our new submission manager (http://littleredleaves.submishmash.com/Submit)! Manuscripts selected for the e-edition series will be available as both a free .pdf and in paperback through lulu.com. Selected authors will be notified by late May 2011.

NEW SUBMISSION MANAGER: we will also be receiving all submissions to the journal through submishmash from now on (rather than our insanely cluttered gmail acct!). Please visit http://littleredleaves.submishmash.com/Submit and our updated guidelines at http://littleredleaves.com/contact.html

EPHEMERA ISSUE SIX: for this issue we have enlisted the help of expert ephemera artists Dawn Pendergast and Paul Klinger, who will hereby be joining the LRL masthead! Miraculous and enthralling ephemera will be constructed for each poem accepted and mailed out. We are asking for a subscription donation of $30 for this extremely limited and gorgeously produced edition. We are only offering 10 subscriptions, so please act quickly. Subscriptions to the ephemera series can be purchased through the LRL blog via paypal (http://littleredleavesjournal.blogspot.com). When the ephemera series is complete, each item will be scanned in to comprise the online issue. Please note that we will be accepting submissions for this issue through May 2011. Please send work for consideration through submishmash (http://littleredleaves.submishmash.com/Submit) or see our guidelines page at http://littleredleaves.com/contact.html


Many Thanks --
we look forward to reading your work,
The LRL Editors

Announcing LRL 5!

Included in the issue:

____Special Feature on the **Paros Translation Symposium** edited and introduced by Joseph Mosconi. With Susan Gevirtz, Angelos Parthenis, Steve Dickison, John Sakkis, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Eleni Stecopoulos, Katerina Iliopoulou, Liana Sakelliou, Mairi Alexopoulou, Maria Laina, Phoebe Giannisi, Siarita Kouka, Socrates Kabouropoulos, Thanasis Maskaleris, and Vassilis Manoussakis.

____New Work By: Hugo García Manríquez, Stan Apps, Valerie Coulton & Ed Smallfield, Amina Cain, Carolyn Guinzio, Roberto Tejada, Jimmy Lo, Justin Audia, Travis Macdonald, Tasha Marren, Cindy Savett, Kelli Stevens Kane, Aby Kaupang, Carrie Hunter, Amanda Ackerman, Judith Goldman, Jared Shickling, Brad Vogler, Matthew Cooperman, Beverly Dahlen, Karen Hannah, Arkava Das, Christine Kanownik, Laura Wetherington, Burt Kimmelman, Nathalie Knight, William Allegrezza, Meg Barboza, Adam Fagin, and Matt McBride.

____Project Features: Carmen Giménez Smith __Selections from Goodbye Flicker__, Robin Tremblay-McGaw __Selections from THE MELMOTH LETTERS__

____Thomas Fink Interviews Brenda Ilijima

++Plus 5 New e-editions++
Sarah Campbell's Everything We Could Ask For, Brian Mornar's Three American Letters, Mathew Timmons' Sound Noise, Gloria Frym's Any Time Soon, and Eléna Rivera's Remembrance of Things Plastic.

With many thanks to our readers and everyone included!!

Ash Smith, CJ Martin, Julia Drescher, and Chad Heltzel
LRL5 Editors