SPD's Mixtape Sale Features Writers Listing Books They Like So That You May Purchase 'Em Cheap

If books are on your list (aren't they always!), check out the SPD Mixtape Sale, where "writers list books they like, and we put them on sale." Writers feat. (in a businesslike full disclose): Lizzy Acker, Rosa Alcalá, Blake Butler, Corina Copp, Nicolle Elizabeth, Kevin Killian, Amy King, Miranda Mellis, Barbara Jane Reyes, Elizabeth Robinson, Evie Shockley, Monica Storss, Stacy Szymaszek, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Dana Ward, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, and Tyrone Williams. Includes brief notes to encourage/introduce you. Here's Dana Ward's mixtape, chock-full of anthologies:

Dana Ward

“I had a lot of ideas for this list once Brent asked me to do it, but none were capacious enough for me. Then I realized that, like list making, editing an anthology allows for the clarification & refinement of a certain frame or theme. Also, like list making, its quite good for exercising one’s aptitude for debilitating anxiety. Oh the graveyard of friendships such things leave in their wake! Maybe I’m being dramatic? Issues of exclusion/inclusion freak me out. That’s why I’ll never edit an anthology. But, thank god, the brave souls below just fuckin’ went for it & produced, through their courage, these wonderful anthologies you should buy from SPD.”

I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women | Caroline Bergvall, Laynie Browne, Teresa Carmody, and Vanessa Place, Editors | Les Figues Press
Looking at the names assembled for this book is like going out to the country, away from all the light pollution, gazing up, & seeing only stars. The various poetic undertakings assembled here under the sign of conceptual writing speak to the interstellar diversity & manifold gravities such a rubric might (or might not!) be able to contain.

Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative | Gail Scott, Mary Burger, Robert Glück, Camille Roy, Editors | Coach House Books
Gluck’s "Long Note on New Narrative", Bellamy’s “Low Culture”, Eileen Myles’ “Long and Social”...I could just type up the table of contents because, like one of those NOW music collections, each piece here is a life-altering part of the fabric of our years. A book of inexhaustible horizons.

A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun Feminism | Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young, Editors | ChainLinks
This book gets more important by the day. It offers a site of crucial resistance against the automated misogynies that often characterize cultural scenes of all kind & as such gives form to the ways in which feminist thought offers routes away from our miserable dilemmas. Plus, the extended title is so awesome.

Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology of African American Poetry | Keith Tuma, Editor | Miami University Press
A terribly under-read book that grew out of a conference on diversity in African American poetry, held just up the road from me at Miami University. So much great work in here, tons of different contexts & aesthetics banging into one another, producing sparks & questions & pleasures.

The Angel Hair Anthology | Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh, Editors | Granary Books
What could be more legendary than Waldman & Warsh’s Angel Hair magazine? This beautiful compendium gives you a feeling for what certain classic poems looked like in their original habitat. Also, the bio section includes some priceless photos like Lorenzo Thomas as a little boy on an outing with his mom & brother, or Bob Rosenthal & Rochelle Kraut looking like total bad-asses in 1976.

Aufgabe No. 11 | E. Tracy Grinnell, Julian T. Brolaski, erica kaufman and Christian Nagler, Editors | Litmus Press
While not properly an ’anthology’ each issue of Aufgabe brings together work in English translation from a region whose poets we might not be getting turned onto enough. In this case there’s a splendid section of work from El Salvador, translated by a variety of geniuses. All the back issues of Aufgabe are totally worth having.

Burning City: Poems of Metropolitan Modernity | Jed Rasula and Tim Conley, Editors | Action Books
Spent a morning pouring over this at a friend’s house & have been dying for my own copy ever since. Stoked that, by putting it on my list, it’ll be on discount. I’ll take the opportunity to cop one for myself. As should you.

Emergency INDEX 2011 | Yelena Gluzman and Matvei Yankelevich, Editors | Ugly Duckling Presse
Great collection of performance scores & documents from all over the world that gives you a feel for micro-trends & macro tendencies emerging on the international performance scene.

The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater: 1945-19851 | Kevin Killian and David Brazil, Editors | Kenning Editions
Hugely necessary book of (seemingly) lost treasures & historically important plays by poets. Indispensable intro as well by two editors whose erudition & intelligence comes together with Reece’s surpassing perfection.

An Anthology of New (American) Poets| Lisa Jarnot, Leonard Schwartz and Chris Stroffolino, Editors | Talisman House, Publishers
A personal classic for me. Before everything was knowable through the internet I’d found myself stuck around, oh I don’t know, 1985, wondering where the lineage of poetry I so loved would lead in my own time. Then I found this book. Just thinking of it makes me want to go write poems, such is its hold on me, still.

Read everyone's lists here; and get 35% off on all the books mentioned.