Because Renay Kerkman and Penelope Rosemont asked and also because we think it’s important, Literago.org is reposting ANOTHER PARADISE LOST! A Surrealist Program of Demands on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster – please read it once to yourself, once out loud in public, and then circulate it among your networks, too. – Eds.

O octopus, with your silken look! whose soul is inseparable from mine … (The Songs of Maldoror)

We are through with the rational, reasonable, realistic and scientific solutions of faith-based positivism. Instead, we make the following demands and dedicate them to Judi Bari, an Earth First! liberator and lover of old-growth trees who was car-bombed by the forces of law-’n'-order twenty years ago on May 24th. Long live Judi Bari! Solidarity with Marie Mason, Oso Blanco Chubbock, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the Tarnac 9!

1. CLARIFICATION: It needs to be made clear that this is not an “oil spill.” This is a manmade disaster. Depending on which official version you chose to believe, millions of gallons of oil have been gushing into the ocean every day since April 22, 2010. A “spill” is what happens when a drinking glass of water tips over; this is and always has been an unstoppable, unpluggable, uncleanable, uncontrollable, unleashed man-made geyser of toxic disaster.

2. PEOPLE’S TRIBUNALS FOR ECOTERRORISTS: An injury to one is an injury to all! We charge every BP America executive and governmental overseer of offshore oil drilling with manslaughter and ecocide. The mansions, yachts, and private jets seized from these executives and bureaucrats will be converted into sandboxes, tree forts, rain gardens, greenhouses, and amusement parks. The accused must face a people’s tribunal and stand trial in the Gulf Shore communities that their actions (and inactions) have affected, particularly the families of those eleven workers killed when the BP rig exploded. Bussed in from the cities, the underground, and the countryside, members of Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! should be on hand to witness the proceedings, especially those who are currently serving harsh prison sentences for their work in defense of the natural world. The least that we can hope for as an outcome is that the accused will be tarred with their own petroleum wastes and feathered with the soiled plumage of murdered birds.

3. DISMANTLING OF ALL OIL, COAL, AND NUCLEAR POWER COMPANIES: The obscene perpetuation of environmental devastation and endless wars in the name of energy company profits cannot be tolerated any longer. In the name of brown pelicans, shrimp, frigate birds, marlins, sea bass, laughing gulls, octopi, and piping plovers, we demand an immediate and total cessation of the violent industrialized extraction of oil and coal from the Earth. We also call for the shutting down of all nuclear power facilities whose foul radioactive wastes threaten ecologies everywhere.

4. DISSOLUTION OF ALL MEDIA CORPORATIONS: Our friend in New Orleans, Max Cafard, reports that monstrous tentacles of oil measuring ten miles long and three miles wide continue to grow beneath the waves, yet tellingly the media industry remains focused on the multicolored “sheen” on the sea’s surface. News outlets dutifully parrot the oil company’s party line of official estimates and explanations. When one BP official said that this disaster was a good opportunity to experiment with pollution containment strategies, no news agency explored the implications of an industry that can trigger a catastrophe and then grope around in the dark for a way out of it. In another interview with a BP spokesman, the CNN reporter concluded the report with the sympathetic assurance that “We’re all praying” for the corporation. Clearly, the media serve only the interests of their stockholders and the State in their coverage of this atrocity. Therefore we call for all equipment and broadcast network technology currently used to disseminate these outrageous lies and propaganda (”We’re glad that you’re on the job, Admiral”; “Don’t worry-warm water microbes break down the oil”) to be collectivized and re-distributed on street corners in order to encourage more participation and free expression in the report and analysis of such tragedies.

5. EMERGENCY MASS ACTION: We call upon everyone to defend your homes, your loved ones, and the Earth from destruction. We have seen the graffiti in Mobile, Alabama: “When life gives you oil spills, make Molotovs!”

- THE SURREALIST MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

Switchback Books is a feminist poetry press founded in 2006 by Becca Klaver, Brandi Homan, and Hanna Andrews, who met in the MFA program at Columbia College Chicago.

In 2010, Switchback has published six books, all sharply designed and covering an impressive range of topics from marriage to illness to animals that change shape and even English as a second language. The books are feminist but not in a narcissistic way, no: in the way that looks at borders and transition and changing beauty. They’re more Judith Butler and Judy Blume, less getting back at your boyfriend, know what we’re saying?

And the deadline for Switchback Books’ annual Gatewood Prize (named for Emma Gatewood, first woman to hike the Appalachian Trail), is coming up soon. The Prize goes to a first or second full-length collection of poems by a woman (Switchback’s definition includes transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, and female-identified individuals) in the English language.

This year’s judge is Cathy Park Hong, and the submission deadline is June 1st: 48-80 pages, $15 entry fee, submission via Manuscript Hub. Full details here, sample poems from previous winners there.

Dalkey Archives and Stop Smiling Books present a reading and Q&A with authors Joshua Cohen and Jesse Ball. Cohen’s novel Witz was profiled by Literago’s own Mairead Case earlier today. Ball joined him onstage at the Stop Smiling storefront to read selections of their fiction and then to hold a Q&A session with Dalkey Archives editor Martin Riker. The fiction was strong and the discussion featured a symbolic articulation of the relevance of being an anteater and how the world really doesn’t need more of anteaters, as well as Martin Riker’s confession and innuendo that he had both played in a band on a cruise ship and that this experience had colored his understanding of the world. Tune in later on Chicago Amplified to stream the event in its entirety.

Two of Chicago’s more interesting poets, one a young up-and-comer and the other a nationally-known entity, read from their work on May 2nd at the venerable Myopic Poetry Series. After some finagling and promises to never photograph the books, I was allowed to take my trusty d90 up to the second floor of Myopic Books, located at 1564 N. Milwaukee Ave., and snap photos of the majestic and Appalachian-bred Philip Jenks, the enthusiastic and Texas-buttered Connor Stratman, and the debonair and razor-sharpened mustache of series curator Larry Sawyer.

Literago.org high-fives A.D. Jameson (and recommends you read his entire piece — posted at BIG OTHER, hotlinked below):

I would like to make more money. I’d like to be able to sell my writing. And I want a job that I don’t detest, and that doesn’t make me too exhausted or bitter to then not be able to write. I want to be able to get health care if/when I get sick … If I want to buy something reasonable, I want to be able to do that, too. And I’d like for my work to be available to others—so that if someone wants to buy it, or otherwise get it, they’ll be able to. Money is a means to all these ends.

But not the only means … What I really want, I think, is to be supported: by myself, but also by my culture …

When I first moved to Chicago, I spent a lot of time reading books on trains. When you’re poor and new and looking for a job, it’s nice, riding the train and reading. It buys time, and it’s cheap. You go in circles through the white noise, reading and reading and making notes. Nobody bothers you.

Dalkey Archive titles were especially great picks, with their good weird weighty stories and summer-colored covers. Plus you looked kinda art and smart, reading them, sometimes so much so that you’d get a missed connection or two.

But you know what? It would’ove been better to actually make the connection in realtime. I shoulda looked up once in a while. I shoulda talked with people about how good those books were. 

Well! Tonight, you can do this! Joshua Cohen, author of the muchly-trumpeted Witz, “the sort of postmo dern epic that arrives like a comet about once every decade,” will be reading from his book (it’s an 800-page novel about a Christmas Eve plague that kills all the world’s Jews, except the firstborn sons — it’s meaty and conflicted and somehow also funny, like all lasting brave books need to be). Seriously, dudes: this is an epic Pynchon-stylee work, and it was published in full, Joycean spit at the end, which makes it renegade in 2010. It’s a Thing, and it is in our time, and you need to hear it read.  

Joining Cohen is Jesse Ball, who wrote Samedi the Deafness, also a good choice for trains. Afterwards, there’s a Q&A with Dalkey’s Martin Riker. 

The event, sponsored by Stop Smiling, starts at 7:00 at 1371 N Milwaukee Ave, just off the Damen Blue Line. It’s free. There’ll be drinks. You should go! and listen and talk, maybe even buy a book and read it, visibly, on the train home. (But geez! Look up, every other stop or so, and wink at someone watching you. See what happens.)

Chris Bower’s super-secret word-of-mouth series is simply not to be missed as each installment features a new theme, some tremendous comedy writing, and, best of all, Ray himself. April’s version was dedicated to the theme of “Shame” and featured a hynotically addictive theme song penned by Alan of The Bitter Tears. Performances ranged from the straight-forward fiction of Natalie Edwards to the improvised riffs of Tim Racine and Chris Bower. When it was finished, we all crept forth into the rainy night unashamed and reeking of Ray’s.

P.S. Want details about the series? Contact Chris Bower at cbower54@gmail.com — he’ll hook you up.

This Wednesday, May 19, at 7 p.m., Literago favorites John Beer and Suzanne Buffam will read poetry from their recent Canarium Books publications. Both books are currently listed in Small Press Distribution’s “Poetry Best-sellers”, with Buffam’s The Irrationalist ranking 7th and Beer’s The Wasteland and Other Poems ranking 9th. The reading will occur in Lincoln Square’s The Book Cellar, located at 4736-38 North Lincoln Ave.

Beer and Buffam will be joined by Whiting Award winning novelist Nami Mun, whose debut novel Miles from Nowhere has garnered her a great deal of industry buzz and established her as a writer to watch.

As always, the event is absolutely free, which means that you should come prepared to buy a book!

OK so everyone knows Quimby’s has a blog, and everyone knows Quimby’s post a weekly Top Ten Bestseller List, and everyone knows those books and zines are, like, the greatest things ever to spend money on, right? Right. We thought so. Here’s this week’s ten:

1. Big Questions #14: Title and Deed by Anders Nilsen

2. Butt #28: Fantastic Magazine for Homosexuals 

3. O Fallen Angel by Kate Zambreno

4. Craphound #4 Clowns Devils and Bait 

5. Weathercraft by Jim Woodring (pictured!)

6. You’re a Horrible Person But I Like You: Believer Book of Advice by var.

7. Bad World Small Things by William Cleveland

8. Gaylord Phoenix #2 by Edie Fake

9. Lose #2 by Michael Deforge

10. How To Make Soap Without Burning your Face Off by Raleigh Briggs

You guys! We planned your weekend for you! It will be so much better than Facebooking!

Tonight, Friday, at 9pm at Elastic Arts (2830 N Milwaukee, 2nd floor) for $7, Justin Petertil is hosting Homeroom’s regular (and regularly awesome) Songwriter Showcase, featuring Scott Masson (Office, The Juliets) and Kent Lambert (Roommate). Come be with good people, support a rad local organization, and hear Scott and Kent talk about how they write.

Tomorrow, Saturday, at 7pm at Quimby’s (1854 W North Ave), for free, the whipsmart and fucking murderous Kate Zambreno is throwing a coming out party for her new (and first) novel, O Fallen Angel. You should go. (And you should read this blog entry, which she wrote and is one of our favorites.) Joining Kate are the great John Beer, Daniel Borzutzky, Megan Milks, Jeremy Davies, A.D. Jameson, and James Pate. Come early and read comic books, because there are totally not going to be enough seats.

And on Sunday, be at the Whistler (2421 N Milwaukee Ave) for a free! double-header reading starting at 6pm. First up is The Orange Alert Reading Series, starring Andrew Farkas, Rebekah Silverman, C.T. Ballentine, James Tadd Adcox, and Brian Costello. After that, from 8pm-10pm, it’s Nerves of Steel with Patrick Somerville (and Mark Rader on fiddle), Heather Palmer, Todd Dills (for reals!), and everyone’s pal Harold Ray. The whole night’s lineup kind of reminds us of the final scene in that Sgt. Pepper movie with Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees, only this one’s better because there’s a fiddle.