An anthology of short stories, edited by John Yau, on fetishes. The collection’s really wide ranging, and run the gamut—some were riveting, others somewhat bland. Still, it had some great moments, which is why I recommend it. The anthology’s divided into three parts: I-You, I-It, and Us-Them. Most of the pieces were written specifically for the collection.

I’ve written a review here

In DaDaDa, language is filtered by machines, technology. The series “Palm Anthology”, for example, is a love poem both to the speaker’s lover and to her handy Palm Pilot:

Place me at the base of your throat
spine
set to vibrate.
Palms don’t vibrate
pulse
no
beepers do.

A novel inspired by the life of Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess who’s said to have tortured and murdered hundreds of girls in her quest for youth—

“But after some moments of comparison I saw quite clearly that my smile did not resemble that of humans: the fact is, I was not laughing.”

“I am son of man and woman, they tell me. That astounds me … I thought myself more!”

“lovely as the tremor of the hands in alcoholism”

“the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella!”

“Love is not happiness.”

A challenging experimental novel that’s set in a post-tech world with no cars. There are two cities—one for men, and one for women, though a few people elect to live in the “wrong” city.

This story of utopias lost and found revolves around M, Gardner, Caesar, and Slave. Beautiful language, fantastic imagination. Published by the Atelos project (director-editors are Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz) in an edition of 1000 copies.

“They are making a new world but it is not a new world, it’s just a reaction to the tragedies of the old one.”

“My god, how do you sustain so many prisoners?
By threatening them but never locking them up.”

While I’m grateful about the fact that our society now has great lesbian poets, Judith Barrington is not one of them. The poems here are mainly about the author’s lesbianism and her love of horses. But the way they’re written is boring and unchallenging - trite, even - and are exactly what I don’t like about the stuff being published in the majority of the lit journals today.

“The taste of self-inflicted suffering, of an evening trashed in spite, brought curious satisfactions.”

“If Mom and Dad were my children, whom I’d created out of nothing without asking their permission, I could understand being responsible for them. Parents have an overwhelming Darwinian hard-wired genetic stake in their welfare. But children, it seems to me, have no corresponding debt to their parents.”

“A smile, the exhibiting of teeth and of intent.”

A book of short prose poems, each with a one-word title that the poem builds around. A playing with words, words playing. Meaning making and meaning-made—

“It’s almost tomorrow here. Can you catch up with the lip of it arcing through space?”

Rather bland lyric poems about the author’s family—a diabetic father who died of cancer, and a Japanese immigrant mother.