from | situ | ation | come | dies // Barbara Cole 71 pp, handmade $10	"The production is gorgeous. I also think it's a wonderful critique of cultural artifacts and media today. If I have any slight criticism it's that the typography is sometimes a bit obvious--I mean large and small type, columns, spread outs--makes one realize how hard it is to fuse layout and meaning. But on the whole the pages really work and the cover with situ ation come dies uses the breaks so well! Please tell Barbara how much I am enjoying her book and thank you very much for sending it!" -- Marjorie Perloff "I want to say how much pleasure I''ve gotten from Barbara's book. It is a beautiful and amusing work physically, bolted as it is--its anti-feminine matrix interestingly presenting the major debates about living in this world, including in one's gender that the work does. Barbara--I admire your pacing and sequencing of this material. It really does mix effectively those discourses of the personal and economic and historical world. Or--better--facets of the personal that have been sanded down (thus Kristen's sandpaper??) by the historical and economic and social (etc). It is a very witty and humane work, a rueful and adult work." -- Rachel Blau DuPlessis "…absolutely wonderful. In all honesty, I think it's the only book of 'poetry' I've ever read cover to cover. It does things close to my heart; it's disjunctive without being syntactically or gramatically so (gosh, doesn't the old style disjunction seem so 'old' now?). The visual layout of the text perfectly reference (IMHO) Silence - always a good thing; It's appropriated, thought up, found, invented and scattered about in chunks that make more sense as chunks than they would ever make as complete sentences. As such, your book stands as a perfect example of the new writing, perhaps it's the best example I've seen to date." -- Kenneth Goldsmith “It only adds to the achievement of this book to say that I read it thinking of what Stein would write if she were around today. 'I've got the fever for the flavor.' Barbara's poem is no more or less autobiographical than Stein's Tender Buttons: 'A steady cake, any steady cake is perfect and not plain, any steady cake has a mounting reason and more than that it has singular crusts.' A cake has a crust? As the little 3 year old who wanted hers to be 'Franny the Frankfurter-a girl frank,' and so painted on a necklace and skirt in mustard and ketchup, the star of 'sitcoms' knew early on that the pleasure is in the making of the food, not eating it.” -- Logan Esdale Text Contents : This chapbook is the first published excerpt of Barbara Cole's book-length manuscript entitled Situation Comedies. Description : The text is printed in black ink on Desert Storm; a smooth, sand colored paper with discrete highlights of brown, blue, and green 17.5x 23 cm. The leaves are bound by three stainless steel bolts and finishing washers exposed on the cover, while square lock nuts of the same luster secure the rear. Beneath the washers, a 3.75 cm. of very fine black sand paper runs from head to tail, and is affixed to the cardstock cover with archival glue. The front and rear covers are a cardstock of the same tone. (Call xpedx and ask what 2 colors I bought in January, around/at the same time as the desert strom.) In the upper right corner of the front cover, appears the author's name, set in 14 pt. Caslon, and justified to the right. Below appears the title, which is justified in a rectangular form with the word “from” set off to left in italics. The leaves are exposed on the spine, while the edges are trimmed evenly on all sides. The pages containing text are all forward facing, and the books were individually numbered by the author in black ink on the half-colophon page. The rear cover is blank. Publication : 100 copies published on May 2, 2002. -- Kristen Gallagher, Handwritten Press Here to download this eBook