Big thanks to @josephcgrantham & @r.n.r.magazine for hitting me up for a few poems, that almost never happens lol. Joseph killing it as an editor too, so many good under the radar writers he’s getting up there. Love to see it! Artwork X #albertoregueira / link in the bio
Few clips from famed bluegrass dobro player Josh Graves’ massive country funk outing “First Breath of Spring”. On a weird budget label from the tail end of 70s but likely recorded earlier, no personnel listed and to me does not sound like his regular drummer from his other country rock type recordings. Don’t see much mention of this one for whatever reason, but pretty undeniable I think. In other spring news we’re expecting nine inches of snow here. #joshgraves
Hey hey, somehow this college dropout got invited to present at a symposium at the University of Chicago next month. Easily the smallest of the small presses who will be attending, but deeply honored to be invited. There will be a poetry reading the evening of the event too, Chicago friends please come out, will be great to see you! Thank you Kai Ihns & Chicu Reddy for the invite.
New Wry Press publication! Wry Press is pleased to present the first book in many moons from poet & artist, Patty Mucha. Born Patty Muschinski in Milwaukee, WI in 1935, she moved to New York City to be an artist in 1957. While working as an artists’ model to pay the rent, she soon met Claes Oldenburg at the beginning of his career. The two were married from 1960 - 1970, for which duration Mucha largely set aside her own career to help with Claes’. However, she not only did all of the sewing and much of the manufacturing for his world renowned soft-sculptures, but was also a featured performer and collaborator in many of the era’s Happenings; appearing in events staged by not only Oldenburg, but also Robert Whitman, Jim Dine, Dick Higgins, Sally Gross, Simone Forti, and others. She also appeared in many Pop Art-era films, including works by Rudy Wurlitzer, Andy Warhol, Red Grooms, Robert Breer, Jean Dupuy, and Rudy Burckhardt. Intriguingly, she was also the singer for a pre-Velvet Underground rock band called The Druds (sadly unrecorded), featuring Andy Warhol & Lucas Samaras as back-up singers, alongside Walter De Maria, Larry Poons, and La Monte Young. Jasper Johns provided the lyrics (!).#pattymucha #pattyoldenburg
New Wry Press release! I was lucky to become friends with @sylvanlionni while working on a volume of his late father’s poems which we published in 2024. Amazing book imo, you should buy a copy! Sylvan is an artist in his own right who has exhibited widely, and he’d been working on a series of text based paintings that also function as poems. Perfect for Wry Press! I love this book and it honestly cracks me up every single time I read it. “XXV Poems” collects of series of works by painter Sylvan Lionni begun in 2022, in which he utilizes the form of the quatrain to make a suite of constraint-based minimalist text-pieces. Created entirely from readymade brand name & media logotypes set in various rhyme-scheme permutations, these poems hilariously (& somewhat sickeningly) peer into the detritus of late-stage capitalism. You can think of these “poems” as as a form of negative dialectics perhaps, or even circles that have been hammered into squares; images & words that seem as far removed from “poetry” as you could imagine, yet somehow, against all odds, function exactly as such. Like with all true poetry, hopefully every single time you read it you’ll not be sure if you should laugh, or if you should cry. Printed in full color / 8x10” / French Flaps / Tangerine endpapers / Images presented recto only / Printed in an edition of 200 copies #sylvanlionni
Happy Birthday, Joe Brainard. Print of a photo I picked up a while back, was unattributed, but I think it was taken by Lorenz Gude, who published C Press with Ted Berrigan. #joebrainard #lorenzgude #tedberrigan
Second up on Wry Press site is Luigi Ten Co N.11, the print only poetry magazine I edit with Whit Griffin. This issue features work from:
Sommer Browning @sommerbrowningperson
Timothy Michalik @ritualbloodbitch
Andy Martrich
Laura Figa @laura__figa
Richard Tuttle
Kye Potter @kyepotter
Jessica Rae Elsaesser @jessica.rae.elsaesser
Marie Buck @m_a_r_i_e_b_u_c_k
Joe Safdie @safdiejoe
Jim Behrle @jimbehrle
Cover artworks x Laura Figa
76 pages, perfect bound, 8.5x11”. The best little mag currently in existence, if I do say so myself. Please support this project! Link at bio
Hey! Two new items up on Wry Press site today, first one I’ve been working on since last year, being our second cassette tape release (after our co-lease with Séance Centre of Allan Gilbert Balon’s solo piano works a few years ago). Especially excited by this as it’s a sound work by one of my favorite poets, Clark Coolidge, in which he cuts up the spoken introduction to a John Cage lp from 1966 (funnily enough, the first Cage lp I ever bought, when I was in high school in Topeka from the Topeka Public Library bookshop, for $1.00). Created for Coolidge’s KPFA radio show, Words, in 1969, and produced by the great Charles Amirkhanian @othermindssf . It’s a sixty-three minute long, mind-bending piece. Design by my dear friend, Rob Carmichael @seenstudio , and then letterpress printed the j-cards here in my garage with Patrick Tillery. Big thanks to Brandon Hocura and Pete Prezzano for guiding me through this process, could not be happier with how it turned out. It’s a beautiful object, we only made 100 of them so don’t delay! Link in bio #clarkcoolidge #johncage
