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The Sundance Film Festival opens this weekend with the premiere of the Allen Ginsberg biopic “Howl,” starring James Franco (angelheaded hipster du jour).  Here’s a clip of Franco’s Ginsberg reciting the end of “Howl for Carl Solomon.”  Just for fun, below that is John Turturro reciting the whole durn thing (from the Beat documentary “The Source”).

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Apparently poetry by fishermen is so popular that there are two separate gatherings of fisher poets on the Oregon Coast this year. The 13th annual Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria, Oregon, will meet the weekend of February 26, 2010, and the inaugural 2010 FisherPoets on the Edge met this past weekend, January 16-19, in Newport, Oregon.

Fisher poets are people who write poetry and are involved with the fishing industry.

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I love these Faber and Faber Poetry books, designed by Justus Oehler of Pentagram. This series uses color so beautifully, setting up the rule of three colors (one for the background, one for the title, and one for the author) and then playing with the way the colors complement or contrast with each other. The color combinations vary from vibrant contrasts—like lavender and yellow on greenish blue—to three shades of purple. The size of the text depends on what fits on the page. So Lachlan Mackinnon is never going to have big text, but Alice Oswald can. They also have a tactile feel, being printed on textured, uncoated paper.

And then they break the rule slightly for this one, befitting the wonderfully weird title:

 

 

I was collecting some images of these myself and admiring the way they look next to each other, and then I discovered that Faber Books has put together a Flickr set of them! Check it out.

This is also a clever tie-in: get a Faber Poetry poem-a-week widget for your blog or Facebook profile here: http://www.52poems.co.uk/. I just added it to my Facebook profile.

 

And there’s yet another tie-in: mugs and playing cards. For when you need to buy a gift for the poetry reader in your life, I guess. You could buy them an actual book, but who knows what they already own, right? Or perhaps you’re looking for a present for someone who is generally literary but might be bummed out if you just gave them a book. It’s too bad they had to pick the three most recognizable names (Eliot, Plath, Heaney—the fourth was clearly chosen because it mentions cocoa). I might have actually bought a mug that said “Ooga-Booga” or “Hare Soup.” I would definitely wear a T-shirt bearing the title “Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid.”

 As a follow-up to my earlier Six Pink Poetry Books post, I present: Six Red Poetry Books!

 

     

       

 

• Fiona Tinwei Lam, Enter the Chrysanthemum. Designer: David Drummond.
• Naomi Guttman, Wet Apples, White Blood. Another one by David Drummond! Check out FaceOut Books for bigger, better pictures and some insight from the designer.
• Cate Marvin, Fragment of the Head of a Queen.  I don’t know who designed the book, but I do know that the cover art is by Arturo Herrera.
• Mary Ruefle, The Most of It
• Richard Meier, Shelley Gave Jane a Guitar
• Rebecca Wolff, The King

David Drummond is doing some very nice book cover designs for Montreal publisher Véhicule Press. Here are just a few highlights.

  

(Andrew Hood, Pardon Our Monsters; Harry Thurston, Animals of My Own Kind; Christopher Willard, Garbage Head)

On his blog he often lets readers in on his creative process by posting designs in progress. In this post he explains how he created the cover image for Don LePan’s forthcoming novel Animals, for which he appears to have smashed some Delft china—but it’s in fact some cheap plates and a little Photoshop magic.

 

Drummond discusses the evolution of the cover for Pure Product by Jason Guriel here.

 

And Ukula magazine has this interesting article on the creation of a Véhicule cover (Postscript by Geoffrey Cook), talking to Drummond, the publisher, and the poet.

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