a plug for black stone

Music: 18 Summers: Phoenix From the Flames (2002)

Dale Smith's wonderful, dark new book, Black Stone, was released by Effing Press last week. It's an unflinching and beautiful rumination of affect on the arrival of something new, and a goodbye to what must leave you in arrivals. An excerpt:

The violence is momentary. It's the mind that shines by the smile, those lines lightly etched on the face. I could bring it down tight, relating a ritual commonplace. Look toward the beginning of a world. Another coming. This election year hypes a public spectacle cast by fabulous, dangerous, other-world creatures. But from another darkness, far out, the child floats in a fluid strangeness of space. From nothing into this so suddenly . . . .

You can pick up Dale's book here for $12 (just send via paypal). Also, for you Austinites, there's a fantastic reading scheduled this Saturday at 12th Street Books, 7:00 p.m., with Hoa and Farid and other groovy wordsmiths. Dale will be there too, and you can make him sign the book (or pick one up at the reading).