INTRO: In what we hope will be a regular feature, THEthe Poetry will be showcasing presses–of all backgrounds, ambitions, and oeuvres. Each feature will include some questions about the press and a sampler of the published work. The first featured press is Called Back Books.
—a new press run out of Oakland, CA and crafted by the poets Sharon Zetter and Lucas M. Rivera—stresses the import of THE BOOK and will be focusing on small volumes from emerging writers, highlighting the discourse of POETRY and a range of mediums germane to the question of ART, METAPHYSICS, LANGUAGE, ETHICS, ETC. CALLED BACK BOOKS will also make exacting efforts to generate dialogue within a narrow sense of the poetry community and will not stray from polemical, argumentative, and outright adversarial discourses (while avoiding ad hominem, cliché, and juvenile antics). CALLED BACK BOOKS deemphasizes the temporary for the temporal and aligns itself with like minded people who are involved in dialogical endeavors. Axiomatically:
“THIS WORD CANNOT BE SHARED. ONLY SACRIFICED.”
-Edmond Jabès
What was the impetus for/genesis of your press?
Metaphysical perpetuity from a source of esthetic concern.
Where do you stand on print vs (or in harmony with) digital, and how do you think presses can help see to it that the former doesn’t continue to devolve?
“… we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it.”
What role do you think your press has played, or aspires to play, in taking on unknown or controversial work?
Neither for “the unknown” nor for the “controversial” but, rather, for Poetry.
If you still see your press as evolving, what kind of new mediums/projects do you hope to eventually incorporate into it?
Potentiality/possibility is all.
Comment a little on the poet/s featured in your sampler, and on their role in establishing and perpetuating the vision of the press.
They are poets & artists–we can ask for little more.
Click here to download the Called Back Books – THEthesampler
